Review: Samurai Cop (1991)

Mathew Karedas (credited as Matt Hannon) stars as the title San Diego cop now transferred to Los Angeles to tackle a Japanese drug syndicate called The Katana Clan (headed by Cranston Komuro). Mark Frazer plays Karedas’ partner on the force, whilst Gerald Okamura and Robert Z’Dar play Komuro’s subordinates. Melissa Moore plays a fellow cop Karedas beds down with at one point, Jannis Farley plays Karedas’ chief love interest (a restaurant owner), and an actress simply credited as ‘Cameron’ plays Z’Dar’s girlfriend…whom Kaderas also seduces.

Nearly every review of Amir Shervan’s cheap and dull “Killing American Style” seemed to suggest I perhaps had started with the wrong Shervan film. So here I am having now seen his 1991 ‘magnum opus’ of crap. Indeed this is the Armin Shervan film to see for those of a certain deranged cinematic mindset like me. Sadly, it was his last directorial effort even though he didn’t pass away until 2006. Apparently he just couldn’t get financing for anything else, even though a sequel to this film was made after his death by other personnel. If it’s not the worst film of all-time (I believe “Plan 9 From Outer Space” permanently earned that great, honourable distinction), it’s still possibly the worst-directed and worst-edited movie of all-time. How in the hell did this get a sequel? Pure bad movie noteriety perhaps?

Writer-director Sherman and his co-editor Ruben Zadurian (“Killing American Style”) are utterly incompetent when it comes to basic editing rhythm, nor does Sherman have any clue how to set his characters and situations up. 14 minutes in and you still haven’t the faintest clue who these people are or what’s going on here. The dialogue is terrible, it’s “Troll 2” all over again as we get a filmmaker with no aptitude for how human beings speak or behave. I almost feel bad for the cast, because Lord Laurence Olivier would’ve struggled with some of this shit. The shot choices are bizarre too, lots of close-ups and several shots of Gerald Okamura are clearly done in different locations to other shots in the same scene. It reminds me of that bizarrely shot M&M’s ad with the intimidating father inviting a heavily tattooed prospective son-in-law to do some pruning. I swear there’s something odd about the camerawork and framing in that ad. No-budget filmmaking at its finest, Edward D. Wood Jr. would be proud.

In “Killing American Style”, Hispanic actor Joselito Rescober played a Japanese character, and here gigantic-faced B-movie icon Robert Z’Dar is woefully miscast as a Japanese villain with a ponytail and a beard that doesn’t remotely match his hair colour. Z’Dar isn’t at his best here, and his best wasn’t ever that much, let’s be honest. Despite his gargantuan facial features, he’s got a completely ineffectual voice and seems frankly bored by the whole thing. That said, at least Z’Dar has size – albeit mostly in his jaw – whereas the chief heavy here played by Cranston Komuro is comparatively tiny. He also completely lacks screen presence or menace of any kind whatsoever. The leading man in “Killing American Style” had a hair metal guitarist look and here our lead Mathew Karedas looks like a cross between Fabio and Rainbow singer Joe Lynn Turner. He’s every bit as absurd as Z’Dar but also strangely unlikeable. In addition to being a serial cheater, he’s also an ugly racist. He almost makes the late Chuck Norris seem PC. The aforementioned Joselito Rescober plays a Costa Rican this time, a flamboyantly gay Costa Rican waiter. It’s a wildly different turn from the Filipino actor and doctor, but I assume he’s much better in the latter profession than he is as an actor. Shout out to Mark Frazer as Karedas’ stereotypical African-American partner who thinks he’s super smooth and cool, but is easily the least cool person in the entire film. He’s a dork but he thinks he’s Steve James mixed with Eddie Murphy. Softcore star Melissa Moore looks tranquilised throughout (not the only time I've made that observation about her if I recall correctly), and participates in one of the least sexy sex scenes not featuring Tommy Wiseau. It’s as flat as most of the line readings, which are so unbelievably bad that you can’t believe they were left in. Some of them are flubbed, other times you can clearly see the actors slowly searching their brain for the line. Hilarious stuff. Much better than Moore is an actress named Janis Farley (spelled ‘Jannis’ here), who is hot but seemingly never acted again, sadly. Actor and martial arts choreographer Gerald Okamura (recognisable as the bald Wing Kong fighter in “Big Trouble in Little China”) does a competent job with the violent action, but it’s rendered unexciting and poor due to the direction and editing. Look out for Z’Dar’s sword in his big fight scene, it looks all dinged up before it begins…because it was likely shot after he actually used it. And the fight is mostly in close-up. Yeah. One action scene has the same shot of Samurai Cop firing his gun played twice in a row. And why is a guy called Samurai Cop using a gun more often than a sword anyway? Nice arm slice at one point though, and Okamura’s own fight scene is pretty decent. A word of warning though: You get the horrifying jump scare of Gerald Okamura in his underwear here. I did have to laugh at Okamura being referred to as a ‘big bald dude’. He’s certainly two of those things, but he’s about 5ft tall.

The kind of awful film that is so poorly done that it really makes you appreciate competent, workman-like mediocrity. How the hell does something this poorly made get unleashed on the viewing public (albeit most widely seen many years after it was made)? I guess we should be glad that it does exist, purely as a bad movie curiosity. And because there’s lots of boobs in it.

Rating: F