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Death Machines
Waiter, there’s a Buddha in my spaghetti!
1976
Review: July 24, 2009
Director: Paul Kyriazi
Starring: Ronald Marchini, Chuck Katzakian, Mari Honjo, Michael Chong
Sure, whatever.
THE SETUP:
Criminal syndicate wants to take control of the local contract killing business with the help of three assassins.
DISCUSSION:
A reader wrote to recommend this, telling me it’s a very 70s film that features a badass mustachioed gangster with gold chains and a hairy chest who runs around barking orders and generally being an arrogant macho asshole, and I thought: JUST MY TYPE! So to the top of my list it went.
We open with a graphic of this extremely pointy pyramid with faces on each side—it totally looks like an Earth, Wind and Fire album cover—which abruptly splits open to reveal the title. The still, poorly hand-animated nature of this illustration gives you a clue as to the level of quality you’re in for. While this is going on, we hear a song apparently called “Devil by the Door.”
Now we see this Japanese couple watching three kung fu matches taking place in their Japanese garden. The winners of each match are their “death machines,” three highly-trained assassins under mind-control to the couple. Their assignment is to take out Mr. G., the bigwig of contract killing in town. He is the big mustachioed gangster mentioned earlier, the kind of guy who barks to his current female playtoy “Aaaayyy! Get your ass back in bed!” The Death Machines [DMs] first take out two of his assassins, and ambush two others. We see each of these fights, because they are the things that is going to take up the time of this movie.
So then the dragon lady, whose very existence is the highlight of the film, with her massive beehive hair and strange little kitty voice. She tells Mr. G that she is going to be taking over the contract killing in this town.
Next this guy is having dinner when he finds a little Buddha in his spaghetti. It actually kind of works to create mystery because the Buddha is red, and blends in with the spaghetti. Anyway, this is apparently the Japanese syndicate’s way of telling you you’re about to be killed. They then bring him a special delivery, which is the head of the guy stationed outside who was supposed to be guarding him. He is soon killed. Between action scenes, there is a lot of synthesized “Weeeew weeeeew weeeew’s” on the soundtrack.
Then we meet Forester, who is the requisite tough cop. He has been avoiding his required human relations classes [“Screw that human relations crap!”] because he needs to work on solving this case! Turns out there’s a witness to one of the killings at the hospital, under police guard. The three assassins sneak in and kill him. They are wearing bulletproof vests, which doesn’t stop the cops from continually firing at their chests. Like idiots. At last one cop thinks to shoot one in the head. One of the DMs is taken into police custody.
But not for long. The DM beats up the whole police office and escapes, whereupon he takes to a local diner. He is being accosted by this religious nutcase when a bunch of bikers come in and, as bikers always do, start raising a ruckus. This naturally requires a large-scale brawl, while religious music plays—so ironic!
Somewhere in here Mr. G has been killed—don’t remember where. There are more brawls, some Black Panthers, an insipid woman or two, and finally the cops close in on the dragon lady and her husband/assistant. They attack the cops ad are eventually killed, freeing the DMs, who, no longer under mind control, decide to all three go in on a Quiznos franchise location.
It was random 70s kung fu b-movie crap. Maybe if you’re really into this sort of thing it would be amusing—it certainly had some amusing elements, especially the dragon lady—but for me its not so much my thing. This is empty grindhouse fare whose main purpose is to fill out its running time with as many fights as it can, and I just don’t care for that. This was one of those things where I watched the first half, then felt obligated to finish the rest to be able to add it to the site, although I had completely lost all interest. If you get off on ludicrous grindhouse kung fu movies, however, go for it.
SHOULD YOU WATCH IT?
If you’re into this kind of cheap kung fu trash.
