Karate Warriors (1976)

Director: Kazuhiko Yamaguchi

Starring: Sonny Chiba

More Info: IMDB

Tagline: The Deadliest Dragon That Ever Smashed the Street Gangs!

Plot: Chico (Chiba) arrives in a city where there are two waring gangs. Chico gets wind of a large hidden stash of heroin owned by the, now dead, former leader (Rico) over all of the gangs and sets off to find it and keep the two gangs at war. Meanwhile, he as befriended a small boy whose father is a samurai assassin working for the rival gang.



My Rating: 8/10

Would I watch it again? Oh, yeah

Viva Chiba! Everybody knows what a badass Bruce Lee was, right? Well, everybody should know that Sonny Chiba is the closest thing to the badassicity of Lee after Lee's death. He became an international star with THE STREET FIGHTER (1974) and its sequels, as well as the spin-off SISTER STREET FIGHTER (1974). So if you're not familiar with this guy then that's a great place to start.

Here's a pic from THE STREET FIGHTER...


The film starts with a newscaster voice-over scenes of gang violence. Here we learn that the former boss, Rico, is dead and there are two brothers who each leads half of the former gang. They are at war with another to gain control of the city for themselves. There's also a large stash of heroin worth 1 billion yen hidden by Ricco before his death. Chico rolls into town and wants a piece of it. He meets a little boy who claims his father is a samurai. He follows the boy to his makeshift home near the wharf. There he meets the boy's father and within minutes is fighting along side him kicking the asses of one of the gangs.

"Everyone in this room will die by the hands of Chiba (seated left)"

There's more ass-kickery on top of that and it's beautiful. You know that technique of using slow motion, speeding up for the impact and then back to slow motion used in movies like THE MATRIX and 300? They use it here and it's done better than those two films!!! And this is 19-freakin'-76 we're talkin'!!! It's fucking awesome. The clip above includes that scene.

"Everyone in this room will die by the hands of Chiba!"

It's kind of cool how this feels like a western at times. The story is not unlike that of A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS which was taken from YOJIMBO. The action scenes are badass. Lots of people die and die beautifully. When a truce is called between the two gangs, Chico doesn't like it. He needs them fighting so he can continue earning large dollars while looking for the heroin so he uses a samurai sword to cut off an arm belonging to a member of his own gang to make it look like the other gang's samurai warrior did it. They're at war again. Hooray for us 'cause that means more ass-kickery.

"Everyone on this beach will die by the hands of Chiba!"

There's blood sprays, body parts getting whacked off, women being brutalized (not a good thing, of course, but these people are brutal). One of the gang leaders beats his girlfriend with a belt and leaves her bloody only to have Chico drop in later, treat her right and bangs her. Later on he rubs it in the guys face telling him how to get what he wants. Nice.


The voice work is really good, surprisingly. The only gripe I'd have about it is the kid sounds like Bart Simpson but as a grown-up smoker. Other than that this movie is tons of fun. The anamorphic widescreen print is far from perfect but considering it's thirty years old it's pretty damn good. It's part of a 6-film, 5-disc set (called THE SONNY CHIBA COLLECTION) I picked up for just over ten bucks at Deepdiscount.com. The sale's over but you can still get it for less than 14 clams which is still a fantastic deal for 6 mid-70s Sonny Chiba action films AND they're all anamorphic widescreen prints! VIVA CHIBA!