Contemporary Gladiator (1989)

PLOT: A kickboxing karate-fighting college drop-out attempts to establish his identity in both the material and spiritual worlds. He can also get you a great deal on shag carpeting.

Director: Anthony Elmore
Writer: Anthony Elmore
Cast: Anthony Elmore, George M. Young, Julius Dorsey, Donny Bumpus, Traci Cloyd






PLOT THICKENER
Of all the adjectives one could pick to describe super-heavyweight kickboxing champion Anthony “Amp” Elmore, sincere would have to be at the top of the list. His 1989 film Contemporary Gladiator (also known as Iron Justice) was his only cinematic effort, and while we can speculate about the reasons for that, no one can deny that Elmore made a personal and genuine film. Not unlike low-budget vanity projects such as City Dragon and Miami Connection, Contemporary Gladiator situates its star’s personal worldview against a variety of roadblocks and internal conflicts. Whereas Stan Derain believed tank-tops and bad rapping could score lots of chicks, and Kim believed taekwondo was the key to success and happiness, Elmore’s dream was to “sell kickboxing to the world.”

Even the biggest dreams have humble beginnings. Anthony plays a vague version of himself as a struggling college student and dedicated martial artist empowered by Afrocentrist politics during what appears to 1970s Memphis (the afro haircut and dashiki were giveaways). He lives with his adoring mother and controlling father, the latter of whom sees his politics and hobbies as one big waste of time. Anthony finds comfort in his all-black karate school but it’s intense, as evidenced by his final black belt test where he’s required to punch the floor. “Floor not hit back,” you might say. To which I’d respond, “oh, have you ever punched a floor? Because that shit fucking hurts.”

As the turbulent 1970s give way to the consumerist 1980s, Anthony has traded in college politics and his dashiki for a suit and a career as a successful carpet salesman. He owns a house, has a loyal girlfriend, and he even got a new haircut. He still practices karate, and wins a first-place trophy in a contact tournament. When he brings the prize back home to his karate school, though, his sensei (Dorsey) embarrasses him in front of the entire class, beating him without mercy and literally stripping him of his black belt for fighting competitively. Not long after that, his girlfriend breaks off their relationship. Anthony finds himself at his lowest emotional point.

He doesn’t seek answers to his troubles at the bottom of a bottle. Nor does he run through the wide open field of loose women. He finds himself in the company of someone who does both, though. Kingfish (Young) is a local shit-talker, hustler, and apparent friend of Anthony’s family. After he wakes up hungover on Anthony’s couch and watches a few kickboxing matches with him, he promotes himself to the position of Anthony's spiritual adviser and de facto manager. In no time at all, the pair are united in a mission to turn Memphis into a hotbed of championship kickboxing. Will Anthony turn his dream of establishing kickboxing as a serious sport into reality? Will Kingfish succeed in his desire to turn Anthony’s dream into a never-ending parade of fat asses? (His words, not mine).

Damn, where to start? No discussion of Contemporary Gladiator can end without noting the contributions of George M. Young as Kingfish, the horniest spiritual adviser in the history of cinema. He chases skirts, he cuts great promos, and he even sings the national anthem. The fight scenes -- almost all of which take place in the ring -- appear to be taken from actual fight footage from Elmore’s career. That said, there’s not much creative choreography of which to speak. The lighting is mostly horrendous, and the ADR is entirely horrendous -- it sounds like it was recorded at the bottom of the ocean. There’s also an odd fixation on mixing music in over scenes of dialogue and the result is (usually) an undecipherable mess. In news that should surprise no one, I loved it.

Elmore is a kickboxer first, a Buddhist second, and an actor probably eighth or ninth. I can’t decide if this is a compliment, because there might be lots of things he considers himself before actor comes up (e.g. water color painter? good bowler? fun dad?) All of this is to say his acting isn’t great and has the markings of a rushed production and someone trying to remember his lines instead of using inflection to suggest human emotion. This trait isn’t unique to Elmore but I found it was most egregious with him. Some might be interested to know that in the years since this film, Elmore has embraced the Internet and fortified his online presence with a fairly prolific YouTube channel through which he publishes music videos, his old kickboxing matches, serious lectures on Afrocentric Buddhism, and this very film. Happy hunting!

This is a movie which teaches us that even if your father hates your lifestyle choices, and your karate teacher threatens homicide over your accomplishments, and your girlfriend sees no future with you, and everyone around you disagrees with everything you do except for a mildly perverted alcoholic spiritual adviser, you should still pursue whatever you want. I think most of us find these circumstances relatable. 

VERDICT

It’s no technical marvel but Contemporary Gladiator joins the ranks of other films which had no business being as entertaining as they were. Created during a time when the only thing that prevented champion kickboxers from appearing in movies was sheer will, this is a unique artifact from a strange era. Recommended for adventurous viewers. 

AVAILABILITY

YouTube and Amazon (VHS).

