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Blind Fury

Tags: rutger

I just can't stop laughing whenever I see this poster. Seriously, I defy you to find a picture of a man happier to be disarming and likely dismembering more dudes at once.

Donkey: It’s funny where you end up finding inspiration. The ravenous pack of regular visitors to this site – which has recently exploded from 2 or 3 all the way up to about 7 or 8, officially making us the Internet’s biggest sensation, at least until someone posts a new video of a kitten or dude getting hit in the balls on YouTube – will notice that it’s been a while since I’ve managed to share a new story of brain-raping splendor. I’m afraid that maintaining the aggressive writing schedule required by this site has become more and more of a challenge over time, especially as my attempts to avoid getting repetitive have started to make the once bountiful well of dick and fart jokes seem to dry up more and more each day. But just when I wondered if I could possibly go on, inspiration arrived in the form of a stern rebuke. I recently discovered that this site has been banned by a certain Christian web filtering application. And while some might consider falling into the cross-hairs of the Jesus Brigade to be detrimental to their continued work, I don’t think I could possibly find this fact any funnier. Someone actually thinking enough of this site to ban it is a real feather in my cap. Of course, some of you who are new to our exploits might be asking what I could have done to deserve this cybercock-blocking, and I have to say that I’m not entirely sure. Could it be that my infectious prose have caused hapless victims to be drawn to their computer at the expense of family, friends, and basic bodily functions? Possibly. Could it be because my promotion of the dong-punching glory that is JCVD could technically be considered a method of birth control that would offend Catholic sensibilities? Maybe. Or could it be because I’ve referred to all organized religions as nothing more than an Amway scheme with a far more obnoxious sales force? Probably. But regardless, thank you Christian blocking software; you’ve made my day.

So with the topic of inspiration in mind, let’s travel back once again to our favorite cinematic decade, to a time when action movies knew that awesomeness didn’t require things like a viable plot or even the slightest basis in reality, and witness the journey of a man who found the inspiration required to overcome his handicap to arbitrarily achieve true semi-greatness.

The Plot:

Donkey: Have you ever wondered what a movie would be like if it starred the butt-baby spawned from a torrid love affair between The Hulk and Daredevil as he teamed up with a kid whose antics haven’t been fresh since Problem Child while concurrently battling a villain so remarkably non-threatening that you could just as easily picture him selling you life insurance or a 1995 Chrysler Dynasty? Yeah, me neither. But feel free to read on and discover the magic that absolutely no one asked for.

The Case for Greatness (aka The Lowlights):

Exhibit A: Sharp Killing Instruments – Basic Vision Or Language Skills = Negative Fun!

Just pray that this is the only time that the villagers are going to want to play "Smell My Snake", Rutger.

Donkey: Like so many of the stories that your grandfather spouts out to support his endless case that you’re a soft-lipped pussy just because you’ve never been face down in thick jungle brush, ducking below an intense firefight between Charlie and Uncle Sam while grunting your way through the intense firefight of syphilis in your trousers resulting from standing fourth in line for a three dollar hooker, this week’s tale begins in the magical place we call ‘Nam. That’s right, it’s time once again to visit the even lighter side of a national tragedy where we pass through a haze of wonder, dreams, and needless human suffering to meet the film’s hero played by the illustrious Rutger Hauer. As a US soldier whom is unknowingly taking his first steps onto the path of an epic journey, Rutger enters the movie crawling away from the smoking rubble of a fierce battle where he was struck blind. Frightened, alone, and undoubtedly farming a particularly potent swamp-water dong-fungus, his darkest day imaginable – pun intended – suddenly gets much worse when he’s caught in a net Chewbacca-style and taken to a nearby village of what I have to assume are blood-thirsty local peasants. However, instead of taking this foreign enemy hostage to create a rudimentary sperm bank in his lower colon or possibly serve his internal organs on a bed of rice pilaf, these simple villagers instead decide to act as angels of mercy. So with absolutely no explanation as to why they would bother, the movie jumps straight into one of sweet, buttery Jesus’ greatest gifts to humankind: the montage. And we’re not talking some syrupy bullshit trying to touch our hearts and our bathing suit areas with random images of Rutger’s plucky resilience and indomitable spirit in learning to live with his new handicap. No, Rutger’s even more ridiculous recovery includes learning the magical art of Jit-Kun-I’m-Going-To-Stab-You-In-The-Face-With-My-Sword-Do. But how exactly does a newly stricken blind man without the Vietnamese language skills necessary to process the most basic instructions manage to train with a fucking sword, you ask? It’s quite simple, actually. He achieves this feat merely by hugging a little old man while that dude practices a few solitary katas. Yep, it’s just that easy.

Whoa! Hey dude, that's not what I meant when I said, "put the sword in its sheath"!

