Bloodfist II (1990)

I've seen this one a few times, including on Spike in 2007, around the time I was starting the DTVC. They played all 8 over the course of a week or so. Somehow, this fell under the radar and I forgot to review it then, which I didn't realize until only a few months ago when I went to look for the post and it wasn't there. Oops. No one I knew had it, and Netflix doesn't carry it anymore, so I finally had to break down and buy it. This does mark the completion of the Don "The Dragon" Wilson Bloodfist Series for us here. Friends of the DTVC who have hit this one before us: Movies in the Attic, Cool Target Action Reviews, and most recently, Ty at Comeuppance Reviews.

Bloodfist II is the only actual sequel, so to speak, in that Wilson plays the same character he did in part 1. Long story short, we have an Enter the Dragon paradigm, with Wilson thinking he's going to save a friend in Manilla from a gambler he owes money to, only to find he's drugged, shackled, and on a boat to an island to fight. "Mr. Lu, I think I'd like to leave your island." After a scuffle, he escapes into the water, comes back to the gambler's compound to get his fighter friends, and ends up captured again and fighting the gambler's 'roid heads. Will he prevail?



This is something of a transitional picture in the Bloodfist series, because, on the one hand it has the Enter the Dragon paradigm, which makes it something of a tournament film like its predecessor, but really it's more like Bloodfists IV-VIII, in that it has that whole anywhere Wilson goes there's a potential ambush he needs to fight his way out of. Yes, Enter the Dragon is a classic, and as something of a remake, Bloodfist II doesn't do it justice; but as a low-budget Wilson martial arts actioner, it really delivers. This is a great time, something you and your friends can get a kick out of, and there aren't any dead spots or any plot to get in the way of your action.

This is one of Wilson's best. No training montages like the first one, nothing to get in the way of just a series of scenes of Wilson getting ambushed and having to kickass his way out of it. I don't know that there's another action star who plays more innocent guys that get ambushed by gangs so often. When you look at, say, Dolph or Seagal, they're usually cops or secret servicemen who go into dangerous places and fight their way out; but Wilson can't go to the corner store for a six-pack without someone trying to kick his ass. And every movie is like that too, it's just expected that the old man with the walker lurking in the background while Wilson is paying his mortgage at the bank knows karate and is waiting to try and kill him.



Rina Reyes played Wilson's love interest/woman on the inside helping him out. She looks like a mix of Kim Cattrall and Lisa Bonet, which means she's really hot. She even rocks silver spandex, which can be very dangerous and unflattering on the wrong figure, but looks great on her. As far as I can tell on imdb, she still works, but mostly in the Philippines. Perhaps the best scene came when she and Wilson had their "moment". It was very 6th grade, how their hands brushed up against each other's, then they looked, asked with their eyes if the other meant that touch, and kissed with smooth jazz playing in the background. I guess they cut out the scene later on when Wilson passed her a note with the question "Be my girlfriend?" and two boxes labeled "Yes" and "No" underneath.

I always try to get my hands on a movie to watch it before I review it, even if I've seen it before, because I almost always forget great moments-- not that I don't forget them when I'm writing the review after having just seen it too! In this one, I had totally forgotten about a scene with Tim Baker at a gym, where Baker tells Wilson "I only talk to fighters when I train", which leads Wilson to jumpkick his punching ball off it's chain and into a sparring ring, hitting one of the fighters in the back. That's a gem that if I don't watch the film again I miss out on, and I'm glad I didn't.



Baker was one of a few great members of the supporting cast, which also included Joe Mari Avellana-- not reprising his role as Kwong from part 1. One of the ones that was interesting was Richard Hill, pictured above, or Rick Hill for short. See where I'm going with this, Rick Hill same name as Deathstalker Rick Hill. In the biography section of the DVD, they actually make this mistake, showing the picture of the guy above-- the guy who was actually in the film-- but then running off the list of accomplishments that the other Rick Hill had had in the industry. How does that happen? Whose job is it to make sure they have the right Rick Hill? And does it really matter? Probably not, right? It kind of gives the DVD character.

