No Surrender Cinema: Bloodfist
You’ve seen most of the sequels covered on this site (including several in previous No Surrender Cinema columns), and now today we’re going to go back, way back, back into time. It’s the one that started it all…the one that launched one of the most popular martial arts movie series of all time, and the film that began Don “The Dragon” Wilson’s rise into the upper echelon of action heroes. Prepare yourselves for a different type of Thrilla in Manila as I look back at the original Bloodfist!
Released just at the 80’s were coming to a close, Bloodfist Wilson’s debut as a leading man, and it was so long ago that our man Don wasn’t even called “The Dragon” in the opening credits! It’s ok though, because we still know what a badass he is by the various kickboxing credentials that flash on the screen. It’s just odd that the filmmakers decided to portray Don’s character as a novice as opposed to a skilled fighter, but we’ll get to that later. First, let’s talk about how Bloodfist opens up, and it involves two of my favorite words when describing an action flick…underground fighting. That’s right, somewhere out there (turns out it’s in Manila), there’s an illegal brawl going on and one guy, who we come to know as Mike, realizes that he’d rather win fights instead of fix them. Mike fights back and survives the contest, but doesn’t survive the night, as he’s attacked in a dark alley by an unknown assailant that decimates him and leaves his dead body to be picked over by the local homeless population.
Back in America, Mike’s big brother, Jake Ray (Wilson), is a champion boxer currently teaching self defense to a group of kids. Jake gets a call from Manila informing him of his brother’s untimely passing, so he decides to out there and get some answers, but not before his rather insensitive business partner Hal throws him a sack full of t-shirts advertising their gym business to take with him, suggesting that they can start a chain. I’m not sure how close Jake and Hal are, but I would think that if my friend’s brother just got karate-murdered in a foreign land, I’d show a little more compassion. I’m surprised he didn’t have dollar signs bulging out of his eyes like a Looney Tunes cartoon.
Jake lands in Manila looking as badass as one can in a tucked in Hard Rock Cafe t-shirt, and immediately finds himself in fighting mode after a gang of youths jack his travel bag (which seems to hold nothing more than a picture of he and his brother and the pile of t-shirts that Hal forced upon him). Jake thwarts the robbery and starts going around looking for answers; eventually, Jake discovers that his brother was killed after he won the Ta Chang tournament, and he himself starts to train under the wise and mysterious Kwong so that he can enter the tournament to flush out his brother’s killer and get his revenge. Jake also makes friends with Baby Davies, a fellow American who may or may not have some type of mental disability. Baby’s sister Nancy becomes smitten with Jake, and the feeling is mutual, but Kwong’s strict, no-nonsense methods of training often conflict with the budding romance. I mean, what kind of savage would make his student wear white sweatpants while running up mountains? I hope bleach is cheap in Manila!
While Jake prepares for the Ta Chang and gets accustomed to his surrogate family, he also does his homework by checking out the list of combatants/suspects. Although the VHS cover of Bloodfist shows Don going head to head with Billy Blanks, Blanks’ Black Rose is just one of the colorful characters that Jake Raye will have to go up against. There’s unfortunately no major battle between the two kickboxing champs, and we get just a small taste of what Blanks would be show us as the villainous Khan in King of the Kickboxers. The #1 suspect, and naturally, the top seed in the Ta Chang, is Chin Woo (Kris Aguilar), a remorseless monster that Jake is led into believing is the man responsible for his brother’s murder. As fate would have it, Chin Woo is a killer, but not the killer that Jake seeks; the person he’s been looking for has been in front of him the whole time, and now he’ll have to try and survive his showdown with Chin Woo before a final fight away from the Ta Chang with the wolf in sheep’s clothing who murdered his brother.
Bloodfist is by no means a great film; yes, it’s a bonafide classic and brought “The Dragon” into the world of low-budget action awesomeness, but the problem is that for a film that was made on the cheap to cash in on the public’s interest in mainstream martial arts flicks like Bloodsport, it feels cheap. Shooting in the Philipines obviously saved Roger Corman some coin, but that’s no excuse for the shoddy editing and bad writing. When all of the pieces of the plot come together in the final minutes of the film, how is it that Jake’s partner, who just arrived from America, not only figured out the entire master plan, but shouted it to him in the middle of an illegal fight to the death, and suffered no repercussions? Why was Angela, the young lady smitten with Baby Davies, coming for her revenge when we weren’t even aware of Baby’s death yet? How come earlier in the film, Jake decides to show his disdain for Nancy’s stripper work by jump kicking an overhead light? I know that the plot is something that simply fills time in between fights, but it’s hard to not be distracted when these things are so glaringly obvious.
As a proud owner of the entire Bloodfist series on VHS and DVD, I have to admit that the first entry is not my favorite, but I appreciate it for what it is. This is the film that laid the groundwork for “The Dragon” to become a star and earn a steady income by kicking ass in a slew of films throughout the 90’s and into the 2000’s. This is a rare case where the sequels overshadow the original, but I’m not sure if that counts, since after Bloodfist II, where Wilson returns as Jake Raye and some of the same cast carries over from this film, every sequel features Wilson as a new character getting in over his head and having to kick his way out of trouble. My personal favorite, Bloodfist III: Forced To Fight, is not only my pick for the best film in the entire series, but Don himself named it as his personal favorite entry in his filmography. I’ll even take things one step further and say that Jerry Trimble’s Full Contact, a film that’s not as readily available as it should be, takes the exact plot of Bloodfist and does it even better.
Bloodfist made a ton of money, made a star out of Don Wilson, and arguably opened the door for many of the films we sing the praises of here at BPA to be made. It’s far from the worst film in the world, but it’s not even the best film in the franchise it spawned. Still, for historical purposes, and because few things are better than “The Dragon” being a badass, do yourself a favor and check this one out on apps like Tubi, Pluto TV, or YouTube (which is where you can find all of the sequels, some of which are currently not available anywhere else).
