Samurai Cop





Samurai Cop is an unreleased(?) low budget action-comedy from 1989 that’s been given a new life on DVD. It’s tough to suggest the movie, which is mind-blowingly incompetent, but the DVD is worthwhile.

The Samurai Cop of the title is Joe Marshall, a narcotics officer from San Diego invited to help the LA police with a gang war. The war was initiated by a baddie named Fujiyama, whose chief henchpeople are a “samurai” played by Robert “The Face” Z’Dar, the samurai’s girlfriend played by adult film star Cameron, and a bald guy played by Gerald “We couldn’t get Sho Kasugi“ Okamura. Joe is also supposed to be some sort of samurai, though this doesn’t come into play until the last scene in the movie. Before that Joe mostly swaps horrible jokes with his partner Frank, exchanges breathtakingly tactless sexual innuendo with every woman he meets (but its okay, they’re all irresistibly attracted to him – a female doctor at a hospital opens a conversation with, “Do you like what you see? Do you want to date me? Do you want to f*** me?”), and occasionally engages in badly edited gunfights with random gangsters in random locations.

This movie is so cheap that even simple dialogue scenes are full of mismatch edits and repeated reaction shots. This movie so cheap that when Z’Dar opens fire on a car with a machine gun, the filmmakers can’t afford squibs so instead they run a rotary sander on a metal plate just off camera to shower the area with sparks. This movie is so cheap that Robert Z’Dar is the biggest star and the best actor in it.

The movie is rotten, and the transfer it’s been given to DVD is hinky. However the DVD does include a very funny commentary by Joe Bob Briggs. This commentary is so good that it sorta ruins this movie as a cult item simply because Briggs makes about 90% of jokes that could possibly be made at this movie's expense.

Posted: Sun - April 3, 2005 at      

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