Cheap martial arts thrills from a bunch of non-martial artists

Catya “Cat” Sassoon didn’t have the skills to star in martial arts movies, but that didn’t stop her from giving her all. She was the eldest daughter of Vidal Sassoon—who cut his teeth on streets of London as part of a Jewish street gang that would track down and beat the shit out of Nazis before he became the hair salon kingpin he’ i’s best remembered as—and actress Bev Adams (who starred as Lovey Kravezit alongside Dean Martin in the Matt Helm films) and, in her youth, a bit of a hellraiser. She dropped out of high school to pursue an acting career in New York, where she enjoyed a fair bit of success but was also, at a young age, exposed to the drug use that was such a core part, it seemed of that scene at that time. When she was 15, she met and soon married 18-year-old USC film student Luca Scalisi.

Scalisi, who had family ties to the film industry, likely helped Sassoon land her first acting role, in the 1985 juvenile delinquent film Tuff Turf (starring James Spader). The marriage ended shortly after the release of the film. By then, Sassoon was battle serious drug addiction and would soon enter rehab. She continued acting after she was discharged, appearing in a series of relatively low-budget films, including a series of martial arts movies beginning with Don “The Dragon” Wilson’s Bloodfist IV: Die Trying. In 1992, she stepped up to lead her own martial arts film, Angelfist, produced by Roger Corman and shot in the Philippines by that country’s version of Roger Corman, Cirio Santiago.

Sassoon, despite her father’s street fighting past, did not have a martial arts background. This didn’t phase Corman, who was already a seasoned hand at inventing fake bone fides for the starts of the action films he produced. Thus Sassoon became “World Karate Champion North American Champion,” an accolade that existed nowhere except the cover of a VHS tape. One can roll their eyes (I certainly did, when I was younger and meaner) at the nepotism that fueled Cat’s film career, but then one should also stop and contemplate this on the tree of woe: Cat Sassoon did not need to do anything in life. Her family was rich, and she was set. Instead, she struck out on her own as a teenager, moved from LA to New York and into a scene that was packed to bursting with exploiters and predators. Later, she worked her ass off in the low-budget film industry. Working for Corman and Santiago in the Philippines was not a posh gig. They worked cheap and fast and didn’t have a great rep for making sure the talent was well cared for. Sassoon stepped into this world and stuck around. There’s no higher show biz due to be paid than the path she chose. If nothing else, that deserves respect, or at least I feel good about paying respect.

That doesn’t make Angelfist a good film. But it does make Angelfist the kind of film I enjoy. Plus, whatever she lacks in martial arts skill, Cat Sassoon more than makes up for with sheer energy and willingness to throw herself with gusto into every scene, no matter how absurd.

Before I saw the movie, Angelfist was a video box cover that haunted me for many years. It was perched at the front entrance of my go-to video store and featured a blonde woman (not Cat Sassoon) in a leotard doing one of the most awkward high kicks I’ve ever seen, while holding her arms in this weird little curled-up T-Rex position. This was an era of my life in which my then-recent discovery of Hong Kong action cinema meant I turned my nose up at so many films that, well, maybe deserved to have noses turned up at them, to be honest. Now I know better and happily embrace such films. Thus, back when you could buy a random pile of like 30 VHS action films for five bucks, I ended up with my very own copy of Angelfist.

The gist of the thing is this: while either vacationing or working as a photographer or participating in a karate tournament, a woman named Kristie (Sibel Birzag) catches an assassination on film. Although she phones the American embassy with news that one of their top generals has just been murdered by dudes with pantyhose on their head, and that she has photographic evidence, no one seems to consider it all that big a deal. So rather than go into the embassy or the police, she goes and competes in a round or two at a karate tournament. She then has the film delivered not to the embassy or the police, but to a friend who works as a nude dancer at a club that specializes in the world’s least enthusiastic stripping. And then, of course, she gets murdered.

When the woman’s cop sister (Cat Sassoon) gets wind of the murder, she travels to the Philippines to solve the case and deal out plodding martial arts justice to those responsible while the local authorities use the ol’ “I know you’re a cop back in LA, but this is Manila. We do things different here,” shtick, which has never deterred a single rogue cop ever. It’s no more effective than “I just spent the entire morning getting my ass chewed out by the mayor,” or “your methods are too extreme, Inspector Nico!”

Cat enters the martial arts tournament in place of her sister, since movies have taught us that all gangsters and would-be revolutionaries are also shady martial arts tournament promoters. Ostensibly, this has something to do with getting close to…I don’t know. There were some drug dealers, or something, and some of the revolutionaries responsible for the murder are involved. Look, I sort of lost track. The primary purpose of the tournament really is to pad out the film’s running time with lots of pretty bad martial arts bouts and shower scenes. You better get used to Cat Sassoon topless, because God bless ‘er, she’s all for it, including during a scene where she is attacked in her hotel room by a bunch of ninjas and has to fight them off while wearing nothing but a pair of panties.

