Catch the Heat (1987)

Catch the Heat is a 1987 star vehicle for Tiana Alexandra. Alexandra's family fled Vietnam for America in 1966. As a young woman, she met and trained under Bruce Lee, who introduced her to his friend and her future husband Sterling Silliphant. Silliphant got her a bit part in The Killer Elite (which he wrote), starting a minor acting career. The year before this movie, she created the "Karatecize" fitness program. A few years after this movie, she directed a documentary called From Hanoi to Hollywood that won some awards and aired on HBO. Obviously, she contains multitudes.

This is not a very good movie, but I found it oddly charming. Alexandra plays police officer Checkers Goldberg. An adorably stupid name, but also kind of perfect for a pulp character. I could see a bunch of paperback covers that say under different titles "A Checkers Goldberg Adventure!" The movie also got me onboard immediately with an opening scene featuring perennial bad guy actor Brian Thompson. I'm always happy to see his prominent skull on my screen. This scene also sets accurate expectations for the rest of the film's tone and quality. Checkers is posing as a drug dealer. She looks like a motorcycle badass, and when she pulls off her helmet, her giant coiffe of hair is miraculously unmussed. Her contact Danny Boy (Thompson) pretty much immediately tries to rape her after their drug deal, she fights him off, and the other cops show up to complete the sting. Afterwards, an angry Danny Boy thinks Checkers is overreacting to the whole ATTEMPTED RAPE thing. Checkers' partner Waldo then helpfully explains it's because Checkers' sister was raped and murdered years ago. Of course, why else would she be so upset? Bizarre. I have a feeling Academy Award-winning writer Sterling Silliphant might not have put forth his best effort here. We have established for the rest of the movie A) Checkers will frequently look amazing, B) This movie is going to deal with serious subjects in a completely inappropriate and goofy way, C) the staging/action is not going to be particularly impressive.

Checkers' partner/kind of boyfriend Waldo(!) is played by David Dukes. That is Dukes with an "S," not former head of the KKK David Duke (that is an unfortunate person to be one letter away from). Dukes is one of the reasons this movie has to settle for being occasionally entertaining and quirky instead of actually good. He is 11 years older than Alexandra and looks older than that. He can't project toughness, intelligence, or world-weariness. His voice/accent are inconsistent, and some of his line deliveries reminded me of Groucho Marx. Later, he will spend a good chunk of the movie partnered with a cop in Argentina, and their banter is PAINFUL. I don't know how much was improvised and how much was (poorly) scripted, but it always devolves into incomprehensible yelling. At one point they have the nerve to try and pull a callback or running joke, but you can't call back to a joke that you flubbed the first time! Maybe he is supposed to be a weenie and the comic relief to make Checkers look better, but if so, they went too far on the weenie front and forgot to make him actually funny. And he has a terrible wig.

Our villain is Jason Hannibal, a slumming Rod Steiger. Maybe he appeared as a favor to Silliphant, as Steiger previously won an Academy Award for the Silliphant-penned In the Heat of the Night. "Hey Rod, I got another "Heat" script for ya!" His performance is amusingly half-assed as he will go from mumbling lines, to sounding like he is reading from a cue card, to occasionally going mega for a precious few seconds of yelling. He ALSO has a terrible wig!

A drug bust leads Checkers and Waldo to Argentina to investigate Hannibal's drug business. He has a side-business of clubs and showgirls, so Checkers poses as an immigrant dancer to infiltrate. And now we come the best/worst/weirdest aspect of the movie. In real life, Alexandra was born in Vietnam but raised in America and sounds like any other native-English speaker with non-distinct North American accent. When Checkers goes undercover as a fresh-of-the-boat immigrant from Hong Kong, she starts speaking in broken English and kind of attempting an accent. If you just closed your eyes and watched one of these scenes, you would probably assume a white person was doing a racist impression, and you would think they are doing a particularly bad job at it. And Hannibal hilariously falls for it! Maybe this is supposed to be ironic or lampooning how easily people believe stereotypes? It's hard to say without being able to ask the people involved, but one thing is for sure it is always distracting and cringey/amusing. ESPECIALLY if she has to use it in a scene that is supposed to involve drama or trauma. And on a completely shallow level, the wig she wears undercover is a bummer after how fantastically 80s her hair looked previously.

There is some action throughout. Fights, car chases, occasional explosions. Nothing much to write home about outside of a crazy (notched?) bike stunt. A short but intense showdown in a small apartment between Checkers and former pro wrestler/frequent movie henchman "Professor" Toru Tanaka is the only one that stood out.

Despite all the movie's shortcomings, I enjoyed it. Alexandra actually seems to have some moves, even if the choreography/direction is lacking. Her acting isn't amazing, but she has more than enough charisma for this kind of B-movie, until the whole accent thing, at which point it becomes compellingly bad. She's sexy, but the movie isn't very exploitative. There is a scene where she gets out of the harbor in a wet tank top, and the camera and another cop ogle her a bit, but that's about it. Don't get me wrong, I would not be against more explicit scenes with her, but it all adds up to the movie's weirdly innocent/naive vibe. After all, WILD ASS SPOILER ALERT, the plot of this movie ends up being drugs hidden in the breast implants of the dancers, one of whom is raped and murdered before having them torn out, yet it never really gets heavy, or graphic? Its handling R-rated subject matter with the mentality of a Saturday morning cartoon or the A-Team.

I wish there were more Checkers Goldberg adventures for me to watch. if nothing else, this will definitely get a replay at some point with friends and drinks.