Good Bad Movie Night - "Samurai Cop"

I won't beat around the bush, this movie is great. "Troll 2" great. This movie has everything. It's bad, and inept, and silly and fun.


It's an 80's buddy cop movie. A white cop on the edge and a straight edge black cop.
The white cop is the "Samurai Cop," of course. Why wouldn't the white cop be an expert in the Asian Arts? No reason to bring in an Asian guy. Just use a white body builder with long Fabio hair.


let's talk about the hair. When we first meet our heroes the white cop is wearing a long wig and a baseball cap just sitting on top of the mess. The black cop makes a point of saying the white cop came up from San Diego, like that explains the wig and his fighting ability. My first thought was that he grows in the film and then he "cuts" his hair and truly becomes a Los Angeles cop. Within 40 seconds I learned that I was over thinking it. He doesn't cut his hair.


They walk into the unmarked police car. Now we cut to them driving and the white cop has real long hair. Then back to the wig for a close up and then back to the real hair.
He must have cut his hair after production and they needed to do insert shots and re-shoots. This goes on a lot in this movie. At first you think, "Ok, they didn't realize they would need a close up there until editing." But by the time you see fight scenes that go from location to location in one fight and long sequences of the hero fighting in a wig, you know there are bigger problems.



Most of the police don't have any badges on their uniforms. Just dark matching clothes. When I say "most" I mean all but one. He must have brought it from home.


Our heroes go to the hospital to question a witness. Guarding the door is one terrible actor in matching dark clothes. The director had to put a mark on the carpet so he would know where to stand. The whole time you can see the wheels turning in his head, "Act, act, act...walk to blue 't' and then say line...act, act, now sit down...and done."


After the witness is murdered the cop watching the door yells, "Someone get security." Wait, aren't you a cop?
Then he runs down the hallway - we cut to the same shot of the hallway and the bad woman running down it. They must have left the camera there and told her to run down. "No one will notice that they are running down the same exact hallway."


Remember in "Beverly Hills Cop" when Eddie Murphy meets the very funny and very gay store clerk. Gosh, that was funny. Well, they try that too. At a restaurant, they meet a very gay waiter that just spills all the beans. It's not funny. I would say it's not funny and not offensive  because it doesn't make any sense. 

The stand out scene is the nurse who hits on the white cop. It makes no sense. Even better is the reaction shots they get from the black cop. He makes these huge faces. He looks like a Michael Winslor for the deaf. 

Look for the blue "t" on the floor in the hallway.

But what about all the samurai fighting the title of the film implies? 
One scene at the end. Which starts in a desert and then appears in 
the woods and then somewhere else.

This movie is great. It's fun and implausible that someone put this out. 
There are so many moments where the director must have said, 
"No one will notice." 
You will, thankfully.