KILL AND KILL AGAIN is one of those American martial arts films made during the 1970s and 1980s which pale into insignificance when compared to their rival productions being made in Hong Kong. This one's another tournament flick in which a bunch of old and evil white men create a secret tournament for the world's top karate fighters; an ENTER THE DRAGON rip-off, in other words. Our improbably-named heroine, Kandy Kane, enlists the help of a top fighter to go undercover and break the criminal gang; the story goes from there. This is very much a nothing special sort of film, with criminally bad fight choreography which makes the fighters look unskilled and out of shape; none of the hits come remotely close to hitting, and there's a distinct lack of excitement and involvement on the viewer's part throughout.

Before watching Kill And Kill Again, the sequel to Kill Or Be Killed (which I haven't seen), I'd suffered through three productions by Edward Montoro: Day Of The Animals, Grizzly, and Mutant. Each film left me with that unpleasant feeling in the pit of my stomach that started cropping up sometime in my late twenties: the knowledge that I'm definitely going to die one day, that feeling that life is short, and the suspicion that – partially because of movies like the three aforementioned – I've all but wasted my allotted span hitherto.So it's not difficult to imagine my mindset when Kill And Kill Again's opening credits rolled, and there was Montoro's name plastered across the screen. I'd already paid good money for the thing, which represents work and arguably falls into that time-wasted category. Then again, if I watched what I was sure would be an atrocious movie, that would be another couple hours of my inevitable race to the grave spent on yet another horrendous Montoro film. Do I cut my losses now, or truly shame myself by letting Montoro fool me a fourth time? Obviously I chose to watch it. Buried beneath my existential nihilism is, in fact, an optimist. My findings? You heard it here first: Kill And Kill Again is kung-fu gold.Well, OK, silver. But for Monotoro it might as well be platinum.It's obvious he missed his calling: after watching three of the worst horrors ever shot on film, I watched Kill And Kill Again, an eighties kung-fu flick, and realized Montoro as a producer missed his calling. Don't get me wrong, 'derivative' still (as always) applies, and I can't judge whether Montoro's was intentionally satirical – maybe my modern sensibilities mistook an actually genuine attempt at a serious kung-fu movie for a tongue-in-cheek romp – but maybe, just maybe, Montoro (without a miraculous accident) actually turned out exactly the sort of film he wanted to make, and it was actually good.James Ryan stars as Steve Chase, a world-renowned martial artist who (presumably in the first film) is no stranger to getting dragged into contests of a nature that's decidedly more lethal than your average cage-match. Model/beauty-queen Anneline Kriel plays Kandy Kane – I swear this isn't a skin-flick – who drags Chase on a quest to save her father, who's been abducted by the evil genius Marduk. Together they assemble an A-Team style crew of the usual typecast-oddballs and token-whatever's, who set out to karate-chop and roundhouse-kick their way to Dr. Kane.Marduk – who's as comically villainous as you'd expect with a comic-book name like that – kidnapped Dr. Kane to work on his latest mastermind scheme for world domination. He's cooked up a potato-based obedience serum, and needs Dr. Kane to perfect it. Seriously, he's taking over the world with potatoes, and if that isn't intentional comedy I don't know what to call it. Marduk's got an entire campus full of brainwashed youths already on the drug, who he's raising as his personal karate army. Once Marduk's plan ripens (heh, get it, because potatoes?) he'll enthrall the entire world, assuming Chase, Kane and their sidekicks don't stop him.Nothing about this movie, when viewed superficially, should have been enjoyable. It's got a white South African, James Ryan, all but parodying Bruce Lee (I could never figure out whether I was supposed to believe Ryan was actually Asian). The voice-acting sounds like a racist's interpretation of Native American mannerisms. Sexism is blatant, even for an eighties movie, although I'll give Montoro this: Kandy Kane is a far more active heroine than any of his others female leads. She'd critical to the plot, in fact, and gets in a few badass moments herself.Kung-fu movies have a reputation for being cheesy and over the top; it's an inverse relationship between the realism of the kung-fu, and the awesomeness of the movie, and Kill And Kill Again wisely doesn't deviate. There's an obvious bit of realism beneath the choreography, but their ultimate goal was entertainment rather than believability. It's got everything we've all come to expect from these sorts of martial-arts movies: spinning kicks, backflipping as a valid means of daily transportation, parkour inspired wall-flips, and outright absurdism when it comes to how many (supposedly well-trained) combatants our heroes can fend off and defeat all on their lonesome.As a matter of fact, Kill And Kill Again broke new cinematic ground, which isn't something I thought I'd ever say about a Montoro production. My jaw literally dropped a couple inches when I saw it. You'll recall the slow-mo spinning-bullet shots in The Matrix, I'm sure; turns out KAKA was the very first instance of that now iconic shot. Even more impressively, they accomplished it all without the modern technology The Matrix and other imitators relied on. A dolly, a camera, some plexiglass and clever lighting were basically all they used for the setup.Innovation? Montoro? My core beliefs are thoroughly shaken.Kill And Kill Again is, slow-mo bullet sequence aside, nothing new. It isn't plowing deep into fresh narrative territory; the minimal character development isn't masking any biting social commentary; the cinematography's impressive, but it's an action movie, so I expect nothing less.But it's fun. It's enjoyable. You can laugh at the over-the-top kung-fu (or karate, whatever it's supposed be). You can dig the eighties nostalgia which is ultimately the genre's hallmark. You can turn your brain off, kick back, and prepare to be entertained with the comfortable knowledge that Kill And Kill Again won't require an iota of your upper-level cognitive function to fully enjoy what it has to offer.And, like me, you can say you finally watched an enjoyable Montoro film.

