Now, if you can get a hold of this film, you better make sure you buy it as soon as you can! I found mine - a cheap Danish VHS, with the awesome sub-title "A Kickboxer Avenges" ("En Kickboxer Hævner") years ago, and I even met David Carradine at a convention in Sweden (2006-ish), and asked him about this film, when I went to get his autograph on the cover. When he saw the cover, he replied something like: "I've never seen a copy of this before! The producer was a real jerk, he never paid any of us our money! I almost thought the movie had never been released" - and all things considered, it really didn't get much of a release by the looks of it. And knowing that good ol' Dave didn't get a single penny for making it, makes it extra special!
The plot is as follows: David Carradine plays Senator Joe Rourke, who has traveled to some remote South American village to see a martial arts-performance by a "local" group of bimbos, and also promote good relations with America and the country in question (not quite sure which one actually, I doubt it's mentioned at all, but probably Colombia or something like that, as there's lots of soldiers everywhere).
Along with Rourke, there's also a bus full of children, called something like "The United Nations Children for Peace Choir", where his daughter Gina (played by Carradine's real-life daughter, Kansas Carradine) are among the singers - although I can't recall hearing them sing at all during the film. The other kids are a random bunch, representing most types of kids from America.. among them a blonde boy with a bowl cut, a black kid resembling Webster, and their guide/guardian, Joe's wife Gabby Rourke (Michelle Pfeiffer look-a-like Ashley F. Brooks).
Of course the kids get kidnapped, and Joe Rourke has to save them all! But for some reason (maybe because of a gunshot wound, perhaps just diarrhea), he gets a bad fever, and has to lie in bed for half the film! Now it's up to the before-mentioned bimbos and their leader, honorable mute (and apparently also dumb) Master Bruce Ly to save they day! Now, I'm not quite sure this "Bruce Ly"-character is actually played by Yung Henry Yu, as the IMDb wants you to believe.. I rather think that two actors chose the same "fake Bruce Lee"-moniker, and they've since become mixed up, as Open Fire's Bruce Ly is a rather robust and chubby looking fellow, and Yu is a lot skinnier and slender looking.. but I dunno, maybe he just had a bad hair-day or something. One of the bimbos is played by Wanda Acuna by the way, whom you may or may not remember as Maria from "No Retreat No Surrender 3: Blood Brothers"!
Anyways, this film mostly consists of hot bimbo girls running around in a jungle of sorts, shooting at random soldiers popping out from nowhere at varying intervals, until David Carradine gets back on his feet. If you thought there were a lot of explosions and gunfights BEFORE he returned to the screen, guess again! When he parades onto the screen again, it's pure mayhem all the rest of the way! Cars explode for no reason (over and over again), soldiers fall down from trees, into rivers (again and again), and an entire forest is burned to a crisp, INCLUDING the lake in the middle of it! He's also quite fond of ducking behind the same palm-tree over and over again, with hilarious results!
For some reason - some say magic or just plain mad skills, I say "p-word"-poor editing - everybody seems to be able to move from different locations at lightning-quick speed, like the bad guy standing on the ground one moment, then suddenly screaming "OPEN FIRE!" at the top of a bell-tower, and then back on the ground again the moment after!
To top it all off, the villain is some guy called "Pecos", played by a sinister-looking no-name actor with a scruffy ponytail, who runs around with a HUGE screaming bird (falcon/eagle/woodpecker/who knows... I'm no botanist!) on his shoulder throughout, and mostly just utters lines like, "THEY CANNOT ESCAPE", "GET THEM!", and such.. his right-hand man, played by semi-famous Mexican actor Jorge Reynoso actually does a lot better job of getting into the action, getting kicked in the face at least a dozen times by David Carradine!
And oh yeah, I almost forgot.. a totally forgettable cameo by Quentin Tarantino's favorite, Hugo Stiglitz (Nightmare City), who basically just stands around, looking for his paycheck (which allegedly never arrived) in a couple of scenes back at the village. His facial expression is totally passionless - he always looks like this of course, but this time it's actually almost painful to watch!
So to sum it all up, this movie is priceless! Literally.
