Movie Description
Miami Connection is a 1987 independent martial arts film starring Y.K. Kim, who also wrote and produced the feature. Originally, the film was critically maligned and received poor box office return upon release. It remained unseen for decades until Drafthouse Films restored the film for a proper release in 2012.
The film opened in August 1988 in eight theaters in Greater Orlando. The film premiered in Greater Orlando and screened in Greater Orlando, Daytona Beach, and Melbourne in Florida. The film also opened in West Germany. Kim said "I was so excited, and I had no doubt that we would pack every theater and it would be a blockbuster." Instead Miami Connection had a poor critical reception and its run in theaters ended after three weeks. The Orlando Sentinel said that it was the worst film of 1988. The film had a cost of about $1 million and almost bankrupted Kim.
In 2009, a programmer at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Austin, Texas, Zack Carlson, found the film on eBay and made a blind $50 bid, which he won. Carlson screened the film in the theater in Austin, Texas and found a positive reception, so he gave the film to the creative director of Drafthouse Films, the distribution division of the Alamo Drafthouse Cinemas. The director, Evan Husney, called Kim, and asked to get permission to re-release the film.
Jacquie Allen of Tucson Weekly said "Miami Connection is quite possibly the most hilariously terrible film made in the '80s, which is no small feat...the film has gained a cult following over the years and with good reason: it is one of the best bad movies ever made."
