The Weapons of Death (1981) User Reviews

Bad haircuts, Bad music, OK story, Adequate fights

[yonhope · 5/10 · 21 August 2005]

Hi, Everyone, The story here is more or less Mike Brady (Robert Reed) of the Brady Bunch tries to rescue a stupid girl. It isn't really Robert Reed, but it looks like Robert Reed and we first see him in his living room so it is easy to get confused.

The kidnappee girl falls down a lot. The bad guy is a cross between a young Boris Karloff and an old Nick Nolte. He is mean and snarly. Even the bad guys don't like him.

One of the bad guys takes on an entire motorcycle gang when the gang decides to rekidnap the dumb girl. The fights are OK but sometimes it is hard to figure out for whom we rooters are to root. The toughest bad guy might be the nicest bad guy if we consider his redemption halfway through the movie.

There's this other bad guy who is the leader of the kidnappers because he is the one who hires the kidnappers to kidnap the girl nitwit. He is pleasant enough for a mob boss who likes to threaten people with a big sword and fifty or so bodyguards. They are all conveniently dressed in black so we can tell they are bad.

The young good guy in white is attractive. He has a nice face and body and he definitely knows his Karate moves. He has a couple of good fights especially one where the bad guy's sword goes flying way up into the air and then something happens. I will let you watch to see what happens.

There is a Ford Bronco. The five rescuers drive it and ride to the rescue. One of the rescuers is intelligent. He carries a gun and shoots the Karate bad guys. He looks like Richard Dreyfuss when Dreyfuss made Jaws, but with a Ron Ely build.

The foolish girl has a mom who is also the mom of one of our heroes, but I will let you watch and keep score on who married whom and who is the Daddy of the girl who gets lost a lot.

I almost forgot to mention there is a bad girl gang of Karate fems. They pop up out of ditches holding swords. One has a red dress. Her hair needs something.

I liked the movie. It is a good one for bad movie night. For a nice double feature, watch this with Detour which also has a tough girl. Instead of a Ford Bronco it has a Lincoln Continental circa 1941.

I don't guarantee you will like this movie, but you will get a laugh here and there.

Tom Willett

Martial Arts that is pretty much one fight after another with a thin plot holding everything together.

[aggie80 · 3/10 · 22 August 2005]

Cinematography is poor, choreography is weak. Some of the one-on-one fight scenes are good due mostly to the physical abilities of the individuals. Too many characters to get to know any of them. Character development is very weak and shallow. Those with deep 'secrets' spill them without much protest.

There is a very weak plot line that sort of ties it all together. Pretty much any time more than two people get together they start swinging at each other. Not a lot of contact is made, but they swing a lot! We have the Chinese crime syndicate hiring a bunch of American thugs to do a kidnapping. The expected evil heavy is bald and carries a bag full of weapons, only a couple which get used before being defeated by the good guy. There is the typical character that is on the side of the bad guys, but is good at heart. Throw in a hoard of women and a motorcycle gang and a couple of double crosses and you've got it! Weapons include pistols, clubs, bow and arrow, swords of all types, spear (the most interesting one in my opinion!), a mace and claws.

Slightly better than movies of this grade

[ringhawk2000 · 4/10 · 25 November 2007]

I think this movie is not as bad as it current score 2.7 indicates. It deserves at least a 4 or 4.5. I just recently watched it on the 50 Martial Arts movie pack. The movie starts off slow but suddenly gets better. The story was very interesting and full of suspense and turns. It wasn't shoot as poorly as other movies of this budget and grade. What does get it down is some bad acting and some badly orchestrated fight scenes. Eric Lee really flubs all his lines in the movie, or it may be the dubbing. Couldn't tell if the copy I watched was dubbed. The black character of Carter was cool. The way he takes down a huge gang of bikers and then Chinese warriors with a sword was funny and cool to watch. It was also funny to watch the semi old guy as the leader. His banter with Josh the other black character to do with race was funny. I didn't realize the director was a main part of the movie as Paul. Its quirky as a lot of the characters use their real first name. I think this movie could be remade better with better script/actors/shooting.

Low-grade action film will satisfy bad movie fans and martial arts aficionados alike.

[J. Spurlin · 3 May 2008]

In San Francisco's Chinatown, Eric (Eric Lee) runs a martial arts school. His skills come in handy when a band of thugs kidnaps his half-sister for a large Chinese gang. The head thug took the job because he has a score to settle with the girl's father. The Chinese gang wants ransom money from the girl's mother, who, despite living modestly, has enough to pay it. Eric gathers a team of expert fighters from his school and goes off to get the girl back. But emotions run high when the team is joined by the father who had left his family years ago. Later, they'll be joined by a kidnapper with a conscience (Louis Bailey). In the hills, the girl escapes and gets recaptured several times. The hills are teeming not only with the members of the Chinese gang, but with female assassins and cruel bikers, too.

