KARATE COP

Nice hat, Ron, couldn't you find anything more generic than 
"Special Police"?

He also bankrolled, co-directed, produced and wrote Karate Cop, and choreographed all the fights himself. So, basically, this was an ego piece for him, and we can look no further for someone to heap insult and blame on for this travesty. Travolta had his with Battlefield Earth, Costner his with Waterworld, so Marchini can have Karate Cop engraved on the prow of his boat across the River Styx to hell.

Ok, what we have here is your typical post-apocalyptic societal collapse, this one brought about by unknown factors, but probably an environmental holocaust due to over-pollution and over-population. There's zero evidence of any sort of nuclear war or comet strike or anything that drastic, just Al Gore being proved right. The area our movie is set in is never explicitly said, though it was filmed in the Stockton, California area (the same as the first film) and there's absolutely nothing in the film that would negate the idea that the actual setting is northern California.

Following the collapse of western civilization (hey, it had to happen sometime), all law and order disappeared, leaving the streets to the criminals and scumballs. In the Stockton area, these are collectively called “scavs”, short for “scavengers”, of course. The scavs of Stockton are beholden to a powerful drug lord named Lincoln, who has his own private army and fortified compound. The scavs seem to be dependent on Lincoln for everything from drugs to food, and as such do the dirty work of protecting his outlying turf and collecting booty and loot for him.

Now, I read that principal photography for this film took just 17 days. That I can believe (actually I would have guessed more like 10 days) considering the unpolished script and the generally hurried look to almost every scene. I can't image that there were many second takes for most shots, regardless of the quality. Extras, props and permits all take money, and Marchini clearly didn't want to waste a dollar. So, to that end, I will write this review with the 17 day shooting schedule in mind.

And on to our show...

Shooting Day 1:
On the first night of shooting, a dozen extras are dressed up in torn and soiled clothes, greasepaint and ash is smeared on their faces, and they are given rubber knives and wooden sticks. They are then told to run down this alley after these two girls, yelling and screaming bloody murder. Run fast, they were told, but not too fast, keep a good distance between you and the girls. Oh, and when one of them artistically trips and the other comes back to help her up, slow down so you don't overrun them. And keep yelling. A lot.

The two girls are from a compound nearby and are apparently (though it's not clear) out at night on a foraging expedition when they are seen and chased by the scavs. One of the girls is Rachel, who I will detail later, and the other is Mica. Mica is a big boned blonde Scandinavian woman played by first-timer Vibbe Haugaard.

While Rachel runs ahead, Mica drops back to delay the scavs, what is certainly a suicidal move but one that shows both Mica's courage and the value to the compound that Mica places upon Rachel escaping unhurt. Swinging a length of chain, Mica gives a good account of herself for a few minutes, but the scavs' numbers are too great and she takes a knife in the back and is pounded down.

Mica, dressed like Bam-Bam from The Flintstones, swinging that chain.

The scavs, rah!

Rachel crawling in slow motion towards the camera like she's in a White Snake video.

Shooting Day 2:
The next night, the crew and cast reassemble at the entrance to an abandoned warehouse, where Rachel, still running from the scavs, stumbles in the dirt. She then (even more artfully) crawls through the open door instead of just standing up and running through it. The extras playing the scavs, only a half dozen now as the rest had to be at their regular jobs in the morning and couldn't show up, slow down even more to allow this crawling girl to beat them to the doorway.

Rachel crawls up on a pair of black leather boots, filled with smelly feet, attached to the sinewy muscled legs of our film's hero, John Travis (Ron Marchini). "Help me." Rachel mutters before passing out (from exhaustion maybe?).

And now we have our first set-piece fight between Travis and these handful of thugs. In typical movie fashion, the thugs take turns attacking Travis, instead of ganging up on him to use their numbers advantage. Travis smacks them all real good, though the frequent editing cuts and pointless close-ups of Marchini’s feet and fists do little to improve the action. Surprisingly (very much so), they had two cameras for this shoot, as different angles of the same hits are spliced in frequently. That they could afford two union camera crews for this movie is amazing, and probably sucked up half the budget. And where you have union camera guys, you have to have craft services tables, and those donuts and ham sandwiches don’t come cheap. I wonder if Marchini dipped into his own pockets for this film?

