Brute 1976 (2025)

This was a screener submission I got from the film's publicist, Scott Motisko, and I was supposed to review it back in August when the film was released. I guess reviewing it now for Spooky Season is okay, right? And to be fair, the movie paid me back for my delay. Oh did it pay me back! Two words: "penis drill." 

Brute 1976 isn't to be confused with Brut 1976, the documentary that was never made about the famous aftershave's impact on men in the 70s. No, this film involves a group of Millennials who have been whisked back to 1976 in a VW bus, and before you can say "vocal fry," a family of crazed killers starts hacking them up. Will any of them survive? And if they do, will they make it back to 2025 in one piece? Maybe they'll show the baddies how to make some sourdough bread. The reality is, none of it really matters, it's all about the penis drill.

That's right, the penis drill. It happens at about the 50-minute mark on a 105-minute movie, and that was it for me after that. Stuff was happening, people were getting killed, there was plot exposition going on with twists and whatnot, but my brain couldn't focus on any of that after the penis drill. All that said, there was a lot to like in this movie. It looked beautiful, and some of the shot composition was next level. I also liked the performances by Adriane McLean and Gigi Gustin, the only thing there is with all the other characters we lose them for periods. I did have trouble with a few elements though. No, the story doesn't involve Millennials sent back in time to 1976, but it might as well have. And on some levels, it felt like the only reason why this was set in 1976 was so Gustin's character could have a platform shoe-related ankle break. I can still have an homage to 70s slasher films set in the 2020s and still have it look the way this did, and it would've made more sense to me. The other issue I had is one I'm sure you guessed by my mention of the 105-minute runtime earlier in this paragraph. It took us over ten minutes for the first kill, even though we know that's where we're going; and then throughout we had these moments where people were talking about whatever, and I think you gotta break that up with kills. I mean, how much am I watching a Gene Kelly movie to see him talk? I need my dance numbers, just like in a horror movie I need my kills. And I think that's where I come down on this movie, at 80 minutes, even with fewer kills, with how great it looked and some of the performances, it would've been a favorite for me, but at 105 it's a harder sell.

That previous paragraph might sound like I'm joining the parade of people dumping on Millennials, and that's not really my intention, it's more like people of a certain age--and I think I can even include myself among them to some extent--sound a certain way and carry themselves a certain way, and it stood out to me from the opening scenes when two characters who were supposed to be in 1976 were speaking in vocal fry. Also, since no one puts their ages on their IMDb bios anymore, some of them could've been Gen Z, but the point remains that no one really felt like they were from 1976. And I don't know how you fix that either. The most glaring one for me was the Ray character. He was supposed to be this mustache-wearing 70s dude, but it was more the Portlandia "the dream of the 90s is alive in Portland" kind of thing, as he reminded me of a guy who sold me pizza slices when I was there in the late 2000s visiting my sister. He looked like something out of the 90s 70s revival more than the actual 70s, only he would've been too young for it in the 90s when it was actually a thing. And again, I don't have a ready answer for this issue, I mean, did people born in the 30s think the same thing when they saw Nicolas Cage in Peggy Sue Got Married? I think Dazed and Confused was more made for people my age than people born in the 50s, so maybe this was meant more for people ten years younger than me, which I can appreciate.

Usually when I do a screener, I only use the stills provided, in part because the screener often has a watermark; but also because they provided them for a reason, these are the images they want me to pick from. I went off-script here though because there was no watermark, and I wanted to spotlight the beautiful shot composition. There was a hyped-up remake of a horror classic that came out around Christmas that was all about the shot composition, and I think I'd take the Pepsi Challenge with this movie over that--plus this movie didn't have any DTV Exorcist sequel-level possession scenes. Had the movie been 80 minutes, with a bunch of shots like this and some deaths sprinkled in, it would've been a five-star movie for me. The other thing is there was nothing necessarily 70s about any of this, it just kind of is its own thing, and had they leaned into that more, the Millennials in the cast wouldn't have stood out at all in trying to pass them off as people from the 70s, they actually would've fit that overall vibe--and that overall vibe still could've been an homage to 70s slasher films. 

I mentioned Gigi Gustin in the second paragraph, and fun fact about her on the DTVC, she was in Fast and Fierce: Death Race, an Asylum film with DMX that happens to be our second-most viewed post of all time. The film leans much more heavily on her in the beginning, and she was up to the task, so when the story went away from her, it felt like we were missing something. From there we had Adriane McLean anchoring the proceedings more, and she was good too, but it was like "what happened to Gigi Gustin's character?" And then the way everything was resolved, I would've liked better for both of their characters. This also isn't McLean's first time on the site, she was in the Art Camacho-directed Dermot Mulroney flick Ruthless (which, if you recall, could've lacked a little more ruth). I guess what I would say is, if you create strong characters in your movie, book, what have you, they need a proper end befitting that strength, otherwise it's a letdown, and the way this ended for them was a letdown for me.

Okay, it's time. Usually I save the seventh paragraph for something personal about me--and I had that paragraph locked n' loaded as I was going to talk about the 90s 70s resurgence, and how I watched Sponge's "Molly (Sixteen Candles)" video to bring back a better sense of that vibe. But then, we got the penis drill, and all bets were off. We've had the 300-pound Pork Roast. We've had John Barrowman's famous line in Shark Attack 3. And now we have the penis drill. The thing is, said penis is definitely a prosthetic, but even so, seeing a drill get shoved into it and turned on is tough to watch. And that was it for me mentally at that point. All dialog was replaced with "penis drill." Whenever there was dramatic music as someone was about to be killed, I was singing "penis drill" to it. Hell, I had "Sussudio" in my head for some reason, and I found myself replacing the lyrics with "penis drill." "Pee-pee-penis driiiiillll." Going back to what I said earlier, an 80-minute gore fest and I'd say a penis drill is right at home with that; but when you still have 55 minutes of movie left, and a lot of that is talking, there's no way you can hit me with a penis drill and expect me to manage through that. I clocked in the denouement at over ten minutes before anything happens, and they still tacked an additional ending onto that. When you come with the penis drill, you need to be wrapping things up with a flurry of kills, and then a bloodied McClean and Gustin need to be hitchhiking on a desert highway as the credits roll, that's about all I can be expected to give you after that. As an aside, I played "Sussudio" on YouTube, and the algorithm played "One More Night" after. "Pe-nis drill... ooh just pe-nis drill..."

