Blood Street (1988)

A lot of fun.

To all those who have watched it: I hope you enjoyed it as much as I do.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Blood street is a wonderful movie with delicate dialogues and an intriguing plot about a group of people that just don't seem to get along very well; the conflict is solved in a very surprising way! Leo Fong is a great actor; unfortunately he hasn't won any Academy Awards or Golden Globes but who knows ... maybe the Hollywood establishment will come to their senses and recognize the pure and sincere creative genius of this amazing actor. Leo is almost 90 years old and still kicking the living daylights out of his enemies ... this alone should convince the Oscars and GG members of jury to see Leo Fong for who he really is ... one of the best actors in the World!

Though I don't clearly recall my past viewing of LOW BLOW, other people must have thought it memorable enough to warrant a sequel – BLOOD STREET. This one surprised me: even though my experience with Leo Fong's vehicles has been poor and diminishing the man's budget doesn't sound like a way to improve his output, his first shot-on-video adventure is an entertaining spectacle. Judged on its merits and on its own terms, this is an imperfect but ultimately fun little diversion.The story: While investigating the disappearance of a missing millionaire (Stan Wertlieb), private detective Joe Wong (Fong) is drawn into a deadly gang war.Features filmed on video inevitably remind us of home movies, and in that regard, many people would not enjoy "Blood Street" by default. However, the feature is photographed and edited with professionalism, and there are few instances wherein you wouldn't presume that this was created by pros. That doesn't save the picture from weak dialogue and an imperfect narrative structure (i.e. a needless flashback section and an embarrassing text scrawl opener), but the more you watch, the more its style seems natural. By its final third, the movie has become a jumbled flow of poorly-connected scenes, and though unprofessional, it's oddly harmonious in a careless kind of way.Most importantly, the movie is fun. For all the faults with his final product, Leo Fong clearly had a ball shooting this and his enthusiasm is catching. There are plenty of unnecessary but amusing character embellishments to make you shake your head and chuckle. Joe Wong may be a homophobic chauvinist with sociopathic tendencies, but he can punch a thug so that the hat the dude's holding flies up and lands perfectly on his head. Speaking of punching, the action content is decent. There's no set standard here, with some scenes so bad they'll make you grimace while others are thoroughly satisfying. Leo Fong plays such an untouchable superman that he makes Steven Seagal seem modest, and while most of his brawls are forgettable, he has a surprisingly good bar brawl. Karate icons Richard Norton and Chuck Jeffreys show off a bit but are not used to nearly their fullest extent.A strong supporting performance by Stack Pierce as a gang lord helps cement this one as an entertainingly average outing, and definitely the best Leo Fong vehicle I've ever seen. Nevertheless, there are much better karate flicks out there, so other than Fong's fans, the only people I can readily recommend this to are VHS collectors. Don't go out of your way, but if you happen across it and are open to a daring experience, give it due consideration.

Starting, inexplicably, with a Star Wars-style crawl of text going up the screen informing us of the ever-important back story (and where "San Francisco" is misspelled), we are then re-introduced to P.I. extraordinaire Joe Wong (Fong), last seen in Low Blow (1986). The trouble begins when Vanna MacDonald (Paige) walks into Wong's office and asks him to find her missing husband. Thus, Wong begins an odyssey into the criminal underworld to find Aldo MacDonald, the gangster with the funny bug-eyes. The father-son team of Solomon (Pierce) and Bones (Jeffreys) work as Aldo's muscle, and lest we forget Malcolm Boyd (Norton) a kickboxer/gangster who stages illegal cage fighting matches in his living room. Teaming up once again with Woody Farmer (the guy who played "Fuzzy" in Low Blow) and his accountant (or perhaps his lawyer) Mark, can Wong avoid an oncoming gang war, dirty cops, many bullets, and a rock-bottom budget in order to get to the truth? Leo Fong is back! He's got a new car, a new hat, and a new attitude. Also, the hat may contain magical properties.In this lesser-seen sequel to the aforementioned Low Blow, Leo Fong, who starred in, wrote, and directed the film, gets to indulge all his Sam Spade-like film noir fantasies, putting himself in the driver's seat alongside some of his buddies like Stack Pierce (and Director of Photography Frank Harris, but surprisingly no Cam Mitchell), drowning it all in a moody sax soundtrack. One character even calls him "a cross between Bruce Lee, Philip Marlowe and a Catholic priest". I guess that's the beauty of writing a starring role for yourself. His flat delivery and brutal martial arts moves remain unchanged, and this time it's topped off with a voice-over by Fong himself, containing many groan-inducing single-entendres. But at least you can hear and see everything this time around, despite the bad video quality and junky overall feel.One of the villains' names is Aldo MacDonald, but it sounds like Fong is calling him "Old MacDonald". Many other characters have funny voices, and Chuck Jeffreys MUST be related in some way to Eddie Murphy. Fong has really ramped up the brutality this time around, and, because it is Fong, sadism has never been so funny. Blood Street is also fairly nonsensical: right in the middle of Joe Wong's journey, we see a title card that says "Four Years Earlier" and we go back in time to basically another plot where he's chasing down this dude in Mexico. Add to that the fact that the plot has more twists and turns than Lombard street in Fong's beloved San Francisco, and you have another mind-bending (or perhaps numbing) Fongtabulous experience.The S.F. locations are a highlight of the film, and another great facet of Blood Street is that it is filled with dialogue and racial slurs you would never hear today. Fong is the most lovable wooden thing since the Nutcracker and you can't help but admire the guy and his work, defying the rules of budgets, acting, technical ability and even filmmaking itself to produce a highly entertaining product strictly meant to delight his fans. And it works.Released on VHS in the U.S. on the small KB Releasing label (does anyone out there know anything about them?), the running time stated on the box is 88 minutes, but in fact is is a brief 79.For more insanity, please visit: comeuppancereviews.com

Leo Fong is the King of American Kung Fu Movies and Guerrilla Film Making and he always delivers. Watching this movie is an indulgent taste of uninhibited and truly independent film making and the action scenes are shot with the classic techniques and without wires and special effects.It's amazing that Leo Fong never sold out to the studio driven industry and ending up playing a serious of "character" parts, and instead he's held firm to his visions and created excellent, independent films for four decades.If you think about it, he's an action star in his senior years who writes, directs and produces his own films - he's the Clint Eastwood of the independent film industry. He's also a pioneer of minority film making and guerrilla film making and he's increasing being recognized for his contribution to the history of cinema.