I grew up watching all Van Damme's movies and have been a big fan of his for years. One day, somebody - knowing that I'm a big Van Damme's fan - sent me this article from The Wave Magazine. He said it's a must-read for all Van Damme fans. After reading it, I found it so hillarious that I've decided to post this on my blog. This article is pretty long though; but trust me, you'll find it very entertaining!
Here it goes:
If there’s one thing we can expect from the Academy Awards, it’s that the Best Picture will go to the movie you and everyone you know fell asleep during, and Best Actor will go to the person who pretended to be a retarded person. In addition to that, it’s a pretty safe bet that this will be the year the Academy finally honors Jean-Claude Van Damme (henceforth occasionally referred to as “JCVD”) with a Lifetime Achievement Award. In fact, we’re so confident that this is going to happen, we’ve put this together to act as a companion to your viewing of the Oscars – a high-flying Jean-Claude Van Damme filmography.
As you already know, there are certain things one can expect from a Jean-Claude Van Damme film: several to many shots of him doing the splits, a muddy fight during a rainstorm, a sassy female reporter, and a clever excuse for Jean-Claude to expose his rear end. These factors will be put into a complicated computer program and multiplied by the number of times Jean-Claude hits someone in slow motion or in the groin to come up with a rating on the Van Dammeter of 1 through 10. This will quickly give readers an idea of the amount of, for lack of an existing word, “Van Dammajesty” that the movie contains.
Also, in order to save us all some time, the plot of each film will be summarized using this simple numerical code:
Plot #1: Revenge over a lost loved one drives Jean-Claude Van Damme into karate-filled circumstances.
Plot #2: On the run from the law, military or mafia, Van Damme flees to karate-filled circumstances.
Plot #3: Jean-Claude Van Damme is unwillingly involved in karate-filled circumstances by a second Jean-Claude Van Damme.
Plot #4: This movie is just a rehashing of a different movie, only now it stars Jean-Claude Van Damme.
Plot #5: If the film’s plot is described by the number five, this simply indicates that it is profoundly insane.
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No Retreat, No Surrender, 1985Plot #4 This is a retelling of the classic 1984 film The Karate Kid, only this version has way more breakdancing. Also, instead of Pat Morita, the teen hero is trained by the badly impersonated ghost of Bruce Lee. This was only Jean-Claude’s second credited role, so he’s just some evil Russian kickboxer that shows up at the very beginning and end of the movie. The villain who receives the most screen time is the protagonist’s fat neighbor, whose hobbies include cheeseburgers and rubbing liquefied parts of cheeseburgers onto his cheeks.
Van Dammeter: 2Although nearly all of it is spent doing spin kicks and the splits, Jean-Claude is only in this movie for a total of five minutes. Still, this masterpiece is as if all the best eighties movies got together and drank until they puked all over themselves, creating what can only be described as a disaster of rad.
Bloodsport, 1988Plot #2 Based on the very, very made up real-life story of Frank Dux, this is about an American soldier who goes AWOL to enter a secret underground martial arts tournament. Since it’s on cable TV every 40 seconds, you already know that when there isn’t an amazing fight scene between two exotic martial arts styles, someone is saying something hilariously stupid. For example, after JCVD magically explodes the center brick of a stack of bricks by slapping the top of it, an Iraqi with a spit curl down his forehead in a Cosby sweater approaches him to announce, “It is American sh*thead who makes tricks with bricks.” Jean-Claude doesn’t have a response because a sentence like that is the conversational equivalent of three hundred Bigfoots armed with flamethrowers – no matter what you have on your side, the war is already over and your side lost.
Van Dammeter: 10This is the definitive JCVD film. It not only features constant gratuitous shots of him doing the splits; it marks the point in history where the Sassy Female Reporter character was created. As you’ll find out, this is the staple romantic interest for Jean-Claude in more than half his movies. You’ll know her when you see the woman who’s helplessly clueless in all situations but very assertive about how she’s going to “get her story,” while along the way sitting on a bed in front of JCVD while he exposes his buttocks to the camera.
Black Eagle, 1988Plot #? The world may never know what Black Eagle is about. Even during the rare scenes in which the filmmakers thought to put a microphone near the speaking actors, their incredibly thick accents make them impossible to understand. It’s like the film was cast with the faculty of Charlie Brown’s school. I heard somebody slur out something about lasers, and I think Jean-Claude is a villain fighting against Sho Kosugi and a sassy female CIA agent, but honestly, these conclusions should be considered wild guesses at best.
