Kill the Golden Goose (1979)

Kill the Golden Goose (1979)
Aka: Kill the Golden Ninja

 

Starring: Brad Weston, Bong Soo Han, Ed Parker, Seaward Forbes, Patrick Strong, Ken Waller, Midori, Kathalina Veniero, Joe Hyams, Phil Garris
Director: Elliot Hong
Action Director: Ed Parker, Bong Soo Han, Patrick Strong, Russ Dodson

 

Kill the Golden Goose is an…heh…odd duck. It is a serious thriller about policemen rushing to stop the World’s Greatest Hitman from killing his targets: witnesses in a federal case against an elusive billionaire industrialist. It casts real-life martial arts masters—Hapkido grandmaster Bong Soo Han and American Kempo founder Ed Parker—in the lead roles. What could have been a Hollywood fight fest ends up being Exhibit A in The People vs. Hollywood Movie Miscasting.

The aforementioned hitman is Mauna Loa, played by Hawaii native Ed Parker. He has been hired to kill three witnesses—whose identities have not been released to the public—in a high-profile case against Maxx Industries and its president, Mr. Maxx, who has not been seen in public in years. Mauna Loa—yes, he is named after a volcano—is seen by an off-duty detective, Sam Hazard (Brad Weston, who also produced the film) when he arrives in Los Angeles. The cop and his partner, Travessi (Seaward Forbes), report to their boss, Captain Han (Bong Soo Han, of Force: Five and The Kentucky Fried Movie) about this. Han has a history with Mauna Loa: his wife, Midori, used to date Mauna Loa. The bulk of the movie is about the Detectives and Captain Han trying to find Mauna Loa and discover what he is up to, while Mauna Loa is offing his targets.

The film in some ways reminds me of the 90s thriller The Jackal, with Bruce Willis and Richard Gere. The movie jumps back and forth between the police investigation of Mauna Loa, and Loa’s hits themselves. Unfortunately, Brad Weston and Patrick Strong, who wrote this, are no Frederick Forsyth, who wrote the novel upon which The Jackal was loosely based. While those films portray their assassin as meticulous in his preparation to the slightest detail, Mauna Loa is inconsistent in his methods. In one kill, he collapses a man’s throat and then forces a piece of steak into his mouth to make it look like the man choked. In other one, he beats his target to death (plus the man’s guards) in broad daylight while leaving potential witnesses alive.

I’m sure that he gets this reputation based on the fact that nobody would believe the witnesses when they gave authorities a physical description of the man. Ed Parker was 48 years old when he made this, and his body structure, hair and overall aura give off more of an impression of an over-the-hill beach bum than a killer who can break a person to pieces with a few well-placed punches. Mr. Parker is also not much of an actor, although he fares better than Bong Soo Han, which is where things really get questionable.

While hiring one grandmaster to face off with another looks great on paper, it does not translate well in practice if both men are not professional actors. You would have to have a simple script that plays to their strengths, or dub them over during post-production. This is the case with Bong Soo Han, who plays Captain (Bong Soo) Han. He is essentially the main protagonist of a movie where the police procedural elements are treated with more importance than the fight scenes. Unfortunately, Han is a terrible actor and reads every single line with the same wooden monotone, even when making ominous statements like “Hawaii’s biggest volcano is going to erupt” when talking about Mauna Loa’s killings. Even in supposedly tender moments with his wife, Han looks like he would rather be anywhere but there.

Both Parker and Bong choreographed the fight scenes, alongside Patrick Strong, who also worked on The Kentucky Fried Movie. As expected from a Hollywood martial arts movie, the fight scenes are neither shot nor edited very well. They are also very few, which is odd, considering that the main gimmick of the film is pit two masters—both well known in Hollywood circles--against each other. It takes nearly 30 minutes for us to get to the first fight, in which Bong Soo Han goes to a dojo ran by a man named Shaker (Russ Dodson, the film’s stunt coordinator), who used to train with Mauna Loa. The two have a fight, which is mainly one sided: Captain Han takes him out with throws, arm locks, and takedowns, all of which are an integral part of hapkido’s curriculum. This fight has the feel of a Steven Seagal fight, sort of a proto-Steven Seagal thing going on.

The other fights come at the end. Captain Han takes on a man brandishing a switchblade and defeats him similar to the fight above, albeit with a few more kicks. Han’s opponent actually uses the knife as if he had been trained in actual knife fighting, but the scuffle is truncated. The finale is the much-awaited showdown between Ed Parker and Bong Soo Han. Sadly, the fight is underwhelming for a number of reasons. First, the entire sequence is ill-lit making it hard to see what is happening in some shots. Second, the fight is just plain short. Third, the camera work occasionally ruins the illusion by making it clear that the punches and kicks are not connecting with their targets. Finally, there is simply not a lot of sustained choreography. Someone throws a punch or kick, the other guy gets hit, both men back up and size each other up, and then one of them—usually Ed—grabs an object to use as a weapon, they size each other up more, and then the process repeats itself.

As it stands, both the finale and the film as a whole is not a particularly good display of either hapkido or Kempo. I suppose the former stands out simply because Bong Soo Han gets more fight scenes than Ed Parker does. But you could probably switch Ed Parker for any martial arts-trained stuntman in Hollywood at the time and the final product would have been the same. That is a shame, considering the distinctive complexity of American Kempo movements, especially the handwork. Thank goodness, Kempo received some degree of cinematic redemption with Jeff Speakman’s The Perfect Weapon twelve years later. But that is another story for another volume.