"CATCH YOU FUCKERS AT A BAD TIME?"

The Super-Kumite: Master of the Flying Guillotine

tn_motfgRound 1, Bout 3, Team Video Games vs. The Men From Hong Kong

Fung Shang Wu Chi is the Darth Vader of the Man Chu Ching Dynasty. He’s a blind man who lives on a mountain disguised as a Buddhist lama, but he works for the Emperor, seeking out the last remaining rebels who support the former Ming Dynasty and decapitating them with the flying guillotine, a scientifically questionable but cinematically unparalleled weapon that’s basically a ring on a chain. When he tosses it over someone’s head it unfolds into a basket with a circle of blades inside, then he yanks it and it’s off with their head. And it’s ingeniously designed because the whole thing can fold up into small cylinder about the size of a pocket umbrella. If these things were easier to master then women could keep them in their purses instead of pepper spray, that would be pretty cool. (read the rest of this shit…)

June 5th, 2013 | 30 Comments »

Chinese Gods (Bruce Lee in Animation)

tn_chinesegodsSpeaking of weird animated martial arts videos, this week for my column on Daily Grindhouse I investigated a weird VHS tape I found of a 1976 animated movie purported to have Bruce Lee in it. Or a cartoon of him. It’s called CHINESE GODS, aka THE STORY OF THE CHINESE GODS. Bruce has a third eye and he fights a nine-tailed fox lady and that sort of thing. You know how it is.

CHINESE GODS on Daily Grindhouse

June 4th, 2013 | 1 Comment »

The Super-Kumite: Mortal Kombat: The Journey Begins

tn_mkjbRound 1, Bout 3: TEAM VIDEO GAMES vs. THE MEN FROM HONG KONG

MORTAL KOMBAT: THE ANIMATED VIDEO, aka MORTAL KOMBAT: THE JOURNEY BEGINS was a straight-to-VHS-and-Laserdisc release made as a tie-in with Paul W.S. Anderson’s 1995 live action theatrical MORTAL KOMBAT movie. The cover boasts that it allows you to “GO ONE STEP BEYOND VIRTUAL REALITY WITH 3D ANIMATION LIKE YOU’VE NEVER SEEN BEFORE!”

It is true that I’ve never seen animation like this before, but only because most people who would make it would know it was not good enough to release on a video. This video alternates between substandard Saturday morning cartoon type drawn animation and extremely crude animatic type computer animation. More on that in a minute. (read the rest of this shit…)

June 4th, 2013 | 9 Comments »

The Super-Kumite Round 1, Bout 2 results

tn_Super-Kumite

I’m pretty sure nobody’s reading these, but that’s okay because The Super-Kumite is an underground tournament. We don’t need the light of day shone on our activities. We do it all by torchlight.

But for the few of us in this elite circle of insiders it is time to announce the winner of the AMERICAN KICKBOXERS vs. THE WOMEN contest. (read the rest of this shit…)

June 3rd, 2013 | 18 Comments »

The Super-Kumite: Pushed to the Limit

tn_pttltn_Super-KumiteROUND 1, BOUT 2, AMERICAN KICKBOXERS VS. THE WOMEN

“They’re gonna be punchin where you’re at. Don’t be there.”

I wasn’t familiar with Mimi Lesseos until I was trying to find more tournament movies and I discovered this one. Actually, her wrestling name “The Magnificent Mimi” sounds kind of familiar, maybe I heard of her back in the late ’80s when she was a contender for the AWA World Women’s Championship belt (which she never got, except in a 1989 Playboy spread). After appearing as The Magnificent Mimi, chief rival to the heroine of AMERICAN ANGELS: BAPTISM OF BLOOD (1989), Lesseos decided to pull a Tom Laughlin and make her own independent action vehicles. She started by writing, producing and starring in PUSHED TO THE LIMIT (1992). (read the rest of this shit…)

June 3rd, 2013 | 13 Comments »

The Super-Kumite: American Kickboxer 1

tn_americankickboxerSUPER-KUMITE, ROUND 1, SECOND BOUT: AMERICAN KICKBOXERS VS. THE WOMEN