Anyway, quickly moving indoors with one of the cameras, the actress playing Rachel strips down to her panties and gets in a sleeping bag as Marchini busies himself with a can of beans or something.

It's now the next morning, and we're to believe that Rachel slept all night under the watchful eye of Travis. She's naked because he had to wash her clothes because of the "acid rain". But it's ok, because he "didn't look". Rachel dresses herself from the pile of clothes next to her and casts suspicious gazes on Travis.

Rachel is played by twentysomething Carrie Chambers, whose sole claim to even marginal fame seems to rest entirely between the golden mounds of a mammoth set of breasts. She has extremely limited acting skills, virtually zero screen presence, and runs like an ungainly duck, but she does have a mind-mumbingly perfect pair of boobs, which this movie takes great pains to show us in a variety of bouncy, nipply ways. I'm not saying that Carrie Chambers doesn't belong on film, but it's clear why she's here.

Rachel, somehow managing to hold onto her pre-war supply of hairspray and mousse.

In my edited version, this is the closest you come to boobie nirvana...

Hmm...Travis has a dog, that he throws a can to, who licks it out, in a post-apocalyptic movie. Hmmm...never seen that before.

Shooting Day 3:
The next day, Marchini and the girl and a dog get into an old car and drive down an alley or two. The car is an early '80s Ford POS sedan, crudely painted black and white to resemble a police cruiser. I guess we're to assume that this was Officer Travis' actual car from before the End of the World.

They are headed for Rachel's compound, which is "not far". But nothing is going to be easy in this movie, and they are soon boxed in by a large group of scavs, who advance with clubs and knives from all directions. Grabbing little more than his cut-off double-barrel shotgun and the girl, Travis jumps out of the car and dashes down a side alley, pursued by the mob.

Eventually cornered, they are confronted by this mob's "leader", a big dude named Snaker. Snaker is played by Michael Bristow, who was also "Raccoon Face" in Omega Cop. His character is a twitchy, jerking, insanely over-the-top crack addict with Tourette's Syndrome and ADD. His face has been made up to look like he's just come from an audition for a community college performance of Cats (which might be the case) and he wears tight black spandex pants and carries a bullwhip (!) and a revolver (which might be the same as used in the Dad scene below).

Snaker fancies himself a fighter (and he better be if he's going to keep the leadership post of this unruly mob) but he's met his match with Travis. After a quick thumping that leaves Snaker wallowing in the dirt in pain, Travis and Rachel hotfoot it out of there, with the mob in chase again.

They make it to a ten-foot high chainlink fence, supposedly surrounding Rachel's compound. Rachel whips out a remote control (!) and turns off the electricity (!) so they can pass through, and then turns it back on (!). What? Where do they get their electricity from? Electric fences take a lot of juice (as do teleporters later) and in this post-apocalyptic setting, with all society in tatters, I'd be amazed if they were still able to pay their utility bill on time. Pacific Gas & Electric would have surely turned off their account by now. But, who knows, maybe in this horrific hell of roving gangs and rampant disease, perhaps the monopolistic California energy companies still exist. Perhaps they have become the "new government", holding together the shattered fragments of civilization while still overcharging for electricity (I'm bitter, I lived in California for 18 years and had to pay those frickin' PGE bills every month, where is Teddy Roosevelt when you need him?).

It's got cop tires, cop suspension, cop shocks...

Snaker, in need of some skin care products.

The compound.

Shooting Day 4:
Ok, the next day a bunch of kids are brought to the set, about a dozen of them. These are the children of the actors and crew, ranging in age from about five to ten-years old. They are dressed in scruffy dirty clothes and have greasepaint smudged on their faces. Marchini instructs them all in the sternest language possible without making the younger ones cry that they must absolutely not utter a sound while the cameras are filming them. Union rules say that actors doing non-speaking roles don't get SAG credits and are vastly cheaper than speaking roles (though I suspect that the younger kids were paid in Skittles and bubblegum anyway).

