This abysmal kickboxing film is set, to little purpose, in 2032, as off-worlder Laker Powell (Dominic Labanca) returns to Los Angeles and finds that his professional kickboxer (or "junker") brother Johnny (Dennis Keifer) has been murdered. After a futile visit to the police ("I have 100
murders a week in my zone alone"), Laker is befriended by low-life Slick (Kisu), junker Eddie (Harold Hazeldine), and his sister Marta (Pamela Runo), who strips in the seedy Trocadero 2000 night club. They track down murder witness Manolo (Manuel Lubin), who says that the killer had a snake tattoo
on his arm. Following a rumor that the murderer was a junker, Laker, with Eddie, enters a round-robin fight tournament, sleazily emceed by Low Ball (Charles Philip Moore), and over the next week, Laker faces and beats a series of opponents, including Kemel (Rae Manzon), Hulk (Richard Fuller),
Black Ice (John Arthur), and Li (Randy Ideishi), before flattening Ahmed (Michael Blanks)--who earlier put Eddie in the hospital with brain damage--to win the tournament.
Manolo is murdered, and Marta, who has fallen in love with Laker, discovers that Eddie's hospital roommate is Slick's brother, who was brutally beaten by Johnny. Laker rips off Slick's sleeve to reveal the incriminating snake tattoo and kills him in a grueling fight.
Executive-produced by Roger Corman, DRAGON FIRE verges on incompetence in nearly every department, starting with the title, which has nothing to do with the story and seems designed to confuse potential viewers with DRAGON, the major-studio Bruce Lee bio-pic. The cliched screenplay is barely
able to merge the mystery-revenge plot with the kickboxing action, and incorporates some hayseed-type humor from the rural action film that is both inappropriate and unfunny. The extremely low budget movie has only a few cheap sets, all--along with the costuming--BLADE RUNNER knock-offs;
establishing special-effects shots are cribbed from earlier Corman-produced pictures. Although technically a science fiction film, Aaron Osborne's settings--strip bars and fight arenas--are straight from the standard, modern-day set urban action genre.
DRAGON FIRE's biggest deficiency is Rick Jacobson's anemic direction. Unlike many kickboxing pictures, this one freely uses blood effects, and it employs a number of prominently credited kickboxing and Tae Kwon Do world champions in minor roles. The actual fight sequences, choreographed by Kisu
(who plays Slick), are mostly unconvincing, the fakeness never camouflaged by Jacobson's overuse of slow motion and, for the final battle, eye-numbing stroboscopic lighting. The acting is equally miserable, with uncharismatic hero Labanca perpetually sullen-looking--even during his sex scenes--and
Hazeldine perpetually grinning like a loon and spewing nuttiness, as though he thought the movie were a comedy. Trivia collectors might want to note the brief appearance by exploitation filmmaker Jim Wynorski as the seedy strip-club emcee. All in all, this direct-to-video picture is probably the
year's worst of its prolific genre. (Graphic violence, extensive nudity, sexual situations, profanity.) leave a comment