{"id":238078,"date":"2026-04-19T18:30:22","date_gmt":"2026-04-19T18:30:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/238078\/"},"modified":"2026-04-19T18:30:22","modified_gmt":"2026-04-19T18:30:22","slug":"a-gloriously-insane-cult-treasure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/238078\/","title":{"rendered":"A Gloriously Insane Cult Treasure"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jack Gayer revisits the insane treasure that is Miami Connection\u2026<\/p>\n

\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Some films are such colossal pieces of shit that they can only be enjoyed sardonically. Until that limited charm wears off and you fall asleep. Cats (2019) is one of these misguided dumpster-fire films, and no amount of mind-altering substances known to man can make watching it a tolerable experience.<\/p>\n

Other films, a certain type of cult film, are made so earnestly that they can be enjoyed less ironically and more gleefully. You\u2019re still marveling at someone\u2019s folly, but what they made is so unapologetically singular; the movie is downright delightful. These films seem to be made by aliens who haven\u2019t the dimmest idea of how real humans talk or behave. The creators seem to lack even the most rudimentary understanding of story. It\u2019s this bizarre perspective that makes them treasures. The Room (2003) is the classic example. Birdemic (2010)\u00a0is also up there. A lesser-known treasure, but no less fantastic, absurd, and hilarious, is Miami Connection (1987).<\/p>\n

What is Miami Connection? What isn\u2019t Miami Connection, you ignorant simpleton? It\u2019s a love story (two or three, really, if you count the brother\u2019s unhealthy fixation with his sister and one of the main character\u2019s unrequited love for another band member). It\u2019s a crime drama. A musical. A martial arts flick. A meditation on violence? Sure. Buckaroo Banzai (1984) walked so Miami Connection could have ninjas running through a swamp, getting hacked to pieces. This ultra-violent climax, including a graphic decapitation, is followed by a message of anti-violence that\u2019s as head-scratching\/crazy-bananas as it is laugh-your-ass-off funny. The main characters of Miami Connection spend the whole movie going headlong into every fight, brutally, often fatally attacking their karate rivals. Often committing what some would call \u201cmurder.\u201d This movie has been about as \u201canti-violence\u201d as the Jackass franchise has been anti-nut shots. But somehow this film is even more homoerotic and funnier than the whole Jackass series.<\/p>\n

\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The film starts off with a Miami Vice-pulpy-campy feel and takes an immediate turn when we see our first ninja about a minute and a half into the film. The movie only gets weirder and weirder from there. And you should be happy it does. Because what a treat. You\u2019d be forgiven for thinking you\u2019re about to watch a gritty crime drama\u2014with ninjas. Then the opening credits roll in, and the first song spells out what you just saw for you, in case you have anterograde amnesia. The villains are \u201cbikers by day, ninjas by night.\u201d They \u201csteal all your cocaine.\u201d Got it? Good, cuz now it\u2019s time to establish some characterization of the main characters through song as well.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Singing that characterization\u2014followed by a song about being \u201cfriends forever\u201d\u2014is our heroes. Band name: Dragon Sound. Attire: karate gis. Some are shirtless. None of their instruments seems to be plugged in (they never seem to be plugged in). Their lyrics touch upon how \u201cyou got a friend in me.\u201d If that\u2019s too subtle, they continue, \u201cWhen times get tough, you\u2019ll see\u2026you make me strong; I know I can depend on you\u2026Friends for eternity, loyalty, honesty,\u201d and so on and so forth. Is this a song about friendship, codependency, or one of the band members lusting after another band member? It\u2019s all open to interpretation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Also, didn\u2019t we just see someone get their arm hacked off? What is this fun, upbeat ode to \u201cfriendship\u201d? Turning up the weirdness is one of the gang leaders, who may be wearing a fake beard, getting more and more pissed off that his (adult) sister is dancing with the band. According to Jeff (William Ergle), his sister \u201cisn\u2019t supposed to be at the club.\u201d Why isn\u2019t she supposed to be at the club, and why does Jeff have such a toxic relationship with his sister? Who fucking knows. Not since Pin (1988) has there been such a possessive brother-sister dynamic.<\/p>\n

