Storia di karatè, pugni e fagioli (1973) - Director: Tonino Ricci - 3/10.
The film constitutes basically what you would expect to get from this sort of entertainment, there is however one upside which is the pairing of Dean Reed and Chris Huerta: Reed turns in a pretty solid performance, though what is more surprising and somewhat shocking is Huerta’s unexpectedly good showing who instead of hamming it up as usual beyond the absolute limits of decency and good taste, just seems mean, agitated and cantankerous, but in a pertinently amusing fashion without any surplus histrionics. Notwithstanding, the said factor is largely obfuscated by the remarkably chaotic script which totally lacks any kind of focus and basically careens from one lousy scene to another in order to culminate in, yes, you guessed it, a gigantic bar brawl, which I took the liberty of fast-forwarding so as to alleviate the pain.
What is astonishing is the thoroughgoing superfluity of the kung fu theme in that it appears absolutely unwarranted and rarely even comes to the fore. Whenever it resurfaces, it only serves as a pretext to showcase some awful kung fu fighting sequences or to make use of some racial stereotypes relating to the Chinese, predominantly treating of eating dog meat, rice and fish, all that stuff. The worst thing is not even that it condescends to this level of crassness, picking the lowest-hanging fruit in the laziest possible fashion, but rather that at the end of the day, it simply is not funny at all and comes to grate on one’s nerves, especially what with the vexing English dub. This could have been legitimately good had it been outfitted with a superior storyline, forgoing the redundant kung fu shtick, but it is evidently anything but. Perhaps not quite as bad as its reputation, but close enough.