As far as martial arts cinema goes, "Kill and Kill Again" may be on the cheaper and cheesier side of things, but it is these very elements that make it oh so amusing. Fans of the genre will find enough things to make it a hoot to watch: a simple story, entertaining heroes and villains, negligible acting, beautiful South African scenery, and enough action to keep it watchable at all times.
A follow-up to the earlier "Kill or Be Killed", it stars James Ryan as Steve Chase, a martial artist hired by a woman named Kandy Kane (Anneline Kriel) to rescue her scientist father Dr. Horatio Kane (John Ramsbottom) - a possible relation to a certain C.S.I. detective? - who's been kidnapped by a maniacal arch-villain, Marduk (Michael Mayer) who intends to control the populace of the Earth and have them do his bidding, thanks to a drug the scientist's discovered. So Steve reconnects with some old buddies - The Fly (Stan Schmidt), Gorilla (Ken Gampu), Hotdog (Bill Flynn), and Gypsy Billy (Norman Robinson) - to form a rescue team.
There are enough inspired details in "Kill and Kill Again" to make it very agreeable: the fact that Mayer is clearly wearing a fake beard, his female partner in crime Minerva (Marloe Scott Wilson) who uses terms of endearment to address him in front of underlings, the early scenes of The Fly and Steve meeting (gotta dig the levitation), Gorilla acquiring the costume of a baddie and having it rip on him as he realizes it's not his size, and of course all of the various fight scenes. Things are so blatantly comedic at times that one has to believe that screenwriter John Crowther and director Ivan Hall weren't ever taking any of this too seriously.
This is precisely why this is a fun flick, and Hall keeps the action and the laughs coming. The movie doesn't take long to start delivering the goods, and the actors here look like they're having a good time. Schmidt and Robinson also serve as the martial arts choreographers, and while Ryan isn't a very expressive performer, he's still reasonably likable and has enough of a presence to make him a suitable hero for this sort of thing. It doesn't hurt that some of the female cast members, including Kriel, are quite attractive.
Overall, this is an acceptable diversion leading to a fairly rousing finale and ending on an endearingly silly final note.
Seven out of 10.