So in the time it takes him to grow a glorious ponytail, Rutger learns to master blind sword work, developing skills so sophisticated that he can slice through coconuts being thrown past his face. Fuck, we’re off to a good start. I can’t wait until he decides to go out for his fighter pilot’s license after spending a couple of hours dry humping an 8 year old kid playing After Burner.

Exhibit B: Take My Wife Please! Oh Wait…She’s Dead.

So tell me...are you ever going to split kings again, motherfucker? Didn't think so.

With our hero’s vague introduction complete, the film says fuck it and decides to get right to brass tacks by jumping ahead 20 years, completely ignoring the question of how a blind American would manage to survive the last two decades tripping around a Vietnamese jungle after practicing little more than a complicated regiment of coconut slashing/dude fondling. Instead we rejoin Rutger on his path of glory just in time to discover that he has returned home to the United States. Naturally we began to speculate that he’s been drawn back to the land of Big Macs and even bigger asses to witness all the miraculous fads that the 80′s has to offer: the timeless musical juggernaut that is Wang Chung, the taste bud molestation of New Coke, or even the elusive “computer” fad undoubtedly destined to fade into nerd obscurity next to Buck Rogers In The 25th Century. But instead we eventually discover that he’s actually returned to find an old war buddy named Frank Devereaux. Little does our hero know, however, that Frank is actually in Reno at the time, being hung off the roof of a casino. But before you wonder if he’s turned his post-war-stress disorder into a shitty David Blaine performance art, I should specify that he’s not there by choice. Frank’s being hung over the side by the casino’s owner, whom we’ll call Hamshank MacCready, and a cadre of hired thugs led by Randall Tex Cobb, otherwise known as the biker from Raising Arizona whose performance achieved a 9.5 on the “Mickey Rourke Scale of Greasy Douche Bags”. Apparently Frank is a chemist with a gambling problem, and rather than have his legs broken or even his feelings hurt through a series of stinging personal observations, Hamshank MacCready has instead decided to call in Frank’s debts by forcing him to become the chemist solely responsible for his designer drug-manufacturing/amateur horse-porn web hosting business.

Careful, Rutger. She's totally fucked over He-Man and Rowdy Roddy Piper. You don't stand a chance.

Blind to the fate of his sought after friend, not to mention oncoming traffic and the sacred art of mime, Rutger begins his journey strolling along the side of a Florida highway where he’s forced to overcome obstacles that are both increasingly dangerous and exponentially asstastic enough in nature to fittingly represent a state with the collective intellectual capacity to be thoroughly crushed and defeated by the veritable minefield of human comprehension that is voting: a discarded Coke can, a pile of dog shit, a live goddamn alligator, and finally a group of local punks in a bar who perform a duet of offenses in harassing a young girl and gleefully spiking Rutger’s burrito with a metric ton of hot sauce. And while litter, deadly free roaming wildlife, and pestering the handicapped are all things that Rutger can apparently abide, playing keep away with a young girl’s purse apparently earns you a first class ticket on the Beating Express. While inexplicably taking the time to make it look accidental, Rutger uses his trusty Cane-Sword (which is infinitely less fuck-headed than Final Fantasy VIII’s Gunblade, just for the record) to teach the punks a lesson in manners that concludes in a final exam involving unconsciousness. But once these minor annoyances are behind him, Rutger finally arrives at his destination, the Devereaux household, where he ascertains that Frank is divorced and has long since moved to Reno, abandoning his wife played by – well goddamn it – Evil Lyn from Masters of the Universe. Jesus, between that and They Live, we can’t get away from this woman lately.

Sorry about the cigar ma'am, but it's the only thing that can cover the smell of flame-broiled garbage.

But just before Rutger can seize the opportunity to see if he can smooth talk his way into a fabled “soccer mom blowjob”, two cops show up at the front door a few minutes behind him accompanied by our old pal Randall Tex Cobb, asking to see Frank and Evil Lyn’s son, Billy. Tex claims to be some kind of inspector, which is goddamn retarded because even if we hadn’t already seen that he’s actually a goon working for MacCready, this guise still wouldn’t be remotely believable to anyone unless he was a water inspector sent to preach the virtues of conservation via skipping all forms of bathing. Seriously, this guy posing as a cop would still be insulting to officers working undercover at a fucking sewage treatment plant. Having obviously been sent to kidnap Billy and ensure Frank’s continued cooperation, the thugs immediately drop their pleasant facade the moment that Billy steps into the room, opting in favor of the more elegant tactic of grabbing the kid while blowing Evil Lyn away with a shotgun. Things look grim for our blind hero, but thankfully two decades of training have elevated his level of lethality to a few steps above the average housewife, so Rutger doesn’t go down quite as easily. With only a few deft movements of his Cane-Sword, Rutger relieves one cop of the burden of having a right hand and splits the other straight down the sternum, leaving Tex to wisely haul ass straight through the living room window in a desperate panic to get away. With the danger seemingly gone, Evil Lyn uses her dying breaths to demand that Rutger – a complete stranger – swear that he’ll look after Billy. I realize that she’s dying and all, but this seems a little quick to be that trusting. He could be a blood thirsty pedophile for all she knows. Maybe just ask him to look after the kid until the real cops show up? Regardless, Rutger agrees to her plea and after waiting for the life to seep out of her, he takes a moment to close her eyes by brushing his hand over her face lightly, even though we can clearly see that she closed her eyes before his fingers crossed over her eyes.