Van Dammeter: 3Although most of the dialogue is a person shouting “Wango churwango!” to someone mumbling softly, this is still more of a dialogue-driven spy thriller than an action movie. As such, Jean-Claude doesn’t get very many opportunities to fight. He does manage to find the opportunity to do the splits and keep his shirt perpetually off, though.
Cyborg, 1989Plot #1 Fun Fact: According to The Internet Movie Database, “[Jean-Claude’s] fight scenes are so intense that he won’t film them in the U.S. for fear of being sued.” That means that either Jean-Claude is spending his evenings spreading awesome rumors about himself online, or there’s a Society Against the Intensity of American Fight Scenes that secretly runs our action film industry.
Van Dammeter: 8While this post-apocalyptic vision of half woman/half robots contains the already classic Van Dammazing trademarks the splits and his naked ass, it also sets the standard for the future of JCVD fight choreography: dropping his hands to the side and letting his opponent assault his face unchecked until he decides to dramatically defeat him or her with his second wind and now-mangled face.
Kickboxer, 1989Plot #1 In order to revenge his paralyzed brother AND rescue his master’s niece, JCVD must take on the evil kickboxer Tong Po in the “ancient manner.” For those unfamiliar with the “ancient manner,” it’s gluing broken glass to your hand. In order to get him ready for such a task, Jean-Claude’s master gets him drunk and tells him to dance, knowing that his adorable pelvic thrusting will infuriate the local kickboxing bullies into attacking him.
Van Dammeter: 9Any scene that isn’t Jean-Claude doing the splits in a musical training montage is him doing the splits in order to beat the hell out of somebody’s lower and upper groin.
Lionheart, 1990Plot #2 Normally, when villains need to boost the ratings of their secret underground martial arts tournaments, they need to recruit crime-fighting karate heroes. And since heroes are generally unwilling to beat men to death for money, villains are forced to kidnap their children or wives and force them to fight. That’s why villains love JCVD so much – he’s the kind of hero that will enter their secret martial arts tournaments purely for the love of quickly doing the splits and punching someone in the genitals.
Van Dammeter: 8Lionheart is as if the filmmakers got together with JCVD’s inner thigh tendons and specifically designed a movie to showcase the flexibility of them.
Death Warrant, 1990Plot #1 Jean-Claude is a loose-cannon Canadian cop undercover in an L.A. prison. He’s trying to get to the bottom of why so many inmates are being killed and since his brilliant detective work is just asking whoever he sees who killed everybody, the audience solves the mystery about 40 minutes faster than anyone in the movie.
Van Dammeter: 4 After his detective work, which climaxes with him threatening to force an inmate to drink pee, the entire last third of this movie is Jean-Claude in a flesh-tearing fight against the villain. JCVD shoves him onto a band saw, kicks him into a furnace and impales his brain on an exposed bolt, setting a trend of horrifying cruelty that he takes with him into several other movies.
Double Impact, 1991Plot #3 This was the first movie written and produced by JCVD, and now that he had some creative control, Jean-Claude Van Damme showed the world what his films were missing: “Another ME!” And to a lesser extent, a haunting romantic soundtrack. Unfortunately, the film’s titular song, “Gonna feel the impact... OF MY SOUL! OF MY SOUL!” failed to sweep the nation’s radios.
Van Dammeter: 7With a second Jean-Claude costarring with himself, it almost gets to the point where there’s TOO MUCH spin kicking. After a scene where Jean-Claude is doing the splits in turquoise tights and training a group of young men in pink karate suits, the second Jean-Claude calls him a “faggot.” Normally, this type of homophobic slur would cause a scandal in the gay and lesbian karate community, but since he technically said it to himself, everything was cool.
Universal Soldier, 1992Plot #5 Vietnam vets are resurrected from the dead to act as super soldiers, who of course go crazy and make necklaces out of harvested human parts. Except Jean-Claude, who plays the friendly kind of ambiguously foreign zombie cyborg.
Van Dammeter: 9Universal Soldier receives a near perfect Van Dammeter score because of its massive clash of JCVD clichés where a sassy female reporter shows up during the splits-filled muddy fight scene in the rain. During the fight she’s hit by an exploding grenade, but through what must have been the filmmakers’ lack of knowledge of what a grenade is, she gets right up a few minutes later.
