Re-Animator (1985)

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2012 (2009)

I actually saw this film a couple of weeks ago but I couldn't be bothered writing about it until now. That probably tells you everything you need to know.

The Maya are well-known for their sophisticated astrology and calendric system, and part of this system is the Long Count calendar, a base-20/base-18 calendar system that identifies a day relative to the Mayan creation date (August 11, 3114 BCE). Hooray for Wikipedia! Well, it seems that this system just ends on December 21st, 2012. Some people think it indicates that some sort of Doomsday event will occur on that date, but these people are stupid and it's all complete bullshit. The 2012 date is just when the Long Count calendar wraps around to zero again, and in fact the Maya did predict things occurring after this date. The 2012 event is just the Maya version of the Y2K bug, but lucky Mayan prophecy doesn't figure into Roland Emmerich's new film all that much, it's just a convenient date to hang his apocalypse porn on.

The plot summary reads like a disaster movie checklist. You've got your scientist, Dr Adrian Helmsley (Chiwetel Ejiofor), who stumbles across some scientific data that predicts a massive disaster will occur sometime in the near future. The cause is something stupid about solar radiation liquefying the Earth's crust. I believe neutrinos are mentioned. He manages to grab the ear of White House Chief of Staff Carl Anheuser (Oliver Platt), and together they formulate a plan to ensure the survival of humanity.

You've also got your relatable everyman, Jackson Curtis (John Cusack), a struggling writer who takes his two kids on a camping trip to Yellowstone park in an attempt to repair his damaged relationship with them. Is his ex-wife Kate (Amanda Peet) now dating a rich asshole? Oh, hell yeah. At Yellowstone they stumble across a crazed conspiracy theorist named Charlie Frost. He is played by Woody Harrelson, although I suspect that Harrelson just stumbled onto the set one day and they just started filming him and worked into the script as best they could. Through Frost they discover the truth about the coming apocalypse and learn of the existence of several arks, built by the governments of the world to weather the flood waters. As the world quite literally collapses around him, Curtis is determined to find the arks and bring his family to safety.

You can probably fill in the rest of the movie yourselves. They have multiple brushes with death, maybe meeting a few wacky side characters along the way. An evil politician will have a change of heart thanks to a stirring, heartfelt speech. Curtis will be presumed dead after heroically saving the day, but - phew! - he didn't die after all. A swelling orchestral score will shotgun-blast emotion into your face. A cute dog will leap to safety at some point. Every disaster movie cliche is dutifully followed with a minimum of originality or creativity.

One thing this movie does really, really well are the scenes of destruction. Apparently this movie cost $250 million to make and I believe it. There is an incredible limo chase through the streets of L.A. as the buildings collapse all around them (also a notable scene for featuring the world's worst Arnold Schwarzenegger impression). Aircraft take off as the runway plunges into a chasm behind them. Entire chunks of the continental shelf snap off and drop into the ocean. It's all very spectacular. Naturally, Emmerich applies the same anthropomorphic malevolence to earthquakes that he has to explosions (Independance Day) and cold (The Day After Tomorrow), with rifts in the earth chasing people all over the place. The most hilarious touch is when the Sistine Chapel cracks in two, right through the point where Adam and God's fingers touch. Well played, sentient earthquake, well played. There is also some great cinematography from Dean "The Patriot but not the Roland Emmerich one" Semler, with the camera kept at a respectable distance so that we aren't rudely interrupted by the reality of millions upon millions of people being killed. There really should be a name for this kind of apocalyptic spectacle cinema. Perhaps spectacalypse or funnageddon.

It is, to use a cliche, a roller coaster ride, but there's a reason that roller coaster rides don't go for 158 minutes, interrupted every half hour for a teary-eyed speech from Chiwetel Ejiofor. I mean, you'd get really bored and nauseous and you'd be thinking "Why is the guy from Redbelt lecturing me about humanity?" 2012 could have been the most entertaining 90 minute film ever made, but instead it's bloated with cliches and too damn long. Even the scenes of destruction get boring after a while and Emmerich has to make things more and more ridiculous to keep your attention. I defy you not to laugh when President Danny Glover gets slam-dunked by an aircraft carrier. It's not possible.