\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Jeff is supposed to be intimidating, but he dresses like how Tobias F\u00fcnke would imagine a tough guy dresses (a sense of style that could easily apply to members of his gang and his ninja crime buddy as well). Ergle delivers his lines with a palpable and endearing anxiety as he struggles to get through his dialogue. You can\u2019t help but think the actor was trying his best. This would be Ergle\u2019s only acting role.<\/p>\n

Jeff\u2019s gang has a similar acting range, where it\u2019s abundantly clear they don\u2019t know what the hell they\u2019re supposed to be doing at any given time. They often stand in the background making vaguely threatening hand gestures, like Jack Donaghy, trying his hand at acting and wondering what to do with his hands. It\u2019s these little details that just keep giving you more to enjoy.<\/p>\n

As you watch, you\u2019ll be asking yourself again and again, \u201cWhy is this scene in the movie?\u201d Certainly not to drive the plot forward or develop the characters, two of the main reasons to have a scene in a movie, that\u2019s for sure. One can\u2019t help but surmise that the \u201cfilmmakers\u201d were just putting in whatever scenes occurred to them that day to pad out the runtime (despite the assertion by one of the co-writers that he read \u201ceight books\u201d about filmmaking to prepare for writing this film).<\/p>\n

\"<\/a><\/p>\n

On the topic of story, does the movie have a plot? Not a discernible one. There\u2019s a loose narrative about the cocaine shipment having been stolen, but it\u2019s all so tenuously held together by seemingly random scenes that we challenge you to figure out what the hell is going on at any given moment. Does it matter? Not really. You\u2019ll be having such a good time with this bizarro world that you can enjoy it on an episodic level. To be fair, this is really the only way to enjoy it.<\/p>\n

And if you want random, the music is a treat. Sometimes it comes out of nowhere and is far too loud, like the composer suddenly woke up from a nap and realized he was supposed to be putting music in the film and overcompensated by cranking up the score. A tactic that drowns out some of the dialogue. At other times, the music is fairly tense and effective, aided by the bone-crunching foley work. If the songs sound surprisingly well-crafted and catchy, it\u2019s because two of the stars, Tom (Angelo Janotti) and Jane (Kathy Collier), are actually musicians. They wrote the songs and helped the production acquire the instruments. They also coached the other actors on how to look like musicians (which apparently didn\u2019t\u00a0 include plugging them in). Unfortunately, Janotti and Collier were also dating at the time, so when Collier had a passionate kissing scene with John (Vincent Hirsh), Angelo was sent off to buy beer so as not to see his girlfriend kissing another guy. Did he not read the script?<\/p>\n

\"<\/a><\/p>\n

If Tommy Wiseau couldn\u2019t write dialogue to save his life, the writers of Miami Connection seem to have gone to the 50 Shades of Grey school of screenwriting. Here is a sampling of some of the more bonkers lines:<\/p>\n

Mark: I didn\u2019t know you had a father. I thought we are all orphans.<\/p>\n

Jack: He\u2019s in there every night with his damn\u2026 gang, selling that stupid cocaine.<\/p>\n

Mark: You don\u2019t scare me at all. AT ALL! GOODBYE!<\/p>\n

But whereas Wiseau thought he was making the next A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), it\u2019s unclear what movie the filmmakers were aspiring to make here. But somehow, it all works. Maybe because self-serious the film is not. How serious can a film be that features a man hand-feeding a roomful of men grapes? And bear in mind that several of the men are shirtless during this forced feeding. But who among us hasn\u2019t been hand-fed a grape by a close friend? However, perhaps taking away some of the intimacy of this gesture is how the grapes are fed: they\u2019re practically shoved them into the friends\u2019 mouths. Several of the actors visibly gag.<\/p>\n

