It Don't Matter If You're Black Or White

Zebra Force (1976)

We start off with a private casino getting blitzed by a gang of black guys with machine guns. Lots of slow motion falls and a truly incredible bit of music which takes us into the groovy opening title sequence.

Zebra Force has arrived.

  

We carry on with the casino mayhem for awhile after the titles as our black heroes shoot their way to stealing the money. Love the blue suits.

They escape in a van and we soon find out that the casino is Mafia run. Somebody’s playing with the big boys.

Charlie informs Sal, the head of the Mafia of the problem. He’s pissed because his son was killed in the raid.

Carmine is sent to deal with the situation.

Our black army of thieves congregate in a warehouse in front of their disfigured boss,  Lt. Johnson, who speaks thru a vocoder and take their masks off. These guys are white. White I tell you.

We then have a Vietnam flashback which shows how our disfigured Lt. Johnson got blown up by a landmine. I love Vietnam flashbacks.

Lt. Dietrich tells the group how fantastic they are and that they will be set for life with the plans he has for other jobs.

Enter Carmine who touches down at the local airport.

The Zebra Force take down another group of Mafia guys who are taking delivery of some high class coke & dynamite.

This is 1976 which only means one thing.....Wah Wah guitar!

  

Our gang steal the money and the coke.

Our groovy Zebra guys escape on motorbikes and end up in the back of a removal truck.

Carmine turns up at Charlie’s mansion and they discuss the problems they face.

The Force keep the money and flush the coke. down the toilet. These guys have a conscience.

Carmine thinks there’s mole in the organization. They have one black guy running things on the other side of town, Earl Lovington. Carmine decides to have a visit to Earl.

Earl tells Carmine that he ain’t no water Mellon boy and acts really tough.

Earl isn’t happy with the idea that some blacks have taken some of Charlie’s goodies. He tells Carmine that if he wanted to rip Charlie off it would take more than some goons to stop him.

Carmine is pretty cool with it. 

Sort of.

Charlie is furious at the way Earl has spoken.

Mafia guys go and pick some protection money up from a local liquor store and the Zebra Force is there to rip them off again.

Charlie & Carmine decide to offer Earl 100 grand to find the gang that’s ripping him off. Earl’s weary about it.

Carmine & Charlie are gonna set Earl up with the help of their on the payroll copper, John.

Carmine wants the copper dead in the mission.

John, the copper, gets a black snitch, Jack Wallace, involved in the sting. Jack Wallace tells Earl he has some heroin he wants to shift.

Jack turns up with the stash. Earl is happy. Then John, the copper turns up and blows everyone away, including Jack. John is then shot by a roof sniper.

The Zebra Force climb ropes in preparation for their next mission.

Back at the mansion Charlie tells Carmine he’s gonna give him a big chunk of doe. But all Carmine wants to do is get back to Detroit.

The Zebra Force turn up at the mansion and take out many guards. They steal the latest shipment from carmine and Charlie and leave. Lt. Johnson covers them with a Gatling gun in the back of a van. But, one of them is caught.

Carmine “Ok black boy who you workin’ for?”

Black Boy “Go to hell!”

Carmine smacks him one and his mask falls off.

“It’s a white guy!”

The Zebras get back to the warehouse.

Carmine torches the caught Zebra. He tells them were the gang are.

The Mafia surround the Zebra Force HQ and all hell breaks loose.

Stuntmen get shot, fall in slow motion and get electrocuted.

People get squashed against walls with vans and Lt. Johnson gets in on the action with some one-armed shooting.

The police turn up to stop the violence and we have a car chase as Carmine gets away. The police get him and blow him away in hail of bullets. I love this.

Lt. Johnson and a couple of a men get away and share the dosh.

We then have a long tracking shot of Lt. Johnson going to his room. Something’s not right here. What could it be?

Johnson begins to wash the white skin from his hands and takes the white mask from his face.

He’s black baby!

Flashback!

Back in Nam, after the landmine explosion, Lt. Johnson and his black, second in command, friend John had plans to take money from the Mafia once they got out. The plans are now shot to hell as Lt. Johnson is not going to make it. He makes John promise to carry on the mission once he is dead. John doesn’t think the men will follow him but he promises the dying Lieutenant.