And with that, we better wrap this up. Currently you can get this on Amazon Prime for $1.99, though word on the street is that version puts a censor bar over the penis drill. Normally I'd say that's like ED-209 in RoboCop, where the edited version is scarier than the real over-the-top (Stallone style) gore of the original, but with a penis drill, you may need it. I will say though, penis drill or no, if you're looking to support indie horror this Spooky Season, this is a great choice. (The algorithm just went to "Do You Remember," "we never talked about it, but I hear the penis drill was miiiinnne.)

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt30561103

Pick up my newest book, Nadia and Aidan, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

3 Musketeers (2011)

It's that time again, DTVC Hall of Fame inductions! And our first one is one we knew was going to be in as far back as March when we first decided to tag him, and discovered he had over 50 movies on the site! That's right, the one and only Cole S. McKay. This film is one of two he directed for The Asylum, the other being 200 M.P.H., and after hearing Will from Exploding Helicopter say good things about it, I figured it's be a great one for McKay's induction post.

3 Musketeers is about an elite US military special ops team of the same name (Xin Sarith Wuku, Keith Allen, and Michele Boyd) who get framed for blowing up a South Korean airliner while doing some special ops stuff in North Korea. Meanwhile back at the Pentagon, agent D'Artagnan (Heather Hemmens) is sent to talk to a crackpot named Planchet (the great Steven Williams), but when he's assassinated, she knows this goes way deeper, so she tracks down the Musketeers for help. Turns out their former boss, Treville the Cardinal (Alan Rachins) is planning to assassinate the President of the United States! Will our heroes be able to stop him?

This was a pretty fun time. It does have some lulls in it, and it has the cheap CGI we've come to expect from The Asylum, but beyond that this does what you need it to do. I think the best part is Heather Hemmens as the lead. She underpins the whole approach The Asylum is going for here where they're doing something different with the Three Musketeers story, and that's furthered with the Musketeers themselves, Xin Sarith Wuku, Keith Allen, and Michele Boyd. This is a fun team that I want to see succeed, which is the key to making something like this work. On the opposite end, Alan Rachins is a great baddie, with David Chokachi working well as his second-in-command. Unlike a lot of the PM films McKay worked on though, CGI replaces a lot of the stunts, shootouts, and explosions, and that keeps this from being an all-time classic that some of those are; but I think the fun cast and the work McKay and the stunt team does in the moments that aren't CGI elevates this beyond the usual Asylum fair, making it worth a watch.

63 tags before a Hall of Fame induction may be a record, unless we decide to put Millennium Films in, but at least it'll be a record for a person. As I've mentioned before, Cole S. McKay was first put on my radar when I had Chris the Brain Kacvinsky from Bulletproof Action on the pod to talk The Sweeper (episode 165 in the archives). We were talking about Spiro Razatos, and he mentioned McKay then as another great stunt guy. From there, doing the PM Entertainment Podcast with Jon Cross, McKay kept coming up, so after reviewing Victim of Desire back in March I decided to tag him, and he had over fifty movies that we'd reviewed on the site! Since then, we've now done an additional 7 movies (this one included), meaning at that rate he could pass Dolph to be the most tagged all time! What's interesting with this movie, is you see the moments where The Asylum skimps with CGI that PM allowed their stunt teams, led by talents like McKay, to get after it. For example, we get a moment where Hemmens's character swings on a large advertising banner to escape some baddies, and it's just bad-looking CGI. You know had this been PM fifteen years before, a stunt person would've been rigged-up and been swinging through that scene for real. As I mentioned above though, what McKay and his team can do is elevate the moments of practical stunts we do get, so we get something closer to that golden age from fifteen years before, even if it's not quite that. He has a ton of stuff left to cover, especially from that golden age of DTV action, so it'll be exciting to see what comes next, but for right now, it's about finally getting him into the Hall of Fame, which we're doing in this post.

Our other Hall of Famer here is The Asylum, they of the Asylum Rule which states that anyone with over 30 tags is an automatic Hall of Famer. In that sense The Asylum made us induct them into the Hall of Fame by the sheer volume of movies they've made like this who have other people in them. The other thing is, when I first started the site in the late 2000s, these Mockbusters they were doing were ubiquitous, and a fun inclusion to get people interested in what we were doing. We did our share of Transmorphers and Snakes on a Train, and one thing I've found with those films, or the myriad disaster movies and big monster movies, is they often used those films to give people opportunities they wouldn't ordinarily have had. In that sense I think they're working in the same tradition as PM Entertainment, and when it works, like it does here, it's a lot of fun. So, maybe they forced us to induct them into the Hall of Fame, but watching a movie like this one is a reminder that they were also deserving of the honor.

