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.

Finding Purpose: The Road to Redemption (2019)

Back in September, our friend, producer Joe Williamson, reached out to see if I could watch and review this film for him. I said yes, but then I ran into the issues that led to a short hiatus for the DTVC on both the site and the pod, and when I got things back on the rails, it wasn't even me watching new movies, I was just reviewing from the backlog of things I'd already seen. Now it's April and I'm finally getting around to making this happen.

Finding Purpose: The Road to Redemption is written, directed, and stars John Reign as a former vet who fought in the Balkans and who's now caring for his developmentally delayed brother (Tom Stoops) along with his wife Skye (Dawna Lee Heising). After John gets a terminal cancer diagnosis, and one of his friends from the war passes and leaves him with some money and a motorcycle with a side car, John decides to go on a road trip to give back to some of the families of the men who served with him, plus patch things up with his estranged daughter, who doesn't know he's her dad. Will he get the redemption he seeks before he dies?

 

This was an earnest attempt at an honest, feelgood movie, and with that in mind, I want to use my review to give it the proper respect it deserves. I liked the idea of this story, and I liked how he used a lot of non-actors to give it a more down-to-earth feel. By the same token, I think Reign betrayed the feeling he was going for in a few areas. First, poor Dawna Lee Heising's character is put through the ringer. She swims in a pond and gets leeches on her. Then she's in a boat on that same pond with John, and he absentmindedly tips the boat so she falls in. After that she gets sprayed by a skunk, and then for good measure, a snake crawls up her pajama pant leg. All because she's supporting her husband and going on this trip with him. There's also a scene where they go to a wing joint that looks like a pretty rough place, and she says multiple times "I don't feel comfortable with this," and he insists on them going in anyway. I'm not sure how that's supposed to endear ourselves to John, both as the character, because this is how he treats his wife; but then as a filmmaker, as this his how he treats the character of the wife. In addition to that, the element of the estranged daughter seemed to come out of nowhere, and maybe I missed the mentions earlier in the film, but I feel like it's something that could have been sprinkled in throughout the film so it didn't feel so grafted on. I saw people online who killed this movie, and I saw people giving it a 10 our of 10, but I think the reality, as in most cases, was somewhere in between.

I could tell this was a passion project for John Reign, and it felt like everyone involved got what he wanted and were as invested in what he was trying to do. I think film making like that is what this site was meant to celebrate, but by the same token, I think it's important to give as honest a take on the film as the honest attempt that was made to make it. One of the things about the passion project is it can veer into the vanity project quickly, which is something we've seen a lot of on this site, and might be why seeing that it was Dawna Lee Heising's wife character that was put through the ringer instead of John's character was such a red flag. We normally see this kind of vanity thing in an action film. Maybe a Seagal or Van Damme gets to beat everyone up and get the girl; instead here, John Reign gets to observe unscathed while his wife gets leeches on her from swimming in a pond. Had these things happened to John instead, it would have made his character more endearing. On the other hand, do we want to see someone who's dying of cancer getting sprayed by a skunk? So maybe no one gets sprayed by the skunk or bitten by leeches then?

The one place that I thought really worked was how John illustrated the bond his character had with the people he served with. It transcended the standard "thank you for your service" approach we see in a lot of movies about war veterans, and gave us something really unique. I also liked the way he demonstrated how that bond was felt by the generations that followed them, as he interacted with the kids of the people he served with; but then also the generations before when he visits the mother of one of the men who died in his unit. He tries to explain how her son died a hero, to which she responds that if her son had been a coward, she'd still have her son. I don't know that I needed more of that kind of scene, because I think one of those scenes was powerful enough on its own; I think it was more that when that scene comes after Dawna Lee Heising gets sprayed by a skunk, it's maybe hard for me to switch gears.

One thing I didn't know about this film until I looked it up on IMDb when I started writing this post, is that this is a sequel. The first film was just Finding Purpose, and it followed John as he dealt with PTSD after his time in the Balkans and he loses his developmentally delayed brother to the state. I don't know if seeing the first one would have changed how I felt about this film, just because I think the issues I had with it were still the issues whether I learned more of the backstory first, but also I think what I liked still would have been what I liked too. The one area that I may have gotten a better sense of was his relationship with the social worker who checked in on him and his brother early in this movie. I don't know if the estranged daughter was brought up in that one too, making it perhaps feel less of a tacked on thing here.