3.5 / 7

Night of the Kickfighters (1988)

aka Night Raiders

The month of March found the members of the Mysterious Order of the Skeleton Suit trading guest posts, podcast appearances, and in a few cases, illegal imported cigarettes and throwing stars! Our compadre, Denis from The Horror!? was kind enough to watch this 1988 AIP film and write a review for us. He's really earned that complimentary pair of Zubaz pants and the denim vest with the dragon patch on the back!

The company of Carl McMann (Adam “the gosh-darn Batman” West) has developed a shiny new laser cannon ideal for blowing away motionless jet models located on cardboard-looking pedestals. The technical innovation also includes a wondrous microchip that can recognize allied soldiers by their “eye prints”, cleverly even when they have turned their backs towards the laser cannon, though not while they are wearing sunglasses; nobody involved cares about civilians, it seems. However, as it always is when SCIENCE is making the Free World™ better at killing, those evil terrorists are there to mess things up.

Evil terrorist Kedesha (Marcia Karr) takes valuable time off from her various family friendly sexual perversions and lets her henchmen – among them the mandatory weird-looking big strong guy in form of Ponti (Carel Struycken) and his inspired grimaces – kidnap McMann’s daughter Kathy (Lisa Alpert). McMann gives out the data about the laser Kedesha wants from him, but he also hires international man of adventure Brett Cady (Andy Bauman) to find Kedesha, save his daughter and blow the complex (aka a series of grey corridors located in the desert) they’re in as well as the laser data to kingdom come.

Because Brett already had his ass kicked by Ponti once, he goes the seven samurai way and calls in a troupe of friends and business associates as his own private kick-fighting strike force. With a team consisting of computer wiz Clea (Phyllis Doyle), mandatory person of colour Socrates (Fitz Houston), hairy explosives and gadget man Bomber (Michelangelo Kowalski), and “British” stage magician Aldo (Philip Dore), all ready for a stealthy night assault on the Mexican base, evil terrorism won’t stand a chance.

Initially, the main claim Night of the Kickfighters had on my interest was the fact that it was distributed by the glorious Action International Pictures (still the only company I know which actually wanted to be confused with Arkoff’s and Nicholson’s AIP), the finest purveyors of direct-to-video nonsense. Now, after I’ve finally seen it, I’m quite a bit more focused on the film’s adorably silly mixture of low cost Eurospy stylings, Men’s Adventure pulp novel fixations, and part-time martial arts adventure. It’s the sort of thing I can’t help but describe with words like “adorable” and “charming”, because, while it certainly won’t thrill anyone with its exciting plotting, its poetic fight choreography or its brilliant acting, Night is a film very eager to please, putting all its negligible money and talent right on screen with verve and a sense of excitement that just doesn’t care how silly everything going on here actually is.

So how silly is it? Well, there’s a scene that sees Kedesha (and her oh so brilliant accent) dressed down to what might be very sparkly underwear or an equally sparkly bathing suit, writhing on a couch while cuddling with a snake, getting a foot massage by a nameless henchman, and being fed grapes by Ponti, which not only demonstrates how far out of its way the film goes in presenting her as of dubious sexual proclivities (she also likes to play with blood) while still keeping the movie breast-free, but is also one of the more inexplicable things I’ve seen in a movie in quite some time, unless the aim of the scene was to fulfill some producer’s very particular fetish wishes. During the course of the movie, we also encounter nunchuks that shoot bullets, a microwave glass tube for humans, blow-up dinosaurs, a heat-seeking explosive crossbow quarrel, and henchmen making a prescient impression of being time-travelling henchmen out of later stealth based video games, only lacking big yellow exclamation points over their heads; the line “must have been rats”, alas, is missing too.

These moments and little flourishes of reality-deprived nonsense run through nearly every scene of the film, with little happening in Night of the Kickfighters that actually makes sense going by our human logic or the rules of the real world (place of horrors), resulting in a film that can’t help but entertain through the sheer power of its willful imagination, and the absolute shamelessness it shows in putting it on screen, with no thought spent on yawn-inducing nonsense like “ironic distance”.

Surprisingly enough, the action itself is comparatively copious, and decently filmed by first-time (and only-time) director Buddy Reyes. At least, Reyes knows enough about filmmaking to keep his camera moving, giving the film a lively, if messy and cheap feel. Because we demand that sort of thing, there are a handful of explosions, two car chases (the first one rather awkward thanks to the inclusion of a luxury limousine as the chased vehicle), and some mild martial arts fights that do indeed have a kick to punch ratio of 5:1, just as the film’s better title promises.

On the acting side, I found myself rather unimpressed with Andy Bauman’s impression of a moving wooden doll, but Struycken’s truly inspired grimacing and Karr’s all-around impressive scenery-chewing that seems to interpret “femme fatale” in ways oh so patently right in being patently wrong, more than make up for this minor matter.

The resulting film is a beautiful, inspired (by drugs, alcohol or just the unbridled human spirit) thing, lacking even a single dull second. Or, to quote our dear friend Bomber: “Fuckin’ A!”

-- Denis Klotz

The Horror!?