Some films stay cemented in the cultural zeitgeist because of unparalleled artistry. Others, like The Last Dragon, are immutable by dint of their distinct charm, regardless of overall quality. A ridiculous cross-cultural curio which blends Blaxploitation with Bruce Lee-inspired martial arts and Motown musical, Michael Schultz’s 40-year-old cult classic is as good a time as ever.

As so many pop-culture diamonds in-the-rough, the plotting is less important than the oddity of its set pieces and background dressings. Ostensibly, the film is about a young martial artist, Leroy Green (the mononymously credited Taimak), on a spiritual quest to find Master Sum Dum Goy (if that sounds like a Yiddish-inspired, Mel Brooks-ian pun, well… it is). Leroy has just finished his training, and his current master (Thomas Ikeda) tells him that he doesn’t need a master anymore — he has achieved the last accomplishment, the “Last Dragon,” which supposedly allows those who have reached this apex to concentrate so much energy, they emit a glow.

But his journey is mostly a red herring. Leroy doesn’t seem to be in any real rush, and anyway, Schultz and writer Louis Venosta are much more interested in throwing a bunch of banana peels in his path in the form of dance-obsessed gangs, overeager paramours, sociopathic business moguls, his Sєxually precocious younger brother, Richie (Lee O’Brien) and a psycH๏τic rival named Sho’nuff (Julius Carry), whose obsession with Leroy borders on the romantic.

There Is No Shortage Of Enjoyably Bizarre Window Dressing In The Last Dragon

No sooner has Leroy left his master’s dojo that he runs into Sho’nuff at a screening of Enter The Dragon. The theater is packed with a wide array of diverse characters and populations: drag queens, trans women, breakdancers, violent gangs, and, of course, Leroy, who has been walking around modern-day New York dressed as an ancient samurai. Sho’nuff’s gang’s mere presence breaks the fabric of reality, since everyone seems to know the “Shogun of Harlem,” who wears an eccentric camo and bright-red threaded gi and slotted black shutter shades.

After that brief but chaotic stand-off, Leroy finds himself at the right place at the wrong time, as he witnesses Laura Charles (Vanity) getting kidnapped by a band of goons, led by Chazz Palminteri in an early-career bit part (also making a brief appearance: William H. Macy as Laura’s nebbishy segment producer). Laura is the video jockey for her locally-owned studio where she shoots a Soul Train-inspired television show called 7th Heaven. Her captors? Hired by video arcade mogul Eddie Arkadian (Christopher Murney), whose sole villain motivation is getting his fame-aspiring girlfriend, Angela (Faith Prince) on the air.

Leroy dispatches with the bad guys without so much as breaking a sweat, but he does leave behind a medallion his master gifted him and which is meant as a key to finding Sum Dum Goy. As if all that wasn’t enough, Leroy is further slowed down by his loving family. His father (Jim Moody) owns a pizza parlor he expects Leroy to work at (“Just directa your feetza to ‘Daddy’ Green’s Pizza!“), and Richie is constantly berating his older brother for being a virgin. Taimak was just 19 years old when he was cast as Leroy, and, were it not for the significant disparity in height, you’d think Richie was the elder.

Leroy is so innocent that he cannot see just how badly Vanity wants to have Sєx with him, though her come-ons are so obvious that his protestations inadvertently suggest the protagonist might just not be interested in women, something that Richie hints at as a dated insult. Nearly every other line Vanity delivers is a Sєxual pun, especially when Laura attempts to hire Leroy as her full-time bodyguard (“I’m looking for someone to guard my body.“) The only actual indication Leroy is interested in Laura comes in one scene when the two are driving on the Upper West Side and Leroy asks, “for a friend,” how to treat a woman, and Laura responds that she’d “love to show you some moves.”

Vanity is utterly effervescent as Laura, a charming and bright presence that gives the main bulk of the film just enough grounded quality for the rest of the cast to skate on. Taimak’s performance is mostly lifeless unless he’s in a fight scene, but it is more than papered over by Vanity and by the sheer volume of wacky side performances. Murney’s eyes are perpetually bulging out of his balding head, as he turns Arkadian into a Looney Tunes-like villain hell-bent on vengeance. Carry’s performance bursts so outside the frame that most people’s ᴀssociation with The Last Dragon is Sho’nuff’s belligerence.

Even watching the film now, in 2025, the color is explosive. Literally, as in the penultimate fight when Leroy and Sho’nuff each use their respective “Glow” in a wild standoff. Angela is dressed in neon pink spandex and a multi-colored rope-like shawl in one scene, and as a “Sєxy” taxi cab while shooting a music video. There is a trio of Chinese gang members who stop Leroy on multiple occasions and have no discernible plot function except to, ironically, mock Leroy for his Asian-ness (Taimak is Black, but his devotion to martial arts causes a number of dated, racist insults).

At some point, the gimmickry becomes tedious. Yet, the film is a lasting triumph for a reason. Its extreme wackiness being what it is, it can be easy to overlook just how warmly and competently it is actually made, with Michael Schultz’s direction allowing space for the martial arts to be seen in its entirety. The fight scenes are really fun, and the soundtrack is aces with wall-to-wall bangers. It can be tempting to get bogged down in the film’s ridiculousness (it is extremely so), but it is also pretty impressive how Schultz holds it all together nonetheless.

Films of this vibrancy are rare these days. Especially in its loving construction and commitment to multiculturalism, The Last Dragon may indeed be the last of its kind. Its staying power is probably due as much to its uniqueness as to its distinctly 1980s aesthetic. Though it is sometimes a bewildering mess, the film totally works in spite of its more ludicrous intentions, a standing piece of proof that the more specific a piece of work is, the more universal it somehow becomes.