Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films (2014)

This is one that I had been meaning to do on here for a while, and when I mentioned on the podcast that it was available, Sean Malloy from I Must Break This Podcast asked if he could guest on the pod to discuss it, which I thought was a great idea. It was a great conversation, and you can catch that in our archives, episode 166. In addition to us, our friend Mitch at the Video Vacuum has covered this as well.

Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films is a documentary by Mark Hartley, he of the great Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation! and Machete Maidens Unleashed! He attacks this topic with the same love and attention, giving us the origins of Cannon through their famed production duo Golan and Globus, their rise in the market with actioners led by Charles Bronson and Chuck Norris, and then their downfall. We also get great interviews from names involved, like Albert Pyun, Dolph, Dudikoff, and Sam Firstenberg, who give us interesting insight into how these rebel producers flew too close to the sun, and ultimately fell into the sea.

This is fantastic, Sean and I were in agreement on that. The only complaint we had was we could've used more--like maybe three parts that are each the length this one was. It's one of those rare films where I don't check the slider bar to see how much is left, and when we get to the end, I'm disappointed and want more. It's great seeing and hearing from the big names, like the ones I mentioned above, but then you have people who worked for Cannon at the time, like David Del Valle--who has a great Instagram account, delvallearchives, with a lot of old Hollywood genre content and things from his collection--who gives us insight into things like how Cannon chose films when he was a script reader for them--"I had one pile for Bronson films, and one Norris films." We also get these great stories, like when Golan and Globus worked with Jean-Luc Godard for his King Lear, which is a movie I enjoyed, but hearing the issues behind it made it even better. If you love the movies we love here on the site, this documentary is for you.

This is now the 73rd tag for Dolph, his 72nd film, and his second appearance in a documentary, the other being Power of Grayskull: The Definitive History of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, which we reviewed a few years back. It would've been nice to have more of him here, but it kind of makes sense that we don't, because he only did one film for Cannon--which was a big one for sure, but still only one. There was a sense in hearing him discuss it, that he was disappointed with how it turned out, and wasn't comfortable with the production as it was happening. He was riding high from Rocky IV, this was as big as he was going to get, and this felt like the next role to take; but it came out after the toys had fallen out of favor, and while it looked nice for a Cannon film, it was still a Cannon film made on the cheap, and ultimately it was a bust that didn't make its budget back. It starts Dolph down a path that leads to DTV-dom, which was our gain, but unfortunate for him--though he's bounced back somewhat now, getting his redemption while riding a seahorse in Aquaman.

We last saw Michael Dudikoff in 2022 with Fury of the Fist and the Golden Fleece, so it's been a bit, and probably will be a bit before we see him again. At one time he actually had more tags than Dolph, and he was one of the first that we had the complete DTV filmography of on the site, but he hasn't done much since 2002 so we don't see him as often anymore. Unlike Dolph, who only did the one Cannon film, Dudikoff has a bunch, including the American Ninja series, one of the greatest DTV action franchises ever, and that means he's in this much more. Also unlike Dolph, whose career started downward after his stint with Cannon, for Dudikoff it opened up the world of DTV action that we know him from now. And what a career it was, especially between the first American Ninja and 2002's Stranded, for me it's a top ten DTV action career, and I don't know with the state of DTV action today if anyone will bump him out of the top ten, even if he doesn't do more films. What we get here is the down-to-earth guy we thought he was, which was fun to see, and fun to hear him give us his experience. Truly one of the greats to ever do it.

Albert Pyun was great as well, talking about Cannon and Golan-Globus in general, but also some specific films he worked on with them like Cyborg and Journey to the Center of the Earth--neither great experiences for him. It was a bit melancholy knowing he's no longer with us, but also a reminder that his insights on film were fantastic and always worth hearing--and he was so generous with them in giving us backstory on some of the films we reviewed. This brings us back to the possibility of getting him into the 50 Club, as this is one more in that direction so he's now at 46 films--47 tags because he asked us to review Mean Guns a second time. There are two more films available that he's directed, Cool Air, which I can rent, and The Interrogation of Cheryl Cooper, which I've had trouble finding. Those two would get us to 48, and then he was credited as a producer on Final Examination, making 49. So close. There's also Interstellar Civil War: Shadows of the Empire, which doesn't seem to be available. If it ever were, that would do it.

Finally, with a film like this, there's a question of who to tag and who not to tag. After reviewing Randall Scandal, I made the decision that file footage of an actor in a documentary isn't enough, but if they give an interview filmed specially for the documentary, that counts. The other thing is, are they the subject of the documentary? That's why Golan-Globus are tagged, despite not being interviewed. But that's also why Chuck Norris and Charles Bronson aren't tagged. Had one of the clips of the films had a McDonald's in it, would I have tagged "McDonald's?" I don't know, but I doubt it. For genres like "Ninjas," even though this had clips from ninja films, it wasn't a ninja film per se, so it didn't get that tag. Had someone done an interview in full ninja gear, would I have tagged this "ninjas," or had someone interviewed a shark would I have tagged this "sharks?" Maybe, but I'd have to see it happen first before I could say either way.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Currently you can get this on Tubi here in the States. YouTube also has a great version if you don't get Tubi in your area. This does a great job handling a subject that's near and dear to our hearts, and worth checking out. Also worth checking out is the podcast episode we did with Sean from I Must Break This Podcast, number 166 in the archives.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2125501

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/

Left for Dead (2007)

This is one I've been meaning to cover for a long time, but I had trouble finding it. It was available to rent, and I considered doing that, but then Vudu--which is now "Fandango at Home"--had it, and after them, the Roku Channel, so between the two I was able to finally make it happen.

Left for Dead is DTVC Hall of Famer Albert Pyun's mix of the Western and Horror genres. In it we have a town that was overrun by their women of the night--or "whores" as the opening backstory so lovingly calls them--who kill everyone except for the local reverend, because he makes a deal with the devil so he can finally get revenge on them. He roams the town, waiting for them to come back, and 15 years later it happens when one of the ladies' daughter is chasing down the man who may or may not have raped her and made her pregnant. At the same time, Victoria Maurette also wants that man, so they're all on a collision course to wackiness--with a murderous ghost reverend waiting for them!

This could've been one of Pyun's better films, but he relied really heavily on a freeze-frame technique that bogged things down. Here and there I think it could've worked, but the volume of it made it hard to get as stuck in as I'd have liked to. This is also darker and gorier, which, for someone like me who's on the squeamish side, was something that could be harder to watch, but I could manage that better than the constant freeze frames. The thing about the freeze frames is it betrayed how well this was shot, and the great environment they were shooting in in Argentina. The other thing is I really liked Victoria Maurette as our heroine, and Andres Bagg as the baddie, the problem was, they were adversaries more out of situation than any kind of common past--the baddie had his bone to pick with the ladies of the night that laid waste to his town and killed everyone, while Maurette had her bone to pick with the other guy that was accused of rape. I think it would've been better if she was seeking out the baddie as a source of conflict. Overall, as a Pyun fan, I liked what he was going for, and I liked a lot of what this had in it, I just wish he'd gone lighter on the freeze frames.

