Velvet Smooth (1976)

Velvet Smooth (1976)

Starring: Johnnie Hill-Hudgins, Owen Watson, Emerson Boozer, René Van Clief, Elsie Roman, Moses Lyllia, Frank Ruiz, James Durrah
Director: Michael Fink
Action Director: Owen Watson

I have been a follower of the B-Masters since the late 1990s. They are (or in a number of cases, “were”) a cabal of websites dedicated to reviewing B-movies, genre films, and sometimes just the “worst of the worst.” The original line-up included Cold Fusion Video (who hosted my site from 2009 – 2013); Stomp Tokyo; The Bad Movie Report; Jabootu; And You Call Yourself a Scientist; Teleport City; B-Movie Notes; Oh! The Humanity; and Badmovies.Org. A few of them entered “Emeritus” status in the early 2000s, being replaced by The Unknown Movies and 1000 Misspent Hours and Counting.

As the years passed, more and more of the member sites stopped updating consistently, to the point that today, only two member sites—The Unknown Movies and 1000 Misspent Hours and Counting—are consistently posting new reviews. I think And You Call Yourself A Scientist still updates, although Lyz doesn’t post them to the B-Masters blog.

And then there is Jabootu, who hasn’t posted a new review in a decade or more, but updates his site with Monster of the Day pix (which he'd been doing for about 15 years now). That said, Jabootu grandmaster Ken Begg stays active in the B-movie world as regular attendee of B-Fest, T-Fest, and T(ween)-Fest, plus his daily posts about monsters. He also does bi-monthly Discord (or Amazon or whatever) movie nights, in which he subjects his faithful readers and friends to crappy movies. It was in this context that I watched Velvet Smooth.

The movie doesn’t have a whole lot of plot to speak of. A group of masked goons have been going around “da’ hood” beating people up. The victims are connected in one or another to the local crime boss, Lathrop King (Owen Watson, of Force Four), who runs the local numbers racket. And yeah…do not ask me to explain how “numbers” works. I’ve seen this in a number of Blaxploitation films and I still do not get it. Whatever. Anyway, Lathrop decides to bring in some hired muscle from outside to fight off the new gang.

Enter: Velvet Smooth.

Velvet Smooth (Johnnie Hill-Hudgins, whose other claim to fame was playing Whitney Houston’s stand-in in The Preacher’s Wife, a film known for its exhilarating stuntwork) is a karate-kicking badass whose skills…well…lemme put it this way: While watching the movie, the Rev remarked, “I don’t think Michelle Yeoh is going to lose sleep at night.” I responded, “Forget Michelle Yeoh, I don’t think Sharla Cheung Man is going to lose sleep at night.” She has two fellow female fighters to join her in her mission: Frankie (René Van Clief, whom I wonder if she’s Ron’s sister) and Ria (Elsie Roman, who was the hot face of karate back in the 1970s).

The rest of the movie is a series of karate battles between the three heroines and the evil gang. There are a pair of detectives—Lt. Ramos (Frank Ruiz, of Force Four and The Devil’s Express) and Sgt. Barnes (Moses Lyllia, also of The Devil’s Express)—who are investigating the beatings and Barnes acts like a bigger asshole to Lathrop than Ramos, who is actually pretty chill. There is also a turncoat in Lathrop’s organization: Calvin (James Durrah), King’s second-in-command. Also, Velvet has a boyfriend (or boytoy) named Matt (played by the awesomely-named Emerson Boozer), but I barely know who that guy is or why I should care about him.

Velvet Smooth is a very bad movie. It is a fun film when watched in the right circumstances (i.e. with a bunch of like-minded snarky people), but there is nothing about the movie that can be construed as good. Perhaps the only praise you can give it is, “It has a lot of fight scenes,” but even that has its limitations (which I’ll get into in a moment). The story does not make much sense: bad things happen, Lathrop brings in some outside help, fights ensue (often for no reason), people find out who the bad guys are (somehow), and more fights ensue. Add goofy dialog delivered “actors” of questionable ability.

My favorite exchange goes along the lines of:

Velvet Smooth: We need to find out if there is a connection. I can just feel it.
Me: No, you dumb broad. You were hired to find that stuff out. You don’t need to feel anything. Do your damn job!

I also found it amusing when Velvet Smooth is dismissing her two homegirls for the evening and we get this exchange:

Ria: I need to go home and do laundry.
Frankie: I need to go home and undo some laundry.
(Get it? It means she’s feisty in the sack)

The fight scenes were staged by Owen Watson—who is billed as Owen Wat-son (does that make him part Chinese?)—who also played Lathrop King. Watson was a former Navy SEAL and one of the original students of the Nisei Goju-Ryu System, under the tutelage of Frank Ruiz (who plays Lt. Ramos). One of his colleagues was Ron Van Clief, who had a limited (but memorable) career in Hong Kong during the mid to late 1970s. For those who are unfamiliar with the in’s and out’s of karate, Goju-Ryu is one of the major karate systems, known for combining the “hard” elements of Okinawan native styles and the “soft” movements of Chinese kung fu, notably Fujian White Crane. I studied it for 2 years as a teenager. Other big names associated with Goju-Ryu are Japanese actress Yukari Oshima, the late Richard Norton, and The Perfect Weapon’s Jeff Speakman, who studied it before moving on to Kempo.

