There is a movie that was released by American International Pictures in 1987 that’s still only available on VHS, and the name of the movie is KICK OR DIE. If you need any more information than that, please enjoy this review.

KICK OR DIE is a particular type of ‘80s b-movie that I have a soft spot for because it’s very serious but has a deranged view of human behavior, and every once in a while the drum machine and the synthesizers kick in and people start fighting. It’s far from the best of this sort, but it’s novel because it lumps together a couple different popular movie types of the era that you wouldn’t necessarily expect to overlap: 1) night stalker whodunit 2) karate movie 3) lady trying to make it as a singer.

That first one might understandably keep some people from watching it. A serial rapist has been attacking women on a college campus. The scenes of the attacks are over quick, but obviously unpleasant to sit through. In the daylight the campus is swarmed with media and protesters as the board of directors or whatever meet about what to do. The football coach says “I say we hire a karate expert to come and teach the girls how to kick his god damn balls in!”

He points to one of the school’s biggest donors, record label owner Craig Merkel (Tim Wallace). Craig says his background is only as a boxer, but he recommends his old friend Don Potter (Kevin Bernhardt, MIDNIGHT WARRIOR), who was in Special Forces and had his own karate school but now lives off the grid in a nice mountain cabin. We’ll come to find there’s some tension between these two, but at first it just seems like macho shit when their reunion is marked by competitive hand squeezing in the style of Bernie Mac in OCEAN’S ELEVEN.

Don takes the job, arrives in town and enters a bar called Joe’s Place after they’ve already flipped the closed sign. But the owner, Joe (Joe Stewardson, LASER MISSION), isn’t offended when all Don orders is a glass of milk. (In fact he assumes he’s poor and gives him a free sandwich.) Joe’s daughter Eve (Holaday Mason) is the waitress, and after Don uses his karate to fight off a gang of bikers (some with face paint and punk hair) trying to rob the restaurant she offers to help him find a place to stay.

Bernhardt’s IMDb claims that he was offered a lead on Beverly Hills 90210 but asked Aaron Spelling to produce one of his screenplays instead. “Spelling never called him back,” it says, but Bernhardt did later establish himself as a screenwriter on movies including TURBULENCE 2: FEAR OF FLYING, JILL RIPS and ELEPHANT WHITE. As an actor here I thought he looked like a pouty Ivan Sergei, but I should’ve recognized him as the sleazy goth night club owner in HELLRAISER III: HELL ON EARTH.

Don fits the feel of the stoic action hero drifter okay, but he’s a real bummer to be around. That’s partly due to trauma – he frequently sees flashes of a dead woman from an incident that will be explained later – but also he does weird things like get Eve in his car and then ask her “How do you know I’m not the rapist?” He’s also weirdly jokey about recruiting some big goons from the football team to act as “aggressive individuals” for the women to spar with. (This comes after they ask “Are you one of those guys that breaks boards and makes funny noises?” and try to fight him but get their asses handed to them. I bet this scene was inspired by the story about Bruce Lee and the UW football team.)

Don’s Debbie-Downer-ism almost seems to infect the style of the movie when his karate lessons are upsettingly intercut with scenes of the rapist attacking a woman. And a big dance scene at a disco ends with him storming out saying “These people are SICK!” because he interpreted a dance as being about women provoking rape. He might be right, but I didn’t pick up on it and Eve defends it as “a dance, no big deal. It’s a celebration.”

Eve cares about their freedom of expression because she’s an artist – a singer-songwriter. Don brings her to meet Craig at Craig Merkel Music, operating out of a gated mansion, halls lined with gold records. She sings one of her songs and it’s so good that a bunch of studio musicians run in unprompted and start jamming out with her. There are seven original songs in the movie written by Jim Weatherly (“Midnight Train to Georgia”).

Despite the fight at the disco, Don and Eve go on a date slow motion running through water and rolling around in tall grass, intercut with her in the studio recording a song that’s perfect to accompany such a scene. With one competent love ballad in the can, Craig tells her “By the end of the year you’ll be drawing like Madonna, Cyndi Lauper…” and lists the cities she’ll go to. She’s still in school though so he agrees that she can just tour on weekends until the summer, then switch to full time. Seems fishy to me, but this guy knows the record business. He tells her he’s gonna tour with her and leans in very close.

She wisely gets the fuck out of there, and in fact straight into candlelight dinner with Don and tearing each other’s clothes off. But suddenly he jumps up, does a ballet-like spin and leans his head against the wall. Broodus interruptus. She asks about Craig so he reveals that they were friends from the time they were kids until the time Don stole Craig’s fiancee. When Craig found out he gave the look of death but then shook Craig’s hand and said “No hard feelings.” Later Nancy was raped and killed, the source of Don’s trauma.

