Virtual Combat (1995)

Virtual Combat (1995)- * * *

Directed by: Andrew Stevens

Starring: Don "The Dragon" Wilson, Michael Bernardo, Athena Massey, Loren Avedon, Dawn Ann Billings, Michael Dorn, Gilbert Lewis, Rip Taylor, Turhan Bey, and Stella Stevens










So in the future, the giant, disembodied head of Rip Taylor welcomes tourists to Las Vegas and tells them where to go and what to do. Evidently, the only worthwhile things are for men to engage in the oft-mentioned ‘Cybersex’ and for women to watch Punchfighting matches. It truly is a brave new world. Unfortunately, a scientist tasked with creating these cyberpeople lets the cat out of the bag, so to speak, and three of them emerge from a tank of slimy goo and into real life. 

Two of them are the Cybersex girls, the dominatrix Greta (Billings) and Liana (Massey), but the other one is arch-baddie Dante (Bernardo). Dante seems to be an unbeatable fighting force, and he wants to unleash all the other VR baddies from cyberspace. Thankfully, David Quarry (The Dragon) is on the case. After dealing with Parness (Avedon), Quarry turns in his badge and gun to his BYC (Lewis) to take on Dante alone. But will he and Liana learn to love as a mixed-reality couple? Will David Quarry catch his quarry? Find out...

It was the 90’s, after all, and as we’ve seen time and again, VR was huge. Or it was going to be. Andrew Stevens probably figured he would just meld the then-hot VR trend with the then-hot Mortal Kombat trend, and, voila, you have Virtual Combat! It really is as simple as that, but what those other things don’t have is a holographic Rip Taylor head who talks to you. Anyway, we have some Demolition Man (1993), some Cybertracker (1994), some Terminal Justice (1996), and even some Fugitive Champion (1998), but the movie is very reminiscent of Virtuosity (1995). This one just happens to have more shirtless men punching and kicking each other.

Some of said punching and kicking is in the time-honored abandoned warehouse, with men in yellow spandex (Scorpion) and blue spandex (Subzero) taking on Don the Dragon. Luckily, he’s as wooden as you want him to be, and in the future, people communicate with devices that look like those things used to measure your feet at old shoe stores. 

When virtual baddies are defeated, they turn into a bubbling mass of Mountain Dew, surely in a homage to their gamer forbears. There are classic pew-pew lasers, some blow-ups, a very, very silly exploding helicopter, and Don the Dragon goes to the Hoover Dam - he would return only the next year in Terminal Rush (1996). He must enjoy the place.

Virtual Combat is good. Just good. There’s nothing extraordinarily bad or extraordinarily great about it. It does have some interesting casting choices - it has genre mainstays Nick Hill and Ken McLeod in smaller roles, but it also has Turhan Bey and Stella Stevens hanging around. 

Loren Avedon isn’t really in it that much, and, interestingly, Michael Bernardo doesn’t use his own voice. Maybe they were trying to compare him with Darth Vader, or maybe the producers thought his own voice was too high-pitched or something, but Michael Dorn, the voice of Whorf (We're not going to look that up to see if it’s spelled correctly) is the voice of Dante. Hopefully, Stevens said at one point, “This guy’s voice sucks. Can we afford Whorf?” Regardless, Andrew Stevens, Mr. Skinemax himself, knows well enough that if there are plenty of babes in minimal-to-no clothing, people will tune in.

There are enough decent moments to keep Virtual Combat afloat, and it’s not likely to offend you, so Don the Dragon fans or lovers of 90’s nostalgia are probably the most likely targets to enjoy it.

Comeuppance Review by: Ty and Brett

Also check out a write-up from our buddy, DTVC!

Shootfighter II (1995)

Shootfighter II (1995)-* * *

Directed By: Paul Ziller

Starring: Bolo Yeung, Brett Baxter Clark,  William “Billy” Zabka, Chase Randolf, and Michael Bernardo











Shootfighter II is just as good as the first one.

Shingo and the gang are back for more of the World’s Deadliest Sport (Which is Shootfighting, duh).

