Okay, we're up to week number... wait, I know this... six of this whole "52 Weeks" project. What have I learned up to this point? The British military is ill-equipped to fight radioactive pudding; much like human brains, alien brains are all about gettin' it on and blowin' shit up; functioning nuclear reactors can be blown up without fear of radioactive fallout; never drink liquids being dispersed from random rock formations in nature that resemble a twisted old man's face; and dancing girls have an evolutionary trait that allows them to stop growing any and all bodily hair when stranded on a deserted island... unless that was just a side effect of the Uranium exposure... damn, I wish I would've made that observation last week when I was doing my Horrors of Spider Island review... So far this is turning out to be quite the educational romp! And people said I'd have to go to an expensive college to learn anything useful. Pashaw! Let's see what junk food we can bloat our brains on with this week's entry: Karate, the Hand of Death!

Well, before we jump into today's lesson plan, I'd just like to provide a bit of cautionary foreshadowing for what you're about to read: the director is also the star, and after this movie, the only roles he would go on to land were narration for other peoples’ movies. Now, despite daddy's warning that the stove is hot and you'll burn yourself if you touch it, would you still like to touch the stove? I was afraid of that... I think I need to get my chromosome count checked.

Not just a movie whose opening credits are painted onto sheets of pre-cut particle board which are then "broken" by a guy who apparently doesn't like that someone wrote their damn names all over his precious fake wood panels, Karate is the story of a blind old German man getting chop sockeyed in the face by a mysterious attacker who steals the geezer's Medic Alert necklace. The End! Wait a minute, you're not getting off that easy. Get back here and sit down, cuz that's just the opening scene. When the unnecessary abuse of wreck room wood paneling in done, we watch as a white guy in Tokyo (which immediately makes him the tallest man in the city) is stalked through the streets by a pair of shady characters. I'm not saying they're shady because they're Japanese, I'm saying they're shady because the white guy's theme music is a cheery piano and alto sax "strolling" waltz, while their theme music is a much lower pitched piano "we're nefarious" dirge... that, and the whole "they're Japanese" thing. As you could expect, Mr. Matt "Whitey" Carver's wallet is snagged by the perps and he's required to file a police report at the local station... where he’s accompanied by the always awesome blump of tuba music. Rock on Whitey.

At the pig sty, the reporting officer notices two big lumps on Whitey's knuckles and immediately knows that Captain American is proficient in karate. As such, while he's in the land of the rising fetish porn, Wonder Bread is required to register those hands as deadly weapons. Unless he knows how to turn those things into a set of Thunderball Fists, I don't agree. Just because you can kill a man with a single blow doesn't mean you should be classified along with somebody carrying a gun or a machete or Executive Power. I know how to kill a person with my keys, does that mean I should be appointed someone to lock and unlock my door for me every time I need to make a late night excursion to the corner store to pick up the latest issue of "Black Tail"? I can kill someone with silverware; does that mean I should only be allowed to eat out at Subway?! Fuck that. If someone told me I had to register my hands as deadly weapons, I'd kill them... but I'd do it with my feet just to avoid the irony. Yes, I'm just that mind blowing.

In standard American fashion, Whitey shouts a lot at the police station like he owns the place, shooting a lot of snarky remarks and accusatory "What are you trying to say?!" lines at the questioning officer. He might as well be wearing a cowboy hat, wielding a hot dog in one hand and poking people with a big red, white and blue foam novelty finger worn on the other. His wallet does turn up, along with a coin very similar to the one taken from the old German guy's necklace in the beginning of the movie. Could Whitey be the one who sissy slapped the senior citizen? Is he supposed to be the hero of this movie, cuz he's been nothing but a dickweed so far. And what's with all the scenes where dialogue has been dropped in favor of turning up the volume on the blanket "there's menace to be had!" musical saw background they ripped-off from an old Bela Lugosi flick? Were parts of this movie filmed before "talkies" were invented?! Much as it might surprise Mr. Holt, some people actually like to know what's going on in your stupid little kung-fu show!

Soon enough, an even taller and goonier looking white guy is introduced into the cast, this one named Ivan Mayberry. Good idea naming the only other white guy in the flick after the town in "The Andy Griffith Show", the whitest show in the history of television. What results from their first meeting is enough to make my brain bleed slightly. Whitey2 wants Whitey's coin, so he pulls a gun. Whitey's response is to call up the front desk of his hotel and tell them that, should they hear any gunfire, they should arrest the near 7' tall English guy that will be leaving his room. Whitey2 gives out such a cheesy put-on laugh that coming from anybody but "MST3K"'s Frank, it leads to the aforementioned brain bleeding. If you should ever watch this scene and don't find it funny, you either need to work on your sense of humor, or I just need to stop injecting NesQuick into my penis.

