Two men are fighting in what looks like your typical illegal underground fighting ring with people all around yelling constantly and waving their arms around. This one looks quite up-market though, as a bank of computers are manned by small Asian women processing bets on the fights. One of the men, an American, is getting the crap beaten out of him until he snaps, yelling “to hell with this deal” and makes a big comeback, so big in fact that he delivers a fatal beating to his opponent. Later that night he’s out celebrating, and drunkenly stumbles into a secluded area, where he is accosted by someone in a red gi who ends up beating him to death. The deed done, the mysterious fighter leaves and a bum comes out of the shadows having witnessed the whole thing, but he just steals the dead man’s money and baseball cap. Meanwhile in the United States a former professional kickboxer turned instructor, Jake Ray (Don ‘The Dragon’ Wilson) is running a school with some fat old guy called Hal. Jake is explaining to a group of children that he can’t fight anymore because he donated one of his kidneys to his beloved half-brother, and that with only one kidney he wasn’t allowed to compete due to the potential health risks (not entirely unlike the health risks involved watching this movie). There’s a call for him from Manila and guess what? His beloved brother was the American fighter killed at the start of the film. Jake travels to the Philippines to pick up his brother’s remains, and he’s there for about two minutes before his bag is stolen by local street urchins though catches up with them and uses his superior martial arts skills to get his bag back. Wow, big tough Don beat up some 14 year olds, way to go. As luck would have it he ends up right outside where he needs to be – Chinatown Police Station, where he gets a sour look on his face and says “Its Chinatown, Jake.” LAME! Jake collects his brother’s remains and possessions which includes a piece of red material ripped from the gi of his attacker which the police detective says was found in his brother’s hand – wouldn’t the police need that for, you know, investigating the murder or something?

Jake swears to his brother’s ashes that he’ll find his killer, before dumping the ashes in the sea, as his last wish might very well have been. He sees two fellows wearing outfits of the same red material found on his brother’s body so he follows them, eventually scaling a wall in order to take a look at the heavily-guarded martial arts camp they entered. There he sees a large Asian man who is later introduced as Ching Woo beat several opponents with ease, however Jake is soon discovered and ends up escaping, and when his bag isn’t where he left it (under a bush covered by leaves, duh) he runs into a middle-aged man called Kwong (Joe Mari Avellana), who knows about what goes on beyond those carefully defended walls. While getting a drink with Kwong, Jake meets another American fighter who he aids in ripping off a group of gamblers. This other Yank takes him back to his home and introduces himself as Baby (named because his parents couldn’t agree on what to name him, and it looks like they dropped him on his head a lot so he’d be too stupid to care). Baby is an irritating idiot who is only alive now because he has his sister Nancy around to take care of him. Nancy is sassy and takes a disliking to Jake at first, immediately telegraphing that they’ll be sleeping together later in the film. Jake shows Kwong the red material and is informed that it is from the required uniform for fighters in the Ta Chang, and that means that one of those fighters must have murdered his brother. Kwong offers to train him to enter the tournament too, requesting cut of the prize money in return for helping him find his brother’s murderer. Baby is set to enter the Ta Chang and Jake sees that the competition is fierce, including the powerful Black Rose (Billy Blanks!) and the previous winner and odds-on favourite, Ching Woo. Jake has an immense task ahead of him if he is going to discover the truth behind his brothers’ killing while his own life is on the line as he risks everything to enter the Ta Chang.

