Low Blow - A world where Leo Fong is either eating or fighting!

Low Blow (1986) - Written, Directed, Produced and Gaffered by Leo Fong

Do you enjoy action films where the hero is never in any real danger? Really? Well how about fight scenes executed with the same fluidity and grace as a first time ballroom dance class? Oh, and are you cool with only 3 pieces of music to accompany an entire screenplay? Finally, do you like films that are edited with the coherence of video taping a TV show and occasionally forgetting to turn off the pause button after the ad breaks? If you’ve said 'yes' to all of the above then Low Blow is for you!

Discovered in a cheap pharmaceutical store known as Priceline, the stunning artwork on the cover and the $3.95 price tag convinced me to max out my disposable income budget on this movie. Now let’s begin.

The DVD begins with an ad from the movie distributor, Payless Entertainment Ltd;
“Why pay more for your CDs and DVDs?” - It’s an important rhetorical question that primes me for the $3.95 intellectual onslaught that awaits.

I'm completely caught off guard when the main menu loads up; what is that music? It seems my TV set has channeled a Commodore 64! And who the hell is that old man slinking along the wall of the chicken shed? Where’s the ass kicking muscle-bound giant from the cover that motivated my purchase in the first place? Wasn’t this going to be a Mad Max (The Road Warrior) homage? Apparently not. Just a flick about an sneaking old hunchback Chinese guy with chicken poo on his shoes.

While I was in my state of surprise about being shafted, the film had started automatically, which is a DVD authoring setting that most competent DVD authors disable.

Still, mistakes happen. For example, if you push “play movie” on the Australian release of Terminator 3, it defaults to an introduction of Arnie sitting in a room: “Haiyee. Dis is Arnold Schwarzenegger an welcome to the DeeFeeDee commentairly...”

The plot involves some rich guy’s daughter who cuts class and joins an ‘extremely dangerous’ religious cult. The mind warping leader can “utter a few words to send his big haired followers on a rampage of murder and destruction.” Enter Joe Wong (Leo Fong), an ex-cop who (“with the help of five special underground martial arts fighters”), is hired to rescue the girl and destroy the commune in the process.

Sounds great? Pity only 30% of the blurb is true. Allow me to describe the opening sequence:

The film begins with an armed robbery taking place in a sandwich shop. Oh, by the way, everyone has stretched heads because the film hasn’t been reformatted for television. The cowering hostages cooperate while the crooks maintain their insistence on waving shotguns and yelling random threats. It’s hard to make out what their saying as the wailing guitar soundtrack drowns out everything. Somehow, this yelling is audible to Joe Wong, who hears the disturbance three floors above the busy streets of San Francisco. Joe takes his revolver down to the store to “quiet things down” and showcases his versatile acting range by posing as a customer asking whether or not his “ham sandwich is ready?” After sitting down for a couple of seconds he casually offers an “OK here’s your money” and blasts the would-be thieves. To close out the scene, he throws back his head and says “hey...forget the sandwich”, a dry cool wit that can only rival the likes of Stallone in Cobra (I’ll get to that one later).

Immediately after this is the well used 'the chief is pissed off with the good guy who wins over with instincts and tough guy tactics rather than beauracracy' scene.

We jump to the location of the Yarakunda cult. Basically a farm with a dozen big haired, flannel wearing teenagers, supervised by an over the top woman who speaks every!...line!...as!...though!...it!...were!...her!...last! The leader of the cult is this mumbling guy dressed in a grim reaper outfit and has the lenses of his sunglasses painted black (ohhh!....he’s supposed to be blind!). The DVD blurb says he’s a dangerous killer with super mind powers, but all he does is mumble bible verses in a passive tone…BORING!!! Lets get to the stupid stuff!


Joe Wong makes a rescue attempt and quickly learns that he’s a little outgunned. The compound is guarded by guys with M-16s and ill fitting muscle shirts. So what do you do? Call in the military? Hell no! Put on a “TOUGH MAN CONTEST” with $20,000 prize money and rally a bunch of goons to your cause! If you’ve made it this far into the film, you really don’t care about the logistics of this.

So from here the winners are recruited to go and take on the cult. The catchphrase that accompanies this film “the best weapon is still your fist” is rendered useless by Joe and his merry band of martial arts bogans using machine guns to resolve the matter. So of course they kick ass and drive away in a van celebrating the fact that they’ve graduated from moronic bar fights and elevated themselves to killing people with firearms. I could really go on about this film,

But you have to see it to realise how unforgivably bad yet entertaining this film is!

STUFF TO WATCH FOR:

The splat head! You would've seen this monumental kung-fu moment recreated in the animation above, but when watching the real thing the scene will actually shock you for about a nanosecond and then make to laugh hysterically!...usually to the point of tears; it gets better every time!

Joe Wong assaults a Mercedes - After roughing up a trio of baddies in chicken sheds, Wong gives the incompetent cronies the ultimate send off by gleefully shattering the windows of their old Mercedes with a piece of timber and then customises the body by cutting off the roof with an industrial angle grinder. Hilarity ensues when Wong puts on his safety glasses and then takes minutes to grind at the car while three bumbling henchmen cower in the backseat waiting for him to chop the roof off before fleeing the scene...Warning: Your IQ may drop watching this scene!

	Dare you seek to own the movie I speak of? Here it is with one of its many cover variations. Personally, I like the George Clooney lookalike with a giant fist below. Don't you think he looks remarkably similar to this guy opposite in the Japanese escalator sign?
	Low Blow poster...nice! Forget those FHM posters which your significant other doesn't really like hanging in your garage or junk room, pin this to your wall and think of Leo Fong unleashing a random act of violence against an old car, among other fond memories, whenever you enter the room!
	Hold me back! Im itching to review NINJA SQUAD!!! Call me naive, but I thought Ninjas were trained for stealth, but after seeing Ninja Squad its actually about wearing bright red and purple suits and headbands which have "NINJA" written on the front (just incase they were mistaken for Mormons or something). This is epic stuff that should be run on every TV network 365 days a year! watch the ultra sleek trailer to Ninja Squad here