As far as friends go, John and Mark are the closest, and outside of the villains, they probably have the most screen time. But their acting ranges from intense fury during the fight scenes to a sort of blank-eyed incomprehension during other scenes. People have looked more expressive after undergoing complete lobotomies. Mark and Jim\u2019s (Maurice Smith) relationship can best be described as \u201cpredatory.\u201d More on that later.<\/p>\n

\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Regarding friendship and the film as a whole, Y.K. Kim has spoken<\/a> about how viewers looking for a film with music, \u201creal action,\u201d and the \u201ctrue meaning of friendship\u2026they will be crazy about the Miami Connection.\u201d Which would seem to imply that real friendship includes force-feeding your male friends. Preferably shirtless. And not knowing the most basic details about your friends\u2019 lives. Or the meaning of \u201corphan.\u201d<\/p>\n

If The Room had out-of-left-field subplots, say Denny\u2019s drug debts and Claudette\u2019s cancer, Miami Connection isn\u2019t without its own where-the-hell-did-this-come-from twists. Like Jim finally being reunited with his father after \u201csearching\u201d for him the whole movie. Of course the dad would be played by an actor about the same age as Jim, but in laughably unconvincing old-person makeup. There are whole scenes of the cast doing nothing but practicing karate and having sparring matches, where Mark seems to be beating his students to a pulp. Is it part of a montage, like Rocky training? Nope. What information is conveyed? These martial artists practice karate, stupid. In a lesser film, this would feel indulgent. Here it\u2019s charmingly bizarre.<\/p>\n

This movie doesn\u2019t just take the cake when it comes to the bizarre and the nonsensical; it obliterates the bakery. Take the beach scene: there are many shots of women in bikinis and men playing volleyball. There are close-ups of women\u2019s asses and breasts, glistening male bodies, and shots of male dumpers too, all of this communicates, \u201cLook at all this sexiness.\u201d We even see the male characters openly leering and catcalling, in case the message wasn\u2019t clear. And then we cut to several shots of children. The visual grammar would seem to suggest that the eroticism of the male gaze extends to kids. It\u2019s also very possible\/highly likely the editor just didn\u2019t know what the hell they were doing. God knows the screenwriters, directors, and actors didn\u2019t. Rather than detracting from the film, this just adds yet another fruit to the crazy salad.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"<\/a><\/p>\n

At one point early in the film, a professor, possibly of computer science, says, \u201cHey Jane, good circle!\u201d What does this mean? Your guess is as good as ours. But if we had to wager, we\u2019d say this is what one of the screenwriters thinks happens in a computer science class. Not having taken a computer science class, we can neither confirm nor deny this. Truly, every couple of minutes, it\u2019s worth pausing to confirm you just saw what you thought you saw (according to IMDb<\/a>, this professor character is played by a real computer science professor).<\/p>\n

The main characters vacillate between committing acts of extreme violence and having playful boys\u2019 time with the sort of unaffected good nature exhibited mainly by sociopaths or the exceptionally stupid. The homoerotic overtones are so strong they probably should have just pulled the trigger and featured some gay sex scenes. Yes, there\u2019s the grape scene, but there are also the small touches, like the thug who wears shorts so small and tight you wonder why he bothered wearing anything at all. His penis is so clearly visible you could describe it to a sketch artist. In another scene, Mark caresses Jim\u2019s face with his foot before guiding him around the stage, holding his nose pinched between his toes. If someone holding your nose with their foot sounds off-putting to you, Jim seems to love it. It should be noted that Kim seems fond of the toe-grabbing nose move in his own martial arts classes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Frankly, Mark really can\u2019t seem to keep his hands off Jim. At several points, you swear they\u2019re about to kiss. Moreover, you have to wonder, when Tom\u2014the band\u2019s John Oates look-alike\u2014is kidnapped, why do the bad guys take his shirt off? Why is Jeff\u2019s gang working out in the dark? Why is Mark acting like he\u2019s just another college student, living with his buds, when he\u2019s clearly in his 40s and seems to be the group\u2019s karate instructor? In a city where everyone seems to know Taekwondo, and those who don\u2019t know it see no problem picking fights with their better-trained adversaries, anything could make sense.<\/p>\n