Our last Pyun review was August of 2022, so this is the first time we've reviewed one of his films since he's passed, which makes this one a little sad. I probably should've reviewed it sooner as a tribute to him like I've done for other legends who have left us, but this wasn't as available, and I created a Letterboxd list where I ranked his films instead, which is something that I think is a little more fitting since we've covered almost all of his films at this point. Where I'd put this one on that list is tough to say. That freeze frame thing is not just me nitpicking, it was tough for me to take. When I reviewed Bulletface I mentioned it then as well, even though it wasn't as frequent as it was in this one. One point I made was, in the age of streaming, the freeze frames feel like buffering, which makes them all the more intrusive, and Pyun actually appreciated that point, as it wasn't something he considered, but it made sense to him. What I love here though is the genre mixing and the imagery. Victoria Maurette as a gunslinger in her dirty wedding dress shooting at a reverend who's been cursed by the devil but given supernatural powers. That was delivered exactly as he wanted it to. And I think the freeze frames were his way of throwing back to the old grindhouse films, especially the old Italian Westerns, so I got why he did it, I just could've done with less of them. As I said above though, it's sad that he's passed, because it looked like he really had some ideas that he was going to bring together for us with older properties like Cyborg and Nemesis, but he never got the chance. Maybe someone will be able to finish those ones off for us at some point, but either way, he's left us with a vast catalog that we can enjoy.

Maurette was great here as the lead, but the problem was the story didn't make her lead as much of a lead as we'd have liked. She had more to do in Bulletface, but this character seemed like it could've been more compelling. The imagery alone of the gunslinger wearing her wedding dress is fantastic, and Maurette plays it as well as you'd want, it's just, again, we have a lot of other things going on between the other women, the other guy, and the baddie, that we sometimes lose her. This is the kind of thing that should be as iconic as Django dragging his coffin, it's such a perfect idea, but I think if there's a criticism of Pyun's work, it's that he has so many perfect ideas, and sometimes when they're all put together, some of each is lost and we end up with the law of diminishing returns. But it's always those things that work that keep us coming back.

Here in the US on weekend afternoons and all day on Sunday, one of the retro channels shows TV Westerns, and considering how big they were in the 60s and 70s, they had to have been a part of Pyun's viewing experience growing up. What I love here though is he takes so much of their tropes and standards, and turns them on their head. One is the idealized version of the world they presented, as if things were somehow simpler, nicer, cleaner, and whiter back then. Pyun takes that and makes everything messy, with everyone covered in dirt throughout--which makes it closer to something like the Spaghetti Western, but this is even dirtier than those. Also those old Westerns had themes like "White Makes Right" and the "Noble Savage," none of which is present here. The other thing is, Pyun pulls Western themes in a lot of his futuristic films, like Omega Red and Nemesis, so it was cool to see him make an actual Western, and then Pyun it up so to speak to put his spin on it.

In the opening title cards that give us all the backstory, the ladies of the night are referred to as "whores," and the term is used a bunch, so much so that it hurts my 2024 sensibilities, and probably would've hurt my 2007 ones too. Also, as someone who grew up in New England, I can't help reading it with that accent, saying it like Mark Wahlberg in Fear. On top of that, the guys at "No Budget Nightmares" have ruined the term for me after they covered Las Vegas Bloodbath (which I reviewed after as well). In that movie, the killer refers to what he calls "daytime whores," which sets off his killing spree--"maybe he didn't like daytime whores!" Who even knows what that means, but maybe because it made no sense in that bonkers no-budget film, it stuck with me, and every mention of "whores" in this had me shaking my fist at the screen saying "daytime whores!"

Finally, like we do with other names who have had this kind of impact on the site, we're giving Pyun a second paragraph as we wrap this up--though this is actually an extra paragraph because I put my images in the wrong places, which caused me to miscount my paragraphs! This is Pyun's 43rd director credit on the DTVC (and 46th tag all-time, but we reviewed Mean Guns twice, and tagged him for his production work on Nemesis 5 and archived work in Dollman vs Demonic Toys), which is not only the most all time, but is 28 ahead of the second-most director tags, Fred Olen Ray. Ray definitely has a enough films to pass him, but will I do enough of them? I'd have to do 4 a year, which as a Hall of Famer he should get at least that, but even at 4 a year, he wouldn't catch Pyun until 2031! We do have a few other Pyun films on the table that we can review at some point. Cool Air is available to rent on some of the streamers; and then Interrogation of Cheryl Cooper looks like it's available to rent though Vimeo on his old streaming site. Then there's Interstellar Civil War that doesn't seem to be anywhere, but maybe it will be? Or Cyborg Nemsis: Dark Rift, that may have been fully shot and screened in a very rough version. Could it be finished by someone else and released? And finally we have listed as in production on IMDb, Cyborg: Overture aka Bad Ass Angels and Demons. It looks like some shooting has been done on that. Could it be finished? Maybe by Dustin Ferguson who did Nemesis 5--or for symmetry, Jim Wynorski, who finished Bad Bizness aka More Mercy when Pyun was let go from the project. If you consider he's at 45 overall films between directing and producing, those ones I listed get us to 50, which would put Pyun in the 50 Club.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Currently this is free to stream on The Roku Channel and Vudu aka Fandango at Home. Between the two, The Roku Channel is much better on commercials, so I'd watch it there--with Fandango at Home I was 6 minutes in--after getting a commercial before we even started!--when the film was interrupted again with another commercial, abruptly inserted in there while someone was talking. Anyway, I think this is more for Pyun completists, but in that respect it's worth it.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0918645

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

Raven Hawk (1996)

This is one I've been meaning to get for years. For the longest time, there was only a foreign language dub version on YouTube. Sometime last year there was an English-language version, but before I had a chance to review it, it was taken down. Then recently Kevin Hazell reached out on the Facebook page and mentioned a YouTube account, The Movie Man, that had a bunch of stuff uploaded. When I started paging through, I noticed some Pyun flicks, and thought this might be it, and sure enough, there it was. In addition to us, Bulletproof Action and RobotGEEK's Cult cinema have covered this, plus Ty from Comeuppance posted a sweet VHS of this on his Instagram page.

Raven Hawk has Rachel McLish as a woman who, as a girl, is framed for her parents' murders by some corrupt developers who want to install a nuclear waste disposal site on Native American land. After spending twelve years in a mental institution, while being transported to a prison, her van flips and she survives. Now free, she's out for revenge, ready to kill those responsible. At the same time, John Enos III is a reservation police officer investigating her murders. He knows there's more going on here. But the baddies aren't going down without a fight either. They've called in a crew of Pyun mainstays to take her down. Will she be victorious?

This is pretty close to pure Pyun, in that we have a strong female protagonist, who is also a woman of color, ready to take down a bunch of bad guys. I read in the IMDb trivia that he wanted to play up McLish's character's mystical and emotional aspects more, while the producers wanted something more like a female Rambo, so they took it away and made it more of what we got. I liked it as a straight-ahead revenge actioner, but I also see what Pyun was thinking too--why make it in the tradition of the white male protagonist, when you have a female Native American hero you can do more with it. At the very least it would've been interesting to see that, but this worked for me, and I think the amount that Pyun was able to influence it made it work. McLish is great as the hero, and I liked too that there were no damsel in distress moments, no male hero like John Enos III's character coming to save her. It's shame that out of all of Pyun's movies, this is one of the tougher ones to find, because I think it's one of his better ones.

This is the 44th film for Pyun here at the DTVC, but as a director it's number 42--we did Mean Guns twice, which is how he has 45 tags, plus Nemesis 5, which he produced, and then Dollman vs. Demonic Toys where archive footage that he directed in Dollman was used. 42 puts him a good 27 ahead of the director with the second-most director tags here, Fred Olen Ray, who has 15. Looking at what we have left for him, there's Left for Dead--which I discovered is free on Vudu right now, so I need to do that soon!--, Cool Air, and then two I'm having trouble getting, The Interrogation of Cheryl Cooper and Interstellar Civil War: Shadows of the Empire, so that plus his producer credit on the Ray-directed Final Examination would get Pyun close to the 50 Club. If that's the case, that he's one away, maybe we count that second Mean Guns review just to get him in there. One of the best DTV directors ever, and this movie is a great one of his.

