Hidden Gems: Samurai Cop

If you’re visiting this site you’re probably a rabid devourer of all things pop culture, constantly looking for some new stuff to take in.  This is where I come in.  Every two weeks I’ll bring you a hidden gem, something that should be part of our pop culture lexicon but hasn’t quite made it yet.  This will usually be a film or a filmmaker but I’ll also delve into music, comics and other areas from time to time.  Either way you will leave with knowledge of something great that you can spread to your friends, who will think you’re super clever and interesting.  You’ll probably get laid.  For this first installment I bring you the so bad it’s amazing, Samurai Cop.

Samurai Cop deserves to be held in the same reverence as Troll 2 and The Room.  That’s a pretty lofty statement but one I firmly stand behind.  This obscure 80s flick is an endearingly idiotic attempt to make a serious action film that is brought down by the ineptness of just about everybody involved.  Written and directed by Amir Shervan, Samurai Cop tells the story of Joe Marshall, a cop trained in the ways of the samurai who is the last hope of the LAPD in its war against the Japanese Katana Gang.  Marshall is played by Matt Hannon, making his first and only film appearance.  Hannon is essentially the American Fabio, complete with rippling biceps and luxurious long hair, which curiously changes shape throughout the film.  See, Hannon decided in the middle of filming to cut his hair short and spent the rest of the shoot wearing a series of extremely obvious women’s wigs.  Since the movie was shot out of sequence it means that if you play a spot the wig drinking game you will die of alcohol poisoning by the second act.

We’re told that our hero is fluent in Japanese and trained by the masters in Japan, which is good because we’re never actually shown any evidence of these things.  His fighting is on the same caliber as bad pro wrestling (not a surprise considering Shervan didn’t even set aside time to train his actors to fight) and the only time he speaks any word of Japanese is when he struggles to pronounce the main villain’s name.  Yet this man is the only hope of thwarting the Katanas.  This makes sense as the Japanese Katana Gang has only two Japanese members.  The leader of the gang is Mr. Fujiyama (played by the very non-Japanese sounding Joselito Rescober) who is incapable of saying anything without rambling incoherently.  Fujiyama is backed up by his right hand man Yamashita, played by an awesomely bearded Robert Z’Dar, who was given top billing due to his “fame” as the titular character of Maniac Cop.  The billing works though, as Z’Dar is the most sincere actor in the entire film.  The laughs from his lines come from the fact that the lines themselves are so painfully stupid and yet he delivers them with utter conviction.  See the clip below for exactly what I mean about these two.

Like most 80s action flicks, Samurai Cop has its fair share of attractive ladies and Samurai Cop tries to get it on with all of them, and fails gloriously in most of them.  During the opening high speed police chase he tells the helicopter pilot to keep her vagina warm for him.  They proceed to have the most awkward sex in the history of cinema.  Later he gets another chick by pretending he’s taking her into custody for questioning and then bringing her to his beach house for dinner.  Apparently kidnapping and date rape laws don’t apply to samurai cops.  They also have some wonderfully awkward sex in which Joe shows his award winning fish kissing method.

 

The villains also have their own ladies, both of which completely destroy their appeal by engaging in some boner shrinking coitus with Robert Z’Dar and Gerald Okamura.  Are you sensing a pattern here?  The entire flick is filled to the brim with awkward sex.  It’s as if everyone involved had heard about sex but had never experienced or even seen it before.  The weird sexual content isn’t restricted to the sex scenes themselves either.  Take the infamous “horny nurse” sequence.

That’s right, the macho action hero of the film has a scene where he has to defend the size of his manhood and beg for sex from an average looking nurse.  Also, at the end of the scene his black partner announces that he has a bigger dick than the Samurai Cop.  Shervan continues this theme later when he has a white gang member threaten to cut off Frank’s “black gift” with some extreme malice in his voice.  It happens enough in the film that it makes me wonder whether or not Shervan had some sort of anxiety on the subject.  He’s lucky that said anxiety made him realize that racially differing penis sizes was the height of modern comedy.

Speaking of phallic objects, the climactic sword battle in the film is one of the most hilarious ever filmed.  You remember when you were little and it was funny to watch things run at super speed while you were fast forwarding your VHS tapes?  Well Amir Shervan did and he felt it was something sorely missing from cinema.  Samurai Cop and Yamashita close in on each other, preparing for battle and all of the sudden rush into what can only be described as the Looney Tunes equivalent of a martial arts fight.   They even have high pitched chipmunk voices!  Needless to say, it’s fucking amazing.

This is Shervan’s second of three American films, sandwiched between the equally inept Hollywood Cop and the awesomely titled Killing American Style, which to my knowledge has never been released.  It’s a shame that he didn’t direct any more films before dropping off the face of the earth because he could have easily become a legendary director of terrible cinema.  I’ve really only skimmed the surface of the layers of horrible awesomeness that this film has to offer and anyone who considers themselves a fan of such things will find plenty to love in Samurai Cop.