Karate Warrior (1987)

Karate Warrior (1987)- * *

Directed by: Fabrizio De Angelis

Starring: Kim Stuart, Ken Watanabe, Jared Martin, Janet Agren, Enrico Torralba, and Jannelle Barretto











Anthony Scott (Stuart) is an American teen who goes to the Philippines to visit his father, Paul (Martin) (credited, in classic ‘lost in translation’ style, as “Anthony father”), a journalist currently living there. After a lot of bonding time with Anthony father, Anthony runs afoul of local gangster Quino (Enrico Torralba), who also happens to be a Karate master. 

Quino and his thugs are even involved in a protection racket with the store owned by the father of Anthony’s love interest, Maria (Jannelle Barretto). Eventually, Quino beats up Anthony and leaves him in the forest. He is then found, and nursed back to health, by reclusive monk Kimura (Watanabe). Master Kimura also goes through great pains to teach Anthony Martial Arts (mainly because Anthony complains and resists most of the time) - but will he learn the “Dragon Blow” in time for the big tournament - the face-off with Quino? Find out, at some point...

Karate Warrior is a very earnest and straight-ahead film that seems like it’s simultaneously trying to be like the Karate Kid movies and at the same time trying NOT to be like them. One of the main problems is that our hero (?), Anthony, is very whiny and not too likable. Only the gaffes provided by the unintentionally funny dubbing give him any likability. He does have a classic 80’s “Cool” look, but that’s about it. (Maybe it was the “hair stilist”, another misspelled credit, who helped him look so cool).

When Anthony arrives in Manila, after getting a ride from the time-honored Wacky Taxi Driver, a bunch of punks beat him up and steal his Walkman. Not a good start. He was only asking around trying to find where his dad lives, a town apparently called Los Banos (if my high school Spanish is correct, doesn’t that mean “The Bathrooms”?), but he quickly runs into arch-baddie Quino, not to be confused with Kimo or Beano. Why his dad didn’t pick him up at the airport, like he did when his mom Julia (Agren) arrived, we don’t know. Maybe that’s why they were estranged from each other.

After a motorbike chase and Anthony gets beat up by Quino, we go into the extensive forest training sequence we’ve seen many, many times before. Master Kimura yells at Anthony to RELAX NOW! That seems kind of counterintuitive, but maybe it’s all part of Kimura’s plan to deal with this whiny brat. 

There is no pounding, inspirational song during the training, which would have helped a lot, but the Simon Boswell music overall is catchy and stands out as being good. Also, we should mention that at this point Anthony hasn’t been wearing a shirt for a decent chunk of the movie’s running time. How can you have a protracted, shirtless training program and no song? That being said, the “Ha-do-ken”-type move, the Dragon Blow, is very cool and the movie should have gone more in that direction. Presumably the audience hopes Anthony will figure out how to use said blow at The Battle of the Karate Champions, the big tournament in town, which does look very well-attended. They also have fireworks after people get beat to a pulp.

Director Fabrizio De Angelis, AKA our good old pal Larry Ludman, turns in a kind of workmanlike product here. It could have used more action and less whining - the whole thing is so darn slow. Sidestepping some of the cliches might have been nice too, but we can’t ask for a miracle. Released on Imperial Video back in the VHS days, this does seem to fit with a lot of their other output. But they did not release Karate Warrior 2, or any of the many other Karate Warrior sequels...we wonder why

Comeuppance Review by: Brett and Ty

Hands Of Steel (1986)

Hands Of Steel (1986)-* * *

AKA: Queruak

Directed by: Sergio Martino

Starring: Daniel Greene, Franco Fantasia, George Eastman, Janet Agren, and John Saxon

A big thank you to Sutekh from Explosive Action for providing us with a copy!









In a post-apocalyptic city, Rev. Arthur Mosely (Fantasia) is the man controlling things. With posters pasted all around that scream “You Have No Future”, the populace is understandably despairing. Enter a hulking brute named, inexplicably, Paco Queruak (Greene). Queruak is 80% cyborg and has been programmed to kill Mosely. After seemingly completing his mission, Paco goes on the run and ends up in rural Arizona. He stops at a road house run by Linda (Agren) and begins working there, as well as developing a relationship with her. But her joint is known for its rowdy arm-wrestling competitions. A man named Raul (Eastman) sure does love to wrist-wrassle. All the while, a mysterious businessman named Turner (Saxon), as well as his goons, are after Paco because they want to stop him, and they will stop at nothing to do so. Dodging danger at every turn, what will happen to Paco Queruak?

Paco Queruak. That name is really all you need to know. The minds that could come up with that applied their talents to an entire movie. How do you even pronounce that last name? Is it like Jack Kerouac? Because if so, Paco Queruak is the real “beat poet”, if you know what we mean. Hands of Steel is director Sergio Martino’s take on the movies of the day - it’s sort of a melange of The Terminator (1984) and Robocop (1987) if they were to walk into a Road House (1989) and go Over The Top (1987). Impressively, Hands of Steel pre-dated all those movies except The Terminator. Martino would go on to use Daniel Greene in American Tiger (1990) a few years later, but here he’s cast perfectly as the lead, because he can be as robotic as he wants to be.

In the future there are plenty of abandoned warehouses, signs warning against acid rain, and, perhaps most dangerously, John Saxon with a laser cannon. It seemed like Saxon was going to have a sit-down role for most of the movie until this scene occurred. It’s worth watching this movie for this part alone. Plus there’s an evil cyborg named Susie that is uncredited in the movie but looks a lot like Daria Nicolodi. But as for the lead, Daniel Greene as - one more time - Paco Queruak - for a guy with “Hands Of Steel” he sure ends up in the right place. That being a place where arm wrestling is king. And during a computer run-down of his attributes as part man and part machine, this is seen on the screen: “Negative Characteristics: None”. So he really is the perfect man. But the strange coda at the end of the movie just may confuse things. You’ll just have to see it to know what we mean.

Highlighted by some great music by Claudio Simonetti, Hands Of Steel is a lot of fun and definitely worth checking out.

Also check out our buddy, RobotGEEK's review!

Comeuppance Review by: Ty and Brett