The Direct to Video Connoisseur

I'm a huge fan of action, horror, sci-fi, and comedy, especially of the Direct to Video variety. In this blog I review some of my favorites and not so favorites, and encourage people to comment and add to the discussion. For announcements and updates, don't forget to Follow us on Twitter and Like our Facebook page. If you're the director, producer, distributor, etc. of a low-budget feature length film and you'd like to send me a copy to review, you can contact me at dtvconnoisseur[at]yahoo.com. I'd love to check out what you got. And check out my book, Chad in Accounting, over on Amazon.

Saturday, March 16, 2024

Code Name Vengeance (1987)

This is one I watched back in May of '21 for the "Ginty Moore Beef Stew" episode of the DTVC podcast, where the guys from Comeuppance and I looked at our top Robert Ginty films. I planned on reviewing it soon after, but it was removed from streaming before I could get any screengrabs, so I had to wait. Now we're finally able to make it happen. In addition to us and the guys at Comeuppance, Mitch at the Video Vacuum has done this too.

Code Name Vengeance is about a terrorist (James Ryan) in an African nation who kidnaps the son and wife of the president there. The CIA knows one guy who can save the day: Monroe Bieler (Ginty). He's reluctant, but since he's spent the last 12 years in an African prison, he's amenable to it. Things aren't what they seem though, when his CIA contact first has Shannon Tweed hook up with him, and then has one of his men join Ginty on his mission. After Ginty picks up old friend Cameron Mitchell, they proceed to rescue the wife and son--but will they make it out alive? And who will kill them if they don't?


This is a pretty fun deal. Ginty with his beard, hair, suits, and occasional sunglasses looked like a 70s soft rocker, which alone could get you there, but then we have a solid action quotient, including a hilarious scene that involves grenades attached to a forklift. The plot meanders a bit, and there are some elements where Ginty's naivete hurts others around him instead of himself, which is a device I'm not a fan of, but with these 80s low budget actioners, sometimes you take the good and the bad, and sometimes the bad even enhances the good. In addition to Ginty, James Ryan was a great baddie, less over the top (Stallone-style) than he was in Kickboxer V, which made him more sinister, and he and Ginty have a solid end battle; Cameron Mitchell was a fun addition as an old soldier going out for one last mission, but I think his character should've gotten a better deal at the end; and then Shannon Tweed isn't in this as much as you'd like, which was too bad--she could've been combined with the CIA guy who was tagging along with Ginty and Mitchell. As a Ginty film, this will get you to the church on time though, especially as a free streamer. Oh, and we finally got a Ronald Reagan presidential portrait! More on that later.

Speaking of Ginty, he's only at 7 films on the site, which is bad enough, but also the last time we saw him was December of '22's Cop Target. Part of the reason for the delay was this film, and another I watched for the "Ginty Moore Beef Stew" episode, The Kinds of Heat, disappeared from streaming, and while I was waiting or them to come back, I kind of unofficially put the Gintinator on hold, which I shouldn't have done. He's all the Ginty you want here, between the 70s soft rocker look, to how well he does the "I'm getting beaten up in prison" routine with all the faces and sounds he makes--no one sells a punch to the gut better than him--and then at the end when he gets his revenge on James Ryan and the CIA agent who set him up, Applegate (played by Don Gordon). If anything, this film is a reminder that we need more Ginty, and I've added Three Kinds of Heat to the Letterboxd list Upcoming Review (watched), which gives you a sense of what's coming for future posts.


Our film's other Hall of Famer was the great Shannon Tweed, who unlike Ginty we last saw back in October when she was inducted into the Hall of Fame. This is now 8 films for her, which breaks a 7-way tie she had with, among others, Julie Strain and Dona Speir, for third-most tags as a woman on the site all-time, and now puts in a tie with Kathleen Kinmont for second-most tags--and in so doing, pushes Strain, Speir, et al down to a six-way tie for fourth-most all-time. (Of course, most all time is Cynthia Rothrock with 43--don't see anyone catching her anytime soon.) As I mentioned above, this could've used more Tweed, but it's possible they didn't have her for as much of the shooting. Also interesting here, almost 10 years before Skyscraper, Tweed plays a helicopter pilot. It's too bad there wasn't a sequel to this where she trained Carrie Wink, linking this with Skyscraper, and linking the world of AIP with PM Entertainment. Forget Marvel-DC crossovers, AIP and PM was the one we needed and never got.

We got a Reagan! If you saw my Facebook post on President's Day, I mentioned the phenomenon of the Presidential Portrait, where a character of some official US government status is shown in their office abroad, and to make that office more official looking, the filmmakers add a cheap American flag that's almost see through, and a portrait of the president serving during the time the film takes place. So far (that I know of) we have Bush 41 in another Ginty film, Cop Target, Clinton in the Wilson/Piper actioner Terminal Rush, and Bush 43 in the film with one of the greatest lines in movie history, Shark Attack 3. We need an Obama, Trump, and a Biden, plus if it's possible that 80s Vietnam War films that were shot in the Philippines have maybe a Nixon or a Ford, or if another stray film has a Carter floating around in a flashback sequence--hell, I'll take a Western with a Rutherford B. Hayes if there's one out there. Now I should point out that despite seeing these in so many films, I've only recently decided to start documenting, meaning there were some, like Shark Attack 3, that I didn't initially get a screengrab of, and had to go back and add it to the image page for that review after the fact, so I may have seen others that aren't listed here. In honor of this great find, I've added the Presidential Portrait tag, and hopefully we'll be adding more to it soon!


