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By: John M Jerva
THE FLASH GORDON AFTERSHOCK
Back in 1982, one of the guiltiest of all guilty pleasures crash-landed into theaters when Flash Gordon was unleashed on an unsuspecting world. Fronted by newcomer Sam J. Jones and loaded with insane dialogue, bonkers situations, wild special effects, and gloriously over-the-top acting, this sci-fi opera looked ready to rocket Jones into full-on Hollywood stardom—even as severe production problems tried to blow it out of the sky.
After the film hit and got roasted by critics and shrugged off by mainstream audiences—before earning its rightful place as an elite cult classic—Jones got tossed into movie purgatory as Hollywood collectively shrugged and went, “Now what do we do with this guy?” So what do you do with the man who single-handedly derailed a would-be science fiction classic? Easy. You turn him into an obscure ’80s DTV action hero. That’s what.
Jones went on to serve hard time in movie jail with starring turns in such must-see trash treasures as Jungle Heat, Under the Gun (not to be confused with the Richard Norton flick), and the short-lived NBC series The Highwayman. Then there were the overseas specials like White Force, In Gold We Trust (also featuring Jan-Michael Vincent), and the magnificently titled Trigon Fire. The list honestly goes on and on. I’ve seen them all, and I fully admit I’ve got a soft spot for every last one of them because, yeah, I love bad movies—especially the ones with limp, awkward, totally undercooked action scenes.
ENTER SILENT ASSASSINS
Today though, I’m here to zero in on one of Jones’ most underrated action gems, the one that teamed him up with legendary Tae Kwon Do Grandmaster Jun Chong and the one and only Phillip Rhee—best known to fight-film fans as Tommy Lee from the Best of the Best franchise. That’s right: Flash Gordon and Tommy Lee in the same movie, teaming up to kick pure, neon-soaked ’80s ass.
Appropriately titled Silent Assassins, this 1988 slice of VHS carnage came to us from Action Brothers Productions, the company founded by Jun Chong in that glorious decade when he cranked out and headlined a slew of low-rent martial arts epics. That lineup also includes Ninja Turf (AKA L.A. Streetfighters) and Street Soldiers, which is basically Romeo & Juliet dragged into an urban war zone with wooden acting, miserable production values, and some legitimately bone-crunching fight action. Chong wisely surrounded himself with elite talent, including training partners like Rhee, James Lew, and Phillip’s brother Simon Rhee—aka Dae Han from Best of the Best.
All of these movies are ultra-low-grade chop-socky epics packed with shaky acting, murky cinematography (seriously, would it have killed them to buy a couple lights for the set?), and plots that veer into total insanity with villains who feel beamed in from another galaxy. This one’s dark, but it’s still not as visually miserable as Ninja Turf. That one is borderline unwatchable from what I remember, and I’m absolutely going to revisit it for a future Action Rewind, along with Street Soldiers, just to complete the Action Brothers saga. God help me. Thankfully, they all feature rock-solid fight action, because almost everyone onscreen is a legitimate martial artist who knows how to throw down. The action is what makes these movies tolerable—they don’t bring much else to the table.
Directed by Lee Doo-Yong—a Korean filmmaker who jumped across the pond in the ’80s to make action flicks—Silent Assassins is one of the hundreds of martial-arts-infused shoot-’em-ups that flooded video store shelves during the genre’s big resurgence after movies like JCVD’s Bloodsport hit big. Doo-Yong probably thought he was crafting high-caliber art here, but the finished product tells a very different story, and it’s pretty obvious that his work back home yielded much stronger results.
WELCOME TO THE SO-BAD-IT’S-AWESOME ZONE
Silent Assassins lands squarely in the “so bad it’s awesome” sweet spot. Jones plays a no-nonsense cop (in the ’80s, was there any other kind?) named Sam Kettle—yes, Kettle—who’s about to retire after a botched operation that got his partner killed. His girlfriend Sara, played by a severely underused Linda Blair, is sick of his dangerous lifestyle and constantly at war with him about it. Their relationship is a full-on whiplash machine: one minute they’re at each other’s throats, the next they’re tearing up the bedsheets. It’s exhausting, perplexing, and honestly annoying, and with every rewatch I keep thinking this movie would play better if she wasn’t in it at all. No offense to Blair.
Enter ruthless criminal mastermind Kendrick, the psycho Kettle is chasing at the start of the movie, played with gloriously unhinged gusto by Gustav Vintas. Kendrick kidnaps an elderly biochemist named Dr. London (Bill Erwin) to force him to hand over a lethal bio-weapon he can sell to the highest bidder—because that’s literally Rule #1 in the Bad Guy Handbook. During the snatch-and-grab, the brother and sister-in-law of one Jun Kim (Chong) are mercilessly executed for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. To make things worse, Kendrick also kidnaps Kim’s niece for reasons that never quite add up, and that move kicks off a blood-soaked chain reaction that leads to some serious butt-kicking.
