Down 'n Dirty (2000)

In my continuing efforts to get more Fred Williamson on the site, I across this one on Tubi and figured I'd give it a go. It has an extremely prodigious cast, which always helps, including 3 Hall of Famers, with Busey and Carradine joining the Hammer. In addition to us, our friends at Comeuppance have reviewed this, so you can see what they said (in fact, as I write this, they are one of only two critic reviews on IMDb). So, without any further ado.

Down 'n Dirty has Williamson reprising his role as Dakota "Dak" Smith, LAPD detective who knows how to get the job done and get the girl. When his partner is killed on a bust, something about it doesn't smell right. His boss, Charles Napier, thinks he needs to let it go, so he does, the credits roll, and we all live happily ever after--or Dak doesn't listen and he keeps digging, and when he digs, he ruffles feathers. But the heat he gets isn't anything he can't handle. When the corruption goes all the way to the top, it just means they have that much further to fall when Dak takes them down.

 

There are a lot of ways to go with this one, but for me, I'm looking at it as a Fred Williamson fan. On that score, this really delivers the goods. Williamson is in most scenes, and he delivers almost every time he's onscreen. When I see Williamson on the cover, that's all I need. From there, we do have a lot of smaller parts by bigger names: I think Busey and Carradine don't show until after the hour mark, Andrew Divoff comes in a bit after that, and Sam Jones only has one scene. Beverly Johnson, Bubba Smith, and Charles Napier have a little more time than that, but not much. Again, I'm okay with all of that if the Williamson delivers, and it does here. On the other hand, if Williamson alone doesn't make a movie for you, there's a lot in this to take issue with. It's pretty standard fare, not a huge amount of action, and the plot doesn't have a lot of suspense or intrigue in it. With that in mind, this is probably for Williamson fans only, and maybe a bit further down the list after you've seen some others first--but it does deliver for Williamson fans, that's for sure.

Our plan to get more Williamson on the site was derailed a bit by me having trouble getting posts by anyone on, and now I'm down to only 1 a week. Maybe a plan to do one Williamson every other month while I'm at this lower output is the way to go, but at the very least, I need to keep making him a priority. This is one of his own productions and he directs it, so a lot of times I'm not as tough on those because I appreciate what he's trying to do overall when he makes his own films. On top of that, his screen presence is so fantastic, I always love watching him get after it. We're now at 19 Williamson films on the site, and when I look at his IMDb bio, I'm seeing anywhere from 30-40 more that we could do, so we have a long way to go to exhaust his filmography. With me close to finishing up guys like Dolph and Seagal, there will be more room to get more Williamson on here, which I think we'll all be a lot better for.

 

Movies like this with a big cast are often gold for the DTVC, because one post can get a bunch of tags for people. It can be fool's gold though, because if the film doesn't deliver on those names, I'm left with a bad post on a film no one cares about. I think for a lot of years that's what plagued guys like Busey, Carradine, and Williamson, is they often did these kinds of movies where they had small cameos and got to have their names splashed across the cover, and I got to say I did a Busey film or a Carradine film. This was one of the rare occasions where the gamble paid off, because at least there was plenty of Williamson in the film, so the smaller Busey and Carradine roles were mitigated by that. I'll talk a bit more about the Busey, but the Carradine is a total sit-down role with him in (I think) two scenes in a limo barking out orders as the main baddie. Nice work if you can get it, right?

Now for the film's Abusive rating. This is a unique one, because we're rating based on quality over quantity--which is odd, because often the quality of the Busey is determined by the quantity. Anyway, I'm giving this a 5 on the Abusive Scale, because there isn't a lot of Busey, but what we got was a lot of fun. Look at that picture below: a woman at his place is about to go down on him, but while she's undoing his robe, he makes that face. What was that? Did she suddenly reveal she has spiked, metal teeth? Did Busey just remember he left the iron on? Did he realize forgot to tape Reba? Whatever the reason, it was pure Abusiveness, and that alone almost earned the entire 5 I gave this. Gary Busey is perhaps our greatest national treasure.

 

Finally, this movie has a pretty nice Williamson soundtrack, but I didn't realize how nice until I saw that The Dells were one it, as in "Stay in My Corner", "Oh What a Night", and "The Love We Had Stays on My Mind" The Dells. I looked into it some, and they actually performed on the Original Gangsters soundtrack as well, so Williamson had already worked with them. It's a very rare thing on our site that we get a group of that caliber performing on the soundtrack--it's rare that we do movies that even have soundtracks--so I wanted to spotlight it. 

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can stream this free on Tubi here in the States, and I think it's also available on Prime. For Williamson fans, I think it's a fun time; for people who aren't as big a fan of his, there may not be enough there--but seriously, who isn't a big fan of Williamson?

