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**CONTAINS MILD SPOILERS**

Fight For Your Life (1977)

Dir: Robert A Endelson

Three sadistic murderers escape from the police van after it crashes. They are Chino (Daniel Faraldo), Ling (Peter Yoshida) and their fanatically racist ‘Redneck’ leader Jessie Lee Kane (William Sanderson).

Fleeing in a stolen pimps car (!) they pull into a liquor store in a small town.
There Kane murders the owner (in front of his baby) and takes hostage a young black woman named Corrie Turner (Yvonne Ross) who is the daughter of a peaceful Deacon called Ted Turner (Robert Judd) who lives with Corrie, his young Son Floyd (Reginald Bythewood), his Wife (Catherine Peppers) and the wheelchair bound Grandma Turner (Lela Small) in a remote house.

Making Corrie lead them home, they take the Turner’s hostage and hide up from the Law. The Detective in charge of the hunt is the ‘by the book’ Lt. Reily (David Cargill, who adds an enjoyably comic tinge to his characters strict following of the letter of the Law) who vows to get his man.

The Turner’s are subjected to a nightmare of racist abuse, rape and murder. But will the tables soon be turned?…….

 

Produced by the infamous William Mishkin (he of many an Andy Milligan flicks like "The Ghastly Ones" and all round trash movie shyster) “Fight for Your Life” became one of the most notorious of the ‘Grindhouse’ titles that played the now long gone 42nd Street dives, Southern Drive-Ins and San Francisco flea pits.
Although never a big overall hit, it became a mini sensation in certain areas. Especially the aforementioned 42nd Street where it played to highly animated, vocal and volatile (as was planned by it’s makers), mostly black, audiences who would hurl things at the screen and shout abuse and support, at the on screen actions of the characters, with equal passion. And given the content it’s easy to see why it’s target audience got so worked up and why many a cautious white punter kept their head down!

A great opening sequence gives us the Police van moving through the grime-coated streets.
It’s scored with a song that is a classic piece of ‘Blacksploitation’ style funk (all the music by Jeff Slevin is top quality, but he seems to have never worked in films again) that sets up the ‘hip’, fast moving style of the movie to come.
This nicely leads us into the violent escape that shows us right off what a psycho Kane is as he needlessly shoots one of the helpless guards in true 70’s blood splattered close-up. The appearance of a black pimp (in the full ‘Pimp Uniform’ of big coat, big pants and big hat) adds the only really intentional humour in the film as, right after slapping ‘his bitch’ around for holding out on him, he is kidnapped in his car (a big car of course) and stripped down to his love heart covered boxers! It’s crass, it’s cliched and it’s wonderful!

Pushing buttons is what the writer Straw Weisman and Director Robert Endelson wanted to do. And they do it brilliantly. Near the start we are introduced to Karen (Bonnie Martin), who was the girlfriend of Val, another Turner, who was killed in car crash. The first real racism actually comes from Ted’s wife, who wonders why they have ‘invited that white girl’ to the house for dinner.
This leads us into a rare for the time multi-racial sex scene between the late Val and Karen.
So already we have race related logs being thrown onto the fire.

Before Kane and his nasty crew get to the Turner’s we are shown the differences between the Family. Ted is a “the meek shall inherit the earth” sort of person whereas young Floyd is a big Muhammad Ali fan who, along with Granny Turner of all people, believes in strength and “Black Power”.
It’s obvious from the start then, as this film sticks to all the clichés you would expect, what the reactions to Kane’s hate and violence will be.

And talk of Kane, brings us to the heart of the film. And what a wickedly non-PC, nasty and jaw droppingly offensive heart it is!
As soon as Kane enters the house the racist slurs and insults come thick and fast, more than any other movie, before or since, would even dare contemplate let alone have blasted out across a mixed race, urban audience.

Weisman admitted the insults are as thick on the ground and as over the top as they are to inflame the ‘Grindhouse’ crowds, and in Kane (played with obvious relish by Sanderson, who went on to mainstream movie success in “Blade Runner” and Family TV in “Newhart”) he has the most perfectly odious mouthpiece.
Some prime examples are:
Kane greeting Ted as he unknowingly becomes a hostage with “Jessie Lee Kane, pleased to meet you nigger”.
Kane asking “Any of you black ass coons hungry?” and then sticks a gun in the face of Ted’s Wife to get him to answer in the manner of a slave, eventually getting him to say “Yessah massah all of us black ass cons are hungry”.
He then orders the Wife around to rustle up “some of that soul food” and throws in as many ‘coons’ and niggers’ as possible. Only taking time out from insulting the Turner’s to insult his own cronies calling Ling a ‘chink’ and Chino a ‘spic’.
Other outrageous remarks are calling Ted “Turd”,“Master Coon” and the hysterically over the top “Martin-Luther Coon”!

