Bloodfist (1989)

PLOT: After his brother is killed in Manila, an American boxer enters an underground kickboxing tournament to find his murderer. The entry fee: 500 tickets from a Skee-Ball game.

Director: Terrence Winkless
Writer: Robert King
Cast: Don “The Dragon” Wilson, Joe Mari Avellana, Michael Shaner, Billy Blanks, Riley Bowman, Vic Diaz, Rob Kaman, Cris Aguilar, Kenneth Peerless, Ned Hourani

PLOT THICKENER

After roughly three decades of watching films, I’ve taken away one cinematic life lesson above all others. Not “follow your heart” or “hope can set you free.” If you’re receiving money to take a fall in a kickboxing fight in a foreign country, just throw the fight! Once all parties have agreed to it, nothing good can come from flipping the script and reneging. Maybe you’re cool with winning the fight, spending the prize money on booze, getting killed in an alley in a foreign country, and getting your brother mixed up in the sleazy underworld of fixed fights to the death, but I ain’t. So, if you need a short 80-minute primer on this lesson for reinforcement, allow me to fix you up with 1989’s Bloodfist. It’ll set you straight.

This is the film debut of Don “The Dragon” Wilson. Most of you will know him from his successful professional kickboxing career and his starring roles in a prolific string of 1990s direct-to-video martial arts films. A handful of you will know him from that time he dressed up in neon and got whooped by Chris O’Donnell’s character in Batman Forever. Here, he’s playing Jake Raye, an unremarkable former boxer teaching self-defense classes to kids at a gym in California with his friend and trainer, Hal (Peerless). Due to a prior act of bodily sacrifice, he’s down one whole kidney, but up one half-brother, Michael (Hourani), himself a fighter based in the Philippines.

That was nice while it lasted, wasn’t it? Following a fixed fight where he refused to take the fall, Michael is tracked down after a late night out in Manila and gets killed by a shadowy figure. Good news travels quickly, like sound, but bad news travels faster, like me running after a recently departed taco truck. Jake receives a phone call about his brother and before you can say, “avenging sibling” he’s on a plane to Manila with a bag filled with t-shirts from his boxing gym. I have no idea why that’s relevant here, I just thought it was strange enough to mention.

Action movies with a sheltered American tough guy who travels to an exotic foreign land usually begin that introduction with one of two things: a distracting scene of locals gambling on bug fights, or a good old-fashioned pickpocketing. This film has both, in that exact order. After recovering his stolen bag of shirts, Jake eventually stumbles upon an outdoor training compound and gets chased for his voyeurism. He learns from a nearby random vagrant and landscape painter named Kwong (Avellana) that it’s a highly exclusive fighting club called the Red Fist, and their annual tournament, the “Ta-Chang” is being held soon.

Parallel to that fast friendship, Jake meets a fellow American named “Baby” Davies (Shaner) during a mano-a-mano bar fight manufactured by Davies himself (don’t ask -- gambling problems). Jake visits his pad and meets his sister, Nancy (Bowman), the kind of big-haired blonde who performs seductive slow-motion rooftop aerobics in a unitard as a matter of habit. You know the type. This on-screen relationship set off what would become a legendary run of gratuitous Don “The Dragon” love scenes rivaled only by Jean Claude Van Damme himself. Was this contractual? Or did distributors get a look at this movie and demand topless Dragon scenes in all his films, ad infinitum?

Jake gets a hint that he must enter the Red Fist tournament to find his brother’s killer, and as luck would have it, Kwong is a martial arts trainer and has an “in” with the Red Fist group. In a colorful sequence that provides equal parts character back story and pure machismo, Kwong guides Jake through the Red Fist training center as the competitors prepare for tournament battle. There’s the mini-mulleted Black Rose (Blanks), a fierce fighter whose intensity is matched only by his hatred for unbroken bricks. And who can forget Chin Woo (Aguilar), Vietnamese napalm survivor and total wrecking ball? Then there’s Raton (Kaman), a German music fan who spars and fights with his earphones in at all times. Among all these different fighters is a consistent theme: they not only punch, but kick, headbutt, knee, and throw elbows. Jake is a boxer, so Kwong must train up his deficiencies in order for him to contend with the field.

Stories that focus on a mentor-student dynamic hinge upon two main things: the push-and-pull tension between the characters, and the sadistic training methods that will force the student to achieve his or her fullest potential. Jake and Kwong have a nice, easygoing chemistry together and it’s easy to buy into their partnership (Avellana played a similar mentor role in 1978’s Death Force). The slightly more bizarre proposition is that the film’s central character -- played by a legendary kickboxing champion -- has no idea how to kick. Luckily, Kwong knows just how to teach him. Because if running up dirt hills, having local kids throw rotten fruit at you, and pummeling huge bags of goat shit doesn’t prepare you for the underground kickboxing fight of your life, what will?

