O Esquadrão de Artes Marciais

By the first expository news flash there is no doubt this is a both nostrils stinker. There is a good reason for this. Hong Kong kung fu stars go to Europe on vacation and while they are there they throw together the cheapest possible movie to help pay the bills. This movie has so many low points it's hard to decide the lowest. Is it the exploding dog? Is it Bruce fighting at the coliseum pretending to be Bruce Lee and they even threw in the cat? Is it the pastey white stunt men who fall to the ground whenever Bruce throws a kick within a meter? My opinion the worst scene is when Kurata Yasuaki chases Bruce through the snow for about ten minutes and then they don't even fight! I gave it a "1" only because "0" was not an option.

Drug-running mobsters are busy assassinating Interpol agents in the opening minutes. Then, Chinese kung fu expert / film star Wang Liu (Siu-Lung Leung) interferes with one of the assassination attempts, and thus earns himself a big target on his own back. The mob hires a supposedly professional hit squad to eliminate Wang Liu, and then, for good measure, stage the filming of a phony martial arts flick in order to lure Wang Liu close to them.

My rating applies obviously not to any aspect of "quality", but to pure entertainment value. This is a true howler of martial arts pulp mayhem, and it delivers plenty of laughs as well as opportunities for the star to strut his stuff. For one thing, this hit squad is so bloody incompetent, they rarely get anything right. Yet, give them credit: they NEVER stop trying! Of course, they're such rotten, evil cretins that they know just how to get our hero hopping mad.

Complete with truly wretched dubbing, an INCREDIBLY annoying kid character (Yu Fan as the heros' young brother), a HILARIOUSLY cheesy music score, and excellent location shooting in Rome, "The Godfather Squad" is highly agreeable nonsense, combining the sensibilities of Italian crime fiction and Asian "chop socky" cinema.

Co-starring lovely ladies Maria D'Incoranato and Shirley Corrigan, and Mario Cutini, Yasuaki Kurata, Gordon Mitchell, and Consalvo Dell'Arti as the hysterically unsubtle bad guys, this actually also features archive footage of Italian TV personality Antonino Fava and Pope Paul VI!

It's patently ridiculous, of course, and is obviously not something anybody should take seriously.

Eight out of 10.