What do you get when you cross ‘3 Ninjas Kick Back’ with ‘Kung Fu Hustle’?  I understand that’s a mixing of one shitty movie with one great movie, but I think it’s appropriate for first time director Colin Mitchell’s debut film ‘All Babes Want to Kill Me’, which is interesting mix of the fairly shitty and the pretty good.

Mr. Mitchell plays Vatchel Cho, the decidedly European looking son, along with his European looking brothers, of the blind Mr. Cho.  Mr. Cho is teaching his sons to be Kung Fu masters in which one training ritual includes cracking his boys testicles with his blind stick.  I’m sure there’s an official name for the blind stick, but I’m too damn lazy to look it up.  One may think that any movie that relies on repeated blows to the nuts may be humorously suspect, and they would think correctly, but Mitchell does space the nut blasts apart a bit.

Tragically, the boys mother dies and this affects young Vatchel quite negatively as he devours paint chips to help quell his grief.    This paint chip consumption leads to the boy getting Mercritis, a disease which emits a pheromone that makes all hot chicks want to kick his ass.  Topped with the knowledge that his father also knows that he is the illegitimate son, young Vatchell tucks himself away to his cave and away from human contact.

Now an adult, Vatchel gets a visit from his evil older brother Shang (Gianni Lazuli) who plays upon Vatchel’s fond feelings for his father to and convinces him to search for his true love, his childhood sweetie Marina.  Shang knows that this will ultimately end with some babe eventually killing Vatchel, and thus Shane being selected

the chosen one which would leave the family fortune in his hands.  Along for the histrionics are fat gay middle brother Ling (Jonathan Schaefer) and some woman they hit with their car and decided to drag along despite her amnesia (Alex Cain).  Mayhem and hilarity ensues as Vatchell gets his ass kicked by numerous babes, fights for the family name and hopes to achieve true love.

Though ‘All Babes’ is a low budget feature, it certainly doesn’t look that way with a very polished look, and good sound which is often absent in a lot of independently produced micro budget films.  Colin Mitchell, who wrote the story as well as directed and starred in it is an appealing actor and a promising director.  But other than a few choice moments, ‘All Babes’ just wasn’t all that funny.  Quite honestly, it worked better as a sweet little romantic comedy, because there were a couple of scenes that were quite touching and moving, and were more effective than the slapstick, coconut to the head type comedy that made up most of the movie.

Like I said, there were a few choice comedic moments, such as the kung fu chef and his salmon style, and the lethal probate attorneys, and also the fight scene between the brothers and the probate attorneys was surprisingly well done.  Consider that this is a low budget film with a martial arts fight scene.  Note that there have been plenty of HUGE budget films made here in the USofA (not choreographed by Wu Yu Ping) that have failed to pull off a decent martial arts fight scene, and Colin Mitchell manages a decent one with no budget. Hats off to you brother. 

But there just wasn’t enough solid humor in this over top comedy for me to actually call the movie good.  The effort is admirable though, and I’m happy I saw it and I do hope that Mitchell gets an opportunity with a bigger budget and maybe a better editor.  I’d be interested to see what he turns out.