Fists of Iron (1995)

PLOT: A single dad with an engineering degree who works as an auto mechanic decides to pursue underground kickboxing after his friend is killed. Will his drunken has-been trainers teach him enough to avoid a similar fate?

Director: Richard W. Munchkin
Writers: Sean Dash
Cast: Michael Worth, Marshall Teague, Sam Jones, Eric Lee, Matthias Hues, Jenilee Harrison, Nicholas Hill, Lelagi Togisala, Michael DeLano, Art Camacho, Nick Koga

 

PLOT THICKENER 

Recent reports indicate that nearly half of college graduates got their first job outside their field of study. Taking a longer view, around one-third of college graduates will never work in the field in which they pursued their degree. I myself went to school for alternative medicine and now I work in the legal field. Hmm, or did I go to school and partake in self-medicating which wasn’t legal? It’s all a bit foggy (much like my dorm room at the time). The central character in 1995’s Fists of Iron may have wasted his college years by getting some newfangled engineering degree, but his job as an auto mechanic gives him enough money to live on the beach (in a mobile home), drink like a connoisseur (at a dive bar), and buy expensive clothes (baggy silk shirts and suspenders). Take that, higher education!

Dale (Worth) is the young and single father to an adolescent daughter. Things with his ex-lady didn’t work out, but Dale is a stand-up guy who made sacrifices to give his daughter a stable environment. He sold a business to help put his ex and his daughter in a proper home, while he lives the dream of residing in a mobile home on the beach like Riggs in Lethal Weapon. He makes his living as an ace mechanic during the day, and spends many of his evenings at a local watering hole with his best friend, Matt (Hill), getting into skirmishes with drunken riffraff. While attending a kickboxing event at the sprawling estate of a local fight promoter, the devious Peter Gallagher (Teague), Dale playfully reminds his pal of all the fighting he’s done on his behalf. Matt’s pride gets the better of him, and when a $2,000 open challenge to survive two minutes with Gallagher’s prized monster Victor Bragg (Hues) is announced, Matt is the first to throw his name in the hat. Surprisingly, he lasts the requisite 120 seconds and takes the cash prize home, but not without cuts, lumps, and internal bleeding to go along with it.

While recouping on the beach outside of Dale’s house, Matt succumbs to his injuries during a nap. Furious and filled with remorse over the death of his childhood friend, Dale does what anyone would do: he goes to the bar to get drunk. While there, he fends off a disgruntled customer from his car garage and then confronts two old-timers who were purportedly once fighters but now like to cut loose and observe instead of engage: Daniel (Lee) and Tyler (Jones). Dale asks them for their help so he can take on Gallagher and his fighters, but they rebuke this silly notion, and Tyler even stops Dale’s punch bare-handed when the young upstart gets frustrated. Because this is a 1990s kickboxing film, this resistance only lasts for about another 10 minutes. Before you know it, the pair of former fighters are instilling their wisdom in a fresh young fighter who’s gifted, as Tyler puts it, with “an iron fist.”

Due to this being such a cookie-cutter subgenre, I was prepared to hit the snooze button on this but was surprised at how much I enjoyed the film. The hero is sympathetic given his circumstances, Marshall Teague plays a terrific and dickish villain in Gallagher, and Sam Jones and Eric Lee have great chemistry with each other and with their trainee. This is one of those cases where a film becomes more than the sum of its parts because the performances are spot-on, and there's some humor peppered throughout to make these characters relatable. Sure, there are missteps. All of Gallagher’s fighters are dressed up in the most unintimidating K-Mart-level ring gear I’ve ever seen. It really undercuts the brutality of the monstrous Victor Bragg when he’s dressed in the same loose, star-print pants and matching cut-off sweatshirt that my mom used to wear to her aerobics class. The screenwriter went a bit too heavy on exposition-heavy dialogue at times, leading to some clunky, unnatural exchanges between characters. But when a movie features a line as unabashedly 1990s as “see the girls in the flowered vests to place your bets,” it’s hard not to jump on the bandwagon despite some flaws.

In an odd bit of serendipity, we’ve now covered consecutive films featuring actresses from the television show, Dallas. Jenilee Harrison -- who famously replaced Suzanne Somers on Three’s Company and played Jamie Ewing on Dallas -- appears here as a love interest to the story’s hero, much like her Dallas colleague Charlene Tilton did in Deadly Bet (see prior post). The tangled web doesn’t stop weaving there! The actress who replaced Harrison on Three’s Company, Priscilla Barnes, appeared in Talons of the Eagle as -- who would have guessed it? -- the hero’s love interest. Before he appeared in the Kickboxer sequels as David Sloane, Sasha Mitchell played the illegitimate son of J.R. Ewing on Dallas. Andrew Stevens -- who co-starred with Karen Sheperd in Blood Chase and directed Don Wilson in Virtual Combat -- played a hustler working for J.R. Ewing. Will the chopsocky film connections to Dallas ever end? More likely, it will puzzle and enthrall researchers for centuries.