We're going to try to stuff everyone else into this sixth paragraph, so buckle up, because there are a lot of names to get to. We'll start with Heather Hemmens, who I discovered from her IMDb bio is a fellow Mainer! She was great here, but it looks like the only other thing she's done like this was another Asylum joint, Rise of the Zombies, so maybe we'll have to give that a try. Among the Musketeers, I didn't recognize any of them either, but Keith Allen I thought looked like a combination of Todd Newton and Ryan Seacrest, which was perfect for the role he played as the computer whiz in the group. Then we had Xin Sarith Wuku and Michele Boyd as more of the action Musketeers, and like Hemmens were great as action leads. It's unfortunate the The Three Musketeers that this was mockbustering was kind of a bust, because it would've been fun to see this crew come back for sequels--and really, is it a rule that The Asylum can't make their own sequels, even if the blockbuster they're mockbustering doesn't get a sequel? With our baddies we had the late Alan Rachins, who brings this West Wing guest story-arc element to the proceedings, which would've been enough, but we also get Rachins Fu, when he fights Xin Sarith Wuku, which was beyond what I could've asked for. And then with Chokachi as his second-in-command, what I liked there was he brought a poor man's Casper Van Dien vibe, but the real Casper Van Dien would've been too much for Rachins's second-in-command, so it's almost like Casper Van Dien light, or like a side-helping of Van Dien. I never considered it before, but Chokachi works great in that lane where you want Casper Van Dien energy, but the real Van Dien is too big for the role. The Steven Williams one-scene was great. We haven't had him too much on the site before, that's why he wasn't tagged, but always great to see him when we can. Finally, the person in this film with the third-most tags was the one and only James Lew, who has one scene in the beginning, but does most of his damage on the stunt team. That's 20 movies for him now. Could he be our next candidate for an Asylum Rule induction?

Finally, in high school we watched the 1993 version of the film, and my friends I loved the opening sword fight between Chris O'Donnell's D'Artagnan and Paul McGann's Girard, mostly for McGann, like when he screams "liar!" and then the faces he makes while he's dueling with O'Donnell. I remember our friend's mom got mad at us for rewinding it and replaying it over and over, telling us we were going to break the VCR. To this day, 30 years later, when I hear the name "D'Artagnan" I hear McGann yelling "will get you D'Artagnan" in his screechy McGann voice. I hadn't seen that scene in 30 years though, so I thought for this review I'd cue it up and watch it on Disney+, which fortunately they hadn't vaulted like they tend to do with their movies, and it still made me laugh all these years later. While that scene is the lasting legacy of the film for me, I think for most people it's the theme song, "All for Love," by Bryan Adams, Rod Stewart, and Sting. I don't know if that one was intended to be a franchise like the 2011 one, but had it made more at the box office, you have to imagine there would've at least been a sequel. It does make you wonder, why hasn't this concept not worked better? I think the period piece thing is always going to be an issue, but when I looked up adaptations, I didn't see any modern versions other than the one we're reviewing here. Could that be the key to the successful franchise? Maybe The Asylum was onto something.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently get this on Tubi here in the States, which I think is a great deal. This is one of those Asylum movies where the formula works, so it's worth a watch if you're looking for a fun time. Also, here's to you Cole S. McKay, and your induction into the DTVC Hall of Fame. You're truly one of the greats, this is well-deserved.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1977681

And if you haven't yet, check out my newest book, Nadia and Aidan, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Classified (2024)

This is one Ty and I covered back in July on the podcast, episode 218, "Eckhart on the Skids (?)", with the question mark because we weren't sure if Eckhart was high enough at one point to merit being on the skids now as he was making movies like this. It's a fair question, one we weren't necessarily able to answer on that episode.

Classified has Eckhart as a CIA lifer, an assassin who learns about his new jobs through coded language in classified ads in local newspapers--which is nice that someone has found a use for newspapers and classified ads in the age of the internet. Anyway, a mysterious young woman (Abigail Breslin) informs him that the whole thing is a sham, and when he looks into it, he realizes this may actually be the case. Could the death of his friend and director, Tim Roth, also be a sham? Now it's up to Eckhart and Breslin to travel around to as many beautiful locations in the Mediterranean as they can to try to get to the bottom of this thing. Will he find out before the net closes in on him?

This isn't horrible, but at a running time of 105 minutes, it's a little long, and that extended time exposes flaws that would've been forgiven at 80 minutes. The tone is a little uneven. There's one point where it seemed like Breslin's character was developing feelings for Eckhart, but later we learn she's his daughter, and she knew that, so the tone of those earlier scenes was awkward, knowing now that that wasn't what the film intended them to be. We also have moments were she's hanging out at the safe house doing goofy exercise things to kill the time, which makes us think the movie is more lighthearted, but then we have serious killings and death. So what then does this movie have to hang its hat on? Eckhart? Sure, but he's doing a bunch of these former CIA agent movie things, so does this one standout, or just look like another one of those? Tim Roth has a few scenes, but what does that get me? And then it was directed by Roel Reine, which does give the thing a polish that helps, but this ain't no Pistol Whipped or even Hard Target 2. Ultimately that's where we're left, this isn't horrible, and I think if you're an Eckhart fan it's worth a watch.

Speaking of Mr. Eckhart, this is now three movies of his we've reviewed, and he played some kind of ex-CIA or CIA veteran in all of them. I haven't seen The Bricklayer yet--that's clocking in at close to two hours, so I'll probably pass, though I saw it's leaving Netflix on October 2nd, so I may want to make it happen just in case! It's an interesting niche to fall into, the grizzled ex-CIA guy, you can make his movies anywhere, he looks great in a suit with no tie reading the paper at a fancy European café, and then it's just a matter of making the action bits believable enough, which we can do now through the power of editing. I saw his next Jesse V. Johnson collaboration won't have him as an ex-CIA guy, but I'm holding out hope that there will be some kind of twist where it's revealed that he led some kind of secret double life. A guy can dream, right? As far as this movie goes, it's the Eckhart you want, and I think for a 105-minute Hulu actioner, that's all you can ask for.

