Weekend Watching: Fist of the North Star

Phrost · 9/02/2012 11:25am

How did I, of all people, not know this was a thing? Surely someone (probably Gezere) has discussed it here before; I must have missed that discussion.

Anyway, I got back from my semi-annual "oh god this is why I quit smoking cigars" reminder event late last night and stumbled upon this gem on Netflix. Again, how could I have not known it existed?

First off, if you have absolutely no clue what I'm talking about, here's a... umm... just watch.

Mad Max Steroid Jesus Bruce Lee travels through a post-apocalyptic wasteland and curb stomps people using a martial art that could only exist within the context of anime or an asthmatic teenage nerd's revenge fantasy.

The anime paved the way for pretty much every retarded/awesome (retardsome?) animated fighting-related thing to come out of Japan for the last 20 years, including Dragonball Z and Naruto.

But otaku weaboo crap aside, you'd expect a movie like this to be as bad as, oh, pretty much every other movie that was based on an anime or manga. For example:

Or this steaming pile of monkeyshit:

Instead, the film co-stars this guy:

And this guy:

And even more shockingly, this guy:

Who you might remember better as this guy:

Also, Downtown Julie Brown for some unfathomable reason.

Unfortunately, this isn't a movie review, so I'm not going to tell you whether or not it was good: I fell asleep shortly after turning it on when both the Red Bull and nicotine wore off simultaneously just as the first fight scene was about to start.

But with the unexpected cast and scale of the film in the opening bit, especially when I was expecting something MST3K-worthy, it's something you should probably check out if you find yourself with absolutely nothing else to do this weekend.

**W. Rabbit** · Posted On: 9/02/2012 12:37pm

What no love for Big Van Vader?

I'll confesss...the live action version is a personal guilty pleasure of mine.

Given the pantheon of completely terrible post-Apocalypse martial arts fare, this movie was not all that terrible for the budget...it was after all straight to video.

The entire 1986 movie is on Youtube.

**itwasntme** · Posted On: 9/02/2012 1:03pm

Originally Posted by W. Rabbit

The entire 1986 movie is on Youtube.

Excuse me while I go relieve this tension in my pants.

**datdamnmachine** · Posted On: 9/02/2012 4:08pm

Watched this in our dayroom in AIT. One of the rare moments where the drill instructors would come in and actually watch TV with us. That's how bad-ass it was!

**Hiro Protagonist** · Posted On: 9/03/2012 3:50am

**Bneterasedmynam** · Posted On: 9/04/2012 7:55am

Exploding heads aside, this has to be one of the worst martial arts movies since no retreat no surrender.

**kelvis** · Posted On: 9/04/2012 1:49pm

Sorry, I love this movie. It's the fact that it's so campy that I like it. Here in Italy EVERYBODY watches Ken Il Guerriero.

You can find the video game in almost every arcade.

**Smackjack** · Posted On: 9/05/2012 8:33am

Movie was cheesy as ****. Remembered Watching it 6 years ago. Gary Daniel's is a horrible actor. They could at least had a better lead role. You barely see heads explode. Did you know the guy named his son after his character in this movie? What a loser dad. I would spend my retirement if I could to remake this piece of **** and do it justice for the cartoon. They have been fucking up a lot of these movies, Tekken, Fist of the north Star, Dragonball evolution, Street fighter, and the only thing tolerable was mortal kombat.

**W. Rabbit** · Posted On: 9/05/2012 9:05am

Originally Posted by Smackjack

the only thing tolerable was mortal kombat.

No I'm pretty sure they fucked up the Mortal Kombat movie too.

**Bneterasedmynam** · Posted On: 9/05/2012 12:26pm

Originally Posted by Smackjack

Movie was cheesy as ****. Remembered Watching it 6 years ago. Gary Daniel's is a horrible actor. They could at least had a better lead role. You barely see heads explode. Did you know the guy named his son after his character in this movie? What a loser dad. I would spend my retirement if I could to remake this piece of **** and do it justice for the cartoon. They have been fucking up a lot of these movies, Tekken, Fist of the north Star, Dragonball evolution, Street fighter, and the only thing tolerable was mortal kombat.

I didn't hate the tekken movie, it was at least as good as the game. But mortal kombat?? You're fucking kidding right??

The only movie I could stand Daniels in was the perfect weapon, but just barily.