Fight choreographer Art Camacho and director Richard Munchkin have worked together eight times, starting with 1991’s Ring of Fire and ending in 2004 in one of those hilarious chimpanzee action films. Either as a result of their cinematic chemistry or the efforts of a crafty second unit director, the fight scenes in Fists of Iron look quite good. Fighters' heads and the punches that hit them snap with intensity. Just about every fight is lively, with striking and countering combinations that make sense. Different fighters have distinctive styles and their abilities are showcased by camera angles that allow the choreography to breathe. Worth’s character tests his mettle against a variety of fighting mini-bosses, all the way up to his climactic fight with Hues’s heavy-hitting behemoth. Their match is fairly entertaining while still maintaining some semblance of believability -- the strategic advice dispensed by Dale’s teachers is actually deployed in the fight itself (and by extension, the choreography) and all too often, films fail to stick to this formula. Combine that with plenty of cutaway shots to people in the crowd dressed in the finest threads this era had to offer, and I’m a happy viewer.

VERDICT

Some will gloss over the plot of Fists of Iron and conclude, “another post, another kickboxing tournament film,” and they wouldn’t be wrong. The main difference between this film from many others with a similar story, is that this film has a lot of heart. It also has a bruised spleen, broken ribs, and cauliflower ear. The fight scenes are fun, the dynamic between the hero and his teachers is entertaining, and the film has some of the most amazingly weird underground fight tournament crowd shots I’ve ever seen. Dig it.

AVAILABILITY

Amazon, eBay.

4.5 / 7

 

When B-List Goes Hollywood: Part 2

The last time we scoured the earth for martial arts b-film actors in mainstream film and television productions, we found nearly a dozen offbeat appearances. Billy Blanks celebrated a touchdown in a Bruce Willis movie by offing himself, Don Wilson nearly kicked Tom Green in the face, and Jerry Trimble acted alongside Al Pacino in an overstuffed Michael Mann crime film. By no means was that list comprehensive though; our team of researchers* has uncovered a group of eight more.

* Me

Jeff Wincott - Prom Night (1980)
Before he was beating up on Dave Matthews in Lake City or playing undercover cops pretending to be homeless on The Wire, Jeff Wincott was fighting the likes of Matthias Hues and starring in a barrage of PM Entertainment releases. Before *that* however, he was rocking a blonde moptop and tuxedo shirt as a rapey meathead in Paul Lynch’s 1980 Canadian slasher Prom Night.

Chuck Jeffreys - Ghost Dog (1990)
Including Chuck Jeffreys again might be a little obvious considering his prolific career as both Hollywood stunt coordinator and performer. But I chose to list this one because even though Jeffreys’s appearance as a mugger is fleeting and he gets his ass kicked by an old man carrying groceries, I do love Henry Silva making elk noises, and I dig the work of Jim Jarmusch. A personal favorite.

Billy Blanks - Kiss the Girls (1997)
Plays a kickboxing instructor, surprises no one.

Rion Hunter? - The Doors (1991)
I can't confirm this appearance at all. It’s a total shot in the dark and I'm only going by the listed IMDb credit. Given that the NRNS3 super-villain is credited as "Indian in the desert," I watched The Doors with particular attention paid to the desert scenes, with especially close attention paid to the desert scenes involving Native Americans. Hunter was not the dying old Native American man near the beginning of the film. He was not the Native American man with the hat played by Wes Studi. He was also not the Native American man in the cave. I can only conclude then, that Rion Hunter played the naked blurry Indian on horseback on a distant sand dune during the peyote trip scene.

Don Wilson - Batman Forever (1995)
Under a mask of glow-in-the-dark face-paint, Don Wilson is virtually unrecognizable as a gang leader in Batman Forever. This role was historically significant for three main reasons: 1) this is the only film I can recall where Wilson actually plays a villain; 2) this is the film where the first Batman franchise officially went off the rails; and 3) you can observe the exact moment where Chris O’Donnell’s film career peaked upon beating Wilson in a hand-to-hand fight.

Matthias Hues - Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991)
Hues plays a hulking Klingon general alongside British heavyweight actors Christopher Plummer and David Warner. While a cool role, this wasn’t exactly new territory for Hues; he played an alien drug dealer two years earlier in the Dolph Lundgren actioner I Come in Peace.

