Top Fives or Tens: Martial Arts Tournament Films

Rik: It used to be that finding martial arts action in films was mostly confined to low-budget chopsocky flicks shipped from overseas that maybe you saw on late night television (if you were lucky). Once home video blew up huge, you could find them all over the place easily. Hollywood was slow to adopt such fighting into their own films though. I remember being astounded by a 1956 film called Bad Day at Black Rock when I was a kid, because it actually had someone who used martial arts to fight -- and that someone was Spencer Tracy!! And he was playing a one-armed guy who knew judo! But then, Bruce Lee broke through (somewhat) in Hollywood on The Green Hornet and eventually in his own mega-popular films after his return to Hong Kong. In the early '70s, a TV series (originally envisioned by Lee) called Kung Fu became popular on American TV, and it was off to the races. By the late '70s, Chuck Norris was really revving up strong, The Karate Kid became a phenomenon in the '80s, and suddenly, there were kung fu and ninja films everywhere. In time, Hong Kong superstars like Jackie Chan, Jet Li, and Michelle Yeoh got huge worldwide, and now, especially with the comic book superhero resurgence onscreen, it seems every movie and TV show is rife with endless martial arts-style action sequences.

So, Aaron, we might need some guidelines for this list. Should we include Hollywood action films where someone like Scarlett Johansson or Jeremy Renner pretends they know what they are doing? (I'm THE BIGGEST Avengers fan going, but still...) Should it be any film that has martial arts sequences in it? Should we include samurai films, which mainly involve sword-fighting and little in the way of hand-to-hand combat? Or should we limit it to chopsocky "kung fu" films? Or should we, in the style of our film topic this week, Bloodsport, make it Hollywood-produced martial arts films created primarily for the American market

Aaron: I think listing our favorite martial arts films would be way too broad a topic, and I'm not looking forward to the headache of trying to figure out which titles to cut out of that list. Yet I think, in honor of the multiple styles on display in Bloodsport, we should avoid limiting ourselves to only one style of martial arts (though I think we can safely save swordplay for another film and another list). The opposite problem is that for as much as I love martial arts films, and as greedily as I devoured them in my teens and early twenties, my overall knowledge of the genre remains rather limited. I am far from being an expert, and if we narrow our scope too far, I may not be able to come up with a proper list.

I am also unopposed to allowing Hollywood action films on our lists. If someone were to tell me their favorite kung fu film was The Matrix, I'd first advise them to watch more kung fu films, but also appreciate that the choice is valid, as the fighting in that film was choreographed expertly by the great Yuen Woo Ping. And in fact maybe your final proposal is the one we should tackle; favorite Hollywood-produced martial arts films. There have been a few good ones over the years, as the style tends to make periodic surges in popularity in this country. The only thing holding me back from choosing that one at this moment is that I feel like highlighting some authentic martial arts films as further viewing for anybody who might be a newcomer to the genre. So perhaps, as one last suggestion from me, we could focus our list on tournaments. We could interpret that guideline as loosely or as strictly as we'd like, if we're having trouble putting together a list.

Rik: That sounds great. Tournament films, it is. So, without further ado, we have each picked five films from the massive catalogue of martial arts films that include a tournament as one its story elements. These are not necessarily the best films in this category, and opinion may be strongly divided as to the quality of some of these films. Flat out, they are merely films that we like for various reasons that happen to contain a tournament aspect. Aaron, you may go first...

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Master of the Flying Guillotine (1976)

Aaron: This is the movie I thought of when considering this topic. Master of the Flying Guillotine was like nothing I had ever seen, and it blew my mind when I first came across it. It had the hokiness I was used to in the martial arts films from the '70s that got imported to America: the sudden zooms, the rapid fire punch-block-punch fighting style, the heightened sound effects, and an English-speaking voice cast that veered wildly between overblown histrionics and deadpan monotone, but Master of the Flying Guillotine also has a ruthlessness that I was less familiar with. The effects for the titular weapon and the attendant gore weren't exactly realistic, but it was still a memorably gruesome manner in which to dispatch a foe. The film was written and directed by Jimmy Wang Yu, who also reprises his character from One Armed Boxer (1971). Its copyright infringing soundtrack features music (allegedly unlicensed at the time of its original release) from German bands Neu!, Kraftwerk, and Tangerine Dream. As for the fighting itself, I'd never seen a film that mixed as many styles as this one. Kung fu, karate, jujitsu, and Thai boxing. Most memorable of all was an Indian fighter with the ability to extend his limbs in a disorientingly wild manner, like Dhalsim in the Street Fighter games. All of this combines to create a film that should hit fans of old school chopsocky films right in the pleasure center, while also feeling fresh and unusual forty years later.

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Enter the Dragon (1973)

Rik: Simply put, still my favorite martial arts film to this day. I didn't get to see it until many years later, but watched it endlessly on HBO as a teenager. Bruce Lee is worthy of his legend in this film, where he stars as a secret agent sent to infiltrate the island stronghold of a maniacal crime overlord, Mr. Han (Shih Kien), who is missing a hand but has a crazy assortment of special, sometimes deadly, attachments. Lee's passage onto the island is via invitation to a martial arts tournament Han is holding. John Saxon, Jim Kelly, and Robert Wall may be the American names in this film, but this spectacle is top loaded with a cavalcade of Hong Kong talent (most in tiny roles) who would go on to storied careers in the genre: Angela Mao, Bolo Yeung (we just discussed him at length regarding Bloodsport), Roy Chiao, Tony Liu, and four of the Seven Little Fortunes: Yuen Biao, Yuen Wah, Sammo Hung, and Jackie Chan. The film contains several of the most iconic scenes in the history of not just martial arts and action-adventure films, but film in general. If you haven't seen it and you consider yourself a martial arts fan, you must. (And if you haven't seen 1977's The Kentucky Fried Movie -- written and directed by the creators of Airplane! --which features a dead-on perfect spoof of Enter the Dragon titled A Fistful of Yen, do so with the greatest urgency!)

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Man of Tai Chi (2013)

Aaron: Who would have thought, back in 1989, that Keanu Reeves would be the American filmmaker to most thoroughly understand the mechanics of Hong Kong-style kung fu films? Man of Tai Chi is probably the least narratively inventive film on my list, and yet it's such a solid piece of work that I recommend it to martial arts fans all the time. Reeves initially planned to incorporate a complex camera rig setup into the fight scenes, even going so far as to shoot a proof-of-concept video of how it would work. The results were pretty great, but due to budgetary or logistical reasons this setup was not used for much of the actual film, and handheld cameras were used instead. While it would have been great to see what Reeves had planned to do, with a camera that would have been able to glide in and out and over the action without disrupting the performers or requiring them to stop and reset, he was still able to achieve a nicely professional style. His cameras weave around the action, and he favors long takes in all of the fight scenes. This insistence on grabbing impressive shots while also not interrupting the flow of his actors results in a technically ambitious film with a pretty elementary plot. Tiger Chen, a stuntman Reeves met and befriended on the set of the Matrix sequels, lacks a certain screen presence, and has a pretty flat acting style. The plot, such as it is, is so threadbare and halfhearted that the film would be laughable if Keanu Reeves hadn't absolutely delivered on the kung fu goods.

