10% Karate movie, 20% Caper movie, 70% low slapstick comedy. If grown men continually trying to look up lady's dress is your idea of sophisticated humour, then this is the movie for you...

The usual suspects from "The Executioner" are brought back together for another mission, the retired Police Chief, his comely daughter, the wily veteran assassin, the pointless idiot and Sonny. However the idiotic character seemed to lack some of the verve he showed in the previous film, as if resigned to his fate.

There are jewels that may or may not have been stolen, a billion yen insurance pay-out (or fraud), a kid-knapped child and another billion yen in ransom. It's never entirely clear who is double crossing who, when and why, but that is of no real importance in this type of movie.

The robbery caper devised is elaborate and implausible, as to be expected, but sadly the makers didn't have budget to deliver the spectacle envisioned in a convincing way on screen. By over reaching themselves they draw attentions to this shortcoming, but, on the other hand, as this is predominantly a comedic outing so it's not a deal breaker.

What is a deal breaker is that there are too many overlong stretches of lame comedy and caper planning in-between the karate battles and the "excecution" of the capers (you see what I did there?), which drag the movie down.

In fact the fight scenes are very good when taken on their own, although the final showdown seems to arrive almost out of nowhere, with every character, good and bad, suddenly turning up for the battle royal, and Sonny delivering a sort of greatest hits of "Streetfighter" mayhem, knocking out a mouthful of teeth here, ripping out a heart there, and breaking one thugs neck by revolving his head 360 degrees with a series of chops, a-la the Exorcist. Even the infamous fishnet arm from the first film makes a surprise encore appearance, apropos of nothing, and I suddenly had a flash of insight into what it's practical purpose was this time;-apparently it may be able to deflect bullets!

I also had a feeling I may have been watching a cut version of the film, because there seemed to be far less female nudity than was foreshadowed in the opening credits, which was made up of what I assumed was a montage of highlights from later in the film, many of which didn't appear to eventuate. Perhaps the lack of puerile soft porn content also contributes to making this edition less enjoyable than the first?

So no "Karate Inferno" here, instead easily Sonny's least convincing effort from his halcyon year of 1974.

This sequel came out the same year as The Executioner and brings back Takeshi Hayato (Makoto Sato), Ichiro Sakura (Eiji Go), Arashiyama (Ryô Ikebe), Emi (Yutaka Nakajima) and ninja bad guy working on the side of good Ryuichi Koga (Sonny Chiba) for another mission.

First, they have to find Koga, who is now a paratrooper - or the Rangers Unit of the Self Defence Forces - and then they're off to retrieve the stolen Jewel of the Pharaohs and a rich heiress, but they discover that the jewel they've retrieved is a fake. And when Koga gets shorted on his pay, he decides to steal the jewel for himself.

This time around, the bickering between the three heroes - well, they're not all that virtuous but are the heroes we have - is filled with comedy, like a scene where Koga is climbing up into a high rise and a well-endowed woman opens her window and her bosom falls directly onto his head and another where Sakura gets set on fire and Koga urinates the flames out. Then again, this is a Sonny Chiba movie, so he does get to rip a man's heart right out of his chest and show it to him before he dies.

The Executioner II: Karate Inferno is also directed by Teruo Ishii, who wasn't a fan of making action movies like this. To see what he liked making, track down Horrors of Malformed Men and Shogun's Joy of Torture.

While not as well made as The Executioner, everyone seems to enjoy their roles and the silly near-Three Stooges antics between the heroes. I wish Toei had made even more of this series.