Hello, kitties. It's your old pal John Kaseer,
the voice of the Cryptkeeper.
And you're listening to
the bottom shelf.
I can't do it, Dallas. Play another round
of street fighter with me? Look, I know
you're not good at these games. No. No.
No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No.
No. I mean well, I mean, it's street
fighter Jason, I suppose.
No, I, I, I can't, I know we're,
I know I said we need to figure
out why these movies are in the dumpster,
but I think we figured out in the
last
episode.
I feel like there's a force compelling us
to watch these. Like there's, they're trying to
make us realize Dallas. Do you know what
else I found down down down there, Dallas?
Cookies?
Suburban commando. What the crap? Bro. Why is
this down there? That was a great Bro.
There's something go there's something going on.
Prepare yourself to discover a world of terrible
movies.
High above the planet Geekeri, a group of
intrepid explorers
hover over the dangerous planet in their fabulous
super orbital spacecraft.
Their mission, to conduct a complete analysis of
movies known throughout the universe as terrible.
So grab your space popcorn, grab your freeze
dried ice cream, and join us for today's
mission of discovery and wonder.
Are these movies better than the galaxy thinks?
Or do they really belong
on the bottom shelf?
Hello, everybody. Welcome movie lovers and movie haters.
And welcome to the bottom shelf where every
movie has a place. So my name is
John and I am joined with the man,
the myth, the legend,
the 8 living wonder of the world.
Dallas
Mora. How you doing? I'm not sure about
that last one, but how are you doing
buddy? I'm doing all right. I'm just trying
to hype you up. I appreciate it. I
feel like we need to be hyped up
after the last episode,
bro. I don't know that I can do
this again. I don't, I don't know that
I can
roast my childhood
a second time. And this one was, this
one was my jam. Like for real back
in the day, the 2 big conversations
in my neighborhood that I grew up on
was 1. Well, first of all, it was
Freddy versus Jason. Like, who who who was
who could beat who? That was the prime
that was the primary
eighties argument I that I can remember.
Were you into kickboxer or were you into
blood sport?
Oh, so this is like a a Star
Wars, Star Trek thing? This is a Coke
versus Pepsi. Our Wow. From my social circles
in in elementary school. RC Cola, man. Well,
you probably voted for Perot then, didn't you?
Hercule Pero. Hello, everybody. Hello. Today, we're gonna
talk, what are we talking about Dallas? We're
so we are so just we're doing it
again. We're talking about everything, but the movie
and we haven't even watched this movie yet.
Oh my gosh. Well, you pulled out a
movie called kickboxer.
So let me look at the database here.
It says kickboxer
1 year after producing bloodsport, mark disal,
disalily,
disalily
decided to team up with Jean Claude Van
Damme to purposefully tell a fictional martial arts
story this time,
starting starring a plethora of actors who cameoed
everywhere else later, including Mario Lopez at home,
Denis Alexio.
Kickspot Kickboxer tells the story of how one
man brought Muay Thai to the world through
the power of cultural appropriation,
especially in his later sequel apparently.
This is a Wow, dude.
That's so everybody Dallas told me he had
these written up and he flat out told
me, do not read them until we read
them on the show. I want you to
be surprised.
Surprised is a word.
So is shocked.
Oh my gosh. Let me read the back
of the box of this movie real quick.
With the help of his brother and trainer,
Kirk Van Dam, American kickboxing champion, Eric slow,
Dennis Alexio arrives in Thailand to defeat the
eastern warrior of the at their own sport.
And his opponent, a ruthless fighter from and
Thai champion, Tong Po,
not only defeats Eric, but brutally delivers
a series of illegal blows that which paralyze
him for life.
Crazed with anger, Kurt vows revenge at any
cost, but first, he must learn the ancient
techniques of kickboxing
from Thai master
Xianzhou.
While suffering Xian's grueling and painful training, Kurt's
only comfort
is the company of his master's niece, Mai
Li. Hoping to disrupt Kurt's training, Tong Po
abducts the innocent girl, ambitiously assaults her. Kurt
delivers believing he is ready to meet Tong
Po in the ring, challenge the champion who
agrees on one condition. They must do battle
in the ancient manner with fists found in
rope and covered in broken glass. Their battle
to the finish born of lust, power, and
revenge will leave
one man standing. Did they just give us
the whole movie?
Seriously. That sounds like we just got a
book report. I like for real, like, okay.
Like this is the actual review from the
back. Like this is the back of the
box, legitimately back of the, but we're not
making this stuff up guys. Did they just
give us the whole movie? Yeah. They
kind of did. Like,
I mean, should we have saved the back
of the box for the spoiler section? Yes.
I mean, all that's really left is the
result of the end fight at this juncture.
And it's Jean Claude. He won't allow himself
to be defeated. Right.