Nowhere to Run, 1993Plot #2 The children in JCVD movies are written so realistically. For example, here Jean-Claude is discovered hiding in a tent by a young Kieran Culkin. JCVD pulls a gun on him, and here he is with a pistol trained on the kid’s face while holding a dirty magazine in the other hand, and Kieran, instead of running screaming, calmly asks him if he’s from outer space. The very next scene is Jean-Claude skinny dipping in front of the kid. Then, a few minutes later when the sheriff and the kid’s mom burst in on him in the shower, it hit me that every single character in the movie, including the little boy, has seen him naked. By the way, the screenplay was by the writer of Flashdance and Showgirls.
Van Dammeter: 1Like all martial artists turned martial artists-in-a-movie, Jean-Claude suddenly decided he was a font of creative expression and it was time to make a movie that focuses more on his ability to portray romantic emotions.
Hard Target, 1993Plot #1 This was legendary Hong Kong director John Woo’s first American movie, and if you can convince yourself that the stupid parts are trying to be ironic, it’s probably the best movie in the world.
Van Dammeter: 2This is more of a John Woo movie than it is a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie which, depending on whether you prefer slow motion gunfights through fluttering doves to a man’s buttocks, can be a good or bad thing.
Timecop, 1994Plot #5 In order to honor this, the second film with multiple Jean-Claudes, I’ve decided to use this portion of a review from www.capalert.com, which rates movies on how well they apply the teachings of Jesus Christ: “Language was a BIG problem in Timecop. The language was exceptionally foul and vulgar and frequent (increasing in frequency near the end of the movie). Thus, the Impunity/Hate (I) score(1) dropped to nada.” And although it received a very poor Impunity/Hate score, its high rating in the Drugs/Alcohol (D) indicates that Jesus is very happy with that area of the film.
Van Dammeter: 3He does the splits a couple of times, but I cut a few points off the Van Dammeter because both times the splits seemed like a very logical and practical thing to do. And throwing your legs out at impossible angles should only be reserved for completely unwarranted occasions.
Street Fighter: The Movie, 1994Plot #1 This is probably the worst video game made into a movie, and if you’re familiar with that genre you know how mean a thing that is to say.
Van Dammeter:4It shouldn’t have been hard to make a movie out of 16 super-powered karate fighters. As long as you don’t translate them into lab technicians, you’ll be fine. However, this is exactly what happened. One street fighter also became a cameraman, and another was translated into an exciting computer systems administrator. And Jean-Claude must have had some input because, yes, one of them became a sassy female reporter.
Sudden Death, 1995Plot #4 In this film, JCVD fights a woman dressed in a giant penguin costume. Now, if Jackie Chan did this, it would be a whimsical slapstick fight, and he’d probably be holding a priceless vase filled with puppies. Jean-Claude, on the other hand, dips her hand into a deep fryer, saws off chunks of the penguin head by ramming her into a ceiling fan... (description of beating continues after Van Dammeter rating)
Van Dammeter: 3... fills her eyeballs with hot peppers, and jams her into a conveyer-fed steam cleaner where she’s strangled to death by her own penguin head while at the same time being boiled alive. Jean-Claude HATES penguins.
The Quest, 1996Plot #2 This film was written by Jean-Claude and Frank Dux, the man whose made-up stories were used as the basis for Bloodsport. Later, Frank Dux sued JCVD for not giving him enough money for coming up with the brilliant idea of having a movie about an underground martial arts tournament. Unfortunately, all the papers proving that Jean-Claude owed him a zillion dollars were destroyed in a freak fire in Dux’s home that miraculously did not damage anything else. I don’t know, it’s starting to look like this guy who wrote a book about his super spy adventures through ninja-launching Hong Kong alleys might be full of sh*t.
Van Dammeter: 9Jean-Claude writes what he knows. And since he’s seen Bloodsport, he rearranged that movie a little bit and changed the title. It’s the same story right down to the sassy female reporter.
Maximum Risk, 1996Plot #3 Jean-Claude Van Telligence: This marks the third time a movie contained more than one Jean-Claude, putting him one multiple-him film ahead of Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Van Dammeter: 2Jean-Claude Van Telligence: This also marks the second time a legendary Hong Kong director (Ringo Lam) made his American directorial debut with a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie that no one liked.
Double Team, 1997Plot #5 Super agents who have faked their deaths are kept prisoner on an island used to fight international crime. To ground this outrageous plot in reality, Dennis Rodman plays a karate master arms dealer who likes to make comedic references to basketball. It’s kind of like a mix between the TV series The Prisoner and pictures Dennis Rodman draws of himself fighting spaceships on his Trapper Keeper.
Van Dammeter: 3Jean-Claude Vantastic Fact: This marks the third time a legendary Hong Kong director (Tsui Hark) made his American directorial debut with a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie that no one liked.
