Written by Old Bluffer 27th Nov 2007

Normally I summarise films in the last death, so as to give a reasonably coherent narrative of the plot as we progress though the killings. For Blind Fury though, this isn't really necessary, as the plot can be summed up very quickly as follows:

A veteran blinded in 'Nam is taught expert swordsmanship and super-hearing by implausibly helpful locals, and spends the next twenty years honing his skills. When he finally returns to America to find his old buddy, he picks the one day that armed goons turn up to kidnap the man's wife and son. The wife gets killed but the blind swordsman escapes with the kid, and they go off to save the buddy / kid's dad.

What this brief synopsis lacks is the wealth of detail needed to explain what an appalling piece of cinema this film is. For example, the baddies are less artfully crafted than in an episode of the A-Team, and their level of menace makes me think they were auditioning for Home Alone.

In summary, wearing my "Hat of Film Criticism" I should be slating the whole mess as a horrible pastiche of the far superior Japanese "Zatoichi" films that it is based on.

I just can't do it though, as despite myself I can't help but find the movie Very Funny Indeed. I'm not talking about the excruciating "blind man" jokes, but the whole tone of the film strikes that happy point on the Badometer that fills it with laugh out loud moments.

For example:

- The two minute sequence showing Rutger's "training" is something of a classic, especially the melon slicing.
- Everywhere Rutger goes he is faced with people that want to mock his disability, allowing him to show his skills in a "hilarious" manner.
- The little kid's "mini-mullet" hairdo is... memorable.
- the scene where all the baddies stand in a line and blast the crap out of a cable car is wonderfully over the top - it's like the Monty Python "mosquito hunting" sketch.

I could go on, but you probably get the idea that this film is worth watching on cable, if you like bad films, and there's nothing else on, and you just want your brain to happily graze on retro-junk for ninety minutes.

Anyway, onto the first notable death (which should technically be the kid's mother, but she just gets unnecessarily blasted with a shotgun and as even the kid doesn't spend long caring about her I'm not going to either).

So, Lyle and Tector are redneck brothers, and are chasing the Blind Swordsman around near the end of the film. Lyle gets grabbed by Rutger, with the razor edged sword at his throat. Tector has his gun leveled towards Rutger, but Lyle has a good idea of his brother's marksmanship skills and yells at him not to shoot. We've already established that Tector is a brainless oaf though, and he blasts away, plugging Lyle with a chest shot that is probably going to be fatal.

Lyle is pretty unhappy at this state of affairs and turns his own gun on Tector, killing him instantly with a headshot.