Pretending to be Lt. Johnson is the only option.

What can I say about Zebra Force without sounding too over the top? It’s a stunning piece of 70s independent cinema. This is the kind of film that should be made today. It’s none stop action for 85 minutes and is surrounded by a cracking story. I can watch it over and over again. The acting is crap and the horrible pan & scan transfer is shite but I don’t bloody care. Zebra Force is my type of movie and I will tell the world.

Damned Cows

The Return (1980)

  

A spacecraft descends on a small American town and beams a bright light at a young boy and girl. It then flies away.

A man, Vincent Schiavelli, bangs on a cave wall with a pickaxe and the same beam of light does the same thing to him. His dog watches on.

TWENTY FiVE YEARS LATER

Cybill Shepherd is a geologist who’s sent to the small town of Little Creek by her father, Raymond Burr, to check on some strange satellite activities. Yes, she’s the little girl from the opening scene.

Stringfellow Hawke is a young deputy sheriff, sorry, Jan-Michael Vincent is the deputy sheriff. Yes, he’s the boy from the opening scene.

Jan-Michael drinks a few bottles of beer and shoots the radio of a group of rowdy kids before Sheriff Martin Landau takes him to a bar.

Cybil is attacked by a dog in her car and swerves off the road. Jan-Michael fixes it for her. They don’t know they’ve met each other before.

The following morning Martin tells a story about strips of bacon and Cybil turns up at the jailhouse to talk to Jan-Michael about why she is here. Cybil goes off into the desert to place some photographic equipment. She’s attacked by the mad dog again and drives away as the great Vincent Schiavelli returns and looks on. Schiavelli has not aged in 25 years. Spooky.

Cybil faxes some photos back to her father. They have a fogging effect on them which I guess is very weird.

Cybil takes a walk through the town and realises that she’s been to the village before. Jan-Michael realises it to.

Cybil and Jan-Michael have a chat in a cafe and Raymond Burr turns up to check on his daughter.

Cybil and her father head out into the forest and meet up with Landau who is concerned about some cattle mutilations. Burr is interested.

The police take some photos of the remains but they come out faulty. Just like the satellite shots. Strange eh?

Enter the cattle’s owner, Neville Brand. He’s pissed that his animals are dying. Brand chews up the scene with his awesome delivery. I like Brand. He calls Burr a dumb son of a bitch and leaves.

There seems to be a little bit of chemistry between Cybil & Jan-Michael, which would have been a little more realistic if either of them could actually act.

A couple are riding the range when the man gets off his horse to take a whiz. The man is suddenly beaten by Schiavelli, branded and mutilated with a glowing stick. The girl runs off and her stunt double falls down a hill to her death.

Vincent Schiavelli is bad I think.

Landau and Jan-Michael do some driving and Martin dunks doughnuts in his can of beer. Nice.

They find the mutilated man and Landau thinks it’s either Satanists or Aliens.

Cybil gets jumped upon by some of Neville Brand’s sons. She throws a cuppa coffee in one of their faces. They are angry at her scientific interference and call her a Cow Killer, now there’s a movie title.

They chase Cybil and Jan-Michael steps in and beats them all up.

  

Cybil & Jan-Michael have a beer and listen to some Country music. They have a dance and laugh. Cybil says she doesn’t understand what’s going on. Neither do I.

Brand and sons go out shooting Cybil’s equipment. One of his sons is killed by Schiavelli and Brand is, well, branded and killed.

Cybil & Jan-Michael have sex to the Airwolf theme. Sorry, I made that up. Would have been quite funny though.

More mutilations of both cattle and humans occur. And Jan-Michael isn’t too happy about it.

One of Brand’s vengeful sons gets shot by Jan-Michael and falls down a hill in slow motion, hitting his head on a rock. If that wasn’t bad enough e then gets killed by Schiavelli. That’s one unlucky bloke in my opinion.

The Feds are called in and Landau is fuming.

Landau is sent by Cybil to pick one of her faulty devices up from a shack in the mountains, Schiavelli’s shack. Oh no.

The shack seems to be connected to some tunnels. Landau investigates and finds a weird kind of purple spinning vortex where Schiavelli is feeding cattle and human parts. Landau loses his arms and gets fed to the strange being in the spinning light.