Jean Claude Van Damme thinks that he's Chuck
Norris. Alright. Well, guys, thank you for joining
us for the bottom shelf this week. I
guess let's give it its due process.
The eighties were wild with the back of
these boxes, man. Yo.
Alright. So trivia,
this was actually the
are these both correct, Dallas? I think these
are leftover.
Yeah. Those are leftover from you. Okay. Last
time, yeah. I wanted to double check. I
don't remember Rowdy Piper being in this movie.
I didn't either, but I wanted to double
check. Alright. Here we go. Coming back in.
Alright. So trivia here, we have
Dennis Alexio who plays Eric Sloan,
was the world lightweight,
no world light heavyweight
and world cruiserweight kickboxing champion in real life
when they did this movie. Wow. No kidding.
Yeah. So they got some royalty in here.
The scene in which Kurt
has meat tied to his leg and is
chased by,
Jian Chow's dog
was inspired by a real life event in
which young JCVD
was ordered by his karate teacher to wear
a productive suit and withstand attempts of a
trained dog to pull him to the ground.
The title held by Dennis Alexio's character in
the movie, the International
Sport Karate Association
Heavyweight Championship
is a real champion championship
and has been held by Alexio during his
fighting career. The belt in the movie, however,
was not modeled after the actual belt. Okay.
And the final
actually, I got 2 more here because I
think these kind of build off of each
other.
Tong Po is mistakenly
billed as playing himself during the film's credits.
In fact, Michael Kusey played the villainous Tai
for this film and its sequel Kickboxer 2
The Road back in 1991.
Campbell Kreefa played the character in the 4th,
and Kissey can be seen in 3 other
JCVD movies along with, Lionheart
and
or vengeance
in 2016,
which right before the, we started recording Dallas
and I just discovered,
being,
a
reboot of the kickboxer movie.
So if you like this movie, go check
that out, I guess. I don't know. I
can't recommend it. I haven't seen it.
In Bloodsport,
Kisi
is the
Kisi is the
fighter that gets his leg broken by Chang
Lee.
So,
the guy who plays Tong Po is actually
in this movie.
In Lionheart,
Kiese plays,
Mustafa
alongside with another legionnaire who's trying to bring
lion back from America
Back to Africa in kickbox or vengeance, a
remake of this movie.
Casey has a brief in joke cameo as
a prisoner who remarks you forgot about me
as Van Dam walked past his cell. And
then finally, Michael Casey was the technical advisor
and choreographer when he overheard the production crew
say they were looking for a tall, oriental
looking guy with a background in Muay Thai.
He volunteered
and got the part of Tong
Po because
he is originally from Morocco.
Makeup was used to make him look more
Asian.
Interesting. So
Alright. There we go. There that was
a lot of information and I hope it
didn't bore
you.
All right. Cool. But there's a lot of
information about everybody except for
JCVD.
Does that say something?
Who am I to say?
I'm just saying when somebody gets their career
blasted off by playing a farcical kung fu
fighter
Right. So well,
it's almost like they don't have to act.
Oh my gosh.
You know, did you know that Jean Claude
Van Damme was the original person casted to
play the predator?
I can see that. He now this will
say a lot about JCV
as well.
The reason why he didn't play the predator
was because he wouldn't be able to have
his face in the film. That does say
a whole lot about him.
That says a whole lot about him and
something we're not surprised about either. The things
you learn about the people that you thought
were heroes. Let's go ahead and talk about
expectations. Dallas,
being as you
I'm assuming you haven't seen this movie before.
Have you seen this movie before? I have
never. I think I'm I've seen the box
for the later kickboxer movies. Mhmm.
But I don't I've never seen this. I've
never seen them. Why don't you go ahead
and give us your expectations then? Being as
I don't want to taint your expectations with
that of my own.
My expectations
is that this will be
like every
other eighties martial arts movie that take place
with the secret martial arts tournament. And having
read the back of the box and having,
I don't know, gotten the cliff notes of
the movie already, I feel like I'm cheating
with this one. I think it'll be fun.
I think it'll be interesting. I like good,
you know, eighties revenge story. So I'm down
for this.
Okay. So as far as my expectations are
concerned, I'm gonna put it to you like
this.
When we first pulled these movies out of
the dumpster and figured out that we were
gonna be watching them for this.
Mhmm. I was so excited to watch this
movie because when we got into that argument
back in the day with, if you were
kickboxer
or,
Bloodsport,
I was team kickboxer.
So I was super excited. Well, after we
watched Bloodsport,
I'm terrified to watch this movie now. Cause
I'm almost afraid that because I'm not in
that eighties mindset anymore, this movie is not
going to be as good as I remember
it being. And I'm just going to burn
down another section of my childhood.
That's fair.
So what what's my impression? I'm terrified.
You were terrified?
Oh my gosh. That's so funny. Alright. Well,
let's find out.
Yes.
Let's.
Dear listeners,
this is your opportunity to escape.