Loren Avedon - Baywatch (1993)
Failing to ask Loren Avedon in two consecutive interviews about his guest appearance on Baywatch as the evil underground fighter Michael Branson will go down as one of my great regrets in life. How many performers in Hollywood can claim that they got paid to pretend to kick and punch The Hoff in the face? Of those performers, how many can also say that they got to engage in fisticuffs with the innovator of a cash-printing fitness craze? Only one: Loren Avedon.

Mark Dacascos - Iron Chef America (2004-2013)
Whether or not he ever tops the high watermark achieved in 1997’s Drive, Mark Dacascos will also forever be known to mainstream audiences as the wild-eyed dude shouting “SECRET INGREDIENT: ______!” in every episode of Iron Chef America. There’s a possibility that Dacascos is prohibited from munching down on the chefs’ creations and forced to eat mayonnaise sandwiches from catering, but he still has the cushiest and most regular mainstream acting gig of anything we’ve listed here.

Any others come to mind? Leave them in a comment below!

Death Match (1994)

PLOT: A dockworker's friend goes missing after participating in underground fights to the death. To be more accurate, though, they fight to the death only occasionally. Other times, they just break appendages or fight until one guy gets too tired and falls asleep in the ring.

Director: Joe Cappoletto
Writer: Curtis Gleaves, Bob Wyatt, Steve Tymon
Cast: Ian Jacklin, Martin Kove, Matthias Hues, Michele Krasnoo, Benny “The Jet” Urquidez, Eric Lee, Peter Cunningham, Ed Neil, Jorge Rivero, Richard Lynch.


PLOT THICKENER:
I had this post ready to go earlier in the week, but after reading similar coverage over at Comeuppance Reviews, the events of the past 10 days or so made me rethink my jump-off point of positioning Death Match as a DTV answer to The Expendables that happened years ago. Suffice to say, there have been a lot of movies in the martial arts b-movie catalog that stacked their casts with recognizable names. Shootfighter, to name one, featured Martin Kove, Bolo Yeung, John Barrett, Kenn Scott, Hakim Alston, Gerald Okamura, and William Zabka in its cast. That’s enough action b-movie talent to choke a horse! (To be fair, Bolo alone would be sufficient for the task of horse-choking).

Director Joe Cappoletto’s 1994 film Death Match is like Shootfighter on cocaine and redeemed IOUs. He either had a ton of friends in the business or a vast, filthy collection of blackmail material -- this is an incredible cast. So what if there’s no Brian Thompson or James Hong? We get appearances like Eric Lee as a hotel proprietor, Conquest star Jorge Rivero as a crime boss, and pro wrestlers Tony Halme and Debra Micelli as random muscle for short action scenes. Richard Lynch. A dwarf in a do-rag hitting a gong before matches. Benny “The Jet” Urquidez. Two minutes of Ed Neil from Breathing Fire fighting No Retreat No Surrender’s Peter “Sugarfoot” Cunningham. This sort of fanboy casting might be the closest we’ll ever get to Tarantino directing a DTV kickpunching homage.

Death Match stars Canadian kickboxer Ian Jacklin as a dockworker named John Larson. He and his friend Nick Wallace (Hill) are winding down their shift and shooting the shit. When Nick approaches who he assumes is the foreman to collect their paychecks, he's stopped by a bodyguard. A massive brawl ensues and the pair of friends is forced to kick ass. During the skirmish, a broken crate reveals a stash of guns and the heroes make a break for it before things get too heavy.

They head to the local bar to pound beers and lament the loss of their jobs. This is the third time they've lost employment together since moving to Los Angeles! John speculates that he may head north to find work, save money, and head back to college. Nick has other ideas. He recently met a dude at the gym who runs underground fights and they pay handsomely, or at least enough to cover a small studio apartment and the occasional trip to Whole Foods.

The aforementioned dude is Paul Landis (Kove) and as far as crime bosses who are into designer glasses, and own lots of blazers, and have a pool, and enjoy red-rope licorice, and think that crystals give them magical powers, and credit their “edge” on the competition to the use of computers, he’s a tough customer. He’s flanked by right-hand man Mark Vanik (Hues), a smooth-talking hulk who’s a little oversensitive about his hair (he beats up anyone who refers to him as “Goldilocks”). In addition to their underground fight ring, the duo also sells illegal firearms -- like any sound businessmen, they offer multiple products to create more marketing opportunities and diversify their customer portfolio, Procter & Gamble stylee.

