Young Jack Donahue is in Thailand with his brother Sean, a martial artist of some renown who we see beating the crap out of his opponent in a big Thai boxing match. Sean lands the winning kick and is declared the world champion to the glee of his adoring sibling. On their way back to the hotel Jack (essayed by the worst excuse for a young actor you could ever hope to see) opines if the locals are going to be upset that a foreigner won their title, but he doesn't have to wait long as they are stopped by a gang of thugs, led by the menacing Khan (Billy Blanks!) armed with an M16. "You shouldn't have won the fight tonight" says Khan, twice, before settings his goons on the American. Sean fights them off easily but when Khan gets involved a lethal three kick attack finishes him for good. Screaming in grief and anger, Jack runs at Khan but receives a beating of his own (which is repeated a few times during the movie for our entertainment) and is left for dead next to his murdered brother.

Ten years pass, and Jack is now an unorthodox undercover Cop On The Edge©! He's meeting up with some drug dealers to make a pick-up, while his colleagues listen from a near-by van, but being the Cop On The Edge© that he is, he ends up breaking his cover so he can beat the crap out the dealers including their leader played by fellow b-movie martial arts guy Jerry Trimble (sporting a hilariously bad spiked hair/mullet combo) and leaves a SWAT team to clean up his mess for him. Of course, as with all Cops On The Edge© his captain is furious with him for breaking the rules, even though he still got the job done. This was my excuse to yell "goddamn it Donahue" at the screen for the rest of the film every time someone gets angry with him. Anyway, because he's still damn good despite being so unorthodox and On The Edge©, the captain has a new assignment for him, going to Thailand to help Interpol discover the source of some illegal snuff films. Jack has no interest in going to Thailand again, but takes the files and the tapes anyway. At home with his dog, Jack checks out one of the tapes and sees some martial arts and real life depictions of violence and death. He couldn't care less until he sees a familiar face on the screen, his eyes bulge as he recognises his brother's murderer Khan! Jack is in shock when his captain calls and tells him that someone else has been assigned to the case. Of course, now Jack is even more On The Edge© and insists that he's going. Despite the jarring situation he finds himself in, he takes it pretty well, if clutching your head and screaming can be considered "well". This is no ordinary assignment for Jack now, it has become a quest for VENGEANCE!!!

Imagine that you go to a local Chinese restaurant. It's called "The Bamboo Garden" and is owned by a kindly-looking old Chinese immigrant and his wife, the waiting staff are all their children or other relatives. However the chefs are American. The inside of the place is decked out like an old 50's diner and they serve nothing but burgers, steaks and Freedom Fries, though you do get the occasional bowl of delicious fried rice. Confusing huh? King of the Kickboxers has the Seasonal Film Corporation logo at the start, and the executive producer is Ng See-Yuen who directed the likes of the Secret Rivals movies. The fight choreographer is the oddly-named Viking Chiu and there's a small appearance by Ong Soo Han who fought Jason Scott Lee in Dragon and definitely knows a few impressive moves. However, westerners wrote and directed it, and the main cast is mostly American including Avedon, and Billy Blanks is meant to be Thai (I think) but he's so obviously just a big black American dude. The style of the film reeks of straight to video martial arts trash too, a cop who would have been fired ages ago for being such a massive threat to himself and others wreaks as much havoc as possible. The script is truly terrible, throwing as many clichés in as possible despite whether they make sense or not. For instance, Jack Donahue meets Molly (Sherrie Rose, who has my utmost respect for appearing in an Italian Robocop rip-off called Cy Warrior) in Thailand after she has somehow been mixed up with Khan and his snuff movie-making associates. Her back story is nonsensical, that she came to Thailand because she wanted to be a model or actress, in fact its so cliché that Jack guesses it without her even needing to tell him! Who the hell goes to THAILAND to become a famous actress anyway? I don't know what the deal with Khan is either, it would appear he is meant to be a Thai (judging by Billy's 'barely able to speak English' act and talk of local customs) but he's a big black guy! This is, of course, never explained. Jack Donahue is a real piece of work too, what the writers Keith W. Strandberg and John Kay must have been going for was the cocky, wisecracking Cop On The Edge© that you could get behind because of his one-liners and plucky 'never say die' attitude. Unfortunately he comes of as an incredibly irritating, conceited jerk who spouts some of the most depressingly unfunny dialogue this side of a Wong Jing movie. What makes matters worse is the truly ridiculous performance from Loren Avedon. He handles himself reasonably well in some of the fight scenes (though he is easily outclassed by some of his co-stars), but his constant over-acting is a truly painful thing to watch. His eye-bugging, screaming, whining delivery is somewhat jarring, considering he's meant to be a top undercover cop he really does shout at people in public places rather a lot too.

Luckily though many would see this as another reason to turn off, for a b-movie masochist like myself he also creates a lot of unintentional amusement. His performance at times gets so manic that one wonders if the director left it in because it was much funnier than the material itself, the aforementioned screaming scene will leave you howling with laughter. The fun doesn't end there, as Billy Blanks puts in one of his best performances as the psychotic Khan, showing that he's a contender when it comes to overdone intensity also. Of course, he also looks extremely impressive when allowed to show what he's capable of, breaking out some great moves and looking monstrous with his considerably built physique combined with his twisted facial expressions. It is a great pity that he has seemingly forsaken the film world to work exclusively on his Tae Bo now because despite not being the strongest actor he has great screen presence and is capable of impressive yet still realistic martial arts performances. Also of note is the small role played by Keith "Superfoot" Cooke, who was brought to my attention after seeing his excellent fight with Robin Shou in Mortal Kombat. He plays the role of Prang, the only man who came close to defeating Khan, and evidently the only man who can train Jack to beat him. Prang is like a younger, dumbed-down version of the Beggar So character portrayed so wonderfully by Yuen Siu Tien, who puts Jack through various agonising (and slightly silly) training rituals and techniques, my favourite of which being having Jack meditate and yelling "imagine the sound of one hand clapping" at him, the irony must have been lost on them at the time. Sadly Keith could very well leave you wishing that he was the star instead. Even though a decent job is done of showing a contrast in Jack's skills and their improvement as he trains (which harkens back to the likes of Drunken Master), Keith is so obviously in an entirely different league one can't help thinking seeing him fight the climactic battle would have been better. At the very least, the majority of the choreography in the film is a good few steps above usual American b-movie fare, particularly in the second half of the film and the end fight still manages to be a pretty thrilling affair.

There are two ways to look at this film. The first is to look at it as a Seasonal Films Production and comparing it to the films listed in the first paragraph, its dreadful. Iffy camera work, horrendous acting, terrible writing with no characterisation, and a grating hero you don't particularly care about. However, this was never meant to compete with Drunken Master and the like and it shouldn't be judged as such, because despite its similarity to dozens of other martial arts b-movies made in America in the 80's and 90's, it has just enough of Hong Kong's action sensibilities to put it up a few notches. The acting and writing are awful, but fun if your cheese tolerance is high enough, and despite Keith Cooke's considerable skills being largely wasted, fight fans should find enough to enjoy here especially the surprisingly inventive and well-choreographed final fight. Not a great movie by any means, but put within its time its solid and entertaining, and not a moment of exploitation of dead actors to be found.