I was quite looking forward to Lady Dragon. For one thing it has the remarkable Richard Norton, who has traded blows with Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung on a few memorable occasions, as the bad guy. For another the film seems to be quite popular with other Cynthia Rothrock fans. On top of that the other three Cynthia movies I'd reviewed so far had lulled me into a false sense of security by all being enjoyably cheesy. Little did I know that a scant 90 minutes after popping this DVD in, I'd feel so soiled as to be contemplating a two-day shower. In battery acid.

Somewhere in the most unpleasant part of Indonesia, former CIA agent Kathy Galagher (Rothrock) enters illegal kickboxing matches in order to earn money, to fund her continued hunt for the guy who had her husband murdered on their wedding day. I say hunt, though as soon as the opening fight is over she and her buddy Gibson (Robert Ginty) discuss the fact that it was a guy named Ludwig Hauptman (Richard Norton) as if they've known this all along. It's probably worth mentioning that we can only be thankful that Cyn's hubby made such an early exit; the manner in which he completely fails to react, even when a bunch of blood squibs are exploding on his chest, suggests that he didn't have a lot of acting to bring to the party.

Kathy picks this particular night to go after Ludwig at his nightclub. She shows up dressed as a hooker and sporting the second worst wig in history, and tries to attack Ludwig as bored-looking patrons watch a couple of dumpy local women mud wrestling. She succeeds in taking down a few goons but is ultimately captured and brought before Hauptman. She’s then dumped on a dirt road out in the jungle, but not before Ludwig has first raped her at gunpoint for good measure.

The following day she is found by some dreadful annoying kid and his grandfather (Piet Burnama). The kid is the very definition of a Kenny, which if you're unfamiliar with the term is the name normally applied to annoying yet plucky kids in Godzilla movies. Kenny's grandfather is a mute, meaning that the kid must translate his half-assed pidgin sign language. Grandfather and Kenny nurse Kathy back to health in their nifty bamboo kickboxing gym and pretty soon she's ready to try another attack on Ludwig. This time she decides to infiltrate his company, Imperial Export, and to accomplish this she finds Ludwig's mistress Susan (Bella Esperance) and jumps in front of her car. By this point I was contemplating a similar course of action myself, but as it turned out Kathy's plan is to make Susan feel so guilty that she sets her up with a job. Kathy is put to work in an office with a bumbling nerdy stereotype named Allan (Hengky Tornando), a guy possessed of the sort of face most likely to be seen on the evening news, along with the story "...this man is wanted in connection with the discovery of several dismembered bodies..."

Later that night Kathy breaks into the Universal Exports warehouse and discovers large quantities of white powder stored inside. Before too long a bunch of security thugs attack her and the fight scene goes on for a while. When it looks like Kathy's about to be gunned down a mysterious guy arrives and saves her, and imagine our surprise when it turns out to be Allan. Far from being a nerdy serial killer Allen is actually an undercover cop, who agrees to take a sample of the white powder back to the lab for analysis - clearly policing skills need work since the concept of actually having a look what Hauptman keeps in his warehouse hadn't occurred to him until this moment.

The next day Ludwig arrives at the office, and despite the lack of that hideous wig pretty soon he realises who Kathy is. He invites her to a party at his mansion that weekend, where he demonstrates his martial arts skills by beating up random Bruce Lee look-alikes. He reveals to Kathy that Gibson has been working for him all along, but she manages to kill Gibson and flee the scene in her shiny cocktail dress. Remember earlier when I was talking about the second worst wig in history? Well here's number one; the allegedly blonde pot scourer worn by a burly stuntman in a shiny cocktail dress, who doubles for Cynthia during the subsequent motorcycle chase.

Kathy escapes and returns to the warehouse to discover that Allen has moved in and the cops have seized all of Hauptman's drugs. If only that was the end of the movie, but no; first Susan kidnaps grandfather and Kenny and holds them hostage, to force Kathy into a kickboxing match with Ludwig. Kathy has to endure a beating from him as Susan holds her friends at gunpoint, at least until Allen and the cops arrive. But instead of just arresting Ludwig they merely disarm Susan, so there can be 'fair fight' between the brick-shithouse Hauptman and the much smaller and considerably more injured Kathy. Still, that doesn't stop her taking her revenge for the murder, betrayal and violation by administering a good solid kick in the nuts, and finally this... thing, is over.

The writer, director and producer of Lady Dragon is one David Worth, who had previously been responsible for one of Jean-Claude Van Damme's early hits, Kickboxer. Although I have a certain fondness for some of JC's early movies like Bloodsport and No Retreat, No Surrender, I never liked Kickboxer much. I thought that Claudie was especially wooden, the fight choreography mediocre but most of all the tone of the film was quite unpleasant, with pretty much every character being utterly unsympathetic. Lady Dragon is basically a female version of Kickboxer with Rothrock replacing Van Damme, which in theory is no bad thing. Unfortunately Worth was obviously at a loss as to why the earlier film was such a great success (he's not the only one), evidently deciding that it was the unpleasant characters and the horrible things that happen to them that attracted the fans. Thus he set out to make Lady Dragon exponentially worse in both areas.

Particularly repulsive is Richard Norton as Hauptman, a guy who's idea of a fun night is beating up some local hooker. I'm stunned that the legendarily affable Norton would ever accept such a role. He was also responsible for the action choreography and his mandate was apparently to make the fights as brutal and sadistic as he could. On top of this director Worth repeats every... single... blow... multiple times (usually about three, but as many as eight for a really vicious-looking one) to make sure the audience doesn't miss one split-second of the cruelty. I'm hardly one to recoil from screen violence, but while repeated blows may appeal to fans of the WWE they aren't why I watch martial arts movies. Sadly any signs of grace and fluidity, which both the leading fighters possess in spades, are omitted in this example.

The film might have redeemed itself if some other aspects had been enjoyable, but this never happens. The opening credits claim an 'original screenplay by' David Worth. I guess by original they meant that he only stole the worst aspects of Kickboxer while adding some even more sleazy new ones. Worth tries to use the location to add an exotic flavour to proceedings, but instead only manages to highlight what a Godforsaken, poverty-ridden shithole the place is.

The acting is never the most positive aspect of martial arts videos but this one really takes the cake. The Western leads are a step below their normally average performances, while the local actors suffer from the double whammy of being bad to start with and then being subjected to even worse dubbing. Special mention goes to Piet Burnama as the grandfather character, who manages something I didn’t think was actually possible. He’s somehow able to be unbelievably wooden despite not having any lines, a neat trick if you can pull it off.

Put simply, this movie is bad in pretty much every way it's possible for a film to be. It makes Kickboxer look like a work of Genius, and I can't think of a worse criticism than that. Though if I could, I'd direct it at Lady Dragon.

Dave Thomas, 23^rd July 2003