Business comes at a cost, which Nick soon discovers first-hand when he fails to kill his opponent during a fight. The crowd voices their disappointment, and no, Nick, they are not mispronouncing your name as “Booowallace.” Landis and Vanik confront him in the locker room about closing the deal and whatever happens next is anyone’s guess, because Nick disappears and John is left with only questions about the whereabouts of his friend and former co-worker.

This is the point where our filmmakers crank the “film noir undertones” knob up to 11, but the knob breaks off at 6 and the machine starts smoking and sparking and then everyone has to evacuate the building because it’s on fire. John cruises around L.A. on his motorcycle and meets all sort of odd characters holding different pieces of the puzzle. Who’s on his side? What does the foxy journalist really want? Why is Michele Krasnoo playing her character like she’s a 12 year-old boy who just bought his first Dr. Dre album?

For the most part, this film delivered the goods. It was well-paced, the characters were interesting, the acting was competent, and the action was solid. I’ve groaned in the past about the constraints of tournament and/or underground fight movies, but I couldn’t find much to malign here because the main story thread was compelling and it moved at a good clip. The fights themselves take place in a variety of settings with all sorts of variables: in a cage, with sticks, on the streets, with boxing gloves, inter-gender, in bars, and even on a military ship. There’s a date montage inter-cut with a training montage, a villain obsessed with crystals and early-90s computer technology, turtlenecks, bolo ties, and strategic conversations while characters are getting massages. Cappoletto went down the fucking martial arts b-movie checklist and ticked all the boxes. Does that make it a little “paint-by-numbers”? I guess, but he colored within the lines and has a creative palette.

VERDICT:
When the novelty of interesting casting choices has worn off, what’s left? That’s the question this or any film which makes a spectacle of its ensemble cast is forced to answer. Fortunately, the filmmakers crafted Death Match as a pacey underground fighting story with film noir flourishes. The fight choreography won’t blow you away, but Ian Jacklin brings improved charisma to the screen, Martin Kove is hitting his rich asshole villain stride with another good performance, and all of the players -- martial artists and otherwise -- fulfill their roles admirably. Recommended.

AVAILABILITY:
VHS, Region 2 DVD, or YouTube.

5 / 7

Fist of Feature: The Year in Search

A burgeoning area in the world of Internet marketing, search engine optimization is not something to which we pay much attention here at Fist of B-List. However, in my annual review of back-end web analytics -- coincidentally, conducted about 15 minutes before writing this feature -- I discovered a number of interesting searches that led users here during the 2012 calendar year. I’m consistently amazed that anyone besides me actually reads this stuff, so I just wanted to highlight some of the more unique starting points. In no particular order, here are the ten most unique searches which brought users to this blog in 2012.

“shower sex”
A 2008 study by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention found that an estimated 234,094 nonfatal bathroom injuries were treated in the U.S., making shower sex a risky proposition. A major disparity in height can make sex in the shower terribly uncomfortable. Hard water can cause painful losses in the body's natural lubrication. Arguments can arise out of the differences between preferences in water pressure and temperature. None of this stopped the filmmakers behind 1992's Talons of the Eagle from featuring a shower sex scene between Jalal Merhi and veteran actress Priscilla Barnes, because it looked pretty good on VHS. This was the most popular search leading users to this blog in the past year.

“don the dragon wilson is a doctor”
Is not! He’s a martial arts actor and former kickboxing champion!

Oh. I stand corrected.

“just want a list of movies made about fucking highschool movies where a janitor teaches the new kid how to defend himslef”
Sometimes you want to find out what’s coming out on the Criterion Collection label in 2013. Other times you want to know the best movies of 2012. Other times you just want a list of movies made about fucking high school movies where a janitor teaches the new kid how to defend himself.

“fridays with tadashi yamashita”
If nothing else, the obscure 1980s late-night sketch comedy show Fridays was famous for a staged melee involving Andy Kaufman and future Seinfeld cast member Michael Richards. But who knew that American Ninja actor Tadashi Yamashita was the host?

“my wife beat me”
Sorry to hear that. Maybe you should stop spending so much time on the Internet and learn how to properly defend yourself.

“b-rated martial arts actor with blond hair and a black belt in martial arts in the 1980's”

 

 Oh, OK. That narrows it down.

“why you shouldn’t smoke weed”
...and Fist of B-List comes up in the search results.

“does the billy blanks movie, back in action, have any rape scenes”
Nope, only murder, drug trafficking, and Canada’s McNamara brothers. Hope that helps!

“bolo yeung get in the soup”
Come on, Bolo! What are you waiting for?

“lost hacky sack”
Maybe you shouldn’t have smoked all that weed.

Any strange turns of phrase that brought users to your blog or website recently? Share them in the comments below.