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Ip Man (2008)

Rik: I am not going to get into just how biographical this first entry in the now three-film Ip Man series is; I am no expert, and I cannot discern the fact from myth when so many sources argue about the basic facts of Ip Man's career. It is hard to trust any film that says "based on a true story" any more, since it is such an abused phrase now. One fact is clear: Ip Man (or Yip Man) was the martial arts master who taught Bruce Lee in his childhood. But this series starts out years earlier in 1937 in Foshan prefecture just as the Japanese have invaded China in advance of World War II. Truthfully, I first rented this film mainly to see the marvelous Donnie Yen in action as the title character, and this film delivers it. While this film is equal parts historical drama, espionage, and martial arts, the heart of the film -- and the real reason we are watching -- lies in a series of intense matches between the occupying Japanese general and his soldiers and Ip Man, pitting their separate styles against each other in a sort of racial grudge tournament. Ip Man 2, which takes place in the post-war '40s and has a large, brutish American fighter as the main villain, is not quite as good as this film, but still very worthwhile. I have yet to see the third installment released last year, where Ip Man starts to take Bruce Lee under his wing in the 1950s. Whether you plan to watch the trilogy or not, at least check out the first installment to see Yen in top form.

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Throw Down (2004)

Aaron: This one is the closest I come to cheating on this list. There isn't really a tournament in this film, aside from some brief flashbacks and dialogue references. Instead the film focuses on Sze-To (Louis Koo), a former judo champion who, after professional humiliation, has become an embittered bar owner in Hong Kong. Tony (Aaron Kwok), a young martial artist looking to test his skill against a respected master, arrives one day. Disappointed in the man he finds, he begins to coax Sze-To back into the martial art. I like to call director Johnnie To the Chinese Howard Hawks, although I don't think he's quite at Hawks' skill level. What the two men do share, however, is a willingness to work in all genres (though Johnnie To is most well known for his gangster films, he's made musicals, romantic comedies, and family dramas as well), a directorial style that favors efficiency and technique over flashiness, and a fondness for the group dynamics of professional men. Throw Down is explicitly Johnnie To's ode to Akira Kurosawa (Sanshiro Sugata gets name-checked a couple times), which makes this a bit more warm and humanistic than the normal To film. The dynamic between the two men, master and prodigy, may be slightly antagonistic, but there is an affection and respect there. The fighters also avoid trying to maim or injure their opponents; they simply want to fight for the joy of it, to see whose skill is better. Of the films on my list, this has the least in-your-face action, but it's the most emotionally satisfying. 

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Ong-Bak: Muay Thai Warrior (2003)

Rik: When the ads for Ong-bak (subtitled The Thai Warrior here, not Muay Thai) first came to theatres and TV well over a decade ago, it was really hard to comprehend how cool the film looked. We had seen a huge rise in the quality of martial arts films over the past couple of decades, but this one seemed like it was trying to not just be a martial arts film -- with the requisite training montages, and tournament face-offs -- but a legitimate across the board action film. Not just fighting, but crazy chase scenes through busy city streets and markets, wild stuntwork ("No wires!" they proclaimed) that looked like an attempt at a more serious take on Jackie Chan's style, and stylized, rather artful cinematography not often seen in most martial arts films. Another detail I picked up on in the trailer were the exotic Thai location shots that promised this film was going to be more expansive than a lot of these films tend to be. And who was this Tony Jaa guy? Well, for me, Ong-Bak lived up to the serious hype that preceded it. Onscreen, Jaa didn't quite have the charisma of a Chan, Bruce Lee, or Jet Li, but he was still a contender with his serious fighting chops and acrobatic skills. The film and its action sequences were indeed intense and rather beautiful at times. I have not seen the film for a while, and like Ip Man, I have seen the immediate sequel but not the third installment. I suppose it is time to knock out both films at once.

Aaron: I was still living in Alaska when Ong-Bak came out, but I had a friend who flew to California every year for the San Diego Comic-Con. And every year he would come back with a huge box full of imported martial arts and horror films, many of them bought sight unseen on the recommendation of a few trusted vendors. Most of them, it should go without saying, on slightly less than legitimate DVDs. One year he came back with a VCD of Ong-Bak, and he handed it to me breathlessly when he got back, telling me I just had to see it immediately. And he was right, I watched in utter amazement as Tony Jaa performed jaw-dropping stunts and delivered bone-crunching blows. (Muay Thai is a remarkably painful looking martial art). For months, Ong-Bak became the film I pulled out whenever friends came over, and I cherry-picked scenes to show them to convince them of the movie's greatness. When the film finally got an American theatrical release, I told everybody I thought would care that they should go see it (while secretly enjoying the fact that I was already well aware of how cool Tony Jaa was). I haven't seen the sequel to this, but I have seen a few of Jaa's other films, and have enjoyed them all, yet aside from the brief flurry of Western attention he received for Ong-Bak and The Protector, he's mostly faded from the American consciousness. This is surprising to me, because with his penchant for intricately choreographed and hectic chase sequences, and his habit of performing his own stunts without wires or nets, I assumed him to be the heir apparent to Jackie Chan.

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No Retreat, No Surrender (1986)

Rik: One of the first films that I watched after getting hooked on Van Damme with Bloodsport and Kickboxer, the earlier No Retreat, No Surrender was Jean-Claude's first major role in a film, as a leering, snarling Russian villain with slicked back hair named Ivan, clearly modeled after Dolph Lundgren in Rocky IV. Van Damme is not in very much of the film, but is in most of the fight scenes that count. The bulk of the story is built around the son of a dojo owner who moves from L.A. to Seattle, and after dealing with his cowardly father and a gang of bullies, gets his training from the spirit of none other than Bruce Lee himself (well, a rather unconvincing double). Directed by Corey Yuen, another of the Seven Little Fortunes, this film is amateurish and laughable at nearly every level. (There are gangsters who want to take over every dojo in the U.S., and Seattle is their latest target. That's right...) But it is a good representation of its place in time (it even has breakdancing), has training montage after training montage after training montage, and is a fun and silly watch regardless (including the most obnoxious bully character in the history of bully characters). Especially fun are the still riveting fight sequences, which in the last fifteen minutes are fairly brutal as Van Damme goes through opponent after opponent until he, of course, meets his match.