 

We'll cut to the chase and get right to our favorite game: who are the Pyun mainstays in this? In this case, all three were tapped by Pyun to be the team of mercenaries called in by the baddies to take McLish down. We start with DTVC favorite Vincent Klyn. Back off Warchild, seriously. He plays a Maori warrior, complete with accent. He's at 19 films here at the DTVC, which is huge for a guy who plays a lot of supporting roles, and puts him now one ahead of fellow Pyun mainstay Norbert Weisser, who was tied with him for 18. Next we have Thom Matthews. That's 12 for him, and while this is a pretty pedestrian performance as Matthews goes, it was good that Pyun got him in this. Same with Nicholas Guest, who is now at 10 movies on the site. Other than Klyn, who would be tagged because he's Warchild--seriously--the others only have tags and the volume of posts on the site because of Pyun. I thought the late Ed Lauter, who is in this as a sheriff, had done more Pyun too, but this is the only film they did together. Same with Mitchell Ryan, who plays Enos's boss.

Rachel McLish did not make a lot of movies, and according to the IMDb trivia, she credits that with her changing her mind about a nude scene Pyun wanted her to do when she's going through a ritual of spiritual transcendence. Eventually she agreed to be topless for it. Honestly, in watching the scene, I don't know that she needed to be nude for it, no matter what the reason. She was a great action lead, and if that was the reason why directors didn't want to work with her, or if it turned her off from the business, that's too bad. I was trying to think how many of Pyun's female protagonists had nude scenes, and one that comes to mind is Victoria Maurette in Bulletface, which was more a series of disjointed scenes in a prison rape sequence. Maybe that's what Pyun wanted to do here as well, not fully show McLish's nude body, but cut and mix things so the focus wasn't on her nudity, but the spirituality. By the same token, if McLish felt uncomfortable with it she felt uncomfortable with it, and could she really trust that what Pyun wanted to do was what would've been the end product, especially since the film was taken from him by the producers?

 

Finally, we have a Star Trek: The Next Generation sighting in John de Lancie--who, unlike Lauter and Ryan, had worked with Pyun before this, in Arcade. In addition to Arcade, he was also in an indie flick we reviewed, Cloned, making this 3 tags for him. For TNG alums, he's one behind Michael Dorn, who has 4 tags. In this he plays a senator who's pulling all the strings, kind of Q-ish actually. Two things I didn't know about him: he's from Philadelphia, and he was born in the late 40s. About the latter, I liked that for the new Picard series they didn't do like they did with Mark Hamill in The Mandalorian and use a computer image of his face to make him look younger. De Lancie played one of my favorite sci-fi characters of all time, and I think a big part of why I loved him so much was de Lancie's performance, so any time I can spotlight him on the site I want to.

And with that, let's wrap this up. As of right now, this can be streamed on YouTube, or bought used on VHS. I think there may also be DVDs outside the USA region. The thing is, this was released here in the States on HBO first, so if they have it, why not put it on HBOMax? They have Collision Course, this wouldn't be too far of a stretch beyond that. A guy can dream, right?

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117446

And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, A Girl and a Gun, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Bad Bizness aka More Mercy (2003)

This is a film I'd been looking to do for a long time, as I'm trying to get as many Albert Pyun films reviewed on the site as I can. Finally it made its way to Tubi, under the alternate title More Mercy, so I was on it. In addition to us, our friend Mitch at the Video Vacuum has covered this, so you can go to his site to see what he thought as well.

Bad Bizness stars Traci Bingham as a hotel detective at a resort in Bali where women are being murdered. Call women, women of the night, moonlighting models, Bingham's not sure what the connection is, but there is a connection. Her boss, Norbert Weisser, would just as soon sweep this under the rug, as would his boss, Master P, so they give Bingham and her partner, Brent Huff, a shot at finding out who did it before they have to call in the Bali police and the whole thing goes sideways. In order to find out who this killer is, Bingham needs to delve into the seedy world of female surf magazines and the photographer/madam who runs them. All fingers point to a sleezy ponytailed rich guy with a soul patch as the killer, but something tells us the viewer that's just too easy...

When I first started the site, I called this The Direct to Video Connoisseur as this tongue-in-cheek concept evoking an image of an Alistair Cooke-type watching Dolph Lundgren action flicks while wearing a robe and ascot or something. After watching this film though, I began to feel like I was becoming a real connoisseur of sorts. Seeking out a movie simply because Albert Pyun started it and Jim Wynorski finished it, it's like discovering a movie Scorsese started and Spielberg finished; or Kurosawa started and Bergman finished. And ultimately that's the value this movie has now, almost 20 years later. The movie itself doesn't have a lot of mystery, but it seems like there's a lot of mystery surrounding the production: when did Pyun stop and Wynorski take over? Why did Pyun stop in the first place, was he fired or did he quit? A Fred Olen Ray film, Final Examination (which I haven't seen yet) was filmed in the same location around the same time, shares a lot of the same cast, and also has Pyun as a producer. Is there a connection? Was Pyun supposed to film that too? Information online is scant, so it would be interesting to learn more if we can.

Beyond all of that, this thing is pretty low budget, and doesn't always make a lot of sense beyond the love scenes. There's a strip club, but it's in a theater where you might see a play, so the woman dances on the stage, and the men sit in the audience. The changing room for said strip club is a restaurant bathroom. Master P literally phones in all of his scenes from a Las Vegas hotel room, in a role that would have made Eric Roberts and Bruce Willis proud. And speaking of hotels, the one that this one takes place in looks suspiciously like it's in Hawaii instead of Bali. But at the same time, there are elements that make this a bit more fun 20 years later. Julie K. Smith is a great addition as a lesbian woman whose partner is killed by the serial killer. Traci Bingham is exactly the kind of strong female lead, especially a woman of color, Pyun would center his movie around; but she's also the kind of strong female lead Wynorski would want in one of his soft core boob fests, and I like that he teases us with that side without ever fully giving it to us, as Bingham remains fully-clothed and doesn't have a full love scene--and why does she need to, when we've got Julie K. Smith to do the honors. Even the fact that a sleazy guy with a ponytail and a soul patch plays on our 90s sensibilities of what bad is so much that we have to think he's the killer helps to make this a fun ride. But I think you also have to be a certain kind of viewer to have fun with it like that, as this isn't for everyone.

While Albert Pyun is now listed as having 44 tags, he only has 43 films, because we did Mean Guns a second time (at his request). We don't have many left to do at this point. I was finally able to track down Raven Hawk online, and then Cool Air and Left for Dead are available to rent; plus we have the aforementioned Final Examination that he produced. There are two others that he released in the 2010s, The Interrogation of Cheryl Cooper and Interstellar Civil War. I can't find a way to watch the latter, but it looks like through Pyun's site I can rent the other one. That still would put him just shy of the 50 Club, but even without that, he's by far the most tagged director on the site. There are definitely directors like Wynorski and Ray who have the output available to catch him, but I'd have to be doing this site for years more for anyone to get near 40 movies like him--I think Ray has the second most of a director with 15, so that means he's almost 30 behind Pyun. That gives us a sense of just how big Pyun has been for the DTVC, a legacy that will never be surpassed.

