Death Machines

source: Death Machines

In the history of bad cinema, DEATH MACHINES must rank up there as one of the worst flicks of all time. US-set kung fu movies had a pretty poor run in the 1970s, and this is the worst I've seen yet. Once again, the primary reason for the awfulness is the utter lack of budget, which renders all of the action sequences appalling. This is a film where somebody crashing into a stack of beans is a top stunt moment, and where a rocket launcher hits a guy and blows sand over him (?!). The only possible interest somebody could ever have in this film is watching the director trying to pull off all these action scenes without a decent budget. He tries hard, which is the only redeeming quality. The idea of three non-speaking killing machines is interesting, but it turns out that the guys (one White, one Black, one Asian) don't speak purely because they're rubbish actors! Marchini went on to star in more dreck like NINJA WARRIORS but was never very good, although Michael Chong is the best of the bunch. The finest actor in the film is Ron Ackerman, playing a police detective shoehorned into the proceedings. The worst actor is Mari Honjo, the Japanese villainess, whose delivery of dialogue is the most intensely irritating thing in the whole world. The action scenes are poor and one of them, an attack on a dojo, plays out with virtually no sound effects! It's like watching a silent movie! The blood is coloured water and the one-handed hero never does anything heroic. The director tries to incorporate lots of '70s staples into the movie, like bar-room brawls, kung fu schools, car accidents and somebody getting chucked off a building (incredibly the car he lands on isn't dented) but the only decent bits are the bullet hits and the blowing up of a real plane. Watch out for the green-faced black police chief and the hilarious showdown in a hospital corridor. Some scenes seem to have inspired THE TERMINATOR...

Bay Area residents probably remember Paul from The Diamond Center, an unctuous late night huckster who flogged easy credit and cheap rocks on late night television throughout the 1980s and early 90s. I mention him only because there is an actor in Death Machines who looks JUST LIKE HIM playing the owner of an Italian restaurant. He appears in the best scene in this positively dreadful and near unwatchable crime drama about a Dragon Lady (Mari Honjo, who wisely hung up her acting spurs after completing this film) who controls the local syndicate. Our hero (let's call him Not Paul From the Diamond Center) plays the restaurateur with all the subtlety of The Simpsons' Luigi ("you lika da spaghetti?") and seems unimpressed when one of his patrons complains about the food. No, there's no fly in the soup or hair in the sauce: there's a Red Buddha in the pasta, the calling card of the murderous crime boss, who sends a statuette to each of her prospective victims. Death Machines is bad by any measure, and pretty boring, which is an even worse crime.

A multi-racial trio of lethal and indestructible ace martial artist assassins - white guy (beefy Ron Marchini), black dude (brawny Joshua Johnson), Asian man (lithe Michael Chong) -- go around the city and bump off various folks for their evil dragon lady boss Madame Lee (a hysterically campy and vampy Mari Honjo, who can barely speak English and mumbles all her dialogue). Boy, does this deliciously dippy and dreadful dreck possess all the right wrong stuff to qualify as an enjoyably awful piece of gut-busting schlock: we've got fumbling (mis)direction by Paul Kyriazi (who also co-wrote the nonsensical script), lousy acting from a lame no-name cast, a token hot naked babe, crude cinematography by Donald Rust, hilariously inept fight choreography (sidesplitting highlights include the death machines wiping out an entire school of karate students, the white guy beating up dozens of cops while escaping from a police station, and our deadly threesome opening up a king-sized barrel of hurting on a biker gang in a diner), slipshod editing, excessively bloody tomato paste-style violence, and a stupid "it ain't over yet" sequel set-up (non)ending. Bonus booby points are in order for Chuck Katzakian's alarmingly overblown portrayal of hot-tempered crime boss Mr. Gioretti and the supremely wired'n'wonky zoned to the funky bone synthesizer score by Don Hulette. In fact, this uproariously messed-up movie often plays like an unintentional (?) parody of a cheesy 70's drive-in action flick. An absolute cruddy hoot.