TC 2000 (1993)

PLOT: The earth is dying a slow and terrible atmospheric death. The elite have retreated underground, leaving the rest of us to choke on the aftermath. The inconvenient truth is that this is the straight-to-video martial arts movie Al Gore wishes he had invented.

Director: T.J. Scott
Writers: J. Stephen Maunder, Richard M. Samuels, T.J. Scott
Cast: Billy Blanks, Bolo Yeung, Bobbie Phillips, Jalal Merhi, Matthias Hues, Kelly Gallant, Harry Mok, Ramsay Smith, Bill Pickells

PLOT THICKENER:
While many will knock the glory days of straight-to-video American martial arts films as inconsistent, campy, or mostly bad, no one can say there was a lack of variety in the genre’s stars. You had the quick and kicky fighters like Jerry Trimble, Cynthia Rothrock, and Loren Avedon, wily workhorses such as Don Wilson, and underutilized talents like Keith Cooke and Kathy Long. Another prevalent subset of talents were oft-glistening strongmen such as Matthias Hues and Billy Blanks. Throw in the original Chinese Hercules, Bolo Yeung, and you’ve got yourself a party with 1993’s TC 2000. Someone definitely spiked the punch with whey protein.

Through narration that recalls equal parts Peter Falk in The Princess Bride and Morgan Freeman in The Shawshank Redemption, we learn the lay of the land from Jason Storm (Blanks). In the not-so distant future, the earth’s atmosphere has rebelled after years of abuse and pollution. The rich have moved underground and safeguarded their resources with high-tech security, while the less fortunate scrap away for survival on the surface world. These poor souls huddle around oil drum fires, refuse to brush their teeth, and battle over bags of drinking water in underground fights held above-ground. It’s best not to figure out the logic there.

Storm and his partner, Zoey Kinsella (Phillips), are security officers called trackers who respond to security breaks in the ruling class’s underworld emporium of food storage and boiler rooms. As of late, sabotages have skyrocketed and the head of operations, the Controller (Smith) is none too pleased with the attacks. Zoey suspects that the tracker patrol schedules are being fed to the aggressors, The Controller’s right-hand man Bigalow (Hues) thinks that Jason is a punk bitch, and Jason thinks that the recipe for mussels and pasta he got from Epicurious is absolutely delish.

Meanwhile, The Controller and his head scientist are working on a secret cyborg prototype called the TC-2000 X, but they need a dead body to get the project rolling. Where the fuck are they going to get one of those with so many healthy, breathing people walking around? As they say, when life hands you lemons, make lemonade and mix it with Robitussin and Jolly Ranchers, then set up a lethal hit on one of your own people.

The cyborg born out of the Controller’s scheme immediately makes contact with the recent saboteurs, the Picasso Gang, led by Niki Picasso (Merhi). A clunky alliance is forged and Picasso has designs on a full-scale overthrow of the underworld. Only after listening to some vinyl, though, because his crew is comprised of high-fashion hipsters dressed to the nines in leather berets and faux furs. Admirably, Jason strikes out on his own to put a stop to the hipster takeover, but discovers that he alone can’t compete with their knowledge of obscure post-punk and ironic facial hair. Teaming with a surface world martial arts master named Sumai (Yeung) is the only chance he has to squash their ambitions.

Technically speaking, this is one of Film One’s slickest productions given the limited budget. The trackers wield laser stunners which exhaust both enemies and 90% of the post-production budget with electrocution effects. During chase scenes, viewers are treated to intense close-ups of Billy Blanks’s face, intercut with Terminator-esque first-person perspective utilizing “tracker view” overlay graphics. The locations are mostly well-scouted and integrated, and the film is thankfully short on generic warehouse scenes. To compensate, it beats you over the head with “people in lab coats frantically pushing buttons in a control room” scenes. Last, it was nice to see some thought and care went into the costume designs for the Picasso gang, even if they look the same as every other post-apocalyptic gang of thugs trotted out in leather, fur, and unnecessary face paint.

What would an early 90s DTV martial arts flick be without some hilarious missteps? There’s visible boom mics and crash mats aplenty, an incredible man-on-fire scene, and heaps of awful dialogue. Just when you thought you’d seen the last of villains consulting a watch before telling the heroes, “it’s time to die,” along comes TC 2000 to get your leather pants all swampy with cliches. Worse yet, Jalal Merhi gets not one, but two scenes where he makes out with the beautiful Bobbie Phillips, because mashing tongue with the female lead is in his contract. Cue the jealous angry fist-shaking now.

