Ever since our first Teamworking Day, I have been a haunted man. I have not been whole. Some portion of my thoughts have always been with this hunk of aged beef:
At first I thought it was pure lust overriding my faculties, and that makes sense: He looks like Guy Fieri had a walk-on part in Waterworld. Heās a portly hombre with a visible facial grimeline wearing half of a Native American. Heās got a possum-head bracelet and Steven Seagalās second-most racist coat. This man is an adonis, itās no wonder he rented a hotel room in my mind and immediately gave it bedbugs. But then something occurred to me — I didnāt want to be loved by Davy Crockettās great-great-grandson, Peevis Crockett… I wanted to be him. So I went and dug up his game.
Harley Davidson: The Road to Sturgis promises to be a completely authentic snapshot of America as seen through the eyes of a dentistās midlife crisis. But they couldnāt even handle a snapshot of a map on the title screen, so we must forgive their dream being greater than their reach. I will not waste time mocking these graphics again. Even though every screenshot looks like you ran it through a dot-matrix printer and a mud puddle then took a picture of it with a Playskool camera.
Iām sorry I lied to you about making fun of the graphics just now.
Iām sorry I lied to you about being sorry just now.
Hereās the entire story of Harley Davidson: The Road to Sturgis:
God damn I miss when games had one screen and fourteen words to communicate the entire plot. Today you have to sit through forty-seven minutes of cutscenes explaining why youāre a Norman Reedus delivering fetuses in the post-apocalypse, but back in the ā80s you wouldāve gotten one holdscreen of a pixelated baby with the words āGreetings Norman Reedus, wasteland needs abortions!ā and off youād go.
Hell yes thatās our opening cinematic! A man who dresses like a stand-in for a local production of West Side Story and who walks like a stand-in for a local production of West Side Story goes to start his motorcycle, which immediately bursts into flame. As both a fop and an owner of several old motorcycles, I am absolutely here for this level of authenticity.
Oh shit, character creation! Are you kidding me, Road to Sturgis? You are decades ahead of your time here. I expected you to tell me Iām named Hank Harley and I love to Harley — but youāre giving me options? I better think of something good. Iām going to scroll back up and stare at that cover again for inspiration.
…
Iāve got it. It has taken three hours and two moleskine notebooks full of scratched-out, tear-blurred rejections, but I have the perfect biker name.
I am an artist.
This is the only other option in the character creator. It is the most robust character creator that video games ever should have had. Everything else added afterward was complete horseshit. All you ever need to know about anybody is their name and how hairy they are. Sweet Hot Dogger, let me assure you, it took absolutely everything in my power not to choose ābushy.ā
Fucking stat allocation screen!
Road to Sturgis!
Are you secretly an RPG??? Is there going to be an ability tree where I have to choose between Power Skid and Dry Hump? Am I going to collect a ragtag crew and try to kill god with Celestial Hepatitis? Sweet Christ, I am so here for this.
Thank you, NPC that looks like a xerox of a xerox of a WARNING: SEX OFFENDER IN NEIGHBORHOOD poster.
Clearly, Scuzz Dogballs is not some prissy trick rider. He doesnāt spend his weekends looking for a 10mm socket. He thinks a bank account is for people without extra baggy underwear and he thinks a pick up line is what you call the rope you use to drag women behind your motorcycle. Scuzz Dogballs knows only one thing: Brawling.
I am going to brawl the holy shit out of literally everything I see.
FIRE WHEN DONE, MOTHERFUCKER.
Is thatā¦ is that supposed to be me? You promised me grizzled, Road to Sturgis! Where is the grizzle?! This is not Scuzz Dogballs, Moto Brawler; this is Perry Winklebottom, Tennis Lothario. Donāt get me wrong, that still sounds like a great game, but itās not the one you promised me.
Ugh, I guess Iāll ENTER STORE if only to get this disappointment off the screen.
Ah, I see my mistake. A true biker does not ENTER STORE. Now Iām not allowed to leave.
