Bloody Mafia (1994) Review

“Bloody Mafia” Theatrical Poster

AKA: Red Mafia
Director: Casanova Wong
Cast: Casanova Wong (Ka Sa Fa), Choi Byung-cheol, Cha Ryong, O O-seop, Kim Du-han, Yoo Seong, Lee Sang-ho, Kim Chang-won, Kim Yeong-uk, Lee Jeonggu 
Running Time: 95 min. 

By Paul Bramhall

By 1994 the kung fu golden era of Hong Kong that dominated the mid-70’s through to the early-80’s was well and truly over, and with it work also dried up for the Korean boot masters that had left their own distinctive stamp on the genre. By the end of the 80’s the likes of Hwang Jang Lee and Casanova Wong were back in their native Korea, however with the film industry in the doldrums and already past their physical prime, the outlook didn’t look promising for continuing their career on home soil. That all changed in 1990, when director Im Kwon-taek revived the legendary figure of Kim Doo-han (think a Korean version of Ip Man) for The General’s Son, which portrayed the iconic freedom fighter as a sharply dressed Taekwondo kicking whirlwind against the occupying Japanese yakuza, and set the box office alight.

The combination of suits with oversized shoulder pads, trilby hats, and taekwondo kicks breathed a new lease of life into the action genre, and the likes of Dragon Lee, Hwang Jang Lee, and Casanova Wong returned to screens for a brief few years before giving way to the blockbusters of the mid-90’s. 1994 offered up 2 of the best examples of the genre, with Hwang Jang Lee stepping into the director’s chair and in front of the camera to take on Dragon Lee in Emperor of the Underworld, and Casanova Wong following suite (minus Dragon Lee) for Bloody Mafia. Wong had taken a leaf out of his mentor Sammo Hung’s book and started directing once he was back in his native Korea, and just the previous year helmed the high kicking gangster flick Blues of Jongro (in which he did get to face off against Dragon Lee, reuniting them 12 years after they faced off in Enter the Invincible Hero).

Not only was Bloody Mafia Wong’s swansong, it can also be considered the swansong of the genre, rivalling the Girls with Guns flicks in terms of the short time they stuck around for. There are 2 theories that I have around Bloody Mafia – the first is that Wong realised the genre was on its last legs, so decided to create a gratuitous, overly ambitious, constantly ridiculous assault on good taste to go out with a bang. The second is that Bloody Mafia was perceived as being so bad, it effectively killed the genre itself. I’d like to go with the former, but wouldn’t be surprised if it was the later. I’d gone into Wong’s magnum opus with expectations of a gritty and violent gangster flick with plenty of kicks to the face being dished out, and that’s what I got, but Bloody Mafia has so much more to offer.

The plot sees Wong as a gangster who values loyalty above all else, and his friendship with another gangster played by Choi Byung-cheol (Viper, One Blow to Kill). When Wong takes down a drug cartel operating on Korean turf, he draws the praise of a gang boss played by Cha Ryong (who featured in Philip Ko’s Korean shot cheapies Payment in Blood and Supercop.com). Wong has his suspicions that Ryong isn’t such a nice guy, but is too busy introducing Byung-cheol to his sister who, despite looking like she’s barely out of her teens and Byung-cheol being almost 50 (with an affinity for dressing like the villain out of Raiders of the Lost Arc), still manage to hit it off. Things come to a head though when Wong rescues one of Ryong’s gang members trying to go straight, who finds himself being beaten half to death by Ryong’s lackeys, which kicks off a fateful chain of events on the wedding day of Byung-cheol and Wong’s sister.

Let’s get to the good stuff first, Wong still has the moves. Made the same year as Drunken Master II, Wong was 42 to Jackie Chan’s 40, and both impress equally with their physicality. Wong had also clearly taken notes from his time in Hong Kong, with the fight scenes undercranked to just the right level, and bodies sent flying through the air from the impact of being (usually) kicked. His legendary roundhouse kicks that earned him the nickname ‘The Human Tornado’ are present and accounted for, looking all the cooler for being performed while suited and booted, as is his iconic flying split kick. In short, he doesn’t look like he’s lost a beat since his role in Warriors Two 16 years earlier.