 

Unless your hand smelling like ball-sweat magically causes eyes to close, that's not even close.

Exhibit C: Need A Cure For Those Blues, Kid? How About Some Depressingly Bad Comedy?

Next up on our hero’s journey is a cross-country bus ride to Reno with his new dependent in tow, and as we all know from watching Over The Top, any time a burly hero and brat kid whose shrill voice is practically begging for a brick to the face get together for a long road trip, wacky hi-jinx coupled with shallow attempts to be more touching than a drunken uncle are assured. The first part of that equation comes when the bus stops to gas up at some shithole in the middle of nowhere, giving our heroes the chance to stretch their legs and comedic chops simultaneously. First they exchange heartfelt mocking laughter at each others’ expense after taking turns slipping and wiping out in the mud. But the fun doesn’t stop there as soon after Billy hands Rutger a rock in the guise of candy. Candy that has a both that taste and nutritional value of a hobo’s asshole, I’m guessing. But our blind hero happily plays along, biting down and making an exaggeratedly pained face before spitting the rock out and nailing the kid right in the forehead. If you’re not laughing by now, take heart: that just means that you’ve managed to avoid the fiery depths of comedy hell. This schtick is so goddamn old that a pie fight or series of banana peel related mishaps honestly wouldn’t seem the slightest bit out of place.

Alright, I'll begrudgingly admit that the only way to make a spit-take funny is by ending it with a kid getting nailed in the head.

But with that crushing hilarity threatening to kill us all, the movie then grants a small reprieve by switching to tender mode. After the pair returns to their bus, Billy’s snooping through Rutger’s wallet yields a picture of him and Frank together in ‘Nam prompting Rutger to regale the boy with the story of how he lost of sight. Through a quick flashback, Rutger reveals that he and Frank were the best of friends back in their war days, but that all changed one night when their base got hit with a mortar attack. Sent out to crawl through the jungle brush and flank their attackers while the rest of the platoon tried to defend their post, he and Frank managed to successfully locate the enemy, only for Frank to run like a pussy the moment they were met with resistance. Left behind to be hit by an explosion, Rutger was left blind while Frank managed to get away completely unaffected, save the terminal damage inflicted upon their torrid bromance. What a great story. Basically your dad’s a treacherous coward that left me scarred for life, kid. Suck on that.

Am I the only one who questions the authenticity of any photo supposedly taken in Vietnam where people have smiles that fucking big?

The bus continues its apparent tour of unremarkable hellholes, stopping at another shithole in the middle of nowhere where emotions continue to flow like bad mayonnaise out of an explosive colon. Billy tries to make a collect call home to his mother, only to have Rutger hang up the phone and finally explain that his mom didn’t stay behind because she was too busy plotting new methods of retrieving the Cosmic Key from He-Man, but that she actually bit the big one. At least that’s what I presume that’s what he’s telling Billy, as this is performed in a pull away shot for dramatic effect while all dialogue is drowned out by music so sappy that I could smother my waffles in it, but for all we know Rutger just told him that his mother is busy starring in a German fetish porn film featuring 3 midgets and a particularly determined dog. And midget-themed beastiality might actually be closer to the truth than I would have guessed judging by Billy’s reaction, as he freaks out at the news he’s given and runs across the highway into a corn field. But it’s not only Rutger that chases after him, as we see that a truck of fully armed hillbillies are quickly following behind. And things just go from bad to worse when Billy runs headlong into the familiar face of our old comrade, Tex. Of course, blocking the kid’s flight that quickly means that Tex either watched where Billy entered the corn field and moved at superhuman speeds to get around him because he is, in fact, the Flash, or he was already in the goddamn field just hanging out. Both explanations are equally ass-hatted, and yet somehow equally appropriate.

If this is the face of your enemy, you don't need to be a martial artist to survive. Hell, you barely need to be a sandwich artist.