I couldnāt figure out the controls to EXIT STORE, so I looked up the manual, found the EXIT STORE button, and confirmed that it did not work. I would die here. Thatās the tale of Scuzz Dogballs: He briefly considered a motorcycle adventure but then settled down to run a discount riding gear outlet instead. RIP Mr. Dogballs, you died how you lived: As a crushing disappointment.
Starting over. There werenāt enough characters to write āJr.ā in there, so just know this is not the original Scuzz Dogballs, and he is nothing like his dad. He has one extra point in riding. Scuzz Dogballs, Sr. disowned him for it.
I wonāt make the same mistake twice. Iāll never enter another business again. The open road is enough for me.
You can see me here, not riding. Iām just sitting there, uselessly revving my Harley to the redline. This is partially because the controls are once again broken and will not allow me to shift, and partially because itās a simulation game about the Harley experience.
I did not drive a single foot, but I did rev so hard that I burned out my clutch. Scuzz Dogballs, Sr. would never admit it, but Junior made his dad proud that day.
All right, back on the road.
I did nothing and fell over. I probably should have read the manual before setting off, but that is not the Harley way. The Harley way is to gun it out of the dealership, immediately hit the side of a bus, spend the next sixteen months learning to walk again, then tell all the female servers at the wine bar that you āhad to lay āer down.ā
I finally figured out how to get into first gear, so I floored it up to a stunning 18MPH until I ran out of gas and had to be rescued once again by a kindly old man who I swear is making a face.
Fuck you, old man. Scuzz Dogballs, Jr. does not invest points in riding.
Letās refill at the station:
Aw hell yeah, here we go. This is the Harley lifestyle simulator Iām looking for. Youāre god damn right I see something else āI might be wantinā,ā you nasty lilā pump attendant.
Oh. Sheās justā¦ sheās going to ignore my advances.
Man, the realism in this game is truly on point.
Letās try something different. I wonāt even ride, Iāll just click āeventsā this time. See what else this game has to offer.
Another sex offender, this one in the middle of going Super Saiyan Blue, here to tell me thereās nothing happening in his dipshit town. I sure hope Scuzz Dogballsās $18,000 Harley can take another twenty minutes redlining in first to make the next offramp where there will hopefully be at least one thing to look at.
Actually, wait — you know what? I know how to do two things. I can get into first gear and I can pin it. Thatās enough to do a fucking wheelie!
Shouldāve seen that one coming.
To recap: In Road to Sturgis, I spent most of my time inventing a biker persona in preparation for thrilling fights and adventures I never had, I spent a fortune fixing my bike but barely got out of town, I was ignored by every woman who quietly seethed at my unwelcome advances, and none of the controls worked.
Truly, this was the perfect Harley Davidson lifestyle simulator.
From the shattered remains of an era where narrative arcs were punches and punches were men! Ladies, your loins are medically unprepared for Man Comics! MAN COMICS! MAN COMICS!!!
He-Man and the Masters of the Universe was a cartoon about a useless dipshit with a terrible haircut…
who transformed into a shirtless version of himself by hollering.
It was basically Tallahassee Drunk and Disorderly Arrest: The Cartoon. You donāt need me to explain what He-Man is, because youāre here, and itās part of the š1-900-HOT-DOG KIDS CLUB!š Foundational Reading Program.
And also because they try to reboot it every five years. Studio executives across the decades live in utter disbelief that they canāt pull off a successful relaunch of this hasty cartoon based on toy remainders. And in every one of those reboots, they insist on including Fisto, and every time somebody new finds out about Fisto, everyone makes a bunch of tired jokes about fisting. Thatās fine, Iām not above it, watch:
The original He-Man toy came with a Power Sword, the original Man-At-Arms toy came with a mace, and the original Fisto toy came with a moist towelette for leakage.