For some reason Netflix doesn't have this, but you can buy it new or used on DVD from Amazon, so it doesn't really make any sense. Anyway, if you're into good ol' late 80s/early 90s bad action, this is right in your wheelhouse-- and if you're not, are you sure you have the right blog?

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099155/

Bloodfist VII: Manhunt (1995)

I could've sworn I'd reviewed this one way back when I first started the DTVC. I know I saw it on Spike, and back then, if I caught a film like this on Spike, I'd just write the review and see if I could Print Screen some images from the trailer. Those were some crazy days back in 2007. It feels like forever ago, huh? And apparently they were more crazy than I thought, because a few months ago I went to the archive to look at my Bloodfist VII review, only to discover, it didn't exist. Boy do I have egg on my face.

Bloodfist VII has our hero Don "The Dragon" Wilson back in his reoccurring/non-reoccurring role, this time as a drifter heading to Mexico when he bumps into Jillian McWhirter, who pulls the ol' "can we share a hotel room I'll wake up before you in the morning and steal your car and leave the keys to my Beamer" maneuver, which Wilson doesn't take too kindly too. He tracks her to a house in Hollywood, which has been ransacked, and in which he's ambushed by an off-duty cop, whom he kills. After a quick interrogation where he tells police captain Stephen Williams what happened, some other off-duty cops take him to a place to beat info out of him he doesn't have, he escapes, and the Bloodfist parts IV, V, VII, and VIII paradigm is on, where it's Wilson against the world, and he can't trust anyone as he tries to put the pieces together and clear his name.



I actually really liked this one. It's 86-minute running time moved very quickly, and didn't have the usual downtime and awkward plot exposition scenes that hamper some of the other films in the series. Wilson was great, especially with the martial arts, and Stephen Williams was too amazing for words (though I'm going to try in a couple paragraphs). Don't get me wrong, this is pure DTV bad action, from the music, to the shimmying stuntmen getting sprayed with Uzi fire, to the Chess King fashions, but it's the kind of pure DTV bad action that works really well, especially in 2011.

This was the kind of movie that got Don "The Dragon" Wilson into the Hall of Fame. I mean, the film starts with Rick Dean at a biker bar acting like a sleazeball, just asking for D The D Dubs to smack him with the butt end of a pool cue. And from there, it's either Wilson fighting, or Wilson running from the cops in some great foot chase scenes. We don't need Wilson to act, we need him to fight, and that's what we got here, great Wilson action.



The reason we don't need Wilson to act? That's right, Stephen Williams did all the acting we needed. I swear they wrote the character name "Marvosa" into the script just to hear Williams say it. I mean, the moment he steps on-screen, it's like he's saying "step aside children, Daddy's here", and from that moment, he owns it like it's his-- "this is my house, my lawn, my barbecue, and I'm willing to let you kids hang out, just as long as you know whose shit this all is." What a coup it must have been to get him in this movie, but we're all better for it.

There was a Neo-Geo sighting. There's a pic of it on the image page. I guess it was at the police station. I went with that for this paragraph over the Ian Jacklin sighting and Jillian McWhirter's hair-- which I have no idea what they were thinking with that, "hey, let's give a 30-year-old woman a 50-year-old haircut." I don't really remember the Neo-Geo. They had it at the local arcade, but I don't think I played it. Too much Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter I guess.



Who's that dude rocking the Chess King/Color Me Badd outfit? It's Stephen Quadros, or as I like to say, The Poor Man's Kevin Bacon. There were some better pictures where he looked more like Kevin Bacon, like one of him wearing a welding mask, but I just loved the clothes here. This is an area where I like the 80s/90s movies better than today's that the modern movie can't really help. This shirt is the Ed Hardy busy T-shirt of 1995, and just because the older one has the charm of age on its side, doesn't mean it's any less egregious a fashion error. Maybe in ten years we'll see a dude in a punchfighting flick with a sleeve of tats and an Affliction T and we'll be like "they don't make clothes like they used to." Maybe we won't.

