Lady Street Fighter

Long after his movie career had dried up, Jody McCrea appeared in thsi direct-to-video opus, directed by James Bryan. The plot is a little obscure, but it seems to involve Renee Harmon (who also appeared in several Al Adamson movies) running around Brutalist architecture in Los Angeles, sucking on celery stalks, shooting at and being shot at by members of an assassin's organization which, as one character explains to another who already knows, has tens of thousands of members.

It seems to have been shot around 1975 and is a fine example of utter ineptness, given that the uncredited director of photography didn't bother to match light levels in the same scene even approximately, and the uncredited writer of the score seems to have used Morricone's theme for THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE UGLY, but played it on a synthesizer. Except for one Black woman, none of the performers seem to be able to give a line reading that makes sense.

On the plus side, Miss Harmon does show that it isn't easy to run in heels and there are several topless women.

A few movies are poor enough to be entertaining in their awfulness. This one doesn't even achieve that. the credits show that Miss Harmon is the producer. I guess she thought she was ready for the spotlight and willing to spend someone's money to prove it. She was wrong.

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.

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.

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.

If director James Bryan never makes another movie, that's OK. He can rest on his laurels, having brought his vision to the screen in Executioner Part 2 and also with Don't Go in the Woods. AND, he also apparently sacrificed years of his life so that the rest of us could experience Lady Street Fighter.

As was the case in EP2 and DGITW, the audio in Lady Street Fighter is dubbed, apparently having been shot with no sound. It's safe to say the actors were bad to begin with, but having recorded the audio afterwards seems to have helped make their performances even more atrocious.

Plot involves an undercover female agent (with THICK German accent) assigned to kill a dirty FBI agent. The FBI agent has also been assigned to kill her. Attracted to one another, they have an affair in between car chases and shoot outs. Plot specifics aren't explained well at all, but I *can* tell you the movie is hilarious in parts. It really is terrible. Kookie music, bad dialogue, a hit man who seems to say "Get it?" after every other sentence. Awful, I tell ya.

If you like bad movies, check this one out. It's hard to find, but hopefully it'll get a DVD release someday.