Samurai Cop is one of those films that you can not believe is not a parody, as if Lethal Weapon was written by an angry anime enthusiast. Released in 1991, this low-budget action movie is a glorious mess from top to bottom. It has everything: outrageous fight scenes, baffling dialogue, and perhaps the most famous wig in cult cinema. The end result is a film so absurd and out of sync with reality that it reverts to being a masterpiece of unintentional comedy.
Directed by Amir Shervan, an Iranian filmmaker with dreams of Hollywood glory, he went to L.A. with a plan to make an American action film in the mold of Die Hard meets Karate Kid. His vision? A samurai-trained cop named Joe Marshall, who would stop a ruthless Japanese gang with a mix of samurai skills and a lot of questionable police tactics. Samurai Cop set out to be a crime thriller with Eastern flair but ended up as a patchwork of mismatched scenes and cheesy one-liners.
In a 2014 interview with Red Letter Media, Matt Hannon, the actor behind Joe Marshall (the “Samurai Cop” himself), offered some hilarious and revealing insights into the movie’s chaotic production. From Shervan’s ambitious pitch to the unorthodox production, Samurai Cop has a behind-the-scenes story that’s almost as entertaining as the film itself.
Casting the Cop: “I Wasn’t Even an Actor!”
Casting for Samurai Cop was anything but traditional, and that’s putting it lightly. For the lead role of Joe Marshall, Shervan picked Matt Hannon, a former bodyguard with zero acting experience. Hannon himself admits, “I wasn’t even an actor. I was just a big guy with long hair and muscles.” But Shervan saw Hannon’s towering frame and rugged look as the perfect “American samurai,” despite Hannon’s lack of martial arts background. This was low-budget casting at its finest—getting someone who looked the part and hoping everything else would magically fall into place.
The rest of the cast was a mix of local talent, actors looking for their big break, and Robert Z’Dar, who played Yamashita, the menacing leader of the Katana gang. Z’Dar’s distinctive look gave the film some B-movie street cred, but everyone else was pretty much winging it from scene to scene. Improvisation and guesswork became essential tools on set, as Shervan’s directing style left the actors puzzled and, at times, cracking up.
Lights, Camera, Chaos: “We Had No Second Takes”
Production on Samurai Cop was chaos in every sense of the word. The budget was laughably small; Hannon remembers, “We had no second takes,” meaning that every awkward line delivery and every botched stunt went straight into the final cut. Shervan had to rely on natural lighting, leading to scenes that jump from day to night at random, depending on when they could squeeze in a shot.
And then there was Shervan himself, whose limited English added a whole extra layer of confusion. He would give vague, often bizarre direction that left the cast totally in the dark. “A lot of the time, we didn’t know what he was saying,” Hannon joked in his interview. Shervan would sometimes shout random directions like “Be sexy!” even in the middle of a fight scene, making everything feel just a little more surreal.
The Infamous Wig Incident
Then there’s the wig. Oh, the wig. Hannon originally had long hair, which perfectly fit the rugged, samurai-inspired look Shervan had envisioned. But after what he thought was the final shoot, Hannon cut his hair. Unfortunately, Shervan called him back for more scenes, and with no time or budget to spare, the crew put Hannon in a cheap, awkward-looking wig. The result? A jarring continuity error that’s become an iconic part of the film’s charm. Hannon described the wig as “one of the cheapest wigs you could buy,” and the movie shows no mercy in calling attention to it, with his hairstyle swapping back and forth between natural hair and wig mid-scene.
It’s hard to imagine Samurai Cop without the wig—what started as a budget constraint turned into an unintentional running gag that’s one of the movie’s best punchlines.
Sound, Editing, and That Glorious Dialogue
If you’ve ever wondered what happens when dubbing goes terribly wrong, look no further than Samurai Cop. The budget didn’t allow for live sound, meaning most of the dialogue was dubbed in post-production, leading to some of the most out-of-sync lines you’ll ever hear. Hannon explained, “A lot of what you see in the movie is dubbed later,” which only adds to the hilarity as voices never quite match the actors’ lip movements. Combine this with a synthesizer-heavy soundtrack that was often layered over scenes with little thought, and the result was a film that felt like a sequence of disjointed scenes glued together.
Editing was another story. Shervan’s editing was as freeform as his directing, resulting in bizarre transitions where scenes would abruptly change locations or time of day. “There were moments where even I didn’t know what was going on,” Hannon laughed. The choppy, unpredictable editing only enhanced the absurdity of the film, and the fight scenes, which should be the movie’s strong suit, are a jumbled mess of awkward choreography and bizarre sound effects that make the punches feel less like action and more like slapstick.
From VHS Obscurity to Cult Classic
After its VHS release, Samurai Cop quietly faded into obscurity, seemingly destined for the dusty shelves of forgotten video stores. Hannon himself thought it was over, saying, “I thought it would disappear forever.” But with the rise of the internet in the early 2000s, fans of B-movie insanity started passing clips around, sharing the film’s most absurd moments and drawing in new fans who loved its unpolished, eccentric style. Midnight movie festivals picked up the movie, and it became a cult classic—one of those films that fans flock to specifically because it’s so unabashedly terrible.
In 2015, its cult status even led to a sequel, Samurai Cop 2: Deadly Vengeance, with Hannon returning to the role that launched his accidental B-movie career. By this point, he was fully on board with the film’s legacy, embracing the weird, wonderful disaster that had somehow become a beloved piece of bad cinema history.
Why Samurai Cop Is So Lovable
After wrapping, Samurai Cop went straight to VHS and faded into obscurity. Hannon himself thought that was the end of it: “I thought it would disappear forever.” But in the early 2000s, as internet fan communities began embracing “so-bad-it’s-good” movies, Samurai Cop re-emerged as a cult favorite. Fans started sharing clips online, especially the movie’s most absurd moments, like the wig mishap, bizarre fight scenes, and unintentionally hilarious lines (“I want his head, and I want it now!”).
Samurai Cop is like a cinematic time capsule of everything gloriously wrong with low-budget action films. It isn’t trying to be anything more than a pure, unfiltered piece of entertainment. The movie doesn’t waste time on character development or complex plot twists; it’s all about delivering absurd dialogue, nonsensical action, and wig-wearing heroism. Hannon, who had long left Hollywood behind, was stunned by the attention. “I can’t believe people actually like it this much,” he admitted.
Samurai Cop’s Legacy: A Beautiful Accident
Samurai Cop is more than just a “bad” movie; it’s a bizarrely earnest attempt at action cinema that’s memorable precisely because of its imperfections. For fans, it’s a reminder that movies don’t have to be polished to be entertaining. Every awkward pause, cheap wig, and poorly timed edit makes Samurai Cop a unique, joyously flawed film that’s more enjoyable for its chaos.
In the end, Samurai Cop is an unintentional gift to lovers of good-bad cinema, proof that sometimes movies can go so off-the-rails that they end up right where they belong—in the hearts of fans who wouldn’t change a thing.
