This week’s B-Movie Enema is on the hunt for a legendary statue with needles, which, when stuck into an adult male in a very particular pattern, will turn that guy into a sexual Tyrannosaurus.

And it’s Joe Don Baker who is one of the men after it!

Yes, you read that right… Joe Don Baker is after the seven Golden Needles that will turn him into a sex machine (well, maybe not so much, but still…). If it wasn’t for a very specific appreciation for Baker, I might just have to barf. *Hurk*

Alright, let’s be serious for a moment. 1974’s Golden Needles is about a statue that has seven golden needles (bet you didn’t see that coming) sticking out of it, which, when transferred to a man’s body, will give him a young man’s vigor, and, I suppose, super sex powers. This movie kind of sounds like a joke, right? Well, not so fast. This is actually a very much for-real and serious movie. Not only that, but there are a lot of recognizable people in the cast and behind the camera.

For one, I already mentioned Mitchell himself, Joe Don Baker. By 1974, Baker had already hit it big with 1972’s Junior Bonner and 1973’s Walking Tall. For MST3K fans the world over, Baker is best known in Mitchell and Final Justice (a movie I’ve got on the docket for later this year). But he also appeared in three James Bond films – as the villain Brad Whitaker in The Living Daylights and as C.I.A. agent Jack Wade in GoldenEye and Tomorrow Never Dies. Baker had a hell of a 55-year career on TV and film. I’ll have more to say about Baker later on in the year.

Golden Needles also features Burgess Meredith, who, I think we all know best as the Penguin on the 60s Batman TV show. Oh, and I guess his Academy Award-nominated performance as Mickey in 1976’s Rocky. For real, whether it is his incredible performances in four episodes of The Twilight Zone, leading to his involvement in the film version in the early 80s, his role as Ammon in 1981’s Clash of the Titans, Grumpy Old Men, or 1978’s Magic, or what seems like a billion other roles, Meredith is an all-timer and a real fun guy to see pop up in things.

We also have the return of Jim Kelly in Golden Needles. You gotta go waaaaay back to nearly ten whole ass years to when I covered Black Samurai for when I last talked about Kelly. Kelly appeared in 1973’s Enter the Dragon, which landed him in blaxploitation action flick after blaxploitation action flick where he could show off his kung fu abilities. Ultimately, the guy would best be known for appearing as himself in a lot of movies that are either about martial arts movies, Bruce Lee, or paying tribute to the movies he appeared in back in the 70s. Sadly, Kelly passed away at the age of 67 in 2013. He never really quit making movies, despite being largely absent from film, with a few brief exceptions, after the 70s. He said he would get scripts, but never found anything he wanted to do for various reasons, largely having to do with not-so-great images the movies put forward. You could very easily see Michael Jai White shaping his character of Black Dynamite largely after Kelly.

Speaking of martial arts films, Golden Needles is directed by the best of the best from the West when it comes to the genre, Robert Clouse. Clouse was the man in the director’s chair for Enter the Dragon. He teamed up with Jim Kelly twice more in 1974 with this film and Black Belt Jones. In the 80s, Clouse did two more action classics that featured some more martial arts – Force: Five and Gymkata. Both of those movies are most definitely eligible for B-Movie Enema later on. In 1990, he doubled-dipped with two China O’Brien films with Cynthia Rothrock. What’s interesting is that Clouse also wrote Steven Spielberg’s first film, the TV horror flick Something Evil. We’ll see Clouse again later this year with his 1975 Yul Brynner sci-fi action flick, The Ultimate Warrior.

But for now, let’s go find those Golden Needles…

The movie kicks right off with the setup of what these legendary needles are. Basically, they are seven acupunctural needles that, when used correctly and in the correct order, provide, yup, sexual vigor and a sort of fountain of youth restorative properties. If they are used incorrectly, it is instant death. People have been hunting this treasure for a very long time. And that’s the whole setup, the movie doesn’t linger on this and instantly gets to business and gets us right into the action, with a pretty rad theme score that’s like half James Bond incidental music, a little Asian sound, and a lot of blaxploitation groove. Which is definitely a calling card of this film’s composer, Lalo Schifrin. Schifrin is most notably the creator of the Mission: Impossible theme and the composer for Enter the Dragon.

