Karate Warrior 2 (1988)

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Karate Warrior goes to college. Is there any idea for a sequel that manages to simultaneously cause snickers, loose stools, and breathless anticipation more than the idea of the biggest dojo douche set loose on campus where he’ll likely get beat up at frat parties, beat up in between classes on the quad and beat up back in the dorms?

And all while struggling to maintain a D+ average because all his study time is spent standing in his backyard in silly poses while his kung fu master smacks him in the head for not using his spirit to fight instead of his strategy of deflecting his opponent’s blows with his overly feminine face? Continue reading “Karate Warrior 2 (1988)” →

Karate Warrior (1987)

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The road from Karate Wuss to Karate Warrior is an arduous one, requiring the sort of sacrifice and commitment not found easily in these days of miracle pills, quick fixes, and grade inflation. Truth be told, it was a lot easier to find a person willing to forgo the trappings of his earlier life back in the late 1980s after the success of The Karate Kid. And since this is an Italian movie, the karate kid here is Anthony Scott, a 17 year-old American with a dubbed 30 year-old voice that sounds like it’s coming from an alien trying to translate from its native language in real time. Continue reading “Karate Warrior (1987)” →

Shock Waves (1977)

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ShockWavesPosterAmong the various secret Nazi plans to win WWII that involved the occult, clones, brain transplants, looted gold, and lost arks, the most fearsome of all (according to this movie at least, but it’s probably a bit biased) was the creation of the Death Corps.

The Death Corps, as both the narrator and later Peter Cushing would explain, were a bunch of thugs and murderers who were turned into zombies that lived only to kill. Now, I would have just thought that those things would be called Nazis, but these Death Corps guys were apparently Nazis that had turned it up a notch. Continue reading “Shock Waves (1977)” →

Crackerjack (1994)

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Crackerjack is a typically stupid Die Hard clone saved only by the fact that it is a typically stupid Die Hard clone. Slavish in its devotion to all the obvious elements of Die Hard while completely uninterested in emulating anything that actually made Die Hard a classic, Crackerjack still manages to blow up two helicopters, a cable car, and an entire resort! And it managed to do all that damage with the Breck Girl of the wannabe action stars of the 1990s, Thomas Ian Griffith! Continue reading “Crackerjack (1994)” →

Kings Row (1942)

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Kings Row successfully navigates around the edges of the movie-style soap opera to bring us a memorable look at how that most hallowed slice of Americana, the clean, pretty, small town, was just as susceptible to madness, corruption and pointless violence as any big city. At least until the last 20 seconds of the movie when the lame and unconvincing happy ending rears its ugly head. Continue reading “Kings Row (1942)” →