O Super Homem do Karate

How does one dare to describe the pure majestic brilliance of this outlandish chunk of cinematic history in just one essay? Holy smokes, I'll give it a shot. Superlative, majestic, confronting, heart renching and above all really good and stuff are just some of the adjectives I will use to describe this emotional rollercoaster of a 35mm brilliance. I was so excited when I first saw Stoner, that I punched my elderly neighbour in the back of the head. Move over Steven, step aside Martin and go home Quentin, Feng Huang is here and he means business. From go to whoa this film packs non stop underpant exploding action that'll have you begging your best mate's auntie for more. Apparently this film was so popular in Amsterdam, that men started shaving off their eyebrows and colouring their armpits with lipstick in a effort to emulate Lazenby's modern-day Hamlet, Detective Stoner. Thank god Jack Palance turned down the role of Stoner or we would not have been treated to such a enigmatic foray into the world of contemporary cinema from The Georgie Lazmeistser. All in do you self a favour, buy yourself some cheetos and a bottle of Distilled Water and treat yourself to a night-in of hard-core provocative entertainment. 3 thumbs up, Cheers George, thanks for the good times. Keep on trucking you crazy cat.

George Lazenby has a moustache and is Stoner (!), an angry Australian antidrug-cop who takes on the Chinese mafia who tries to push a new drug that makes women super-horny! He also says "Hmm..." a lot, wears pimp suits and kicks ass. A lot of ass, using his own special "kung fu" technique. Basically he's just waving his arms around like a madman while the villains fall like bricks. More Cüneyt Arkin than Bruce Lee if you catch my drift... The real kung fu (and eye-candy) comes from his female sidekick Angela Mao who really got some moves! To sum it up, this is a cheezy but highly entertaining kung fu-burger full of 1970s charms. A new martial arts favorite of mine! Blink and you'll miss a young Samo Hung getting his ass beaten to shreds by George Lazenby (the humiliation!)

Lazenby plays Stoner, a cop who in search of a organization who makes "the love pill" that is killing and spreading the market in Australia. Angela Mao only has a supporting part for top billing, so it makes me wonder if she is the lead (with more footage) in the HK version. The dubbing is terrible, but good action scenes helps. Look for Sammo Hung and Kurata Yasuaki as the bad guys fighter.

...perhaps I ought say "distilled" rather than refined - this film embodies the concentrated essence of the trashy 70s action flick, a heady brew for the irony-poisoned minds of today's trash conisseur's minds (e.g. mine).

"Stoner" (as it was labelled at my local rental store) opens with a shot of an urbanely smug 'Asian drug lord' kicking back in his office. The walls are all red, his desk perpetually rotates, and there's a big map on the wall covered in flashing lights. The mere shock of the decor alone sets the tone for the remainder of the movie - jerky fight scenes, needless sexploitation, and pornstar swaggering all drenched in polyester and enveloped in a funky soundtrack punctuated with some very strange moog.

Needless to say, it's hilarious. George Lazenby, incidentally, proves himself pretty useless throughout the film, both in-character and out-. The real star is Angela Mao, rolling her eyes about furiously and kicking arse in the surprisingly good final fight scene. I guess George's role was played up for Western release so we'd have a strutting, obnoxious white guy to relate to.

Barely a movie. I think it comes alive at the very end, when they decide to have one decently choreographed fight scene, but it's otherwise a very pedestrian affair. It's a bit sleazy, and there are lots of small hand-to-hand fight sequences throughout, but most are repetitive and not very much fun to watch. A couple of people sort of team up and take down a bunch of criminals. You go into it hoping you'll unearth some hidden gem, but then come away going, "Ah okay, that's why it lives in obscurity."

Also, this film has some of the worst music I've ever heard in a movie. There's this one piece of music with about half an hour to go that felt like torture. I'm not sure if it was supposed to be sound effects or music, or a bit of both, but it sounds like footsteps kind of, but also experimental, and extremely annoying. And it just goes on and on. It made finishing this film a challenge.