As far as martial arts cinema goes, "Kill and Kill Again" may be on the cheaper and cheesier side of things, but it is these very elements that make it oh so amusing. Fans of the genre will find enough things to make it a hoot to watch: a simple story, entertaining heroes and villains, negligible acting, beautiful South African scenery, and enough action to keep it watchable at all times.A follow-up to the earlier "Kill or Be Killed", it stars James Ryan as Steve Chase, a martial artist hired by a woman named Kandy Kane (Anneline Kriel) to rescue her scientist father Dr. Horatio Kane (John Ramsbottom) - a possible relation to a certain C.S.I. detective? - who's been kidnapped by a maniacal arch-villain, Marduk (Michael Mayer) who intends to control the populace of the Earth and have them do his bidding, thanks to a drug the scientist's discovered. So Steve reconnects with some old buddies - The Fly (Stan Schmidt), Gorilla (Ken Gampu), Hotdog (Bill Flynn), and Gypsy Billy (Norman Robinson) - to form a rescue team.There are enough inspired details in "Kill and Kill Again" to make it very agreeable: the fact that Mayer is clearly wearing a fake beard, his female partner in crime Minerva (Marloe Scott Wilson) who uses terms of endearment to address him in front of underlings, the early scenes of The Fly and Steve meeting (gotta dig the levitation), Gorilla acquiring the costume of a baddie and having it rip on him as he realizes it's not his size, and of course all of the various fight scenes. Things are so blatantly comedic at times that one has to believe that screenwriter John Crowther and director Ivan Hall weren't ever taking any of this too seriously.This is precisely why this is a fun flick, and Hall keeps the action and the laughs coming. The movie doesn't take long to start delivering the goods, and the actors here look like they're having a good time. Schmidt and Robinson also serve as the martial arts choreographers, and while Ryan isn't a very expressive performer, he's still reasonably likable and has enough of a presence to make him a suitable hero for this sort of thing. It doesn't hurt that some of the female cast members, including Kriel, are quite attractive.Overall, this is an acceptable diversion leading to a fairly rousing finale and ending on an endearingly silly final note.Seven out of 10.

When you watch a kung fu movie, are you expecting an intelligent plot, fine acting, and high production values? I hope not, because this movie has a very SILLY plot, lame acting, and it was made for about $100. But it's a lot of fun. The villain has a mind-control serum and a fake beard. Steve Chase assembles his team, Seven Samurai-style, to save the world. The rest of the movie is hilariously cheesy. I used to watch this flick on HBO in the middle of the night when I was a kid, around 1980. It was on all the time. When I founjd it on sale on DVD, I took a chance (these things don't always age so well, ya know?). But it's still GREAT. When it's deadly serious, I laugh, and when the characters crack a joke, it falls flat. KILL AND KILL AGAIN is the Plan 9 of martial arts movies. All humans must see it at least once! Marduk commands it!