Your Bad Movie Night Guide, Vol. 6: Samurai Cop

Ever wanted to see 2 white dudes in beaters w/ swords battle? Now’s your chance.

This week, we’re tweaking the format … slightly. From now on, all pictures will be numbered, and we encourage you to take a stab at captioning them. Best captions will round out the next week’s volume of YBMNG.

2) Apparently, Lethal Weapon defines about 30% of all bad movies.

If you thought we were done with covering awful riffs on Lethal Weapon after we covered Tango & Cash, you are due for another thinking. This week’s entry takes the Tango & Cash budget, throws it in the trash, and tries to make a movie anyway. What director Amir Shervan came up with is now reverently referred to in hushed voices as, Samurai Cop.

3) This is the face you make when chopping off somebody’s arm.

Samurai Cop
Director: Amir Shervan
Release Date: November 30, 1991
Rated: UNRATED
Bad Movie Grade: B+
Where to Watch: Amazon

COME FOR THE:

• Free guide to how not to pick up or hit on anyone, ever.
• BANANA HAMMOCK MAN-BUTT!

5) Featuring cross-promotion from Buns of Steel.

• Mullet bonanza!

6. They literally pulled people in off the streets to stand in the background.

STAY FOR THE:

• Magic, disappearing wig. For some of the film, star Mathew Karedas has real, long hair, and in other parts, it’s clearly a wig–apparently the director kept adding more reshoots and at one point Karedas, wrongly, thought he was finished with the movie and cut his hair. Hence the wig, which gloriously comes off his head … here: 
• Amazing VICTORY BALLAD that plays both times when SC nabs babe number two. I need to purchase that track! AMAZON! DO YOU HEAR ME! SELL THIS SOUNDTRACK!
• Final shot: the movie ends on a 3-second shot of a rock in the ocean right before a wave hits it, which one can only presume is a metaphor for the inevitable samurai sex that’s happening via the ocean jizzing on the rock? No clue.

7)

My crack team of YBMNG investigators said this the most while watching Samurai Cop: Whaaaaaaaaat????

It’s hard to have any other reaction throughout much of the movie as the plot, action, directorial choices, dialog, editing, sound editing, costuming, and every other aspect of legitimate filmmaking. Now take away the modifier ‘legitimate’ and add quotes to all those various facets of filmmaking, including filmmaking itself, and we can properly discuss Samurai Cop.

8) It’s never explained why this lion head is featured in about 30 shots: but we like it!

I’m not going to get into the interview reveals I found after watching the movie, as I feel the mystery that encompasses pretty much every decision in the movie adds to its appear. Why, oh why, does the final battle scene begin with a samurai sword standoff where the hero and villain are a football field away from each other? From when the hero picks up his own sword to match the villain’s, to when their blades first meet, is an excruciating and hilarious 47 seconds of screen time. It’s inexcusable.

9) What passes for ‘cinematography’ in Samurai Cop.

And apparently, that’s just how this director was. He had no budget, and if it seems like people are wearing the clothes they auditioned in, or driving the shitheap cars that beginning actors drive, there’s a reason for it.

If you feel like two people immersed in dialog with each other have the exact same voice, there’s a reason for it.

If at one point Samurai has legitimate long hair, but later is clearly wearing a wig, only to again be sporting his own lengthy locks, there’s a reason for it! But you’ll need to watch the entire film and then do you’re own research on the web to get satisfactory answers. Half the people making this movie never thought it would be seen by an audience. Little did they know. Shervan himself reminds me a lot of Tommy Wiseau, the director of The Room. He wrote all the dialog himself, insisted it be read 100% to form, and directed the piece as well. He probably would have starred in it himself if he’d felt he had enough muscles. Clearly, these love scenes were meant to feature Shervan, not star Karedas.

10) Gut-bursting moment here, as the mini-boss emerges from a can of garbage to silence a failed henchman.

Can we talk about those love scenes for a moment? At least 75% of no budget was budgeted for them; Samurai Cops first love scene has more lighting than the rest of the film, and they even used microphones!

11) The director pointedly made sure to get this from the rear, rear shot, in all love scenes.

Mullets at every turn; bad guys gunning down their own bad henchmen; the sluttiest people you’ve ever encountered; and plenty of heroes going beat red in the face: Samurai Cop has got it all.

FUCK

• To quote that “lady cop”: “Hey preacher, you and I got nothing to do. Let’s fuck.” WHILE THEY’RE ON A STAKEOUT! This dude just scowls at her and says, “Shut up!” That should be an indication of how much out of place, random fucking is happening at every fourth poorly time jump cut. Also, this shot makes it into every love scene: from behind.
• Samurai bags two babes himself, and clearly had interest from at least 2 more (especially if you include those he’s convinced want it)
• The bad guys get two as well! Oh yeah, equal distribution!

 MARRY

• Well, there was a married couple once, and it didn’t end well for them. But, while on this topic, can we touch on how director Shervan seems to need to see every pair of breasts in his film make it on screen? This chick was older, more homely, and definitely not getting it on with anyone at the time, yet for some reason her blouse gets ripped off in one of the more ‘rapey’ scenes in Samurai Cop. It got a bit slimy there for a moment, and was only saves because they killed her instead.

KILL

• This one is a mystery for the ages for several reasons 1) The editing is so atrocious, you can never tell exactly what’s happened 2) Character fates are very ambiguous–are they dead, mortally wounded, suffering from just a flesh wound, or going to walk it off? Impossible to say. 3) Characters are resurrected from the dead, reincarnated as new characters and back out there in fresh duds from scene to scene–if they don’t stay dead, were they ever truly killed?

UBER DIALOG

• SC: “Looks like this is his last fuck.” FRANK: “Let him finish it then.” SC: “The hell I will.”
• FRANK: “Man, what are you going to do, fight this guy barehanded?” As SC is about to fight guys with swords with his bare hands, then Frank shoots them. 
• There’s so much dialog in this that’s just perfect (or the opposite) you’ll never be wanting for laughs.

---