Deadly Bet (1992)

PLOT: A drunken, degenerate, kickboxing gambler must overcome his vices to regain his self-esteem, his money, and the woman he loves. But mostly, his money.

Director: Richard W. Munchkin
Writer: Joseph Merhi, Robert Tiffe
Cast: Jeff Wincott, Steven Vincent Leigh, Charlene Tilton, Michael Delano, Mike Toney, Ian Jacklin, Gerald Okamura, Ron Hall, Gary Daniels

PLOT THICKENER

I’ve only been there once, but I can say from experience that when Las Vegas puts its hooks in you, it can be hard to break free. One minute you’re walking around on the casino floor, slack-jawed and overstimulated, and the next minute you’re $2,000 in the red, wondering where it all went wrong and why you’re wearing mismatched sneakers. (Don’t ask). Director Richard Munchkin and PM Entertainment honcho Joseph Merhi originally met in the City of Lights, so it’s no wonder that Vegas was often featured as a setting in many PM films. In 1992’s Deadly Bet, it’s also the antagonist.

Angelo (Wincott) and Isabella (Tilton) are a young couple on the verge of a move, trading the neon of Las Vegas for the natural wild of Colorado. This particular night finds them exchanging a hearty goodbye with Isabella’s lounge-singer brother, Frank (real-life entertainer Jerry Tiffe) before Angelo announces that he needs to settle a debt of $1,000. The creditor in this situation is Rico (Leigh) a suave fight promoter and fighter who gives Angelo the chance to settle the debt by taking a new bet on two fighters currently in the ring. Angelo’s fighter wins! The couple celebrates over drinks! A steamed Rico finds them later in the evening and challenges Angelo to a fight for even more money. This time Angelo not only loses, but made the foolish mistake of putting Isabella up as collateral. She begrudgingly goes home with Rico, but not before slapping Angelo in the face for his dumb deeds and broken promises.

Broken, alone, and flat-broke, Angelo must decide between two paths. One: cease gambling, get sober, and win back everything that he’s lost. Two: get shit-faced, owe more people even more money that he doesn’t have, and act like a total asshole. As you can probably guess, he spends a lot of time in this story stumbling down path #2 before he reverses course to take the first one. Along the way, he bets on college basketball, drinks whisky, sniffs the clothing Isabella left behind, and is forced into working as muscle for a bookie named Greek (Delano), who oddly decides not to go by "The Greek," perhaps because he's not really Greek. Neither was The Greek though!

This wasn’t Wincott’s first time at the chopsocky rodeo -- see Martial Law II -- but it would mark his first time as the leading actor in your standard 1990s kickboxing tournament feature. It also marked his last time in this sort of movie, which might demonstrate that you can only go so far working in that sub-subgenre. Much to my surprise, this was also the first of only two films he did with PM Entertainment, the other being 1996’s Last Man Standing, which I maintain is one of their top three films ever. This is just further evidence that unlike a lot of chopsocky stars who stay in their lane, Jeff Wincott is full of surprises. He attended the prom in Prom Night. He did a romantic comedy with Adrien Brody. He even beat up Dave Matthews. Not surprisingly, Wincott is the best part about this movie, and I say this as someone who is perversely obsessed with Zubaz pants and poorly lit action scenes.

The action scenes are fine by PM Entertainment standards, which is to say, 'poor' by 1980s Hong Kong standards and 'borderline genius' by 1960s Star Trek episode standards. For me, there were two stand-out fights worth mentioning. The random alley confrontation between Angelo and a group of thugs led by stunt stalwart Art Camacho is punctuated by some humorous dialogue where Angelo details his losses from that day before fighting off his would-be muggers. It made sense in the context of the plot and added a light, self-aware touch to the hero’s circumstances. The other fight of significance is the climactic blow-off between Rico and Angelo. It has drama, some blood, and decent kicks that make both fighters look competent, but the fight is also preceded by one of the most blatantly homoerotic pre-match stare-downs I’ve ever seen. Apropos of nothing, Angelo decides to jump up on the top rope in his corner in a split-legged position while flexing, and Rico’s face lights up like he just got served a plate of filet mignon after two months of forced Tofurky dinners. While the tone is not exactly foreign to a genre where muscular dudes beat the shit out of each other, it was a weird moment.

We’ve seen some wacky tournament fighting before, but the tournament featured in Deadly Bet stretches the laws of time, fashion, and even spelling. Greek tells Angelo it’s a 50-man tournament. OK then. The tournament then unfolds over the course of a single night. I hate to drop math on you guys, but assuming it’s a single elimination tournament, 50 fighters means 49 matches. How the hell are you going to get through 49 matches in one night? The sartorial choices add further confusion to the proceedings. Some of the fighters, Angelo included, don the unfortunate combination of bike shorts with white cross-trainers, giving this tournament the appearance of uncool dads fighting each other to exhaustion. And last, one of the people keeping tabs on the brackets spells Rico’s name wrong on the whiteboard. Whoever organized this tournament (hint: it was Rico) performed no quality control whatsoever, and really should have hired an event planner.

