Movie review: American Rickshaw (1989)
What's up, you digital degenerates? Thank god I made sure to post something else at the start of the year, I'm not sure I would have been able to live with myself if this review had been my first post of 2022. Today, I'm going to be talking about a movie I checked out recently, it's probably something that almost none of you have ever heard of. It's called American Rickshaw. This is a low budget movie from the 80's that has one of the most weird plots I've ever seen, a true trashfire of a film. But, god damn it, did I enjoy it. The movie has a very strange cast, as the main protagonist is gold medalist Mitch Gaylord, while the antagonist is Donald Pleasance.
Yeah, Donald Pleasance, the same one that had big roles in heaps of John Carpenter Films and had an acting career spanning decades from the 50s, is in this movie for some reason. I dunno if he just took whatever he could get towards the end of his life, or if he had a big boner for black tar heroin or something. But, either way, I'm glad he's in this shlocky trash.
But, lets actually start talking about the movie.
When I went into watching this flick, I figured it was going to be a little goofy with enough entertainment to warrant one watch and then I'd just forget about it until I'm dusty bones in the ground. However, I was pleasantly surprised with just how god awful it actually is, where it falls into the so terrible it's good camp. The narrative of the film is an absoulute slop ridden mess, where it's hard to even really give a synopsis of what happened during my watch. The movie centers around a rickshaw runner played by Mitch Gaylord, who is supposed to just be an average guy caught up in a mystical situation. There's so much goofy shit going on in the film though it's hard to describe it without just rambling for several minutes. So, I'll just mention some plot points here and there, but I'll mostly just talk about specific things that were really silly with this movie.
I mentioned the plot is an average joe getting dumped into a mystical setting, and I think the movie tried to go this route because of previous releases that did well with that type of angle. This movie feels like a sleazy version of Big Trouble In Little China, but, also just done very poorly. Our main character works as a rickshaw runner in Florida, you know, for some reason. He's a pretty unlikable character and just comes off as an aggressive asshole for the most part. It also seems like it's hinted at that he's a prostitute and that all the rickshaw runners are male prostitutes, but, I dunno if it's ever really confirmed. But, yeah. Kind of a weird random detail that's just thrown in there. Our other big characters in the movie are very special, with a nonsensical immortal Chinese witch (Who is very reminiscent of being a discount dollar store Lo Pan from Big Trouble), a grimy stripper/prostitute, a pervert missing his thumb, an evil televangelist and a hitman sent by said televangelist. So, obviously there's lots of relatable characters here for you to empathize with.
There are a lot of huge issues with the plot, beyond it just being all over the place. There's a lot of things happening due to convenience, or sometimes lack of. One big plot point is that the main character receives a letter along with a talisman from the immortal witch, and then drops it in the stairwell of his apartment building from running into someone in the midst of reading it. And, instead of going to get the letter, he chooses to be a fucking sloth and just leave it there. He even goes back to find it later on, doesn't finish reading it again and then leaves it to be eaten by rats. He is quite literally the laziest protagonist of all time. Another big plot point is that the main character was born on 06/06/66, while another character also is born on that day but is the evil counterpoint of him for no reason. There's also lots of other pointless or just dumb things in this movie, like a confession tape being made by a character that has no bearing on the actual story of the movie happening. I'm not gonna go into all of them, but, shit is dumb.
If you just want a summarized idea of the plot, here's my best take on it for you guys. This is as much as I went to delve into SPOILERS. So, if you don't want a ton of SPOILERS, then just skip this paragraph. An ancient witch is picked up by a man on a rickshaw, who was born in the year of the tiger on a mystical day. Which means he has the power of a tiger, for some reason. There's an evil televangelist who tricked and seduced the witch years before and stole her supernatural statue, taking away her youth and giving him some powers. Later on, he had a child who was born on the same day as the main character, but is evil. For unexplained reasons, he decided to steal the statue from his father and hide it in a train/bus station. The witch sends the main character a talisman and letter, but he ignores it. The main character later runs into the evil son, and this causes him to find and accidently lose the key to the statue after a botched sex crime happens, with the witch setting fire to the scene to cover the evidence. (Good god, there's so much stupid shit going on in this movie.) The rest of the movie is a cat and mouse game between main character and antagonist, with each person trying to locate the key to find the statue for their backers.
The acting itself is pretty bad from most characters in the movie. Mitch Gaylord is at least entertainingly bad with his acting in the movie, though that's in part to the dialogue being ridiculous sometimes, which does elevate the movie quite a bit. The rest of the cast is pretty ass though, save Donald Pleasance who gives an amazingly goofy performance towards the end of the movie involving him imitating a pig during a speech for reasons. I'll be up front that you obviously don't go into this type of movie expecting great actors or insane performances or anything. But, I would hope for a lot of characters to be ridiculous instead of just sub-par and mediocre.
The writing for the movie is pretty hilarious, but not in an intentional way. This has some of the funniest scenes I've seen in a b-movie in a long time, and I think it's because the director and team who made this film were trying to come up with "Americanized" dialogue for the film. One character comes onto and seduces another character with an absolutely beautiful, charming line of dialogue that goes like "Take it easy. You make a move, and I might have you arrested for rape". There's even another piece of haunting dialogue between these characters as well, where one threatens to give the other aids via a used needle they found in the gutter if they don't do what they say. If these things are perfect examples of what your relationship goals are, then I don't know what you're doing with your life. There's tons of other lines in this movie that just make you laugh when you hear them, and it's definitely my main reason for enjoying this movie so much.
The "action" scenes in the movie range from boring as hell, to laughing at someone just beating the shit out of two people in a boat for 3 minutes while in tiny shorts. Most of the action isn't really packed with high octane entertainment. One of the antagonist of the movie dies from getting hit by a random truck while chasing the main character, for example. Other scenes are just a snake or a cat attacks someone for 30 seconds. Some of this stuff works just because it's dumb and makes you laugh, while other parts just fall flat from being shit. There's some strange special effects in the movie that aren't bad per say, but, they can be a bit goofy. Some of it works fine, while other parts don't. There's a pretty fun body horroresque effect at the end of the movie that's great, if anything. But, yeah. Don't expect tons of squibs and explosions and shit going into this movie. If you can't tell, there's not much consistency with the quality of this movie. Or, well, anything in this movie in general.
Overall, this movie is a baffling mess, but, a pretty entertaining one that has lots of wild scenes which keep you interested. It lacks any fun or cool action for the most part. But, makes up for that with hilariously bad writing and weird/bizarre scenes. It's hard to really review it without spoiling a shit ton of stuff in the movie, because the movie is so nonsensical and all over the place. But, I imagine if you like watching movies that are so trashy they're good, then you'll enjoy it. Hell, the movie is worth watching for seeing Donald Pleasance oink and snort like a pig at the end of the movie. So, yeah. I would say go check it out if you've got a spare 90 minutes on your hands and just wanna have some laughs at this weird ass fucking movie.
So, until next time, doods.
Later!
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