Enter the Bloodfist
You Box, We Kickbox! Who has the advantage? Man with two clubs or the one with 4?
BLOODFIST
The Possible Genesis of BLOODFIST
Roger Corman: Gentlemen! I had a dream, a dream to make a martial arts movie, about an underground tournament where the world’s best fighters must battle to the death, we need to make this movie and we shall call it…BLOOD (beat) FIST!!!!!
Concorde Exec: Roger, is this just a jump on the bandwagon and try and catch some of the money Cannon Films have made with that Bloodsport movie?
Roger: NO!!!! BLOODFIST will be a genre of its own, there’ll be multiple sequels with only the first two films being connected, and then we’ll do a sci-fi take on it and even do a remake or two of the first Bloodfist with pretty much the exact same script, but this time with a different actor, and to show we understand the idea of female empowerment, we’ll even do female version with lots of nudity, oh and some fighting!
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While Roger Corman had played around with martial arts movies previously, there’s no doubting that Cannon’s success with Bloodsport and a young martial artist named Jean-Claude Van Damme, lit a fire under Corman to make a full blooded martial arts movie of his own…
So Corman began to assemble his team for the movie, with Terence H Winkless best known as Bingo the Gorilla from The Banana Splits Adventure Hour, who’d also worked on the original Gone in 60 Seconds, and been one of the writers for The Howling, as Director. While Winkless was not known as a martial arts director, he had earlier written a Manchurian Candidate with martial arts styled script with Corman’s brother Gene, originally intended for American Karate legend Joe Lewis, star of Jaguar Lives, Force Five and Death Cage. And working with a script by Robert King (who also wrote the very Bloodfist’ian Full Contact starring Jerry Trimble and the sci’fi esque take on Bloodsport I mean Bloodfight, Dragon Fire which was made a few years later), the film came together.
Now Corman needed a leading man, someone with the requisite martial arts skills and as often happened back in the pre-internet days, he turned to the martial arts magazine world and thanks to the extensive martial arts press coverage and popularity of Kickboxing at the time, he found that man in Kickboxing Champion Don “the Dragon” Wilson. Wilson had previously popped up in villainous role in the Hong Kong actioner New York Chinatown, and had just shot a cameo as himself, playing John Cusack’s Kickboxing instructor in Cameron Crowe’s Say Anything.
While the original script was set in Hong Kong, the film and the storyline was relocated to the Philippines, where Corman had previously shot many a movie and had an experienced and trust worthy Production crew overseen by Chris Santiago, son of the late great Cirio H Santiago, who directed countless movies for Corman during the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s especially. The budget for the film was modest, with an estimated cost of between 250 thousand dollars to 1 million dollars US, depending on who you ask, and at times the budget limitations show, whereas Bloodsport makes Hong Kong look exotic and exciting, Bloodfist doesn’t really do the same for the Philippines.
The film follows retired boxer Jake Raye (Don Wilson) who learns of his brother’s mysterious death in the Philippines, and heads to Manilla to pick up the body but decides to stay there and investigate the circumstances and hopefully track down those responsible. Learning that his brother was competing on the underground fight circuit, Raye learns about the Ta-Chang/The Red Fist Tournament, which has drawn some of the best fighters to Manilla to fight for honor and glory, or for some, just the money.
A chance encounter introduces Raye to Kwong (Joe Mari Avellana) and another fighter, the wonderfully named Baby Davies (Michael Shaner), who also has an attractive sister working as an exotic dancer and potential love interest for Raye.
Among the fighters are Dutch Kickboxer Rob Kamen, the spectacular Black Rose (Billy Blanks) and the Bolo’esque Chin Woo (Chris Aguiller) a Vietnamese Chinese brute scarred by Napalm and out to take revenge on the world. Kwong tells Raye that Chin Woo is the man responsible for his brothers death, and begins to train him in kickboxing with the help of Davies who will also enter the tournament.
The tournament begins and it really is a bloodsport, as the fighters battle in front of not only a braying crowd but strangely for a secret underground tournament, but also the advertisements for various sponsors! The Official Drink of the Underground Fight World is Blood Sauce!
The battles get bloodier and deadlier, and the final fight sees Raye facing off against Chin Woo, who has now also killed Davies and manages to kill Davies girlfriend during his fight with Raye! But is Chin Woo really the man responsible, or has someone been using Raye as a pawn for their own ambition, and to paraphrase another Van Damme movie, have they made the “wrong bet?”
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Let the Tournament Begin, Don’t Give Up and Don’t Give In!
BLOODFIST which as the posters and advertising so proudly proclaimed starred REAL-LIFE WORLD CHAMPIONS in Kickboxing and Karate! Hit the Big Screen in North America and around the world to modest success before becoming a major video hit once it hit VHS, Betamax and Laserdisc.
Now I have a lot of love for Bloodfist, I mean make a movie about a secret underground martial arts tournament and I’m in, and as a kickboxing fan in the 80’s, getting to see a number of recognizable names and faces from the Kickboxing and Martial Arts World as the leads in a movie produced by the legendary Roger Corman, and you can’t really go wrong! Yes, its Corman doing a Bloodsport riff in the Philippines, and as I said earlier, Corman would pretty much remake the movie himself multiple times as Full Contact with Jerry Trimble, Dragonfire, Angelfist and Bloodfist 2050, the man knows how to make a script go a long way! But Corman knew how and where to spend money, the budget went a lot further in the Philippines, and the film has a big feel to it at least in the tournament scenes, and the use of real kickboxers helped generate the hype as did the notorious challenge issued by Corman wanting Don Wilson and Jean-Claude Van Damme to step into the ring for real, Cannon had proclaimed Van Damme as both a Martial Arts Sensation and a Kickboxing Champion in their marketing for the movie. I mean come on Roger, they also claimed Bloodsport was based on a true story, and while the challenge was great hype, and Wilson continues to talk of wanting to get in the ring with Van Damme to this day, some 30 plus years later, we knew back then it was never gonna happen!
