Featuring a threadbare plot that seldom makes sense, a cast of actors who seem to have forgotten to read the script before shooting their scenes, and some of the least convincing karate ever committed to film, this incomprehensible bargain basement action flick might very well be unwatchable if it wasn't so rife with unintentional humor. Lucky for us, there's oodles of the latter, so what Death Machines lacks in white-knuckle thrills it more than makes up for with its deluge of sheer giggle-inducing lunacy.
Though the title refers to a trio of assassins who spend the movie lumbering from one quarry to the next, the central villain here is unlikely underworld crime boss Madame Lee (Mari Hanjo), whose already massive beehive wig seems to swell even larger from one scene to the next, and whose basic inability to form complete sentences renders at least half of her dialogue completely unintelligible. It's a good thing we don't ever need her to clarify her nefarious plot, since she doesn't have much of one to speak of. The general idea is that she has concocted some sort of mind control serum which transforms her three hand-picked Death Machines into mute and mindless killers who are impervious to bullets and will carry out her orders without question, then sets these lethal mandroids into motion against her enemies.
The silliness abounds from the opening montage, during which Madame Lee carefully chooses her three subjects by observing them in combat. After a lengthy kung-fu exchange, one of the future Death Machines simply pulls out a gun and shoots his opponent to death at point blank range, which sort of negates the entire purpose of the demonstration. Elsewhere, the squad's results are equally successful, and their methods are equally unsubtle. They engage one of their disposable and nebulously-designated victims by driving a truck into the restaurant where he's eating, wait until another target boards his helicopter and level it with a bazooka instead of just offing the dude when he's all alone on the ground, and massacre an entire karate class for the sole purpose of taking out the instructor.
While each of these vignettes technically qualifies as an action sequence, their clumsy execution instead renders them some of the funniest parts of the movie. Swords that don't come within four feet of striking anyone somehow produce mass casualties and end up sheathed in blood, while other foes are felled by knock-out punches that are visibly swung well above their heads, so on most of the occasions these untrained performers engage each other on the screen they look like they're trying their hardest not to accidentally hit each other.
Since most of what happens in Death Machines is utterly extraneous, watching the film unfold creates the sneaking impression that the producers filmed everything they had scripted, then scrambled to concoct various random things for their cast to do once they realized they had only logged about a third of a feature-length offering. That's really the only way to explain the presence of a restaurant owner who eats up several of the movie's lean 90 minutes bragging about how good his spaghetti is. Furthering that effect, the film also introduces a grizzled detective to track the eponymous killers, though he doesn't make much of an effort to actually hunt them down and most of his screen time is instead spent getting yelled at by his Lieutenant for falling behind on his paperwork and not attending some mandatory civics class.
An even larger chunk of real estate is devoted to the recovery of Frank, the lone survivor of the afore-mentioned karate school slaughter, who struggles to adapt to a whole new way of life after having his hand amputated in the skirmish. As the spree's only living witness, Frank is immediately tagged for a follow-up attempt on his life to stop him from aiding the police; however, he mostly keeps himself busy plotting revenge against the slayers who butchered his dojo buddies. Frank also mopes a lot, which his nurse evidently thinks is super hot, because she is shoehorned into the ensemble for a romantic subplot with him. After a decidedly awkward tableau that suggests the duo engaged in some highly unsatisfactory sex, they adjourn to the bar where Frank works, at which point a wild brawl promptly breaks out, ostensibly because there hasn't been a proper fight scene in several minutes. Despite his abiding commitment to martial arts, Frank gets summarily beat down by a drunken codger who looks to be in his 70's, a head-scratching turn of events that doesn't go very far in establishing him as a credible foil for the invincible Death Machines. This turns out to be a moot point anyway, since the vengeance half the film is squandered setting up doesn't actually take place; Frank never has a second encounter with Madame Lee's assassins and instead spends the climax battling her.
I could go on and on. There's also a tacked-on biker rumble at a mom and pop diner that one of the DMs gets into for no apparent purpose, which occurs following an extended diversion involving him being captured by the police and escaping custody, none of which has any bearing whatsoever on the story. Not to mention the fate which befalls a father-of-the-year-candidate bank manager who refuses Lee's demand that he quit his post even after he's informed that her minions have kidnapped his daughter and will inflict all manner of horrific carnal debasements upon the poor young lass if he doesn't comply (his response, essentially: "well, daughters come and go, but do you know how HARD I worked to get this job?!").
Suffice to say, Death Machines is an incompetent mess. But thankfully it's the kind of incompetent mess that is a giddy blast to behold for anyone who fancies themselves a connoisseur of ridiculously awful cinema. Once you factor in the awesomely schlocky Radio Shack synthesizer score, what we have here is a certified classic that fans of this particular subgenre should not sleep on.
Although the nifty but obvious twist at the end overtly announces the instant potential for a sequel, that augured follow-up never did arrive. What a shame; hell, I'd watch an entire franchise of these.
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