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.

Thursday, May 3, 2007

Dead Tides (1997)

My buddy bought this on VHS when he found out it had DTVC Hall of Famers Rowdy Roddy Piper and Miles O'Keefe in it. He brought it over one night before we were headed to Boston, and the whole next day this film was all we could talk about. It's that good.

Dead Tides has not only those two DTV legends, but also Tawny Kitaen and Trevor Goddard. Tawny is the chick from the Whitesnake video who danced on the cars, and Trevor Goddard is the guy who played Kano in Mortal Kombat with Lambert. If you include his work in Men of War with Dolph Lundgren, he's had the distinction of working with four DTVC Hall of Famers. Not too shabby.

 
The movie's about Piper, a yacht sailor, who's recruited by Kitaen for her drug dealer boyfriend to smuggle drugs into the country. Goddard is the Coast Guard guy who's sleeping with Piper's ex-wife. Miles plays the ATF guy who wants Piper's help in taking down the drug dealer. You've probably seen the rest of the movie in other drug dealer/double cross films, so I don't need to tell you what happens. Who cares anyway with that kind of stellar cast?

One of my favorite parts was early in the movie, when Goddard trashes Piper's boat and throws him in the water. Another great one is when he takes down the drug dealer's henchmen one at a time after the dealer screws up his execution of Piper. It's just good to see him in the movie.


It lacks a bit of Miles, and that's disheartening. Of course, in Marked Man we get plenty of Piper and Miles, so maybe I'm just being greedy... yeah, I'm just being greedy. What I'd really like is an off-beat cop drama with Piper and Miles as partners, only they dress like Rowdy the wrestler and Ator. A guy can dream, right?


I think you know where I'm going with this. Buy it, rent it, do whatever you can to see this. On the open market, you should be able to buy this used on VHS for no more than $5. I don't know if it's on DVD, but as far as I know it ain't. Either way, it's a solid deal. Just remember who you're getting: Miles, Rowdy, and even Kano. As Billy Ocean would say "Simply... awesome."

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0161485/

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7 comments:

  1. tawny kitaen wasn't just the girl from the white snake video. more importantly she was herc's wife from the action-pack tv-movie days. back when iolaus used to have to share him with women from time to time.

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  2. See, that's why I need you perusing my blogs. That's a very important fact that I forgot. She was also the woman on Seinfeld that made Jerry's penis play chess with his brain.

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  3. This has been released on DVD a few years back in Australia but title is sweptaway. picked up a copy second hand after reading the review. not a bad little film

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  4. That's not a bad deal, a DVD in Australia. Maybe we'll get a DVD release of it over here at some point.

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  5. the company which released it RBC Entertainment no longer exist due to a copyright dispute which got them out of business. Surely Showcase Enertainment has the contacts to release it on DVD in America. Got the DVD cheap and love the opening score.

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  6. Yeah, it'd be nice to finally see this on DVD. It is currently on Netflix Instant Streaming here in the States, so that's good.

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