{"id":1110,"date":"2011-12-24T23:02:16","date_gmt":"2011-12-24T22:02:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1110"},"modified":"2011-12-25T08:38:00","modified_gmt":"2011-12-25T07:38:00","slug":"the-demise-of-jean-claude-van-damme","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/1110\/","title":{"rendered":"The Demise of Jean-Claude Van Damme"},"content":{"rendered":"

Flicking through the film listing on the flight back from Thailand a few weeks ago, I noticed they were showing a film featuring Jean-Claude Van Damme.\u00a0 Does anyone remember him?\u00a0 I do.\u00a0 When I was a teenage boy he was one of the biggest stars around, and we all thought any film with him in was awesome.\u00a0 I think I’d probably grown out of him around the time of Time Cop<\/em> in 1994 and had barely heard of him since.<\/p>\n

But a while back I did a portable hard-disk swap with a friend which contained all my old favourite Van Damme films from the late ’80s and early ’90s and so I decided to watch a few of them again when I was bored.<\/p>\n

Somewhat unsurprisingly I found them to be utter tosh, but they are unintentionally funny.\u00a0 I mean, they’re so bad that they become almost good.\u00a0 Maybe that was the secret all along?\u00a0 These films were rated 18, but did anyone of that age who wasn’t a complete retard actually watch them, let alone enjoy them?\u00a0 I watched most of them when I was about 15, which shows you how tightly controlled the videos finding their way into a boarding school TV room was.\u00a0 If the teachers hadn’t been so busy wife swapping…<\/p>\n

Anyway, where was I?\u00a0 That’s right.\u00a0 Somebody obviously had it in for Van Damme’s career right from the off, somebody in the wardrobe department.\u00a0 Here’s a scene from Bloodsport<\/em> (1988).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

He’s been decked out in cowboy boots, grey chinos which are too short, a black vest, and a cheap looking short leather jacket with the sleeves rolled up.\u00a0 Who the hell rolls the sleeves up on a leather jacket?!\u00a0 Were fashions really this bad in the ’80s?\u00a0 Of course, the black vest came in handy in a later scene where Van Damme shows off his muscles as he smashes his fist through some bricks.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

But couldn’t they have achieved this without our Belgian hero wearing his trousers like Obelix<\/a>? No wonder he sunk without a trace halfway through the ’90s.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Flicking through the film listing on the flight back from Thailand a few weeks ago, I noticed they were showing a film featuring Jean-Claude Van Damme.\u00a0 Does anyone remember him?\u00a0 I do.\u00a0 When I was a teenage boy he was … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1110"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1110"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1110\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1125,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1110\/revisions\/1125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}