Lousy Lottery 39: Blind Fury!
Welcome, friends, to the Lousy Lottery! Here’s how it works. First, I post four movies to a poll on Twitter. Fans vote to pick which movie to make me watch that week. I watch it, review it and spread the word about an amazingly awful, terribly terrific b-horror flick.
This is week 39! This week we get a little action with 1989’s Blind Fury!
This week I’m going to do things a little differently and mix my breakdown with the plot. Let’s start with the oddity that this movie exists at all and I’ve not heard of it! I absolutely love the director, Phillip Noyce. In fact, he’s one of my favorite directors and some of his movies are some of my all time favorites. Namely Rabbit-Proof Fence and Dead Calm. If you haven’t seen these flicks, remedy that shit immediately! He also directed the mini-series Roots and other incredible films like Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger and The Quiet American. How that director is the director of Blind Fury I will never know. I mean, for fuck’s sake, Blind Fury and Dead Calm came out the same year! Unreal.
It’s not just that they’re different sorts of flicks. Most of his movies are varied from the others. No, it’s the quality level that’s different. Dead Calm, for example, is still quality and holds up today as a stellar thriller while Blind Fury plays like a made for TV movie from the late ‘80s. One thing that is consistent across the two is the acting quality. That Noyce does get good performances, no matter the budget or subject. Still, it baffles me that there was a hidden Noyce I’d never heard of and that it’s as shitty as Blind Fury.
Our movie starts in what I can only assume is supposed to be Vietnam. It certainly doesn’t look like Vietnam. In fact, it looks like someone’s backyard. It’s clearly supposed to be Vietnam because of the music choices, the slain choppers and the overall look of the soldiers. This means from the starting blocks this movie relies on broad stroke stereotypes. Need to set an ‘80s movie during a war? Vietnam it is. Will that war show a realistic portrayal of locals? God no. The locals all seem to live in ‘jungle’ villages in grass huts with pointed hats.
Somehow in the melee our hero is blinded. He stumbles his way through the jungles of what looks to be the Midwest village of locals. Like any good east Asian stereotype, they possess secret martial arts skills and teach him to fight with a Japanese katana and sense things around him with a skill level bordering on magic. Then they send him on his merry way. Yeah, okay, sure. Flash forward a number of years and our hero is back in the states and seemingly a drifter. He tries to reconnect with a buddy from his combat days, only to find that his buddy is missing. With spooky timing, he showed up right as some really bad dudes also arrived.
These bad guys shoot and kill his buddy’s wife and try to kidnap his kid. Nick, our hero, stops them with his superhuman hearing and sword fighting skills. The only of the bad guys to survive is played by the incredible Tex Cobb. You’ll remember him as the motorcycle-riding bounty hunter from Raising Arizona. I remember him from his incredible career as a boxer. Either way, the dude is one of a kind and makes an absolutely perfect villain.
Nick escapes with the kid and is on the run. If this movie is any indicator, people were absolute dicks to blind people in the ‘80s. Someone at a restaurant puts hot sauce in his food and laughs at him. The kid he’s traveling with will flip him off because he can’t see and laughs when he trips or falls. My grandpa was blind and I honestly don’t remember people treating him like shit like this, but hey, who knows.
Nick learns his where his old Army buddy, Frank, is alive and in Reno, so off they go! They don’t make it long before ol’ Tex succeeds in taking the kid. Now Nick must find Frank!
Surely an older blind man in Reno would need years to find a missing friend he hasn’t seen in decades in the days before the internet. Not in this movie! Nah, he finds him in no time. Welcome to ‘80s action movies. In typical fashion, he arrives in town, finds his friend, learns of an underworld plot involving gambling and drug manufacturing and takes down their entire lab. Dang, get this blind bastard a job with the State Department! Somehow the mob boss guy knew Nick was a master swordsman and hired a Japanese assassin to take him out.
How did he learn this? How did he get someone there from Japan so quickly? Why Japan when Nick has absolutely zero connections to Japan? The world may never know. Either way we get two of the best kills ever caught on screen, so who’s complaining? First, Nick beats the assassin in an epic sword fight by electrocuting him in a goddamn hot tub. Okay, seriously, why do so many ‘80s action movies feel the need to disable their heroes. He’s blinded! He’s a one-armed boxer! He’s a deaf safe cracker! Whatever it is, it was clearly a trend and this movie fits right in. The other great death is ol’ Tex, who tries to finish the job only to get straight cut in half by Nick’s blind blade. Son and dad reunite and escape, drug lab gets blown up, Nick just walks off aaaaaaaaaaand scene.
Wow. I really don’t know what to say about this movie. It has its moments. A couple of the kills are fun and some of the more lighthearted moments are fun. Overall, though, this seems like a paint-by-numbers late ‘80s/early ‘90s action movie. Nothing stands out, nothing’s very memorable and all the scenes feel like they’re lifted from episodes of an early ‘90s TV show. It doesn’t even have a good score. Again, how in the world was this movie made by Noyce the same year he made Dead Calm? How?! Often with b-movies and cult classics, audiences love it while critics hate it. Strangely this movie seems to be the exception to that. Critics, including people like Siskel and Ebert, loved it and a sequel was planned. Then audiences didn’t show up and it only made about $2 million at the box office. With a budget of $10 million, I think it’s pretty clear audiences didn’t dig it.
Rutger Hauer claims this was one of the hardest jobs he’s had as an actor. He described the production as being super difficult. He also felt acting blind was way harder than expected. Plus, it was so hot that they had kiddie pools set up around the set for people to cool off in. Makes sense, given it was shot in Australia. Guess I was wrong about it being in the Midwest, but, yeah, Australia doesn’t look much like the jungles of Vietnam.
So, is it worth a go? Meh, I guess. Honestly, I’d recommend either watching the original, this is a remake of Zatoichi Challenged, or making your way through Noyce’s filmography. There’s tons of gold there. That said, if you have a hankering for ‘80s action and can’t think of one you haven’t seen, it might be one to cross of the list. I’m not hating on Blind Fury, by any means. I guess I’m just saying it’s not the sort of movie that elicits hate or love. It just is. If you wanna check it out, you can find it streaming on Amazon Prime.
Don’t forget to see what’s coming next in the Lousy Lottery. Make sure you tune into Twitter later today and vote for Lousy Lottery 40! My handle is @MrJosh79, look for it and don’t forget to vote!
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