Regardless, Tex is well aware that Rutger is following along behind and is prepared for his blind nemesis this time. He locks Billy in an abandoned shack in the middle of the field and sits waiting on its roof with a rifle. But at the same time Rutger begins to realize the danger he’s in, sensing the gaggle of rednecks slowly surrounding him. In response he switches to stealth mode and slowly begins to stalk his way through the thick natural cover to take out the well-armed hillbillies one by one. It sounds straight forward enough, but just to give you an idea of the stupidity we’re dealing with, this pack includes a dude named Popcorn who, get this, is eating popcorn at the time. Genius, I know. That kind of brilliance just earned this movie a scratch-n-sniff sticker simply called “Dick Cheese”. And after killing them all one by one, Rutger has only one nemesis left to dispense, so he brings the ordeal to a close by distracting Tex with a scarecrow while he runs up and – no shit – brings the entire goddamn shed collapsing down underneath the greasy thug with a single slice of his sword to the only support post in sight. Of course, I hate to be a killjoy here but beyond the amazingly idiotic suggestion that anyone would build a four-walled structure that’s held up by a single support beam, the movie seems to be forgetting that Billy’s still inside the goddamn thing. No worries though, as after giving Tex a good slice across the chest, Rutger extracts Billy from the rubble, completely unharmed, and flees the scene as fast as possible. And just to make the whole thing that much more pointless, our villainous oil slick wakes up after they’ve left to reveal that he has survived via a Kevlar vest under his shirt, all while giggling his ass off in as evil a voice as one can muster after being spanked twice by a blind man who bested your gun with a fucking sword. Kudos, dicktip.

Billy would go on to explain this experience later in life to be "kind of like the crushing disappointment of discovering there is no Santa Clause...only with more broken bones involved."

Exhibit D: You Could Find Better Villains At A Kitten Lovers Convention

Taking a brief interlude from the thrills of child neglecting action, our attention is turned a back to Reno for a very modest amount of plot development. Our evil antagonist Hamshank MacCready reveals the motivations behind his villainy, whining to his casino manager and right hand man, Ed, that the bank is going to foreclose on him unless he can come up with a large sum of money in two days, forcing him to turn to illegal narcotics manufacturing. Are you fucking kidding me? He owns a goddamn casino, which last I checked, is one of the few businesses that almost never has a cash-flow problem. He’s not the Assistant Night Shift Manager of a fucking Taco Bell, struggling to find a way to pay off a debt while making $6.50 an hour. Ed assures MacCready that their plans are in motion, but having apparently gotten word of Tex’s repeated failures, stipulates that “the blind man is complicating things”. Clearly a master of shrewd and cunning calculation, MacCready immediately demands that Ed do whatever he has to, including procuring the services of Bruce Lee. When Ed quietly explains that Bruce Lee is dead, MacCready rants on undeterred, demanding that if that’s the case then Ed should instead find Bruce Lee’s brother. So just when we thought that the movie couldn’t lose any more of it’s momentum, it becomes clear that its primary villain is not only motivated by the same kind of dilemna that a blue-collar factory worker would face, but that he’s also brain dead enough to be comprehensively demolished by a paint-by-numbers exercise. Did Bruce Lee even have a brother? And if he did, why the fuck would that mean that he knows anything about martial arts? After all, I’m no J.D. Salinger over here, but one of my brothers is barely literate enough to write any more than his name on a cocktail napkin while the other is more likely to eat that same napkin while shitting his pants.

Exhibit E: At This Point I’d Rather Be On A Roadtrip With Fran Drescher, Rosie Perez, And The Rotting Corpse Of Mickey Rooney

Shitty character development isn’t limited to the criminally stupid, however, as we return to our heroes as they hunker down by their campfire for a night of sharing, feelings, and possible casserole recipes or some other equivalently fruity bullshit. And much like an evening with a Viagra-chugging elderly man, the disgusting attempts at intimacy can’t end fast enough when Billy begins to blubber about his father not really wanting him (what gave you the first fucking clue kid…the fact that he moved across the country or the fact that you haven’t heard from him since?). Rutger tries to reassure the boy that he’s not a complete pussy by dropping a small but important fact about himself, saying that he wishes that he could join in for a good cry but that the same accident that robbed him of his sight also took his ability to cry. Of course that’s just a cover story, since any real man knows that crying is simply unacceptable unless you pass out just moments before the threesome was about to start or you’re watching Artex sink into the Swamp of Sadness in The Neverending Story. That’s right, ladies. We’re not made of stone. But anyways, Rutger concludes that he would be proud to have a son like Billy himself, which both gets the kid to stop acting like such a goddamn skirt while also showing how low Rutger’s standards apparently are. The next morning they wake up and hitchhike to Reno where their journey finally comes to an end in the only way we could possibly imagine…catastrophic failure. They manage to meet with Annie, Frank’s cocktail waitress girlfriend. But just before Billy can create a truly awkward moment by claiming that his mother was still breastfeeding him at 10 and demand that Annie step up to the plate if she’s going to be his new mommy, the heroes are ambushed by a pair of brothers belonging to Tex’s hillbilly goon militia.

If Rutger could see that dude wearing a sleaveless cowboy shirt, he'd agree that sometimes it's better to be blind.

