No retreat, no surrender II - Raging Thunder (1989)

[Neville]

Ahhh... The early year of Berlusconi's Tele 5 in Spain. Imagine a teenager sitting in front of TV, learning for the first time how high and how low private TV could get. WWF matches, Bruce Li and Bruce Le HK films, Chuck Norris, Kitano's Castle, and women in underwear in every program but the news reports.

Among all that enjoyable badness, one gem stood out, a semi-sequel to one of those obscure action films of the VHS era in which an American dorky boy learned martial arts thanks to the ghost of Bruce Lee, and then proceeded to teach a lesson to a Russian fighter (Van Damme), back then when the Soviets though they could prevail by winning local kickboxing matches.

Anyway, the kid is now a grown up and he's in Thailand to visit her adorable (and excruciating) oriental belle. Luckily for us, once the kid's got laid the girl is kidnapped and the madness follows. This is no "Apocalypse Now" but director Corey Yuen (yep, that Corey Yuen) stages plenty of bizarre action scenes. A few moments later after the boy obtains the help of a HanSolo-ish 'Nam vet they get into a street fight and a grenade is thrown towards them. What to do? Easy: Put a henchman on top of the grenade, a table on top and the henchman and run!

Want more? There's a fantastic fight involving our heroes (now joined by Cynthia Rothrock, who has a voice almost as excruciating as the oriental girl's) and a bunch of faux Buddhist monks. Pure madness, I'm telling you. And there's a final battle against a bunch of VC (yes, there are still VC, but now for some reason they plague Cambodia) and a Soviet officer (Mathias Hues at his best) who keeps a Lenin poster on his office and has a penchant for crocodiles.

Ahhhh... madness stills feels good in 2006. Thanks God.