In the wake of the noble yet fruitless attempt by Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino to re-introduce the grindhouse genre to modern cinemagoers (and I would just like to point out that you modern cinemagoers are total morons… Grindhouse could and should have been the end of crappy Michael Bay/Jerry Bruckheimer/Akiva Goldsman atrocities that you mindlessly gobble-up because you don‘t have any common sense! I hate you all!), our friends at BCI Eclipse and Deimos Entertainment (along with several other DVD distributors) have put together a smashing series of double features (complete with the options to view the flicks back to back along with trailers and intermission bumpers) to satisfy sleaze maniacs and psychotronic buffs galore.
This DVD double feature presents probably the first widescreen editions of two Sonny Chiba flicks: Sonny Chiba’s Dragon Princess and Karate Warriors. Apart from the waka-chika music and the occasional well-done scene, the only other saving grace for these two films is that they hold the impressive record of not being released by grindhouse mogul Terry Levene’s now-sacred Aquarius label, but were released in the States instead by the cheaper(?), lesser-known Silverstein Films.
Sonny Chiba’s Dragon Princess is a strange little oddity armed to the teeth with numerous bloody fight scenes, bad dubbing, Japanese look-a-likes of American celebrities, and weird camera angles that reminded me of a homemade monster movie I shot on 8mm when I was a kid.
Our attempt at a story begins with the great Sonny Chiba entering a deserted Christian church somewhere in Japan (at least, I think it’s Japan…why should the movie bother the audience with such pesky details anyway, right?) with his young daughter. Sonny’s a karate teacher who meets a rival teacher to fight over who is going to be the reigning teacher supreme pizza kind of guy, who is played by the Japanese hybrid of Barry Sullivan and Jack Palance…let’’s call him “Barry Jack”. Evil Barry Jack is so determined to win that he’s brought along several of his compadres, including the Japanese Edgar Winter!  The baddies succeed in kicking the tar out of Sonny: Edgar punctures one of his eyes with a knife (and is blinded by Chiba in return), another guy cripples his arm, and the third guy impales his hand to the cross in a scene that is nowhere near as symbolic as the director probably wanted (providing the director even studied symbolism in film school…and that’s providing that the director actually did go to film school!). Having proven his superiority at teaching via violence and the art of maiming, Barry Jack decides to spare Sonny his life. They leave, Sonny demands his daughter pull out the knife stuck in his eye (he can’t do it, apparently as it‘s much more fun to traumatize your children in such events) and promptly begins to bleed all over his daughter as she escorts him to the opening title. What a guy.
For some reason, now the film decides to tell us where we’re at…New York. Never you mind the fact that we weren’t told of our own whereabouts previously…you were just supposed to know we were in Japan (or wherever); who cares that Barry Jack will later say “Los Angeles” when referring to this locale (an indication that the US distributors threw in the New York caption to appeal to the 42nd Street fans); and dammit all, don‘t pay any attention to the similarities between New York and Japan when they show us what could very well be the same stock footage (my explanation for which is in the previous flaw)!
 Anyway, Sonny lives in a small apartment with his now-grown daughter (Sue Shihomi), drinks Jack Daniels (it’s America, after all) and vigorously trains his offspring all the moves of karate on the rooftop so that she will be able to avenge him someday (it’s good to give your kids a goal in life…I’ve already begun to train mine to kill my adversaries from high school). At some point, the Jack catches up with him (it is America, after all), he’s on his deathbed (well, actually it’s his regular bed, but it doubles as his deathbed…it‘s a low-budget film, you know), a slightly Caucasian-looking doctor with frosted hair, bushy eyebrows and thick glasses (to further disguise his eyes…which do not reveal him to be Japanese whatsoever) arrives and informs Sue that her beloved pappy doesn’t have long to live. This short scene has to be one of the funniest bits I’ve witnessed due to the fact that the American distributors didn’t bother dubbing the doctor’s lines and, since he has his back to the camera, it just looks like he‘s having an epileptic episode as he shakes his head up and down and back and forth at Sue for no reason whatsoever!
Following Sonny’s death, Sue returns to Japan (I know it’s Japan this time, because they told us), moves in with her priest grandfather, and befriends a portly, obnoxious-looking guy who no doubt inseminated Delta Burke’s mother.
Meanwhile, Barry Jack’s school has grown by leaps and bounds due to his political connections (wait, this isn’t America anymore?) and has a lot of disciples and students (including the Japanese Lionel Richie and a Japanese cross between Elvis and Curly Howard of the Three Stooges) such as The Big Four, a group of four big guys (go figure) with a name that sounds like a hardware store chain. There’s also a Japanese Jim Stafford that’s really a good guy.
 Anyway, Sue helps Delta Burke’s father out with some protection-racket thugs who get back by siccing the dogs on her (she kills the poochies…shhh, don’t tell PETA). Then Barry Jack has some International Karate Champions eliminated by the Edgar Winter Trio (the scene that’s supposed to take place in Cuba is laughable at best…a non-Cuban-looking guy in army fatigues fights amid fires, bags of coffee beans and graffiti!). Next, Japanese Jim Stafford is hired by the thugs to kill her (he doesn’t). Cut to a pointless, softcore sex scene with a man and a woman (both mostly naked) on the dance floor of a club all but fornicating right there on the spot in front of the band (something I probably did once in a drunken stupor). This scene probably wouldn’t leave the viewer disoriented if the characters were actually from the same movie! They don’t even look Japanese! No…instead, we wind up with a bizarre clip that makes me wonder if Jesus Franco stopped by to shoot for a day.
