Karate Wars (1978)

Tatsuya (Hisao Maki) used to be the top Karate-ist in Japan, but a stint in prison for murder sent him into exile.  When former sensei Tetsugen is offered the opportunity to prove the worth of Japanese Karate in Hong Kong and Thailand, his former student takes up the mission.

Hideo Nanbu’s Karate Wars (aka Karate Daisenso aka Karate Great War) features Maki as the most stoic martial artist in the history of cinema.  Nothing surprises the man, and he is forthright in his undertaking.  One has to believe that this approach comes, at least in part, from Maki the person.  Before his death in 2012, Maki was known for three things, his manga work (he was the creator of WARU and co-writer of the Futari no Joe anime, amongst other titles), his devotion to Karate (he opened his own dojo), and the rumors that he was a yakuza.  Two of these things can be definitively proven, but the third seems to influence this film most of all.  Tatsuya betrays no emotion.  He is there not just to beat the champions in the other countries but to kill them.  He swaggers with every step he takes, and the vast majority of his reactions to danger is an icy sneer.  This plays into the film’s concept of honor (something which, some would say, yakuza are only tangentially concerned with, but which is intrinsic to Japanese culture).  Tatsuya went into hiding because he had lost face in the eyes of the Karate world.  He was no longer worthy of being public about his artform.  It doesn’t matter that the murder he committed was not only accidental (and against a luchador, no less) but also was done out of love for his sensei’s daughter Reiko (Yoko Natsuki) and his urge to protect her (that Tatsuya wants to kill his adversaries in foreign lands is antithetical to the whole reason he left the martial arts world in the first place, but never mind).  Tetsugen falls for the line of the Karate Association, as headed by bent politician Soma (Nobuo Kaneko), that they want to claim honor for Karate outside of Japan, but he’s not so gormless as to not be suspicious.  

In Hong Kong and Thailand, the opponents that Tetsuya faces do so out of honor, though they are not necessarily honorable people.  Chinese Kung Fu master White Dragon (Yao Lin Chen) knows that Tatsuya must be defeated in order to save face and his own Kung Fu school.  Yet, he doesn’t want to confront the Karate man himself.  He sends lackies like his wife Chin (who does a great disco/Kung Fu floor show in a Japanese club) and an assortment of Kung Fu goons to surprise attack Tatsuya at every turn.  He meets Tatsuya in bars and chats with him as if he were sympathetic.  It’s only when White Dragon’s legacy is directly threatened that he finally challenges Tatsuya to mortal combat.  In Thailand, Tatsuya is jumped again at several points, but their current Thai Boxing champion doesn’t command people to do so.  They attack because Tatsuya is a direct threat to the honor of Thai Boxing.  The former Thai champ, King Cobra (Darm Dasakorn), has fallen on hard times.  Like Tatsuya, he has recently been released from prison for an accidental murder.  Unlike Tatsuya, King Cobra has become a layabout and a drunk.  He sponges off his girlfriend and refuses to get a job.  Only when he sees that a Karate master defeated the Thai Boxing champ does King Cobra decide to contest Tatsuya and regain honor for his country.  It’s this same sense of honor and the ineffable drive that it sparks inside the martial arts masters that proves their undoing.  They cannot and will not back down.  Ever.  The pleas of their loved ones mean nothing in the face of possible dishonor.  Honor requires not only victory but also the death of an opponent.  On the one hand, the sense of honor in Karate Wars is virtuous, but, on the other hand, it’s also ultimately destructive.

Likewise, the film is nationalistic.  The plot is sparked by the Japanese characters’ sense of superiority as represented by Karate.  They want to show the world that Karate is the best and expand its influence outside of Japan.  Soma even states that Karate’s triumphs will appeal to the Japanese people’s sense of nationalism.  When Tatsuya leaves Japan, he becomes a stranger in a strange land, so to speak, though he behaves exactly the same as he did in his home country (i.e. like he owns the place).  All of the non-Japanese characters are prejudiced against the Japanese in general (the use of the pejorative “Jap” is ubiquitous in their dialogue) and Tatsuya in particular.  Though he is befriended by a Thai man who becomes his guide and translator, this man also becomes an outcast due to their relationship.  When he lived in Japan, he was similarly ostracized for his ethnicity, something about which Tatsuya does not give one shit, and he would likely eschew this guy if he didn’t need him.  Tatsuya is even kicked out of his hotel for no reason other than his presence in Thailand and what that means as a menace to the Thai identity.  What’s interesting in the film is that Tatsuya is similarly nationalistic, and this, in combination with his slavish devotion to honor, is his fatal flaw.  The two characters who care the least about any nationalistic ideals are Tetsugen and his daughter Reiko.  Instead, they are motivated by love; Tetsugen’s love of Karate and Reiko’s (inexplicable) love of Tatsuya.  Because their love is unselfish it surpasses the self-absorbed nationalism that motivates all of the other characters.