We’ve been harsh on the way fight scenes are often handled in Film One productions, but this film gets the viewing angles and editing correct more often than not. First-person and over-the-shoulder perspectives are used sparingly and fights are well-paced without too much reliance on fighters standing around while huffing and furrowing their brows at each other. The choreography is mostly substandard, but there are plenty of funny fight screams, grimaces, and sweaty embraces mid-battle between Yeung, Hues, and Blanks.

VERDICT:
TC 2000 cribs freely from the buddy-cop formula, Demolition Man’s reanimated-corpse-as-troublemaker, and science-fiction film’s general fascination with cyborgs. These elements alone are cause for concern. However, the story keeps its focus on the right elements for the most part. In stepping to the side as a supporting player, Jalal Merhi manages to deliver what is arguably his best (or least wooden) performance. While TC 2000 isn’t fantastic by any objective stretch of the imagination, it’s a pretty serviceable 90 minutes of goofy sci-fi action fun, and an upper-tier entry in the leg-sweeps-and-lasers subgenre.

4.5 / 7

When B-List Goes Hollywood: Ten Random Appearances by Martial Arts Actors in Mainstream Media

Partly because I have too much free time, but mostly because of this blog (which was more or less born out of having too much free time), I often pore over the filmographies of martial arts b-movie actors to track down films to review. Because of the niche skill-sets that these actors brandish, many of them have done little else but martial arts or action film and television work. Thus, most of my searches reveal no surprises. Every once in a while, though, I’ll stumble across an acting credit that’s unique because of the role the actor is playing, or because of the visibility of the production itself. When an actor jumps from PM Entertainment to an 8 PM prime-time television slot, it’s cause for celebration. Plenty of martial arts b-movie actors have logged screen-time in mainstream film and television productions. Some of these I knew and some were new to me, but compiled below is a short and random list of some of my favorite examples.


Dale Jacoby - Step by Step (1994)
The owner of one of the most incredible early-90s pompadours in action film history had few roles where he didn’t play a raging, Zabka-lite douchebag. So it’s no great surprise that he visited familiar territory for this supporting television role on a 1994 episode of TGIF’s saccharine stepfamily sitcom, Step by Step. Jacoby plays an evil and arrogant karate coach opposite Sasha Mitchell’s Zen-surfer martial artist, Cody, who’s trying to instill the fighting spirit in his nerdy step-cousin. The casting is a little less random when you consider that Jacoby and Mitchell worked together on Albert Pyun’s Kickboxer sequel in 1991.

Chuck Jeffreys - Pootie Tang (2001)
It was a bit of an inevitability that the Shaolin Wushu expert and Bloodmoon co-star would appear on this list. His list of various stunt credits in Hollywood productions is impressive and he’s one of the most prolific American fight coordinators of the modern film age. In a two-decade career that’s found him training Wesley Snipes for sword battles in the Blade films and choreographing fights in Spider-Man, perhaps none of his cinematic contributions were more memorable than selling the awesome power of the belt in the 2001 cult comedy Pootie Tang. Sine your pitty on the runny kine!

Jeff Wincott - The Wire (2008)
Jeff Wincott is probably the most “actorly” of the bunch on this list and has had a ton of mainstream film and television roles (The Invasion and last year’s Unstoppable among them). After combing through his credits, I’d narrowed it down to his role as an undercover "homeless" cop on HBO's The Wire, or his part in 2008’s Lake City, where he plays a menacing drug kingpin who slaps the shit out of Dave Matthews and strangles his balls, striking a mighty blow for jam-band haters everywhere. Odd as that might be, it gets no bigger than the series finale of the best television show in history.

Cynthia Rothrock - Eye for an Eye (1996)
More than any other part listed here, Rothrock’s role as a self-defense instructor is so short and fleeting that you will literally miss it if you blink. A Sally Field revenge thriller is pretty much the last place you’d expect to find a martial arts actor of Rothrock’s stature, but you can’t blame her for taking a break from the Herculean task of carrying Jalal Merhi to watchable movies.

Matthias Hues, Big Top Pee Wee (1988)
If you can find something more random than Matthias Hues running around in a lion-tamer’s outfit acting alongside Kris Kristofferson in this oft-reviled sequel to Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, I will give you my last can of Crystal Pepsi.

Loren Avedon - In Living Color (1991)
What makes Avedon’s cameo on the legendary Fox sketch-comedy show interesting is not that he plays a redneck cowboy, or even that he has to sell a terrible stomach punch by Damon Wayans (playing hilarious vocabulary manipulator Oswald Bates). Rather, this guest role came shortly after what arguably remains his best and most popular film, The King of the Kickboxers. Avedon shouldn’t feel too bad though; Wayans pilfered his co-star for a role in another mainstream production on this list.