Sadly, despite being the “real deal” when it came to martial arts and real-life combat situations, Owen Watson was not a very good action director. What I mean is that Velvet Smooth has some of the worst martial arts sequences on record. As we all stated during the watch party: This is the sort of movie that makes Kill Squad look like Yuen Woo-Ping (personally, I found Kill Squad to be a lot of fun, even though it isn’t a very good movie). The punches and kicks delivered by lead actress Johnnie Hudgins-Hill are so weak and lacking in power that you would be right to think that Watson had asked the actors to play-spar and just film that.

The thing is, you can tell that a lot of the stuntmen are actual trained martial artists. You see them performing a few nice spin kicks and whatnot, so you know those guys know their stuff. But, that is not the case with the lead actors. I don’t know if René Van Clief was a student of Frank Ruiz like Ron was, but she is at least spirited in her fights, even if they struggle to reach the level of an early 1970s basher film. Elsie Roman was a big thing in the 1970s karate scene, and her best moment is a simple exchange of moves involving a pool cue. And the lead actress: Good lord, she’s bad.

Velvet Smooth is the sort of movie that makes you pine for TNT Jackson. That movie has questionable fight scenes, but they were better than the ones here and that movie had legitimate exploitation elements, including a legendary topless fight involving Playboy Playmate Jean Bell. Velvet Smooth just has Johnnie Hudgins-Hill fighting off scores of thugs set to choreography that suggests the filmmakers just filmed the actors’ practice sessions.

Shamo (2007)

Shamo (2007) Chinese Title: 軍雞 Translation: Military(ized) Chicken

Starring: Shawn Yue, Annie Liu Xin-You, Francis Ng, Masato, Dylan Kuo Pin-Chao, Bruce Leung Siu-Lung, Ryo Ishibashi, Pei Pei Wei-Ying, Terri Kwan Wing, Hiromi Nakajima, Takuya Suzuki

Director: Soi Cheang

Action Director: Jack Wong Wai-Leung

Shamo is based on a Japanese manga of the same name, which tells the story of a young man who serves a term in a correctional facility for murdering his parents. While there, he learns karate from another one of the inmates, who is a karate master-cum-revolutionary. Once on the outside, he becomes a professional fighter of extremely questionable morals, often employing underhanded means (psychological warfare, blackmail, and even rape) in order to get the upper hand. In other words, the character of Shamo is a complete heel and a true antihero.

This live-action adaptation of the manga was brought to us by Soi Cheang, who is best known these days for martial arts films like SPL 2: A Time for Consequences and Walled In: Twilight of the Warriors. However, when this movie was made, Soi had previously made the ultra-bleak and ultra-violent crime thriller Dog Bite Dog, which is a hard film watch (let alone re-watch for the purpose of reviewing). Considering that film revolved around a professional assassin who was only marginally worse than the cops trailing him, making a movie about an unsavory character like Ryo Narushima seemed like a understandable idea.

The film opens with an idyllic family breakfast at the Narushima household. Ryo (Shawn Yue, of Dragon Tiger Gate and The Invisible Target) and his sister, Natsumi (Pei Pei, who played the mute love interest in Dog Bite Dog), are at the table enjoying a meal with their parents. The film cuts to Ryo being taken to prison as we learn that he has violently murdered his parents and confessed to the same. Ryo’s experience in prison is not a fun one: he regularly beaten, tortured, and raped by both the inmates and guards (led by the warden, played by War’s Ryo Ishibashi). He receives one visit from his sister, Natsumi, who announces that she has become a prostitute because of Japan’s culture of ostracizing anyone related to criminals, even if they themselves have done nothing wrong.

After one of his daily beatings, Ryo is about to slit his own throat on a broken toilet when he rescued by a new inmate, Kenji Kurokawa (Francis Ng, of The Mission and A Man Called Hero). Kurokawa is a karate master who was thrown in jail for murdering the Prime Minister—I’m surprised he didn’t get the death penalty for that—and is allowed by the Warden to teach karate to the inmates. Yeah, way to make hardened criminals even more dangerous. He sees potential in Ryo Narushima and teaches him, which makes Ryo strong enough to fight back against his tormentors.

Due to his being a minor, Ryo is let out after a two-year stint (unlike California, where violent offenders are often transferred to normal adult prisons after serving part of their sentence at the CYA). He dyes his hair blonde, becomes a gigolo (servicing overweight women), and is a general bully among the dregs of Japanese society. He meets a prostitute named Megumi (Annie Liu, of Invincible Dragon and The Great Grandmaster), whose nome de guerre is Natsumi. They become lovers after some initial conflict; Ryo has no problem beating women in this. A fight with some of the employees at Megumi’s hostess club spills over into a stadium where an MMA fight is being held. Ryo catches the attention of several of the big wigs from the Banryu Group, including group founder Kensuke Mochizuki (Bruce Leung, of Broken Oath and Four Shaolin Challengers) and split-off dojo leader Ryuichi Yamazaki (Dylan Kuo, of Skiptrace and Hyperspace Rescue).

