Bloodfight (1989)

Bloodfight (1989)
Aka: Final Fight
Japanese title: Fainaru Faito - Saigo no Ichi-geki
Chinese title: 最後一擊
Translation: Final Blow

 

Starring: Yasuaki Kurata, Bolo Yeung, Simon Yam Tat-Wah, Meg Lam, Anzu Christina Lawson, Ono Shinya, John Ladalski
Director: Shuji Goto[1]
Action Director: n/a

Bloodfight is a fascinating anomaly. It is a Japanese movie, produced by the Kurata Film Company, which was founded by martial arts actor Yasuaki Kurata (natch!). It was made by a largely Japanese crew, but was filmed in Hong Kong with considerable Chinese talent in front of and behind the camera, too. Made at a time when action was frowned upon in Japanese cinema, it is sort of fitting that Kurata-san’s film wasn’t made for his homeland, or necessarily Hong Kong, but for international audiences. It was filmed in English with a script that makes no bones about ripping off Bloodsport, right down to casting Bolo Yeung as a brutal tournament competitor named Chong Li.

The movie starts off at the 1989 World Championship of Free Fighting in Hong Kong. We see a number of competitors going to the competition, such as a 7-foot Indian guy and a sumo wrestler. We focus on the matches of a guy named Kai Masahiko (Yasuaki Kurata, of The Prodigal Boxer and Heroes of the East), who moves through his bracket until he reaches the finals. Meanwhile, the other bracket is dominated by a fellow named Chong Li (Bolo Yeung, of Bloodsport and Tiger Claws). As Chong Li takes out one opponent after another, we switch a flashback of how Kai got into the tournament.

It’s 1987 (or so) and Kai Masahiko is a washed up former champion who runs a ratty gym on the roof a building somewhere in Hong Kong. His longsuffering wife, Suzie (Meg Lam, of Enter the Fat Dragon and Blind Fist of Bruce), is at her wit’s end. She drinks herself to sleep every night because her husband spends most of his free time watching his old tournament videos instead of giving her attention. One day, Kai comes across a street gang harassing the locals and is impressed by their leader’s (Stuart Smith, of Ninja Destroyer and Undeclared War) innate kicking ability. Kai gets it in his head that he can reform the kid through the martial arts and turn him into a champion. All it does is make the gang leader even more dangerous and put the final nail in the coffin of his marriage.

Some time later, the gang is out terrorizing the locals when a local Good Samaritan, Ryu Tenhei (Simon Yam, of Full Contact and Cypress Tigers), steps in and uses his kung fu skills to hold him off. Kai witnesses this and decides that Ryu should be his next project. Kai goes into stalker mode for the next few days, following a reluctant Ryu wherever he goes. The young man, however, just wants to study and play basketball for his college class. A vicious ambush from the gang, however, ultimately changes Ryu’s mind (this leads to an amusing segment where Kai turns him down because he doesn’t want to teach for revenge, and then Ryu starts stalking Kai instead). The two start training together, much to the dismay of Ryu’s girlfriend, Milly (Anzu Christina Lawson, of Best of the Best 3).

Kai eventually puts the idea in Ryu’s head that he should train for the World Championship of Free Fighting. Ryu takes the bait and enters the tournament. He wins all the matches in his bracket, but eventually is pitted against Chong Li. Chong Li viciously murders Ryu in the ring and suffers no legal repercussions…why? I mean, if you land a kick and the person dies, that’s one thing. If your opponent is sprawled out on the ground and you still take the time to break his neck, that’s something completely different. That’s a crime. What the hell was the referee doing at that time? Wringing his rag?

It goes without saying that Kai is completely crushed by the death of his student. He closes down the gym and goes into self-pity mode, drinking himself silly at all hours of the day. Eventually, the board of directors of the World Championship of Free Fighting—who still haven’t taken away Chong Li’s certification for…well…murder—has come up with the idea of letting Kai back into the tournament in order to “avenge his student” and sell more tickets. They send his old trainer, Jack O’Brien (the late John Ladalski, of City War and Death Cage), to roust him from his drunken stupor and train him…FOR REVENGE! FOR HONOR! And…FOR REDEMPTION!!!

