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

Angelfist (1993)

PLOT: When her kickboxing covert agent sister is mysteriously murdered in the Philippines, an American cop heads overseas to bring the killers to justice. Contrary to popular belief, justice is not a hip upscale Manila restaurant, but rather a fair and reasonable application of law.

Director: Cirio Santiago
Writer: Anthony L. Greene
Cast: Cat Sassoon, Melissa Moore, Michael Shaner, Roland Dantes, Cristina Portugal, Tony Carreon, Henry Strzalkowski, Joseph Zucchero, Jim Moss






PLOT THICKENER
There are few performances in film that can be described as truly chameleonic. Few characters are conceptualized in such a way as to grant us access to the various layers of their personalities. Denis Lavant’s Monsieur Oscar in Holy Motors comes to mind, as does Joaquin Phoenix in The Master. After viewing the Corman-produced, Santiago-directed 1993 action film, Angelfist, I think we can add Cat Sassoon and her character of Kat Lang to that same elite group. Over the course of roughly 80 minutes, she encompasses a wide variety of flavors and colors. She’s a cop, she’s a kickboxer. She’s white as a sheet, she’s tanned to the color of an indoor basketball. She’s dressed in her Muay Thai best, she looks like a backup dancer for Paula Abdul.

A rugged and experienced cop, Kat is cleaning up the mean streets of Los Angeles when she receives word that her kickboxing sister, Kristie (Birzag) has been murdered in Manila. Kristie captured the murder of a U.S. military man on film, and a terrorist group called the Black Brigade responded a little harshly. One airplane transition later, and Kat is knocking down doors and beating up random Filipinos in a search for answers. The local Manila police are useless and paranoid, and the U.S. embassy is no help at all due to constant protests and pressure from the local population.

With the assistance of a shallow himbo nicknamed Alcatraz (Shaner), Kat talks her way into a meeting with her sister’s former fight trainer, Bayani (Dantes). Only after winning his respect during a sparring contest is she able to set the wheels in motion for a break in the case. In order to uncover more solid leads to chase, she enters the local ladies karate tournament in which her sister took part. Upon joining their ranks, she not only catches the attention of her sister’s friend, Lorda (Moore), but also last year’s champion and secret brigadier, the standoffish, Bontoc (Portugal). Will Kat avenge her sister's death? Who are her true enemies and allies? Why do the fight organizers call this thing a "kubate" instead of a "kumite?" And why does Kat's skin tone vary so wildly by time of day and lighting? 

So, about those action scenes. The tournament fighting is marked by extremely repetitive strikes and an almost complete disregard for defense and blocking. Moore and Sassoon, in particular, are guilty of awkward fight stances in which they curl their arms up close to their bodies while kicking, almost in an effort to conceal something -- a strange choice given the sheer amount of toplessness throughout much of the film. Cirio makes sure to combine said toplessness with an actual fight, putting Kat in the crosshairs of would-be assassins who raid Alcatraz’s apartment as she’s fresh out of the shower. In the absence of technical sheen, the stunt players sell HUGE for Sassoon and others. Enemies go screaming and flailing through walls and tables. Any piece of furniture that isn’t nailed down gets incorporated and smashed to pieces.

Sassoon gets all of the bits to put her in position to win our hearts and look awesome. Our introduction to the Kat character involves her jumping through a window with an uzi to waste a bunch of drug dealers. She wins the respect of Bayani by whooping him in an eskrima sparring match. She also takes a three-story fall from an apartment window that sees her smash through multiple levels of scaffolding to the street below. No one will ever mistake her for Moon Lee or Karen Sheperd in terms of ballsy action scenes, but I’ll put it this way: I’d wear a t-shirt with the visage of a growling Kat Lang for virtually any occasion. Even if it was a tank top!

It’s impossible to discuss this film without noting the untimely death of its star. Sassoon had a purported five-picture contract with Roger Corman, but was unable to see it through (I’m still anxious to see her Bloodfist franchise appearances). Discarding the minor transgressions of occasional duckface and dated wardrobe, most would agree that whether it’s an awkward love scene, a rompy fight, or long shots of her smoking a cigarette, Sassoon brings a palpable zest to the film. She’s clearly committed to this role and she got the memo about its tone; that effort is observable and lasting. Given the timing of her death in 2002, it’s difficult to say whether she would have weathered the erosion of the DTV action market that affected so many other stars in the early 2000s. Still, Angelfist is a unique time capsule that features Sassoon at her best, which is to say fierce, tanned, and mysteriously shiny.

Knowing that Corman took an active interest in creating “feminist exploitation films” -- using female protagonists as both asskickers and objects of lust -- I’m interested to know if viewers feel that Angelfist achieves this odd label. I’m undecided. The ladies here fight and snarl and save the day, but they also stand around awkwardly and navigate detachable shower heads over their nude bodies during inexplicable transition scenes. They’re terrorized by captors and pushed bare chest-first into blocks of ice, but they also deliver dialogue that earns the film a passing grade on the Bechdel test. Is Bontoc considered a villain because she’s part of a terrorist network, or because she never disrobes? There’s some serious contradictions at work here and I’m frankly not intelligent enough to sort it out. Maybe the Internet’s first aspirational expert in the subgenre of nude kickboxing movies, Keith over at Teleport City, can render a decision on this. Inquiring minds want to know.

VERDICT
Despite its flaws -- acting and originality among them -- Angelfist is a very entertaining film. It observes the loose but effective “action beat” rule where *something* interesting happens approximately every 10 minutes. (Even if it does nothing whatsoever to push the story forward or distract us from the arbitrary nudity). Despite her limitations as a peformer, Sassoon is ferocious and convincing as an action movie heroine, and the stunt team makes everyone look good. A fine effort from Cirio Santiago and something of an unheralded gem from the Concorde-New Horizons canon.

AVAILABILITY
Angelfist is at the ready on DVD or VHS.

4 / 7