My Cultural Diet

Richard Harrison is best known for his starring roles in Z-grade Godfrey Ho ninja movies like 1984’s Ninja Thunderbolt and 1986’s Ninja Terminator. But during the ’80s, he also starred in several movies by Filipino director Teddy Page (aka, Teddy Chiu), including Blood Debts. Essentially a riff on Death Wish, Blood Debts stars Harrison — who also co-wrote the movie — as Mark Collins, a former Vietnam vet who just wants to settle down with his family in the Philippines. That idyllic life is tragically shattered, however, when his daughter is raped and murdered by a gang of thugs that Collins subsequently tracks down and kills within the movie’s first ten minutes. That vigilanteism catches the attention of both the police and other criminal elements, and the latter want to use Collins’ thirst for revenge to their own advantage. That’s an interesting twist, but even so, Blood Debts is nowhere near as gritty or seedy as any of that might make it out to be. Although director Page didn’t employ Godfrey Ho’s cut-and-paste filmmaking style for his movie, Blood Debts is still pretty nonsensical thanks to its wooden performances, stilted dialog, and awkward pacing, not to mention an ending that went viral several years ago for its stunning abruptness. (Apparently, we have Ferdinand Marcos’s dictatorship, and its harsh censorship laws, to thank for that ending.) Ending aside, my favorite aspect of Blood Debts has to be Patrick Wales’s soundtrack, which veers from ’80s news channel theme music to some blaxploitation-style funk.

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