It was an odd decision to film this exclusively in English. While most of the actors can get by with their lines, it is obvious that a) it is not their first (or second) language and b) their ability to emote in it is quite limited. Kurata can speak clearly enough that you can understand them, but he doesn’t really emote here (save a few Van Damme-esque screams at the end). Simon Yam, who had a year before he’d really hit it big with Bullet in the Head, does a little better. Ono Shinya, who plays the owner of the restaurant where Ryu works, is very hard to understand. Only Anzu Christina Lawson, who was born in the States (and modeled in Japan at one point), really sells her acting.

There isn’t much here that you haven’t seen in Bloodsport or Rocky IV. The training sequence in the third act is basically a copy of the latter, with Kurata-san training via more “rustic” methods (including going to a foundry and slamming a hot metal box into his stomach) while Bolo uses more “modern” exercise equipment a lá Ivan Drago. Sadly, the fighting also feels more like an American movie than a Hong Kong one, despite the talent involved. The only fight that feels Hong Kong in its execution is Simon Yam fighting against the gang in the first act.

There is no credited action director, so I’m not quite sure on who to place the blame. On one hand, it could have been Bolo Yeung. He contributed to the action in 70s films like The Greatest Thai Boxing and Bolo, among a few others. On the same token, Yasuaki Kurata had about 60 credits between Hong Kong and Japan by this point, and had worked a bit with the Hung Ga Ban (Sammo Hung’s Stuntman Association) in the years preceding this movie, so he’d definitely have the experience to stage his own fights. Finally, the IMDB lists old school veteran Chan Lau as the assistant director of the Hong Kong unit, so it might have been him. Chan Lau was known more as an actor than as a fight choreographer, but he choreographed more than 20 movies of the course of his career, spanning from the early 1970s into the mid-1990s.

Yasuaki Kurata does more aikido—one of the original styles he trained in—than he does in a lot of his other movies. In fact, many of his early fights in the tournament are won more through throws and locks than by punches and kicks. Obviously, once he throws down with stiffer competition like Bolo, he has to use more punching and kicking than arm twisting. Simon Yam looks fine in his first fight, but then the action director cheats by having him win his tournament fights via bionic-legged jumping axe kicks, instead of actual fighting. Bolo is Bolo. He’s big and strong and intimidating. Sometimes he wins via treachery—like strangling a sumo wrestler with his own diaper. Sometimes he wins by his usual brutal punches and kicks, backed up by his sheer brawn. If you liked him in other movies, you’ll be sure to like his fighting performance here. In fact, it is arguably better than his display in Bloodsport. But then again, that movie, while also low budget, had better acting, was more polished, and just flowed a lot better. So stick with that instead.

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[1] - Amusingly enough, the beginning and end credits were redone for the American release to look a little less cheap. However, they got the name of the director wrong and he is credited as Shuezy Gott.

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Gothic Lolita Battle Bear (2014)

Gothic Lolita Battle Bear (2014)
Aka: Nuigulumar Z
Japanese Title: ヌイグルマーZ
Translation: Nuigurumar[1] Z

 

Starring: Shoko Nakagawa, Rina Takeda, Mao Ichimichi, Hiroshi Neko, Sadawo Abe, Koto Takagi, Chieiko Imaizumi, Ai Yahata, Risa Takada, Arisa Sakamoto, Kami Hiraiwa
Director: Noboru Iguchi
Action Director: Takeshi Miyazaki

Noboru Iguchi has been in the game since the 1990s. A glance at the IMDB suggests that he started his career in porn and then moved up to horror, and then to more bizarre concoctions that mix extreme gore with general WTF. He helped usher in the “ohataku fan-wank” genre with Machine Girl (2008) and then made one of its most outlandish efforts, Robogeisha. Yeah, the movie where the protagonist has a katana blade that comes out of her butt. Apparently, Iguchi is an ass fetishist, with films like Zombie Ass: Toilet of the Dead and shorts like Bad Butt and “F” is for “Fart” (from the anthology ABCs of Death) serving as exhibits A, B and C.

Even considering his already questionable filmography, Gothic Lolita Battle Bear is a bit of a head-scratcher. It has all the hallmarks of an “ohtaku fan-wank” movie—lots of pretty girls, zombies, Japanese popular culture strip-mined for everything a director thinks is cool—but apparently this was made for local audiences, as opposed to Westerners who just want a hard-on from Japanese girls in cute outfits drenched in extreme gore.