As per ’80s cop-movie law, Kettle’s chief drags him back into the case because it ties directly into his dead partner and the failed attempt to nab Kendrick in the opening sequence. Kettle agrees to come back for one last mission—much to Sara’s fury—because it’s unfinished business, and Flash Gordon doesn’t walk away from unresolved beef.
Unfortunately for Kettle, Kim turns into a massive thorn in his side, shadowing him at every turn because he wants his niece back and refuses to stay on the sidelines. At first, Kettle wants nothing to do with him, but as the movie rolls on, the two slowly forge a rough-around-the-edges partnership and an unlikely friendship, united by their shared goal of bringing down Kendrick and rescuing both the doctor and Kim’s niece.
Naturally, Kendrick doesn’t just have a couple goons—he’s got a full-blown army of Asian ass kickers who are clearly meant to be ninjas, even though they never bother with the traditional ninja getup. Instead, these so-called shadow warriors rock combat fatigues, which is…a choice. Maybe they’re undercover ninjas. They’re also anything but silent—when they attack, they charge in like battering rams, screaming their lungs out, and raising as much noise as possible while carving people up. Let’s be honest, Un-Silent Assassins just doesn’t have the same ring to it.
Another unintentionally hilarious touch: one of these “ninjas” will kill a victim, and then the rest of the squad storms in to hack the poor sap to pieces after the fact. It’s like they’re adding a blood-soaked exclamation point, just in case you missed the memo that this movie is here for dumb, gleeful carnage. It’s absolutely unnecessary, but it helps sell the fact that this is pure, junk-food fun—and also a reminder that the film could’ve used even more gloriously over-the-top violence.
THE CASE GETS LOADED
As Kettle and Kim dig deeper, they cross paths with Beverly Hills pretty boy Bernard (Phillip Rhee), who runs an upscale martial arts school and just happens to be the son of the late, great Mako, here playing a Yakuza Oyuban. At first, Bernard wants nothing to do with our battered duo, but once his father is brutally executed and his snobby, high-maintenance girlfriend is poisoned—by a drink that was meant for him—Bernard drops the laid-back act and signs up for vengeance duty. He joins Kettle and Kim for an all-out assault on Kendrick’s fortress, where they finally square off against the…you guessed it…silent assassins. Also, is it just me, or do way too many character names start with K? Anyway, moving on.
NO BRAKES. NO MERCY.
Silent Assassins is absolutely unapologetic about what it is and wears its B-movie DNA like a badge of honor. It’s low-budget, cheesy, and drenched in gloriously tacky ’80s excess, and you get the sense the cast collectively decided, “screw it, we’re getting paid.”
Jones and Chong actually have strong buddy-cop chemistry, with Kettle’s off-the-rails, loudmouthed Westerner energy clashing perfectly with Kim’s wide-eyed, low-key naïveté about American culture. It’s Chong’s underplayed performance that really anchors things; watching him shift from quiet, almost awkward observer to full-on warrior mode when it’s time to throw down is one of the movie’s big pleasures.
Like I mentioned, Exorcist legend Linda Blair is horribly underused as Kettle’s girlfriend Sara. She spends most of the runtime doing her best Jekyll-and-Hyde routine—furious with Sam one second, soft and forgiving the next. It’s exhausting, and her performance doesn’t bring any of that raw, haunting power from her horror heyday. I also love how the VHS box art sells her as Jones’ gun-toting, no-nonsense sidekick, like she’s about to tear through the movie as his female-centric badass partner. Yeah, no. She does manage to shoot somebody, so there’s that, but beyond that moment, she’s pretty much useless.
Rhee is clearly having the time of his life as Bernard, the spoiled rich kid who runs a high-end dojo. Just like Chong, he gets to flip the switch from surfer-dude clown to stone-cold killer when the situation demands it. Viewers can absolutely turn his dialogue into a drinking game—take a shot every time he says “man.” “Come on man!” “What do ya mean man!” It’s like half his vocabulary, and it’s genuinely laugh-out-loud funny. The finale is pure vintage Rhee as he finally cranks the seriousness up to eleven and lays some brutal smackdown on the bad guys, including a two-on-one fight against his real-life brother Simon Rhee. Their throwdown here never hits the emotional or technical highs of their showdown in Best of the Best, but it still totally works as a Saturday-night beatdown and a nice warm-up for that later classic.
As for former model turned actress Rebecca Ferratti, who plays Kendrick’s icy femme fatale enforcer Miss Amy, I’ll say this: it’s a good thing she’s easy on the eyes, because she is flat-out terrible as an actress. We’re talking full-on cringe every time she opens her mouth. I have spoken.
Some of the funniest moments come from Kendrick trying to squeeze the bio-weapon formula out of the good doctor while London stalls for time like a champ. At one point, the doctor casually mentions that the computer they’re using has a “defect”—if you flip the keyboard over, the whole system explodes. Now that is what you call a design flaw. I can’t help but wonder how many poor, unsuspecting customers blew themselves to kingdom come with that little quirk.
THE SETUP BEFORE THE STORM
The first half of the movie doesn’t exactly deliver a buffet of hand-to-hand mayhem. I guess Doo-Yong was trying to establish plot and character depth, so most of it is just Kettle and Kim driving from one lead to the next. Riveting stuff if you’re an action junkie. There are a few scattered altercations involving Kim, but nothing that really gets the adrenaline pumping.
