I can't say that it looks all that great (there is a definite DTV vibe to the whole thing) but I absolutely adore Cynthia Rothrock, and the films also stars the late Richard Norton, as well as Keith Cooke, Don 'The Dragon' Wilson, Patrick Kilpatrick, Benny 'The Jet' Urquidez, and Keith Vitali. So it's stacked with a cast I grew up with and would enjoying seeing onscreen together.

That looks terrible but I’ve had a crush on Cynthia Rothrock since I was a kid so I may watch this if it shows up on streaming.

And holy shit is Don “The Dragon” Wilson is looking old! I didn’t even recognize him. I always thought he was in his 20s during his “Bloodfist” days. I guess he was pushing 40 then.

Yeah, I was trying to be diplomatic but terrible is an apt description. However, I do plan to catch in on streaming but won't rent it. It's Cynthia Rothrock that makes me want to subject myself to it, but I am certain I won't enjoy it.

Sorry if I sabotage the thread a bit, but If you guys haven't checked it yet, this commentary she did for (The immortal) Undefeatable is a must-see! You're bound to love her even more after experiencing this!

No need to apologize for more Cynthia Rothrock content, Mondo Kane. We're all fans here.

You were probably better off doing a broader Cynthia Rothrock appreciation thread as opposed to this random straight to video movie that most here won't watch. It would have generated more discussion.

Sorry, dad.

In all seriousness, I was just surprised to see a trailer for a new Cynthia Rothrock at all. Hence why I was compelled to make the thread. But if one of the mods would like to change this into a Cynthia Rothrock appreciation thread, that'd be cool.

A few Cynthia Rothrock movies that I have. I picked these up at a Con many years ago. They are 2 movies each.

I just have Righting Wrongs and Undefeatable thanks to Vinegar Syndrome. I hope to get China O Brian in the near future.

Of the Rothrock movies I've seen, I'd rank them roughly in this order

I forgot about that "female Expendables" flick, Mercenaries. Can't even remember if I watched it.

I watched Yes, Madame! an obscene amount of times when I was a kid, and in my teens. I had such a huge crush on both Rothrock and Yeoh (and I still do).

That’s not bad for an Asylum picture, but pretty bad by most other measures. Rothrock doesn’t do much in it as she’s not really part of the main crew. I actually watched it twice because I likewise couldn’t remember if I’d watched it.

Rothrock’s place in the low-budget martial arts pantheon is secure, but largely for her Hong Kong movies (mostly pretty solid) and some of her 90’s American DTV stuff (a mixed bag with some ok time killers). The lion’s share of her best movies are pretty much included in that image posted by IBJoel earlier. She’s made an awful lot of crap in the last 20 years just to trade on her name value, though, even as she pushes 70.

I suppose we gotta give her credit for still cranking out product and paying the bills, but most of this stuff treads beyond Seagal territory.

I’ve always thought she was a better martial
artist – and screen martial artist – than she was an actress, but she deserves better. I suppose if better offers actually came along she’d jump at them, but they seem few and far between since her heyday.





She’s worked with Don Wilson a few times, but the films just got cheaper and worse over time. (One of these stars a charisma-void named Alexander Nevsky who has somehow managed to wrangle financing for shitty movies [with deceptively appealing trailers] for nearly twenty years.). The BLACK CREEK trailer that opened this thread looks like it might go some ways to redeeming Wilson and Rothrock for starring in some of this stuff.







This one ropes in a whole bunch of DTV action stars, who do virtually no action in it, because Christmas?



See that cat in the dress on the right in the thumbnail screencap below? That’s ’Mama Cat’, and she’s voiced by Cynthia Rothrock. If you’re not familiar with the Cool Cat universe and the utterly delusional ‘auteur’ behind it, it’s a rabbit hole that will scar you for life. I went down it, and now I must inflict it upon others, Rothrock and all. This is the whole movie, since it’s the only one where Rothrock’s ‘character’ appears in the thumbnail, but I defy anyone here to survive the whole thing:

100% disagree. I'd take literally any of their giant monster movies over that dreck Hell, I think I have several of those at my parents' place. No, like Mercenaries, even a lot of the great HK stuff she's in, she doesn't have a huge role. The Inspector Wears Skirts comes to mind and I think she's only in the last act of Millionaires Express. Her stuff Stateside (or maybe they were still produced in Asia, but just had all white actors) in the 90s couldn't capture the quality of works where she gets second or third billing, without Hung or Yuen's direction

Depends on which cut of MILLIONAIRES' EXPRESS you have. I remember Rothrock and Richard Norton being in way more of the film than just the last act, including a significant confrontation she and Norton have with other bad guys in the villains' camp early on.

Well, in fairness, I wasn’t completely quoted there.

