Furious (1984) Online

This is, without a doubt, the most amazing movie I have ever seen. It still fascinates me to this day. I guarantee you will never, ever, see another movie like this. If someone asked me what my top five most memorable films were, this would definitely be number one on the list!

Trust me. Go see it!

I've wanted to see this film ever since finding out that it features Loren Avedon's first starring role in a movie and reading the only review of it currently on IMDb which affirms the film as nothing short of ecstatic. I received and watched a copy of 'Furious' with a few friends on the weekend, which I luckily found on eBay. It was very unique and unpredictable as the only other current review of the film states.

However the only scene we managed to spot Loren in, was during a part where a red alarm goes to signal that Simon Rhee is spotted outside of an all black high security building. Loren Avedon is one of studentsfighters in the building that run off together as soon as they hear the alarm in order to detain Rhee.

This scene is also juxtaposed with a band randomly playing (What the?). The only thing that sucked was that we couldn't spot him at all after that scene. Also, he is listed in the IMDb credits as a fighter for the film, however not in the credits of the actual film itself.

Rather odd, however, I'm still very happy for purchasing and owning the film.

Let me state right from the start, when it comes to a movie that's as scatter-brained and unfocused as Furious, that makes it a real challenge to write anything of a succinct review. This makes movies like Surf II seem perfectly logical in comparison.

And on the matter of "speaking succinctly". Furious, even for a Martial Arts film, has some astonishingly bad voice-dubbing and often with hilarious results. That being said, it takes a whole 15 minutes before there's a single word of intelligible dialog.

Furious is certainly quite a mixed bag of several things: martial arts, pseudo-mythology, Chinese restaurants, bad voice-dubbing, but most of all, complete and utter nonsense - as it's constantly shifting from ludicrous to tedious from hilarious to repetitious and ultimately making very little sense in the long run. Simply put, it's stranger then stranger, in fact I think this crap made even less sense the second time I saw it. I believe that it was writer/director Tim Everitt's intent, to have us believe that his film's a "deep" and "sophisticated" work of art, with all the pseudo-mythological babble that he infused his film with. But in sheer terms of execution, it's this movies dire levels of amateurism, that over-power any of it's positive qualities, especially in the photography and editing departments - oh man, the editing is so haphazardly done, it's easily among the worst ever seen in a feature film. And other than a few quirky and off-kilter stylistic touches there's not a whole lot to like here, the fight scenes are decently done, but hardly memorable. The one thing Furious excels at is, it's sheer strangeness and take my word for it, it's very strange indeed - but certainly not in a good way.

And on the off-chance you find yourself watching this obscure and little-known movie (why obscure? why little-known?) (yes that's sarcasm), no doubt, you'll be thinking to yourself just how stupid and nonsensical it all is. But just relax, because it only gets stupider and stupider as it goes and it's really quite a marvel in that respect - and just wait until "Mika the Sorcerer" enters the movies... plot. Speaking more on that, this movies plot is painfully idiotic, Simon's "Master" turns out to be an evil overlord, who hangs out in a tower of steel and glass - a skyscraper, and by the movies own logic, if he collects certain wooden trinkets and pieces them together, forming a ring and does so while in a "sacred Mongolian cave" this will unlock the "powers of the universe" and will give whoever possess the wooden ring "unlimited power". It seemed that the master was already doing pretty well for himself, even before having unlimited power - because he literally flew like Superman to the scared cave. But of course, once there, all Simon has to do is, is simply kick and punch him and it's with this clever strategy, that our hero eventually defeats the master and any notion of him having "unlimited power".

On the matter of determining -where- it is that this movie is taking place at is absolutely impossible and it's kinda surreal in that regard, as if you're floating through time and space in a quasi-netherworld; but one thing's for sure, the transition's from locale to locale, are about as subtle as a jack-hammer to the head. In most cases you -instantly- arrive, as if through instantaneous teleportation. Specific locations that are shown are: a forest where our hero "Simon" lives in a small shack, a single stark modernistic skyscraper of glass and steel, rolling grassy planes, Chinese restaurants, coastlines and "sacred Mongolian caves" - just a little bit of everything.

Mika the Sorcerer is a memorable character, an evil wizard who has a "talent" for literally shooting chickens out of his hands, as if used as some sort of projectile. He also has one of cinema's best mustache's - always a big bonus if you play the villain. If all that wasn't enough he has not one stupid sounding voice, but two, while he's still in human form and then by simply being kicked in the face, this SOMEHOW turns him into, literally, a dying pig; where an even more ridiculous voice is heard, ending in a series of "death farts". Oh stop it Mika, I only have so many ribs and I'm breaking all of them due to laughter. Sadly.... what I just described happens to be one of the movies best scene's.

Furious, is said to be (by some delusional souls) a cult classic, statements like that really make me wonder if we saw the same movie. Furious doesn't even begin to qualify as a Martial Arts classic, let alone any other kind of "classic". For that realm of cinema check out: Bruce Lee's films, or Jackie Chan's more inspired efforts or even some of Bruce Lee's imitators, such as Dragon Lee or perhaps best of all Jimmy Wang Yu's 1975 Martial Arts masterpiece Master of the Flying Guillotine (which lands squarely between the Lee and Chan era's). There are literally dozens Martial Arts films that are much better than Furious - but probably none weirder. This movies insanely stupid and I feel like a total moron just by describing it. It's indeed the kind of movie that will lower your IQ. Just how bad can movies get??? Watch Furious and then you'll know.

At the end of it all, it would seem that I can't bring myself to throw away this dreadful movie, it's simply fun to watch once every other year - glad I only paid 5 bucks.