Lady Street Fighter

Don't go into this one with visions of Sue Shihomi kicking in your head. This is a lame 70s action flick from James Bryan of DON'T GO IN THE WOODS infamy. Linda (Renee Harmon) arrives in Las Vegas and is immediately attacked by some thugs. She is searching for some list on microfilm that involves a pimp and everyone wants to kill her. Seriously, that is all I could make out of this film's plot. It runs a scant 76 minutes, but I often found myself thinking, "What is going on?" Harmon - looking like a low rent Chesty Morgan - has zee zickest Cher-man ackzent so at least her dialog delivery is entertaining. Oh, and she does throw some wild karate kicks, licks a phone, sucks on a celery stalk, and gets nude. Naturally, a film this bad demands I immediately dive into the rest of Bryan's work.

Long after his movie career had dried up, Jody McCrea appeared in thsi direct-to-video opus, directed by James Bryan. The plot is a little obscure, but it seems to involve Renee Harmon (who also appeared in several Al Adamson movies) running around Brutalist architecture in Los Angeles, sucking on celery stalks, shooting at and being shot at by members of an assassin's organization which, as one character explains to another who already knows, has tens of thousands of members.

It seems to have been shot around 1975 and is a fine example of utter ineptness, given that the uncredited director of photography didn't bother to match light levels in the same scene even approximately, and the uncredited writer of the score seems to have used Morricone's theme for THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE UGLY, but played it on a synthesizer. Except for one Black woman, none of the performers seem to be able to give a line reading that makes sense.

On the plus side, Miss Harmon does show that it isn't easy to run in heels and there are several topless women.

A few movies are poor enough to be entertaining in their awfulness. This one doesn't even achieve that. the credits show that Miss Harmon is the producer. I guess she thought she was ready for the spotlight and willing to spend someone's money to prove it. She was wrong.

The main character "Linda" is out for revenge after her sister is Murdered. If what followed was pure non stop action (even on a low budget) with decent fight choreography.. then we might have a pretty good trash cinema movie, but when the movie slows down to dialogue it's extremely noticeable how bad most of the actors are, including the star, who has a heavy accent and talks like she is coldly reading instructions off a paper. The insanity will keep you watching just to see how ludicrous the film is. The fight scenes are hilarious, no one knows how to throw a punch or block it especially Linda. I recommend you play this movie on mute while you listen to music and it will Be more captivating.

Really, really, really, really, really funny movie but man is it badly made. On the other hand its hard to make any movie good or bad so just the fact that anything gets onscreen is a downright miracle really...but seriously its not well made.

The lead actress is very Tommy Wisseau-esque tho--her accent, but also her outsize over-reaction to anything and everything that's also in the scene with her. She's a wee bit over the top you might say.

There's a grown woman playing a 5 year old girl here as well, as in she's actually supposed to be 5 and not a grown woman with the brain of a 5 year old...it doesn't make any sense, but i'm hoping it wasn't supposed to.

There's a sequence that's set at a party that turns into a drug laced freakout/orgy that seems to serve no purpose other than to give the people in the movie who aren't the main actress something to do.

Honestly nothing that happens in this movie makes any sense--it starts out trying to be a straight up revenge movie (this woman's sister gets killed and she comes to California to find the guys that did it) but somewhere around the lets say 20 minute mark, the movie turns into a woman on the run movie, and then it inexplicably becomes a love story--that part was actually the most believable because the actor who's playing against the lead actress is about as much an actor as she is--except where she goes completely and totally over the top, he's like underplaying every line--their love scene needs to be seen to be believed quite honestly.

How this hasn't been rediscovered as an object of cult fandom yet is a good question--its definitely every bit as nuts as The Room, but somehow The Room is still unquestionably the better movie! (At least The Room has some resolution at the end of its plot!)

If director James Bryan never makes another movie, that's OK. He can rest on his laurels, having brought his vision to the screen in Executioner Part 2 and also with Don't Go in the Woods. AND, he also apparently sacrificed years of his life so that the rest of us could experience Lady Street Fighter.

As was the case in EP2 and DGITW, the audio in Lady Street Fighter is dubbed, apparently having been shot with no sound. It's safe to say the actors were bad to begin with, but having recorded the audio afterwards seems to have helped make their performances even more atrocious.

Plot involves an undercover female agent (with THICK German accent) assigned to kill a dirty FBI agent. The FBI agent has also been assigned to kill her. Attracted to one another, they have an affair in between car chases and shoot outs. Plot specifics aren't explained well at all, but I *can* tell you the movie is hilarious in parts. It really is terrible. Kookie music, bad dialogue, a hit man who seems to say "Get it?" after every other sentence. Awful, I tell ya.

If you like bad movies, check this one out. It's hard to find, but hopefully it'll get a DVD release someday.