Strike of the Panther (1988)

Edward John Stazak is back as Jason Blade! This was shot back-to-back with Day of the Panther, and I would like to say that Strike of the Panther is the better movie of the two. Life goes on in Perth, and Jason is happy with his girlfriend. But one day one of the bad guys from the first movie escapes from prison, takes the girlfriend hostage in an empty factory and sets up the ultimate trap to kill Jason Blade!

Like the first one, we're not talking about a big masterpiece. It's cheesy and the eighties is as beautiful as we can expect it. When the first movie had a bizarre dance/work-out routine, this actually has a dance-scene - thank Mighty Mothrzokk it's quite short! What makes it's more entertaing is that they seem to have a couple of hundred more bucks in the budget. There's a little bit more destruction, a few more extras and more fun locations. The first fight is in a luxery bordello for example. Another new thing here is that the master has a psychic connection with Jason Blade and helps him through the last fight!

The last fight yeah, it's in this factory and Jason (and also a minor SWAT-team) have to fight against a small army of ninjas wearing hockey-masks! The fighting is maybe a little bit more uneven here, but more things are going on and the tension is more... tense (I'm running out of words here). One of the new characters is a Sgt Lucy Andrews, and with her looks I just presumed she sometime must have starred in a couple of episodes of the australian show Prisoner (Kvinnofängelset in swedish), and of course I'm correct about this. Sometime I wonder if there's not one australian female actor who hasn't been in that show?

Okey, I know. This aren't any masterpieces. But I like them. I can't help it! They're a bit silly, but there is some fun fighting and it's just popcorn. Just fast food for the mind, and I can't resist it! I think Australian should thank their lucky stars for having Brian Trenchard-Smith there to clean up the entertainment-trash!