Jim Wynorski is one, on the other hand, who we haven't seen as much on the DTVC, but hopefully that'll change soon. He's credited in this film under the name Bob E. Brown, which could be a reference to the R & B singer and member of New Edition; the hair metal video vixen (my favorite of which is Hurricane's "I'm Onto You"); or even the former American League baseball president. I think part of the reason why Pyun has so many tags, and someone like Wynorski so few, is Pyun worked with a lot of big names, and the names tend to make movies move up in my review queue, so he got a bit of a head start because his films overlapped more with how the site evolved in the late 2000s-early 2010s. Now that we've exhausted most of Pyun's filmography, where Wynorski may have room to get more films in, we have directors like Jesse V. Johnson and Isaac Florentine eating up some of that space. When I look at Wynorski's filmography, it's really just the names that make the difference, because otherwise he has a lot of movies that belong here--and one feather he has in his cap that Pyun doesn't: he's worked with Dolph.

As far as I can tell, we haven't played the Pyun Mainstay game since 2013, so I figured we'd bring it back and give some shine to one of the most mainstay-iest of mainstays, Norbert Weisser. This is his 18th film on the DTVC, only one of which, Android, wasn't a Pyun film. That's the most of any Pyun mainstay, and while we have someone like a Thom Mathews who's had 10 films on the site and all of them were Pyun flicks (remember, Mean Guns was reviewed twice, so that's why he has 10 instead of 11), 17 out of 18 is pretty prodigious. I wonder what he thought when Pyun was no longer directing. Maybe it didn't matter, since most of his scenes were shot in this chair right here. 

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently find this in the States on Tubi under the name More Mercy. It really is for Pyun and/or Wynorski completists, and late-night cable cinema from the late 90s/early 2000s connoisseurs. If you start it and you're like "what am I watching?", you're probably safe to turn it off. But if you start it and you're like "why do I watch stuff like this?", you're probably best to stop questioning it and settle in for the next 90s minutes or so.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0373163

And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, A Girl and a Gun, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

 

 

 

Nemesis 5: The New Model (2017)

When you look at Albert Pyun's IMDb page, there is a lot of stuff in progress, but this was one that was already in the can and available on Prime and Tubi, so I wanted to make it happen, especially since I'd done the other four films in the series. On the other hand, Pyun didn't direct this, which had me wondering what I was in for. I guess the only way to find out is to dive in.

Nemesis 5 starts further in the future, where Alex Sinclair (still played by Sue Price) is training an orphan she came across after one of her missions. She trains this orphan, and when she grows up (the grown-up played by Schuylar Craig), sends her back in time to take down the Red Army and their campaign of misinformation before they can create the horrible future that everyone is living in. Along the way, she has to fight the Red Army's goons, looking to stop her at any price. Will she succeed?

This is definitely an interesting addition to the Nemesis story--and to some extent it feels like a place holder before Pyun really wanted to bring it all together by combing the Nemesis world with the Cyborg and Omega Doom worlds. That said, it's very low budget, and probably only for Nemesis completists--and from the IMDb user reviews, a lot of them weren't happy with it either. It wasn't as bad as those 1s and 2s would have you believe though, it had its bright moments, like the lead, Schuylar Craig. She's worked with the director, Dustin Ferguson before, but also fit really well into the kind of strong female lead Pyun likes to use. I also liked Mel Novak and Dawna Lee Heising, but they're only in it at the very end. And I think that's where the budget constraints really hurt us. It would've been cool to see the scene where Craig confronts Novak and Heising set in either a large boardroom, or a darkened underground layer--something with a lot of atmosphere that the previous entries gave us. And maybe that's the ultimate conclusion here, it's good, but it could have been better.

Albert Pyun didn't direct this, he was the executive producer, and Dustin Ferguson was the director. Don't get me wrong, I think Dustin Ferguson is very good, and good at what he does in the low-budget realm in particular, but you can see how in that scene I described above with Craig, Novak, and Heising, that he's not quite Pyun when it comes to Pyun's aesthetic. You can talk budget constraints to me all you want, but Pyun did Deceit over three nights for $25,000 using equipment that he already had to rent to do the Cyborg reshoots, and that movie had atmosphere for days. That older Noirish element that Pyun brought to the previous installments, plus the Russ Meyer 60s exploitation and 50s/60s low-budget sci-fi, all mixed with 80s cyberpunk in his own unique Pyun flair is a hard thing to pull off, even if he's approving everything that's happening. There was a part of me, as I watched this, that couldn't help but wonder what this film would have looked like if Albert made it himself twenty years ago. It definitely would have been a different movie.

That being said, when you look at Dustin Ferguson's previous work, it's pretty much all horror, so this is definitely a departure from that, and for someone who's just switching over to sci-fi, this is a challenging way to do it. Yes, we have to judge a movie solely on its merits, but I think for a first sci-fi effort, and working within the confines of a budget, he did well here considering. It'll be interesting to see if Pyun farms more of his projects out to other directors in the future, and which directors he chooses for that. Obviously I'd always prefer Pyun to direct, but for me, if the choice is the work gets farmed out or it never happens at all, I'll choose the former; and I also like the idea of giving it to someone like Ferguson so he can grow as a director and add something more to his toolkit, because that only makes his work better and gives us more enjoyment when we watch his films too.

As I mentioned above, this may have been a placeholder for things to come with Pyun, and you get that sense just by looking at his in-development credits on IMDb. One is Cyborg Nemesis: Dark Rift, which just sounds too amazing for words. We also have Cyborg: Rise of the Flesh Eaters, which Pyun is attached to, but could also be like Nemesis 5, a means to get us to that merging of the two stories. On top of that, Pyun has two Kickboxer sequels listed starring Sasha Mitchell. In looking into some of these, I realized that I missed out on some GoFundMe campaigns while I was on hiatus to back some of these projects, but hopefully, Albert's health allowing, we'll get to see some of these make it to us in some form.

Finally, it would be good here to discuss some of the stars of the film. It'll be interesting to see if Schuylar Craig reprises her role in future Nemesis films, or if she makes her way into more Pyun films, because I think she matches what he wants in that strong female lead. Mel Novak is someone who we've seen on the site a few times, and also has the distinction of being someone who has played the president in one of our movies. I'd say he may be the one people would recognize the most, with Dawna Lee Heising second, and they both share the screen a bunch at the end, but aren't in it much before that. And then Sue Price reprises her role from the original films, but isn't in this much beyond the beginning in her role as the one passing the torch on to Craig. She's done some other films with Ferguson after coming back to make this, so we may have to check those out as well.

And with that we wrap this up. Right now you can stream this for free on Tubi. I think that's a good way to do it, that way you can decide for yourself if you want to pay to get it on DVD. The hope is that, health and resources willing, this is the start of more to come from Pyun, and if that's the case, I can't wait to see what we get.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7008310

Journey to the Center of the Earth (1988)

This is one I'd meaning to do for a while now, strictly for the Pyun factor, but it wasn't an easy find. Recently though it popped up on Multiplex On Demand, so I figured I'd better make it happen, especially since it has been a long time since we'd done a Pyun joint. Let's see how it went.

Journey to the Center of the Earth is technically a sequel to Alien from L.A., except it's not. We follow Crystina (Nicola Cowper), a nanny from England who is hired and sent to Hawai'i to care for a rock star's dog. At the same time, a trio of siblings (Paul Carafotes, Ilan Mitchell-Smith, and Jaclyn Bernstein) are heading out to investigate a cave near a volcano. When the carrier containing the dog ends up in their jeep, Crystina has to follow them, and ends up exploring the cave with them. That cave leads to a tunnel that takes them to Alien from L.A.'s lost city of Atlantis, where the people there are trying to recreate Kathy Ireland. Will they escape, or be trapped there forever?

