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Director: |
Cirio H. Santiago |
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Writers: |
Dick Miller and Ken Metcalfe |
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Cast: |
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Jeannie Bell |
Diana ‘T.N.T.’ Jackson |
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Stan Shaw |
Charlie |
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Pat Anderson |
Elaine |
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Ken Metcalfe |
Sid |
Synopsis:
Learning of her
brother’s demise at the hands of a ruthless drug lord in Hong Kong, the
beautiful lethal karate expert Diana T.N.T Jackson joins the drug underworld turning
it upside down while taking vengeance on the killer of her brother, Brother!
Review:
This is another one of
those special movies from a collection of mostly bad and forgotten tittles. And
like so many of the others I wasn’t expecting too much from this one, but then
I’ve never seen this sort of martial arts performed at this level before. It is
both a spectacle and a mystery to behold as you watch the many foes of our
heroin devastated by her cries of ‘Ha!’ and her never coming close to touching them.
I guess the point here is we know these films are fake. No one believes anyone
is actually beating the hell out of 5 or 6 guys; it’s just that you don’t see
it done with this level of disregard for the genre. It’s as if the production
team said let’s make a Blaxploitation / Kung Fu Film so bad no one will ever
make one again, and if you can sit all the way through this one, you just might
think that way. The only way to know for sure is to watch it all like me.
Our exciting adventure
opens on a mean street in Hong Kong (we only get to see the one street) and
then focuses on a theatre. This is the first time we get to meet Charlie, the
big time drug dealer. Coincidentally this is also where we get to see Jackson’s
brother for the first and last time. So the point of this part of the plot is that
her brother was holding out on a brother, so he killed her brother. This
unfortunate incident stops mail coming to Diana (T.N.T.) leaving her no choice
but to fly to Hong Kong to find out why. Diana gets dropped off on the edge of
the mean streets of Manila, oops I meant Hong Kong, and right away in the first
alley she enters, we get to see some pimp smacking one of his topless girls in
the street until a rival pimp puts him out of business. The rest of the locals
aren’t much better and they sure don’t like Americans since all Diana does, is
ask if they speak English and they start a big Kung Fu brawl. We get treated to
some pretty hokey fighting and some guy with large butterfly knives showing off
his skill including the old throw it behind the back and over the shoulder
trick that they had to speed up so he didn’t take off any fingers. I don’t
think there was much in the budget for props.
After fending off several waves of attackers, that
politely wait their turn for her to beat the crap out of them, Diana makes it
to the end of the alley meeting Elaine in her limo. She is the embedded drug
enforcement agent planted deep in the local underworld as the squeeze of the
big bad white dealer. They don’t seem to get along but that doesn’t stop Elaine
from dropping her off at Joe’s Heaven, and this is a convenient place for
things to get a bit muddy. We meet Joe, but we never get to see what he’s
really all about. In his intro scene we see him supposedly instructing some
form of martial arts, but his opponent has a black belt and seems to know what
he is doing while Joe has a white belt and winds up on the floor a lot (BJJ?).
He seems to be at the centre of the shady part of town, knows all the players,
and even more important they seem to know him. I’d hate to just call him an
exposition device because he’s central to one of the best scenes in the film.
Joe offers to do some
investigating for Diana on the whereabouts or status of her brother. This is
where Joe is both awesome and fuzzy at the same time. He shows up at our local cinema
from the opening and he looks like Jim Rockford on another case. This part is important:
he asks the theatre manager if he knows anything about a missing American black
man. The manager thinks real hard trying to remember something that should be
at the front of his mind, unless young black American men are murdered on stage
on a regular basis. It happened during a live performance in front of a full
house which had slipped his mind until a sudden revelation. But, before he can
get another word out, they are spotted by some thugs that go to guns immediately. One of them is in Plaid, and everyone in Hong
Kong knows Plaid means a mother is goin’ down. Joe’s not taking their crap and
in one of the best choreographed scenes, he kills one of them and takes his gun
killing Plaid man. Later on our drug lord has his drug deal hijacked featuring
a large gun fight between gangsters with lots of machineguns and lots of
gangsters all making this look like real movie. In fact these scenes are done so
well, if you accidentally came across them on some late night broadcast, you
might consider watching, but we know soon it will go back to shouting “Ha!”
I don’t want to reveal
too much of the plot, mostly because it was hard enough for me to figure out so
why shouldn’t you. And, I’m not saying that this film is clever, instead I can
honestly say I can’t remember the last time I had to keep backing up to see
what I missed. It’s not complex, it’s dull. Over and over I had to back up
because I had been busy looking at stuff on the floor, or just plain forgetting
it’s on. However there are some scenes that will get your attention other than
Joe’s shoot out. Diana gets into real bare-boobs fight in her room. There is a
very unimpressive stripper at Joe’s club which adds nothing to the story other
than making Diana and Elaine look very good except when they fight; it’s fugly
and slow motion didn’t help. There were only two technical aspects to this
film. For some reason they put a lot of effort and thought into gun play. I don’t
think the same can be said for the martial arts part which was a lot more of
the movie and never looked real. The one part of this movie that does look real
is boobies and they come out a lot. One thing I’m certain of is you won’t like
the ending. It’s sudden and abrupt, but hey, at least you don’t have to keep
watching.
Lessons Learned:
·
It’s not just a style choice, everyone knows the way to beat that
Tropic Asian heat is full leather Brother!
·
You know, add a small length of chain and a second suitcase she
might have something.
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It’s real hard to keep your Kata while watching things bounce.
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If ‘Panties’ are noted as a continuity error on your IMDB page, it’s
an automatic move to the watch list.
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The strippers in Hong Kong are not what we were led to believe.
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Drug lords expect you to pay in cash, who knew?
·
It is not a spray on tan.
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