Schiavelli then returns to the town with his glowing beam of light and attacks both Cybil & Jan-Michael. Apparently he just wants to be left alone. He then drives off with Cybil in Landau’s police jeep. Obviously not that alone.

Chase!!!!!

No.

Damn!!!

Jan-Michael is about to go after Schiavelli & Cybil but the FBI turn up and stop him. Finally there’s a little chase and a few explosions before Jan-Michael bursts through a window on a motorbike and goes after his girl.

Schiavelli is pissed off that Cybil is here and will take over his patch. Cybil & Jan-Michael are the ones they want you see, after all these years although Jan-Michael actually lives in the bloody place. Maybe they just want them together. All the scientific problems were simply just to get Cybil back. It worked. What a great plan. Schiavelli uses his glowing stick against Cybil but it doesn’t work. She is the chosen.

Jan-Michael still races to the scene. It’s a long way you know. He’s attacked by Schiavelli’s dog when he finally gets there.

Schiavelli is sucked into the purple vortex because now both chosen are here and there is no need for him anymore.

Cybil & Jan-Michael decide to step into the vortex and float calmly into a white room.

The craft flies off as the town watches on but soon comes back and drops the pair off again.

Strange.

Cybil & Jan-Michael look to the skies as the craft goes away.

CAPTION

Send Out The Light And The Truth

...Let Them Lead

Psalm 43.3

Very very strange indeed.

Greydon Clark’s The Return is an utter mess of a film from start to finish. Clark also made The Warning the same year, again with Landau and Brand. He also made another favourite of mine a couple of years later, Wacko with George Kennedy and Joe Don Baker.

Why am I talking about Greydon Clark’s other work I hear you scream. Simply because it beats the hell out of talking about The Return. Look at that cast people. What a waste of talent. Raymond Burr, Martin Landau, Neville Brand. What the hell were they doing? Cybil & Jan-Michael are terrible in the movie.

Ken & Jim Wheat wrote the film and were responsible for Ewoks: The Battle for Endor a couple of years later. They also wrote Pitch Black.

Jan-Micahel Vincent has now retired from acting.....30 years too late mate.

Oh dear

Funniest clip ever

And maybe a little something from his prime, if he had one.

Midget Gems

The Impossible Kid (1982)

Weng-Weng is walking up a street minding his own business when he is attacked by a sniper on a rooftop. This happens to me on The Brook every now and again. Weng hides behind a fire hydrant without even bending down. You see this is no ordinary secret agent, this is Weng-Weng, 2’9” of Filipino fury.

Agent 00 Weng calls in his team to help track down his assailant while romantic flute music plays in the background. The sniper takes a few hostages in a building and Weng scales down a wall, stopping briefly to take a little look at a naked woman in a shower. Dirty little Weng.

Weng gets his man with a few kicks to the groin, difficult to get much higher for the little bloke.

We then have a theme song sung by a woman telling us how much she loves her Weng-Weng. Our hero then rides his little yellow motorbike as he saves a businessman from the back of a truck. What a guy.

Weng returns to base to be briefed on a mission. He and his boss watch a movie about terrorists trying to get into the Philippines.

Weng joins in on a meeting of businessmen who are being threatened by some terrorists, or something like that. Weng is thrown about before the meeting starts because they think he’s a little boy but kicks ass once more. A video is played telling of terrorists demands and it self-destructs.

I have no idea what is going on here.

Weng is then chased by motorcyclists and hides in a wheelbarrow. Good job Weng.

Businessmen are then killed for not paying the money. Weng must find out who the mastermind is.

The Pink Panther theme plays and I am getting really confused.

Weng takes a walk in the park and hides in a barrel. As you do.

A businessman comes and places a bag of money for the terrorist into the barrel. The barrel, the money and Weng are then put onto the back of a truck. The police follow.

The barrel is moved to another truck and the police lose it.

A man in a mask and a cape takes the bag of money from the barrel and Weng jumps out and kicks ass once more. The masked man gets away. Damn.

The businessman who left the money is not happy that Weng interfered. The businessman leaves and a woman follows him. Weng uses some special glasses to show the woman is actually a man. I call these WoMan Specs. They fight and a hand grenade blows the man/woman up. Weng saves the day once more.

Assassins are diploid to end Weng once and for all.

