Time Cop [1994]

The dice determined that we would be experiencing the final of the three "double Van Damme" movies tonight, which also happened to be a favorite of Adam's when he was a kid. Van Damme plays a cop who tries to stop time crimes after time travel is invented. Of course, it is immediately used to make money to fund a political campaign. This being a Van Damme movie, he also has a wife who he has sex with and then she immediately dies, clearly setting up a future motivation to save her life. 

In general, the movie was kind of strange to follow. The plot wasn't specifically complicated, but, ironically, the pacing of the movie was really off. It was kind of hard to tell where we were in the film and every major plot point seemed to either happen way too early or way too late. Perhaps that's the real joke here: bad timing. Overall, it was just a bland Van Damme film, without anything specific to note about it. It certainly was missing some of the weird lines of other movies of his. The two main highlights involved some body horror CGI that was very mid-90s, but otherwise it's pretty forgettable.

Spoon Rating: 2

REWATCH: Street Fighter [1994]

[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]

So we watched "Street Fighter" once in 2013 on Kay's birthday, and we never rated it so we were long overdue for a rewatch. Adam has compiled every movie we've watched into a spreadsheet with ratings with the somewhat ultimate goal of creating a list of 52 movies that all rank in the "rewatchable" score range to provide as a year of solid bad movies. 

Unfortunately, "Street Fighter" just missed the cut. We decided to give it a Spoon Rating of 6 because while there are a lot of funny moments, some of them feel intentional. There are a few moments we specifically know were intentional ("change the channel" and "you get paid?" being the two that come to mind) but a lot of the comedy comes specifically from the over-the-top performance of Raul Julia as M. Bison. Was this meant to be more menacing than scary? Who's to say? But it's hilarious. Otherwise there is a bit of comedy to be had from Jean-Claude Van Damme as Colonel Guile and some comedy to be had just from the strange nature of the script and how each of the one hundred characters is shoved into the movie with some kind of two sentence backstory and a plot device to get them into their video game costume.

So you should definitely watch it, but you don't really need to see it again. Just watch one of the many compilation videos of M. Bison's best lines.

Hard Target [1993]

[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]

If you happen to be an unusually diligent reader of these posts, you may have noticed that there wasn't a post two Mondays ago. This wasn't a mistake but actually the result of the writer of this blog being on vacation in New Orleans. The movie that night was a rewatch of "Russian Terminator" which we watched over five years ago so the writer did not remember it enough to write anything about it. 

We were going to watch "God's Not Dead" tonight but it's currently in the mail so we decided to bet on what seemed to be a sure thing: the first American movie by John Woo starring Jean Claude Van Damme. It's basically "The Most Dangerous Game" set in New Orleans. It was a good bet.

A perpetrually surprised looking woman goes to New Orleans looking for her father who left when she was young only to find out that he died mysteriously the day before. She almost gets mugged by some guys who Van Damme beats up for her. Turns out he is a Cajun native (with the greasiest mullet in America) so she pays him to lead her around the city and help her solve the mystery of her father's death. They stumble upon a company set up by some foreigners where rich people can pay to hunt poor people who will get $10,000 if they can make it ten miles to the Mississippi without dying. When the foreigners realize Van Damme is onto them, a third of the movie becomes an extended fight scene that takes place mostly in a warehouse full of old Mardi Gras floats. Oh, and at one point they meet up with Van Damme's uncle who is the guy from the diabetes commercial.

This movie is actually quite funny and most of that is thanks to John Woo and whoever edited this film. The direction and editing decisions are WILD. There are Woo trademarks like doves in the background and dual guns and a POV shot for an arrow, but there are also great awkward still frame moments, weird wipes and dissolves, and just tons of poorly timed cuts. 

The biggest downside of this movie is that Van Damme doesn't wrestle a gator. We still totally won New Orleans bingo though.

