Rating: 3/5
Cult Movie Challenge 2017 | 26/52 | Filipino Exploitation
This must be the place where they bury the gahddamn kung fu fighters.
Warriors’ Island is a burial ground for disgraced martial artists where rumor says that monks raise these warriors from their graves to keep out outsiders. A plane lands on the Island, where monks wait at the dock. A German man in a white suit with a uh, familiar mustache steps out of the plane. Three men corral five women hostages. The men rip off the women’s clothes and put them on a scale with baskets of jade on the other side. The monks remove one woman for being too skinny. Otherwise, the men take the baskets of jade and load them into the plane. As the plane leaves, a kung fu zombie comes out of the woods and kills the skinny woman.
Cut to a taxi heading for Port of Long Beach. Taylor, Schwartz, and O’Malley of the Burbank Karate Club are going on a budget tour of the islands of the South China Sea, which passes Warriors’ Island. Host Hazel Buck and temperamental Captain Harry Dodds welcome them aboard. The boys exhibit their martial arts skills alongside the boat’s chef, who is a bit of a fighter. They catch the eyes of Cookie Winchell, an LAPD SWAT Team member, who also shows the boys a move or two.
Hazel Buck reveals to a crew member that several passengers want to visit Warriors’ Island this time. The men all pair off with a woman, except for O’Malley, who ends up in a thruple situation with a married couple. When they dock, O’Malley and the husband, Lloyd, go to The Palace of 1001 Pleasures. Uh oh, Colonel Hitler Sanders and his woman-nappers also show up, ready to take more women to Warriors’ Island to trade. Posing as police, the mercenaries raid the palace. When they learn that the boat is going to Warriors’ Island, the mercenaries chase them down so they can protect their source of jade.
This movie is quite silly and intentionally so. It knows its concept is goofy and tries to pack in as much fun as it can. The film puts most sex comedies to shame with the amount of superfluous nudity it packs in. If you thought Andy Sidaris movies were indulgent, this movie says, “Hold my beer.”
The fight choreo isn’t much, especially for the white dudes, but they manage to set up some decent set pieces. The film blends martial arts with slasher kills, further emphasizing the “throw everything at the audience” mentality of the movie. They even throw in some piranha footage from Joe Dante’s Piranha because why not?
The movie slows down a bit once they get on the island—a classic case of the plot getting in the way of the movie. The film spends so much time building up the zombie fighters that there’s just no way the finale can match expectations. It’s fun, don’t get me wrong, but it’s low-budget fun.
Mary Miller is the MVP for her ridiculous scene — is this the only movie she did??
One of the monks talks like Homer Simpson.
This movie ends with the saddest To Be Continued… because it never came to be.