\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The glory that is Miami Connection is rife with behind-the-scenes trivia that goes a long way toward explaining much of the film, although nothing will ever fully explain it, much like how Alejandro Jodorowsky could never adequately explain why he opened his film El Topo (1970) with a staggering number of shots clearly showing his underage son naked. John Lennon was a big fan. Of the movie, not the shots of the pantsless minor, that is. However, Lennon wasn\u2019t without his own cinematic penis fixations, as he once made a short film of himself getting an erection. The film lasts 40 minutes. Didn\u2019t write a song about that for the White Album. But less about men\u2019s genitals and more behind-the-scenes info.<\/p>\n

Supposedly, a motorcycle club was paid in beer to act in the movie. It shows. One of the motorcyclists clearly dumps his bike over as he tries to drive it in sand. Why leave a shot in that makes the fearsome biker gang look like buffoons? Probably because they didn\u2019t have the budget or sense to reshoot it.<\/p>\n

The co-director, writer, producer, and star Y.K. Kim was supposedly so popular in Orlando that he was allowed to film without permits. Kim\u2019s resourcefulness didn\u2019t end there. If it seems like the majority of the cast were first-time actors, it\u2019s because they were. Apparently, many of them were Kim\u2019s students from his Taekwondo studios. Other \u201cactors\u201d may have included real-life police officers playing police officers and a federal prosecutor playing the bearded band leader.<\/p>\n

\"<\/a><\/p>\n

According to an interview with Kim, the filming was a nightmare, as he\u2019d never \u201chad time\u201d to see a film before. He was also \u201cshocked\u201d that all the major studios rejected it (the cowards). So, Kim did the next logical thing and brought the film to Cannes. Nearly everyone there told Kim his film was \u201ctrash.\u201d One person told him it needed some fine-tuning. Kim decided to write some more scenes and direct some reshoots himself. After all the improvements he made to the film, Kim was sure Miami Connection would be a \u201cblockbuster.\u201d It was shown on eight screens in Central Florida, and according to Kim, the audience totally rejected it. Despite his retrospective confidence in the movie, it\u2019s also been reported that the ever-optimistic Kim became so depressed after he saw Miami Connection for the first time that he went home and slept for 48 hours straight.<\/p>\n

Kim also promised that there would be an Academy Award-quality sequel suitable for the whole family coming out in three years. That was thirteen years ago (still no sequel, Academy Award-worthy or otherwise). Following the film, among other pursuits, Kim has been doing motivational speeches where his audience chants his name and claps their hands in a totally non-cultish fashion.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If Grease (1978) and The Warriors (1979) had a baby, you might get something close to Miami Connection. Provided they also drank paint thinner while pregnant. There are many terrible-yet-amazing films. Few \u201crise\u201d to this level. Unlike films of a similar ilk, such as The Room, Miami Connection has a purity to it. The star had a vision and believed in himself to an admirable degree, but he didn\u2019t have the ego (or the misanthropic personality) of Wiseau. Kim has said over and over again how his primary goal was making a movie that promoted martial arts. And that he did. Much like one can\u2019t really describe a psychedelic trip, one has to experience it. So too does describing Miami Connection fall short. You just have to experience it. Possibly on a psychedelic.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Have you seen Miami Connection? Let us know your thoughts on our social channels @FlickeringMyth\u2026<\/p>\n

Jack Gayer<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jack Gayer revisits the insane treasure that is Miami Connection\u2026 Some films are such colossal pieces of shit…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":238079,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[123,125,124],"class_list":["post-238078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-miami","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238078"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238078\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/238079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}