Regardless of the significance of their roles, there are plenty of faces in the film that will be familiar to fans of action b-movies. Gary Daniels shows up for a brief, non-speaking role as the fighter who wins Angelo a bunch of Rico’s money to set the plot in motion. Ron Hall took a small part as a tournament fighter. Ian Jacklin shows up as a shaggy bartender who tangles with Angelo over unpaid debts to Greek. And even Gerald Okamura (listed in the credits as his Irish doppelgänger, Gerald O'Hamura) gets in the ring for an underground fight -- and wins!  Didn’t catch James Lew or Al Leong anywhere, but there *was* a scene where Isabella visits a hair salon. Maybe they were getting their hair did.

VERDICT

Deadly Bet is one of several love letters from PM Entertainment to the city of Las Vegas. But instead of affectionate words, the letter is actually just a 47-page storyboard of Jeff Wincott repeatedly kicking motherfuckers in the face. The boozy, sin-soaked Vegas kickboxing film seems to be an actual THING (recall To Be the Best) and I’m going to chase down more movies like this one.

AVAILABILITY 

Amazon, eBay.

4 / 7

To Be the Best (1993)

PLOT: A disgraced family of fighters is put to the ultimate test during a world championship kickboxing tournament in Las Vegas. No, not the MCAT. I mean, sure, it’s a difficult test, but why would you make a kickboxing movie set in Vegas and base the central conflict around the MCAT? That’s stupid.

Director: Joseph Merhi
Writer: Michael January
Cast: Michael Worth, Phillip Troy Lingers, Martin Kove, Alex Card, Brittney Powell, Steven Vincent Leigh, Vince Murdocco, Ron Yuan


PLOT THICKENER:
After classics like Five Fingers of Death, Master of the Flying Guillotine, Enter the Dragon, and Bloodsport, the drop-off to the next tier of tournament-themed martial arts movies is stark. With the incredible oversaturation of this subgenre that film fans observed during the late 1980s and early 90s, how much differentiation can there really be? Shootfighter added weapons and gore to the fights. Heatseeker added cyborgs and American Apparel leggings. For a fresh angle, Joseph Merhi’s 1993 film To Be the Best adds a round-robin point system, fight-rigging, and baggy American flag warm-up pants and I have to admit: that just might be a winning formula.

Legendary b-movie bad-ass Martin Kove plays Rick Kulhane, the alcoholic patriarch of a family of kickboxing has-beens. After taking a bribe to take a dive during a fight, his career was derailed by a combination of bad decisions and alcohol. If he’d only stuck to beer crafted by Sam Adams --in their words, “Always a Good Decision” -- he could have mitigated the ill effects of his behavior. For the record, that previous sentence was not paid for by Sam Adams, and I’m a little pissed about it, because they put out a fine product. Except Cherry Wheat, which sucks mightily.

Perhaps worse, Papa Kulhane’s past mistakes have taken root in his kickboxing sons, Eric (Worth) and Sam (Lingers). While Eric is still young and shows promise, Sam has gone down the same dark paths of greed and addiction as his father, and has been reduced to street fighting for cash. When Rick shows up at their gym to recruit five willing and qualified American fighters for a yearly international kickboxing tournament in Las Vegas, they’re energized by the possibilities. For all three men, it represents an opportunity to return glory to the Kulhane name. A win for the U.S. would spell redemption for Rick’s past misdeeds. A win for Sam would mean a validation of his long journey to defeat addiction and return to elite status in his sport. For Eric, the championship would provide financial security for his future with Cheryl (Powell), the woman he hopes to make his wife. For U.S. teammate Duke (Murdocco), the trip to Las Vegas represents an opportunity to get shitfaced and play Blackjack until he passes out.

Victory will be far from easy. The Thai team has won the event for the last five years and is comprised of one guy with brown hair who clearly isn’t Asian, and four guys with Chinese names, two of whom have vaguely Californian accents. Played by Steven Vincent Leigh, Hong Do (pronounced “dough”) is the team’s charismatic leader who has found that “everywhere I go, people love Hong Do.” Uh, YEAH. Who wouldn’t love a kickboxing rhymesmith? The Thais’ dominance doesn’t just extend to the ring though. During a scene that sees enough Zubaz and acid wash jeans to choke a Valley girl, the Thai and U.S. teams find themselves bowling next to each other at the local lanes and things quickly turn violent. Sadly, this is only the second best bowling-alley-conflict-that-directly-leads-to-an-arm-injury scene of the 1990s.