I figured the film was over at the point where Curtis and his family sneak aboard one of the arks, the US one naturally; everyone else has to share. The UK, France and Germany sharing an ark? Yeah, that should work out great. Instead Curtis and Co. end up dropping a piece of hardware into the gears, jamming the doors open and creating a horrifying disaster by extending the film for another half hour or so. Seemingly unaffected by the freezing arctic waters flooding the chamber, Curtis manages to repair the damage and is hailed as a hero for fixing the fault that he caused, costing the death of thousands in the process.

One thing I did like about this film is that it played things relatively straight. None of this Michael Bay bullshit where everybody is constantly cracking jokes to relieve non-existent tension. I think Emmerich realises that the boundless stupidity of a film like this provides it's own humour. The ending is a perfect example. After floating around for a few months they realise they just plum forgot about Africa and it survived all this apocalypse business just fine. Also the flood waters begin to recede so I guess the liquefaction of the Earth's crust is just a temporary problem. I wasn't really expecting Emmerich to have the balls to go through with a global apocalypse like in Deep Impact, but this is just insulting.

Roland Emmerich has made quite a career out of blowing shit up in big, stupid films, so it's no small thing to say that 2012 is Emmerich's biggest, stupidest and explodiest film ever. In fact, I believe that with this film Emmerich has reached the apotheosis in all three categories. With nowhere left to go I suggest Emmerich take up another profession such as shoe-making or dog grooming.

Out for Blood (1992)

Behold the acting range of Don "The Dragon" Wilson!

The world of Direct-to-Video action films is getting pretty crowded these days, what with JCVD, Dolph Lundgren and, of course, Steven Seagal all throwing their hats into the ring. However, back in the late 80s and early 90s, there was one name that was synonymous with Direct-to-Video action: Don "The Dragon" Wilson. I don't who gave him the nickname "The Dragon", but that shit has stuck with him like herpes and now I believe you have to pay his lawyers ten cents every time you refer to him without it. "The Dragon" put his considerable kickboxing talent (and less considerable acting talent) to use in dozens of dodgy action films. He appeared in Albert-Pyun-esque low budget sci-fi flicks like Cybertracker and Futurekick and eight out of the nine Bloodfist films. In 1995 he made a whopping seven films! Truly, this was the age of "The Dragon".

In the very Seagalian-titled Out for Blood, Wilson plays John Decker, a criminal lawyer/martial artist whose life is destroyed when his family is murdered by drug dealers. The culprits are roaming free thanks to an incompetent police force and Decker's selective amnesia about the night in question. The police are skeptical about Decker's condition, but he is being treated by a psychiatrist named Dr McConnell (Ron Steelman). The two of them hang out a lot socially, which is weird and probably unethical, and McConnell takes a personal interest in restoring Decker's memory.

One night Decker is out jogging, haunted by memories of his family, when he is confronted by some stereotypical scumbag drug dealers (many uses of "holmes", "ese" etc). Simmering with rage, he beats them to a pulp and after realising that one of the men was there on the night his wife was murdered he tosses him off a rooftop. A homeless woman witnesses his act of vigilante justice and soon the media have branded him with the hilarious nickname "Karate Man". It's only later at the hospital, when he helps subdue a enormous, drug-fueled madman, that his synapses begin to fire and he gets a little piece of his memory back. He realises that his amnesia can only be cured by beating up as many drug-dealing scumbags as he can find. This is probably the best set-up for a martial arts vigilante film ever.

So by day Decker is a smartly dressed criminal lawyer and by night he stalks the streets of LA in his Adidas jogging suit looking for drug dealers to kick in the head. He doesn't have to look very far either; he can't even enjoy a quiet meal a noodle bar without being interrupted by an armed gunman. At one point he visits some drug dealers in an old train yard and even though there's just one dealer selling coke to a couple of dorky white guys there are at least a dozen guys armed with uzis. Seems excessive, but Decker manages to punch, kick and shoot his way through them anyway, getting those two buyers caught in the crossfire. Don't do drugs, kids, or you too could end up in a Don "The Dragon" Wilson film.

Decker also tries to conceal his vigilante alter-ego from his would-be girlfriend, a gallery owner named Joanna Montague (Sheri Shattuck doing her best Katherine Hepburn impression), but she manages to piece it together when she sees a report about "Karate Man" on the TV. This film probably sets a record for conveniently placed local news reports; everybody seems to have their TVs on and set to the local news 24 hours a day. Joanna is kind of annoying but she does introduce him to a Japanese artist named Hiroshi (Aki Aleong) who acts in the critical role of "wise master", inspiring him with folk wisdom and haikus.

