Project Terrible: Shaolin Dolemite

Project Terrible is upon me once again, and I figured I'd try to get what's probably (hopefully) the worst one out of the way right from the get-go:

Aw, crap.

This gem is brought to me by my dear old friend Alec over at Mondo Bizarro...yes, somehow I do keep describing him as a friend despite the fact that he gives me stuff like Shaolin Dolemite.

This is...well...to start, I have to give you a bit of history. This is basically Rudy Ray Moore's version of Kung Pow: Enter the Fist...though to call it that is a huge insult to Kung Pow. Rudy Ray Moore, for reasons known only to Rudy Ray Moore, made this film by basically dubbing over a 1980s Taiwanese martial arts epic called Ren zhe da, otherwise known as Ninja: The Final Duel. Turns out that that film had around 10 hours of footage shot for it and was intended to be this massive epic, but only about 90 minutes was actually released...so Moore got all the extra footage to play with too. He added new footage of his own, tied the thing together with a paper-thin, terribly written and awfully-redubbed plot, and released it as Shaolin Dolemite.

Making a movie by combining new footage with an old martial arts film isn't a new thing...the director Godfrey Ho, for instance, is famous for doing just that. But the difference here is that Moore uses almost entirely footage from Ren zhe da, with his own footage almost entirely consisting of very occasional shots of himself standing in areas that look almost kind of remotely possibly like something that could be just off to the side of the areas in the film (if you squint and hit yourself very hard in the head a few times so you aren't thinking so clearly), making "witty" (read: generally unfunny and somewhat obscene) comments. Moore's character is supposed to be Dolemite from his earlier films, but really it barely matters even to his rewritten plot--he never does anything and you'll frequently go 15-20 minutes without even a momentary shot of him...not that I mind.

Ow.

So what you get is a really odd film in general. It's actually pretty fun when it's just showing Ren zhe da and when the dubbing seems to be heavily following the original film rather than sticking in rapper references and street lingo. The whole thing is pretty cheesy in the way that these sort of martial arts films often are, but the action is fast-paced and the fight scenes are interesting and engaging for the most part (if you can get past the cheesy old kung-fu movie tricks they pull all the time, which, fortunately, I can). There are some pretty creative fights and some very entertaining sequences in there, the acting--what can come through despite the dubbing, anyway--isn't bad, and while a lot of it does come off as pretty generic, I think Ren zhe da looks like it would have been a fun film to watch.

I love Shaolin Eyebrows.

Unfortunately, I'm not watching Ren zhe da, really. I'm watching Shaolin Dolemite. And...every sign of Rudy Ray Moore's touch on this thing is a huge negative. Aside from the scenes of Dolemite just kind of standing there saying, "That n*****'s got skillz!" and so on, the dialogue for some characters has been heavily adjusted to be extremely stereotypical street gang lingo. One of the main characters of Ren zhe da is actually black--played by 80s American martial artist Eugene Thomas--and Moore basically has him dubbed as the most stereotypical street "gangsta" ever. Poor guy. His friend Alexander Lou, who starred with him in several other films from what I understand, fares better and is dubbed pretty much straight as a Japanese fighter who comes to learn the ways of Shaolin. Two Caucasian actors played some kind of Shaolin monk in Ren zhe da as well, evidently, and they're unfortunately dubbed over as, uh...well, white gangstas, I guess. And then there's the ninjas, who inexplicably are dubbed as a Hispanic gang. O_O ("Get outta here, gringo!") Oh, and there's a fencer who has been dubbed as Davey Crockett, largely because he wears a hat that looks like a coonskin cap.

No, really. Davey Crockett.

If this sounds like it's funny, sorry. It really isn't. Again, any interesting or fun parts of the film are those that would have been interesting or fun in the original Ren zhe da--Moore's contributions pretty much either offend or fall flat.

First "kung fu death" at about 4 minutes, 38 seconds in.

Okay, so...the plot. Here's the basic idea: Rogue Dolemite clan member Tupac (Eugene Thomas) kills a member of the Wu-Tang Clan and steals a sacred Dolby Stereo Death Bell. He is "hunted" by Dolemite (Rudy Ray Moore, doing absolutely nothing) and more legitimately hunted by the daughter of the man he killed. Meanwhile, a Japanese man named Sanada (Alexander Lou) stops a ninja plot and then goes to learn the ways of Shaolin to be able to survive the revenge of the ninjas, but the ninjas begin to plot against the Shaolin and eventually kill his teacher. Two white Shabazz clan members try to get the Death Bell back but are defeated, and join up with the Wu Tang girl to warn Shaolin of an impending mass ninja attack. Finally, Tupac and his ninjas face off against the Shaolin, Shabazz, and Wu Tang (and Davey Crockett) at the Shaolin temple. That's it. That's...pretty much all there is to the plot. The rest is just people punching and kicking each other, so if you were expecting any twists or intricacies...look elsewhere.