Wilson’s an unconventional leading man, he doesn’t have the chiseled physique and leading man looks of Van Damme, but I think that’s part of his appeal, he’s got that everyman look to him. Yes, he’s a genuine multiple times world kickboxing champion, but he’s not cocky, he comes across as a man trying to make his way in a world he doesn’t seem to really understand or want to be a part of at times, but for pretty much his first major role, he comes across well, carrying the weight of the movie and even getting to let loose with a few one-liners including his own take on “forget it Jake, its Chinatown!”
Winkless gives him some solid support with Joe Mari Avellana having fun as Kwong, an at times almost Master Xian styled teacher with his own take on training and philosophy, especially Sun Tzu.
Raye: What does Sun Zu say? Kwong: No Mango! Perhaps tomorrow!
While Riley Bowman gets to pout as Raye’s love interest, while Michael Shaner who had previously popped up in Birdy and Lethal Weapon (he’s the guy who takes a leap off a building with Mel Gibson) , and would go on to appear in Angel Fist, Open Fire with Jeff Wincott and The Expert with Jeff Speakman, chews the scenery as a strangely obnoxious but likeable sidekick to Wilson, even if his fight skills are a tad lacking.
The Flying Dutchman Rob Kaman was a legendary fighter back in the 80’s and 90’s, gets a rare chance to fight onscreen, he would pop up in mostly non action roles in Legionnaire, Maximum Risk and Double Team with Van Damme some years later. While the one and only Billy Blanks gets to have some fun and made the poster as the villainous Black Rose, his involvement in the movie was secured by him being in the Philippines bodyguarding Dukes of Hazard star Catherine Bach who was filming Driving Force with Sam Jones and Don Swayze in Manilla at the time. Blanks would of course go on to become a major name in 90’s martial arts action cinema and as the founder of Tae-Bo… We get to see Blanks demonstrating his skills ringside and looking great, but he too is under served by the choreography, come on man its Billy Blanks and Don Wilson in their prime, Roger we could have had King of the Kickboxers worthy action!!!
Now as I said, I do have a lot of love for this movie, Winkless makes the best he can with the budget, and I do like the horror movie feeling to the opening and closing scenes, all smoke and shadows, and fighting in the rain even if there’s some weird story choices. So you were supposed to throw the fight in a secret underground tournament run by the Philippines equivalent of the Black Dragon Fighting Society, is it really a good idea to start drinking at the event and stumble through the dark streets on your own afterward? And ok the girlfriend of the hero’s girlfriend’s brother tries to take revenge on the man who killed her boyfriend, and the hero stops her and lets the villain kill her while he watches?
Much like Michael Jai-White’s character in Undisputed 2, we are supposed to see our heroes transformation from a boxer to a fully rounded martial artist, and the training montages don’t really deliver and neither does the choreography for the subsequent fights, although we do get one brief moment during one of the training montages where we say a backlit Don the Dragon throwing a combination of spinning kicks in his hotel room where you go, hang on!
BUT as I said, the thing that has always frustrated me about the film, since I first saw it and even more now, is the fight choreography. It’s one of the movies where I always find myself revisiting hoping that this time, the choreography will pop, and it did get better on subsequent Bloodfist movies, but for so many of the fights its flailing fists and feet with little or no impact, which considering the talent of those onscreen is a disappointment. BUT it’s a testament to how well Don Wilson comes across and carries the movie, and for how hungry movies distributors and audiences around the world were for martial arts movies back then.
Just come on guys, it’s a movie movie about a secret underground martial arts tournament, it has Blood in the title, a cast of real life martial arts champions, Corman as the Producer and it fumbles the ball for the fights. I felt they underserved the cast back then, and it hasn’t aged well. I think it’s a combo of the fight choreography, the camerawork and the editing, it doesn’t complement the fighters and their techniques.
It’s the one thing that I think plagued most of Wilson’s film career, having seen him fight for real in the ring, he would pull off some cool kicks and moves, I remember him delivering an effective cartwheel kick in one fight, but in films I never think he had a choreographer who made him look as good as he could have looked.
Wilson would go on to become an incredibly prolific martial arts star, reprising the role of Jake Raye in Bloodfist 2, and as various unrelated characters in a further six Bloodfist movies as well as battle vampires in the shaky cam vampires who spend a lot of time in daylight Night Hunter, briefly fight Dick Grayson in Batman Forever, and many more movies.
What I would do for a boxed set of the BLOODFIST series, with interviews with cast and crew, audio commentaries and more. I finally got to meet Roger Corman about 12 years ago by chance in Hong Kong, and work for him when he Produced Abduction starring Scott Adkins, and he had fond memories of Wilson and the Bloodfist movies, and I am surprised that nobody has tried rebooting the series, we’ve had the Kickboxer remake, the Bloodsport remake seems stuck in development hell, maybe its time for a new Bloodfist!