Roger Corman prides himself on producing movies on a tiny budget and still making them suck as little as possible but I have no idea what happened here, as this is just poorly made, amateurish garbage. How you can mess up the formula martial arts film so badly is beyond me, Van Damme repeated it time and time again and never got this bad, even the Kickboxer sequels deserve more respect that this, and that includes 4 that features the worst skin cap ever created. However, this has the combination of the tiny budget, hack filmmakers, a sans-charisma leading man, and the final killer blow of totally worthless, utterly pitiful fight sequences. Don Wilson is no actor who can barely strain any sort of expression across that stone face of his, though the viewers at home will go through more than enough emotional anguish and pain watching him try and emote to make up for it. Most of the supporting cast is just as bad, muddling through with little skill or motivation which is no surprise as these are mostly professional martial artists and just aren’t cut out for the screen. with the one exception of Joe Mari Avellana who at least seems moderately capable despite the poor dialogue he’s fed. The story itself is as straightforward and mundane as you’d expect, though there is a minor twist at the end of the film which provided some entertainment, though its lost a little in the contrived execution. The characters are a terrible bunch of typical stereotypes, from the American loud mouthed idiot who you end just dying to see killed, to the moody blonde who ends up sleeping with the hero despite not liking him at first, to the old teacher who spouts meaningless nonsense to the hero while he trains. We’ve seen it all before and it was done much better in films like Bloodsport and Kickboxer, which despite their failings gave us a tighter story and a charismatic lead who you might actually want to rally behind. Don Wilson has no such luck, stuck with a flatly written character and no charisma of his own. At least the backdrop of Manila is actually quite pleasant and is about the only decent-looking element of the film that Corman and company could muster, from the low rise buildings to the rocky areas out of town where Jake trains, its as close as the film gets to looking in any way legitimate.

Unfortunately its all for nothing when you see just how incompetently made Bloodfist is. Using as little film as possible must have been the key to the film’s production, as numerous scenes look like they were genuinely botched and in some cases were badly edited to try and hide it. This is entertainment, watch as Jake goes to kick an over-head lamp and barely hits it, only for them to cut to the next scene as quickly as possible in the hope you won’t notice! Marvel as Don slips on the stairs walking to the ring! Look on in awe as Black Rose misses with a kick by a good two feet and his hapless opponent hurls himself to the ground anyway! Even worse, not only do little snafus like this crop up, the fight choreography is quite possibly the worst I have ever seen. When you look at the great work of Yuen Woo Ping taking the non-martial artist stars of The Matrix and making them look plausible in fighting situations, you realise what a truly gifted action director and choreographer can do. Then you look at the work of Stunt Co-ordinator Fred Esplana and/or whoever else was responsible and how they made a collection of world martial arts champions look like they’ve never thrown a kick before in their lives, you see how much harm can be done complete hacks who have no place in the business. The fights in this film are some of the most rushed, shoddy, and downright dreadful ever put to film, and considering this was marketed as being full of the best competitive martial artists in the world, the results are mystifyingly horrendous. Billy Blanks narrowly redeems himself for the simple reason that he is the only person in this film who has exciting enough an on-screen style to work in a martial arts flick. Don Wilson looks awful in this film, flailing away with weak-looking punches and the same three kicks over and over again, and the lopsided choreography (if they were choreographed at all) puts him in a great position of weakness in many of the fights before he suddenly pops back up and gets the win out of nowhere, which just make his wins look like flukes. To make matters worse, the fights terribly shot, the camera is in way too close and the fights are filmed so tight that you can't really tell what's going on some of the time. To be quite frank, if I had been in this film as a fighter I would have been thoroughly embarrassed, and its no surprise that out of the supporting players it was only Blanks that actually went anywhere. Quite how Don Wilson got more lead roles after this film is one of life’s great mysteries.

A shambolic excuse for a film that doesn’t even compare favourably with the cheesy and much-maligned contemporary martial arts films of the same ilk. I will never understand how this film launched the career of Don ‘The Dragon’ Wilson, as not only did he prove to be a lead actor of zero charisma he also showed he has nothing in the way of visually-pleasing martial arts skills. Fighting professionally and fighting in films are very different things, while practicality is the key in real competition, that style is incredibly dull when choreographed on screen, where more elaborate and essentially less realistic techniques are usually what make for good scenes. Wilson isn’t capable of performing in this style, and the appalling quality of the fight choreography in Bloodfist just made matters worse. Even more annoying is I’m totally out of bad things to say about it, when I wish I could go on much longer. Without a doubt one of the worst martial arts films I have ever seen, its only saving grace being some nice scenery. THIS got seven sequels? God truly is dead.