Ryuichi tries to bring Ryo Narushima to his dojo to train in order to become a professional fighter in the Lethal Fight (LF) circuit—this film’s UFC equivalent. However, Ryuichi is challenged by Mochizuki and loses…and then is challenged by Ryo, and loses. His character more or less disappears from the film at this point, which makes me wonder what the point of the subplot is. Mochizuki tells Ryo that he can participate in the LF and to wait for a phone call. A fight is set up between Ryo and a Thai boxer, and he starts training. At this point, Kenji Kurokawa shows up—he got out of prison early, but the reason for that will be explained later—and starts training Ryo. Ryo wins his first professional match, winning only by a sliver when he whip-kick’s his opponent in the eye and blinds him. Mochizuki kicks Ryo out of the LF, but since Ryo is determined to fight the current champion, Naoto Sugawara (ISKA welterweight champion Masato), he resorts to underhanded means in order to get the fight scheduled…

Shamo is a Japanese/Hong Kong co-production. Most of the main cast members are from Hong Kong, as is the director and fight choreographer. Many of the people behind the camera are Japanese, as are most of the producers. The film is set in Japan (although parts were filmed in Thailand, hence a lot of Thai names in the smaller roles) and the characters are Japanese, although everybody speaks Cantonese in the movie. It is a weird mixture of cultures.

I have not read the Shamo manga, but gleaning over the synopsis at Wikipedia, it appears that this film covers the first two or three story arcs of the series. What is most noticeable in the story is how it feels like Soi Cheang actually diluted Ryo Narushima’s antiheroics in comparison with the source material. The original character was not above doing all sorts of awful, often criminal things in order to win. In this film, Ryo Narushima is a jerk, sometimes a woman-beating jerk, but he is not a complete monster. He threatens to rape Naoto Sugawara’s wife (or girlfriend), but never follows through with it, like he apparently does in the manga. Characters say that he is cruel, but he rarely comes across that way, except maybe when he’s fighting Ryuichi Yamazaki. Instead, he comes across as a bully whose bark is worse than his bite and often takes more than he dishes out. There are some other last-minute revelations that change the way we see his backstory.

Reviews point out how the dialog tries to be profound, but often comes across as weird and absurd. Case in point, while Ryo is training for his fight with the Thai boxer, Kenji shows him a reflection of the moon in a puddle and strikes it with a katana, telling him that if he can “split in the moon in half,” he’ll be ready for the fight. So, Ryo cuts himself and splatters a line of blood across the reflection of the moon, thus “splitting” it in half. Does this have anything to do with his training? No. Does it have anything to do with how he fights his opponent? No. So what was the entire point of the scene?

So what is the point of the movie? I’m not sure. It’s about a guy who studies karate in prison and goes on to become a professional kickboxer, but it’s not even really about the fights. Or at least Soi Cheang and choreographer Jack Wong don’t stage the fights to stand out from the rest of the movie. Jack Wong has spent most of his career working with other, more famous action directors, but in the past few years has gotten more acclaim for his individual choreography jobs, like Warriors of Future. The fights are all about karate and kickboxing and are staged fine, but the choreography is not particularly complex. There is also a bit of shaky cam and quick cuts in a lot of the fights, perhaps to create a comic book panel feel to the fights? There is one sequence where we see Ryo fighting some thugs inside a stadium. We see the footage of the professional fight clearly, while the other fight is depicted entirely with dueling shadows. Interesting from a visual standpoint, but choreography fans will be left wanting.

My main issue with the fighting is that Ryo is portrayed as the underdog for the entire movie. Even when his training has progressed, he often gets into group brawls with (supposedly) untrained people and gets beaten up despite being better than the people he’s fighting. The same goes for the professional fights: he gets done dirtier than Rocky in the ring, without the cathartic comeback at the end. Maybe director Soi Cheang wanted the fights to be subversive, much like Nicolas Winding Refn’s Only God Forgives. It is weird to see this movie about a jerk training in karate and growing in his training, only to get his ass handed to him at almost every turn. But between the thuggishly unlikeable main character, questionable decisions in fight editing and direction, and an awful TV-movie score, I cannot really recommend Shamo to anyone.

Karate Kill (2016)

Karate Kill (2016)

Japanese Title: KARATE KILL カラテ・キル

Translation: Karate Kill

Starring: Hayate Matsuzaki, Mana Sakura, Asami, Kirk Geiger, Katarina Severen, Tom Voss, Miki Kawawa, Noriaki Kamata

Director: Kurando Mitsutake

Action Director: Keiya Tabuchi, Hayate

I spent the last week watching horror movies in celebration of Halloween (2024). I caught Halloween 3 and 4; Resident Evil 1, 5 and 6; and the 2004 Dawn of the Dead remake. That last one was the goriest of the lot, but even then the gut-munching was kept to a minimum and most of the violence—the film got an 18+ rating in Brazil, reserved for hard “R” and “NC-17” films—was in the form of (admittedly) bloody head shots. The Resident Evil films are some of the most sanitized zombie flicks around in terms of graphic violence, which is hard to believe, considering that Paul W.S. Anderson also did Event Horizon. And the two 1980s films are almost quaint when it comes to onscreen violence.

I say this because martial arts movies in the past 15 years have start attaining levels of onscreen graphic violence usually reserved for horror movies. I mean, you had Japanese chanbara films in the 1970s and stuff like Kill Bill Vol 1 which were full of blood geysers. Tom Yung Goong had that scene where Tony Jaa breaks the collective limbs of about 40 people in a single fight. But around the time of The Raid: Redemption, there was an extra level of visceral gore added to martial arts movies, especially those coming out of Indonesia. Headshot was mean-spirited to the point it was starting to get hard to watch. The Night Comes for Us was worse. Now I hear that Shadow Strays manages to be even gorier than that film.

I bring this up because on the week of Halloween, in which I watch six horror films in three days, the most violent film I watched was a martial arts movie: Karate Kill.

