Day of the Panther (1988)

What do you get when you mix martial arts, the land down under, bad acting and an awesomely bad script? Day of the Panther. That's right our movie takes us to everyone's favorite island of convicts and gives us the harrowing tale of an undercover cop hellbent on revenge for the killing of his partner.

What do you get if you mix Crocodile Dundee and Bruce Lee? The killing machine that is Jason Blade. That's right his name is Jason friggen' Blade. How awesome is that? If I continue calling him by his full name instead of him, he, or just Jason it's because he has the greatest name in cinematic history.

Our movie starts out with Jason Blade and his partner doing an undercover operation, and by that I mean they're sneaking around in the kitchen of a restaurant where a drug deal is going down. Apparently they have a much different definition of undercover in Australia. Either way the drug deal goes to hell, the buyer kills the sellers, our two undercover detectives get caught in the middle and have to fight their way out of the restaurant. Luckily it's a Chinese restaurant so everyone in the joint knows karate; that way Jason Blade can really showcase his talent.

Up next you have the most mind blowingly awesome scene in Australian cinema. Linda, Jason Blade's partner, is watching a drug deal go down. He tells her to wait, but that's not how Linda rolls. She's going to go down and check it out... and Linda knows how to make an entrance.

Little known fact: everything in Australia is made of balsa wood.

Remember how I said that this was a mind blowingly awesome scene? Want to know why? Because these are the three guys that Linda ends up fighting:



That's right, it's old man mask man! Cower in fear when he looks like an old man but is actually a really bad ninja!



Skull mask man with bat that has spikes in it! Okay, I can see where he's going with this. Skull masks are kind of scary, and a good way to intimidate others. The third guy must be really scary!



Pig... mask... man? What happened to Rocksteady there Bebop? He late? Seriously, I know that Pig Mask Man has a machete but really? Were there three masks and skull guy got the only good one? Was there just not a costume store on the way to the drug deal and you had to use what costumes you could scrape together from your mom's basement?

Also, if you've ever participated in the candy giving holiday of Halloween you've probably worn a latex mask. Let me ask you something, how was your peripheral vision out of one of those things? There's a reason kids get hit by cars on Halloween and it's not just because they're stupid. It's because you can't see worth a goddamn out of those masks. No wonder they get the crap kicked out of them by Linda. Also, want to see the greatest thing? During her fight with Skull Mask Man Linda pulls off his mask and...



He has a friggen' skull painted on his face! Why in God's name does he need the mask at all!?

So are you wondering why she's fighting three guys in masks? Get in line buddy because I'm pretty sure so is everyone else who viewed this movie.

Long story short Linda manages to dispatch the three guys in the goofy masks and is killed by their boss, the only one not stupid enough to put on a mask and parade around like it's Halloween. Though he does look a lot like George Michaels.



So on to the meat and potatoes of the movie. So now Jason Blade has learned that his partner has been killed. Thankfully he was already going undercover into the group that killed her, and actually undercover this time, not spying on them from fifteen feet away.

The great thing is, the moment he shows up at the airport two bumbling detectives are assigned to follow him because they think he's a gangster hitman. Despite the fact about 20 minutes later he tells their boss that he's actually undercover... yet they follow him throughout the movie. I guess the captain just likes wasting manpower. On the other hand I don't know if there's a Mayberry in Australia that these two could be policing instead.

Basically the rest of the movie is bad karate fights with plot kind of sprinkled around it.

You have Jason Blade working for the local gangster in Australia, and his right hand man is George Michael looking bastard, the guy who killed the drug dealers at the first and Linda... this guy really gets around.

You also have Jason Blade's Sensei, William Anderson, who happens to be Linda's father and his other daughter Gemma... is also Jason's love interest in the movie. I would think after you lost one daughter you wouldn't let your other hang around with a guy who tends to get into kicking fights with the gang that killed said daughter... but that's just me.

You also have the greatest 80's/karate movie plot cliche ever... you see the gangster boss holds a great big karate championship each year and he wants Jason to fight in it. Do these kinds of things actually happen? I mean I know there's karate tournaments, but are there huge underground tournaments held by stereotypical mob bosses where the worlds best get together and fight perhaps to the death? You see it constantly in movies, but you never hear about these kinds of things being broken up by the police in real life.

Either way you bet your ass that Jason Blade and George Michael end up in the ring fighting against each other. Sure it's not during the tournament, you see they find out Jason Blade is a undercover cop before then... but oh, ho, ho you bet they duel it out in the ring. You also probably guessed that Jason Blade is getting the crap kicked out of him but makes a miraculous recovery and wins. Frankly I'm surprised this fight didn't take place at dusk with the Sydney Opera House in the background.

So of course Jason Blade saves the day with a little help from Sensei Anderson and Gemma... But don't worry, Jason Blade will be back for Strike of the Panther. And you can bet your ass I'll be watching it as soon as I find a copy.

2 Birthday Fish out of 5

Squid.

Trauma (1978)

So here we go again. A foreign movie dubbed into English. This time it's an on the edge of your seat, thrill ride of a roller coaster called Trauma, or Enigma Rosso, or Red Ring of Fear, or Virgin Killer, and the list keeps going... Frankly I'd go with Virgin Killer, mostly because it shares the name with a Scorpion's album with a very inappropriate album cover.

