High Kicks (1993), by Ruta K. Aras

I have encountered a generation of movies--usually action movies, but it varies--that have managed to contain the very living essence of the '90s, which was a bizarre era for those of us who set out to make movies with no money. A lot of these low-budget productions washed up on the shores of our elementary schools. Some of them distantly haunt my memory, all nameless and indistinguishable from one another; nothing else but old ghosts now. They always featured the immortal VHS hiss, wooden acting, curious accents, and questionable slang. It turns out there were some movies that had all of that, down to the letter, in movies made for adults as well, and High Kicks is one of them. It is a martial arts film. It is also a rape revenge film. But because it's filtered down through classic shot-on-shitteo blandness, it comes across as jarring and flat at the same time. That contrast has always intrigued me for some reason. Maybe I just like being embarrassed by how stupid the decade I grew up in was.

High Kicks starts off on what is probably the weirdest possible note for a rape revenge film: with super-sexualized shots of ladies working out. I feel like maybe this was supposed to set up some sort of guilt in the audience, possibly offense and confusion as well. This workout takes place as a gym called High Kicks!, run by Sandy, mistress of aerobics. When her handyman ditches out on her she takes on a new one, a sailor named Sam, who is secretly a karate master. A group of street thugs, led by a chubby white dude named TC, break into the gym and assault Sandy. Sam helps her recover from the trauma, and he offers her to teach her karate, with the aid of his buddies/practice combatants Jonas (from Germany!) and Maurice (from "OUTAH SPAAAAACE!!!"). Every line of dialogue throughout is unnatural but charmingly Hamill-esque ("I'm kinduva free spirit, actually!" Sam says), and the hair on most of the characters is pretty awful. It's simultaneously dark and whimsical, uplifted by Casio cues and community theater earnestness even after people have been gang-raped. It jumps from unflinching and realistic images of trauma to a weird love triangle between Sandy, Sam, and one of Sandy's students, Tracy, which plays out in the most soap opera-y of fashions. And all throughout, those training montages and synth demos never let us forget what decade it is. High Kicks is vengeance and justice...for the '90s!

The scope of the film never gets too sizable for its trousers, as the saying goes. That is to say, it is a movie that you can believe would happen in real life. There is a five-man criminal organization who is the subject of sweet revenge by Sandy and her three karate buddies, broken down into several ass-kicking sessions. Then, there is the Tracy-Sandy-Sam love triangle, which is endearingly the fault of Sam's bad social skills. Actually, Sam is a pretty great character for this sort of movie--not only is he as awkward as he is good at martial arts, but he, too, is a rape victim. He and Sandy are on equal terms, because one is never above the other in terms of martial arts skills, or at least so. Can I go so far as to call it a feminist movie? It does fail the Bechdel test pretty hard, at least as far as I noticed, but unlike a lot of low-budget action movies, it doesn't glory in or exploit its rape scenes...er, even though those rape scenes become the primary motivation for its lead character. I may be thinking too hard about this--you know the rule of never devoting more time than the director did. 

This movie isn't going to change how your brain works. It is simply entertaining. But entertainment, at least in my opinion, can truly be an end in itself--humans thrive on it. And High Kicks will entertain every time you come back. That means it's a reliable resting place for one to go to when the "real world" gets too intense. You just need something of a strong stomach, a little tastelessness, and a forewarning of the potentially triggering material. (The whole thing's nudity-free--there is nothing explicit in Sandy's assault, though it may still be troubling.) But it is rewarding, and not merely because the acting really does remind you of Birdemic.

This movie is better than Birdemic. For one thing it's only 80 minutes, and also, things constantly happen in it, instead of there being blank seas of hopeless nothing. The special effects are better, too, because there are none. A better comparison movie would be 1987's Killer Workout. That film plus this one would be a great double-feature, providing a slasher take on the world of aerobicizing. (A world lost to time, full of dark and mysterious secrets.) I'm sure Killer Workout will end up on this site at some point or another.

Seriously, though: do not watch High Kicks if you have a dislike of the '90s in any way. It will literally kill you.