Our crew has just entered into the media
projection chamber.
What horrors and matters that they consume are
unknown?
Their mental state upon their return is
unknown.
You have been warned.
Well, Joe, I'm disappointed. We should've watched this
one before we did Bloodsport. I feel like
Bloodsport would've made more sense because this is
a prequel, isn't it? No. This movie has
nothing to do with Bloodsport.
This isn't a prequel to Bloodsport? No. John's
not playing the exact same character in the
exact same manner? No. Just that he's learning
kung fu? No.
Wow. Yeah. Well, that changes everything now. It
actually turns out, oops, I did it again
was what the script writer said after they
watched the movie Bloodsport,
and they were like, oh, I did that
again. Oh. Somewhere, Frank Dukes is like, hey,
that was my life too. I did that.
That was me.
Wait, is did the guy who wrote this
movie, is that just a pen name for
Frank Dukes?
Maybe.
Like like, for real everybody, if you're out
there, there there are,
there are 3 fake martial artists you really
need to look into if if you really
want a good lap. You need to look
into Frank Dukes, you need to look into
Ashita Kim, and you need to look into
Count Dante.
Mhmm. That's interesting.
I don't know Count Dante.
Count Dante
Do we have time to go into this?
This this just isn't the this isn't the
time or place where it's not that it's
inappropriate. It's just it would probably take me
about an hour to explain Count Dante to
you. Wow. So that being said, let's actually
talk about this movie that is intentionally fake
instead of accidentally fake. This was the same
movie.
Yeah.
I I mean,
this was basically Bloodsport,
better choreography.
Mostly better choreography. Like okay. And this is
a conversation Dallas and I had again while
watching this movie. I had mentioned to him,
like, yo, despite the fact that this is
essentially the same exact movie,
the action to me seems better.
And I think it's mostly because
Van Damme
the the Muay Thai is what Van Van
Damme was trained in. Like, that's that's he's
he is Belgium's champion
kickboxer, which is Muay Thai,
which on to a certain degree, and I
said also said this to Dallas earlier, which
to a certain degree is kind of like
saying you're Alaska's
champion
bullfighter.
But it it still is to be said
that of all the Muay Thai fighters there
are in Belgium,
he was the best one at one point.
Far be it for me to take Belgium's
Chuck Norris away from them. Just not my
cup of tea, and it very well could
be that I remembered.
For some reason, I just remembered Van Damme
being a better actor, like being able to
deliver wines better. I think it was, they
were so inundated with him back in the
day that we just assumed like, oh yeah,
he's clearly
gotta be a a great actor because he's
everywhere.
Right. I remembered him being a a better
actor. And when we watched
street fighter
Mhmm. Initially,
like, I thought, okay, well, he's bad in
this because we found out exactly how much
illicit substances he was using
during that time frame. And, you know, drugs
will mess you up. I'm gonna pause real
quick because I just I did a goo
I was trying to see what movies he's
done. Try because I'm trying to go, what
movies has he done that was good? I
didn't realize this, but he voices freaking Johnny
Cage
in moral combat 1, the video game. That
kills me. That's
I didn't even realize that until just now.
That's a ma that makes so much sense.
But, yeah, I just remembered him being a
better actor. And then when we watched street
fighter for this, I figured, okay, well, bro
was coked out of his mind for this.
So I'll give him a pass on that.
That makes sense. Mhmm.
But coming back to these movies, it's just
like, I don't believe a single thing that's
coming out of your mouth. Like, I've watched
better
middle school theater programs.
You know what I mean? It's like, I've
watched I've watched our city's inner players kids
programs do a Charlie Brown Christmas live on
stage.
That's terrible. And I believed them more than
I believed that Jean Claude Van like, for
real. Like, yeah, it's like he's never experienced
a human emotion in his life to understand
how to replicate one in front of a
camera.
I feel like that it like,
last week or last time we recorded the
with the time of the other movie, Bobby
had left a comment saying that time cop
was a good movie.
And I remember time cop being good, but
also remember him doing decent job with double
team.
I mean, I guess,
I don't know.
Like the last movie he ever, that ever
came out in the theater that had him
in it that I was actually quasi interested
was the movie that he did with Dolph
Lundgren. I think it was called universal soldier.
Oh, yeah. This is that one. I never
ended up seeing it just because at that
time period when universal soldier finally came out,
it was about the same time period that
Terminator 2 came out. Right. And because they
were so similar in tone and concept, I
think
Universal Soldier ended up getting buried. That was
kind of the tipping point where
he went off into
street fighter land.
I am going through his INDB right now.
Uh-huh.
And I feel like I should be ashamed
at the number of these movies I've watched.
Bro,
you gotta understand, during that time period, it
was about mindless violence and action. They're they're,
like, for real.
