Chokugeki jigoku ken: Daigyakuten

10% Karate movie, 20% Caper movie, 70% low slapstick comedy. If grown men continually trying to look up lady's dress is your idea of sophisticated humour, then this is the movie for you...

The usual suspects from "The Executioner" are brought back together for another mission, the retired Police Chief, his comely daughter, the wily veteran assassin, the pointless idiot and Sonny. However the idiotic character seemed to lack some of the verve he showed in the previous film, as if resigned to his fate.

There are jewels that may or may not have been stolen, a billion yen insurance pay-out (or fraud), a kid-knapped child and another billion yen in ransom. It's never entirely clear who is double crossing who, when and why, but that is of no real importance in this type of movie.

The robbery caper devised is elaborate and implausible, as to be expected, but sadly the makers didn't have budget to deliver the spectacle envisioned in a convincing way on screen. By over reaching themselves they draw attentions to this shortcoming, but, on the other hand, as this is predominantly a comedic outing so it's not a deal breaker.

What is a deal breaker is that there are too many overlong stretches of lame comedy and caper planning in-between the karate battles and the "excecution" of the capers (you see what I did there?), which drag the movie down.

In fact the fight scenes are very good when taken on their own, although the final showdown seems to arrive almost out of nowhere, with every character, good and bad, suddenly turning up for the battle royal, and Sonny delivering a sort of greatest hits of "Streetfighter" mayhem, knocking out a mouthful of teeth here, ripping out a heart there, and breaking one thugs neck by revolving his head 360 degrees with a series of chops, a-la the Exorcist. Even the infamous fishnet arm from the first film makes a surprise encore appearance, apropos of nothing, and I suddenly had a flash of insight into what it's practical purpose was this time;-apparently it may be able to deflect bullets!

I also had a feeling I may have been watching a cut version of the film, because there seemed to be far less female nudity than was foreshadowed in the opening credits, which was made up of what I assumed was a montage of highlights from later in the film, many of which didn't appear to eventuate. Perhaps the lack of puerile soft porn content also contributes to making this edition less enjoyable than the first?

So no "Karate Inferno" here, instead easily Sonny's least convincing effort from his halcyon year of 1974.

It's a commonly acknowledged fact that sequels rarely live up to the original... either they try too hard to replicate what made the original good and end up feeling redundant, or they don't seem to have understood why the original was successful in the first place and give us something different - which is rarely what we want when we choose to buy/watch a sequel.

The Executioner II definitely succumbs to the latter problem, choosing to sacrifice most of the sex and violence in favour of screwball comedy capers... and it seems to have completely forgotten the fact that Chiba's character is a ninja! There's only two fights in the film, and only the second one of those has any balls to it... and by then it's just too late.

The opening credits for the film seem like they know what we're here for, teasing us with a montage of violence and nudity that the film completely fails to deliver on... much of it was taken from the first film, and almost all the good bits of the 2nd get shown right there... you could stop watching after the credits finish and not miss much at all.

Taken as a slapstick comedy, KARATE INFERNO is fairly decent... though the humour can be a bit hit & miss, and some of the production looks frighteningly cheap - almost as if the intention was to spoof bad 70's films. Taken as EXECUTIONER II the film is very disappointing, though!