The Weapons of Death

I suggest you find this title if you're a mega die-hard martial arts fan. This one's completely monotonous! In opening this picture, we see a Hulk Hogan impersonator having a bad temper while smashing the jukebox and throwing chairs. Child's play! The fighting battles are what makes the movies, but this has got to contain the sloppiest choreographies ever performed. Notice how the camera jerks around too often, because that's when you realize no one's hitting anybody! Some celluloid materials include brawny bikers and battling babes with clubs. The lack of poorly dubbed voices is the best advantage this mediocre flick has to offer.

When I watched this film, I had no idea at all that its director, Paul Kyriazi, also helmed the earlier Death Machines (1976). It seems that a lot of people don't have much good to say about that one but I, on the other hand, thought it was excellent fun. A proper crazy bit of action trash, and highly entertaining. It maybe explains why I found myself enjoying Weapons of Death really, because as I have seen more and more cheap martial arts flicks from the 70's and 80's I've sort of realised I can't really be bothered with most of them at all. I usually find them somewhat tedious with action scenes so relentless that they act as a sleep inducer. Well, for some reason Kyriazi's two action movies didn't bore me at all. I found Death Machines to be the better of the two on account of its sheer insanity levels but Weapons of Death certainly is coming from a similar overall general ball-park.

Set in the San Francisco area, a Chinese crime group hires a band of low level American thugs to kidnap a girl from a rich family from Chinatown, a family who have hitherto refused to pay the gangsters protection money. Instead of bowing to the criminals demands they gather together a crew of fighters to go and rescue the girl and sort the bad guys out.

This American movie sort of tries to come across like it might be an Asian effort, or at the very least a cross-cultural movie. To this end we have multi-ethnic characters all bringing their own individual fighting methods to the table. We have swords and bow-and-arrows mixed in with kung fu and brawling. One of the proponents of the latter is one of the bad guys, a black character called Carter who for me was the most memorable character in the movie. In one scene of inspired mayhem he takes out an entire gang of bikers (or sex offenders), he slashes and boots hell out of them resulting in exploding motorcycles and piles of dead bodies. Great stuff. There are also other notable characters such as a gang of Chinese female ninjas, although to say that they were underused would be putting it mildly. But this one scores in that it has a variety of characters of different types, and some unpredictable plot developments. The action is pretty full-on but it isn't as tedious as it can be in a lot of similar action nonsense. Overall, I found this one to be quite a bit of fun.

Cinematography is poor, choreography is weak. Some of the one-on-one fight scenes are good due mostly to the physical abilities of the individuals. Too many characters to get to know any of them. Character development is very weak and shallow. Those with deep 'secrets' spill them without much protest.

There is a very weak plot line that sort of ties it all together. Pretty much any time more than two people get together they start swinging at each other. Not a lot of contact is made, but they swing a lot! We have the Chinese crime syndicate hiring a bunch of American thugs to do a kidnapping. The expected evil heavy is bald and carries a bag full of weapons, only a couple which get used before being defeated by the good guy. There is the typical character that is on the side of the bad guys, but is good at heart. Throw in a hoard of women and a motorcycle gang and a couple of double crosses and you've got it! Weapons include pistols, clubs, bow and arrow, swords of all types, spear (the most interesting one in my opinion!), a mace and claws.

There is a surprisingly strong script here; sadly, it is buried by poor production values, generally amateurish performances, and a lack of any real direction that could turn these disadvantages into strengths (or at least nullify them).

However, the film is only comparatively bad - that is, if you size it up with better made American martial arts films, it will look pretty bad; if you rate it next to anything Hong Kong, it will look embarrassing when not laughable.

However, After this became obvious, I let decided I'd try to set these comparisons aside and just let the film be an cheap American action film of its era; and on its own terms, it proved watchable, and even entertaining.

The high point of the film is a sequence some reviewers complain about, that seems to drop a biker gang into the movie out of nowhere. The writing is crisp and the 'cinema verite' approach makes the violence seem brutal, despite lack of proper dramatic perspective. This actually emphasizes the almost Homeric theme of the scene, and I could help thinking that the writer had read a bit of Homer before writing the film, since similarly epic-influenced moments pop into the story throughout. It's too bad the script wasn't sold to someone or some group that could really put a package like this together.

Altyhough looking dumb at the surface, there are some interesting themes here expressed well in the dialog. And the pacing is pretty good for a cheap action movie.

One other remark - I suspect this sat on a shelf looking for a distributor for a number of years - the '80s release date is belied by the hokey '70s fashions and hairstyles.

Hi, Everyone, The story here is more or less Mike Brady (Robert Reed) of the Brady Bunch tries to rescue a stupid girl. It isn't really Robert Reed, but it looks like Robert Reed and we first see him in his living room so it is easy to get confused.

The kidnappee girl falls down a lot. The bad guy is a cross between a young Boris Karloff and an old Nick Nolte. He is mean and snarly. Even the bad guys don't like him.

One of the bad guys takes on an entire motorcycle gang when the gang decides to rekidnap the dumb girl. The fights are OK but sometimes it is hard to figure out for whom we rooters are to root. The toughest bad guy might be the nicest bad guy if we consider his redemption halfway through the movie.

There's this other bad guy who is the leader of the kidnappers because he is the one who hires the kidnappers to kidnap the girl nitwit. He is pleasant enough for a mob boss who likes to threaten people with a big sword and fifty or so bodyguards. They are all conveniently dressed in black so we can tell they are bad.

The young good guy in white is attractive. He has a nice face and body and he definitely knows his Karate moves. He has a couple of good fights especially one where the bad guy's sword goes flying way up into the air and then something happens. I will let you watch to see what happens.

There is a Ford Bronco. The five rescuers drive it and ride to the rescue. One of the rescuers is intelligent. He carries a gun and shoots the Karate bad guys. He looks like Richard Dreyfuss when Dreyfuss made Jaws, but with a Ron Ely build.

The foolish girl has a mom who is also the mom of one of our heroes, but I will let you watch and keep score on who married whom and who is the Daddy of the girl who gets lost a lot.

I almost forgot to mention there is a bad girl gang of Karate fems. They pop up out of ditches holding swords. One has a red dress. Her hair needs something.

I liked the movie. It is a good one for bad movie night. For a nice double feature, watch this with Detour which also has a tough girl. Instead of a Ford Bronco it has a Lincoln Continental circa 1941.

I don't guarantee you will like this movie, but you will get a laugh here and there.

Tom Willett