By Geno McGahee
The late eighties was a great time for action films and that carried over into the early nineties. Many great action films came out around that time including EXCESSIVE FORCE (1993), ONLY THE STRONG (1993), SHOWDOWN (1991) and BEST OF THE BEST 2 (1993). Damn wasn’t 1993 a good fucking year? All these action movies coming to me and most of them were from that year. When people say “that was a good year”, they must be talking of this year.
Pulling double duty in 1991 was Ken McLeod. In SHOWDOWN, he played high school bully, Tom, and that was a good name. Most Toms are complete fucking assholes. When I hear that name, I know I’m probably going to meet a prick. In COLLEGE KICKBOXERS, Ken plays James, a good guy starting college. He has some martial arts experience and moves in with another karate guy in Mark (Mark Brown). There’s some tension because James sets an alarm to wake up the poor guy early. When Mark runs to the window, he sees James taunting him. Maybe James isn’t that great of a guy after all. That move was really fucking prickish.
The two begin to fight and James wins the fight, but a friendship is born. The happy moment doesn’t last long because Craig Tanner (Matthew Ray Cohen) shows up with his gang and immediately starts throwing around racial slurs. Now, I had some issues immediately with this gang and the fact that Tanner was racist. When I think “racist gang,” I think of Nazis or the KKK guys…but this guy looked like a headbanger and his friends were not all white. He had a nice mix, but maybe he hated exclusively black guys. Whatever the case, he didn’t fit the bill of racist. I think he was just lost and needed love.
James stands his ground, but this group of racists now target him. I’m sorry. I can’t call the entire group racist. I think it was just Tanner and Tanner really studied racism. He used a large variety of racial slurs. I wonder if his friends didn’t agree with his views, but thought he was a good guy otherwise. We all have that friend that has strange views, but we accept them and try to slowly change their minds. If this is the case, then perhaps there is hope for Tanner.
James meets Kimberly (Kendra Tucker), a total bitch, but he is really pursuing her. She is into the environment and saving nature and no matter what James says, she goes off on him. What the hell was his interest? I mean, she was hot, but damn, who could stand that abuse? Maybe it’s that karate shit. A lot of these martial arts guys can put their mind at peace no matter what. So maybe James is putting his mind at peace when Kimberly is telling him that he sucks horse cock.
Tanner and his group of goons won’t stop. Sometimes they wear ski masks and other times they do not. Sort of strange to attack without a mask on and then return with a mask. He has already seen their faces, but if he has short term memory problems, maybe they had a point. After calling James a “pretty boy” nineteen dozen times, the group finally wins and lays James out, leading to Sifu Wing (Tak-Wing Tang), a cook, taking him under his wing and training him to be a better fighter. OK, yes, this is definitely inspired by THE KARATE KID, but it’s got its own vibe.
I’m just gonna say it. Tak-Wing Tang sucks. His acting was terrible and you could see McLeod struggling to make the scenes work with him. He should have gotten Billy Blanks from SHOWDOWN to train him rather than this fat pudgy shit. So many good movies with trainers that make the film better like KARATE KID, SHOWDOWN, KICKBOXER and so on and then we have this shit.
Through training, James learns patience and even gets lucky with Kimberly, who totally changed her tune. Maybe she was just having a bad week and was taking it out on James. Maybe that fat pudgy shit, Tak-Wing Tang, came onto her and made her angry at all men, or maybe Tanner called her a racial slur and that set her off. Who knows? Whatever the case, James stayed the course and got some action because of it. That must have been my problem. I never stayed the course when they yelled at me to get lost.
So, there is a fighting tournament that Mark is set to fight in, but he has to step down and James steps in and, of course, wins. This film follows the action formula very well and even though everything is familiar, I still liked this one and it still stands out in its own strange way. Perhaps it’s the addition of a racist headbanger that I found so enjoyable.
COLLEGE KICKBOXERS is a very good film and McLeod did a good job as the lead, BUT the award for best performance goes to Cohen. He was so fucking hilarious in this. I wish he stuck with the craft. He could have played many racist characters and nailed it every time. I highly recommend this. It’s righteous.
Rating: 7/10
