Superfights (1995)

PLOT: After the local news media airs footage of his fight with a group of thugs, a young martial arts enthusiast uses his new fame to join Super Fights, a popular fighting organization. What a self-serving dick.

Director: Siu-Hung Leung
Writer: Keith W. Strandberg
Cast: Brandon Gaines, Keith Vitali, Kelly Gallant, Chuck Jeffreys, Cliff Lenderman, Patrick Lung-Kong, Brian Ruth, Feihong Yu, Jim Steele, Rob Van Dam



PLOT THICKENER: 
In terms of future careers, kids have a tendency to dream big. Many aspire to grow up and enter practical fields like medicine or education, while others dream of odd or completely unrealistic jobs: penguin milker or mermaid supermodel. The protagonist in 1995's Superfights falls into the latter group. Probably with a much louder thud than the other kids, because he’s roughly 20 years old.

By day, young Jack Cody (Gaines) works a boring job as a clerk in a sporting goods warehouse.  By night, he’s a lifelong fan of a fighting organization called Super Fights. The competition could best be described as the love child conceived during a drunken night of fun between WMAC Masters and pro wrestling. The fighters have colorful costumes and unique personalities. The live events feature martial arts battles between heroes and villains in front of packed crowds. Jack is so enthralled with the sport that he spends the majority of his work hours going through training drills with an elaborate system of pulleys and mannequins. This is not so unusual. When I worked at American Apparel, I rigged up a similar system to simulate heated confrontations with people in overpriced v-neck shirts who had nothing interesting to say.

During a contemplative night drive, Jack notices a girl being mugged at an outdoor ATM and makes the save. Sally Wong (Yu) is only the latest in a long line of young women who failed to avoid using the cash machine at night in a poorly lit area. (They're called "best practices" for a reason, Sally). The resulting media blitz piques the interest of Super Fights president Robert Sawyer (Vitali) and he sees dollar signs. Not because he’s on LSD, but because the young media hero represents a great business opportunity.

Sawyer extends Jack a lucrative offer -- an American flag-themed costume and a roomy townhouse -- and the one-time superfan joins the ranks of his idols as a competitor. He finds himself brushing shoulders with guys like No Mercy Budokai (Lenderman) and Dark Cloud (Jeffreys) in the locker room and the gym. He hones his skills in a high-tech training center under the tutelage of Sawyer's right-hand lady, Angel (Gallant), herself an active Superfighter. Throughout the film, you can cut the sexual tension between Jack and Angel with a knife, because the sexual tension is room temperature and easily spreadable on bread. Kelly Gallant side-boob has that effect on things.

To balance out the friskiness of this mentor-student relationship, Jack occasionally trains with Sally's grandfather (Lung-Kong). A Tai Chi master, Grandpa Wong doesn't think much of Jack's fighting skills, his new gig as a famous fighter, or even his townhouse. The elder is right to be suspicious because things in the world of Super Fights are not as they appear. The fighting roster is encouraged to gargle down an odd vitamin cocktail and selected fighters regularly cruise around in a white van and leave a trail of destroyed restaurants and crippled drug dealers in their wake. What are they up to? Why doesn't Jack close the deal with Angel or Sally? Why did the filmmakers dress up Chuck Jeffreys like a Jamaican Jack Sparrow?

As stated in the past, the real sweet spot for American DTV martial arts movies is that holy intersection of a zany premise, good fight sequences, and hilariously bad acting. The latter element here, while hammy, isn't consistently awful enough to be funny, but the premise, characters, and fantastic fight sequences in Superfights make this a delicious slice of action cheese. In his American directorial debut, Siu-Hung Leung took a bit of a risk by relying on a first-time actor in Brandon Gaines to carry the film, but Gaines hits most of his character’s notes to perfection. He's enthusiastic to the point of obnoxiousness and naive to the point of stupidity, which makes the journey into his passion's sleazy underbelly all the more compelling. Or ridiculous.