These kids live in this compound and are known as "freedom fighters". They are orphans who have been taken in by Rachel as protection from the scavs and the streets. She feeds them, protects them, and gives them hope (though she can't wipe their faces clean or comb their hair, rotten parent). There don't seem to be any other adults here, and we wonder if it was only Rachel and the now deceased Mica caring for them.

There's one older boy about 15 or so named Cal, who actually has a speaking role. Cal is played by Dax Nicholas, who was also the kid who baited Travis in Omega Cop. He’s quite possibly the most awful excuse for an actor ever in the entire history of filmmaking. He must be the director’s son or something.

Ok, now clearly Marchini was a fan of James Axler’s Deathlands series of PA books (which were pretty popular at the time) because Rachel now shows Travis a “teleporter”! This is a matter transfer machine, or a Star Trek transporter if you prefer, that can zip anything from one unit to another instantly. Just going to call it the “Mat-Trans” unit, for the Deathlands fans.

Rachel says that the “military” build a number of these units all around the country to move stuff and people around. In the chaos, however, all but three were destroyed (how does she know this?). Two of the three left are here in the Stockton area and the third is in far away Juneau, Alaska. Rachel’s goal is to ship her and all her kids to Alaska to escape the mess that's now California.

The problem is that each machine runs on a “crystal” and the one for their machine recently broke. Rachel wants Travis to travel over to the other Mat-Trans unit nearby and get that crystal and bring it back. Simple plan, eh? Against his better judgment, and surprisingly not at all swayed by Rachel’s monstrous breasts bulging out of her tight shirt, Travis agrees to this plan.

The kids, nothing like the kids in Mad Max 3, really, nothing like them at all.

Cal, wash your face, boy.

The Mat-Trans unit.

Shooting Day 5:
The next day a stuntman, who is basically the same body size and build as Marchini, is brought in to ride the bike. A conveniently dark-tinted helmet visor makes us think that Marchini himself is violating his insurance policy by riding the bike, but we know better.

Travis rides the bike down a dirt path, at a dangerous speed in my opinion. Lurking on the rooftops of nearby buildings are scavs, and they mean to do harm to our hero. They begin tossing Molotov cocktails (!) down at him as he races past below.

The stuntman drives through a carefully pre-arranged track, avoiding the gunpowder bombs buried under two inches of topsoil scattered about the dirt path. Boom they go, geysering up dirt and smoke, vroom goes the motorcycle, swerving and gunning it to safety. Wow, that really looked authentic, just like in Renegade! Because Coke bottles filled with gasoline always cause neat explosions with no flames but lots of dirt.

We get a lot of these sorts of shots.

Anti-vehicular weapon of choice for PA gangs.

Hmm...not very explosive, eh?

Shooting Day 6:
The next evening the prop guys move the entire Mat-Trans setup from the garage to the basement of a nearby building to serve as the second Mat-Trans unit. They light some candles, dress up some extras in robes and have them mutter Gregorian-style chants. A secret cult has set up shop down in the second Mat-Trans unit, and Travis has to get past it to get the crystal.

This he does, but not without trouble. Jumped by a cultist, he has to shoot his way out, which causes the Mat-Trans unit's security system to kick in. On the wall is one of those scrolling LED signs like you see outside bars and restaurants, this one announcing that a self-destruct bomb will go boom soon! Travis runs out, but the bomb is a dud, luckily.

Outside, Travis’ luck takes a hit when he sees his motorcycle is gone. Since he has the keys still, someone pushed it off and they couldn’t have gotten far. Most oddly, right across the street from the building (the one full of dangerous cultists) is a small diner called “Jackass Junction”.

Travis uses a grappling hook to enter the building, which makes zero sense as he leaves the same building later through an open door.

The scary priest of this cult, looking a bit like Napoleon.

Ha, a scrolling light sign, that's funny.

