Getty Image / Steve Campbell/Houston Chronicle
The 1980s and early-to-mid 90s were the golden era for Action movies. It was just nonstop martial arts and montages. The actual plots of these films were an afterthought. And while there are multiple stars on the Mt. Rushmore of 1980s Action Films, Jean-Claude Van Damme is 100% up there for me.
There was a time in my childhood when my older brother and I would rent Bloodsport from Blockbuster every single Friday night. Why didn’t we just purchase the VHS? Nobody knows. We must’ve rented it a hundred times.
Honestly, I don’t even remember how old I was back then but I look back at those Friday night Bloodsport binge watching days as one of the best periods of my life. So with that, we rank the best Jean-Claude Van Damme movies from that era.
The Best Jean-Claude Van Damme Movies From The 80s And 90s
We are counting down to #1 here and starting at #11. It is a lesser known film and it came toward the end of that film genre’s heyday.
11. The Quest (1996)
Was this film trying to capture the magic of Bloodsport? Perhaps. This 1996 film was only rated PG-13 so all of the 80s babies who grew up in JCVD’s heyday could see this one in the movie theaters which was a bonus.
The plot was over the top. The tagline on IMDB is “a group of gentlemen of fortune visits a legendary “Lost City”, located in Tibet. They plan to steal a priceless statue “Golden Dragon” during the martial arts tournament.”
You’re not going to have a Golden Dragon heist in the middle of a martial arts tournament without our boy JCVD getting involved in the action, right?! You can currently rent this on Amazon Prime for less than $4 if you are inclined to do so.
10. Double Impact (1991)
The only thing better than Jean-Claude Van Damme in a movie was TWO JCVDs in the movie. In 1991’s Double Impact, he played “twin brothers torn apart by violence” where “one packs a punch, one packs a piece.”
Bolo Yeung, Jean-Claude Van Damme’s nemesis in several films, appeared as ‘Moon’ in this movie. The fight scene above was enough to get people watching after their history in Bloodsport. The two brother were reunited after 25 years intent on avenging their parents’ death. Did the plot need to make sense beyond that? Absolutely not.
9. Double Team (1997)
This 1997 movie co-starring Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dennis Rodman was billed as “an international spy teams up with an arms dealer to escape from a penal colony and rescue his family from a terrorist.” …They really don’t make them like they used to.
Mickey Rourke was straight-up jacked in this film. It might have been the fittest he appeared in any movie throughout his career. Dennis Rodman was a household name and paired perfectly with JCVD. 1997 was a little late for the Van Damme era but it still worked.
8. Cyborg (1989)
The tagline for this 1989 Jean-Claude Van Damme movie was ‘He’s The First Hero of the 21st Century… And He’s Our Only Hope.’ You had JCVD on the poster holding the weirdest looking weapon anyone has ever seen.
Playing ‘Gibson Rickenbacker,’ a character’s name straight out of the world of Harry Potter, JCVD used a Tippmann SMG-60 paintball marker which was made to look like an actual gun and he carried a kukri-style knife.
This movie was battle after battle after battle set in a dystopian world. The IMDB tagline is “a martial artist hunts a killer in a plague-infested urban dump of the future.” Everything about this movie rocked. If it wasn’t for the nostalgia factor of the others, this would be ranked higher.
7. Kickboxer (1989)
Jean-Claude Van Damme starred in two movies in 1989 and both of them were bangers. If we are strictly talking about memes, Kickboxer might be his most enduring film. The dancing scene lives forever in the world of memes. He even recreated the dance moves as a guest on Conan 10 years ago.
Tong Po, the villain in Kickboxer, appeared menacing in every scene. Whoever directed this film was like ‘let’s put blood on his hands or face’ and the rest was history. He was a Muay Thai champion and ruthless killer. If my memory serves correctly, this dude literally kicked a pillar in half and separated it from the ceiling.
6. Timecop (1994)
‘Murder is forever, until now’ is just a perfect movie tagline for 1994. Time travel didn’t have to make sense, they just did it.
Van Damme played Max Walker who worked for an agency that regulates time travel but got caught up in a political plot that left him fighting for his own life. And nobody in their right minds would want to throw hands with JCVD. But they did, and they all got beat. This movie grossed $101,646,581 worldwide with an est. $27M budget. It was a huge hit.
5. Street Fighter (1994)
Millennials were obsessed with the Street Fighter franchise and Hollywood HAD to monetize it somehow. So what did they do? They took Street Fighter to the big screen with some of the most insane backstories of all time.
Jean-Claude Van Damme starred as Colonel Guile. Raul Julia (Addams Family) played his opposite as the villain General M. Bison. For his part, Raul Julia actually studied crime lords for the part as well as Joseph Stalin’s mannerisms and Hitler’s obsession with art.
Critics hated the movie even though it was a box office hit. Most of the budget went to the leading cast members with Jean-Claude Van Damme making $8 million for the film ($35M total budget). It went on to become a cult classic and is apparently still making millions of Yen annually according to Capcom a few years ago.
4. Sudden Death (1995)
Jean-Claude Van Damme was the fire marshal at Pittsburgh’s Civic Arena when he must break up a terrorist plot during a Pittsburgh Penguins game with the Vice President and his daughter in attendance. The tagline here was ‘terror goes into overtime.’
This movie really capitalized on how the Pittsburgh Penguins were having a cultural moment in 1995. They’d recently won the Cup in 1992 but had Mario Lemieux and Jaromir Jagr on the squad when this movie came out and hockey was having a moment. This is somehow one of the most re-watchable Jean-Claude Van Damme movies if only because there was a solid plot to go along with the action.
3. Universal Soldier (1992)
Cyborgs! The military brought back its deadliest soldiers who were killed in action to create a secret army of super soldiers. JCVD was up against Dolph Lundgren in this movie who everyone had come to from Rocky IV where he played Ivan Drago.
It was funny to have a guy from Stockholm and the Muscles from Brussels portraying American super soldiers but again, this was 1992 and plots didn’t need to be realistic or make sense, there just needed to be incredible fight scenes.
2. Lionheart (1990)
At #2 on the list of the greatest Jean-Claude Van Damme movies from the 80s and 90s we have Lionheart. JCVD plays ‘Lyon’ who is an ex-French soldier in Los Angeles to raise money to support his brother’s family and he does this by winning underground street fights.
The fight in the half-filled pool is epic. Brian Thompson as ‘Russell’ was the perfect ‘final boss.’ This movie sort of mirrored the original Mortal Kombat film where you started at the bottom and had to fight your way to the top. That’s essentially what Van Damme was doing here, fighting his way through Los Angeles. Could he have gotten a job as a banker? A private security guard? Flipping burgers? Sure. But he made with his fists instead.
1. Bloodsport (1988)
I think it’s fair to call 1988’s Bloodsport a martial arts cinema masterpiece. Jean-Claude Van Damme plays Frank Dux who was trained by Tanaka after befriending Tanaka’s son.
There were gratuitous splits after splits. His hard-drinking American buddy Jackson (Donald Gibb) got injured by the ruthless Chong Li in the Bloodsport tournament and Frank had to avenge him. But that’s all after he had to smash a brick with his bare hands in order to prove he was worthy of the tournament in the first place.
Meanwhile, Frank’s former bosses were chasing him all throughout Hong Kong to try and get him back but Frank was having none of it, not until he brought honor to Tanaka by winning the most brutal tournament in the world.
Were all of the splits necessary? Absolutely not. Did they make him look awesome on film? Of course.