Finally, Ginty's look in this film inspired me to pay tribute to one of the greatest music phenomenons ever, the 70s/early 80s soft rocker. Now full disclosure, this is not going to be some kind of ironic "yacht rock rules" kind of thing--there is no concept of "yacht rock" to me, as a young child in the early 80s, soft rock was ubiquitous, it was the soundtrack to my growing understanding of the world. Dentists and doctors' offices, department stores, government buildings, etc. all had the smooth sounds of soft rock playing from the PA overhead. As I learned that life is a series of waking up early for school--which then leads to work--standing in queues, and riding in cars--or later as an adult, public transportation--soft rock was there to anesthetize my experience, and ease any possible rebellion I might have considered--how can you throw a temper tantrum about having to go to school while Toto sang (what I thought then was) "I guess it rains down in Africa," or Michael McDonald told Patti LaBelle "we were even talking divorce, when we weren't even married," which made much more sense as a 5-year-old than it does now. We live near an elementary school here in Philadelphia, and every morning I hear at least one or two kids having a temper tantrum, rebelling against the life of work, queues, and commuting that the world is cramming them into at a young age. If only they had the smooth sounds of the Fender Rhodes keyboard accompanying a bearded man singing about his feelings to make the transition more palatable like we did. Just learn to accept it kid, sit back in your car seat, and let Air Supply tell you that "even the nights are better" or Christopher Cross say "when you get caught between the moon and New York City"--it doesn't matter what it means, kid, just let the sound ease the fight out of you, you'll be better for it.

And with that, let's wrap this up. As of my writing, you can get this on Tubi. As great a Ginty this is, I think free streamer is the way to go. And then for the "Ginty Moore Beef Stew" podcast episode, it's number 85 in the archives, from May 17, 2021, so you can check that out as well to see where it placed on our lists.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097073

And my newest novel, Don's House in the Mountains, is available now on Amazon! Click the image to buy.

Saturday, March 9, 2024

Miao tan shuang long aka City Cops (1989)

With DTVC Hall of Famer and 40-Club member Cynthia Rothrock celebrating her birthday yesterday, I wanted to get a review up for her, and saw that this was available on Tubi. It's one of two Hong Kong films of hers we haven't done yet, the other being Lady Reporter, so I figured it would be perfect. In addition to us, our friends Ty and Brett at Comeuppance have covered this as well.

City Cops has Ken Tong as a jewel thief on the run from some baddies in America, so he goes to Hong Kong hoping to fence the stolen merchandise. On his trail is FBI agent Cindy (Rothrock), but to get her man, she has to team up with two local HK detectives, Kiu-Wai Miu and Fui-On Shing, who are also on Tong's trail. Wackiness ensues, as Miu has a thing for Tong's sister May (Suki Kwan), and a romance may or may not be budding between Shing and Rothrock. In the meantime, they need to find Tong, as the baddies have taken May. This leads us to a final showdown at a factory. Will our heroes prevail? And how much damage will they do to the factory in the process.


This is a pretty good deal. Not the best of Rothrock's HK films, but she has some great martial arts scenes, in particular a fight at the end with Michiko Mishiwaki. On the other hand we have this comedic element which works sometimes, others it drags the film down a bit, and then others it either makes you cringe with the kind of jokes they make--or makes you laugh in spite of yourself. Tong is playing a gay man, who is originally busted by Miu and Shing in Hong Kong while dressed as a woman. There's a whole joke while the three of them are getting a meal at a hotel restaurant, where Tong and Miu tell Shing that Tong has AIDS after Shing accidentally drinks from Tong's water glass. On the one hand it's like "can you be making AIDS jokes?" so there's that cringe element; but then there's the gallows humor element, where they're not making fun of AIDS and the suffering it causes so much as making fun of Shing's ignorance of the disease, thinking he could catch it by drinking Tong's water--plus the fact that Tong doesn't have AIDS anyway, Tong's just making them think that because he's gay and wants to mess with them. So I'm watching this bit play out, where I'm like "I can't believe they're making a joke about AIDS," but also laughing as Tong and Miu are playing off each other, convincing Shing he'll be dead in seven years. Anyway, I think this film has enough action, especially with Rothrock in some sweet fight scenes, to make this worth a watch, especially while it's on Tubi.

We're now at 43 for Rothrock on the site, which puts her in a three-way tie with Cannon and PM Entertainment for fifth-most all-time, and third all-time for actors after Dolph and Gary Daniels. Looking at where she is on the actors list, she's probably not going to move up or down anytime soon, because she's 16 behind Daniels, who has 59 films, and the closest behind her are Seagal with 39, but he hasn't made a film since 2019, and Wilson at 37, who does have some stuff we can cover to at least get him into the 40 Club, but I don't know if we have six for him to catch Rothrock. The other issue is the quality of her newer stuff. I was trying to think how many are near this film, and other than New York Ninja, which is her voice work, the best I could come up with was Outside the Law, which came out in 2002. Death Fighter was decent too, but not as good as this, and the rest of it, over the last 20+ years, has been her in tiny parts, not a lot of action--if any at all--and even worse, a lot of them haven't even been released--and I don't mean not released in the US, I mean not released period. That's what makes it so great that we have movies like this on free streamers, and if you search her on Tubi, you'll see some other greats she did. This is the Rothrock you want when you see her name on the tin, and while she doesn't have as many fight scenes, what she has are fantastic.


In addition to Rothrock, we had some Hong Kong film greats. Ken Tong (playing a character named Kent Tong) was our thief, and while he's in the film even less than Rothrock, he's cool as he's outsmarting Miu and Shing while trying to stay one step ahead of the baddies on his trail. It looks like we've seen him here one other time, when we did Police Story. Then we had Kiu-Wai Miu, who's our womanizing detective. It's always interesting how that character is played in Hong Kong versus the US, they're much more handsy and sexual assault-y, but then they can redeem themselves by looking cool smoking a cigarette, which Miu does here. It's like all the HK action stars were expected to be Bruce Willis: equal parts comedic and serious action lead, and Miu hits all those notes. And then we have Fui-On Shing, who we've seen on here before as well, in John Woo's The Killer, which also came out in 1989--in fact, he had 34 films come out in 1989, Eric Roberts eat your heart out! He's more the comedic foil to Miu's leading man, but he does get to be with Rothrock at the end, so it wasn't all bad for him. Unfortunately he passed away in 2009. Finally, a few other names, Fung Woo plays their police captain. He also was in Police Story, plus Millionaire's Express, so we've seen him a couple times here. He also did the Rothrock film Prince of the Sun, which we haven't covered yet, but we will eventually, so this won't be the last time we see him on the site; Suki Kwan, who played Tong's sister May. We haven't seen her here before, but I recognized her from a couple other Hong King films; and Michiko Nishiwaki, who was great in her one fight with Rothrock. It would've been nice to see her do more, maybe another fight scene so it builds better to her fight with Rothrock, but at least we had the one scene.