This is no longer on Netflix, but can be bought new at Amazon for as little as $3. Thing is, that's too expensive when you tack on the additional $3 in shipping. It does mean it could turn up in a bargain bin here or there, so keep an eye out. This is a total fun time.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112533/

Bloodfist (1989)

Here we are, post number 549, and somehow Bloodfist has slipped through the cracks up until this point. I could have sworn I'd reviewed both this and part 2 already, and as I was watching this again for this review, I had a sense of deja vu as I saw certain images, thinking, "I could've sworn I grabbed that scene." Anyway, it was all my imagination, but here we are now, rectifying the issue.

Bloodfist has DTVC Hall of Famer Don "The Dragon" Wilson as Jake, a fighter in California, whose brother, a fighter in Manila, is killed. He goes over there to get to the bottom of things, and finds all roads lead to an underground fighting tournament, which he enters, hot on the trail of the murderer. The problem is, his trainer, a local who got him into the tournament, isn't too enthused with Donny figuring things out before he fights in the final. Who can Donny trust when the chips are down?



I don't really know where to go with this one. I guess, because it's a classic, it's worth looking at. Some of the fights are good, some are lackluster. The one big thing it has going for it is the running time, because you're in and out in 80 minutes, which isn't bad. On the other hand, the training montage is silly, and worse than that perfunctory and a bit superfluous, which hurts because that's more fighting or other action we could have had in its place. It is what it is, a derivative tournament film with the distinction of being Don "The Dragon" Wilson's first starring role.

And with this review, we're down to 13 films left in out Dragon completion project. This is an interesting case on why he became a DTV action star, because I think you can see what Roger Corman and whoever else saw in him. He wasn't a great actor, and the tapered pants didn't do anything to make him look any better on-screen, but when he squared up for the fight scenes, there was that look in his eyes, that elite athlete look, like "you won't beat me" or "if you're going to beat me, it's going to hurt a lot. Are you ready for that?" That translates well to the audience, giving him instant credibility. The problem always is, while he's good in those fight scenes, the rest of the time, we don't know what to make of him. Elite athlete does not always translate into solid actor.



Billy Blanks is sweet for his few scenes. His fighting actually looked the best out of everyone, including Wilson. I'm still not sure why it never happened for him, like it did for guys like Wilson. I know before I've speculated that his race might have been an issue, and on some levels, one could still make that case. I'm trying to think, after Wesley Snipes, how many African American action stars there are. And then, if you eliminate all the converted former rappers, how many do you have? And it's not like there's no one with potential out there. Look at Michael Jai White. He's great period, with no qualifiers, as was Blanks in the late 80s early 90s, great period, not just great African American. People must have looked at him and said "no one will buy a black action hero". That's our loss, unfortunately, because whenever we see him, he's great.

On the image page, you'll notice a kid with a rat tail. I figured I needed to snag that. I remember in 8th grade, my science teacher had one, and we were telling him how out of date they were. I want to say they were cool in like 4th grade, which would have been around when this was made. That kid's probably my age in the picture. If you're wondering, yes, I tried to grow a rat tail, went to the beauty school with my mom to get my haircut, and the stylist there started the process for me. It was pretty weak, compared to some of the other kids, so I gave up. Not that I had any better hairdos than that, I just didn't have the rat tail.



I like this mention of Chinatown in Manila. I was trying to think of other films we've had that have featured Chinatowns in them. Obviously, anything taking place in San Francisco, New York, or LA that had anything to do with martial arts showcased those Chinatowns. Into the Sun has the Tokyo Chinatown, which was cool. If you ever make it up to Boston, we have a pretty cool Chinatown here (the oldest in the country, actually). It's right down the road from South Station.

