"Funeral for an Assassin" director Ivan Hall's low-budget, chop-socky saga "Kill or Be Killed" with James Ryan and Norman Coombes emerges as a tolerably entertaining, juvenile kung-fu actioneer set in dusty South Africa with a tournament plot reminiscent of Robert Clouse's "Enter the Dragon." The numerous karate fights in this frantically paced epic rate a slash and a gash below those vintage Bruce Lee chop'em-ups. Nevertheless, "Kill or Be Killed" passes muster just barely because it clones surefire scenes and gimmicks from better kung-fu movies. Aside from its "Enter the Dragon" premise, "Kill or Be Killed" differs from most movies for its treatment of short people because midget actor Daniel DuPlessis is treated with greater respect than usual for somebody of his abbreviated statue and doesn't serve primarily as a source of comic relief. You might almost be tempted to say that scenarist C.F. Beyer-Boshoff and Hall were imitating the James Bond movie "The Man with the Golden Gun" where a midget, Hervé Villechaize, played the villain's errand boy. Villechaize later co-starred with Ricardo Montalban in "Fantasy Island" where he played a similar role. "Kill or Be Killed" was initially released in 1977 so Boshoff and Hall had probably modeled their dwarf after the Bond dwarf. Again, rarely are dwarfs used for anything but circus movies and strictly as comic relief. Although DuPlessis looks ridiculous in one scene where he croons lovingly to an idiotic hand puppet, he has the third largest role in "Kill or Be Killed" so he isn't your run of the mill midget character.
The filmmakers rely on the time-honored plot where opposing teams of kung-fu fighters battle each other in a fight-to-the-death tournament. Baron von Rudloff (Norman Coombes of "The Mangler") is an insane, ex-Nazi captain seeking revenge again Japanese diamond merchant Miyagi (Raymond Ho-Tong) for a war-time injustice perpetrated against him. During the war, the Axis arranged a martial arts tournament, and Miyagi bribed von Rudloff's men with diamonds to throw the match. Rudloff resigned in disgrace. Beyers-Boshoff's script is fraught with loopholes and improbabilities. First, why wait 30 years for another match. Second, chances are in real life the Baron would have been killed by the Gestapo for besmirching the Third Reich with defeat at the hands of the Asian. Moreover, those Nazis that accepted the pay-offs would surely have been executed for their treachery, too. Nevertheless, this is a B-movie thriller, still it seems mighty contrived. Anyway, von Rudloff throws down the gauntlet and Miyagi accepts the challenge. If the Japanese merchant wins, he gets more precious gems, but if he loses, then he must reveal his duplicity to the world at large.
Baron von Rudloff's right-hand man is Chico (Daniel DuPlessis) and the aristocrat trusts him more than anybody else. When Miyagi consents to the tournament, von Rudloff dispatches Chico to round up some more championship martial arts experts. The Baron already has assembled an army, paid them well, fed them well, and keeps them in the lap of luxury at his vast castle fortress in the middle of the desert, except one, Steve Hunt (James Ryan of "Kickboxer 5") isn't happy with all the waiting for something to happen. Furthermore, he is more than a little surprised that he would meet a beautiful babe, Olga (Charlotte Michelle) at von Rudloff's training center. Steve wants to marry her. As soon as von Rudloff returns, he cuts Olga and another fighter from his team. Steve isn't overjoyed by this revelation and they try to escape. The Baron recaptures Olga while Steve winds up on Miyagi's team. The middle part of "Kill or Be Killed" involves the search for kung-fu fighters. Chico finds men for the Baron or discovers too late that Miyagi has beaten him to the punch.
Ivan Hall does a fine job with the fight scenes and covers them sufficiently with several cameras so we see them from a variety of angles. James Ryan is as nimble as Jackie Chan and plays the same underdog character that Chan does, but he lacks Chan's sense of humor. The Baron is a strict, disciplined man, but he is also a poor villain. He relies on other people to perform his tasks and relieves in the loss of honor from World War II. Since the movie was so financially strapped, Hall turns to pictures of Nazi combatants and Hitler for von Rudloff's reverie. The Baron is more scheming and impotent than intimidating and mad. We are never told why the Baron built a castle in the desert. For that matter, we are never told what prompted Steve to enlist in the Baron's program. Eventually, Chico turns against the Baron and helps the star-crossed lovers. Instead, Hall and Beyers-Boshoff concentrate on the gathering and training of the karate fighters on both sides.
Parents will be happy to know that the script eschews sex for violence. Even the violence is toned down. The worse thing that you will do is flinch every time that one combatant socks another with a loud WHACK on the soundtrack. While there are some acrobatics, the combatants never engage in fights as fantastic as the Bruce Lee battles in "Fists of Fury." Mind you, blood is kept to a minimum. Hall directs all this nonsense at breakneck pace. The relatively bloodless brawls are swift but vicious. There is an amusing scene when our fleeing lovers strip down a Volkswagen Beetle and turn it into a sail powered conveyance. The opening credits sequence recalls similar opening credits from the James Bond movie "From Russia, Will Love." In "From Russia, With Love," the credits were projected on the body of a dancer. Here, the credits are projected onto James Ryan's lean, sinewy body while he demonstrates various martial arts moves. "Kill or Be Killed" contains a bang-up finale. Altogether, this kung-fu thriller qualifies as just average. Nevertheless, the success of "Kill or Be Killed" prompted the production of a sequel called "Kill and Kill Again."
