Machines à tuer

Director Paul Kyriazis' "Death Machines" is so unrelentingly silly and incompetent as to rate as a true hall of fame see-it-to-believe-how-bad-it-is turkey. It's so silly, in fact, that one has to wonder if the filmmakers had their tongues in their cheeks the entire time. Now, granted, it could have been even more entertaining on a lovably clunky level, as it's somewhat overextended, but sometimes the padding is absurd enough to generate some real chuckles.

This martial arts / action / exploitation piece of sludge stars Ron Marchini, a student of Bruce Lee who also produced the film, as one of three "death machines" (the other two are a black and an Asian) who've been given a drug that controls their minds, and apparently also makes them impervious to bullets. Thus they make handy assassins for Madame Lee (Mari Honjo, who sports an enormous wig and whose facial expressions are truly gut busting), a dragon lady villainess. But when the trio of killers massacre the students at a karate school, the lone survivor, Frank Thomas (charisma-free John Lowe), vows vengeance. Good old Frank's not about to let the fact that they chopped off his hand deter him at all.

So much of this is gloriously goofy. Let's start with our "hero", Mr. Thomas, who actually gets his ass handed to him by a rowdy old barfly. Yet somehow this turns on Mr. Thomas' new lady friend! One incredibly, deliciously moronic set piece has Marchini sitting down for a nice nourishing burger at a restaurant and being hassled by annoying bikers. Another fine bit of comedy has a target for assassination, a bank manager, handcuffed to his file cabinet while a time bomb in his office ticks away - yet his secretary takes her sweet time while helping out.

From the super funky and funny music score by Don Hulette (dig that piano during a fight scene) to the thoroughly amateurish acting, "Death Machines" sizes up as a real hoot and a half. If you love silly schlock, you know you're going to be in for a good time with those opening credits. And it all leads up to a resolution that will leave you with a smile on your face. As low budget '70s cheese goes, this is a movie worth a look.

Seven out of 10.

Death Machines. This old classic action film in a kind of tale of a difference...

This movie asks us what the plot is all about? Well basically, it's all to do with these highly trained assassins who work for some mysterious chinese woman who sends them out to terminate anyone who stands in her way...

Have you got it..? Well, to me that film was dull in some parts especially those "machines" that don't even say a word in this film. Yep! They just basically going round killing people left, right and centre..

Another thing that bothers me was that when the film finished, the three men just stood there as they're making their way off somewhere.. I don't know where.. But, as me the viewer, it didn't say "The End" to say that the film has finished. It just plays the music and the men are just standing there like a bunch of bananas..

Well, if you ever see that film, see what you think..? You may the plot but you'll never know the ending...

Hi, Everyone, Oh, Boy... This one is a lulu. It has really bad background music whenever they can squeeze it in. There are three bad guys who, I guess, are the stars of this. They beat people up and chop people up and crash trucks and bulldozers into people. Usual stuff.

The woman who is sending them on their missions is unable to move her mouth when she speaks. It's sort of like watching a bad ventriloquist who is her own dummy. She walks like she is balancing an egg on her head.

The wardrobe is 70s leisure style for the men and blah for the female lead who is supposed to be a good nurse. The bad novocain mouth woman wears red. A silk frock perhaps, or maybe just a poplin windbreaker that is too big.

I actually liked the ending even though it did not make a lot of sense. It lets us in on what happened earlier in the film.

The police officers are OK. Some bad, some good, all stupid except two. The two bright ones could have worked again in Hollywood.

The movie starts interestingly enough and ends with a surprise. The middle sucks. The guy in the diner who gives a free hamburger to the star does a good job. He is like a 1940s character actor. Great voice.

This one is a bit too long. The lady with marbles in her mouth could have had just a couple of lines and the rest could have been said by a parrot. It would have been easier to understand a bird.

Her scene with a sword could have been handled by a trained woodpecker.

Tom Willett

Fans of trashy, bad 1970s cinema gather 'round. I've found a real winner - Death Machines. Calling Death Machines "so bad it's good" doesn't begin to explain how deliriously enjoyable this movie truly is. Sure, it's bad - in fact you'd have a hard time finding anything quite so inept - but it's also an incredibly fun experience. What little plot the movie has concerns three assassins for hire - one white, one black, and one Asian (Think of the Death Machines as the Rainbow Coalition of killers - how politically correct!). These killers are all but indestructible - they're even impervious to bullets (the movie may have explained why or how, but I must have missed it). On a mission to take out a local karate studio, they inadvertently leave one man alive. They may have taken off one of his hands, but he's alive nonetheless. The police can't seem to find any leads into the karate studio killings, so it's up to our hero, Whining One Hand (as I like to call him), to bring down the gang of killers.