Things might seem grim for Rutger and Billy as they are tossed into the back of a panel van for express delivery to MacCready after mandatory banjo solos and oral molestation, natch. But as we’ve seen time and time again, if there’s one opponent that can be easily disposed of by a blind man, it’s fucking chowderheads, and luckily this movie has them in spades. So while the Dim-witted Duo manage to burn their way through their bonds by means of a lighter that Billy finds after fumbling through Rutger’s pocket along side an accidental hand-job, their captors manage to miss this slow and remarkably obvious Houdini routine by occupying themselves within preschool shenanigans. But their uncontrollable giggling soon ends when one brother manages to cut himself on Rutger’s Cane-Sword by running his finger over the blade, apparently having been too busy corn-holing his brother – whom I’m fairly certain from the looks of it might also be his father – to learn that swords are sharp, and after tossing the weapon out the van’s window just to show that inanimate object who’s the boss (NOTE: it’s Tony Danza), it’s right about then that the hillbillies finally notice that there’s a fire raging behind them. Basic logic dictates that the best course of action would be to get out and wait for the world’s worst tag team duo to either burn to death inside or pop their heads out just in time to be served a 22 caliber sandwich, but instead the rednecks decide to pull over and investigate face-first. So naturally they open the back doors with the kind of hushed anticipation you rarely see outside of a 16 year old about to lose his virginity, only to get similarly fucked by Rutger’s flying fists. Wasting no time our heroes join Annie in the front of the van (which happens to not be on fire at this point for reasons I’ll never know) and take off back in the direction from which they came, stopping along the way to find Rutger’s discarded Cane-Sword which they locate using a ridiculous counting method that both is both poorly executed and exceptionally ineffectual. And they find it with not a moment to lose, as the two tenacious hillbillies brothers show up just then in carjacked vehicle of their own, looking for gingivitis-fueled revenge. This, however, is where things go from dumb to Fox News commentator shit-headed. As they scramble to jump back in the van and take off again, Annie’s glasses end up being trampled. So in a stroke of genius, rather than electing to have the person who’s almost blind drive, the team instead elects to have the person who is actually blind do the driving. Because that makes fucking sense. Goddamn it man, I can’t land this plane with my arm broken like this! Quick, strap the corpse into my seat and let’s see what it can do! Then in what may be one of the most ridiculous chase scenes ever unleashed upon humankind, Rutger pilots the van through downtown traffic using navigational directions that Billy screams out with such stunning clarity that he might as well be reciting the digits in Pi with a mouthful of howler monkeys, all while the gunfire of the pursuing hillbillies is drowned out by the sound of Rutger giggling like a madman. This is equal parts preposterous and absolute tedium until finally the madness comes to an end when the pursuing goons end up flipping their car and our heroes come to a screeching stop within mere inches of a brick wall.

I couldn't sum up this scene better than by simply pointing out that not one of them is actually looking where they're going.

Exhibit F: Loose Slots, Bad Craps, Glorious Mullets…The Recipe Ultimate Recipe For Cinematic Glory Or An 80′s Fetish Porn

Fair warning, ladies: the mere sight of these sweet Kentucky Waterfalls is responsible for more wet panties than a bladder control problem.

After finally making it to a safehouse, or a safetrailer such as it is, Rutger leaves Billy in the hands of Annie and another completely unknown woman while he commences Operation: Rescue-Frank-From-Drug-Casino-Go-Kicky-Fast-POW! The mission, of course, will require the right combination of idiotic decisions and inexplicably stupid events to be executed up to this movie’s standards, and things start off nicely when Rutger arrives in the casino to find MacCready wandering around the gaming floor, talking to his mini-boss Ed about Frank and their need to get their hands on his kid. I would point out how stunningly dick-faced it is to talk about your evil plans while wandering through the general public in your own establishment, but when you’re a “villain” motivated by nothing more than a questionable credit history, this is probably about what we should expect and just be thankful that he’s not shitting his pants as he’s talking. Hamshank conveniently goes on to explain that he figures that Frank will have made enough of the drugs by the end of the night that they can sell the product, get the money that the bank needs, and find a new chemist that is more cooperative, thus making Frank completely disposable. And once they’ve given Rutger nearly all the information he needs, the two men conveniently retire behind the protection of two body guards both sporting incredibly glorious mullets that I’m beginning to believe people in the 80′s thought had a direct link with how much ass you could kick.

Dude with a sword? Whatever. A casino is stacking the odds against me? Fuck, it's go time.

