What Not To Watch: Slaughter in San Francisco
It was apparent early on in my viewing of 1974’s Slaughter in San Francisco that any sort of logic was thrown out of the window where the plot of the movie was concerned. I seriously question if there was even a script or if Director/Writer Lo Wei just made the whole thing up as he went along.
As I continued to watch Slaughter in San Francisco it was also apparent that I should probably take the DVD and throw that out the window. The intrigue of this being an early role for Chuck Norris is what hooked me, but even that bit of nostalgia was not enough to overcome all the negatives and gaping plot holes that the movie contained…
- Super Cops: The movie begins with our hero Officer Don Wong (played convincingly by Don Wong) and his partner Officer John Sumner driving around in their patrol car and using their apparent super vision and super hearing to detect crime in the area. When they hear a woman screaming in the woods, the two cops hop out of their car run up a hill, down a winding trail and finally happen upon a clearing where the screaming woman is laying on the ground with two men hovering over her and trying to take her pants off. Don and John spring into action and we get our first taste of martial arts action as the cops battle the would be rapists in the woods. Cut to the police station where Sylvia, who we believe is the victim in all of this, denies that the two guys were trying to rape her and they are actually all friends who were just having a little fun. Don and John’s boss, Captain Newman, is none too happy with his officers. One of the two bad guys who was brought in is also not happy and it turns out he is actually the younger brother of a very powerful criminal in town named Chuck Slaughter (Chuck Norris). The movie then shifts gears with the bad guys targeting Don Wong and John Sumner for meddling in their business, even though none of the bad guys were actually arrested and they probably could have let the whole thing slide.
- Where’s The Spoon?: Don Wong eventually loses his job as a cop after he foils an attempt on his best friend John Sumner’s life and kills some bad guys in the process. Don lands on his feet however and gets a job as a waiter. It is inferred for about 37 seconds that John is actually going to be arrested for killing the guys that were trying to kill Sumner, but that piece of the story is dropped as soon as he gets the waiter job… so I guess it was find another job or we’ll have to arrest you!? The restaurant where Don works is where we see our first interaction between Don Wong and Chuck Slaughter with Chuck Slaughter putting his cigar out on the hand of Wong as he is pouring him another cup of coffee but Don just takes the abuse and doesn’t fight back. After a crappy day on the job like that, it is no wonder Don and John meet up at a bar and drink themselves stupid into the wee hours of the morning. The best friends then stumble out of the bar and go their separate ways home… except John Sumner never made it home that night. The bad guys struck again and killed John in a dark alley… actually I am connecting the dots there because the dark alley was so dark it was tough to tell what was going on, but John’s dead body is found the next day in the garden of the Chu family… I should probably mention that Mr. and Mrs. Chu are Sylvia’s parents.
- Hello Newman: Captain Newman (who we eventually learn is a dirty cop on Slaughter’s payroll) instantly accuses Mr. Chu of killing John Sumner even though Mr. Chu had no motive in killing Sumner. Mrs. Chu then comes up with the bright idea of bribing Captain Newman to get him to leave them alone and her dumb ass husband goes along with it… this leads to some good old fashioned police brutality and Mr. and Mrs. Chu being arrested for the murder of John Sumner. What follows next is more confusion, with Sylvia seeming to not care that her parents are in jail then a few scenes later her desperately wanting to get them free and turning to anyone and everyone for help including Don Wong and Chuck Slaughter (who tries to fornicate with her minutes after his brother introduces Sylvia to him as the woman he intends on marrying). There’s also Don Wong who starts conducting his own investigation into the murder of his best friend and murdering the dirty Captain Newman… Then at some point, Chuck Slaughter tries to recruit Don Wong into his criminal empire and when that doesn’t work out we finally get to see Chuck in action, but at that point my head was spinning trying to figure out why anyone in the movie made the decisions they made and more importantly why the hell I decided to not throw the DVD out the window within the first 10 minutes.
Slaughter in San Francisco was produced by Raymond Chow and Golden Harvest, who were famous for working with Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan and later for their work in the United States with movies like The Cannonball Run and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles… but there was nothing golden about Slaughter in San Francisco.
Slaughter in San Francisco seems like a movie that would have never seen the light of day if not for the success Chuck Norris experienced years after this film was first produced. Even the fight scenes in the movie, which can often be the saving grace of bad Hong Kong imports, seemed uninspired and forgettable.
And while I may have already forgotten about the fights in Slaughter in San Francisco, I did not forget to include a few Bonus Bullet Points…
- One Question: Why is the Statue of Liberty on this poster for Slaughter in San Francisco? The movie takes place in San Francisco and at no point are they in New York.
- Product Placement: The first attempt on John Sumner’s life involved a U-Haul truck.
- AKA: Slaughter in San Francisco has many aliases including Yellow Faced Tiger, Chuck Norris vs.the Karate Cop and Karate Cop.
- Welcome to the 1970’s: Chuck Norris’ hairy shoulders in Slaughter in San Francisco were the martial arts movie equivalent of giant bush in a 70’s porno.