If you haven't seen this one, I think it's good to get it out of the way, just to be able to say you've seen all the Bloodfists-- kind of the same way I need to be able to say I've reviewed all the Bloodfists, right? Anyway, the DVD is currently out of print, meaning Netflix won't rent it. If you keep an eye out though, you'll probably catch it on TV.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096952/

Bloodfist VI: Ground Zero (1995)

For some reason this film stands alone as the one Bloodfist holdout from Netflix's Bloodfist purging. All the other ones are no longer available. I believe after this one, I'll only have 1, 2, and 7 left to review, and though I've seen all of those, I'm not sure how I'll get my hands on them for the blog. Anyway, Bloodfist VI was the only one out of the 8 that I hadn't seen before, so I finally got that out of the way.

Bloodfist VI: Ground Zero has DTVC Hall of Famer Don "The Dragon" Wilson, this time as a military courier who happens upon a facility holding nuclear missiles that's been taken over by terrorists. He's in a race against time, as he's the only one who can stop the terrorists from launching the missiles, but also because a near-sighted general has sent a squadron of fighter jets over to blow the place up. Can he do it?



This is by far the worst of the Bloodfist series. It was like a bad, boring Die Hard rip-off. Wilson did the least amount of kicking ass of any of the other films; and the plot was the most self-contained and most thrown together too. It was like an Airwolf episode without the cool helicopter. I mean, that's the extent of the storyline here, enough material to make a 1980s action TV series plot for one episode, stretched out over 90 minutes, and with much less action.

It's been a little while since we've seen Mr. "The Dragon" Wilson-- almost a year to be exact. A big part of that is his DTV catalog has been systematically removed by Netflix. I had enough trouble just getting this film, as it had to be sent from another shipping center. Still, he has a few other films on there, so it shouldn't have taken me almost a year between posts. He just kind of got lost in the shuffle, and now his first film back after a long hiatus is a stinker like this. Next on the list is Moving Target.



On April 5th, another DTVC Hall of Famer, Roger Corman, celebrated his 84th birthday. I kind of lost track of tagging Mr. Corman, but I think I'm caught up and it would seem this will be his 13th film, which isn't many. Don "The Dragon" Wilson was one of his mainstays, though, as Corman produced all of the Bloodfist films. One of the more fascinating places I saw him recently was attached to the Kurosawa film Dersu Uzala. His distribution company, New World Pictures (which he sold in 1983), released the film here in the States. Mr. Corman is the man.

Of the 8 Bloodfist films, 4, 5, 7, and 8 all have pretty much the same plot: guy is framed, and is alone fighting the good guys and the bad guys with no one he can trust. I'm not sure what made them switch it up for this film, but I think it might have been for budget reasons. It's a lot cheaper to just go out to the desert and use one or two sets, than it is to film at various locations. Also, I imagine this one was relatively shorter to make too. With the DTV film, it's always necessary to examine more than just the art of movie making to figure out why something turned out as bad as it did. We're so used to Jersey Girl-type bombs that were sautéed in wrong sauce from the get-go, but were entirely a case of the actual art being wrong, as opposed to someone saying "Let's squeeze out a Bloodfist movie on the cheap. How can we do that?"



This is our second film to feature former Dodgers stand-out Steve Garvey, the first being Ice Cream Man. If you haven't seen the Cheap Seats episode where the Sklar Brothers make fun of a Steve Garvey celebrity fishing event, check it out here. Absolutely amazing. Garvey's only in this for a few minutes, which is kind of too bad. If you're not familiar with him, he played for the Dodgers in the 70s to early 80s, amassing great numbers and winning the NL MVP in 1974. He also was a standout in big games, winning MVPs for All-Star games and League Championship Series. He was a little before my time, so I vaguely remember him.