After Whitey2 leaves, Whitey gets jumped by gun-wielding hoods half his size. Whitey braces to unleash some of his Caucasian fury (which looks like Will Ferrell cheerleading in one of those "SNL" skits), but has a flashback about killing some Japanese soldiers back in "the War" with his deadly honky-fu. This brain fart gives his attackers the chance to pistol whip his whiney ass, then dump him on his old sensei's doorstep where he wakes up later. The funniest part of the movie? Everyone keeps saying that Whitey is one of the greatest karate fighters any of them has ever seen. I hope everyone who says this died a little inside while doing so, because even as lines read from a script, those words are blasphemy no matter what corner of the world you’re squatting in. On the plus side, giving Whitey a tortured personal disposition toward fighting gives us an excuse not to have to see him pretend he knows how to use it! Some exposition reveals that Whitey's in town looking for his Sensei's supposedly dead daughter Tushko (pronounces "Tush Co.", like a company that manufactures rubber asses), a recent photo of whom was sent to him back in the States and brought him here. Turns out it was actually a picture of Tushy's little sister Reiko who has since grown up to look exactly like her... of course, if Tushy's acting was anywhere as deep in the septic tank as Reiko's is, she did everyone a favor by dying.

My interest is starting to wain heavily at this point, so I'll just tell you what I was able to gather from the remaining hour or so: the old German guy was a Nazi, he had access to a bonanza of goose-stepper platinum before he was killed, and Whitey2 believes that the coin Whitey now has is a key to uncovering said bonanza. There's a plumber that talks like such a stereotype you'd think he fell out of a 1940s Captain America comic. Some time is killed with karate demonstrations and a brief history on the art... then more time is killed with karate demonstrations... though I'd rather watch this stuff than any more of the oral Ebola this cast is trying to pass off as acting. People eat snake soup. Whitey and Whitey2 compete to see which is the most boorish Saltine a-hole in Japan. Whitey reflects on his negative experiences in the war killing 100+ of his Japanese "brothers" with his bare hands (shoot me now), but will no doubt overcome his kung-fu impotency just in time to save the day. Whitey2 one-ups Whitey's douche baggery by constantly bumming smokes off of our *shudder* hero. The movie almost tries to win us over by bribing us with a pair of tits, only to give us one more reason to hate it when we’re kangaroo punched in the kidneys with a badly edited quick-cut to more inane banter by the white guys as they order drinks. We meet yet another white guy, this one a German guy wearing a jacket made out of Fruit Roll-Ups. German guy discovers why you never buy used handguns from someone named "Rip-Off Pete", as he gets one shot off at Whitey before the gun jams and he throws it away. In Germany it's apparently customary to tell taxi drivers where you want to go, then drag them from the car and kick their ass before stealing the car anyway, as Fruit Roll-Up Man does while chasing Whitey. Never play chicken with a bail of hay, because cars are apparently useless against straw-based attacks and you will die immediately, if not sooner, as is the case with FRM. German coins contain tiny reels of audio tape, while I’m guessing their paper money reveals nude pictures of Otto Von Bismark when you hold it up to candlelight. Everyone in Japan speaks English except the guy behind the counter at RadioShack. The best way to hide and transport platinum is by making it into a chemistry class version of Kool-Aid. Finally, there's some kind of conspiracy against Whitey, something about betrayal and opium and a baby, but there's just no reason left to care at this point. Finish.

In case you still aren’t quite sure why I hated this movie, there's a whole lot of terrible acting that looks and sounds like ad libbing, only if it were done by people who had never ad libbed in their lives. So toxic is it, in fact, that if my exposure to it doesn't give me some type of excruciating disease, I don't know what will. Additionally, the direction is lazier than an H.G. Lewis movie. I want to say that for almost every scene the camera was just set up on a tri-pod at a stationary point where the shot was wide enough to fit any and all character movements for said scene, and they just let it roll from there. I don't know if it's a kung-fu flick trying to be a gumshoe noir or a gumshoe noir trying to be a kung-fu flick. Either way, it works as neither.

The only two bright sides to this dung heap I can think of would have to be: Project: Kill no longer has the worst fight choreography in the history of film (If you don't believe me, click the rolling head below and find out for yourself); and EVERYBODY in this movie smoked heavily on camera, so there's a good chance they've all justly died of lung cancer by now. There we have it: Karate, the Hand of Death. If you've never seen a martial arts flick in your life, well, it'll still be the worst martial arts movie you've ever seen. Six weeks down and forty-six more to go... unless I pay someone to cut off both my hands, in which I will be free of my self-imposed curse. Right now, I think I'd prefer it. *Sigh*