Gradually Decker works his way up the food chain of the local drug distribution network, which is lead by a cowboy named Rick (Todd Curtis). His organisation seems to be a pretty varied lot, from bikers to hillbillies to surfer dudes, but they all seem to be united by their love of bandanas and long flowing hair. Unfortunately his gang cannot lay claim to having the best hair of all, that title belongs to a mafia bodyguard played by Deron McBee (aka Malibu from American Gladiators).

Naturally Rick kidnaps Joanna and Decker is forced compete in unarmed combat with a knife expert named Blade. There's a pretty funny moment when it focuses on Blade's fruity scorpion earring, and there's a musical sting that sounds like a rattlesnake. Eventually it turns out that the mastermind of the drug organisation (and the murder of Decker's family) is Dr McConnell. I'd put in a spoiler warning, but if that revelation comes as a surprise to you then... jeez. I don't know what to say. Maybe you should give up on narrative fiction altogether and take up scrap-booking. Turns out that McConnell spared his life for some reason and kept him under control using a combination of hypnosis and drugs.

This is probably one of the better Don "The Dragon" Wilson films. There's a lot of action and while the fights aren't fantastically choreographed or edited, they are extremely violent. There are several broken limbs, an eye gouging and a several stabbings. If a fight film isn't technically brilliant I'll take some tastelessly brutal violence as an acceptable trade-off. A less acceptable trade-off is compensating for a complete lack of boobs by having the portly Dr. McConnell lounging around in a skin-tight, nipple-accentuating sweater. I'll take no boobs over man-boobs.

Paranormal Activity (2007)

I've been looking forward to this film for a while and by the time the trailer was released in Australia - basically a stream of hyperbolic pull-quotes from various newspapers, websites and probably your mum, calling it the "scariest film ever made" - the hype had reached such epidemic proportions that it nearly turned me off the whole thing. Going in I was naturally a bit skeptical, but luckily I really enjoyed it, probably the best example of... well, I used to call them Blair-Witch-style films, but there are so many of them now that that comparison seems a bit quaint and old-fashioned, like referring to modern video games as Space Invaders. It's a documentary-style horror film. You know what I'm talking about.

Here is a plot synopsis: Micah (Micah Sloat) and Katie (Katie Featherston) set up a video camera in their bedroom in order to gather proof of some ghostly activity in their new house. During the day Micah films their conversations as they discuss their situation and what they are going to do about it. During the night he mounts the camera to a tripod and films their bed as they sleep. These sequences are where the movie really shines; time-lapse photography punctuated with ghostly happenings that are breathlessly suspenseful. At around 90 minutes it's the perfect length, it could have easily worn out the formula if it had gone on much longer.

I liked that the two leads weren't Hollywood actors. They look like normal people you might actually see or talk to in real life. They are both good actors but there is a rawness and a realism to their performances that makes them a lot more believable. You aren't constantly aware that they are annoying movie characters like in Cloverfield and the acting never gets as hammy as in The Blair Witch Project. Micah is a bit of a douchebag but he's a believable douchebag. It's understandable that he'd be really fascinated and excited by it at first, and then later that he'd want to stay and protect his girlfriend and try to take care of things himself. It's less understandable why he would sit on all that footage instead of showing it to somebody. I bet Ghost Hunters would pay a fortune for that shit.

A couple of times they call in a psychic who is a pretty funny character. He tells her that the presence in their house isn't a ghost, it's a demon, which blows because that means it's completely random and malicious, and pretty much anything you do will just piss it off more. Sucks to be you. Also, leaving the house won't do jack because it's tied to Katie's presence (a pretty clever way of dodging the usual plothole of the couple just packing their shit and leaving the house). Then he gives her the number of his demonologist friend and leaves. They are unable to contact him and, faced with some serious feces/fan interaction, they call in the psychic again. He basically says "I'm pissing this thing off more by just being here. You're on your own." and leaves. What an asshole!

