July 14-20  Vanity Project Week: “…it might be said that the specific remedy for vanity is laughter, and that the one failing that is essentially laughter is vanity.” Are these products of passionate and industrious independent filmmakers OR outrageous glimpses into the inner workings of self-obsessed maniacs??

This whole thing started with “The Karate Rap” in 2012. Or 1986, when the video was made. 2012 seems to be the year it went online, according to Punching Day.

“Relax, and breath / Keep training, you′ll get it / Ich ni san shi, come on everybody / Train Karate / Ich ni san shi, come on everybody / Train Karate / (Karate train your body all the time)”

This video has a Karate Dog.

The man behind this is David Seeger, who followed that rap video with episodes of The All New Mickey Mouse Club and mixtapes of daytime soaps, like All My Children: Daytime’s Greatest Weddings, All About Erica, Luke and Laura Vol. 1: Love on the Run and Luke and Laura Vol. 2: Greatest Love of All.

It always comes back to Anthony Geary.

The son of Hal Seeger (a TV producer and the director of a cartoon, Batfink) and the brother of Susan (who wrote episodes of Blossom and Hangin’ With Mr. Cooper), Charbie Dahl (a creative consultant on Family Matters), Efrem (who produced and wrote Queer as Folk) and Mindy (34 episodes of The West Wing and Bloodfist VII: Manhunt), David directed, wrote and stars in this as Sensei Dave.

An evil martial artist named Tiger (Robert Scaglione) challenges every martial artist in the world to Kumite. Only Sensei Dave shows up, looking like the whitest of all great white hopes, a man who keeps his black belt in the freezer. Why? Look, that’s going to be the least of your questions after watching this.

Will this movie reuse footage from “Karate Rap?” Will footage from Batfink slow the plot to an absolute crawl? Will the entire Seeger family, including Dad, appear as one of the bad guys? Of course. But are you ready for the idea that Sensei Dave can heal any wound and can also send his spirit out of his body? Or that Tiger has a much cooler training facility complete with bikers and women in lingerie that looks like the VCA ripoff porn of Mortal Kombat? Let’s call that movie Mortal Kumbat. Oral Kombat? Oral Cumbat? Mortal Kumblast: Finish Her? Fourplay With Goro?

Anyways.

Tiger has been trying to kill Sensei Dave since he was a baby. He once kicked his baby carriage down the steps — someone alert Erica Shultz — and Dave also stopped him from beating up unhoused people, who revealed that he would be Karate Jesus someday.

That day is now.

Hal Gaudy (Dave’s dad, Hal) is funding Tiger, who has drug dealers in his karate school. Locker rooms — for reasons. He makes a fair amount of money betting on Tiger’s fights. They draw as well as indie pro wrestling, which is to say, not well. They also own a cable TV channel and keep Tiger on staff as a hitman, complete with a miniature scythe. A kama. A sickle. You get it. They have killed so many people along with Tiger that they need a map for their yard to remember where people are buried, which is totally not something the police would use against them in court.

Also: Thanks to Punching Day, I know Tiger’s rap that he says before he kills someone: “Do you know the truth about the tiger’s tooth? Does it cut, does it puncture, does it rip? Let me give you a tip!”

So many questions: Why does Tiger live above a porn store in a small apartment with giant pictures of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Bart Simpson? Are we to infer that America is a fascist bully because the evil man’s girl wears a U.S. flag for lingerie? Or are we just to know that because it’s true?

Tiger and Sensei Dave battle on a boat, and by the end, Sensei Dave is left dead in the water. Literally. Drowning dead. Dave’s ghost leaves his body and visits his pregnant wife and his sister, Sister Sensei — now the movie makes sense and also you will scream yourself hoarse if you scream the secret word scream every time they say the title — to avenge his death. Or find his body. Or something.

Sister Sensei is a big Hollywood star — well, Mindy was trying — and doesn’t have time to avenge her brother’s death. So he starts haunting her, and sometimes, it feels like all of the images and sounds and effects overload to the point that you may think you licked one of those blue stars the teachers warned you weren’t stickers but instead LSD.

To get his sister — who has never done karate — to fight, his ghost pervs on her in the shower and does an impression of Max Headroom mixed with Garth Algar, complete with early 90s video effects. But whatever. It’s time for a montage, and Mindy becomes Sister Sensei and is given Dave’s belt, and no one is all that sad that Dave is dead.

Remember Exposed! Pro Wrestling’s Greatest Secrets? That same audience shows up for the fight between Tiger and Sensei Dave, who shows up, only for Sister Sensei to take the fight. Keep in mind that this is a comedy, and then watch these scenes and the aftermath, where Sister Sensei’s face looks like a hamburger. Funny!

Sam’s favorite trope: Sister Sensei’s tale of the tape photo is her publicity picture.

Instead of following all the signs in the crowd — where did these people get these signs and how did they know to bring “equal rights” signs when Sensei Dave was supposed to be there and there was no hint of Sister Sensei taking the booking — that empower women, Sensei Dave enters his sister’s body to fight, all while his very pregnant wife pulls a Mary in a manger and breaks water right there, giving birth backstage. Look, I have been backstage at MMA and pro wrestling shows. This is no place to be born. It’s also not the place to have a baby, but you wouldn’t be surprised how often that happens.

Sensei Dave leaves her body and causes it to wash up on shore after being dead and bloated in the river for five days, and he just gets up and lives, like two days better than Jesus’ record, and the unhoused people from his past proclaim him to be the karate messiah.

As for his sister, Tiger beats her so severely that she dies.

You read that right. His sister straight up gets killed, and her spirit also leaves her body. She goes “Into the Void” — “Rocket engines burning fuel so fast / Up into the night sky, they blast / Through the universe, the engines whine / Could it be the end of man and time?” — and is now in Karate Heaven.

You know who else is there?

Tiger.

Yes, the Karate Void is part of the Martial World, and anyone who fights can be in it at any time. Imagine how Sister Sensei feels, dying and being trapped there — I wish this had a Street Fighter II countdown screen with her bloody as it counted down from ten to one — and then the guy who karate killed you can just show up at any time to make fun of you for dying at his hands. Anyways, she knows Karate Magic and comes back to life, knocking him out.

Sensei Dave’s wife has the baby on the filthy concrete.

But wait…two years later, and Dave’s wife Holly spins to the camera and says, “Tiger?”

Yes, we’re getting a sequel. Sons of the Sensei.

But we never got it.

Yet.

Hellhammer taught us, “Only death is real.” But in this movie, even the final beyond is not infinite. These people die more than the X-Men when Chris Claremont wrote it.

This took 19 years to be released. It aged, like wine. Or stinky cheese.

Final review: Every star in the Karate Void.

You can watch this on YouTube.