Nanbu’s film is simple in its story and repetitive in its structure.  The characters outside of the three main fighters are nigh-inconsequential except for illustrating the self-destructiveness of these men.  The plan of Soma’s cabal never develops beyond being a motive to get Tatsuya back into Karate-ing.  Where Karate Wars excels is in the subtext of its story and in the style Nanbu brings to the table.  At various moments, the picture fades to black and white or becomes solarized.  The sound drops out except for the natural noise of the environment.  Nanbu isolates the minds of the fighters in these ways, giving the audience an idea of the focus and viewpoint of these martial devotees.  The director also makes extensive use of slow motion, long takes, and wide shots in the fight scenes.  The fight choreography appears to be, by and large, genuine, not stylized to a superhuman degree but idealized for what a human is capable of through the martial arts.  So, while the story is mechanical, the film satisfies as a showcase for Karate and a study of the pros and cons of honor.

MVT:  Maki, Dasakorn, and Chen all impress with their skills.

Make or Break:  The finale is a great summation of the film’s thematic elements and an enjoyable rumble.

Score:  6.75/10

T.L. Bugg’s Sunday Cult: Karate Cop (1991)

Hello, all, and welcome to the first installment of T.L. Bugg's Sunday Cult here at The Gentlemen’s Blog to Midnite Cinema. Each week I'm going to look into a different hidden nook of cult film, and try to uncover a tucked away gem deserving of Cult status. Today’s film scores on many marks starting with the title, Karate Cop. As we all know, anything with a descriptive or noun before the word “Cop” is always worth watching. Rarely does this formula go wrong, but every so often there’s a K-9 Cop that comes along to mess with the average. Not only does the film follow in the proud footsteps of Maniac, Top, and Samurai Cops, it also contains the word “Karate” in the title, another mark of greatness to be sure. (Well, except for Karate Dog. What is it with mutts ruining my systems?) What I didn't know when I watched it was that it was a sequel to another “Cop” film, 1990’s Omega Cop directed by Paul Kyriazi (Death Machines, Ninja Busters). Thankfully, I was not lost in the all too familiar post apocalyptic background of Karate Cop. What drew me to the film initially was the tie to director Alan Roberts, who made an infamous film this very year that was recognized, for better or worse, worldwide. 

Karate Cop begins with a couple of girls, Rachel and Micca (Carrie Chambers and Vibbe Haugaard), eluding your typical Max Max-ish group of thugs. There does seem to be a large number of field hockey masks involved to set themselves apart from other sports paraphernalia street gangs, and I will give them credit for picking a lesser beloved sport. The gang, lead by the mutated lisper Snaker (Michael E. Bristow), are stopped in their tracks by, you guessed it, the Karate Cop himself, John Travis (Michael L. Marchini). The thugs get away with Micca, but John saves Rachel who offers him a warm meal back with her street family, The Freebies (who I desperately wanted to see eat Beans or have a turf war with The Beans or something.) Lincoln (D.W Landingham), who would surely have to be played by Guy Fieri in the inevitable remake, is the local top crime lord, and he’s none too happy with Travis and The Freebies. After Lincoln and his men execute Micca in front of him, John promises to help in a dangerous mission to gain a crystal needed to power a transporter, and, as you might guess, take out the scum with a well planted boot to the head. 

For what it is, a low budget action affair with enough heft to get David Carradine to cameo, but not into a main cast role, Karate Cop is not the worst way to spend an hour and a half. It’s not so much of a great way either, but little things like a countdown device gag that works, some tight, decent camerawork on the action sequences, and Lincoln’s Roman style coliseum /Thunderdome-Mini lair complete with a Mini-Master Blaster, all add up to outweigh the wooden acting. As I teased earlier, the real interesting story revolves around director Alan Roberts. Though he directed several films before Karate Cop, such as Young Lady Chatterley (1977) and The Happy Hooker Goes Hollywood (1980), and has maintained an ongoing career as an editor, Roberts will perhaps be infamously known now as the director of Innocence of Muslims. The sleaze and cult film director was hired on to make a picture called “Desert Warrior”, but with a little redubbing it became the movie that incensed a religion and fans of decent films. Exactly what Roberts knew remains somewhat unclear, and in the wake of the riots in Syria, he has completely kept a low profile. It should be said that he has not been detained, unlike producer Nakoula Basseley Nakoula a.k.a “Sam Bacille” who may or may not have simply just stolen Mr. Roberts identity. It would be quite a career to go from Happy Hookers to Karate Cops to the Salmon Rushdie of internet videos. 

