Matty buckles up for a decent burst of Rapi Films action. Featuring some words with director Sam Firstenberg! 

A hugely entertaining offering from the Rapi Films conveyor belt — specifically the Indonesian outfit’s brief dalliance with American style action movies — BLOOD WARRIORS (1993) is anchored by a welcome union:

Director Sam Firstenberg and star David Bradley. 

Having occupied each other’s orbit since their crossover on The Cannon Group’s American Ninja series (Firstenberg shepherded 1 and 2, Bradley starred in 3, 4 and 5), the pair joined forces on an unofficial spin-off, American Samurai (1992). At the time of Blood Warriors’ making, they’d just finished shooting Cyborg Cop (1993) for Nu Image. 

“Cyborg Cop was in post when Rapi asked me to come to Indonesia,” says Firstenberg. “I’d met Rapi at some film market — the AFM I think — and they wanted to break into the international market. They had experience in sales, and they’d done a few Cynthia Rothrock films which had done well for them. What they said to me was they wanted to make an action film with Frank Zagarino. And I knew Frank socially so I was happy to work with him. Then they asked if I could bring in another star as well so I suggested David Bradley.” 

Bradley toplines as a jaded ex-marine — fresh from the clink, incarcerated for a crime he didn’t commit — who treks to Jakarta and discovers that an old, supposedly dead ally (Zagarino) has put together his own private army (a la John Rhys Davies’ character in the aforementioned Cyborg Cop). 

A true master of mayhem, Firstenberg unleashes the violence with his usual full throttle style. The brawling is nicely choreographed and suitably bruising, and the key set pieces are slickly staged, with the helmer’s much-favoured bursts of slow motion utilised to accent the kamikaze pratfalls of the film’s Indonesian stunt team (Gatot & Group). That said, Blood Warriors isn’t quite as kinetic or carnage-driven as its stablemates, Triple Cross (1990), Lady Dragon (1992), and Lady Dragon 2 (1993) — though both it and Lady Dragon 2 end in a similar factory location. 

The most well-rounded film of Rapi’s American action run, Firstenberg fosters a surprisingly heavy and sombre mood befitting of Blood Warriors’ themes of guilt, grief and redemption. Bradley submits a solid turn, tackling both the arse-kicking and the more dramatic aspects with attention-holding intensity. Feeling akin to a passion piece for the tightly wound bruiser (he even gets a small musical number), the credits suggest Bradley had a hand in the screenplay. They list him as co-penning Blood Warriors with his and Firstenberg’s Cyborg Cop II (1994) collaborator, Rami Alon. Firstenberg, however, says otherwise:

“I have no idea why he’s credited. I know David had a lot of freedom to develop the character but then that’s how Rapi were. They certainly trusted me as a filmmaker, which doesn’t always happen [laughs]… I wrote Blood Warriors with Rami. I’d known him since the Cannon days; he was my production manager on Ninja III: The Domination (1984). And when Rapi approached me, they didn’t even have a script so we wrote it ourselves from scratch. Me and Rami liked the idea of a foreigner coming to a foreign land so we decided to sort of remake The Third Man (1949) but as an action film! [Laughs] Rapi were happy just as long as it had Frank in it and some explosions.” 

As for the rest of Blood Warriors’ cast, Jennifer Campbell — who’d reunite with Bradley on White Cargo (1996) — does what she can with her thin love interest part; Indonesian B-movie stalwart Dicky Zulkarnaen is fantastic as a secondary villain (his final role before his death on 10th March 1995); and Zagarino brings a flurry of cartoonish energy as the main antagonist — a Harry Lime with muscles if you will — when he surfaces proper at the film’s halfway point. 

Blood Warriors landed on U.S. cassette via Imperial Entertainment on 15th December 1993, per Rapi’s output deal with the company. The month before, in order to generate hype for the video release, Imperial booked the flick (as the S-less ‘Blood Warrior’) for several theatrical screenings in mall cinemas and drive-ins in Glendale, CA, whereupon it shared space with RoboCop 3 (1993); the film that Firstenberg’s preceding assignment, Cyborg Cop, was designed to ride the coattails of.

Here in the U.K. Blood Warriors was issued on tape in spring ‘94 by Columbia-TriStar, through their own distribution pact with Imperial.

Note the picture of Bradley on their sleeves. Nu Image used an alternative take from the same photo shoot in their Cyborg Cop II press materials.