The action in the film is solid on balance, but some fight scenes are better than others. The highlight was seeing Wilson and Blanks duke it out in a short but compelling fight that made interesting use of camera angles and undercranking to make both guys look good through crisp choreography and a fast pace. At the back-end of the film were two surprisingly violent confrontations, one of which involves a fighter being pinned to a metal railing and beaten before having his earring ripped out, and another that features a brutal act I can only refer to as “pointy thing impalement.” It was probably scrap metal.

This isn't a knock: Bloodfist is the sort of film that is so cookie-cutter in its story and presentation that you can trick yourself into thinking you’ve seen it before. Even the title itself -- mashed together from two random words -- evokes a hundred other movies in the realm of action cinema. (Teddy Page was responsible for four such “Blood____” films but I’m not going to ruminate on the “fist” film titles because of the frightening implications it has for my Google referral keywords). Perhaps that’s what led CNN (of all news outlets) to include it in a January 2015 listicle feature about Hollywood’s most violent films. Sandwiched between Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Goodfellas, you’ll find Bloodfist, 1989 direct-to-video Filipino Roger Corman production. Maybe the author was just a Don “The Dragon” fan?

VERDICT

Sibling vengeance. Underground fighting. Hammy training montages. The bait-and-switch VHS cover. And a ton of sequels, some related, some not. There may be no more well-rounded representation of the 1980s and 90s DTV chopsocky experience than Bloodfist. Recommended.

AVAILABILITY

On disc at Amazon, eBay.

5 / 7

One Man Army (1994)

PLOT: A martial arts instructor returns to his hometown after the death of his grandfather only to find that corruption has taken root. Will he dispense vigilante justice and let the heads roll, or run for public office and get a shiny sheriff’s badge?

Director: Cirio H. Santiago
Writer: Daryl Haney
Cast: Jerry Trimble, Rick Dean, Melissa Moore, Dennis Hayden, Paul Holmes, Yvonne Michelle, Nick Nicholson, Jim Moss, Ned Hourani









PLOT THICKENER:
Before 1973’s Walking Tall was remade into a middling action vehicle for Dwayne Johnson in 2004, its premise had already been ground into dust by knockoffs and mimicry. 1980’s Defiance borrowed a bit from the Joe Don Baker classic and Robert Clouse cribbed from it rather liberally for 1990’s China O’Brien. Not to be outdone by some rinky-dink outfit like Golden Harvest Company, Filipino action auteur Cirio H. Santiago went back to the same well to make 1994’s One Man Army. He trades one blonde for another by reuniting with Jerry Trimble, and that’s not Jerry Trimble of Jerry Trimble Helicopters, but rather Jerry Trimble, the PKC WORLD KICKBOXING CHAMPION. Sorry for the all-caps text, but the box art and opening title sequence really got into my head.

Trimble plays Jerry Pelt, a martial arts instructor who receives a phone call so urgent that he takes it on the red phone in the dojo’s inner office. The news is terrible: Grandpa Pelt, the man who raised him, is dead. Continuing in the proud tradition of martial arts teachers driving total shitboxes, he packs up his rusty Volkswagen Bug and departs for his hometown. As soon as he crosses the county line, a group of boozehounds in a pickup truck run him off the road, damaging his car. He rectifies the situation only a few minutes later in the greatest gas station action sequence since The Jerk, and we’re off to the races.

Upon arrival to the sad and poorly attended funeral, he’s greeted by an old flame: high-powered attorney Natalie Pierce (Moore). Against the backdrop of this misery, though, Jerry re-establishes some old connections. He and Natalie share some dessert that night, his grandfather’s German Shepherd, Hank, is still barking up a storm, and old friend and local roughneck Eddie Taylor (Hayden) arrives with an invitation to catch up over a few rounds of brew.

During his night out on the town, Jerry discovers that things aren’t the way they used to be. He and Eddie arrive at the local watering hole to find it overrun with topless prostitutes cavorting with clients out in the open. In the bar’s backroom, bets are placed on unsanctioned full-contact fights. How did things get this bad? Not without a certain local sheriff named Pat Boze (Dean) turning a blind eye and a crime boss named Sharperson (Holmes) giving him a cut of the profits.

After a string of suspicious incidents involving arson, assaults, and human trafficking tunnels, Jerry decides to run against Boze for sheriff and clean up the town for good. With Natalie’s legal expertise, Hank’s knack for biting and disarming potential gunmen, and Jerry’s ability to rally crowds during montages with patriotic music, the campaign is well-equipped for the political meat grinder. It won’t be easy, though. Sharperson’s influence runs deep, and Boze and his crew are coked out of their minds with easy access to firearms.

