Firewalker

Firewalker

United States – 1986

Director – J. Lee Thompson

Video Treasures/Media Home Entertainment, 1987, VHS
Run Time - 1 hour, 46 minutes

If ever there was a cheap - and I do mean cheap - knockoff of the Indiana Jones franchise – and I assure you, there weren't ANY, not one - this would probably be, if not the best cheap knockoff, then maybe the worst good one. If there were such a thing as a Heroic Pantheon of Legendary Norris Films - and there isn't - Firewalker might just be one of the best. In fact, even as I shook my head at the simple, crude script, I was laughing right along with it, an intoxicated dopey grin spread over my face. The thing is, this movie really took me by surprise. That devious right-wing ginger ideologue pulled out a good performance on me. It's almost as if this is actually the role that he should have played all along, his perfect match.

I might also say the same of his buddy Louis Gossett Jr., who compliments Norris' reckless charming white-guy lead with a stellar performance as a skeptical, fast-talking black-dude accomplice. Once again, a Norris film that isn’t challenging any stereotypes, but it ‘works better’ (or is less offensive) than many iterations and is far less grating.

Together our color-coded-combo consistently screw up and botch their various treasure seeking adventures: Max (Norris) dutifully getting them deep in the shit, then barely pulling them out in the nick of time, making it seem completely accidental, while Leo (Gossett) curses and berates him with practiced consistency. As if on cue, (as if) the beautiful blonde Patricia shows up with vague clues promising a plethora of potential wealth at great risk of life. Consulting Tall Eagle, a cynical but campy Native American stereotype, they learn the legend of the Firewalker, for whatever it's worth and are off to Central America followed by an evil Apache shaman (Sonny Landham.)

 

Unsurprisingly, Central America is full of overeager loudmouthed revolutionaries with big bottles of tequila and a love for blonde gringo women. John Rhys-Davies pops in for a quick (Norris-requisite) 'Nam reminisce, and an almost uncomfortable philosophical discussion. Don’t get too carried away now, Firewalker gingerly walks the triple line between campy, dramatic, and crappy, without totally botching any of them, but narrative depth is not on the menu. The essential Norris staples are still there, but the big fella actually manages to squeeze out a little human emotion and warmth this time out.  But that might just be the secret of the firewater, er…Firewalker.

Still image credits from top to bottom are:
listal.com
theworstmovie.files.wordpress.com
masternorris.com

I borrowed this UK VHS sleeve from Cannon Rank

Bad Medicine

Bad Medicine: 

Natives Helping White Folks Clean up their

Spiritual Dirty Laundry since 1492

There is no shortage of films in which white folks play at being The Other. Playing at being Japanese or Chinese is certainly not limited to Mickey Rooney, nor Latino/Mexican to Marlon Brando and Telly Savalas. Still, it is not often that we think of white folks breaking out the Red-Face and play at being 'Injuns.' But it wasn't uncommon. The assumption that 'Others' cannot sufficiently portray themselves (or more accurately cannot act the way white folks need them to be in order to justify various forms of racism) is not a distinction meted out to any group exclusively.

If the examples of Blackface are many, replaced only by stereotypes sufficiently disguised to maintain the illusion of superiority, then Redface is hardly any different. From the stony-faced war-chiefs of the 30's an 40's, Redface gradually gave way by the 1960's to more acceptably romantic notions of a people somehow closer to the Earth and like, in tune with the spirits man.

And that's a power that us white people need to expropriate. In the world of cinema, there is nothing worse than helplessness in the face of sheer supernatural terror, or aimlessness in the wake of cultural banality. Fortunately Indigenous peoples have provided us with a convenient release valve for all our Anglo-Saxon spiritual hangups. Whether helping us find meaning in our privileged but ultimately hollow lives or defeating wacky demons of our own creation comes the White Man's spiritual savior: The Medicine Man.