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Fist of Legend (1994)

Aaron: Until Ip Man came along, which you talk about above, Fist of Legend was my gold standard for judging the pure ass-kicking brutality of a martial arts film. This one is a remake of the Bruce Lee film Fist of Fury (known as The Chinese Connection in America, to tap into the popularity of The French Connection), and I am not going to try and decide who is the better martial artist. I can't think of a less fruitful endeavor. But I will say that Fist of Legend is by far the tougher of the two films, with some incredibly ruthless fight scenes. Jet Li in this film doesn't mess around in his fights, he doesn't toy with his opponent or waste time figuring out their style, he just goes straight in for the knockout, and Li emulates Bruce Lee's demeanor in these fights, if not his fighting style. Bruce Lee's famous "come over here" wave makes a couple of appearances. There's one move in here that is still seared into my brain, where Li dispatches an approaching opponent by hooking two fingers into his mouth and dropping him to the floor. It's so quick, so painful looking, and done so matter of factly, that I think I actually winced in pain and shouted in surprise when I first saw it. The brutality on display is a tad surprising, coming from choreographer Yuen Woo Ping, who tends to operate more with graceful wirework. His martial arts tends towards beautiful, unrealistic movements with people gliding through the air as they trade kicks and punches, and it is completely absent here. The beauty in these fights comes from how efficiently Li is able to dispatch waves of opponents.. One of the first Jet Li films I ever saw, and still one of the best.

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Shaolin Soccer (2001)

Rik: Well, we never said it had to be a martial arts tournament, just a tournament. The overabundance of joy that I felt upon seeing this film when it finally came to American theatres in 2004 may have been a portent of things to come for me over the next decade. Not long after seeing it, I would move to California and become enslaved to a youth soccer organization for ten years, which I loved at first but which ultimately ended in tragedy. My tragedy. Now I hate soccer to such a degree I can no longer watch it. Well, except in Shaolin Soccer, that is. Director, co-writer, and lead actor Stephen Chow doesn't just pull out all the stops in this tale of a horrid soccer team turned into gods of the grass by the healing knowledge of Shaolin kung fu; he delivers a screwball flying kick to each one of those stops until they are both begging for mercy and rolling on the floor with laughter. Some of the jokes are a tad un-P.C. to American audiences, but who the hell cares? Chow made such a great debut to mainstream American audiences that his next film, Kung Fu Hustle, couldn't help but disappoint a little bit, even if it was an almost equally charming merging of martial arts with dance musical. Strangely for me, as much as I love these two films, I haven't kept up with Chow since or checked out his back catalogue, and so I need to rectify this straight away.

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Visiting and Revisiting: Bloodsport (1988) Pt. 2

[This is Part 2 of our discussion of Jean-Claude Van Damme's Bloodsport (1988). If you missed Part 1, click here to get caught up before reading this part.]

Aaron: The Kumite tournament is the backbone of this movie, and if those scenes don’t succeed, neither does the movie. To that end, each of the combatants is given their own unique style. I’m not enough of an expert to be able to distinguish them by name, but it appears that the filmmakers hired people based on their skill in different styles of fighting. This variety of styles keeps the tournament scenes fresh and interesting, and after awhile you get into the fight scenes because you’re anticipating what it will be like when the different styles clash. This is a pretty common trope in itself, but again it’s so reliably solid a piece of entertainment that it’s still fun to see it executed. It’s satisfying for the same reason video games can be satisfying; it gives the impression of advancing through levels towards the ultimate goal. Outside of our heroes, Frank and Ray, the other fighters are more or less disposable, and you never know who is going to win a particular fight.

Of course, there’s one other person who is not disposable: the villainous Chong Li, portrayed by former competitive bodybuilder Bolo Yeung. Bloodsport and Enter the Dragon are probably Yeung’s most famous films here in the U.S., but he was a prolific actor in the Hong Kong action scene for decades, starting with a string of bad guy roles for the Shaw Brothers in 1970, he kept working for decades, sometimes appearing in over a dozen movies in one year. He started slowing down in the late nineties, and has only had a handful of movies released this century, although he does have a small part in an upcoming film featuring those titans of martial arts action: Michael Madsen, Armand Assante, and Peter O’Toole.

Bolo Yeung as Chong Li is a seriously imposing villain, owing to his bulk and some seriously weird demeanor. He constantly clears his nose by shooting snot rockets just before he attacks (which is actually a tic common to this type of fist-fighting entertainment), speaks very little, and when he wins a match he raises his arms in triumph and screams noiselessly. He opens his mouth and makes every indication that he’s screaming triumphantly and working the crowd, but he makes no noise. I’m not sure if it was intentional or not; did he really make no noise during those moments, or did they decide to remove his shouts because they didn’t sound right? At first I thought maybe he was a deaf-mute, but then he speaks a couple lines of dialogue, so that’s not the reason. He’s like Lenny in Of Mice and Men, if Lenny ever realized his strength and decided to get into MMA fighting. There’s something off about him, something seedy and depraved, but when he wins a match he seems somehow innocent and childlike, even though he’s just maimed or killed someone with his bare hands. It’s one of the most unsettling things I’ve ever seen someone do.

How did the fighting hold up for you? Clearly there are hundreds of better film options out there if you’re looking for well-choreographed fights, but it was still executed well enough. It’s what I imagine the appeal in pro wrestling is; the fights are staged and not entirely convincing, but the athletic skill involved can still be impressive.

Rik: The fight scenes were an aspect in which I was lightly disappointed in when I watched it again (and again and again) recently. I think the lack of overall excellence in the fight choreography goes hand in hand with the relative cheapness of the whole production. There are a few obvious misses where things don’t seem timed quite right, and there is a sense (for me, at least) where it seems like they just went with the first take to speed things up a bit. The upside in displaying a zillion fighting styles (and in Gibb’s case, a near total lack of fighting style) though is that one can point to this as a reason why things don’t seem as fluid as they might be normally. There are many mismatches, especially when tiny, would-be Bruce Lee types are thrown in the ring with the aforementioned and absolutely formidable-looking Bolo Yeung.

Yeung (aside from Jean-Claude, of course) has always been my favorite part of this film. He is an impressive presence on just a physical level, but then he has that unceasing glare on top of it that gives his character an extra touch of villainy. When I saw Bloodsport the first time, I recognized him instantly from Enter the Dragon, and I didn’t need much more than that to sell me on how dangerous he would be in this movie. But then Bolo truly delivers on that promise with not just his fighting prowess but also, as you mentioned, by making his every second of screen time in Bloodsport as memorable and often as annoying as possible. Unless you outright hate the guy (or this movie) in real life, I think it is impossible to end a viewing of Bloodsport without coming away with the impression that Yeung’s Chong Li is one of the great martial arts villains. He is that great in this film.