I watched DEATH MACHINES as part of BCI Eclipse' Drive-in Cult Classics (featuring Crown International Pictures releases) on DVD. As I work my way through the multiple DVD sets, I am growing to love many of Crown International's movies -- especially, the creepy, erotic, psychological thrillers! DEATH MACHINES is not one of them. After seeing movies like MALIBU BEACH, THE CREEPING TERROR and THE PINK ANGELS, it is hard to say that this is the worst film ever made; but, it doesn't have much going for it. No plot; really no story to speak of. The acting isn't evident – only the actor responsible for the terribly-played Tony (with the thick, fake Italian accent) made any attempt to "get into character." The score is annoying and pedantic. The only thing about this movie is why... what compelled the film-makers to make this film? Did they think the story of: 1) three ninjas, 2) two competing crime bosses, 3) an ancillary bartender / karate school student character; and 4) his pitiful love-interest nurse was so compelling that the world would not be complete without this movie being made? This is a complete waste of time and money, for you, me, the producers, writers, actors, and the director.

As bad as this movie is, I really like it. The poor acting, dialogue and action made it so funny. I loved John Travis from Omega Cop and stayed up all night working out how the Death Machines checked in at the airport if they can't speak, probably had to shake/nod at the security questions. Actually why can't they speak!? It fails to adhere to any sort of movie making convention which makes it strangely interesting to watch- just lots of people getting killed around a very loose plot surrounding hired killers - no "machines" as such and those weird face/mountain things on the front cover and the trailer do not appear! I love the fact that there is no good guy in this film until about half way through and I love the numerous pointless scenes of that aeroplane landing - lots of people get killed who have nothing to do with the "plot" and no explanation is given about anything - DO NOT expect to understand this film. Instead admire how the main good guy can't even handle a random old guy in the bar - who is presented as the bad guy yet speaks out against the barman's decision to hire a scantily clad woman to dance badly in the corner for "entertainment" - all the good guys seem to enjoy this! Why did old guy get to beat up our hero - and why did the random bloke decide to help old guy in the fight?! Why did the hero collapse under one punch from old guy onto the bar where a stream of water jets out in the background so it looks like it's coming from his mouth? Definite Top 20 B-Movie, must check for a part 2.

What a gargantuan pile of malodorous ordure! Ye Gods where to even begin with this one….. Well, mix crap acting (including one bloody infuriating woman who speaks as though she's either a) chewing painfully on some ice cubes or b) has just woken up after having undergone some extensive root canal surgery), editing that would appear to donate that the celluloid was cut and spliced via the utilisation of an angle grinder, some truly hopelessly choreographed martial arts 'action', a script that has ostensibly been written by a two year old and some of the most hideous and intrusively loud background music ever committed to any film and hey presto you have Death Machines aka The Ninja Murders (although note that surprise, surprise – there are in fact no actual ninja anywhere to be found in this sodding travesty!) In a nutshell, if ever there was a cinematic equivalent of a particularly vehement bout of dysentery, then this must surely be it! Avoid at all costs!

