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

Blood Street (1990)

Blood Street (1990)-* * *

Directed by: Leo Fong

Starring: Leo Fong, Richard Norton, Chuck Jeffreys, Kym Paige, and Stack Pierce













Starting, inexplicably, with a Star Wars-style crawl of text going up the screen informing us of the ever-important back story (and where "San Francisco" is misspelled), we are then re-introduced to P.I. extraordinaire Joe Wong (Fong), last seen in Low Blow (1986). The trouble begins when Vanna MacDonald (Paige) walks into Wong's office and asks him to find her missing husband. Thus, Wong begins an odyssey into the criminal underworld to find Aldo MacDonald, the gangster with the funny bug-eyes. The father-son team of Solomon (Pierce) and Bones (Jeffreys) work as Aldo's muscle, and lest we forget Malcolm Boyd (Norton) a kickboxer/gangster who stages illegal cage fighting matches in his living room. Teaming up once again with Woody Farmer (the guy who played "Fuzzy" in Low Blow) and his accountant (or perhaps his lawyer) Mark, can Wong avoid an oncoming gang war, dirty cops, many bullets, and a rock-bottom budget in order to get to the truth?

Leo Fong is back! He's got a new car, a new hat, and a new attitude. Also, the hat may contain magical properties. 

In this lesser-seen sequel to the aforementioned Low Blow, Leo Fong, who starred in, wrote, and directed the film, gets to indulge all his Sam Spade-like film noir fantasies, putting himself in the driver's seat alongside some of his buddies like Stack Pierce (and Director of Photography Frank Harris, but surprisingly no Cam Mitchell), drowning it all in a moody sax soundtrack. One character even calls him "a cross between Bruce Lee, Philip Marlowe and a Catholic priest". I guess that's the beauty of writing a starring role for yourself. His flat delivery and brutal martial arts moves remain unchanged, and this time it's topped off with a voice-over by Fong himself, containing many groan-inducing single-entendres. But at least you can hear and see everything this time around, despite the bad video quality and junky overall feel.

One of the villains' names is Aldo MacDonald, but it sounds like Fong is calling him "Old MacDonald". Many other characters have funny voices, and Chuck Jeffreys MUST be related in some way to Eddie Murphy. Fong has really ramped up the brutality this time around, and, because it is Fong, sadism has never been so funny. Blood Street is also fairly nonsensical: right in the middle of Joe Wong's journey, we see a title card that says "Four Years Earlier" and we go back in time to basically another plot where he's chasing down this dude in Mexico. Add to that the fact that the plot has more twists and turns than Lombard street in Fong's beloved San Francisco, and you have another mind-bending (or perhaps numbing) Fongtabulous experience.

The S.F. locations are a highlight of the film, and another great facet of Blood Street is that it is filled with dialogue and racial slurs you would never hear today. Fong is the most lovable wooden thing since the Nutcracker and you can't help but admire the guy and his work, defying the rules of budgets, acting, technical ability and even filmmaking itself to produce a highly entertaining product strictly meant to delight his fans. And it works.

Released on VHS in the U.S. on the small KB Releasing label (does anyone out there know anything about them?), the running time stated on the box is 88 minutes, but in fact is is a brief 79.

Comeuppance Review by: Ty and Brett