Roughly paralleling the 'Magic Negro,' the movie Medicine Man imparts some kind of Earthy spiritual knowledge or healing upon the bereft white man. Like the Magic Negro who uses soul, rhythm or a clever ruse, the Medicine Man uses sacred smoke, animals or a fetishized notion of extra-natural powers, something mysterious and beyond the comprehension of urbane whites. In most cases, like his black analogue, the Medicine Man is mysterious, arriving physically from nowhere, i.e. a spirit, or historically from nowhere. In either case this 'pastlessness' makes stereotypes easy to swallow because it dissociates them from any historical subjectivity but the immediate-white-present. After imparting his knowledge the Medicine Man inevitably moves on (literally and/or just from the script), disappearing as "mysteriously" as he came. All he asks in payment for his services some symbolic and often trivial token and the satisfaction of having helped. This reiterates the infamous and oft repeated assumption that Native peoples don't understand "true" (acquisitive) value and is quite fortunate because a deeper relationship might require that we white folks actually change ourselves (and our racist assumptions) rather than our (temporary) circumstances and gosh, that's really hard. Our need to fetishize and objectify Indigenous peoples (and other Others) says far more about us than it does them.

Here is an ongoing list of fortuitous Medicine Men (and Women I suspect we shall discover) who have helped us white folks clean up our dirty laundry, without having to clean up much else, throughout the years:

The Manitou
Director - William Girdler 
Syrian born actor Michael Ansara portrays John Singing Rock, a member of an unnamed Plains tribe who helps Tony Curtis defeat an evil Medicine Man that emerges from Curtis' girlfriend's neck in this woman-hating horror film from 1978.

Medicine: Prayers and 'charms'
Token Payment:Tobacco

Poltergeist II
Director - Brian Gibson
Creek actor Will Sampson played Taylor, the Medicine Man whose butterfly summoning power helps the Freeling's defeat spooks a second time around in 1986. Sampson, who died the following year, had played Native Americans in a number of famous roles including those in Outlaw Josey Wales and One Few Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

Medicine: Sacred Smoke
Token Payment: A beat up station wagon

Forest Warrior

Director - Aaron Norris

A tired looking Chuck Norris played McKenna in the 1996 film Forest Warrior. The character is actually a Scotsman who "went native" and whose spirit now protects Mt. Hood, Oregon. When a group of kids go up the mountain to play in their tree-house, spirit-McKenna transforms into various animals and helps them defeat a group of nefarious loggers. While not technically a Medicine Man with magic spells, the use of assumed native atributes to help white folks is clear. The noble savage and super warrior being venerable tropes of USAmerican frontier literature and cinema. McKenna's round-housing spirit-power helps the kids to become stand up for themselves and become mature.

Medicine: Warrior spirit

Token Payment: Satisfaction in having helped

Free Willy
Director - Simon Wincer
In the 1993 film Free Willy and its two sequels, August Schellenberg plays Randolphe Johnson, a Haida Indian who teaches the hero Jesse a tribal song that helps the troubled product of multiple foster homes to communicate with the titular whale, teach it tricks and learn to love someone other than himself.
Medicine: A Haida prayer-song
Token Payment: Satisfaction in having helped

Windrunner

Director - William Clark

This little gem from 1995 features the iconic Russel Means as the ghost of Jim Thorpe helping young Craig overcome his parental hangups in order to achieve high-school football stardom. The film itself is something of a Karate Kid clone with the familiar training sequences and nasty rival sports star, in this case played by Jake Busey. Although the relationship is nominaly reciprocal, Means' Wa Tho Huck character is definitely a 'mysterious Native American elder' whose primary role is to help Greg before vanishing. Despite his historical foundations, the film character remains a wandering spirit.
An emerging trend in these films appears to be the white-boy's missing father figure whom the Medicine Man temporarily replaces until the boy can become a man on his own or, as in Windrunner, forgive/reunite with his own (or new, see Free Willy) father.

Medicine: Warrior spirit/confidence

Token Payment: A Superbowl ring (which he gives back of course) 

Band of the Hand
Director - Paul Michael Glaser
From the maker of Miami Vice comes this gorgeous time-capsule of mid 80's television and raw stereotype. Stephen Lang plays Joe Tegra, a Vietnam Veteran and member of the Miccosukee tribe of north Florida. When a group of young delinquents is dumped in his care in the Everglades, he trains them in survival and guerilla warfare before returning to Miami to confront the drug cartel. Joe himself doesn't appear mysteriously though he has zero back-story, but he is the recipient/teacher/savior of the five punks. Nor are the punk kids, recipients of his Medicine, exclusively white but they are all introduced via back-story.

