Terrible movie thematically related to Shadowrun, "American Streetfighter" (1992) Options

[Wounded Ronin]

Yesterday I saw a really terrible movie called "American Streetfighter" which was originall produced in 1992 but which was re released in 2004 by Kreative Digital Entertainment. The main actors were Gary Daniels, Ian Jacklin, Tracy Dali, and Gerald Okamura.

In fact, the movie was a poorly-acted low-budget hash of all the most hideous and crappy forms of 1980s orientalism, and as such is related to Shadowrun. When I first saw the film the poor image quality and the content made me think that the film must have been from the mid 80s. I was shocked when I saw the production date was '92 since Revenge of the Ninja was probably a better film in the conventional use of the term better rather than even an ironic or sarcastic use.

I found the IMDB entry: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103674/


The premise of the movie is that a blond muscular American with really big hair has to flee the country after the son of the Japanese yakuza boss dies while they're on a Shadowrun which involves taping a timed explosive to the side of a jukebox. Dear god, you really can't make this stuff up.

So, he flees to Hong Kong where he sits in a small office with colored light and a fake cheap looking suit of samurai armor and a giant exec chair. (This is how I envision high level corporate offices looking in Shadowrun, except that nobody realizes how bad the samurai armor looks due to everyone being trapped in an orientalist hallucination) He sits in his chair and recites lines in Cantonese or something. Of course, you know his accent has got to suck, and what's even better is that the supposed American speaks English with a non-American accent. Then he gets a call from his long lost family in the US that his younger brother is involved in savage Lionheart-style pit fights so he flies back to the US to get his brother out of that situation. Once he gets back everyone criticizes him for fleeing the US in the first place. Then he takes his brother's place in the pit fights, gets beat up, realizes that defeated fighters are having drugs smuggled in their cut up carcasses, and finally ends up defeating the yakuza oyabun in a katana duel.

These are the strong 80s hypertrash elements that the film brought to the table:
1.) Flowing golden tresses...on men. More that once.
2.) Kicks which are flashy and acrobatic but which are still inferior to those performed by Jackie Chan in his later films/80s movie style crap martial arts
3.) A black leather jacket covered with decorative hanging long strips of leather
4.) Orientalism...preoccupation with yakuza, existence of asian martial arts chick who is supposed to be Japanese but who isn't
5.) Martial arts deathmatch occuring at low budget rave club
6.) Mr. Miyagi cliches about karate only being for defense. A character who later talks about being "back in 'Nam" before beating another character to death teaching a martial arts kids class in the beginning of the film.
7.) Character wearing a stars and stripes gi. Oh dear god.
8.) Little kid teaching an adult martial arts on the basis that the adult forgot certain steps of kata and therefore he actually fights worse than if he had the correct steps in the kata memorized
9.) Katana battle with overweight yakuza boss

[Grinder]

[Wounded Ronin]

[Deschain]

[Lazerface]

Sounds like a job for Mike Nelson's Rifftrax.

[Grinder]

[Wounded Ronin]