Director: Frank Harris
Writer: Leo Fong
From: Cult Cinema
The daughter of a wealthy industrialist is inducted into a cult and a scrappy PI is tasked with finding her.
The second part of my birthday gift to myself and I wish I’d just bought socks instead. As with last post’s Killpoint, this is a Frank Harris film starring Leo Fong and Cameron Mitchell (our lord and savior), and I was made aware of it by a Best of the Worst episode. I have to say, they liked the movie far more than I did.
We open with the credits—bold move—which indicate that not only are Leo Fong and Cameron Mitchell in this, so is Stack Pierce, Nighthawk from Killpoint. Pierce was my favorite part of that movie and I was excited at the prospect of seeing him in this one as well. In fact, a lot of the actors from Killpoint are here as well. Nothing comes of it, but it was neat to notice.
In terms of content, the movie opens with armed gunmen holding up a sandwich shop. Fong, playing ex-cop and now private investigator Wong, (not to be confused with Lt. Long, his character from Killpoint) somehow hears the commotion from across the street, walks in, and shoots all the gunmen.
Meanwhile Karen Templeton, daughter of the head of Templeton Industries, is being inducted into a cult headed by Cameron Mitchell. Mitchell is the charismatic focus, but it’s actually being run by Karma, a young woman recently released from prison and running the cult as a scam. This becomes the first, but not last, instance in this movie of “the movie I’d rather be watching.” The cult being explicitly run as a scam that the leader themselves isn’t aware of is great. I’ve never seen that movie. Plus Cameron Mitchell is wearing a cloak and blackout glasses the entire time. His whole routine is just odd, much like his role in Killpoint. Best of the Worst made fun of his performance because he was always sitting down, but he doesn’t come across as drunk or lazy here, he honestly seems to be camping up a gonzo role.
The Templetons find out their daughter has been absent from college for two weeks and John Templeton sees Fong retrieve a woman’s stolen purse. That’s enough for Templeton to go to Fong’s office, which is a sty, and hire Fong to find his daughter. Sidenote: the thieves Fong stops pop up a couple more times in the movie to get beat up as one of the running gags that doesn’t work. The others are that Fong’s car doesn’t work and that he can’t park. They’re not funny and they don’t fit with the movie.
Anyway, Fong finds out the girl is at the cult, he sneaks in as a reporter but is outed and beaten, and then he escapes. He gathers a team of various toughs, sneaks in at night, and saves the girl as every guard gets killed and Karma shoots Mitchell in the head. Templeton is reunited with his daughter and Fong decides to take his girlfriend to Vegas, but his car won’t start. THE END.
I skipped a lot of the middle because it doesn’t matter and is boring. Nothing in the movie seems to connect to anything else, not just narratively, but visually. I was constantly confused as to where characters were or how shots related to each other spatially. Honestly, it felt like they forgot to shoot coverage so it started to feel like characters just appeared and then suddenly were somewhere else.
Also, as I noted above, there were several moments where I would rather have been watching the movie suggested by Low Blow as opposed to the actual movie. A big one was when Stack Pierce shows up as an underground boxer trying to make money in unlicensed fights. He gets in trouble with the local mob for not taking a fall. Fong finds him while Pierce is contemplating his next move and gives him his card. This happens several times, by the way. Fong sees someone being an impressive fighter and gives them his card. As Best of the Worst points out, he’s constructing a team before he realizes he needs a team.
Only, when Fong realizes he needs a team to raid the cult, he doesn’t call all the people he’s been contacting, he holds a “Tough Guy” competition with a $25,000 prize… which then features all the people he gave his card. The competition is held in a dirt pit in the middle of nowhere and when Fong has gathered all his fighters, he says they won’t get their money until they do the raid.
As I’m thinking about it, there’s a lot that happens in the movie that would warrant discussion: the Tough Guy competition, the fight at Fong’s home that’s apparently a dilapidated farm, Fong cutting the top of some goons’ car off using an angle grinder. There are moments that are laugh-out-loud funny just for their incongruity, but they’re placed amidst all of this disjointed nothing.
In fact, the movie’s really boring despite these oddball moments. To give just one example, I had to rewatch the raid on the cult three times because I kept falling asleep—and that features a shot of Fong crushing a guy’s head by stomping on it (dude’s head turns to cake. It’s hilarious). The movie weirdly required constant attention to follow but in no way rewarded that attention.
So, surprise surprise, this isn’t a recommend. As with Killpoint, Best of the Worst basically hits all the good moments obviating the need to actually watch it. If you’re really inclined to check out either of these flicks, I found full copies of both on YouTube. Knock yourself out.
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