Sharing A Jean-Claude Van Damme Cinematic Retrospective
A couple of years ago, while surfing on the webernet, I stumbled on this article online from a web version of "The Wave Magazine" (what seems to be a Bay Area (San Francisco, I assume) entertainment magazine). Now, that article was probably the most hilarious thing I read that month, so much so that I saved it on my hard drive. Now that it's long gone from their servers, I think it's my turn to harness the power of the internet and share this piece of genius with all of you.
Ladies and gentlemen, brace yourselves for:
Maximum Double Universal Timekick Warrant: A Jean-Claude Van Damme Cinematic Retrospective
If there’s one thing we can expect from the Academy Awards, it’s that the Best Picture will go to the movie you and everyone you know fell asleep during, and Best Actor will go to the person who pretended to be a retarded person. In addition to that, it’s a pretty safe bet that this will be the year the Academy finally honors Jean-Claude Van Damme (henceforth occasionally referred to as “JCVD”) with a Lifetime Achievement Award. In fact, we’re so confident that this is going to happen, we’ve put this together to act as a companion to your viewing of the Oscars - a high-flying Jean-Claude Van Damme filmography.
As you already know, there are certain things one can expect from a Jean-Claude Van Damme film: several to many shots of him doing the splits, a muddy fight during a rainstorm, a sassy female reporter, and a clever excuse for Jean-Claude to expose his rear end. These factors will be put into a complicated computer program and multiplied by the number of times Jean-Claude hits someone in slow motion or in the groin to come up with a rating on the Van Dammeter of 1 through 10. This will quickly give readers an idea of the amount of, for lack of an existing word, “Van Dammajesty” that the movie contains.
Also, in order to save us all some time, the plot of each film will be summarized using this simple numerical code:
Plot #1: Revenge over a lost loved one drives Jean-Claude Van Damme into karate-filled circumstances.
Plot #2: On the run from the law, military or mafia, Van Damme flees to karate-filled circumstances.
Plot #3: Jean-Claude Van Damme is unwillingly involved in karate-filled circumstances by a second Jean-Claude Van Damme.
Plot #4: This movie is just a rehashing of a different movie, only now it stars Jean-Claude Van Damme.
Plot #5: If the film’s plot is described by the number five, this simply indicates that it is profoundly insane.
No Retreat, No Surrender, 1985
Plot #4
This is a retelling of the classic 1984 film The Karate Kid,
only this version has way more breakdancing. Also, instead of Pat
Morita, the teen hero is trained by the badly impersonated ghost of
Bruce Lee. This was only Jean-Claude’s second credited role, so he’s
just some evil Russian kickboxer that shows up at the very beginning
and end of the movie. The villain who receives the most screen time is
the protagonist’s fat neighbor, whose hobbies include cheeseburgers and
rubbing liquefied parts of cheeseburgers onto his cheeks.
Van Dammeter: 2
Although nearly all of it is spent doing spin
kicks and the splits, Jean-Claude is only in this movie for a total of
five minutes. Still, this masterpiece is as if all the best eighties
movies got together and drank until they puked all over themselves,
creating what can only be described as a disaster of rad.
Bloodsport, 1988
Plot #2Based on the very, very made up real-life story of Frank
Dux, this is about an American soldier who goes AWOL to enter a secret
underground martial arts tournament. Since it’s on cable TV every 40
seconds, you already know that when there isn’t an amazing fight scene
between two exotic martial arts styles, someone is saying something
hilariously stupid. For example, after JCVD magically explodes the
center brick of a stack of bricks by slapping the top of it, an Iraqi
with a spit curl down his forehead in a Cosby sweater approaches him to
announce, “It is American sh*thead who makes tricks with bricks.”
Jean-Claude doesn’t have a response because a sentence like that is the
conversational equivalent of three hundred Bigfoots armed with
flamethrowers - no matter what you have on your side, the war is
already over and your side lost.
Van Dammeter: 10
This is the definitive JCVD film. It not
only features constant gratuitous shots of him doing the splits; it
marks the point in history where the Sassy Female Reporter character
was created. As you’ll find out, this is the staple romantic interest
for Jean-Claude in more than half his movies. You’ll know her when you
see the woman who’s helplessly clueless in all situations but very
assertive about how she’s going to “get her story,” while along the way
sitting on a bed in front of JCVD while he exposes his buttocks to the
camera.
Black Eagle, 1988
Plot #?