I wanted to spotlight a couple things that stood out in this film that you probably wouldn't see in an American film like this--or at least done as well. First, look at that cat painting below. This is in May's place, and that cat watched over the proceedings that took place there, from knock-down-drag-'em-out fights, to Miu's bungled attempts at romance leading to all manner of John Ritter-style physical humor, with a sphinx-like stoicism, expressionless, possibly judging, but never letting on either way. Can you imagine a modern USA action flick doing that? Or if they did, the cat painting would come up constantly in ironic tongue-in-cheek conversations. This was the perfect use of a large cat painting, and I loved it. The other one was the use of Pee Shyness as a plot device. Pee Shyness is when someone can't pee with someone else near them. At the end of the film, Rothrock is handcuffed to Tong, ready to take him back to the States, but he has to go to the bathroom, and he says he can't go with her standing there, so he goes in the stall, still handcuffed to her, while she stands outside, and then he makes good his escape. While she's waiting, another guy comes in and tries to go while Rothrock is standing there, but can't either. I personally experienced it more when I was younger, especially if there weren't barriers between the urinals, and once there was a delay, I'd almost feel like the guys standing on either side recognized I wasn't going, which made it worse. Now that I'm older, for whatever reason, that Pee Shyness is gone, which makes it all the weirder that it existed as an issue at all. Anyway, this is another thing that a Hong Kong film uses as a plot device that an American film either won't think to try, or if they did, it would also be filled with not-so-witty but so-dripping-with-irony banter. In the Hong Kong film, it's a goofy buttoner on an overall fun actioner, and they leave it at that.


Finally (I know, usually the paragraph above would be the "finally"), I wanted to do a second Rothrock paragraph. In discussing how she hasn't had much to hang her hat on film-wise in the last 20 years or so, one thing she does have coming is her own film, Black Creek, which is listed in post-production on IMDb, and has an Indiegogo that's still live. According to that, the red carpet premier is set for July of 2024--one of the support packages is two tickets for $450 bucks. On the one hand, I think it's definitely cool, and even if the tiers can be expensive, donating $10 isn't the worst thing to help push it over the goal line. On the other hand, if this film is successful, you'd hope that this is the last time she needs to bother with Indiegogo and she can get future films funded through more traditional means, and I think that's more of where we come in as fans. Yes, she can definitely use the Indiegogo donations, like all indie creatives, but if Black Creek ends up on Tubi and we all watch it--and people with sites like mine review it--I think she can go to backers and say "this is the kind of following I have, and these are the kinds of numbers I can generate if you give me a chance." At least one can hope.

And with that, let's wrap this up. This is available on Tubi here in the States. Maybe not Rothrock's best Hong Kong film, but she's great in it, and has enough action to get you to the church on time, especially as a free streamer. 

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099614/

And my newest novel, Don's House in the Mountains, is available now on Amazon! Click the image to buy.

Saturday, March 2, 2024

Fit to Kill (1993)

As we continue to work our way through all of Andy Sidaris's LETHAL Ladies films, we're onto this one from 1993. Maybe not as well known as some of the others, it does introduce DTVC Hall of Famer Julie Strain, so it has to at least be notable for that. In addition to us, Mitch from The Video Vacuum has covered this as part of his Sirens of Skinamax series, and SteveQ at Down in the Z Movies.

Fit to Kill takes place after the previous film, Hard Hunted, where our baddie Kane is still after our LETHAL Ladies, and has employed a new weapon: assassin Blu Steele (Julie Strain). Everyone is trying to get their hands on a huge diamond that Aki Aleong wants to give back to the Russian people through their emissary Rodrigo Obregon, and as more players get involved, Dona Speir realizes she may need to work with her hated rival Kane in order to bring everyone to justice--despite the fact that he's tried to have her killed multiple times. Will they succeed, or will this be the one mission where the baddies prevail?


You know the answer to that, and when our heroes take out the baddies, it's in spectacular fashion involving things like missiles attached to toy helicopters. This was also intended to be the final LETHAL Ladies film, and it has that feel that we're ending something big here, especially when Donna blows up Kane's yacht with all the baddies on it and says "my work is done here." What we get after this is almost a reboot with two films directed by Sidaris's son Christian, Enemy Gold and Dallas Connection, before Andy himself comes back in to finish the series with Day of the Warrior and LETHAL Ladies Return to Savage Beach, so in a way this almost is an end--maybe like Marvel Cinematic Universe phases, this is the end of Phase 1, where we know many stars like Dona Speir, Roberta Vasquez, Cynthia Brimhall, and the Abilene Who Can't Shoot Straight are bowing out, while others like Bruce Penhall, Gerald Okamura, and Rodrigo Obregon are staying on in a different capacity, and then we're also introducing our new lead, with Julie Strain taking over for Dona Speir in Phase 2 of the series. We also see a legitimate heel-turn in Kane (Geoofrey Moore), which was a first in the series--to this point actors who played villains came back as new characters to be heroes. Was Vin Diesel using this as his template for his Fast and Furious heel-turns? It might not be the best of the films, but it's everything you want in a LETHAL Ladies movie, and for that reason I enjoy it like I enjoy all the others.

