Double Dragon (1994) | Attack of the Drive-In!
What may be the goofiest version of the apocalypse.
Rating: Two Double Dragons (2 + 2 = 4 out of 5)
Once upon a time, in a faraway land, there was a place called “Kroger.” Outside this particular Kroger, there were not one — but two — arcade machines. One of them was the Konami classic, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Arcade Game, and the other was Double Dragon.
In front of the latter machine, upon a plastic egg crate, perched yours truly. Back then, I was knee-high to a Big Gulp, and things haven’t improved much since then. Next to this mussy-haired tyke, there stood a man in a black Hawaiian shirt and khakis. A strong man in body and soul, who’d survived a World War, if barely, and not much later taught me the wartime classic “Hitler Has Only Got One Ball” (much to his wife’s — and my mom’s — dismay). My Pop. There are two things you need to know about him. His favorite books were Perry Mason novels. And, nearing his 70s in the early 90s, he’d discovered he liked video games.
Hollywood did too, as it turned out.
Not sure how much some of y’all know about the Double Dragon series of video games. Woah, hoss. Before you go tracking down a lore video, because you can’t be bothered to play them, let me spoil it for you.
You play as one of two brothers, Billy Lee or Jimmy Lee. In a couple of outings, you get to play as the Battletoads. It eventually spawned one criminally-underrated fighting game. But as the brothers Lee:
You wander around town, punching and kicking things that are trying to punch, kick, and/or toss you around like a discarded bucket of KFC on a Friday night.
That’s it. That’s the story. You’re welcome.
Still, it was (and is) a fun time. There’s something to be said for a mindless dragon-fu-‘em-up. Just ask my Pop. Or Hollywood execs who decided they’d option the concept. In case your attention span’s a little bockety this fine day, the story so far is that Billy and Jimmy are walking from left to right and punching, kicking, and/or throwing their erstwhile enemies to-and-fro about the screen. King Lear this ain’t.
These execs in their little suits could’ve tried anything with this concept. Recall, though, that this was just one year in the wake of another cult classic video game flick — Super Mario Bros. Hollywood hadn’t quite gotten handled to video games just yet.
Today, it seems obvious. You get a guy in red, another guy in blue, make it a throwback to classic kung-fu flicks (or bring in one of the modern masters from Hong Kong or Japan to direct), have wicked set pieces, and dragon-fu your way into the hearts and minds of America.
Instead, the producers at Imperial Entertainment really said, “Haha screw that,” and brought in and found some of the edgiest, most delightfully weird bunch of creatives this side of the Mississippi on board. A similar thing happened with Super Mario Bros. The latter brought on Annabel Jankel—and I have to wonder how much better this one would’ve been for having the co-creator of Max Headroom. This one? The story is by Paul Dini (of Batman: The Animated Series) and Neal Shusterman (a novelist of some repute who wrote one of younger-me’s favorite books — The Eyes of Kid Midas).
If it sounds like this pair would make an adaptation into a live-action cartoon — well, that’s exactly what they tried to do. Catch this:
In a faraway land called “Los Angeles,” the big one hits. A mega-quake destroys SoCal, changing the landscape and leaving L.A. (now N.A., not for the oxy, but for “New Angeles” in shambles. The feds say “Haha, screw you, California!” Fast forward seven years, and in this flood and it turns into a cyberpunk dystopian dragon-guanoscape. This is where our heroes come in—and our villain — crime lord and some sort of smog magnate or something else nonsensical Koga Shuko. Shuko’s played by career villain Robert Hammond Patrick who doesn’t so much chew the scenery as set down to a whole buffet of it.
The brothers Lee, Mark Dacascos and Scott Wolf who are also ham hocks for this film, get accosted by gang members, dragon-fu them with the help of Alyssa Milano, and find out that Shuko is looking for a magical MacGuffin, the Double Dragon amulet to…do magical villainy. It doesn’t matter. It’s a MacGuffin.
It was ahead of its time in a few ways. Out of the two back-to-back adaptations in 1993 and 1994, as a whole package, this one is much better. It’s both truer to the source material’s style (Bo Abobo, an iconic villain from the series, is played by Nils Allen Stewart here — carrying what looks like a half-ton of practical effect makeup, and it’s brilliant) and it was a fun ride for its target audience — people who thought movies and video games should be fun. Also ahead of its time. The story changes from a dynamic duo to a tough-fu trio, and the story — to the credit of the writing team, including co-writers Michael Davis and Peter Gould — shows how to bring on a kick-Abobo woman on screen (played wonderfully by Milano, with what she’s given) without breaking the source material. Julia Nickson joins in a solid turn as the Lee boys’ mama, Satori.
The world is also incredibly visually fleshed out, even compared to contemporaries like Demolition Man. One high-speed boat chase finds jet skis zipping around and through now-underwater overpasses. The set design and costuming for this one are criminally underrated. Even the Lees — clad in video-game true red and blue — could’ve read much more Gouda than they do.
If you liked Street Fighter’s pure cheese and hammy performances, or you dug the cyberpunk world of the other 8-bit brothers, you’ll find a lot to love in this one. As a video game movie — it’s much better than either of those. As a sci-fi, buddy-bro movie and a classic 90s cyberpunk flick? It’s hard to beat-em-up.
THE SIZZLE REEL:
• Andy Dick shows up as a weatherman who deals with the "fogcast", giving warnings over (implied acidic and radioactive) black rain. Unsure if he’s meant to be a character or alternate-universe Andy Dick.
• Vanna “Wheel of Fortune” White is also here, covering the news.
• The boat chase sequence was filmed on Northeast Ohio’s Cuyahoga River. It climaxes with an explosion fueled by 700 gallons of gas with 200 gallons of alcohol added.
• One of the rare cases that a video game gets adapted and a video game adapts the movie back, original developers Technos Japan launched a 1995 fighting game spin-off of Double Dragon that features some elements from the film. It also (much better than the Street Fighter: The Movie backdaptation) uses footage from the film. It was released for the Neo Geo, making it a little more obscure than Street Fighter’s re-videogaming.
If you need your own dose of dragon-fu, you can pick up a copy of this cheesefest of a classic right here. If you do, I get a small commission at no extra cost to you, and you get the warm fuzzies about supporting independent film writing.