This actually isn't our first time seeing Tim Roth on the site, if you remember we covered The Incredible Hulk for a Wild Card post back when I did those. He's not in this much, and when he is, it was hard to get a shot of him sans reverse shot from the actor he was speaking with, so I finally gave up and just grabbed this one, even if it wasn't the best. Modern filmmakers, especially DTV ones, should help out us reviewers. If you know you only have the name in the film for a day's worth of shooting, make sure you get one or two clean headshot moments for us. I'm not going to say that explains why this movie only has 11 critic reviews on IMDb (12 now if you count mine), but it doesn't help, right? Again, that low number of critic reviews speaks to how this movie didn't have much to hang its hat on in a sea of Eckhart grizzled ex-CIA options out there, and the one thing it was supposed to have, Roth, doesn't have enough of him for it to work as a hang your hat on kind of thing. They were close though when we had the scene with Roth in a full-zip hoodie eating at a fancy restaurant with Eckhart. A touch more of that energy would've made all the difference.

We're finally tagging director Roel Reine on the site, which makes this his seventh film. Out of all the ones we've reviewed, I'd say Pistol Whipped is my favorite, one I put in my top 10 DTV films of the oughts, and probably one that would make a top ten of the 2000s so far for me. This doesn't come close to those heights, but as I looked through the rest of his films we've covered so far, this might be my third-favorite, after Hard Target 2. I don't know what that says about him or his films, I think maybe more he's a higher-end gun for hire, and can put a level of polish on something that otherwise would be unremarkable, which is an important skill in the modern DTV ecosystem. The other thing I noticed is he often acts as his own DP, which, I don't know enough about how directing works at this level, but because it doesn't seem to happen that often, it must not be that easy to do. Maybe like a drummer being a lead singer, it's rare, and when it did happen with Karen Carpenter, they were like "sorry, you can't be a drummer anymore." Don't you remember you told Roel Reine you loved him, baby? Rainy days and Mondays do get him down, don't they? Okay, I'll stop.

Finally, I want to finish by going back to the newspaper. I'm from that age where we remember when the newspaper was a big deal, and were also part of the transition population that expected to be able to find every story online while our parents were still getting the paper delivered. I'm sure everyone else who's around my age also had to have the conversation with our parents when we were looking for a job, that newspaper classified ads and "hitting the pavement" aren't how it works anymore. How can that be? No, it made more sense to them that we were just being lazy and not wanting to find a job, than that we could actually go on that computer box thing and apply to a job and send them our resume through that--and that they actually preferred that to us just showing up. I was also one of the first people I knew who worked from home, starting back in the fall of 2013, and that totally blew their minds. The fact that this movie, released in 2024, was using classified ads in newspapers--physical newspapers no less--was a blast from the past. Maybe that was the thing they should've hung their hat on more. All the things physical newspapers can do that digital ones can't. Like when you're moving, you can't wrap your fragile stuff in a digital version of a newspaper, can you? What about putting Silly Putty on a newspaper to show how the print comes off on it, try doing that with your computer screen, right? And God forbid you find yourself in prison, you can't turn the digital version of a newspaper into a deadly weapon like you can the print one. The thing is though, out of all of those things, the one thing you could do with the digital version is read the classifieds and decipher any codes in them.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently get this on Hulu here in the States, but if you cancelled your Hulu subscription recently, this wouldn't be the reason to get it back. And also check out the podcast episode Ty and I did on this, 218 in the archives, "Eckhart on the Skids(?)"

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27714840

Pick up my newest book, Nadia and Aidan, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Repo Jake (1990)

Our friend Jon Cross over at the PM Entertainment Podcast has been doing a celebration of PM films this month called "SePMtember," and I thought I'd get in on the festivities with this PM flick I'd been meaning to watch for a long time. In addition to us, we have a legit Murder's Row of other reviews, with Chris the Brain from PM, Ty and Brett at Comeuppance, Mitch at the Video Vacuum, and Simon from Explosive Action all having covered this as well. A sign that I'm long overdue to join the party.

Repo Jake is an early PM joint featuring the great Dan Haggerty as the eponymous hero, a burly fellow from Minnesota who moves out to LA temporarily because he hears the repo business is booming out there. Once he gets on with a repo company, it doesn't take much for him to rise to the top of the rag-tag fun group of fellow repoers--and fortunately the people he needs to repo cars from are just deadbeats, we wouldn't want to have to think about people struggling to make ends meet and falling behind on their payments during the recession in the early 90s, would we? Anyway, one of those deadbeats is a pimp and porn producer, and after Jake repos his car, he gets revenge by threatening Jake's new lady friend. Now he has to win a demolition derby-style race for said pimp--oh, by the way, Jake was a former Indy car driver. Wonders never cease.

There are a few places you can go with this. From a PM standpoint it's fun to see the seeds of some of the things that would be hallmarks of their films appear here, like people being thrown through windows, exploding cars, and Cole S. McKay appearing in a scene. The wave is starting to build here, and it's like we're wading in the water, watching the wave come in, waiting for those PM classics to come in push us to shore. There's also the 90s nostalgia. I loved seeing Haggarty come in on a Trailways bus--try not to think of someone with his massive frame having to sit on a bus from Minnesota to LA though, Christ, I'm 5'7" and my back and knees are seizing up just thinking of that trip! But the third element is taking it as a film on its own merits, and that may be where it falls a but flat. We get the classic PM action to start, but they hadn't developed that every 10-15 minutes rule yet, so we get dead spots too. The race scenes were hard to follow, and I couldn't make out where anyone was. And then the music, if it wasn't a wailing harmonica, it was a Casio preset whimsical theme. With all that in mind, while I usually use the term "connoisseur" ironically--and I guess I still am here--you have to really dig this kind of thing to enjoy it, which I did, but not everyone will.

