Samurai Cop (1991)

OH BOY. Samurai Cop. One of the big motherfuckers of the worst movie genre. Samurai Cop has to be a Top 5 in terms of most well known alongside; Plan 9 From Outer Space, Manos Hands of Fate, Battlefield Earth, and The Room. I honestly thought about not bothering with this one. It's been done so many times by YouTubers, Podcasters, like what am I going to bring the table that's fresh, that's different, that hasn't been said before? Honestly? Probably nothing. But ironically Samurai Cop doesn't feature on my list of Worst Movies Ever Made, maybe because it flew under the radar at the time? But I feel like there is something to be said about these super cringe "terrible" movies that go on to achieve cult status? Like The Room, which in recent times I actually went the cinema to watch a showing of it. I will never review it... But because of their ultimate terrible-ness they've gone on to become cinematic cornerstones... for better or for worse... and despite heralded as the ultimate "worst movies", as someone who is sort of becoming an expert on the subject matter; they really aren't. I can give you a good list of the worst movies I've ever watched. And I promise you now. As poorly scripted, as poorly produced, as completely nonsensical, as terribly performed The Room is. There are a good 10, 20 odd movies I would put before it that are 15x, 20x worse and less entertaining than The Room is and all of them came out before 2003. Some of them after... so yeah. I guess what I'm saying is; Samurai Cop is shit and you don't need me to tell you that but I guess what I can bring to the table is - how does this movie stack up against the absolute crème de la diarrhoea crème of bad movies? I am excited to find out. I actually, genuinely, haven't watched this before.