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0253056

Slip & Fall (2011)

This is another submission from Kevin at MTI Video.  When I saw the trailer, and saw that it had William Forsythe and Andrew Divoff, I wanted to check it out.  Then when I saw that it took place just outside of Boston, I really wanted to check it out.  Let's see how it did.

Slip & Fall is about a guy, Danny, who's struggling to make ends meet while going to law school and taking care of his grandmother.  When his grandmother spends their mortgage and his tuition on a satellite dish, he's forced to come up with cash quick, or Dean Dickman (Divoff) will have him kicked out of school with only one semester to go.  So he goes to his uncle Jerry (Forsythe), who makes a living off of slip and fall scams, to pull off one of his own to make some quick cash.  This brings him into contact with all manor of funny, shady characters, but also Sarah, the beautiful, kind secretary of Jimmy O'Malley, the shyster lawyer in charge of Danny lawsuit.  While falling for her, he's increasingly stressed out by the fate of his suit and his ability to make it through school and make ends meet.  Will he succeed?



I really enjoyed this.  It was funny in parts, but overall it was more fun than it was funny, if that makes sense.  Part of it might be that my growing up an hour north of Boston, a lot of the characters and the things they talk about hit close to home.  William DeCoff's Jimmy O'Malley was one of the best, with his thick Boston accent and hilarious obnoxious Bostonian Guy impression.  I think there's a lot here for people not from the Boston area too though.  Danny's story about struggling to make ends meet in the new economy, and the things he has to do when the situation becomes desperate, rings true everywhere, and the film carries these themes off in a fun and charming way with great characters and enjoyable moments.

One of those characters was the great Andrew Divoff, and while he's still a heel and a bad guy, he's not a diabolical criminal holding a bunch of people hostage or something like we usually see him here on the site.  Not only that, but he's a joke of a bad guy, playing it straight, and very funny.  I think it's good for us at the DTVC to get outside our comfort zone of action and sci-fi and horror to do something like this and see Andrew Divoff do something different.  For fans of Divoff, this is a must watch, I know you'll like it.



I have to get back to William DeCoff's Jimmy O'Malley, because he was the best.  He was so That Guy you hear on the T after a Sox or B's game, who's had a few pops, is really loud, and who you just hope gets off at the next stop, but you know he's on that Red Line all the way to Ashmont, and it's you that gets off first at South Station, and you and your buddies will be mocking him and his accent the whole ride home.  My favorite line was "hur ass was like Mohrgan Fuckin' Fayrchild dood."  There were some other characters like him, but none as great.

Among the other people in the film, I mentioned William Forsythe above.  He was great as the uncle who gets Danny involved in the scam.  One thing I liked too was that he didn't affect a Boston accent-- maybe being from Brooklyn he couldn't bring himself to do it.  Sam Cohen played Danny, our hero, and he was good too.  The idea with a guy like this is that we want to root for him.  When he resorts to this decision, we need to not only accept his motives, but we have to like him too to have sympathy for him, and he pulls that off.  Zofia Gozynska plays Danny's Russian domineering girlfriend, who thinks Danny will be her meal ticket.  She was funny too, but she was also listed in the opening credits with the dreaded "Introducing" tag, so let's hope she transcends that curse and ends up having a long career, because we know that too often "Introducing" means "never hear from him/her again."  And then we had famous attorney Alan Dershowitz playing himself in a quick cameo.  It's always great to see him in anything.



Finally, because this was filmed in the Boston area, I saw actors I recognized from local Boston commercials, including Marie Polizzano here, whom I remember from a commercial for one of the local private healthcare companies.  It had a bunch of "regular" people, all with lines that were supposed to follow one another, and hers was "and they won't drop you", which she said while holding an infant.  Here in Slip & Fall she was Sarah, Danny's love interest.  What I liked about her character was that she was strong and independent, and also going through the same troubles Danny was in pursuing a career in law.  Unlike a lot of comedy movies like this where our hero wins a woman who's way out of his league, we see right away that Sarah likes Danny because he's earnest and real in a world where so few people are.  To make this work we had to believe too that she was down to Earth, and she had that down perfect.  This movie could've been every other comedy romp, and she helped make it something more.

According to the MTI website, this film doesn't come out until September 10th.  When it does, you should definitely give it a look.  It might be a little slow at the beginning, but it really takes off and is a lot of fun.  Even if you don't live near Boston-- or you're from a city that hates Boston and all our sports teams-- this has enough in it for everyone to enjoy.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1401700/

Blast (1997)

This is not the easiest find, which is too bad, because it's chock full of great names. If you like your Albert Pyun films filled with Pyun Mainstays, this is the movie for you. One of the difficult things about tracking down a copy, is its name makes it ambiguous in search engines. Plus there's an Eddie Griffin movie of the same name that came out later. I was fortunate enough to have a buddy overseas send me his DVD-- being the DTV Connoisseur has its privileges.