We're now at 52 PM flicks, and if it seems like I've been covering a lot of them lately, you're right. This is three months in a row with a post, four months out of the last five, and 7 of the last 9. This is the earliest one we've watched in a while though, you can tell from that early logo, and between the logo and the script on the opening credits, it was a lot like Shotgun, only without the too-sweet theme song. There were other hallmarks of PM that we could see here too. Like when one of the repo guys fell asleep, and some of his coworkers put lipstick on him, then woke him up and sent him out on a job. That was it, nothing else happened, like the kids who put the pizza box in the oven in Riot and then after Chinese food with Daniels, are never heard of again. Another hallmark I mentioned above was Cole S. McKay, who had a scene driving a car Haggerty is trying to repo. Before you know it, Haggerty is on the hood hanging on for dear life while McKay is driving all over the place. It was a great way to get McKay's 62nd tag on the site. We also have Merhi's direction with Pepin's cinematography on a Jacobson Hart script, and Paul Volk working on post-production. With all these names working together, they were able to refine their craft with each successive movie, which I think more than anything was what made PM so great, each film was part of the process, not just a one-off.

This is only our second Haggerty film on the site, the other being Axe Giant: The Wrath of Paul Bunyan, which we reviewed in 2013. It does seem odd that 1300+ posts in and this is only his second film, especially when we have a classic like Elves that I discuss with Mitch on the podcast every year around Christmas. And it's in that mid-80s to mid-90s period where he did a lot of DTV damage, so I probably should make an effort to get more of his stuff up. He does have another PM flick, from the same year as this, Chance with Lawrence Hilton Jacobs, where Haggerty also plays a repo man, just not the same one he plays here. The thing about him that's so great is he has this avuncular quality that always makes him endearing to watch, whether it's as a race car driving repo man in penny loafers like he is here, or when he's tearing it up on Battle of the Network Stars. For all the things about this film that didn't work, he's definitely one that does.

We generally don't do our McDonald's paragraph this early in the post, but it is the 16th film we've had with a McDonald's, so I feel like maybe they've moved past the penultimate paragraph territory. And the thing is, similar to Presidential Portraits, I wasn't always tagging them in the past, so sometimes when I rewatch things we've already reviewed, I catch one and add the tag. Could we see McDonald's getting into the Hall of Fame on the Danny Trejo rule? I've looked at other fast food places, and none of them appear as much as McDonald's, I think in part because the one from this film and the one on the Vegas strip are in a lot of films from this period. Recently I made a trip to Chicago to see a White Sox game (ballpark number 14 for me!) and before my flight back I hit the McDonald's flagship location, where they have some international offerings, including the Big Arch Burger. Not to be confused with the Arch Deluxe, the Big Arch is two quarter-pound patties with white American cheese and this Arch sauce, along with some other accoutrements. The white American cheese was a bit strong for me, but otherwise I liked it. The best way to describe it? It's like what the rest of the world must think of American cuisine in the form of a burger.

Finally, for our actual finally paragraph, would you look at that sweet, late 80s Texas Rangers cap. There's a little mark in the middle, which I think was meant to obfuscate it enough to avoid MLB's lawyers calling to complain, but otherwise it's perfect. In 2023 I was lucky enough to be in Dallas for work, and was able to get a Lyft over to Arlington to see a Texas Rangers game (ballpark number 11). I looked online, and no place makes this version new anymore. As far as the ballpark, if you get a chance, it's worth seeing a game there. When I went, I got a cheap seat in the upper deck, but one of the ushers told me to sit in the section below that because they hadn't sold out, something I've never had an usher do before. The problem with the park though is there's no public transportation out there, and it's not in Dallas. For someone who goes to games here in the Northeast, and who doesn't drive, being able to take the subway--or even a light rail option--is much nicer.

And with that, let's wrap this up. As of this writing, you can get this on Prime, which is a great way to go. It's probably a deeper cut PM, you've gotta really like movies like this to enjoy it, but if you do, I think you'll have a great time like I did.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0340312

Pick up my newest book, Nadia and Aidan, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Take Cover (2024)

This is one that Will from Exploding Helicopter and I covered on the podcast, back on episode 213, as part of our Scott Adkins double feature with Accident Man: Hitman's Holiday, and I figured why not review it now and get in on the Snipetember festivities. In addition to us, Chris the Brain at Bulletproof Action has covered this as well.

Take Cover has Adkins as a mercenary sniper who, after killing an innocent person, wants to retire. If only it were that simple, right? His boss (Alice Eve) is okay with that, as long as he does one more job for her. Again, if only it were that simple, right? And sure enough, when they get into the hotel suite he and his spotter (Jack Parr) are staying in before they do their job, they realize they're sitting ducks for a sniper who wants to get them! Now this beautiful hotel suite is a death trap, with it's large windows that have a fantastic view of the city providing very little cover from the assassin's bullets. As luck would have it though, two young women were sent up before the shooting to keep our heroes company, and while one dies off right away (Alba De Torrebruna), the other (Madalina Bellariu Ion) lives and proves to be quite helpful. Will Adkins make it out alive?

This is another one of your classic we have enough material for a 42-minute episode of a syndicated action series, but not enough for a 90-minute movie. Adkins does the best Adkins he can, be he doesn't get a lot of Adkins moments; and then Alice Eve as the evil mercenary leader is wasted in a kind of Eric Roberts sit-down role--the fact that she has to do a wardrobe change at the end seemed like a big ask for her part. I think the biggest fail for me though was how our heroes would do things that seemed strategic, but had no strategic effect. "Everyone turn all the lights off so he can't see inside here." Great, we'll do that... except the sniper has the same ability to see inside and shoot at them? Then why did we go through all the trouble to turn out all the lights? Our closest thing to an Adkins moment came when a clean-up crew went to the suite to finish everyone off, and Adkins took them out, but even that felt perfunctory, as if the people making the film were like "we need something to break-up the monotony of this siege." Finally, we get Chekhov's silk bedsheets, where this idea of using silk bedsheets to make an escape is brought up a few times in the film, and pays off in this silly sequence of Adkins parachuting out of the hotel suite using said silk bedsheets. It tonally felt off, and I wasn't sure how I was supposed to take it. All that said, if this were a 42-minute episode of an action series, where maybe Alice Eve's character had been developed over multiple episodes before that, we'd probably call it one of the best episodes of the series, and maybe that's wherein the rub lies: the idea of this script being in mostly one location was too enticing to pass up, so they made the movie, even if they were stretching to fill the rest of the time.