This film also does a great job of integrating the camera into the story and the Paranormal Activities are kept on such a a small scale that you can (usually) understand why they would pick up a camera and try to document it instead of running for their lives. I must have shouted out "Just put the camera down, you fucking idiot!" only half a dozen times or so, which is a new record. Even more importantly, the camera is kept relatively steady. Micah actually holds the camera like a normal person; pointing it at his subject; panning and zooming steadily and sparingly. Then during the night scenes, when most of the spooky shit happens, the camera is mounted on a tripod. Hallelujah! Nice to have a film that doesn't assume modern audiences won't fall asleep from boredom if the camera isn't leaping around like a Jack Russell terrier. At the showing I went to you could hear a pin drop during those night scenes. They were as engrossed as fuck.

I had a couple of minor problems with the film. There was a part where Micah spread talcum powder on the floor to try and get evidence of the demon's presence and, well, they looked like oversized bird feet. Maybe they thought that hooves were too cliche, but I couldn't shake the feeling that she was being haunted by Big Bird. Also, I wasn't really happy with the way the film ended, with Katie covered in blood and the bad CG etc. It was too much. I would have preferred if they had cut out that final part and ended things a little more ambiguously. I'm sure it would have pissed off a lot of teenagers, but they're too busy giggling during the dramatic scenes and twittering their facebooks or whatever so fuck 'em.

This film probably isn't for everyone. In fact, I know it's not for everyone because when it finished I heard a guy say incredulously "Was that supposed to be scary?" Sorry, guy. Also, you probably won't like it if go into it expecting a huge payoff. About an hour in a oujia board catches on fire and this qualifies as one of the more over-the-top moments of the film. Those people who hated The Blair Witch Project and can't get over the double-artifice of the fake documentary style probably won't like it either. It worked for me, though. I don't think I've ever been so scared watching so little happen. If you can buy into the fake documentary style then I think you will enjoy it and movie magic will happen etc. You will believe a door can move.

Sworn to Justice (1996)

Chun Li weeps with jealousy when she sees
Rothrock's meaty thighs

I've already discussed how Jean-Claude Van Damme and Kurt McKinney, like a couple of deadbeat dads, abandoned the No Retreat, No Surrender series while it was still in it's infancy. We all know what happened to Van Damme (Bloodsport etc), but if you're anything like me you frequently wake up in a cold sweat wondering what happened to Kurt McKinney. Well, throughout the 80s he made some TV appearances on shows like ALF and General Hospital and for the past 8 years he's been on some soap opera called The Guiding Light, but I don't care about any of that shit. What about movies where he kicks bad guys in the head? Well, the only other action film he's been in since then is Sworn to Justice, where he plays love interest/sidekick to B-movie regular Cynthia Rothrock.

Rothrock plays Janna, a criminal psychologist who returns home from a trip to find her sister and nephew murdered, victims of a botched burglary. What's more, the attackers are still in the house, and after fighting them off she leaps from the balcony and crashes through the trees, getting smacked in the head with a tree branch on her way down. After she coalesces she discovers that she has developed psychometry, the ability to receive psychic impressions of somebody by touching their possessions. Like in all TV shows/movies about psychics, the visions are in black and white with a dutch tilt and annoying editing. She decides to use this ability, plus her martial arts skills, to enact vigilante justice on the people that murdered her loved ones. So it's is like Medium with more vigilante justice and roundhouse kicks.

I thought it her character's occupation was pretty unusual for this type of film. She works for a some sort of law firm/forensics lab and it's her job to give psychological assessments of criminals and determine whether they are fit for trial or require psychiatric treatment. In most vigilante films she would be one of the weaselly, criminal-coddling liberals perverting the justice system but here she's the hero. I don't think it's supposed to be ironic and she doesn't abandon her liberal beliefs like Paul Kersey in Death Wish. She believes it's her duty to give fair and unbiased advice despite the meddling of the prosecution and the defence. Good for her.

During her investigation she falls for a new coworker named Nicholas (McKinney). This guy is interested in Asian culture and has one of those goofy apartments that combines random architectural and decorative elements from a bunch of different Asian cultures, and ends up coming off as patronising rather than tributary. He is interested in martial arts too, and soon after she gives him a kung fu demonstration in her sexy night attire they are rolling around naked in front of an open fire with cheesy saxophone music playing in the background. This is followed by another sex scene later on. To be honest this film shows a lot more of Rothrock that I was after.

It really bugs me when they try to turn Cynthia Rothrock into a sex symbol. It's not that she's pushing forty (she actually looks pretty awesome for her age) or hugely unattractive or even that she's short and kind of stocky. It's that she's Cynthia fucking Rothrock; she should be kicking ass, not slinking around in lingerie and little black evening dresses. She's above that shit. It's like when they put Jet Li in sunglasses. It really doesn't help that Rothrock doesn't really have the acting skill to sell the romance either. I don't think anyone could sell risible cliches like "Is it hot in here or is it just me?" but Rothrock and McKinney definitely can't.

