Return of the Kickfighter (1987)

Return of the Kickfighter PosterAt long last an action movie that articulates why its climax is taking place at the old abandoned cement factory outside of town. Too often, it seems like everyone just magically teleports to the docks for a final shootout (lots of shipping containers can get blown up and bad guys can end up dramatically floating in the water) or mindlessly cruises over to a power plant because all the catwalks can provide a lot of suspenseful chasing (and bad guys falling to their deaths) and steam valves can get ruptured, filling the area with smoke (and burn bad guys in the face), but without any logical explanation why the action had to shift from where it was happening to these locales. Continue reading “Return of the Kickfighter (1987)”

Kick or Die (1987)

Women are being brutally attacked and raped on the campus of the local college, but now the community is standing together to take back the night! By having a meeting to decide what to do! And they decide what any sensible low budget action would – hire the legendary alumni martial artist to teach the co-ends self defense! And it only took two short raped-filled years to add it to the curriculum! Continue reading “Kick or Die (1987)”

Empire of Ash III (1989)

Empire Of Ash III (or as the clumsily inserted title claimed on the VHS version I saw, Last Of The Warriors) isn’t just your standard post apocalyptic desert wasteland picture. And that’s probably because it takes place in the woods of New Idaho!

If watching nameless goofs dressed in leather and driving beat up cars and battletrucks while shooting each other across rocky terrain is your thing, you needn’t worry though. There’s still plenty of rocks up in New Idaho that need blowing up! The rest of the movie similarly takes vaguely familiar elements of these sorts of movies and goes its own special direction with them.

Take the whole “breeding a new race” angle you get in some of these flicks. There’s always a dirty bird trying to force hot, fertile chicks to get preggers in an effort to begin the world again. You’ll recognize these scenes because these guys are always making grand pronouncements about how some babe has been specially selected to receive his seed. Ugh. Is there a radioactive cactus I can screw instead? Continue reading “Empire of Ash III (1989)”

Night of the Kickfighters (1988)

How cool would it be if there was a kickboxing-champ-turned-action-hero that us mere mortals could emulate? What if there was a guy taking on impossible missions to save chicks and the world that wouldn’t be a threat to our fragile masculine egos? Wouldn’t such a fellow be in for a long and successful career with his regular Joe qualities?

No. Not really. In fact, the same things about such a guy that would cause him not to threaten us normal dudes would be exactly the same things that would make us laugh uncomfortably whenever this regular kickboxing guy foolishly attempted to strut his lame stuff.

Do you really think you want to see an out of shape, balding, middle-aged loser huff and puff his way through a series of fight scenes so badly staged that a professional wrestler in his first match would cringe at their amateurishness? Continue reading “Night of the Kickfighters (1988)”