The world may never know what Black Eagle is
about. Even during the rare scenes in which the filmmakers thought to
put a microphone near the speaking actors, their incredibly thick
accents make them impossible to understand. It’s like the film was cast
with the faculty of Charlie Brown’s school. I heard somebody slur out
something about lasers, and I think Jean-Claude is a villain fighting
against Sho Kosugi and a sassy female CIA agent, but honestly, these
conclusions should be considered wild guesses at best.
Van Dammeter: 3
Although most of the dialogue is a person
shouting “Wango churwango!” to someone mumbling softly, this is still
more of a dialogue-driven spy thriller than an action movie. As such,
Jean-Claude doesn’t get very many opportunities to fight. He does
manage to find the opportunity to do the splits and keep his shirt
perpetually off, though.
Cyborg, 1989
Plot #1Fun Fact: According to The Internet Movie Database,
“[Jean-Claude’s] fight scenes are so intense that he won’t film them in
the U.S. for fear of being sued.” That means that either Jean-Claude is
spending his evenings spreading awesome rumors about himself online, or
there’s a Society Against the Intensity of American Fight Scenes that
secretly runs our action film industry.
Van Dammeter: 8
While this post-apocalyptic vision of half
woman/half robots contains the already classic Van Dammazing trademarks
the splits and his naked ass, it also sets the standard for the future
of JCVD fight choreography: dropping his hands to the side and letting
his opponent assault his face unchecked until he decides to
dramatically defeat him or her with his second wind and now-mangled
face.
Kickboxer, 1989
Plot #1
In order to revenge his paralyzed brother AND rescue his master’s
niece, JCVD must take on the evil kickboxer Tong Po in the “ancient
manner.” For those unfamiliar with the “ancient manner,” it’s gluing
broken glass to your hand. In order to get him ready for such a task,
Jean-Claude’s master gets him drunk and tells him to dance, knowing
that his adorable pelvic thrusting will infuriate the local kickboxing
bullies into attacking him.
Van Dammeter: 9
Any scene that isn’t Jean-Claude doing the
splits in a musical training montage is him doing the splits in order
to beat the hell out of somebody’s lower and upper groin.
Lionheart, 1990
Plot #2Normally, when villains need to boost the ratings of
their secret underground martial arts tournaments, they need to recruit
crime-fighting karate heroes. And since heroes are generally unwilling
to beat men to death for money, villains are forced to kidnap their
children or wives and force them to fight. That’s why villains love
JCVD so much - he’s the kind of hero that will enter their secret
martial arts tournaments purely for the love of quickly doing the
splits and punching someone in the genitals.
Van Dammeter: 8
Lionheart is as if the filmmakers got
together with JCVD’s inner thigh tendons and specifically designed a
movie to showcase the flexibility of them.
Death Warrant, 1990
Plot #1Jean-Claude is a loose-cannon Canadian cop undercover in
an L.A. prison. He’s trying to get to the bottom of why so many inmates
are being killed and since his brilliant detective work is just asking
whoever he sees who killed everybody, the audience solves the mystery
about 40 minutes faster than anyone in the movie.
Van Dammeter: 4
After his detective work, which climaxes with him threatening to force
an inmate to drink pee, the entire last third of this movie is
Jean-Claude in a flesh-tearing fight against the villain. JCVD shoves
him onto a band saw, kicks him into a furnace and impales his brain on
an exposed bolt, setting a trend of horrifying cruelty that he takes
with him into several other movies.
Double Impact, 1991
Plot #3This was the first movie written and produced by JCVD,
and now that he had some creative control, Jean-Claude Van Damme showed
the world what his films were missing: “Another ME!” And to a lesser
extent, a haunting romantic soundtrack. Unfortunately, the film’s
titular song, “Gonna feel the impact... OF MY SOUL! OF MY SOUL!” failed
to sweep the nation’s radios.
Van Dammeter: 7
With a second Jean-Claude costarring with
himself, it almost gets to the point where there’s TOO MUCH spin
kicking.
After a scene where Jean-Claude is doing the splits in turquoise tights
and training a group of young men in pink karate suits, the second
Jean-Claude calls him a “faggot.” Normally, this type of homophobic
slur would cause a scandal in the gay and lesbian karate community, but
since he technically said it to himself, everything was cool.
Universal Soldier, 1992
Plot #5Vietnam vets are resurrected from the dead to act as
super soldiers, who of course go crazy and make necklaces out of
harvested human parts. Except Jean-Claude, who plays the friendly kind
of ambiguously foreign zombie cyborg.