Just as I am pleased that “post apocalyptic rollerskating movie” is not a description of a single film but of an entire genre, so too am I happy that “movies featuring nude kickboxing” yield expansive enough results that I can sit back and say, “You know, I think I’m going to become an expert in films that feature nude kickboxing.” Angelfist may fail to deliver in a lot of aspects, but it certainly doesn’t fail to deliver in the nude kickboxing arena. It joins a storied list of films that includes Angel of Destruction, Redline, Girls on the Run, Rolls Royce Baby, Naked Fist, and Kung Fu Leung Strikes Emmanuelle in the pantheon of nude kickboxing movies.

Joining Cat in her quest to showcase awful karate fights is Melissa Moore, a Kentucky native who found herself slumming it in all sorts of movies like Hard to Die, Vampire Cop, and Sorority House Massacre 2, among others. I like Melissa, even though her part consists mostly of sitting in the audience and watching Cat fight while nodding to herself. Well, when she’s not busy taking showers. And apparently someone else likes her too, because there was a comic book about her, Melissa Moore, Bodyguard from Draculina Publishing.

Both of the leads are willing to give their all, however much that may be, for a movie like this. I mean, good or bad, Moore and Sassoon are in there, taking their lumps and starring in crummy kung fu films. Working the Corman-Santiago Manila circuit can’t be steak and onions, as stories from the likes of Walter Hill and Pam Grier attest to. And I don’t know about Melissa Moore, but Cat Sassoon certainly didn’t have to do anything more than live off the sudsy wealth of her family. Instead, she went to the Philippines and made low-budget action films. Good for her!

Not so much, though, for the comedy relief male sidekick and the usual host of “You kicked their ass? But…but…you’re a girl!” and “That was amazing! Could you teach me some of that hi-yah kungfu jazz?” shtick that invariably follows him and his Chess King wardrobe around. Michael Shaner looks like someone mashed Matthew Modine and John Malkovich together. The big difference between Shaner and Sassoon is that by the end of the movie, Sassoon’s bad acting and terrible but enthusiastic martial arts (to give Cat her due, she looks like Jackie Chan at his prime compared to poor Melissa Moore) won me over. Conversely, I wanted to punch Shaner in the face (not him personally; jus the concept of him in this film). You know what, Shaner? Your wardrobe isn’t even good enough to be Chess King.

Both Moore and Sassoon turn in nude kickboxing scenes, though I think Moore’s only counts half a point since it’s just a ripped shirt. But Sassoon goes full on, in just her lacy red panties, that, coupled with the oily misting job they did on her to give her that fresh out of the shower appearance, makes her look like a particularly aggressive Nathan’s hot dog. This is without a doubt the second finest nude kickboxing scene I’ve witnessed (it’s going to be hard to beat the scene from Girls on the Run, though, because that’s a nude kickboxing scene directed by Cory Yuen Kwai). But Cat Sassoon holds nothing back. She throws all her energy into the scene, jumping around awkwardly, growling, yelling, and a few times doing spinning kicks while her face is obscured by a huge dollop of Vaseline or something on the lens.

I think they might have been trying to obscure the fact that a male stuntman with fake boobs attached to him was standing in for Sassoon. If that’s the case, what must that guy’s day have been like? One stuntman shows up and hears, “Well, you’re in the fight, and Cat Sassoon is going to be all greased up and naked, and she’s going to kick you then straddle your face.” And yeah, I call that a good day at work. So the other stuntman is like, “This is gonna be an awesome day!” until he finds out that his job is to grease up, put on fake boobs and a pair of red lace panties, and be a stand-in for a nude kickboxing woman.

The rest of the cast is Filipino kickboxing women who show up for matches and disappear again during the shower scenes (I’ve never seen a Filipino martial arts tournament locker room with so many white women in it; and I guess I’ve never seen a Filipino martial arts tournament locker room, at all). I assume most of the Filipina women have some actual martial arts background, but that doesn’t matter all that much since real life tournament martial arts are pretty boring to watch if you’re not an avid practitioner. They’re not any better here and are probably somewhat worse. There are also a couple of rebels, and the usual assortment of white guys playing generals, diplomats, and other figures of authority. None of them are really worth mentioning. There is a guy named Mr. Carrion, which I suppose is a slightly better name than Mr. Rottin’ Guts, but just barely.

Cat Sassoon’s life didn’t get any easier. She was in and out of rehab for the rest of her short life. She passed away in 2002, at the age of 33, after a New Year’s Eve party, from what was either a drug overdose or a heart attack caused by strain years of drug use put on her heart. Looking back on her slightly tawdry film career and life, my fondness for her only grows. It’s easy to assume the children of the rich and powerful have it easy, and many of them do, or could, but wealth doesn’t guarantee happiness or comfort. And if the darkness is self-inflicted, that doesn’t change anything. Like I said, Sassoon didn’t have to muddle her way through rough-hewn martial arts films, but she did, and she really tried hard. I salute that.

This is one of the films, one of the many films, that force me to grapple with an assortment of moral questions related to passing judgment. Because this is a terrible, terrible movie, and I like it. It’s idiotic, and I like it. I have no justification for this adoration, and certainly I hesitate to tell others they should check it out. The acting is bad, the martial arts are worse, and the direction is nondescript. But like Cat Sassoon, and somehow all the negatives add up to a decently dumb and entertaining 80 minutes. The action may be bad, but there’s a lot of it. Like Melissa Moore and Cat Sassoon, all this movie wants to do is entertain you.