A friend of mine bought this film for 25 pence and always said it was the worst film ever made. I didn't think it could be that bad. It is. In England it's on video as The Ninja Murders. There's a Chinese woman with a small mouth who seems to be up to something. Lots of ninjas who don't seem to know kung fu from ballroom dancing go around "attacking" other people who seem to have no purpose in the plot. That is if there is a plot. I'm not convinced. There's one bit where some ninjas attack a fisherman and he disables them by gently pushing them to one side. We see lots of stock footage of a propellor plane landing. I never knew who was on the plane or why. Or what film this footage came from as I'm sure the production team couldn't afford the hire charge on a plane. The last time we see the plane land there is a blond man hiding. At the end of the film he is revealed as Frank. Well, a woman calls him Frank. I assume he was the hero. I don't recall seeing him do anything during the film and I certainly had no idea he was called Frank. The most interesting thing about the whole movie is the plot summary on the back of the video casing. It says that a new warlord is gaining power and the old warlord is struggling for survival. Apparently they must "fight to the death before the MAIN BATTLE!!". Well i don't recall any warlords, though I suspect the chinese small-mouthed woman may be the new warlord. And don't bother sitting in great gaping-jawed anticipation for any fight to the death or main battle. What fight to the death? What main battle? The film ends with two men at an airport and then the height of all camera tricks is used to show they are a group of three men not two!! Maybe a great twist ending but as these men were about as familiar to me as Frank I had no idea what it all meant. Actually I have no idea what any of it meant or what was going on. I'm still baffled. The great thing about this film is that you couldn't possibly make a worse film. Even if you tried so hard to make a film on a shoestring budget that was so bad it was unwatchable it would be like The Godfather in comparison to this pile of pants. I would conclude my review with words representing such abominable appallingness that I won't even bother. Avoid at all costs

Everyone on this site is bashing Death Machines, but its cool. I understand. Some of you just haven't taken the time to look under the surface and see just how deep this movie is. I'm talking Moodys deep, man. Really deep. Three racially diverse assassins, unstoppable, even with bullets, unless you shoot the white assassin in the head, then he lets out a girly scream and gets arrested. What does it all mean? That unstoppableness transcends all racial and social boundaries? I don't know. Evil mushmouthed, giant-haired Asian dragon lady, the mastermind behind it all. Are all Asian women with gigantic wigs evil? The blackmailing henchman who carries incriminating photos in a wicker basket? Who is he really? The wimpy by-default hero who takes karate lessons only to have his hand cut off then have disappointing sex with his nurse-turned-girlfriend? Why did the director turn him into a human water fountain? The religious old guy who gives the white assassin a hamburger? Was he a direct descendant of the similar character from "I Accuse My Parents"? Like I said, deep. Think about it.

Director Paul Kyriazis' "Death Machines" is so unrelentingly silly and incompetent as to rate as a true hall of fame see-it-to-believe-how-bad-it-is turkey. It's so silly, in fact, that one has to wonder if the filmmakers had their tongues in their cheeks the entire time. Now, granted, it could have been even more entertaining on a lovably clunky level, as it's somewhat overextended, but sometimes the padding is absurd enough to generate some real chuckles. This martial arts / action / exploitation piece of sludge stars Ron Marchini, a student of Bruce Lee who also produced the film, as one of three "death machines" (the other two are a black and an Asian) who've been given a drug that controls their minds, and apparently also makes them impervious to bullets. Thus they make handy assassins for Madame Lee (Mari Honjo, who sports an enormous wig and whose facial expressions are truly gut busting), a dragon lady villainess. But when the trio of killers massacre the students at a karate school, the lone survivor, Frank Thomas (charisma-free John Lowe), vows vengeance. Good old Frank's not about to let the fact that they chopped off his hand deter him at all. So much of this is gloriously goofy. Let's start with our "hero", Mr. Thomas, who actually gets his ass handed to him by a rowdy old barfly. Yet somehow this turns on Mr. Thomas' new lady friend! One incredibly, deliciously moronic set piece has Marchini sitting down for a nice nourishing burger at a restaurant and being hassled by annoying bikers. Another fine bit of comedy has a target for assassination, a bank manager, handcuffed to his file cabinet while a time bomb in his office ticks away - yet his secretary takes her sweet time while helping out. From the super funky and funny music score by Don Hulette (dig that piano during a fight scene) to the thoroughly amateurish acting, "Death Machines" sizes up as a real hoot and a half. If you love silly schlock, you know you're going to be in for a good time with those opening credits. And it all leads up to a resolution that will leave you with a smile on your face. As low budget '70s cheese goes, this is a movie worth a look. Seven out of 10.