Van Dammeter: 9
Universal Soldier receives a near perfect Van
Dammeter score because of its massive clash of JCVD clichés where a
sassy female reporter shows up during the splits-filled muddy fight
scene in the rain. During the fight she’s hit by an exploding grenade,
but through what must have been the filmmakers’ lack of knowledge of
what a grenade is, she gets right up a few minutes later.
Nowhere to Run, 1993
Plot #2The children in JCVD movies are written so realistically.
For example, here Jean-Claude is discovered hiding in a tent by a young
Kieran Culkin. JCVD pulls a gun on him, and here he is with a pistol
trained on the kid’s face while holding a dirty magazine in the other
hand, and Kieran, instead of running screaming, calmly asks him if he’s
from outer space. The very next scene is Jean-Claude skinny dipping in
front of the kid. Then, a few minutes later when the sheriff and the
kid’s mom burst in on him in the shower, it hit me that every single
character in the movie, including the little boy, has seen him naked.
By the way, the screenplay was by the writer of Flashdance and Showgirls.
Van Dammeter: 1
Like all martial artists turned martial artists-in-a-movie, Jean-Claude
suddenly decided he was a font of creative expression and it was time
to make a movie that focuses more on his ability to portray romantic
emotions.
Hard Target, 1993
Plot #1This was legendary Hong Kong director John Woo’s first
American movie, and if you can convince yourself that the stupid parts
are trying to be ironic, it’s probably the best movie in the world.
Van Dammeter: 2
This is more of a John Woo movie than it is a
Jean-Claude Van Damme movie which, depending on whether you prefer slow
motion gunfights through fluttering doves to a man’s buttocks, can be a
good or bad thing.
Timecop, 1994
Plot #5In order to honor this, the second film with multiple
Jean-Claudes, I’ve decided to use this portion of a review from
www.capalert.com, which rates movies on how well they apply the
teachings of Jesus Christ: “Language was a BIG problem in Timecop. The
language was exceptionally foul and vulgar and frequent (increasing in
frequency near the end of the movie). Thus, the Impunity/Hate (I)
score(1) dropped to nada.” And although it received a very poor
Impunity/Hate score, its high rating in the Drugs/Alcohol (D) indicates
that Jesus is very happy with that area of the film.
Van Dammeter: 3
He does the splits a couple of times, but I
cut a few points off the Van Dammeter because both times the splits
seemed like a very logical and practical thing to do. And throwing your
legs out at impossible angles should only be reserved for completely
unwarranted occasions.
Street Fighter: The Movie, 1994
Plot #1
This is probably the worst video game made into a movie, and if you’re
familiar with that genre you know how mean a thing that is to say.
Van Dammeter:4
It shouldn’t have been hard to make a movie
out of 16 super-powered karate fighters. As long as you don’t translate
them into lab technicians, you’ll be fine. However, this is exactly
what happened. One street fighter also became a cameraman, and another
was translated into an exciting computer systems administrator. And
Jean-Claude must have had some input because, yes, one of them became a
sassy female reporter.
Sudden Death, 1995
Plot #4In this film, JCVD fights a woman dressed in a giant
penguin costume. Now, if Jackie Chan did this, it would be a whimsical
slapstick fight, and he’d probably be holding a priceless vase filled
with puppies. Jean-Claude, on the other hand, dips her hand into a deep
fryer, saws off chunks of the penguin head by ramming her into a
ceiling fan... (description of beating continues after Van Dammeter
rating)
Van Dammeter: 3
... fills her eyeballs with hot peppers, and
jams her into a conveyer-fed steam cleaner where she’s strangled to
death by her own penguin head while at the same time being boiled
alive. Jean-Claude HATES penguins.
The Quest, 1996
Plot #2
This film was written by Jean-Claude and Frank Dux, the man whose made-up stories were used as the basis for Bloodsport.
Later, Frank Dux sued JCVD for not giving him enough money for coming
up with the brilliant idea of having a movie about an underground
martial arts tournament. Unfortunately, all the papers proving that
Jean-Claude owed him a zillion dollars were destroyed in a freak fire
in Dux’s home that miraculously did not damage anything else. I don’t
know, it’s starting to look like this guy who wrote a book about his
super spy adventures through ninja-launching Hong Kong alleys might be
full of sh*t.
Van Dammeter: 9
Jean-Claude writes what he knows. And since
he’s seen Bloodsport, he rearranged that movie a little bit and changed
the title. It’s the same story right down to the sassy female reporter.