Unless you want to see all 8 Bloodfist movies, you should skip this one. Even for a Bloodfist, it's extremely boring and a whole lot of blah. Wilson has done much better as well, and there are plenty of other Corman produced films that are much more fun.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109301/

Bloodfist VIII: Trained to Kill or Hard Way Out (1996)

In seeing this on Spike recently, I had another case of bad movie deja vu. You know what I'm talking about: you think for sure you've never seen a certain movie before, but halfway through it, things look familiar, and it's more than just bad movie cliches. Then it dawns on you that yes, in fact, you have seen it, and you just didn't remember. With this film, it turned out I'd seen it a while ago, probably at a time when digital cable guides didn't exist, so I watched it without even knowing what it was. In my mind, the only thing worse than watching a bad movie once, is watching it twice because I didn't remember the pain I'd suffered the fist time. I guess as a connoisseur of bad cinema, I should probably get a journal like wine people do, so I can recall what it was like: film had bold explosions and potential with great actors, but horrible after taste with unoriginal plot. Also smelled bad once it had a chance to open up.

Bloodfist VIII, aka The Ocho, takes the overused Bloodfist premise of Don "The Dragon" Wilson against the world, and moves it to Ireland. I guess LA told Roger Corman that seven Bloodfists was really pushing it, and if he wanted to make an eight, he'd have to take his business elsewhere. Anyway, D "The D" Dubs is a former CIA agent turned high school teacher trying to raise his erstwhile estranged son. Someone puts a hit on him for killing a dude in Italy, and in order to clear his name, the trail takes him to Dublin. The CIA follows him there, because they want to kill ol' Donny too. As in every Bloodfist, he prevails against all odds.



Wanna talk about pulling blood from a stone. They were scraping the bottom of the barrel when they put this one together. I can't lie, with the extreme success of Bloodfist VII: Manhunt, I probably would've greenlighted an eight too. It's not like any of the actors had anything better to do, I'm sure. Why not take a paid vacation to Ireland? I bet Donny hadn't been before they shot this.

Speaking of Donny, he really gives this the ol' college try. He's having trouble making the same stale storyline not so stale. I bet he's the guy you have as a roommate that saves every scrap of food because he thinks he can make a taco bake or something out of it. I'm that guy too, and I know sometimes you just gotta bite the bullet and throw that stuff out. And then you gotta bite the bullet again and buy some new food at the grocery store.



I guess that's the issue with the Bloodfist series: they never did anything new. There was nothing that I could discern from the earlier movies that said explicitly that movies IV through VIII absolutely had to have a guy that was some sort of fugitive with everyone against him with no one he could trust. The first two weren't like that, and the third was only sorta kinda like that. Why they felt compelled to make the others essentially the same film is beyond me. I know after this they really tried to mix it up with Bloodfist: 2050, but that doesn't do anything for me here with number VIII, which is what I'm reviewing.

This may be one of the most nondescript films I've ever done for the DTVC. Other than Donny, there's nothing in it that makes it memorable at all. I've had trouble grinding out more than four or five paragraphs. It's not extremely bad; but on the other hand, if it was, it might be more entertaining. Instead it's just a big pile of blah. The only way I'd recommend watching it is if you're suffering from insomnia or up late typing a paper, and this is on at 2 AM, and it's your only option. Otherwise skip it. It's not worth any money you spend on it, no matter how small; and it's not worth any time you could spend doing something else, like watching another movie, or reading a book.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115711/

Bloodfist III: Forced to Fight (1992)

I caught this recently during a Bloodfist marathon on ShowtimeXtreme. I have friends with the channel, but unfortunately, they will probably be dumping it soon. I know when I had the channel myself it provided hours of enjoyment; but it is expensive, and I can totally understand them not keeping it. Perhaps we can get the channel as a tax write-off at the DTVC head offices.

Bloodfist III: Forced to Fight is the first of the series to feature Don "The Dragon" Wilson as someone other than the guy he was in the first two. In fact, all of them after III do that. Anyway, here he's in prison, and he sees his buddy raped and murdered, so he kills the guy that did it. That garners him bad attention from the cats that dug the dead guy, so he's forced to fight to survive. Richard Roundtree is his cell mate, and he's close to parole. He also represents the inmates at their parole and appeal hearings. The question is: will his supporting Donny kill him before his release date? We know it won't kill Donny Dawg.

