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.

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!)

The plot is about Lady Street Fighter maybe trying to figure out what happened to her sister? And some crooks trying to recover a cassette tape of their misdeeds in a stuffed animal she has. She also has a romance with an FBI agent among some fighting of what I think is kung-fu that somehow gets worse as it goes on. She gets tangled in webs of lies, 70s sleazy cats, assassins from Assassins Inc and sleazy dives. It's baffling, but it suits it, as does its conclusion.

Just about everything short of the music and restoration is bad. To start somewhere, I don't know if this is "acting" or not. A lot of the actors are just saying their lines, as if they're reading from a script that only they can see; devoid of emotion, heart and life itself, even in moments of mortal peril. I'm not one that notices bad acting from half-competent acting but this is just so bad, past the point of cheese that exploitation movies should have. Especially this one guy, I think he was the FBI agent, but his delivery is so awful. I was begging for him to stop talking. He stood out, among thick accents, sleazy 70s Bee Gees gangsters, hookers and drunken stoned togas.

I almost forgot to mention a comical stealthy, sneaky guy sneaking into Lady Street Fighter's room to steal the previously mentioned stuffed animal. He could hear the shower but didn't look into the bathroom at all where she saw him sneaking around. Sneakily.

Apparently this movie was lost for a long time until being recently rediscovered. After watching it, it's clear why apparently nobody was keeping a close eye on it. While it isn't the worst movie I have seen, it is all the same a really amateurish effort in every department you can think of. The story makes absolutely no sense, almost as if it was being made up as the shoot was going on. The production values are rock bottom. The acting is pretty pitiful as well. Still, I will admit that there are a few small pleasures to be found here. A few action sequences, as crude as they are directed, do contain a little zip. And there are some touches of unintentional humor that are genuinely hilarious, from some really dopey dialogue to music that rips off Ennio Morricone's music for the movie "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly". But most of the movie is a really confusing slog to sit through, so I don't think it's worth watching the whole package just to get a few tiny nuggets of entertaining material. Why Turner Classic Movies thought this crudely made obscurity was worth broadcasting on their network, I cannot say.

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.