IMDb may list this Cannon production as AMERICAN KICKBOXER, but the DVD cover and more importantly the title screen call it AMERICAN KICKBOXER 1. So going by the DIE HARD 2 precedent that is the official title as far as I’m concerned. Part 1 is the story of B.J. Quinn (John Barett, GYMKATA), middleweight kickboxingstill_americankickboxer_title champ with a 35-1 record. In the opening fight he takes on the young up and comer Chad Hunter (Keith Vitali, REVENGE OF THE NINJA) and wins with an allegedly accidental elbow. Because of B.J.’s arrogant talk on the way to the ring and the dishonorable means of victory I honestly thought this was the introduction of the bad guy. But I guess he’s supposed to be one of those lovable asshole characters, or possibly just a guy at a low point who needs redemption or whatever. (read the rest of this shit…)

May 30th, 2013 | 8 Comments »

The Super-Kumite Round 1, Bout 1 winner

This was a tough otn_Super-Kumitene. Already we can see that the competition will be fierce. Both BLOODFIGHT and BLOODSPORT II: THE NEXT KUMITE are solid takes on the formula. Both have some good fights, some good gimmicks, good laughs, good older mentor characters, good villains. This is gonna be a close call, but I know who the winner is.

 

(read the rest of this shit…)

May 29th, 2013 | 5 Comments »

The Super-Kumite: Bloodsport II: The Next Kumite

tn_bloodsport2ROUND 1, FIRST BOUT, BLOODSPORT SEQUELS VS. TEAM BOLO

“You’re a true warrior, Alex.”

The hero of the original BLOODSPORT, Frank Dux (played by the icon of tournament fighting movies, Jean-Claude Van Damme) trained in ninjitsu as a kid after stealing a valuable katana and then impressing its owner by having second thoughts and returning it. As an adult he’s in the Army, but goes AWOL to enter the dangerous underground Kumite tournament.

The replacement hero for the Van-Damme-less part 2, Alex Cardos (Daniel Bernhardt, the Swiss martial artist and model who had been in a Versace commercial with Van Damme) is also a dirty sword-stealer, but this guy does it as a grown man, has no regrets and doesn’t try to give it back. He goes to a party at Pat Morita’s house, steals the sword from upstairs and makes a lunch date with a lady he was flirting with named Janine (Lori Lynn Dickson) as he flees. (read the rest of this shit…)

May 29th, 2013 | 14 Comments »

The Super-Kumite: Bloodfight

tn_bloodfightROUND 1, FIRST BOUT, BLOODSPORT SEQUELS VS. TEAM BOLO

aka FINAL FIGHT

“Stop him! You mustn’t let him keep practicing martial arts! Please! Please! Ryu is not a fighter. He’s a warm and caring person!”

BLOODFIGHT is from Japanese director Shuji Goto (FIGHTING BLACK KINGS) and star Yasuaki Kurata (HEROES OF THE EAST, EASTERN CONDORS, FIST OF LEGEND) but it’s a Hong Kong production featuring Bolo Yeung and Simon Yam. I rented it on a triple feature called Great Martial Arts Movies, and it had a warning about the picture quality not being up to modern standards, so I expected the worst. But other than being cropped it looked fine.

I also thought it might be dubbed, and there’s not any dialogue for the first ten minutes or more, so I was in suspense. Turns out it’s one of the rare Hong Kong movies that was actually filmed in English. Some of the actors sound like they’re just repeating it phonetically, so it’s hard to understand some of it. (read the rest of this shit…)

May 28th, 2013 | 11 Comments »

Ladies and gentlemen, THE SUPER-KUMITE!

tn_Super-KumiteFriends, I am proud to announce a new outlawvern.com event, THE SUPER-KUMITE, tournament of tournaments. It is a 3-round tournament of fighting tournament movies, with only one victor.

I’ve been wanting to do this for a year or two, but it took me a while to figure out how to make it work. Even once I did I made some mistakes and had to do some adjustments. It turns out there are less straight-up tournament movies than I imagined, and weirdly little information about them on the internet.

Here’s how it will work: I’ve put together 8 teams of 3 movies each which will be pitted against each other in one-on-one match-ups. In round 1 the chronological first films from each of the eight teams will compete in four bouts. The four winning teams will send their second movie to round 2, to be whittled down to the two finalists, which will compete for the crown. (read the rest of this shit…)

May 28th, 2013 | 31 Comments »

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