While the plot points are tired and silly at times, I ended up enjoying One Man Army quite a bit. The film’s pace sucked me in immediately and the solid cast kept me engaged. Similar to Live by the Fist, this checks in under 80 minutes and Santiago wastes no time in establishing his hero with the gas station fracas around the five-minute mark. With his laid-back manner and easygoing delivery  -- he hails from Kentucky -- Trimble is a good fit as the righteous local hero. Character actor Dennis Heyward was cast perfectly as Jerry’s grizzled friend, and B-film veteran Dean is both intense and menacing as Pat Boze.

No stranger to the action genre -- she was the unfortunate victim of a bacon grease torture by Robert Z’Dar in Samurai Cop -- Melissa Moore is pretty solid, sharing most of her screen time with Trimble. While I’m not going to complain much about topless scenes, 66% of her nude scenes are completely (and hilariously) out of context. For instance, during a conversation about the sheriff’s race during a windy and overcast picnic, Natalie suddenly strips down and goes skinny-dipping to test Jerry’s courage. When he follows suit and jumps in, we know we’re dealing with a bad-ass motherfucker. He didn’t even wait for a full hour after lunch before swimming.

In Live by the Fist, Santiago did well to match Trimble up with a few legitimate martial artists at the back end of the film, escrima practitioner Roland Dantes among them. Dantes is absent from this production, and unfortunately there was no one to really take his place in what should have been the best stretch of fight scenes in the film. I spotted who I believe was an uncredited Ned Hourani fighting Trimble on a rooftop but the fight lasts under a minute, and no one else in the story is built up as a physical threat to Trimble’s character. This was a missed opportunity, because Hourani can hold his own during extended fight sequences, as evidenced by his work in Blood Hands and Fighting Spirit. The choreography is cookie cutter, but Trimble lives up to his reputation as one of the best kickers of his sport and the stuntmen sell pretty well.

VERDICT:
If you enjoyed Live by the Fist, this is another enjoyable Filipino action romp from the same actor and director duo. The amount of heroic dog scenes with the German Shepherd are on par with the Benji and Rin Tin Tin franchises, so this might be something you can watch with the nieces and nephews. Just be sure that you get them to sign affidavits forbidding them from telling their parents about the voluminous amounts of cocaine use, boobs, gunfire, and kickboxing they’ll see in the rest of the film.

4 / 7

Live by the Fist (1993)

PLOT:
Ex- Navy SEAL John Merill is imprisoned in the Philippines for a crime he didn’t commit. Upon incarceration, he experiences the horrors of the Filipino prison system, which combines rampant racism and police corruption with a frightening lack of adobo chicken. (Delicious, by the way).

Director: Cirio H. Santiago
Writer: Charles Philip Moore
Cast: Jerry Trimble, George Takei, Vic Diaz, Ted Markland, Roland Dantes, Laura Albert, Romy Diaz


PLOT THICKENER:
In Transparency International’s annual Corruption Perception Index list, the Republic of the Philippines was ranked 134th out of 178 countries surveyed. For perspective on this, if corruption came in overly elaborate ice cream flavors, the Philippines would be Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream. This is not to say the country is unsafe or undeserving of your tourist dollar. Just make sure you don’t end up in Filipino prison -- that place is like Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream with Gummy Bears.

Because of his ability to churn out virtually any type of genre film, Cirio H. Santiago has endeared himself to exploitation film fans for all eternity; he’s done Vietnam war films, blaxploitation films, martial arts films, and post-apocalyptic action films. In Live by the Fist, Santiago includes all the character ingredients integral to a compelling prison action movie: a corrupt warden, played by Santiago regular Vic Diaz; dueling gangs cut along ethnic lines; and the wise prison elder, played by George Takei. All of them factor heavily in the fate of the Bolera Prison Colony’s newest resident, American longshoreman and ex-military man John Merill.

After he stops a woman from getting raped at a shipping yard by a gang of thugs (only to watch her get killed by them anyway) Merill gets cold-cocked and the goons plant the bloody knife on him. He’s convicted and arrives to prison a mostly innocent man, but Warden Acosta (Diaz) has heard that song before, and he doesn’t like it. (He’s more of a Paul Anka fan). A cranky old fellow, his only joy in life comes from his lizard terrarium, his samurai swords, and a swanky tiger tapestry.