However, Chong Li (as a character) seems entirely too brutal even for a competition such as this. Since this Kumite isn’t a “to the death” style tournament like you often see in this genre, and is an annually held event that obviously depends on some measure of protection from local authorities or organizations (even if it is, you know, “secret”), I find it strange that Chong would be invited back after gratuitously murdering someone in the ring there a year earlier. After all, there is a fighting association (the IFAA) that sends someone (the “Jackson” character) to help guide the American fighters through the tournament, so there seems to be some oversight involved. And Chong seems fairly intent on killing everyone he meets in the current tournament as well, even if he doesn’t actually murder most of his opponents. However, he does seem to greatly enjoy cracking backs over his knee and twisting necks violently and snapping limbs in ways that look more like pure criminal assault than a regulated sporting contest. (The crowd – and the judging committee, too, up to a certain point -- seems pretty OK with Chong’s exceedingly gratuitous poor sportsmanship, which I also find hard to believe.)

And then there is that brick scene, which seems to be a bone of contention with anyone who disputes Frank Dux’s claims of authenticity. Jean-Claude has to prove himself worthy of entry into the Kumite by smashing (with a single blow) through a pile of bricks, but can only break the bottom one on the stack. This is supposed to be a big deal, and apparently no one has ever done such a thing before. Jean-Claude succeeds mightily, crushing the brick with a grand explosion of force and brick dust that leaves everyone with their jaws agape. It’s an impressive enough feat that even people in the film are left somewhat in doubt, leading one villainous jerk to get dangerously close to Fox in Socks territory when he scoffingly says of Jean-Claude, “He’s the American shithead who makes tricks with bricks.” The “trick” is a technique often called “the death touch” and the real-life Dux has apparently performed a similar though not quite exact feat in public and on television over the years. The outcome in the film is, of course, silly beyond measure, but it is one of those “buy-in” moments where if you believe the hero can do this, then you have to believe everything he does that is yet to come. And boy, did we ever buy into the exploding brick trick…


Aaron: I’m just going to say this about the sometimes unconvincing fighting and frequently silly machismo: it fell on the right side of the divide between enjoyably cheesy and obnoxiously stupid. I never bothered to think about how realistic that brick scene was; I took it to be just your typical bit of martial arts mythologizing, along the lines of the “Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique” in Kill Bill, or any variation of a near magical martial arts move. The movie that keeps coming to mind as I write this up is Blind Fury, where Rutger Hauer plays another white guy who attains a legendary level of skill and defies the laws of physics and logic at every turn. That film, as ridiculous as it was, was based on one of the films in the long-running Japanese franchise, Zatoichi (Zatoichi Challenged, to be exact), so this is all part of the tradition. As for Chong Li, you are quite correct in finding him too brutal for this film. He’s imposing in a way the rest of the film never quite attempts, and is actually more in line with what I expected from this film when I was younger. When he blinds Jean-Claude by blowing powder in his eyes, though, he becomes the ineffectual cartoon villain the film seemed to require. I’m confused as to how this worked, however. There is a referee in the fight, and Chong Li makes no attempt to disguise his actions as he grinds up a piece of chalk and blows it into Jean-Claude’s eyes. I can only assume no one stopped the fight because they are all terrified of Bolo Yeung in this role. Then, bizarrely, Chong Li mostly steps back and allows Jean-Claude time to clear his eyes. He makes some jabs at him, but keeps backing off for a while when it’s clear he should just go in for the kill.

Aside from Chong Li, though, this film is lighter and more fun than I expected, as I said earlier. However, there were some various attempts at actual comedy that never quite landed for me. I didn’t hate them, but they left me more baffled than amused. Chief among the things I found baffling were the not-quite-competent-yet-not-quite-bungling pair of American officials tasked with tracking Frank Dux down in Kowloon, stopping him from fighting in the Kumite, and transporting him safely back home. Played by Norman Burton and a young Forrest Whitaker, this pair seems like they’re supposed to be the comedic relief, but they never really do anything funny. A lot of their business has the structure of comedy, but isn’t actually comedy. Like the way Burton constantly cuts Whitaker off in conversation; it seemed to be setting up a “good cop bad cop” dynamic between the two of them, with Whitaker as the polite, understanding officer who gets people to open up to him. But, no… Burton is as polite as Whitaker; he just keeps interrupting him. Or that scene where they eat at a waterfront restaurant, and Whitaker is handling those chopsticks like an 8-year-old who’s never seen them before. There’s some dialogue and action that I guess is meant to convey how crazy the food is in China, but even the local cop (and one disinterested dog) seems to find it disgusting. Then again, everyone in the place appeared to be Caucasian, so possibly they’re eating at a location that the locals have convinced the tourists to eat at, so they don’t overcrowd all the good restaurants.

And then, what may be the most famous moment of comedy in the film: the chase scene through Hong Kong where Burton and Whitaker try to capture Jean-Claude, who is clearly in peak physical form and will have no trouble avoiding these soft, pudgy desk jockeys. And in fact he outruns them effortlessly, literally running circles around them as he leads them through Hong Kong, always stopping just long enough for them to almost catch up. It’s groaningly unfunny, in a way that actually manages to be kinda funny again. Plus, it gives us a nice segue into one aspect of this film we can’t not discuss: the soundtrack. This scene features one of those cheesy late-eighties synth-driven rock songs that must have been a requirement for this type of film for a few years. There are, to my memory, three vocal tracks that are all pretty awful, but again, fell on the right side of cheesy for me. Nothing I’ll go out and buy, but Fight to Survive, with its repeating chant of “Kumite! Kumite!” has snuck its way into my head, to the extent that I’ve caught myself several times repeating the chant in rhythm to the song under my breath.

The rest of the soundtrack, from Paul Hertzog, is some fairly low-key synth work that ties it quite distinctly to a specific time in the American film scene. Hertzog had a pretty brief film career, working on only seven film scores (two of which were for JCVD films, the other being Kickboxer) before retiring to become a high school English and music teacher. Time will tell which of his professions had the larger impact on the youth of America.

What are your feelings on the soundtrack? As someone who saw this movie several times during JCVD’s heyday, did you ever own a copy of the soundtrack?

Rik: If I had been aware that a soundtrack was available, I possibly would have bought it, though I would have hardly ever listened to it except to make fun of it or to annoy someone. I am very rarely a fan of synth-driven soundtracks at all – there are exceptions, like John Carpenter or Tangerine Dream, but even there, synth soundtracks don’t have a lot of replay value for me – so I doubt that I would have rushed out to buy the soundtrack unless there is a really great song or two that I just had to have in my collection. Bloodsport does have that song, but I wouldn’t call it great, not with a straight face anyhow. Fight to Survive is the sort of anthem – along the lines of Eye of the Tiger, but much, much cheesier, like if John Waite had a baby with Steve Perry – that is perfect for training montages and Parker and Stone parodies. The singer sounds so puffed up and convinced of his own cool; I mock the film, but like you, the Kumite chant (and the chorus of the song) always gets into my head when I am watching the film, and I can’t help but love the song in spite of itself.