The movie opens in the desert with a man (Hayate) in a karate stance facing down a woman (Asami, of Gun Woman and The Machine Girl) pointing a gun at him. As we cut to another scene, we hear a gunshot.

The next scene opens with the large, healthy rump of a woman wearing a thong (AV actress Tia, of Milk the Maid) just a few inches from the camera. We then meet our main character, Kenji (the guy from the first scene), as he goes about his life from one part time job to another. He works at a warehouse, as a waiter at a small restaurant, at a construction site, and at a strip bar (hence the scene with Tia). All of his proceeds go to support his sister, Mayumi (AV actress Mana Sakura, of STAR-604). Mayumi has gone to Southern California to study acting in hopes of becoming an actress. Recently, Mayumi has stopped answering her phone and sending messages to Kenji. Thankfully, the manager of the strip bar (Takashi Nishina, of GMK: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack and Gamera III: The Awakening of Irys) is a benevolent fellow. He gives Kenji some money to purchase a plane ticket and go to California to look for Mayumi.

Once in Los Angeles, Kenji finds her studio apartment: a run-down dump whose windows are mostly boarded up. Once in her room, he finds it occupied by a Japanese guy (Akihiro Kitamura, of CATnip) tossing the salad of a naked girl wearing a nun’s habit…what the heck, people? After some karate persuasion, Kenji learns that his sister was last scene working at a hostess club in Little Tokyo called “Secret Treasure.”

Kenji heads over to the hostess bar, which is run by a homo (or bi-)sexual dude with a comb-over (Noriaki Kamata, of Gun Woman and Samurai Avenger: The Blind Wolf). Kenji beats up every body in the establishment, including the bokken-wielding bar manager. Faced with the real possibility that Kenji will irreparably re-arrange his face, the manager comes clean. Mayumi did indeed work at the hostess club for a spell. However, the manager owed some money to a cult known as Capital Messiah, who funds their activities by showing snuff films over the dark web. When the manager couldn’t pay his debts to the cult, they showed up at his establishment and kidnapped a pair of girls, Mayumi and Kelly (Lion-Girl’s Miki Kawawa), as payment.

The cult compound is located in Texas and Kenji must fly there and find his sister before she gets killed, brainwashed, or both. Joining him for his hunt is Keiko, the only person to successfully escape from Capital Messiah’s clutches.

There is not much of a plot here. There are a few twists here and there, but the story is straight forward: Mayumi disappears, Kenji beats people up until he finds out where she is, then he has to beat more people up. End of story. There are a few moments where you think the film is gearing up for a climax, only to throw a (light) curve ball, but most viewers will know where this film is going.

What Karate Kill is is an exploitation film through and through. It is an updating of the 1970s Sonny Chiba karate movie, but with the over-the-top sensibilities of those late 2000s ôtaku-wank films that Nikkatsu and Sushi Typhoon were making at the time. This film plays those elements completely straight and you have the feeling that director Kurando Mitsutake really had a vision for this sort of thing. There are movies like Zombie Strippers where it’s clear both the actors and the filmmakers are in on the joke. Then you have movies like The Machine Girl, where the actors take it seriously, but you feel the people behind the camera are in on the joke. In Karate Kill, you almost feel as if there is no joke.

There may be no joke, but there is no shortage of sleaze. From that second scene two minutes in—followed shortly by Tia’s complete routine—to the finale, where one actress’s top has conveniently ripped in the right place, there is no shortage of female nudity. Some of it is consensual, like a sex scene between Hayate and Asami. You know how a lot of sex scenes in movies often cut to a close-up of the performers’ fingers interlocking to show union and affection? This film has him interlocking his fingers with the hook that has replaced her hand, which is blackly amusing. There is some sexual assault that occurs, mainly when bad b**** Simona (pro wrestler Katarina Severen) is groping Mana Sakura while the latter is being crucified. 

In addition to that sort of action, there is a fair amount of karate and gunplay, too. The action sequences were staged by Keiya Tabuchi, who had worked with director Mitsutake on Gun Woman. Tabuchi most recently staged the action sequences in the Netflix series “House of the Ninja,” so it’s good that he’s getting work still. The fight scenes are well choreographed. Hayate, who served as the film’s martial arts consultant, fights mainly with his fists. Fans of fancy bootwork may be disappointed with this movie. But he sells his fights well and really comes across as a Sonny Chiba for the new millenium.  His big fight is set inside of a truck container and pits him against a swordsman (David Sakurai, “Iron Fist” and Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald). That fight is pretty cool, mixing solid choreography with the sort of pauses and strategizing that is typical of Japanese samurai movies.

The action is good, but there are no fights for the ages in this. What most people will remember from this movie is the gore. There is a lot of it. When Kenji goes into the hostess bar, some guy attacks him with a Bruce Lee impression. Kenji responds by simply ripping the guy’s ear off and throwing it into a cup of liquor. Interesting enough, my old karate sensei once told us about how you only needed four pounds (or so) of force to rip an ear off, so that scene gave me flashbacks to my old karate days. How appropriate. This film also has eye gougings, broken bones exposed through the skin, slit throats shown in loving detail, and nice long takes of people with their heads blown off. The only thing in which the gore falters is the CGI blood during the Keiko’s shootout with the cult members. The blood just disappears into the air (and the muzzle flashes feel incongruent with the angle of the gun and sound effect of the gunshot). 

Exploitation fans will probably take to Karate Kill quite handily. It is nothing but sex and violence, but with little of the wink-wink “We know we’re making crap” attitude that accompanies a lot of these sorts of films today. I personally find the film a bit too unpleasant to be able to enjoy, but fans of blood n’ boobs will certainly have fun with it.

