The film has a post-holocaust setting – although one that never leaves the industrial suburbs in terms of locations. There are psychotic wasteland mutants wearing bad makeup and hideously overacting and a mutant warlord who insists that people fight in gladiatorial combat. There’s a small community for the loner hero to defend, a few motorcycle stunts and lots of martial arts action. Hero Ron Marchini attempts to mimic the monosyllabic tight-lipped delivery that Eastwood and Stallone manage but this goes hilariously wrong and comes out more as a phlegmatic dopiness. The whole film is conducted very cheaply. From the mutant cult that worships the crystal to the girl dancing in the bar wearing what looks like a sheepskin rug for a top, nothing in the film whatsoever has the slightest conviction. The one scene that does have an uncanny authenticity – it almost gives the impression that the filmmakers were shooting so much on the cheap that they did it for real – is the scene where Marchini pulls a bullet out from his leg with a pair of tweezers and then cauterizes the wound.

Karate Cop is actually a sequel to an earlier post-holocaust action film, Omega Cop (1989), also starring Manchini.