We've now done 31 Scott Adkins movies here on the site, and many of the ones before it are high-octane actioners directed by some of the best in the business like Jesse V. Johnson, Isaac Florentine, and James Nunn. That means he's set a high bar here, and not every movie he does will live up to that. I can also see why he would've done this project. Like if I read this as a short story while on a plane or a train or something, I'd have been into it, and I'm sure that's what intrigued him too as he read the script. The other thing in his favor is his presence elevates this beyond a total stinker. He's still fun to watch, and he plays these mercenary/special forces characters well--even when he's parachuting out of the building using silk bedsheets, aided by a not-well-disguised greenscreen. Maybe all these Adkins free streamers like this are telling me I need to get it over with and pony up the $5.99 and rent Diablo. And they're probably right, but I want to wait it out because I know eventually it'll make it to a streamer, so in the meantime you'll have to settle on reviews of movies like this.

This is our first time seeing Alice Eve on the site, and after how great she was as Typhoid Mary on the Iron Fist series, and how the cover of this makes it seem like an Adkins/Eve actioner, I was disappointed that she only had an Eric Roberts-esque sit-down role. I know out of the Netflix Defenders series Iron Fist is considered the weakest, but one of the bright spots for me was Eve's Typhoid Mary, especially after the sautéed in wrong sauce version in Elektra (through no fault of Natassia Malthe). Even the Iron Fist version was kind of sautéed in wrong sauce though, because it changed a lot of her backstory. In the comics, she's one of the top Daredevil antagonists, and one of the top female supervillains overall, so the fact that in the MCU she only has this short moment has been disappointing--though to be fair, we haven't gotten any more of Elodie Yung's Elektra after The Defenders mini-series either. Throw in Taskmaster, who, even though he was a male in the comics, would've been great if that version of the character was played by Olga Kurylenko--but instead they give her this weird version in Black Widow who gets an even rawer deal in Thunderbolts*--and between those three, Typhoid Mary, Elektra, and Taskmaster, you'd have a pretty sweet Disney+ series. It's one of those things where, as much as Kevin Feige and his MCU get things right, they do still miss from time to time, but the great thing about comic book content is you can always fix it. If they brought Olga Kurylenko back as the comic book version of Taskmaster and just said "yeah, that version of me that was injured in the building collapse was a plant, while the real me was learning all these skills," I'd totally be okay with it, especially if it's to team her with Alice Eve's Typhoid Mary and Elodie Yung's Elektra.

Is it me, or is DTV filmmaking becoming more cynical? I mean, I guess it's always been cynical on some levels, and this trend of doing films that take place in as few locations as possible isn't so much a trend as it is something that we've seen for a long time. Is Fred Olen Ray converting a grocery store into the inside of a space ship for a space romp film any different from this movie leveraging one location to save money? Something about Ray doing it though seemed more fun, didn't it? The other thing I think is we see this the most from the most cynical of DTV producers, Randall Emmett. Bank robbery stand-offs, sieges in underground bunkers, or cat and mouse chases through small wooded areas, culminating in the worst of them all, whatever Armor was. It's like when he's in his office with his collaborators coming up with script ideas, the first thing they do is find a way to set it in as few locations as possible. "Hey Randall, our location scout found this great mansion in the country in Georgia we can use." "Excellent! Find a CW drama alum, call up Bob De Niro's agent to see if he wants to shoot a couple scenes as a local sheriff, and we'll write some kind of home invasion-turned Die Hard rip off." "Chad Michael Murray's agent said he's free. Can he hold an assault rifle though?" "Who cares, by the time we get there, we'll have already generated enough streams to make our money back." Maybe this movie isn't as crass as that, but it's in the context of that crassness that I'm watching it, and every misstep it makes reinforces that crassness, even if it's not trying to be that. I guess like when the kid comes late to practice and everyone has to run laps, Randall Scandal ruined it for everyone.

Finally, who doesn't love a good Chekhov's something other than a gun? Will actually has a list of them on Letterboxd, which you can check out here. Part of Chekhov's Gun though is the payoff. As the audience, when we see the gun in the first act, we don't just want it to go off, we want a dramatic death, or even a dramatic almost death. It's interesting, because in my writing I try to keep the principal in mind, while also adhering to Ernest Hemingway's counter that inconsequential details can have value too. In my novel A Girl and a Gun, the main character Justin is friends with an NFL football player who's close to retiring. To drive home how much of a toll the NFL is taking on him, while the NFL player and Justin are talking, I have a league official show up at his hotel room to interrupt their conversation because the NFL player needs to take a drug test. For me, the inconvenience of the drug test itself was the plot point, but I discovered after that readers expected the results of the drug test to play a part later in the story. Chekhov's anything is so ingrained in us that without the payoff it can be confusing, or even disappointing. That gets us back here to this film, and Chekhov's silk bedsheets. I don't know what kind of payoff I expected with that, but the silly shot of him using the sheets as a parachute to escape the hotel room wasn't it. I think I thought maybe he'd do an old Batman show and climb down. The fact that the payoff wasn't good though brought the film back to that Randall Scandal crassness I talked about above, making something they thought was clever turn into a detriment.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can still stream this on Hulu, plus at one point it was on Tubi as well, so it may make it back there at some point. I think this is strictly for Adkins completists, or if you're struggling for more Snipetember picks. Also, if you haven't yet, check out the podcast episode Will and I did on this, 213 in the archives.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt28129054

And if you're interested, you can purchase A Girl and a Gun over at Amazon in paperback, Kindle, and Kindle unlimited. I always appreciate the support!

