Imagine a kung fu movie with Alyssa Milano, Andy Dick, George Hamilton, and even Wheel of Fortune’s own Vanna White. Well, imagine no more, because Double Dragon, an outstanding joyride of unintended B-movie entertainment smashed into theaters as an A-movie in 1994, and you will never be the same after you watch it (actually, it’s not life-changing at all, so you will likely be the same).
The reviews will have you flying to see the movie. Rotten Tomatoes, where it has thoroughly earned a score of 12% approval rating on the vaunted Tomatometer, has a number of vegetable-smashing reviews, criticizing the “cheesy dialogue” and the “pervasive sarcasm.”
To say the movie was a massive success would a major lie. Its budget was only $7.2 million, but its worldwide box office was just $4.2 million.
Double Dragon was a highly popular video game series that was originally released in the late 1980’s. The Japanese game was one of the highest grossing arcade games in the world and was made available as a Nintendo game where it only became even more popular.
Coincidentally (this is how you know I do too much research on my articles), Wheel of Fortune was also a Nintendo game in the late 1980’s and there was a Vanna White character (or maybe just a blond lookalike game character) turning those letters. Clearly, filming Double Dragon was a full-circle moment for Vanna.
Scott Wolf stars in Double Dragon and it’s impossible not to notice that he was engaged to Alyssa Milano in 1993, only for them to separate a year and a half later. Was working together on Double Dragon to blame?
My favorite appearance is by Julia Nickson. She shows up and kicks kung fu booty. Her first role in a film was nearly a decade earlier as the brief love interest of Sylvester Stallone in Rambo: First Blood Part II. She also appeared in Sidekicks with Chuck Norris.
You know who else is in this film? One of my favorite actors, actually. Mark Dacascos is the star alongside Wolf, which is also a coincidence because he played Mani in a wildly unique French film called Brotherhood of the Wolf, which also has martial arts in it. Brotherhood happens to be an excellent film, a sort of fictional tale based on the beast of Gėvaudan which I recommend seeing. Perhaps Dacascos’ most familiar role is as villain Wo Fat in the revival of the television series Hawaii Five-O. His appearances often made the show better.
Now, it’s time to express some disappointment. Vanna White does not actually have a kung fu role in the film. This is heartbreaking. Vanna Van Damme White does not exist, she is just a figment of what you would wish to happen in the movie. Instead, Vanna White appears only a handful of times as a news anchor. This disappointment is obviously the only reason why the film has such bad reviews, because Vanna White as the star of a kung fu film would break Tomatometer records.
Despite the letdown, I prefer to end on a good note and this is where I have the pleasure of telling you that Robert Patrick of Terminator film fame, is the main villain in Double Dragon and, because of the way he looks, you will likely immediately think that he’s Vanilla Ice. How do you pass up watching a cheesy kung fu film with a Vanilla Ice villain?
The movie is available for free on YouTube, so make that time this weekend to watch this king fu movie of your dreams.
