Bloodfist II

Once again Don Wilson has retired from kickboxing. This time it's because he's killed a man in the ring. So instead he teaches others how to do this stuff, until he's lured to an island run by Joe Mari Avellana, who has a mysterious young woman, Rina Reyes running around. It seems that Avellana's scientists have synthesized a steroid that will make anyone a killing machine and then quickly vanish from the blood. This way they can cheat undetectably at the private kickboxing tournaments he holds on his own private island. Then they kill the losers.

The camerawork has improved a bit from the first in the series. The crowd direction remains awful.

My review was written in February 1991 after watching the film on MGM/UA video cassette.

Second of three Don Wislon martial arts vehicles made for Roger Corman, this perfunctory exercise did not perform as well as the original at the box office. "Bloodfist II" is an MGM/UA video release.

Known as the Dragon, Wilson is a diminutive high-kicker who has the titles and expertise to whip any action movie superstar from Schwarzenegger to Van Damme in a fair fight. However, his acting is stilted and screen presence nil, making his films strictly for the purists.

In fact, both films have opening credits listing only the male cast members with the unusual designation of all their kickboxing and karate titles on screen. That's about as interesting as these features get.

This time, Wilson is called out of bed (with a pretty, nude woman beside him) to fly to the Philippines and search for a missing buddy. There he's befriended by another beauty (Rina Reyes) who gets him shanghaied to participate in a gladiatorial contest run by evil Joe mari Avellana.

The fight footage, some of it staged in a steel cage, looks about as real as wrestling and the cast is woefully short on character actors. Wilson's next film co-stars Richard Roundtree, so some attention has been paid to this failing.

Cornball script has Reyes switching sides and helping Wilson out by the later reels, while he has to fight the big match to the death against the friend he's been seeking. Climax is diluted by Wilson taking time out during the match to give an antidrug lecture.

Tech credits are meager, including phony sounding crowd murmuring dubbed in during the fight sequences.

...And perhaps deservedly so? OK, so any movie, especially a martial arts movie starring "B"-movie Kickboxing phenomenon Don "The Dragon" Wilson, with backing by Roger Corman, is bound to not be good, right? Yeah, pretty much. I'll admit to watching and video-recording the first two "Bloodfist" movies that feature "The Dragon" as American Kickboxing champ Jake Raye, who's kicking the bad guys' butts in the Phillippines. In both movies, Raye has to fight in brutal martial arts tournaments and also get out of some sort of convoluted mess of a plot. But in "Bloodfist II," Raye returns to Manila, this time to help out a friend named Vinny Petrello (former UFC champ Maurice Smith) who is in some sort of trouble. It turns out to be a trap, and Raye is kidnapped along with six other martial artists (whose styles range from Greco-Roman Wrestling to Judo to Shotokan Karate) and forced to fight a group of chemically enhanced brutes in a series of Roman-style, to-the-death gladiator fights arranged by Su (Joe Mari Avellana). Now with the rising popularity of mixed martial arts all over the world and my own personal interest in this sport, it would make sense that a movie like "Bloodfist II" would get some more attention, since it deals with fighters of different styles coming together to show whose style is the best. (But didn't they do that in 1988 with Jean-Claude Van Damme's movie "Bloodsport"?) Yet, this entry, by director Andy Blumenthal, has pitiful acting, lousy dialogue, Jake's poorly timed relationship with Su's daughter Mariella (Rina Reyes) and just about everything else, except the fights, with the actual tournament not starting until the third act of the picture. The illegal underground martial arts tournament story has been done to death already. How about fighters competing in a legal martial arts tournament for once? And lastly, there's Wilson. He's far from a great actor, but his performance is pretty much limited to his Kickboxing skills, which shows that his title as "The Dragon" seems rightful. Too bad, he could've been a great cult movie martial arts star if his career and "B"-movie choices had panned out a little better.

4/10

I swore that I would never watch any Bloodfist sequels after being appalled at what I saw with episode # 1, however somebody said that I'm a lot like another reviewer who has been reviewing low budget junkers such as I, his name is Gridoon. I looked at his reviews and it turned it out he had reviewed Heatseeker, Kickboxer 4, Cyborg and a bunch of others that I had seen. Not to be one upped, I dare challenged to watch all Bloodfist movies, just to prove I was no meter maid in the stakes of bad movies. In other words I rented and saw all Bloodfist movies in two days. The film itself stars Wilson as a you guessed it, a kickboxer who is abducted and forced to fight a bunch of super fighters enhanced by a steroid. The sequel is of course an obvious rip off of Enter The Dragon, but the fighting here was better and from what I have seen remains one of the better entries of the series. Take that however you want take it. Wilson though is dependably terrible.

* * out of 4-(Fair)

Jake Raye(Don "The Dragon" Wilson) is back in action, only this time the action is more extreme. In "Bloodfist II", Jake and several other fighters go down to the Phillipines, where a friend of Jake's calls him out to help him. It turned out to be a booby-trap for all of them. Jake's friend seem to got himself way over his head. Working with the wrong people and getting greedy from those people. Jake and his friends fight for their lives when their opponents take a steroid which makes them impervious to pain, but some of the fighters didn't do too well. They kill off whoever doesn't last in the fight whether it was Jake's friends or the opponents. Looks like those who took the steroid, didn't have a clue that they were pawns as well. Jake friend took the same steroid and he paid the price for betraying him and his friends. The steroid may have given him immunity to pain, but it didn't make him indestructible when he took a roundhouse to the neck. Once the old saying goes, Once a pawn, always a pawn, forever a pawn! That steroid had only one purpose, and look what happens. That movie was a lot of fun, and the plot of the movie was great, I liked that. Rating 3 out of 5 stars.