Mission: Killfast

Mission: Killfast (1991)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

A bunch of bad guys are selling mass weapons and other destructive things to other bad guys so martial arts expert Cheng-Wu Yang must come out of retirement and track them down.

Ted V. Mikels made several films but all of them had very small budgets. His film range from straight forward thrillers like STRIKE ME DEADLY to sex pictures like DR. SEX to dramas like THE BLACK KLANSMAN and of course the various exploitation pictures like THE CORPSE GRINDERS, BLOOD ORGY OF THE SHE-DEVILS and THE ASTRO ZOMBIES. Mikels obviously knew how to work with a low-budget and rarely did he ever try to hide the fact that he was working without much money.

MISSION: KILLFAST isn't a very good movie and in fact it's quite poor. With that said, I must admit that I admired Mikels' work here because the budget is so low that it would be impossible for this story to work yet the film really doesn't look too bad. Yes, the cheapness is there but at least Mikels tried to deliver some real action scenes and some of them are rather big as well. Does it look like the next DIE HARD? Of course not but, again, look at the budget.

The performances are pretty bad as you'd expect but Yang at least does a nice job with his action scenes. He certainly knows the martial arts quite well but he isn't too photogenic and he just can't become too memorable on the screen.

It's too bad that IMDb does not allow single sentence reviews. After all, anyone who is remotely familiar with the work of schlock auteur Ted Mikels will know that if he's the one making a particular film, it is guaranteed to be horrible and that could be summed up very easily. It's just a given...trust me on this. He is a bottom of the barrel producer, editor and director and has no pretensions of being an artist--he just makes really, really, really cheap films. No need to do re-writes or re-takes--just make it fast and get it in the theaters or on DVD even faster seems to be his mantra!

The first thing I noticed about this film is that although it's relatively new, the print was rather grainy. Is this because the camera equipment was that cheap or did Mikels keep the print in his garage?! The second thing I noticed was that although the film has a copyright date of 1991, the clothes, music, fashions and cars look like they were much older. Did this film sit on the shelf for a decade before being released? It looked so early to mid-1980s (you gotta love those mullets). The garage theory is starting to look even more plausible. Plus, when I checked out Tiger Yang's web site, it said he stopped making films about 1980--lending further credence to my contention that the film was held for many years before its 1991 release.

The film itself is about a group of arms merchants wanting to sell guns, nuclear detonators and other bad stuff to crazed revolutionaries. However, Tiger Yang comes out of retirement to stop them. I'm really not sure who this man is, but the old overweight guys playing the baddies seemed afraid of him. I thought at first he was a dietitian and personal trainer (now THAT would have really scared them), but it turns out he's a combination martial arts expert and government agent! However, given the looks of the baddies, I really didn't think they needed to bother with Yang...I mean, how hard could it have been to take out THESE guys?! I kind of think the film could have just as well been called "Attack of the Paunchy Middle-aged Accountants".

By the way, since I am pointing out how most of the bad guys look nothing like bad guys or even actors, I'm going to say something that may sound very mean--but it's very true. Many of the 'sexy ladies' in this film are about as un-sexy (and sometimes quite old) as you can find in films--even low-budget ones. It looks as if either Mikels had a hard time finding actors or he just let all his friends appear in the film--or both.

So does this dumb film have anything going for it? Well, Tiger Yang is clearly an accomplished martial arts master and he did seem to know his stuff (something that CAN'T be said of some of Mikels martial arts stars from other films). While he doesn't have a lot of charisma, he seems like he's pretty good with his kicks and other moves...though, of course, against REAL baddies this shouldn't matter even if you suspend disbelief. That's because arms merchants who never use guns or other weapons is a bit of a tough sell!

Overall, the film is exactly what you'd expect from Ted Mikels and sadly not one bit more! For bad movie fans, it's a must-see. Others...beware. Also beware if you see it, as there is a reasonably high amount of nudity...so you might not want to show this film to your mother or priest.