Unlike Marvel, which has had trouble replacing Iron Man the main star of their franchise, this series does a great job of bringing us Julie Strain. Right off the bat, in her first scene, she's in this Catwoman-esque spandex bodysuit with over-the-knee boots slinking around a Vegas hotel, ready to assassinate Kane. Even though she doesn't succeed, we know we have someone important here, someone who could really challenge Donna Hamilton and make life difficult for the LETHAL Ladies. You could totally see why when this film is done Sidaris's son would've looked at her and thought "let me do some of these movies with her as my lead." Granted, she plays a baddie for those two films before she transitions to hero Willow Black for the final two films, but either way, she was a perfect choice to center the films around after Dona Speir left. With her being in the Hall of Fame now, our goal is to get more of her films on the site, and while we haven't been doing as well as we could with that, she's at 7 now, and we at least have two more of these films to cover, so we'll be seeing her again soon.


This is the final LETHAL Ladies film for Dona Speir, and part of me didn't want to do this film now so I could save it for her eventual Hall of Fame induction post, but she does have a couple other DTV films we could do for that, and I didn't want to hold off too long on finishing off this series of films. When she blows up that yacht near the end of the film and says "my work is done here," it's the capper on one of the greatest DTV action franchise runs. She starts in Hard Ticket to Hawaii, where, as a de facto sequel to Malibu Express, Ronn Moss was the lead as the next Abilene in line, but she still turns in a great performance. From there, when Moss is out in the next film, Picasso Trigger, we see the shift Sidaris makes, where we have Steve Bond playing another Abilene who can't shoot straight, but I think Sidaris realizes Speir is the one who can carry these, and with Savage Beach he turns the thing over to her, and the Abilene who can't shoot straight becomes a secondary character. So when she says "my work is done here," we can look at what her work was: some of the most iconic DTV actioners of all time, featuring names like Erik Estrada and Pat Morita, but she truly was the lead in them. Normally we would think of the Bloodfist series as the number one DTV action franchise, but watching these again, they have to be above those because we don't have the duds we get in the Bloodfist series, like VI or VIII. So yes, Dona's work is done here, but what great work it was.

As is often the case with the LETHAL Ladies series, we had a bunch of other names in this. In addition to Dona Speir, mainstays Cynthia Brimhall and Roberta Vasquez turn in their final performances in the series. Then we had mainstays Bruce Penhall, Rodirigo Obregon, and Gerald Okumura who we see here and then come back in different iterations in the second phase of the series. You could also say that about Ava Cadell, only in her case she comes back for the final film; same with Carolyn Liu's Silk, though she does come back as a different character in Day of the Warrior too. Our bumbling assassins Chu Chu Malave and Richard Cansino were back as well. This was the last go around for them, though Cansino had a part in Day of the Warrior. Finally, a name we were seeing for the first time was veteran character actor Aki Aleong, who I didn't realize hadn't had a tag yet! I went back through his IMDb bio, and discovered he had six films on here before that, so this marks 7 on the site now. And speaking of an "Aleong," I also tagged Al Leong because this has archived footage of him from the previous film.


Finally, with this being Speir's final film in the series, I thought I'd look at where she sits all time among female action stars. Number one has to be Pam Grier. Her 70s stuff is some of the best ever, and she should've been given the kinds of parts guys like Stallone and Schwarzenegger got in the 80s. Michelle Yeoh has to be next, and while she's getting more love after her performance in Everything Everywhere All at Once, if you go through that bio, it's a string of great action films. Third for me is Cynthia Rothrock, she has some of the best stuff in that late 80s/early 90s Golden Age of action, plus some fantastic Hong Kong stuff. It's here where I start to look at how Dona Speir slots in. Most lists will have names like Angelina Jolie, Linda Hamilton, and Scarlett Johansson, but they're all dramatic actors who have done some iconic action roles--and they're more for people who only understand action as TNT New Classics and other big budget films from the last 30 years. Speir helming a franchise for five films, and costarring in the two films of the franchise before those, put her above all of them. Milla Jovovich has to be above Speir for me, because she also helmed a franchise for 5+ films, and her franchise, Resident Evil, pulled in over $1 billion all time--and the total budgets of those films put together was less than The Marvels. Some other names I was looking at: Zoe Saldana, who was great in Colombiana, and stars in three major franchises, four of the top six highest grossing films of all time, and two of the top five when adjusted for inflation; another big budget star, Michelle Rodriguez, who also has the distinction of being the top women on Exploding Helicopter's top ten actors list; Ziyi Zhang, who had some of the biggest hits of the early 2000s; Olga Kurylenko, who on some levels is just getting started, but she's put out some great stuff, and currently is one of the top DTV action stars, man or woman; and finally Kate Beckinsale, whose Underworld films didn't have the run Jovovich's Resident Evil ones did, but still important as a female-led action franchise. I think looking at all that, I'd put Speir behind them as well, but only because this was her one franchise, and then she was done. That makes this my ranking: Grier, Yeoh, Rothrock, Jovovich, Rodriguez, Saldana, Beckinsale, Zhang, Kurylenko, Speir. So maybe Speir isn't as high as I'd have expected, but she's still in my top ten.

That was a bit of a long paragraph, so let's wrap this up. Currently in the States the LETHAL Ladies films are all available on Tubi. I don't think you need me to tell you how great these are, but I will say if you've already seen them but it's been a while, you could use a rewatch. They only get better with time, and they never get old.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106922

And my newest novel, Don's House in the Mountains, is available now on Amazon! Click the image to buy.

Saturday, February 24, 2024

Murder City (2023)

I've been a huge Mike Colter fan since I saw him in Luke Cage, which is one of my favorite things Marvel has done. When I saw this Tubi Original with him in it pop up on my Tubi recommendations, I knew I had to make it happen. Let's see how it did.

Murder City has Colter as a semi-corrupt cop who decides to take his dad (Antonio Fargas) up on an offer to make some easy cash by doing a drop off and pick up of some illicit stuff. Turns out the DEA was wise to it, and both of them get clipped. After two years in the can, Colter is out and trying to pick up the pieces of his life. Local crime boss Stephanie Sigma has been messing with his wife and son, and not only that, she's upset that Fargas sounds like he's going to cut a deal with the DEA to bring her down. He offers to work for her as hired muscle, while at the same time he's working undercover to get the goods on Sigman so he can bring her down himself. All of this sounds like it should work out really easily, right?