Don “The Dragon” Wilson - Stealing Harvard (2002)
I was ready to put The Dragon down for his role as the gang leader who sets his day-glo goons on Robin in Joel Schumacher’s Batman Forever. However, because the skull make-up turned him nearly unrecognizable, and “gang leader” isn’t quite so strange a part for a martial arts actor, I had to give top prize to his even more random role in the 2002 comedy Stealing Harvard. Wilson counted the late Chris Penn as one of his best friends in Hollywood and plays one of the Reservoir Dogs star’s drug gang thugs. Seeing him as a neon nightmare in a superhero summer blockbuster is pretty cool, but the viewing experience of the Bloodfist star trying to kick Tom Green’s head off while adorned in not much more than flip-flops and boxer shorts is fucking surreal.

Gary Daniels - The Expendables (2010)
There’s nothing unusual about a prolific DTV action star playing a supporting role in a Hollywood action production. What makes Gary Daniels’s role in the 2010 action throwback The Expendables unique is that Sylvester Stallone had literally dozens of actors he could have used to stoke the flames of action b-film nostalgia. While most of Gary’s action scenes in the film fell victim to choppy editing and the dreaded Hollywood shaky-cam, his inclusion suggests that Stallone has at least some admiration for DTV action of the 1990s. This might portend more interesting casting choices when you consider the rumor that Stallone’s vision for the sequel will be a “love letter to martial arts.” GASP.

Billy Blanks - The Last Boy Scout (1991)
I apologize to those of you who have been unable to fit this film into your viewing schedule at some point during the last 20 years, but Blanks might have the most impactful screen time of all the parts listed here. As star football running-back Billy Cole, Blanks has the joy of doing a bunch of PCP at halftime during a game and then shooting several would-be tacklers with a firearm during a breakaway running route in the film’s opening. After scoring a touchdown, he blows his brains out. Umm... Tae-Bo anyone?

 

Jerry Trimble - Heat (1995)
In his film debut, champion kickboxer Jerry Trimble played a mulleted drug dealer who gets his face burned with a space heater in The King of the Kickboxers. Five years later, he had a speaking part in some marginally successful crime drama directed by Michael Mann, and starring actors like Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Val Kilmer, Jon Voight, and Natalie Portman. Um...so...yeah. Jerry Trimble rules this list forever.

I know that I’ve missed a ton of equally deserving parts, so feel free to contribute your favorites in the comments below.

Mission of Justice (1992)

PLOT: A down-on-his-luck cop named Kurt Harris infiltrates a secretive organization dedicated to peace, order, and the election of a six-foot tall Amazonian mayoral candidate. What he discovers will possibly be incriminating but definitely be on VHS tape.

Director: Steve Barnett
Writers: George Saunders, John Bryant Hedberg
Cast: Jeff Wincott, Karen Sheperd, Brigitte Nielsen, Matthias Hues, James Lew, Billy Williams, Tony Burton



PLOT THICKENER:
It’s not often that I make personal disclosures in this space, but I’ll start off with one here: I went nearly three decades without watching a Jeff Wincott film. I’ll pause now for the collective gasp and screams of “FRAUD!”

He was never an actor I purposely avoided (*cough* Lorenzo Lamas) but since I was elbow-deep in Lundgren and Van Damme films during my prime direct-to-video years, Wincott never crept onto my cinematic radar. But much like other important milestones like sex, ice skating, and rigging live bait, the longer you go without watching a Jeff Wincott film, the harder it becomes to really start. So I pegged his 1992 film Mission of Justice as my jumping-off point.

Police officer Kurt Harris (Wincott) is a cop with a total respect for the rule of law to match his propensity for using whatever force is necessary to bring criminals down. When an abusive informant kills his girlfriend after being released by the department’s sergeant, Harris wigs out on his dickhead superior and earns a two-month suspension after punching him out. His partner, Lynne Steel (Sheperd) wants to see cooler heads prevail but Harris’s belief in the system is all but destroyed, remarking that as cops, they’re “supposed to stop the bad guys, not process them.”

To blow off some steam, Harris visits his old friend and boxing trainer and champion Cedric Williams (Burton) at his gym. A veteran of all six Rocky films, Tony Burton has carved out a nice career for himself by getting typecast, which is really not all that unusual considering he was an actual boxer. Harris and Cedric pump some iron and work out together, but the latter’s strange mood isn’t lost on Harris. Although he refuses to discuss the issue with his friend, Cedric is piping mad because a local mayoral candidate named Dr. Rachel Larkin (Nielsen) has been using his name and image to promote her campaign without his permission.

