June 10: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is Kung Fu! We’re excited to tackle a different genre every day, so check back and see what’s next.

It’s real easy to make Gymkata a punchline. But how many movies have ninjas on horseback and Olympic gymnast Kurt Thomas as a secret agent?

Based on The Terrible Game by Dan Tyler Moore, this was directed by Robert Clouse, who seemed to have a talent for making movies that I love, including The Ultimate Warrior, Force: Five, The Pack, China O’Brien and its sequel, Game of Death, Battle Creek Brawl, Enter the Dragon and The Pack. Its writer, Charles Robert Carner, also made the amazing Blind Fury.

Jonathan Cabot (Thomas) is tasked by the Special Intelligence Agency (SIA) to play The Game, the athletic spectacle that the country of Parimsitan makes foreigners play. It’s like American Gladiators but to the death with the winner getting any wish they want. The SIA wants that wish to be allowing the United States to place a Star Wars early warning satellite system in the country. Cabot is told that he can save the country and also learn about his missing father, who they claim was an SIA agent. He’s trained in the fighting arts by Hao (Conan Lee) and soon falls for Princess Rubali (Tetchie Agbayan) who he saves from the enemy by using his combination of karate and gymnastics or, as the movie says in the title, Gymkata.

Can Cabot defeat Commander Zamir (Richard Norton)? Will he find his father who supposedly died in The Game? Does he win The Game which no outsider has succeeded in winning in 900 years? Certainly you know the answers to all of these, right? How about this one: Is it strange that we’re cheering on American imperialism?

There’s also a “Town of Crazies” that luckily has a pommel horse in the middle of downtown so that Cabot can thrill us all with his abilities. And the leader is called The Khan and he’s played by Buck Kartalian who was Julius in Planet of the Apes and Peter Fudd in Please Don’t Eat My Mother. Isn’t his real name better than his name in this?

Kurt Thomas was a great enough gymnast that he has several moves named for him: the Thomas flair, the Thomas salto, the Thomas on High Bar and the Thomas flair on pommel horse. I never knew that in gymnastics, new moves are named in the gymnastics rule book after whoever first performs them in an international competition. So Scott Steiner would not get to call the rana the Frankensteiner, because Huracán Ramírez did the huracán rana first.

For all the worst movies this film is on, it’s never boring and always ready to delight you with people screaming, fist fights and yes, gymnastic chop sockery. There are way worse movies, trust me.