Films about organised fights to the death

IdleRich

IdleRich

IdleRich
When I was a kid there were a number of different fighting sports such as boxing and wrestling and judo and so on but everyone always wanted to know who would win out of Tyson or Bruce Lee or whatever. Now MMA has been introduced in an attempt to answer that but it still has a few annoying rules about how your'e not allowed to boot people in the bollocks or gouge out their eyes and, basically, the main problem, if it seems like someone is about to die it stops. Cos let's face it, what everyone is after is finding out who is literally the hardest person in the world (apart from Jason Statham obviously), who would be the winner if every single hard person fought no-holds-barred to the death.

Another relatively recent phenomenon is those tramp fight things where people - I think this is right, I've never actually seen it - bribe homeless people to beat the shit out of each other. Presumably they pick homeless people cos they can be bribed with relatively small amounts that lots of people can afford. This is illegal I assume and so it takes place on the internet. And I have also seen a few other kinda street fight type things on the net shared here on dissensus.

But really what everyone wants to see is something illegal and underground and taking place in a secret location so there is no interference from those busybody authorities and so on... but with elite fighters. And as far as i know this hasn't happened yet. But right now this second I am watching a film called Arena with Samuel L Jackson in which people are kidnapped and forced to fight to the death. There is a good guy who refuses cos despite the fact that he is an insane double-hard killing machine they need to put in all these moral qualms so that the viewer identifies with him. The plot is all but identical to a film (The Condemned apparently) with Steve Austin and Vinnie Jones in which a load of vicious criminals selected for being the hardest in their jails (except it turns out that - so you identify with him - Steve Austin was unfairly imprisoned after being abandoned on a US special forces type mission). I think there is also one with the guy out of Bros and going back further you had slightly different films butt still tv shows where the stakes were death - there was The Running Man of course and there was one called Series No Seven The Contenders... in fact further back yet there was the 10th Victim.

But yeah, the modern films Arena, The Condemned and there is one that is actually really quite good called Traders with the fat guy out of Game of Thrones... these seem very much like an idea whose time has come, with MMA and the internet as they the genre simply had to come into existence, the world was crying out for it... I just wonder how long it will be before we get an actual thing like this in real life.
 
W

wild greens

Well-known member
I'm not sure where it has progressed to now- no doubt something weirder- but the homeless people fighting thing was called Bumfights if I remember right. When they first came out we watched two or three and the main star was a crackhead who rapped and i think at one point they tied a rotten tooth to a car with a string and drove off to pull it out?

As for the weird niches of "professional" fights going sour there are all kinds of weird fringe MMA that wouldn't be legal in the UK or even most states in the US. Mostly Eastern Europe, Poland especially - they are fucking mad

A good channel to subscribe to is Caposa's Corner, he watches it all puts together highlights of all the fringe stuff. Some good pros as well as the borderline illegal stuff


This isn't what this thread is about at all is it ha
 
william_kent

william_kent

Well-known member
There's a whole sub-genre of martial arts films known as "tournament" films. I suppose the most famous are Enter The Dragon, Bloodsport, and Kickboxer, which are all Western examples of the genre, but when Hong Kong cinema was good ( before the handover, the CCP have destroyed the industry ) there were quite a few.

One of my favourites is Master of The Flying Guillotine ( aka One Armed Boxer vs The Flying Guillotine )


The Flying Guillotine - Yoga Master vs Tornado Knives Kung Fu

There can be a racist element to these films as it is just not styles being put to the test, but styles from other countries. In the clip above the Yoga master, accompanied by sitar sounds, uses his sneaky "grow his arms to six feet long" trick to try and counter the superior Chinese Kung Fu.
The film completely disregards Western notions of copyright infringement and just lifts tracks from Neu!, Kraftwerk, and Tangerine Dream.

The Flying Guillotine of the title is an interesting weapon - in this clip from the start of the film the villain practices his technique:



Edit: it has a great trailer as well:

 
F

forclosure

Well-known member
@IdleRich i think you'd like the Undisputed movies the first one was directed by Walter Hill of 48 hours, the driver,southern comfort fame its a prison boxing movie thing with Ving Rhames and wesley snipes

The rest of the series moves away from boxing but the interesting thing about the series is the guy who was the villain of the last movie becomes the protagonist of the next one.

