I have this question about kung fu. I’ve personally witnessed every type of Kung Fu known to man. Full contact karate. Tae Kwon Do. Jujitsu. Kenpo karate.
Dragon-fist fighting. Mad Monkey Kung Fu. Trampoline somersault samurai. Hong Kong Kendo. Spread-eagle triple-reverse serpent-on-a-spear kickboxing. Open-foot mustache-bashing.
And now that kung fu movies are bigger than ever this year, there’s about 97 martial arts stars, and everybody that wins an ESPN foot-clobbering tournament gets a movie contract. And every time you talk to one of these black belts, or you see one in the flicks, they start talking about how kung fu is meant for SELF-DEFENSE only.
In other words, they do it to protect themselves from psycho killer transvestites on the street. They don’t do it to fight. They do it to AVOID fighting. And, in fact, if somebody ever catches em fighting FOR REAL, instead of defending themselves, then they’ll get shanghaied and whipped with a wet noodle by the Grand Wazir of Kickboxing, who’s always bald-headed with a long beard and he has a name that sounds like Morse Code for hare-lipped people–Goo Goo Gai Pan–and he sits cross-legged like Shirley MacLaine on a mini-series and calls you a “sniveling pile of weasel doo-doo” if you do the wrong thing and pursue a lifestyle of violence.
And they ALL say this, and they ALL mean it, and so here’s my question:
How can you stand it?
I mean, wouldn’t it be like getting ready to have sex for forty years, but never having it, but always being READY to have it just in case?
I mean, what if nobody ever comes up to you on the street an picks a fight?
I mean, what if you go through your whole life and nobody jumps out of a building onto your back or tries to rape your sister or beats up a little old lady while you’re crossing the street?
It can happen, right? It’s not like we witness 17 crimes a day. I mean, wouldn’t you end up getting so desperate that you’d go into the meanest parts of the South Bronx, just HOPING something dangerous would happen?
It’s sort of the same principle as when the cops tell you to label all your belongings in case a burglar steals em. And so one day you decide to do it–you label everything–but then the next week you buy a new stereo, and you throw out a bunch of old stuff, so now half your stuff’s labeled and half isn’t, and so you go “Oh, what the hell.” You’re already sick of it, right? You’re not gonna work that hard JUST IN CASE a burglar shows up, right?
This is the same deal, only these guys train EVERY DAY so that eventually, JUST IN CASE somebody jumps em, they can be ready to kick his butt.
Don’t they ever, once, just for a MINUTE, say, “I need to kick butt today”?
Otherwise, it’s like cleaning your shotgun every day of your life, but always eating Swanson’s frozen TV dinners.
You know what I mean?
Does anybody else ever think about this?
All right, well, one person who’ll never have to worry about it is Sheila Caan, star of the drive-in classic “Fertilize the Blaspheming Slut.” (Actually, it was recently retitled “for marketing purposes.” Nothing is changed, but the title on the marquees is “Fertilize the Blaspheming Bombshell.” Censorship is EVERYWHERE.) Also, the original poster had to be changed. The first one said “She Was a Slut From Brooklyn on a Cross-Country Ride to Hell!” And now it says “She Was a BOMBSHELL From Brooklyn . . .”
Anyhow, Sheila turns in one of the finest performances of the year, as a Las Vegas anthropologist running across the desert in her underwear while being chased by murdering satanists in black hoods and robes. She wants to find out just who it was that that sacrificed her sister and set her on fire in the middle of a giant pentagram and pushed her sister’s fiance off a cliff. The local sheriff, Bo Hopkins, doesn’t seem to know anything about it, and the horny gas station attendant on the highway is not much help. That leaves nothing but the spunky Sheila and her ripaway Frederick’s of Hollywood lingerie, venturing into the desert town full of bald-headed satan-worshipping character actors, praying to the devil that he will “sanctify my potency, that I may fertilize this blaspheming slut.”
I’m getting all choked up just thinking about it.
Fifteen dead bodies. Fourteen breasts. Chest-carving. Stake through the heart. Goat-head devil sex. Giant-stick-through-the-stomach. Two satanic dune-buggy motor vehicle chases. Three crash-and-burns, fireball. Flaming sacrificial victim. Flaming satanist. Gratuitous bath in a waterfall. Kung Fu. Bimbo Fu. Drive-In Academy Award nominations for Sheila Caan, as the blaspheming bombshell, for saying “It’s a satanic sign of evil”; Robert Tessier, as the satanic priest, for saying “Take her to the sacrificial pentagram!”; and Bo Hopkins, for being in this movie for no apparent reason.
One and a half stars.
Joe Bob says check it out.