This wasn't bad. It was slow in a few spots, but with the short runtime, that was mitigated. Colter was great too, along with Sigman as the baddie, and Fargas as the dad. On the other hand, the powerful crime boss stuff got repetitive, no matter how good Colter and Sigman were. You can only see it so much: Colter thinks he's making headway, but she's one step ahead because she's got "eyes all over the city." Like when his wife and son go to a hotel to get away, we know it's only a matter of time before Sigman's goons fine them--and when they do, we get a particularly brutal beating of Colter's wife, played by Medina Senghore. The action was sparse, as this was more of a suspense kind of story, but what we got wasn't bad, especially the fight Colter has with Anderson Silva, who plays Sigman's right-hand man. I think if this didn't have Colter in it, it would've felt more run-of-the-mill, but because it did, he made it a more enjoyable ride.

Looking at Colter's IMDb bio, he doesn't have a lot of DTV stuff, and in a way I was relieved to see that, as it means his career is still doing well in the upper tiers of the industry. This one may have come across his desk as some extra money, or maybe something that was going to be bigger than it was. The thing is, the character he played could've been more compelling in a different setting, like maybe a remake of a Bad Lieutenant, where he starts out like he does here, only pinching a couple hundred bucks here or there from lower-level drug pushers he catches, and then it starts to spiral, either with a gambling addiction like Keitel had in Bad Lieutenant, or maybe it's a mental spiraling like Cage in Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. There's a sense in watching Colter play this part that he had more to give it, but this story wasn't built for that. I don't know if we'll see him again on here, because he's doing more big-budget films and he has a broadcast TV show, but at the very least it was great to see him this one time. And if you haven't yet, you should check out Luke Cage on Disney+. Colter is Luke Cage, and hopefully with the new Daredevil show coming, they'll bring him back to reprise his Cage as well.


As much as this was run-of-the-mill, Stephanie Sigman was a great baddie. She had this calm demeanor that we all knew was a facade over her true sinister nature, giving every scene she's in a vibe of tension and impending danger, and then when the more overt stuff came out, it made it all the more chilling. I think with someone with the kind of screen presence Colter has, a baddie has to be truly special to make us believe that she could scare Colter, and Sigman does that. Speaking of Luke Cage and the Marvel Defenders shows, another villain she brings to mind is Vincent D'Onofrio's Kingpin, but part of what makes him so scary is his imposing size, and that makes the fact that Sigman could pull this off so well that much more impressive. Like Colter, I'm not sure how much more we'll see her on the site, but she has a few things that may end up on here, so you never know.

We last saw Antonio Fargas in Night of the Sharks, which was our post in honor of the late Treat Williams. Unlike Colter and Sigman, we'd expect to see Fargas on here more, but this is only his fourth film. I looked at his bio, and while there are some we could've done, his stuff doesn't overlap with what we do as much as you'd think. What I liked about his performance here, was this was straight-ahead serious with no goofing around. I imagine that's why he would've taken this role, because it wasn't just another version of Huggy Bear, he got to do something else, and he did really well with it. 


Finally, in addition to being a Tubi Original, this is also a Fox Entertainment Studios production. I was curious what else they'd done, since Fox sold off their 20th Century Fox movie arm to Disney, and it turns out according to IMDb not much. There's this, 2023's Cinnamon, two hacky-looking Right Wing culture war animated films, and another animated film called Big Bruh. All of these are also Tubi Originals, which makes sense, because Fox owns Tubi. It seems like they might be slowly inching back into the movie game, nowhere near at the score they were at before, but at least involved; while it looks like in Deadpool and Wolverine this summer we have a scene where the 20th Century Fox logo is buried in the dirt as a relic of the past, symbolizing what once was. It is interesting that they had all of these Marvel properties, especially the X-Men, and they couldn't hit Disney and Marvel Studio's success, but when you look at films like Deadpool and read that they cut the budget and wouldn't pay for a Wolverine appearance, you can see how they mismanaged their assets even on relative successes like that. I guess we'll see what this new direct to Tubi iteration does now.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Currently you can get this on Tubi here in the States, and as a free streamer it's not a bad deal. It had a run-of-the-mill plot that we've seen often, but the performances and the runtime elevate it to something a bit better.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2583014

And my newest novel, Don's House in the Mountains, is available now on Amazon! Click the image to buy.

Thursday, February 22, 2024

Equal Standard (2020)

I was looking to get some more Ice-T on the site, and saw this on Tubi. The story looked compelling, which was made even more so when I learned that the screenwriter, Taheim Bryan, was murdered about a year after this came out. Great story, great cast, this had all the hallmarks of a solid film.

Equal Standard follows an NYPD detective named Chris (Tobias Truvillion) who is out with a friend, and is accosted by two racist cops that don't realize Chris is a cop too. Shots are fired, Chris is hit, and one of the racist cops is killed. This sparks a massive controversy, as the city is already tense due to a rash of police shootings, plus the racist cop is from a "Blue Lives Matter"-type family, where the younger brother and a racist friend want revenge, while the older brother has a sense of what his family's about and is trying to stop the younger brother before he gets into trouble. Underneath this, local gangs led by Ice-T and Treach call a truce so they can deal with their common enemy: the NYPD. All Chris wants is for this to end so he, his wife, and daughter can move on and live their lives.


This was really good. There were some clunky moments with some of the interludes that were mixed in, where some of the supporting characters would have conversations that tried to delve into issues like how cops that also happen to be people of color feel about what's happening, but that's a smaller issue, and to some extent it still worked despite the clunkiness. What I liked was the compelling characters in Chris and his wife Jackie (Syleena Johnson), both police officers who both want to make a positive difference, but also just want a comfortable life for them and their daughter. It grounds the film and gives it a level of humanness that we often don't get in movies like this. From there, we had great supporting performances from bigger names like Ice-T; Robert Clohessy, who plays an IA investigator looking into the shooting who thinks something's off with the dead cop's partner's story; General Hospital's Maurice Bernard as Chris's police captain; and Chris Kerson as the dead cop's older brother. Finally, because the film was shot in New York, we get the full effect of the "New York as a character" element. At times it feels like an unfeeling observer, lurking in the background throughout all the conflict and tension; but at others it feels like a massive gravitational force that can pull the story in different directions. This is worth checking out, especially while you can stream it for free.

