Death Machines – 1976 – Unstoppable Martial Artists
Death Machines is one of those movies that only could be made in the 70s. It’s about this crime boss being forced to hire a Lady Dragon Boss to do his dirty work after she has his hitmen killed off one by one. This was a good story back in the day. Or maybe not the story itself, but the Kung Fu Action. It appears she has injected her own hitmen with a serum that makes them invulnerable and even invincible. I can remember actually seeing this injection being made but I wasn’t paying too much attention. Death Machines is not a good or interesting movie. At least not on that level. I still enjoy the fighting scenes in films like this though.
The fighting scenes are heavily choreographed and not very realistic. You can almost see the staccato moves, and their counter moves, done step by step. In the best fighting movies, it was at least seamless. But I don’t think they cared about that here. I presume that the movie was very cheap to make and probably paid off its investors. If it’s still entertaining, maybe it was entertaining enough back then to sell a few tickets.
Not like it was
Of course, you don’t see Death Machines with the same eyes today. But what do I know, I wasn’t around for the first time around. I was born, but I didn’t go to see fighting flicks at the B-movies cinemas in the US. I doubt that it was shown in Sweden at the time. That is why I like the times we live in now. It’s easy to hut down movies that nobody ever heard about, or even care about these days. Except me of course. I find great pleasure in seeing flicks that nobody else, or very few people care about. We don’t all have to see the same blockbuster movies again and again do we?
I recognize some of the actors from Death Machines but I can place them. I don’t recognize their names but I guess there were many of these kinds of movies around back in the day and I have seen my fair share of them even if I forgot about them later. But let’s back up a little. The main plot about these fighters being invincible is quite entertaining. They don’t seem to be superior in every fight scene. But they can survive anything it seems. One of them even gets shot and is pronounced dead and lives another day to tell about it.
It’s quite an awful movie really, with no star like Chuck Norris to make go down in history. But it’s still quite entertaining if you are in the right mood for it!