When the movie opens, we see some familiar pants. You’ve heard of “Blockbuster Pants”, now there are Shootfighting pants. As you remember from the first movie, they are black sweatpants with big pink patches.
The man wearing the pants is running from the new shootfighting ringleader in Florida, Lance. He is an ambitious and deadly man.

Cut to a James Brolin doppelganger, a cop named Rawlins (Randolf) asking the question “Do you know anything about a shootfighting ring in Miami?” to Nick, Ruben and Shingo. Rawlins wants to go undercover and bust the new shootfighting ring because his son died in it. Rawlins also recruits a dock workin’ badass named Shark (Clark) who resembles a lost Swayze brother. An uneasy alliance is forged between Nick, Ruben, and Shark.

Nowhere is this tension better exemplified than in the scene where Ruben notices Shark’s tattoo. Ruben glibly notes that it looks "Like a tuna fish to me." Whereupon Shark delivers the immortal line (groan) “It’s a shark, buttwipe” (groan again). Also groan-worthy is Shark inexplicably nicknaming Ruben “Waterboy” for the rest of the movie.

The new gang enters Lance’s strongman competition where it eventually leads to an underground shootfighting match. They fight baddies such as a black guy who looks like “Dee Jay” from the then-current game “Street Fighter II”, a guy who eats raw meat, and Sargon, Anatoli, Khan, and Grunner.



The audience for “The best entertainment on the planet!” consists of 7 or 8 bloodthirsty rowdy jackasses, one of whom closely resembles Singer-Songwriter-Pianist Randy Newman. Who knew?

There is a subplot involving Ruben and some British waitress who works for Lance. She has a very nice apartment for a single woman on a shootfighting waitress salary. They go to a party where one song continuously plays: “Take me to your house”, and we debated whether the lyrics were "Take me to your high house" or "take me to your high horse". Only the viewer can decide...either way it is catchy!

In the end, Lance kidnaps Shingo, a terrible secret is revealed and Rawlins joins the fray in the shootfighteriffic climax. Will Lance make his casino? Will his assistant “Joseph Stalin” get his comeuppance? Will Shingo fight?

Find out the answers to these questions and much, much, MUCH more in this rousing sequel where the action is as bone-crunching as the dialogue is flat. It caps off with an awesome freeze frame and thus concludes this Bolotastic sequel for the ages!


Comeuppance Review by: Ty & Brett

Shootfighter (1992)

Shootfighter (1992)-* * *1\2

Directed By: Patrick Allen

Starring: Bolo Yeung, Michael Bernardo, William Zabka, John Barrett, Martin Kove, and Edward Albert






"You-disgraced-the-art-of-shoot-fighting."






This opening quote sets the tone for this lively beat-em-up starring the ever-lovable Bolo Yeung as Shingo.

The plot revolves around two buddies named Ruben and Nick played by Zabka and Bernardo respectively. Yeung plays their mentor. There is the prerequisite montage where he teaches them to "shootfight" and also they play basketball with young black children and Shingo smiles in an oddly fatherly way. Before the shootfighting tournament, there is a fight in a grocery store a la Cobra (1986) where Bolo shows off both his fighting and his broken English skills.

You may remember Zabka as Johnny from The Karate Kid (1984) where he infamously swept his leg at Macchio. Apparently he couldn't get enough karate-chopping action, so he hooked up with director Patrick Allen to give birth to Allen's one and only cinematic baby.



Ruben and Nick get embroiled in an underground "shootfighting" ring. They eventually have to shootfight each other...to the death, but not before battling an array of wacky baddies in the ring, such as "Boa", who acts like a snake (including the hisses) and Mongoose, who adopts a mongoose fighting style, whatever that means. Some fights have a surprising amount of gore (i.e. limbs and fingers being broken off in a bloody mess), and this provides unintentional laughter and it sustains the viewer's interest until the end.






Martin Kove plays the evil mastermind, inexplicably named "Mr. Lee", who is behind all the shootfighting, and in his villainous rage, slices a pineapple with a samurai sword.

What is "shootfighting" you ask? Well, that question is never quite answered satisfactorily, but after doing some research we were able to determine (by reading the back of the VHS box) that it is a "forbidden sport so brutal it's banned from the civilized world".

Prepare to get uncivilized with this classic.

Comeuppance Review by: Ty and Brett