Movie : Samurai Cop (1991)

Well you can't beat a trash movie, and Samurai Cop is really bad. A film with a budget so low the actors (if we can call them that) apparently had to wear their own clothes and drive their own cars! Samurai Cop is, as you can probably guess, one of many low-budget straight-to-video movies made in the 1980s that tried to put an American take on martial arts. In this one an American cop trained by the samurai masters is now out to defeat the Japanese gang running rampant in Los Angeles.

The film makes little sense of course but what elevates this above mere trash is the weirdness going on in nearly every (frequently blurry) scene. Set design for one, take the police chief's "office" which suspiciously looks like a caretaker's desk with a tell-tale array of keys on the wall. Or the large lion's head on the mantlepiece in one of the main character's office. The "police station" which has a hand-written sign that has "Detectives" on it.

Then there is the action, which is frequent, bloody and usually inept. The strange tangents and inconsequential characters. The odd sex scenes (lots of them too). So much in this film to ponder and gawp at, no doubt more joys/horrors would pop out at every viewing. Thats why in the list of bad/great movies, this has to be near the top. Few movies will make you laugh out loud as much, unintentionally.