The movie begins with a family—a man, woman and child—celebrating the little girl’s birthday. Daddy has gotten his daughter a teddy bear for a present. Before she can blow out the candles, however, a hand shoots up from the cake and zombies attack the household! The little girl gets away and meets up with Yumeko (Singer and voice actress Shoko Nakagawa), a lady dressed in Lolita attire (substyle: “Sweet” or “Hime”). Yumeko takes the teddy bear and hugs it, thus transforming into a pink teddy bear tokusatsu heroine Nuigulumar (Rina Takeda) and beats up the zombies with her karate skills and laser-beam sewing threads. After dispatching the zombies, Yumeko tells the girl her origin story.

Once upon a time in another galaxy, the planet Domoho exploded. Its inhabitants escaped, many of whom fled to Earth in the form of ethereal cotton balls. Most of them sorta disappeared upon arrival. One of them, however, merged his life force with that of a teddy bear. That was Dumava (voiced by Sadawo Abe, of The Lady Shogun and her Men), a great warrior. The teddy bear is a present that a divorced mother (Kami Hiraiwa) is making as a birthday present for her daughter, the perpetually pissed-off Kyoko. Nonetheless, Dumava takes it as his mission to always protect Kyoko, whom he calls “the Princess.”

Kyoko gets mad at her mother for not finishing the teddy bear, whom she calls Punchy, on time (“Why didn’t you make more time for your daughter?”) and discards the stuffed animal. Enter Yumeko, Kyoko’s Lolita-dressed auntie who is moving in following the death of her parents. Kyoko immediately takes a disliking to her aunt, whom she sees as a threat to her quality time with mom. Yumeko tries to help, including finishing the sewing on Punchy, but Kyoko is too angry at the world to care.

Meanwhile, a second survivor of the planet Domoho has arrived on Earth and taken up residence inside a black teddy bear. The bear belongs to a diminutive loser named Takeshi (Hiroshi Neko, of Death Yankee 2 and Dragon Yankee), who has spent all of his life getting pushed around be everybody, including his uncle. When Takeshi hugs his alien-possessed teddy bear, he transforms into a tokusatsu villain named Knitted Vengeance Warrior Charlie. Charlie transforms a random cosplay model into a zombie, who causes an small zombie outbreak in the city.

The zombies shows up at a restaurant where Kyoko, her mother and Yumeko are having lunch. Although Punchy does his best to fight off the zombies, he can’t save Kyoko’s mother from being shot to death by the zombified cosplay model. The zombies chase after Kyoko until she finds herself face to face with Knitted Vengeance Warrior Charlie and his two henchmen: Kill Billy (Rina Takeda in drag) and Lolita (Koto Takagi, of Bushido Sixteen), a gothic lolita with a machine gun for an arm. Yumeko and Punchy show up to help, but she’s injured by Billy’s projectile spoons. Just before she dies, Yumeko and Punchy fuse and transform into a superheroine called Nuigulumar. Nuigulumar defeats the zombies, but Charlie and his entourage go into hiding.

Several years later, Yumeko is Kyoko’s (now played by tokusatsu actress Mao Ichimichi) guardian, supporting the family as a bicycle delivery woman. Kyoko is now a rebellious rocker and hates Yumeko just as much as she did years before. One day, Kyoko is invited by another rocker friend to attend a seminar at a big company. Said company turns out to be a front for Knitted Vengeance Warrior Charlie’s nefarious activities. He transforms all of the attendees into zombies and thus initiates a new zombie outbreak, while simultaneously forcing Yumeko to marry him. Then things start to get weird.

Gothic Lolita Battle Bear is the Japanese equivalent to one of those Sharknado sequels from last decade. It is full of special effects, but none of them are very realistic. And yet, that’s sort of the point. It is meant to be kitschy, trying to give the viewer as much randomness as possible despite knowing that it doesn’t have the budget to do so convincingly. Each successive scene is meant to make the viewer’s jaw drop even lower. Think about the climax of Sharknado 3, which has a sharknado, and then the hero goes to space, and then the sharknado goes to space (despite the absence of any atmosphere), and the hero finds a light saber chainsaw, and then hero returns to the earth in the belly of a shark…NOT BURNING UP in the Earth’s atmosphere, and then we learn that the heroine gave birth to a baby in the belly of a shark while she was entering the Earth’s atmosphere, too. That’s the sort of bizarre mentality that dictates the events of Gothic Lolita Battle Bear.

