REEL ACTION: Gymkata: The skill of gymnastics. The Kill of karate!

Last Updated on July 23, 2021

GYMKATA (1985)
Rating: 3 out of 4 /Buy the DVD Here

Tagline: A new kind of martial arts combat! The skill of gymnastics. The kill of karate.

Directed by Robert Clouse
Starring: Kurt Thomas, Tetchie Agbayani and Richard Norton

THE PLAN: Young American gymnast Johnathan Cabat (Kurt Thomas) discovers his father just died in a small (fictional) town called Parmistan during a endurance battle to the death called “the game”. After learning his father was actually an SIA operative (that’s SPECIAL Intelligence Agency) attempting to win the game so he could plant a Star Wars satellite station in the country (don’t ask), Cabot is convinced he must follow in his father’s footsteps and play the game too. But not die.

THE KILL: Sweet lord, where to begin with GYMKATA? I suppose we can start with why I chose the film for this week’s Reel Action. Well, to be perfectly frank, it’s mostly because I needed an excuse to watch GYMKATA, a film I enjoyed greatly as a very young fellow but haven’t seen in well over 15 years. But my shame in wanting to see GYMKATA in all its high-kicking, parallel bar-swinging glory wasn’t the only motivator – I genuinely remembered the film as being filled with wall-to-wall action. And that action would be my ticket to viewing a lost cheesefest and your ticket to reading about my trip down memory lane! So how did the screening fare?

GYMKATA is a crap movie. No, this doesn’t come as a surprise to me – after all, it’s a movie that features a gymnast as its action hero. No one born after 1990 will know much about Kurt Thomas, but during the 80s the dude was recognizable thanks to his soft touch with a pommel horse. I suppose he was the Michael Phelps of his day, so Hollywood saw fit to structure a movie around his ability to twirl around and whack people in the head. GYMKATA allows Thomas to engage in all sorts of ludicrous moves, like when he simply spins around and around on a horizontal bar until villains run face-first into his shoe. He dishes out a lot of spin-kicks, hops around like a high school cheerleader until somebody notices that they should be getting their ass kicked by him, at which point they fall over. (Every punch and kick comes complete with punch-to-a-slab-of-beef sound effect.)

After Cabot has a training session/montage that lasts about one minute because he doesn’t really need that much help, he eventually finds himself in Parmastan (there’s a few stopovers along the way that I won’t bore you with), which is a dreary f*ckin’ place to live, especially if you’re one of the random street dwellers. The whole place is filled with them. Cabot chills in a sweet castle and meets the country’s goofy king and his competitors – all of whom are pretty nondescript except for a hulking fellow named Thorg, who looks like the Hulk Hogan of Bizarro World. As the competitors tackle an obstacle course, they’re chased by goons on horseback, led by a bearded lothario named Zamir, who shoot at them with arrows and stake them with spears (these guys must have been in the javelin portion of the Olympics). Once in a while, the contestants will come across a ninja holding a flag. These dudes just stand there. Waiting. For days, for all we know. They’re the most fascinating characters in the whole movie.


I got my degree in Ninja Economics for this?!

There is one sequence that I had remembered being genuinely effective, and takes place in a town filled with the country’s cast off crazies. The flick takes a weird left turn into horror territory when the contestants have to pass through the hellish place, which looks like it was designed by Mario Bava, and it’s actually not just a little unnerving. Perhaps it’s because everything that has come before it has been so silly, but I kinda like GYMKATA’s detour into Freakville, and wish it could have stayed there longer, not to mention gotten there earlier. (Okay, sure, he finds a pommel horse in the Village of the Crazies and uses it to his advantage, but that’s really neither here nor there, right?)

The taint stench was just too overpowering…

You get the idea. GYMKATA is pretty much exactly how I remember it. The karate, the laughs, the danger… it’s all there. If you want to watch a lovably awful 80s action movie, you can’t do much better than this.

TOP DEATH: One guy gets pitchforked to death by depraved maniacs in a filthy hut, only then to have pigs eat at his bloody corpse… And this movie is rated PG-13 and stars a Gold Medallist!

TOP ACTION: That pommel horse fight in the Village of the Crazies is tough to beat – mostly because you’ll be laughing your ass off.


God put a pommel horse in the town square, just for Kurt Thomas

FEMALE EXPLOITATION: Cabot’s girl/trainer is hot and all, but you know… GYMKATA is all about the gymkata in the end…

HOMOEROTIC MOMENT: The whole movie is gay.

TOP DIALOGUE: Cabot to a sai-wielding macho asshole: “Put your hardware back in your pants.” (Hehe, it’s like he’s talking about his penis.)

DRINKING GAME: Take a swig of something hard every time Cabot does an unnecessary gymnastic maneuver. Wont be long before you’re doing a Thomas Salto in your kitchen. (Google it.)

TRIVIA: Director Robert Clouse also helmed the Bruce Lee classic ENTER THE DRAGON.

Kurt Thomas was nominated for Worst New Star at the Razzie Awards, but lost out to Brigitte Nielsen in ROCKY IV.

BUY THE DVD HERE!

Source: AITH

About the Author

Eric Walkuski is a longtime writer, critic, and reporter for JoBlo.com. He's been a contributor for over 15 years, having written dozens of reviews and hundreds of news articles for the site. In addition, he's conducted almost 100 interviews as JoBlo's New York correspondent.