Gymkata

This earns 100 points for having a pommel horse in the middle of the "village of the damned". Another 100 points for having a man survive a fall onto a pile of rocks, and then an arrow in the spine. It gets another 100 points for having a gymnast backflip about killing fools. Sadly, it loses 218 points for its dialogue and story.

Gymkata, we need you to head into this whatever for reasons we can barely put together so dress inconspicuous “oh don’t you worry” *saunters out dressed like a thirty year old toddler in a big red sweater and giant blue jeans* I have never once in my life seen a pommel horse outside.

The one mistake those goons made was putting a pommel horse in their lair.

Now this is a weird one. Most of the time it's as ridiculous and campy as you'd think, but then someone let Tarkovsky direct the City of the Damned bit.

Impeccable first 15 minutes, immaculate last 15 minutes, everything in between is worth it for this loveable garbage

I must leave you soon, my friends. In Parmistan, the land of pitchforks and Parmesan cheese, my destiny awaits. For years, I've been chasing an empty dream. Have I been blind all this time? Was gymkata the answer all along? I'm so excited, I can barely sit still or hold a thought in my... Actually, screw that shit, what I need are turtlenecks!

A pretty hilarious and awesome film! Ok, I know that objectively it was really bad, but sat in a "badfilm" screening with 150 people laughing and drinking beer, the film came across as 79% enjoyable. Some of the deliberate gags are laugh-out-loud funny. The fights are not exactly slick, but when MacGyver Jr takes out 30 deranged peasants using a random pommel horse - good times flow! Yes, I do think that Gymkata is one of the best awful action B-movies of the 1980s... and I've seen several.

Well it's either bad or it's good. In my opinion it's good but it's not good. It's ridiculous enough ot be good, but not good enough to be good. Yanno?

A gymnast (Olympic gymnast Kurt Thomas) is sent by the U.S. government to compete in "the game", an endurance/survival course run by a remote nation on the verge of a coup. Very derivative of director Robert Clouse's masterpiece ENTER THE DRAGON, it has some good moments of unintentional comedy, and the "village of the damned" sequence is legitimately well-directed, but on the whole it's too dull to be a great piece of schlock--and certainly not good enough to be good in its own right.

If you look up "unfortunate" in the Film Dictionary, you'll see a big ol' picture of Gymkata. As it turns out, the same picture is used for the entries of "grease" and "yeast infection".

Gymkata is.. ehm.. well, unique? All the fights are equally hilarious, with its ridiculous gymnatic fightstyle. Everything has a sound effect. Well, almost everything. I'm surprised they didn't use one when someone blinked his eyes. You hear horse clippety sounds, when they are in a grain field.. Yeah, really convincing. Also shot on probably the coldest day in history, which makes it even more stupid, cause there's a guy who wears an open 'fur' body warmer. So-bad-it's-funny movie

sweaterrific

Quick, let's make something cheap that we can put a gymnast in. At least it's pretty bizarre and ridiculous to be somewhat interesting.

Amidst long stretches of dullness and incoherence, there is a powerful psychotronic beauty, hypnotic in its mercenary badness.

uff, that one's tough to watch...06/12/09

This is beyond awful...

Terrible terrible movie, but definitely worth watching in a big group with a couple of beers for yucks with friends. This is snarking GOLD. Like shooting malformed fish in a barrel

Ah, come on, Criticker, you think I'd give this a 33? The only reason I'm watching it as an adult is because I'm hoping for some 80's Cannon-style So Bad It's Goodness and this delivers a decent amount of that. Yes, it's predictable and full of convenient plot holes, but it's also LOL ridiculous at times. What exactly is that village pommel horse for? As silly as the concept is, Clouse's direction is fine & he makes sure to throw in pole swings & as many flips as possible. It really is Gymkata!

Absolutely fantastic film. Everyone should watch this gem. Rifftrax score: 50

It's bad and nobody in it can act but you'll never see anything else like it.

This film's paper-thin Klein bottle of a plot and silly martial arts and possibly computer-generated dialog could've make it at least unintentionally funny, but everyone involved fails even at that. This movie gets too boring to even hate-watch.

Loved the Mel Brooks cameo!

I honestly have no idea what the plot of this movie was.

So bad it's good, etc. etc. Watch it with friends or just go to youtube.

Crotch-shots, Ninjas and Gymnastics. Sadly, not funny enough to warrant a "so bad, it's good" recommendation. Go see the few chuckleworthy scenes on youtube and forget about it.

"The mind boggles!"

This may be the worst martial arts film ever made. Seriously.

I had the misfortune of seeing this in the theater, and an equally unlucky patron a couple rows ahead of me summed it up best about halfway through the movie when he leaned to his companion and said, "This is weak."

It deserves it's high rating for it's social commentary. Witness this throwaway line. Agent: "There is some anti-American sentiment here." Immediately is killed by an arrow. Harrowing stuff.

Host ratings: 47 / 73 / 74. (Trash or Treasure Showdown) Podcast review link: https://rydeorwrong.podcaster.de/rydeorwrong/folge-092-trash-or-treasure-showdown-dracula-3000-das-ding-mit-den-2-koepfen-gymkata/

Look, if you center an entire movie around a scene where an Olympic gymnast decimates the entire Ganado population while on a pommel horse, then you have already won my heart.

This is a movie in which the US, in order to build a state of the art cold-war-winning satellite base, sends an elite gymnast to a foreign country to compete in a deadly game where the winner gets to make a wish. This is a movie where said gymnast spends several minutes roundhouse kicking an entire village of lunatics in the face from an improvised pommel horse. What more is there to say?