Shooting Day 7:
55-year old living legend David Carradine arrives on set in his Mercedes S500, along with his agent, who informs Marchini that he has Mr. Carradine for exactly 45 minutes and not a second longer. Carradine peruses the script (certainly written on the back of a $100 bill...) and says, "Let's do it." Everyone piles into the abandoned diner that serves as the set for Jackass Junction, the shabbily-dressed extras take their places at the tables with their knives and blacked-out front teeth, a young woman wearing a fur halter top begins to sway unconvincingly to a honky tonk tune coming from a boom box, and Mr. Carradine puts on a grimy t-shirt and apron and gets behind the bar. Cue Marchini's entrance.

Travis enters and warily has a seat at the bar, all the scuzzy patrons burning holes in his back with their beady eyes. The bartender (Carradine) comes over and offers a bowl of fresh "jackrabbit stew", which Travis reluctantly orders. The bowl of stew, looking much like Hormel chili bought down at a local supermarket and cooked up by Marchini's wife, is placed before him and he makes a show of stirring it around.

Travis then asks Dad (that's the bartender's name, really) what the bill is, to which the old man only laughs oily. He says the price is the keys to the motorcycle that one of his boys pushed back here a bit ago. Ah, so that's where his motorcycle went! Dad pulls out a large revolver and points it at Travis as the half-dozen men rise as one and advance on him, knives and clubs drawn.

Acting with the swiftness of someone who has read the script, Travis whips around and shoots Dad with his shotgun (Carradine's agent, who had not read the script, screams "Don't hurt him for god's sake!", which was edited out in ADR), knocking him backwards onto a mattress hidden behind the bar. Dad artfully drags his pistol across some bottles as he goes down, shattering them in bursts of glass (the agent again screeches in agony as his client is showered in beer and glass shards, vowing to never again let Mr. Carradine work with this low-rent son of a bitch Marchini).

David Carradine!

Travis with a gun to his head. Someone's going to pay for this.

The skanky dancer chick, hands off unless you want cooties.

Shooting Day 8:
The next day, they drag out the motorcycle, gas it up down at the Exxon station, and have the stuntman drive it down another rutted dirt track. The extras playing the scavs run over to an ambush spot beneath a bridge and lay a thin rope across the track, hoping to clothesline Travis as he roars by.

The rope is pulled tight, the stuntman lays the bike down and rolls a bit to make it look good (the insurance agent on set cringes at the damage to the bike, which is a lot, and the $1,000 deductible).

Abandoned tires, the clearest sign of the collapse of western civilization.

A stuntman dressed like Travis runs from his crashed bike.

A cornfield, which makes you wonder why people are so hungry and starving, just harvest the corn and eat it, dumbasses.

Shooting Day 9:
The next day, Marchini and crew go back to the garage where the kids were. Travis enters on foot, carrying a duffle bag with the crystal. He isn’t there two seconds before Cal the Sucky Actor comes up and tells him that Rachel of the Awesome Boobies was captured by Snaker! It seems she was out (again) and got caught. Travis is tempted to just say screw it and leave, but he knows that the right thing to do is try and get Rachel back.

Cal tells Travis the bad news, that Rachel has been captured and that his boonie hat is out of style.

Rachel being abused by Lincoln after being captured, don't touch the boobs!

I think something was cut out of my version, because the scene jumps suddenly and we see Rachel with half her shirt off and a frightened and angry look on her face. I think an icky rape scene was cut out.

Shooting Day 10:
Marchini takes a break to travel back to Los Angeles to try and get some more financial backing. The budget is shaky and he needs to hit up his distributors so the shoot can continue. The next afternoon, Marchini returns from LA with some checks, and much rejoicing ensues. After cashing the checks, Marchini pays two day's rent on a large brick abandoned building in Stockton. This will serve as the evil kingpin Lincoln's redoubt.

Lincoln and his gang are watching the Champion fight contenders in a gladiator-style pit, ringed with shouting fans and surrounded by electrified chicken wire. There’s a lot of breaking bones and a lot of bleeding down here. My, look at those shoulder pads! And those lacrosse helmets! This is definitely a post-apocalyptic movie.

The Champion, wearing what I think is a cricket keeper's helmet.

The arena of death! Well, maybe the forced perspective hallway of death!

The fence around the arena is electrified, which means that Lincoln also pays his electric bill every month.