Nevertheless, Joe still disappears from our narrative with nary a reward.

This begs the question, what if the Medicine Man doesn't use "Medicine" (i.e. indigenous 'magic' or 'sprituality') Joe for example, and McKenna and Wa Tho Huck all impart a warrior knowledge more in keeping with the legendary tracker/hunter icon of legend. Actually, Joe really epitomizes this with his 'Nam Vet guerilla stylings, demonstrating that regardless of the metaphysical quality of the gift, the Medicine man imparts secret knowledge in service of the protagonist. That the latter is not on the surface literally white is largely moot, Band of the Hand being a case in point. Our vigilante heroes fight (ethnic) criminal drug users in the service of (white) law and order, feeding a mythology of racist stereotypes in abject denial of real life drug use statistics. No matter, the Medicine Man can help save white culture writ-large from it's own cognitive dissonance. 

Medicine: Warrior spirit/confidence

Token Payment: Satisfaction in having "saved" the boys

And that, until the next update, is Bad Medicine. We'll post more as they hit the radar screens...

I highly recommend the excellent documentaries Imagining Indians and Reel Injun, both films by indigenous filmmakers about the cinematic portrayal of Indigenous Americans. The latter is presently streaming at Nitflex.
There is also a fantastic article on the total erasure of Indigenous peoples from Hollywood cinema (and USAmerican "history") at Tequila Sovereign.
By all means if you dear reader know of any film in which a Native medicine man or woman helps white people get over themselves, let me know, I want, no, NEED to catalogue it here. And finally, in case I haven't been clear enough; This project, whatever it amounts to, is not meant to disrespect or insult indigenous peoples. Its purpose is to point out white use of stereotypes and appropriation of native cultures in furthering our own agenda, that is as a project of expropriation and colonialism. This is intended as an anti-racist project.

Hellbound

Box scan courtesy of VHS Wasteland

Hellbound

United States - 1993

Director - Aaron Norris

Cannon Video, 1995, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour, 35 minutes

In the Dark Ages, during one of many terrible Crusades against the eastern desert heathens, Richard the Lionheart personally slew Satan's voice-modulated emissary of Armageddon, Prosatanos, and stuck him in a stone sarcophagus. Unfortunately, he sealed the tomb with jeweled golden daggers, a prize far too tempting to remain undisturbed. 800 years later Prosatanos (Christopher Neame) is freed by several tomb robbers. Cleverly disguising himself as an archaeologist he begins searching for the pieces of a broken scepter which holds his power. Sometime in 1993, he finds himself in Chicago... At the very same time, while patrolling the streets looking for drug dealers, Frank Shatter (Chuck Norris) and his shuckin’& jivin’ partner Calvin (Calvin Levels) find themselves at the scene of a murder. After a short fight in which his adversary flees, Shatter discovers what appears to be the head of a broken scepter.

Returning to HQ, Frank and Calvin are interrogated by Israeli police, and instructed to escort the Rabbi's body back to Israel. Fortunately for us, this gives them ample time to ham up the white cop/black partner routine that has frequently made American action cinema so inspiringly progressive since the end of the70’s. Sporting a mop of Jheri Curls and a fanny-pack, perpetually hungry/whiney Calvin isn't going to challenge any cinematic stereotypes. All arguments, whether goofy or simpering merely bounce off the Norris's stony, practically comatose personage like so much bird shit. While I am not holding my breath to discover what value anything conceived by Team Norris has, I am curious to see how much worse this can get.

Following a string of clues which Prosatanos conveniently leaves lying on his writing desk, Shatter and Calvin manage to track Big-P to a partially excavated temple in the desert. Having collected and reassembled the pieces of the scepter, Big-P now intends to sacrifice his glorified secretary and usher in Armageddon. While Calvin distracts Big P with more whining, Norris storms in and personally delivers his traditional beat-down. Cue corny rubber demon-mask and writhing, mostly obscured by flames and Norris is once-again the savior of the world.

8 years after Chuck's finest moment, Team Norris is clearly running out of ways to present the same trite shit. The not-so-clever twist here is that Norris is just a two dimensional beard with fists, and the ethnics are left to compensate for the vacuum of personality with the amplified clowning that white people seem to find so reassuring. Relying heavily on both, Hellbound is arguably the laziest application of Team Norris’s “detached-benevolence” schtick to be found among their pantheon of hits.