I mean the whole thing with homeless people being paid to fight isn't exactly a new thing, the late Kimbo Slice made his name off of that(and losing his rep once he entered UFC) but when i was alot younger there was the Bumfights series which was exactly this pay them to fight each other or do stunts where they harmed themselves, they came under alot of criticism but if you watch interviews with the producer Ryen McPherson it just comes across like he's completly cold and only cares that "everybody wants a piece of bumfights" last i heard about him he got arrested cause he was trying to smuggle body parts back from Thailand.

Another case of one of those guys where when they choose to plumb the depths of misery they either have a shock realisation and abandon these things altogether or they just keep going further in until they're either dead or involved in something grim, McPherson chose the latter
 
F

forclosure

Well-known member
@IdleRich is this gonna be the moment where you start seriously getting into Joe Rogan? it'll at least have @Corpsey somebody to talk to, while you two go on about how we're so detached from violence and how we need to return back to our base primal urges.

All the while you two are blearing out Godsmack and downing bottles of monster energy and headbutting each other

i'd be interested to know your opinion on deathmatch wrestling or bareknuckle boxing , the former is filled with guys getting hit with glass lighttubes, cutting tongues out and hitting each other in cookie sheets at these shows in the middle of bumblefuck nowhere to 35 people in makeshift outdoor arenas (Japan used to get pretty ornate with this stuff back in the 90s)
 
william_kent

william_kent

Well-known member
Bumfights is reprehensible. I saw one where they got a van load of crackheads and drove them to a swimming pool, and then they threw a load of crack rocks into the pool and filmed as they fought over the little stones. Pretty low.

They also featured a segment called "bum hunter" where the guy did a bad Steve Irwin impression as they beat up sleeping homeless guys. The pits.
 
F

forclosure

Well-known member
woops said:
Also made the warriors and throw mama from the train, and worked on alien and aliens, he got around that guy
Click to expand...
i don't remember hearing anything about him being involved with throw mama from the train but yeah he did get around

last movie he directed was this transphobic exploitation action movie thing with Michelle Rodriguez
 
F

forclosure

Well-known member
william_kent said:
Bumfights is reprehensible. I saw one where they got a van load of crackheads and drove them to a swimming pool, and then they threw a load of crack rocks into the pool and filmed as they fought over the little stones. Pretty low.

They also featured a segment called "bum hunter" where the guy did a bad Steve Irwin impression as they beat up sleeping homeless guys. The pits.
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oh yeah its real reprehensible stuff very much of the 2000s like say rotten.com but in a way where you wonder why was this a thing and you can see why nobody ever decided to make their own version of it.

Honestly i feel like the problem with Idle's idea regarding this "dream fight" of two men no rules just going at it is that now more than ever we're aware of the physical and mental ware and tear of what these sports do to the human body(talk about CTE is far more common in American Football discussion now than ever) not to ignore the times where people have infact died in the ring but that was a result of freak accidents.

Not only that but lets not forget the internet hallmark of compilation videos of guys in muay thai or MMA matches having their bones broken or getting headbutted and you as the viewer seeing the human body be inflicted with damage or hearing sounds that you never thought possible and maybe never want to hear again.

There probably is an audience for this kind of ideal no holds barred fight but its very very small and not only the fact of these kind of injuries its there where and how they're going to arrange such an event.
 
woops

woops

is not like other people
WebEschatology said:
i don't remember hearing anything about him being involved with throw mama from the train but yeah he did get around

last movie he directed was this transphobic exploitation action movie thing with Michelle Rodriguez
Click to expand...
my mistake i meant Brewster's Millions
 
IdleRich

IdleRich

IdleRich
Just to be clear, I'm not saying that I like these films at all, just that the rash of them and extreme similarity of plots that some of them share is somewhat noteworthy.
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
its easily the worst film ive ever seen in my life, so in that sense, its a classic.
 
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