Sunday, May 29, 2016

Capital Punishment (1991)

aka Kickbox Terminator

How bad is it? It's very messy, contrived and cheap.
Should you see it? Maybe - if you want to see the next terrible martial arts star.


I have a couple of Gary Daniels films in my queue; he was  in the background of a number of martial arts films and then did a few direct-to-video turns as the "star," including this one. Scott Shaw, who is all over this blog, has an early role here and David Carradine does about 6 minutes of footage, mostly behind a desk. There's a food additive that causes birth defects, so it's made illegal, but it's also addictive, so there's a market for it and the leading supplier is the former teacher of the star. There's also corrupt DEA agents (including one whose clothes appear spraypainted on). The film has endless - though pointless - fight scenes, which are very slow and had me thinking of "Dolemite." The cheapness of the film tells especially in the use of stock footage explosions; a freeway bridge in Los Angeles, through a continuity error, becomes a small bridge in a jungle, for example. The worst scene has our hero sticking a pool cue down a guy's throat; it's done so poorly that I had to stop to realize that that was what was supposed to be happening.

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