I suppose that if the film took place anywhere but Hong Kong, I might be more forgiving toward the chase scene through the city. But it is in Hong Kong, and because of when it was made, it is hard for me not to compare it to the type of chase scenes that Jackie Chan was filming in Hong Kong around the same period. It is a totally unfair comparison, because Van Damme and Chan are very different types of entertainers, martial arts being their primary genre notwithstanding. Still, Van Damme is running around in supposedly comic fashion in the streets and alleyways that pretty much belonged to Chan at the time; thoughts of Chan’s Keaton-style stunt work where he runs through crowds and leaps from bus to bus and over or through obstacles can’t help but come to mind. The chase here almost feels like a game of hide and seek where the parent or babysitter kind of makes it a bit easier for the kid to find them, even though they will find ways to draw out the game a bit longer just to eat up time. I can’t help seeing Burton and Whitaker as a couple of toddlers that Van Damme is teasing along the way as they struggle to walk across the room towards him. Having just given The Gumball Rally another watch for the first time in decades, I must add that a little Norman Burton goes a long way for me; he is the least successful part of Gumball, and if the kid playing the young Van Damme didn’t already take the crown, Burton would have it locked down in Bloodsport as well. (Plus, he is the worst Felix Leiter of all time...)

I believe that the powder that Chong Li uses is supposed to be a salt pill that he crushes after previously hiding it in the wrap around his midsection. There is definitely a bit of Luke Skywalker Jedi sense at play in the blindness scenes, and I do find it hard to swallow that Chong Li couldn’t have just flown at Jean-Claude full force and knock him into submission easily. But, we must have our heroes, and so I am willing to suspend disbelief to allow for Jean-Claude to have some sort of crazy spider-sense that allows him to not just block nearly every blow from Chong Li, but to have enough skill to blindly pummel the murderous fighter into the mat thoroughly.

Something we have not touched on that I want to bring up: the “sex” scene between Jean-Claude and the blonde reporter that he “befriends,” played by Leah Ayres. (Horror fans may remember her as the lead female role in The Burning, an OK slasher film with some great Tom Savini makeup and effects). I put quotes around the word “sex” initially, because we don’t actually get to see any of their assumed romance that involves physical involvement at all. Not even a kiss. Early on in our JCVD worship in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, we were all fairly convinced that Jean-Claude was gay. It was just the impression we gained from watching many of his films early on was that another of the standard elements of a Jean-Claude film was that you never saw him actually get physical with any of his female co-stars. I think maybe Timecop broke us of that impression but it has been so long, I cannot remember which film it actually was or even if this theory would hold water today. (Timecop does have Mia Sara as his wife, so if you were going to break the mold and finally get down onscreen, that’s the film in which to do so.)

Aaron: You probably weren’t alone in thinking Jean-Claude Van Damme was homosexual; his first credited onscreen role was as Gay Karate Man in the 1984 film Monaco Forever. Bloodsport's producers stated that they chose Jean-Claude for his ladies man appeal, while also realizing he would appeal to both genders. Women would want him, and men would want to be him, but also be with him. In that light it definitely seems like a calculated choice to downplay his sexuality in this and other films. It now makes sense that Jean-Claude’s most convincing emotional relationship in the film is with Donald Gibb. We’re supposed to understand that he had sex with Leah Ayres, but what we see of their courtship is mostly chaste, and he seems perfectly happy to see her on the arms of another man after their supposedly passionate night. They don’t even share so much as a tender embrace as Jean-Claude embarks for America, only a professional salute across the tarmac. Donald Gibb, on the other hand, is a totally different story. Jean-Claude says, “I love you” to one person in this film, and it’s Donald Gibb, right before he leans in to either kiss him on the cheek or whisper sweet nothings in his ear while Donald lays in his hospital bed.

Rik: Back then, though, we also thought it could be some other reason – perhaps a jealous spouse or girlfriend, or a horrible, real-life STD situation or worse – he never made it on screen with the ladies. And he was so pretty then… is it any wonder we thought maybe there was something Jean-Claude was hiding from us? Which made it especially ironic when we found out gradually that, in addiction to a cocaine addition and bipolar disorder, he was a total horndog behind the scenes all those years, cheating on spouse after spouse (he has been married five times, twice to bodybuilder Gladys Portugues), and even declaring himself a sex addict at one point. And straight as an arrow, it seems. So we had it all wrong. (Can’t blame him for the Kylie Minogue thing, though…)

But this was and is just silly rambling, for the films are the important part. Somehow, despite some rampant goofiness on the part of the script, the music, the non-fighting action scenes, and the casting, Bloodsport still makes me absolutely buy into the Jean-Claude screen persona, and had me jumping on Netflix right away to see what else was immediately available to watch streaming (sadly, just a couple of his later films). He still kicks ass in this movie, and I still think the film is a lot of fun, though perhaps not totally in an intentional way. Seeing Bloodsport a couple of times with fresher eyes has me totally ready to revisit other JCVD films again, especially Kickboxer, Cyborg, Universal Soldier, Timecop, Hard Target, and Sudden Death. Oh, and my personal favorite of the JCVD oeuvre: Double Impact, where he plays equally ass-kicking identical twins, long lost to each other, raised on the other side of the world from each other, that each have different excuses for talking and fighting exactly like Jean-Claude. The film is directed and co-written (along with Jean-Claude) by Sheldon Lettich, who had a hand in Bloodsport’s screenplay. Best of all, there is an even cooler performance from Bolo Yeung in Double Impact. A must.

Aaron: I had heard a few of the stories about Jean-Claude’s public behavior during the early nineties, when he must have been coked out of his mind. These stories acted as another reason I never went in for his films, even once I’d reached the age where I really should have seen them. When this film came out in 1988, it was a pretty big sensation (at least as far as independently produced martial arts films are concerned). There were articles debunking the claims made in this “true” story, lawsuits about those articles, and a slew of knockoffs that flooded video store shelves. It’s amazing how quickly Jean-Claude’s star fell, although it took awhile for the quality film roles to dry up. He was at least a big enough draw to appear in high profile films throughout most of the nineties, but his public profile declined sharply. 

