As you can tell by the title Bloodfist this is just another band-wagon effort by producer Roger Corman. Movies about kickboxing were extremely popular at the time thanks to the efforts of the Cannon Group with films like Bloodsport and Kickboxer. Corman also attempted to find us another kickboxer turned actor in the form of Don "The Dragon" Wilson. You know he's got to be good when he's credited with his nickname in quotations along with his birth name. Another weird thing about the credits is each "actor" is also credited with their martial arts award titles under their name. With opening credits like that one knows that the filmmakers are not trying to appeal to an Oscar crowd. The film knows what it is and it's not going to hide the fact. The opening credits might as well say "This is a kickboxing movie, like it or fuck off."
The film opens with a kickboxing match where a fighter goes against his trainers wishes to throw the fight and ends up winning the match. He is later killed in an alley and news travels back to the US where his brother (Don Wilson) decides to travel to the Philippines to find his brother's killer.
The film gave me a lot of flashbacks to "Rocky". While there he meets a grizzly old man who decides to train him. We are also graced an ultra cheezy training montage complete with "Rocky" style music. Wilson also meets up with a friend named Baby (thanks to some hilarious dialogue we find that his name is Baby because his parents couldn't decide on what to call him), a stock character who is easily made out to be the guy-who-gets-killed-and-drives-hero-to-vengeance motive. We also get introduced to his sister, who is of course our stock love interest. Her introduction has to be one of the most barf inducing intros to a love interest as we first see her exercising in slow-mo on a building roof. Her sweat stained armpits made me wince away from the screen.
Typical of Roger Corman productions the budget of this film was extremely small and it's restraints show up everywhere. Our hero even wears Carhartt jeans more suitable for construction workers. The fight choreography is poor and the acting is thigh slappingly awful along the dialogue. This film had me hit the floor laughing with unintentionally bad dialogue as much as films like 2019: After the Fall of New York and Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2. I actually had so much fun with the shear awfulness of this film that it has actually become one of my all time favorite bad movies.
You have to go into this movie expecting an awful Kickboxer film. If you are also a connoisseur of bad films you will have a great time with Bloodfist as there is plenty to make fun of. Strangely enough I actually find myself popping this film into my DVD player quite often.
Written By: Eric Reifschneider
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