Capsule Reviews - 1976 in film (Part II)

One-Armed Against Nine Killers (Taiwan, 1976)
aka The One-Armed Swordsman vs. the 9 Killers 
Chinese Title: 獨臂拳王勇戰楚門九子
Translation: The one-armed boxing champion bravely fights against the Nine Chu School Disciples

Starring: Jimmy Wang Yu, Tsung Hua, Chen Hung-Lieh, Lo Lieh, Tsao Chien, Lung Fei, Wan Shan, Kao Chen-Peng, Hsieh Hsing
Director: Hsu Tseng-Hung
Action Director: Huang Kuo-Chu

Entertaining, if confusing little wuxia adventure about a one-armed boxer--yes, boxer--who is going around looking for the titular characters to avenge for his family's massacre three years prior. The main culprit behind the slaughter is the head of the Chu clan, who employed nine assassins to wipe out JWY's clan after his dad refused to participate in a rebellion. The film is basically JWY walking around the countryside and getting in one fight after another with a whole plethora of colorful villains, like a transsexual/hermaphrodite monk and a guy who practices the "turtle style." There are several twists along the way, a few I saw coming and a few I did not.

Highlights of the film include Chen Hung-Lieh wielding a Cloud-sized sword; a guy who plays chess with real people for some reason; Lo Lieh with a blowgun-flute; and JWY almost decapitating a prostitute with a tea tray. The fights are fun, if a bit simple (and fast). There are lots of weapons being used, including fans, spears, swords, sabers, sickles, and even a tonfa-sword. My main problem is the dubbing, which confuses the names of two or three of the assassins, and the fact that there are several assassin characters who are not the nine killers of the title. That makes the movie a little confusing. The Wu Tang Collection has a clean 76-minute version from a German rip, although another user on Youtube has grainier 83-minute version uploaded, which is the one I watched.

For anyone watching who can't keep score:

Clan Leader Chu - Tsao Chien (The Gallant Knights)

The 9 killers:
Lu Sao Fung - (killed before movie starts)
Mung Sing-Hung (guy at beginning) - Tsung Hua (Super-Chaser)
Yen Hsi-Su - Lung Fei (Bruce Lee, We Miss You)
Fu Pai-Su (tonfa-blade guy) - Wang Chi-Sheng (Revengeful Swordswoman)
Yang Chi (female assassin)
Chu Lu (brothel guy) - Wan Shan (Chivalry Deadly Feud)
Liu Fei-Dong (big sword guy) - Chen Hung-Lieh (Cub Tiger from Kwangtung)
Shao Si-Yu (Lu Yen?) - Lo Lieh (Five Fingers of Death)
Tang Han (spear) - Choe Song (The Black Enforcer)

Other villains:
Lo Pu (chess guy) - Wu Ho (Woman Guerilla with Two Guns)
Wong Pa, the "Turtle" - Hou Po-Wei (Flying Swallow)
Dr. Poison - Yu Heng (The Hero)
Lu Ta-Chia (shows up in forest) - Hsieh Hsing (The Ghost Hill)
Fortune Teller - Kao Chen-Peng (The Deadly Silver Spear)
Tai Li-Wai (sickle killer) - Chin Lung (Heroine of Tribulation)
Chu Clan 4 Killers (dressed like scholars)
Lo Pai-Do (throwing dagger killer)

Spy Ring Kokuryukai (Taiwan, 1976)
aka Lady Karate
Chinese Title: 黑龍會
Translation: Black Dragon Society

Starring: Chia Ling, Chang Yi, Lung Hsiung, Sally Chen Sha-Li, Kam Kong, Chin Chien, Miao Tian, Tien Yeh, Ke Tian, Yi Yuan, Hsieh Chung-Mou
Director: Ting Shan-Hsi

Action Director: Shan Mao, Ho Wei-Hsiung

This is a pseudo-martial arts take on the story of the infamous Manchurian/Japanese spy, Yoshiko Kawashima. The movie is set in the early 1930s, with Kawashima (Chia Ling, in an atypical role) living in Japan. The Japanese army has taken Manchuria, but it's still something of a No Man's Land. The Prime Minister figures that if they can't tame the place before the Nationalist Army arrives, they'll lose it. So, they decide to set up the puppet state of Manchukuo, with "the Last Emperor" Pu Yi. Yoshiko is given the task to help Pu Yi escape from his exile mansion in Tientsin and take him to Manchuria.

The premise is pretty simple, but the execution is a bit complicated. There are a lot of different parties getting in the way, and for their own reasons. The local Japanese authorities, led by Lung Hsiung and Miao Tien, are something of a hindrance to her...although I'm not really sure why. There is a band of anti-Japanese revolutionaries led by Chang Yi, who also moonlights as a cape-and-mask hero called the Plum Bandit. The Plum Bandit is eventually joined by a Nationalist spy named Bluebird (Sally Chen). There is a rival spy played by Kam Kong who's in love with Yoshiko. There is a random bunch of Japanese samurai led by Yi Yuan. Finally, Yoshiko's own estranged Mongolian husband, Ganjuurjab (Tien Yeh), shows up to complicate things even more.

