This movie reaffirmed my faith in our kickboxing lord and savior, Gary Daniels. So much of Gary’s teachings involve showing us that if we bear the crosses he gives us (stupid plots, poorly executed scenes of guys flying through the air on wires, hideously untalented and unappealing co-stars), our reward will not be the eternal damnation that lesser action stars (Van Damme, Don “The Dragon” Wilson, and the Great Satan himself, Steven Seagal) routinely deliver like a cold, soggy pizza the driver spit, shat, and pissed on, but an everlasting peace brought about by his love of kicking and punching scumbag killers!
But what is the point of blindly following a religious messiah if there isn’t a final battle between Good and Evil? How are we able to threaten non-believers with Gary’s righteous retribution if there isn’t some story about the end of the world and how all the Gary-haters will be sodomized with a radioactive cactus for all eternity for their blasphemy?
Gary’s True Revelation on the subject is contained in the movie Bloodmoon. Its power to inspire and renew faith in Gary is powerful and inspiring. Its deceptively simple story belies the depth of its message as Gary is able to take everything he has taught us to this point and gives us a roadmap for navigating the turbulent days of the end times.
The journey though will not be easy! For one thing, Bloodmoon is too frigging long! I mean, I’m a super, super strong Gary believer and all, but come on! This movie is 102 minutes! There’s no reason for Gary to kick stuff longer than about 90 minutes!
To be fair to Gary, he doesn’t actually appear until about 15 or 20 minutes into the film which makes the coming of Gary that much more of a jeans creaming moment for devotees, but dang it, don’t fill that time with the likes of a magic trick prone cop and a really old and crabby Frank Gorshin!
The opening segments though also serve to introduce us to the force that Gary will battle for the very soul of our universe! I give you…Bloodmoon!
Technically, he wasn’t really called Bloodmoon by name, but we can see through Bloodmoon’s many disguises, can’t we? Deceit is one of Bloodmoon’s greatest weapons! So also, are his steel-toe boots, superior kick fighting skills, and his two metal fingers he uses to punch holes in people!
Evil is also all about preening flamboyancy so Bloodmoon is sometimes decked out in a mask and black cape like some ass kicking amalgamation of the Phantom of the Opera and Zorro!
Like all prophecies involving the coming of the Final Evil, there are several signs that Bloodmoon has descended to our world for his final confrontation with arch-nemesis Gary. First of all, the moon is red! Second of all, a whole bunch of champion fighters are turning up murdered! Third of all, Bloodmoon keeps sending the NYPD taunting e-mails and at one point even manages to stream live video to them of a battle to the death he was having!
It’s a testament to his dark powers that he’s able to plug his video camera into his laptop and send crystal clear video to a police computer just by punching a few buttons!
Bloodmoon’s foul mastery of mid-1990s Internet technology though wasn’t limited to harassing the NYPD. He also took on Gary directly through the computer! While Gary is consulting with a hacker at the hacker’s house, Bloodmoon sends an e-mail to Gary through Gary’s e-mail account and it pops up on the hacker’s computer while Gary is standing there!
As awesome as that was, Bloodmoon pulls an even better stunt on Gary when Gary breaks into Bloodmoon’s house and Bloodmoon’s computer displays a picture of Gary with his wife and child, but the picture is suddenly replaced with the same picture but with Bloodmoon Photoshopped in instead of Gary! I think I would be stating the obvious if I mentioned that Bloodmoon also rigged the machine up to speak in an electronic voice during these various encounters.
Bloodmoon’s tech war though is just an evil hobby since he’s really all about killing off all the champs that trained under Gary’s old master. I don’t know that his motive was ever made really clear, though there was some mention of him being disqualified from the big tournament of champions for being too brutal.
The confrontation between Gary and Bloodmoon is everything you assumed, hoped, prayed, begged, pleaded, and sold your soul for! The venue? Large factory with big pipes, catwalks, ledges, and lots of stairs! The stakes? Gary’s wife and daughter are strapped to a pole with a wad of dynamite taped above their heads! The fight? To the freaking death, my friend!
Any doubts that this battle isn’t religious are shattered when Bloodmoon announces upon Gary’s arrival to the factory, “welcome to hell!” Bloodmoon also babbles about how the “endgame” has begun!
And even though the first hour and a half of this movie felt like I was simultaneously being crucified, burnt at the stake, drawn and quartered, electrocuted, skinned alive, and listening to fingernails scrape a chalkboard, I felt a sweet release and calm wash over me when Gary began to use a metal pole to beat the fudge out of Bloodmoon! Bloodmoon got his licks in as well, punching a hole in not only Gary’s stomach with his magic metal fingers, but also in Gary’s magician partner, too!
Bloodmoon also turns out to be about more than deranged kickboxers giving each other concussions and dislocated arms. It’s also about the importance of family!
Though we hated the cop who did magic tricks more than Bloodmoon himself, it was his two-headed quarter that tricked Gary into calling his wife and telling her that he wanted to work things out! And it was because of that two-headed quarter that we got to see Gary, his wife, and kid have a family outing at a carnival where Gary used his mega kick to ring the bell on that game where you usually have to use a sledge hammer! Toss in professional wrestling superstar Rob Van Dam in a minor role and it’s easy to see why millions of people continue to light candles to Bloodmoon and Gary each and every day!
© 2014 MonsterHunter