 

Finally, this is more of a general concern I have with screeners. Don't get me wrong, I always feel appreciative when someone comes to me to screen a film for our site, as it's been a part of this DTVC experience that I never saw coming when I started everything, and the ability to help get the word out on an indie production is something I love being able to do; but these large watermarks in the screeners reminding us that the film is not to distributed illegally are getting excessive. I get it, when you've poured not only your heart and soul into a project, but so have all the people helping you along the way, you want to protect your creation as much as you can; by the same token, these things can be obtrusive to the overall watching experience. Does it have to be a static watermark? Could it be a periodic crawl that rolls along the bottom of the screen? Something that doesn't interfere with my ability to watch and enjoy the film.

And with that, let's wrap this up. This can be rented for a dollar on Prime right now. I don't think that's a high price to pay for supporting an indie filmmaker. One word of caution though: IMDb lists this as a 90-minute runtime, but when I watched the screener I was given the link to, it clocked in at 100 minutes.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10332260

And if you haven't yet, check out my novel, Chad in Accounting, in paperback or on Kindle!

 

Savage Dog (2017)

When I had Simon from Explosive Action on the pod to discuss Avengement, he had this right up there as another favorite Adkins flick of his. Hearing that I knew I had to make this happen. In addition to us, our friends Ty and Brett at Comeuppance Reviews, and Mitch at the Video Vacuum have looked at this, so you can go to their sites to see what they thought.

Savage Dog takes place in 1950s French Indochina (which might make the title Chien Savage?), where Scott Adkins is a prisoner forced to fight other prisoners by an evil Nazi warden (Vladimir Kulich, who played Tommy in the Debt Collector films--though not taking any cream off the vig in this one). When he gets his release, he goes to work at Keith David's bar, where he meets JuJu Chen and falls in love with her. To make extra cash, he fights in the Nazi warden's underground fight club, which, as you can imagine, doesn't end well. This is all in the first half of the movie. In the second half, Adkins is unleashed on a revenge quest against the Nazi warden and his crew.

As we were discussing Avengement more, Simon decided he preferred it to Savage Dog, but he was torn. For me, I wasn't torn, I liked Avengement more than this, but that doesn't mean this wasn't fantastic either. I think the beginning of this is a bit more of a slow burner--not without its moments though--but then it goes ape shit. Avengement is ape shit from the beginning, and just gives us breathers from time to time to collect ourselves. But man, when this get kicks it into that next gear, it really gets there. When it is slower at the beginning though, we have performances by Adkins, Chen, David, and Kulich; plus, among Kulich's gang are Cung Le and Marko Zaror, so the slower opening is really just preparing us for Adkins's eventual fights with both, which don't disappoint. In their review on Comeuppance, Ty and Brett were saying that this is one of those few modern DTV flicks that meets the standard set by those great DTV flicks of the 80s and 90s, and I agree with them on that. Adkins and Jesse V. Johnson have done it again.

Recently Adkins was on our friend Jon Cross's Booth Talk podcast (which if you aren't subscribed you really should be!) to discuss his latest film, Legacy of Lies, and on that one he mentions that people doubt his acting ability. First off, if that were true then neither Debt Collector would have worked, because part of the charm of that is his interplay with Louis Mandylor; but also, here he has many scenes with Keith David, who's an excellent actor, and he holds his own in all of them. While we don't come to an Adkins action film for his acting, we're coming for his explosive, high-octane martial arts, if he couldn't act these films wouldn't quite be what they are, so he does deserve credit for that. I don't know that anyone is killing it the way Adkins is right now, and it's exciting to see him get after it in film after film. This is just another we can add to that great list.

I recently watched Wu Assassins on Netflix, and while the show itself fell into the classic Netflix show trap where I feel like I'm watching a 10-hour movie and I get burned out, JuJu Chen was amazing in it as the Triad enforcer for Byron Mann's character. We talk about Adkins getting after it, but Chen really got after it in that show, and it's a shame we didn't see any of that here. Just the same, she turns in a great performance alongside Adkins, and it works for what it was; but one fight scene would have been great too. She did a film recently with Luke Goss called Hollow Point, where not only does she get to fight, but Luke Goss doesn't affect an American accent, so that's definitely on the list to check out once it's available.