Weng takes a karate lesson and looks cute in his little suit. Weng is attacked by four karate men but shows off his super skills. A female assassin joins and starts beating on the little fella. Weng soon gets the upper hand though and turns the tables to win the day. Again.

I love the way Weng slides across the floor. Somebody must throw him.

I want to know who Weng’s tailor is. He wears some smart suits in this one.

Weng enters a building and is followed by a few bad guys. They chase him around the building. Weng jumps out of a window with a sheet as a parachute and lands in a swimming pool. A big ft man in the pool thinks he’s a little boy. This happens a lot to Weng.

This is one crazy film.

The police interrogate the female assassin from the karate school by injecting her with a truth drug. Is that legal in the Philippines?

She dies! Oh no. It wasn’t a truth drug. It was a death drug. Don’t you hate that? I think there should be some sort of police enquiry here, or at least a bad dubbing enquiry.

Could one of the businessmen be pulling the strings of this whole operation? Weng thinks so and I think so because the camera lingers on him for way too long when the scene ends. Always a give away that.

The Pink Panther theme makes a return as Weng breaks into the suspected businessman’s home.  Alarms go off in the house and they capture little Weng. They throw a cobra at him and he batters it off with his tiny hands. The businessman tells him he isn’t the terrorist and they let him go.

Weng takes some shooting practice on the range and is thrown off the case by his superiors. But we know he really isn’t.

The businessman is delighted that the midget has gone and laughs with his men for 33 seconds.

Weng takes another ride on his little yellow motorbike and is chased by a car. He’s shot at so goes off road and jumps over a cliff. He then goes to a night club and has a glass of coke. He watches the news at his table and the terrorists have increased their demands.

Are you taking all this in?

Does this make sense?

A song plays in the background

“Fly with me across the stars. Let the moon be are only light.”

Nice

Bad guys turn up at the bar for a few scoops. Weng watches them. They leave and Weng follows. Weng is ambushed and has to fight for his little life. Luckily for Weng he has exploding shoes that make him disappear for a few seconds. The bad guys shoot each other.

Weng follows one bad guy to a massage parlour. The girls go crazy for a piece of little Weng.

Weng loses his man in the parlour, because of some female action and returns to headquarters where another bad guy is being interrogated. As they move the man from the station he’s shot and killed.

The terrorists now give a final warning...One Billion Pesos or they all the businessmen will die, again.

Weng places a listening device on the evil business man but he finds it, pretends he knows nothing about the terrorists and puts the device in the sink.

Weng is caught while spying and fights with a big pole. (A big metal stick, not a man from Warsaw). He then uses the pole to pole-vaults a wall and does a bit of wire walking between two buildings. This guy can do anything.

Weng throws himself down a long pipe and lands on his little motorbike.

“That god damn midget is beginning to get my goat”

Great bad guy line that.

Weng chases the bad guys to a yacht as The Pink Panther returns.

The bad guys laugh for 23 seconds on the deck as Weng is locked in down below in a bird cage.

Nearly one minute of random laughter in this movie so far.

They get Weng’s gun.

“Look at this little gun, it’s so small and tiny. My kids got a bigger one” 

Everyone laughs on the deck again.

  

“It’s a pity you are in there agent 00. You shouldn’t be caged like a silly big bad owl.”

They decide to weight the little bid cage down and throw Weng to the sharks.

Oh no!

Could this be the end of the small one?

Weng gets help by a young lady who pulls him back up.

All the business men meet to give their Pesos on a beach.

The bad guys get their money, take it back to their yacht and return to the beach.  Everybody laughs on the yacht again until Weng stops the laughter with a machine gun. He destroys everything in sight, including the boat which explodes.

The briefcase of money is saved from the water and the bad guy looks a little weary.

Weng jumps out of a suitcase and beats the main bad guy. The police take him way and he then has a bit of a kiss and a cuddle with the girl who saved him.

They wave goodbye to the camera.

A still pops up telling us to watch out for Weng-Weng in LICENSE EXPIRED which was never made.

If you’ve seen the incredible “For Y'ur Height Only” you’ll know what to expect from this film. If you haven’t, well you won’t know what the hell to make of it. It’s awful in a hysterical way. Jaw droppingly bad in parts and laugh out loud funny in others. I guarantee if edited properly it would last 40 minutes tops. Weng-Weng has about 4 lines in the entire films and has no talent what so ever. Unless being a midget is a talent.

