Bonus #14: Fist of the North Star (1995)

 

Director: Tony Randel

Screenplay: Peter Atkins and Tony Randel

Based on the manga by Buronson and Tetsuo Hara

Cast: Gary Daniels as Kenshirô; Malcolm McDowell as Ryuken; Costas Mandylor as Lord Shin; Downtown Julie Brown as Charlie; Dante Basco as Bat; Nalona Herron as Lynn; Melvin Van Peebles as Asher; Clint Howard as Stalin; Andre Rosey Brown as Sandman; Paulo Tocha as Stone; Chris Penn as Jackal; Tracey Walter as Paul McCarthy; Rowena Guinness as Jill McCarthy; Isako Washio as Julia

 

Is it peaches? Sounds like peaches.

My knowledge of Fist of the North Star was limited to the point that this, in honesty, was one of the first versions of Buronson and Tetsuo Hara's legendary manga I had seen. The first was anime, New Fist of the North Star (2003-4), but worth mentioning is that, if the history of bringing Fist of the North Star into the United States only took to the late 2010s into 2020s to succeed, we in Britain got less of this legendary series. The United States finally got the full and uncut 1984-8 television series only in 2010s with Discotek, whilst in Britain, we only had 36 episodes of Manga Entertainment's attempt to sell the show, coming in the mid-2000s in a long gone box set. Fist of the North Star, this curious attempt to sell this franchise in the West, had the advantage in the DVD era that Hong Kong Legends picked this up as a title. A British DVD company, now long gone, who strove to preserve and release Hong Kong martial arts cinema with a care for extras and full versions pre-dating the Blu-Ray era, where even Criterion is preserving titles they once released, unexpectedly included Fist of the North Star itself among their catalogue.

This is not the first live action version, bootleg or otherwise, but with Clint Howard having his name over pro wrestler Leon "Vader" White on the opening credits, it is clear this is a curious adaptation. To those with no knowledge of the franchise, as this film tells, the world has descended into the post-apocalypse, with those who wish to acquire power having taken over as marauding hoodlums. One figure named Lord Shin (Costas Mandylor), having dominated with an iron fist, as the practitioner of the Southern Cross martial arts style, has created a city, his desire to improve the world contrasted by his ego and letting his men commit atrocity by invading smaller communities for supplies and slaves. His rival, who he has taken his love Julia (Isako Washio) from, now a caged songbird to him, and marked his body in permanent scars, is Kenshirô (Gary Daniels), practitioner of the North Star style. North Star, as interpreted in the manga, in the anime, but also here, is that contacting certain pressure points on the human body causes that person to explode, as gory as that sounds, and Kenshirô approaches Shin's world in attempt to defeat him.

Gary Daniels as Kenshirô looks like the muscular brother of Benedict Cumberbatch, who can still make your head explode, which is a compliment to both men. Daniels, a martial arts action star of films like Bloodmoon (1996), born in London, was also the person who came to this as a fan of Fist of the North Star, enough to call his son Kenshiro Daniels, who would go on to become a football (soccer) player when he grew up. Things obviously however made it clear the Fist of the North Star, this live action film, is not quite what it should be. It is conventional, which is the biggest sin it commits, that Tony Randel, most famous for Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988), came to this film and made it very conventional, more concerned with trying to give the character of Kenshirô angst-ridden rather than a narrative exploiting its premise. Even for a lower budgeted film, it has a lot to get the tone right, the production design team and model builders deserving all their praises for a film which, when exterior location shots, feels post-apocalyptic, but those involved beyond this clearly missed the point.

Despite being part of the wave of pop culture films from the 1990s that I am obsessed over, this is just has one pace, to tell a very simplistic tale of this Kenshirô beating Lord Shin, and not a lot else to work with. A film presenting Clint Howard, Ron's memorable acting brother, getting to be a murdering bastard in the first half, shooting people indiscriminately should sound like a lurid pulpy movie, especially as this does have fight scenes, and one of the most curious casts you could imagine for such a film. One thing you cannot deny, and should have excited people coming to this film, because Randel comes to this as a horror director behind films like Ticks (1993), is that they did not ignore how these characters can make people explode with a punch, or Lord Shin's special glowing hands attack causes veins in the biceps to burst in jets of gore. Even then, however, this does pull back, and never was there a film whose personality is against itself with moments this adult and violent, against content you would expect in tone from a child-friendly comic book adaptation.

Explain, for example, that this is a film with moments of gore, where the troops of Lord Shin, the South Crossmen, are explicitly raping, pillaging and murdering nearby locations, but contrasts this with a blond haired teen male character (Dante Basco) who is a goof and a wannabe kung fu expert, whose friend is a cute blind moppet who Kenshirô cures of her blindness. The film’s narrative is incredibly generic, and for a film that needs good fight scenes to work, the compromise to their presentation undermines the whole project, alongside the fact that, for the few moments of gore here, there are also points where the gore from the original manga are removed for the most part too. What it becomes is a strange concoction of who managed to end up in the film. Even in style there are weird moments that show this, like inexplicably, for a sombre toned film with an orchestral score by Christopher L. Stone, for it to suddenly splice in a Machine Head song A Thousand Lives into the soundtrack.

Malcolm McDowell, entirely separated off from everyone in his scenes, is a North Star martial arts master named Ryuken existing in the afterlife, continuing the obvious concern of Western actors having Japanese characters to play, levitating in a room or inexplicably appearing as a zombie to Kenshirô, voicing another actor, to tell him to not flee his role as a hero. Vader, the legendary pro wrestler, especially in Japan as much as in the West, is perfect as a Fist of the North Star baddie, and is just being Vader, pulling a promo on a small girl, as awesome as that sounds whilst performing moves on Gary Daniels. But with that fight ending in an anti-climax belittling both of them, even Vader is misused. Melvin Van Peebles is a really curious choice, a legend in African American cinema for directing Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (1971) alone, here as an actor, as with Downtown Julie Brown, a British video jockey (VJ) and personality, neither ultimately given much to do as members of a village Lord Shin is terrorising. Unfortunately as a result, neither were really worth having hired in the first place despite both, Van Peebles especially, are inspired figures to have hired.

Costas Mandylor himself is also a curious choice as that unfortunately means, as a former soccer/football player with no martial arts training, they had to work around this with stunt doubles, in a film which has Gary Daniels but not many who can do the martial arts fights. Japanese actress Isako Washio likewise, an actress from films like Bloom in the Moonlight (1993) is also stuck here trying to perform in a language not her own and feeling lost too. The one curious choice who managed to grab something from this is Chris Penn as Jackal. Penn steals the film, the actor from films like Reservoir Dogs (1992), with the advantage, playing a sleaze ball goon who managed to tape his head together before Kenshirô's blows caused his head to explode, that he could find a character he could relish the lines of.

It is a project which ended up with people who really had no idea what to do with this - co-screenwriter Peter Atkins mostly worked on Hellraiser and Wishmaster films, making this frankly a case of someone dropped with a title they had no investment it, Tony Randel likewise feeling entirely out of place here. Even in mind that huge chunks are clearly missing, such as the aforementioned Clint Howard disappearing entirely eventually, the live action Fist of the North Star film feels entirely at odds with what it is was adapting, a franchise which would have to take decades to finally get a lot more recognition in the West. This is a fascinating film to see, and has aspects which are worthwhile, just in how it looks, but never was there a film which really did not have a lot going on despite having such a curious production on and off screen.