As if the temptations of booze, drugs, and women weren’t enough, a wealthy businessman who purports to be a friend of Cheryl’s father is in town to monitor the tournament. Played by Alex Cord, the sleazy Jack Rodgers never met a Bolo tie he didn’t like or a kickboxer he didn’t attempt to bribe. He targets the youngest Kulhane as a vulnerable pawn who he can buy off in order to manipulate the tournament results and rake in millions in gambling winnings. Will Eric cave to the same pressures that doomed his father and older brother? Can he overcome girlfriend troubles, death threats, and terrible fashion sense to win the championship? Furthermore, will Hong Do and the Thais continue their streak of dominance, or crumble like the Peach Cobbler served daily at the Wynn Brunch Buffet?

This was pretty decent and the overall spread of action in the film offers a little something for everyone. There’s an opening helicopter crash to satisfy a thirst for splosiony stunts, we get our requisite training montage complete with a freeze-frame outro, and a boat load of tournament fighting. Since it comprises the largest part of the action quotient, it’s probably the most deserving of extended critique.

If you’ve read these posts for a while, I’ve not made secret my distaste for fights in spaces like rings or cages. Beyond the obvious spacial limitations, they can constrict interaction with the surrounding environment that can really choke the creativity of the fight choreography. With the large-scale tournament device, the filmmakers are married to showing a lot of fights using the same space over and over, and it’s hard to get any one to stick out from the crowd. That said, it was pretty tolerable here. The themed Zubaz pants for each team was a nice visual touch and I appreciated that some fighters isolated and attack specific appendages to weaken their opponents. It’s a psychological trope common to pro wrestling, and speaking of pro wrestling, some of these fights have a lot of pro wrestling moves. Arm bars, backbreakers, and even a flying clothesline from the second rope pepper the otherwise punchy and kicky proceedings. While the moves don’t really have any logic or context in a legitimate kickboxing tournament, they’re apparently legal. Almost everything is legal in Las Vegas.

While the film’s central conflict surrounds Eric Kulhane and his rise-or-fall dilemma, this is an ensemble piece and everyone gets their fair share of screen time. Michael Worth was pretty decent as the lead, which is to say neither his fighting nor his acting sucked badly enough to detract from the viewing experience. Phillip Troy Lingers was equally up for the task as Sam; again, solid dramatically, but otherwise nothing noteworthy. The real glue was Martin Kove, who guzzled down scotch-and-sodas with ease and rocked a swank Los Angeles Raiders leather jacket for the majority of the film. Unfortunately, he doesn’t do any fighting but still commands the screen better than about 80% of the cast and conveys Rick Kulhane’s human flaws believably while still playing the role of the good guy mentor.

To Be the Best is a film replete with villains -- the dominant and cocky Thai team and the Vegas mobsters among them -- but the main villain is the fight-rigging Jack Rodgers. This character was dangerously close to villainfiller territory but this perception was upended by the terrific performance of Alex Card. Scheming middle-aged businessmen are by no means an original archetype in these films, but Card turned Jack Rodgers into Halliburton executive material: a rich, sleazy, and batshit-crazy asshole. From the soft-spoken manner with which he initially approaches Cheryl, to his turn as a violent and double-crossing hothead, Card makes you believe both extremes and everything in between. He doesn’t really fight per se, but like James Hong in Talons of the Eagle, his performance is so good that he doesn’t have to.

VERDICT:
To Be the Best features a few interesting characters, some good performances, amazing jackets, and moderately entertaining in-ring fights. This one came during the latter portion of Joseph Merhi’s career and directorially, he was in the groove. Tune in for the familiar faces and the unbridled onslaught of American flag themed warm-up pants. Though not without flaws, To Be the Best is an entertaining watch for the kickboxing-inclined.

AVAILABILITY:
Amazon, Netflix, EBay.

4.5 / 7

Ring of Fire (1991)

PLOT:
Two groups of kickboxing meatheads are at war over bragging rights and ethnic pride. Amidst the chaos, romance begins to blossom between Don “The Dragon” Wilson and Maria Ford. Will the gang violence tear them apart? Will casual racism in Zubaz pants win out over vengeance in leather jackets? Does Maria Ford get naked or does she use a body double? These and more rhetorical questions answered henceforth.