Shooting Day 11:
Back now to Lincoln’s compound set the next day, following a fight with the union electrician on set, who was pissed that one of the gaffers plugged in a lamp when union rules clearly state that only a union electrician can plug in a lamp on film set.

Our bad guy Lincoln is played by D.W. Landingham, who was also "Norm" in Omega Cop. He's a fat-jowled overly-squirmy guy, dressed in the sort of fake military tunic with lines of costume jewelry medals that you see on a lot of PA warlords.

Lincoln has a favorite woman, of course, his moll. She’s played by Dana Bentley, a skanky chick whose butt I recently saw in 1991's Bad Girls from Mars. Here she slinks around in a leather dominatrix outfit, but the camera never really gets close enough to her for us to get too excited.

Rachel is brought in now, lead on a leash by the moll. Good lord! They put her in a shiny silver dress, with slits up both legs all the way to her waist, and with a plunging neckline sans bra. Trashy, but nice.

Ron Marchini’s wife Jo Anne is on set today, and she expresses her displeasure at all these young hotties in their skanky outfits working with her husband. Ron assures her that it’s all just business and he doesn’t find them attractive as she. Really. Jo Anne is still not happy, but she lets the shoot continue, while stationing herself behind the key grip so she can keep tabs on where Ron puts his hands.

Lincoln, looking a bit like a PA version of Newman from Seinfeld.

The moll and Rachel in her dress have a little S&M moment, get your credit card ready.

Travis is not happy about all this tomfoolery and he means to
put a stop to it.

Shooting Day 12:
The next day the shoot resumes, Chambers puts on the silver dress again, the extras reassemble (grumbling at that trashy diva who delayed the shoot), the fog machines roll and the heavy metal blasts.

Travis now swings in on a rope to save the day, kicking the Champion into the electrified fence. The Champion fries beautifully, twitching and thrashing on the fence. The crowd goes crazy with rage, but Travis quickly reaches Lincoln and holds a knife to his throat. Lincoln proves himself a coward here (as are many of these sorts of thugs who let others do their dirty work) and Travis uses him to get him and Rachel out of the room. He tosses Lincoln aside then (why?) and they run for dear life. Travis seems to have no escape plan prepared, but just runs about the building looking for a way out. All this running is hard on Rachel in that flimsy dress, and she has to hold her boobs with one hand as she runs to keep them from flopping out. Eventually, they make it up to the roof.

Travis holds Lincoln hostage.

Rachel climbs a ladder in that Princess Leia dress, nice legs!

Up on the roof, Travis and Rachel enjoy the summer sun while running from the machinegun-totting bad guys.

Shooting Day 13:
The next morning, they head back up to the roof of the building to shoot a few stunt scenes. Carrie Chambers puts on the dress again, by now she’s getting used to it, and used to the stares of the trailer park extras and greasy gaffers, and she and Marchini run around and hide behind air conditioning units as guys chase them with toy guns.

While "jumping" from one rooftop to another, Travis takes a bullet in the leg! Hobbling off, he and Rachel manage to escape, surely helped by the bad guys, who just stop chasing them, stop shooting at them, stop paying any attention. Perhaps it was 5 o'clock by then and union rules state that extras can only work eight hours a day and Marchini was unwilling to pay them the overtime so the scene just ended there.

Two badguys fire their toy guns from below.

More badguys shoot like mad from above.

Rachel helps the injured Travis up from near death, please ignore the ledge just off-camera.

Shooting Day 14:
The next day they shoot the scene where Travis is forced to dig out the bullet, Rambo-style, with little more than his toolkit and determination. Rather icky, actually. With what was surely a lack of money by this point, and seeing the incredible ego that Ron Marchini possessed, I would not be at all surprised if Ron actually shot himself in the leg and then dug the bullet out in real-time for that "authentic feel".

Travis' surgical scalpel...

Travis pulls that round out with needle-nose pliers. Damn!

Travis sleeps the pain off.

Shooting Day 15:
Back at the garage set now, the Mat-Trans unit reassembled here. We now see that Rachel, who before I just assumed was a hottie with tremendous boobs, is in fact a nuclear physicist! I know that because she's now wearing a white lab coat and these nerdy librarian glasses. Wow, so I guess that she was working on the Mat-Trans project before the collapse, and just stayed here afterwards, hoping to get it running again? A little set-up would have been nice.