I remember the plot to Bloodsport being a
lot more sweeping, like, than
it was when we watched it. Like,
it's just, there's so much that our memory
and our imagination fills in on the back
end
that
it's almost Like, once you hit the year
2000, it becomes a little more foggy for
me with his movies,
which ones I've seen and not seen. Like,
I saw him in Kung Fu Panda 2.
He did great in that one as a
crocodile. I've got the analogy for you, Dallas.
Okay. Jean Claude Van Damme was the Andre
Agassi of action films.
That would make a lot of sense if
I knew who that was.
Andre
Andre Agassi was a very promising
tennis star in the late eighties, early nineties.
Mhmm.
He was everywhere. He was on all the
Wheaties boxes because he had the long hair
and the sunglasses.
Like, he was the new guy that was
making
tennis young, hip, and cool. Right? And then
he fell off because it started coming out
about, like, Bro was getting into the excesses
that come along with immediate stardom. Oof.
And that's kinda what happened to JCVD. Like,
he came in and he was the new
action
star or Right. He's got the French accent.
Then the the illicit substances kinda take over
and he fells off. You know what I
mean? Right. So I'm sorry. I guess that
one's more for the gen x leaning side
of the zennials out there.
It's probably,
like, like that that's the reason why Dallas
and I connect so hard is like, we're
both part of the Xennial Michael micro generation,
except I lean harder towards the gen X
side and he leans harder towards the millennials.
So we got all y'all covered with this
stupid crap.
Oh.
Let's talk about this movie again.
Hey. We're doing a movie today, guys. Y'all
talk we already talk really, all we have
to do if you guys really, really want
us to to go through it is just
go back and listen to the last episode,
and we'll send you the exact same things.
Okay. I'll say this. Hang on. Hang on,
Dallas. Story wise. Hang on, Dallas. Just a
second.
Ladies and gentlemen,
the spoiler section.
Story wise,
there was more to it in this than
I felt like, although I did read a
review, like an early review that came out
about this movie, and they were like, there's
no story. I was like, there's more story
than this.
One person did compare it to call it
a a bloody version of
of Karate Kid. I could see that.
But I I thought the story was interesting.
I'm gonna close your eyes. I rather
I will not close my eyes. You stay
over there, sir.
Let let me try that again. I'm gonna
try something. Dallas, close your eyes. Okay. All
right. I'm gonna describe a movie. You tell
me a movie I'm describing.
A man goes to a nondescript
Asian country in support of a significant, a
significant
close person
who is going to said country for the
sake of a fighting tournament
at said tournament
said friend is severely
injured
to the point where he can no longer
fight
supporting friend steps into said tournament to avenge
the memory of befallen friend
against
the evil combatant who had injured this individual.
At which point at the very end,
supporting friend wins the tournament
and has some kind of a romantic interest
crammed in at the very last second for
the sake of having somebody to be
romantic with, and everybody's happy at the end.
I'll take Mortal Kombat for 300, Alex.
Like, for real. Did I just did I
just describe Bloodsport
or did I describe
kickboxer?
I feel really weird about the fact now
that you got you say that because you
it's both, but also Mortal Kombat. Like, that's
the exact story life for Mortal Kombat. Now
Jean Claude wasn't in Mortal Kombat. It was
the guy from Highlander.
Yeah. But Johnny Johnny Cage was inspired by
Jean by Jean Claude Van Damme's character in
Bloodsport. Dang. Are we doing 6 degrees of
Kevin Bacon, but Jean Claude Van Damme? Yes.
Then welcome to our show where we now
play a new game called Van Damme. That's
creepy.
My gosh.
Oh, man. I would be interested to see
how we find Van Damme connections later on
in life. But anyways I I I am
bro. The same story. Wait. Wait. Kickbox.
Okay. I just described the plot. We've both
we've we can both agree that I just
described the kickbox the both kickboxer
and,
Bloodsport plot lines. Right? Mhmm. Now I want
you to think about
it's almost the same movie if you put
it in a military aspect, street
fighter. Yeah. Yeah, it really is. All these
movies are just the Sean, Jean Claude van
dam has been giving us the same movie
for 40, almost 40 years. And we keep
watching it.
I don't
bro. When was the last time you paid
money to watch a JCVD
movie?
I think when I rented universal soldier when
I was 9. Well, no, no, no. Cause
you, you, you've seen the Expendables too. You
saw Expendables too. I didn't pay for it
though. I had to read it as a
Hollywood video. Oh. Oh.
That's even that's even sadder.
Wow.
I worked for Hollywood video. I watched everything
for free. Yeah. I feel like we've talked
about this entire movie. Like, this movie brings
nothing new to the table. I am so
saddened by this whole experience.
I feel like there is an evil force
out there that's forcing me to face the
fact that I had terrible taste as a
kid.
Yeah.
And I am I am afraid
Dallas of where this is going to lead
us.