If you’re a fan of Filipino midget movies (and who isn’t) you’ll love Impossible Kid. If your favourite movie is Citizen Kane though, you may want to give this little gem a miss.

Trick of the Light

Light Blast (1985)

A young man and woman meet in an abandoned rail yard to do some lovin’.

Maurizio & Guido de Angelis sing “You Never Know What Your Love Cost, ‘Till Your Love’s Lost” in the background.

A van turns up. Inside is what looks like a huge laser gun.

 OH NO!!

It is a huge laser gun.

A beem of red light is fired at one of the carriages, you guessed it, the carriage the kids are makin’ out in.

The kids are evaporated along with the carriage.

We now have a hostage situation at a bank. A security guard is freed but shot in the back. These guys mean business, they also want lunch delivered by a naked waitress.

There food arrives by..............

Ok, let me just stop proceedings here for a second and throw a question at you.

What happens when you’re the star of a hugely successful TV series in America and that series runs its course and eventually comes to an end.

What do you do?

Do you find another big series to get your acting prowess into people’s living rooms  every week again?

Maybe you get yourself a nice big Hollywood action movie to tell people you’re on the map and here to stay?

Or

Do you take a roll in an Italian action movie by Enzo G. Castellari who made the original Inglorious Bastards?

Meet Erik Estrada, star of CHiPs, slumming it to death in the latter.

Back to plot.

A naked Erik turns up at the bank with a gun in his turkey and fries and saves the day while delivering his first movie line.

“Maggots like you make me like my job”

Well it’s not “Go ahead make my day” but it will do for now.

The mad laser attacker wants Five Million or he will destroy the city. He will have a show of force at 5.48pm. But where? The police make a guess that it could be at a car stunt show. What great cops these are. The police arrive but the press box still gets blown up at 5.48pm. Maybe they aren’t that great after all. 27 people dead!

Erik tries to chase the van the deadly shot was fired from, pretty easy to find and follow because a cameraman is still on top. Erik shoots him down but the driver of the van and laser mastermind, Thomas Moore gets away.

The van is later found dumped under a bridge and a phone called is made to the Mayor wanting the money in small bills. The call is traced so Erik leaps into action as Maurizio & Guido rock out.

Cars explode, innocent people are ran over and lots of crates are smashed. This is all mostly Erik’s doing. He don’t give a crappa in an Italian kind of way.

Erik finally gets him men only to find they aren’t the actual bombers. They just wanted some cash. Erik is well pissed off.

Thomas Moore now wants double.

Now we have the science bit about the laser gun which works with liquid crystals or something. I didn’t really care.

Remember the cameraman who was shot off the truck? Well his name was Kurt Shcmidt. He married Boonie for American citizenship. Erik heads out to talk to her but he’s too late because Bonnie’s been shot by a guy with a cool moustache. Erik follows him.

  

Erik follows a lot of people in this film.

Moustache man ends up at a funeral chapel. Erik ends up at the funeral chapel to. He’s really good at this following lark.

Erik gets attacked by a karate kicking mortician with a pipe and has a shootout in the morgue with moustache man. Moustache man gets away and this time Erik can’t be arsed following.

Another tape to the Mayor and the city is gonna pay up.

Erik’s partner, I didn’t mention him earlier because he wasn’t important. Now he seems to be important because he’s been elected to take the Ten Million to the bad guys.

Thomas Moore jogs and does some weights at the docks while Erik’s partner drops the case off at a car park.

The case is being tracked though. Excellent.

Now, apparently, Thomas Moore is a physicist who was dismissed from his post at a university after a terrible “Laser” explosion.  A simple case of mad scientist gone mad me thinks.

  

Back to the case, the police track it to a house but the house explodes, as well as a nice Volkswagen Beatle. Was there any need to destroy the car?

The money was also destroyed.

Thomas Moore now wants double the double money he originally asked for. Twenty Million Dollars!!

We now have a little recap montage to more Guido & Maurizio De Angelis music.

Erik’s girlfriend is killed in a raid by moustache man and pals on his house, I didn’t think she was important either....She isn’t now.

