Posts Tagged ‘Cynthia Rothrock’
Tuesday, June 18th, 2024
THE LAST KUMITE is a movie designed for a very specific demographic some of you may be familiar with. It’s a throwback to ‘90s tournament fighting movies, its cast is heavily populated with venerated icons of the genre, and they even managed to get a score by Paul Hertzog (BLOODSPORT, KICKBOXER), his first since 1991’s BREATHING FIRE. Best of all it features two new songs by the king of montage rock, Stan Bush (if you’re not familiar he did multiple songs on KICKBOXER and BLOODSPORT and “The Touch” from TRANSFORMERS: THE MOVIE).
Knowing all that, and that it was partly funded with Kickstarter and Indiegogo campaigns, you could reasonably expect it to be directed by some young fanboy, but in fact it’s from someone who’s been in the trenches of legit DTV martial arts movies since the ‘90s. Ross W. Clarkson got his start doing cinematography for Ringo Lam (he’s worked with him on five movies) and he did Dolph Lundgren’s THE MECHANIK, Isaac Florentine’s UNDISPUTED II and III and NINJA I and II, and Michael Jai White’s NEVER BACK DOWN: NO SURRENDER. So he knows what he’s doing.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Abdel Qissi, Billy Blanks, Cynthia Rothrock, David Kurzhal, David Yeung, fighting tournament, Kurt McKinney, Mathis Landwehr, Matthias Hues, Michel Qissi, Mike Derudder, Mike Moller, Monia Moula, Paul Hertzog, Ross W. Clarkson, Sean David Lowe, Stan Bush
Posted in Reviews, Action, Martial Arts | 17 Comments »
Friday, May 6th, 2022
RAGE AND HONOR II: HOSTILE TAKEOVER was released only a year later (1993), but it’s made by a whole new team. It’s the only narrative feature directed by Guy Norris, an Australian stunt legend who had been on the team for THE ROAD WARRIOR, stunt coordinator for DEAD END DRIVE-IN and BLOOD OF HEROES, etc.
This sequel also has a new set of writers: Louis Sun & Steven Reich. Sun has no other credits, but Reich was producer of CIRCUITRY MAN and SHAKES THE CLOWN, both also released by record-label-turned-film-distributor I.R.S. Media.
Rothrock is playing Kris Fairchild again, but she might as well be a different character. We first see her sneaking around in all black with gun holsters, wearing a headset and saying “Alpha 1 in position” before battling a bunch of terrorists in creepy Halloween masks. It will turn out to be a training exercise, meaning she has moved on from both of her jobs in part I – high school history teacher and martial arts instructor. Now suddenly she’s some kind of agent and she’s sent to work for a bank in Thailand as part of an investigation. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Cynthia Rothrock, Guy Norris, Indonesia, IRS Media, Patrick Muldoon, Richard Norton, Ron Vreeken, Tanaka
Posted in Reviews | 2 Comments »
Thursday, May 5th, 2022
RAGE AND HONOR (1992) opens in black and white – first, grainy high contrast footage of the city, maybe 16mm, then camcorder footage with scanlines – following leather-jacketed Kris Fairfield (Cynthia Rothrock) in an empty high school class room, finishing up her day of work and heading home. I assumed this was a reference to the Michelle Pfeiffer tough-and-inspirational-inner-city-teacher movie DANGEROUS MINDS, which also opened in black and white, until I realized that this came out three years earlier. This is another TOP-GUN-coming-out-after-IRON-EAGLE situation. I got one very suspicious and insinuating eye on you, Mr. Bruckheimer. You’re on notice.
The biggest surprise about this movie is that after the opening it’s never relevant or mentioned that she’s a high school teacher. I was so confused by it that I reloaded the DVD two different times thinking I must’ve misinterpreted something. But it’s true – she has a classroom, a chalkboard, she leaves with papers to grade, she runs into a student named Paris (Patrick Malone, THE BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES) and gives him his paper, she seems to be his history teacher. It’s too bad they didn’t stick with the idea, because a Rothrock version of THE SUBSTITUTE or ONLY THE STRONG would be right up my alley. She really does seem like a cool teacher. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alex Datcher, Brian Thompson, Catherine Bach, Cynthia Rothrock, IRS Media, Matt O'Toole, Patrick Malone, Richard Norton, Stephen Davies, Terence W. Winkless, Toshishiro Obata
Posted in Action, Martial Arts, Reviews | 8 Comments »
Wednesday, May 4th, 2022
TIGER CLAWS II (1996) starts with part I’s Tiger Claw kung fu serial killer Chong (Bolo Yeung) in jail, and ends with him on another astral plane. During that same period the quality of the movie takes a similar journey, going from very promising to something else entirely.