But hereās the thing: We make these naughty little jokes like He-Man wasnāt in on it. Like the cartoon was some naive young pixie blinking up at the ribald double-entendres with a placid smile that said āI donāt get it, but Iām just glad everybodyās having fun.ā That is not the case. I can prove it. Hereās Fistoās actual origin story:
Fistoās Forest is a loaded term that begs a terrible question. Never ask it. The smile that comes over Fistoās face whenever a busload of soon-to-be-missing Mormons asks āw-whatās Fistoās Forest?ā is terrible in its purity. Fistoās Forest is a Ukrainian slang term for the abandoned lot behind a truck stop where they donāt even pick up bodies anymore. Itās the name of the hidden porno your wife discovered that made her leave you. That very name promises untold perversion and the cartoon absolutely delivers: Within thirty seconds Fisto is grabbing a strange child and carrying him away.
Youāre right, I am taking that out of context. But in my defense, itās impossible not to – Fisto destroys context just by existing. It is impossible to take any screen grab where Fisto doesnāt look like a sex offender doing his legally required introduction.
Fuck. Iām going to scan ahead randomly and try again:
Heās a bearded man in fur panties with one giant hand; even if you didnāt know his name you would instinctively utter the word āFistoā as he pushes you into the dumpster where you die.
Hereās Fisto just a few minutes into his own origin story, hiding behind a bush…
…and promising that, actual quotes here, āIāll give [He-Man and friends] a sticky welcome.ā
THIS IS NOT A METAPHOR.
Again, this is taken out of context for a cheap joke… but is it still out of context if every single moment of the show is like this? Itās a twenty minute episode that requires constant explanation and if you stop breathlessly justifying whatās on screen for even for a second youāll wind up with no alibi for watching this:
Now for legal purposes heās supposed to have an evil spider and those are supposed to be webs, but you might recognize that this stream of goo is in no way web-shaped, and is instead a puddle of sticky white liquid that Fisto shoots at feet:
Nobody has ever made unfortunate eye contact with a man named Fisto, had starchy pale sauce splattered all over their sassy red high-heeled boots, and thought āoh no, a spider web! Iām stuck!ā
In fact, the running gag in the show is that people keep stepping on, running into, or grabbing various things and then grimly staring off into the distance as they realize Fisto has already coated it with his āwebbing.ā
Thereās not even really any justification for these hijinks — we get some brief fantasy bullshit about Skeletor casting a magic spell on the forest and imprisoning the elf lord, but this takes up maybe two minutes of Fistoās episode:
And the other twenty three are dedicated to lovingly-rendered spider bukakke.
Hereās the thing: The term āfistingā not only existed long before He-Man, it was especially present in the mid-80s lexicon. He-Man ran at the height of the AIDS epidemic, when fisting was being held up as the flagship deviant practice by those darned homosexuals, recklessly spreading the virus due to the small tears the act caused in the anus. And I promise you that Baron Douglas Booth, writer of this episode and actual fucking Baron — that is a real title that you seriously had to call the guy who wrote Fisto and you still think Iām kidding — knew what fisting was when he wrote this shit. Douglas Booth inherited his British shipping familyās baronetcy and, presumably bored with the idle perversions of the aristocracy, used it to pursue a passion for American cartoon-writing. The dude was like the Davy Crockett of western hentai: he didnāt discover the frontier, but he sure plunged into it headfirst when everybody else was like āno, gross.ā
Hereās another of those āout of contextā grabs from Fistoās Forest:
Fistoās whole arc is that he started out as a bad guy, but reformed when somebody finally treated him like āa real person.ā Seeing a path back to normal society, he changed his ways and earned a pardon from the king. You can read into that story what you will. I donāt live in Baron Douglas Boothās head and you can tell because Iām not currently being raped by trees and ejaculated on by spiders. So Iām not here to tell you what he really meant with Fistoās tale. Iām not even here to tell you to stop making Fisto jokes — Iām just here to tell you that Fisto was a sex criminal named after a then-culturally villified gay practice by the actual fucking aristocrat who created Scooby Doo. Iām here to tell you that because some facts pollute your brain and the only way to alleviate the damage is to spread that poison out nice and thin. Thanks for taking some of my brain-poison, guys. Sorry I got it all over your sassy red high-heeled boots.
