Day Five of the September Exploitation Challenge
BLACK FORCE (1974)D. Micheal Fink
Urban Showdown Multi Disc Pack
VHS Rip
Wow, this is stinky piece of shit. I have a HIGH tolerance for crap and can usually find at least something in most any movie from the golden age of exploitation as long as it isn’t boring. But let me tell you, it took real balls to foist this on the public. I can’t even imagine the stoned out crowd that had to be stuck watching this thing on 42nd st back in the day. One of only two directing credits for director (and boy do I use that term loosely) Michael Fink, the other being VELVET SMOOTH which is in the well worn multi back BAD BROTHAS MEAN MOTHAS. So help me God if I end up watching that (I probably will).
The entire cast is made up not of actors but Multi-belt martial artists with the only recognizable name being Warhawk Tanzania from the similar piece of shit GANG WARS (that for reasons I cannot explain when it comes out on DVD from CODE RED I will still buy). They play an elite “Black Force” or super trained Martial Artists (we know they are well trained because we spend a twelve minute sequence watching them show their skills - without soundtrack music!) are are hired to find the fat-assed thug who stole a priceless African artifact.
What ensues are endless montages of these dudes (and one lady) walking the streets of New York cut with lots of shots of garbage trucks and street signs, over dubbed with gibberish that is supposed to be them questioning people, but sounds like secret recordings from an insane asylum. Lots of street fights occur, at random, with people we have no idea who the hell they are. Occasionally a fight will be semi impressive with a stunt or move that catches your attention. As are some of the eye straining fashions. But mostly it is just confusing.
And cheap. Dirt cheap. Like homeless cheap. Like they found the film stock in a trash can, rounded up their karate school friend wrote the script on a McDonalds wrapper and dubbed the whole thing later when it was edited and they were drunk. THAT kind of cheap.
To make matters worse the transfer in this box set is clearly from a decades old VHS, probably EP in origin, then wedged on a DVD-5 disc with THREE other movies! So they took what was already a crappy looking movie, made it look worse on a VHS and then said “all well fuck it, how can we make this look even worse than before? I know squeeze this shit out of it on DVD!”
But did I enjoy this? If I could edit it down to a fifteen minute movie I might. Luckily for me the last ten to fifteen minutes of the movie are just that, the “good parts” repeated over to fill the movie up to feature length! So skip ahead to about the hour and five minute mark and you get a highlight reel!
To make matters worse the transfer in this box set is clearly from a decades old VHS, probably EP in origin, then wedged on a DVD-5 disc with THREE other movies! So they took what was already a crappy looking movie, made it look worse on a VHS and then said “all well fuck it, how can we make this look even worse than before? I know squeeze this shit out of it on DVD!”
But did I enjoy this? If I could edit it down to a fifteen minute movie I might. Luckily for me the last ten to fifteen minutes of the movie are just that, the “good parts” repeated over to fill the movie up to feature length! So skip ahead to about the hour and five minute mark and you get a highlight reel!
Review © Andy Copp
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