Uncover the Surprising Secrets Behind ‘Gymkata’ That Even Die-Hard Fans Missed
–>
In addition to Enter the Dragon, Robert Clouse had previously helmed several landmark martial arts movies, including Jackie Chan’s first American venture, The Big Brawl. He’d also twice been nominated for an Academy Award thanks to The Cadillac and The Legend of Blue Eyes, short films both released in the 1960s.
But the Korean War veteran appeared to lose his way in the 1980s. Force: Five was a pointless remake of Hot Potato, the kung fu B-movie released only five years earlier. His adaptation of James Herbert’s rat-infested horror Deadly Eyes was panned by critics, as well as the author himself (“absolute rubbish”). Even an actor as inexperienced as Thomas started to question his credentials. “When we were filming, Robert Clouse, as a director, honestly seemed to be a bit past his prime,” he later told Bristol Bad Film Club in an interview about Gymkata. “It was a low budget film, so as a result, there were very few retakes!”
Its casting was problematic.
The VHS era was undeniably a very different time for moviemaking. In a cost-effective bit of casting that would certainly get Gymkata canceled today, the locals who attempt to kill Cabot shortly before his father comes to the rescue weren’t actors: They were real-life patients from a psychiatric hospital near where the film was shooting in Yugoslavia. According to Thomas, those recruited were rewarded for their efforts not with cold hard cash but with alcohol and a buffet. (The Olympian also made it clear that anyone he physically attacked during the shoot were only ever professionals.)
Gymkata wasn’t the only film to make this questionable casting choice. Fellow “so bad it’s good” classic Troll 2 (1990) hired an extra on day release from the University of Utah’s psych ward as Nilbog’s creepy drug store owner, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) used patients from the hospital where it was shooting as extras.
Filmmakers created nonsensical scenes to showcase Thomas’s gymnastics skills.
Kurt Thomas was a pioneering American gymnast: He became his homeland’s first ever male gold medalist at the World Artistic Gymnastics Championships in 1978 and then set a six-time medal record the following year that’s only ever been equaled by Simone Biles. So it’s not difficult to see why filmmakers tried to showcase his skills on the big screen. The titular gymkata is Cabot’s signature fighting style, which combines gymnastics with martial arts and makes him a force to be reckoned with.
Unfortunately, incorporating Thomas’s form of physical prowess into another proved to be one feat too many. The graceful art of gymnastics doesn’t exactly lend itself well to the no-holds-barred world of martial arts, as proven by several ludicrous set pieces: See the alley getaway in which Cabot swings on a pipe placed conveniently like a high bar. Or when he miraculously fends off an army of town crazies on a rock boulder designed suspiciously like a pommel horse. And then there’s the unintentionally hilarious scene when, for reasons entirely unknown, our hero climbs up a staircase using only his hands.
“From time to time, the producers would just ask me what I could do physically that would look good on film—and they simply ended up incorporating most of them into the movie,” Thomas would say later.
Gymkata has a baffling romantic subplot.
Wedged in just as egregiously as all the handstands is the bizarre romantic subplot involving Cabot and the ruler of Parmistan’s largely silent daughter, Princess Rubuli (Tetchie Agbayani). The pair’s meet-cute begins when the latter lassos him with a rope, pushes him into a wooden beam, and hits him where it truly hurts.
Not only is Cabot instantly smitten, he also tries to woo the royal by enacting an imaginary discussion between them, continually somersaulting himself into two different positions while adopting her voice. Somehow, this mix of violent physical assault and bizarre impersonation does the trick, and the unlikely duo eventually jump into bed before teaming up to overthrow a military coup and butter up the dastardly king. Sadly, Thomas had more chemistry with the makeshift pommel horse.
It’s quotable for all the wrong reasons.
It’s fair to say that Gymkata screenwriter Charles Robert Carner took liberties with the source material: The Terrible Game doesn’t mention gymnastics once. And although hardly a literary masterpiece, it’s a solid piece of pulp fiction free of clunky one-liners—something that can’t be said for its big screen transfer.
“It’s not over yet, so put your hardware back in your pants,” Cabot says as he dukes it out with sai-brandishing love rival Zamir (veteran stunt performer Richard Norton) in a bewildering double entendre. Then there’s the muddled speech from his Eastern trainer (Tadashi Yamashita), which seems to be an attempt to mimic the metaphorical lessons of The Karate Kid’s (1984) Mr. Miyaki (“There are many sounds around us, each is slightly different … Do not hear the wood split. Hear the only sound of axe, cutting air. Read the air itself. It has much say to you”). Like all the best-worst movies, Gymkata is quotable for all the wrong reasons.