Oh, also hereās Evil-Lyn standing with Jitsu, Fistoās villainous counterpart:
ā¦ This article was brought to you by our fine patron and Hot Dog Supreme, Cale Block: who only now, this sentence, realizes he is being hunted by a Showtime Pizza robot band.
The book is called THE 100 DEADLIEST KARATE MOVES, and it’s barely more than your lowest expectations. There are no tips on how to set these moves up, how to do them most effectively, or which states consider them “not murder.” It’s a list of common karate attacks and locations on a human body it would make sense to hit with them. For instance, punch in the face, punch in the neck, punch in the dick, punch in the dick, punch in the dick, end of chapter. Each move is accompanied by a picture of DR. TED GAMBORDELLA 5TH DAN using it on his mostly nude friends along with a list of injuries it causes in a best(?) case scenario. It is, by any standard of judgement, a terrible book. But it would make an awesome set of trading cards. So here is THE 100 DEADLIEST KARATE MOVES by DR. TED GAMBORDELLA 5TH DAN adapted into trading cards by ME.
… This article was brought to you by our fine patron and Hot Dog Supreme, Micah Phillips: who joins together with four other pure-hearted warriors to form Zorklon, Protector of the Cosmos! He pilots the left leg ā the invaluable left leg!
As a tastemaking 1-900-HOTDOG reader, you already know most of our articles are about artifacts covered in the spectacular wrongness of some dark otherworld. Today is different. This Punching Day I’m talking about a single fight from the sequel to a knockoff movie that achieves spectacle through mediocrity alone. It’s a collection of uninspired cliches and lifeless performances as if all anyone cared about was smearing vaguely kung fu-like shapes on some film for the Yugoslavian VHS market. I’m, of course, talking about the finale of 1996’s Shootfighter II: THE ULTIMATE FIGHT TO THE DEATH: KILL OR BE KILLED.
Before we look at the stunning ordinariness of Shootfighter II‘s climax, we need to talk about how we got here. It took decades of training to create something this hauntingly generic. So let’s look at the long, weird, and almost exclusively mediocre journey of the film’s star, Bolo Yeung.
In 1973, Bolo Yeung was named Yang Sze and he starred in a movie called “Chinese Hercules.” I dare you to come up with a title more efficient at explaining the content of a movie. The films We Bought a Zoo and I Have Sex With Latina Babysitter (Facesitting Fetish) owe the elegance of their naming style to the legacy of Chinese Hercules. The only question you could possibly have when you hear “Chinese Hercules” is “Can he pick you up by your dick in the middle of a fight?”
The answer is yes! And there were no wire tricks or reasonable ways to safely perform it! That stuntman’s genitals were squashed into a wet rubber glove all for Chinese Hercules, a movie not worth such a sacrifice. This stuntman’s first four children were declared “bologna with fingernails” by the state. And even after doctors fused them together to form most of a boy, that boy received an unprecedented rating of “Get this thing the fuck out of my office,” in the April, 1977 issue of Hong Kong Son Review. All because the man who would one day be called Bolo Yeung couldn’t stop pumping weights even during handjobs.
To give you an idea of how good Chinese Hercules was, here’s a shot from the trailer. Which means this footage of him just missing the shit out of these guys was where they thought he looked the coolest. The trailer also prominently featured Bruce Lee who is not in the movie and a narrator screamed: “BONE CRACKER! HEAD CRUSHER! BACK SNAPPER! BODY BREAKER! MEN. WOMEN! OLD. YOUNG. HUNDREDS. OR ONE ALONE. EACH CHALLENGES, AND EACH BECOMES THE PULVERIZED PREY OF CHINESE HERCULES. THE FIRST AND ONLY MUSCLE MAD MONSTER OF THE MARTIAL ARTS. CHINESE HERCULES! HE’LL GET A CRUSH OUT OF YOU!!!“
Chinese Hercules was the 18th film by Yang Sze, who was also credited as Yang Szu, Szu Yang, Shih Yang, Yang Tze, Sy Young, Young Zee, Sze Yang, and Yeung See. One of the reasons he was so muscular was so bank tellers would be scared enough to cash checks made out to 70 different names. The point is, whatever the hell he was called, our English letters didn’t know how to recreate it. It’s sort of like how my name in hanzi can be the character for “explosion” in a cowboy hat or a drawing of Pac Man eating the letter ęÆä¹³. None of it mattered, though, because later the same year, the actor known as Something-like-Soo Something-like-Young would star in Bruce Lee’s Enter the Dragon and everyone in the world would know him as “Bolo.” Or at the very least “that big guy who killed a dude by cradling him like a baby way too weirdly.”