There's plenty in this low-grade action film to satisfy bad movie fans. Eric's mother speaks perfect English (though she often flubs her lines), but Eric himself seems to be reading his lines phonetically. All the performances are cardboard, except that of Bailey, who somehow manages to seem intelligent. Eric's band includes only one man with a gun: Paul (played by the writer and director, Paul Kyriazi), who seems a much more efficient killer than the rest of his team, especially since no one in the Chinese gang has a gun either.

The good guys always manage to win their fights, even though they're always ludicrously outnumbered. Late in the movie, the female assassins are given a big introduction in slow motion. Considering what happens in their very next appearance, it seems in retrospect much ado about nothing.

The fight scenes are violent and cartoonish, and show off the impressive skills of the martial artists. Even a bad martial arts movie needs good fighters.

Because "Pointy Implements of Inconvenience" wouldn't draw in the audience.

[lemon_magic · 4/10 · 3 May 2008]

This is actually one of the better movies in the "Martial Arts Classics" 50 pack. I realize that isn't saying much, but it does have a few good moments. It's much more energetic (and features a lot more martial arts and fights) than some of the other "Westernized" martial arts movies in the collection. And since it's in English, although most of the lines are woodenly delivered, at least the voice work isn't dubbed on a wax cylinder by ESL voice actors delivering their lines phonetically...which gives "WOD" an edge in watch-ability over some of the badly dubbed Chinese punch-fests I've seen.

There's the thinnest of plots to tie all the fight scenes together, involving a kidnapped girl member of a family that owns a martial arts school. The bad guys grab her because her mother won't pay protection money and then the rest of the family (and friends) team together to bring her back. Hilarity (and mayhem) ensues.

Basically,people fight each other nonstop,with a pause once in a while for some desultory dialog. Most of the fights are in some nice woods. A member of the bad guys punches out an entire bar in order to recruit an old friend (who is actually a sympathetic character). The bad guys invade the school and kick the good guys' tails and grab the girl. The sympathetic bad guy kills an entire motorcycle gang to get the girl back when she escapes(for the first time). Various people punch, kick and stab each other with swords. The good guys fight the bad guys all over the woods and mountains. Eric Lee and Gerald Okimura have a couple of sword fights that are actually pretty good. The sympathetic bad guy turns against his friend and gets killed (I actually felt kind of bad about that). A bunch of sword wielding ladies (apparently the female chapter of the bad guy gang) show up out of nowhere and get mowed down like winter wheat. More people are punched, kicked, stabbed and also shot (just for a change of pace). People chew off their lines and grimace and look like they are passing gallstones to indicate their, um, depth of emotion. And so on.

The sad thing is that the director put a lot of effort and time into the fight scenes, and then shot and edited them badly. He had no idea about how to build momentum or pace his scenes. Sometimes it's as if the actors are waving broom handles around, rather than actual weapons. He tried to work in a little plot about family and honor and emotional growth of some of the good guys, but his actors have all the emotional ranger of patio furniture. A few of them at least look pretty good on camera, including Eric Lee when he isn't "acting".

This director was also responsible for a previous movie called "Death Machines", and this movie is better than that in every way. That gets it an extra star. I wouldn't rate it as high as I did (or that much higher than similar products in the collection), but I like it when people improve in their crafts.

Sloppy kung-fu fighting!

[emm · 3/10 · 25 January 1999]

I suggest you find this title if you're a mega die-hard martial arts fan. This one's completely monotonous! In opening this picture, we see a Hulk Hogan impersonator having a bad temper while smashing the jukebox and throwing chairs. Child's play! The fighting battles are what makes the movies, but this has got to contain the sloppiest choreographies ever performed. Notice how the camera jerks around too often, because that's when you realize no one's hitting anybody! Some celluloid materials include brawny bikers and battling babes with clubs. The lack of poorly dubbed voices is the best advantage this mediocre flick has to offer.

@MakellBird on twitter

[makellbird · 1/10 · 19 April 2011]

Sh!tty acting combined with sh!tty choreography ruin this whole film. I couldn't stomach more than 30 minutess of this sh!t. The plot is BASIC, even by Kung-Fu standards. I agree with previous reviewers. Plus, why is it so hard for Kung-Fu movie producers to come up with more original title names? It makes it very hard to discern between films. I actually got this movie as one of 20 movies in a $5 20 movie Kung-Fu pack. The transfer is bad quality. Almost worse than a VHS tape. I WISH Kung-Fu movie producers would REMASTER their stuff with the original widescreen version of the film.