We always start with our DTVC Hall of Famer, and this film is no different, as Ice-T proves again why he has that status, and why he should've been inducted long before he was. It's the perfect use of him too, if you only have him for a short shooting schedule, make him the high-level gang boss that isn't in the film as much, and he'll make the most of that time, which he did. Everything you want in that character, a sense of menace and power, yet he's also intriguing and compelling. This is now 18 films for him, and I think this performance here is a reminder of how much more we need to get him on the site. Truly one of the greats, which he reinforces in this film.


One of the elements I really liked in this film was the way it depicted racism and removed some of the verbal equivocations racists try to use to avoid saying they're racist. One involves the N word, where racists will sometimes say "if black people can use the word, why can't white people?" The film smashes that false equivalency when we have two scenes almost back-to-back, one where some of the gang members call themselves the N word, and then another when the racist cop's father goes to the police station and uses it. That juxtaposition is sharp and jarring, and it delivers the point effectively that the two uses are not the same. Another is the Confederate Flag. Racists have all kinds of excuses for why they have it--"it represents the South," "I like Lynyrd Skynyrd," "it's part of my heritage as a Southerner." Again, the filmmakers smash those equivocations when the racist cop's younger brother and his White Nationalist friend break into Chris's house and hang a Confederate Flag on the wall. The message the flag is meant to convey is clear, there's no other reason why they'd do that if that flag meant anything else.

Someone I wasn't expecting to see was Maurice Bernard, who plays Chris's captain. I know him as Sonny, the mob boss on General Hospital, which I haven't seen in years, and didn't realize was still on the air. Growing up, my mom watched the ABC soap operas, which were All My Children, One Life to Live, and then General Hospital. Later, when I was older, our neighbor would babysit my younger brother and sister after school, and she watched General Hospital as well. I remember I'd go inside to get my baseball glove or basketball or something, my friends waiting outside, and then I'd find myself watching it until the commercial, and my friends would be annoyed that I kept them waiting. There's something about soap operas that always drew me in. Anyway, I was curious which soaps were still on the air now. General Hospital was the lone survivor on ABC; and then Young and the Restless and The Bold and the Beautiful are still on CBS--and I thought that was it, but Days is streaming only on Peacock. For decades, soaps were king on daytime TV, and now it's talk shows and judge shows; but somehow General Hospital has held on, with Maurice Bernard still there 30 years later. It was great to see him here, and great to see him turn in a great performance.


Finally, someone I was expecting to see even less than Maurice Bernard, was Bill Weeden. Who's Bill Weeden you ask? He played the baddie in Sgt. Kabukiman NYPD, one of my all-time favorite films. I had no idea he was doing other stuff, but here he is in this, with long hair, some kind of official person at a church that has a KKK picture on the wall, telling the racist cop's younger brother and his White Nationalist friend that they're fighting the good fight as racists. Sgt. Kabukiman came out in 1990, and 30 years later New York is a very different place--in fact, Troma had to move out of Hell's Kitchen because it's too expensive, and now they're in Long Island City, Queens--which is also where the writer of this film, Taheim Bryan, was killed. I didn't know NYC in the 1990s--and to be fair, I don't really know it now either, I just pop up there a few times a year for a day trip to see a sporting event or go to a work conference--but this film kind of gives you the sense that for some people, they were left behind by the changes New York has gone through, but at the same time, for those same people who were left behind, they also have a more authentic relationship with the city. Like so many elements in this film, it's complicated, and in 90s minutes they're able to convey that complicated nature really well.

And with that, let's wrap this up. As of my writing, you can get this on Tubi, Freevee, Plex, and Prime here in the States. While it may have a few moments that were a little rough around the edges, overall this really worked for me, and I think worth checking out, especially on a free streamer.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8171000

And my newest novel, Don's House in the Mountains, is available now on Amazon! Click the image to buy.

Saturday, February 17, 2024

The Commando (2022)

I saw this on Tubi and wanted to make it happen strictly to get more Michael Jai White on the site, and the fact that it had some other favorites like Mickey Rourke and Jeff Fahey helped. In addition to us, the New York Times, The Guardian, and Variety have covered this too.

The Commando has White as a DEA agent suffering from PTSD after accidentally shooting and killing a wife and her two young daughters during a raid of a drug compound. At the same time, Mickey Rourke is getting out of prison, and he wants the $3 million he stashed in his parents' old house. Whose house is that now? You guessed it, White's. Just happens that one of his daughters has found some of the money, so she uses some of that to send her parents on weekend away, with the idea in mind that with her parents away, she can have a party. Oh, she'll have a party all right, and her poor older sister will have more to worry about than whether or not she'll get to sleep with all the noise, as these violent baddies break in looking for their cash. Will White make it back in time to save them?


Save who? The daughters? From death maybe, but the unfortunate older one still gets beaten and raped, and while most of it happens off-screen, that it happens at all is enough. The Guardian wasn't a fan of it either, but mistook the older daughter for the younger daughter who threw the party, so it wasn't even a twisted penance for throwing a party as they said, it's a twisted penance for being a stick in the mud about the party? And speaking of the party, all the guys and some of the girls the younger daughter invites over get murdered too. In a horror movie, teens getting killed is harsh, but we can handle it. When it's sadistic baddies in a home invasion, it's darker, and was handled here pretty callously, as if director Asif Akbar didn't realize he was murdering kids or something. The Michael Jai White we get is solid, and I did like the twist of him dealing with PTSD from a DEA mission instead of a combat tour, but even that didn't make a lot of sense, considering he was slitting guys' throats and shooting first and asking questions later all over the place. As the writer of the Variety review said, it felt more like a writer's crutch. Either way, when he gets home and takes out all of Rourke's baddies, it was pretty sweet, it was just a shame we didn't get more of it sooner. Rourke himself was great, even in a limited capacity, as was Jeff Fahey, in an even more limited capacity. I think if this had a cleaner, less dark identity, it would've worked better. The rape and murder of kids is not something to casually toss around in a film, especially not a 90-minute DTV actioner that's more meant to be a fun time waster than anything.