Since Merill killed a thug named Chavez who had friends on the inside, a Filipino faction led by Alvarez (Romy Diaz) wants to kill him. The constant need to defend himself draws unwanted attention from the security staff, who regard Merill as a nuisance and a troublemaker. While he has relatively low stature as a “whiteboy,” slightly less as an American, and even less as someone who wears a sharktooth necklace, he has fighting skills unmatched by any other inmates. For this reason, the caucasian contingent wants him to join their crew. Led by an ex-Navy man named Sacker (Markland), these trashy whiteboys do the same things they were probably doing before prison: smoking dope, drinking moonshine, and giving the Asian population a really hard time for being Asian. Merill rebuffs their recruitment efforts and prevents Sacker from beating on an innocent old man; as a result he’s targeted by yet another group of assholes.

Despite his lone wolf status, Merill isn’t entirely without acquaintances. While he and other prisoners break up rocks on what appears to be the set of Dune Warriors, Stryker, and Equalizer 2000, a younger Filipino inmate attends to them with a cask of water. In time, he and Merill even grow comfortable enough to have a mildly homoerotic water fight. Speaking of fights, Merill’s cell-mate fucking hates them. Played by Star Trek legend and television veteran George Takei, Uncle Coronado is the prison’s conscience and having noted various abuses over the years, believes the inmates should be fighting the system instead of each other. An avid reader, he’s soaked up the prison’s law book collection and has been furtively writing letters to a human rights organization for assistance. He and Merill befriend each other, though Merill isn’t interested in the plight of the prisoners or the rampant internal corruption so much as he’s obsessed with getting the fuck out of Filipino prison.

Throughout the story, there’s a lot of backstabbing, fighting, unlikely bedfellows, and sweat. (The latter two are unrelated, by the way). Takei does what he can with the material he’s given and turns in a solid performance marked by downtrodden rage. Character actor Ted Markland is reasonably dickish as Sacker and sports the best skullet this side of Hulk Hogan. Vic Diaz is wonderfully sleazy as the corrupt warden and Romy Diaz is equally sleazy as gang honcho Alvarez. Though he’s dubbed, he has some incredible facial mannerisms aided by a supremely bushy moustache.

Wisely, Santiago chose not to go down the road of challenging American History X for “most brutal rape scene set in a prison shower.” Partly because he’d already satisfied the attempted rape quota in the film’s first scene, but mostly because Jerry Trimble is a much better fighter than Edward Norton, and therefore better at not getting raped. However, there is a fight scene set in the showers that was every bit as revolting as forcible sodomy. Merill uses common sense by wearing shoes to the washroom, only to have some assholes throw him into the shower’s draining trough. You remember that trough in college? Snots, pubes, ass-water, etc. -- shit was nasty! I would hope Merill asked for some bacitracin from the prison’s medic after swimming in that filth.

Despite the title of the film, Trimble does a great deal more kicking than fisting … err, punching. While the fight scenes are well-shot and the stuntmen make Trimble look good, the choreography on the whole is a touch repetitive. There are really no other fighters on Trimble’s level so we’re treated to him dominating revolving groups of henchmen in virtually every action scene, save for one. Toward the end of the film, Trimble crosses paths with the prison’s main guard, played by Filipino b-movie actor Roland Dantes. While many may be unfamiliar with Dantes’s work (myself included), his career was dotted with several choice action roles highlighting his expertise in arnis, the Filipino martial art of stick-fighting. Dantes breaks the sticks out against Trimble’s kicks but there’s not much to write home about; the visual impact of stick-fighting has its limitations, especially when filmed in low-light on a Santiago budget.

Last, many great films are further elevated by their respective musical scores; David Shire’s piano work on 1974’s The Conversation and Anton Karas’s zither-based score for 1949’s The Third Man immediately come to mind. I would be hard pressed to exclude Nicolas Rivera’s electric guitar score for Live by the Fist from these same distinguished annals of film history. He uniquely bends each composition to the onscreen drama: there are confrontational electric guitars for the fight scenes, morose electric guitars for the death scenes, brooding electric guitars for suspenseful scenes, and despondent electric guitars for the sad, emotional scenes. Anyone who’s ever said that that the human condition can’t be adequately illustrated through the sound of squealing electric guitars has never seen Live by the Fist.

VERDICT:
The first of three collaborations between Trimble and Santiago, Live by the Fist satisfies many of the basic tenets of the b-level martial arts film: a lot of fight scenes, character actor screen presence, an entertaining supporting cast, and fairly awful production value. Somehow, it makes for a reasonably engaging film despite its obvious limitations. At a tidy 77 minutes, you could certainly do worse, though I was a bit disappointed that Trimble dropped the mullet for this one. For his more fierce follicle performances, seek out The Master or King of the Kickboxers.

AVAILABILITY:
Readily available via Amazon and Netflix.

5.5 / 7