Leo Fong is looking for REVENGE!

THE LAST REUNION aka REVENGE OF THE BUSHIDO BLADE (1978)
D. Jay Wertz
Media Blasters/ Code Red/ Rare Flicks Box Set #3 1.85

My Leo Fong obsession continues. This revenge fueled swordplay movie was made in 1977 but looks to have not been actually in theaters to maybe as late as 1980 (I could be wrong about that). This time our dearest hero Mr Fong takes a creative backseat, only acting and producing, allowing for other folks to take the reigns. But his reliable acting troupe is here and accounted for as Stack Pierce, Cameron Mitchell as well as several very familiar faces in the background and stunt teams pepper the area. This is a Fong production through and through.

Leo Fong in the house! And lookin' for revenge!

The story starts out in the Philippines circa 1945 as an American platoon is about to liberate a jungle plantation occupied by the Japanese. Inside the Commanding Japanese officer is actually shown to be a rather upright, honorable man, with a son and wife. One of the American Soldiers in particular, a dude named Steadman (no relation to Oprah's stud apparently) knows he is gonna face a court marshall after this raid and is not a happy man. So he goes in guns blazing. He and a couple of other soldiers kill the Japanese officer and rape his wife, in front of the kid, then killer her too. When an American soldier finds them, the motherfucker panics and kills that cat too! All the while another soldier has cowardly stood by and watched the whole mess go down, refusing to participate or stop the madness. Steadman manages to spin the whole mess to look like the Woman attacked them and killed the soldier, and had to be killed.

I Leo Fong Bless this motherfucka killin blade in hopes that this scene will be lifted for Kill Bill in twenty years or so...

Flash forward thirty years later and the little boy is now Leo Fong, so you know asses are gonna be fucked up. He is seen practicing with a Samuria sword and mumbling about Bushido, which is a Samurai code of honor and vengeance. He goes to his job as the head of a trading company and says his goodbyes to his super hot secretary letting her know in no uncertain terms it is up to her to run the show and leaves for Manila.

Meanwhile all over the USA older dudes are leaving and heading to Manila as well. Seems there is a big reunion of soldiers going down there. Six of the big bad soldier boys from the big WWII are getting together to rehash old times. The commander has grown up to become a chain smoking Cameron Mitchell (rather subdued in this movie for once) and his right hand man Washington is now Stack Pierce. The evil fucker Steadman is now played by Hol Bokar and the coward is Phillip Baker Hall who simply owns his role. The plot from here is simple Leo Fong will hunt them down one by one, and kill them, Samurai style. Along the way we will get two barroom brawls, lots of disco dancing, and incredible disco styled lounge number about the Zodiac sung by a Philippino duo, Stack Pierce enduring far too many racial slurs from the Steadman character, and more than a few sequences that seem to have been revised for the KILL BILL movies. Oh, yeah and some cockfighting too, with the most amiable cockfighters in the history of the sport. These guys are just so happy to be doing something, anything, that they are filled with simple, JOY to just be spending time together. Very weird.

But in the last half hour, the movie changes. It goes from being a kind of weird, but fun action romp, to having a rather serious, even dark, edge. The film finds its footing and heart beat, with the writing getting intensely better. From the moment Fong's character confronts the Coward, well actually the moment before that. When the Coward is with the kind hearted Hooker, and he cannot perform with her because of the years of guilt and alcohol he has abused himself with, the movie hits a melancholy note. A note that is, just right. When the Coward starts to beg Fong not to kill him because he IS a coward, then stops to ask for a drink and tells him, he has "been dead for years, that he is not a man, hasn't lived as a man, and wants to finally die like a man", it is some poetic shit. Some Peckinpah, poetic shit. And Fong's acting in the moment when he HAS to kill him is up to par too. The whole scene is just fucking sublime. It is stuff like this, moments like these, that keep me combing through these exploitation movies. This is the kind of stuff that in mine eyes, is BETTER filmmaking that the crap that is shoved down our throats in the multiplexes today.

"BUSHIDO!!!"

There are plenty of good things after this scene. A beautiful double montage as Cameron Mitchell visits the war memorial/graveyard in Manila for American soldiers, while at the same time Leo Fong visits a war torn, rusting monument to a major battle field where many Japanese lives were lost. It is a montage with no narration just images and war sounds and a ton of emotional impact about how wars kills indiscriminately. The film has a rather sad, but tidy wrap up, and a final line delivery by Mitchell that at first seems kind of maudlin, but soon as he is done saying it, the truth to it weighs in. the final walk off line of the movie, though clearly over stated, is actually pretty profound.

So what you end up getting is a revenge/action film, that is less action and more philosophical, anti-war film. With bar fights, decapitations, lounge singing, and lots of 70's actors boozing it up. I'm in exploitation groove heaven here guys. And this is a fucking great movie.

"What's for dinner? Oh I've already had some head today..."

The DVD here in the Rare Flix box set #3 is in bad shape though. Clearly taken from either a 1 inch video master or several different masters, it is a mess. The color timing is all over the map, with is shifting from one scene to the next, sometimes one shot to the next. The video rolls during several scenes (tipping off that it is from a video master), the sound levels are mixed for shit (though that could be the low budget of the original production). Even with bad materials, there was clearly very little effort put into cleaning this up. There are two trailers for the movie, one under the original title and one with the REVENGE OF THE BUSHIDO BLADE title dubbed in. Some "deleted" scenes that amount to roughly ten seconds of alternate shots. best of all is that there is a Leo Fong commentary, which I had not listened to as of yet. But considering how stone faced he can be during his movies, I fear he might be as well during a commentary. But I bet you can feel him staring at you if he is. Just waiting to kick your ass.