Yet here, in his first breakout role in the film that jumpstarted his American career, everything is golden. I know it’s all a bit silly and juvenile, and a lot of this film just doesn’t work on a critical level, but it mostly all worked for me, and I’m ready to make a complete turnaround on my previously held opinions about Jean-Claude Van Damme’s films. I’ll admit that a large chunk of my enjoyment is probably not in the manner the filmmakers had intended (I am loath to use the term “ironic enjoyment” here), but part of me actually does buy into the juvenile image of tough guy cool that the film is selling. Bloodsport, for all its cheesiness, intermittently unconvincing fight scenes, completely dated songs, stilted dialogue, unfunny comedic moments, outrageously bad acting, cliché-ridden plot developments, and gaps in internal logic, still manages to kick ass (for lack of a better term). I’ve seen this film twice now in quick succession, and only one of those viewings was for Visiting and Revisiting. It may not be perfect, or even fit the definition of what could be called a "good movie" in many cases, but it is a really fun time that I’m sure I’ll be revisiting again.

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Thanks for joining us for Visiting and Revisiting and our discussion of Bloodsport. The next film up for us is the 1999 sci-fi thriller, The Thirteenth Floor, directed by Josef Rusnak. We will see you soon!

Visiting and Revisiting: Bloodsport (1988) Pt. 1

Rik: Welcome to the next edition of Visiting and Revisiting! Since the last movie we covered – Starcrash – Aaron and I decided to stop splitting the individual parts of Visiting and Revisiting between our respective websites, and actually start a separate blog expressly for this column. If you have enjoyed our discussions of various films in the past, we hope that you will continue to visit this site, and if you are new to our writings about film, we welcome you to take part in the discussion by leaving comments on our posts.

This is the first part of our two-part discussion about the 1988 "martial science" classic, Bloodsport, starring Jean-Claude Van Damme in his first big starring role.

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Rik: By the late 1980s (and for the bulk of that decade), I was definitely getting more and more into martial arts films. I thought that I had seen most of the major science fiction classics by then, and while horror was more prevalent in my local Video City, I too had gone through most of the bona fide classics (that were readily available on VHS) and was really just picking through the bones to find a decent film here and there. But martial arts as a genre were still a fairly untapped resource to me. However, I kind of got into them the "white guy" way, which was, sad to say now, Chuck Norris films. I saw his early flick Good Guys Wear Black in a theatre back in 1979 after I saw Siskel and Ebert feature the film on their show. I don't remember their review, and I think the show was actually about "Stars of the Future" or something similar; I just remember seeing Chuck kicking ass in a clip on their show, and knowing right then that I had to see Good Guys Wear Black. 

I had seen Enter the Dragon by this point, as well as the other major Bruce Lee films, and while I loved them all, Bruce was already a few years dead. For me, without much knowledge of the genre in those pre-internet days, the implication at the time was that kung fu movies died with Lee as their master. I did not know about the Shaw Brothers films or the wide variety of other chopsocky flicks in the world. Asian films, apart from Godzilla movies, were fairly unknown to me in general. I would not really know anything about samurai films, apart from John Belushi's spoof of them on SNL, until I saw Shogun (the NBC mini-series) and Shogun Assassin in the same year (1980). I would get acquainted with Jackie Chan in The Cannonball Run and The Big Brawl, but I had no idea he would ever blow up across the globe like he did eventually. It would be a few years before I started running into his films again. I hate to bring even a smattering of racial identity to this, but for a too skinny, blonde white kid to see someone like Chuck Norris come along and kick serious booty, it was a big deal to me then. (I have since grown up and such things do not matter to me anymore.) I did not connect Norris to Return of the Dragon either; seriously, I did not actually know his name until Good Guys Wear Black. After that, I went to every Norris film that came out up through the second Delta Force movie. Then I went cold on Chuck, and that has pretty much remained constant through today, which is great, because he and I will never come close to sharing the same opinion on anything.

I also started going to anything in the theatres with martial arts in it: Sho Kosugi's Enter the Ninja series, Hollywood pastiche/tribute films like Big Trouble in Little China and The Last Dragon, Jackie Chan’s first foray into the U.S. market, The Big Brawl, and even low-budget films that you can't believe made it to a U.S. theatre like Tongs. Hey, standards often had to be low in order to see martial arts on the big screen. And on video? For every horror science fiction flick I was renting, I was also getting a martial arts film beside it. I watched everything that I could, and it is seriously astounding that I never made the leap into trying out karate or another form on my own. (The truth is, I am remarkably uncoordinated to be able to participate in any form of athletics outside of bowling or darts, and at the time had no muscle on my body whatsoever. I also have shyness in social situations that kept me from joining a gym or a dojo at all.)

And when Jean-Claude Van Damme came along? Well, I did not see Bloodsport in a theatre, and am unsure if it even played in Anchorage. If it did, how I missed out on it I’ll never know, except to say I was probably in a play at the time. I saw it first on video, but once I did, that was it. I had found my new action hero. I will also admit that there was a bit of a man-crush as well, before that term had really come along. He was just too pretty, and normally this would have made me believe he was mere fluff and not worthy of serious attention as an action guy. But he kicked major ass, or at least gave the impression that he did, and you really believed that he could fight his way out of any situation. And he was just immensely pretty, and… and… what are these strange feelings coming over me once again?!!

From Cyborg in 1989 through Maximum Risk in 1996, I saw every Jean-Claude film that hit our local theatres. We even formed an unofficial club around seeing his films, wherein we reveled in common JCVD tropes that seemed to pop up in every film: 1) the explanation for his Belgian accent, especially in American scenes; 2) showing off his naked or nearly naked perfectly muscled derriere (or body); 3) the first scene in a film where you can see him visibly thinking through his lines in English; and 4) how deep into the film would we get before he did his trademark splits. And from my first video viewing of Bloodsport up probably through 2005, when I gave away my well-worn VHS copy, it is likely that I saw Bloodsport several dozen times, though the last time I watched it was probably near the end of the '90s. By then, like for many of us JCVD fans, once he started teaming up with the likes of Dennis Rodman, you could smell the decay and desperation, and we fled like rats from a sinking Jean-Claude.

Now, Aaron, how is it you avoided seeing Bloodsport, generally considered to be somewhere in the lower range of martial arts classics, until recently? What's your relationship with Mr. JCVD?

Aaron: For once I have a fairly concrete reason for not seeing one of these films that we discuss. I was ten when Bloodsport came out, too young to see it in a theatre (to answer your implied question, I do have a memory of seeing the Bloodsport poster in an Anchorage theatre; I believe this is accurate, but I have no proof of it), and I grew up in a house without cable. Of course, I had friends and cousins with cable, and I was given a fair amount of autonomy when it came to the movies I rented at this age (it’s likely my mom would have balked at Bloodsport based on the title and cover alone, but it’s equally likely I could have snuck it past her), but it was just something I wasn’t interested in. To be shamefully honest, I was kinda scared of it.

