Bloodsport *** (1988, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Donald Gibb, Leah Ayres) – Classic Movie Review 8,128

The rousing 1988 martial arts action thriller Bloodsport stars the athletic young Jean-Claude Van Damme as real-life American martial artist Frank Dux.

Director Newt Arnold’s fairly rousing, surprisingly watchable 1988 cheaply made martial arts action thriller Bloodsport stars the athletic young Jean-Claude Van Damme as real-life American martial artist Frank Dux, the first American to win the oriental challenge of the Kumite endurance contest. Dux quits the US Army to compete in a fight-to-the-death martial arts tournament in Hong Kong.

Bloodsport is as brutal as expected from the title, and it is effectively and convincingly made, with input from Dux himself, serving as the action choreographer and technical advisor. It is based on the supposedly true story of Frank Dux, a US Army Captain and ninjutsu practitioner who competed in an underground full-contact martial arts tournament called the Kumite.

Bloodsport is notable for finding ‘The Muscles from Brussels’ Van Damme (born in Brussels, Belgium, on 18 October 1960) making his mark as an exciting new movie action hero, or international martial arts sensation, as the poster helpfully puts it.

Also in the cast are Donald Gibb, Leah Ayres, Norman Burton, Forest Whitaker, Roy Chiao, Philip Chan and Bolo Yeung.

It is written by Sheldon Lettich (story and screenplay), Christopher Cosby (screenplay) and Mel Friedman (screenplay), based on many of Dux’s claims first covered in the November 1980 issue of Black Belt magazine.

The film was marketed as a true story and its promotional materials said that the Kumite that Frank Dux won in 1975 was held in the Bahamas but that producers decided to set the story in Hong Kong because it was exciting and not over-exposed in American films. Supposedly it was the first American film made in Hong Kong since 1969. However, later many of Dux’s claims were disputed, and Sheldon Lettich claimed that Dux had fabricated his fight record and the existence of the Kumite.

Bloodsport was a much-needed nice little earner for Cannon International. On a budget estimated between $1,500,000 and $2,300,000, it grossed $15 million in the US and Canada, for a worldwide total of $50 million.

It is filmed entirely on location in Hong Kong in late 1986 and is one of the few films with scenes inside Kowloon Walled City before its demolition in 1993. Other locations include The Peninsula Hotel, Causeway Bay, Hong Kong Trail, Victoria Peak, and Stanley Fort.

The score is by Paul Hertzog, who also wrote the music for Van Damme’s next movie Kickboxer.

Sheldon Lettich later directed Van Damme on Lionheart (1990).

 It is followed by three sequels: Bloodsport II: The Next Kumite (1996), Bloodsport III (1997), and Bloodsport 4: The Dark Kumite (1999), all without Van Damme but with Daniel Bernhardt instead.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 8,128

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