Dynamite Johnson

The Return Of The Bionic Boy should be avoided unless you are insane, or a zealous Bionic movie completist, even if such a person exists I doubt whether he/she could glean any joy from this plotless obscurity. After a promising funk driven Bruce Lee/Shaw Bros/Sonny Chiba style title sequence, which included a magnificently cheapjack mardi gra fire breathing dragon float, the film became a seemingly endless round of dull, repetitive and badly executed martial (No) Art battles. Not only was said boy far from bionic, his left leg appeared to have some batteries in it, the bionic sound effect was darn poor, and, like his powers utilized way to frequently. On the scale of bad movies this was unfortunately right up there with Bruce Willis's 'Color Of Night', yep, that grotesque. If you happen to know someone who brings this round with a plentiful supply of booze, simply get drunk and hurl master Bionic Boy out the window. Dreadful nonsense.

Director Bobby A. Suarez brings us this convoluted Karate Fighting adventure starring Johnson Yap as a Bionic Karate Fighting Kid (Sonny Lee). Apparently, this is a sequel to The Bionic Boy, which I have yet to see, also starring Yap and long legged Marrie Lee (Cleopatra Wong) as Sonny's Mother . The first five minutes of Dynamite Johnson is "Z" movie magic highlighted by a fire breathing Nazi Dragon. The film slows down a bit from there with Cleopatra and Sonny out to stop One Eyed Nazi Kuntz, who is comically assisted by (Dr. Hiss) Joseph Zucchero, from blowing up Hong Kong which incidentally would take Chungking Mansions off of my bucket list. It's nice to see "Z" movie veteran Ken Metcalfe in a starring role as Head Nazi (Heinrich "One Eye" Kuntz).

A couple of problem with the film are The Boy (Sonny) gets quite irritating with his whistling and constantly sticking out his tung at his evil adversaries. Or Course the dubbing is not great and a bit is lost in translation with one of with Cleopatra's enemy's yelling "hey you, what you do there" at her. "The film is also thirty minutes too long, but it is nothing a skilled editor could not fix. I still give D. J. a qualified recommendation and with an good aforementioned edit this one could be vaulted into the highly desirable "Z+" catagory for sure.

The idea of this movie - a young boy with bionic parts battling a Nazi madman filmed by Filipino filmmakers on a very low budget - may sound like it would be a lot of fun, at least on an unintentionally entertaining level. Indeed, there are some moments that are so lame, so tacky, so feeble-minded that they do provoke chuckles from viewers, my favorite being the name of the Nazi villain. But for the most part, the movie is forgettable stuff. Most of what the title figure does to battle the bad guys is indulge in martial arts, and the martial arts are strictly standard stuff; you wouldn't most of the time figure out that the bionic boy really is bionic from his fighting skills. A bigger problem with the movie, however, is that there isn't a heck of a lot of story. The story is really thin, and as a result the movie is really padded out with material that advances the plot little to not at all. Eventually I started to lose interest, even when the movie in the last third decides it's going to deliver an action-packed finale. I haven't seen the Bionic Boy movie that preceded this, but after watching this sequel, I have no desire to do so.

This film is known under several titles. This is pure trash cinema! The boy has special powers, and when he uses them, a prolonged 'waah-waaah-waaaah' sound accompanies him, and every bionic act is done in super slow motion (as in the scene where he throws a man into a basketball hoop, and the dock side scene, when he bends a bumper around a baddie). His sister is a bit of a babe too. Plot-wise, i dont remember, but the 'finale' has to be seen. It inolves a giant fire breathing mecha-godzilla, but on a budget. One of them (i think his sister..) is hit by a boulder, which is obviously made of paper in the climatic scenes. I laughed at how bad it was, yet sat through it all. This really is a gem, and any fan of exploitation or asian trash cinema must see this.

The film was released in various formats in the UK. The version reviewed was available on Cable 2 video.