Schlock and Awful: Turning up the heat

Let’s get straight down to the nitty and the gritty:

“Raw Force,” aka “Kung Fu Cannibals” (1982) has got it all. It’s difficult to encapsulate the majesty, but here goes: There’s a Pacificisland with cannibal monks who only eat shapely young women. They trade jade for shapely young women with a fat German who’s named Speer and has the last toothbrush moustache in the world. Add the wacky crew and customers of a cut-rate ocean liner, zombie martial arts warriors, a heaping helping of gratuitous nekkidity, continuous mayhem and absolutely zero plot to get in the way of the story, stir briskly, and you’ve got “Raw Force.” With Cameron Mitchell as the grumpy ship captain and the immortal Vic Diaz as the main monk.

Here’s a real oddball entry. “New York Ninja,” (1984/2021), a sprightly tale of a kung fu vigilante and the brainchild of John Liu, was shot in 1984 and never made it to post-production. Decades later the people at Vinegar Syndrome, a purveyor of the finer things in dreck, got hold of the footage and managed to get it into screenable form, despite handicaps such as no audio, no script, and no idea what the hell it was about or who all these people were. The only reason it came to the attention of the Bad Cinema desk is that the world’s greatest kung fu female, Cynthia Rothrock, was hired to do voiceover work for one of the characters.

We’ll have a future edition of S&A devoted to Rothrock.

The result warrants more than one paragraph, a rarity in S&A. We’ve got multiple villains, many wearing silly masks. One main villain with a melty face from his habit of looking into a box full of plutonium. Group of kids who overwhelm both bad guys and cops with cuteness. Kung fu badminton net. Ninja vs. maitre d’ with rattail that he sucks on while fighting. Enough gratuitous nekkidity to be going on with. The worst martial arts displays this side of “Fungicide.” Only the faintest hint of plot to get in the way of the story. An outstanding effort all around.

“Sugar Hill” features slow-moving, cobweb-covered zombies.imdb.com

“Sugar Hill” (1974) answers the question “What happens when the mob bumps off a lady’s boyfriend and she’s friends with voodoo people?” Answer: One by one the gang members are knocked off in uniquely hideous ways. Marki Bey does a pretty fair Pam Grier imitation. The zombies are the traditional, slow-moving type. In an unusual twist, the zombies are covered in cobwebs, which suggests they need to get out more. Severed chicken foot attack. Death by many many snakes. Death by quicksand. Zombie massage parlor. Zombie rhythm section. Perfunctory nekkidity we could have done without. Add completely blatant rip-offs of James Bond music and voila! It’s the poor man’s “Live and Let Die.”

Speaking of Pam Grier, one of her lesser-known efforts is “Sheba Baby” (1975), the stirring tale of a woman who takes revenge on the loan sharking hoods who destroyed her father’s legal loan sharking business. No gratuitous nekkidity, a grave flaw, but the car wash scene makes up for it. We’ve got a bad guy who looks like the young Al Sharpton dressed in carpet remnants. Lots of gunplay as opposed to kung fu. An extended fairground scene that gets filed under “Why yes we have permission to film here.” A fairly humdrum affair, all told.

Let’s wrap this up with “Red Star Rising” (1994), a Don “The Dragon” Wilson vehicle that also features the immortal Mako. This brings us to the Iron Law of Martial Arts Flicks: “If it has Mako, you must watch.” Japanese/American cop comes to LA to hunt bad guy. Cop endures many bad jokes about Japanese people. Bad guy specializes in a fatal kung fu move called the Death Touch. Plenty of mayhem and a touch of gratuitous nekkidity. Gnomic utterances, such as “Fate has pitted Thomas against this assassin” and “When day meets night only one can survive.” And, of course, the Death Touch, which isn’t as good as its counterpart in “Kill Bill” but it’ll do.