The queen of DTV action takes cues from The Dead Zone in her boldest, sexiest movie
Film Features Watch This
Watch This offers movie recommendations inspired by new releases, premieres, current events, or occasionally just our own inscrutable whims. This week: We look back on highlights of the DTV action craze—some of the coolest, wildest, and most entertaining action movies to skip theaters entirely.
Sworn To Justice (1996)
American martial arts champion Cynthia Rothrock was arguably the first female action star in the vein of Jean-Claude Van Damme or Steven Seagal. After launching her acting career in Hong Kong, where she starred in movies like Corey Yuen’s Yes, Madam (1985) alongside then-newcomer Michelle Yeoh, Rothrock returned stateside and emerged as a direct-to-video leading lady at the height of the home video boom of the late ’80s and ’90s. She never achieved the popularity and name-recognition of her male counterparts, but the blonde bombshell was a regular, and a unique female presence, in the profitable world of martial arts DTV. Her greatest hits—like China O’Brien (1988), Lady Dragon (1990), and Undefeatable (1993)—are campy B-grade schlock that lean heavily on her physicality. Paul Maslak’s Sworn To Justice, a much later entry in Rothrock’s oeuvre, is no exception. At the same time, the movie’s kooky cross-genre approach and unexpectedly heavy dose of eroticism singles it out as the action star’s boldest effort.
Criminal psychologist Janna Dane (Rothrock) comes home one night to find her sister and nephew brutally murdered by a gang of ex-cons; she fends them off in a tight skirt-suit and flesh-tearing stilettos before leaping out a window and hitting her head. Practically every Rothrock movie is about serving vigilante justice on murderers and rapists, but this time her karate skills aren’t her only weapon. Thanks to the injury, Janna wakes up the next morning conveniently endowed with ESP abilities; she simply touches an object to access monochrome visions of others’ deepest traumas and secrets. Tony Lo Bianco, best known for his role in The Honeymoon Killers (1970), plays the leering Detective Briggs, who’s tasked with solving the murder mystery but too distracted by Janna’s hot bod and the pleasures of civilian intimidation to make much progress. Janna winds up as the expert witness in the trial of a mentally disturbed cop-killer, and by night she transforms into a black-hooded superhero, targeting members of a crime syndicate she suspects of being involved in her family’s murder.
Janna wears many hats as a crime-fighting psychic with a Ph.D., and Sworn To Justice matches that eclecticism with just as many outlandish subplots. One minute it’s a courtroom drama, the next The Dead Zone, and after that a goofy slapstick comedy with bad guys knocked around like coconuts. Maslak isn’t exactly adept at balancing out these elements, but the sheer randomness is oddly mesmerizing, and never boring. The movie also boasts an unusually high number of cameos from B-movie action stars; Rothrock must’ve called in a few favors from her inner circle to get kickboxing pro and Deathmatch star Ian Jacklin to show up just to get thrown out of a window within seconds. Also floating around is DTV director Art Camacho; Flesh Gordon himself, Vince Murdocco, from Flesh Gordon Meets The Cosmic Cheerleaders; and No Retreat, No Surrender 2 star Max Thayer as an office schmoozer in a bolo tie. Meanwhile, former Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Kenn Scott plays perverted crime kingpin Eugene, who delivers the movie’s best one-liner when he threatens to “rip the flesh from [Janna’s] creamy thighs.”
Compared to Rothrock’s past movies, this one’s less interested in packing as many fight scenes as possible into its slim running time. That might explain its many detours, the most surprising of which is not one but two racy sex scenes set to cheesy Latin instrumentals. Rothrock was never one to show too much skin, perhaps because she intuited that audiences would take her less seriously as a martial artist and an avenger figure if she emphasized her sexuality. Sworn To Justice breaks from this approach by involving Janna with Nicholas (Kurt McKinney), a dreamy, younger-looking co-worker who declares his love for her almost immediately. Their first sex scene, a fusion of martial arts and foreplay, is the movie’s pièce de résistance; Janna performs a kata in the manner of a striptease, tossing her leg up into standing splits before engaging Nicholas in a suggestive sparring match, the camera expressing equal interest in both actors’ sculpted, muscular bodies. The signature “Rothrock sting,” or scorpion kick, comes out in the final showdown, but none of the straightforward fight scenes compare to Rothrock’s sexy kata, which unabashedly owns the inherent eroticism of martial arts movies. Already an action movie veteran at the time of Sworn To Justice’s release, Rothrock must’ve sensed it was time to retire the chaste heroine for a new, sexually liberated image and a character no longer concerned with being one of the boys.
Availability: Sworn to Justice is available on Amazon Prime with a subscription.