Oh, come on, ninjas! Don't you know you're outnumbered? I mean, you've only got like 20 of you versus one martial arts movie hero! Bring at least 300 next time.

Oh, though there's an unimportant bit with Moore's friend Jimmy Lynch unsuccessfully trying to portray the art of Drunken Boxing, which was just scintillating.

There's really not all that much to say about the film, unfortunately. It's...hard to discuss. Basically, you're just watching Ren zhe da for 99% of the film, with occasional unfortunate dubbing decisions, and then every so often Rudy Ray Moore appears for a couple seconds and says something stupid, and then you go back to Ren zhe da again, and then finally at the end Rudy Ray Moore appears again and gives his trademark rhyming Dolemite speech, telling people not to mess with him, like he actually was responsible for anything. In terms of Shaolin Dolemite, there really isn't a film here! It's just a bunch of fight scenes tied together really, really loosely by the tiniest threads of a plot, and then Rudy Ray Moore just appears every so often. The film is about 1 hour and 50 minutes long, and Moore is in it for probably about...3 or 4 minutes. I didn't think someone could out-Godfrey Ho Godfrey Ho, but Moore has done it! He's released a movie that is literally just showing you an entirely different movie and then kind of pointing the camera at himself at various points and mugging for the camera. I mean, this gives me a whole new appreciation for all the honest work that went into that crappy "Ultimate Ninja" movie and other Godfrey Ho stuff Alec and I have watched with our friends! I could make this movie in an afternoon! Just grab some old, forgotten kung fu flick, go out to a park and point a camera at myself and say some stupid one-liners, and mix them at kind of random points, and you've got yourself a film! This is quite possibly the laziest example of film making I've ever seen. I have never seen a film that had so little effort put into it by the guys claiming credit.

To try to actually get something resembling a review here...let's split this up in a couple quick lists.

Rudy Ray Moore's part of things:

• Horrid dubbing: You can hear echoes and audio distortions frequently, and it's clear that this was recorded in what was by no means a professional environment. I'm thinking...in the garage, with a sub-$10 microphone that was also 10 years old, broken, and purchased at a garage sale, then doused accidentally with whiskey.
• Terrible and sometimes offensive jokes: To the extent that you can understand Moore or the "street slang" part of the dubbing, it's all horribly stupid and involves pretty frequent racial slurs, a few rape jokes...I really don't want to get into it, but let's just say I'm not very impressed with Rudy Ray Moore as a human being after watching this.
• Paper-thin plot: There's really not much there at all. Just a bunch of people appearing, kindasorta getting in trouble with the same bad guys, and then one hell of a lot of lengthy fight scenes. Again, the re-producers didn't really do a ton of work with this, and seemed to not want to really do that "writing" thing, so they selected mostly long fight scenes for the film. And look, as I've noted and will again note in a moment, the fight scenes are actually pretty nice, but if you don't have any kind of plot there, there's no way to connect with the characters. And yes, that's important, even in a comedy/parody...thing...like this. 
• Unfortunate use of fast-forward fighting: This could be in the original film--I'm not sure--but I've seen Moore use it in his own films, so I'm going to blame him. :-P There's a few bits during the fight scenes where the fighters are very obviously sped up to a pretty ridiculous degree, and it really hurts those fights. Fortunately, this isn't used to a huge extent, but it rears its ugly head at some bad times.
• Rudy Ray Moore Claiming Credit: Through one or two lines of dialogue for other characters, a couple clips of himself looking around, a few comments, and one 20-second speech at the end, Rudy Ray Moore claims credit for the actions of the heroes in the film without doing a single thing. He appears on camera (through either some Kung Pow-style film trick or maybe just hiring a guy to dress up like a monk for a couple lines) with another character once...okay, twice if you count the completely unnecessary Jimmy Lynch bit, which I don't. This isn't like a Godfrey Ho film, where there's two complete, separate movies that are tied together tenuously by one poorly-edited scene implying two characters are talking. Moore doesn't even go that far. This is one movie, and then we get a couple of Moore's vacation videos and some shots of him mugging for the camera. I'm sorry to keep harping on this, but how lazy can you be? If you're going to make a movie, make a movie! This is like if I "remade" Star Wars by just showing you the movie, splicing in one clip of me sitting on my couch eating popcorn and giving a thumbs-up just before the Death Star explodes, and redubbed one line to say "The Bob is with you."

