Tödliche Fäuste

My cousin rented this movie when he was staying over one night. This movie is a howler. The acting, budget and fight scenes are bad. My father had a hoot making all of us laugh with his witty observations. Come to think of it, this makes a great party movie. Bad acting, sloppy direction and lame chop socky= Great party movie.

Recommended for party viewing. Those brave enough to view it alone will truly be dissapointed.

C

Another hit or miss, a case of hit or miss... -The Damned

My review was written in June 1989 after watching the film on Forum video cassette.

Routine action pic has its moments, making for a decent video title pitting mafia against two cons (the title combo).

Ted Prior is an L. A. cop framed by the mob but ordered rubbed out in prison so as not to spill the beans to the FBI about a mafia chieftain. His old Vietnam vet buddy Teddy (played by the filmmaker Tony Zarindast) is ordered to carry out the hit, but decides to help Prior and his martial arts expert cellmate Carter Wong escape instead.

Film loses credibility as Zarindast and his girlfriend Maureen Lavette tag along with the cons as Good Samaritans until gettig conveninetly wiped out in a siege by gangsters.

In addition to good stuntwork, best thing about the film is Zarindast's canny casting of beautiful women, especially Christina Lunde as Prior's girlfriend. Plotting is too loose to be riveting, notably the cavalier treatment of Wong's wife, Debra Lamb, who is talked about a lot, finally shown doing a striptease in a nightclub and cryptically dropped from the story.

Tech credits are up to par except variable sound.

This film is atrocious, even by the abysmal standards of Tony Zarindast. Hardcase and Fist are two crimefighters with very different styles - Hardcase is a gun-toting, maverick-yet-somehow-by-the-book white cop, while Fist is an enigmatic, inscrutable Chinese martial arts expert who eschews the use of firearms in line with the best traditions of movie cliche. They learn to respect each other's strength and virtue after the usual initial mutual suspicion. The two team up to defeat some implausibly incompetent, classically Zarindastesque bad guys who have kidnapped somebody, or something like that.

Watch out for the brilliantly choreographed gunfight towards the end of the movie when our heroes attack the bad guys' "base" (a bunch of rundown shacks in the middle of some waste ground). It runs thus: Hardcase walks along blithely, gun in hand; single bad guy jumps out from behind a building and shoots twice; misses; Hardcase shoots once; kills bad guy; repeat about 15 times as Hardcase draws closer to whatever the hell it is he's looking for. Best moment: the climactic car chase, which begins with Hardcase in a small car pursuing the chief bad guy, who is driving a station wagon. In the middle of the action, with no explanation offered, the bad guy is suddenly in the small car, and Hardcase is in the station wagon. The chase ends with the bad guy crashing his car into a small river. He emerges from the car on fire, wades through the water to the shore, and promptly burns to death (in slow motion). The awfulness of this movie is so complete, so perfect in every respect, that Tony Zarindast may well be the greatest comedic genius of our time.

A friend of mine has the movie and so we looked at it. I really liked the movie. I really liked the part were the house Blow up when he picked up that grenade to throw it back out. Also when the guy was shot between his legs while on the roof--Cool. We all enjoyed it and liked it. I am going to get my own copy. Also since that time I have seen other movies that Victor Von Wright, has played in and they also were very good. Some may say other wise about this movie, however I have found that some people try to pick apart anything and everything. Nevertheless, we all enjoyed the movie and there were about 15 of us watching it. Good Movie.

In 1976, while in a drama academy in Los Angeles, I had the misfortune to be chosen by Mr. Zarindast to act in the film (and I use the term loosely) Kill Alex, Kill. Mr. Zarindast is not one to be stopped by minor details, such as substituting me with someone who had no resemblance whatsoever with me or my character(?). I was never given a script o read, not even the page with the scene in which I was about to appear. My character kills "Alex" in the end of the story an drives away. All this substitution took place while I was in South America and was recalled to film additional scenes, after shooting had ended. I could not help Mr. Zarindast finance his own movie when I was never paid one dime, so I declined to come. I had never seen the film until, in 2003, browsing the internet I found a copy of it in a movie warehouse in Conroe, Texas. I am sure that I purchased the only copy of this disaster ever sold. While filming I thought that my acting was terrible ad unworthy of participating in any home production, let alone a real one. After seeing the tape in 2003, I realized that I was not the worst actor... Mr. Zarindast was. That being said, why would I be surprised at any negative comment towards any of his productions/directions/acting/screen-writings/etc.