11 Things You Might Not Have Known About ‘Gymkata’

When the rights for Dan Tyler Moore’s 1957 novel The Terrible Game were purchased in 1960, producers intended to adapt it into a vehicle for Rock Hudson. The actor presumably would have played the protagonist: a man who parachutes into a remote Russian village for a life-or-death competition with the intention of winning the United States a new military base there. But the film that would eventually make it to theaters decades later took on a very different form. Instead of a silver screen icon, the leading man was an Olympic athlete with no prior acting credits to his name. And as its new title suggested, the battle-to-the-death tournament its hero competes in was given an unusual gymnastics twist. To celebrate its 40th anniversary, here’s a look at how Gymkata backflipped its way into cinema infamy. 

1. Gymkata has similarities to a martial arts classic.
2. The movie relied on an acting novice.
3. Gymkata was Cold War propaganda.
4. Its director was considered past his prime.
5. Its casting was problematic.
6. Filmmakers created nonsensical scenes to showcase Thomas’s gymnastics skills.
7. Gymkata has a baffling romantic subplot.
8. It’s quotable for all the wrong reasons.
9. Gymkata bellyflopped at the box office.
10. It failed to launch a new craze.
11. Gymkata has become a cult classic.

Gymkata has similarities to a martial arts classic.

In 1973’s Enter the Dragon, Bruce Lee’s martial artist is recruited by an intelligence agency to infiltrate a shadowy physical tournament staged on a private island. In Gymkata, Kurt Thomas’s gymnast Jonathan Cabot is also recruited by an intelligence agency to infiltrate a shadowy tournament, this time staged in the fictional country of Parmistan. Robert Clouse directed both films. 

Gymkata does change a few things. Instead of trying to bring down a drug-trafficking crime lord, Thomas’s hero is tasked with winning the competition so that a satellite monitoring station designed to thwart nuclear attacks can be built in Parmistan. And the competition itself is far more cutthroat: Only the last man standing is guaranteed to leave with his life intact. For the most part, though, Gymkata doesn’t even bother to hide its seeming source of inspiration—and inevitably, it was always going to pale in comparison.

The movie relied on an acting novice.

Gymnast-turned-actor is a more common career pivot than you may think. Olympic gold medal winner Mitch Gaylord played the leading man in both the 1986 sports drama American Anthem and the 1989 action flick American Rickshaw. Two-time London 2012 medalist McKayla Maroney enjoyed a recurring role in small-town dramedy Hart of Dixie. And Pan-American Games runner-up Mark Caso donned Leonardo’s costume in two of the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles sequels.

But Thomas lacked natural on-screen charisma, which isn’t much of a problem when he’s jumping, kicking, and twirling all over the place—but it is when he’s required to convince viewers he’s smitten with a fearless princess or having an emotional reunion with a long-lost father who was presumed to have fallen to his death. The untrained actor received a Worst New Star nod at the 1986 Razzies. (He lost to Brigitte Nielsen, who starred in both Red Sonja and Rocky IV that year.) Thomas went on to bag later roles in TV movie Circus and Spanish comedy Slam. 

Gymkata was Cold War propaganda.

“There’s just a little anti-American sentiment running around,” Cabot’s handler explains about Parmistan’s general vibes shortly before getting pierced through the chest with an arrow. Gymkata does its best to redress the balance, painting its vaguely Soviet setting as a medieval wasteland populated by “crazies” and making its grand prize an early warning satellite station for Ronald Reagan’s infamous Star Wars Defense program. 

But in addition to being interpreted as Cold War propaganda, Gymkata is could also be viewed as payback for its leading man. Thomas was denied what many believed to be a surefire gold medal at the 1980 Moscow Olympics when Team USA boycotted the Games. The reason for their no-show? The Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan.

Its director was considered past his prime.

In addition to Enter the Dragon, Robert Clouse had previously helmed several landmark martial arts movies, including Jackie Chan’s first American venture, The Big Brawl. He’d also twice been nominated for an Academy Award thanks to The Cadillac and The Legend of Blue Eyes, short films both released in the 1960s. 

But the Korean War veteran appeared to lose his way in the 1980s. Force: Five was a pointless remake of Hot Potato, the kung fu B-movie released only five years earlier. His adaptation of James Herbert’s rat-infested horror Deadly Eyes was panned by critics, as well as the author himself (“absolute rubbish”). Even an actor as inexperienced as Thomas started to question his credentials. “When we were filming, Robert Clouse, as a director, honestly seemed to be a bit past his prime,” he later told Bristol Bad Film Club in an interview about Gymkata. “It was a low budget film, so as a result, there were very few retakes!” 

Its casting was problematic.

The VHS era was undeniably a very different time for moviemaking. In a cost-effective bit of casting that would certainly get Gymkata canceled today, the locals who attempt to kill Cabot shortly before his father comes to the rescue weren’t actors: They were real-life patients from a psychiatric hospital near where the film was shooting in Yugoslavia.  According to Thomas, those recruited were rewarded for their efforts not with cold hard cash but with alcohol and a buffet. (The Olympian also made it clear that anyone he physically attacked during the shoot were only ever professionals.)   

