Revenge of Godfrey Ho Month - Catman in Boxer's Blow (1993)

Catman in Boxer's Blow (1993)
Image Source: numerocinqmagazine.com

Most of Godfrey Ho’s movies have a certain level of incomprehensibility, which is an inherent consequence of his cut-and-paste editing technique.  However, out of all of Ho’s movies that I have seen, I cannot think of one more confusing and outright perplexing as Catman in Boxer’s Blow.  The sequel to Catman in Lethal Track, the film continues the story of Catman, a special agent named Sam who gains superpowers after being scratched by a radioactive cat.  He’s in the movie all of five minutes.

The majority of the plot is simply confounding.  I honestly do not know where to begin here, but I will do my best.  An evil cult leader plots to use nuclear weapons to kill millions and hires a group of mercenaries to help him achieve this goal.  The crew is comprised of several men, each with their own specialties and skills, and they are all bad, except one.  A man named Bobby, who was recently broken out of prison, is coerced into helping the cult, who is holding his family hostage.  That is quite literally where I start to get confused.  

I assumed Catman intended to stop the cult, and I am guessing he did in the end fight, but characters run on into each other and the plot points seem so overlapped that they make zero sense.  I was able to decipher that Bobby was innocent of the crime he was imprisoned for... I think.  I also can tell that his father and siblings do not trust him because he is an escaped convict.  There is a female martial artist who just sort of seems... there.  She does not really do anything except help out in some of the film’s many fight scenes.

Rear of the VHS case.

The fight choreography is okay, and fights range from standard to occasionally entertaining.  The problem is, I spent half the time wondering which character was which, and who was fighting who.  In a few instances, I was not able to even decipher who the villains and heroes were, even after the fight subsided.  There was almost zero attempt to make a cohesive series of events.  I say almost, because they try to tie things together with some inserted dialogue scenes featuring Catman, his boss and his friend, but these do little to repair the damage done to this film by the horrible wrath of scissors!

Yes scissors.  No man, woman and child in any 80’s movie is safe when Godfrey Ho gets his greedy paws on scissors!  The editing here is so bad that it actually edits scenes into other scenes from the same movie.  This is not where Ho will cut in a dialogue scene from his new footage into the older movie to make it appear as though characters from the two films are speaking to one another.  No, these are two scenes spliced together out of order, from the same movie.  I only caught this when I saw one of the lead characters clothes change, then change back in the span of a few minutes.

A lot of movies can be heavily destroyed by poor editing.  Elaine May blamed Ishtar’s failures on poor editing and I can see it, even though what was left on screen sucked too.  Here, I honestly do not know what to think.  I would say that most of the fights are okay, but that doesn’t fix the fact that I have no idea who the heroes and villains of this movie were, besides Catman and the cult leader, who are barely mentioned at all in the movie.  The plotting is so bad here, that I had to read a plot synopsis AFTER WATCHING THE MOVIE, to know that it was a cult and not a terrorist group, because the movie makes no reference to the fact at all (except on the back of the VHS case, apparently).  It does make the fact that the villain’s name is Reverend Cheever make more sense, but other than that, it does not effect the movie at all.  

Character motivations are never established, character relationships are rarely explained, and actors are made up with the same hair styles, clothes styles and mustaches so that you cannot tell who is who in a fight.  That is until the camera does a close up and only then can you hope the close up will be of a character you have seen before because, in all honestly, half of the time it isn't.  A fight would end with a victor standing and I was forced to ask myself, “Who is this guy?”  This happened more than one time while watching this incomprehensible mess of a film.

This is one of Godfrey Ho’s last films, released in the early 90’s.  It definitely has a sort of inert blandness and lack of enthusiasm that could be found in his 80’s movies.  Even in Ho’s worst cut-and-paste work from ‘86 to ‘89 usually has some semblance of a story.  Here, there is literally nothing to hold anything together.  It’s like throwing a handful of random Scrabble tiles into the air, trying to read all of the letters as the fly up and form words out of them before they hit the floor.  So much is lost to the attempt to shoehorn Catman into the plot as well as make it seem as though he would be able to effect what is going on in the other movie at all, that I think Ho just sort of threw his hands up with this one.  

The only source of comedy here is occasional goofiness from the barely glossed-over Catman plot and some really bad dub work that left me laughing more than a few times.  The rest of this movie is so bad, so lost, so... sad, that it has achieved a new low.  On this blog I have discussed the Fat Spy, Birdemic, North, Chairman of the Board, the FREAKING Bounty Hunter and I may go so far as to say that Catman in Boxer’s Blow is the worst movie I have reviewed on this blog, and one of the worst movies I have ever seen.