Maximum Risk, 1996
Plot #3Jean-Claude Van Telligence: This marks the third time a
movie contained more than one Jean-Claude, putting him one multiple-him
film ahead of Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Van Dammeter: 2
Jean-Claude Van Telligence: This also marks
the second time a legendary Hong Kong director (Ringo Lam) made his
American directorial debut with a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie that no
one liked.
Double Team, 1997
Plot #5Super agents who have faked their deaths are kept
prisoner on an island used to fight international crime. To ground this
outrageous plot in reality, Dennis Rodman plays a karate master arms
dealer who likes to make comedic references to basketball. It’s kind of
like a mix between the TV series The Prisoner and pictures Dennis
Rodman draws of himself fighting spaceships on his Trapper Keeper.
Van Dammeter: 3
Jean-Claude Vantastic Fact: This marks the third time a legendary Hong
Kong director (Tsui Hark) made his American directorial debut with a
Jean-Claude Van Damme movie that no one liked.
Knock Off, 1998
Plot #5Jean-Claude and his wacky sidekick Rob Schneider try to
foil an evil plan to distribute exploding jeans. And if you were
wondering what it would take to start getting Jean-Claude’s films to go
straight to video, now you know. This was his last film to make it to
the theatres.
Van Dammeter: 6
It’s hard to know how to feel about this
film. Amazing fight choreography and groundbreaking cinematography mix
with what would have been the worst script of all time if someone
hadn’t written Men in Black 2. I have a theory that if you were to mute
your TV, it would be like watching the Citizen Kane of action movies.
Legionnaire, 1998
Plot #2In Lionheart, Jean-Claude flees from the Foreign Legion
to enter a world of crime. Legionnaire’s brilliant twist is, get ready
for this - the opposite happens.
Van Dammeter: 4
I think the desert in this film symbolizes
the desert our lives have become in not seeing his naked rear end for
two movies. Which would make his exposed backside in this one an oasis
of ass.
Universal Soldier: The Return, 1999
Plot #5
Early in the movie, a little girl falls in the hallway and has a
massive brain hemorrhage. And since the military programmed the evil
military computer with medical technology that doesn’t exist yet, the
evil cyborg is the only one who can save her. Which, if you think about
it, is either ironic or retarded.
Van Dammeter: 8
There are no splits or naked asses, but the
sassy female reporter transcends new levels of assertiveness. At one
point she screams, “General, you throw the media around like we were
cattle!” when she finds out she’s not allowed back into the chemical
weapons factory rigged with explosives and filled with invincible
zombie robots with machine guns. But no matter how in favor you are of
sassing heavily-armed men while they’re fighting an army of cyborgs,
you have to admit that seems like a pretty reasonable rule.
Desert Heat, 1999
Plot #4This film teaches us a lot about Native American culture
when after being shot by desert redneck bullies, JCVD is nursed back to
health by Danny Trejo’s savage medicine involving a bottle of whiskey
and a magical coyote. Later, he sings Jean-Claude a song while he gives
him an oily foot massage, but I don’t know enough about Indian culture
to know if this is the normal procedure for treating a man’s bullet
wound.
Van Dammeter: 4
Fun Fact: This is a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s classic samurai film, Yojimbo. Second Fun Fact: it was already remade by Clint Eastwood with Fistful of Dollars in 1964 and then again by Bruce Willis with Last Man Standing
in 1996. Jean-Claude’s is magnificently inferior in every way to the
original, the remake and the other remake, but it did manage to fill
one noticeable hole in the plot - why doesn’t this story have
Jean-Claude Van Damme wearing nothing but cowboy boots?
Replicant, 2001
Plot #3Although in the other three films with multiple hims
where Jean-Claude had to portray two very different ranges of emotions
and karate competency, this one is the furthest stretch. In Replicant,
he plays a sadistic mass murderer and his own lovable, misunderstood
clone. Why clone a mass murderer? Well, you’ll be sorry you asked. The
police had a theory that the clone might be born with some kind of
mystical psychic connection to the original that could lead them to
him. And you’re right, that’s child-eatingly crazy, but not as crazy as
the fact that it kind of worked.
Van Dammeter: 3
There’s something that just doesn’t seem
right about two Jean-Claude’s fighting each other when neither of them
are wearing a spandex wrestling tunic.
In the beginning…
Jean-Claude’s first film role was an uncredited part as a unitard-wearing breakdancing enthusiast in a crowd scene in Breakin’. His first credited role came in Monaco Forever, a film by the acclaimed director of Blackenstein and Wham Bam Thank You Spaceman. The name of the character he played - “Gay Karate Man.”