Point blank, this movie is a waste of time, even for hardcore Kung-Fu fans.

Pleads for a remake by someone who know how to make films

[winner55 · 6/10 · 9 November 2007]

There is a surprisingly strong script here; sadly, it is buried by poor production values, generally amateurish performances, and a lack of any real direction that could turn these disadvantages into strengths (or at least nullify them).

However, the film is only comparatively bad - that is, if you size it up with better made American martial arts films, it will look pretty bad; if you rate it next to anything Hong Kong, it will look embarrassing when not laughable.

However, After this became obvious, I let decided I'd try to set these comparisons aside and just let the film be an cheap American action film of its era; and on its own terms, it proved watchable, and even entertaining.

The high point of the film is a sequence some reviewers complain about, that seems to drop a biker gang into the movie out of nowhere. The writing is crisp and the 'cinema verite' approach makes the violence seem brutal, despite lack of proper dramatic perspective. This actually emphasizes the almost Homeric theme of the scene, and I could help thinking that the writer had read a bit of Homer before writing the film, since similarly epic-influenced moments pop into the story throughout. It's too bad the script wasn't sold to someone or some group that could really put a package like this together.

Altyhough looking dumb at the surface, there are some interesting themes here expressed well in the dialog. And the pacing is pretty good for a cheap action movie.

One other remark - I suspect this sat on a shelf looking for a distributor for a number of years - the '80s release date is belied by the hokey '70s fashions and hairstyles.

Better than you might expect it to be

[ChibaSon · 8/10 · 15 January 2006]

I saw "The Weapons of Death" after seeing Paul Kyriazi's previous title, "Death Machines." I have to say that the latter is laughable, but don't rule out seeing it for that reason. If you're into cheesy martial arts films, it's perfectly fine...sort of. Yes, it is Mystery Science Theater 3000 fare, and for some it might be painful to sit through, but it's very unintentionally funny and there are a couple of decent action scenes.

However, I'm here to talk about "The Weapons of Death." I must admit, when I saw Kyriazi's credit on this one, I was prepared for another dose of "deathly" insanity. However, it's actually rather watchable for the type of film that it is. The editing, (which is rarely good for 70s/80s-style kung fu flicks) is not too horrendous. Some cuts are actually rather clever, (again, for this kind of film) such as when Bob Ramos' character stabs a katana down while saying the name of one of the villains, Bishop, (Ralph Catellanos) and we cut to that character traveling in a van just as it gets a flat tire. Nothing Oscar-worthy, naturally, but after you watch enough of these, you tend to appreciate things like that.

The fight scenes are decently-choreographed, for the most part. However, they often suffer from that old problem of unconvincing stabs and slashes. You know, sort of the deal where you pretend to be stabbed, but the sword is just tucked under your armpit. Still, there are some solid stabs for the deaths of more notable characters. There are even a couple of creative deaths for certain characters, which can be rare in C-grade martial arts movies like these. Don't get me wrong, I adore the genre, but let's be fair. In addition, there are a good number of fights, and they are better than those in "Death Machines." The final fights are relentless.

The story is far more well-conceived than Kyriazi's previous effort. Nothing mind-blowing, but it's more balanced and believable. This may be a SPOILER: The twist of the story reminded me of "The Empire Strikes Back," and I think you can guess easily enough what that means. I won't mention the characters involved, but it's sort of that situation. Even the line after the revelation is "No, that's not true," just like in Episode V. I'm not sure if that was a conscious reference or not, but either way, it was fun. Another neat aspect is the fact that there are (gasp!) actual *connections* between events in the story! For example, certain characters fail at certain tasks or behave badly during the course of the story, but by the end, they pretty much all get redeemed. Doesn't sound like a lot to get worked up about, but again, my review is based on watching many, many of these types of movies which lack such things. The characters are also less one-dimensional than you would think. For example, one of the "bad guys" turns out to be a sort of hero, and gets more likable because of it. Check out the other reviews if you want more details about the plot.

Acting is about what you would expect, but since this is a more westernized martial arts flick, it doesn't suffer from the dubbing issues that affect other such movies. The acting is inconsistent; some performances are thoroughly wooden, while others are more natural. You don't watch these movies for the acting, however, now do you? Sound is about average. The effects are what they need to be and nothing more. The music is sometimes over-dramatic, but ANYTHING is better than the electronic, sci-fi score to "Death Machines," which even the director himself will admit.