The fact that a race of cotton ball aliens are actually powerful warriors that possess teddy bears and make them talk is really just the tip of the iceberg. You can hug the bears and transform into a tokusatsu character. And the villain transforms people into zombies using “happy gas.” Plus he has a doomsday weapon that looks like an ordinary straw dispenser. And one of the villainesses drips soy sauce on her boobs so as to sexually excite a terrorist brainwashed into thinking he’s a baby, which causes him to push THE RED BUTTON and release the zombies into the city. Wait, what? And much of the climax involves a quartet of Lolita’s (substyle: Classic) going topless and firing colored lasers from their breasts to destroy the city! Your reaction to this paragraph will determine whether or not you want to watch this movie.

Despite Rina Takeda having dual roles, she does not have a serious showcase for her karate skills in this movie. Stick with High Kick Girl! and KG: Karate Girl instead. There is a fair amount of tokusatsu action, courtesy of Kamen Rider stunt coordinator Takeshi Miyazaki. It’s the sort of fighting you’d see in a typical episode of a Kamen Rider or Super Sentai series. Takeda does some pretty decent bootwork, but she never really faces any real opponent in a seriously-choreographed one-on-one. Think of the Power Rangers just sort of kicking the Putties around. Takeda doesn’t do much handwork, since one of her hands (in superhero form) is a giant plush bear claw, which does laser slashes for killing zombies. Cutesy idol Shoko Nakagawa generally doesn’t fight, although at one point, she picks up a pair of plush nunchaku and wields them like Bruce Lee would. Yes, it’s kinda weird that pink-furred nunchaku would even be a thing, but then again, weird is name of the game here.

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[1] - The title is a play on the Japanese word for “stuffed animal” - nuigurumi

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Blood Heat (2002)

Blood Heat (2002)
aka: Muscle Heat
Japanese title: Masuuruhiito
Translation: Muscle Heat

Starring: Kane Kosugi, Shô Aikawa, Masaya Katô, Misato Tachibana, Noboru Kaneko, Ikkei Watanabe, Joe Li, Ken Lo
Director: Ten Shimoyama
Action Director: Sam Wong, Chan Man-Ching

 

Kane Kosugi is one of those martial arts actors whose career should be a lot bigger than it is. Son of actor Shô Kosugi, Kane (and his brother, Shane), got his start in the business acting alongside his pa in some of the ninja movies that the man headlined throughout the 1980s. Much like his character in Black Eagle, wherever Shô went, so did Kane and Shane. As Kane grew up, he trained in more martial arts than a normal person can wrap his head around. In addition to Japanese martial arts (karate, ninjitsu, aikido, kendo) as per his old man, Kane also studied tae kwon do, gymnastics, judo, wushu, and breakdancing. That’s a perfect background for someone who really wants to get into the game, and yet, Kosugi hasn’t been able to do much beside the occasional thankless Hollywood role, a few good turns in DTV films, and the occasional Asian movie.

The Japanese film Blood Heat was supposed to be his big intro into the feature film industry, having already cut his teeth on TV with series like Ultraman: The Ultimate Hero and Ninja Sentai Kakuranger (released Stateside as Mighty Morphin Alien Rangers). It brought together the American-born Kane Kosugi with a Japanese cast and crew, Hong Kong fight choreographers, and superkicker Ken Lo as one of the main villains. In some respects, this was the spiritual follow-up to the 1989 film Bloodfight, another Japanese martial arts movie buoyed by Hong Kong talent (in that film’s case, Bolo Yeung and Simon Yam) produced for international audiences.

Kane Kosugi plays Joe Jinno, a former Navy SEAL who’s been in the brig for some time for disobeying orders to kill enemy terrorists, who turned out to be children. Jinno is living in the far-flung year of 2009, in which the recession that hit Japan in the 1990s has dragged on for longer than a decade. Illegal immigrants have flooded the country, setting up shop in abandoned industrial districts. Meanwhile, a powerful drug known as Blood Heat has been flooding the market, creating thousands of new addicts daily. It has even grown in popularity with salarymen and housewives, putting the country on the verge of a collapse of apocalyptic proportions. A secret mission with the Tokyo police has been set up and Joe Jinno is brought in to help the local authorities bring down the big dealers.