After the opening scene introduces the evil Katana gang and their leader; Mr. Fujiyama (Craston Komuro) and his incredibly impressive mullet and moustache combination, ruthlessly slaughtering a Chinese criminal gang, we are introduced to cop duo; Joe Marshall (Matt Hannon / Mathew Karedas) - a Martial Arts trained, incredibly long haired ladies man and Frank Washington (Mark Frazer) - his wise cracking black partner, who after a tip off from a Chinese gang member trail a van suspected of belonging to Katana Gang on it's way to carry out a cocaine deal. They get into a shootout and a chase that ends with the van careering off the road and into a wall exploding into flames. This understandably upsets Mr. Fujiyama and he sends his top henchman; Yamashita (Robert Z'Dar) to take care of Joe. Meanwhile Joe and Frank pay a visit to the horrifically burned van driver in hospital where the nurse just outright asks Joe if he would like to fuck her. Joe says: "bingo." and then she blows him off... I mean err... figuratively, not... it doesn't matter, anyway they leave their horrifically burned patient in the hands of Officer Steve who, when he lets his guard down, unwittingly allows Yamashita to be snuck into the room where, by the order of Mr. Fujiyama, he promptly cuts of the guys head and take's it home with him. After Joe and Frank get a bollocking and Joe almost gets fired, the team get some intel that Mr. Fujiyama is hanging out at the Blue Lagoon restaurant. They pay it a visit where Mr. F. is wining and dining his American girlfriend; Jennifer (Janis Farley) along with all his pals, associates, and work colleagues. Joe confronts the gang at the table and promises them he will "ship their dead bodies back to Japan to be used as fertilizer" to coin a phrase, and calls them motherfuckers. This seems to subtly impress Jennifer and Joe promises he will see her later before asking the eccentric Costa Rican waiter to pass on a message that he thinks she is very lovely. Not impressed by Joe's little display, Yamashita joins them outside in the parking lot and dispatches his gang of hired goons on Joe and Frank to take care of them. After they do a pretty piss poor job of doing over Joe, and end up all in handcuffs, Yamashita pulls out a massive uzi and proceeds to just gun them all down, killing his own men and trying to take Joe and Frank with them in the process. After they manage to evade him just long enough for Yamashita to get bored and wander off, Joe explains to Frank that he killed his own men under the "Code of Silence", as he doesn't want anyone talking to the Police. Joe heads back to the restaurant and catches Jennifer alone who explains that Mr. Fujiyama helped her and her mother run the restaurant financially after her father passed away. Despite Joe trying to explain the true source of Mr. Fujiyama's money and despite his best efforts in trying to convince her to go for dinner, Joe walks away unsuccessful but appears to have left some impression on Jennifer... On the way out Joe runs into a waiting gang of more hired goons, but after getting the better of one of them, he learns that they were sent to kill him by Okamura (Gerald Okamura) - one of the Katana Gangs leaders. Joe and Frank rock up at Okamura's house with Officer and walking innuendo Peggy (Melissa Moore) - the eye candy of this picture and Officer Johnson (?) another cop. Joe and Frank barge in on Okamura getting jiggy with it and he has the flee the scene in his little black underpants. Somehow managing to become fully dressed as he evades the police, Okamura leads Joe out into the garden at the back of the house where they have a shootout until Okamura runs out of bullets and they instead engage in a much more traditional martial arts fight. That ends when Joe overpowers Okamura and Frank arrests him only for Joe to have to shoot him when he tries to surprise Joe by pulling Frank's gun on him. Joe laments - briefly - that he wasn't able to capture him alive. After another hit on Joe fails miserably and he takes everybody out, he approaches and collects Jennifer from the church she visits on Sundays. This not going unnoticed by one of Mr. Fujiyama's men who reports back to him as such. Taking Jennifer back to his place he proceeds to cook her a full roast dinner... before they disrobe into their swimwear and canoodle on the beach and then in the swimming pool. Fair play! Meanwhile Yamashita and his men burst into Officer Johnson's place and when he won't give them the location of Joe's house, they slaughter him and his wife. They then split up and head to Frank and Peggy's place individually with 2 goons trying to get the best of Frank when, catching him heading out the shower they threaten to cut off his "black gift" and yes that means exactly what you think it means. Frank gets the better of them but Peggy is less lucky, getting overpowered by Yamashita and 2 of his henchmen who torture her with burning oil into telling them where Joe lives. After Joe gets done banging Jennifer, Frank reaches him on the phone and warns him the Katana Gang are on their way to kill him. Hastily putting some clothes on, Joe and Jennifer make their escape, making it to Joe's car and speeding away. Presumably dropping Jennifer back off at the restaurant she confesses to her mum she doesn't want anything to do with Mr. Fujiyama any more because she is "in love." which is unfortunate as Mr. F. just happens to walk into the room as she says it... Deciding that he's had enough, Captain Rohmer (Dale Cummings) orders Joe and Frank to storm Mr. Fujiyama's compound and kill everyone there, essentially. Arriving onsite, after a bit of a gunfight in the gardens, Joe and Frank storm the house and confront Mr. F. who is holding Jennifer captive, demanding that he go free to flee the country but just when he think's he got the best of the police duo he discovers Frank is one step ahead and thought to wear a bullet proof vest. As a result he takes a slug in the chest and that's the end of Mr. Fujiwara! Deciding that before they go they have to take care of Yamashita, Joe and Frank sneak up on his... cabin?... and a massive firefight breaks out. Reaching something of a stalemate, Yamashita challenges Joe to a sword fight and the two start posturing in the garden before locking blades. With Joe managing to overcome him but refusing to execute him, Yamashida commits Hari Kari, taking his own life.

I think I was watching an internet friendly version of this movie as there was significantly less boobs than I've heard about which was... not... disappointing at all... but in seriousness that was Samurai Cop. A movie wrought with some very questionable production techniques, some very questionable acting but hands down, by far and away not the worst thing I have ever watched. Not even close. It is very clear and obvious to me from watching this that a lot of love and attention was put into this thing. There might not have been a lot of skill involved... but I am 100% sure that everybody here was just trying to make this the absolute best version of what it's painfully limited range could allow it to be.

