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I wanted to but couldn't!

From my favorite movies..

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Lovely, but tough and lethal karate champion Susanne Carter (a winningly spunky performance by gorgeous blonde knockout Jillian Kesner) stumbles across a nefarious drug cartel and a ruthless to-the-death martial arts tournament while searching for her missing sister in the Philippines. Director Cirio H. Santiago, who also co-wrote the blithely low-grade script with Ken Metcalfe, relates the entertaining story at a brisk pace, delivers a sizable smattering of tasty gratuitous female nudity (Kesner gets stripped down to her panties by two slimy thugs in one especially hot and thrilling set piece), stages the wall-to-wall no-holds-barred martial arts fights with a reasonable amount of flair and competence, and certainly doesn't skimp on the unflinchingly grisly violence. This movie further benefits from a solid cast of familiar B-pic regulars: hunky Darby Hinton as cocky ace karate fighter Chuck Donner, Metcalfe as smooth head villain Erik, the ubiquitous Vic Diaz as crude and short-tempered dope connection Grip, Chandra Romero as smart and sultry moll Malow, Tony Ferror as dogged narcotics cop Tony, and Peter Cooper as scruffy bartender Pete. Nonong Buencamino's throbbing synth score hits the get-down funky spot. Ricardo Remias' fairly polished cinematography likewise does the trick. The sex scene between Susanne and Chuck in which they cut off each other's clothes with knives is a sizzling doozy. A real blast.

The plot is of secondary importance: something about a female karate champion who goes to the Phillipines to investigate her sister's disappearance and stumbles on a drug ring and a tournament of no-holds-barred fights to the death. The film is mainly a showcase for the beautiful, athletic, voluptuous woman and convincing, tough fighter Jillian Kesner - and I have no complaints there: she has about 10 fight scenes in this movie, the first one of which occurs after only 2 minutes! The production is very cheap, but the fight choreography is actually quite good - not exactly on the level of early Jackie Chan but certainly vastly preferable to the heavily wired, computer-enhanced crap that so often passes for martial arts today. The long scene in which Kesner ends up topless as she tries to fight off two attackers is not just exploitation, but almost a statement: here is this undressed, unarmed, completely feminine woman and these two men can't touch her, can't even go near her without getting hurt. I'm surprised this B-movie mini-classic is so little known today. (**1/2)

Yup, star Jillian Kesner does manage to combine a karate fight scene with a slow strip, and it actually is a bit sexy. She's not the most lovely woman who ever took her clothes off in a movie, but I thought she was attractive and there's something appealing to a certain sort of adolescent sexual mind (like mind) in the sequence. She gets her clothes ripped off, a bit at a time, while she's fighting for her life. It adds vulnerability to her physical allure, and that worked for me. Of course, that's because it's a movie, and not reality. Seeing women attacked for real is nothing I hope for. Hell, most of what happens in movies is nothing I hope for.There are other scenes in this movie, but I don't remember any of them from the one time I saw it, over 20 years ago. They're probably awful. But, who cares? There are many films that are worth seeing for one scene and, if you share my fondness for the sort of thing that makes teenaged boys snicker and rewind their VCRs, over and over, you'll think this is one of them.

This movie was probably singularly responsible for my interest in B-grade martial arts movies. I saw it when I was very young (before cable - eeeeek!) on late-night "Kung-fu Theater". The local station had obviously made a mistake and aired the movie uncut - violence, nudity, and all! The epic final fight scene finds the heroine steadily losing pieces of her clothing one item at a time until she finishes the battle wearing nothing but her panties. The sight of her fighting in such a condition forever made me a fan of the genre! See it if you have a chance.