Despite the American title, there isn't a whole lot of fighting in this. There is a fight at the very beginning where Chia Ling demonstrates her skills against a whole bunch of karate fighters. We're about halfway through when we get a sword-and-knife tussle between Kam Kong and Pu Yi's guards, inlcuding Jimmy Wang Yu regular Hsueh Han. There's a gunfight that becomes a sword-and-bayonet fight between the revolutionaries and the Japanese soldiers which is well staged. The showstopper is a huge raid by the aforementioned samurai on the restaurant that Yoshiko runs her operations from, which has her fighting of dozesn of katana-wielding killers with a tanto dagger. It's the best scene in the film, although I can't place Yi Yuan's motives. Finally, there's a final shoot-out between the revolutionaries and the soldiers as Pu Yi and Yoshiko are escaping into the harbor. 

Oh, and kung fu viewers may be surprised that Chia Ling has two sex scenes in the film, although she might be using a butt double during her sex scene with Kam Kong.

The character of Yoshiko Kawashima has been portrayed in other films and do-ramas:

Beautiful Spy, Kawashima Yoshiko (1955) - portrayed by Pak Ming
Sen'un Ajia no Joō (1957) - portrayed by Miyuki Takakura
The Last Emperor (1987) - portrayed by Maggie Han
Kawashima Yoshiko (1989) - portrayed by Zhang Xiaomin
Kawashima Yoshiko (1990) - portrayed by Anita Mui
Ri Kouran (TV, 2007) - portrayed by Rei Kikukawa
Dansō no Reijin: Kawashima Yoshiko no Shōgai (TV, 2008) - portrayed by Meisa Kuroki
Chasing Kawashima Yoshiko (2023) - portrayed by Lynn Xiong

Capsule Reviews - 1976 in film (Part I)

Killer Elephants (Thailand, 1976)

Original Title: ไผ่กำเพลิง
Aka: Rumble the Elephant; Bionic Heroes; Kill for the Truth

Starring: Sombat Methanee, Yodchai Meksuwan, Kanchit Kwanpracha, Pipop Pupinyo, Dam Datsakorn, Sayan Chantaraviboon, Kom Akadej, Aranya Namwong, Naiyana Shewanan, Mayurachath Muarnprasitivej
Director: Kom Akkadej

Thomas Weisser's Asian Cult Cinema has an entry for this in its traditional kung fu movie section, which is misleading. This movie is more of a general action film, with a few brawling-style fights complementing the other types of action. It is a Thai production, one of few that seemed to get picked up for international distribution the way it was, instead of chopped up and spliced with footage of Caucasian actors doing things, as Filmark often did. That said, some of alternate titles suggest that it did get picked up by IFD or Filmark at one point, which the website Thai World View confirms that it was IFD who had it dubbed and exported. I watched this via the Wu Tang Collection on Youtube, although viewers who do not wish to support that channel can find it as a double feature on the Brooklyn Zu Collection disc of Dragon Snake Fist. 

The film starts off with a bang, in the form of a policeman, Chow Ming (Yodchai Meksuwan), getting cut off on the highway by a bunch of hooligans in a truck. He tries to flag them down, but it quickly escalates into a gunfight(!), complete with the truck guys throwing barrels of gasoline into the road and blowing them up with shotgun blasts. Three gas explosions are enough to stop Chow Ming, who is visited on the side of the road by an old friend, Kau Fei (Sombat Methanee). Kau Fei tells them that these truck ruffians are working for The Boss, whom Kau Fei would like to eliminate. Chow Ming tells Kau Fei to stay out of police business, and Kau Fei directs his pal to the local lumberyard. Chow Ming goes there and a fight breaks out, with Kau Fei showing up at the last moment to save his friend's kiester.

From there on out, there is a semblance of a plot. The story is something like an old west film about rival cattle barons, except the good baron has a herd of elephants at his disposal. This is actually a great intimidation tool, although the dialog never clarifies whether it has to do with their size and durability, or if even Thai hoodlums are afraid to attack a sacred animal. The evil cattle baron--the Boss--does wicked things like burn down the local village and steal Kau Fei's girlfriend, Shu (Aranya Namwong). The movie never explains why his men burn down the village, I guess that is just something bad guys do. This leads to protracted gunfights in the sticks between the two sets of characters. Kau Fei eventually steals back Shu and gets her pregnant. When she has her baby, the police show up at the hospital to take her and bring her back to her "real" husband, the Boss. But Kau Fei has an elephant attack the hospital and get her to safety. The Boss is eventually killed by Evil Mustache Guy, Mau Tien (Dam Datsakorn), and he kidnaps Shu and the other village women.

All of this leads up to a climax on the border of Thailand and...another country (Vietnam? Malaysia?). The finale feels like two Jackie Chan movie setpieces squashed together, those being the monster truck destruction derby of Mr. Nice Guy and the Thai village shootout of Police Story III: Supercop. There are lots of thatched huts being blown up with grenades and shots being fired on both ends. Meanwhile, the titular elephants are also knocking over huts and causing general mayhem as well.

It is a little hard to talk about the story because it doesn't make a lot of sense. Chow Ming at one point is charged with arresting Kau Fei, partly because the police is corrupt, but also because he...uh....kidnapped(?) Shu. That part wasn't well explained. I'm guessing that Kau Fei had dated Shu, but she was forced to marry the Boss. And that would make her the boss's property. So, that would mean that when Kau Fei snatches her from the boss's mansion, that would be a form of kidnapping? Maybe it made more sense in Thai. The dubbing also doesn't explain the power dynamic between The Boss and the evil Mau Tien.

