The King of the Kickboxers (1990)

My friend Kenner at Movies in the Attic has been on me about this one for a while, and when I did Tough and Deadly starring Billy Blanks a couple weeks ago, he put on a full-court press, hitting me with e-mails containing YouTube and Amazon links letting me know all the myriad ways I could experience this gem. I finally got a hold of it and made it happen on my own.

The King of the Kickboxers is about this undercover cop in New York who's always getting into trouble and living life by the seat of his tight acid wash jeans. Anyway, the chief wants to get rid of him for a little while, and sends him to Thailand to work on a snuff film case. It's not what you think: American fighters are being duped into acting in action films where they're really killed, and the killer is Billy Blanks. Our hero remembers Blanks, because Blanks killed his brother ten years before when they were in Thailand and the brother won a kickboxing tournament. Anyway, when our hero gets there, he finds out he's not ready yet, and luckily the Native American from China O'Brien is willing to give him a hand. Can our hero defy the odds and take down Blanks?



I don't know where to begin. First off, it's awesome. It starts with this title graphic that looks like an SNK Neo-Geo video game, then moves into some of the most poorly choreographed kickboxing in a ring you'll ever see. Just when you think this is a sack of asscrack, the kickboxer and his little brother (who grows up to be our hero) are attacked by Billy Blanks and his boys. Blanks then proceeds to blow up a golf cart with machine gun fire, letting us know that this is the official start of the film. It only gets more amazing from there. Jerry Trimble has (unfortunately) a small part as a two-sweet mulleted drug dealer, and our hero takes him and his goons down, just carrying over the energy from the Blanks scene before it. The action is stellar, the martial arts some of the best you'll see, and the acting and plot, though woeful, only enhance the experience, as opposed to detracting from it.

Billy Blanks as a baddie martial artist is great. I'm not exaggerating when I say he's up there with Michel Qissi as Tong Po or Bolo Yeung as anything. This is key to any great bad action film, as the baddie must make us detest him enough, yet at the same time respect his fighting skills and fear him. If our hero isn't facing an enormous challenge, or we aren't rooting for him either, the film isn't fun, and that's what we're in this for, to have fun. On top of all this, the end fight between he and our hero did a great job of paying us back for our investment, as it was worthy of Blanks's baddie and the work our hero put in in montage time to defeat him.



If I have one complaint though, it was how little Jerry Trimble there was. I know he was just getting started in the film industry, but still. The mullet was amazing, and the martial arts were tight. You know a movie is good when they can have a talent like Trimble in it for only one scene, and still be as awesome as The King of the Kickboxers was. Other people you may recognize were Ong Soo Han, who, like Billy Blanks, has starred in an action film with Rowdy Roddy Piper; Sherrie Rose as the love interest; and Don Stroud as our hero's contact in Thailand. Again, a great cast that just enhanced a great film.

Mr. Kenner remarked, and I agreed with him, that the late Richard Jaekel as the police captain was one of the best we've seen in a role like that. Whether you agree with us or not, what's interesting to note here is that we're remarking on an actor's job playing the police captain in a bad action movie versus other actors we've seen do the same part. We've seen that many bad action films that we're examining the art of the police chief. I'll have you know, though, that I passed up a used DVD copy of Guns and Lipstick at my local record store last night because they wanted $8 for it. I might be a self-professed connoisseur, but I'm not crazy.



I imagine the picture above has already told you where I'm going with this last paragraph. Loren Avedon, our hero, is shown here sporting... a Fanny Pack! Unlike David Bradley's similar fashion disaster in Cyborg Cop, though, King of the Kickboxers was a solid enough movie to transcend something so atrocious. Still, even if the point of the fanny pack was to have Avedon's undercover character come off as a naive dork looking for a fight, the tacky shirt and white pants were sufficient. The Fanny Pack is an abomination, and I can't let even a film as great as this one off the hook for such a felonious transgression.

To give you an idea of how awesome this movie is, I captured 12 images of it (which you can find on the image page), and that was me showing restraint. There might be another 20 to 30 other scenes that'll make you laugh, make you pump your fist, or just make you nod your head in understanding that what you got here is good. Find it on YouTube, buy it on Amazon, or scoop it a local used retailer. Whatever you gotta do, make it happen. You won't be disappointed.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102217/