B-Movies of our Youth: Bloodfist II (1990) Review

Updated: Sep 13, 2020

Movie Name: Bloodfist II

Director: Andy Blumenthal

Producer: New Horizons, Concorde Pictures ( Roger Corman, Catherine Cyran, Cirio H. Santiago )

Actors: Don Wilson, Maurice Smith, James Warring, Timothy Baker and Richard Hill

Release Date: October 12th, 1990

Box Office: $1,292,323

Introduction

Back in 2018, I reviewed a very B-movie called Bloodfist with real life Kickboxing champion, Don "The Dragon" Wilson. The first movie was a success by B-Movie standards. They managed to gross about 6 million from a one million dollar budget.

I had noticed that most of the series is on Amazon Prime video. I figured this would be a great time to go through the sequels one by one and provide a review for each one, starting with Bloodfist II.

Many of these movies, I remember renting from the local video store back in the day. These were the guilty pleasures that my brother and I would enjoy a lot.

Story

The story is a typical B-Movie martial arts movie. The story is not super great, however it does the job.

Don Wilson returns as Jake Raye. Jake used to be a kickboxing champion. However, there was one fight where the other fighter was juiced and he would just not go down. The only way that Raye was able to defeat him was to kick him in the throat and kill him in the process. Raye was so in shock about what he has done, that he vowed never to fight ever again.

About a year later, one of his old trainers Vinny Petrello (played by Maurice Smith), calls him to ask him for a favour. He does not provide many details but he does seem that he is in distress and asks Jake to meet him in Manilla.

Once Jake Raye is in Manilla, he has a hard time settling down. The first cab that he takes brings him to an alley where Jake was ambushed. Then, he goes to a gym where he asks to see Vinny and gets ambushed there are well. Both of these attempts failed.

The third attempt is when a woman (important for later on) that he sees at the gym offers to help him to get away from the thugs. She brings him to a warehouse where he is ambushed again. However, this time he gets drugged to get him to get knocked out. He then wakes up on a boat. He notices that he is also in the boat with fighters from the gym. We soon learn that Raye was kidnapped to fight in this underground tournament in order to show off the new drug that makes fighters numb to pain. The end goal would be to sell this drugs to make a ton of money.

After some snooping around, Jake finally gets caught and fights. He realizes that Vinny who, he thought was his friend and in trouble, works for the bad guy. A fight ensues at one point with Vinny and Jake ends up killing him.

The boss Su (played by Joe Mari Avellana) then tries to kill Jake, while the other alive fighters fight their way through the compound to try to get out.

As a side story, we learn that the girl from the gym at the beginning is the daughter of Su. She also helps Jake defeat her dad.

The story pretty much ends there, as there is no real conclusion to the movie itself. After the last part, it goes straight to credits.

Trailer

Bottomline

Has this movie aged well? Like the first installment the answer to that is not really. But it is one of those that it is so bad that it is good.

This was the third movie in Don Wilson's repertoire and it shows that he had not grasped the acting thing just right. Some of his dialogue seems very cardboard like. It is not as bad as some Chuck Norris movies but still pretty bad.

The story is bare bones. If you are looking for an Oscar winning performance and story, you might have to look elsewhere. As with Don's acting at the time, most of the cast, acts the same way. Most of the fighters in the movie are actual world champions in their respective styles. However, acting was not necessarily in their blood.

One thing that did not help the movie acting either was the fact that the fighting scenes were not that great. In fact, some kicks and moves seemed very choreographed or just seemed awkward. I think due to budget constraints, instead of having reshoots, it looks like they took one take and they were done.

The characters in general are quite forgettable. Years later, the only character you kind of remember is Don "The Dragon" Wilson. The rest are not very memorable.

One thing that I do appreciate is the fact that in the opening credits, they show the actors with their title underneath. For example, Maurice Smith was a Kickboxing champion.

This movie in general has not aged well, but I have a soft spot for these bad movies. They are bad and can be boring for some, but I find they are what makes B-Movies so great. Yeah there are many faults, but nothing beats an 80's or 90's bad martial arts movie. I admit that it is not for everyone, but if you mike B-Movies, this is a good one to look for.

Have you watched this movie? Let us know your thoughts.