But we did achieve our one goal, right? We got more White up, with this being his 25th film now. Interestingly enough, that puts him only two behind Scott Adkins. Depending on how the new releases fall, if I'm leaning more on the back catalogs White could catch him and beat him to the 30 Club. The thing you can see when watching a film like this is how much he should be getting better parts in better films. Forget playing a DEA agent who slits low-level drug cartel members' throats, he's showed us over and over how much better he is than that. I think that's why he's gotten into more directing. An Outlaw Johnny Black isn't going to come to him, he needs to make it himself, and what's great is when he does, we get something fantastic. He does his best to make this fantastic too, which I appreciate. He saw something in the character he liked and went for it--for one take, and then they moved on to the next scene, as this did feel like a bit of a rush job.

This is now five for Mickey Rourke, and while we can joke that you get what you pay for, because he's not in many scenes, he also turns in a pretty solid performance in the limited role he has, and I think the fact that he's in this at all is the reason this is getting reviewed in major publications and not just sites like mine. One thing I didn't realize about him, I thought he was born in the late 50s/early 60s, but he was born in 1952, meaning he was almost 70 when this was made. I don't think he was playing someone 70 though, I think based off of John Enos III, who was playing a biker that was a longtime friend of Rourke's, that would make him ten years younger, but then I think both of them were supposed to have been born in the late 60s, which would mean Rourke was playing someone a good 15 years younger. I think you could also do the same thing with Michael Jai White, who was born in '67, but paired with Brendan Fehr in this, who was born in '77, probably say that White's character was ten years younger too. To be honest, I would've liked Rourke's character more if he was playing his age. Say he was in prison even longer, maybe he has to adapt more to life on the outside. The problem was, with the limited time they had him, younger and less time in jail was the way they had to play it.

This is the second film we've done that was directed by Asif Akbar, the other being the Gary Daniels film Astro. This one was definitely more brutal than that one, but it also felt a bit like an Amir Shervan film in that the brutality felt more like it was trying to mimic the American action genre. Akbar said in his bio that he grew up in the States, unlike Shervan who moved here during the Iranian Revolution, which I think would explain why it's not as off as the Shervan films were, but the seeds of it are still there. Tonally, murdering teens, beating and raping a young woman, or even DEA agents slitting the cartel grunts' throats puts the movie in a different place from teens just being held hostage and menaced, the threat of the young woman being raped but it never happens, and the cartel grunts being incapacitated with a rear-naked choke by the DEA agents. Where does that confused tone come in though? Is it a misunderstanding of what makes Commando--not The Commando--with Schwarzenegger work despite the high body count? What is the difference between Arnold raiding the tool shed and murdering baddies versus DEA agents slitting guys' throats? I don't know how to explain it fully, but tonally that difference exists, and this film has the Shervan--or even Godfrey Ho--feel of our culture being reflected back at us, even if it was to a much smaller degree.


Finally, this film asks the age-old question: what do you do when you find a lot of money? The closest situation I've ever been in to that, was when I was out with some friends and their kids, and I was washing my hands after going to the bathroom, when one of the friends' kids came out of a stall with a wallet stuffed with cash and asked me what to do with it. This was a TGIFridays, so we took it to the host, and the person whose wallet it was came for it after. We got barely a thank you from the guy, forget any of the cash as a reward, but I felt better knowing we did the right thing regardless. Now, if I found millions of dollars under a floorboard where I was living, I'd probably call the cops in that situation too, and they'd probably just confiscate it and use it for their police funds, but with all the action films I've seen, I'd also wonder if they may be in on it, like Fahey was here, and instead of letting me just turn it over, would kill me for it too. I don't have the martial arts skills of say a Don "The Dragon" Wilson, who could handle the Bloodfist-ian wherewithal required to escape a situation like that, and then live on the run for however long it took to expose the conspiracy at the heart of why this cop tried to kill me. All that to say, I guess the hope is I'm never unfortunate enough to find a pile of cash anywhere, especially not in the floorboards of a place I'm living in.

And with that, let's wrap this up. As of my writing, you can get this free on Tubi here in the States. I think this is really for Michael Jai White completists, or if you have a site like mine and you want to get more than 30 films of his reviewed. Otherwise, you could probably skip it. You've seen this one before, and while it tries to cover new territory with the PTSD angle, really what distinguishes it is the tonal confusion with all the brutality.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12689248

And my newest novel, Don's House in the Mountains, is available now on Amazon! Click the image to buy.

Saturday, February 10, 2024

Deadly Impact aka Impatto mortale (1984)

With this weekend being the Super Bowl here in the States, and with the Kansas City Chiefs one of the participants, I figured we'd do a Fred Williamson film, considering he played in the first Super Bowl for that same Chiefs team. Also, this is a good time for us to officially celebrate his entry into the 30 Club. In addition to us, the guys at Comeuppance and The Video Vacuum have covered this, so we're completing the triangle with our review.

Deadly Impact has Bo Svenson as a detective on the edge who likes to crash cars. He's investigating the murder of a young computer programmer along with his hustler/helicopter pilot buddy, Fred Williamson. They discover the murdered young man had software that allowed him to see when slot machines in Vegas would hit, and some baddies wanted all the money he'd won. Now it's a race against time, as the baddies are looking to kidnap the young man's girlfriend to find out where their money was, and our heroes need to stop them. Will they make it in time? And if they do, how many cars will Svenson crash in the process?