Almost every action hero has to do the perfunctory prison flick. Don got his out of the way very early in his career, and I must say that was a good move. Though this movie is atrocious, we can forgive him for it, because he didn't have a lot under his belt. That being said, he better not do anymore, like Van Damme did, because the results could be disastrous. I think Crooked was a far better movie choice than In Hell.



One thing I dug about this was the sheer volume of fighting in it. There could've been more if they'd just removed the plot completely, and I can't say I would've been upset with that, but I think the amount they had was enough. In one scene, Dragon fights this big dude in the laundry room. He kicks the guy backward through who knows how many hanging sheets. I'm not sure exactly what they were going for, whether that was a scene played for laughs gone wrong, or if they really thought it would be a cool effect and just got carried away, but it looked like something out of the Three Stooges.

Richard Roundtree's in this, unfortunately not reprising his role as Shaft. As a kid, the Shaft movies were to my mind the most amazing things I'd ever laid eyes on, and as an adult, my opinion hasn't changed much. We get flashes of what made Shaft great here, like when Roundtree goes upside a dude's head with a bat, but nothing like the scene in Shaft in Africa when he killed a bunch of dudes with a car; and none of the great lines like the classic "Close it yourself... Shitty!" from the first one. I think the film makers were a little over their head when they cast Roundtree, and as such, weren't able to use him to his full potential.



This film had all the depraved hallmarks of the routine prison film, which I assume is meant to show us how gritty the prison environment is, but in the end just look whacked. This is especially true in the beginning when D "The D" Dubs' friend gets raped. Eww. Just the same, the film does a solid job in tempering this depravity, especially with how Don is able to get justice against both the warden (played by the assassin in Hard to Kill, an interesting connection between Don and Seagal) and the baddies in prison; and with the way they wrapped up Roundtree's story. I left this movie without the icky feeling I'm usually left with after other prison flicks, and I guess in that respect this film is a nice slice of all right.

If you see this again on ShowtimeXtreme or something, and you're up late typing or paper or battling insomnia, a fella or a lady could do a lot worse than watch this bad boy. On the other hand, if you spend any money, or set aside any time to watch this, you will feel sorely cheated. It's what we in The Biz call nondescript, and in my mind, nondescript is no good.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101481/

Bloodfist V: Human Target (1994)

The Bloodfist series is rough for the uninitiated. Don "The Dragon" did 8 of them, all produced by Roger Corman, and there isn't much variation between them. You get some guy framed for something and he's got everyone against him, except usually a woman who gives him a hand. But paper-thin plots aside, the martial arts in these are usually way better than their pay-grade. You gotta respect Don, at the very least, for his expertise as a martial artist.

Bloodfist V, like it's predecessors, doesn't pick up where the previous installment left off. In this one, we see Donny with a mullet getting shot by people. He wakes up in a hospital with amnesia and a haircut. A woman shows up, saying she's his wife, and they escape the hospital and the Asian mafioso trying to kill them. Turns out the woman's a prostitute hired to pretend to be her hubby, and when they go back to her pimp, we find out the pimp, played by American Ninja's Steve James (the guy who played Jackson), is in on the set up. The next 45 minutes has D. "The D" Dubs trying to figure out who he is. He thinks he's a special agent. Then he thinks he's a criminal. We find out he was a criminal, but he's good, and the prostitute was working for the government to set him up, but she loves him now, so she saves him from Steve James, who it turns out isn't her pimp, but her boss in the NSA, who also wants to kill Donny. Who cares if it's convoluted, it's Bloodfist.

Don is pretty decent in this. It's not like 4, where he fights an equally solid fighter in Gary Daniels. That's kind of disappointing, in that I'd like to see Don flex his martial arts muscles, and we don't get as much as we'd want here. Still, he's ever the survivalist.