Knock Off, 1998Plot #5 Jean-Claude and his wacky sidekick Rob Schneider try to foil an evil plan to distribute exploding jeans. And if you were wondering what it would take to start getting Jean-Claude’s films to go straight to video, now you know. This was his last film to make it to the theatres.
Van Dammeter: 6It’s hard to know how to feel about this film. Amazing fight choreography and groundbreaking cinematography mix with what would have been the worst script of all time if someone hadn’t written Men in Black 2. I have a theory that if you were to mute your TV, it would be like watching the Citizen Kane of action movies.
Universal Soldier: The Return, 1999Plot #5 Early in the movie, a little girl falls in the hallway and has a massive brain hemorrhage. And since the military programmed the evil military computer with medical technology that doesn’t exist yet, the evil cyborg is the only one who can save her. Which, if you think about it, is either ironic or retarded.
Van Dammeter: 8There are no splits or naked asses, but the sassy female reporter transcends new levels of assertiveness. At one point she screams, “General, you throw the media around like we were cattle!” when she finds out she’s not allowed back into the chemical weapons factory rigged with explosives and filled with invincible zombie robots with machine guns. But no matter how in favor you are of sassing heavily-armed men while they’re fighting an army of cyborgs, you have to admit that seems like a pretty reasonable rule.
Desert Heat, 1999Plot #4 This film teaches us a lot about Native American culture when after being shot by desert redneck bullies, JCVD is nursed back to health by Danny Trejo’s savage medicine involving a bottle of whiskey and a magical coyote. Later, he sings Jean-Claude a song while he gives him an oily foot massage, but I don’t know enough about Indian culture to know if this is the normal procedure for treating a man’s bullet wound.
Van Dammeter: 4Fun Fact: This is a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s classic samurai film, Yojimbo. Second Fun Fact: it was already remade by Clint Eastwood with Fistful of Dollars in 1964 and then again by Bruce Willis with Last Man Standing in 1996. Jean-Claude’s is magnificently inferior in every way to the original, the remake and the other remake, but it did manage to fill one noticeable hole in the plot – why doesn’t this story have Jean-Claude Van Damme wearing nothing but cowboy boots?
Replicant, 2001Plot #3 Although in the other three films with multiple hims where Jean-Claude had to portray two very different ranges of emotions and karate competency, this one is the furthest stretch. In Replicant, he plays a sadistic mass murderer and his own lovable, misunderstood clone. Why clone a mass murderer? Well, you’ll be sorry you asked. The police had a theory that the clone might be born with some kind of mystical psychic connection to the original that could lead them to him. And you’re right, that’s child-eatingly crazy, but not as crazy as the fact that it kind of worked.
Van Dammeter: 3There’s something that just doesn’t seem right about two Jean-Claude’s fighting each other when neither of them are wearing a spandex wrestling tunic.
In the beginning…Jean-Claude’s first film role was an uncredited part as a unitard-wearing breakdancing enthusiast in a crowd scene in Breakin’. His first credited role came in Monaco Forever, a film by the acclaimed director of Blackenstein and Wham Bam Thank You Spaceman. The name of the character he played – “Gay Karate Man.”
I was so bored one time so I've decided to start submitting my friends' pictures to HotorNot.com again.
I grew up watching all Van Damme's movies and have been a big fan of his for years. One day, somebody - knowing that I'm a big Van Damme's fan - sent me this article from The Wave Magazine. He said it's a must-read for all Van Damme fans. After reading it, I found it so hillarious that I've decided to post this on my blog. This article is pretty long though; but trust me, you'll find it very entertaining!
No Retreat, No Surrender, 1985
Bloodsport, 1988
Black Eagle, 1988
Cyborg, 1989
Kickboxer, 1989
Lionheart, 1990
Death Warrant, 1990
Double Impact, 1991
Universal Soldier, 1992
Nowhere to Run, 1993
Hard Target, 1993
Timecop, 1994
Street Fighter: The Movie, 1994
Sudden Death, 1995
The Quest, 1996
Maximum Risk, 1996
Double Team, 1997
Knock Off, 1998
Universal Soldier: The Return, 1999
Desert Heat, 1999
Replicant, 2001
In the beginning…
I have a co-worker who used to live in Japan for about a year and recently he told me about this reality show where a guy (named Nasubi) was stripped naked, locked inside a small apartment alone with no food, household goods, and entertainment; and was told that they were going to keep him there for over a year until he had won One Million Yen! And he could only get the food and other necessities by participating in contests.
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