Review © Andy Copp

I could not find a trailer for this movie, so this classic one for Fong's LOW BLOW will have to suffice.

Man that was a LOW BLOW!!!!

LOW BLOW (1986)
D. Frank Harris
BCI/ NAVARRO
1.85

Part of the Maximum Action 10 pack (now out of print)

Before reading the excellent one two punch books GODS IN POLYESTER and GODS IN SPANDEX I had never heard of Leo Fong. I had maybe seen his name here and there, but never knew who he was. But after reading his recollections of making kung fu styled action films with pennies on the dollar I fond myself really fond of the guy and had to find some of his films. Then after checking out the movie movie WILD RIDERS in one of the BCI DRIVE IN CULT CLASSICS packs there was a trailer for LOW BLOW and I was completely sold. My girlfriend and I HAD to see this movie! We become more than a little bit obsessed with seeing our first Leo Fong movie. I almost didn't get to as the MAXIMUM ACTION set that I found on Ebay never came and after a little research I found that it was out of print. I sent some emails to the company I ordered it from explaining that I NEEDED my Leo Fong fix! That I would not be a complete cult film fan until I got Leo Fong into my life! And they came through, in some dusty corner of the DVD warehouse, hiding under a million copies of GIRLS GONE WILD THE CATHOLIC YEARS was one last copy of MAXIMUM ACTION with not one but TWO Leo Fong movies in the set. Joy was about to set in my peoples!!!


We were not disappointed at all. Within five minutes of the opening of LOW BLOW it had lived up to the what we had expected. The movie hits the ground running, not unlike the vastly inferior LETHAL WEAPON 2 with the action already in progress. A thugs are robbing a coffee shop, roughing up the patrons and generally being loud pricks. The next building over is the office of tough guy Private Investigator Joe Wong (played by our hero Leo Fong) who is aggravated by the noise and ruckus. He throws on his members only jacket and tells his pretty and perky secretary "I'm gonna go see what all the noise is about!" Within two minutes those trouble makers are eating the floor with much foot being put to ass, and Mr. Wong has barely broke a sweat at all. But low and behold some nasty bastards are taking some old ladies purse outside, so they are gonna have to be taught a lesson too! But it is all in a day's work for Mr. Wong. Ass kicking is a way of life! He also has a comic relief car that only he can start by popping the hood and whacking it with a tire iron.Leo Fong's screen presence is a strange one at best, with his pinched up face that consistently looks like someone in the room has just farted, and stiff walk like he may flip out at any second. He's wound tighter than the rubber bands holding the roll of twenty's that was the budget of this flick. His line delivery, all ten of them, is fast, and to the point. Like lines are just a waste of time to get to some ass kicking. He might very well hop out of the screen and punch you at any moment.

The plot finally kicks in when a blond California bimbo is being indoctrinated into some Johnstown styled cult run by a blind Cameron Mitchell and his African Princess named Karma (played by respected black actress Akosua Busia, who actually gives a great performance here). It is never really explained what the cult is actually doing, but it is all about love, enlightenment, and digging in the fields all damn day long. At one point it is revealed they are planting, wait for it, asparagus! Evil bastards!!! Seems the bimbo is the daughter of a rich industrialist played by Troy Donahue and he wants his little girl back. After witnessing Mr. Wong whopping the ass of some Latino's who were trying to steal his hub caps he decides that Wong is the man for the job!

But wait! After some shenanigans in the camp where Mr. Wong gets mildly roughed up (and Karma is clearly enjoying herself, because her nipples clearly get hard after every bit of torture she inflicts on Mr. Wong!) he decides he cannot do this alone. So he holds a tough man contest to find some teammates to help him infiltrate the compound and get the now drugged and wigged out babe to safety. So now it is THE DIRTY DOZEN street style!

Weird thing about this movie is that it is almost family friendly in some ways. The violence (outside of one nasty head squishing) is mostly hand to hand combat kung fu stuff. The gun play is very toned down. There is no bad language or sex to speak of at all. Watching it you can't help but to feel like Leo Fong was trying to appeal as wide a base as possible. And make no mistake, this is Leo Fong's show. He wrote, produced and starred in this bad boy. He raised the financing and made it happen.

There's tons of weird moments to recommend here, like several of Karma's freak outs, the bad guy who gets thrown into a pile of cute puppies who proceed to lick his unconscious body, Leo Fong's attempts at breakfast table comedy, the REALLY out of place macho bonding casual racism that will make you uncomfortable, the muscle bound blond pit fighter chick, that head squishing i previously mentioned, or the incredible compilation worthy action scene were Fong chases four bad guys into their car. He gets so pissed he rips the cables out of the engine, beat the CAR up, smashes all the windows out with a two by four and then buzz saws the top of the car itself off just to kick them all in the ass and send them on their way! Truly it is one of the most amazing scenes I have ever seen in an action film!

So before Seagal, before Van Damme, there was Leo Fong! And he did it for the among of money those guys spent on hair stylists.

Leo Fong, APPROVED!!!

Andy Copp