Where was I?
Well, long story short: granddad and Sue get the shit kicked out of them by the Edgar Winter Trio. Deciding that it has to end then and there, Sue leaves grandpa with Delta’s dad, but not before he gives her some solid advice on how to kill the rotten bastards that stole his screen time. Sue and Japanese Jim Stafford team up, square off with the villains and the movie ends. Just like that!
One of the reasons this film just doesn’t cut it is that, at this point in time, Chiba was all but past his international sensation status and it would be TV shows and the occasional supporting role in feature length films from here on in. Wisely, he only appears in the beginning of the film, but the fact that audiences were now growing tired of his on-screen butchery and the fact that this film isn’t very good are enough to bury the film even before it made its way to the States.
 Karate Warriors (1976) is another film in Chiba’s Street Fighter legacy (although you wouldn’t know it with the dubbing) which borrows heavily from one of Japan’s most frequently ripped-off masterpieces, Kurosawa’s Yojimbo.
Taking place in modern times, Sonny shows up in a port town where two rival gangs (headed by brothers) are destroying both the economy (which seems to consist of gambling and porn) and the population. He befriends an annoying kid and his samurai father shortly before saving their sushi from gang members that belong to the gang known henceforth as Gang #1. From here, Sonny adjourns to Gang #1’s bar, assaults the bartender (never a good idea), insults the Madame of the establishment and asks the boss of Gang #1 for a job. He even beats up a Japanese Michael Clarke Duncan to prove how good he is. The boss of Gang #1 hires him for ¥3,000 a week, but that’s not up to his wandering life-style, so he asks the boss of Gang #2 for a job, but their position has been filled by a samurai, who is the father of Annoying Kid (anybody else getting a weird Ogami Itto-vibe?).
Sonny begins to form a creepy bond with the Annoying Kid and teaches him dumb philosophy (“They ran…that means you won!” he tells the annoying kid after some other children in tight shorts beat him up) as his samurai father is out murdering and pillaging throughout the city.
 Somehow, a million-dollars worth of heroin enters into the several plots happening at once within this film and Sonny goes all Mifune-Eastwood-Ladd-Willis on their asses as he pits one gang against the other so that the city will be gang-free and a safe-haven for gamblers and sexaholics once again!
In the end, Sonny manages to wipe out both of the gangs, kills the samurai father, finds the stash of heroin (which the Annoying Kid promptly throws into the ocean believing them to be the ashes of his late father) and takes the Annoying Kid to his mother…who doesn’t want him as he’s annoying, she’s re-married and has another annoying kid. Sonny doesn’t want the annoying kid, either, since he dumped his option to retire early into the sea but, being the big softy he is (yes…he kills, steals, lies, cheats and dreams of dealing drugs…but this is Annoying Kid, folks!), relents and he and Annoying Kid stroll off together on the beach to the strained sounds of music that even an old Montgomery Ward department store would have thought was lousy!
Presentation
Both features are presented in 16x9 widescreen (2.35:1). The perfectionist will no doubt be disappointed by the prints of these two films: colors are sometimes faded, some scenes look worse than others and, worst of all, neither film is complete…these are the domestic cuts as originally released by Silverstein Films in the early '80s. Sonny Chiba’s Dragon Princess is a swift 78min long (as opposed to the 90min running time indicated on the back cover) riddled with film flaws, while Karate Warriors suffers less from the ravages of time and appears to be more intact at 88min. If you’re a fan of titties, however, you won’t be disappointed…breasts abound in the features and trailers alike…lots and lots of boobies...hooters, jugs, chi-chis, blouse bunnies, bouncing’ cushions o’fun for all!
 Extras
The aforementioned option of watching the films grindhouse style includes some brief intermission bumpers (one of which bears the Something Weird Video logo!), the traditional swirling color optical effect that has become synonymous with the grindhouse genre and several trailers (only viewable via the grindhouse option): thrill to the wonderfully absurd exploitation-style preview (in 16x9 nevertheless!) for Terry Levene’s release of Sonny Chiba’s The Bodyguard (Viva Chiba!), complete with a white narrator trying to sound black. A trailer for the bizarre, mystical, non-grindhouse martial arts fantasy Legend of Eight Samurai is cheesy at best (complete with a very bad song for the US release performed by the late John O’Banion and played throughout) and they refer to it as both Legend of Eight Samurai and Legend of Eight Ninja in the same preview! Additional trailers include Sister Street Fighter (starring Chiba and Sue Shihomi fighting back to back) and at very amusing spot for Sho Kosugi’s shiro-made martial arts non-epic, 9 Deaths of the Ninja.
The Bottom Line
Despite the fact that these are not the original Japanese or International versions of the films, the lack of sufficient special features (the grindhouse option is cool…even with the non-removable DVD authoring logo integrated at the beginning of each feature), bad sound (not the DVD distributor’s fault) and passable film elements, this double feature is low-quality entertainment for fans of the genre at an affordable price (I actually think the strikes against this release improve the grindhouse element).
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