...I should totally do that.

Ren zhe da's part:

• Pretty good action: There are some excellent fight scenes, and some that are just average to good, but by and large the folks involved in this knew how to put on a good fight. There are some pretty impressive moves, particularly in the epic battle at the end of the film where we get a lot of team-ups and there's a heck of a lot of fighters doing things all over the place. Ren zhe da clearly involved some pretty talented fighters, and while you can certainly spot some flubs, the footage is by and large very, very fun to watch. Heck, they managed to make a scene where a girl uses long strands of cloth, via magic, to beat up some ninjas and then to duel the main villain really, really entertaining and kind of cool...that takes some talent.

• Glorious ridiculousness: This isn't quite to the level of my favorite cheesy martial arts masterpiece, Duel to the Death, but it gets surprisingly close. There is some awesome, hilariously goofy stuff here. We've got the aforementioned cloth-fighting style, a scene in which two people with bells have a musical duel that ends with explosions, a whole heck of a lot of flinging random objects at each other for them to explode in midair, a guy having a fight with a floating Buddha statue, a guy dodging throwing stars and repeatedly moving from his dodges smoothly back into meditation pose, a nice bit with a mind control flute being used in a an assassination attempt, and a fight between Sanada and a topless kunoichi where he keeps having trouble hitting her because he doesn't want to touch her breasts. O_O Ren zhe da is kind of awesome...I have no idea how much of this is in the actual movie, but this is some wondrous lunacy.

Oh, crap! Boobies!

• Acting: As I mentioned above, it's hard to really tell because of the terrible dubbing, but honestly the folks involved in the actual movie seemed to be doing a good job of it. I got close to connecting with some of the characters because they were really trying hard and bringing out the emotion visually, so I think you probably had the makings of a good, serious martial arts film here. I just kind of lost any care anytime Moore appeared, so...
• Terrible special effects: I can't harp on this too much since it's pretty much what you see from any old martial arts film that wants to involve ninjas and magic and all, but...those effects are awful. Particularly notable is the kunoichi's first appearance (before she adopts the topless fighting tactic), where they have her spend like 30 seconds to a minute repeatedly, meaninglessly flipping out from behind a "floating" sheet of cloth in very unconvincing teleportations. Also notable is one scene where, completely inexplicably, "Tupac" and two of his men are walking through a forest, and just kind of teleport a few steps ahead multiple times for no reason at all. It's like this horrid stylistic effect I saw in the movie Absalom, but this is actually clearly supposed to be them teleporting! They're moving two feet! Why would they teleport?
• Plot questions: I can't under any circumstances say I got a clear picture of Ren zhe da's plot, but even so...there's some things I have to question. The villain just kind of seems to develop new powers all the time without any clear reason for it, for one thing. For another, why is there a guy with a coonskin cap that using a fencing sword in this movie? And...why are there two white guys going around dressed as Shaolin monks? I'd really like to know what that was all about in the actual film. But the biggest thing is that there's one scene where the heroes are fighting "Tupac" and have beaten all his henchmen, and have him down, but have nearly lost one of their own guys too...and they just kind of leave rather than sending in their many still-healthy fighters against the obviously-beaten villain. I mean, they turn tail and run, and he kind of stumbles after them and falls over several times, clearly dead on his feet. I'd love to know why they ran in the actual film, because I can't see any reason. O_O
• Lengthy fighting: It's fun, but wow is this ever long. The film's 1 hour and 50 minutes in length, and probably a good 1 hour and 35-40 minutes of that is training scenes or fight scenes. Obviously some of that is due to the scene selection by the re-producers, but it's pretty clear that there would be a huge amount of fighting in the real film too. Entertaining or not, it goes on for a really, really long time, and it can start to wear on you to watch this. If they really were planning a massive, epic film with this originally, I sure hope it wasn't like 9.5 hours of fights and a half hour of dialog, as that's too much even for a martial arts fan! 

The infamous metal men of martial arts movies make an appearance as well.

So...I don't know. I can't compliment this, because it totally, unquestionably just ripped off another film and slapped a couple new...they aren't even scenes! It slapped a couple new...moments...in to the film. So...Shaolin Dolemite is terrible for certain, a prime example of a person trying to get attention for someone else's hard work. Ren zhe da, on the other hand...that looks pretty gloriously awesome, and I think I'm going to have to see if I can find the real thing at some point. All in all, I was entertained, but not by anything Rudy Ray Moore and friends brought to the table here...any credit for entertainment goes to the older movie that they were trying to leech off of. Shameful, terrible, and offensive...yeah, that's pretty much my memory of Rudy Ray Moore's work.

Shame on you, Rudy.