This is a fun one for sure. As Ty and Brett said in their review, this is an Italian production rip-off/cover movie of 48 Hours, and with that in mind we'd rather have Bo Svenson and Fred Williamson than Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy. The two of them are a fantastic pair and have great chemistry, which makes them enjoyable to watch. It is a bit on the dark side (John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band?)--I mean, our baddies are leaving a trail of bodies all over Phoenix that would make most mass killers in history blush. That said, when people aren't being murdered, the car chases are fantastic. Just when you think they could be going on too long, one of the cars suddenly flips over somethings and lands on it's roof. How do you not love that? And Svenson's character in particular seems to love crashing into things--the moment he borrows someone's car you know that's it for it. The helicopter chase we get near the end was fun too, culminating in a sweet helicopter explosion. The other thing is, for the juvenile minded of us out there, of which I count myself among them, the word "hacker" hadn't been coined yet, at least not officially, so the term used in this was "computer penetration," and what we know of as "cyber security" was "penetration prevention." I'm giggling about it as I'm writing it. Finally, speaking of Phoenix, we get some nice shots of the city in the 1980s, plus even better, shots of 1980s Vegas, which looks fantastic. If you can find a copy of this, it's worth checking out.

For years we've been talking about getting Fred Williamson into the 30 Club, and when we finally do it, it ends up being a tiny cameo at the end of The Outlaw Johnny Black, so while this is technically his 31st film on the site, I figured we'd use this one to truly celebrate his entry--though even this one is more of a Bo Svenson film, with Williamson playing his sidekick. In less than a month from my writing this, he'll be 86 years old, and he still has in production credits on IMDb. Even without those, I count around 25 films of his that we could do on this site that we haven't yet, so the 40 and 50 Club are definitely possibilities, I just need to review his films at a more consistent clip--which has been the thing that's kept him out of the 30 Club for so long. There's also the element of him being a director, with him being the only member of the 20-10 Club--20+ films as an actor, 10+ films as a director. We do have a couple more of the films he's directed that we can do here as well, I just need to track them down. One thing I liked about this one, was it was an Italian production, but it didn't take place in the future or after the apocalypse. Not that I don't enjoy seeing Williamson in those films too, but this one was a nice change of pace. One of the greatest to ever do it, finally joining the 30 Club here at the DTVC. It's an honor that's long overdue and well-deserved.


As I mentioned above, this also has Bo Svenson. In looking over his bio, I didn't realize how similar to Dolph he is. Both from Sweden, both came here to study--Dolph mechanical engineering, Svenson metaphysics--both fell into acting, and both are 6'5" and athletic. The big difference I think is the size of the big break each got, where Svenson's came in replacing Paul Newman as Robert Redford's co-star in The Great Waldo Pepper, and Dolph's was as Ivan Drago in the hit blockbuster Rocky IV, which led to the lead in another blockbuster, Masters of the Universe. The two did team up in The Killing Machine, which was directed by Dolph, so we at least have that. As far as team-ups go though, it's his work with Williamson that's the best, and this film is another example of that. In Williamson's later films, Svenson would often play a baddie, so it was cool to see the two of them working together and bantering with each other, as Svenson crashed Williamson's car that only had two notes left on it.

We get to use the McDonald's tag for the twelfth time, as this film has not one but two locations, one in Vegas, and then the one above in Phoenix. While I have had McDonald's in Vegas before, I've never been out of the Phoenix airport to have been able to get it there--I did get it near the Grand Canyon though, so I have had it in the state of Arizona. What's great here is the baddies are using the payphone at McDonald's, which I don't know if we've ever seen before. Before the advent of the mass availability cellphones, I remember using payphones at McDonald's, smelling the fries cooking, the scent almost like an anthropomorphized hand pulling me in like you might see with a pie cooling on a windowsill in an old cartoon, I couldn't wait to get my call done so I could get inside and order, despite having had no plan to get anything prior to making that phone call. It was a business model for them that went away when payphones were no longer necessary, but back in 1984 it was in full effect as we watched the two baddies go inside after their call, seemingly unable to resist the siren song of McDonald's. Here in Philly many of the McDonald's near us have closed, so instead of that great French fry smell, it's the Popeye's fried chicken, which can be just as alluring.


Finally, I caught this billboard advertising Arizona State football games on the radio as this car flew past it. It reminded me that in 1984 the Phoenix area didn't have an NFL team yet. I looked it up, the St. Louis Cardinals moved there for the 1988 season--in fact St. Louis has lost two NFL teams in my life, first the Cardinals, and then they got the LA Rams in 1995, where they stayed until they moved back to LA in 2015. It's a strange concept to the rest of the world I think, that in US pro sports--and Canadian when those teams play in the US pro leagues--teams can move around like that. In fact, two of Phoenix's four professional teams are from other cities, as they got their hockey team, the Coyotes, from Winnipeg--don't worry, Winnipeg eventually got Atlanta's NHL team, so they have NHL hockey again. This also shows how much Phoenix has grown in the 40 years since this film was made. They went from having only one top tier professional team, the Phoenix Suns of the NBA, to now one in each of the four sports; and is also now the fifth largest city in the US by population if you just go by city limits, more than doubling their population between the 1980 census where they had just shy of 800,000 people, to the 2020 census, where they had over 1.6 million people. You'd like to think this film helped that trend of growth, but actually there was a 10% dip in population growth between 1970 and 1980, where they had 35% growth, and 1980 and 1990, where they only had 25% growth. My hunch is seeing Svenson driving around like a maniac scared some people off.

And with that, let's wrap this up. I caught this on Plex here in the States, but you can see that that version they have available isn't much better than a VHS rip on YouTube--in fact, you even get the same tracking issues at some points--and Plex is one of the worst for commercials, every 15 minutes you get about 150 seconds-worth, which is a pain, but it's better than nothing, and this is worth checking out however you can.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087461

And my newest novel, Don's House in the Mountains, is available now on Amazon! Click the image to buy.