This is our seventh Keith David film on the site, and like those others, he doesn't disappoint. I think the thing with him is, he's usually not the lead, and I usually don't seek out films for him specifically, but if I'm torn between a couple films, and he's in the cast of one, it's definitely a selling point that will lean me in that film's direction. One aspect I thought they did really well with here too is they leaned on his great voice work by having him be the narrator as well as part of the cast. Another film we did with him in it, Dirty, didn't make the same choice, instead opting for another cast member to do it, and the film suffered. Here's to you Keith David, you're one of the great ones.

Finally, this film features Cung Le and Marko Zaror, two excellent fighters that we can't wait to see Adkins get after it with. For me, this is part of what makes Jesse V. Johnson so great in the action realm right now, because the temptation is probably to have Adkins fight either or both of them sooner in the film, and he ignored that and left it until the end. It's a lot of trust in the audience, because that first half isn't as action-packed as the second, and with all the options at our fingertips on streaming sites, if we're bored we'll find something else. There was just enough there in that first half for me to keep me watching, and I was rewarded with the payoff of two great scenes, one each with Le and Zaror--plus so many other great scenes as Adkins was unleashed on his road to revenge.

And that's as good a note to end this on as any. I put this right behind Avengement on my list of Adkins/Johnson collaborations, right above Accident Man. To go back to my mention of the Comeuppance review, this is the action that will keep you from saying "man, they just don't make them like they did in the 80s and 90s"--at least for 90 minutes.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5851014

Pound of Flesh (2015)

I needed to get some more Van Damme on the site, and this one was available On Demand from my cable company. I think it was one I was looking to do before my unplanned hiatus, but that could have been another Van Damme project coming out at that time, you never know. Either way, let's see how it ended up. Also, our friends Brett and Ty at Comeuppance Reviews looked at this one, so you can see what they thought too.

Pound of Flesh has Van Damme as a guy in town in the Philippines who saves a nice lady from her abusive boyfriend (the late Darren Shahlavi), and for his trouble, she slips him a mickey, and while he's out a surgeon slips in and steals his kidney--it's urban legend meets JCVD! Problem is, that kidney was meant for his niece, and if they don't get it back, she's dead. So Van Damme teams up with his estranged brother and local crime lord friend, Aki Aleong, to track down his missing organ. As they dig deeper, they find not all is what it seems. Can they get to the bottom of things and find that kidney before it's too late?

This had the makings of a great Van Damme actioner, but it never quite got there. Why you ask? First and foremost, we have a 104-minute run time with what was maybe at most 80 minutes of material--but probably better a 40-minute short film or syndicated TV show episode length. To pad out that extra time, we have this added piece with Van Damme and his estranged brother, which I think weighed the movie down. A better approach would have been he's just pissed someone stole his kidney and he wants it back because he's a crazy assassin guy. Make it more hubris than anything, and make him a one-man force unleashed on all the baddies--they stole the wrong man's kidney! Action is better when it's short and sweet, and this film went in a different direction with too many plot twists and added elements that we didn't need. The film does have its moments, so it's not a total waste--and I may not have put it as much of a disappointment as Black Water, but it still dragged, and still felt like a missed opportunity.

Van Damme is closing in on the 30 movies territory, but with the great big screen career, I don't think pushing him to milestones like that is as important as it would be for someone like Cynthia Rothrock or Don "The Dragon" Wilson. Just the same, I don't want to ignore his DTV work, because I think covering films like these is necessary. He's very different from Seagal or even Dolph in current DTV films. Van Damme is really invested, and it seems like he's also choosing projects that pique his interest. I don't know if he's the reason this went beyond what it should have been, but it's possible. I feel like if Van Damme took the baddie he played in The Expendables 2, and did that as a good guy in an 80-minute high octane actioner, it could be really exciting. I don't know that he's ever really done that before, but it would be nice to see.