Arabic poster from The Movie Poster Page

UK VHS sleeve from Froggyflix

Good Guys Wear Black

Good Guys Wear Black

United States - 1977

Director - Ted Post

HBO Video, 198?, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour, 36 minutes

We're talking, golden boy here: this is Chuck looking his film finest and on an upward trajectory, not yet fully tarnished by the stigma of culture war. Hot cars, fast women, tight leather and a strawberry blond moustache; it almost seemed as if Chuck might go on to have an actual “acting” career. If only he had been able set aside his marrow-deep bitterness about the 1970 death of his brother Wieland who was killed in action in Vietnam. I suppose it was still fresh in his mind in ‘77, and it was certainly fresh in the minds of the nation as it attempted (or not depending on your point of view) to come to terms with ten years of death and waste.

The MIA and POW peace negotiations at the end of Vietnam were for Good Guys Wear Black, the turning point of American dignity at the end of a bitter and unnecessary defeat. As the legend popular among Chuck Norris’ particular demographic would have it, the common G.I. was the primary victim of Vietnam. Answering the call of his country, he was sent to a overseas to save democracy and get shot at, but much worse, when he returned, he became a victim of domestic politics. Villainized by the citizenry who either thought he was a babykiller or just wanted to forget he existed, and treated by the politicians who had used him as a pawn in their dominoes and developmentalism power game, he had been robbed of his dignity and his masculinity. The myth of Soldier was dead.


In Good Guys Wear Black Norris plays John T. Booker a veteran of the Black Tigers, a Special Forces unit sent into the jungle during the Paris Peace negotiations in 1973. Ostensibly their mission was to rescue P.O.W.’s, but as soon as they hit the ground it became evident that they were a ruse. The betrayal of the Black Tigers, who were promptly shot to pieces, functions as Norris’ blunt assertion that both the fighting men on the ground, and the P.O.W.s were hung out to dry by the Nixon administration, sacrificed in a political shell-game.


Years later in his civilian life as one of the few survivors of the Black Tigers, Booker is the embodiment of redemption. He works as a professor of history who teaches a class about the Vietnam War, literally divulging the “truth” to his students. In his spare time he also recharges the masculinity and all-Americanism of the Viet-vet trope by racing expensive sports cars and seducing women, using the same terminology to refer to both. Vietnam vets in Norris’ world are neither fools nor beaten men, and it only remains for him to physically avenge his comrades. When some of them begin turning up murdered, Booker joins forces with a chainsmoking CIA man to discover why and who wants to “silence” the experiential “truth” of the veterans. This really amounts to having a series of heated conversations with minor politicians, but in order to make it interesting the next 45 minutes are a James Bond espionage action story complete with cheesy fake beards and “exotic” locations.

Norris speaking the truth in a snowsuit and with Soon-Tek Oh who is wearing a disguise. Norris then kicks him to death through the windscreen of his speeding car.

Good Guys Wear Black is Norris’s attempt to punch and kick his way through a simulacrum of Nixon-era politicos and lay blame at the doorstep of Government. The trail leads to a longwinded booze-soaked down-and-out congressman Edgar Harolds (undoubtedly based on J. William Fulbright) who explains over a glass of breakfast scotch why maintaining the myth of American power required duping the public into expending vast amounts of blood and treasure. Harold’s outspoken guilty conscience and drunkenness have robbed his opinion of any official respectability however, and all he can do is point Booker toward up and coming Secretary of State nominee Conrad Morgan. Like his real life analogue Henry Kissinger, Morgan negotiated the secret deal that ended the war, hanging the Black Tigers out to dry but ensuring the President’s reelection as a “peace-maker.” (Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize and Nixon predictably won in ’72.) Confronted with Booker’s accusations, Morgan counters with a dose of remorseless realpolitik, leaving Booker/Norris little choice but to resort to his trademark hands-on approach to problem solving.