Given his easygoing demeanor and a serious lack of vocal gravel, one could argue that Keith Vitali was a poor casting choice for the Robert Sawyer character. However, I’d make the case that these traits, in some ways, enhance his Sawyer’s veneer of warmth and generosity. Such a personality guise made Gaines’ buy-in all the more plausible. Furthermore, his fight scene at the back-end of the film is one of the better scenes you're likely to find in Stateside martial arts output. It’s shot competently, the choreographers make good use of the physical environment, and the performers move with that elusive mix of speed and fluidity.

The film’s appropriately titled theme song, “Superfighter” is an inventive exercise in lyricism. Most action film songs would be content to pair thematically relevant cliches with a few killer guitar licks. Instead, the song “Superfighter” makes direct references to training techniques, the deceptions at the story’s center, and even specific character names. It is both endearing in its absurdity and completely awesome in its literalism. Yes, of course you can find it on YouTube with subtitles.

 

VERDICT:
For fans of both the martial arts genre and offbeat action, Superfights represents the colored, overlapping portion of the Venn Diagram. There are certainly better uses of your time than creating logical visualizations of related film genre concepts, but I just spent three hours writing a rundown of a chopsocky/wrestling movie. I’m not here to judge. If you like your plots zany, your characters bizarre, and your martial arts fast and technically proficient, Superfights fills all three of your needs. Also, side-boob.

6.5 / 7

American Kickboxer 1 (1991)

PLOT:
A disgraced former kickboxing champion must rebuild his life after going to prison. In his absence, his arch-rival rises the ranks and taunts him from his perch atop the middleweight kickboxing world, where he has a nice view of the ocean, a brand-new dog park, and his own house.

Director: Frans Nel
Writers: John Barrett, Emil Kolbe
Cast: John Barrett, Keith Vitali, Brad Morris, Terry Norton, Ted Le Plat, Len Sparrowhawk, Roger Yuan


PLOT THICKENER:
If you watched nothing but Gary Daniels or Cynthia Rothrock movies, you might be lulled into thinking that kickboxing exists only as a tool of violence and retribution within the world of drug runners, serial killers, terrorists, Communists, and crooked authority figures. I actually do watch nothing but Daniels and Rothrock movies, so I was surprised to learn that kickboxing is an actual sport too.

BJ Quinn, played by Chuck Norris acolyte and b-movie veteran John Barrett, is an aged champion kickboxer at the back-end of elite status in his career. After a hard-fought victory over middleweight contender Chad Hunter (Vitali) he and other figures from the kickboxing universe attend an after-party hosted by his promoter (Sparrowhawk). Unfortunately, young punk upstart Jacques Denard (Morris) hits on Quinn’s lady, Carol (Norton) during the festivities and roughs her up when she rejects his advances. Quinn responds with shit-faced aggression but before things reach a boiling point, he lashes out at a bystander trying to break up the scuffle. The clumsy oaf flails his way through a shoddily constructed glass table and later dies in a hospital. You might say: “how can someone die from falling through a glass table?” But you need to remember this was the early 90s. The medical community was almost entirely focused on combating AIDS and probably had no one on staff qualified to treat his cuts and scrapes.

The fallout from this accident is devastating for Quinn. While Hunter vouches for his character at the trial, Denard offers deceptive testimony to muddy the waters. The judge hands down a stiff 12-month prison sentence and bans him from all title fights for the next five years, which effectively ends Quinn’s prime. No more electrifying kicks. No more girlish screams to pump up the crowd between rounds. No more Roger Yuan and the guy with puffy mullet as his corner men.

Upon Quinn’s release from prison, Carol picks him up from the clink in his old sportscar, but despite the show of loyalty it’s obvious Quinn is a changed man. He stands in silence in front of his fish tank wearing nothing but tighty whities. He drinks constantly, sometimes by himself. His relationship with Carol is rocky at best, and his newly formed friendship with former opponent Hunter is tenuous and marked by bickering. Quinn further isolates himself in an effort to reconstruct his identity as a person, not a fighter, but he continues to struggle with the absence of kickboxing glory.

