Tubi is great, man. I mean, if you are here and reading this, I’m probably preaching to the choir. But if I’m not and you aren’t using Tubi, I have to ask: What are you doing with your life, man? Seriously, where else are you gonna find trash like College Kickboxers? And if you’re asking yourself why you’d wanna find trash like College Kickboxers–friend, you might be in the wrong place.
So anyway, let’s get the boilerplate shit out of the way. College Kickboxers is an early 90s no budget Karate Kid clone “starring” Ken McCleod, Dang Tak Wing, Mark Williams, Matthew Ray Cohen, and Kendra Tucker. I put “starring” in quotes because I’m betting none of you have ever heard of even one of these people. I’d be surprised if any of you have ever seen even one of these people in a movie. Ever.
Ken McCleod has probably been in the most movies of all of them, and only one of those could be considered mainstream. That was the 1994 video game adaptation of Double Dragon, but he was basically an extra in that movie. The movie I know him from is a favorite from that same era that was constantly on Showtime when I was a kid–another Karate Kid rip off called Showdown with Billy Blanks in the Miyagi mentor role. Except Ken McCleod plays the bad guy in this one. Versatile, right?
Karate Kid Clone
But we’re not here to talk about other Karate Kid rip offs. We’re here to talk about College Kickboxers. The plot is simple. It’s Karate Kid with a twist. You ready for the twist? Instead of high school, everything takes place at college. If you need a minute to process that, feel free to pause and walk around for a minute or two to let it sink in. Hell, you can even run the video back a bit and listen to that again if it’s too much to fathom on the first listen.
Anyway, not much else is different except for some of the character motivations. Another pretty original alteration to the formula. Are you ready for it? You should probably sit down.
Bad Guy Bigots
The bad guys don’t like good guy James Caulfield (Ken McCleod) because his friend and roommate Mark (Mark Williams) happens to be a black guy. You see, Craig Tanner (Matthew Ray Cohen) is a racist, and he is the leader of a racist martial arts gang (who are also students at the college because education is important) called the White Tigers. There’s an Asian guy in the gang, though, so I’m not sure how that works. Maybe they just let him in because he’s good at karate and kung fu and stuff. Who knows? None of it really matters, because if you are watching this movie for plot, you are going to be very disappointed.
The motivations for the good guys are a tad different too. Mark teaches at a local martial arts school that is being leveled to make way for condos or something. But you see the school has been a big factor in helping turn some of the underprivileged kids in the neighborhood around, and Mark wants to continue doing that work. But he needs money. Dinero. Greenbacks. We’re talking cold hard cash, people. And Mark’s just a poor college student. But luckily there is a tournament coming to town that pays 25,000 smackeroos to the winner. Mark plans to sign up and win that 25,000 shekels. For the kids, man.
But Mark isn’t the main character, so now we gotta talk about James, the actual main character.
What’s his motivation? That’s a good question.
For the Kids, Bro
Soon after arriving at college, he begins a love/hate relationship with environmental activist Karen, I mean Kimberly (Kendra Tucker). Kimberly is interested at first, but once she realizes the only biology James is interested in is the birds and the bees, she disses him. Scorned, James turns his energies toward learning kung fu from Wing, the Chinese master (Dang Tak Wing) who works as a chef at the Chinese restaurant where James busses tables in the evening.
James is a pretty good martial artist in his own right, but after witnessing Wing beat Tanner’s entire gang one evening behind the restaurant after they jump him, he decides he has to learn Wing’s secrets. Wing reluctantly agrees to teach James but forbids him from entering the tournament, insisting that kung fu isn’t for profit. But when Mark is injured after the White Tigers attack him at the mall, James is faced with a choice between keeping his promise to Wing or being loyal to his friend whose dream it is to own a martial arts school, thus saving all of the underserved local youth from their miserable, tragic lives. Or something.
A Karate Movie with a Conscience
By now you must have realized this isn’t a good movie. The acting isn’t good. The direction isn’t good. The editing isn’t good. Even the story is bad. And that is an accomplishment, because, as I mentioned, this is basically a Karate Kid copy. How can you screw up the story when you have a template to follow? I don’t know the answer to this, but maybe it has something to do with screenwriters Roxanne Reaver and Teresa Woo.
