This was the second and last of Warhawk Tanzania's only movie appearances, both starring vehicles. I guess he didn't catch on, no doubt because the movies weren't particularly well made and because by then both the blaxploitation and "kung fu" genres had passed their U.S. commercial peak due to oversaturation of the market with cheap knockoffs. He had the right look, and if he wasn't much of an actor, there were worse ones who were successful enough (particularly in martial arts cinema), so I guess it was more a matter of bad timing than anything else.
"Devil's Express" is a bit slicker than "Black Force" (confusingly, both have sometimes been called "Gang Wars"), a little wilder and more fun. WT plays a karate master who goes with his buddy (Wilfredo Roldan as "Rodan," the same name his character had in "Force") to a conference in Hong Kong. Afterward, they see the sites. Problem is, his buddy is a bit of an ***hole, and he steals an amulet from some ancient burial ground (or cave, in this case). So naturally once they get back to NYC, a demon spirit follows them, mostly holing up in the subway system and possessing the bodies of various unfortunate passers-by it's murdered in order to get back its stolen treasure. Police, the heroes' dojo, and a rival Chinese group of fighters all get caught up in the eventual mayhem.
The mix of horror, martial arts and blaxploitation sounds like trash heaven, and "Express" gets about halfway there. It's fairly well-made on a B-pic level, and reasonably fast-paced, but despite the decent premise there's not much colorful idiosyncrasy to the characters or situations. (Apart from Rodan being an entertainingly snotty jerk, that is.) But the real problem is that neither the fighting or horror elements are developed sufficiently. There's a lot of fighting, and clearly most of the participants have at least some training. But the film is edited in a way that is pretty obviously covering for them--we get much kicking and "thwack!" noises but it's not very convincing as anything but faux-fighting. (There are even a couple moments when characters say "Ow!" in pain, even though we've just clearly seen their opponent's kick didn't connect.) The monster is introduced rather late, then kept largely out of sight. So, this is a promising mix of elements, but the fighting isn't very impressive and the horror is likewise also mostly "cheated" (people go "Yaaagh!!!" at something we don't see, then are presumably murdered offscreen).
So, fairly amusing grindhouse action junk from the period, worth seeing once for those who like this sort of thing. But not the guilty-pleasure classic you might hope for.