With almost all the information he needs and almost no time to lose, Rutger makes his way over to the roulette wheel to create the mandatory diversion required to cover his assault. After a few minutes of ridiculously successful play, Rutger amasses a large stack of chips for reasons that I would love to have explained to me before, prompting the casino staff to finally take notice of his hot streak and decide to make a change. And they don’t fuck around, as a new dealer comes out with the two glorious “business in the front, party in the back” bodyguards and switches the roulette ball for one that we can see is secretly radio controlled. After the new dealer gives the wheel a spin, he quite obviously uses his radio control to make the ball move at the last second, resulting in a loss of all Rutger’s winnings. But since the radio signal was easily picked up by his inexplicably superhuman hearing, Rutger knows immediately that he’s been cheated and jumps into action, slicing open the dealer’s vest pocket and flipping the roulette wheel with his Cane-Sword, revealing the corresponding radio devices in both. Here’s where the sheer genius of the scene comes, though: instead of being the slightest bit bothered or distracted by the fact that some strange dude just finished wildly swinging a fucking sword in a casino, the other customers surrounding them instead realize that the house is cheating and almost instantaneously start a fucking riot. This of course gives Rutger the chance he needs to sneak away to executive elevator that MacCready and Ed used earlier, getting on board just as the mullet-glad guards and freshly arrived hillbilly brothers finally make their way through the crowd and move to stop him. When his musak-fueled ride to the top finishes, Rutger easily disposes of two more huge black bodyguards with Uzis, and then stalls the impending reinforcements by cutting the panel off of the elevator call button panel and ramming his sword into it, which shorts out the system miraculously without causing him to be electrocuted.

 

Having successfully made it past a crack security squad that would keep all but the cleverest of preschoolers out, Rutger storms into Ed’s office for a deadly confrontation. But when his presence is greeted with a simple “fuck off”, Rutger realizes that he has to kick it up a notch. With only a single backhanded swing of his Cane-Sword, he takes the eyebrows right off his opponent’s face. And yet unlike us, who burst out into laughter at how clearly far away the sword swing was from his target’s face, Ed is actually scared shitless by Rutger’s physically impossible attack, prompting him to reveal that Frank is in a room across the hall while handing over the room key. After issuing the universally accepted action hero method of showing appreciation, wherein Rutger knocks Ed the fuck out, he makes his way across the hall and has an awkward, pseudo-emotional reunion with his old war buddy. At long last we’re finally ready to move on to the final step in Operation: Rescue-Frank-From-Drug-Casino-Go-Kicky-Fast-POW!, which is quite simply to run like hell. But before they go, Frank decides to create a distraction of his own after he grabs the bright blue drugs that he has just created, or what I think are supposed to be drugs – either that or Fun Dip – by setting the lab on fire. The veterans then escape down a stairwell just after the mullet/hillbilly combination arrives on the scene, with Rutger covering their tracks by cutting off the stairwell’s doorknob with a crushingly awkward swing.

 

This horizontal backslash has about the same likelihood of successfully trimming his eyebrows as a drunken amputee with a weed whacker.

Exhibit G: The Ultimate Battle For The Prize No One Wanted

Once the newly reunited war buddies arrive back at the safetrailer, having likely spent a long cab ride tip-toeing around whether or not to that night of daiquiris and rim-jobs lo those many years ago, they discover that things haven’t quite gone as planned. After finding the random chick who owned the trailer dead, they get a timely call from MacCready himself, informing Frank that he’s holding Billy and Annie up at his ski lodge. MacCready warns that he had better come meet him there with “the stuff” by dawn or he might lost both his casual girlfriend and the dependent that he really didn’t seem to want in the first place in one fell swoop. Does no one else see the problem with this? Seriously?

This couldn't be a more obvious time to hit them if Rutger was hanging out the windows screaming about the last time he banged the hillbillies' moms.

So, as predictable as the rampant ass-widening, childhood diabetes that KFC’s Double Down sandwich is sure to deliver, we arrive at the typical action movie “final battle”. And as much as we might be hoping that they instead say fuck it and head to a titty bar, the Super Friends rise to the challenge and journey to the ski lodge of doom to meet their fate. Of course that titty bar starts to look a like a significantly less idiotic option when compared to their actual approach: the path up to the lodge consists of a very long and exceptionally vulnerable ride on a gondola. But all is not lost, considering their rivals in this picture were drawn from a genetic wading pool. As such, MacCready’s hillbilly brigade is naturally ready and waiting to strike, but instead of hitting their prey while they’re dangling precariously above a fucking mountain, they choose to wait for the war buddies finish their slow moving ride, conveniently allowing Frank to pass the time by preparing for the coming battle by mixing some homemade explosives. Once the gondola finally arrives in the ski lodge’s station, Tex and his gaggle of well-armed thugs finally open fire, blasting the shit out of the car as it comes to a rest. But of course when they go inside to collect what they presume are going to be two corpses/tomorrow night’s dinner, they instead find that the car is empty as a result of the Super Friends managing to sneak out of a hatch in the floor. It’s nice to see that this battle has just begun and it’s already goddamn tiresome.

