Death Machines

"Death Machines" is a wonderfully precocious bit of bad movie nonsense, director Paul Kyriazi really lets a scene play out to it's conclusion, however unpleasant. There is a scene were two idiots destroy the world's crummiest dive bar. Kyriazi captures the dull poignancy of this act of stupid violence, it's an idiotic, mean thing to do, but at least they care enough to do it.

The story involves a Dragon Lady (Mari Honjo, in a one shot performance of a lifetime Carol Burnett could not touch) who are developing some machine like marital arts killers for use by an evil syndicate, problems arise when the killers learn to think for themselves. There's a pair of refreshingly plain lovers who are only trying to find a little happiness in a world where Death Machines come along and run right over you. A not by the book cop tries his best against all odds.

it's really hard for me to imagine how someone could not enjoy "Death Machines." It is quite cheap, and the final freeze frame suggest they just ran out of time and money and couldn't finish the credits.

We live in a cruel world where DEATH MACHINES never got to live to its franchise potential. I can't be the only one who would love to see the continued karate-kicking adventures of the three unnamed, ethnically diverse zombified ninjas of writer/director Paul Kyriazi's 1976 action jewel. Of the dozens of B-movies (and worse) that I've subjected myself to recently, DEATH MACHINES is one of the best. Madame Lee (Mari Honjo), a minor boss in a vague Asian crime syndicate, has got a new weapon to make a splash on the world of organized crime: her three mind-controlled ninjas (Ronald Marchini, Michael Chong, and Joshua Johnson). When her shadowy boss orders her to eliminate rival hit-men and establish business dealings with mob boss Gioretti (Chuck Katzakian), the ninjas are more than effective. When they're assigned to eliminate a local karate teacher (for reasons unknown thanks to bad audio mixing), the "death machines" attract the attention of law enforcement, particularly hot-shot detective Lieutenant Forrester (Ron Ackerman), and earn the ire of overzealous karate student Frank (John Lowe). Frank is the sole survivor of the machines' vicious attack on the karate school and he's determined to seek vengeance for the murder of his teacher and fellow students and for the loss of his right arm. Will Frank rise to the challenge of Madame Lee's three unstoppable death machines? Will Lt. Forrester succeed in his mission to capture the mystery ninjas? More importantly, will he ever get around to that human resources class so his captain will get off his back?

DEATH MACHINES is a perfect blend of semi-competence, incompetence, and martial arts action with just a hint of insanity. The filmmakers set the tone from the very start. The movie opens on the ninjas' final test, where each of them battle another martial artist of the same ethnicity (out of….symmetry? fairness?). Just in case anyone was worried this would just be a bunch of sword-swinging and high kicks, the white ninja eliminates his competition with a pistol he pulls from an ankle holster. So right away, we're shown that rules are for suckers. When assigned to knock off the competition, we're treated to three separate murders in the first fifteen minutes; of those three, zero involve any sort of martial arts action. One involves a freakin' bazooka. Who needs subtlety when you're a seemingly invulnerable death machine? Man, this movie's a blast. Far from perfect, DEATH MACHINES suffers from its share of problems. For starters, the movie's obnoxious synth score and the audio mixing that frequently drowns out dialogue in favor of it. Most of Madame Lee's dialogue in the film is near unintelligible. But, it's just intelligible enough for us to hear that poor Mari Honjo isn't much of an actress. It's fine. I'm not here for the performances. The movie also has the unfortunate problem of being unsure how to tell a proper story, what with the protagonist and the story arc and whatnot. DEATH MACHINES, and the audience, isn't really sure whom we're rooting for to win.

Detective Forrester seems an obvious choice, being a police officer and all. And he's a pretty cool guy, standing up to his griping captain and putting his overly smug rival in his place. But Forrester doesn't show up for the first half hour and then disappears again until the end of the film for a little bit of deus ex machina. Then there's Frank, the newly one-armed karate student. But Frank disappears for large chunks of the movie and then proceeds to get his butt handed to him by an ornery old man in a barfight, so he's hard to get behind. At one point about halfway through the film, there's even a brief moment when it appears the white ninja might shift allegiances and become our hero when he stands up to a rowdy band of bikers that terrorize a Ma & Pa diner/fueling station. But nope, once he finds his ninja buddies again he's back to work as usual, making the previous twenty minutes or so where we followed his capture and escape from the police (and said diner brawl) completely pointless. Fortunately for this movie, I'm willing to forgive all these problems because it's all so much fun. It sets itself up perfectly at the end for a sequel but I guess it was never meant to be. DEATH MACHINES, while certainly not a "good movie", ranks high on the spectrum against its peers. Do yourself a favor; I know the movie is available online…find it and watch at least the first 15 minutes. You won't regret it and you just might be tempted to see it through to the end.

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.

I'm from Texas so I thought I knew big hair, but the female villain in this movie had humongous hair. Whenever she was on the screen I couldn't concentrate on anything but her hair. Take about stage presence! There seemed to be a lot of people with hearing problems in this movie also. There was a traffic warden writing out a parking ticket who somehow didn't notice the owner plunging toward the car screaming at the top of his lungs until he hit the car. Then there was a guy in a phone booth who couldn't hear a huge bulldozer coming at him until it was 5 feet away. All the hit men in this movie seemed a bit deaf, no one had to sneak up on them. The one handed 'hero' of this movie was so whiny and ineffective that it was funny. The bar-fight was pretty funny. There is a priceless scene where the hero and his girlfriend just had sex and judging from their expressions, it wasn't good for either one of them. It made me laugh out loud. This movie is on the 50 Movie Pack Martial Arts set if you want to see a lot of bad movies (with a few decent ones).

They don't really make films like Death Machines anymore and that's a bit of a shame. It seems to have a bit of a mixed reputation if the reviews on here are anything to go by but for me this is an unqualified success on account of just how entertaining it all is. Its story centres on three fighters – the death machines - who are directed by a female crime boss by way of a mind control drug. She then uses them to carry out a series of hit jobs on her enemies. For reasons that remain unexplained, the death machines are bullet proof.

From the outset, you have to give some credit to a film whose three central characters are named in the credits as White Death Machine, Black Death Machine and Asian Death Machine. And you also have to give plus points to a film whose master criminal is an East Asian lady with huge hair. She directs proceedings that amount to a series of scenes of the death machines taking out a variety of shady rival criminals. These set-pieces are connected together, often without much of an explanation. But sometimes sense can be over-rated and sheer nonsense can be so much more fun. I find it hard to understand how so many people can have found this movie boring. As far as I'm concerned, it moved along at a cracking pace and threw plenty of action and insanity at us from start to finish. There are lots of martial arts fights; heads and arms are chopped off; a truck is driven through restaurant window and a bulldozer flattens a man in a phone booth; an aeroplane is taken out by a bazooka; a banker is blown up by a time-bomb and a professional hit-man is thrown off a roof; an assault on a karate school is attempted with predictably action-packed results; there's a biker bar-room brawl; we have a shouting police captain and a 'hero' who is beaten up easily by an angry pensioner. I'm pretty sure there was a lot more than that as well. This is great fun basically.