Now Playing: ANGELFIST and ANGEL OF DESTRUCTION

Cat is Katana Lang, a tough Los Angeles detective first seen storming a cheap motel to mow down some crooks who have just machine-gunned a bunch of cops outside. You'll be amazed at how many Filipino cops and hoods there are in L.A. That night, she gets the word that her kickboxing sister Kristie, who was moonlighting as an undercover FBI agent, snapping photos of a fatal ninja attack upon a prominent American politician, was slashed to death in her hotel room. Kristie was ostensibly in Manila to compete in an all-female martial-arts tournament. When Kat arrives in Manila to investigate her sister's murder and is stonewalled by U.S. embassy officials, she takes Kristie's place in the tournament, unreasonably (but correctly) assuming that the death must be somehow connected to the tournament. She also shacks up with Alcatraz, an annoyingly smug gambler who somehow manages to lure Kat to his bachelor pad and his bed.
ANGELFIST is stupid and crudely made, but it certainly isn't boring. Santiago certainly doesn't believe in shooting many takes (his attempt at using optical zooms to provide instant coverage for a dialogue scene between Alcatraz and Katana is painful), but at least he stages plenty of fight scenes. Sassoon's topless karate scene (in which it appears Kat must have been showering in her panties) is the highlight--how could it not be?--but several other action scenes, usually involving the breakage of cheap wooden furniture, keep the pace moving. And when women martial artists aren't bashing each other in the ring or Filipino ninjas leaping into battle with one of the film's stars, Santiago alleviates the silly plot with plenty of gratuitous nudity, including three different shower scenes, two of which feature statuesque blonde Moore as the kickboxing FBI agent sister's kickboxing FBI agent partner.
Cat Sassoon, the daughter of Vidal Sassoon and ‘60s actress Beverly Adams, died of heart failure the morning of January 1, 2002 at the age of 33. At least she lived long enough to presumably see Maria Ford remake ANGELFIST as ANGEL OF DESTRUCTION, which also manages to ripoff two Roger Corman movies; in addition to ANGELFIST, ANGEL OF DESTRUCTION is a step-by-step remake of a Don “The Dragon” Wilson movie called BLACKBELT, which was a ripoff of THE BODYGUARD. I don’t know how Corman manages to keep all these ripoffs straight. The best way to remember 1994’s ANGEL OF DESTRUCTION is that it’s the one with Maria Ford performing the topless karate fighting.

Originally Charlie Spradling was signed to star in this New Horizons action flick, but when she balked at performing the eagerly anticipated (by me anyway) naked kickboxing fight, Corman reportedly dumped her, sent Ford over to Manila (filling in unconvincingly as Honolulu), and ordered the director to rewrite the script to kill off Charlie's character and introduce Ford as her sister. Some of the dialogue and camera setups are even taken verbatim from BLACKBELT, which, obviously, didn't have the advantage of Maria Ford's amazing naked kickboxing skills, as she bounces around a house wearing nothing but a G-string and rouge on her nipples and beating the crap out of an army of trained hoods. And despite her character's determination to never strip again, this professional law enforcer doesn't hesitate to step out onto a stage and perform an intricately choreographed striptease in order to save the life of a hostage (how and why this happens aren't addressed, but we know it's to provide Ford with yet another nude scene).
Although Corman claims to have retired from filmmaking and has put his massive Concorde/New Horizons library up for sale, I can’t help but hope he’s got one more Naked Karate movie left in him. After all, four isn’t nearly enough.