Now Available: Kill or Be Killed

[Pak-Man]

Kill or Be Killed

Feature film · 2019

Thirty years after losing a karate tournament and disgracing himself in front of Adolf Hilter, a Nazi officer challenges his opponent - named Miyagi - to a rematch.

With Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy, Bill Corbett

See it on RiffTrax

Oh, Kill or Be Killed, where to begin? It's a cornucopia of wonders, specifically South African martial arts wonders. If the title and long-haired karate hero seem familiar, that's because we already riffed the sequel to this movie, Kill and Kill Again. Why did we riff them out of order? That's a good question. Another good question would be, why were either of these movies made? The answer to both questions is "who knows, but enjoy!"

The plot of Kill or Be Killed is somehow even more whacked-out than the sequel. Back in the 1940s, a Nazi officer disgraced himself when his German karate team lost to Japan in a tournament attended by none other than Mr. Adolf Hitler. Um, embarrassing! Now, 30 years later, the Nazi has built a castle hideout in the desert, where he challenges his Japanese karate rival - who is named, no joke, Miyagi - to a redo of the tournament he lost decades ago. But this time, there will be no audience, and also no purpose, other than trying to soothe the Nazi's hurt feelings. Quite frankly, this Nazi is kind of a weenie.

Both teams try to recruit our hero, karate legend Steve Hunt - played by none other than James Ryan, who you might recognize as the villainous MacPhearson from Space Mutiny (he does much less karate in that movie). But Steve isn't really interested in the pointless tournament, he'd rather hang out with his girlfriend, who also does karate, naturally.

All that, plus Chico! Chico is the Nazi's wisecracking sidekick, but he's so much more than that. We don't want to give too much away, but Chico is without a doubt the real star and hero of this movie. Get Chico fever, and join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for the vague revenge saga that is Kill or Be Killed!

Written by:
Mike Nelson, Conor Lastowka, and Sean Thomason

Contributing Writers:
Jason Miller and Zachary Shatzer

[dbsommer]

According to IMDB they cut about 13 minutes out of this one. Since I had seen the previous sequel (it makes sense, it just doesn't sound like it) uncut and the cut riff one, I can say it's the only one I've bought that the cuts they made hurt the already bad film. Admittedly, the fight scenes would have been repetitive, but still it made the movie more incoherent than it already (there is no reason for him to spend half the film recruiting a team that ends up doing nothing to help him aside from the big guy grabbing a helicopter blade). I'm going to wait for some feedback on this. if it's funny with the cuts, fine. Jack Frost is a perfect example of a film that needed to be cut, and was both just as godawful and still amusing as if they had been left in.

[CJones]

Even though this apparently did have quite a bit cut, it's nowhere near as blatantly obvious as in Kill and Kill Again. You probably wouldn't notice anything was missing unless you'd seen the uncut version already. Compare that to KaKA, where huge chunks of the movie are obviously missing to anyone who has ever seen a movie before 

And, this is good riff. Definitely worth buying.

[dbsommer]

Even though this apparently did have quite a bit cut, it's nowhere near as blatantly obvious as in Kill and Kill Again. You probably wouldn't notice anything was missing unless you'd seen the uncut version already. Compare that to KaKA, where huge chunks of the movie are obviously missing to anyone who has ever seen a movie before 

And, this is good riff. Definitely worth buying.

Someone else who watched both said the same thing. I'll get it at the next sale.

And since I was reminded of KaKA I just rewatched the martial arts skydiving scene. God why did they cut it? The team watch the skydivers pop the chutes, and half of them keep playing cards while the other half casually chill until the bad guys land. Then half of them keep playing cards while the bad guys get mauled in the background. All the one on one scenes at the end, I can understand why they cut those. That would have been pure redundancy. Probably even the bar battle since cutting one of those was fine. But, argh.
Glad I'm not the only one that realized that movie was choppy. I mean, I watched it on HBO as a kid one summer about 6-7 times, (since they reran everything 10 times a month on it), so it was kind of burned into my mind, but still.

[TriffRax]

I just don't understand why Rifftrax has started cutting their VOD releases at all. I can understand removing sexual violence or extended sex scenes and the like, but so often there's way more than that edited out and I just don't get it. It's not like they have to edit for time or anything, it's a VOD.

[dbsommer]

I just don't understand why Rifftrax has started cutting their VOD releases at all. I can understand removing sexual violence or extended sex scenes and the like, but so often there's way more than that edited out and I just don't get it. It's not like they have to edit for time or anything, it's a VOD.

They say it's sometimes more for pacing rather than content. There have been times, Starship Invasions comes to mind, where the movie's content dragged everything down and I probably could have dealt with some stuff being cut. As I said in the KaKA, at the end the bad guy has each of the heroes have a one on one fight with his best men. I can see cutting those as how many jokes can you make about 5 or 6 back to back fights? But it seems a lot of the cuts shouldn't be made as I can't figure out how leaving them in hurts the pacing. I think I'd prefer a little more 'dragging' than more cutting.

[Darth Geek]

It's odd that they complain about pacing now that they did the riff of Octaman and apparently didn't cut anything, since they were constantly complaining about pacing issues with that one.

[The Lurker]

There's been others that seemed to be pacing related, though I can't remember which ones. As far as pacing goes, if any Rifftrax needs pacing edits it's Terror at Tenkiller.

[John Bradley]

I demand that my crappy B-movies have terrible pacing, the way the good lord - or at least their incompetent directors' - intended.

If the boys had cut the slow parts out of movies in the past, we'd never have gotten DeepHurting or HypnoHelioStaticStasis, and the world would be a darker place for it.

[fodder650]

That and I thought we were told that they were going to ease back on the cuts some time ago. Thirteen minutes out of a ninety minute movie is a lot of the movie. Especially when they will re-release a MST3k movie (see Final Justice) as the full uncut movie. We are fans of B movies but I really don't want to go back and rewatch some of these to go and see what I missed. I know they are also trying to hold to a pretty rigid schedule but, again, I thought we had this discussion a long time ago about this and it was that this heavy editing was going away. This is starting to feel like the way a certain other person does over edits. If releases have to be slowed down then so be it.

[dbsommer]

Finally bought this. I couldn't tell if it was cut anywhere. In fact I don't think I would have liked an 'extended cut' of this. It was sized perfectly, especially Chico.  But it was neither too short, ike some of them have been , nor too long, since the idea could have been exhausted quite easily. I mean turning your VW bug into a desert windsurfer? Yep, padding.
Definitely superior to the hacked apart Kill and Kill Again. Martial arts Nazis fighting in a castle in the middle of nowhere in a desert? Sign me up.