Monitoring most of this and other kickboxing happenings is a newspaper reporter named Willard (Le Plat). He wants nothing more than to get a headline about middleweight kickboxing on his newspaper’s front page and will do just about anything to get it. Well, he doesn’t blow or blackmail anyone. But he’s pretty much a stalker who harasses every fighter he can find for quotes or backstage dirt. Because of this, he has a contentious relationship with virtually everyone, and Denard in particular has it in for him. As a character, Willard wasn’t entirely necessary but it allowed Nel to integrate a lot of modified newspaper headlines.

Despite his status as new champion, Denard doesn’t have a desire to be the best so much as he wants to be better than Quinn. He goes out of his way to antagonize him and his arrogant sense of entitlement is on full display throughout the film. He turns up to formal soirees in tank tops and ill-fitting pants, wears dark sunglasses during a court testimony, threatens kids seeking autographs, and even headbutts an innocent locker door. While all of this sufficiently characterizes Denard’s dickishness, Morris so thoroughly embraces the character’s traits that we can’t help but be entranced. Much of an audience’s hatred for a villain is set in motion by a single event but Denard is such a complete and utter asshole in everything he says and does that you legitimately want to see him beaten to death. And he has horizontal lines shaved into his head, which is OK if it’s 1991 and you’re nine years-old. But give Denard a pair of Ray Bans and some skinny jeans and he’s pretty much every hipster douche you’ve wanted to see step in dog shit and into oncoming traffic.

As a fighter, Denard is talented but his strategies in the ring are unconventional. At the start of matches, he allows his opponents to land a few strikes in order to get pumped up. Following that, he typically drives them into the ropes or the corner and hammers away until they’re knocked out or the ref gets between them. That said, he’s not above including cheap shots in his arsenal either. All the while, he plays to the crowd while decked out in teal tights under a colorfully patterned banana hammock and flowy tassles. The result is one of the more colorful martial arts villains of the era, and it’s a shame Morris’s skills as both actor and fighter weren’t put to better use in additional films. This was his last film role and he hasn’t been heard from since. It’s unlikely that you’d see Bolo Yeung or Michel Qissi giving this nuanced of a performance (especially in thongs with tassles) so Morris deserves to be lauded for his efforts.

The fights in the film are light on creative choreography and heavy on dodging, bobbing, and weaving. While certainly realistic in the context of a kickboxing match, it isn’t all that interesting to watch unfold on the screen, though all of these guys are good fighters. However, Hunter and Quinn deserve special recognition for some intense training montages. While they don't reach quite the same sweaty and rippling heights, the film contains the most homoerotic jogging scenes since Balboa and Creed in Rocky III.

VERDICT:
Because of the bad hair, bad fashion, and goofy montages, there was great potential here for the film to flail about in a vast pool of piping hot Gruyere … and it still does, at times. But the story and strong performances from Morris and Barrett elevate it above the trappings of its place and era to exist as an average-to-solid redemptive sports story. Audiences have seen this Rocky-style arc done bigger and better elsewhere -- like in, uh.... Rocky -- but Nel is somehow able to forge cohesion with the film’s elements and it results in a fairly entertaining watch.

AVAILABILITY:
Freely available via Amazon and Netflix. Tassles and thong not included.

5 / 7

Bloodmoon (1997)

PLOT:
A mysterious killer with metal fingers has been knocking off martial artists, and Det. Chuck Baker is stuck with no leads as his superiors are losing patience. When retired cop Ken O’Hara joins the investigation, he and Baker must work together to put an end to the murderer’s reign of terror.

Director: Siu-Hung Leung
Writer: Keith W. Strandberg
Cast: Gary Daniels, Chuck Jeffreys, Darren Shahlavi, Frank Gorshin, Nina Repeta, Brandie Rocci, Hakim Alston


PLOT THICKENER:
During a lunar eclipse, the earth’s atmosphere can bend red sunlight into our planet's shadow and scatter out blue light. The result gives the moon an orange or reddish appearance. Lunar eclipses occur at least twice a year and present excellent opportunities for night photography, stargazing, and killing martial artists.