The imdb page for this movie says this in its trivia section: "Director Albert Pyun hated how the studio took his film from him and spliced it with another film to just to have it released. Because of this he has disowned it and his name doesn't appear on any official releases." That's not entirely true, because he lists it on his site, Albert Pyun movies, but beyond that, it is listed as a Rusty Lemorande film, despite Lemorande saying he only directed the first 8 minutes--and Lemorande commented on the imdb and said that he had shot another movie that was supposed to be this, and of which 8 minutes was used. What do we do with all that information then? How do we make sense of this film, the same way we wonder how we make sense of his Urban Trilogy, which Pyun had to cobble together after a crate of film reels was lost by Air France, yet are still out there in the ether for us to consume. And like those Urban Trilogy films, this movie feels cobbled together, especially when we get into the Alien from LA territory and we don't know how we got there or how we're getting back out in the short time we have left. In that sense, I think this is really about Pyun completists.

And in that vein, there are elements that work, in particular the cyber punk elements that he brought over from Alien from LA. If anything, Atlantis is stylish and has the feel of an 80s music video--you almost expect Simon Le Bon to swoop in wearing torn clothing and paint on his face, saying cool, nonsensical things in his English accent. But before that, we're watching what can best be described as a wannabe Goonies kids romp without the Feldman, and we're not really sure where it's going until it hits Leftturnsville and we're on the set of the "Wild Boys" video shoot. And you want to say, "well, you should have done this" or "tried that," but when we're talking about two movies cobbled together, none of that matters. It feels like two movies cobbled together because it is! If Cannon and Golan-Globus were trying to fulfill contractual obligations, is this worth it? Maybe, because it's still being shown on cable On Demand and people like me are watching it.

The issues Pyun had with making Cyborg are well-documented, and fortunately now we have his edit of the film so we can compare the two, but that was another issue with Cannon, right after this film here. I don't know if those issues overlapped at all too, considering it's all around the same time, but it looks like those were the last two films he did for Cannon--and his first film after these two was the ultimate middle finger film, Deceit. As I mentioned though, you do still see Pyun elements that you can recognize, like these cyber-punk characters in Atlantis. It feels very Radioactive Dreams or Vicious Lips, but also you can see how this evolves as we hit Nemesis and Omega Doom. A lot of his stuff from the past 10 years or so has been released entirely by him, which, on the one had can make it difficult to find it, but on the other, he has the control he needs, and with situations like these I can understand why he'd want that.

This goes back to something that I've learned in doing this site over the past 13 years. I always had this idea that each movie was the filmmaker's vision. Good or bad, this was their attempt to make a movie. But in talking Pyun about his experiences, and also other filmmakers like Jason Horton (who did the fantastic Trap), is that that's not always the case. There are so many ways a film is taken from a director; or situations like one Jason Horton described in the film Deceitful, where he was called in to make a film out of an idea that had gone through many revisions. On the one hand, I think it gives us more license to pan a film if we see issues with it; but on the other, we can pan the film in a general sense, without sticking it to one person--though maybe here we blame Cannon for what happened.

One of the bright spots in the film was the dog, which for me I think always works as long as the dog is well-treated, as he was here. I'm not saying I like a full on dog movie like Beethoven or Air Bud, but one where a good dog is part of the cast. I like cats too, but I feel like a cat moseying around in the background, cleaning a paw, maybe getting into something, works better for me, whereas I like the dog in the cast, taking naps, barking occasionally, and just acting cute. What's great too here, is we had Jaclyn Bernstein as the kid, and when the crew goes into the cave, she leaves, but the dog stays. More filmmakers should make that call when deciding between kids or dogs: dogs always work better.

And with that, I think it's time to wrap this up. For me this really is for Pyun completists. He doesn't have his name on it, and it's not entirely his film, because it's cobbled together from two movies. It's a fascinating anomaly from a great director who's a bit of an anomaly on the DTV scene. Right now you can stream it through Multiplex On Demand, or if you have Starz as part of your Amazon Prime package, you can stream it on there.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097630

Road to Hell (2012)

Recently Albert Pyun sent me a link to screen his new film Road to Hell on YouTube.  The film is pretty much finished, and looking to be released by Lions Gate in the first quarter of 2014, so this screener was for us reviewers and whatnot to take a look at it for him to see if there were any glaring issues.  I asked him if he wanted me to write a review of it now, and he did, so here we are.  Let's see how it went.

Road to Hell is a sequel to Streets of Fire, with DTVC favorite Michael Paré reprising his role as Tom Cody.  He's headed to see his long lost love Ellen in Edge City, and finds himself on an isolated desert road.  This road he's on is Purgatory, and the Archangel Gabriel (played by Joei Fulco) is trying to save Cody's soul before the Devil can take it.  On the way, he encounters two spree killers: Caitlin and Ashley, dangerous women with their own demons.  Will he survive this meeting?  And if he does, will he find the redemption he seeks in Edge City?



I really liked this movie.  One of Pyun's best in my opinion, especially among his newer films.  It's bold and innovative, and his penchant for taking chances pays off here as well as I've ever seen it.  The film looks really nice, and he captures the liminal space aspect we want from a film taking place in purgatory.  Cynthia Curnan's story fits Albert's directing style organically, as does the score featuring longtime Pyun composer Anthony Riparetti and songs performed by The Roxy Gunn Project (with lead singer Roxy Gunn playing Cody's daughter).  And then there was Paré, who got a film worthy of one of his most iconic characters, and he nailed it completely.  It's like he never lost touch with that character after all these years, yet he still moved him forward to make him into the character Cynthia wrote for him.  On top of Paré, I really liked Joei Fulco as Gabriel, and Claire Kramer as Caitlin, plus Courtney Peldon as Ashley and Pyun mainstay Deborah Van Valkenburgh reprising her role as Cody's sister.  It's a little gory, so if you have a weak stomach you may want to be careful, but if you're looking for something different, and bloody, Road to Hell delivers.

 We've done almost all of Pyun's films here at the DTVC, and I'm not about to try to figure out where this one stands with ones like Brainsmasher or Nemesis, or really any others, because this one is so different.  I mean, I could recognize elements from films like Radioactive Dreams or Vicious Lips, and maybe the bloody, violent, dark nature of Road to Hell is what he ultimately wanted Cyborg to be; but really, what's there is Pyun's unique vision and desire to try new things and take risks, which is something you can see in a lot of his films.  And like those films, it doesn't always work-- like I thought his attempt to explore Ellen Dream's (Roxy Gunn) backstory in an interview with a local radio host didn't come off as natural, even though I liked that it had a rock n' roll feel like the rest of the film-- but more of his risks and instincts paid off here than didn't, and we were left with something that I found to be very entertaining, and a distinctly Pyun film experience.



When I told my girlfriend I was reviewing a film with Michael Paré in it, she told me that growing up she had a pin-up of him from her Teen Beat on her wall, maybe from Eddie and the Cruisers.  For the most part here at the DTVC, we've either done his DTV stuff from the 90s where he had lead parts, or his recent DTV work where he's often either the baddie or has a small cameo.  To see him here though, even as the lead in a picture that is very different from the usual action flick, was really great, and I think brought back some of that 80s heartthrob magic.  Between Pyun's direction, and Jim Hagopian and Michael Su's cinematography, they really leaned on Paré's face, and his more mature features that he has now lent themselves really well in crafting that Film Noir vibe Pyun was going for, but without him being the lead that he is, it wouldn't have come off, and he has that same leading man charisma that he had back then.  So while it's great to see him in anything, and those cameos and roles as baddies are fun, we need more films like this with him in the lead, and hopefully we'll get them.

