Deadly Bet (1992)

I watched and reviewed this primarily for the Wincott factor. Jeff Wincott is the Bee's Knees, the Cat's Pajamas, and it had been along time since I'd reviewed one of his films. I'm also looking to showcase more PM Entertainment films here at the DTVC, and Deadly Bet fit that bill as well, so it was like two birds with one roundhouse.

Deadly Bet has Wincott as a gambling man who gambles a little too much and pays for it with his girlfriend, Lucy Ewing. Perhaps Wincott wasn't the guy JR had in mind for her during the Dallas days, but we here at the DTVC think he's well within her league-- until Wincott puts her up for collateral in a bet with a guy named Rico, and Rico takes her in. After some issues with alcoholism and some more bad bets, Wincott gets a chance to make some real cash and get his girl back, he's just got to fight in Rico's tournament and beat him.



As far as a Wincott film goes, I've seen better. It was fun and silly, but the fight scenes were pretty mediocre, which was a shame coming from the dude who did Last Man Standing. I'm not really sure with this story how one would work more fights into the script, but I would've been fine with just better fights for the ones we had. When I think of Wincott, I think of three or four guys at a time and him just running through them all. Overall, not a bad film, but could've been better.

Jeff Wincott is the man. It's amazing that he never became bigger than some of his cohorts. His recent work is mostly in smaller roles. I saw one listing saying he played an attorney in One Tree Hill. I mean, that's cool and all, but even better would've been if he beat up a bunch of the local jocks on the show who come to mug him or something. Maybe he does, I haven't seen the episode. Who knows when we'll see Mr. Wincott again, but hopefully sometime soon.



One of the funnier things in this was Wincott's facial continuity. Early on, when Rico beats the crap out of him, his face is all bruised. From that point on it's a guessing game to see if from one scene to the next his face will still be all bruised. And it wasn't like a small shiner or anything, one half of his face was all black and blue. It was just great how one scene his face would be fine, and the next it would look like he passed out and fell flat on his face the night before. Maybe that's why Wincott didn't become a bigger star, because he had too many films like this that he didn't want to put on his resume.

Charlene Tilton from Dallas plays Wincott's love interest. My mom used to watch Dallas when I was growing up, and I think that's where I got my fascination with the prime time soap opera. I'm not really sure how to explain it, but let's take Dallas as an example. JR Ewing was the ultimate TV baddie. As a writer, I really appreciate something like that. I mean, think of the 80s. There were two famous villains from that time, Darth Vader and JR Ewing. Sure, you get plenty of silliness like Evil Twins and that kind of nonsensical intrigue, but in Star Wars you got the same thing with the whole Vader being Luke's father thing, so how different is it really?



Finally, newly inducted DTVC Hall of Famer Gary Daniels has a cameo at the beginning of Deadly Bet. He's sporting the most amazing head of lettuce ever. I don't think I've ever seen him in anything looking like that since. I realized now that I haven't done a film since the inductions in November for any of the actors in that class, so I should probably get on that. I can't wait to see him in the new Tekken film, though I see in the credits that there's no King or Armor King. I used to dominate my friends at Tekken Tag Tournament using those two, and then I saw in a strategy guide that they were considered by far the two best and had an unfair advantage against the other fighters. Oops. Maybe they didn't want them in the movie for that reason too, but I would love to see King and Armor King delivering the ol' Giant Swing.

There's much better Wincott out there than this one, so if you haven't seen the other's ones I've reviewed, go for those first. I'll do my best to get some more of his up here that are better representations of how awesome he is.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104066/