The nameless homicidal martial artist, played by Darren Shahlavi, is a practitioner of several fighting styles and as it turns out, many hobbies. Among other activities, we see him strolling through a park snapping photos and later, admiring the talent at the local nudie bar. But there’s one pastime that’s giving the NYPD absolute fits. Like, other than the murdering. It’s his robust set of advanced computer skills. He sends cryptic, taunting emails to the station. He livestreams a murder and sends them a link to watch. I would guess he’s pretty good at Quake too.

Following in a long line of martial arts stars playing characters of the same name, Chuck Jeffreys plays Det. Chuck Baker. The time he doesn’t spend cracking jokes is used to perform archaic magic tricks like sneezing out flowers and producing flames from his hands. Also contributing to his lack of productivity on the case is that his work space is covered in karate magazines. Seriously, there isn’t an inch of visible desk or floor in his entire office. While some might point to his enthusiasm for the martial arts, I’d wager it’s more likely that he’s a compulsive hoarder. It’s only slightly better than accumulating malnourished cats.

Collecting back issues of Blackbelt magazine and doing sleight-of-hand on the city dime aren’t Baker’s biggest offenses. The department is much more concerned over his inability to turn over a clue or lead in the killer martial artist case. His direct superior, Chief Hutchins, is catching plenty of heat from the press for the lack of progress. With Hutchins, the film satisfies one of the basic tenets of b-grade American martial-arts film by casting recognizable television character Frank Gorshin in the role. I’m not sure if someone replaced all of the periods with exclamation points in Gorshin’s copy of the script, because he ends almost every line of dialogue by yelling angrily. Then I remember that his top detective sneezes flowers ... so I guess he has every right to be pissed all the time.

So Hutchins sends Baker to entice retired detective and profiler Ken O’Hara (Daniels) to join the investigation. Due to a traumatic past and his fragmented family situation, O’Hara is initially resistant. He softens his stance because you can’t have Gary Daniels in a movie and contain his natural instinct to fight people and pursue martial arts killers. It’s in his blood!

Initially, Baker and O’Hara don’t get along particularly well. Baker likes to make jokes, O’Hara is uptight. Baker carries a gun, O’Hara detests them. Baker sounds a lot like Eddie Murphy, O’Hara sounds like Jason Statham’s older, slightly more effeminate brother. In time, they discover common ground and are able to work together. Surprisingly, their love and practice of the martial arts is not this mutual interest, but rather the fact that they’re both crappy husbands who work too much. And much like my grandparents, they’re both completely confused by the concept of email.

When they’re not showing off their prowess during impressive fight scenes, Baker and O’Hara walk through a number of scenarios common to police procedural films. They play “good cop/bad cop” with a hacker, analyze wounds on dead bodies with a coroner, and pore over evidence. Through it all, they’re also trying to deflect involvement from the daughter of a slain martial artist (Rocci), who wants nothing more than to take vengeance for her father’s death. Considering the established buddy cop dynamic, this subplot was as useful to the story as tits on a cactus. However, it did lead to a pretty cool fight centered around some “refrigerator and cramped NYC apartment kitchen” choreography. I only wish it looked that cool when my wife beats me up for burning waffles.

The action in Bloodmoon ranges from solid to fantastic as Daniels, Jeffreys, and company are utilized to great effect by director Kuang Hsiung. A member and former vice chairman of the Hong Kong’s Stuntman Association, Hsiung’s fight choreography is tight, crisp, and fast, and his performers are up to the task. While Daniels and Shahlavi are both seasoned vets of Hong Kong action films, Jeffreys brings equally valuable experience as a fight choreographer and stuntman on Hollywood sets. There’s some fairly blatant wire-work during the climactic fight, but it’s not so defiantly unrealistic as to be offensive and the rest of the choreography during this stretch more than makes up for the visual missteps. We also get a very cool Kendo-influenced swordfight, complete with metallic sparks and sword clash sound effects. Most important, we get wrestling star Rob Van Dam dry-humping a girl on top of a pinball machine.