Erik is pissed and his partner shot, but lives

"Get the bastards" 

Moustache man gets away, again. Erik gives chase, again.

Most of this film is set at the docks. Is it cheaper to film at the docks?

Erik enters the docks for his show down with Thomas Moore and Moustache man.

Erik enters a warehouse and is informed by Thomas that Erik killed his wife (She was the mortician by the way). Erik also deduces that Moore is a “Fucking lunatic”

Thomas leaves the building. Enter moustache man to add his weight to a shootout with Eric in the warehouse. Many people are shot, Erik gets away but his car is attacked by moustache man in a tractor. Erik sets fire to the tractor and moustache man burns. He didn’t even have to follow him.

Thomas is still on the move so Erik steels a high powered racing car and goes on the chase, again. Lots of chases in this film as you can see.

The cars speed their way around the hills of San Francisco in a chase that tries to rival Bullit. It fails.

Another couple of questions for you.

Do all Californian people leave empty boxes out in the street?

Do high powered sports cars all have the ability to jump over things with no ramps?

We eventually end up at.....You guessed it

The docks.

 

Thomas gets to a barge were his weapon is housed and unfortunately shoots himself with it. He melts away as Erik watches on.

Light Blast just seemed to be a series of scenes to connect some chases and that actually spoilt it a little. This could have been a real cult gem if a little more effort was given by the usually dependable Castellari (Keoma, Big Racket, Bronx Warriors, Last Shark). Estrada is as charismatic as a house brick and Thomas Moore is totally wasted. Guido & Maurizio deliver a pretty good soundtrack.

I can’t say I liked or disliked Light Blast. It was just there.

Don't Get Heavy!

Dragon Force (1982)

Bruce Baron delivers a suitcase of money to a gang of men and swaps it for a suitcase of diamonds. The deal goes well until the head of the gang decides to take a shot at Bruce. Bruce suddenly kicks ass and takes the head guy down.

Then the real plot. Princess Rawleen’s plane has to land in Hong Kong with a problem. She goes to stay with some old college buddies, Elana & Richard Mann. They are brother and sister and live in a nice big mansion. Richard is a witty bastard and says things like.

“You can call me Rich...I am you know” & “I have just received some incredible cocaine from Thailand. Perhaps your highness would like to get even higher later on”

He also has some fantasic wisdom like

“You know what we Chinese say. Beware when trying to avoid stepping on the tail of the dragon.  Least you trip on the claw of the phoenix and fall into a massage parlour which does not except American Express” 

Lost me on that one Richie.

Ninjas!!!!!

Yes, ninjas seem to be roaming the grounds and the Princesses’ security doesn’t stand a bloody chance.

Aren’t Ninja’s cool? They climb walls, hide in the dark, throw stars, block bullets with their swords and throw smoke bombs. I love ninjas me.

They kidnap the princess while she takes a bath.

Ok, Bruce Baron is Jack Sergeant. He seems to be some sort of James Bond style agent.

The kidnappers want the Princesses’ Chrome Oil supplies. But so do the Americans.

Bruce is sent on a mission to get the Princess back.

Bruce first goes to Ah Chu (Pronounced like a sneeze). Ah Chu is like “Q” in the bond films. Chu shows him a few gadgets for his mission like a sneaky Yo-Yo and a bullet proof sweater in four different colours and machine washable. Oh how I laughed.

General Marushka & Mr. Sly are the bad guys and the Princess calls them filthy bastards.

Bruce goes to the magical Tip Toe Forest which is actually just a wooded area by the docks. He’s attacked by Soo-lim, a woman with a flute, has a sword fight on some logs with a Japanese guy in a kabuki mask and set upon by two guys doing a Lion Dance.

Bruce then meets Bruce, Bruce Li that is. If you don’t know Bruce Li, or Ho Chung Tao to his friends, he’s probably the best known of the Bruce Lee imitators. I like Bruce Li. (Check out Dragon Lee, Bruce Le and Bruce Liang for some other lookalikes)

Li wants Bruce to join Dragon Force, but he wants to see how good he is first. A demonstration with a staff is needed. One of the Lion Dancers begins to throw tiles at Bruce as he performs his groovy moves. Not nice.