Gymkata wasn’t the only film to make this questionable casting choice. Fellow “so bad it’s good” classic Troll 2 (1990) hired an extra on day release from the University of Utah’s psych ward as Nilbog’s creepy drug store owner, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) used patients from the hospital where it was shooting as extras. 

Filmmakers created nonsensical scenes to showcase Thomas’s gymnastics skills.

Kurt Thomas was a pioneering American gymnast: He became his homeland’s first ever male gold medalist at the World Artistic Gymnastics Championships in 1978 and then set a six-time medal record the following year that’s only ever been equaled by Simone Biles. So it’s not difficult to see why filmmakers tried to showcase his skills on the big screen. The titular gymkata is Cabot’s signature fighting style, which combines gymnastics with martial arts and makes him a force to be reckoned with.

Unfortunately, incorporating Thomas’s form of physical prowess into another proved to be one feat too many. The graceful art of gymnastics doesn’t exactly lend itself well to the no-holds-barred world of martial arts, as proven by several ludicrous set pieces: See the alley getaway in which Cabot swings on a pipe placed conveniently like a high bar. Or when he miraculously fends off an army of town crazies on a rock boulder designed suspiciously like a pommel horse. And then there’s the unintentionally hilarious scene when, for reasons entirely unknown, our hero climbs up a staircase using only his hands.

“From time to time, the producers would just ask me what I could do physically that would look good on film—and they simply ended up incorporating most of them into the movie,” Thomas would say later.  

Gymkata has a baffling romantic subplot.

Wedged in just as egregiously as all the handstands is the bizarre romantic subplot involving Cabot and the ruler of Parmistan’s largely silent daughter, Princess Rubuli (Tetchie Agbayani). The pair’s meet-cute begins when the latter lassos him with a rope, pushes him into a wooden beam, and hits him where it truly hurts.

Not only is Cabot instantly smitten, he also tries to woo the royal by enacting an imaginary discussion between them, continually somersaulting himself into two different positions while adopting her voice. Somehow, this mix of violent physical assault and bizarre impersonation does the trick, and the unlikely duo eventually jump into bed before teaming up to overthrow a military coup and butter up the dastardly king. Sadly, Thomas had more chemistry with the makeshift pommel horse. 

It’s quotable for all the wrong reasons.

It’s fair to say that Gymkata screenwriter Charles Robert Carner took liberties with the source material: The Terrible Game doesn’t mention gymnastics once. And although hardly a literary masterpiece, it’s a solid piece of pulp fiction free of clunky one-liners—something that can’t be said for its big screen transfer. 

“It’s not over yet, so put your hardware back in your pants,” Cabot says as he dukes it out with sai-brandishing love rival Zamir (veteran stunt performer Richard Norton) in a bewildering double entendre. Then there’s the muddled speech from his Eastern trainer (Tadashi Yamashita), which seems to be an attempt to mimic the metaphorical lessons of The Karate Kid’s (1984) Mr. Miyaki (“There are many sounds around us, each is slightly different ... Do not hear the wood split. Hear the only sound of axe, cutting air. Read the air itself. It has much say to you”). Like all the best-worst movies, Gymkata is quotable for all the wrong reasons.

Gymkata bellyflopped at the box office.

Any hopes that Gymkata would kickstart a money-spinning franchise instantly came crashing down when the opening box office weekend’s takings were revealed. The martial arts crossover grossed under $1.3 million to place just inside America’s Top 10, well below other new entries like Code of Silence and Gotcha! as well as Beverly Hills Cop, which was in its 22nd consecutive week on the list.  

The critical maulings didn’t help either. The Miami Herald, for example, argued that it would be “better to spend your $4.50 renting a tape of Thomas scoring a perfect ‘10’ at the American Cup,” while TV Guide remarked, “The film has only a minimum of credibility or intelligence, but since these qualities have little or no place in the genre, that becomes irrelevant.”

It failed to launch a new craze.

Whether it was Flashdance inventing the collarless off-the-shoulder sweatshirt, Top Gun doubling up as a recruitment ad for the U.S. Navy, or Risky Business ultimately saving the Ray-Ban Wayfarer from extinction, the 1980s saw a whole host of real-world crazes that derived from Hollywood films. Unfortunately, the producers of Gymkata failed to convince the moviegoing public that they’d pioneered a hot new sport.

“When gymnastics and karate are fused, the combustion becomes an explosion, and a new kind of martial arts superhero is born,” boomed the trailer for the infamous flop. Its tagline was just as boastful (“A new kind of martial-arts combat! The skill of gymnastics … the kill of karate”). It soon became clear why the two physical pursuits had previously been—and ultimately stayed—mutually exclusive.

Gymkata has become a cult classic.

Like The Room, Troll 2, and several other best-worst movies, Gymkata has been adopted as an unintentionally hilarious classic in the years since its release. It’s something Roger Ebert foreshadowed in his review: “This is one of the most ridiculous movies I’ve seen in a while, but make of this what you will: I heard more genuine laughter during the screening than at three or four so-called comedies I’ve seen lately. I was even toying with praising the movie as a comedy, but I’m not sure the filmmakers would take that as a compliment.” 

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