This is a slippery slope we're on. We're
gonna make it. We're gonna be fine. You're
being, you're being pro the, but the Bible
says the truth shall set us free, but
I feel, I don't feel free. I'd Feel
attacked.
I feel attacks.
We'll be fine. We'll make it. I will
say this over and over again in my
notes. There's words like,
again, this, again, like another eighties power ballad,
More leg stretching.
Like, it's everything that was, like, oh, we
just did this in the last movie.
I know. But one thing I also noticed
about this movie and,
Bloodsport, other than the fact that they're the
same exact movie with a different soundtrack,
is the fact that the songs are
super similar between the two movies as well.
Like, I was waiting for the Kumite song
to come up in the middle of kickboxer.
Yeah. I can see that. I'll say this.
I found it interesting with seeing Jean Claude
play dumb at the beginning of the movie.
That was interesting watching playing?
Playing dumb as far as as he doesn't
understand how to fight. Oh, okay.
Like, that was interesting seeing him go through
that training process and, like like, at the
front end where he's, like, in awe of
the other fighters and stuff like that. And,
when his brother was basically,
like, you know, stop with the tiptoe things.
Hit. You know? Like that Mario Lopez at
home.
Yeah. Basically. Can I I got a question?
What was the point of the dancing? Why
why did we have to make him dance?
I I don't ever wanna see this man
dance again. I don't know. I mean, if
you remember
best of the best, they kinda did something
similar to that to the bar scene. Did.
Yep. Surely did. I think it was the
thing in the eighties where they wanted to
show these characters
cut loose to try to humanize them a
little bit. So
you don't think that all they do is
just train and that's all who they are.
Like, they're trying kudos to them for trying
to add dimension to their characters, but
really, it just reminds me of the evil
Peter Parker dance.
Bam that comments for you. I will never,
I will never let the evil Peter Parker
dance.
I'm I'm going to let him shimmy all
the way to supervillain as he mildly inconveniences
the public.
What a schmuck.
Oh my gosh. Yeah. Again, I'm I'm looking
through this stuff. I I have no note,
in this. Like, Jean Claude's ability to always
have a battle buddy in every film is
amazing. This is true. And I think that's
the reason why he always came across as
being more charismatic than he actually is.
Mhmm. Is because he's written
to have
ultra like, if you notice, like, all his
battle buddies
or however you wanna call them, like, his
the goose to his mad to his maverick
is always more charismatic
than he is. Mhmm. And so by the
by the laws
of deference,
you're it kinda tricks your mind into thinking
that, oh, well, he's friends with all these
charismatic
people, so thus, he is a charismatic
person himself.
Oh, was that a whole like tracks like
type of mindset?
Right. But, I mean, if you were to
take, like I don't know these characters' names.
Like, if I was if I was to
say from Bloodsport, if you were to take,
Short Stack as a teenager
and Booger from revenge of the nerds out
of the equation,
and all you have is JCVD,
that's gonna be a boring movie and nobody's
gonna wanna watch it. Like the thing about
it is, and that's, that's the thing that
I was noticing by the time we got
to the end of kickboxer
is that
John Claude Van Damme movies,
all the side characters are
what drive the movies.
Mhmm. Because it all the all the side
characters, all the NPCs,
so to speak,
they have more personality
than his characters. You know what I mean?
Which Like, you show up for those characters
and and his fighting for these movies, basically.
Yeah. And which makes me go, was it
done on purpose? Like, were and if it
it's on purpose, kudos to the to the
people who did this, who who did the
writing and did the directing going, hey. He's
a great fighter. He's a great at certain
things. However, his acting, it's wooden. We need
somebody to to kinda puff it up to
make things a little bit more for for
somebody to
see themselves in, I that's smart if they
did it that way on purpose. I would
would have 100%
argue that it was, it it was intentional.
It that you can't you can't do that
twice
and not for it for it to not
be intentional.
Yeah. Definitely. So here's a fun question for
you. How many kids do you think almost
drowned or broke their shins trying to do
the training sequences that he was doing? All
of them.
How many times did you almost die? Oh,
I I did.
I I
I I had the friends I did okay.
So
this is sounds so stupid, but Dallas will
understand what I mean when I use this
phrase
because it was an eighties thing. If you
weren't in the eighties, don't mock it. You
won't understand it. But the friends that I
did karate with
Mhmm. In the eighties,
did karate, they
we were more interested in just beating each
other up than actually trying to do a
emulate what we saw.
You know what I mean? Like, there I
I was just thinking about it earlier. Like,
I was having, like, eighties flashbacks, like, ever
since we started this request.
I was thinking about it earlier today about
some of, like, the Pattersons down the street,
and that's not me doxing anybody because they
don't live there anymore.
But the Paterson's down the street, I was
thinking to myself. I'm like, Jesus. I remember
having conversations about watching this movie over at
their house and then being out in the
front yard and ripping open
sea batteries to try to try to create
grenades with the battery acid and heavy metals
on the inside.
