For years following Bruce Lee's death, low-budget vehicles for such dubious characters as Bruce Le and Bruce Li flooded the chop-socky market, crudely exploiting Lee's growing legend. A slightly different form of cinematic grave-robbery is practiced in 1986's No Retreat, No Surrender, a shameless Karate Kid knockoff--its video box describes the film's protagonist as a "kid karate student"--that covers its bases by exploiting both Lee's legacy and then-simmering anti-Russian sentiment. Kurt McKinney stars as a karate-proficient, personality-challenged teen whose family is forced to move to Seattle after his father both retreats from and surrenders to the mob. Once settled, McKinney encounters Jheri-Curl enthusiast J.W. Fails, whose irritating peppiness and ability to dribble a basketball while riding a bicycle mark him as a prime candidate for ethnic-sidekick comic relief. Fails impresses McKinney by performing an elaborate Bruce Lee-themed rap/moonwalking routine, securing his eternal friendship in the process. But all is not well in Seattle, as McKinney discovers when metabolism-impaired villain Kent Lipham (helpfully addressed as "chubby," "fat boy," and "lard-ass" and introduced eating a chocolate cake with his hands) begins viciously bullying him. After suffering a Lipham-engineered drubbing at a party, McKinney peels off in his two-toned, wood-paneled station wagon and, in a fit of rage, visits the grave of Bruce Lee. Soon, a poorly dubbed actor vaguely resembling Lee appears in a blast of cheap glowing light, promising to teach him to be a champion and using a Diet Coke can as a visual aid in a fighting metaphor. Benefiting from the surprisingly cranky Lee's posthumous aid, McKinney employs his skills to defend his father from a group of thugs, all of whom fight him in the popular but invariably unsuccessful one-at-a-time attack pattern. Following yet another showcase for Fails' breakdancing skills (featuring both the challenging "helicopter" technique and a Michael Jackson-style faux-military uniform), McKinney finally takes on a character billed in the credits as "Ivan, The Russian" (played by an agreeably mute Jean-Claude Van Damme), whose heinous nationality is referenced repeatedly whenever he's on screen. McKinney ultimately emerges triumphant, secure in the knowledge that due to his heroics, clean-cut, discipline-heavy martial arts would become synonymous with Seattle throughout the late '80s and early '90s."
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