UNCLE DON’S VIEWS OF NIL REPUTE:

Pulling Excalibur from the stone would have been a piece a cake compared to trying to yank any logic from “Crank High Voltage.” This flick is the worst idea since the DH rule.

We last left Jason Statham at the terminus of the first edition of “Crank.” Upon falling from a helicopter, he was making effective use of the weakest of the four fundamental forces. Terminal velocity was followed by terminal stoopidity as he hit the top of a car like a bird dropping, bounced like a California tax refund check, and landed face down in the asphalt. Did he live fast, die young and leave a corpse with two-day-old stubble? We gotta sequel to do here. Like the old man in Monty Python’s “Holy Grail,” he’s not dead. Yet. (I know “yet” is not in that scene. Don’t bug me).

Statham is Chev Chelios, some sorta marginally successful hitman who seems to be a walking Hurricane Katrina. Dead and destruction follow him along with the obligatory bad music and Chinese accents that are worse than the tires on my Pinto. Nearly everyone in this sorry excuse for filmmaking sport teeth that would easily fill a second edition of The Big Book of British Smiles.

The plot, especially for those of you incapable of negotiating numbers greater than the number of fingers on both hands, is fortunately rather simple. Ole Chevy has lost his heart and wants it back. Dude, hit the yellow brick road and look for the Wizard.

He’s lost his heart, cuz some Chinese guy, played by David Carradine, yes, the Kung Fu guy, kyped it. Really. Grasshopper should just need to take the pebble from his hand to get it back, I guess. But instead, Chev takes the scenic route to retrieve it. We’ve got chases, gun fights, car crashes and the usual assortment of wannabe Quentin Tarantino scenes.

Turns out Chev has got other organs that refuse to die. So he’s to be kept around as an organ bank.

Recovering from his sub-terminal plummet out of the helicopter, he wakes up in an operating room dirtier than any Highway 99 gas station head you’ll ever have the pleasure of not finding enough toilet paper in.

Did you fall for “Alien Autopsy” too? Still do? Then check out the operating room scenes in “Crank High Voltage.”

Wonder how much the “Crank” producers paid to use the outtakes in this flick.

Remember Chev has to be kept alive, so his heart is replaced by something that looks like something Dr. Jarvik made. In kindergarten. Blindfolded. One arm tied behind his back.

I wonder with what they’ll replace his brain?

It should be pretty valuable; it doesn’t look as though he’s used it much.

But, like Frankenstein’s monster, he escapes from the Craftsman tool-equipped operating room.

Until he can retrieve the real deal, he needs to constantly recharge his fake heart. Requiring volts like a Democrat needs money or an editor needs IQ points, he gets creative with his approach.

He inserts his finger in cigarette lighters, grabs transformers, attaches jumper cables to sensitive body parts, and because this is a family film, rubs up against old ladies to create static electricity.

Along the way, he and the screenwriters manage to offend nearly all known ethnic groups and probably a few we haven’t heard of yet, but will.

They don’t miss a stereotype even down to the doughnut-fed cops who couldn’t shoot the bull, much less a barely moving target.

“Crank High Voltage” brings to mind Civil War bullets.

Dumdum.

UNCLE DON reviews B-rated movies and cheesy musical acts for the Independent. He can be reached by e-mail at reallybadwriting@yahoo.com.