After Replicant, Jean-Claude made The Order and Derailed, but judging by how not a single copy of it is currently rented out of any video store in the world, I’m not going to review them since everyone must have already seen them.
- Seanbaby
Ladies and gentlemen, brace yourselves for:
Maximum Double Universal Timekick Warrant: A Jean-Claude Van Damme Cinematic Retrospective
If there’s one thing we can expect from the Academy Awards, it’s that the Best Picture will go to the movie you and everyone you know fell asleep during, and Best Actor will go to the person who pretended to be a retarded person. In addition to that, it’s a pretty safe bet that this will be the year the Academy finally honors Jean-Claude Van Damme (henceforth occasionally referred to as “JCVD”) with a Lifetime Achievement Award. In fact, we’re so confident that this is going to happen, we’ve put this together to act as a companion to your viewing of the Oscars - a high-flying Jean-Claude Van Damme filmography.
As you already know, there are certain things one can expect from a Jean-Claude Van Damme film: several to many shots of him doing the splits, a muddy fight during a rainstorm, a sassy female reporter, and a clever excuse for Jean-Claude to expose his rear end. These factors will be put into a complicated computer program and multiplied by the number of times Jean-Claude hits someone in slow motion or in the groin to come up with a rating on the Van Dammeter of 1 through 10. This will quickly give readers an idea of the amount of, for lack of an existing word, “Van Dammajesty” that the movie contains.
Also, in order to save us all some time, the plot of each film will be summarized using this simple numerical code:
Plot #1: Revenge over a lost loved one drives Jean-Claude Van Damme into karate-filled circumstances.
Plot #2: On the run from the law, military or mafia, Van Damme flees to karate-filled circumstances.
Plot #3: Jean-Claude Van Damme is unwillingly involved in karate-filled circumstances by a second Jean-Claude Van Damme.
Plot #4: This movie is just a rehashing of a different movie, only now it stars Jean-Claude Van Damme.
Plot #5: If the film’s plot is described by the number five, this simply indicates that it is profoundly insane.
No Retreat, No Surrender, 1985
Plot #4
This is a retelling of the classic 1984 film The Karate Kid,
only this version has way more breakdancing. Also, instead of Pat
Morita, the teen hero is trained by the badly impersonated ghost of
Bruce Lee. This was only Jean-Claude’s second credited role, so he’s
just some evil Russian kickboxer that shows up at the very beginning
and end of the movie. The villain who receives the most screen time is
the protagonist’s fat neighbor, whose hobbies include cheeseburgers and
rubbing liquefied parts of cheeseburgers onto his cheeks.
Van Dammeter: 2
Although nearly all of it is spent doing spin
kicks and the splits, Jean-Claude is only in this movie for a total of
five minutes. Still, this masterpiece is as if all the best eighties
movies got together and drank until they puked all over themselves,
creating what can only be described as a disaster of rad.
Bloodsport, 1988
Plot #2Based on the very, very made up real-life story of Frank
Dux, this is about an American soldier who goes AWOL to enter a secret
underground martial arts tournament. Since it’s on cable TV every 40
seconds, you already know that when there isn’t an amazing fight scene
between two exotic martial arts styles, someone is saying something
hilariously stupid. For example, after JCVD magically explodes the
center brick of a stack of bricks by slapping the top of it, an Iraqi
with a spit curl down his forehead in a Cosby sweater approaches him to
announce, “It is American sh*thead who makes tricks with bricks.”
Jean-Claude doesn’t have a response because a sentence like that is the
conversational equivalent of three hundred Bigfoots armed with
flamethrowers - no matter what you have on your side, the war is
already over and your side lost.
Van Dammeter: 10
This is the definitive JCVD film. It not
only features constant gratuitous shots of him doing the splits; it
marks the point in history where the Sassy Female Reporter character
was created. As you’ll find out, this is the staple romantic interest
for Jean-Claude in more than half his movies. You’ll know her when you
see the woman who’s helplessly clueless in all situations but very
assertive about how she’s going to “get her story,” while along the way
sitting on a bed in front of JCVD while he exposes his buttocks to the
camera.
Black Eagle, 1988
Plot #?
The world may never know what Black Eagle is
about. Even during the rare scenes in which the filmmakers thought to
put a microphone near the speaking actors, their incredibly thick
accents make them impossible to understand. It’s like the film was cast
with the faculty of Charlie Brown’s school. I heard somebody slur out
something about lasers, and I think Jean-Claude is a villain fighting
against Sho Kosugi and a sassy female CIA agent, but honestly, these
conclusions should be considered wild guesses at best.