Like the eighties were wild. We had lawn
darts.
Just playing with chemicals and blades. Why not?
I grew up fine.
We're okay. We made
it. I'm fine.
Oh my gosh. I'm trying to see if
there's anything worth talking about in my notes
where it's just it was different. Again, it
but It wasn't though. It wasn't different at
all. It's just it's a different country, but,
I mean, the the here's the thing about
it, and and that here's something that will
I can talk say about both movies that
covers across them too, is that the way
that the different call standards,
comma, it comes across as being casual,
casually racist.
Mhmm. If that makes sense, the way that
the way that
Thai culture and the way they portrayed,
Hong Kong culture and the way they portrayed
African culture in bloodsport with the African fighter
who, who they had rolling around like a
monkey.
Right. It all
came across
as being racist. And then I know somebody
out there is to say, well, John, there
is a monkey style kung fu where that
does look
like that. And I would say, yes, there
is.
But I would also say there's no reason
to force the black guy, the only black
guy in the movie to be the guy
who's proficient in it. Right. You can't tell
me that wasn't intentional.
I'm sorry. Well, I mean, they got the
white guy do Muay Thai. Well, that's the
American coming to the Asian country to save
them from themselves, which is also the way
a theme
across both these movies as well. Just putting
that out there. In Bloodsport, they had a
white guy doing Muay Thai. Oh, did they?
Yeah. No. I didn't catch that. Yep. So
yeah. It was that was one of the
things that was said in one of the
early reviews I saw from the original time
frame, is that people they didn't like the
stereotypes it was reinforcing that was coming out.
There was one stereotype that I didn't appreciate,
and it was a stereotype of Americans, the
arrogance, the fighter. And this is something that
I genuinely was struggling with when we watched
this movie, which was
his brother was so arrogant and so ignorant
of
Muay Thai. And, again,
you and I were in 2024.
I've known about Muay Thai actively since probably
2000, 2,001,
because I had friends who did it. And
but Muay Thai did some research. It's been
a we've had an American League since, like,
the sixties
here in the states. I can't imagine somebody
being at the top level of kickboxing
and not
at least somehow know
about
what Muay Thai is. And then to be
the top person and to be so arrogant,
that was purely a movie trope put in
for just to push the story forward, and
it's the one that I feel like it's
been played out. Because I I I've I
have I've met top performing
people in different fields.
I have I have had full conversations with
Olympic, o o Olympians,
and the honor and respect they have for
the art that they do and the predecessors
to the art is it's massive because they
understood that that's how they get to where
they're at now. Now, again, I'm in 2024.
Minds have changed quite a bit, but I
struggled a lot with that on the front
end of this movie. Well, I would be
willing to
push that further to say that this is
25. I apologize. Kept saying 2024. That's fair.
We just had the new year.
I would say though that this is an
archetypical character that you would find in the
standard eighties action film,
especially with the tournament style,
action film. In that,
there's the over cocky
natural talent that refuses to accept instruction.
You find that with the guy that I
refer to as Booger
in Bloodsport.
You know what I mean?
You find that with his character, his brother's
character in kickboxer,
you find it with Chris Penn's character
in best of the best and best of
the best to Chris Penn again.
Right. With the villain
in order to 1
demonstrate
that cockiness
is bad,
but also to demonstrate
how ruthless
a villain is
Right. To the point where it's super formulaic.
Yeah. I can see that. I can see
that. I've run out of things to talk
about.
I literally just spent the last 7 minutes
talking about
character archetypes rather than this movie because
Yeah.
Really, once once you've seen Bloodsport or you've
seen The Karate Kid or you've seen The
Kickboxer
or you've seen
best of the best or whatever.
You've seen all these movies. The difference is
what the core message is that they're trying
to send
or the setting that they're in outside of
that. Those stories are gonna be the exact
same.
It's it's like what people call the hero's
journey. The points are gonna end up lining
up
along the lines. There are certain plot points
you're gonna end up expecting if you're watching
these movies. So Yeah. I mean, if you're
into that sort of,
like, if you find repetition comfortable,
so where
there's nothing new or nothing to catch you
off guard, then these are gonna be the
types of movies that you're gonna be super
into. And during the eighties, that was common
place. You'd see that a lot with how
TV was done in the eighties
with TV shows
in their sitcoms
Mhmm. Where every episode like, everything was fluff
and nothing mattered in the sitcoms during that
time period.
And that's kind of how the movies are
too. Everything's fluff and nothing matters.
Right. I can see that. So let's rate
this because I'm rambling because I'm, I don't
know.
This the these movies make me wanna talk,
but they they make me want to don't
make me wanna necessarily talk about the movie
itself, but ideas that the movie gave me
while I was watching it. Yeah. Alright. Well,
let's get to the the rating system then.