Trauma wasn't as horrible as I thought it would be. Don't get me wrong it's still pretty bad, but I guess it could have been a lot worse. Mostly it's kind of an ordinary movie with weird subplots that seem to go nowhere. Like the main character is a detective, who happens to be dating a woman who's a kleptomaniac. Why is she a kleptomaniac? No real reason, she just likes to steal things... it adds absolutely nothing to the story. Though it doesn't really matter because about half way through the movie she leaves him for no real reason. He goes to leave and she says that when he gets back she wont be there, and that's that. What does that have to do with the story? Nothing at goddamn all. There's several little things like this throughout the movie... they don't do anything for the story, and in some places actually just seem to hurt it.

What does this picture have to do with anything? Absolutely nothing, but it's awesome.

That guy up there? That's our detective friend. He's investigating the murder of a sixteen year old girl. You know, when he's not having to deal with his shoplifting girlfriend. So while looking into this girls murder he discovers two things:

1) The girl goes to an all girl boarding school, along with her and her friends they have a secret little club called The Inseparables. All the sudden this movie got a lot more sexy.

2) The dead girl has a sister who's creepy. I'm not sure if she's meant to be, but I'll be damned if she doesn't seem that way.

Either way the dead girl's sister (who by the way doesn't seem all the broken up over the death of her sister, though neither does her mother) pops in occasionally throughout the movie with little hints and help for the detective. Because I hope that if a detective is looking into my murder he's doing so with the help of a ten year old... I hope it's a lot like Cop and a Half.

But don't worry, our detective doesn't rely solely on the help of a ten year old to solve crimes... oh no! You see, the detective is a loose cannon with unorthodox interrogation techniques! And by that I mean he takes one of the people he's trying to get information out of on a roller coaster ride. That's not a metaphor or anything, he literally takes him on a roller coaster ride. That's what gets the guy to talk. Seriously, I've seen Jack Bauer do things that are banned by the Geneva Convention... and this guy takes his suspects to the carnival. Maybe if he doesn't talk he takes them on the tilt a whirl.

Dammit, I get results!

Either way the story is kind of crappy. The plot is confusing with way too many subplots and unexplained things to make it even somewhat decent and the characters seem to do things that defy explanation. Maybe I got an edited version, or maybe it just didn't translate well to English. All I know is I got done with the movie and I know who killed the girl... I think... but I'm not sure how or why, and those things are kind of important in a murder mystery. It's like it started out well and then about halfway through the writers decided to get lunch. From about halfway through till the end just seemed like a convoluted mess.

Is it worth wasting 84 minutes of your life on? Probably not, but what else are you going to do?


3 Birthday Fish out of 5


Squid

Cindy and Donna (1970)

Needed something new so I switched over to the Drive-In Cult Classic DVD pack. Basically every movie in this pack is a bad sexploitation movie from the '70s. Every movie on it generally has to deal with someone wanting to have sex with a mother, a stepmother, a nanny, a sister, two sisters... you get the point. And Cindy and Donna is no different.

I learned two things from Cindy and Donna:

1) The '70s was an awesome time when you could use the word "groovy" in all seriousness.

2) Pot turn women into nymphomaniacs.

I can tell you that number two is false, if it were true my high school life would have been a hell of a lot more interesting.

The tagline for Cindy and Donna says it all: A story of two sisters. Cindy... so anxious to grow up. Donna... who grew up too fast! That's basically it, you have the sweet, innocent Cindy who wants to be like her big sister Donna, who's basically a pot smoking whore. I would strive to achieve that as well.


Also it has the greatest opening theme ever.

That's it. That's pretty much the whole movie. Seriously. The movie is just an excuse to get Cindy, Donna, Cindy's friend Karen, and Alice the stripper naked... all while leading up to one of the most hilarious endings I've ever seen. And frankly I'm okay with that.

Sure there are other "plots" in the movie but mostly they go nowhere. The father in the movie likes to have sex with a stripper... and that's pretty much all there is to that subplot. As far as I can tell it's only there to show the stripper naked. I'm starting to see a trend. Then there's the mother. She's an alcoholic. That's her subplot. She also has an accent that seems to randomly change throughout sentences.

The funny thing about this movie is that it's all about nudity and sex and drugs. It's sexploitation at its finest... and yet if you take all of that away you have almost a morality tale. This film is basically about the dangers of drugs and alcohol.

You have Donna who will do anything for weed. Sex in a car for a joint? Oh yeah. Have two creepy guys take naked pictures of you and then have sex with you? Oh she'll do it all for some sweet, sweet mary jane. Pot will do this to you. It's evil.

Then you have sweet, innocent Cindy. She wants to go farther with her boyfriend but just isn't sure that she's ready. But the second that joint touches her young, virginal lips? Well all the sudden her and Karen are going at it like lesbianism is going out of style.

But you have this odd message seemingly hidden under tons and tons of titties. So imagine an after school special about the dangers of drugs but where everyone is naked and having sex with random people.

2 Birthday Fish out of 5

Squid.