But I stand by the belief that there are plenty of worse Asylum movies – and undoubtedly some better ones – but that company is basically nothing but degrees of badness, and MERCENARIES, if anything, proves how few decent opportunities are out there for a lot of ‘name’ actors who mainly achieved their fame in the DTV heyday. I was more disappointed to see Zoe Bell in something like that than Rothrock, who’d already made plenty of shitty movies before it. Bell always seemed like she could carry bigger and better projects, but aside from a few studio bits, she’s mostly been wasted. Obviously, her stunt and stunt coordinator career is where things really paid off.


This is feels in line with my thinking that Rothrock isn’t a particularly strong actress, but she has a ‘look’ and the martial arts bona fides that if anyone was going to put her to good use, it was the Hong Kong filmmakers. They also had the advantage of her being a novelty in their cinema for her main run of pictures.

As enjoyable (not always in a good way) as some of her American DTV pictures can be, the vast majority of them follow very basic formulas for that genre and usually pair her and surround her with other martial artists of varying degrees of acting ability (Richard Norton was probably the best of them). But the direction is almost always uniformly undistinguished, especially in comparison to the Hong Kong style.

There’s really only one director who seemed to see some potential for her to push a little more into the mainstream, and that was Spiro Razatos. This guy is a veteran stunt coordinator, second unit director, and stuntman with major A-list credits going back to the 1980’s. Look him up on IMDb, and I doubt anyone on a forum like this could say they haven’t seen a ton his work, regardless of whether they like the movies or not. He only directed two feature films to date: CLASS OF 1999 II: THE SUBSTITUTE (94) which wasn’t very good, and FAST GETAWAY (91) a mainstream action thriller (with a light comic tone) costarring Rothrock which was reasonably good and was slated for a theatrical release. The problem was, it was a Corey Haim movie in an era where his tiresome shtick was fading from vogue, and so theatrical releases for his movies were increasingly questionable. This one probably would have been a modest release at best, but some test marketing with him didn’t do it any favours and so it went direct to video and I believe played in regular rotation on cable.

It’s a PG-13 movie Rothrock has often spoken highly of because it gave her equal billing with, by her own measure, ‘real actors’ (Haim, Leo Rossi, Ken Lerner, Marcia Strassman) instead of blank slate martial artists – in fact, she was second-billed onscreen and on all the posters – and the script gave her a modest character to play rather than the one-note tough-chick roles in most of her DTV fare. She does get martial arts scenes in the picture, and even a few comic bits, but because it’s not a ‘Cynthia Rothrock movie’, I think she gets to do more effective acting than usual in her portions of the film, and even play up the vixen angle. Because it was Razatos’ first directorial gig, there’s a greater emphasis on car stunts but he clearly called in a lot of his pals to make sure they were well done for the budget. There’s also a good descender-rig stunt off of a suspension bridge. She wasn’t going to win any awards for it, but it was nice to see her move briefly toward mainstream-style filmmaking. As has been mentioned, certain directors have given her boosts. It’s just that they came along so rarely afterwards.

Here she is talking about it on her YouTube channel a few years back (note: the thumbnail shows the poster for FAST GETAWAY II, but she talks about the first one only). By the way, the channel still gets updated on occasion and has plenty of other chats about her movies. You have to wade through a lot of travel, exercise and bikini/lingerie videos to find them, but they’re there.


Full movie:



- - - - - - - - - - - - -

And for those who enjoy her Hong Kong legacy, here she is dishing about those:

YES MADAM

MILLIONAIRES EXPRESS

RIGHTING WRONGS

LADY REPORTER / BLONDE FURY
(she calls this the hardest movie she ever did )

MAGIC CRYSTAL

PRINCE OF THE SUN

INSPECTOR WEARS SKIRTS

Like Elvira, I've always found it fascinating how she does market herself in terms of sexuality while not being "sleazy" but not exactly... Y'know, she's not exactly doing prestige work. Just a different era and mindset, I guess.

She tapped into a pretty good market - a predominately male dominated genre whose demographic is mostly young men. A hot ass-kicking female seems like a perfect fit for that. And as hot as her body was back then, I don’t recall her ever showing her breasts, which i would imagine she was probably pressured into doing numerous times by the sleazy producers who produced these kinds of movies.

She brings this up in the interview for FAST GETAWAY that I posted, which might be the first time she experienced it. Despite that picture seemingly being designed to be more family-oriented than her straight martial arts stuff, apparently they tried to get her to do a topless scene, including the old ‘you can be topless but we won’t actually film them’ ruse. Good on her for finding a way around it. As noted, she certainly has pushed the ‘sexy’ angle, more outside of her film work than within it, and perhaps a fair bit past the age many actresses would have dialled it down.