Chong is sitting cross-legged on the floor of his cell when a shithead cop comes in and asks “Who’s the gorilla?” Hearing that Chong has just finished a 9 month psych evaluation and will plead insanity tomorrow, the cop (who didn’t even know who the guy was) insists “He’s not crazy!” and goes into the cell to “teach him some manners” by hitting him with a club and yelling at him.
(I do totally believe this part actually.)
Chong sits and meditates, ignoring him at first, then casually taking the club from him. Unfortunately he doesn’t do anything with it.
Meanwhile our boy Tarek (Jalal Merhi) is busting a gloriously-ponytailed arms dealer named Victor (Evan Lurie, DOUBLE IMPACT, MARTIAL LAW II, AMERICAN KICKBOXER 2). There are fiery explosions, he gets his man, but his partner dies, and while he’s distracted some guys in a white van free Victor. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bolo Yeung, Carter Wong, Cynthia Rothrock, Eric Lee, Evan Lurie, Harry Mok, J. Stephen Maunder, Jalal Merhi, Lazar Rockwood, Loren Avedon, Nicholas Celozzi, Ong Soo Han, Paul Rapovski, Russell Peters, Vinegar Syndrome
Posted in Action, Martial Arts, Reviews | 28 Comments »
Thursday, April 21st, 2022
TIGER CLAWS (1991) is the second film starring the Canadian Dragon (I made that name up) Jalal Merhi. After filming BLACK PEARL, a.k.a. FEARLESS TIGER, he brought along some of his cast and writer J. Stephen Maunder, hooked up with Shapiro-Glickenhaus, and kicked off Film One Productions, which produced 19 movies between 1991 and 2015, almost all of them starring or directed by Merhi.
For this first film, crucially, they hired Canadian TV director Kelly Makin, making his feature film debut. He would soon make a bigger mark directing filmed segments for The Kids in the Hall, and later their movie BRAIN CANDY. I’m guessing he’s the reason TIGER CLAWS has more wit and style than many comparable DTV action movies of the era (including this film’s sequels).
Even more crucially, Merhi was able to co-star with Cynthia Rothrock. She’d already made her mark in Hong Kong with YES, MADAM!, etc., and in the west with NO RETREAT NO SURRENDER 2, CHINA O’BRIEN I and II, the first MARTIAL LAW and even FAST GETAWAY, so I hope he realized how lucky he was to share the lead with her. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bill Pickells, Bolo Yeung, Cynthia Rothrock, J. Stephen Maunder, Jalal Merhi, Kelly Makin, martial arts killer, Mo Chow, Shapiro-Glickenhaus, Vinegar Syndrome
Posted in Action, Martial Arts, Reviews | 3 Comments »
Wednesday, December 1st, 2021
GUARDIAN ANGEL is a 1994 Cynthia Rothrock joint from PM Entertainment, directed by Richard W. Munchkin (RING OF FIRE) and written by Joe Hart (REPO JAKE, STEEL FRONTIER). It’s not one of the better crafted Rothrock pictures, but it’s a worthwhile grade of ridiculousness.
Rothrock stars as Christine McKay, who’s working as a cop when we first meet her. And she’s at a great place in her life. Staking out a public park undercover as “lady standing next to ice cream truck,” she shows off her engagement ring to her partner and confesses that she never thought she’d marry a cop. Then the shit goes down: two groups totaling around 25 people show up at the park to discuss a counterfeiting transaction.
McKay makes the very questionable choice to run by herself toward these gangs firing her gun in the air. The sound causes them to start fighting and shooting at each other. She personally beats the shit out of several of them before backup arrives. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Aharon Ipale, Art Camacho, Cynthia Rothrock, Daniel McVicar, Joe Hart, John O'Leary, Ken McLeod, Lydie Denier, Marshall Teague, PM Entertainment, Richard Norton, Richard W. Munchkin
Posted in Action, Martial Arts, Reviews | 4 Comments »
Monday, October 11th, 2021
NEW YORK NINJA, which had its world premiere at Beyond Fest earlier this month, is a b-action miracle: a previously unknown and unfinished vigilante ninja vs. street punks film accidentally discovered by just the right people who would know how to treat it like a lost Orson Welles film. Shot but abandoned before completion in 1984, it was an American production starring and directed by Taiwanese-born martial arts star John Liu (SECRET RIVALS, SNUFF BOTTLE CONNECTION).
