Devil's Express

The working title of "Gang Wars" was "The Phantom of the Subway" but it was first released as "The Devil's Express".The film mixes blaxploitation genre,American martial arts and horror flick and does this with huge enthusiasm.The acting is mostly wooden and Warhawk Tanzania is not as awesome as his name.The fights are well-shot and there is a decent amount of blood and gore.The film's running time is padded out by random inserts of not exactly important scenes for example the fight between two sleazeballs and karate waitress.The gang war and subway murders committed by amulet seeking demon are fun to watch.A trash classic.7 out of 10.

An afrocentric martial arts master attends a Karate tournament in China, accompanied by a young student who steals an ancient amulet from a cave, unwittingly freeing a long captive demon. He brings the cursed artifact back to New York City, unaware that the demon has followed him in order to reclaim it. The evil entity possesses and kills people as it hides in the underground subway system, leaving homicide investigators baffled with each brutal murder. Only the aforementioned Karate master has the testicular fortitude needed for a hand-to-hand combat with the ancient evil.

DEVIL'S EXPRESS is emblematic of movies typically screened in "The Deuce" of NYC during the 70s...those little theaters so unendurably squalid that you'd need to bring a plastic garbage bag to cover your seat with. Cast of nobodies is headed by the inimitable WARHAWK TANZANIA, a karate-chopping soul brother forever iconified by this, and just one other Z-grade blaxploitation feature(FORCE FOUR, 1975).

7/10...Eighty-three minutes of sleazy, kickass action. You never had it so good.

DEVIL'S EXPRESS starts off in China (200 BC), where a coffin and a mysterious jewel are lowered into the ground, resulting in death and doom.

Fast-forward to modern day NYC, and we're introduced to Luke (Warhawk Tanzania), karate master and all-around bada$$. Accompanied by his friend, Rodan (Wilfredo Roldan), Luke hops on a jet to Hong Kong in hopes of becoming an ultra-bada$$.

Mission accomplished.

Unfortunately, Rodan's toying with eeevil forces winds up creating a zombie situation back in the NYC subway system. Police are baffled as several mutilation deaths occur. Can Luke and Rodan help "the man" sort things out? Let the astounding, downtown, underground showdown begin!

This movie is what 1970's entertainment is all about! Mr. Tanzania is exquisite in his incredible, two-tone, blue denim, bellbottom outfit! If that's not enough, just wait until you see him encased in his gold velour jumpsuit!

EXTRA POINTS FOR: The karate gang fight sequence, complete with screams, wails, and punches and kicks that sound like liver-filled mattresses being swung into brick walls!...

The Devil's Express is part blaxploitation, part horror, and part martial arts flick, but the film fails to do any of those genres justice, with an unlikeable protagonist, tepid frights, and some of the worst punching and kicking imaginable.

The wonderfully named Warhawk Tanzania plays Luke, a black New York martial arts master who, accompanied by his drug-dealing student Rodan (Wilfredo Roldan), travels to China to complete his training. When Rodan finds an ancient amulet in a cave, he takes the trinket, and, in doing so, unleashes a bloodthirsty demon that follows him back to the Big Apple.

When mutilated bodies begin to show up in the city's subway, the police believe it to be the result of a gang war between the blacks and the Chinese, but when Rodan joins the list of victims, Luke investigates and learns of the supernatural creature lurking in the dark and heads underground to settle the score.

Technically inept (several scenes feature characters talking but we can hear no dialogue), poorly written (horrible jive street-talk is taken to the max) and dreadfully directed (the fight scenes are laughable), The Devil's Express is, without a doubt, a terrible film, but is still just about worth a watch to witness a possessed man with eyes like Kermit the frog, a Chinese man with an afro (a chifro?), and Luke's show-stopping gold velvet onepiece playsuit, complete with flares and button down shoulder straps.

This was the second and last of Warhawk Tanzania's only movie appearances, both starring vehicles. I guess he didn't catch on, no doubt because the movies weren't particularly well made and because by then both the blaxploitation and "kung fu" genres had passed their U.S. commercial peak due to oversaturation of the market with cheap knockoffs. He had the right look, and if he wasn't much of an actor, there were worse ones who were successful enough (particularly in martial arts cinema), so I guess it was more a matter of bad timing than anything else.

"Devil's Express" is a bit slicker than "Black Force" (confusingly, both have sometimes been called "Gang Wars"), a little wilder and more fun. WT plays a karate master who goes with his buddy (Wilfredo Roldan as "Rodan," the same name his character had in "Force") to a conference in Hong Kong. Afterward, they see the sites. Problem is, his buddy is a bit of an ***hole, and he steals an amulet from some ancient burial ground (or cave, in this case). So naturally once they get back to NYC, a demon spirit follows them, mostly holing up in the subway system and possessing the bodies of various unfortunate passers-by it's murdered in order to get back its stolen treasure. Police, the heroes' dojo, and a rival Chinese group of fighters all get caught up in the eventual mayhem.

The mix of horror, martial arts and blaxploitation sounds like trash heaven, and "Express" gets about halfway there. It's fairly well-made on a B-pic level, and reasonably fast-paced, but despite the decent premise there's not much colorful idiosyncrasy to the characters or situations. (Apart from Rodan being an entertainingly snotty jerk, that is.) But the real problem is that neither the fighting or horror elements are developed sufficiently. There's a lot of fighting, and clearly most of the participants have at least some training. But the film is edited in a way that is pretty obviously covering for them--we get much kicking and "thwack!" noises but it's not very convincing as anything but faux-fighting. (There are even a couple moments when characters say "Ow!" in pain, even though we've just clearly seen their opponent's kick didn't connect.) The monster is introduced rather late, then kept largely out of sight. So, this is a promising mix of elements, but the fighting isn't very impressive and the horror is likewise also mostly "cheated" (people go "Yaaagh!!!" at something we don't see, then are presumably murdered offscreen).

So, fairly amusing grindhouse action junk from the period, worth seeing once for those who like this sort of thing. But not the guilty-pleasure classic you might hope for.