Here on the bottom shelf, we have 4
levels on our rating system. Top shelf is,
this is a fantastic movie. I think I
need to own this so I can watch
it several times.
Hey. Hey. Middle shelf is, it's alright. If
it's on streaming or whatever, I might watch
it sometime, maybe. I don't know. It's not
terrible.
The bottom shelf is, this movie's bad. I
don't wanna watch it again. Someone else might
wanna watch it if it's your jam, but
it's not for me, and I don't wanna
see it. And then there's the dumpster fire,
which is this doesn't have any place on
any shelf. It needs to be destroyed and
eradicated from existence, and I'm gonna go out
of my way to make sure nobody else
watches it. That being said,
captain Dallas Mora,
as I have invited you into my childhood
to watch this and invited you to watch
me
become disenfranchised
with things that were once sacred,
please rate this film. It's not a good
movie.
Such a segue, bro. It's not. But
and I said at the beginning, it has
a better story,
and
part of me's
oddly curious as to how it got 4
more
movies out of it. It looks like in
the second one, they kill Kurt, and his
the unknown brother who we don't know about
has to fight Tong Po. And I kinda
wanna watch him for some reason. I wanna
know where we go with this. I don't
wanna own this movie ever, and
I'm thankful that Tubi has it for free.
I'm gonna put it on the middle shelf.
It's a better movie than Bloodsport.
And
Okay. So I wanna say, first of all,
welcome to team Kickboxer.
We have,
we have cookies in the back.
Feel free to help yourself.
Will do.
I'm glad you fell out on the wrong,
on the right side of history on that
one, my dude.
I'm gonna, I'm gonna join you on that
middle shelf. I do rank it as a
higher middle shelf than the Bloodsport,
not because I think it was a better
movie necessarily, but
I I do believe that the action in
it was more believable. I believe that the
technique
was better. I didn't feel the compulsion to
yell at the screen at the actors telling
them to put their hands up so they
can have some form of defense.
Although there was one point at the end
of this movie where Tong Po's just standing
there with his hands down,
letting
JCVD
just
run a train on him.
Could I just wanna pause you real quick
because talking about how it's the same thing.
There's a moment where JC is
just getting in a kicking, like, back and
forth with with another Muay Thai fighter back
and forth, back and forth, just like he
did
with the Muay Thai fighter in Bloodsport.
It I mean, the exact same thing. They're
just like he's like, come on. They're just
back and forth kicking each other. Yeah. In
the ribs. I remember that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. What else is there? Made me think
of something. It
bro. I just thought of another movie that
follows this whole story type that stars
that stars JCVD,
the quest.
Yep. Yep.
I was just thinking about the quest too.
Bro, get a different script writer.
Oh my God. All right.
That being said, let's go ahead and,
get on over to the,
weak connections section because there's nothing more we
can do here that's gonna be productive.
This is a weak connection.
Hello, everybody, and welcome to the weak connection
section. This is
Dallas Mora coming out of the Healing Place
Church in
Shreveport, Louisiana.
Pastor Dallas, long time listener, multiple time caller,
why don't you go ahead and give us
a one of those fantastic
weak connections that you always deliver so
so right twice.
Alright. I feel uncomfortable now in this podcast.
I'm in the building.
I feel about as uncomfortable as Jean Claude's
acting. So my thing so there was a
moment in the front end when, Jean Claude
was describing his
how him and his brother are brothers, but
they basically grew up apart. And he goes,
in some ways, we're different, but we're still
brothers. And there's this whole aspect of, like,
you still they're very different characters in the
front of the movie, but
there is an aspect of you may be
different from the people around you. But if
you're if you're brothers, you're you're brothers. And
that's the thing about as as Christians, we're
in this we're in this community of faith,
and it's kinda gone out of fashion. This
whole idea of calling somebody brother or sister.
You know? And
it's easy for us to kinda go, I
don't like that person. They're gonna stay over
there. But there's still our family in Christ.
I forgot to pull up the scripture, but
there is a passage where Jesus says that
they will know you're my disciple the way
you treat each other, the way that you
love
each other,
and we are called to love our brothers
and sisters in Christ regardless
of who they are or what they look
like or what they've done. Doesn't necessarily mean
that, like, if they've done us dirty or
if they've done wrong, that we just bring
them close to us, and we're gonna be
our best friends for life. No. We gotta
know how to put people in a place
where, like but we still show them love.
We still show them grace because they're still
our family in Christ.
Scott was preaching on a very similar message
about that today, actually, and he has a
great line. He goes, you can choose your
friends, but you cannot choose your brother and
sister in Christ because if they're in Christ,
then they are a sibling in Christ
regardless. And,
you know, we all have that Jerry Springer
side of the family, and maybe we and
we have some Jerry Springer side of the
family in the body of Christ, and we're
like, you're a bit crazy. You can stay
right there. But we still love them. We
still try to show them respect. We still
try to encourage them and walk through things
where we can, and so my encouragement to
us is we are like, geek devotions as
a whole, we are a multi
denominational interdenominational
ministry as a whole. We got people who
are baptist, Presbyterian.
