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Bloodsport is free to watch on Prime Video, but only for 4 more days.

Rentahamster

Rodent Whores
Go and watch the greatest martial arts movie that's probably about a faker but it's still epic 80s magic.





Bloodsport
was and is something of a miracle. I was told at the time that it was made for about $750,000. Internet sources suggest twice that. Even at the high end, I find it hard to believe that any film could be produced for such a slight budget, but given the miniscule pittance I was given to produce the score, I suppose the figure might well be true. Filming was done entirely in Hong Kong at the end of 1986, and certainly, filming outside the U.S. helped keep the budget down. Jean Claude Van Damme was still an unknown trying to get any work he could, so his fee must not have been a budget breaker. The producer was unknown, working on his first feature film. The director had been Peckinpah’s assistant director, not known for his own directing. And the other talent all came through the Cannon low-budget system, again keeping costs in line. So I guess that figure might indeed have been plausible.

We spent about a week, a very intense week, mixing. And then, with the film completed, the energy expended, nothing.
Cannon sat on it. For nearly a year, nothing happened. Apparently Cannon didn’t believe in it. Finally in the final weekend of February, 1988, the film was released in only 5 western states. I suppose it was a token release to satisfy some sort of contractual obligations. But now the miracle started happening. Even in its limited 5-state release, the film charted in the top twenty nationwide. (Well, it was only 19, but hey, it was on the charts.) By its sixth weekend, still in regional release, it had managed to remain in the top 40 and earn over $2,000,000. Not bad for a film made for somewhere around half that amount and released in only five states. So finally Cannon went nationwide, and the film jumped to number 10 the last weekend of April and to number 7 the first weekend of May. The largest number of screens it ever played on was 784. The first weekend of May, Bloodsport was number two in box office receipts in New York City, averaging $4,546 per screen on 88 screens. By June 1, the last weekend I kept clippings for, the film had grossed $10,808,163. Not so shabby for a film Cannon didn’t even seem to want to release. And Jean Claude Van Damme was now a star.
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Tesseract

Banned
'The coin-op machine that Frank Dux and Ray Jackson are going head-to-head with is called is a 1984 arcade fighting game that is developed by Technos Japan and published for Data East under the title Taisen Karate Dou: Bishoujo Seishun Hen (lit. "The Competitive Way of the Empty Hand: Pretty Maiden Edition") '

 

Tesseract

Banned
'Midway's hit videogame, Mortal Kombat (1992), took huge inspiration from the film and even used a parody of Jean-Claude Van Damme for the character Johnny Cage, who has a similar costume, back story and a familiar split punch. According to game creator John Tobias, they wanted to make a "gritty" game based on the film. '



 
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