In the lead up to this film, Pyun was telling us on his Facebook page about this new actress Joei Fulco he found and cast in this film and the upcoming Cyborg Nemesis.  I know from having seen a lot of his films that he has a great instinct for young talent, especially young women, and isn't afraid to lean on them in key scenes, so I was curious to see what he was talking about with Fulco.  I didn't have long to wait, because she starts the film off introducing us to the action, and he wasn't exaggerating about her talent.  This was a tough role he put on her, having to give us the backstory in a monologue at the beginning of the film, when all we want is some action to draw us in, she's doing it with just her voice and her face; but she did it, she read it almost like she was having a conversation with us, and it all completely worked.  If she doesn't pull that off, not only does Pyun risk us not being engaged with his film right from the start, but also the redemptive quality of Paré's Cody is totally lost on us.  Instead we're rooting for Cody because of Fulco's Gabriel, which sets the stage for the rest of the film to work.



I mentioned above that Pyun drew a lot from Film Noir, and another genre he drew from that we've seen him go to before is the 50s and 60s dangerous women exploitation film.  I've seen other film makers try to emulate this kind of Russ Meyer film too, and miss completely.  I think because Pyun has always gone deeper than just the sex aspect, and makes his women in these films fully rounded characters, which makes it work much better; and seeing that aspect in the characters of Caitlin and Ashley is a great example.  They aren't just wild women who take their clothes off, make-out, and kill, they have motivations for their actions, and as such when they interact with Cody things are more tense and less predictable.  It's touches like that in Pyun's films that I often enjoy no matter what, but when they work really well like they did here, it's so much better.

Fans of Streets of Fire will like the music, and many songs from the original are here.  The Roxy Gunn Project does some, with Roxy Gunn playing Ellen's daughter and performing them as the soundtrack to Cody's adventure, adding to the tone of Cody's redemptive quest.  They definitely had that 80s feel that the original film had, not to mention the outfits of the band performing at the end of the film.  It's interesting when you think of films Pyun did like Radioactive Dreams and Vicious Lips which were from that time and had some of the elements of Streets of Fire, to then feel like here I'm seeing him bring elements from those films into this was really cool.  Unfortunately, the late Dan Hartman's "I Can Dream About You" didn't make an appearance.  I guess you can't have everything.



No review of an Albert Pyun film would be complete without playing our favorite game: Name the Pyun Mainstay.  We'll start with the obvious one, Deborah Van Valkenburgh, who wasn't in this so much for being a Pyun mainstay as she was reprising her role from Streets of Fire, but she's still a mainstay and needs to be included.  She has a few scenes where she's interviewed by a police interrogator about her brother, plus a flashback scene, then comes in at the end to interact with Cody.  I think fans of the first film will enjoy seeing her here.  Speaking of the police interrogator, he's voiced by none other than Norbert Weisser.  We don't see him on-screen, just hear his voice, but it's him all right, and this makes 16 films of his that he's done with Pyun that we've reviewed here.  Finally, Scott Paulin also does some voice work, playing a man who drives Paré into Edge City.  Like Weisser, we never see him on screen.  Also, his character name is Brick Bardo, keeping up Pyun's tradition of having a character with that name in his films.

As I said above, it looks like this will be out in the first quarter of next year.  For updates on it you can follow Albert Pyun on Twitter @albertpyunfilms and like him on Facebook at Albert Pyun Movies.  The movie is very unique, but I think long time Pyun and Paré fans should definitely check it out, and really anyone looking for a different and compelling film experience.  I love it when film makers take chances, and Pyun always does that; but he also has a wealth of skill and experience as a director, and all of that comes together here and really works.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1253859/

Invasion aka Infection (2005)

We've had this one in the Netflix Instant queue for sometime, and often, as we were about to get to it, we'd either get our hands on an Albert Pyun film I wanted to do more, or he'd release a film that would jump this in the priority line.  But we're here now, ready to make it happen.

Invasion takes place in a small town, where a police officer, Brick Bardo (played by Pyun mainstay Scott Paulin) gets a call to help out a man doing some night fishing in a remote state park.  When he gets there, he finds a meteorite, and is also accosted by the man he's there to help, who implants a bug in his ear, Invasion of the Body Snatchers/Star Trek II: Wrath of Kahn style.  As you can imagine, these bugs take control of the host, whose job it is to spread the bugs to more people.  Bardo's first victims: a couple chilling at Lover's Lane down the road.  Problem, he gets the guy, but the girl (played by Paulin's daughter, Jenny Paulin Dare (as Virginia Dare)) escapes in Bardo's vehicle.  Trapped in the park, she now has to survive long enough until help arrives.



I don't know where to go with this one.  The bulk of it is a one-take found footage film shot from a camera mounted to the police car's dash.  The camera only moves as the car moves.  We seldom see people speaking on-screen.  I thought about it like this: if Albert put a comment on the blog or sent an e-mail telling me "I'm working on this new project.  It'll be like a classic 1950s sci-fi drive-in flick, only almost the entire thing will be shot in one take from a camera on a police car dashboard, like found footage, but on another level.  Cynthia Curnan is writing, Tony Riparetti is doing the score, and I have this great new cinematographer, Jim Hagopian.  Plus, we have Scott Paulin and Norbert Weisser, and Paulin's daughter Jenny is a real talent.  I'm really excited for this."  I'd read that, and think "I can't wait to see this!", because it seems like such a good idea.  But in practice, I think it's a little too long.  A 35-minute short probably would've nailed it, because the talent is there-- including Pyun-- it's just hard to maintain a movie for over an hour in this manner.

I have to give Pyun credit for going for it again, and I don't see this as a total failure.  I went on Netflix to see the reviews-- which can often be a harrowing experience-- and found more people that felt the way I did than I thought.  The thing is, it sounds gimmicky, and it could've been gimmicky, but Pyun isn't doing it that way.  If that were the case, he wouldn't have had the attention to detail in other areas that he did; and the work it must've taken to coordinate these scenes as he's shooting so much in one take must've been immense, plus the cinematography was not simply found footage all over the place crap, it all worked.  This was an attempt to take a new approach to movie making from an established and experienced film maker, and for me, with the talent he had, I think this could've worked over a shorter time; but there were people who not only disagreed with me, but disagreed with my misgivings and liked it more than I did.  Besides, even Citizen Kane has gotten "worst movie ever!" type reviews, so I imagine Pyun has to take those ones with a grain of salt.



One aspect of his films that I've noticed now that I've watched quite of few of them, is that he has a knack for casting really strong young actresses.  I don't know if, in the low-budget film world, too many casting directors don't give credence to female acting talent, or only focus on beauty and not talent too when they shoot, but it seems like Pyun consistently casts great young women, and leans on them for their great performances to carry his films.  We saw it here with Jenny Dare Paulin, especially one scene that required her to react for an extended period on-screen while we listened to the sounds of a violent struggle going on on the other side of her walkie-talkie.  It looked like a tough scene to act through, and she did really well.  Another thing I wanted to remark on is her outfit.  Her character had her prom that night, so she's in her prom dress, and while being modern, there's something very 1950s about it, so we can see that 1950s sci-fi movie element of the film in her that way.  These are the kinds of touches that Pyun adds to films that makes even ones like this that didn't totally work, at least work on some level.

