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15 year old Anthony (Kim Rossi Stuart) comes to the Philippines to
visit his father (Jared Martin), a former powerful investigative
journalist who has been tricked into exile by an even more powerful
multinational atomic sorporation. Once there he finds not only love in
form of Maria (Jannelle Barretto) but also injustice in form of Quino
(Enrico Torralba), who uses his karate-skills to get protection money
from local shop owners. Our clever boy insults Quino at an karate
tournament, & even though he can escape him on motorbike that day,
he recieves his deserved beating the very next day, & Quino leaves
him to die out in the wilderness. But then mysterious monk Kimura (Ken
Watanabe) finds our boy, nurses him back to health & teaches him
karate - actually Kimura was the very man who taught Quino karate in the
first place & is now shocked about his misguided favourite student.
Upon coming back to civilization, Anthony immediately saves Maria's
brother from a fire set by Quino & then challenges Quino at yet
another karate tournament - which he is about to lose until Master
Kimura has the great idea to blindfold Anthony, so he can use his
invincible Dragon Fist. To no surprise, Anthony wins now ! It
is of little doubt that Fabrizio De Angelis (as a producer) was a
crucial figure in getting the Italian horror- & sci-fi-boom off the
ground in the late 70's/early 80's, producing among many others such
genre faves as Zombi 2/Zombie Flesh Eaters (1979), L'Aldila/The
Beyond, Quella Villa accanto al Cimitero/House by the Cemetery (both 1981) & Lo Squartatore di New York/New York
Ripper (1982) by Lucio Fulci, 1990 - I Guerreri dal Bronx
(1982), Fuga dal Bronx (1983) & I Nuovi Barbari/The
New Barbarians (1983) by Enzo G.Castellari & Zombie Holocaust
(1980) by Marino Girolami. By 1987 however, this market had relatively
dried up & De Angelis was looking for other sources of revenue.The
many (American) martial arts movies that were flooding the video rentals
back then, spawned by the surprise mainstream success of the pretty poor
Karate Kid (1984), seemed to have a very easy formula to copy
& were rather inexpensive to make, so this film was born. Karate
Warrior actually fares no better or worse than its American
counterparts while being a far cry from even mediocre Hong Kong-martial
arts-movies (let alone classics), meaning it's an extremely unremarkable
film: the action is pedestrian, the karate is reduced to pure violence
& brutality without any grace, the Far Eastern philosophy seems to
be derived from fortune cookies, the dialogues are so bad it almost
hurts, the actors are completely wooden ... just like every Hollywood
martial arts movie from back then. Karate Warrior did actually
prove successful enough though to spawn 4 sequels, all directed by De
Angelis, as well as a 6-part television series.
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