There is hope just around the corner, however, as shortly after this film’s release, Godfrey Ho begin working with an American martial arts heroine and would make one of his most glorious films ever.  Next up on Godfrey Ho Appreciation month, we’re talking about Undefeatable.

A little Late Movie Review - Kung Fu Girls Club (????)

Competent film making?  Proper equipment?  Cohesive storytelling?  Talented actors?  No longer do you need to deal with all of that superfluous crap!  Now, thanks to Robbie Ryan, you too can make a video, put it on YouTube, and call it an "Independently Distributed Film".  Boy, oh boy, do I wish I was being sarcastic there, but no, Kung Fu Girls Club (in all of its improper lack of titular punctuation) exists, and this makes me very happy.

I do not have anything against someone making a movie, putting themselves out there and trying to make a name for themselves in the industry.  Some of the greatest directors of the modern era got their careers started doing exactly that.  Hell, it is arguable that the entire movie industry would not exist if it were not for the race to innovation that occurred in the 1890's, where inventors copied each other's patents and short films in an effort to be the most acclaimed name in the new art of movie making.  That said, time has taught us that when some people get behind a camera, the result is not good, but still epic

I do not know much about the film maker Robbie Ryan.  He has a blog, a YouTube channel but little else really identifies him.  I can tell you he does have a strange sense of humor, and that this movie could be some sort of campy joke, but it is honestly difficult to tell.  Kung Fu Girls Club follows a teen named Tsunami (yep, I am pretty sure how they spell it too) who transfers to a high school where all ten of the other students are complete assholes (like real high school I guess).  When aliens disguised as humans (thus revealing this film's budget, as though the core production was not a dead giveaway) attack out of nowhere, paralyzing the rest of the student body, an Evanesence fan-girl named Sage informs Tsunami and her friend that they are bestowed with great power and they are destined to fight these shape-shifting creatures.  They give two more girls prop MacGuffins in the form of necklaces that give them powers also and the four of them proceed to fight the aliens.  There is almost zero build up to this, one second they are acting out a poor-man's Breakfast Club, the next they are fighting black-clad aliens, complete with lame after-effects!

The movie was filmed in what appears to be a single weekend at a school campus I can only assume the cast and crew broke into.  Even the hospital room set appears to be a low angle shot of a public restroom carefully framed to cut out all of the fixtures, leaving only the patient, the swinging door, the concerned student and a sketchy guy in a lab coat that I think also appears as a different character in the film (I cannot be certain of this though).  The otherwise empty halls of this building are reused over and over (I'm guessing in an attempt to avoid security cameras).  Okay, okay.  I kid.  I cannot accuse this production and those involved with any criminal activity legally, so I'll just say that this is a really, really bad movie that appears to have been filmed entirely in one location over a very short period of time.

Now, as for the action, it's bad.  Each fight scene is filmed clumsily and filled with goofy effects.  The one actor who seems to possess any actual martial arts ability seems out of place in this film too, playing a villain named Takahashi, he is also the only person on this project with an IMDB page with some pretty impressive stunt credits to his name.  Obviously attempting to mimic anime, the Girls Club members have transformation scenes for their "fighting modes" which come complete with fourth-wall-breaking, excessive poses, brightly-colored wigs and forced Japanese names.

Now, normally I would give a little detail and information about the film but, I can't find any.  As I said, the aforementioned Takahashi, played by Ilram Choi is the only credited actor in the film I could find any information on and even he does not credit this movie on his IMDB page, I just recognize him from the photos.  The filmmaker, Robbie Ryan, did not seem to do much to promote the movie either, as I can not find any online references to this film other than a few photos, mostly from the blog of Robbie Ryan himself (Where you can also watch the movie!).  Now, there are references to multiple "episodes", but these appear to be segmented parts of the film as a whole, probably its original format on YouTube.   I found this gem simply searching for fantasy Kung-Fu movies online and was very excited about this one by the five minute mark.

If it sounds like I'm bashing this film earlier in the article, know that I thoroughly enjoyed watching Kung Fu Girls Squad and strongly recommend everyone give it a shot.  This is the bad film bad film fans dream of.  It is filled with plot issues, bad editing, bad acting, bad effects, bad everything, and the end result is a glorious example of schlock fun.  The only thing that really grated on my nerves after a while was the buzzing, 8-bit techno soundtrack that sounds like a bee trapped in an old radiator.  The voices of some of the aliens are even layered with this buzzing, low-end sound and it is truly awful.  Still, there are so many laughs to be had with this film, and if you love flicks like the Room and Birdemic, you really, really need to watch this movie.  I found it posted in a number of locations online including YouTube and with the credits taken out, this one is less than an hour in length.  You will not regret this sit!