TOP 30 MUSCLE MOVIES (#20)

VanDamme1#20. BLOODSPORT (NEWT ARNOLD, 1988)

Van Damme returns to our list at #20 in what is arguably his best film. Bloodsport is the ultimate depiction of Van Damme’s incredible strength and martial arts skill. It has maximum splits and, of course, maximum blood.

Van Damme depicts Frank Dux, who has spent most of his life being trained to participate in Kumite, the ultimate martial arts tournament. This is the kind of tournament where people get seriously injured or even killed. Thus the “blood” in Bloodsport.

While Van Damme was a world-champion martial artist in his own right, the real Frank Dux announced that Damme wasn’t in anywhere near good enough shape for the film. So Dux put Damme through a three month long training program to prepare for the role. Van Damme has gone on record saying that those three months were “the hardest training of his life.” And this is Van Damme we are talking about here.

Yet he can’t complain too much – because of Dux’s training regiment, Bloodsport became one of the most high octane martial arts movies of all time. The amount of fighting styles on display here is phenomenal. The film mixes up various different styles to keep the action surprising, exciting, and bad-ass. There are so many fighting techniques that they actually made up their own monkey style that doesn’t exist. It’s nonstop. It’s jaw dropping. And as a result, it’s unforgettable. Separating the men from the boys. Or, you know, separating “your head from your body.”

 

Hit us up in the comments section below and be sure to stop by tomorrow as we crack past twenty and reveal muscle movie #19.

 

Photo courtesy of: Alamo Drafthouse Cinema

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