Overall, I gave it an 8/10 not because I think it really deserves it, but it's a relative score based on Kyriazi's previous movie. Granted, there are some Hong Kong films which have the problems this movie lacks, yet they are still better because of the superior fight scenes and because they have a genuine eastern flavor. However, for what this movie is--a low budget, westernized, early 80s martial arts flick--it's actually not that bad. I was pleasantly surprised that Kyriazi turned this one out; I suppose he had learned his lessons from "Death Machines." Check it out if you like martial arts movies with a big side helping of cheese. You can find it (along with "Death Machines") on DVD as part of the affordable "Martial Arts 50 Movie Pack." I don't know of any other widely-available releases.

Paul Kyriazi strikes again with another bit of crazy action

[Red-Barracuda · 6/10 · 7 October 2017]

When I watched this film, I had no idea at all that its director, Paul Kyriazi, also helmed the earlier Death Machines (1976). It seems that a lot of people don't have much good to say about that one but I, on the other hand, thought it was excellent fun. A proper crazy bit of action trash, and highly entertaining. It maybe explains why I found myself enjoying Weapons of Death really, because as I have seen more and more cheap martial arts flicks from the 70's and 80's I've sort of realised I can't really be bothered with most of them at all. I usually find them somewhat tedious with action scenes so relentless that they act as a sleep inducer. Well, for some reason Kyriazi's two action movies didn't bore me at all. I found Death Machines to be the better of the two on account of its sheer insanity levels but Weapons of Death certainly is coming from a similar overall general ball-park.

Set in the San Francisco area, a Chinese crime group hires a band of low level American thugs to kidnap a girl from a rich family from Chinatown, a family who have hitherto refused to pay the gangsters protection money. Instead of bowing to the criminals demands they gather together a crew of fighters to go and rescue the girl and sort the bad guys out.

This American movie sort of tries to come across like it might be an Asian effort, or at the very least a cross-cultural movie. To this end we have multi-ethnic characters all bringing their own individual fighting methods to the table. We have swords and bow-and-arrows mixed in with kung fu and brawling. One of the proponents of the latter is one of the bad guys, a black character called Carter who for me was the most memorable character in the movie. In one scene of inspired mayhem he takes out an entire gang of bikers (or sex offenders), he slashes and boots hell out of them resulting in exploding motorcycles and piles of dead bodies. Great stuff. There are also other notable characters such as a gang of Chinese female ninjas, although to say that they were underused would be putting it mildly. But this one scores in that it has a variety of characters of different types, and some unpredictable plot developments. The action is pretty full-on but it isn't as tedious as it can be in a lot of similar action nonsense. Overall, I found this one to be quite a bit of fun.

Rescue/Reveng story

[dkeizer05 · 8/10 · 30 January 2009]

I couldn't believe the low score this movie got. This movie was action packed. All the characters were hilarious. The plot was reasonable, and who can blame it for only serving to bring one fight to another? I'll try to straighten out the plot: Organized crime gang contracts a ragtang gang of dirty scumbags to kidnap daughter of rich woman in Chinatown. Her family goes on a hot blooded mission of violent revenge. I don't know if I can really reveal more without spoilers, but there's some nuances and intricacies.

This flick reminded me of some of David Carradine's more kung fu-based action movies of the same period. Matter of fact, I'm going to go as far as to say that the Bishop character was the bad guy from a certain Carradine Road Warrior rip-off film. Was this a fake kung fu movie? It seemed like it was an American movie masquerading as a real oriental product. Even the credits were weird.

I was also wondering if the dad in the movie was Van Damme's brother in the first Kickboxer. Same dude? Sure looked like him. The outfit he wears in his first seen also reminded me of Tommy Vercetti in Vice City.

Greatest Martial Arts movie never seen!

[maztersav333 · 10/10 · 19 May 2011]

Greatest martial arts movie never seen! Until now. I just watched Weapons of Death on DVD last night. Even though it wasn't a 'big Hollywood production' and all of that, almost 100% of the characters this movie are Masters of many different martial arts styles. Not just paid actors. And on top of that, most of them did it for free at the time. I was especially impressed with Master Eric Lee. His skill is extraordinary! Even to this day. This movie needs more exposure. I want to see it on TV one day for all to see.

Special thanks to my Godfather, Nathan LeBlanc (the bouncer in the opening scene) for me letting borrow it to watch it. He makes Arnold look like a stick figure! These are the Greatest martial artists and fighters most of the world has not seen. The weapons are real and so is the skill.

Take some time to watch it. You'll be impressed. I was, and iv seen every martial arts movie there is. Im gonna watch it again tonight.