43 Comments
Hi Beatrice Loayza,After i read this reviews i saw the movie. Actually it was awesome. I enjoy a lot.Again Thanks for this informative post.Regards,Hridoy
Reading that one liner about thighs just made me make a face like I smelled sour milk. It was extremely upsetting.
Thoughts and prayers! Luckily, Cynthia killed the bad man.
I was just badly expressing how revolting that line is. But it really is perfect for making the viewer hate the bad guy.
It takes quite the acting chops to be able to mess up the line ‘You killed my sister’.
I dunno — Steven Segal seems to have fucked it up like a boss.
Cynthia could never hope to rock a ponytail or run as delicately as ol’ SS does.
Sadly Rifftrax doesn’t have this movie, but they do have other Cynthia Rothrock classics such as Honor & Glory, Martial Law, and Santa’s Summer House.
I’ve seen the riffs of Honor & Glory and Santa’s Summer House, but haven’t seen Martial Law yet. Have to get on that – the other two were great (despite a distinct lack of fighting and way too much croquet-playing in its place in Santa’s Summer House).
Santa’s Summer House! Starring Woo from Survivor!
“American martial arts champion Cynthia Rothrock was arguably the first female action star in the vein of Jean-Claude Van Damme or Steven Seagal.”
By people who have no idea what the word “star” refers to?
Undefeatable is a ton of fun, especially the ending where the serial killer gets impaled on a hook via his eye and then gets hanged by the hook.
“We’ll keep an eye out for you, Stingray.”“Yeah. C-ya!”Finest scene in film history. Change my mind.
I saw the smaller version of the header image on the front page, and I thought the figure looked familiar but I had no idea who it was. As I clicked on it I was like, “Wait, is that Cynthia Rothrock?” Which was even more unusual for me, since I have never seen any of her films or even knew who she was before the RLM gang reviewed Undefeatable:And I only bring all of this up because they emphasize (beginning around the 49:10 mark) that Rothrock was just as good a martial artist as Van Damme or Seagal (and just as good an actor, too, though that’s damning with faint praise), and the only reason she didn’t achieve their status is probably because, well, the sexism. So if you dig DTV action films but never heard of her, you should definitely give this a try.
I learned about Cynthia Rothrock through Allison Pregler, arguably the biggest Cynthia Rothrock fan on the internet. She has reviewed every movie with Cynthia Rothrock she has been able to find.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzSaABvhwN1PU9MkA9f15xDdHY1G9XyQw
“Cynthia Rothrock…Allison Pregler”…these are made up names, aren’t they? You’re making these up to mess me, right?
Watch her Hong Kong ones — they’re better than her American ones, which are all largely bottom-of-the-barrel trash.In fact, watch Yes, Madam — where you get the Badass Twofer of her and a young Michelle Yeoh kicking butt and taking names.
“Rothrock was just as good a martial artist as Van Damme or Seagal (and just as good an actor, too”
Van Damme can act passably well, his English just sucked for years. I’ll bet he’d have been fine in French or Dutch. Hard to act convincingly in your 3rd (4th, who knows) language.
“Rothrock was just as good a martial artist as Van Damme or Seagal (and just as good an actor, too” This is damning with faint praise .(The acting part)
One of my friends is Flemish and only speaks Dutch, and I like to point out that, technically, in his home country he’s two-thirds illiterate.
I remember China O’Brien was a mainstay of HBO back in the early 90s and my mom and I used to watch it together every time it was on. That movie was a blast, I always thought it was a shame Rothrock didn’t have a bigger career.
While VanDamme and Seagal may have a better catalog of movies overall, Rothrock was a vastly superior cinematic martial artist. Certainly she used a stunt double for some heavier impacts (as they ALL do) but she was faster, more fluid and more versatile than either of them. Anyone that could thrive in the Hong Kong action scene at its peak and go toe to toe with martial arts luminaries like Sammo Hung, Michelle Yeoh, and Richard Norton is among the best in business for any era.
Lumping genuine talents like Van Damme and Rothrock in with a boorish oaf like Seagal is just criminal.
Yeah, the RLM guys actually used Van Damme and Schwarzenegger as their points of comparison. I substituted in Seagal for Schwarzenegger because Beatrice used Seagal and Van Damme as her examples in the opening paragraph.
Semi-on topic and even more semi-interesting: If I’ve been keeping track properly, Sworn to Justice is officially the 1000th feature-length production highlighted in the Watch This series!
https://letterboxd.com/gargusscp/list/watch-this/
Ouch! The star of No Retreat, No Surrender 2 gets cited for his NRNS chops but no recognition for poor Kurt McKinney for launching the franchise? Anyway, this sound incredibly entertaining, great write-up. I just watched Silent Rage, with its cheesy sex scenes from Chuck Norris, but he didn’t bring his martial arts technique to that area.
She wouldn’t have survived.
Roundhouse Dick!
Take some stars right there my friend. Take some stars.
