#9 - Death Machines (1976)
You know, I've watched a lot of terrible movies over the years. Some have been entertainingly bad, some have been sort of good, but it's pretty rare than I've watched anything that was truly, truly awful.
Death Machines is truly, truly awful. Three mind controlled assassins (a white guy, a black guy and an Asian guy,to cover all the exploitation markets) work for a mushmouthed Japanese woman who wants to take over the mob activity in her town. After they slaughter all the students in a karate dojo at the behest of a mobster, but leave one alive minus a hand, the boring, handless 'hero' goes after the assassins and their boss. Meanwhile the cops, led by Captain Green (whose makeup actually makes him look green in the film), and Lt. Clayton Forrester (really... surprised MST3K never picked up on this one, they would have loved it) argue and fight and don't really do any policing.
The film was produced to be a starring vehicle for the white assassin, one Ron Marcini, who would go on to an unspectacular career in shitty straight to video actioners. Crown International picked up the film and convinced the filmmaker to add a scene at the beginning in which a mysterious hidden man explains to the mushmouthed dragon lady about the mind control, and then released it with a poster and a trailer suggesting it was a sci-fi actioner, which it is not. What it is, as I said, is completely and utterly awful.
Here's the trailer, if you don't believe me:
Death Machines is truly, truly awful. Three mind controlled assassins (a white guy, a black guy and an Asian guy,to cover all the exploitation markets) work for a mushmouthed Japanese woman who wants to take over the mob activity in her town. After they slaughter all the students in a karate dojo at the behest of a mobster, but leave one alive minus a hand, the boring, handless 'hero' goes after the assassins and their boss. Meanwhile the cops, led by Captain Green (whose makeup actually makes him look green in the film), and Lt. Clayton Forrester (really... surprised MST3K never picked up on this one, they would have loved it) argue and fight and don't really do any policing.
The film was produced to be a starring vehicle for the white assassin, one Ron Marcini, who would go on to an unspectacular career in shitty straight to video actioners. Crown International picked up the film and convinced the filmmaker to add a scene at the beginning in which a mysterious hidden man explains to the mushmouthed dragon lady about the mind control, and then released it with a poster and a trailer suggesting it was a sci-fi actioner, which it is not. What it is, as I said, is completely and utterly awful.
Here's the trailer, if you don't believe me:
Click to view