Also, I found the Golden Needles, so I’m here to collect either my sexual vigor or death.

You’d think this hunt for these Golden Needles would have been harder than just following an old Chinese man into an acupuncturist shop, but here we are.

Nah, I’m kidding. Another old Chinese man who is rather decrpit what with his barely being able to walk, needing a wheelchair, and a few shakes here and there in his hands, wants to test out this legend. He gets up on the table, and the first few needles go in, and everything seems to be going a-okay. Once the acupuncturist puts in the final needle, the old man seems to be doing okay. He even smiles and is able to see his hand, which had long been taken by arthritis, start to move normally. He sits up, looking at how well his hands move. The women who accompanied the old man seem pleased about the procedure. The old man even refuses help from the girls and can walk without needing the wheelchair.

After he leaves, men in fireproof suits come in and torch that place to all fuckin’ hell. They torch the acupuncture table, the women who work there, the walls, everything. Now, the acupuncturist’s place might just be a smoldering pile of nothing, but the statue survived. And Elizabeth Ashley, definitely best known for playing Talia Shire’s lesbian stalker in Windows, is excited to see that it survived.

Felicity (Ashley) agreed upon a price for the statue of $125,000. She gave these men some cash upfront and is now ready to pay the balance. The guy who has possession of the statue says he has come to view the statue as priceless. They can’t sell it for less than twice the agreed-upon price. Before leaving, she warns that there are powerful men in Hong Kong, and she happens to know a few of them.

Felicity returns to a man named Kwan. He agrees that the statue is priceless, but seeing how they exponentially raised the price on her, he is convinced they have the legitimate article. He says that they must possess the statue. Felicity says she doesn’t have that kind of scratch to buy a statue like this, even if it were the real one. Kwan has an idea about who could get the statue out from under the other guys’ control. There is only one man for the job in all of Hong Kong.

Hell yeah… We’re introduced to Joe Don Baker. I’d like to say he’s playing a man named Dan, but he’s really just playing himself. He’s got a bit of an unassuming tough guy swagger. A guy tries to take something out of his pocket, but he yells at the guy to put it back. In the course of yelling at the guy, he makes an appeal to the heavens to say that he will remove the guy’s face if he doesn’t put whatever he took back into his pocket. Early Joe Don Baker is something very similar to Elvis Presley. He’s got that same kind of chubby face that Elvis had when he was younger. That’s just an observation.

Kwan visits Dan. Dan reminds Kwan that this is pretty hairy stuff he’s asking. If Dan is caught, he’s likely gonna be tortured, killed, or both. Kwan says he wouldn’t ask a friend of his to do this if it weren’t for the fact that an innocent woman was cheated. When Felicity comes into the bar to find Kwan, Joe Don can’t help but notice she’s quite the looker. He gets that look in his eye that he always gets when he sees an Arby’s Beef ‘n Cheddar sandwich on his plate, a look of love.

Joe Don’s price isn’t too steep. He’ll do the job for the beautiful lady for $30,000, a romp in the hay, and a hug with a convincing “I love you” from Felicity. I like how Joe Don starts the job. He just walks up to the dealer’s front door and tries to get in that way. When it is appropriately locked, he goes to the room and breaks in through a window. I wish more movies would have a guy on a heist just try to sneak into a place by checking the front door first.

After a bit of a skirmish, Joe Don Baker makes off with the statue. Kwan is going to ship it to Los Angeles to Felicity’s employer as promised. Before Dan takes Felicity home after a job well done, which might also include some naked times for Dan and Felicity, Kwan explains he will work all night to package the statue so it can be shipped safely. He also apologizes to Dan for asking him to do such a dangerous job.

