BLOODFIST 2050 (2005) ** ½

Before we wrap up the last of the Bloodfist movies, here’s a review I did a while back for Bloodfist 8:  Hard Way Out:  LEGENDS OF THE SILVER SCREEN: DON “THE DRAGON” WILSON - The Video Vacuum — LiveJournal

Well, here we are at last.  We have finally come to the ninth, and so far, final entry of the Bloodfist franchise, Bloodfist 2050.  Sadly, it’s the only one without Don “The Dragon” Wilson (WKA World Kickboxing Champion).  Although Wilson did not appear, the villain of the first two movies, Joseph Mari Avellana, appears as the ring announcer during the fight scenes.

In Wilson’s place, we have Matt Mullins (Five-Time World Martial Arts Champion).  He’s no Don, but he’s serviceable enough.  Think Daniel Bernhardt meets Channing Tatum. 

Bloodfist 2050 is basically a loose remake of the first movie, just set in the post-apocalyptic future.  Instead of going to modern-day Manila to avenge his brother’s death, our hero goes to post-nuke Los Angeles in the year 2050.  There, he winds up getting mixed up in a martial arts tournament and goes toe to toe with various fighters in “The Pit”, all the while trying to find his brother’s killer. 

Although it’s kind of clunky and slipshod, I kind of admired the blend of post-nuke inspirations.  The opening scenes are a pretty good rip-off of Mad Max with a decent car chase through the desert.  (If it looks familiar, it’s because it’s from the David Carradine flick, Dune Warriors.)  Once in L.A., it turns into more of the typical Blade Runner/Escape from New York/Demolition Man type of futuristic scenario.  It’s all a mishmash, but it’s a fairly entertaining mishmash.  I mean nobody was really making these kinds of throwbacks in the mid-‘00s, so it was sort of nice seeing such an old school approach.

Luckily, whenever the plot slows down, characters congregate at a strip club, where there are a lot of striptease scenes.  The presence of Skinamax Hall of Famer Beverly Lynne (who plays the dead brother’s girlfriend) helps immensely.  Not only is she the best looking dancer of the bunch, she’s also the best actor in the whole movie.  Lynne also gets to perform several stripteases, one of which finds her covering her whole body with lotion before she rubs it in slowly and seductively. 

My favorite scene though was when she hit the stage dressed up like a naughty schoolgirl, which led me to wonder… do they still have schools after the apocalypse?  And if they did, would they still be a stickler for uniforms?  Or was her dance merely trading in on her clients’ former memories of what schoolgirls looked like before the bombs fell?  Like she was somehow giving them a comforting reminder of how things used to be.  Or am I just analyzing the ninth entry of an unrelated kickboxing franchise way too hard?

Bloodfist 2050 was the next-to-last movie directed by everyone’s favorite Pilipino filmmaker, Cirio H. Santiago.  (His final film, Water Wars was completed posthumously.)  As is the case with most of the entries in the series, the fight scenes aren’t that great.  However, what they lack in quality, they more than make up for in quantity.  Once Mullins arrives in L.A., he gets jumped by goons every five minutes or so.  After he hops into the ring, the fight scenes are equally as plentiful.  The short running time (seventy-eight minutes) doesn’t hurt either, especially when it’s heavily padded with completely gratuitous striptease sequences.  (Including one featuring stock footage of Maria Ford and Nikki Fritz.) 

The detective on the case gets the best line of the movie when he warns Mullins about a dangerous fighter:  “He’ll kick your ass before you have time to wipe it!”

AKA:  Street Fighter 2050.