Denice Duff is Don's love interest, and she does all right. She's actually hotter later when she dresses in her NSA business suit attire. There's also a gross scene where she's being interrogated by the Asian baddie, and he sticks an acupuncture needle right under her eye. Many of you that are fans of bad horror and sci-fi are no doubt familiar with her other work. For me personally, I remember her vividly in a Matlock episode my mom was watching once where she played the girlfriend of an older guy married to Matlock's cousin.

This film also had the distinction being the last movie that wasn't a TV movie for bad action great Steve James, who unfortunately died of pancreatic cancer in 1993, before this film was released. He was probably best known as Jackson in American Ninja 1 and 2. He had a very prolific career, despite dying young. I'd have liked to see him as the star in a movie, but unfortunately that will never happen.

With the lack of great martial arts, we're left with very little here. The action is all right in the bad action film sense, but is that enough? We can get that re-watching a great Dolph Lundgren film. Also, since the Bloodfists don't have any kind of impact on the other films in the series, you can get away with skipping one or another. I'd say skip this one. At best, watch it at 2am if you're suffering from insomnia or writing a paper.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106434/

Bloodfist IV: Die Trying (1992)

Don "The Dragon" Wilson has always been pretty cool in my book. I think if he had more memorable films he'd probably be in the DTVC Hall of Fame. He'd definitely be in my UFC Color Commentator Hall of Fame if I had one. I don't want to bag on Joe Rogan here, because everyone else does that, and to be honest, I kind of like Fear Factor, but D "The D" Dubs held it down when he had the gig back in the early UFCs. I was glad to see him in that Last Sentinel movie on Sci-Fi, even if they were packaging it as a vehicle for the chick that plays the counterfeit Starbuck on the new Battlestar Galactica.

Bloodfist IV: Die Trying is another in producer Roger Corman's Bloodfist series, all of which star Mr. Wilson as different main characters (except the first two, where he's the same guy). In this one, D "The D" Dubs plays a repo man who repos the wrong car. He fights a buff and long haired Gary Daniels for it. Later Gary brings his boss and others to the repo place to retrieve some stuff from the car, and they massacre all of Donny's co-workers. He's blamed for it, and he needs to clear his name and save his daughter, who's been kidnapped by Daniels' boss, at the same time. James Tolkan of Masters of the Universe and Top Gun fame plays an FBI agent.

I must say, Don does a great job choreographing fight scenes in this, especially with Gary Daniels and the late Cat Sassoon. The first and final fights with Daniels are some of the best I've seen in a non Jackie Chan, Bruce Lee, or Jet Li film. I guess it pays to be the greatest kickboxing champ ever, right?

The plot in this was interesting. The bad guys were after switches to nuclear bombs or something. Don had to deal with not only the baddies, but the LAPD, the FBI, and the CIA. One thing I liked was how they had all these complicated plot twists with the whole "who's side is so-and-so on?" kind of deal, but it wasn't too heavy because we knew they were all against Don. All he had was character actor Amanda Wyss, who you may have seen in absolutely everything (most memorable for me was the reporter on Highlander: The Series), to lean on as he tried to clear his name and save his daughter.

Other than the nice fighting and the simple plot, this didn't have much going for it. There were no memorable lines or spectacular action. If I hadn't been watching this at 2am while fighting insomnia, I probably would have turned it off. After the final fight between Don and Daniels, there's still another 15 minutes (a half hour with commercials if you're watching it on TV), which for me was useless.

If you came into a bunch of Bloodfists for a cheap price, it's not exactly a bad deal, especially if you like good martial arts. Overall, though, spending more than a couple bucks on these individually, especially this one, is a little much. If you see Bloodfist IV on TV at 2am and you're battling insomnia or taking a break from a term paper or an all night cram session, you could do a lot worse. That's probably why Spike and ShowtimeXtreme show this around that time.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103840/