Taken from Rio Bravo (2024)

This is one Ty and I covered on a podcast episode, episode 210 in the archives, part of our Xumo double feature with 12 to Midnight, and with all the names involved, it was only a matter of time before we reviewed it on the site too, so here we are. In addition to us, Chris the Brain at Bulletproof Action has covered this as well.

Taken from Rio Bravo is a sequel to Gunfight at Rio Bravo, with Alexander Nevsky reprising his role as a fictionalized version of Union Army officer Ivan Turchin. This time, some young women have been taken by dastardly traffickers (led by Dolph movie mainstay James Chalke), and it's up to Nevsky and his sheriff friend (Joe Cornet, who also directed) to track them down and rescue them. Along the way, they get some help from a Native American tracker (Don "the Dragon" Wilson), and they encounter all manner of ne'er-do-wells who impede their progress. Finally, as they near the young women and are about to achieve their goal, an old foe enters the fray. Who could that be? I mean, if you read the cast list, you probably know, but still, pretend you didn't so you can be surprised. Will Nevsky and Cornet prevail?

When you do this kind of thing long enough, you find yourself saying things you never thought you'd say, but here I am saying this movie needed more Nevsky! Usually I'm railing against what I call a "Nevsky vanity project," but here he's really realized his version of Ivan Turchin, and when you have a fun gunslinger hero like that in a Western, you want more of them! What happens though is this gets too bogged down in the particulars of trafficking, which also gives us more Chalke than we needed. One scene that stood out involved Chalke wanting to take one of the women he trafficked back to a cabin to have his way with her. It went on too long, and ultimately didn't go anywhere, and while this is happening, we're missing an opportunity for Nevsky to take out more men in a saloon or something. All that said, I think this is the closest Nevsky's come to making this approach work, where he's the star and he casts a bunch of other stars in smaller supporting roles, and I think the Western and the use of his version of Ivan Turchin as the hero is a great formula for him. The runtime is also great at 80 minutes, so he keeps it lean, which always helps. Now he just needs to swing the pendulum back a bit in the other direction and include more of himself as that hero, and I think he'll have it.

Art Camacho is now at 56 tags on the DTVC, which used to be good enough for third all-time, but since we've tagged Cole S. McKay, it's now fourth-best. Either way, Camacho brings his talents as fight choreographer to this, elevating fight scenes and giving the film a sharper feel than its budget would normally allow, which is why you bring him in in the first place, but it's still always great to see. He also has a scene as a character named Camanchero who has a fight with Nevsky, which we don't see often, he's usually behind the camera, so I had to get a screen of that. Between all the PM stuff of his that we still need to get to, and the new stuff he has coming out that looks promising, 60 Club and beyond is more a matter of when than if. One of the greatest to ever do it, and he gives us that here.

We have three other Hall of Famers here who, in true Nevsky style, only have small roles, but they're fun to see, and it gets them more tags. First off, this makes 47 for Cynthia Rothrock, so we're closing in on the 50 Club for her, and with all she has out now, three more movies should be easy enough to make happen, except when you dig deeper, you see stuff that is either only available to rent, or isn't available at all, so unless that changes, it could be a while for her. In this movie, she has a small part as the older sister of the two women that get kidnapped, including one small fight scene which was pretty good. Then for Don "The Dragon" Wilson, this is 42, so still a ways from 50, but unlike Rothrock, he does have a few that we haven't done yet on free streamers, so we'll need to make those happen. Here he plays a Native American, which didn't make any sense, except they could've used the fact that Wilson isn't genetically of Native American descent as an opportunity to show that "blood" shouldn't exactly be the determiner of being part of a first nation, the same way that someone can become American without having been born here. Finally, we have Matthias Hues reprising his baddie from the first film. Unlike Rothrock and Wilson who are in the 40 Club, this is only 22 tags for Hues. I think a big reason for why that is, is I don't necessarily seek out Hues movies, he just happens to be in the ones with people I do seek out. But considering how much he does, I imagine we'll stumble into another 8 movies of his at some point along the way.

Like the previous installment, this took place in "Eastern Texas," despite being shot in Arizona, which doesn't look anything like "Eastern Texas." From there, they're supposed to be going to the Mexican border, because apparently even in the Old West, middle class conservative trafficking panic was about middle class white women being kidnapped and taken to Mexico--though Nevsky didn't go far enough and have one of the women find a water bottle on her car, which I guess showed some restraint. Anyway, the other thing is East Texas is much further away from the Mexican border than West Texas. As I said when I reviewed the previous one, why not just set the movies in West Texas? What is it about "Eastern Texas" that it needs to be there, despite it being shot in Arizona? But then another thought hits me: why does it matter? I'm watching a 2024 Western where Don "The Dragon" Wilson is playing a 60s stereotype of a Native American, harkening back to when movies would have Italians do that, and I'm concerned about the location accuracy? But that's the kind of content you've been coming to the DTVC for since 2007, right?

Finally, in looking at these Nevsky vanity projects, where he gets all these stars and they all have smaller parts, the question then is, "Matt, what would you do if you could get names like Rothrock, Wilson, Hues, or Gruner in a movie?" Yes, I would definitely want them to be in it more, even if they only have a day or two of shooting. And then I have a top five for what my one scene would be, because I would definitely not try to make myself the star. Number 5 would be the standard henchman machine gun shimmy death. Get me in a blazer, maybe put on a ponytail wig, and cut to me shimmying to death while one of the names I mentioned above is hosing me down in Uzi fire. Number 4 would be the knife throw, preferably between the eyes, but if I gotta take it in the chest, that's fine too. I could be lurking around, holding my gun, and then one of the heroes lets fly, and in the next cut I'm falling over with the knife in me. For number 3, it's gotta be taking a Wilson roundhouse kick to the face. With it being a Western, if I fall into a trough of water, all the better. And if you're thinking "Wilson can't get up that high anymore," I'm only 5'7", so it won't be as difficult. Number 2, taking a scorpion kick to the head by Rothrock. This time I wonder, with me being only 5'7" if that makes it harder, because my head is a lower target than some of the taller guys she does that to. Finally, number 1, me as a front desk security guard, Matthias Hues takes me out, preferably with a silencer. Might be difficult to pull of in a Western, but if I'm giving you a movie with more of the stars you want, I think you'll indulge me.