Directors: Rick Jacobson & Richard W. Munchkin
Writers: Richard W. Munchkin, Jake Jacobs, Steve Tymon
Cast: Don “The Dragon” Wilson, Steven Vincent Leigh, Maria Ford, Dale Jacoby, Vince Murdocco, Gary Daniels, Eric Lee, Ron Yuan

PLOT THICKENER:
Omnia vincit amor: love conquers all. A phrase to live by, a song by Deep Purple, a horrible cliche, it is most commonly invoked to explain away the various problems and hindrances that accompany intimate relationships. Ring of Fire, a tale of kickboxing and forbidden love, encapsulates this age-old adage and a great deal more. While love yields an endless amount of good vibes, it can also kick you in the face, slap you during a funeral, and stab you with a samurai sword.

Enter Johnny Woo, played by Don “The Dragon” Wilson. As a doctor, he takes pride in healing the sick and injured. Recently, his cousin Terry (Leigh) and his social circle are supplying plenty of the latter. They compete in kickboxing matches on a regular basis with other local martial artists, and the tension between two distinct factions has boiled over like an unwatched cauldron of breast milk. One group is led by Terry and is predominantly of Chinese ancestry. They’re a fun-loving group of guys: there’s Terry, the strapping handsome dude who scores chicks, the wise-ass played by Ron Yuan, and martial-arts legend Eric Lee as the guy who loves to drink vodka straight. In other words: they’re your best friends from college! Minus the guy with the Dreamcast and the four-foot bong.

Their opposition is a group of monosyllabic whiteboys led by No Retreat, No Surrender alumni Dale Jacoby, playing a cocky prick named Brad. Filling out the ranks are Bud (ponytail-era Gary Daniels) and the perpetually pussywhipped Chuck (Murdocco). He’s engaged to Brad’s sister, Julie, and constantly deals with her whiny concerns about his fighting and the risk of injury. He also constantly deals with the fact she’s played by DTV hottie Maria Ford, who brings the 80s hotness like Mount St. Helens. The Aquanet, acid wash jeans, and belly shirts were out in full force. (On Ford, not the volcano).

The root of the hostility between the two crews is never really divulged, so we’re left to assume it stems from competitive spirit. Brad adds fuel to the fire by making cruel remarks about Asians at every opportunity and Terry’s crew is too prideful to let the digs go unpunished. As a result, the fists fly in a number of skirmishes, run-ins, and showdowns. Eventually, the leaders decide to settle things with a two-man battle. The training montages that precede the hyped fight between Terry and Brad leave a trail of shattered inanimate objects in their wake. There’s a pretty killer sequence with Brad slamming his flaming fist through a stack of dry ice, so I’m pretty sure Steven Vincent Leigh must have lost a bet to get stuck ... punching apples. There’s absolutely nothing cool or visually appealing about this. Worse yet, it’s a waste of perfectly good produce. I love apples.

Chuck’s involvement in the underground fights and the ongoing gang rivalry leads him to neglect Julie and she takes refuge at a local Chinese restaurant, where she crosses paths with Johnny. Their flirting turns into casual dating, and there’s a way goofy scene with Johnny showing up to a costume ball dressed as the Phantom of the Opera. As he and Julie exchange saucy glances across the dance floor, I couldn’t help but think about what other costumes Johnny might have considered. Frankenstein’s monster? Wolfman? Pregnant nun?

As the conflict between the two fighting crews escalates, Johnny is drawn into the fray and a persistent detective takes notice of the violence. Relationships are tested, customs are ignored, bad advice is given, and racks are unsheathed. In the only two love scenes in the film, Jacobson and Munchkin flash their art-house tendencies by intercutting footage of fighting and sex. The film student in me observes the visual blend of the fighters’ clenched fists and Julie’s sand-dollar areolas as an effective linking of sex and violence which demonstrates the duality of humans as both lovers and fighters. The film fan in me is shirtless, sweaty, and eating fistfuls of Fruity Pebbles from the box while watching freaky boobs and dudes hitting each other in the face.

Unfortunately, the fight choreography is pretty uninspired, which is a real shame considering the on-screen talent involved. Most fights are plagued by guys standing around getting hit and then reversing position; even in cases where there’s some drama behind the fisticuffs, there’s little to no visual flow at all. However, action movies are so often tagged with titles that have nothing to do with the plot, so I have to give credit to the filmmakers for putting an actual ring of fire in the film.

VERDICT:
This was the first Don Wilson movie I ever saw. More important, it was the first movie containing gratuitous nudity that I ever viewed on my grandmother’s premium cable package. So for these reasons, it will always be a sentimental favorite. There are a few goofy moments which add touches of flavor, and Wilson and Ford have a reasonable amount of chemistry as an on-screen pair. Leigh is definitely the best performer in the bunch and Jacoby is his usual unmenacing, goofy self. However, the fight scenes are a little too clunky, and the romance plot is a bit too generic to consider this anything other than your below-average facekicking escapade.

AVAILABILITY:
Easily trackdownable via Amazon or Netflix.

5 / 7