Devil's Express

OK. I wasn't expecting much of this film on Amazon, but it was a short blacksploitation/chop-socky film with a lead called Warhawk Tanzania. Let's start with him. 70s machismo kung fu artist, with almost no acting ability, bizarre novelty fight stances, but full of 'I'm going to be the next Jim Kelly' enthusiasm. He isn't. He's actually quite terrible. His Jersey Hispanic sidekick is even worse, at both the acting and fighting. the support actors were similarly poor, with the bizarre exception of the 'educated' jokey detective drafted in to help solve the case. He just seemed to be in the wrong film entirely. As expected, the story moves along in a disjointed fashion. Full of poorly shot fight scenes, where you clearly see that the kicks and punches are missing, but somehow the recipient lurches back in agony. Some of the subway/monster scenes have a genuinely eerie 70s feel, and in parts, the film is not bad. The DP tries some effects in part- slomo/monochrome, etc. I won't spoil the plot, because actually that doesn't matter. Made in a time when New York was genuinely a dangerous place, people wore flares, and production values were less important than the 'vibe'. I happily watched this to the end just to ensure that Warhawk put the fiend 'in the pocket'. If you can wade through the clichés and cheesiness, this is worth a view, if only for the terrible fashion, grubby New York outlook, 70s jazz-hipster dialogue and an actor inspired by decolonisation to change his name so spectacularly. Worth a view. They don't make 'em like this anymore!

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.

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.

One reviewer described this as like "Black Belt Jones vs. The Galaxy Invader," but that only scratches the surface. Exhumed Films calls it "a Blaxploitation/Horror/Kung-Fu absurdist masterpiece," which they very correctly note "could only exist in the exploitation heyday of the 1970s." This gets a bit closer. You're really getting 3 or 4 different movies in one here. Possibly my favorite plot of all-time: a soul-brother karate instructor travels to Hong Kong to learn and master his art, where his buddy and protégé steals an ancient amulet which (unbeknownst to him) has the power to control a demon. The demon follows them home to NYC where it hides in the subway and begins killing innocent (and not-so-innocent) bystanders. Oh, and by the way? The amulet-stealing buddy is also a drug dealer with an ongoing vendetta against the local Chinese crime gang. That's at least 2 movies right there. The film now shifts gears to another buddy of the karate instructor, who is a cop investigating the subway killings. This portion of the film now plays like a supernatural/creature hunter/police procedural/X-Files kinda thing. Again, this could be a movie in its own right. Everything comes to a head when the black kung-fu-ers and the Chinese gang realize it might not just be their street fights that's killing off their members, and that maybe the cops are on to something when they say something is lurking in the subway, waiting to mutilate its next victim. This all ends with what is the trippiest final fight sequence since Zardoz. I would not have believed such a movie could exist had I not seen it. I *have* seen it. You should too.

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.