Remember the pain in the ass, naggy environmentalist would-be love interest who scorns James because he’s less interested in saving the earth than he is in getting into her pants? This character is so preachy and unlikeable that I found myself wondering how the story would redeem her character and make the whole romance angle work at the end. And while she does soften, she doesn’t evolve and she certainly doesn’t learn that being an annoying nag is no way to go through life. No, she changes because James stops paying attention to her and starts focusing heavily on his training with Wing and his studies.
The result of all of this of course is that James sees the error of his ways and becomes a kind of enlightened version of himself. The kind that cares about the issues Karen, I mean Kimblery cares about. So instead of a straightforward revenge karate movie where the protagonist works on himself to achieve a very specific goal, we get the age old female fantasy of the man that must be shaped and changed into something different before she can fall in love with him.
If that sounds like a lousy motivation for a karate movie, it is.
That Dang Wing is Good
But College Kickboxers isn’t without its charms. Kimberly disappears for a good chunk of the movie while James is doing man shit, and we get several training and fight sequences that are, honestly, really good. If this movie is a two and a half star movie (and it is), the fight scenes are easily a four. Ken McCleoud, Mark Williams, and Dang Tak Wing are all very good martial artists. And more importantly, they are very good screen martial artists. They know how to make their kicks and punches pop for the camera.
Which I’m sure is due in no small part to the fight choreography by Wing. Some fights are better than others, but there are stunts in this that are very creative and more indicative of Hong Kong style chop saki flicks than western karate movies. Regardless of who is owed more credit for it, the fighting in this movie works, and it’s the main reason to see it.
The other reason to see College Kickboxers is for Dang Tak Wing. I’d never heard of this guy. And don’t get me wrong, his performance is almost as amateur as the others in this movie, but this guy has a natural screen presence that makes you want to know more about this character. I doubt this guy was much older than 30 at the time, but he comes off as so sage and wise that he reads more like a guy in his 50s or 60s. Compared to the atrocious acting in College Kickboxers, Wing is easily the standout player here.
Flawed but Fun(ny)
The last reason you watch a movie like College Kickboxers is for the inadvertent entertainment. Bad guy Craig Tanner chews all of the scenery in this movie. I mean, this performance should be shown in acting classes as one of the absolute worst examples of overacting. The way this guy mugs in every scene he is in is just hilarious. He’s also probably the weakest link in the movie. He’s never shown to be a competent martial artist. He gets his ass kicked every time he fights. And along with Mark, he is also injured and unable to compete in the tournament.
So the inevitable final showdown is just weird. A completely new character we’ve never seen enters the picture as a kind of ringer to fight James for the 25k. And this guy is good. Better than Cohen’s Tanner. Which makes the choice of Tanner as the primo antagonist of the movie even more mind boggling. Why not just cast this guy instead?
Final Thoughts
Despite having a clear roadmap to follow, screenwriters Reaver and Woo take College Kickboxers off the reservation and end up getting it completely lost in order to inject some sort of social commentary about bigotry and environmentalism. The bigotry angle could have worked, if I’m being honest. But you don’t have the tough, mean martial arts gang also be students at the college. You’ve got to make them actually scary and dangerous for it to be believable. And the White Tigers are anything but scary, dangerous, or believable.
And as far as the environmental issue goes, the only way this works out in any satisfying way is for Kimberly to eventually see that she’s the annoying pain in the ass here and that going around knocking people over the head with her views is no way to gain friends or boyfriends. She and James both learn something and soften toward one another. The end.
So, do I recommend College Kickboxers? If you are still reading, then yes, I recommend this movie to you. Because no one in their right mind would stick around this long to read about an obscure 35 year old no budget karate movie with no name actors if they weren’t already inclined to watch it for themselves. So go on. Watch the movie, and then come back and let me know what you think. Or if you’ve already seen it, sound off below.
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