Les poings de l'ange

Once again I fell victim to deceptive video box art. Even though actress Melissa Moore appears prominently on the cover brandishing a gun, there is no gunplay in this pathetic low budget martial arts action film. The biggest problem with this film about a female kick-boxing competition is that none of the girls can fight! The main actress, who is billed as a legitimate award winning martial artist, only exhibits a handful of different moves, and all of her semi-competent fight scenes are laughably performed by a male stunt double in drag! Another fine example of an American girl-fu film that completely misses the mark.

Angel Fist was a decent low-budget martial arts movie, I've seen this movie lots. The main attractions are Cat Sassoon & Melissa Moore going undercover and competing in the kick boxing tournament wearing their tight spandex shorts and bathing suits/leotard. I normally watch this movie and fast forward to the fight scenes. I think Melissa Moore just looks so hot in her first match at the tournament, seeing her in dark blue spandex shorts and a yellow one piece bathing suit and in her second match later in the movie she was in her white sports bra and spandex shorts with a black swimsuit thong. As far as Cat Sassoon goes she was just in her sports bra and spandex shorts from her match in the kick boxing tournament to her last match near the end of the movie.

Okay, I'm lying. The acting is bad. The sound is dubbed poorly. And, I've seen better fight choreography on the Batman television series. All that having been said, I have to admit, when it comes to breasts and martial arts, this movies has them both.

The late Cat Sassoon, though no great actress, gets kind of endearing by the end of this flick. I realized that, although she was in a bad movie and had nightcrawlers for lips, she probably couldn't help either. And, there were no good actors to make the bad actors look really bad. Two of the characters look so much alike, however, that the viewer might get confused for a while. Don't try to give this movie the benefit of the doubt...just enjoy it for what it is:

A b-movie worth seeing by anyone who enjoys female martial arts action...

Filmmaker Cirio H. Santiago must have really liked his 1974 martial arts movie "T.N.T. Jackson", because he remade the same basic story in two more movies before his death, "Firecracker", and this movie. I didn't like the first two versions, so I guess I shouldn't have been surprised that I didn't like this version. It's technically inept, with poorly recorded (or dubbed) dialogue and sound effects. It's also very poorly made elsewhere, with fight sequences that are not only badly choreographed, but directed and edited in ways that suck the little life there is in the combat. As for Cat Sassoon, she doesn't come across well, not looking terribly beautiful (she has freckles all over her face and body), but also acts in a way that often doesn't make her character endearing. The only plus that the movie has is some gratuitous nudity, but it's not as frequent as it should be. Even those who love movies where women kick ass will be bored by this.

No one could be "fooled" by the box in which this film is marketed: it depicts martial arts chicks, flexing and fighting in their Spandex thongs, and that is exactly what it delivers. Cat Sassoon is even better here than in her previous masterpiece "Dance With Death" - when she fights off several ninjas wearing nothing but a pair of black bikini panties, any true fan of the genre should shudder in the grim knowledge that A) this is a truly cheesy film, and should be enjoyed as such, and B) Sassoon's are some of the fakest breasts in Hollywood, and that's saying a lot. Even during roundhouse kicks, they stand hard and fast, refusing to move. Now that's grade Z kung fu cinema. Grade: A-