The men responsible for the murders are a bunch of ex-cons led by a boy-band reject named, hilariously, Eugene (Ken Scott). He's shorter than Rothrock so he must be about 4 feet tall, like a hobbit, so I find it hard to believe that this well-groomed douchebag commands respect from these guys. Although to be fair some of these guys look pretty dorky, like the lanky doofus wearing an eyepatch. Eugene takes his orders from the mysterious Mr. Big, whose identity is so ridiculously obvious I was convinced there must be some sort of third-act twist on the way (which there wasn't).

Basically the movie is a series of action scenes where Janna uses her psychic powers to track down the different scumbags responsible and murders them. Nicholas finds out about her vigilante rampage and espouses a pacifist viewpoint, but whatever, you know he's going to help her out by the end of the movie. Everything in between is padded out with some boring sub-plots and a bunch of minor characters. There's an asshole cop named Briggs (Tony Lo Bianco). There's her boss Lorraine (Katie Mitchell), who seems nice but mysteriously follows her around making scowly faces. There's a wise, blind newspaper man named Mr Young (Mako). There's also her mentor (Walter Koenig), who's a psychiatrist so of course he speaks with an outrageous German accent.

One of the subplots involves her giving expert opinion in a case involving a cop-killer. Even though the prosecution are looking to nail him to the wall, she is adamant that he requires psychiatric care rather than jail time. Well, it turns out that the nutball defendant Teddy is played by Brad Dourif (which is awesome and a good use of his Nick-Cage-like ability to over act) and when she fondles the murder weapon she discovers that he had something to do her sister's murder. She uses her psychic powers freak him out and pump him for information.

After blowing up Eugene's brother, Janna battles her way to Eugene's crims-only nightclub for the ultimate showdown. There's a pretty amusing touch here when Eugene gives a short speech and then spins around a chair to reveal his brother's crispy, blackened corpse dressed in a new suit and a terrible blonde wig. I suppose that before she arrived these guys dressed up the corpse, propped it up in a chair and then just sat around having a few drinks. Everybody mourns differently, I guess. Also the corpse blinks a few times, so noticeably that I wondered if he was supposed to be alive somehow.

Eugene and Janna then have a mediocre nun chucks vs sticks battle (there's a lot more show-offy twirling than actual fighting) which is interrupted by the reveal of Mr. Big's identity. When things look hopeless Nicholas busts in and a bad guy grabs his shirt, which tears away like stripper pants so he can whip ass without a shirt on. Unfortunately Janna doesn't deliver the final blow to Eugene, that honour goes to Nicholas while Janna chases down Mr Big on the roof. Nicholas ends up taking a bullet in the shoulder for Janna and Mr. Big completes his movie villain checklist by falling through a glass atrium roof to his death.

After watching the fast paced, Hong Kong styled action of the No Retreat, No Surrender series, I'd forgotten just how slow and boring most American martial arts films are (or at least were) in comparison. Most of the fights here are slow, over-edited and unimpressive. Sure this film was made nearly ten years after Rothrock's Hong Kong heyday, but this is nowhere near films like Yes, Madam or The Inspector Wears Skirts. The only times the film comes close to recapturing that era is during a fight with a little Asian guy in a garage and when she stumbles upon a convenience store robbery Seagal-style and defeats them using a roll of duct tape. Even the latter fight is ruined by awful cartoon sound effects, including tweeting birds when someone is dazed. I can't say I've seen too many of Rothrock's American films, but apparently this is considered one of the better ones. If that's the case I'm not sure I want to see any more.

Guy N. Smith Book Review - Fiend

The Politburo are left in a bit of a pickle when the Party Chairman, Andre Keschev, keels over from a fatal stroke while on a hunting trip. Beloved by both the party and the public, Keschev's presence is essential at an upcoming world summit in Geneva. In desperation they call on Anton Yafremov, a Russian occultist with an interest in the dark arts. He uses his black magic to bring Keschev back to life, but as we learned from Pet Semetary, when you pull this kind of stunt they never come back quite right. Soon Keschev is building up Russian military power and bringing the world to the brink of war, much to the alarm of the Politburo. There's only one option left. Assassinate Keschev. But how can you kill something that's already dead?