Luckily, the footage happened to be included in a library acquired by Vinegar Syndrome, the excellent blu-ray label that started out restoring vintage porn movies before becoming one of the premiere curators of cult horror and action (PENITENTIARY I & II, DOLEMITE, MARTIAL LAW I & II, THE BEASTMASTER). According to Re-Enter the New York Ninja, a 48-minute featurette that will be included on physical releases of the movie, when they asked what the reels were they were told they could throw them out if they wanted. Instead they watched them and found a movie you can imagine the company acquiring intentionally, had it previously existed: a pulpy, somewhat campy but very sincere revenge movie with Liu battling cartoonish gangs and a mutated serial killer on the streets of New York (sometimes with noticeably unsuspecting extras). (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Cynthia Rothrock, Don "The Dragon" Wilson, John Liu, Kurtis Spieler, Leon Isaac Kennedy, Michael Berryman, ninjas, Vinegar Syndrome, VOYAG3R
Posted in Action, Martial Arts, Reviews | 44 Comments »
Wednesday, February 10th, 2021
FAST GETAWAY was apparently a hit by some standard, so three years later we got the DTV sequel FAST GETAWAY II. Like the first one, it’s still only available on VHS. Corey Haim, Cynthia Rothrock, Leo Rossi and Ken Lerner all return, and there are many direct references to things that happened in the first one, but they do at least find a new setup to make it different.
Young but experienced bank robber Nelson Potter (Haim) now lives on his own, in fact seems to be pretty rich, and is so far beyond his past as a horny virgin that he wakes up and is offered sex in the opening scene. Then there’s a bank robbery that plays off the first movie, with Nelson now graduated to his dad’s role of the ringleader-who-makes-the-bank-customers-sing-a-song, and with an attractive woman named Patrice (Sarah Buxton, THE SURE THING, LESS THAN ZERO, TODAY YOU DIE) as both the person he follows into the bank to hit on and the plant hostage he takes.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: CineTel Films, Corey Haim, Cynthia Rothrock, Ken Lerner, Leo Rossi, Mark Sevi, Oley Sassone, Peter Liapis, Sarah Buxton
Posted in Action, Comedy/Laffs, Reviews | No Comments »
Tuesday, February 9th, 2021
FAST GETAWAY (1991) is a movie that has not made it to DVD, and the VHS cover shows a slightly Vanilla-Ice-looking Corey Haim doing a teen magazine locker pinup pose in front of a red rectangle. I was vaguely aware of its existence for many years before learning that it might be worth watching because it co-stars Cynthia Rothrock. And only when I rented it did I learn that it’s the first of only two movies directed by stunt legend Spiro Razatos. (His other one is CLASS OF 1999 II: THE SUBSTITUTE, and then he did some episodes of Team Knight Rider.)
Razatos is a stuntman going back to the early ‘80s (THEY CALL ME BRUCE, POLICE ACADEMY 2) who graduated to stunt coordinator with OMEGA SYNDROME in 1986. He also did SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT PART 2. I first became aware of him when I was impressed by the crazy low budget car stunts in the MANIAC COP movies and learned he was the second unit director and stunt coordinator behind them. He also did EXTREME JUSTICE, BAD BOYS II, TALLADEGA NIGHTS and DEATH RACE, and then he became the go-to car guy with FAST FIVE and all subsequent FAST movies, plus MONSTER TRUCKS and TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES: OUT OF THE SHADOWS, which has some good shit in it, I swear. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: CineTel Films, Corey Haim, Cynthia Rothrock, Ken Lerner, Leo Rossi, Marcia Strassman, Spiro Razatos
Posted in Action, Comedy/Laffs, Reviews | 12 Comments »
Tuesday, December 8th, 2020
THE MILLIONAIRES’ EXPRESS (also called SHANGHAI EXPRESS, originally 富貴列車, or FORTUNE TRAIN according to Google Translate) is a 1986 Sammo Hung directing and starring joint all-star period comedy.
In the tradition of LICENCE TO KILL it opens with a fight in snowy Russia, as Sammo’s character Ching Fong-Tin is caught trying to steal from Russian soldiers and they force him to wear women’s underwear and do a sexy dance for them. He kind of pulls a Bugs Bunny, leaning into it, and manages to escape with an impressive window leap while the cabin explodes, but is then captured by a mountain-trapper-looking CIA agent called Fook Loi (Kenny Bee, THE SPOOKY BUNCH), so there’s more fighting. They end up rolling down the hill and making giant snowballs. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Cynthia Rothrock, Jimmy Wang Yu, Kenny Bee, Olivia Cheng, Richard Norton, Sammo Hung, Woo Fung, Yuen Biao, Yukari Oshima
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Martial Arts, Reviews | 9 Comments »