Now that they’ve successfully slipped into the impenetrable fortress of death and family leisure, Frank and Rutger begin running through darkened hallways with no discernible plan whatsoever until they eventually run into familiar foes in the form of the two hillbilly brothers. But with no sodolicioius panel vans to be seen, the brothers find themselves at a disadvantage. Rutger gets the drop on one of them and puts his sword across the brother’s mouth, using him as a human shield while the other one begins to go right ahead and fire anyways. As you can imagine, this idiocy inevitably leads to the one brother shooting his human pinata kin in the chest. Go fucking figure. But not to be outdone, the newly perforated sibling looks back indignantly before pulling out a gun of his own and returning the favor, shooting the other brother. So yeah, they’re both dead. Thank God. But the fighting for our heroes has just begun as the rest of Tex’s horde catches up to the Super Friends moments later and attempts to give them a led-flavored greeting. Together under fire once again all these years later, Frank finally comes face to face with an opportunity to redeem himself…only to once again show his true colors by running like a bitch and leaving Rutger to die alone. But after suffering through a series of painful flashbacks, Rutger manages to pull himself together enough to escape out of the hallway and scramble into a large theater room. The reprieve is short lived, though, as within moments the hillbilly pose floods in behind him and surrounds Rutger. And with their prey finally at their mercy, after having him hand their asses to them repeatedly up to this point, the gang of thugs naturally decides that the best course of action is to stop and take 20 fucking minutes to cock and prep their guns for what they’re assuming is the inevitable execution. But at the last moment, Frank reappears and finally redeems himself by…shutting off the rooms’ lights. Hmmm…leaving him to die twice VS flicking off a goddamn light switch? Yep, consider that debt repaid in full. Realizing that the ring of morons surrounding him with guns has been suddenly cast into darkness, Rutger makes probably the most intelligent decision in the movie thus far and simply ducks, leaving the retarded bumpkins to fire on each other, killing several of their companions before finally stopping. Confused and terrified in the darkness, the supposedly hardcore thugs stand around more stunned than a teenage girl at Justin Timberlake concert, just pointing their guns at nothing and waiting for the inevitable. And of course, Rutger calmly obliges them, weaving his way through the darkness and cutting them down with ease. The best part of this scene is that the hillbillies are acting like the room is pitch black, and yet there is very clearly a significant amount of light pouring in from doorways around the room’s perimeter. I know that filming in absolute darkness can’t be easy, but really? This is supposed to be pitch black and we can’t do any better than sexy mood lighting?

Holy shit...it's so dark that I totally can't see the things that are clearly illuminated around me.

After killing idiot rednecks in the not-quite-darkness, the final confrontation continues when Rutger and Frank finally make it up to the pinnacle of the lodge where they find a highly irritable MacCready and his hostages. After storming in and going through the obligatory exercise of surrendering their guns and the load of stolen drugs, the main event finally begins. Seeing as this is an 80′s action movie, you don’t need me to reassure you that this clash will be truly epic, but I don’t think anyone could possibly be prepared for the moment that a random Asian dude walks into the room with a sword to face off against Rutger. You heard me. Apparently when MacCready demanded Bruce Lee’s brother, he wasn’t fucking around. So I’m not sure if this is supposed to actually be the long lost brother or just some random Asian guy that MacCready snagged from a neighborhood mall after assuming that he knew martial arts solely because he was Asian, but we’ll assume the former and just call this dude Chad Lee. Rutger obliges his challenge of course, and a sweet sword fight ensues which is in no way completely deflated by the obvious method of speeding up the film to make it look more intense. Eventually Rutger and Chad Lee end up fighting on the edge of a hot tub that has a random severed electrical floating around in it. Figuring that it might somehow make for the most ultimate attack of awesomeness ever to blow its load into human eyes, Chad Lee decides that it would be sheer brilliance to combine swinging on a rope trapeze contraption that just happens to be hanging over the hot tub for no conceivable reason with his final slashing sword attack. And as anyone with more brain functionality than a particularly dim-witted carrot might assume, Rutger’s response is to merely duck and cut the rope, dropping Chad Lee into the electrocuting hot tub. No shit.

This is totally the best idea I've ever had...whoa...SHIT!