Van Dammeter: 3
Although most of the dialogue is a person
shouting “Wango churwango!” to someone mumbling softly, this is still
more of a dialogue-driven spy thriller than an action movie. As such,
Jean-Claude doesn’t get very many opportunities to fight. He does
manage to find the opportunity to do the splits and keep his shirt
perpetually off, though.
Cyborg, 1989
Plot #1Fun Fact: According to The Internet Movie Database,
“[Jean-Claude’s] fight scenes are so intense that he won’t film them in
the U.S. for fear of being sued.” That means that either Jean-Claude is
spending his evenings spreading awesome rumors about himself online, or
there’s a Society Against the Intensity of American Fight Scenes that
secretly runs our action film industry.
Van Dammeter: 8
While this post-apocalyptic vision of half
woman/half robots contains the already classic Van Dammazing trademarks
the splits and his naked ass, it also sets the standard for the future
of JCVD fight choreography: dropping his hands to the side and letting
his opponent assault his face unchecked until he decides to
dramatically defeat him or her with his second wind and now-mangled
face.
Kickboxer, 1989
Plot #1
In order to revenge his paralyzed brother AND rescue his master’s
niece, JCVD must take on the evil kickboxer Tong Po in the “ancient
manner.” For those unfamiliar with the “ancient manner,” it’s gluing
broken glass to your hand. In order to get him ready for such a task,
Jean-Claude’s master gets him drunk and tells him to dance, knowing
that his adorable pelvic thrusting will infuriate the local kickboxing
bullies into attacking him.
Van Dammeter: 9
Any scene that isn’t Jean-Claude doing the
splits in a musical training montage is him doing the splits in order
to beat the hell out of somebody’s lower and upper groin.
Lionheart, 1990
Plot #2Normally, when villains need to boost the ratings of
their secret underground martial arts tournaments, they need to recruit
crime-fighting karate heroes. And since heroes are generally unwilling
to beat men to death for money, villains are forced to kidnap their
children or wives and force them to fight. That’s why villains love
JCVD so much - he’s the kind of hero that will enter their secret
martial arts tournaments purely for the love of quickly doing the
splits and punching someone in the genitals.
Van Dammeter: 8
Lionheart is as if the filmmakers got
together with JCVD’s inner thigh tendons and specifically designed a
movie to showcase the flexibility of them.
Death Warrant, 1990
Plot #1Jean-Claude is a loose-cannon Canadian cop undercover in
an L.A. prison. He’s trying to get to the bottom of why so many inmates
are being killed and since his brilliant detective work is just asking
whoever he sees who killed everybody, the audience solves the mystery
about 40 minutes faster than anyone in the movie.
Van Dammeter: 4
After his detective work, which climaxes with him threatening to force
an inmate to drink pee, the entire last third of this movie is
Jean-Claude in a flesh-tearing fight against the villain. JCVD shoves
him onto a band saw, kicks him into a furnace and impales his brain on
an exposed bolt, setting a trend of horrifying cruelty that he takes
with him into several other movies.
Double Impact, 1991
Plot #3This was the first movie written and produced by JCVD,
and now that he had some creative control, Jean-Claude Van Damme showed
the world what his films were missing: “Another ME!” And to a lesser
extent, a haunting romantic soundtrack. Unfortunately, the film’s
titular song, “Gonna feel the impact... OF MY SOUL! OF MY SOUL!” failed
to sweep the nation’s radios.
Van Dammeter: 7
With a second Jean-Claude costarring with
himself, it almost gets to the point where there’s TOO MUCH spin
kicking.
After a scene where Jean-Claude is doing the splits in turquoise tights
and training a group of young men in pink karate suits, the second
Jean-Claude calls him a “faggot.” Normally, this type of homophobic
slur would cause a scandal in the gay and lesbian karate community, but
since he technically said it to himself, everything was cool.
Universal Soldier, 1992
Plot #5Vietnam vets are resurrected from the dead to act as
super soldiers, who of course go crazy and make necklaces out of
harvested human parts. Except Jean-Claude, who plays the friendly kind
of ambiguously foreign zombie cyborg.
Van Dammeter: 9
Universal Soldier receives a near perfect Van
Dammeter score because of its massive clash of JCVD clichés where a
sassy female reporter shows up during the splits-filled muddy fight
scene in the rain. During the fight she’s hit by an exploding grenade,
but through what must have been the filmmakers’ lack of knowledge of
what a grenade is, she gets right up a few minutes later.