There are a few fight scenes, but they are staged more like a lively Western brawl (with a few kicks thrown in) than a martial arts film. There are lots of explosions, burning buildings to save people from, and lots and lots of firefights. You have villains who ride into action on horses and heroes who ride into action atop elephants while brandishing M-16s. The gunplay isn't John Woo, but it's more along the lines of the shooting in, say, Eastern Condors. 

The whole thing is just mediocre in the end.

Sister Street Fighter: Fifth Level Fist (Japan, 1976) 

Original title: Onna hissatsu godan ken 

Starring: Etsuko Shihomi, Mitchi Love, Ken Wallace, Masafumi Suzuki, Masako Araki, Iwao Tabuchi, Yoshiki Yamada, Takanori Oya

Director: Shigehiro Ozawa

The fourth and last film in the Sister Street Fighter series is actually unrelated to the other three. Lee Koryu, the half-Chinese, half-Japanese ass-kicker has now been replaced with Kiku Nagazawa (still Etsuko Shihomi), a young single karate instructor in Kyoto whose dad is a successful (if henpecked) kimono designer. Kiku gets dragged into the world of cops (represented by Takagi, played by Tsunehiko Watase) and drug dealers on account of a close friend, Michi (Mitchi Love, of the Super Sentai series "J.A.T.Q. Blitzkrieg Squad").

Michi is a half-white daughter of (presumably) an Okinawan prostitute. She has a half-brother, Jim (Ken Wallace), who is half-black. The two are very close, having both endured bullying in their hometown on account of their half-breed status. Unbeknownst to Michi, Jim is working as a karate hitman for a drug ring, who uses a low-budget movie studio as a front for their activities. When Jim is seen by Takagi murdering an American narcotics agent, his employers have him snuffed. Michi tries to kill one of the head drug dealers, but gets herself kidnapped instead. It's at this point that Kiku gets involved, going undercover at the movie studio in order to find Michi.

The first three films were fight fests that were plotted so that everywhere Shihomi's Lee Koryu went, she'd get ambushed and a karate fight would break out. This is more of a crime drama, with Kiku being a passive observer of the events going on until the last 20 minutes or so. There are some fights involving Ken Wallace in the first half, but most of it is trying to tell a story of drug dealers and the Law's investigation into them on a (relatively) realistic level. Sorry, I prefer bad guys with outrageous collections of martial arts enforcers--including a screaming "nunchuck" guy in a black mesh shirt--in my Etsuko Shihomi films. I liked the premise for the finale: the heroine taking on the cast and crew of a low-budget jidai-geki film, including guys with katana blades. But the camerawork is a bit obstructive, especially when they are fighting in close-quarters in the narrow hallways of the prop room. And there are no trademark Street Fighter deaths here. And the final shot is both ambiguous and unsatisfying. 

Karate from Shaolin Temple (Japan, 1976) 

Original title: Shorinji Kempo: Musashi Hong Kong ni arawaru

Starring: Ken Kazama, Junko Igarashi, Henry Yu Yung, Wu Chung-Hin, Chui Meng, Yi Feng, Tien-Hsi Tang, Simon Yuen Siu-Tin, Chow Siu-Loi, Fung Ngai

Director: Nanbu Hideo

Action Director: Ng Ming-Choi

The IMDB lists this as a sequel to Sonny Chiba's famous The Killing Machine, although this was produced by Shikoku Ofuna, as opposed to Toei. Our hero is Musashi Yamanaka (Kenji Kusuma, of The Street Fighter and When Taekwondo Strikes), a shorinji kempo expert who has left Japan for Hong Kong in search of a worthy opponent. Musashi quickly falls in with millionaire Chow Yin-Nin (Fist of Fury's Fung Ngai), who has been a harrassed by a kung fu gang led by Wu Chung-Hin (Henry Yu, of Fists of the Double K and The Awaken Punch). Musashi accepts a position as Yin-Nin's bodyguard and also strikes up a friendship with a Japanese singer, Reiko (Junko Igarashi, of Hito Goroshi).

Musashi and Wu Chung-Hin eventually have a throwdown, which leaves both men seriously injured. The circumstances behind the fight lead Musashi to suspect that Reiko has some sort of connection with Chung-Hin--they're ex-lovers. Musashi learns that his boss is actually the owner of a series of opium dens throughout Hong Kong. Also, Chung-Hin is seeking revenge against Yin-Nin for murdering his father years before. Musashi is captured and tortured by the bad guys, and eventually switches sides...

There are a handful of fights in this, possibly choreographed by Seven Fortunes member Ng Ming-Choi (King Hu's Legend of the Mountain and Raining on the Mountain). The best fight is between Musashi and Wu, which is pretty good. The other fights are pretty short, including the finale, which is underwhelming. After all the stuff that the good guys go through, I was hoping for a longer, more violent climax with our hero crushing heads and taking names. He dispatches all of his opponents in a couple of hits, which is boring. There is a chaotic fight in the hallways of an apartment building, featuring guys with nunchaku. Also, Yuen Siu-Tin shows up in an extended cameo as a wise monk.