As always, it's time to play our favorite game: name that Pyun Mainstay!  First up, we had, as mentioned above, Scott Paulin as the first sheriff.  Norbert Weisser plays the voice of an expert on the invasion/infection, which we hear from Jenny Dare's standpoint through her radio; and then he plays the deputy on-screen, though the voice of the deputy on the radio is someone else.  I remember when I first saw Weisser on-screen, I was like "hey, but his voice was...?", then I saw it in the credits.  Also, Jenny Dare Paulin was not the only mainstay offspring in the film.  Morgan Weisser, Norbert's son, played Dare Paulin's boyfriend.  He was 34 when this was made, which might explain why there were no close-ups on him playing a high schooler-- I'm 34 now, and who knows if I could play a high schooler either.



I want to finish with my own personal take on the 1950s invasion film.  For me, I came into contact with them in two ways: growing up on late-night or early morning television; and through MST3K.  With TV going almost exclusively with either new movies, or syndicated reruns of first-run programming; and with MST3K having been off the air for many years now, many people don't have the access to that kind of movie like they used to.  Sure, they know Plan 9 or whatever, but to know the genre and the type of film consistently to recognize aspects like the old guy needing help with his car, or the old townsperson who's been infected, it helps in understanding where someone like Pyun making a movie like Invasion is trying to go.  It's okay to still not like it after that-- one could make the case that MST3K makes fun of these movies because they're so bad, so why be inspired by them?-- but I think what's going on is people aren't getting what Pyun's going for, because a lot of them haven't been exposed to it, so they judge it harshly.  It's just a theory, and I could be wrong.

And with that, let's wrap this up.  This is available on Netflix Instant.  It says 80 minutes, but roughly 15 is credits, and then about five is prologue and epilogue, leaving you with an hour of one-take dashboard cam found footage.  If that sounds intriguing, I say go for it.  I will say, while it's probably not for everyone, you aren't watching a film based on a gimmick.  Pyun is really going out on a limb to try something different.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0472465/

The Wrecking Crew (2000)

Like Corrupt in the post before this, I figured with Albert Pyun's Urban Trilogy getting the axe from Watch Instantly, I might as well review the two I hadn't done yet. I was hesitant though, because, as I mentioned in the Corrupt post, half of each of these films was lost en route from Eastern Europe to LA, meaning what we got was the best Pyun could do to make lemonade out of lemons, and not films that are indicative of what Pyun usually gives us. But I think it's good to get the word out as to why these didn't come out so good, especially with so many people checking them out and vituperating against them on their own sites or imdb message boards, so that's why we're here now looking at these.

The Wrecking Crew is about a street gang led by Ice-T that's been hired by some high-level governmental authority whose job it is to take out other gangs in other cities. In this case they're in Detroit, and, after conning the three major gangs into meeting in a warehouse for a truce, Ice-T and his boys go in there to clean them out. Can the three leaders of the gangs squash their feuds and come together to defeat Ice-T?



Maybe not as bad as Urban Menace, but definitely was hit pretty hard by that missing footage too. We start with these distorted archive shots of Snoop from when he was Snoop Doggy Dogg. We assume he's some kind of important figure, but that's all we see of him. Then we get Ice-T cleaning up another gang in Chicago, while our Detroit gangs are having big rallies. From there, it devolves into Die Hard with gangs, based around three characters that aren't all that remarkable. I'd really be curious to know what this movie was supposed to be. How did Snoop Dogg figure in? Was there more Ice-T? Was it really only Die Hard with gangs? The thing is, if you see this on the shelf and think "Oh, Snoop and Ice-T, this should be good", and then you watch it and are totally disappointed, just know, what you got wasn't what you were supposed to get.

I know some of my readers are not big Albert Pyun fans-- and many of them don't miss an opportunity in a comment box to tell me so-- so hearing me in these two posts trying to explain away some real duds probably has them thinking "Sure, I bet, and why were all the rest of his films crap?" I guess the first thing I would say is "what are you doing at the Direct to Video Connoisseur if you don't like Albert Pyun?", because Albert Pyun's approach to film making is the kind of thing we celebrate here. But the other thing is, you can't be all like "I can't stand big Hollywood", but then not be cognizant of the difficulties film makers face when they try to work outside of the major studios. For me, I like hearing these stories, and I think it's really cool that Pyun took the time to comment here and tell us what happened with these urban films. Unfortunately, part of that charm that we like in low-budget independent films, that they have to be innovative and make do with less, means that when shit happens and half the film is lost by Air France and they have to try and salvage something, you end up with this.



The Ice-T here is more of your run-of-the-mill Ice-T, the vintage mean-mugging over-enunciating Ice-T. Not the chilling baddie we got in Corrupt. I don't know why we get the guy from this more than we get the guy in Corrupt, but we do. Maybe it's him wanting to get out there and try new things. I don't know, he played a kangaroo man in Tank Girl, what more does he want? He also produced this movie, so I imagine he was as disappointed as Pyun was when half the film turned up missing-- I imagine everyone involved with the project was.

It doesn't escape me that, while this was filmed in Eastern Europe, it took place in Detroit, which is probably where this would've been shot had it been made today-- which also would've meant that there would've been no need to ship it with Air France to LA. The majority of the action in this takes place in an abandoned warehouse. Well, they'd have their pick of abandoned warehouses in Detroit.



I'm skipping the Pyun Mainstay game for this post, because, like Corrupt, all we had outside of Ice-T was Vincent Klyn. Instead, I wanted to bring up something that caught my eye as a former wrestling fan. You can barely see it in that pic there, but that dude is giving the other guy the Camel Clutch. Remember that? When Sgt. Slaughter became an Iraqi in the early 90s? He'd get Hulk Hogan in the Camel Clutch, trying to make him tap out. Man, those were the days.

Other than the Camel Clutch, there isn't much going on here. If you haven't seen this before, and see it on the shelves, just know what you're getting yourself into-- an attempt to make lemonade out of lemons--; and if you have seen it and wanted to know why it was so bad, well, now you know. It's hard to make a movie come out the way you want if you've lost half of your footage.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0196219/

Corrupt (1999)

A little over two years ago I reviewed a film of Albert Pyun's called Urban Menace, starring a number of Hip Hop luminaries like Big Pun, Fat Joe, Snoop, and Ice-T. It was pretty bad, but not in a way that didn't work; rather, it was amateurishly made, which isn't indicative of Pyun's work. Later, in my Radioactive Dreams post, Pyun commented, telling us the story behind why Urban Menace, and his other two urban films, Corrupt and Wrecking Crew, were of such poor quality. In transport from Eastern Europe to LA, Air France lost a crate containing half of each film, forcing him to scramble to make something resembling three feature films, and the result is what we have. Because of this, I had put off reviewing the other two films, but since Netflix was dumping them from Watch Instantly, I figured I'd give them a look and maybe help get the word out for people who might see them or have seen them, and were ready to rip them on their own sites or on imdb.

Corrupt has Ice-T as the eponymous villain, a local thug making moves to consolidate his power and take a stranglehold on the neighborhood. He has a thing for a Jodi (Karen Dyer), but she's dating Miles (Ernie Hudson Jr.) and wants nothing to do with Ice-T. Things change though when her punk younger brother (Silkk tha' Shocker) re-appropriates some of Ice-T's drugs, and now, if she wants her brother to live, she needs to agree to be Ice-T's lover while Miles is out of town. Problem is, things go nuts when Silkk tha' Shocker's girlfriend tells Miles on her.