She gets the Mat-Trans unit up and running after replacing the old broken crystal with the new one that Travis retrieved. A lot of typing on a keyboard, and a lot of adjusting with a crescent wrench (a little too blacksmith for such a delicate machine, I’d say), and it’s operational again!

Piling all eleven kids (minus Cal) onto the platform, she flips the switch. With a humming and flashing of lights, the kids are zipped up to Juneau, Alaska! What they are going to do there is never stated, but lets not worry about that right now, lets just celebrate.

At the same time, however, the compound is under frontal attack by Lincoln and a bunch of his men on some sort of fork truck. Travis holds them off while the kids escape, but Lincoln's men bust in before Cal and Rachel can make their jump north.

There's some fighting, some kicking, some punching, and some general unpleasantness directed towards a number of underpaid extras wearing matching jumpsuits and lacrosse helmets. In the melee, Snaker takes a crossbow bolt (!) from Cal and dies, all of Lincoln's men get thumped and thwacked while he just stands there and looks annoyed, and Rachel and Cal manage to make their jump to safety.

Oh, she's smart and hot. I'm in love.

Why didn't they use this before to get into the compound? Seriously.

The kids transfer north to Alaska, going north, the rush is on.

Shooting Day 16:
The next day, after a night of rest, massages, and green tea, Marchini shows up early to the set for his climactic final fight with the Champion. Michael Foley (his opponent) was out drinking last night with the girls from the craft services table and shows up late, stinking of cheap wine and astroglide. It's noon before he gets into makeup and has enough coffee in him to start the shoot. Marchini is not amused, and will surely take his annoyance out on Foley in the coming fight scene.

Which goes as expected, with a whole lot of kicks to the face, punches to the chest, eye gouging, ball kneeing, and lots of grunting and sweating. The post-production editors will have their work cut out for them with this fight, filmed with two cameras and lasting a good five minutes.

In the end, the Champion is bested and Lincoln is killed when he tries to make a Mat-Trans jump himself, but Travis kicks the crystal and Lincoln goes puff into a pile of ashes. Ah, but all that started a self-destruct mechanism that will explode the unit in 90 seconds! Run, Travis, run!

Rah! The Champion's face is half black and half white, like he's from the planet Cheron!

The Champion is down, let this be his last battlefield.

All that remains of Lincoln, note the medals and jewels in there.

Shooting Day 17:
The last day of the shoot is the most dangerous, the exploding building. An abandoned building is purchased by Marchini's accountants, the city permits are obtained, the local fire department is alerted, and everyone signs liability waivers in triplicate. Marchini stands off at a preset distance, his back to the building and waits nervously for the countdown.

Ka-boom! The building explodes in a rolling gas-fueled fireball! Travis crouches down and holds his head in his arms as gouts of dirt and smoke roll over him.

The ending shot (most likely filmed some days earlier in between smoke breaks) shows Travis walking off into the sunset (please!) with his hat and his dog. If there was ever a better set-up for a sequel, I've not seen it. Karate Cop II/Omega Cop III where are you?

You know, I think that Marchini is standing in front of a bluescreen.

Yeah, that looks like a bluescreen.

Travis walks into the sunset like Shane.

The End.

Bonus! Some handy stats for this movie:
10: Number of people definitely killed by Travis.
10: Number of pistol rounds fired by Travis.
6: Number of shotgun shells fired by Travis.
1: Number of really good high-quality mullets seen.
0: Number of cigarettes smoked.
0: Number of naughty girly nipples seen.

Stinger: The Moviefone.com description for this movie was clearly written by someone who had never seen the movie, and most likely by a blind goat herder in Nepal...

“Set in the Future, Karate Cop stars Ron Marchini in the self-explanatory title role. Marchini is obliged to join forces with gorgeous scientist Carrie Chambers, who's also pretty good at taking care of herself. The two crimebusters scour the city in search of a priceless stone. Villain David Carradine, of course, intends to rule the world with that rock.”