Samurai Cop

Samurai Cop (1991)

Runtime: 96 minutes

Directed by: Amir Shervan

Starring: Matthew Karedas, Mark Frazer, Robert Z'Dar, Janis Farley, Melissa Moore

From: Hollywood Royal Pictures

This infamous movie (along with its made years later sequel) are now on Amazon Prime, which is where I saw it. It is as amazingly bad as I heard, as I explain below: 

NOTE: The rating applies to the entertainment value this movie provides. In terms of such things as filmmaking craft, plot structure, scene transitions, dialogue, logic, continuity... this is a ½ star motion picture all the way.

I did not partake in 4/20 yesterday, but I imagine some reading this did; hopefully you all had nice days getting baked as F, plowing through bags of Cheetos or boxes of pizza. I will presume that this movie is incredible if you viewed it after smoking a bowl of tokin' a bong. It is incredibly inept and yet that is what makes it such a blast to watch, even while sober. If you love things like Miami Connection... this is on Amazon Prime in a great-looking remastered print for me and everyone else to see.

The plot, as it is: a muscle-bound dude with amazing long flowing hair is named Samurai Cop... the character's real name is Joe Marshall, but his name might as well be Samurai Cop. He teams with black cop Frank Washington to take down an evil gang, led by a Japanese man with a great mullet. There's also Robert Z'Dar, random women, an amazingly over the top police chief, doofy henchmen... Z'Dar is supposed to play an Asian man. While he did not look Asian at all, I say it's better than the alternative of Z'Dar being made to “look Asian” in a horrific caricature.

I don't want to give everything away about why this is so damn inept. I'll just mention that this is the sort of movie where characters will fire one kind of gun in a scene and mid-scene it will change for no reason, and hairstyles will also obviously change during a scene. Hell, a “hospital” is obviously a dentist's office and I am pretty sure that police stations don't have pieces of paper taped to doors that tell you which room or department it is! At least there's an incredible police chief. Then, there's the acting... this is a special kind of bad, and that's what makes it so bad. Of course there is plenty of gratuitous nudity for fans of such things, and it's up to you if you think that the sight of both Samurai Cop and middle-aged Gerald Okamura in bikini briefs is a positive.


The sequel is also available on Prime; as they are now in on the joke, I know it won't be as funny or entertaining as the solid gold original.