When I said the film had its moments, that shot above is one. If this were a big screen movie in the mid-90s, this would have been the money shot in all the commercials. Classic Van Damme right there, and nice to see that he's still pushing himself and wants to go there twenty years later. That's why I can't kill this movie entirely, despite the fact that it was draggy and a bit long, he's fully invested and doing his part to make this work. Whether he's doing it for us, or doing it for himself to prove he still has it, it doesn't matter, it was exciting to see. By the same token, bringing back the old Van Damme buttcheeks may have been a bit much for people--not the "pound of flesh" they were expecting! I get it, I understand, but for me, the buttcheeks were part and parcel with the splits, and I was willing to take it for the nostalgia factor.

At the DTVC we talk about the ways in which a film can be derailed, and the two biggest are run time and letting the plot get in the way, and this film committed both sins. And the thing is, to consider dumping the brother character, who plays a big part, seems like a drastic cut to make the film; but the reality is, making Van Damme a crazed assassin character whose quest to retrieve his kidney is more hubris than anything works if it's 80 minutes and has fights or shootouts every 15 minutes. They don't even have to be all Van Damme. We could have Shahlavi do one with someone else. Looking at the split above, plus the Bible Fu Van Damme did in a scene at a Philippine nightclub, the action was there to carry 80 minutes of a hubris-filled quest to get his kidney back. Sometimes that's all we need.

This was one of Darren Shahlavi's last films, and I think the saddest thing about that is, not only that he was only 43 when he passed, but that you could see here how he was turning the corner in his career. Someone who was so great in Bloodmoon and should've been getting bigger roles for years, finally was, and it looked like it was only going to get better from there. He had the skill and presence to be up there with Adkins and Michael Jai White, not to mention stars like Tony Jaa and Iko Uwais who are starting to be big from Asian markets; and there was going to be a lot of films made and a lot of roles for someone of Shahlavi's talents to showcase what he could do. Here's to you Mr. Shahlavi, you were one of the greats, and we will miss you.

On that somber note, let's wrap this up. While this had its moments, it's ultimately too long and gets too bogged down in its plot and many moving parts to fully work for me. Right now you can stream it through MoviePlex On Demand on cable, or if you have Stars, you can stream through that or their Amazon Prime service.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3488328

Out for Blood (1992)

Usually I have a great introductory paragraph, maybe where I tell you how I came across the film, or when I first had a chance to view it. Simply put, this was a Don "The Dragon" Wilson PM Entertainment actioner I hadn't gotten to yet, and now I am. Need I say more? Also of note, our good friend Ty at Comeuppance Reviews covered this as well, so you can check out his post and compare.

Out for Blood is PM Entertainment and Don "The Dragon" Wilson's answer to Death Wish, with Wilson as a lawyer whose wife and kid are killed after they stumble upon a drug deal, and Wilson is severely wounded. Afterwards, he suffers from amnesia and doesn't exactly remember who did it, only that they were drug dealers, and he's going to kill as many of them as he can until he finds the right ones. Throw in the detective from all the Ring of Fire flicks, Robert Miano, the villain from Chain of Command, and a special appearance from an old friend.

This one does the trick. It's vintage PM Entertainment/Don "The Dragon" Wilson, from the fight scenes that almost come out of everywhere, to the shootouts that seem to go nowhere until a stuntman falls to his death, to the explosions that really make no sense--except in our action-loving hearts. "Hey, we paid for the fire experts, and we're gonna use 'em. I want two stuntmen ablaze in the next scene." "Hey, we paid for the pneumatic catapult, and by God, we're going to use it, I don't care if the stuntman looks nothing like Mr. Wilson." This is why we love PM Entertainment, and why it seems like they get the best out of Wilson.

I always talk about how the charm in Wilson is his "awe shucks" demeanor, but he sheds it very effectively to don his Bronson persona. This is the kind of Wilson we want though, kicking ass and taking names--and when he's not kicking ass, he's making great sarcastic comments about kicking ass. Line up the beefy guys with mullets, and let Wilson have at it. Yes, we want that. Five guys on a rooftop getting beat up? Yes! Cruising around on the hood of a car? Give me more. When it's done right, Wilson DTV action is a thing to behold, and when it's done poorly, it hurts. This certainly didn't hurt.