But just when we think this grand struggle can’t get any better, it ushers in one the dumbest fucking endings you can imagine, short of involving a boxing kangaroo with a foot fetish. After Rutger finishes reliving the glory of his ‘Nam days by killing an Asian for the first time in 20 years, Tex walks in and wastes another clear shot at Rutger by hitting him square in the arm. To his credit, Rutger manages to keep his head and issues a swift response in the form of a thrown sword directly into his opponent’s gut. With a grimace of pain, Tex rips out and discards the sword before falling to the ground and crawling for the gun that he had carelessly dropped. And with this brief pause in the action, Billy leaps on the chance to make a dash for the Cane-Sword, heroically tossing it to Rutger only to watch him bobble the catch and send the weapon plummeting into the electrocuting hot tub of death. This was so careless that you’d almost think he was – oh I don’t know – a fucking blind man. But as Tex continues crawling towards the gun slowly, Rutger comes up with Plan B and grabs Chad Lee’s sword instead. With one last dramatic slow motion shot, Rutger runs up just as Tex reaches his gun and hits him with a massive slash before he can get a shot off. And while that sounds great, it gets even better when the greasy turd rockets backward out of a window only to fall down a massive fucking cliff, splitting in half as he falls and making him look a lot like Darth fucking Maul if the Sith lord happened to have an aversion to bathing. Just as a side note, while all this is going on, Frank wrestles with MacCready for control of a gun, but that struggle is never actually resolved on camera. So we don’t see Frank actually disarm and subdue MacCready, so who knows what the fuck happens there. I guess it doesn’t matter at this point.

I can hear Schwarzenegger shouting in the distance: "Hey Tex, time to split!"

Exhibit H: Maybe Tomorrow I’ll Wanna Settle Down

Now that our improbable journey has come to an end, it’s time to match its meandering, arbitrary splendor with an equally mind-numbing epilogue, and it just kind of writes itself when you stop to think about it. With an absentee father, his trashy girlfriend, an obnoxious kid, and a blind lethal weapon left to their own devices, they naturally decide to pile onto a bus and start a new life in San Fransisco, on the verge of possibly creating one of the dumbest fucking sit-coms the world has seen since Full House. But at the last moment, Rutger manages to muster a shred of common sense and tosses away his bus ticket. And while his new parents board the bus just ahead of him, Billy takes notice of Rutger’s swift escape, chasing after him while crying about how much he needs either him or possibly the smell of soiled panties to get him going in the morning. I’m not really sure as we stopped paying attention about 20 minutes ago. Giving the little ankle biter one last hug, Rutger tells Billy that he’s quite fond of his asinine existence but that he must go back to his father. To then punctuate exactly how much he doesn’t want to be around the kid anymore, Rutger gets up and wanders through traffic before eventually disappearing behind a passing bus. Yet again, that’s pretty goddamn impressive for a blind man. Not ready to give up, Billy starts running like a lunatic in the direction that he guesses that Rutger went, screaming for the blind man to come back while his his newly adopted parents prove exactly how much they love him by not bothering to even get off the bus to see where the hell he is. Eventually Billy stops at a bridge where he cries out to Rutger, exclaiming that he hates him. But just as Billy stands blubbering, his bus suddenly pulls up and Franks jumps out to retrieve him, begging the question how did this fucking bus know where to go to find him and why did the driver agree to go chasing after him in the first place? But even more importantly, can we possibly top this bullshit? Yes. Yes we can.

It's a common misconception to think that he's crying over Billy, but it's actually over the fashion catastrophe that is those goddamn glasses.

The final groan worthy moment of excellence comes as Rutger walks out from under the bridge where Billy gave his emotional farewell, very obviously crying. This suggests that either he was lying to Billy earlier when he said that he couldn’t cry or the love of an exceptionally annoying child suddenly managed to fix an actual medical problem. Either way is equally idiotic, so who gives a shit. But with that, the movie finally ends with Rutger hitchhiking as he wanders away down a highway, beginning what is assured to be yet another epic journey. Is this the setup for a sequel? Will he see our wandering hero once again slashing his way through both the criminal underworld and the everyday obstacles that a handicapped man must face?

Don’t bet on it.

The Verdict:

Donkey: This movie is classic. It’s premise is idiotic and disgustingly stereotypical of an 80′s action film, featuring a hero that’s conceptually ridiculous while still managing to be skillfully executed by a very credible thespian in Rutger Hauer. The villains run the gamut of stupidity, ranging from amusingly ineffectual to shockingly ball-faced. It’s only major weak point comes in the form of Billy the kid, and much like the legendary western bandit of the same name, I’d pretty much beg to have this particular one hung by the scrotum. Seriously, much like a healthy sex life, kids almost always ruin a movie and this one is no exception. But still, there are enough laughs here to make it worth a watch. I give Blind Fury four dry-humping-filled training montages out of five cases of jungle crotch rot.

What We Learned:

Donkey: If your brother dies under mysterious circumstances, the only way that you can possibly top him is to die under absolutely ludicrous circumstances. Preferably involving a hot tub.

Don’t forget to check back every Sunday for a new fresh review! Next week shittymovienight.com presents: a double feature like you couldn’t possibly imagine as we dissect two of The Asylum’s newest and most awesomely named films in…”MEGA SHARK VS GIANT OCTOPUS” VS “MEGA PIRANHA” VS COMMON SENSE.

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This post first appeared on Shitty Movie Night, please read the originial post: here

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