Back at Felicity’s apartment, this movie wastes no time getting these two to lock lips. I mean, I get it, Joe Don Baker is a sex machine and all, but these two have barely spoken to each other in the previous scenes they had. In fact, sex is part of the payment for the job, which is… odd. I guess Felicity’s employment was really on the line with her employer to get the statue if she needed to hop in the sack with the guy who is going to steal the thing. What do I know, man? It’s Hong Kong 1972. If you’re hired to steal a thing, maybe you have to put out. I wasn’t even born yet, so the economics of the time are a bit of a mystery to me.

I joke, but honestly, there is something kind of fun about Joe Don Baker and Elizabeth Ashley’s evening together. They are interrupted during their sex scene by room service delivering this incredible shrimp cocktail spread. This leads to a little montage of them having fun eating all this exotic seafood. It’s funny how quick the movie jumps into bed for these two characters when they had little to no real chemistry outside the acquisition of this statue, but they are likable in this. Joe Don Baker is almost always likable as a character, even in his not-so-great flicks.

And there’s something alluring and appealing to Elizabeth Ashley. She has a kind of smoky voice, and there’s a hint of sultry charm in her big brown eyes. I don’t mean this as a slight in any way, especially because Ashley was in her early 30s when this film was released, but she kind of always had this look about her that came off as “your friend’s hot mom” if that makes sense. She and Baker make for a fun duo, even if you don’t quite wrap your head around their chemistry.

At the hangout that Dan hangs out at, which I think is a place for gambling on Mahjong, the woman who runs the place is visited by some goons who work for Lin To, the guy who had the statue previously. They want to know where Dan lives and are willing to torture her by breaking her fingers one-by-one with a set of pliers. They basically destroy her place.

Dan wakes up in the middle of the night to find Felicity gone and no pile of cash lying around for his other half of the payment. He returns to Kwan’s to maybe see what’s up with that, but Lin To’s goons have arrived to rough up the old man. Dan arrives just in time to witness Kwan be thrown through the roof’s windows to his death. A couple more defenestrations later, and Dan is roughed up, and the cops are there to see what all this is. Before leaving, Kwan’s last words are to ask Dan to take care of Lotus.

After Kwan is cremated, Dan tells Lotus he will do as Kwan asked and take care of her. He’s going to take over Kwan’s business and make a lot of money to help her. Before going to Los Angeles to see a guy referenced a few times before named Jeff, he stops off at the Mahjong parlor to check in on Finzie, the woman who runs the place, to make sure she’s okay. She tells him to do them both a favor and not return to this place. Instead, he should make something of himself.

On the way out, he gets jumped by Lin To’s guys. However, a man and a woman, both of whom are pretty kick ass at the kung fu. The woman, specifically, is interested in going to Los Angeles with Dan. In fact, she has the plane seat next to him. She says that this is about acupuncture, but she still won’t share who she is with Dan. Now, this is Joe Don Baker, right? He’s not exactly gonna fully understand anything clandestine or be able to solve any riddles. He’ll largely do what he does when she keeps telling him that she won’t tell him who she is and give him off-the-wall clues about what it’s all about: look at her confused and say, “Huh?”

We’ll find out this woman’s name is Su Lin (played by an uncredited Ming Shih). She explains to Dan that ancient warriors, when pierced by arrows in very specific spots on their bodies, discovered they felt better than any other wounded soldier. It was like it made them nearly invincible. That statue is the key to properly using the acupuncture needles in a way that the ancient doctors learned about the warriors’ wounds. Su Lin, who later says she works for the government, says that the hunt for this statue has resulted in a lot of bloodshed over the centuries. She’s been tasked by the government to retrieve the statue, as she says it belongs to the government.

Dan believes it really just belongs to whoever possesses it, and doesn’t really agree that any government should horde such a thing. He only changes his mind about allowing her a chance to reclaim the statue by saying she will match whatever offer anyone else makes to obtain the statue. After she rides off to her hotel, Dan meets up with Jeff (Kelly). They talk about Kwan and how much they learned from him. Jeff tells Dan that someone tried to make off with the jars of oil that Kwan prepared and Dan shipped. One got busted open, but it’s possible no one got the statue.

