Filmmaker Amir Shervan’s Samurai Cop wowed shitty movie audiences when it was rediscovered in the 2000s, so it made sense that the mutants would dig into his back catalogue to see what else he left behind. Shervan has thirty directing credits to his name, most from before he left his native Iran due to the Islamic revolution. He was in the wilderness, filmmaking-wise, for a bit, but came back in 1987 with Hollywood Cop, kicking off a string of five unforgettable b-flicks that culminated with Samurai Cop, before he left the business once again. One of those glorious remnants was Killing American Style, a home invasion action flick released in 1988.
Written, produced, directed, and partly edited by Shervan, this particular opus is something of an ensemble piece. By my estimation, most of the screen time belongs to Robert Z’Dar as Tony Stone, leader of a gang of holdup men who have just robbed the payroll of an ice cream truck depot. Yeah, that must have meant big money in 1988.
The gang is caught, but Tony and Lynch (John Lynch, hopefully not playing a version of himself) are busted out of their prison bus on a lonely country road by Tony’s brother, Jesse (Bret Johnston), and his uncle, Loony (Jimmy Williams). Jesse takes a round in the stomach for his troubles, so Tony decides that further running is out. They need to hole up somewhere, form a real plan, and get Jesse some medical attention.
Meanwhile, the police, headed by Lieutenant Sunset (Jim Brown), are on the bad guys’ trail, somewhat. Brown was this flick’s star power, but like many more famous performers slumming it for a check, he’s peripheral to the main action in the movie.
The hero stuff is reserved for Harold Diamond as John Morgan, a kickboxer and owner of a small horse ranch. It’s his property that Tony and company set their sights on as a hideout. While Harold and his young son are in town at the dojo, the gang takes Morgan’s wife and her 
sister hostage (I’d love to give credit where credit is due, here, but the credits are spotty). After Morgan returns, he’s forced to run errands for the gang, but it’s all leading up to some serious action back at the ranch.
This is a silly and stupid movie. The action stinks, the acting stinks, the plot stinks, the ranch location is a mess…I could go on, but if one has seen enough bad movies and read enough bad movie reviews, one gets the point. This is not fine cinema. What this is, is a legendary piece of substandard filmmaking. It may not have the cachet that Samurai Cop does, but the roots of that movie’s shamelessness are on display, here. This feels prototypical, in fact, as Mathew Karedas, star of Samurai Cop, feels derivative of Harold Diamond.
Diamond is a treat. He had the long black tresses of a metal musician, the brick chimney torso of a trained fighter, and the fashion sense of, well, a denizen of a 1980s California dojo. He’s like a slightly smaller Peter Steele. He has the perfect mix of confidence and lack of self-awareness that is an ingredient in all successful shitty movies, mirroring that of Shervan. He struggles, gets knocked down and gets back up, and prevails through sheer force of will.
Z’Dar gets a chance to shine in this film, as much as he was capable. He probably had more lines in this movie than anything else he did in his career. He’s over the top, as befits the movie.
Lynch is the film’s resident scumbag, though. His rapey performance is just the kind to set an audience totally against him, and he plays up the sleaze. I wouldn’t call it a talented or revelatory performance, but it gets the point across. Lynch is a bad dude, in a way that even Tony is not. It’s no spoiler to write that he gets what he deserves in the end.
A movie this bad is normally not this watchable. Regular movie fans will recoil, but this flick isn’t for them, nor was it ever. This is a low-budget piece of garbage that does nothing less than enrich the legacy of shitty movies. It’s not as ‘awfuckit’ crazy as Samurai Cop, but it very much shares the same genes, and it’s easier to sit through. Killing American Style enters the Watchability Index at #137, displacing Final Score. Check it out.