Firecracker

1981's FIRECRACKER is B-movie gold.  Sincerely.  The Filipino shot actioner packs quite a bit into seventy eight well paced minutes, including two near legendary scenes involving gorgeous leading lady Jillian Kesner and loss of clothing.  We'll get back to that.  If you like surprises in your Bad Movies, read no further.

The former model plays Susanne, an martial artist who owns a karate studio and holds several black belts.  She journeys to the far East on a clandestine mission to locate her missing sister, who may have gotten mixed up with drug smugglers.  No sooner does she check into her hotel then she beats the hell out of two goons waiting in her room (this is about five minutes into the picture, after a nifty title sequence).  They work for Erik (Ken Metcalfe) who runs a sort of gladiator arena and a restaurant in which the entertainment involves men fighting to the death.   He's also a drug kingpin with several questionable employees, including Chuck (Darby Hinton), who is recruited to charm Susanne and find out why she is snooping around.

The plot gets more ridiculous as it plays out, and is comprised of a mishmash of police dramas and nunchuck epics.  There's even an undercover cop.  The story is of no consequence.  In fact, it's often a distraction.

It's all about the set pieces.  Early on, Susanne is kicking someone's ass every six minutes or so.  The randomness of the bar brawl (and the bartender, who disappears all too soon) is quite hilarious.  Then we reach the construction site fight, where Suzanne is chased by two idiots and her top is eventually sliced off by one of their sickles.  Notorious director Cirio H. Santiago also used this trick in his earlier TNT JACKSON. Kesner concludes the battle in the nude, in one of the best exploitation movie dances I've seen.  Indefensible, sure, but honest about its lasciviousness.  I had to chuckle when a Letterboxd reviewer attempted to compose a feminist empowerment interpretation of the scene.  Sure, dude.

Then there's the lengthy, much discussed sex scene between our heroine and Chuck.  It involves knives shearing off garments and mirrors on the ceiling.  It was one of the oddest such things I've watched since MITCHELL.  Hard to describe.  You have to see it.

FIRECRACKER is entirely trashy and inept, with abysmal acting and some truly abrupt editing.  I laughed a great deal during this movie.  The fight choreography is variable, mostly pretty decent.  Refreshing to see real action rather than that slo mo CGI nonsense we've been getting for the last twenty years.  Fairly fake looking gore. And Nonong Buencamino's score rips off many sources, even "Planet Claire" by the B-52's!  This would be a perfect movie to see with a rowdy audience.