This one was remarkably better than Urban Menace. The big thing is we had a very strong performance by Ice-T, perhaps his best this side of New Jack City. It makes me wonder what this could've been if we'd had the rest of the film. At 66 minutes though, we get a complete-enough story, I think what the added footage would've done was give us a more polished product. I also liked this story better than the one in Urban Menace, this was much more down to Earth, looking at characters struggling to get out of the 'Hood, some going legit, and some going dirty. Hopefully someday the rest of the footage will turn up and we'll get a director's cut showing us what this should've looked like.

I don't blame Pyun if he doesn't like the idea of these films being out there with his name on them after what happened. Especially with the big name rappers associated with them, they tend to be some of his more heavily marketed films, which has gotta be even more frustrating. What this has done for me as a reviewer, though, is it's shown me that there's all kinds of crap that can happen to affect film's outcome, things that have nothing to do with how talented the cast and crew are. And it's usually the kinds of films we review here at the DTVC that are most likely to have suffered some of these calamities. It makes me wonder how many other films I've reviewed that have had half their footage lost by Air France.



I wasn't kidding about the Ice-T performance, he was great. Extremely menacing, but not in that affected way we often see from him as a baddie. This was a legit, cold-blooded gangster, think like Jim Brown in Crackhouse. Who knows if we lose some of this in the full version that we never got to see, or if he's even better, but what we got here was good. He anchored those 66 minutes, and made this work for me much more than it should have.

We've seen Silkk tha' Shocker before in Hot Boyz, where he was horribly miscast as the film's lead. Here he's a supporting character, a kid trying to make moves that ultimately get him in over his head and forces his sister to make tough decisions to save his life. Hot Boyz tried to have us believe that Snoop would be an underling in Silkk tha' Shocker's gang, while this film knew we'd easily believe that he'd look well above his pay grade trying to rub shoulders with Ice-T, and it worked that much better.



There isn't much of a Pyun Mainstay Game to play here, the big one other than Ice-T being DTVC favorite Vincent Klyn, who has one scene as a bum hitting on Dyer. Klyn still hasn't made a movie since 2004's Max Havoc: Curse of the Dragon, which is very disappointing. With Pyun getting a lot of the old gang out of retirement, including Sasha Mitchell, maybe we'll see Klyn again in one. Man I hope so. "Back off, Warchild. Seriously."

This is no longer on Watch Instantly. I think if you're a big Ice-T fan, this might be worth checking it out. Otherwise, I'm not so sure. I wanted to do these reviews more to get the word out regarding what happened to them, though maybe after hearing that you might be more intrigued to check them out. You can always page through the Albert Pyun tag to see some films of his that I've reviewed that are of a much higher quality.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0194773/

Dollman vs. Demonic Toys (1993)

This is another one that I'd been planning to do for some time, and when Emily of Deadly Doll's House of Horror Nonsense came to me for posts featuring miniature baddies for her Vertically Challenged Villains Month, I figured I'd bump this one up and do it now too, like I did with Puppet Master II. I should point out, it's been a long, long time since I've seen Demonic Toys and Bad Channels, two of the three films that this is a sequel of, the third being Dollman, which we did sometime ago. It might mean I missed some things I'd have picked up on if those other two were fresher in my mind.

Dollman vs. Demonic Toys is like a comic book crossover of Full Moon projects, featuring Dollman Brick Bardo (played again by Tim Thomerson), who, after beings stranded on Earth, goes out to California to find Nurse Ginger (Melissa Behr), who herself was shrunk and left shrunk at the end of Bad Channels (actually, in Bad Channels it was Bunny, not Nurse Ginger who was left shrunk, but does it matter?). He makes it to her house and they form a romance, hoping to live happily ever after. Not so fast cowboy. Enter Tracy Scoggins, who has been hunting the Demonic Toys. She hears about Ginger and Brick, and thinks Brick would be perfect to take down the Demonic Toys due to his size. His big gun doesn't hurt either. The Demonic Toys won't know what hit them.



This is exactly as I described it, a comic book crossover in movie form. That's what it felt like, a cool one-off. Even the length, just over an hour, fits that vibe. As someone that grew up with comics and loved it when one-off issues were released with characters from different books put together, to see something like this that captures that vibe is really cool. Tim Thomerson is his usual awesome self reprising his role as Brick Bardo, and the showdown between him and the Demonic Toys is everything I could've asked for. Scoggins and Behr were also great, as was Phil Fondacaro, who had a small part as a security guard (no pun in tended). Add to that Quiet Riot in the film's soundtrack, and you can't lose. Even though a chunk of the film gives you enough backstory that you can watch this without seeing the previous films first, you should at least take advantage of Dollman and Demonic Toys on Watch Instantly beforehand, because it'll make this one a little more fun.

I guess we start with Tim Thomerson, right? He's so deep into his Brick Bardo character that there's no question about anything being silly with him fighting an over-sized baby doll or duking it out with a Conan O'Brien action figure. He plays it so straight, yet so cool, that it all works and makes it that much better for all of us. In fact, the entire cast plays it pretty straight, which makes all the difference in films like this. Thomerson also has an interesting distinction here at the DTVC: he's one of the few non-Hall of Famers to have more tags than some of the inductees. The question is how to rectify that: get more films for those Hall of Famers, induct Thomerson this fall, or both?



I want to stay with this shot of Thomerson here, because it's archive footage from Dollman, which was directed by Albert Pyun. I wasn't sure if I should the tag Pyun, because it is his footage that's being used. I mean, I've tagged actors for smaller appearances than the amount of footage from Dollman that we had in this. I wonder how that works as far as Pyun goes for money, or if Band owns the rights. Same with the actors, like Michael Halsey, Vincent Klyn, and Jackie Earle Haley. I don't believe they're credited either. Should I tag them or not too? There's also the character name "Brick Bardo", which Pyun has used a lot. Was there any dispute about who owned the rights to it after the fact? Another interesting Pyun connection here was Anthony Riparetti, who worked on the music. He's worked on a lot of Pyun's films, usually credited as "Tony" Riparetti.

I loved the Conan O'Brien action figure. How is that not awesome? He of course predates Conan's run on Late Night by about a year, but still. It's too bad Conan doesn't have the rights to all his characters, because you could have a great crossover with them and the Demonic Toys. Imagine Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, the Reverend Otis K. Dribbles, the Masturbating Bear, Pimp Bot, maybe even the Ear of Corn, all fighting the Demonic Toys, or maybe the Puppets from the Puppet Master series. A guy can dream, right?



As I mentioned above, this film clocks in at a cool 64 minutes, which isn't much. I always hear the term "feature length" tossed around, and wanted to find out exactly what it was, so I did what anyone would do, I went to Wikipedia. According to them, there are multiple definitions for feature length, some as short as 40 minutes, but the rough standard for an adult feature is 80 to 210 minutes. Do I think this one at 64 minutes should've been longer? No, 64 worked, and I imagine, if Band were forced to make it 80, he'd just add five more minutes of archive footage from each of the three original films, and one more minute of credits, and he'd have his 80. Give me shorter with less padding every time. I always say, anything after 88 minutes is borrowed time and better be damn good.

We are two-for-two this week on Full Moon flicks, the other being Puppet Master II. I daresay I like this one even more. If you like Full Moon, you like Thomerson, and you like the old comic one-off with tons of different characters, this is your flick. Right now it's on Watch Instantly. I can't think of a 64 minutes better spent. (Okay, maybe I can think of a few ways, but not many.)

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106743/