Spoon Rating: 6

REWATCH: No Retreat, No Surrender [1986]

As graduate school winds down for Sarah and Kay, the need to mostly do rewatches increases until finals are over. It had been quite a long time since "No Retreat, No Surrender," a movie that acted like Van Damme was the lead even though he maybe had 15 minutes of screentime while some Bruce Lee-obsessed teen was actually running the show. He did karate, worshipped Bruce Lee's grave, made a token black friend, had a very long montage with the ghost of Bruce Lee (played by a man who neither looked nor sounded like Bruce Lee), and eventually triumped in the end. And did a lot of retreating and surrendering. Ironically.

Double Impact [1991]

[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]

The more Van Dammes the better! While the last time we saw two Van Dammes it was the result of cloning, here we have two Van Dammes who are twins separated at birth! Maybe we'll one day see all the double Van Damme films and learn all the different cheap excuses for having an actor play a duel role.

After a Hong Kong business deal gone wrong, the Van Damme twins' parents get murdered. One of the twins, Chad, gets raised by the family bodyguard, Uncle Frankie, in France (to explain the accent) and becomes a karate expert and instructor who wears a lot of pastels. The other one, Alex, gets dumped at a Hong Kong orphanage and becomes a gangster. Many years later, Uncle Frankie decides to give up his respectable business to unite the two brothers and go after the gangsters and evil British dude who killed their parents. The gangster team consists of a leader who always wears a light-colored suit, Bolo Yeung, and the red-headed black-clad evil 90s action girl who can break your head with her thighs. A lot of fighting results from numerous "comedic" situations that occur when people mix up the brothers (this action was sometimes set in the subtly named Climax Club). At one point, Chad saves Alex's girlfriend and Alex responds by drinking and imagining them boinking which leads to a Van Damme on Van Damme fistfight that I guess the audience was waiting for. Our particular audience was waiting for Van Damme and Yeung to get unnecessarily shirtless which does happen during their final stand-off (I think it was Chad!Van Damme who also killed the British guy; Alex!Van Damme was busy killing muscular thigh girl and the suited leader). The Van Dammes save Uncle Frankie and Alex's girlfriend and in the end, they decide to embrace their fraternity and the film ends on a freeze frame:

They probably go on to form their own gang with Uncle Frankie and the girlfriend.

This movie is all the usual cheese we have come to expect from any given Van Damme movie. Now you also get hilariously bad special effects to have both Van Dammes in the scene at once:

So realistic!

Van Damme only did one split in this movie, very rare for him, and didn't show his butt, also rare. We did however get our one split in the form of this awkwardness:

Summarizing Line: "I think we were wasting our time here."

Quote: "You don't know what side your bread is buttered on, you silly git."

BMN Quote:

Adam: A VanDammewich.

Keith: Delicious but not too tough.

Replicant [2001]

[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]



Some facts: This is the fifth Van Damme movie that we've watched for Bad Movie Night and, according to Wikipedia, it is one of four movies in which he plays a duel role. The others include "Double Impact", "Maximum Risk", and "The Order". At some point the people in charge of creating more things for Van Damme to do (I assume there is a team that handles this and only this; same with Steven Segal) decided that one Van Damme was simply not enough and that what the people really want and need is at least two Van Dammes per film.

Van Damme #1 is a serial killer who seems to seek out young mothers so he can kill them and set their houses on fire. The protagonist is a cop, hours from retirement, who managed not to catch him again after three years of trying and enters his retirement relatively unfased. Then he starts getting threats from the serial killer and a shady government agency decides to fix everything by cloning the serial killer and giving Van Damme #2, who is inexplicably psychically connected to the killer, to the protagonist as a crime sniffing pet. Van Damme #2 is basically a human Lassie combined with a parrot and a lot of the humor comes from him trying to navigate the world around him. The protagonist is particularly unhelpful to Van Lassie and frequently treats him as he would like to treat Van Killer. After numerous shenanighans involving Van Damme on Van Damme violence and Van Lassie trying to solicate a prostitute with no idea how, there is a lengthy final showdown in which Van Lassie's loyalty to his master is proven stronger than his loyalty to his "brother" and he dies heroically while Van Killer dies in a fire of irony. Or does he?