We got baptistals like John here.
We got Presmicostal.
I concur with that.
But we have a a range of of
things here, but we're still the family of
God. We may have some things that are
different theologically
about some stuff, but it's not salvific,
and it's okay. We can rock them out.
And there are people in our community
that we're all very different. We all see
things differently. We all operate differently on a
personality level, but we still love each other.
Say what? Nothing.
I'm kidding everybody.
So but there's still our family in Christ,
and we need to do our best to
encourage each other, help each other out. So
that's my weak connection.
No. What I said, Dallas, I'm not I'm
not throwing rocks and hiding hands.
What, what what I said was you you're
like, we all have all these differences, and
I'd whispered in the mic, and you're right.
I kid, though. That's cool. I actually have
one because
the connection I have wouldn't have made sense
until we covered this episode because the scripture
I'm pulling from
is from James
1 chapter 1
verse 17, which is every good gift and
every perfect gift is from above coming down
from our father of lights with whom there
is no variation
or shadow due to change.
And it was inspired by watching both of
these movies and
realizing between the two movies that there is
no variation
or shadow due to change
because they're the same movie.
And so it's a good analog of how
God is because God doesn't change
from
1988 to 1989,
his mercy and his precepts don't change from
1988 to 89. They are the same today,
yesterday, and forever. As the Bible says, Same
as the stories between kickboxer
and Bloodsport.
God's love is never ending and always in
and it always in enduring.
Same as the plot between kickboxer
and Bloodsport.
Jesus will love you no matter what happens
in it, same as the storylines
between kickboxer
and Bloodsport.
This is what we can learn from these
two movies.
That despite the fact that there is no
variation between these two films,
we can learn from these movies that there
is also no variation in God. And sometimes,
no variation at all can be a very
good thing.
The most tongue in cheek, weak connection I've
ever seen you do. But it works so
well. Right?
It does. I wanna I saw
hey, Ben Ben. I don't know if you
listen to this show, but if you do,
I I need your opinion on this.
Oh my gosh.
Alright.
So that being said, thanks so much for
listening everybody. We had a lot of fun
making these. We're going into something super special
as you can tell with the mysterious
breaks that you're hearing in these transmissions.
Dun dun dun.
There's a big thing coming up.
I'm just kinda stepping outside the narrative at
the end of the episode here. Dallas and
I have plans for this year. We want
this year Oh, we got plans.
We want this year to be the year
that the bottom shelf really takes off. Not
because we're trying to be
hipster
podcast
idols and make a bajillion dollars, but mostly
just because we really like doing this.
And we think it would be really neat
if we could do this, like, as it
was for you guys to laugh at our
stupidity
and maybe do cool things and bring
famous people on to laugh at stupid things
with us. So I don't know. It's a
thought. If you wanna help us out, recommend
us to your friends, like and subscribe.
Go do stuff
to get our name out there, and tell
us what you want us to do to
help us get our name out there. Tell
us how we can serve you better.
Dallas, how can people tell us to how
to serve them better? Yeah. You can reach
out to us. We are on Instagram and
Facebook. Just look for the bottom shelf. Don't
forget to leave comments on the YouTube videos
we post up. Also, we have a discord
channel for the, Geek Devotions as a whole,
and we have a whole section in the
Discord,
for the bottom shelf, where we would love
to talk to you guys about the bottom
shelf and these terrible movies that all seem
to be the same things. And don't worry,
folks. As far as I know, we're not
doing any more Jean Claude Van Damme movies
this month. This month. Absolutely not.
I don't know. Now that we talked about
universal soldier
and the expendables too.
We'll find out.
Tune in next time on no next, next
month, next month. If you guys want to
participate with us next month, we are going
to be covering Indiana Jones and the temple
of doom,
as well as suburban commando.
Wow. Yes. Like, we we have made mention
of both those movies in
both these episodes.
And the reason is is because that those
movies legitimately
qualify
for the like, this is gonna be part
of our theme. There are some movies that
we're, like, trying to figure out from our
childhood. Like, did we just have bad taste
or what's going on?
So, yeah, come on this ride with us
this year because it's gonna be
a doozy,
and we want you to join along, join
on with us. Like I said, towards the
end of the year, there's going to be
a big, big, big, big event. That's going
to tie everything together
and there will be
prizes.
And when I say prizes, I mean,
prizes that you'll want. I'm not gonna give
you when I when I play when I
play the prize game, I play the prize
game for stuff that people will be excited
about. So I'm not gonna give you a
cracker jack thing. So stay tuned, everybody. It's
gonna be good.
But until next time, stay devoted.
Peace and love.