Action aside, the film is not without its narrative flaws. Most, if not all, of the story’s focus on computer technology comes off as clunky and half-baked. The killer’s apparent omnipresence is never fully explored and despite a very cool look (steel-tipped boots, cape, mask) he spouts off some pretty wretched villain cliches (among them: “Welcome to hell!” and “The end game has begun!”) There are some lazy stock characters as well -- the angry chief and the hacker-as-fat-pervert are the worst offenders -- but in pointing them out, it’s equally important to acknowledge that we’re watching mid-90s American martial arts here, not a Michael Mann crime thriller. That said, I still have no clue why Baker needed the magician background. That shit was creepy.

VERDICT:
Having not seen much of his other work, I’ll prematurely conclude that Bloodmoon is Gary Daniels’s best starring vehicle. He and Jeffreys have good chemistry and the fight scenes are well-choreographed. It’s a bit of a shame that Kuang Hsiung didn’t do more work in the American film industry; his direction is solid and his fight choreography is creative and visually engaging. He and Strandberg would team up again for 1997’s Superfights, but Bloodmoon is the better of the two and definitely deserving of your attention. Great action cast, solid plot, and RVD dry-humping a girl on a pinball machine.

AVAILABILITY:
A new copy might cost you a pretty penny, but you can get this shizz on Region 1 DVD via Amazon or EBay.

7 / 7

No Retreat, No Surrender 3 (1990)

PLOT:
Two brothers are forced to put aside a bitter sibling rivalry when their father is murdered by a lethal terrorist syndicate. While each follows a different path towards an inevitable showdown with the villains, they both manage to fuck up in equally illogical ways.

Director: Lucas Lowe
Screenwriter: Keith W. Strandberg
Cast: Loren Avedon, Keith Vitali, Rion Hunter, Joseph Campanella, Wanda Acuna, David Michael Sterling


PLOT THICKENER:
When the day comes to finally retire, I plan to walk away from the world of business fully cashed out with no loose ends. I will grow a wily and unkempt beard, live somewhere deep in the woods, and brew my own mindbending moonshine. Retirement is a difficult proposition that, for some, leads to part-time consulting or inspires an outright refusal to quit. For those involved with the dangerous world of covert operations, the concept doesn't appear to exist at all. The field is a dangerous web of death and deceit that never fully relinquishes its grip from those who partake in the madness.

John Alexander (character actor Joseph Campanella) is a classic case of the former workhorse who can't walk away from the game. He keeps former agency cohorts as social buddies and his son, Casey, is deeply entrenched in the "Company" work as a hard-kicking field agent. Portrayed by Keith Vitali, Casey leads a quiet and modest life. A carousel of smoking hot ladies, a shiny performance sportscar, and designer suits at least two sizes too big are a few of the luxuries in which he indulges on a regular basis. Having followed in his father's footsteps, he is regularly lauded by John and his CIA friends as he consistently farts excellence as a model of covert greatness. Very quietly, of course.

Not all of the senior Alexander's clandestine genetics were passed onto his progeny though. His younger son, Will (Avedon), stands firmly against everything his family's employers do. He refers to the lot of them as babykillers and has no qualms about rocking a swanky Soviet-inspired denim jacket at his dad's birthday party with scores of CIA employees in attendance. He ain't no fairy peacenik, though, working as a karate instructor by day and ... probably something in retail at night. Despite his ambiguous academic credentials, he lives the grimy undergraduate lifestyle. His wheels: a used VW Bug. His meals: loaves of bread and cola in the can.