I was a fairly sheltered child, and Bloodsport seemed a bit extreme for me. I, like you, had fallen under the spell of Chuck Norris and Bruce Lee films, and unlike you I actually had joined a dojo for a short, miserable time (it was not the right time or place; later in life I did join a kung fu school and it was one of the most positive experiences in my life). I had even started to get into martial arts through the monumentally crappy -- but still silly and fun for twelve-year-olds -- films of Chinese schlockmeister Godfrey Ho. A surprisingly large number of these films were available for rental at my local Video City, and came in enticing foil-embossed covers for easy detection on the packed shelves. But something about Bloodsport, from the images I’d seen to the things I’d heard from older or braver friends, convinced me that this movie was something new. The destruction in the action movies I had been seeing up to that point were focused on property damage, while Bloodsport promised horrific bodily damage.

And then, when I was at the age and temperament to enjoy Bloodsport, only a few years later, the cultural attitudes had changed and the film seemed laughably outdated. Jackie Chan had burst upon the American action scene, and my growing appreciation of action tended towards Chow Yun Fat, Jet Li, Donnie Yen, and Michelle Yeoh. They were all arriving on our shores to point out how bloated and silly Western action films had become. Stars like Jean-Claude Van Damme and Steven Seagal were instantly made obsolete, and even juggernauts like Stallone and Schwarzenegger were faced with severely diminishing returns. As you yourself pointed out, JCVD had pretty much been reduced to a punchline, starring in films with notably psychotic sports stars. These films felt inessential and, worst of all to a pretentious teenager, inauthentic.

And so I missed out on almost all of JCVD’s filmography, even though I loved at least one of his films from this heyday: Hard Target. Of course, it was easy to justify that enjoyment by pointing to the involvement of John Woo, a director who had yet to disappoint me in the gun-fu department.  Over the years my opinion of Jean-Claude Van Damme has greatly improved, even if the quality of his films has greatly decreased. Sure, he’s been in a couple of legitimately good movies like JCVD, and he’s popped up in some interesting projects that play off of his outdated tough guy image, but the majority of his films these days are no-budget DTV flicks filmed in dirt-cheap Eastern European locations. But, the thing is, he’s become a fairly decent actor. As his youthful face became more lined, and his physical prowess has diminished (though just barely), his on-screen charisma has actually grown, and I generally enjoy seeing him pop up. This got me thinking I should make an effort to see his earlier star-making films. Whatever my opinion of him was, JCVD was a pretty large pop-cultural figure to many of my generation.

I’m not going to draw this out anymore; I loved Bloodsport. It was ridiculously entertaining, owing to a reliable story structure familiar to any kung fu fans; young fighter enters a not-so-secret tournament to avenge the honor of a loved one. Underestimated by the established fighters, he inevitably battles his way to a showdown with the villainous reigning champ. It’s such a reliably satisfying story arc that it’s still being used in dozens of films every year, with little deviation. It really only requires, to be successful, any two of three things; a charismatic hero, colorful villains, and well-choreographed fights. Bloodsport has the first two, and is fairly accomplished with the third. At least for a low budget, independent, American film about martial arts.

Rik: I, too, love Bloodsport, though my estimation of it as a film – already fairly rated in the middle range and mostly tongue-in-cheek -- has come down a little bit with my most recent viewings. I think that at one point I could just look at this as a great martial arts flick with a few plot issues that bothered me, but now the restrained budget and the straining at the seams of the picture are far more obvious to me, though not enough to make me turn against the film, and stop seeing it as a really fun, kind of stupid action flick.

You are also correct about Jean-Claude having grown as an actor over the years to where he is a reliable presence onscreen, even if he doesn’t get much in the way of big screen work these days, outside of appearances in things like The Expendables 2 (which I admit that I haven't seen yet). I would love to see him make a big screen comeback in the manner of Liam Neeson, who became a true action star about the same age that Jean-Claude is now. While Neeson is a much better actor, of course, Jean-Claude already has action credentials, and is still fit enough that he probably pull off ridiculous action scenes far more believably if he got the chance.

But let’s put aside the Jean-Claude talk for the moment and discuss the plot of Bloodsport. The film is built around one of those mysterious fighting tournaments that are supposed to be top secret hush-hush and only whispered about in the lightest of whispers but that everybody and their blind, deaf, and dumb dog seem to know is happening. In this case, it is a tournament called the Kumite, which is really just a term used in karate for training against an adversary, and used quite frequently at that. But in the world Bloodsport, the very word seems to invoke immense awe and respect, and refers specifically to a highly revered but dangerous tournament to which several dozen adversaries will travel around the world to take part and hopefully defeat the rest of the field to be crowned champion.

Bloodsport is the purportedly true story of Frank Dux, who in our real world is a martial arts instructor and fight choreographer in California. Everything that happens to Dux in the film – his military service, his undercover intelligence work that makes him far too important an asset to the military to possibly lose his life in the fighting arena, and his eventual victory at the Kumite – have all been highly disputed over the years, and the articles written by such sources as the LA Times and statements from other doubters supposedly exposing Dux as the basest sort of fraud have brought about lawsuits from Dux for slander and libel. There have been books written about his claims, and he too has published his own autobiography refuting the accusations. I don’t know enough about any of it to really say where I stand on the issue; all I know is that in 1988, more so than today where everything is suspect when someone claims “true story”, we really believed that Dux was some sort of superman after seeing Bloodsport. What is your take on Dux’s story and his possibly amazing adventures in the real world, Aaron?

Aaron: I can honestly say that the thought of digging through Frank Dux’s story and learning all the details and trying to parse what’s truth, what’s exaggeration, and what’s an outright lie, fills me with a deep sense of exhaustion. What I can tell you is that when that end title came up, telling us that the preceding story was based on the true exploits of Frank Dux, followed by a list of his Herculean labors… well, I just assumed that was a load of bullshit. We could spend a few dozen pages just bringing up how ridiculous Frank Dux’s (real or imagined) exploits are – and a quick Google search shows me many have already done so – but I couldn’t care less. Not that that’s a deal breaker; I’m used to ignoring a film’s claims to reality, and I generally just take it to be marketing bluster. But it has given me a rather dim view of the real life person Jean-Claude is playing. I’ve been in enough white-guy dojos, and spent time around enough Westerners who take martial arts way too seriously, to know that anyone who proudly makes those types of claims would be a real bummer to spend any time around. I immediately thought of Danny McBride’s character from The Foot Fist Way, and if that film isn’t familiar to our readers, I’d advise them to just imagine any Danny McBride character as a martial arts instructor, and that’s what I assume Frank Dux is like in real life. Had I seen this movie when it came out, I likely would have just thought Frank Dux must be the coolest guy in the world. As a skeptical adult, I have trouble buying any of it.

But let’s get back to the movie, where I’m more than willing to accept the events on display at face value. As a first time viewer, with very few preconceptions of the film, there was nothing in the frequent shoddiness to disappoint me. It’s a Cannon Group production, and I’d seen enough of them as an adult (as well as the excellent Electric Boogaloo documentary about the Golan-Globus partnership) to have a clear conception of the resources they were working with. To that end, while the film is cheesy and dated and often cheap looking, it was well utilized and always fairly enjoyable in its faults. I felt the movie got pretty good mileage out of actually filming in Kowloon, although a lot of the shots used could have easily been replicated on a soundstage.