So I’m watching the movie trailer in the YouTube link above and it gets to the part, “Brad Dourif, Lord of the Rings” and I find myself confused as Sworn to Justice came out in 1996 and The Lord of the Rings didn’t kick off its trilogy until 2001 but even more to the point, Brad Dourif didn’t appear until the second movie, The Twin Towers (2002).
It’s available on *what* with a subscription?
Fixed, thank you.
Now it’s gone again!
Why hasn’t she shown up in one of those Expandables movies. She far more awesome and tougher then the wash up wrestlers they put in those movies
She is in the 2014 Mercenaries, sort of a female Expendables, where she puts together a team of badass ladies including Zoe Bell, Kristanna Loken, and Viveca Fox to save the president’s daughter from Brigitte Nielson (probably not playing herself, but I am a bit fuzzy on the details).
“probably not playing herself”
Nothing can top her performance as Mrs. Claus in Santa’s Summer Home. (Thanks, Rifftrax)
Also courtesy Rifftrax: Honor & Glory.
Cynthia Rothrock is a national treasure.
Thanks to SNL, whenever I see “The Dead Zone” instead of the book or the movie I first think of Ed Glosser, Trivial Psychic.
https://dula.tv/videos/ed-glosser-trivial-psychic/
If you did an 80s-90s DTV version of The Avengers, she would definitely be Black Widow. Carl Weathers as Nick Fury, Seagal as Hulk, Brian Bosworth or Dolph Lundgren as Thor, you spend for a real star to be Iron Man, maybe Peter Weller, and of course JCVD as Captain AmericaBilly Drago as Ultron
Sworn to Justice is available on with a subscription.thank you, this is very helpful
yeah this really is one of those rare, rare movies that is absolutely bananas.
and by “bananas” i mean “bananananananas.”
so it begins with our hero innocently coming home to find her family gruesomely murdered, which for any movie is heavy. our hero is understandably devastated, and is wailing in mourning.
then, all of a sudden, it’s a fast-paced action scene where she fights her family’s murderers completely confidently straight – all sadness suddenly evaporated for straight-up action.
then, she bonks her head on a tree, and so magically gets psychic powers. and despite this way, WAY out development, the movie doesn’t really play it for anything but straight (or as straight as possible with this material).
then, there’s an awkward scene of karate / kata foreplay between her and a man she just met. this sequence gives our hero a chance to not only dress down but also flex her considerable physical strength and agility, and it’s meant to be played (i guess) as serious AND funny AND sexy.then, there’s an incredibly stiff Love Scene replete with “steamy” 1990s saxophone muzak – genuinely played for (i guess) eroticism and/or romantic interest. THEN, there begins a three minute zany comedic fight set-piece in a convenience store backroom set to zany Samba music. then, a man’s pants are pulled down and then, that image is accompanied by a slide-whistle sound effect. then, she stomps on one of the would-be robbers’ feet and a loud elephant trumpet sound effect blares on the soundtrack. THEN, there’s a couple of ‘hilarious’ crotch hits, accompanied by various “boink!” sound effects. this entire scene is played for nothing *but* the very lowest, most basic and childish form of slapstick comedy possible – after the defeated men end up hogtied on the floor, the man whose pants ‘hilariously’ fell down previously farts directly in the face of one of his compatriots. then there are slow police procedural / court room scenes, all played completely straight, and then there’s other stuff too, only by that time my brain had began to melt out my ears and i had to take a five minute break.
that was three days ago, i think, and my brains have begun to pool and congeal around my feet. if i stand up now, i do believe i’ll fall down.this movie really IS insane. and if i can’t say it’s GOOD, i *can* say it’s adventurous. seldom do you come across something so bizarre as that convenience store fight scene. i’m not sure i’ve ever seen a movie where someone’s foot being stomped on makes an elephant noise.
now, was that scene INTENDED to be ridiculous from the script stage? or was it torpedoed in Post by a greedy editor? you really can’t tell, though if you *do* watch this movie, i HIGHLY recommend also the “Making Of” video available on YouTube™. watch how the director of this absolute *schlock* talks as though he’d just shot Doctor Zhivago. he goes into this tangent about montage (he insists on pronouncing it “mun•tah•jj”) where (i think) he actually credits himself with creating some sort of brand new form of the art that had never been done previously.
. . . and all that while talking discussing a scene about her doing slow-motion karate moves in her underwear.
as someone not at ALL accustomed to such absolutely low-rent, direct-to-video material, i have to say this movie was a pretty baffling ordeal. if you’re there for the action, there’s that convenience store scene made for children no older than ten. if you’re there for wacky slapstick, there’s only that one scene. it’s entirely strange. who was this made for? what were they thinking? it’s like nothing else i’ve seen.
and so i highly recommend it.