Other than the director’s infamous ties, the main attraction in Karate Cop is Ronald L. Marchini. Besides appearing in the aforementioned first film in the series, Omega Cop, he generally liked to stick to two word film titles. Jungle Wolf, Arctic Warriors, Return Fire, all appear on his résumé with only Marchini’s directorial sequel Karate Commando; Jungle Wolf 3 deviating from the pattern. For an actor who carved out a place playing action lead roles, I could find little out about the man behind Karate Cop save for a listing for his out of print book The Ultimate Martial Art: Renbukai. From this I can assume he had some martial arts training, and it does show on the screen. His co-star Carrie Chambers was comely and charismatic, and I barely recognized her from her role as Allison in the 2012 unfortunate sequel Sleepaway Camp IV. The big surprise for me in the film was the David Carradine cameo. I didn't know he was in Karate Cop, and it came as a shock when he showed up as a sleazy bartender named Dad. Michael E. Bristow and D.W Landingham really ham it up as the bad guys, and they alone make the flick worth watching. 

The question I had to ask myself going into and coming out of watching Karate Cop was whether I would have cared to even seek this movie out, if not for the newsworthy connections. While I’m not sure a casual synopsis or running my eyes over the title somewhere would have grabbed me, if it did, I would have still had a pleasant time checking out a silly slice of early Nineties action. Karate Cop belongs with the other “Cop” features beloved by genre films fans, and I hope that Alan Roberts is remembered by a great many as a man who made some interesting slices of genre films and not the man who was bait and switched to produce hateful propaganda. If that is what happened, and only Alan Roberts knows for sure. No matter how he is remembered in the long run, his story is another in a long list of directors who struggled their whole career to make films, ultimately making compromises that were more compromising than they thought. It is a story of film, and it is the kind of story that makes for the richness of cult movies. Until next week, I call this meeting of the Sunday Cult adjourned. 

Mr. No Legs (1979)

“Mr. No Legs” would have benefited from focusing more on the main attraction. Mr. No Legs (Ted Vollrath) isn’t even the main villain. He works for D’Angelo (Lloyd Bochner), who leads a drug ring. They smuggle cocaine throughout the country by hiding it in cornstalk (which would make for a radically different version of “Children of the Corn”).When one of their workers accidentally kills his girlfriend, they cover it up to look like an overdose and dispose of their worker. The victim’s brother, Andy (Ron Slinker), is a cop who catches wind of the incident. With his partner, Chuck (Richard Jaeckel), they track the drug lords down. This is when the films becomes a standard, rudimentary action drama. It follows the basic principles a crime drama would. Andy slips into depression, his wife is a bitch who constantly complains, his partner tries his best to understand his dilemma and Andy conveys his anger through destroying an entire bar.

There are two scenes that are worthwhile in “Mr. No Legs”. One would be the aforementioned bar scene. Andy goes in to investigate, only to discover a catfight has broken out (unfortunately, Joey Styles wasn’t present). When everybody discovers that Andy’s a cop, they all charge for him. He picks them off one by one. This includes chucking a few men through walls. The other scene involves Mr. No Legs himself. When a dispute between Lou (his actual name) and a few of his cohorts breaks out, a fight ensues. This all takes place by the pool, which sees Lou dunked into the water. This doesn’t stop him from pounding away on his adversaries and drowning them. He also displays his amazing karate kills, which Ted Vollrath has a black belt in real life.

There is also a car chase near the end that’s mildly exciting. Ricou Browning lets it run on for too long, causing it to lose steam. It starts out fast, then starts to move at a snail’s pace. The only clever thing about it is seeing the reactions of the pedestrians whose cars and trailers are accidentally demolished by policeman. Other than that, standard stuff. One way to improve this film would have been to make Mr. No Legs the main protagonist. Have him be the cop whose sister is murdered by drug lords. We all came to see him do his thing. Why not allow us to cheer for him? You can still get away with the guns and shooting stars attached to his wheelchair. He’d be a cop out for vengeance who isn’t afraid to bend the rules for justice. Screenwriter Jack Cowden missed a golden opportunity there. Instead, we’re treated to your average action film. Drug lords antagonize the local cops, chaos ensues, yadda yadda yadda. It does have Mr. No Legs himself to thank, as he does give the film it’s own unique flavor. It simply never utilizes him enough to fully stand out from the pact.

MVT: Ted Vollrath as Mr. No Legs. He is fun to watch and adds a unique flavor to the film. Only if we got to see more of him. Make or Break: I’m going to say the standard tone of the film slightly breaks it. Outside of the bar and pool scene, this has a “been there, done that” feel to it. Final Score: 5.25/10