Faraway signals from way-out cinema
It seems almost far-fetched now, but there was once a time when San Francisco was filled with leather bars and martial arts schools instead of unaffordable housing and tech startups. Like a limp body flying over the bar and smashing only the bottom-shelf vodka, THE WEAPONS OF DEATH comes out of nowhere to surprise and delight.
The decade of the 1980s was a banner era for the fantasy film all across the globe. KUNG FU WONDER CHILD probably isn’t the only one to feature bathroom humor alongside martial arts and magic, but it might be the only one that has a monster with blonde bangs and Yukari Oshima kicking dudes into trees.
When his brother overdoses on a new designer drug called “nirvana,” a fresh MBA graduate must choose between the stable pursuits of marriage and a burgeoning family business, or traveling to Hong Kong to learn kung fu and fight drug dealers.
A mystical sword formed from a meteorite. A nun in a wheelchair flying off a cliff. A motorcycle riding hero in a red cocktail dress. All these random threads converge in the misshapen, cable-knit sweater of a 1980s action film that is SWORD OF HEAVEN.
The rare b-grade action film that delivers what its title promises and its box art fails to convey: actual blood on actual hands!
All of the genre elements of this film — martial arts, blaxploitation, gang warfare, police procedural, and man-in-a-suit monster tropes — work well individually and in combination. Of course they do! People are out there eating Mountain Dew & Doritos donuts for fuck’s sake.
A kickboxing movie which teaches us that even if your father hates your lifestyle choices, and your karate teacher threatens to kill you over your accomplishments, and your girlfriend sees no future with you, you should still pursue your dreams.
Have you ever seen a cinematic hero voluntarily crash through a patio door window to jump-kick a guy standing in a living room with no furniture? THE MASTER DEMON may be your only chance.
The criminal activity in Chinatown is escalating and the city’s police department doesn’t have enough resources. Violent gangs perform complex Tai Chi routines with impunity. Thugs in latex Halloween masks kidnap kids in broad daylight. Only a hero with a simple plan can make things right. 1991’s LETHAL NINJA spreads the havoc.
The sort of film that gives you five straight minutes of old women eating chicken while a man in a kabuki mask performs magic tricks for a baby and a shirtless man twirls swords around in the back of a dimly-lit restaurant.
At least a decade before organized mixed martial arts provided a platform to answer questions such as “who would win in a fight between a kickboxer and a really overweight sumo wrestler?” a somewhat obscure 1985 film from West Germany sought to provide clarity to a similar proposition, with a slight sartorial spin. (“Who would win in a fight: a guy with mustache in a fur-collar leather jacket, or a tall dude with a mullet in leather pants and a white scarf?”) MACHO MAN puts real-life boxer, Rene Weller, and karate expert, Peter Althof, in a tiny wardrobe closet and shakes it vigorously to see if they’ll fight.
In the U.S., we take the influence of Hong Kong’s “Golden Age” for granted, but you can see its fingerprints on everything from the 2000 film version of CHARLIE’S ANGELS and the UNDISPUTED sequels to the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the JOHN WICK films. NO RETREAT, NO SURRENDER was a very early version of that classic Hong Kong fight choreography mapped to an American film production, and made primarily for an audience that had gotten its kicks from flicks like THE KARATE KID.
Smoking clowns, unpredictable quips, weird relationship dynamics, alcoholic benders, and murderous sleaze. TO THE DEATH is that rare breed of underground fight film that surprises, confuses, and delights.
Death Ray Dive 