GYMKATA 
(1985)


(From Joe Bob's Ultimate B Movie Guide)


Olympic gold medal gymnast Kurt Thomas in the first of one starring roles, playing an Olympic gold medal gymnast recruited by the CIA to go to Hindu Land and fight 900 warriors to the death so they can stick a nuclear missile base in the middle of an Arab country. "If you win the fight," they tell him, "the king says we can do it." So Kurt, who stands about 3- foot-6 and has a voice like Betty Boop, starts training for the Big Gave by walking on hands and riding around on a Clydesdale and throwing cardboard knives and letting big black guys beat him up. Pretty soon he's getting off the tour boat in Hindu Ville, where a guy tells him "The reason these people are spitting in your face is there's just a LITTLE anti-American sentiment here," and then the messenger gets an arrow through his stomach and Kurt has to run through the alleys of Zagreb until he finds one that happens to have a horizontal gymnastics bar set up between two buildings. So he grabs the bar and starts spinning and kicking guys in the teeth cause they wear turbans and carry those big curved knives like Yul Brynner. Apparently the reason this was filmed in Yugoslavia is that the whole country has gymnastics equipment hidden in the rocks, and sticking out of buildings, and it gives Kurt a big advantage over the guys with machine guns. Kurt's girlfriend gets kidnapped in a terrorist training camp, and Kurt has to go in there and gymnastick his way out, then the two of em decide to take a whitewater raft trip, only on the way down the river, eight Ninja warriors come out of the woods and carry everybody off to the Hindu Castle where they put Kurt in a big bed so some transvestite maids can come mop his brow and get him ready to be killed in the big race. The way the race works is, they say "Run like hell," and all the warriors take off, and then the Ninjas chase em on horseback and shoot em through the back with arrows and spear em in the privates. But Kurt's been practicing his steak-knife twirling so that he can survive the flaming-rope torture, the Grand Canyon cleaver attack, the gymkata-fu struggle against a crazed 800-pound Norwegian Viking named Thor, and the final Race Through the Loony Bin, where everybody tries to make it through a prison full of zombies carrying farm implements. Then he kisses the king's daughter like a fish. 85 dead bodies. Twelve implements. One gallon blood. Ten Kung Fu scenes. Gymnastics Fu. Loonie Fu. One motor vehicle chase. One pitchfork through throat. Heads roll. Sickle in stomach. Pig-licking.

 

 

 

 

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