Will is not unlike many younger siblings in feeling overlooked and underestimated due to his older brother's stature. The source of the tension between the two brothers isn't explicitly stated but we can infer it has something to do with Will being a stubborn nancy and Casey being a cocky prick. Papa Alexander recognizes his sons' unique differences but wants nothing more than for the three of them to spend quality time together. His silly insistence on investigating a terrorist syndicate sorta puts an end to that aspiration, because they show up to his pad after his birthday party and give him a surprise present: a Rolex! Ha, kidding. It was actually a violent and bloody death.

Leading the group of assholes-for-hire is the devious Franco, played by Rion Hunter. A veteran of action television with few film roles under his belt, Hunter more than holds his own in this early and rare role as main scoundrel. Other than a trademark deathblow, the cardinal rule for any martial-arts villain is a striking visual presence and Franco nails it in every conceivable way. His signature look forgoes sinister for stylish -- an incredible bottle-blonde mullet paired with a rotation of turtlenecks and stylish jackets with the sleeves rolled up to the elbow. It's Miami Vice meets Dynamic Dudes on Don-Niam-as-Stingray Boulevard and it works to great effect. His deathblow is equally memorable: a bird-sized metal dart launched with expert precision.

Not only does Franco walk the walk, but he talks the talk with several great lines. He remarks at one point that singed human flesh smells much like roast pork, and while this is a precarious assertion at best (I'm in Camp Grilled Chicken) he sounds confident saying it. Throughout the film, Franco's line delivery boils over with a relaxed arrogance befitting a terrorist leader who has consistently evaded capture and while neither he nor his minions appear to have any concrete political beliefs, they definitely have demands. We never learn what those demands are, but Franco insists that they definitely have some. Furthermore, the group is based in that most fiendish cesspool of terrorist strongholds -- Florida. My guess is their list of demands begins with a better hangout in a different state.

Most of the second act follows Will's adventures in planning and executing an infiltration of Franco's gang and Casey's attempts to prevent his brother from getting in over his head. Throughout this process of push-and-pull, the energy normally reserved for hating each other is instead used to fuel their collective thirst to avenge their father's death. I'm not sure what that says about the human condition, but I can say that the net result is a lot of fucking kung-fu. Among the three entries in the NRNS franchise, Blood Brothers has the slickest action choreography and highest volume of hand-to-hand fight sequences by far. That being the case, it also has the highest amount of visible stunt doubles and the most ridiculously convuluted plot in the series. And while I sincerely feel the original NRNS set the bar for technically inept American martial arts filmmaking, the boom mic here makes so many onscreen appearances it should have been given an acting credit. I'm not sure how director Lucas Lo managed to overlook this most egregious set of errors but I have a feeling he was too busy shooting technically proficient fight scenes with visible stunt doubles.

The film culminates with several kidnappings, an incredible showdown inside an airplane hangar, and even a cameo by a certain 41st President of the United States. Also: buckets of drool, sweat, blood, and slo-mo, though I'm not sure if it's possible to place slo-mo in actual buckets. While Avedon is rock solid across all categories and Vitali's fighting skill barely manages to overshadow his atrocious (though amusing) acting, Rion Hunter shines through as the overall prime performer of the bunch. His Franco is the best creation of villainy in the NRNS franchise and while that might not seem like the biggest compliment, he's one of the best villains in the history of Western martial-arts film, though that doesn't seem like such high praise either.

VERDICT:
Marked by great fight choreography and even better late 80s hair and fashion sense, Blood Brothers is the final official sequel in the No Retreat, No Surrender trilogy. This subtitle is fitting since the central characters -- much like the three films in the NRNS franchise -- have nothing in common with one another but find a way to work together because of the bond to the person who created them. As mentioned, it has the best fight scenes of the three films and much of it is on par with most Hong Kong output during the same era. It's a shame Rion Hunter didn't do more villainous film roles, but given the sheer volume of random black belts who won tournaments getting film roles during this period, it's no great surprise he didn't have long-term traction in the genre. A certain must-see, if not a must-own.

7 / 7