And with that, let's wrap this up. In addition to Xumo, it looks like this is available on more free streamers, including Tubi and Prime. I think with the names and runtime, it's not a horrible watch if you're not paying or it's included in your streaming package. Also check out the podcast episode Ty and I did on this, episode 210 in the archives.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt20202928/

Pick up my newest book, Nadia and Aidan, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

The Devastator aka The Destroyers (1986)

It's been a while since we've done some Cirio H. Santiago, so we were long overdue, and this one was on Tubi and looked like a gem. In addition to us, Chris the Brain at Bulletproof, Ty and Brett at Comeuppance, Eoin at Action Elite, TarsTarkas.net, and When the Vietnam War Raged... in the Philippines have all covered this as well, plus it was included in Bulletproof's Cirio H. Santiago Countdown.

The Devastator has Rick Hill as a former special forces guy who's called to a small California town after a former Army buddy that lives there dies. Turns out there's a lot more afoot, as a baddie is growing weed there in the Green Triangle, and he runs the town with an iron fist, including the sheriff, who's complicit. Well Hill ain't complicit, so he rounds up a bunch of his old crew, and they go back to take on those dastardly weed growers. They won't know what hit them!

This is a ton of fun. Hill is exactly the hero you want him to be, the baddies are sufficiently bad, the old Army crew are sufficiently colorful, and the action does what it needs to do. We get plenty of stuntmen shimmying to death from machine gun fire, falling from high heights, or flying through the air after explosions go off behind them. On top of all that, we have a 79-minute run time. That's right, when you're 19 minutes in, you only have an hour left! They just don't make 'em like this anymore, but at one time they did, and we're fortunate that they're on free streamers like Tubi.

We're only at 11 films for Cirio H. Santiago here on the site, which isn't great compared to some of the other directors we've covered. I count 20 between 1981's Firecracker and 1994's Stranglehold that we could review that we haven't yet. That means we have a lot of work to do, but with how much fun his movies are, and the indelible impact they've left on the world of low-budget action cinema, that work will be well worth it. And of the ones we've covered, this is one of my favorites. Santiago doesn't play around, he gets in and gets out in 79 minutes, and doesn't waste any of that time, either giving us action scenes or plot exposition scenes that lead to action scenes soon after. Santiago is one of the best to ever do it for a reason, and this film is a great example of that.

If our Santiago tags are lacking, we're only at seven films now for Rick Hill, but when I look at his IMDb bio, I don't see many more that we can do for him, maybe another six? While he may not qualify for one of our high-tag clubs, he could get Hall of Fame consideration, because he's one of the great leads of low-budget action. I think this is right up there with Deathstalker for one of his best movies, Hill just carries it from start to finish, he's a leading man you have to root for, and it's so much fun to see him blowing up baddies. Whether it's Santiago, or another B-movie stalwart like Fred Olen Ray, Hill seems to understand what's asked of him in these films, and he delivers it. I'm going to do my best to try to get the rest of his DTV flicks up here, because the more Rick Hill the better.

In 1986, I don't know if we could've seen the current US, where many states, including California, have legalized recreational cannabis, but had we had any sense back then, we'd have seen how making it illegal leads to this underground economy where crime lords like the baddie in this film can have power and kill people. No one should be dying so people can smoke weed. And even with the legalization on the state level, it's still illegal federally, which affects where and how it can be grown and sold. Here in Philadelphia, for example, it's not legal in our state, but it is decriminalized in the city, so people can go to New Jersey and buy it there then bring it back. Why? All that tax revenue is leaving the state. But the question is, if it was legalized in this state, would we have nice rural family farms growing it, or would it be a baddie like in this film, only instead of an illegal cartel he'd have a massive corporation, a legalized form of cartel if you will (and if you won't, that's okay too). I guess what I'm asking is, in a world of legalized weed, is there still a place for someone like The Devastator to come in and have to sort our evil growers?

Finally, would you look at that beauty! A vintage Detroit Tigers cap! And in the image above that we have a rumpled San Francisco Giants one. In addition to those two, a baddie wears a New York Mets cap, and I swore another wore a Yankees one, but it was blink-and-you'll-miss-it, and I kept missing it. Baseball caps don't really look like that anymore, which I'm okay with, I prefer the modern '47 Brand Clean-Up style, and I have it in a variety of teams. When I started going to more games in 2018, my plan was to get a cap for every ballpark I visited, both Major and Minor leagues, but at $30 a pop, I realized that was too expensive, so now I do souvenir cup sodas, since I'll need a beverage anyway. I also collect them when I see other sports, so I have a bunch of them now. If you're curious, the Mets and Yankees do the best job with them, it's like they're competing with one another to see whose is better. The worst? The Philadelphia Phillies. Ever since they made it to the World Series in 2022--made it, not won it--they changed the style from the standard, shorter and wider version, to something that's taller and thinner. Why, I don't know, I guess they wanted to make it harder for me to stack them with all the others I have, because they made it to the World Series in 2022, not won it.

And with that, I'd say it's time to wrap this up. As of this writing you can get this on Tubi here in the States, among other streamers. If you're looking for some fun, low-budget action that gets you in and out in 80 minutes, this will do the trick. Also, if you haven't yet, check out the Bulletproof Cirio H. Santiago Countdown, where yours truly did a write-up on Dune Warriors! The link to the site is on the left sidebar.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089023

Pick up my newest book, Nadia and Aidan, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!