Huang mian lao hu

Officer Don Wong (Wong) is a San Francisco cop who is proficient in Martial Arts. Frustrated by the growing menace of gangs in the area, one day all his anger is unleashed and he gets into a big brawl. The brass back at the precinct aren't happy about this, and he has to turn in his badge and gun, and is actually busted down to waiter, working in, what else, a Chinese restaurant. It's there he comes into contact for the first time with crime lord Chuck Slaughter (Norris). After Wong's former partner gets caught up in the crossfire, Wong really has a yen for revenge and goes after Slaughter and his minions. Will his next brawl put him back on the police force? Find out today! Just so no one gets confused, Don Wong plays Don Wong and Chuck Norris plays Chuck Slaughter. Get it? Slaughter in San Francisco? Heh heh. Now that the formalities are out of the way, we can say what a silly - yet entertaining - movie this is. It's filled to the brim with big, plaid-centered 70's fashions, a nice, fuzzy, funky soundtrack with cool drums, and, seeing how it was a very mustachioed time back then, those are on just about every male face as well. Even though the film is ostensibly American, because it is a Golden Harvest production and everyone (including Chuck) is dubbed, somehow, things get lost in translation. And it's not just the overdubbed, loud, "classic" 70's Kung Fu-style dubbing, it's also the sound effects, like fist and foot blows sounding like someone smacking a cardboard box with an aluminum baseball bat. If someone hits you and that sound comes out of your body, you are in serious trouble.

Speaking of things that are over-inflated, the role of Chuck Norris in this movie comes to mind. His role is pretty small, but packaging was retrofitted to make this a Chuck movie after his success. Meanwhile, Don Wong, who is a real Don Juan, gives the Chuckster a run for his money. Additionally, we believe one of the thugs towards the beginning of the film (the guy in the brown leather jacket, though that doesn't narrow things down much) is none other than Ron Marchini. He's not credited, but we strongly believe it's him. Maybe someone out there can help confirm this for us. Nevertheless, Mr. Norris and his bizarre body hair situation Chucking it up to the soundtrack which sounds like a funky version of the music from NES' Lode Runner makes this worthwhile, never mind all the other ridiculousness herein.

As for buying this movie, the options available are not great. There's the version, under the title Karate Cop - not to be confused with the Ron Marchini-starring movie from 1991 - that was released on the low-budget label MNTEX, which is unfortunately in EP mode. Then there's the version on Rhino, under the Slaughter in San Francisco moniker, but that's a pan-and-scan barbarity. Nevertheless, we'd probably say go with the Rhino version, given the choices at hand.

A blond beach-boy looking Chuck Norris playing top San Francisco mob drug kingpin Chuckie Slaughter does his best to keep a straight face in this movie that if anything should have earned him the top acting Academy Award honors for 1974. Norris in his first staring role plays the baddest of bad guys, having a gangster-like voice dubbed in, who not only runs the city's top drug operation but is as crude and uncouth towards the ladies in the movie as Jack the Ripper or Ted Bundy. It's Chuckie's attempt to rape his kid brother Paul's fiancée Sylvia Chu that in the end did him in and put him under. With former SFDP cop, and now restaurant waiter, Wong in taking him as his gang out and making chop suey out of them.

Wong who was framed by Chuckie's under-link Capt. Newman in a bank robbery that Chuckie and his boys pulled off that ended up killing Wong's police partner Robert Jones. As for the robbery it was blamed, with planted false evidence, on Mr. & Mrs. Chu, Sylvia's parents, who just happened to live next door to the bank that was held up. With Wong determined to find those that murdered his partner he discovers that his former boss Captain Newman was behind it. After kidnapping Newman and with a little friendly persuasion, like hanging him by his you know what, Wong finds out that Chuckie was the master mind behind this entire crime wave, as well as police and political pay-offs, that's sweeping the city.

The final showdown has Wong take on Chuckie and his gang on their own turf with Chickie & Co. getting the worst of it. It was when Wong dumped Chuckie in the duck pond and his his yellow hair dye bleach started to run he finally called it quits. It was far more humiliating to Chuckie Slaughter to end up not being blond, since in his mind blonds have more fun, then taking a whopping from Wong whom at the time, before being dunked, he was more then holding his own against.