When Don hears about Craig making a pass at Eve he breaks off their relationship, telling her she should give in to Craig because “he could do alot for you.” She protests but then does just that. (I told you there was some bizarre behavior in this movie.) There’s a really funny montage of Eve’s career success under the wing of Craig, intercut with Don at home looking dazed, drinking out of a large bottle of Jack Daniel’s, crying and headbutting a table. But as soon as the montage ends Eve is home from tour and tells Craig she wants to get back together with Don.

In the next scene she’s attacked by the rapist, and it’s unclear but I guess she gets away by kneeing him in the balls. This leads to the not-so-shocking reveal that the rapist is Craig wearing a disguise. In the next scene he’s wearing a suit and tie on a lawnchair in his backyard holding a cat, and hears a radio report about Eve being attacked. Don also hears the news and they both rush to John’s Place and walk in at the same time. I like how Eve goes right to Don and embraces him while totally ignoring Craig, and then the three of them sit at a table together but Eve and Don cuddle and look into each other’s eyes all lovey-dovey as Craig angrily taps on the table and lies that the injuries on his hand are from his cat.

Is that why they showed him holding a cat!? Seems unnecessary. But the cat is out of the bag, and it’s kinda fun when the focus shifts to this piece of human garbage unraveling as he tries to cover up his crimes. Eve reveals that she recorded audio of the attack, so he offers to analyze the tape with his studio equipment. When he hears that his voice is indeed on the tape he panics, kicks a garbage can, yells “Think!” to himself, and comes up with the ingenious plan of blaming his secretary for recording over the tape. Then he finds out they made a dub so he has to sleaze his way into getting ahold of that one too. When Don hesitates to give it to him Craig says, “I’m a pro, man. Don’t EVER question my professionalism!”

There’s an obvious thing that could’ve made this movie way better, and that’s a bigger emphasis on action. The fights don’t feel to me like a large enough percentage of the 87 minute runtime, and they also don’t really do anything with the community fighting back now that they’ve learned how to kick. (For that matter the students don’t even stop going out alone at night.) However, the fights are pretty well done (fight choreographer: John Barrett, STEEL DAWN, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers; stunt coordinator: Tyrone Stevenson, GALLOWWALKERS, MAD MAX: FURY ROAD) and do indeed involve some kicks. As far as I can tell Bernhardt is not a martial artist, but I bought him as a fighter. I also respect that they set up right from the beginning that Craig is a boxer (and even have a scene of him sparring and being an asshole about it well before we’re supposed to know that he’s the villain) so that there can be a final fight. I think said match up could be bigger and better, but it does at least happen. There’s also an unexpected stretch of car and motorcycle action (action vehicle coordinator: Ashley Waldorf, THE MANGLER).

KICK OR DIES is the only movie written and directed by Charles Norton, but he directed two episodes of Gilligan’s Island and was an assistant director for a period spanning almost 30 years, from DARBY O’GILL AND THE LITTLE PEOPLE to PROGRAMMED TO KILL. His bio on IMDb (likely self-penned, since it spends five paragraphs on his love of sailing) calls the movie NO HARD FEELINGS, and says it was filmed “in Africa.” Meaning apartheid era South Africa, I’m afraid.

The original title explains why the phrase “no hard feelings” is used as the punchline for the movie and the title of the end credits song. And the willingness to do business in South Africa at that time seems relevant to to some pretty gross racial themes that I saved until now to get into. At the beginning it’s mentioned that witnesses described the attacker as “bearded, tall, and Black.” Eve says that she knows Don isn’t the rapist because he’s not Black. Then she gets a ride home from Black session guitarist Alfred (Leslie Mongezi, MERCENARY FIGHTERS). When he later says he’s happy to see her again, ominous music plays, and when Craig attacks her in blackface he calls her “mama,” which we’re supposed to remember Alfred also calling her. In fairness, the point here is that this piece of shit rapist takes advantage of racism in covering up his crimes. But in 2026, and likely in 1987 also, you gotta resent the movie assuming we share these attitudes enough to be tricked into fearing Alfred.

Similarly, there’s a scene at the beginning where drunk college dudes do some victim-blaming, and the point of the scene is that John very fiercely tells them off. It still feels a little nasty because what the guys are saying is so far out of line that it feels gross to present it as a common sentiment that needs to be rebutted.

But I think the intentions are good. It’s interesting that the story links the predation of a serial attacker with the more common reality of sleazy coercion in the music industry. Craig Merkel was a real piece of shit, man. I wonder how many records he was involved in that became tainted by that knowledge. And if the college had to rename, like, a wing of the library or something.

The aforementioned Norton bio describes NO HARD FEELINGS/KICK OR DIE as “an action movie he had been inspired to write about rapes that were taking place on the U.C.L.A. campus when his daughter was arranging to go there. He wanted to alert the board of Governors to ways they could protect their Students and Secretaries.” Which sounds like he really wanted them to hire a karate expert? I hope they got a better guy in real life.