Starring: Don "The Dragon" Wilson

THE STORY:  I've never seen the original Bloodfist movie before. At least it makes sense in the name Bloodfist. Don 'The Dragon" Wilson has a bloody fist after beating up bad guys, that are connected to the Red Fist Gym or some such. So hence the name...naw, I'm reading too much into this. Bloodfist just sounds cool. Think about it. You can tack on the word "Blood" to almost anything and make it sound cool. Like Blood Star, or Blood Basement...or even Blood Cat! Its like using the word Deadly, Dark or Black in a title. Just put in there and the public thinks "Wow! This must be a kickass flick! Dark Hamster!" . Well, maybe not the entire public, but someone somewhere will fall for it.

Jake Raye is a kickboxer that runs a gym with his friend, the fat bearded guy. I didn't write his name down so we'll call him FBG. Well, Jake learns that his half brother, Mike was killed in Manila. It seems that Mike was fighting in illegal tournaments and that he didn't take a fall when ordered to. Someone had him  iced for that. You can tell its Jake's half brother because he's played by a white guy and they had to find a way to explain Wilson's half Asian features. I'm a little amazed at that...couldn't they have found another Asian guy to play the brother?

Jake travels to Manila to avenge his brother, and falls into a relationship with "Baby" Davies, another fighter and his sister, Nancy. Nancy, is only really there to be the love interest and since she has enormous boobies, to take her shirt off later in the movie. Jake also begins to work with Master Kwan in order to train. For some reason, fighting in the deadly tournaments will lead Jake to his brothers killer. Kwan tells him the last man he fights in the ring will the murderer. I don't get the logic of that, but fuck it, I rolled with it.

You know, I'm beginning to love the gym scenes in these movies...you know, where the trainer tells the hero about the guys he'll be fighting. It was almost as funny as a roll call from the Warriors. Kwan shows him guys like "The Black Rose!" and "The Desert Fox and his dance of Death!" What was this a roll call from an old Batman script? I half expected the Baseball Furies to show up.

I won't go into too much...not like its too amazing but if you haven't seen it I won't tell who the killer was and why they killed Mike. To be honest I forgot! I just watched this movie and already the memory fades! The fights weren't all that great looking, but for a cheapie movie they were acceptable. (Barely) which is sad, because in a movie like this the fights are what we came to see.

Best Lines: "He says your sister wore him out, fucking all afternoon."- Kwan lies to Baby about Jake in order to make him fight for real.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?:

1.) I've never been to Manila, but if its anything like the movies...its a dump! Geez! Every big city has its crummy parts, but they need to show some parts of Manila that don't look like a litterbox gone terribly terribly wrong. It doesn't help the Manila Chamber of Commerce in this movie when Jake is attacked and robbed by some thugs and his own cab driver right after arriving!

2.) Jake accosts the old vagrant that saw Mike get killed because the man is wearing Mike's blue baseball cap. Are you telling me that there are no men in Manila that own a blue baseball cap!? If Jake uses that criteria for suspects he'd have to beat up almost every swinging dick in any city!

3.) Kwan switched the tapes on the German fighter so that his inspirational 'dance of death' music wouldn't be played. That allowed Jake to win, but isn't that kind of cheating? Hard to respect the hero if he has to cheat to win.

4.) Gee, how come no one seemed too concerned about Baby's health until he had to face Chen Wu? He makes a living getting in fights with professional asskickers! Jake on the other hand is doing this for a reason, but Baby could just quit if he had to.

5.) If Nancy was a translator in Hong Kong she can obviously speak Chinese and English...and maybe some other languages...fluently...so why is she working as a stripper in a bar I wouldn't go into in a cesspool like Manila. (I call Manila a cesspool as its shown in the movie. The real Manila could well be a wonderful place.Certainly can't be worse than Philadelphia.)

NUDITY AND SEX:  Jake has sex with Nancy. We see her assetts.

HUH?:  Damn...way to hurt her feelings, Jake. When she says "Kwan thinks your falling in love with me" Jake answers "Kwan has a big mouth." rather sternly. I suppose you'd have to see the scene to get the full effect but it was such a fucked up answer in every conceivable way.

Chen Wu is known to be a sadistic brute and he always kills his foes in the ring. Baby even comments in the film he doesn't need luck in his fights as long as he doesn't face Chen Wu. Since the combatants seem to be chosen randomly the chances are fairly good that any one fighter might have to face the giant crazy man at some time. Why would any sane person do this? Especially since they all seem to realize how dangerous Chen Wu is! If my name came up to fight Chen Wu I'd leave one of those cartoony human shaped holes in the wall on the way out.

I don't get the whole "The last man you will fight in the tournament is your brothers killer." there's no logic to it and the movie doesn't even try to add any to it. You'd expect Jake to at least ask "How the hell do you figure that?".

THE FINAL JUDGMENT: I saw this movie because I wanted to see every Bloodfist movie. I'm still working on that as of this writing, but if you don't want to see every Bloodfist movie you can safely avoid this...and not be missing out on anything in the b-movie martial arts arena. Still, it was fairly enjoyable, paced well and good for what it was. For a Corman movie it probably had a decent budget. The Inferno awards it three devils!