Slaughter in San Francisco (1974) World Northal Corporation/Action RT: 88 minutes Rated R (martial arts violence) Director: Lo Wei Screenplay: Lo Wei and Chang Yung-Hsiang Music: Joseph Koo Cinematography: David Bailes Release date: September 1981 (Philadelphia, PA) Cast: Chuck Norris, Don Wong, Sylvia Chang, Robert Jones, Daniel Ivan, Bob Talbert, Robert J. Herguth, James Ecomomides, Chuck Boyde. Box Office: N/A
Rating: ***
The kung fu cheapie Slaughter in San Francisco probably wouldn’t have seen the light of day if not for Chuck Norris. He’s billed as the star of this B-level action movie, but nothing could be further from the truth. He has maybe ten minutes of screen time in all, but that’s not the weird thing. He plays the bad guy, a San Francisco crime boss who makes the mistake of screwing with the wrong ex-cop. It’s the second and last time Chuck played a villain, the first being The Way of the Dragon opposite his former martial arts teacher Bruce Lee.
Filmed in 1974, Slaughter in San Francisco began life as Yellow-Faced Tiger. It was originally intended as a vehicle for Bruce Lee, but his death the year before necessitated the makers to hire a replacement. They found Don Wong, a Chinese actor with serious fighting skills. It got made then languished for about seven years until the folks at Golden Harvest decided to cash in on its co-star’s popularity in movies like Good Guys Wear Black and A Force of One. They repackaged it as a Chuck Norris vehicle and released it to cinemas in ’81. Imagine the surprise of audience members when they figured out they were the victims of a bait and switch. That’s show biz, exploitation style!
Wong plays a cop named….. Wong. He and his partner John (Hang ‘Em High) are like some kind of dynamic duo. When they hit the streets, the s*** hits the fan for criminals. They both have mad kung fu skills. Wong’s troubles begin after he and John arrest a couple of rapists in the park only for the victim (Chang) not to press charges. John later gets abducted by the creeps and a bunch of their friends. His wife calls Wong who somehow manages to find them on a beach beating up his partner. He jumps in and easily beats them all down, killing one of the assailants in the process. He’s fired from the force and sent to prison.
We later catch up with Wong working as a waiter in a Chinese restaurant. He’s done his time and wants to get on with his life. Unfortunately, he catches the attention of crime boss Chuck Slaughter (Norris) who tries to recruit him into his gang. Wong turns him down flat despite being threatened to accept the offer of employment.
Wong and John still hang out. One day, John spots some suspicious men fleeing the scene of a bank robbery. He gives chases, but the scumbags get the better of him and kill him in somebody’s backyard. When the police investigate, corrupt Captain Newman (Ivan, Blind Rage) arrests the homeowner and his wife even though they had nothing to do with it. Wong decides to look into it himself. It doesn’t take him long to discover the truth about his former boss and his connection to Slaughter. It all culminates in a big showdown between Wong and Chuck.
I didn’t see Slaughter in San Francisco until I rented it from West Coast Video one August night in ’88. I hated it at the time. I thought it was one of the cheesiest, crummiest movies I ever saw. I didn’t give it a lot of thought after that initial encounter. At some point, it was re-released on video as Karate Cop. If memory serves, that’s the title used by the cheap $4.99 VHS recorded in EP mode. You know, the ones where you could never get the tracking right. I wondered how many people would be suckered into buying it only to realize they’d seen it before. I wasn’t one of them.
So how does Slaughter in San Francisco hold up now? It doesn’t, not at all. It’s still bad. What changed is my tolerance level. I always liked cheap exploitation movies, but now I know to accept the bad along with the great and that the two aren’t mutually exclusive. Old age does have its benefits besides those offered by AARP.
This past weekend, I saw that Slaughter in San Francisco was playing on Tubi and decided to rewatch it. I rather enjoyed it this time. I had a few good laughs. There’s plenty to laugh, chuckle and chortle at. For me, the topper is the bad dubbing. Get this. It’s not just the Chinese actors who have their dialogue dubbed into English, so do the American ones including Norris. The voice that comes out of his mouth is clearly not his. It’s the nuttiest dub job I’ve seen since Arnold Schwarzenegger in Hercules in New York. Almost as funny is the amount of body hair on Norris. We’re talking front, back and facial. He looks like a 70s porn star. Maybe we should be looking for his version of Italian Stallion (the pre-Rocky Sylvester Stallone porno).
I’m not even going to attempt to review Slaughter in San Francisco like I would a normal film. It wouldn’t be a fair method of assessment. Everything about it is cheap, clumsy and amateurish from the fight choreography to the dopey dialogue and bad acting. Norris is so wooden; I kept thinking he should be holding a fistful of cigars. Wong can fight, but he’s no Bruce. To the movie’s credit, it has lots of action. It follows the same basic rule as all kung fu flicks; give audiences a fight every few minutes so they don’t get bored. If nothing else, writer-director Lo Wei (Fists of Fury, The Chinese Connection) knows his way around the genre.
It should be noted that there are two versions of Slaughter in San Francisco floating around out there. My review is of the shorter American version. There’s also a Chinese cut with all the actors speaking in their native tongues. That one runs about 101 minutes. I’m curious to see how it differs from the most widely available version.
Film and art are subjective. One man’s trash is another’s treasure. You know how it goes. I’m not going to sit here and try to convince you that Slaughter in San Francisco is an undiscovered masterpiece. It’s NOT, not by a long shot. It’s definitely trash. It doesn’t deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as cinema. As a cheap B-movie, it’s pretty good as long as you keep your expectations low, VERY low. Don’t think about trivial things like quality, intelligence or competence. If you can do that and I know most of you can, you might have some fun.