Nowhere to Run, 1993
Plot #2The children in JCVD movies are written so realistically.
For example, here Jean-Claude is discovered hiding in a tent by a young
Kieran Culkin. JCVD pulls a gun on him, and here he is with a pistol
trained on the kid’s face while holding a dirty magazine in the other
hand, and Kieran, instead of running screaming, calmly asks him if he’s
from outer space. The very next scene is Jean-Claude skinny dipping in
front of the kid. Then, a few minutes later when the sheriff and the
kid’s mom burst in on him in the shower, it hit me that every single
character in the movie, including the little boy, has seen him naked.
By the way, the screenplay was by the writer of Flashdance and Showgirls.
Van Dammeter: 1
Like all martial artists turned martial artists-in-a-movie, Jean-Claude
suddenly decided he was a font of creative expression and it was time
to make a movie that focuses more on his ability to portray romantic
emotions.
Hard Target, 1993
Plot #1This was legendary Hong Kong director John Woo’s first
American movie, and if you can convince yourself that the stupid parts
are trying to be ironic, it’s probably the best movie in the world.
Van Dammeter: 2
This is more of a John Woo movie than it is a
Jean-Claude Van Damme movie which, depending on whether you prefer slow
motion gunfights through fluttering doves to a man’s buttocks, can be a
good or bad thing.
Timecop, 1994
Plot #5In order to honor this, the second film with multiple
Jean-Claudes, I’ve decided to use this portion of a review from
www.capalert.com, which rates movies on how well they apply the
teachings of Jesus Christ: “Language was a BIG problem in Timecop. The
language was exceptionally foul and vulgar and frequent (increasing in
frequency near the end of the movie). Thus, the Impunity/Hate (I)
score(1) dropped to nada.” And although it received a very poor
Impunity/Hate score, its high rating in the Drugs/Alcohol (D) indicates
that Jesus is very happy with that area of the film.
Van Dammeter: 3
He does the splits a couple of times, but I
cut a few points off the Van Dammeter because both times the splits
seemed like a very logical and practical thing to do. And throwing your
legs out at impossible angles should only be reserved for completely
unwarranted occasions.
Street Fighter: The Movie, 1994
Plot #1
This is probably the worst video game made into a movie, and if you’re
familiar with that genre you know how mean a thing that is to say.
Van Dammeter:4
It shouldn’t have been hard to make a movie
out of 16 super-powered karate fighters. As long as you don’t translate
them into lab technicians, you’ll be fine. However, this is exactly
what happened. One street fighter also became a cameraman, and another
was translated into an exciting computer systems administrator. And
Jean-Claude must have had some input because, yes, one of them became a
sassy female reporter.
Sudden Death, 1995
Plot #4In this film, JCVD fights a woman dressed in a giant
penguin costume. Now, if Jackie Chan did this, it would be a whimsical
slapstick fight, and he’d probably be holding a priceless vase filled
with puppies. Jean-Claude, on the other hand, dips her hand into a deep
fryer, saws off chunks of the penguin head by ramming her into a
ceiling fan... (description of beating continues after Van Dammeter
rating)
Van Dammeter: 3
... fills her eyeballs with hot peppers, and
jams her into a conveyer-fed steam cleaner where she’s strangled to
death by her own penguin head while at the same time being boiled
alive. Jean-Claude HATES penguins.
The Quest, 1996
Plot #2
This film was written by Jean-Claude and Frank Dux, the man whose made-up stories were used as the basis for Bloodsport.
Later, Frank Dux sued JCVD for not giving him enough money for coming
up with the brilliant idea of having a movie about an underground
martial arts tournament. Unfortunately, all the papers proving that
Jean-Claude owed him a zillion dollars were destroyed in a freak fire
in Dux’s home that miraculously did not damage anything else. I don’t
know, it’s starting to look like this guy who wrote a book about his
super spy adventures through ninja-launching Hong Kong alleys might be
full of sh*t.
Van Dammeter: 9
Jean-Claude writes what he knows. And since
he’s seen Bloodsport, he rearranged that movie a little bit and changed
the title. It’s the same story right down to the sassy female reporter.
Maximum Risk, 1996
Plot #3Jean-Claude Van Telligence: This marks the third time a
movie contained more than one Jean-Claude, putting him one multiple-him
film ahead of Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Van Dammeter: 2
Jean-Claude Van Telligence: This also marks
the second time a legendary Hong Kong director (Ringo Lam) made his
American directorial debut with a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie that no
one liked.
