News - July 2005 Part 2

No Retreat, No Surrender...

... and how all four (yes, four) movies in the franchise ended up in my collection.

I love b-movies, whether it's horror, sci fi, fantasy or martial arts and whilst researching a possible future CaC post on martial arts b-movie superstars... I got onto Loren Avedon. Loren was big in the 80's and 90's (well, as big as b-movie martial arts stars can get) and he was one of the 'bridging' actors until Van Damme or Jackie Chan released a new movie. By 'bridging', I mean we all knew the films were shit, but they killed time until better movies were released.



Loren was launched onto the scene in No Retreat, No Surrender 2 and then the third movie in the mega franchise (CaC exaggeration).

But his biggest hit and still an incredible movie, is King of the Kick Boxers, which many fans still believe to contain the best onscreen fight scenes to this day. It's a poor man's Kickboxer to be fair, but Billy Blanks is awesome, as is Loren as the lead. Yes, you Tai Bo fans will be amazed to discover that Blanks had quite a long career in martial arts b-movies.



Anyway, during my research on Avedon, I decided to head on over to Play.com to order King of the Kick Boxers. Imagine my surprise upon finding that it's alternative title is No Retreat, No Surrender 4... no shit.

So I ordered the other three too as the urge to watch Van Damme's official debut, was too great. Now those of you who have seen NRNS, will know that Van Damme has a small part. An impressive part without doubt, but he is essentially a henchman, who breaks the hero's father's arm (or leg, I can't remember) and then gets the bejesus kicked out of him by the hero, who is trained by Bruce Lee's ghost (man it sounds shit when you say it like that!)

So imagine my surprise when the DVDs arrived yesterday and the case for NRNS looked like this:



Yes... above the title of the movie it really does say, Jean Claude Van Damme... the lying BASTARDS... well, actually the EXAGGERATING BASTARDS...

I remeber being duped by distribution companies over Jackie Chan movies where Jackie would come onscreen for like two minutes, throw a dumpling, make a funny face and then fuck off... the rest of the film would be shite.

So the moral of the story is... well, there ain't one actually.

Sadly, Billy is too busy with Tai Bo to care about un-profitable b-movies, his last role was in '97. Loren however has a new movie coming out this year called Brutal.

The tagline is "A Man With No Name. A Town Without Hope. A Stranger On The Path Of Justice. Are you Ready to Get Brutal." Glad to see Loren hasn't turned his back on shitty b-movies.