One of those cheap, sunny action films that seemed to proliferate in the 1980s and always went straight-to-video in the days of the VCR boom. The twist is that this is a Ted V. Mikels film and so cheap that it wasn't actually released until 1991, even though it was shot in 1982 and feels very much like an early '80s movie. It's also the best Mikels film I've seen so far, but only because the other films I've seen by him (including BLOOD ORGY OF THE SHE-DEVILS and TEN VIOLENT WOMEN) have been much worse.

The storyline makes a fair bit of sense and involves some terrorists getting their hands on nuclear weaponry. A fashion magazine serves as a front for criminal activities so there are lots of padded photo shoot scenes involving women in bikinis (and occasionally out of them) wandering around swimming pools and beaches and the like. Unfortunately not many of them are very attractive and there are some you really don't want to see so much of. The bad guys include mercenaries and corrupt officials, while the sole hero is a Chinese guy played by the little-known martial artist Tiger Yang who just so happens to be a government agent.

Yang isn't much of a hero, it has to be said, although he's still better than Leo Fong of LOW BLOW infamy. He gets to kick and strike his way through various henchmen in a series of cheap and cheesy fight scenes. In some respects, MISSION: KILLFAST reminded me of the delightfully inept movies made by Amir Shervan, such as KILLING American STYLE and SAMURAI COP, although sadly it's never as deliriously awful as them.

This film is so close to being a trash action classic that it's really a shame that it can't quite pull it off. Some gangsters are selling weapons to some mercenaries, and (probably?) some stolen nuclear detonators. The government can't intervene (for reasons that are amazingly unclear), so they recruit martial arts dude Tiger Yang (playing himself!). The first third is so packed full of wonderfully bent storytelling that it's a serious letdown when it finally becomes so bogged down in plot, characters and exposition that you can't hope to follow it anymore. A mobster's son runs a pornographic magazine that has one or maybe two government moles working there ... but then the son also turns out to be a mole. The daughter of a government agent killed in the line of duty (I assume this happened in the movie, but I don't remember it happening) vows revenge against the gangster. A hit man named "Cocoa Charlie" poses as a cop by wearing Groucho Marx style fake eyebrows and then rapes and murders a woman. It sounds like it may be fun, but it's just scene after scene of characters talking and talking. It doesn't help that Tiger Yang cannot act or really even speak English well. Then it all goes delightfully off the rails in an action climax that's positively avant-garde ... people blow up, buildings burn, and the exact same sequences are used over and over again. The whole thing is almost worth it if you can wait through 40 minutes of sheer confusing boredom.

The convoluted plot of this martial arts / action flick from veteran schlock specialist Ted V. Mikels mostly boils down to the efforts of weapons merchants to deliver supplies to mercenaries and revolutionaries. The plot also involves a dirty magazine used as a front, a young woman named Catt Valone (Sharon Hughes) attempting to get revenge on behalf of her father, and a martial artist / former government agent (Cheng-Wu "Tiger" Yang) coerced back into action as his old associates desperately need him to acquire some nuclear detonators from the bad guys.

Make no mistake, this is pretty stupid and lame. A lot of the action is uninspired, even if real life Grand Master Yang is able to handle himself well in hand to hand combat. One would hope that this would reach certain heights (or depths, if you will) of ineptitude and absurdity, but it never really does. Mostly, it's just kind of boring. It's not that easy to care that much about this "story" or the characters, and the villains are, by and large, a nondescript, non- threatening lot. On the plus side, there are a few gorgeous girls (B movie favourite Jewel Shepard makes an appearance as "Miss August"), a little bit of T & A, and some moderately amusing sequences towards the end. Things do improve once the Detective Peterson character shows up. Just get a load of this idiots' "disguise". The music score is also kind of fun.

Yang, even basically playing "himself", is not a particularly expressive or charismatic guy. Not all of the performances are that terrible, though:Hughes ("Chained Heat") is modestly appealing, and Ronald Gregg is good in the role of Yangs' associate Harry. Look for Mikels himself (he's a hard guy to miss, what with that moustache) as a mercenary in the training camp.

Trivia at IMDb states that financing problems caused the movie to take around nine years to reach completion.

Four out of 10.