Black Force (1975)

Black Force (1975)- * * *

Directed by: Michael Fink

Starring: Warhawk Tanzania, Sam Schwartz, Sydney Filson, Malachi Lee, Judie Soriano, and Owen Wat-Son








When a guy on the streets of New York is mugged and a priceless artistic artifact stolen, the whole underworld begins buzzing. A gangster named Z (Schwartz) wants this precious statue, as does a woman named Felicia (Filson). Thankfully, a team of black-belted Martial Arts experts are on the scene to stop the artifact from getting into the wrong hands: Eric (Malachi Lee), Billy (Judie Soriano), Jason (Wat-Son, whose real name is Watson but presumably he hyphenated it to look more Asian?), and our personal hero Warhawk Tanzania as Adam. 

When you have a name as awesome as WARHAWK TANZANIA isn’t it a bit of a letdown naming him, simply and boringly, “Adam”? Kind of a step down if you ask us. Anyway, what ensues is a bunch of wonderful incoherency as warring factions vie for the statue. Who will get it? The bad guys or the BLACK FORCE?

Travel back in time to the freewheeling 70’s as you boogie on down to funktown in this unconstrained, uncontrived, yet unintelligible outing. The temptation is to label this as “Blaxploitation”, but really, this movie defies all labels and is a planet all to itself. That being said, it’s very much in the vein of fan favorite Death Promise (1977) (though nowhere near as good), and fellow - and only other - Warhawk vehicle Gang Wars (1976). Even Wilfredo Roldan from that film reappears here, continuing the through-line. It’s all about grimy NYC streets, funk on the soundtrack (from a band called Life, USA), and montage after montage that seems like it was edited by people who were distracted by Watergate.

But you have to remember that this was during the Kung-Fu craze of the 70’s, and material like this made a lot more sense back then, presumably. Bruce Lee was king and everybody was Kung-Fu fightii-iin. So it follows that you’d get a bunch of non-actors and semi-pro’s together and put their Dan or belt level on the screen along with their credit. Seemingly everyone is listed that way. 

We practically know the skill level of the best boy grip for godsakes. Or best boy Kung-Fu grip, as it were. We’re even informed via an on-screen title card before the movie that “no trick photography was used” and high-speed cameras were on hand to capture all the action. And this was decades before CGI trickery and quick cuts. Such was the reverence for the craft at the time. The problem, if it is indeed a problem, is that because of their focus on the Martial Arts, literally every other facet of the movie suffered. 

The result is a disjointed, incomprehensible mishmash of scenes of our heroes “hitting the streets”, with a bunch of post-dubbed dialogue that is unhearable because the music drowns it out. The only thing louder than the music are the shirts the characters are wearing. The fight scenes have no pretext before they spring up, and what dialogue you can hear is classic jive talk. You have to love it. Or maybe you don’t, it’s entirely up to you. We found it entertaining for most of the running time.

 Tailor-made for drive-in’s, Black Force was from a different time, when even the priests had very wide collars, even the baddest bad guy had a walrus ‘stache, and Martial Artists took their loud exhaling VERY seriously. There’s even a “greatest hits” segment at the end where we can see all the moves yet again. At least the music is good quality during all this madness. 

Besides, you know a movie is going to be good when a credit appears beforehand stating “Produced by Landfall Systems, Inc.” Apparently this wasn’t produced by a human being, but maybe a laundromat or something. Seeing as we also have a movie on the site called Whiteforce (1988), we figured we’d be fair and balanced.

Released on VHS with an unrelated guy on the box cover, the same company actually released Black Force 2 - a retitling of another film that came out two years BEFORE the original Black Force! Maybe the fans were just clamoring for more during the video store era of the 80’s. For a classic example of bellbottom-Fu - with no regard given whatsoever for coherent consistency - look no further than Black Force. And why don’t guys keep their afro-picks in their hair anymore?

Comeuppance Review by: Brett and Ty 

Gang Wars AKA: The Devil's Express (1976)

 Gang Wars (1976)-* * *

AKA: Death Express and Devil's Express

Directed by: Barry Rosen

Starring: Warhawk Tanzania, Larry Fleischman, Thomas D. Anglin and Wilfredo Roldan


 

"50,000 years of Death stalks the subways!"







Gang Wars is a unique movie everybody should see.

The man with one of the most awesome names in human history, Warhawk Tanzania, stars as New York City Kung-Fu instructor Luke Curtis. He and his none-too-bright compatriot/student Roldan (Roldan) travel to "China" to brush up on their martial arts. While there, they just happen to stumble into a mysterious hole where, in 200 B.C., some monks buried a secret medallion. Despite Luke's admonition that "this place has strange vibes!", Roldan sees the medallion and decides it's just the ice he needs to bling-bling up his fly threads (hey, I'm just trying to keep up with the movie's lingo), and he takes it.

Unfortunately, this angers the medallion's owner, an ancient zombie with orange skin and ping-pong ball-like eyes. The zombie gets on a boat and follows them back to New York, and while he's there, causes all sorts of havoc in the subway. Meanwhile, due to that crazy Roldan and some mix-ups of murdered people involving the zombie, two street gangs, the Blackjacks and the Red Dragons, are at war. Can two cops on the beat stop the madness, or will Warhawk have to don his bright yellow overalls and take matters into his own hands?

What's great about Gang Wars is it truly is down-and-dirty, street-level, even guerrilla filmmaking of the New York City 70's, whose sole intention was to play some grindhouses. All the kung-fu fights are actually outdoors in the streets and alleys of the city. Yes, the filmmakers' hold on the technical aspects of filmmaking is...shaky at best, but for pure entertainment, it's hard to beat a hybrid blaxploitation/kung-fu/zombie horror film, and even if it doesn't ALWAYS gel, which is normal, the film certainly gets an A for effort.

Warhawk Tanzania is like a cross between Commodores-era Lionel Richie and Jim Kelly. Roldan is his John Leguizamo-like sidekick, who, though he's constantly referring to Curtis as "Sifu", it sounds like he's calling him "seafood", but that just naturally fits in with all the other 70's jive dialogue. Not to mention the great clothing, cars and NYC locations of the time - it's an excellent time capsule, and the icing on the cake is the super-funky and catchy soundtrack by famed musician/producer Patrick Adams.

Naturally, even though the zombie is an unimaginably ancient, gooey monster with eyes like those protectors people wear when they go tanning, somehow he is wearing a contemporary suit and tie. Those prehistoric demons sure were fashion-forward. The zombie also shrieks like a banshee and the whole "horror from underground" thing predates C.H.U.D. (1984) by 8 years. You might even say the kung-fu zombie is the original C.H.U.D. Where else will you read a sentence like that last one?

It's gritty, silly, fun and very entertaining. The screenplay was written by five people - presumably each person was assigned a different genre then they mashed it all together. Warhawk Tanzania is a man of the people - see him in action as soon as you can.

Comeuppance Review by: Brett and Ty