Abominable Advent Calendar Day 9: Fatal Deviation (1998)
Crapsterpiece Category: Awful Auteurs, Straight to VHS, WTF Were You Thinking?
Heads up: cringeworthy sex scene, gratuitous pasty male nudity
Fatal Deviation is lauded as “Ireland’s only martial arts movie,” probably because once everyone in Ireland saw it, they looked at each other, bowed their heads in shame, and said, “We will never speak of this again.” It. Is. Terrible. It’s also an absolute blast if you love bad cinema.
The star, James Bennett, wrote the film to showcase his martial arts skills. Unfortunately, although he’s fairly good at imitating his idol Jean-Claude Van Damme’s famous splits-in-the-doorway move, his writing and line delivery have all the energy of a plate of cold chips. He’s also borrowed (using that word generously) several plot points from Kickboxer and Bloodsport.
Jimmy returns to his hometown of Trim, Ireland after 10 years in reform school, and starts dating Nicola (Nicole O’Sullivan). He runs afoul of the goons who work for the drug lord who killed his father. Hoping to get even, he accepts an invitation to participate in a no-rules martial arts contest and meets a Yoda-Mr. Miyagi-Celtic-Monk-Druid (John Murray) who helps him train. The thugs, who bully small children, harass grocery store workers, and commit petty crime under the questionable leadership of someone’s creepy uncle with a penchant for cheap, shiny suits, tell him in a poorly spelled note that he has to “loose or else.” If you’ve ever seen a martial arts movie, you know more or less how this all goes down.
What sets Fatal Deviation apart, though, is that it’s obvious these people are having a blast. The combination of that and how abominably bad it is makes it compulsively fun to watch. Sure, it’s a no-budget production with no set dressing, utterly flat acting (Bennett got friends to perform many of the roles), dodgy music, dodgier lighting, and unintentionally hilarious dialogue. There are gratuitous workout montages to show off Bennett’s martial arts, and the love scene between Bennett and Nicola is cringeworthy. At the “huge” martial arts contest at the end, the audience of roughly two dozen is sitting on hay bales. In one inexplicable scene, the film’s financial backer runs naked across the screen and jumps into an outdoor clawfoot bathtub for no discernable reason. And the one and only special defect—a car crash—was accidental, but they got it on film and nobody was hurt, so they left it in. Bonus! At one point, Celtic Mr. Miyagi tells Bennett, “In keeping with the ancient ways, there are no rules.” Kind of sums up the whole film.