All in all, it's your typical Van Damme movie: silly (although this time often intentionally) and full of dragging fight scenes. What is crazy about this film is that the budget for it was $17 million and most of that probably went into destroying property. Was it worth it to see Van Damme staring dumbly into the camera for over an hour? You decide (but the answer is yes).

Quotes:
"Hi." (offers hand) "Wendy Wyckham."
(repeating) "Calm the fuck down."

Sometimes the clone repeats lines from his human training video - "I am sitting. I am walking."- and it seems like Van Damme is reading the script.

"I beat the shit out of him. Honest mistake."

(last lines said wistfully) "He likes rain."

Adam's Grandma's Review: "It was good."

Kickboxer [1989]

[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]

Last Monday we watched what I believe is the fourth Van Damme movie since Bad Movie Night started: "Kickboxer." Since this movie is about 75% filler, it's impossible for me to give a summary without explaining the entire movie. Van Damme is American (as always and inexplicably) and after his brother wins a kickboxing championship he decides to go to Thailand to fight Tong Po, the undefeated champion of Thailand. He gets paralyzed so Van Damme decides to learn Muay Thai from a master so he can avenge his brother. There are a few disposable side characters who contribute nothing but mostly the film is Van Damme training among the beautiful scenery of Bangkok. And in case you didn't get enough training montages the first time, there's also a ton of sequels and a planned reboot coming soon. All in all, "Bloodspot" is funnier and has slightly more plot if you want an 80s Van Damme fighting movie but at least there's plenty of hilarious Van Damme faces as he tries so very hard to emote.

Quotes:

"I'm in the best ship of my life! I'm a butter fighter!" (transcribed phonetically from Van Damme's dialogue)

"GOODBYE TO BUGS" (the last thing listed in the credits without explanation)

Adam's Grandma's Review: "Wasn't bad."

No Retreat, No Surrender [1986]

[Originally posted on Facebook on December 4, 2013]

"No Retreat, No Surrender" distinguishes itself from our other bad movies by having probably the most misleading movie cover ever. Sure, Van Damme is in the movie but as the Big Bad's sidekick who does nothing aside from fighting in a final full contact martial arts competition. 95% of the movie is actually about this kid who moves to Seattle (there are no fewer than three establishing shots so you really know it's Seattle) after his dad's dojo is shut down by the Big Bad who wants to . . . use it as a drug front maybe? It's not very clear. This kid is obsessed with Bruce Lee to the point of grave-worshipping and week-long training montage hallucinations with his ghost. He has an awesome stereotype best friend who never stops dancing and is antagonized by a fat kid who loves cake. In the end he fights Van Damme. It's surprising that I can even say that much about it when the movie is so cut and pasted together that there are hardly any necessary scenes. No loose ends are tied up aside from the main character winning back his girlfriend during a break-dancing competition (the 80s!). The only other thing you need to know is that shouting out the battle cry of "No retreat, no surrender!" is always immediately preceded by running away, completely contradicting the statement. Good confusion tactic though. 

Adam's Grandma's Review: "Good for kids."

Street Fighter [1994]

[Originally posted on Facebook on October 30, 2013]

On Kay's birthday we watched "Street Fighter." 

You should watch "Street Fighter" and here's my in-depth and thought-provoking explanation why:

Bloodsport [1988]

[Originally posted on Facebook on August 28, 2013]

The second film of the night was "Bloodsport", one of Jean-Claude Van Damme's first starring movies. It's supposed to be a movie about the life of Frank Dux but what you end up remembering about it is that it is about a bunch of stereotypes fighting in a full contact martial arts tournament, Bolo Yeung's crazy facial expressions, and a total of seven montages and six full splits done by Van Damme. The best part is any time Van Damme isn't speaking (although it wasn't just him; this movie had its fair share of unintelligible accents).

Quotes: 
(on a split) "That hurts me just looking at it."

"Asia is a big place, you know?"