The biggest names in the drug business are the Lai brothers—Kenjin (Drive’s Masaya Kato) and Kenkyo (Joe Li, who had a bit part in Time and Tide)—a pair of half-Japanese, half-Chinese gangsters who not only produce the country’s Blood Heat, but also run the Muscle Dome. The Muscle Dome is an illegal fighting arena in the middle of the industrial No Man’s Land where desperate people go in hopes of making it big via gambling or fighting, but often lose on both. Kenjin has a special Ace in his had, namely the Chinese fighter Lee (Ken Lo, of Mahjong Dragon and Drunken Master 2), a Blood Heat addict who is virtually indestructible.

Joe and his partner, Aguri Katsuragi (Shô Aikawa, of Zebraman and Gozu), raid a nightclub where Kenjin is trying to sell some Blood Heat to the Russians. In the resulting firefight, Aguri is captured and taken to the Muscle Dome. Before Joe can rescue him, Aguri is thrown into the ring and subsequently beaten to death by Lee. With the mission more or less aborted, Joe goes on a vendetta mission against Kenjin, making allies with Aguri’s police officer sister, Akane (Silver Hawk’s Misato Tachibana), and clandestine outfit of petty criminal orphans, led by the enigmatic Ken (Noboru Kaneko, of Godzilla: Tokyo SOS).

So yeah, don’t really go into this movie expecting a WHOLE LOT OF PLOT. This is a movie that you watch mainly for the violent action, which is split between some well-staged John Woo-esque gunfights and the martial arts battles. The acting is okay, although native English speakers will probably chuckle as they are wont to do whenever a Japanese movie has more than three lines of English in its script. All of Joe’s narration is in English, as are much of the dialog between Joe and Kenjin. So be prepared for the occasional awkward moment of “Engrish” in this movie. Also, I’m pretty sure that Kane Kosugi was finding his voice as an actor, especially in his native English. So he comes across as a bit wooden, especially in his voice overs.

The action is choreographed by Sam Wong, best known as the Chinese soldier who has an exhibition fight with in Police Story 3: Supercop. Backing him up is Chan Man-Ching, a member of Jackie Chan’s Stuntman Association. I’m guessing that Sam Wong and Kane Kosugi got along very well, because some eight years later, Sam Wong brought Kane Kosugi onboard for his dismal (if well-intentioned) chopsockey film Choy Lee Fut. The fight scenes are generally staged well, but often suffer from some bad photography and hectic editing. Cinematographer Hideo Yamamoto has worked on some great movies in his career—Hana-Bi; Ichi the Killer; and a bunch of other Takashi Miike efforts—but I don’t think he is suited for the Hong Kong style of martial arts movie.

There are several fights in the Muscle Dome, although those tend to be least interesting of the set pieces. It’s not that they’re bad per se, but the film really kicks into high gear when Kane Kosugi is kicking the collective butts of multiple opponents. His fight in the glass room in Kenjin’s building is probably the highlight of the movie. It’s a nice mix of block and locks, karate-inspired reverse punches, and some awesome bootwork. Kane’s fight with Ken Lo doesn’t reach the (hoped for) heights of Drunken Master 2, but it is a respectable fight and once again, Kane launches a series of awesome aerial kicks that puts him up there with Scott Adkins as one of the best onscreen kickers of the post-Donnie Yen generation. Sadly, his big final fight with Masaya Kato is a little disappointing. Once again, the fight is fine in general action direction terms. However, after watching Masaya Kato almost steal the show from Mark Dacascos in Drive, I’m sure that we the viewer expected more than a swordfight with sledge hammers.

My criticisms aside, Blood Heat does offer us some pretty good Hong Kong style fight scenes at a time when Hong Kong had trouble doing Hong Kong-style fight scenes. I mean, the year 2002 gave us two nominations for Best Action Choreography that didn’t even have any action in them at all—Infernal Affairs and Princess D. The HKFA should have made an exception to their rules and nominated this one instead. Kane Kosugi shows off enough great bootwork that it is a gosh-darn shame that he doesn’t get as many quality projects as Scott Adkins.

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