By illuminating the extent of betrayal that occurred at the top levels of U.S. government, Norris hopes to restore the dignity of the average soldier while leaving the war itself unaddressed. The Black Tigers are Norris’ cypher for all soldiers. In their only combat scene they express the full range of soldierly sentiment, from outright fear to reluctance to a sense of patriotic duty. This last is Norris himself of course, whose vindication of the “experiential truth” of all G.I.s through the use of soldierly violence back home reinvigorates the heroic masculine ideal (Booker is smart, strong, attractive and righteous). By illustrating that any breaches of ethics (i.e. My Lai etc.) took place at an individual level, Good Guys dismisses the notion that Vietnam as a whole was part of a systematic immorality. He differentiates the political parties; describing the Democrats (Harolds) as weak-willed and hypocritical, and the Republicans (Morgan) as heartless and secretive, but in both cases deceitful. By indicting them both in the dishonorable conduct of the war he asserts that in contrast the Black Tiger’s “cause was just,” thus parroting a frequent claim of the patriotic right wing.


If you are interested in some of the actual history behind these events check out The Trials of Henry Kissinger, The Fog of War and In The Year of the Pig.

I love this shot near the end of the movie: We observe Booker and his CIA pal Murray Suanders (Lloyd Haynes) (left) listening to Morgan's explanations. The camera looks through an open shelf with John F. Kennedy (just below Suanders) and Lyndon B. Johnson mugs bookending the whole tableau. Gee, whose fault is all this?

I think the tagline on this poster is very prophetic. "Why is everyone trying to kill this man?" Of course they're referring to Booker, but if you consider that the popular image of the Vietnam veteran in the late 70's was that of a criminal, a lowlife or a nutcase; Booker was none of those. They may as well be asking why everyone is trying to kill the "real" veteran, the normal guy, whom of course, Booker represents.

A nice Dutch VHS cover from Rolfens DVD

Forced Vengeance

Forced Vengeance

United States – 1982

Director – James Fargo

MGM/UA Home Video, 1992, VHS

Run Time – 1 hour, 43 minutes

Chuck Norris, pillar of humble manhood, delves into the dark-side in Forced Vengeance, a stunning portrayal of a good man forced to take the law into his own hands when the underworld kills his closest family members.

Hard at work in his stepfather's Hong Kong casino the "Lucky Dragon", head security guard Josh Randall, (Norris) lackeys around as the strong arm of his adoptive family whose name I didn't catch. His step-father is a "rich jew" character, veteran of WWII who decided to stay in HK, practice Tai Chi, and open the casino. He made some money, retired and handed it to his impulsive weak-spined adopted asian son, who gambles the family business to shit, putting them at odds with "expansionist-evil-American", Raimundi, another spoiled whiny stepchild. Raimundi tries to buy up The Lucky Dragon, Jew dad refuses, Asian son whines, dad still refuses and both get greased, leaving Josh with the rest of the movie to punch, pummel and kick his way through the remaining plot.

He pokes around Hong Kong a little, asking the expected questions of the expected people, and, delivering the necessary face punches to secure the desired answers. His girlfriend Claire (Mary Louise Weller of Animal House) is something else entirely. In the first scene, she appears to display a few moments of individual personality and independence, but as soon as Josh gets bossy, she gets doe-eyed and limp and he drags her around with a bruising deathgrip on her upper arm.

Josh meets up with his old Special Forces buddy, LeRoy, who now sells Army surplus gear in HK and sleeps with underage Asian girls. After hearing the age of LeRoy's current girlfriend Josh offers his congratulations, so that really reinforces these guys as “protagonists” and makes us all feel great about cheering for them. Josh leaves Claire in LeRoy's protection – which seems like a fantastic idea. I mean, the guy clearly has a healthy respect for women, errr, girls. But the eviler forces of evil are just a few minutes behind, and wearing the tightest possible outfit, Claire meets her predictable doom, eliciting only a modestly increased output of bereaved face kicks from Josh. Now wearing his full Army dress uniform, replete with four rows of ribbon bars, the stony-faced Josh takes to the streets once again, his vengeance forced out like a stony constipated poo.

If you can continue to ignore Josh's awkward smattering of narration and a laughably hypocritical "good guy" epilogue, the final sweeping joy of this movie is literally a big nasty piece of window glass delivered directly to the face.