Li then shows off his moves with the staff by breaking some water containers. Li just looks a little cooler in my opinion. We then have a little mass and a bit of a ritual to bring Bruce into gang (Dragon Force).

Bruce even gets a Dragon medallion and a life time subscription to the Dragon Force Magazine. (I made that bit up).

Bruce and the force then set off on their mission to find the Princess...I bet you forgot about the Princess.

Bruce finds Elana in a market place and is fended off by her people. We then head back to the mansion to some groovy bass music. More Ninjas appear and an orange one. Cool. Lots of running happens and many guards are killed on a roof.

The orange ninja is pretty good.

Bruce is hit with a poisonous throwing star and faints. Li returns with a snake to suck out the poison. Bruce Li is like Mr. Miyagi.

Now Bruce is back to fighting fitness.

Elana falls in love with Bruce. Those five minute romances will never work.

Li pimps out The Flute Player, Soo-lim, to a nightclub as a singer. Very strange turn of events if you ask me.

Soo sings in a nightclub and gets the attention of Yang, the big spender. They have a drink and feed each other olives. Su and Yang leave the nightclub and they have a brawl. This date is not going to plan. Soo beats up Wang but he doesn’t feel a thing, so, she stabs him in the ear with a hair clip and throws him in the water. Yang gets in a taxi and goes to a big mansion, the mansion where the Princess is being held. Wang works for General Marushka & Mr. Sly!!!!

I get it now

What Wang didn’t know is that a bug was placed on him by Soo. Dragon Force knows where they are now.

By the way, the Dragon Force team now wear identical suits. I like this, a bit of uniformity never hurt anyone.

Dragon Force to the rescue.

Sly finds that Yang is carrying the bug. Remember Sly? They begin to do acupuncture on the Princess and cut all her hair off. They are going to do the “Para Technique” which will make the Princess do what they like.

The bald Princess, in a trance, has Chinese writing scrawled onto her face and naked breasts. This would tickle me to death.

Dragon Force enters the grounds and Li does some super cool fighting.

An army of orange ninja appear. These are obviously the best ninjas. Dragon Force cuts thru them with power and precision.

The naked Princess seems to have one breast bigger than the other! This has nothing to do with the plot but it did freak me out a little.

Now inside the mansion, Dragon Force fights more hordes of orange ninjas. Feet and swords fly.

Just as one group of ninjas are disposed of more appear. Only in groups of six though. Could these just be the same six orange ninjas? Am I being cynical here?

The Princess is taken to a helicopter and flown away. I wasn’t expecting that to happen.

General Marushka & Mr. Sly finally give Wang a seeing to over a nice banquet as a stoned Princess eats her meal.

Dragon Force is invited to lunch on Marushka Island.

Soo-Lim plays her flute, Lion Dancers meditate, Kabuki cleans his sword, Li writes and Bruce has sex with Elana. Good man Bruce.

The following morning we set off to Marushka Island where our team are shown a wondrous supply of martial arts showmanship.

Bruce thinks something is wrong with the Princess. He’s right.

You see Marushka is going to be the Princesses’ new minister of trade. The Princess tells them this in a dopey state.

Now all hell breaks out on the island in an Enter The Dragon inspired sequence.

Marushka & The Princess escape. Bruce & Li are confronted by six orange ninjas standing on top of each other (Six again...hm).

Ninjas fly around (on wires) and Bruce & Li do battle. Different coloured ninjas appear from the ground. How long had they been there?

Orange ninjas are blown up but six more appear (something's going on here)

The Princess attacks Li & Bruce. Marushka laughs. 

We are now in a yard full of barrels with danger written on them. Could these barrels contain danger? What does danger look like?

The yard goes on fire. This can not be good for the barrels of danger. Can you sell barrels of danger?

Marushka escapes in a speed boat but is blown up by Bruce. Those barrels didn’t explode! Maybe they were empty barrels of danger.

The Princess is saved and Li returns her to her normal self with his expertise in acupuncture. I wonder if he noticed her dodgy breast. The Princess thanks Dragon Force for their help.

Dragon Force is a funny movie, terribly dubbed and acted. It’s not boring for one second and would make a fantastic drunken lads movie.

Fantastic.

And as Bruce Li says in the movies final line

“Don’t get heavy!”