This is confirmed when Jeff and Dan get to Dan’s hotel room to find Felicity taking a bath. She isn’t able to really explain why she had to leave Dan like she did, but her employer, Winters, received the statue and has Dan’s payment. He wanted to give Dan the money himself and thank him for helping Felicity get the statue. He doesn’t want to help her get toweled off or dressed. He doesn’t even really want much to do with her on a physical level. He just wants his money.

She takes Dan and Jeff to Winters’ mansion. The little old man is played by Burgess Meredith. He’s a kooky little fella. He likes to play tricks and have a good time. He also has many, many bodyguards.

Winters is quite unhappy. He opened the pottery only to find no statue, only oil. He reveals that he gave Felicity $300,000 to bring back the statue. That means she was playing everyone too. She had enough money to have bought the statue outright from Lin To, but she low-balled him. He tells Dan, Jeff, and Felicity to find the statue in 24 hours or he will “subtract” them from the face of the planet.

After sending him on his way, it’s revealed that Lin To has been in the house the whole time and overheard everything. He tells Winters that he should not have let Felicity go. She could have bought the statue from him, but she lied to her own employer. Besides, there was no reason to even try to trust her to begin with. If only Winters had gone to Hong Kong, Lin To would be $250,000 richer, and Winters would have still had $50,000 from what his budget was for the statue. Lin To asks what was worth all of this trouble. Was it only to please a woman? No, Winters just simply does not want to die.

Felicity explains that she owes a bunch of money in gambling debts. That’s why she tried to low-ball Lin To and steal the money from Winters. Dan asks to speak to Jeff alone, and they eventually leave to follow up on some leads about where the third and final jar was sent. Lin To attempts to kidnap Felicity as part of a scheme with Winters to give Dan some extra incentive to find the statue quickly. She’s saved by Su Lin, and all four of our heroes, Felicity Lin To, Jeff, and Dan, discover that the third jar was sent to a health club.

So they get to the health club, and they ask one guy if he’s seen the jar. He has not. They ask a lady in the ping pong room. She has no idea what they are talking about. The third guy seems to point them in the right direction, though. I’m not sure why we didn’t just go straight to the third guy, but whatever. What they don’t realize until they actually talk to the right guy who knows what they are asking about, says it’s under the stairs they just walked past.

I can’t exactly tell you why we went to four different guys to ask about the jar of oil, only to be told it was somewhere else. I guess it was to lead to a big fight between the four of our heroes and Winters’ men? It’s cool to see Joe Don Baker, Jim Kelly, and Ming Shih crack some skulls, but I feel like we could have saved ourselves a few minutes of screentime getting there. Regardless, the main point of this scene is that while the three fighters crack those skulls, Felicity is taken hostage by Lin To.

This brings all of them back to Winters, who has obtained that jar. Which… They could have done so anyway and killed the good guys by way of bullets. But… You can’t punch bullets. Those things kill. Those go through punches like butter. So I guess you needed all the lead-up to the big fight and recapture of everyone.

Anyway, Winters has his goons open the jar and, sure enough, there’s the statue. Winters’ top man, Claude, is used to verify the needles’ ability to heal and invigorate the guy getting the acupuncture. The acupuncturist inserts the needles, but the sweaty Claude starts shaking and then tries to reach out for help until he falls to the floor dead.

Su Lin looks over the statue, and it’s revealed that it’s not the real one. Winters tells them to all return to Hong Kong. If they find the statue, all is forgiven. However, he thinks Dan knows where it is. So he sends Lin To to follow him.

And so it’s back to Hong Kong. Dan visits Finzie to ask him if she knows where he can find Lotus. Lin To has recaptured Felicity and is following Dan as he visits Lotus, whom Finzie called “tall for an Asian.” That’s a detail that you would think would make finding her easier than it should be, right? Well, Dan finds her, but he’s got goons on his tail.

He asks Lotus if Kwan gave her anything to hide. She tells him it’s here. She thought about tossing it in the harbor so that no more blood would be spilled. She realized it’s not the statue itself that was evil, only the men who try to possess it. She knows Kwan wasn’t evil, but he sought youth. She only sought his love.

