{"id":1254,"date":"2024-07-23T19:56:20","date_gmt":"2024-07-23T19:56:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=1254"},"modified":"2024-10-14T11:39:24","modified_gmt":"2024-10-14T15:39:24","slug":"firecracker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/07\/23\/firecracker\/","title":{"rendered":"Firecracker"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Firecracker<\/strong> (1981)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 New World\/Action\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 77 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (bloody violence, nudity, sexual content, drug material)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Cirio H. Santiago\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Ken Metcalfe, Cirio H. Santiago and Allan Holzman (additional scenes)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Nonong Buencamino\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Ricardo Remias\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: May 1981 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Jillian Kesner, Darby Hinton, Rey Malonzo (as \u201cReymond King\u201d), Ken Metcalfe, Peter Cooper, Carolyn Smith, Chanda Romero, Tony Ferrer, Vic Diaz, Don Bell.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: N\/A<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ***<\/p>\n

\u00a0It happens, even to the Movie Guy, but I don\u2019t let it get to me. On the contrary, I see it as a gift, discovering a movie I never even knew existed. I stumbled on Firecracker<\/strong> while cruising through the action titles on Tubi late one Saturday night. It sounded good, so I clicked on it. Right away, it had solid credentials. It\u2019s a New World picture, it\u2019s from 1981 and it\u2019s directed by Cirio H. Santiago whose resume includes such exploitation delights as TNT Jackson, Vampire Hookers, Stryker and Angelfist. At that moment, I knew I was in for a good time. I wasn\u2019t wrong either.<\/p>\n

\u00a0When her journalist sister goes missing in the Philippines, martial arts teacher Susanne Carter (Kesner, Raw Force) goes looking for her. At the time of her disappearance, she was working on a story about a drug ring headed by Erik (co-writer Metcalfe), owner of The Arena, a nightclub that features fight-to-the-death martial arts matches. Susanne decides the best way to locate her sister is to get close to Chuck Donner (Hinton, Malibu Express), an American fighter who looks more like a 70s porn star than a cold-blooded killer. She uses her feminine wiles in an effort to get Chuck to convince the boss to let her compete.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Meanwhile, the drug ring is being destroyed from within. It seems that Chuck is behind the thefts of drug shipments while they\u2019re en route from point A to point B. It\u2019s all part of a larger plot, of course. Susanne isn\u2019t concerned with any of this; she just wants to find out where her sister is. Somebody in the criminal organization knows. She gets help from a bar owner (Cooper, The One Armed Executioner) and a friend of his, Rey (Filipino martial arts star Malonzo). Rey saves her ass more than once. The cops, led by Tony (Ferrer, aka super spy Agent X-44), are also on the case. They even have an undercover on the inside. I won\u2019t name this person, but it\u2019s easy to figure out who it is. Tony warns Susanne to stay out of it, but since when does any truth-seeking warrior listen to the cops? How about NEVER!<\/p>\n

\u00a0Essentially a remake (unofficial, of course) of TNT Jackson, Firecracker<\/strong> is a lot of goofy bad movie fun with plenty of action. A fight breaks out every few minutes which is a very good thing as it distracts from the terrible acting, dopey dialogue and disjointed plot. The fight scenes are surprisingly good, but one of them in particular is one for the books. It has nothing to do with the actual plot. A couple of would-be rapists hanging around on the street go after Susanne only to be resoundingly defeated. What\u2019s truly amazing about this sequence is how she loses almost all her clothes while fighting off the creeps. It starts with tearing her dress on a chain-link fence and goes on until one creep cuts her bra off. OH YEAH! WE GOT BOOBS! That\u2019s great and all, but what I really want to know is how she manages to outrun her would-be assailants in a pair of heels? It\u2019s a couple of minutes before she thinks to take them off.<\/p>\n

\u00a0There\u2019s a lot to laugh at in Firecracker<\/strong> and it isn\u2019t even a comedy, not an intentional one anyway. I got a kick out of watching our heroine fight a cobra. That\u2019s right, she uses her skills to defeat her venomous reptile opponent after one of the villains, a slimeball named Grip (Diaz, Black Mama White Man), uses it in an attempt to get information out of Susanne. She just kicks it and throws it at one of his goons. Now let\u2019s talk about the sex scene between Susanne and Chuck. First of all, why would she go to bed with a guy she thinks might have something to do with her sister\u2019s disappearance? On second thought, who the hell cares? ANYWAY, it resembles a Quentin Tarantino sex fantasy. Chuck removes Susanne\u2019s shoes and fondles her bare feet before using a pair of knives to remove her clothing. She reciprocates (i.e. the clothing part) and they have at it. Alrighty then!<\/p>\n

\u00a0The screenplay by Santiago, Metcalfe and Allan Holzman (what the hell do they mean by \u201cadditional scenes\u201d?) leaves a lot to be desired. The plot, such as it is, is messy and underdeveloped. Early on, Susanne treks to a temple in the mountains to learn the art of arnis<\/em> better known as stick fighting. Remember the opening of Rambo III? She\u2019s met by the master (who looks like the lost twin of Mako\u2019s wizard in Conan the Barbarian) and an assistant who acts as translator. When translated, he sounds like a Chinese fortune cookie. ANYWAY, he agrees to train Susanne and then NOTHING! The expected montage never happens. Did she somehow learn this form of combat in a matter of hours? She must have because she\u2019s pretty adept at it in the finale.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The late Kesner, who died of leukemia-related causes in 2007, is a real fox. Sadly, she\u2019s not much of a martial artist. In her defense, she\u2019s not a terrible actress. She\u2019s not good, but not terrible either. Hinton is laughable as Chuck. What X-rated movie set did he wander away from? I kept waiting for the funky porn score to kick in when he was around. For simplicity sake, let\u2019s just say all of the acting in Firecracker<\/strong> is superbad and leave it at that.<\/p>\n

\u00a0One of the cool things about Firecracker<\/strong> is the bloody violence. Over the course of 77 fun-filled minutes, a man is impaled by a spear during a fight at the Arena. A security guard gets impaled on a sharp metal object. One guy has his head sliced open by a table saw. They\u2019re all cool, but the piece de resistance <\/em>is when somebody gets a pair of fighting sticks right in the eyes. HOLY CRAP! Dad was right about sticks poking out eyes!<\/p>\n

\u00a0On a dull Saturday night, there\u2019s nothing better than a cheap action flick to pass the time. Oh sure, I could watch some prestigious Oscar winner, but where\u2019s the fun in that? Good or bad, I get a real lift from low-budget exploitation movies like Firecracker<\/strong>. Technically, it\u2019s a bad movie, but it\u2019s also great in its own way. Everything that should count against it works in its favor. For instance, the score by Nonong Buencamino isn\u2019t even original; it\u2019s excerpted from Shogun Assassin. Ordinarily, I\u2019d consider this lazy, but it\u2019s the right movie in the case of Firecracker<\/strong>. That\u2019s the miracle of exploitation. I really wish I could have seen it in a grindhouse theater along with two equally dumb B-movie titles. It\u2019s made to be seen that way.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Firecracker (1981)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 New World\/Action\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 77 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (bloody violence, nudity, sexual content, drug material)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Cirio H. Santiago\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Ken Metcalfe, Cirio H. Santiago and Allan Holzman (additional scenes)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Nonong Buencamino\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Ricardo Remias\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: May 1981 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Jillian Kesner, Darby Hinton, Rey Malonzo (as \u201cReymond King\u201d), Ken Metcalfe, Peter […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1617,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-b-movies","category-kick-ass-actioners"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/Firecracker-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1254"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1254\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1885,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1254\/revisions\/1885"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}