Kung Fury (2015) Directed by David Sandberg
The Internet can be a wonderful thing sometimes. This movie is definitely one of those times. Kung Fury started off as a short, maybe like 3-minute trailer about a Kung Fu Police Officer in the 80s being sent back to time to take on the ultimate Kung Fu master, Adolf Hitler (aka Kung Fuhrer). Sound awesome? That’s because it was awesome. So awesome that people donated money until its budget was met, and turned into a 34-minute short movie. In that time David Hasselhoff made a music video for the film titled “True Survivor”. The song has upwards of 10million vies on YouTube, the talk started. In March it was posted to YouTube for free, and recently it has been added to Netflix. I first heard of the movie from my brother in law, and I impatiently awaited its premier. I promised late last year on my twitter (@31horrormovies) that I would do some non-horror reviews for you guys, so here is the first one! Enjoy!
The film starts with a group of 80s street toughs walking up to a cop, whom hassles them, causing one tough to put his skateboard under the car, stomp it and send the cop car flying in the air. The group shoots the car and it explodes. Soon after they cut to an arcade where a machine comes to life and blows people’s heads off. A cop calls the station and demands they contact Kung Fury, a martial arts police officer dressed basically like Ryu from Street Fighter. Kung Fury is in the house of a sexy woman, she walks up and grabs his arm and he utters a great line “yeah, that’s my bicep!” Suddenly the phone rings and a frantic officer asks him to come help. He crushes the phone and the woman asks “what are you going to do”, Fury replies “My job!” He then runs, jumps out of a window and off the roof of the building, he fires his gun at his Lamborghini Countach and jumps in. He hits a hill in the car, goes airborne then jumps on the hood and fires shots into the robot. Next the tracking goes off and he’s hanging from a helicopter fighting the robot. Again the tracking goes off and he’s now in space bouncing off the hubble telescope. A third time, the tracking goes off and he’s slamming the robot into the ground and finishes him off saying “Game over.”
Fury tells his backstory, with flashbacks. His partner Dragon arrests a ninja, they celebrate and Dragon is cut in half by the ninja. Fury goes to shoot the ninja and he’s struck by lighting, has a vision of a great kung fu master writing Kung Fury on a scroll. He awakens to see the ninja running towards him, and realizes he is now an amazing martial artist and kicks the ninja into a wall. The ninja says he’s the chosen one, Fury says “knock knock (who’s there?) Knuck…les!” and destroys the ninja, he uses piece of the cloak as a headband then has a bitchin montage.
After the credits they show Adolf Hitler arrive in Miami like Arnold in the Terminator, but fully clothed. The Police Chief yells at Kung Fury for destroying so much trying to take down the robot. The Chief assigns Fury a new partner, named Triceracop, yeah he’s a Triceratops, which is pretty dang awesome. Only a Stegosaurus would be cooler, but hey that’s like my opinion…man. A guy that looks like Tom Delong walks on the pier talking on the phone until Hilter holds a gun to his head, takes the phone and calls the cops. The chief answers and Hitler fires shots into the phone, thus blowing the chief’s brains out, he fires more shots that rattle through the police station, until Fury shots the phone dead. Kung Fury asks for someone to trace the call, Hackerman says he can do it. Fury goes with Hackerman who turns on his 80s badass computer and tells Fury it was Hitler. Fury tells the backstory of Hitler saying he changed his name to Kung Fuhrer since he was a Kung Fu champion. Hitler tried to figure out how to harness the power of Kung Fu mastery, he failed and escaped. Fury says he is going to go back in time to Nazi Germany and destroy Hitler once and for all. Hackerman creates a time machine to hack him back in time, complete with The Power Glove. If you don’t know the Power Glove, watch the Angry Video Game Nerd episode about it. Fury stands on an old keyboard, Hackerman types in multiple lines of code and sends Fury into the future. Fury rides along a laser grid like an old Trapper Keeper, until he’s “hacked too much time!” causing Fury to crash.
