Teruo Ishii makes films for adolescent lads, giving them plenty of one-sided sex committed against rather than with women, & scads of fight scenes. He's regarded as a "cult director" & not apt to be liked by anyone who thinks even an exploitation film should have a at least a few slight moments of intelligence or credibility.

Tragically regarded as one of Ishii's best films, the jazzily scored karate film The Executioner aka Direct Hit: Hell Fist (Chokugeki! Jigoku-ken, Toei, 1974) provides horrible cinematography & jerky quick-cut editing instead of quality fight choreography.

Shinichi Chiba plays a modern descendant of ninjas who takes on a drug cartel. Chiba is in the main very tacky in his performance, making vomit sounds when trying to scream like Bruce Lee, & mugging so butch it's sissy.

Reminiscent of the "castrate a black man" right of one of Chiba's Streetfighter movies, his character Kouga beats the living daylights out of a virtually helpless black guy who was having cross-racial sex then tosses him off a balcony.

A mostly second-string action cast, but with some few exciting faces, including Makoto Sato as a disgraced police officer turned avenging hitman, & a guest appearance from Ryo Ikebe.


In the main, The Executioner is just a bad movie. In the unnecessary sequel The Executioner II: Karate Inferno aka Karate from Hell: Star of Pharoah (Chokugeki jigaku-ken: dai gyakuten, Toei, 1974) Kouga has become the thief of thieves out to get a jewel from a crook.

There's more slapstick gags this time around & plenty of pointless action, but Chiba has absolutely nothing to be proud of here. Tetsura Tamba & Ryo Ikebe put in appearances, but the main cast is once again a second-string cast, with "Sue" Shiomi & the Japan Action Club hopping about foolishly. The conclusion with a comic reference to the Abashiri Prison series perked me up for a half-second.

Some people regard these two films as classics of sleeze rather than regular sleeze. For the rest of us, we can just count our blessings that there was no Executioner III.