Double Team, 1997
Plot #5Super agents who have faked their deaths are kept
prisoner on an island used to fight international crime. To ground this
outrageous plot in reality, Dennis Rodman plays a karate master arms
dealer who likes to make comedic references to basketball. It’s kind of
like a mix between the TV series The Prisoner and pictures Dennis
Rodman draws of himself fighting spaceships on his Trapper Keeper.
Van Dammeter: 3
Jean-Claude Vantastic Fact: This marks the third time a legendary Hong
Kong director (Tsui Hark) made his American directorial debut with a
Jean-Claude Van Damme movie that no one liked.
Knock Off, 1998
Plot #5Jean-Claude and his wacky sidekick Rob Schneider try to
foil an evil plan to distribute exploding jeans. And if you were
wondering what it would take to start getting Jean-Claude’s films to go
straight to video, now you know. This was his last film to make it to
the theatres.
Van Dammeter: 6
It’s hard to know how to feel about this
film. Amazing fight choreography and groundbreaking cinematography mix
with what would have been the worst script of all time if someone
hadn’t written Men in Black 2. I have a theory that if you were to mute
your TV, it would be like watching the Citizen Kane of action movies.
Legionnaire, 1998
Plot #2In Lionheart, Jean-Claude flees from the Foreign Legion
to enter a world of crime. Legionnaire’s brilliant twist is, get ready
for this - the opposite happens.
Van Dammeter: 4
I think the desert in this film symbolizes
the desert our lives have become in not seeing his naked rear end for
two movies. Which would make his exposed backside in this one an oasis
of ass.
Universal Soldier: The Return, 1999
Plot #5
Early in the movie, a little girl falls in the hallway and has a
massive brain hemorrhage. And since the military programmed the evil
military computer with medical technology that doesn’t exist yet, the
evil cyborg is the only one who can save her. Which, if you think about
it, is either ironic or retarded.
Van Dammeter: 8
There are no splits or naked asses, but the
sassy female reporter transcends new levels of assertiveness. At one
point she screams, “General, you throw the media around like we were
cattle!” when she finds out she’s not allowed back into the chemical
weapons factory rigged with explosives and filled with invincible
zombie robots with machine guns. But no matter how in favor you are of
sassing heavily-armed men while they’re fighting an army of cyborgs,
you have to admit that seems like a pretty reasonable rule.
Desert Heat, 1999
Plot #4This film teaches us a lot about Native American culture
when after being shot by desert redneck bullies, JCVD is nursed back to
health by Danny Trejo’s savage medicine involving a bottle of whiskey
and a magical coyote. Later, he sings Jean-Claude a song while he gives
him an oily foot massage, but I don’t know enough about Indian culture
to know if this is the normal procedure for treating a man’s bullet
wound.
Van Dammeter: 4
Fun Fact: This is a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s classic samurai film, Yojimbo. Second Fun Fact: it was already remade by Clint Eastwood with Fistful of Dollars in 1964 and then again by Bruce Willis with Last Man Standing
in 1996. Jean-Claude’s is magnificently inferior in every way to the
original, the remake and the other remake, but it did manage to fill
one noticeable hole in the plot - why doesn’t this story have
Jean-Claude Van Damme wearing nothing but cowboy boots?
Replicant, 2001
Plot #3Although in the other three films with multiple hims
where Jean-Claude had to portray two very different ranges of emotions
and karate competency, this one is the furthest stretch. In Replicant,
he plays a sadistic mass murderer and his own lovable, misunderstood
clone. Why clone a mass murderer? Well, you’ll be sorry you asked. The
police had a theory that the clone might be born with some kind of
mystical psychic connection to the original that could lead them to
him. And you’re right, that’s child-eatingly crazy, but not as crazy as
the fact that it kind of worked.
Van Dammeter: 3
There’s something that just doesn’t seem
right about two Jean-Claude’s fighting each other when neither of them
are wearing a spandex wrestling tunic.
In the beginning…
Jean-Claude’s first film role was an uncredited part as a unitard-wearing breakdancing enthusiast in a crowd scene in Breakin’. His first credited role came in Monaco Forever, a film by the acclaimed director of Blackenstein and Wham Bam Thank You Spaceman. The name of the character he played - “Gay Karate Man.”
After Replicant, Jean-Claude made The Order and Derailed, but judging by how not a single copy of it is currently rented out of any video store in the world, I’m not going to review them since everyone must have already seen them.
- Seanbaby