Fury comes to in the wilderness, complete with huge bodies of water and mountains. He stands up and a velociraptor shoots a laser at him, he explains that it’s a laser-raptor. Suddenly its shot dead and he turns to see a Viking babe with a mini gun atop of a giant wolf. She says her name is Barbarianna and explains that it’s the Viking age. Which explains the laser-raptors. Another Viking babe shows up called Kitanna, she gives him a ride to Asgard on her T-Rex. He explains why he is there, she says she knows someone that can help. From the heavens Thor lands, flexes and opens a portal with his hammer. Kung Fury thanks Thor and gives the babes his number, gives them a phone and goes off to list the aspects of the phone like an 80s commercial. Fury then walks through the portal alone.
The next scene shows two Nazi’s talking about their mustaches. They continue to argue and explain their mustaches for what feels like twenty minutes until Kung Fury smashes them flat with a tank and says “tank you!” Hitler is giving some speech to all his Nazis, all of which are wearing gas masks. Fury blows through with the tank, jumps down and says to a Nazi “I’m disarming you!” Then he rips the guys arm off and beats him with it. He shoots a bunch of the Nazis then puts his shades on. He strikes a pose and lays waste to hundreds of Nazis one by one in an awesome fight scene that goes on for a few minutes. During the scene he does some crazy stuff like kicking a guy’s head off and bicycle kicking a guy over his head. Later he uses a guy as a skateboard and breaks him into pieces. Towards the end he rips a guys spine out like Sub Zero stating “you don’t need that spin, its holding you back” Hitler flips is lectern to show a gun and fires off into the crowd, killing a few men and taking Fury down.
Lighting crashes and Thor drops down bringing with him, the babes, the T-Rex, Triceracop, and Hackerman. Hackerman turns into a robot and the group starts killing Nazis. The T-Rex eats a bunch of guys and the fight wages on. With all the Nazis dead, Hitler is the only one left. Suddenly the giant gold eagle above him comes to life and battles the T-Rex. They now cut to an 80s cartoon sequence reminiscent of Transformers or even Heavy Metal. Kung Fury talks to his spirit animal Cobra, he says that Kung Fury is in heaven. Kung Fury refuses to accept it. He comes back to life because Hackerman hacked away all his bullet wounds. Now alive, Kung Fury faces off with Hitler. Hitler tries to be nice and talk things off saying that him and Fury have a lot in common. He tries to get Fury to join him. Fury does a flip and punches Hitler in the balls. Thor crushes the eagle on top of Hitler with his massive hammer. Fury and Triceracop embrace and happy music plays. Fury says he needs to head back to the office, looks around at all the dead bodies and says “its gonna be a hell of a lot of paperwork.”
They go back to the 80s and another arcade robot is shooting people, Fury flies towards it with his Countach and asks the Hoff9000 to open the doors. Basically the HOFF9000 is KITT from Night Rider, nice turn around guys lol. They argue about opening the doors. HOFF9000 says “Didn’t anyone tell you not to hassle the HOFF9000?” Fury hits the same jump from earlier and shoots the robot. The radio that brought back earlier again brings Hitler back this time with the Gold Eagle. The arcade robot has a swastika on it and Fury realizes that Hitler is back, the eagle screams as Hitler flies by riding it and the movie ends. The credits role and “True Survivor” plays.
What a fun movie. So stupid, so cliché but completely ape-shit bananas at the same time. It is a love letter to the 80s B movie through and through. The over the top fighting scenes and ridiculous dialogue fits right in with 80s gems like Miami Connection and Hard Ticket to Hawaii. The whole movie has an odd lighting effect that each character seems to have a glow, which is awesome. The scenes where the tracking goes off and it looks like you’re watching an old VHS, are brilliant. The constant one-liners are reminiscent of Arnold and Stallone movies. Yes the story is completely absurd, but that’s the point. The fact that David Hasselhoff decided to not only make a song for the movie but also have a cameo as HOFF9000 is hilarious. Its nice that to see celebrities who can poke fun at themselves. I love all the 80s references in the movie like the Power Glove and the cheesy phone commercial. The animation sequence is also quite impressive; it truly captures the style of Thundercats, Masters of the Universe, and Transformers. What it really reminded me of when Cobra appeared, was Dinoriders, if you have never seen that it is basically humans riding dinosaurs and using them to battle aliens in a prehistoric planet…it is as awesome as it sounds. I really just love this movie, it is totally off the wall, bizarre and stupid. I would give this an A. If you love B movies like Revenge of the Ninja, Miami Connection, or even Deadly Prey, watch this movie you’ll love it. One last thing…TANK YOU!
