No Surrender Cinema: A Shootfighter Retrospective
Over the past five years, the popularity of The Karate Kid continuation series Cobra Kai has helped elevate the stars of the original film like Ralph Macchio, William Zabka, and Martin Kove back to A-List status. Action fans and nostalgic viewers alike have been entertained by the ongoing conflict between the senseis and their students, but what many may not realize is that the conflict between Johnny Lawrence and John Kreese wasn’t just put on pause in the years between The Karate Kid and Cobra Kai…well, sort of. Join me for this edition of No Surrender Cinema where we look back to 30 years ago when Zabka and Kove would co-star as martial artists who crossed paths in Shootfighter: Fight To The Death!
Released direct to video in 1993, Shootfighter is yet another action film that finds our heroes caught up in the world of underground fighting. Zabka plays Ruben, a more straight laced sensei than the one he’s most famous for, who trained under Shingo (the legendary Bolo Yeung, playing against type here as one of the film’s heroes). We know from the opening of the film that Shingo has experience in the world of the shootfights, where he once witnessed Lee (Kove) rip out his friend’s throat. Lee was deemed a disgrace and barred from fighting again, but fast forward years later and Lee is running his own shootfights down in Mexico, a more brutal, “kill or be killed” setup than the fights of the past. Lee has been seeking out Shingo for years, blaming him for being ousted from the tournament, but instead of a direct approach, Lee has his cronies invite Ruben and his friend Nick (Michael Bernardo, who facially reminds me of Micki Dolenz from The Monkees for some reason) down to Mexico to fight for him. With Ruben strapped for cash and trying to keep his school afloat (shades of his Johnny Lawrence reprisal years later), the two agree to fight, not knowing of Lee’s true intentions.
It doesn’t take long for our heroes to discover the truth about Lee and the tournament, and that’s where the rift between Ruben and Nick comes into play. Nick stops Ruben from taking things too far, but Ruben wants to keep going, with our without Nick’s help. Ruben starts becoming a little more relentless and aggressive a la Daniel in The Karate Kid Part III, while Nick begins training under Shingo. We get to see the contrast in both of their methods during a montage that features Ruben pounding on a sparring partner and beating up gang members, whereas Nick and Shingo’s training is a whimsical, lighthearted affair featuring the master and the student playing basketball with a neighborhood kid. Ruben and Nick’s paths would cross once again at the finals, where Ruben learns just how brutal the shootfights are, and Lee finds himself getting exactly what he wanted when Shingo is forced into action to save his charges.
Shootfighter: Fight To The Death was one of the most talked about action films of my teenage years thanks to its frequent airings on cable and its Mortal Kombat-esque violence. The tagline on the box of the VHS read “It’ll Tear Your Heart Out”, a promise that comes true not due to the emotional turmoil that our characters go through, but rather because one fighter literally has his heart ripped out, fatality style! It was also the first time that Zabka got to showcase his martial arts skills since he originally began training for The Karate Kid and the first time he and Kove shared the screen since. It was also cool to see Bolo Yeung, who at the time was becoming familiar to action fans as a brute who went toe to toe with Jean Claude Van Damme in Bloodsport and Double Impact acting as a hero. These were the major talking points of the film in my youth, and over the years additional appreciation for it was earned thanks to the appearances of several other martial arts movie mainstays like Showdown‘s Kenn Scott and the original American Kickboxer himself, John Barrett. Both men play characters that are sent to an early grave in the film, but they make for a great supporting cast that also included accomplished actors like Edward Albert and Maryam D’Abo (in non-fighting roles).
The popularity of Shootfighter: Fight To The Death on home video and cable did lead to a sequel, though this one felt less like a video game and was more of your typical beat ’em up along the lines of a Billy Blanks or Don “The Dragon” Wilson effort. 1996’s Shootfighter 2, directed by Paul Ziller (who helmed Blanks’ Back In Action and the fourth entry in Wilson’s Bloodfist franchise) reunited Zabka, Bernardo, and Yeung as the same characters from the first film, only this time they’re sent into action to stop an illegal fighting ring overseen by Shingo’s evil brother. This scenario sees Ruben and Nick going undercover to help a police chief get some good ol’ fashioned street justice for his son’s murder, and while Yeung gets top billing once again, he’s almost an afterthought until the plot dictates he has to step in and go face to face with his much more sinister sibling. Fans expecting to see fighters vanquished a la the first Shootfighter in all its gory glory will be let down by the basic brawling format that the fights in the sequel have taken on, but Shootfighter 2 is still one of the better entries in a genre that was losing a little bit of steam in 1996, where the DTV karate films were starting to become overshadowed by more explosive, bombastic action films that were churned out in hopes of capitalizing on the blockbuster success of Michael Bay’s big budget features.
The biggest draw of the Shootfighter films for me back in the 90’s is the same thing that should encourage action fans (especially those who enjoy Cobra Kai) to check it out now, that being the presence of William Zabka as Ruben. The character of Ruben, especially in the first film, shows aspects of what has made the Johnny Lawrence character so endearing over the past few years. He’s flawed, he’s got attitude, and when his back is to the wall, he’s ready to kick some ass. Kove’s appearance in the first film may feel tacked on to some, and with good reason; his role was added after much of the film had been completed, in which the character Teng (who was one of Lee’s henchmen in the finished product) was the main foil for our heroes. The first film also had the gimmick of being a video game come to life, and was more brutal than the film adaptations of Mortal Kombat (the OG ’95 version) or Street Fighter could hope to be, since those latter films were geared towards the younger generation who were spending hours in front of their game consoles. The second film felt almost soap opera-ish at times, with love scenes, police informants, and another shootfighter who spent his non-fighting time bickering with the main characters. Overall though, both films are winners in my book, even if they both suffer from having endings that come too abruptly, almost to where I was half-expecting freeze frame high fives and a studio audience applauding wildly over them.
If you’ve been to this site for even the briefest amount of time, you know that this is the place to be if you love 90’s DTV action flicks, and the Shootfighter franchise still holds up some 30 years later. I won’t lie and say both films stand on equal ground, since much of the goodwill is built upon the success of the first film, but part 2 is decent in its own right, even the extremely loose connection to the original doesn’t have much bearing on the plot. Shootfighter 2 borders on Bloodfist sequel territory where we may have been better off having Yeung, Zabka, and Bernardo as different characters akin to what “The Dragon” was doing. Wrestling fans may want to watch part 2 out of curiosity thanks to the appearance of Madusa Micelli aka Alundra Blayze, who at the time had made headlines when she dropped her WWF Women’s Championship in the trash live on WCW Monday Nitro. Her role was a blink and you’ll miss it appearance (much like her role in Death Match a few years prior) playing a female shootfighter dominating this ring as well as she did the wrestling ring.
Neither film has been released officially on DVD in North America, though there are imports floating around out there. We’re also long past the point where these 2 are popping up on cable, and even favorite streamers like Tubi haven’t had them available. Luckily for anyone wanting to see the original reunion of Zabka and Kove pre-Cobra Kai, both the unrated edition of Shootfighter: Fight To The Death and the second film are both currently available to watch on YouTube. Who knows, perhaps with the runaway success of Cobra Kai, it might not be too long before a company like Vinegar Syndrome or MVD gives both of these films the treatment on disc that they deserve.