Firstly they assign two top KGB assassins to murder him during the talks in Geneva. Instead of a gun they are instructed to use a wooden stake under the assumption that he is a creature of darkness and firearms would be useless. I don't know, I'd at least try first. Take his head off with a sniper rifle or blow him up with a car-bomb. Let's try a few established methods before going all Van Helsing on his ass. Naturally their attempt fails and Keschev easily slaughters the assassins and blames the whole mess on the CIA. In fact, it's only at the very end of the book that someone has the bright idea of marching into his office and blasting him with a shotgun. It doesn't kill him but it does put a sizable hole in his torso that remains there for the rest of the book. A+ for effort.

Probably the weirdest assassination attempt is when they try to use an attack dog, a Rhodesian Ridgeback to be precise, to maul Keschev as he is wandering the grounds. Yafremov uses his black magic abilities (I guess?) to inhabit the body of the dog and attack him, only for the dog to be killed by Keschev and Yafremov driven insane as a result. He gets sent to a mental institution, surprising the staff when he grows a bony ridge along the length of his back. Very Tales From the Crypt but a little out of place amongst all the political intrigue.

After shipping all the Russian Jews off to concentration camps (this is not a particularly subtle book) Keschev starts purging the Christians. This hampers the conspirators' efforts to arrange an exorcist, especially when their prime candidate, the head bishop of the Russian Orthodox Church, is driven completely batshit by demonic forces. Keschev then goes about systematically murdering all of the members of the Politburo he suspects of conspiring against him, which is everyone. One gets trampled to death by a wild boar, another gets eaten by rats (scrotum first), others are crucified in Cathedral of St. Michael, it's a complete mess. Who can stop the Kremlin Beast?

The main character, if there is one, is Sergey Prokop, a KGB operative turned Kremlin paper pusher, who is blackmailed into assisting a beautiful British spy named Ursula Ramanninov. She is a famous Russian dancer and he falls in love with her even though he rightly suspects she's a honey pot. She's certainly an improvement over his fat drunken bitch of a wife, whose born again Christianity soon earns her a date with the secret police and their spiked dildo of doom. Ramanninov and Prokop gradually piece together the truth of the situation and formulate a plan to kill Keschev. However, with tensions rising and Soviet troops marching through Afghanistan and beyond, can they complete their mission before the world erupts into nuclear war?

Usually Smith's protagonists are misogynistic and one dimensional, but at least they're proactive. Prokop, on the other hand, does pretty much fuck all except get ordered around by other people and mope about his horrible wife. At one point he is assigned to protect a politican during a visit to Keschev's dascha. After completely failing at that task, a prostitute confides in him about her fear of Keschev. His response is to give her a knife and wish her luck, which goes about as well as you'd expect. Also, during the climax of the book Prokop just sits around biting his nails while Ramanninov does all the work. What an asshole.

Like in Warhead, Guy N. Smith tries to combine cold war tension with supernatural horror, but I think he's more successful here. The Russian perspective was interesting and it's always scary to have a crazed madman with their finger on the button. It's one of Smith's longer books and while the cat-and-mouse between Keschev and his conspirators is quite enjoyable it does gets a little repetitive after a while. Some decent suspense is generated as the cast of characters is whittled down and it ends in a decent and somewhat surprising climax. This is a pretty good one.

Strike of the Panther (1988)

Oh Jason Blade, you're just so dreamy.

Fans of the Day of the Panther's protagonist, the kung-fu-master/wearer-of-high-waisted-pants Jason Blade (Edward Stazak) - and who isn't a fan - will remember that at the end of the first film we were assured/warned that Jason Blade would return in Strike of the Panther. Here they make good on that promise, which probably wasn't hard since the two films were made back-to-back and released the very same year. Those of you who aren't completely up-to-date on your Blade-ology needn't fear, because the film recaps the plot of the first film in meticulous detail, a process that takes over seven minutes, even though the only thing you need to know is that Blade hooked up with a girl named Gemma (Paris Jefferson) and pussed out on killing his nemesis Baxter (Jim Richards).

