Champion kickboxer Jake Raye quits the sport in anger after his opponent is killed in the ring. Two years later, Raye is called by his friend Vinny in Manila, who is trying to leave the country without being killed. Raye heads over to escort him to safety but is overpowered & drugged. Coming to, he discovers that he & several other champion fighters have been chained together & taken to an island where they are expected to fight in professional gambler Su's gladiatorial contest. Raye manages to escape, but sneaking into the mansion in order to free his friends finds that Vinny has been assisting Su in developing a super steroid that is undetectable & gives its user super strength & immunity to pain. Raye must help his fellow fighters in taking on the small army of thugs & drugged-up killers in order to leave the island alive.
After the original Bloodfist made back its money & then some in its limited theatrical release, producer Roger Corman decided to greenlight this, the first of eight sequels. Don "The Dragon" Wilson returns as the hero (although this is the only sequel where he plays the same character twice) & a couple of his co-stars in the original Bloodfist return as well.
The film is an improvement over the original, but not by much. Indeed, Bloodfist II has better fights & more action than the original. Here, the script has been developed to make a story that despite being nothing more than a thread to connect all the fights together still has considerably better drawn characters than the original ever did.
The fights in this film are considerably better than those in the original. Here, the martial arts champions starring in the film must take on an army of drugged-up killers & an almost unlimited number of stick-wielding thugs in a climax that is so full of wall-to-wall martial arts action that you'll be almost overwhelmed by the sight of it all.
While saying that, Bloodfist II is still not a particularly decent film. It is better than the original, but remains decidedly average. If you like the sight of muscular men beating the crap out of each other, then this will be a good choice.
The acting is better than the first film, but still has its fair share of bad actors. Among the ones improving their thespian skills is hero Don "The Dragon" Wilson. He has improved considerably since the original but still has a long way to go. Richard Hill makes one of his early appearances as the Army Ranger combat instructor & Joe Mari Avellana returns as the sinister gambler & steroid maker Su (making him the only actor to be beaten by the same nemesis (Wilson) in two films).
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