Enter the Dragon was the most famous movie by the most famous kung fu star, so you’re probably familiar with it. And Szu(ish) Yang(ish) would milk its popularity for 15 years. After Bruce Lee’s death, 750 Chinese actors changed their names to something very close to Bruce Lee, added kitty cat sounds to their kicks, and made unauthorized sequels to his movies. Bolo Yeung was in fucking all of them. He starred in Bruce’s Fingers, Soul of Bruce Lee, Image of Bruce Lee, Bruce Li Invincible Chinatown Connection, Amsterdam Connection, The Tattoo Connection, Enter the Game of Death, Dragon on Fire, Bruce and Shao-lin Kung Fu 2, Young Dragon, Enter the Game of Shaolin Bronzemen, Bruce the Superhero, Way of the Dragon 2, The Clones of Bruce Lee, Bruce Lee King of Kung Fu, The Big Boss 2, and Bruce Lee’s Dragons Fight Back (starring Jackie Chang).
Between 1973 and 1988, Szu Young acted alongside a Bruce Le, a Bruce Li, or a Bruce Lei 17 times, meaning he starred in 12 more Bruce Lee ripoff movies than there were actual Bruce Lee films. He has worked with hundreds of co-stars on dozens of movies, but he has never met anyone with a second name. To tell the Bruces apart, he had to use subtle vocalizations like a penguin, and even then he could never be sure he was on the right set or punching the right Bruce.
His characters rarely had names because why bother? It’d be like giving a backstory to the Before model on a tube of Teenage Mutant Karate Tortoise Penis Large-Up Cream. No one fucking cares who Henchman #3 is in Broose Lea Meets Cop-Robot 2000. Bad example, because that was Professor Shave Gravestone, who everyone loved. The fact is, you could have named Szu’s character “Titties Breakdance” or “Beijing Trevor” and everyone would have still called him “Bolo.”
In 1977, Sze tried to fix his name problem when he played a character named Bolo in a film he directed named Bolo. Strangely, it wasn’t about a man named Bolo murdering men by cradling them too tightly. It was a comedy aimed, apparently, at shitty toddlers dying of stupidity. It wouldn’t have exactly redefined his personal brand even if anyone had seen it. It was like Jaleel White writing “Urkel Vitamins!” on a bottle of benzodiazepine pills and leaving it in a parking lot. Still, it gave Tse the courage to finally, officially change his name to “Bolo.”
You already know this, but in 1988, the man now known as Bolo Yeung starred in a second Greatest Martial Arts Movie of All Time– Bloodsport. It’s the film my Netflix algorithm knows as “the only movie.”
Bolo was great in it. Just like in Enter the Dragon, he hardly talked, stole every scene he was in, and the moment the movie was over he spent ten years playing characters with the same name in third rate knockoffs of it. For instance, his first project after playing Chong Li in Bloodsport was playing Chang Lee in Bloodfight. That sounds like the winner of 1989’s Least Inspired Joke, but it’s what really happened.