After the proceedings of the first film, Baxter is sent to Fremantle prison but, fueled by a burning hatred for Jason Blade, manages to escape by, uh, climbing a sheet rope over a wall. A fittingly retro escape for a prison built in the 19th century, but such lax security was probably a contributing factor to the prison's decommissioning a couple of years after this film was made. Zucor, the criminal mastermind from the first film, is nowhere to be seen so I guess Baxter left him to rot in jail. I can't really blame him since he was kind of an asshole, but this means that the villain of this film is basically the hired muscle, like if there was a sequel to Enter the Dragon where the villain was Bolo Yeung. Actually that sounds pretty awesome.

Meanwhile, Blade has found work in the West Australian police force, training up a new criminal task force in the supposedly top-secret Panther school kung fu. A criminal psychologist from Interpol, Sgt. Lucy Andrews (Rowena Wallace), shows up to lend a hand and Blade is given the assignment of retrieving a politician's crack-addled daughter from a high class brothel. Going undercover, Blade infiltrates the brothel and finds the girl, but with the madam busting into their room every five minutes to distribute fresh towels, it's not long before his true identity is discovered. This gives Blade a great excuse to rip off his shirt and beat up some thugs, all the while dodging pervs in full-body chicken suits (Blade's incredulous response: "You're sick!!") and Angus Young schoolboy outfits.

Gemma is also up to her old tricks, seducing Blade with her sexy dance routines while he impresses her with his shirtless kung fu and frequent work-out sessions. There's also the kind of cultural exchange that is a hallmark of a burgeoning relationship; Gemma learning some kung fu moves and Blade awkwardly step-kick-stepping his way across the dance floor. It's not all leotards and sweaty pecs though. It seems that Blade is having trouble committing. Blade claims that he doesn't want to put her in danger, and he's got a good point because the next morning Gemma gets kidnapped by a couple of Baxter's hired goons.

Also returning from Day of the Panther is veteran Australian actor John Stanton as Blade's mentor (and Gemma's uncle) William Anderson. He gets hit by a car while trying to save Gemma and is stuck in a hospital bed for the rest of the film. Luckily he's still able to provide Blade with fighting advice ("Jason! Above you!") thanks to a telepathic ability that isn't explained but I guess is part of their secret Panther School training. I wish I had a psychic link with Jason Blade. Or John Stanton for that matter.

Baxter holes up with Gemma in the old Fremantle power station and demands to see Blade by 6pm that night or he kills her. Usually in a movie like this the hero would just strut right in without hesitation, but Jason Blade is a prudent man and gets Sgt. Andrews to stall Baxter while he finds out some more information. After tracking down some of Baxter's goons, it turns out that Baxter has assembled a team of expert martial artists to ambush Blade as soon as he enters the power station. Baxter has dressed them up like ninjas with hockey masks and armed them with knives, swords and kamas as well an very un-ninja-like weapons such as butterfly knives, baseball bats and blowtorches.

Thus armed with information, Blade busts into the power station while a SWAT team, led by Sgt. Andrews, breaches from the opposite side. The ninjas try to freak them out by flitting about in the shadows and one particularly brazen ninja, no doubt hearing about Blade's woeful dance moves, tries to intimidate him by break-dancing and moonwalking. Blade triumphs, thanks to the telepathic advice of his mentor, but the SWAT team get completely wiped out save for Sgt. Andrews.

Eventually Blade finds Gemma and has his final battle with Baxter while Andrews nervously defuses the time bomb that Baxter has planted on the station's transformers. After an appropriate amount of back-and-forth fisticuffs, Baxter gets kicked into a junction box and electrified, despite the fact that the power plant had been shut down years ago. This film is directed by the stunt-obsessed Brian Trenchard-Smith, so you'd think Baxter would burst into flames like in a (fellow former stuntman) Craig R. Baxley film, but here he is disappointingly restrained and Baxter simply thrashes around and expires with some cheesy sparks and smoke.

Actually this film doesn't have a lot of the awesome stunts you expect from Trenchard-Smith. There's a pretty cool moment when Blade chases a guy up the side of an apartment building and down again, only for him to get creamed by a passing car, but there's no real good car chases, explosions or gun fights. Granted the first film didn't have a lot of that either, but the action/non-action ratio seems a lot lower here too, even after cramming in some unrelated fight scenes such as Blade beating up some punks who are trying to steal his car. Like the first film, the fights are nicely choreographed and edited, and Stazak has some great moves. Probably not as good as Day of the Panther, but it's still the second best West Australian kung fu flick of 1988.