But the verbal assaults are also helped along with physical assaults. Kane threatens violence against everyone (including hitting Chino and Ling about the head!), even Granny Turner when he threatens to knock out her remaining teeth!
Racism is at it’s most extreme when he orders Ted to shine his shoes before he fires his gun into the floor to get Ted to dance for them! “A Jig doing a jig” he laughs.
Poor Ted obliges with a very strange dance indeed, and is then made to sing.
But in a great bit of plotting, this humiliation is turned around by the Family as they join in with Ted and create a song of defiance, much to Kane’s annoyance.

In between all this terrorising though Weisman gives Kane an hysterically overwrought drunken speech to explain his resentment that these blacks have more than he ever did as mumbles about his hard life of toiling the soil, his incarceration and what bad things can happen to a poor white boy in ‘the Pen’.
A set piece that goes into high camp as he smells some flowers and laments about a woman that let him down!

But this ‘light’ violence and naughtily entertaining madness is given a very harsh coating of genuinely nasty violence and sadism. The first to be given the lion’s share of this violence is Ling, and in true exploitation fashion a female victim is partially stripped and terrorised by him and he then delivers what is, even today, a truly shocking and unexpected outburst of bloody violence involving a head and a rock. It’s strong stuff.
A later gang rape (where only Kane is actually shown assaulting and stripping the screaming victim) is shocking because of what it is more than what is shown and the victims zombie like re-entry into the living room says more than any actual rape scenes could.

Another unusual twist is when the horror of the events are brought tragically home to the Police on the case, and this results in a surprising and well crafted sequence that is rare in this type of film.
In general the violence is sparse but harsh with some messy bullet hits, a bloody knifing, head basing, a gun shoved into a crying baby’s face and a finale full of screaming pain and mild gore.

Acting goes from the acceptable to the extremely enjoyable, Sanderson is especially fun, Yoshida does some delightfully over the top leers and slimy grins and Judd eventually comes into his own during the family’s revenge where he is clearly relishing his peaceful characters chance to hit back.
Another highlight though is Lela Small as the feisty Grandma! Her biggest moment (and what a divine moment it is) comes after Ted is brutally beaten with his Bible.
Rearing up in her wheelchair (supposedly Mishkin’s Mother’s to save money, so she had to spend the shooting time stuck in bed!!) she lays into Kane with amazing gusto and Weisman delivers some of his best lines:
“Y’all just fakers in a whore house, a little boy with a banana in his pants… you two legged yeller dog….Shoot me! But I’ll tell yer something Mr poor white trash you ain’t nothin’ but what you got in your hand, and your Pappy should have thought about that before he stuck it in you Mammy”!
Other gems from Granny are: “Give me a sticker for that pink pig” and everyone’s favourite “Don’t move or I’ll blow your motherfuckin' balls off”!

As for the long awaited (and by now much anticipated by the enraged black audience) revenge, well what’s great about it is that it’s s really hardcore personal!
Amazingly, despite the police being outside, and although the tables have turned, the Turners lie to the Cops to make sure they don’t come in and put a stop to their revenge!!
It’s completely outrageous and is without question the best revenge set up ever put on film. It’s a truly wonderful thing to behold, and one can only imagine what effect this would have had on a predominantly black 42nd Street crowd as the black family, with a fleet load of white cops outside ready to help, decide to do it THEIR way!!! This is no longer survival…this is pure cold-blooded revenge!

But it’s a shame that this superb set-up never actually pays off in the bofo acts of vengeance it promised.
The Family spends most of this time threatening acts of much nastiness to their tormentors, but never actually do much! There is some payback dealt out by the Family, don’t get me wrong, but they certainly bark louder than they bite. The abrupt ending is satisfying enough though thanks to some choice dialogue, strong performances and a brief bit of ultra violence.

“Fight for your Life” (which was one of the rare non-horror titles to make it onto the UK ‘Video Nasties’ list) is certainly dated now and you can only really (unless you were there) imagine the impact that this must have had in 1977.
But 27 years on it still manages to shock with some of it’s violence, and certainly entertains with it’s gleeful attitude to good honest, offensive exploitation, some ripe performances, some unusual twists, and some truly warped and wonderful dialogue.

‘Blue Underground’s’ new DVD of this hard to find slice of ‘Grindhouse’ history offers a fully uncut and restored print and an interesting commentary that includes Straw Weisman. Not a great movie, but certainly worth picking up for general audiences and is essential for exploitation fans.