If you had a wife named Maggy and you introduced her to Bolo Yeung, he would go home, build five mannequins named Majo, Morga, Maggie, Majjy, and Cyber-Maggy vs. Moonwolf, then fuck the shit out of them for SAG minimum. After playing “Chang” in Bloodfight, he went on to play “Chong” in Tiger Claws. Then he mixed it up by playing a good guy in Shootfighter: Fight to the Death, a movie the producers definitely pitched as Bloodsport meets nothing else featuring the co-star of Bloodsport. It had both bad guys from Karate Kid, only enough plot to get everyone into an underground death tournament, and one of the fighters was a man-snake. Look at how sweet Shootfighter man-snake was:
Fucking snake dodge! Snake dodge! Snake headbutt! Man-snake’s existence implies there are lots more magical Mortal Kombat guys in this movie, so it will already never live up to your expectations, but it’s still pretty great. And it’s weird seeing Bolo as the good guy, not because he’d been a villain for 80 straight movies, but because of scenes like this:
Was this Bolo’s script note? To have the hero rip a man’s bones into gore and then, in front of cheering fans, feast on his agony? Silently? For a full minute? This would be like Rocky III ending with Sylvester Stallone running over Mr. T’s head with his car and screaming, “Adrian! My boner throbs with the forbidden power I’ve taken from the vanquished!!!” Bolo didn’t even try for a catch phrase. He could have said, “Thought you could use a break!” or “If this movie is a hit, I’m going to play this character again in six no budget reboots with you impersonators!” Anything would be better than demon-hissing at the crying man’s ruptured remains.
So that brings us to this, the fight scene I mentioned 9000 Bolo Yeung facts ago– the finale of Shootfighter II. It’s everything Bolo had trained for over the course of 100 lazy, knockoff movies. It opens with an avalanche of story elements. There is no need to watch the rest of Shootfighter II because everything you need to know is communicated with “Chinese Hercules” levels of efficiency. Stakes are explained by having actors walk right up to the camera to show the audience their gun. It is not ham-fisted. It is Shaquille O’Neal searching for his wrist watches inside two full pigs.
The cage fighters, Bolo Yeung and Joe Son, are both cranky Asian men wider than they are tall. The film wants us to know this is serious, but they look the same heading into a battle to the death as they would bowling or enjoying a glass of sun tea. These are actors who can perform “menacing” and “bored after a long day of menacing.” Asking them to act like this particular murder is important is like asking a Wendy’s employee to make a cheeseburger extra special. They wouldn’t know how or even consider trying.
A crowd of about 15 wealthy gamblers are there to watch, and they each specifically look like the last person you’d trust to keep your murder fighting pit a secret. They all take turns demonstrating how they’ve never seen a fight, a crowd, or a movie. For instance, one guy spends the whole match against the cage fist pumping and any time he starts to feel too silly he’ll throw an awkward high five to the nearest extra.
The extras are putting in five times more work than the fighters. If you’ve ever seen a kung fu movie, you recognize the move where one guy has a staff and chases his enemy with foot smacks. It never hurts anybody, but it’s more exciting than picking it up and walking over to them. At least it was before Bolo Yeung tried it. He looks like he called time out to sweep up dog hair. This is how an elderly couple learns hip hop dance on a cruise ship, not how you kill a man with a stick. It’s almost too terrible to explain away with “everyone involved sucks.” They might have had to patch this scene together with rehearsal footage after Bolo left to film Bloodpunch IV with Jake-Claude Von Doom and the original Hamburglar.
Bolo and Joe both have a tendency to look away when they attack or block as if they learned how to fight by watching Magic Johnson play. It takes away all urgency from this life-threatening situation as if they learned risk assessment by watching Magic Johnson fuck. Nobody in this cage gives a shit if they live, die, or look at all like two men fighting. Luckily, the subtle filmmakers remind the audience of the stakes by constantly cutting to a shot of the villain holding a gun against the neck of Bolo Yeung’s friend.
This is a pretty normal trope for a death tournament movie. Bloodsport is both the best known example of the genre and the only one where the hero enters the tournament for no reason other than kicking ass. Normally, they need to be blackmailed. What’s weird in Shootfighter II is that it’s happening in plain view of the main group of shootfighting fans. Assuming they’re okay with this very different tone of crime, it still seems a little distracting. This would be like watching an illegal horse race while Magic Johnson was in the center of the track hovering a nose bleed over a sleeping baby. It is not the drama you paid to see, but it will command a bit of your attention.
