Exploitation Nation

Psycho Kickboxer: The Dark Angel (1997) ** - Perfectly serviceable no budget actioneer and starring vehicle for one Curtis Bush 5 time Kickboxing Champion. This thing has been kicking around in the $1 bins for years but Pop Cinema has put it out now on their Shock-O-Rama label with a fairly nice transfer (it gets REAL grainy towards the end though) with a second film called Carnival of Blood. I had heard that Psycho Kickboxer was terrible over the years but it actually isn’t at all. As far as these kinds of American chop-socky flicks go its no worse than the dozens of Kung Fu movies that Roger Corman pumped out through the 90’s. Curtis Bush plays the kickboxing son of a cop. But when Mob thugs kill his dad (with a shocking exploding head shotgun blast you may want to rewind) gang rape and kill his fiance and leave him for dead, its time for revenge. He’s nursed back to health by a warehouse dwelling Black Army vet who was crippled by the same Mobster his dad was hunting. So the Black Crippled Guy helps train our hero in street smarts so he can take on the bad guys. Along the way he starts sneaking out into the streets in a ninja outfit and putting the whoop ass on criminals for the hell of it, thus being labeled by the press “The Dark Angel”. The acting ranges from okay (the pretty female tabloid reporter) the the atrocious (his fiance who gets raped) and everywhere in between. The martial arts aren’t bad at all, but they are not shot very well and edited even less so. But what saves them is that there is lots and lots of bloody violence. Obviously they were Steven Seagal fans (and Seagal fans will appreciate that Curtis Bush runs even funnier than Seagal does, which is saying something!) because they emulate his splatter filled fight scenes. Bush himself is fine during the fighting, but is pretty flat during scenes when he is trying to emote, but shit, thats not much different than a lot of other action stars. I really don’t see why this didn’t sell to cable or get a better release than it did. I think it just fell into piss poor rip off distribution. Hopefully this new DVD will change that. First time seeing this.