... aka: Devil Express
... aka: Gang Wars
... aka: Gang Wars: Devil's Express
... aka: Phantom of the Subway, The
Directed by:
Barry Rosen
China. 200 B.C. - A group of monks put a amulet
inside a coffin with a corpse and drop it down into a cave. Afterward, the
leader (Yoshiteru Otani) decapitates all of
his followers with his samurai sword and then slashes his own throat. Cut to present day New York City. Martial arts instructor Luke
Curtis ("He's not one of the best... he is the best!") finishes up a lesson with
a "pig honky" client of his and gets ready for his big trip over to Hong Kong,
where he'll do some more training with martial arts guru Master Leung (Duncan
Leung). Accompanying Luke (Warhawk Tanzania) on his trip is one of his
students, Rodan (Wilfredo Roldan), a coke dealer / gang banger who really
could use some soul cleansing. The two men arrive in China, go to the
camp for some laughable training exercises and then venture into
the woods to meditate. While there, they stumble upon the cave. Despite Luke's
"bad vibes," Rodan finds the coffin and, unbeknownst to his buddy, pockets the
amulet. Both men get on the midnight flight back to the U.S. ... but they're not
alone. As it turns out, after they left the cave, a living corpse (actually a resurrected demon)
busted out of the coffin, made its way to a dock, possessed a businessman (Aki
Aleong) and then hitched a ride aboard a ship heading to, you guessed it, New
York City.
Once the ship arrives in New York Harbor, the possessed dude (now blinded and
sporting some huge white eyeballs; an effect achieved by having the actor close
his eyes and painting his eyelids white!) stumbles down the street and
disappears into a tunnel. His chest bursts open and something comes out. Not
long after, mangled corpses start turning up in the subway. The amulet, which
Rodan now wears around his neck, seems to have some kind of power over the demon
/ monster / zombie or whatever it is and the creature would like it back. Lt. Cris Allen (Larry Fleischman)
of the NYPD is put on the case, and he's assigned new partner Mike (Stephen
DeFazio) for a clichéd odd couple pairing. Cris is street-smart and tough
while Mike loves tennis and country clubs and thinks mutant animals (!) may be
responsible for the killings. The two men hit the streets to try to figure out
what's going on and don't seem to take an eyewitness who claims to have seen "a
deformed monster" in the subway all that seriously.
Meanwhile, there's a vicious rivalry going on between two rival gang factions:
one a Chinese gang called "The Red Dragons" and the other a black gang called
"The Black Spades" (seriously... ).
If you're sitting there at home pulling out your hair because you can't decide
whether to watch a blaxploitation movie, a demon movie, a kung fu movie, a gang
movie or a buddy cop movie then don't fret: Devil's Express has got you
covered on all fronts. So does it actually pull any of that off
successfully? No, it does not... but that is not necessarily a bad thing
depending on what kind of viewer you are. Most of the acting is terrible, the
characters aren't the least bit likable, the editing is ragged, the dialogue is
boring, the blood is tomato soup and the action is just pathetic. The subway
horror scenes are few and far between to begin with but the lighting is so dark
(even in the restored version) you can barely even see anything. The demon
itself is not fully revealed until the very end but, again, it's difficult to
really make the thing out because of the lighting and editing. Where this truly
shines for fans of bad movies is in the fight choreography, which is some of the
worst ever. For starters, the black actors clearly have no real martial arts
training and are pitted against Asian actors who do, which is extremely awkward
to watch (and makes it extremely difficult to believe that the "Spades" could
whip their asses). That's made even more awkward than it already is by the fact
fists and feet typically don't come within a foot of their desired target. Add
some canned 70s-style kung fu sound effects for the body impact and the back
alley brawls are a laugh a minute. I am still laughing writing this up a few
days later.
This film is also odd in that there's no real central focal point. Top-billed Warhawk
Tanzania (whose name cannot be said enough in its entirety as far as I'm
concerned) features prominently in the beginning, but is strangely absent from the majority of the mid-section
when it focuses its attention over on the cops, the gangs (of which Luke has no
involvement because he's an upstanding guy) and the murders. Though Tanzania's
acting skills and on-screen charisma border on nonexistent, he does at least
come through for a hilarious finale; strutting around, doing various cliché kung
fu poses and beating up a bunch of guys (and the demon) while wearing gold lamé
bellbottoms. The "actor" had appeared in another kung fu blaxploitation
flick called
Black Force (1975) before this one, but nothing after.
The major talents to
emerge from the production were director of photography Paul Glickman,
who'd go on to shoot many other films (including a half-dozen for Larry Cohen)
and assistant cameraman Stefan Czapsky, who'd move up the ranks to become
a cinematographer himself (winning some major awards for Tim Burton's Ed Wood
[1994]). David E. Durston (director of the cult classic I Drink Your
Blood [1970]), Sherry Steiner (from several early William Girdler
films), Domonic Paris (director of Dracula's Last Rites [1980]),
Fred Berner (later an Emmy-nominated TV producer) and Brother Theodore
(in a truly bizarre cameo as a manic preacher) all have small roles, as well.
Though listed on IMDb under the title Gang Wars, this was filmed as The
Phantom of the Subway and was first released theatrically under the Devil's Express
title in
1976. The Gang Wars moniker was a re-release title hoping to cash in on the
success of The Warriors (1979). There was at least one early U.S. VHS
release on the Simitar label (under the Gang title) and one early
pre-cert issuing in the UK by FLK Video. In 2005, Videoasia either accidentally
screwed up their packaging or intentionally led people astray with their DVD
collection "Tales of Voodoo: Volume 3;" which claimed to contain Devil's
Express, when in fact the movie on the set was actually The Devil
(1981), a gruesome black magic film from Hong Kong originally titled Xie bo.
It wouldn't be until 2013 that Code Red finally released the film legitimately.
★1/2 SBIG