It’s insane and ridiculous, but checking in to see which of these guys is smiling is the only way to know who’s winning. Joe and Bolo never change expressions and their punches and kicks miss by a wider margin than Magic Johnson AIDS jokes in a karate article. But you can always tell when one of Bolo’s nonchalant air swipes was supposed to hit because the hostage is having fun.
I didn’t edit that clip in any way. The sequence of events is this: Bolo claws at Joe’s titties with both hands and misses, neck hostage guy fucking loves it, then suddenly Bolo is holding a stick again while Joe patiently waits to die with his arms at his side. It should not be possible for any men to be this bad at pretending to fight, especially these two. At this point in his career, Bolo had been in over 200 professionally choreographed fights and Joe Son was a UFC veteran who would go on to be a convicted sex criminal and actual murderer. Joe Son could have shown a tape of his UFC fight to the producers and said, “In my exact experience, real cage fights look more like this:”
The filmmakers knew the action had to escalate, but weren’t sure how to do it since the gun-in-the-neck guys can only smile and frown so hard. One idea Joe had was to climb onto Bolo’s shoulders like he’s getting sleepy at DisneyLand. I guess It was about as good an idea as the one he had at UFC 4 when he clung to a useless headlock while getting punched directly in the dick. And it didn’t help the scene when veteran actor Bolo Yeung chose to sell the attack as “mildly to not annoying, this reminds me of the other time I held a guy up by his mangled dong.”
By this point, each fighter had drawn blood, but the makeup effects were limited to a few streaks of fake blood on two very wet men, so their wounds closed after one or two camera cuts. And with neither able to land a convincing shot, it seemed there was only one way this fight was going to end– have Bolo freeze in place for several seconds so Joe could pick up an emergency fuel can and douse him in gasoline.
Think about what this means. Someone built a cage for the purposes of locking two gladiators inside and thought, “We should be ready in case they drove here from the left side of the basement and ran out of gas.” This is a truly insane choice for the one single object to put in a fighting cage. Even assuming it was for one guy to light the other on fire with, what kind of maniac wants Bolo Yeung on fire in a crowded room with one exit? You think a burning alive Bolo Yeung is going to wait for the building to evacuate before he bursts through the cage and into a flammable stampede of sociopaths? All these people should be dead and this lair should be ashes. It’s pure dumb luck that Joe Son suddenly came down with a brain disorder that prevented him from swinging a torch any lower than seven feet in the air.
There is no more certain way to lose a kung fu fight than to use a lethal weapon against an unarmed opponent. If you’re the only one with a sword, drop it. That man is about to do something so cool and kill you. In this case, it would be almost too obvious for the blind, battered, gasoline-covered man to defeat the guy beating him with a flaming stick, but one thing Shootfighter II: THE ULTIMATE FIGHT TO THE DEATH: KILL OR BE KILLED never does is defy expectations. Sure enough, Bolo finishes Joe with dozens, maybe zeros of punches. With the bad editing and mistimed sound effects, it’s hard to tell which impacts happened and which ones were sarcastic. After it ends, Joe is helpless while the crowd chants for Bolo to execute him. But Bolo has done this enough times to know: if you’re the only one with a sword, drop it.
With the hero gladiator refusing to kill and walking away, there were no cliches left to film. “Not… so… fast,” said Joe Son as he picked up the discarded sword and drove it into his own guts. “You assholes… forgot about this one.” And with a look of disappointment from the bad guy of Karate Kid, Bolo Yeung had finished the perfect final fight of his long film career– an impossible combination of insane, cliche, terrible, and awesome. Long live Sze “Bolo” “Chong” “Chinese Hercules” Yeung.
… This article was brought to you by our fine patron and Hot Dog Supreme, Ethan Rangel:Ā half wolf, half cop, half cyborg, and all wolf again twice, for a total of 2.5 wolves.