This had some major boom-mic-age. And I'm not talking for a second either. It seems like that at first, because right away we see the thing bob up and out of the shot. But then we go back to Wilson, and it's there again, just chillin' over his head. And then we go back, and it's there again, and this time a little lower, if that's possible. It's one thing when it's for a split second, but this was major, and it was awesome.

One of the best mullets ever was sported by Todd Curtis, who you may remember as the main baddie in Chain of Command. He was dressed like a cowboy here too, which I didn't get, but I figured I'd just go with it and not ask any questions. He didn't have a fight with Wilson though, which was unfortunate. They thought a fight with Ken McLeod would be better. Who knows?...

Recognize that face? Yep, that's DTVC favorite Don Niam, from Undefeatable. That's the only close-up in the film, and it happens in like one second. According to IMDb, it's his first ever role, so not bad. Right after that close-up, he's decked by Wilson and knocked out, and then we see him from a distance lying on the ground, or being dragged out of a van. Gotta love Don Niam.

And you gotta love Out for Blood. A vintage PM Entertainment/Don "The Dragon" Wilson collaboration. As far as I know, it's out-of-print on DVD, but can be bought at Amazon, plus they have it on Video-on-Demand; the problem is, when you click on the IMDb Amazon link, it's mixed in with a bunch of similarly titled vampire flicks and whatnot. Anyway, if you can spot this cheap, either on VHS or DVD, go for it, because it's worth it.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107762/

Looking for more action? Check out my short action novel, Bainbridge, and all my other novels, over at my author's page! Click on the image below, go to https://www.matthewpoirierauthor.com/

Deadly Target (1994)

I first saw this about five or six years ago when it aired on either EncoreAction or ShowtimeXtreme. I actually wanted to review it when I first started the DTVC back in 2007, but I didn't remember enough about it (in fact, I didn't even remember the name!), so I just forgot about it and it was lost in the shuffle. A few weeks ago, though, when I was looking for some films to review because Netflix didn't have available the ones I wanted, one of our readers, Michael, suggested I give this one a try. Of course, as luck would have it, it too ended up not being available, then the storm hit, and everything just got all backed up. Finally, here it is, Deadly Target, in all its glory.

Deadly Target has DTVC Hall of Famer Gary Daniels as a Hong Kong cop in LA after Byron Mann, who's a big time drug dealer. The problem is, Mann's escaped, and Daniels has pissed of the LAPD to the point they don't want him involved. Lucky for him, a hot Asian chick has taken him in, and one dude on the force has taken a shine to him. Now it's only a matter of time before Daniels gets his man.



This is bad 90s action at it's pretty-good-est. I mean, it had some great fights, some great car chases, and some great explosions. Daniels did his thing, and believe me, we've seen much worse from him. Overall, I could dig it. One problem I had was with it though is his female friend who takes him in. She handles herself in a fight and with a weapon as if she's had quite a bit of training, when her character is depicted as a glorified Valley Girl grown up. That's kind of that point where silly becomes too silly for me, and not silly in a way that's awesome, like a car exploding from a minor collision as if it were filled with TNT.

I'm fighting an uphill battle to get all of Daniels' films up here at the DTVC. It seems like for every one film I get my hands on, Netflix makes two unavailable. The most recent victim is Fatal Blade. It could be worse. It looks like Netflix is systematically eliminating all of Jeff Speakman's library. I'm wondering if this isn't Netflix's fault, or rather the individual distributors don't want Netflix to have them. For instance, Albert Pyun's new film, Bulletface, is only available through the website, and not on either Amazon or Netflix (you can download a torrent of it, but I would never do that for a Pyun film, based on the support he's shown us here at the DTVC). Anyway, so maybe I shouldn't be giving Netflix all the blame.



One of my issues with this movie was the lack of a really great fight scene after the initial action. I mean, don't get me wrong, Daniels and his partner, Ken McLeod, were great, but with the studs they had, like Ron Yuan, Byron Mann, and James Lew, we should've been getting some of the best stuff we've ever seen. This shows yet again that you can line up all the talent you want, but if you don't use it, what good is it?

