VIDEO ARCHIVES WEEK: The One-Armed Executioner (1981)

VIDEO ARCHIVES NOTES: This movie was discussed on the September 13, 2022 episode of the Video Archives podcast and can be found on their site here.

Interpol agent Ramon Ortega (Franco Guerrero) and his new blonde American children’s book author wife Ann (Jody Kay, Death Screams) are back in the Philippines after a honeymoon in San Francisco. Within minutes, the drug dealer that our hero is after — Edwards (Christopher Mitchum) — has sent his men to kill Ann and chopped off his arm. And in case you’re wondering if the drug dealer is evil, he has an evil Axis symbol on the side of his boat.

He spirals into depression and drinking, just trying to live out the rest of his life in pain when a new master named Wo Chen appears and teaches him how to fight with one hand and how to do gun fu, if you will, in which they have a gigantic training device with numbers. The master calls out the targets and Ortega gets better with each shot.

You feel for Ortega, as he found the right kind of woman, the one who sleeps with baby dolls and has sex in the shower with her shower cap on, the height of eroticism. But seriously, he really does hit rock bottom but this film pulls him up and gives him the chance to get revenge. This movie is an absolute blast from the beginning until the end, delivering the kind of weirdness and magical action that could only come from the Philippines and a master director like Bobby A. Suarez, who also directed American CommandosThe Bionic Boy, Cleopatra Wong and Warriors of the Apocalypse.

You can watch this on Tubi.

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