 

 A poster from Wrong Side of the Art

Code of Silence

Code of Silence

United States - 1985

Director – Andrew Davis

Good Times Video, 1993, VHS

Run time – 1 hour, 41 minutes

Made in the same year as Joseph Zito’s epic Invasion USA, Code of Silence is as completely different from that as two Chuck Norris movies can be. Nevertheless it starts off well, Chuck is in his element here, the role isn't too demanding, all the supporting characters and plot are just entertaining enough to keep us from noticing Norris' sundry flaws.
Norris plays Eddie Cusack, a Chicago Police Sergeant known throughout the precinct as "Stainless Steel" for his fanatical adherence to procedure. During the opening scene sting against the Columbian mafia, the Italian mafia busts in and shoots everybody wrecks the whole thing before Eddie and pals can close in.

The Columbians are not pleased to say the least, and Eddie’s interference raises the personal ire of their boss Henry Silva who joins the pantheon of Norris’ anti-heroes.
“Someday I would like to give you a gift of a Columbian Necktie, it's very special. You slit the throat, and pull out the tongue, and on you it would
look beautiful.”

Chuck actually has a pretty good comeback for that one though;

“Why don’t you give it to me right now?”

Returning to the station, Eddie watches a demonstration of a newfangled remote controlled police robot crimefighter unit called the Prowler, a primitive 2 year predecessor to Robocop’s mecha crime-fighting robot equipped with an assortment of completely impractical weapons. Cue joke about Eddie being unorthodox and dumb but effective, and robots being the future. However, with one simple demonstration and stony unflinching grimace, Eddie reclaims the throne of emotionless robot king, relegating the rickety Prowler to a humorous final scene re-appearance.

Eddie’s despicable do-gooder cowboy attitude even pisses off all the other cops when he demands the removal of a corrupt old cop named Craigie. But betwixt all the office pranks and hazing ol’ Stainless Steel still finds time to simultaneously take down both the Columbians and Italians, with only the Prowler to back him up. In retrospect the entire film was basically a greased chute from prologue to finale. With the supporting cast sidelined into ineffective do-nothing roles, Chuck just slips unobstructed from one end to the other with his fists and feets plowing the way.

What I can’t get is the sudden change of heart everyone has. You’ve spent at least half of the movie building this bitter dichotomy between crooked burned out Craigie, and the 100% fraternal support he gets from the precinct, and Eddie’s solitary voice of dissent. Even the weasely partner punks out in the end, and then just because Eddie shoots his way through two mafias, and rescues a not-so-good looking girl (Molly Hagen) everybody thinks he’s the golden boy again? I don’t care how many shots of cops cracking sheepish smiles and shaking their heads in amazed admiration you show, I’m not convinced. I refuse to believe it.

Bells of Innocence

I had to buy all of these Norris movies when I was journeying through The Many Circles of Norris Hell, but I've since disposed of most of them so I got this cover image from Amazon.

Bells of Innocence

2003 – United States

Director – Ali Bijan

Good Times Video, DVD, 2004

Run time – 1 hour, 50 minutes

Two members of a Texas church, Oren and Conrad are headed to Mexico with a planeload of bibles for the peasants. "They couldn't ask for a better gift" one guy says. I'm thinking that they probably could ask you to keep your misguided gringo imperialism to yourself, or at the very least to deliver bibles in Spanish. Anyway, Oren and Conrad are joined by a third, troubled quasi-suicidal alcoholic, Jux (Mike Norris, yes, the offspring) who, after a bender the night before, is their acting "pilot".

On the way to Mexico they are forced to land in a field. A field surrounded by infinite sand dunes up every one of which Oren whines his big fat mouth. Just as I am about to press eject, they stumble upon a small prop "old west" town inhabited by stiff awkward extras (read members of the church that funded this movie). The town is evil, the mayor is even a minor demon or something, all this obviated by the fact that there is no municipal or economic infrastructure to speak of. God bless commerce, and the people walking back and forth across screen repeatedly clearly aren’t doing business, or anything else.

But, our three intrepid heroes are stuck there, so mongoloid Oren staggers around town, loud fat and cringingly friendly. Jux fawns over a little girl who reminds him of his deceased daughter. Conrad, I don't know what that loony fucker is up to, I think he's trying to seem smart and really "together," like the moral anchor to Oren’s charisma ball & chain. The town invites the three amigos to a harvest festival (read “Halloween is evil”) where they are given boozy tropical punch, and the children start playing satanic chanting games. Clearly, you’re either with us or you’re openly worshipping the devil in the streets.