Dr. Larkin is not only a statuesque blond capable of ripping apart lobster tails with her bare hands, but also a philanthropist and public safety hardliner. Through her organization, the Mission of Justice, she’s recruited a task force of fighting experts dubbed the Peacemakers to supplement the municipal law enforcement in their crime-fighting. Why would Cedric ever consider aligning himself against such a virtuous cause? His terminated association with the Mission of Justice points the way.

After Harris leaves for the evening, Dr. Larkin and her head goons, Akiro (Lew) and Titus (Hues) pay Cedric an unexpected visit. At first, she tries simple persuasive language to bring Cedric back into the fold at the MoJ. When that doesn’t work, Cedric and her brother, Titus, have an impromptu fight in the ring which the latter wins handily through established Western boxing techniques like elbows, cheapshots, and breaking the opponent’s hands. After Cedric’s continued dogged resistance to Larkin, everyone decides to depart amicably without further conflict. That is to say, Larkin knifes him to death.

Harris is devastated when he discovers the news about his friend. After the chaos at the crime scene dissipates, he breaks into the gym and discovers little left other than a single flower buried in the sand of a slashed heavy bag. He’s not alone, however. Lynne figured he might come snooping around the crime scene, so she comforts her friend and partner by sharing the grisly details of Cedric’s death, driving Harris to sob and probably snot and drool all over himself.

Later at home, he makes a critical connection the way most of us render logical conclusions: while watching an old spaghetti Western on TV, drunk as shit. A Larkin campaign commercial airs and the decorative bud on her lapel suggests a reasonable facsimile of the flower he found at the gym. Instead of sharing his hunch with his fellow officers, he pursues it at the source by enlisting in the Mission of Justice the very next day.

After going through a brutal combative gauntlet to earn his stripes (a pinky ring and a free t-shirt), Harris joins a regular patrol of Peacemakers to keep the streets safe. His search for the truth about the organization continues through election day, where the conflict comes to a glass-shattering, knife-pulling, hand-breaking head.

If the quality of a film’s action were to be described in terms of 8-bit video games instead of superlatives, Mission of Justice would have been Rampage (pretty good) if not for two terrific set pieces that elevate it to Mega Man 3 (really good). The first, in which Wincott’s character is put through a gauntlet against dozens of Peacemakers to prove his worth, manages to be both well-choreographed and visually striking. Harris and the trainees are all equipped with fighting sticks and fight choreographer Jeff Pruitt gives the various techniques room to breathe without sacrificing any of the visceral impact. The mat in the corridor is a bright red, which contrasts nicely with the trail of black-clad fighters in various states of disrepair that Harris leaves in his wake. Even more impressive? According to an interview with Stack of Dimes, Wincott had no prior experience with fighting sticks or the many techniques endemic to eskrima and other weapon-based martial arts like it. He learned 45 minutes before the scene was shot. The other main course might not have the same visual sting as the gauntlet scene, but still manages to deliver the fun. I’ll avoid spoiling too much, but it includes action movie tropes like stunt-falls and wire-work, and creative choices in weaponry, like chainsaws and light tubes.

Director Steve Barnett pulls decent performances out of his actors and weaves the action and mystery elements into a tight, well-paced 84 minutes. When a film is bookended by characters getting smashed through windows, I have a hard time finding faults. I was a little disappointed to learn that screenwriter George Saunders was not the same George Saunders who writes awesome and hilarious short story collections, but it wouldn’t be fair to use that as a mark against the film. One oddity worth mentioning is that in addition to checking the financial records of its applicants, the Mission of Justice also used something called a “bio-feedback” machine on them. I like thinly-veiled jabs at Scientology as much as the next guy, but I thought the cultish elements in the screenplay could have been better explored.

If you’ve ever longed to see Matthias Hues dressed in a white turtleneck under a sportscoat, or wanted to see him scream “NOW I’M CHAMPION OF THE WORLD!” while wearing a massive championship belt under said sportscoat, this movie is the answer to your totally fucking random Matthias Hues fantasies. As he does so often, Hues brings a screen presence befitting of a main villain despite being cast as a supporting character. His blond locks and towering stature make him a natural choice to play the brother of Brigitte Nielsen’s character in this movie ... or any movie really.

VERDICT:
I had no pre-conceived notions about what type of martial artist Jeff Wincott would be, so the biggest element of his skill-set that surprised me was his acting. This guy has legitimate chops. I’m not sure where Mission of Justice ranks in his filmography, but I was really impressed with the overall effort and the roster of talent. Highly recommended for Wincott virgins and loyalists alike.

AVAILABILITY:
VHS or Region 2 DVD.

6 / 7