Like you, I found it difficult to decipher just what level of infamy the tournament resided at. It’s spoken of in hushed tones and is apparently not discussed with outsiders, and yet it’s also common knowledge among military commanders in America. It’s being held in the walled city of Kowloon, in a chamber hidden within a maze of back alleys, with ties to the local Triads, and yet it’s also controlled by the IFAA (the International Fighting Arts Association, which actually exists, though seems to be a mainly American organization inspired by, among other things, Bloodsport). At the very least, the tournament had to be semi-public in order for Frank Dux to be an internationally known record holder. And we see this is the case when basically everybody who is not the female reporter intent on writing an expose of the fight is able to just waltz into the arena with no hassle.

Although really, this just added to the sense of fun for me; either as a running joke in the film, or a sign of a rush-job script, it fell on the enjoyable side of bad every time. It was a surprise to me, actually, just how much fun this film is. Clearly the extreme experience I was anxious about as a kid never manifested itself, and it turns out Bloodsport has a pretty light tone, perfect for budding martial arts enthusiasts of all ages. There are a couple of light sexual references, but the dirtiest the film gets is when we see Jean-Claude’s bare ass for a split second after a night of sexual relations that occurred between tastefully discreet edits. The fights have some blood, of course (gotta deliver on that title), but for the most part they’re all pretty tame in regards to actual physical damage. Bloody noses abound, although there is one gruesome shot of a bone protruding from a fairly fake mass of prosthetic makeup. In general this film had a sense of fun I totally didn’t suspect as a child.

Rik: The opening of the film has an extended sequence where Jean-Claude sets a record for longest time spent waiting in a foyer as he flashes back for what seems like half an hour (not really) over his journey from starting out as a callow, brooding youth with criminal tendencies to getting transformed by martial arts master Senzo Tanaka (played effectively by Roy Chiao) into a fighting machine capable of winning an international tournament like the Kumite. 

The training montage built into the month-long flashback is the part of the film where we get crazy scenes such as when Van Damme is suspended upright between several trees with pulleys and ropes tied around his wrists and ankles, and he starts flexing and pulling himself upward until he snaps one of the ropes free from its mooring. I don’t know how I would have reacted to this scene were I seeing for the first time today, but back in 1988, it was pretty convincing to me that Jean-Claude was pretty amazing to behold. We also see the first example of him doing the full body splits, and again, this astounded us at the time. Before we even got close to “real” fighting in the film, Jean-Claude had won us over.

And then there is the post-Star Wars blindness training, where Jean-Claude (I have a hard time referring to him as Frank, his character name, because after all, he is so Jean-Claude), as a teenager, has to learn how to use his remaining senses to perceive the world and eventually fight, you know, just in case some villainous cretin decides to cheat and blind Jean-Claude in the closing match of a big Kumite tournament. (Will that happen in Bloodsport? Who knows?) Jean-Claude also has to learn how to serve tea while blind but even after successfully completing this task and sitting down to enjoy the tea, Senzo sends a hard chop towards Jean-Claude’s face. Even with his blindfold still in place, our hero easily blocks Senzo’s blow. We see that Senzo and his wife (who seems a little too wrapped up in this scene) are both pleased with the progress. When the training montage (and the lengthy flashback) are done, Jean-Claude finally goes in to see his master, who is supposedly old (he doesn’t look any older) and tired and laying in bed. He tells Senzo of the Kumite tournament, and Senzo tells Jean-Claude that his own spirit will fight alongside his pupil. I guess he is dying, but there is nothing else said of this before the film transitions to Hong Kong.

While it is immensely clichéd today, as I mentioned, this opening worked wonders on me in 1988 at the age of 24. Jean-Claude – and his very Jean-Claudeness – was sold to me in just a few short minutes. How did you see the training montage opening?

Aaron: If there were one part of this movie I could go back in time to remove or alter dramatically, it would be that training montage. Actually, strike that; the training montage was fine, it was the flashback structure that really just bored me to tears. It goes on for so long, and is for the most part highly repetitive and stilted, that it was clearly included and drawn out to pad the running time of the film. Think of the other big training montages, think of any montage from Rocky, and there’s continual movement and fast paced editing set to some inspirational song. The training montage here is a bunch of shots of people standing around and then suddenly striking out in some seriously unconvincing stage fighting. I won’t deny that Jean-Claude’s freeing himself from those ropes still has some charm derived equally from its badassness and its cheesiness, but everything else just drags on forever. And don’t even get me started on the kid who played young Jean-Claude (Pierre Rafini, in his only acting job). It was clear from his slightly bewildered stare and awkward physical demeanor that this was the mentally challenged kid the older kids keep around only because they can always talk him into doing anything. In a film full of non-actors, this kid manages to stand above the rest.

Luckily this segment isn’t actually that long, it just feels that way. In pretty quick order we’re in Hong Kong, where Jean-Claude has a meet-cute with Donald Gibb (probably still most well-known as Ogre from Revenge of the Nerds) that actually telegraphs their relationship as one of antagonism, until they come to respect each other’s skill at primitive martial arts video games. And after that it’s on to the Kumite. One thing that seemed odd to me, along the lines of not understanding how secret the tournament is supposed to be, is how Gibb got invited to this tournament. This is supposed to be a gathering of the best of the best, world-class masters of a variety of fighting styles from around the world. And then there is Gibb, whose fighting style recalls Mongo in Blazing Saddles. He isn’t skilled so much as big and bulky and able to knock people out of the ring with basic pro-wrestling maneuvers. Jean-Claude had to prove his credentials through a display of genuine skill, but Gibb has done so well that he’s apparently been invited several times.

Rik: I am not a fan of Revenge of the Nerds (unlike a lot of people that I know; somehow that one was lost on me), and so Gibb’s charms somewhat evade me as well. This is not to say that I don’t like his presence in this film, and if I can say one positive thing in defense of him in his fight scenes in Bloodsport, it’s that he has presence. As in massive, hulking presence, where he might terrify you just seeing him as you step into the ring. I admit he is a puzzler. He seems rather out of shape in general, and I can’t imagine he has ever been invited to a fighting tournament outside of a biker bar. That said, he and Jean-Claude do seem to have a bit of onscreen chemistry, and as sidekicks go, he’s a good one to have on your side. But, could this particular character ever gain entrance as a fighter at the Kumite tournament? I highly doubt it. (And yeah… that kid playing the young version of Jean-Claude is truly awful. Thank goodness his film career was so brief.)

[To read Part 2 of this conversation about Bloodsport, click here.]