Bloodsport (1988)

BLOODSPORT (1988) Three stars
RZA said that he’s probably watched THE 36TH CHAMBER OF SHAOLIN 300 times.

I have probably watched Jean-Claude Van Damme’s feature debut BLOODSPORT a good 100 times.

I can just remember being a young lad watching it every single damn time it played on cable television.

Yeah, every single time.

Idly clicking on that remote control day after day, depressed by all them channels and nothing to watch, then here came BLOODSPORT like an oasis in the sub-Sahara of Midwestern small town cable TV.

BLOODSPORT, you saved me from watching SHE’S OUT OF CONTROL again because there’s “nothing to do and nowhere to go.”

Van Damme played an important part in my adolescence. For a while, I was a raving JCVD fan, watching as many of his cheesy action flicks as possible. To be sure, JCVD had many, many fans during the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s, where his performing the splits at least once every flick became nearly as ubiquitous as Keanu Reeves saying “Whoa!” in all his films. All we needed was Van Damme splits followed by a Reeves “Whoa!” Life would have been perfect.

Eventually, though, I had to face the facts that Van Damme’s movies were not all that good.

Yeah, you’re right, I’m still mad about being ripped off by his 1997 pairing with Dennis Rodman, DOUBLE TEAM, and Rodman’s acting made a basketball fan pine away for the acting of his Chicago Bulls teammate Michael Jordan, who struggled considerably playing himself in SPACE JAM. That’s bad.

I felt ripped off by DOUBLE TEAM and somebody else rented it.

Oh dear Lord, I even forgot Mickey Rourke was in DOUBLE TEAM.

Roger Ebert started his review, “DOUBLE TEAM is one of the most preposterous action films ever made.”

That comes with the territory for Van Damme movies and it’s just amazing what cocaine will do.

Anyway, here we are back at BLOODSPORT, Van Damme’s magnum opus.

Under normal circumstances, it’s not a good movie, but like TEEN WOLF and OVER THE TOP, for example, I enjoy it particularly because it’s not good and it stockpiles cliches like rogue nations do atomic weapons. I like BLOODSPORT more than both TEEN WOLF and OVER THE TOP, though.

Let’s go through a brief cliche checklist for BLOODSPORT:

— Illegal martial arts tournament in Hong Kong.

— Our hero (Van Damme) who wants to go to honor his sensei, who trained our hero as if he was his own son.

— Our hero who must go absent without leave because his Army superiors balk at his participation in the martial arts tournament.

— The Army send a couple buffoons to chase our hero around Hong Kong. Bet they skip this film during a Forest Whitaker career retrospective.

— Our hero’s arch enemy (Bolo Yeung) in the illegal martial arts tournament who effectively creates a mood of menace until he finally opens his mouth to speak.

— Our hero’s new best friend (Donald Gibb), a loud-mouthed, cartoonish American who must take a fall to give the hero the revenge angle in the final match.

— Our hero’s obligatory love interest (Leah Ayres), who’s a reporter that wants access to the illegal martial arts tournament. She’s just appalled, terrified by the violence and, of course, wants the hero to not participate.

— How could I forget the loud, loud, loud rock music that’s used because the movie’s producers couldn’t afford Survivor.

Here it’s “Fight to Survive” by Stan Bush, a jaunty little rock number I remembered simply as “Kumite!,” the name of the illegal martial arts tournament the song chants until it’s hopelessly attached to your cerebrum.

Yes, that Stan Bush, who gave the world “The Touch” from TRANSFORMERS THE MOVIE, later covered by Dirk Diggler in BOOGIE NIGHTS during his cocaine wannabe rock star days.

In 1986, Bush’s “The Touch” and “Weird Al” Yankovic’s “Dare to Be Stupid” (Al’s Devo style parody) split a single. Epic. Surely, it was released on Epic Records. (How ironic that YouTube cued up “Dare to Be Stupid” right after rocking out to “The Touch.”)

Think I like “Fight to Survive” more than “The Touch.”

— There’s a child actor playing the young Frank Dux (later played by Van Damme) in BLOODSPORT and he’s an astonishingly bad actor. He’s named Pierre Rafini and his only credit listed on IMDb is “Young Frank.” Awesome.

Honestly, that’s not a huge liability, since he’s only in a small portion of the film, not like for example David Mendenhall in OVER THE TOP and Norman D. Golden II in COP AND A HALF, who mugged so heavily during their performances that I look for my wallet after every viewing of their respective films.

— Slow motion. Lots and lots of slow motion. Maybe the whole movie should have been made in slow motion and we’d have a GONE WITH THE WIND-length martial arts epic.

— “Based on a true story,” about as true as “The Amityville Horror.”

Credit: “This motion picture is based upon true events in the life of Frank W. Bux. From 1975 to 1980 Frank W. Dux fought 329 matches. He retired undefeated as the World Heavy Weight Full Contact Kumite Champion. … (yada yada yada not in credits yada yada yada).”

BLOODSPORT screenwriter Sheldon Lettich touched on Dux in an interview found on Asian Movie Pulse, “Frank told me a lot of a tall tales, most of which turned out to be bullshit. … There was one guy who he introduced me to, named Richard Bender, who claimed to have actually been at the Kumite event and who swore everything Frank told me was true. A few years later this guy had a falling out with Frank, and confessed to me that everything he told me about the Kumite was a lie; Frank had coached him in what to say. … Nearly everyone knew he (Dux) was just a delusional day-dreamer and a big bullshitter.”

Dux served as the fight choreographer for BLOODSPORT.

— Van Damme made such waves in the motion picture industry that he received a Razzie nomination for “Worst New Star” and his competition included Don the Talking Horse from HOT TO TROT, Tami Erin from THE NEW ADVENTURES OF PIPPI LONGSTOCKING, Robby Rosa from SALSA, and the winner Ronald McDonald from MAC AND ME.

Lettich received a Worst Screenplay nomination for his work with Sylvester Stallone for RAMBO III. Both lost to COCKTAIL and its screenplay by Heywood Gould.

— Cannon released BLOODSPORT and all I can say about that is “Electric Boogaloo.”