Firecracker (1981) – A Movie A Day 2021 #29
Firecracker (1981) – A Movie A Day 2021 #29
For today’s movie, I went back to Tubi to scan through some more movie posters. I was in an action mood, so I started my search browsing through their martial arts movies. I didn’t remember Tubi’s selection of martial arts movies being all that great, especially when compared to their fairly deep B-horror-movie choices, but I guess it’s been a while since I looked. I spent a decent amount of time looking through a nicely sized list of martial arts films from my favorite decades for the genre, the 70s and 80s. Once again I let the cover art speak for itself, I settled on a movie from 1981 titled Firecracker, and I might have found another fun rabbit hole to venture down with some of my upcoming movie choices.
Firecracker stars Jillian Kesner as Susanne Carter, a 6th-degree black belt in karate who travels to the Philippines on a mission. Susanne is searching for her journalist sister, Bonnie, who has gone missing while working on a story. A clue leads Susanne to a man named Chuck, a member of an organized crime group dealing in drugs and underground fights to the death. As Susanne gets closer to Chuck in an attempt to gain information about her sister, she becomes entangled in dangerous plot of drug deals gone bad, back-stabbing, and a fair amount of bloody murder. For Susanne, the only way out may be through a whole bunch of punching and kicking.
I had a lot of fun with Firecracker. It’s my kind of b-movie martial arts action. The plot is simple enough, and there are lots and lots of excuses for fight scenes to break out. And sometimes the movie doesn’t even need an excuse. Fights will sometimes just break out for no reason, and I’m not complaining.
If you’ve seen movies like Kickboxer or Bloodsport (and really, about a hundred other movies with the same formula), you’ll know mostly what to expect here. A foreigner (often American) journeys to an east/south-east Asian country, they get mixed up in some local crime, many fights are had, and it all leads up to a climactic battle with everything on the line. Firecracker even has a scene where the American (Susanne in this case) goes out into the wilderness to be trained by a wise old man. It’s classic stuff, and it’s great.
What I didn’t necessarily expect from Firecracker were some of the more brutal and bizarre scenes. To set the tone in the opening scene, we see Chuck fighting in some sort of underground competition (which we learn all about later). The fight is fun, then it takes a turn for the brutal when Chuck stabs his opponent with a spear, murdering him in a violent and bloody spectacle. Not every fight in the movie ends up that way, but there are a few gore effects throughout the movie that would fit right in with any number of b-level slasher movies.
There are some really bizarre scenes as well. Two in particular stand out to me as being either incongruous with the rest of the movie, or just plain weird considering the context of the situation. I won’t spoil them specifically, but I will give a generic description so you’ll know what I’m talking about if you watch it. The first is a scene that feels 100% like the movie was screened for producers or someone else with money, and they said the movie needed more blood and nudity. The scene happens about halfway through the movie, and it has absolutely nothing to with anything else in the story. It features a few more graphic murders, and it’s clearly an overt effort to titillate the audience with Susanne’s clothing being gradually removed as she fights against two attackers. None of the other fight scenes are like that, and it really stands out in a weird way for that reason. The other bizarre scene is a love scene later in the movie. I won’t talk about what happens, but I was just confused because it happens at a strange time for the characters. Plus, I didn’t think one of the characters felt that way to begin with. Oh yeah, and there are knives and a cat involved (sequentially, not at the same time).
So yeah, there’s some weirdness in Firecracker, but maybe that’s a good thing. It definitely helps the movie stand out, and I can’t say I’ll soon forget it. It also makes me want to check out the director’s other work. The director, Cirio H. Santiago, has directed 100 movies according to his IMDB page, and I’ve already seen that he has a few on Tubi. I might just have to check those out.