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JCVD! Jean Claude Van Damme is another focus once again on the podcast, one of our favorites.

Here he is, portraying French Foreign Legion AWOL-er, Lyon.

The flick has one of our favorite action movie themes: the furtive underground world of unsanctioned fisticuffs!

Hardscrabble men gather under bridges, in dismal urban locales (and occasionally in squash courts!) to battle it out, pre-UFC. And all to earn an honest buck. If you define honest as under the table black market highly illegal and amoral activity.

It’s like Fight Club, but with a Don King-esque fixer chick in a little black dress!

Lionheart builds on Van Damme’s uber charisma, and truth be told, there’s not too much of a story arc to this. Still, there’s ass kicking aplenty. And that’s key, right?

On this episode, discussion on who the best actor is among the one-named action superstars your Arnolds, Chuck Norrises, etc, etc. Join us!

And don’t forget to pick up a copy of our action movie book, Mine’s Bigger Than Yours! The 100 Wackiest Action Movies. If you’re a fan of Cannon films, Steven Seagal, bizarre Philippines-lensed chop socky, you’ll love this tome!

 

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There’s only one Chuck Norris. And before Delta Force and Invasion USA (or for that matter, Good Guys Wear Black) there was A Force of One.

Chuck plays Matt Logan here, a sensei who runs a dojo, and is of course, a champion kickboxer.

Logan is hired on as a consultant when members of the San Diego Police Department end up dead, their windpipes cracked by practitioners of a certain deadly art. Three guesses as to which one.

The lieutenant and coroner suspect that the cop-killer (or killers) are proficient in the deadliest of the deadly martial arts, in this case, karate, which was exploding in popularity thanks to the likes of Enter the Dragon and the Chuck Norris co-starrer, Way of the Dragon. And it’s up to Chuck as Logan to find out which end is up, and how detectives keep ending up in San Diego Bay as fish food.

This one features an inane criminal drug syndicate subplot, and also b movie genre stalwarts like Clu Gulager (The Return of the Living Dead) and Jennifer O’Neill (Lucio Fulci’s The Psychic). And we can’t forget Super Fly himself, Ron O’Neal (no relation to Shaq…that we know of) portraying a sleazy on-the-take cop.

Join us on this special edition of the Really Awful Movies Podcast, as we once again jump into the turgid waters of the action movie ocean.

And for those who are interested in some of the nuttier offerings in the genre, be sure and check out Mine’s Bigger Than Yours! The 100 Wackiest Action Movies, which features a foreword by Ozploitation kingpin Brian Trenchard-Smith.

The book spans 9 chapters, variously covering categories like Covert Ops, Kick Ass Women, Dystopian Action and much more, but also spanning the globe, featuring many a Filipino-lensed Rambo knock-off.

If we do say so ourselves, it makes a mighty fine Christmas gift.