Throughout the late 80’s and 90’s kickboxing Champion Don “The Dragon” Wilson was a dominate force in the straight to video action market. It seemed like he was churning them out left and right always delivering his signature martial arts action to keep the fans wanting more. Of his films there were a few that spawned numerous sequels including the Ring of Fire and Cyber Tracker series, but none spawned more than his Bloodfist series that delivered eight films including Wilson. Beyond being his longest running series, the original Bloodfist also marked the debut as leading man, thus launching into his long running career.
Bloodfist follows a retired kick boxer who travels to Manila to enter a kickboxing competition in order to flush out the man that murdered his brother. This 1989 cult classic martial arts film not only marks the early beginnings of Wilson’s film career, but also numerous other professional kickboxers including Tae Bo creator Billy Blanks. This film is all about the fighting letting Wilson do what he does forever cementing not only his domination as the greatest kickboxer of all time, but also as the go to guy for martial arts films throughout that period. The story here is similar to Bloodsport, but brings together the professional kickboxers and lets them do their thing as opposed to trying to sell the audience on flare. Wilson is in top form still fighting at the time this was made and it shows. The performances are what you would expect form this sort of film, but as usual you’re not watching it for anything other reason.
These films are clearly geared towards a particular audience and might not catch on with anyone but the martial arts buffs, but who cares it’s not for those people anyway. Love his films or not, you cannot deny Wilson has hacked out a career churning out fun martial arts action in all sorts of genres and your collection would not be complete without this film apart of it.
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