Martial arts movies make little to no sense most of the time. Then, there's this movie.

Steve Chase is a martial artist who goes to the desert for what he thinks is an Olympic style meet. Nope. An ex-Nazi general was defeated at the 1936 Olympics by a Japanese martial artist named Miyagi, so he's out for revenge. Luckily, Steve and his girl Olga escape.

To fix up his team, von Rudloff's miniature henchman Chico goes around the world to recruit a new team. And Steve ends up meeting Miyagi and joining his team, which leads to the madcap fight between he and his girl when she is kidnapped and forced to join his team.

Finally, Steve must fight and defeat Luke, the ultimate fighter, leading the Nazi to killing himself rather than face defeat.

I've given you a straight reading of the film. To see it is to know how different it is, as it's either filmed by someone who wants to be an artist or someone who has been in the sun too long. This is often the same thing.

This movie was a success for four years in its native South Africa, where many Japanese martial arts forms were done to perfection. Yes, that makes no sense to me either. Neither does the sequel, but trust me, I'll be covering that one soon enough, too!

KILL OR BE KILLED is a quite dreadful open rip-off of ENTER THE DRAGON, with both Nazi and Japanese war criminals presiding over an illegal martial arts tournament where various fighters battle it out to the death. There's a slight plot involving some good-guy heroes attempting to rescue political prisoners, but most of this devolves into random floppy-haired muscle guys beating each other up for an age. Made in South Africa, this is cheap and fuzzy throughout, badly dubbed and with the fights boringly staged. The dwarf character has to be one of the most annoying ever, while the villains are singularly unimposing and the whole thing feels very silly indeed.

I first saw this in the late 80s on a vhs n liked it a lot.

Revisited it recently.

This movie is a self proclaimed greatest martial arts movie but if u sit down to watch it, u will be disappointed cos none of the fight sequence is noteworthy, of course it is laughable.

It is nothing but a rip off of Enter the Dragon minus the star cast n fight sequences.

The film has lots of action but it is not at all violent like Sonny Chiba's movies. What they stole from Chiba are his whistles.

Our main guy in this movie keeps on making whistling faces.

Our main guy while fighting a muscular hulky fella, keeps on jumping on and off a mountain without even touching his opponent.

Do watch out for the desert vehicle n how our main guy fights off dogs.