Daniels' love interest is played by Susan Byun, who was in one of my all time faves, Sgt. Kabukiman NYPD. I've never really done any Troma films here because I've always looked at them as a different category to what I'm doing. I know this might sound silly, but I've always seen them as an independent film company. With the DTVC Wild Card look at comic book movies winding down next week, I'm considering options for a new series of films to examine, and Troma seems like a logical next choice (another I was considering was vampire movies). I think we'll take a break for a little while though before I start something new.



I don't remember which MST3K episode it was, but in one of them, a dude gets punched in the face, and the fake blood that comes out of his mouth causes one of the 'bots to say "Cherry Starburst." Ever since that time, every time I see a similar effect, I'm forced to say the same thing. I remember at one kitchen job I had, we served this Starburst Cake, and I always called it "Cherry Starburst Cake", and my boss would always be like "why do you keep saying that?" I think he felt like there was some inside joke or pop culture reference I wasn't letting him in on. Anyway, James Lew has an amazing Cherry Starburst moment, and I had to capture it for the blog. It was a thing of beauty.

I'm not really sure you need to throw this on your Netflix queue over anything else you've been considering watching, but if you have a hankering for some Gary Daniels and you've seen everything else, why not give this a shot. At the very least, if it airs on EncoreAction or ShowtimeXtreme, you could do a lot worse than watch it. It's not horrible, it's just, for a mid-90s DTV actioner, it's nothing special, just a solid bad action film.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109573/

X-treme Fighter aka Sci-Fighter (2004)

I found this movie when I was looking up Lorenzo Lamas films to rent. I saw it also had Don "The Dragon" Wilson in it, so I knew I needed to rent it. The idea sounded cheesy, but I felt the star power would see me through.

X-treme Fighter is the ridiculous story of a boy who gets his brain trapped in a virtual reality video game. The game is designed by his grandfather, who gives it to him as a birthday gift, despite his son, D "The D" Dubs', resignations. Now it's up to Donny to go inside the machine and beat all the fighters one by one to save his son. Lorenzo Lamas and Cynthia Rothrock also star.



This movie could've been so good, and it so wasn't. Forget the ridiculous idea that a virus in the game has trapped the kid's mind in it, and for whatever reason that means Don has to beat all the other fighters; what they did with the video game idea was boring. All Don did was fight bad guys. It would've been cool if he had to get things in the game to make him more powerful, or figure out how to get into new worlds. How much would it've taken to play Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter and see what made those cool. Give me some fireballs. Give me some finishing moves. Give me some hyper-combos. Just give me something.

That was too bad, because the film had some top notch talent. Beyond Lamas, Wilson, and Rothrock, there were also a bunch of professional fighters with championship status in a host of disciplines. None of them were in cool outfits, or did anything special, or even have any sweet one-liners. Come on, put some make-up on these people and make them teleport or, or, or something.



As far as Wilson goes, he was all right considering what he had to work with. I've seen better plots in his Bloodfist movies, and those are usually just one man against the world yarns. Also, the fight scenes weren't choreographed that well. There was a lot of him putting a foot out and guys waiting to be kicked. Even Seagal and Van Damme don't do that. Maybe not his best, but not his worst either.

Lamas was completely wasted. He's barely in it, and when he is, he's mostly flirting with Rothrock, even though she's got the hots for Wilson. In one seen, they put Lamas and Wilson together, saying it was a glitch in the system, and Lamas is gone before we know it. Again, a complete waste. He should've teamed up with the glitch Lamas. Just another missed opportunity. Not worth it at all if you're a Lamas fan.



According to imdb, this is the last film Cynthia Rothrock has been in. That's kind of too bad. I think if anyone has a shot at being the first woman in the DTVC Hall of Fame, it's her. I think the one thing keeping her out is the low quality of some of the films she's done so far. I know what you're thinking "low quality here?" Yes, most of the films at the DTVC are bottom barrel stuff, but some of her movies were pushing that Bruce Penhall Julie Strain level. As such, other members of the DTVC panel are unfortunately unfamiliar with her work. I'm hoping through the magic of Netflix to change that.

This is a pretty dumb and boring movie. It has all the right credentials, and sounds like it might be a good deal, but it really isn't. My fear is that you rent this with a group of friends ready to make fun of something, and then the ADD kicks in and people start firing up laptops and browsing the Internet. If anything, this is not a film for people saddled with ADD.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0390463/