One standout gag has Kettle super-gluing a heavyweight agent who’s been tailing him to the side of a building, and you honestly have to see it to believe it. Jones literally buys some glue, slaps it on a wall, and sticks the guy there like a cartoon. It absolutely annihilates the laws of physics and logic, but it still makes me laugh to this day because it’s so completely, beautifully ridiculous.
THE ACTION IGNITION
It’s the back half of the film where Silent Assassins finally earns its B-movie action stripes. The fights crank up, the bodies start flying, and even Mako gets in on the fun, busting out some slick moves with a katana. Chong steps forward for some standout throwdowns while Jones mostly stands there looking confused and out of his depth—which honestly just adds to the charm.
THE FINAL SHOWDOWN
The grand finale is the real reason you watch this movie. Our three-man wrecking crew storms Kendrick’s compound for all the marbles. Rhee finally unleashes his signature skills, Chong floors the gas pedal on the close-quarters beatdowns, and Jones turns into a one-man mowing machine, cutting down waves of cannon fodder with not one, but two M-16s. Two is always better than one when it comes to bullet hoses.
Fists and feet of fury are everywhere as Chong and Rhee—Rhee sporting some glorious, highly questionable red sweatpants—tear through Kendrick’s hired killers. The choreography, handled by Chong, Rhee, and their team, is tight, brutal, and satisfying. On top of the empty-hand brawling, there’s a healthy dose of bladed weapon mayhem that really amps up the ferocity of the set pieces. The rest of the movie may wobble all over the place, but the fights are the real showstoppers, like everything else is just an excuse to get us to these glorious eruptions of violence.
The effects are all practical, and we get some juicy blood squibs and glorious red-mist sprays to go with the severed heads and limbs flying around during the finale. One highlight has Kettle unloading on a bad guy who immediately detonates because the bullets hit some explosives. It’s hilariously obvious that a mannequin has been swapped in for the shot, but that’s exactly the kind of old-school charm I miss. It still hits the target, and it’s a reminder of how great real, in-camera gore gags used to be.
Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of other ’80s action flicks with cleaner choreography and more polished set pieces, but for what they had to work with here, this one’s a real treat—and absolutely a must-watch example of ’80s excess captured on tape.
Of course, everything comes to a glorious, fireball-filled head in the climax, where Jones gets to blow stuff sky-high with a LAW rocket launcher that appears to magically reload itself. In real life, these bad boys are one-and-done, but here we get multiple shots out of it, which is always welcome in this kind of insanity. Toss in Rhee dangling off the skid of a helicopter that’s trying to whisk Kendrick to safety—for absolutely no logical reason—and you’ve got some serious stunt power closing out this true-blue guilty pleasure.
THE VERDICT
Now, with all the ribbing I’ve given this movie, you might think I hate it—but it’s the exact opposite. Warts, flaws, and bargain-bin production values included, Silent Assassins is a textbook case of why DTV ’80s action absolutely rocked. We all know these films are bad, but they’re bad in all the right ways, and Chong, Jones, Rhee, and the rest of the cast throw themselves into it so we can bask in that glorious “holy cow, what did I just watch?” energy.
The casual filmgoer will watch this and roll their eyes straight into the back of their skull, but we, the die-hard action faithful, understand. We live for bad acting, tiny budgets, and nonsensical plotting—as long as the fights deliver the goods. There’s some serious talent swinging fists and feet here, and that’s exactly why the whole thing works.
Top it all off with an ultra-dependable ’80s synthesizer score, and the icing is slapped right onto this greasy, glorious cake. I said in another interview that this kind of music needs to make a comeback, and I stand by it—modern action films would absolutely benefit from a proper synth-fueled resurrection.
Sam J. Jones may never have become the massive mainstream star he was clearly being groomed to be, but genre fans still love the guy, and he deserves a spot in some mythical B-level action hall of fame. He never seems to take himself too seriously and always throws his whole self into these roles, no matter how thin the budget is. That, ladies and gentlemen, is a true professional.
FINAL VERDICT
Overall, Silent Assassins is pure, concentrated ’80s action-movie DNA. The cheese factor is high enough to cover a truckload of pizzas, the acting is joyfully over the top, and the action is absolutely the main attraction. I honestly wish Jones, Chong, and Rhee had suited up together for more of these, because they work incredibly well as a trio, and the movie even ends on a sort of light cliffhanger with the true mastermind still on the loose. Watching it now, it’s dated as hell—but that’s part of the appeal. It’s a snapshot of a simpler time, with way less political correctness and action films that proudly reflected that. Plus, you’ve got Flash Gordon, Tommy Lee, and a Tae Kwon Do Grandmaster teaming up to take on an army of urban-clad ninja assassins. It really doesn’t get better than that.
If you still don’t buy a word I’m saying about this flick, fire up the original theatrical trailer—it tells you everything you need to know in under two minutes. You’re welcome. Until next time!
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