You know things are going to be kind of special though when, after his first fight against a gangster that offends a café madam, he straddles his opponent on the floor and proceeds to feverishly bite the guys nose off, before casually spitting it onto the floor. Bloody Mafia continues to go down a rabbit hole of bizarre creative choices which entertain for all the wrong reasons, most the result of working with what’s obviously a very low budget. Another poor soul heads to his car in a parking lot and turns on the ignition, at which point it cuts to stock footage of a car exploding in the middle of a field. I almost spat out my coffee, which by this point I hastily finished and swapped for a beer. In another fight scene a barrel rolls over a hapless lackey to reveal his body has been completely flattened into the ground, Looney Tunes style, but what’s even more confusing is that the scene isn’t supposed to be comedic at all.

Not content with his reputation as a boot master, Wong uses Bloody Mafia to assert himself as an equally skilled booty master. In probably the most head scratching scene of the movie, he visits his nightclub singer squeeze, who we’re introduced to singing Whitney Houston’s I Will Always Love You. Only, as the camera pans closer, her lips aren’t moving, and when they do, it’s definitely not to the song we’re hearing. It’s a disorientating experience. K-pop only really took off in the mid-90’s, so it wasn’t unusual for Korean movies in the late 80’s and early 90’s to feature western pop which was popular at the time. I mention this to preface the fact that we have to witness Wong vertically grinding his lady to the tune of Eternal’s Oh Baby I, in a scene which I’m convinced involved him telling the cinematographer “Ok, I’m going to be grabbing her ass a lot, so make sure you film it close-up, really close, don’t be shy!” He certainly wasn’t.

We also get Mariah Carey’s Vision of Love, 2 Live Crew’s Me So Horny, and UB40’s Falling In Love With You (which is used again for a grinding session between Wong and his crush in a car). Clearly Wong must have been jealous of Chan Wai Man getting all the action in City Ninja, so decided to make up for it here. Either that, or perhaps he just wanted to live up to his name for once. Despite how sexy it all sounds, onscreen it doesn’t quite translate, no more so than when one floozy gets naked and proceeds to seductively open a bottle of champagne, before pouring it all over her face.

Matching the gratuitous nature of the sexy frolicking, is the amount of violence contained in Bloody Mafia’s punchy runtime. Apart from the nose munching, we also witness the most hilariously fake rubber hand (I can’t bring myself to call it prosthetic) get stabbed, and in a scene which I’m still not sure was disgusting or genius (it may well be both), we get a riff on The Godfather’s horses head in a bed scene, except it’s a pigs head. Plus its intestines. Oh, and just like in The Godfather, it’s also all real.

All this being said, if you only clock into Bloody Mafia for the fights, then you won’t be disappointed. Wong even indulges in some Bruceploitaiton style posturing, when he jumps on the neck of a female assailant as if she’s Bob Wall, and does the old shaking the head with a somewhat pained expression schtick. We get a bonus dose of crutches kung fu, a whole decade before Panna Rittikrai’s Born to Fight remake, and most hilariously, in one scene a lackey is kicked so hard that the impact sends him careering down a hill and across a lake like a human water-ski. Think the sleigh scene in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, only minus the comedy and with added violence.

Bloody Mafia certainly wasn’t the movie I was expecting it to be, but in the end, I’m kind of happy it turned out to be the movie it is. Over the top, nonsensical, frequently violent, and with just enough unintended incompetence to make it 95 minutes of schlocky fun. All of this, and on top of it you get Casanova Wong unleashing his kicks like he was never going to unleash them again, and indeed he wasn’t. Thankfully in 2020 Wong filmed the as yet unreleased Tiger’s Trigger with fellow Korean boot master Won Jin, which means his final image onscreen will no longer be of him swinging someone’s intestines around his head in slow motion. But you know, after I tuned in to Bloody Mafia’s craziness, if it was, then perhaps that wouldn’t be such a bad thing after all.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 6/10