Our three "faith based" heroes escape the demonic rituals to the home of Michael; Michael the archangel; Michael the Archangel played by stringy old homeless Chuck Norris. With the help of some banal faithy hard-rock theme music Michael mumbles something about the three of them being sent to Ceres to save it.

There is a stereotype of crass American tourists in which, unwilling to learn even some of the most basic local language, they yell English in people’s faces. The less the natives understand the slower and louder the Americans yell. Evangelists have embraced this principle because redeeming Satanists requires a similar narcissistic arrogance. The eviler folks are the louder and simpler you need to yell about the love of Jesus to make any progress. Actually, I hear that all foreigners are evil, so it follows.

Slaughter In San Francisco

Here's the box art I have, but the tape within is a Rhino Home Video cassette released in 1990, so whatever.

Slaughter In San Francisco

United States - 1974

Director - Wei Lo

Front Row Features, 1997, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour, 28 min.

An interesting take on a Chuck Norris film, but I guess I have to admit it's only barely a Chuck Norris film. Actually, it's just a piece of the Norris puzzle, and if like me you feel the need to be complete, you have to have all the pieces. This is the only movie in which Chuck plays a "bad guy", unless you count the thinly veiled racist patriotism and mass murder "justice" in many of his later roles. Don't let my cynicism shake you, I eat this shit up.

This actually plays out like a wannabe Bruce Lee movie. Since it came in the wake of the Lee tragedy, and of course in light of Norris's close association with Lee, that is no surprise. But it's a poor substitute for Bruce, while a vague and generic plot just about chokes off the Chuck Factor.

The lead is a Chinese American cop in San Francisco, Officer Don Wong, played by, uhm, Don Wong. Along with his partner, the token black guy, they form the do-good friendly cop team, the cheesy movie definition of protect and serve. While taking his son to school one day, the partner stops the car to help some people loading a panel truck, only to be kidnapped. His wife calls Wong, but it does no good and the partner is killed. Wong busts some heads, but gets himself fired from the force. Unwilling to let the case rest, Wong continues to investigate, between shifts at his new job as short order cook in a Chinese restaurant. No, really.

Although two old people are framed for the murder by some more corrupt cops, Wong knows better and after asking them some questions, it occurs to him that the arrogant and contemptuous hot chick who’s living nearby with several known thugs and dating a shady white dude who is the brother of San Francisco's biggest drug kingpin is probably the obvious answer. It's lucky Wong knows kung fu.

Norris doesn't really act any different than in any other Chuck Norris movie, or even play a different character. It's really just the poorly and unnecessarily dubbed dialogue that comes from his mouth, and the big ass cigar he chews on for a few seconds. Oh except for the whole drug czar thing, I forgot that. I’m beginning to suspect that people were so used to dubbing kung-fu movies that even American martial arts films had to be dubbed to be taken seriously back then. Then again this is a Golden Harvest picture so there may have been no English original.

We're treated to a few laugh inducing scenes of Chuck living it up in his mansion, chomping his cigar and training his class of karate kids. Every lesson must be accompanied by a climactic demonstration of devastation delivered to boards and reinforced by, whoops some cigar chomping and evil dubbed laughter with the trademark Norris towel around the neck. There's Chuck. Swoon. He cackles and grins appropriately, eliciting monotonous sycophantic head noddery from his lackeys. His one weakness though, may be his admiration for good fighting skills. He offers the crafty Wong a job, and the whimpering of recalcitrant hot chick and a misplaced desire for revenge lead Wong to accept, with obvious motive.

Even if it seems silly and sometimes painfully staged, it's fun to watch Norris recieve the beat-down. He's clearly good at on screen fighting, and he's just coming into his game here, so the risk is just about worth the final reward. Strangely in retrospect it feels almost like Game of Death in that the real star is not present for the bulk of the film, and only in the final fight does the true gold lie waiting.

Some alternate VHS covers including the alternate title and two tape covers from the Critic Online VHS cover gallery.

Poster from Imp Awards

Poster from MovieGoods

And this thing from Asian Cinema.blogspot.com