Oh where to start? This is one of those instances where I could easily write paragraph after paragraph about the ineptitude on display in Death Machines. But I'm not sure I can do the thing the justice it deserves. So instead, I'll summarize some of the highlights:

• The plot is little more than one set-piece after the next that only fit together because some of the characters are the same. The attack on the karate studio, the killing of the man in the phone booth, the bazooka shot at the airplane, the obligatory fight scene in the police station, and the bombing of the bank president - the only connection is that a familiar character or two appears in each scene. Otherwise, you might get the wrong idea and start to think the Death Machines actually had no real, coherent plot (wink, wink).

• The killers receive their marching orders from one of screendoms most bizarre master criminals. Madame Lee (and I only know her name by reading the credits on IMDb) is one weird cookie. To begin with, she seems incapable of opening her mouth and speaking as a normal person might. Between that, her thick accent, and the boom operator's inability to get close to her, it makes it just about impossible to understand what she's saying. And then there's that wig! Why in God's name did anyone think it would be a good look to have her wear a 12-inch high geisha wig? She looks ridiculous. Add to that her strange way of walking, her unusual choice of wardrobe, and her totally out of place facial expressions and Madame Lee is a sight that must be seen to be believed.

• The fight choreography is laughable. The opening fight scenes where Madame Lee is picking her three killers is beyond ridiculous. My 6 year-old son takes karate and I'm sure he and a few of his friends could have put together more believable fight set-pieces. And what's with the gun? Who told the white guy to bring a gun to a karate fight? And was it just me or were the opening fights rigged to ensure the racial diversity of Death Machines? White guy fighting white guy, black guy fighting black guy, Asian guy fighting Asian guy? It's too funny.

• Has there ever been a more ineffective hero than Whining One Hand? When not whining about his problems, getting beat-up by an old man in the bar he works at, or making love to the most unappealing nurse imaginable (I think I might have just thrown up a little in my mouth thinking about it), one of his lone contributions to the movie is to follow the bad guys, crawl through the tall grass, and watch as they blow up a plane and the unknown passengers therein. Does he do anything at all to try to stop the baddies? NO. He merely watches. By the time he shows up at the run-down house (that's obviously a stand-in for an opulent mansion- just use your imagination) the Death Machines have left, Madame Lee's right hand man is already dead, and yet he still manages to get attacked by the wobbly sword welding Madame Lee and her gigantic wig. What does our hero do? Again - nothing. Thank God the police were on hand to take out the dragon lady or Whining One Hand might have ended up being Whining No Hand.

On and on it goes (I haven't even gotten into the technical issues, the lack of any sort of ending, the inappropriate Casio keyboard music, or the old time gospel music played over the fight scene in the grocery store/bar). Death Machines is a real hoot of a movie that I implore all fans of bad 70s trash movies to seek out. You won't be disappointed. As for my rating, I'll be honest, rating movies like Death Machines is difficult. On one hand, it's a stinker of epic proportions. But, on the other hand, I've always said that I rate movies based on my enjoyment. And with that in mind, I have to give Death Machines at least a 7/10 even with its numerous and all too obvious problems. Be warned, if the notion of a bad, plot-less 70s movie with characters that have no motivation or acting ability and big bad wigs with speech impediments doesn't appeal to you, stay away. Otherwise, enjoy!

If you remember the great Lee Marvin movie "Point Blank" you'll recognize the "pipe-smoking assassin" character originally played by James B. Sikking. As you watch "Death Machines" you find yourself constantly reminded of some of the great scenes or clichés you've seen in other movies. It's almost as if the makers just grabbed a handful of as much fun stuff as they could remember from other movies and tossed it all into one. Of course it makes for one very silly and (in that context) very entertaining movie. Can you see actress Mari Honjo actually biting the blood capsule after she is shot? Clearly this is one of the reasons she has never been seen on the screen again. Or anywhere else, at least lately. C'mon, how can you not appreciate a movie with a one-armed bartender?