SAMURAI COP 2: DEADLY VENGEANCE is a fan made film, funded by Kickstarter and released as a tribute to the original SAMURAI COP. For those who don't know, SAMURAI COP (and the likes of KILLING American STYLE) were cheap, inept and cheesy low budget action flicks from the early 1990s which today have a kind of cult charm and so-bad-it's-good feel.
Sadly, this follow up makes a huge mistake in that it looks and feels nothing like the original movie. All of the humour and the goofiness has gone and what we're left with is a cookie cutter film packed with all the awfulness a typical Z-grade film can muster: terrible stilted acting (most of the cast are moonlighting porn performers), embarrassingly bad direction, rubbish fight scenes, and a general lack of plot cohesion. Amir Shervan, who wrote and directed the original SAMURAI COP, must be spinning in his grave.
I think SAMURAI COP 2 is a good example of the difference between old B-movies and new ones. The old B-movies at least had something going for them; they weren't perfect, but they had a kind of cheesy, hard-working charm. These days, film-making is so cheap that anybody can make a B-flick, except few amateur film-makers have the talent even to make so-bad-it's-good productions. They're mostly just horrid, like this one.
Robert Z'Dar died before the production began - that was a lucky break - but Mathew Karedas, Mark Frazer, and Cranston Komuro all return from the original film and yes, Karedas is still the bad actor that he always was. If you were ever interested in seeing how badly Laurene Landon (MANIAC COP) has aged, here's your chance. Oh, and Bai Ling (DUMPLINGS) is here too in her most awful performance yet; I guess she really will appear in any old thing.
