Director : Joe Mari Avellana

Scripted : Joe Mari Avellana

Starring : Dale Cook & Maurice Smith

Chip ‘N Dale Cook chomps down on his winter provisions and springs into Action as Lieutenant Jake Reynolds , who in true gung ho fashion heads up a US Ops team fully laden with big guns in a mission into the jungle regions of Vietnam. It’s ‘Predator’ style macho mayhem with sun protection factor unlimited slap on Apache makeup and an attitude to match. An Asian dictatorship’s leader is on route through the jungle and Reynolds team have the inside information to intercept and take him out of the picture once and for all. Dale Cook has the ability to fight Asians half his size and cut them down to a quarter , proving to be the ultimate short order Cook. A funky jungle synthesised sound keeps up with the pace of proceedings leading right on into a full on encounter as the two opposing forces collide.

Real life Ultimate Fighting Championship cohort Maurice Smith teams up with Pride pal Dale ‘Apollo’ Cook for this rumble in the jungle that starts at a pace and continues like an all enveloping wild fire. The heat is on as they indeed intercept and attempt to take down the despotic head honcho and his escorting entourage. Time to rip the grenades from the fatigues and pull the pins as explosive Action takes centre stage. These little foreign fella’s know how to formation die with point scoring precision! Revel in audacious air spinning pirouettes as death deals its ballistic ballet upon these luckless lemmings. Uniformed kill scenes belly up slightly out of synch with explosions that follow for guaranteed unintentional audience appreciation giggles galore. The shear scale of running interaction has to be appreciated though as this is a relentless battle mode with running stand off gun play that comes to a glorious crescendo amidst an abandoned site. The small army faces off against Cook and his handful of hand picked men defiantly protecting their commander. The stunt coordinators lay it on thick and fast with an array of spectacular moments that include a suicide bomber burning alive as he pursues his goal and an ‘Oh yes’ scene featuring a motor bike gun assault. Explosions galore and more bangs for your buck than a regular Bruno Mattei rollicking ruckus. ’Fist Of Glory’ comes equipped with a relentlessly rewarding , Action crammed opening thirty minutes , to make your hair follicles bristle all over with electricity and damn near malt in exacerbation !. As Lieutenant Reynolds takes a defensive stand to enable his surviving men to head for the retrieval helicopter he takes hits from all sides until James Lee comes to his aid in the shape of Maurice Smith , spitting nails and bellowing thunder in his defiant charge to the rescue. Buddies to the end , do or die as ‘True Grit’ pours from the eye patch not seen since the day of John Wayne.

If ever the header ‘Three months later’ gave reason for an audience to catch its breath this would be it , and almost to order the immortal wording takes centre screen , soon honing in on Jake Reynolds just recovered from his near fatal wounds. Whilst Reynolds lay in a recovery unit second in command James Lee was having the book thrown at him for the mission that did not go to plan. Reynolds is informed that his friend and saviour is back in the heart of Vietnam , and seemingly part of a drug emporium that parades him to a money crazed community thirsty for the death matches he competes in. Lee is drugged regularly and his past memory is blurred , with only the thrill of the underground fights in the blood pit giving him purpose. Reynolds goes back in to seek out and save his friend but is soon caught up in a world of seedy bar joints and drug dealing dens of iniquity. Organised crime and drug barons The Black Skulls rule the roost and they parade their champion no holds barred fighter The Demon at regular intervals. Reynolds soon discovers that The Demon is his compatriot James Lee , and he is caught up in a world of hurt.

When Reynolds gets involved in a market scuffle his martial arts skills catch the eye of a local who was once involved with the fight game himself. Both men have their own reasons to want to see the blood sport brought to its knees and so Reynolds takes up the loners offer to train him to enhance his fighting skills in order to hone himself to enter the arena and to get closer to his friend Lee. The training sequence is old school , hard school and more realistic than most seen before. The regime is rigid and rigorously designed to prepare the determined Reynolds for the death matches ahead. Sure enough what we get here is bolstered ‘B’ movie ballsy bravado , testicular draped in a hybrid slam bang of ‘Kick Boxer’ and ‘The Deer Hunter’. Throw into the mix the best of the Eighties Italian reconstituted kick ass Action flicks and what comes out is a raw recreational roller coaster of richly rewarding movie entertainment relish.

Kick in the anticipated reunion care of the pumped up Dale Cook and you like he are sucked into this fight game all fists a flying in a movie with a real kick to it. Super drug enhanced opponents line up before Reynolds before he gets to square up to The Demon and then all hell lets loose. The only turkey here is of the cold variety as Reynolds strives to get his partner James Lee out of the mire he is deeply enveloped in. With no punches pulled the fully fuelled finale proves to be a double team of mucho satisfying gratuitous violence , with an explosive mêlée amongst a boatyard battleground. Ending with an all out volatile charge , just as the movie had begun , you are left explosively alerted to the fact that the ‘Apollo’ has well and truly landed.

Film review by Paul Cooke

Bitch Slap Ratings:

Film: 4.0

Picture: 4.0

Sound: 3.5

Overall: 4.0

Film Reviewed : Fist Of Glory

Production : 1990

Format : Video

Presentation : Full Screen

Release : HMV

Coding : NTSC Japanese

Sound : Mono Hi Fi

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