Close Kung Fu Encounter (South Korea, 1976)

Original Title: 대탈출 (Daetachul)

Translation: The Great Escape

Starring: Kao Chiang, Hwang In-Shik, Choe Min-Gyu, Kim Ki-Joo, Lee Ye-Min, Han Myung-Hwan, Lee Seok-Goo, Jang Jeong-Guk, Jo Choon, Hong Seong-Joong

Director: Kim Shi-hyeon

Action Director: n/a

Two men are riding through Manchuria, carrying what appears to be a coffin on one of their horses. After riding through a village in which all the inhabitants appear to have been slain, they stop to rest. They get in a fight and there is only one survivor, whom I think is played by Lee Ye-min. He arrives in a town and visits a nightclub, where the singer, Grace (Jang Soon-ja), gets his attention. This angers the club owner, Mo-Kei (Kim Ki-joo), and a fight breaks out. Although the stranger is initially victorious, the tables turn when the local Japanese official, Suzuki (Hwang In-sik), shows up with his men. The stranger is ultimately imprisoned.

Also imprisoned with him is a fellow named Kang (Kao Chiang), who turns out to be a member of the Chinese resistance. The stranger gives him a map to where the gold--the contents of the coffin--has been hidden. Shortly thereafter, the stranger is executed, but not before Kang escapes. Kang finds the gold and takes it to a farm, where he steals a pig, kills it, guts it, and hides the gold inside, transporting it downstream--something similar happens in Ming Patriots. Kang is captured by Mo-Kei and Grace, who want the gold for themselves. They travel downstream, with Suzuki and his men following behind...

The HKMDB mistakenly identifies this with the South Korean film A Wandering Hero (1975), which has the same director, some of the same cast, and a similar premise. The two movies are different, with A Wandering Hero known in Korean as 방랑의 영웅 (Banglang-ui yeong-ung). This movie is available on Youtube via the notorious Wu Tang Collection, although I wonder if the censor blurs in the film's sex scenes were added by them, or by Korean censors. Pity, since Jang Soon-ja is very pretty in this.

The action is okay, but spoiled by the frequent excessive undercranking. I mean, it reaches levels that makes Donnie Yen's 1990s output look restrained in comparison. Hwang In-sik kicks up a storm at the end, fighting Kim Ki-joo and then Kao Chiang, but ends up being less impactful than his other films because he is unnecessarily sped up. The film also suffers from a lot of missing frames, which makes regular scenes (and their accompanying music or sound track) look choppy. Thankfully, those flaws become fewer as the film progresses.

Black Dragon River (South Korea, 1976) 

aka Martial Mates 

Original Title: 흑룡강 

Translation: Black Dragon River

Starring: Casanova Wong, Legendary Superkicker Hwang Jang Lee, Jo Choon, Jang Jeong-Guk, Lee Ki-Yeong, Kwon Il-Soo, Jeong Jin-Hwa, Jang Choon-Eon

Director: Kim Seon-gyung

Action Director: Richard Nam Choong-Il

This film is notable for being the first starring role for Wang Ho aka Casanova Wong, whose only earlier credit was a smaller supporting role in Gate of Destiny (1974). It is also notable for being one of Hwang Jang-Lee's first projects after The Secret Rivals and probably the earliest film to have him in a nominal good guy role. The director, Kim Seon-gyung, did a number of martial arts films in the 1970s, like Black Dragon; Four  Masters; and Magnificent Wonderman.

The film is set in Manchuria circa 1932, when the Japanese are still trying to set up Manchuko. There is a farm owned by a Korean Taekwondo master (Hong Seong-joong, of Stoner and The Skyhawk), whose laborers are also his students--the senior student is Il-jae (Legendary Superkicker Hwang Jang-Lee). The only laborer on the farm that is not allowed to study is Gyung (Casanova Wong, of The Mighty Four and Duel of the 7 Tigers), who is an orphan adopted by the master. He is betrothed to the master's daughter, Oh-kran (Jang Soon-ja), and the heir to the farm, but the master refuses to teach him. That does not keep him from learning in secret and getting good at it. But after a fight with the local Japanese thugs, Gyung is more or less forced to pack his bags and leave.

Gyung wanders around and finds himself at a Japanese karate dojo run by Jo Choon (Kill the Ninja and Kill the Shogun). Jo, for once in his career, actually wins a fight and takes Gyung as a student. Sadly, his "karate" "training" consists of him running and screaming blind-folded through a forest trying not to run into trees. When that's done, Gyung becomes a tool of the Japanese (led by Jang Jeong-guk, of Duel at Devil Hill and Hand of Death) to beat up the local masters and harrass the local farmers into giving up their land. The farmers go to the Korean Master to help them, but having been kicked out of Korea, he doesn't want to risk getting kicked out of Manchuria, too. But when the farmers find out that the Japanese secret weapon is a Korean, they come down hard on the Master. He sends Il-jae and Oh-kran out to find Gyung and bring him back. And if they can't convince him, Il-jae has to kill him...

The film's structure is a little strange. The first act revolves only around Gyung, played by Casanova Wong. The second act focuses on Il-Jae and the daughter's journey, with only a few cut-aways to Gyung, who's gotten into drinking to make up for his loneliness. The third act focuses on the build-up to the characters' final showdown, which is partly derailed by Jang Soon-ja's (and her dubber's) overracting and screaming. There is a fair amount of fighting, choreographed by Richard Nam, who also plays a samurai. Casanova Wong gets the best showcase, with his spin kicks and forward-jumping spin kick getting showcased. "Human Tornado," indeed. Legendary Superkicker Hwang Jang-Lee gets more fight time than in his other Korean movie appearances up to this point and does well, although he doesn't quite get the showcase for his infamous aerial boots like in his best Hong Kong movies. There are a few token attempts for Korean Taekwondo actors to fake kung fu, since the film is set in Manchuria. But fans of Korean Taekwondo cinema should enjoy this.