Matt Hannon, or Mathew Karedas depending on which name you want to go with, is the absolute star of the show. He long flowing dark locks and his muscular hairy physique grace this movie with it's presence and combined with the fact that he's a pretty unusual looking guy, I am absolutely convinced that without him, if you just cast some regular looking dude in the same role, it falls flat on it's arse. Not to say that Mark Frazer as Frank isn't the perfect accompaniment because he is, and his wise cracks and sly little comments just garnish the pairing. They have... limited... chemistry at best and the dialogue between them is short and stunted, absolutely, but the casting is perfect as a kind of buddy cop pairing that absolutely works and absolutely doesn't work. It's a kind of a beautiful juxtaposition. 

There is also a good bunch of morbidly fascinating characters in this thing. Lots of incredible hair styles and fashion choices. Unfortunately for all the wrong reasons.. and some of the voices... I swear are intentionally terrible. Mr. Fujiyama himself sounding like somebody doing a terrible impersonation of a Japanese gangster. It absolutely cannot be his natural voice. I refuse to believe it. And the Costa Rican waiter in the restaurant? I have no idea what the fuck was going on there. It was like some kind of weird science experiment... 'Hey, we have to overdub the voices. Why not make them as completely over the top and ridiculous as we possibly can?' It was bafflingly intriguing. Like watching a car crash in slow motion.

Storyline-wise things are kept pretty basic, which is probably for the best really, but there is enough of a plot to a degree to give the movie some structure and build some action scenes around. It's a pretty standard affair; your buddy cop duo are trying to take down a Japanese mobster. And it rarely strays outside of that to be honest. If you're here expecting complex thought provoking plot development you are watching the wrong movie, mate. It was average but there was - I think - just enough to give the movie some semblance of order and not collapse into a stupid, cheesy mess.

In terms of production values, this was where the amatuerish nature and low budget-ness really shone through. For some reason, there was a lot of close up shots that must have all been shot with the same focal length lens? And they produced this really kind of awkward head and neck framing that was really uncomfortable to watch. And they used it alot in this movie. Scene after scene. If they had just recomposed the shots to get a bit more of the shoulders in it would have gone completely unnoticed. But they didn't. And it didn't. Other than that though, the rest of the cinematography was fairly decent. Even with the fight scenes and the shoot outs. There was decent enough camera use to cloak the fact that they couldn't use mega expensive special effects to produce more accurate death scenes. But it was hard to compensate for the weird close up angles that were going on.

And there was some slightly hasty editing going on, although that could have been down to my truncated version I was watching, but there is a fair few moments where it's a pretty abrupt transition cos they gotta move on to the next scene. But the whole thing was filmed like it had this kind of really charming home movie aesthetic to it. Right down to a low key buzzing of the microphone in the background. It was completely unintentional and probably down to shooting the whole thing on the cheap to be honest. But I actually kinda liked it. It gave the movie a very amateurish and unprofessional edge granted but also gave it a kind of lo-fi feeling that complimented the dodgy outfits and the dodgy haircuts. It's kinda difficult to put my finger on it. I liked it I guess for the same reason people like listening to music on tape or vinyl records? A more authentic feeling? I don't know.

Despite the quite clearly bad production values, the awkward and cheesy acting, and the obviously painfully low budget the movie was confined to, I found it really difficult not to enjoy this movie. It got a little bit tedious towards the end and I think you could probably trim this thing down some 15 odd minutes and it wouldn't suffer, but I overall found it enjoyable. Even if it was just in a morbidly curious kind of way and yeah, I'll probably watch this again, not gonna lie. It was by far and away not the worst thing I've ever watched and anyone who tells you it is clearly doesn't have the bad movie pedigree that I do. I definitely felt that love, attention, planning and effort was put into this and you can't deny that it wasn't. Even if the result was not very good. It's like baking a really disappointing cake that crumbles to pieces when you pull it out the oven, but still retains something of a cake based shape and it tastes decent enough. 2 stars out 5.