Dan takes the statue and escapes the goons sent to follow him. Once he gets back to land, though, there are going to be more of Lin To’s goons, of which he apparently has many. The good news is that Su Lin also has goons… Government goons. Felicity tries to warn Dan about Lin To’s guys, which gets her stabbed. She still escapes to find Su Lin. In all this climax, someone along the way claimed that Dan killed a kid. This causes about 50 guys to chase him through the streets of Hong Kong’s harbor area. I’m not kidding, at least 50 guys are trying to tear Joe Don Baker’s balls off. It’s kind of a madhouse.

During the chase, Dan ditched the statue at a table selling other statues. The cops come and tell the angry mob that no child had been killed, and Dan is not a bad guy. One of Lin To’s goons, who got mixed up in the mob, slips away to find his boss’s car. Dan follows and smashes the car’s windshield. Dan then chases Lin To through the streets of Hong Kong’s harbor district. They start fighting and, if it has happened like fifteen times in this movie, it will happen again… Dan tosses Lin To through a plate glass window, and he tumbles down stairs to his death.

The statue was found by Su Lin’s partner. She tells Dan that he’ll get his $30,000. He rides to the hospital with Felicity in the back of an ambulance. She tells him he should have asked for more because they won’t be able to live on a measly $30,000. The movie ends with the two of them making out after they tell the EMT to get the fuck out.

Golden Needles is not exactly a good movie, but I gotta tell you, it’s a fun one. It’s the kind of action flick that isn’t as good as, say, what Clint Eastwood might do with a Dirty Harry movie. That said, it’s a little better than just some throwaway exploitation schlock. You gotta love seeing Joe Don Baker at a point in his career where everything is looking up. Jim Kelly is always great, though he’s sorely missed in the final scenes in Hong Kong. He’s not present in any Hong Kong-shot stuff, so it’s clear how this movie was filmed. He’s only present in the Los Angeles stuff and didn’t travel overseas for any additional shoots. But that’s okay. When he shows up in L.A., he’s great.

The movie is relatively simple. It’s all about the MacGuffin. Everyone wants this statue. There are middlemen who will obtain it. There are guys who will kill for it. That’s it. It’s as simple as that. You can argue that the plot sometimes overcomplicates itself by adding additional twists and turns with people double-crossing others, etc. It’s fine. More than anything, it’s just a fun watch.

It’s a little bit of a thriller with people willing to kill for the statue. It’s a little bit of a comedy, particularly with the trio of Baker, Kelly, and Ashley. It’s a two-fister with Baker just pummeling fools who want to fight him. We’ve got the martial arts stuff that was coming on strong in America by this time. That’s what Jim Kelly is doing here, but the real breakout for me was Ming Shih. She’s got some speed to her fighting, and you can see she has talent. She largely made Chinese flicks, and you can tell she is dubbed. She likely filmed all her scenes speaking her native tongue. But that’s fine too. When she showed up, she was someone you kind of wanted to know about. The moment she started throwing down, you definitely wanted to see more from that.

The charm of Golden Needles is that it does not take itself too seriously. It’s an easy-breezy 90 minutes of action with some intrigue. Plus, despite my complete and total hatred of J.C. last week, this is another Kino Lorber flick that looks great. I’m glad that these types of movies have a boutique label to get released through at a very affordable price. Vinegar Syndrome and Severin both have their issues with sticking primarily to grindhouse and niche flicks, and then passing those costs onto their customers. Kino Lorber? I got each of the movies I’m writing about this month and next at no more than $13 a pop directly from their site.

Anyway, this was exactly what the doctor ordered after a really bad time with last week’s movie. Next week, we’ve got something that might turn out to be something of a treat. It’s a movie that might be a little-known inspiration for the stalker brand of the slashers made popular by 1978’s Halloween. Join me in just seven short days for a terrible case of Fright.

Until then, I’m gonna get poked by some needles to see if I can become a real sex machine.