Blast takes place during the Atlanta Olympics in 1996, where the villainous Andrew Divoff and his terrorist gang have taken over a swimming practice and the American women's swim team hostage. One kink in their plans: janitor/former Tae Kwon Do champ Linden Ashby is still kicking around the facility. Bad news, right? And he better save the day, because the rest of the assembled Pyun talent can only sit on their hands while Divoff bumps off swimmer after swimmer.



All right, so let's start with the good. Great cast. Let me rattle them off: Divoff, Ashby, DTVC Hall of Famer Rutger Hauer, Tim Thomerson, Vincent Klyn, Thom Mathews, Yuji Okumoto, Tina Coté, and Norbert Weisser; plus Kimberly Warren from Mean Guns. Wow. Other than Divoff, who cut a sweet baddie, everyone else was spread throughout the film with parts of varying sizes, but every one of them was solid. This had some good fight scenes and action as well, especially when Ashby was taking out Divoff's men Die Hard-style. I also liked the way Pyun cast this as a 50s/60s Red Scare type film, using terrorism as the monolithic evil, instead of the USSR. The one fault I had with the movie though, was how big the story was. There was just too much going on, and it weighed the film down at points. This effect was lessened to some degree because of the cast involved, but I went through periods where I forgot Linden Ashby was in the film at all-- and he was the lead hero! Overall, though, Blast isn't bad.

Look at that cast. If you play the Pyun Mainstay drinking game, you'll be pretty drunk by the movie's end-- you may not even make it. It depends on what you consider a Pyun mainstay, but we have Norbert Weisser, whom imdb says has been in 18 Pyun flicks, Vincent Klyn who's been in 13, Thom Mathews who's been in 12, Tim Thomerson who's been in 9, Tina Coté who's been in 7, Yuji Okumoto who's been in 6, and Andrew Divoff who's been in 4. All we needed was Scott Paulin, Nicholas Guest, Ice- T, and Michael Halsey. And cyborgs, we didn't have any cyborgs here either.



Andrew Divoff is such a sweet baddie. I daresay this film is Div-tastic. He's probably best known for the Wishmaster series, of which I have done none of yet at the time of this posting-- I know, I suck as a human being. Anyway, in Blast, he might be one of the better Die Hard terrorist style baddies, because he has the chops to live up to Alan Rickman as Hans Gruber. If Blast shows us anything, it's that the more Divoff, the better. Div-tastic.

As I mentioned above, I liked the way Pyun drew on the old Red Scare movie. He has a couple screens of text at the beginning, talking about potential terrorist attacks in Atlanta, then ends with a screen telling us that what we were about to see was what could've happened. We're almost a month away from the ten year mark of the 9/11 attacks, and after that happened in 2001, it made sense that the discourse shifted to make terrorism the new Cold War-esque enemy, but here in 1997, Pyun was ahead of that curve (as he often is with this kind of thing). Yes, the film devolves into Die Hard at a swimming practice facility (which I think is the prison from Mean Guns, but I'm not totally sure on that), but it does have those old Red Scare film elements that give it that extra layer beyond the simple Die Hard rip-off.



Check that out, Shannon Elizabeth as a credited extra. She gets a fair amount of screen time as a hostage, but she really doesn't have any lines beyond sobbing in mortal fear, hoping Divoff's cronies don't choose her to be the next sacrifice. I thought this wasn't the first Elizabeth film we've done at the DTVC, but it turns out, as I went back into the archives, that I haven't actually done Jack Frost before. How did that happen? I could've sworn it was one of the first ones I did four years ago. Anyway, Blast came out about two years before Elizabeth's breakthrough in American Pie, and now it looks like she's fallen back into the DTV world-- when she's not playing poker, of course.

This is definitely for completists or hardcore B-movie fans, because if you don't think it's awesome to see names like Tim Thomerson, Yuji Okumoto, and Andrew Divoff on the marquee, you'll have much more trouble with the down times when the weight of the plot becomes too heavy for it. On the other hand, if you love seeing names like that, I think you'll really enjoy this one. As far as I know, here in the States this is out of print and only available used on VHS, making it probably that much more a purchase for completists and hardcore fans only; and I know there's a Region 2 DVD floating around, so if you're in Europe or another area like Australia that is Region 2 compatible, you might have better luck.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115701/

Nemesis 4: Death Angel (1996)

This is the fourth and final film in Albert Pyun's Nemesis series. I've had it for a little while now, but a few other Pyun films took precedence, so we're finally making it happen today. Let's see how it all shakes out.

Nemesis 4 moves us back to the future, in 2080, when the war between cyborgs and humans is at an uneasy peace, and the warriors from that conflict are now selling out their services to the burgeoning crime syndicates. Enter our hero, Sue Price as Alex, working as an assassin. She's becoming disillusioned with it, and her boss thinks she should retire, but she decides against it, despite a strange visitor who looks like the angel of death. Then things go pear shaped when she mistakenly kills the son of a major crime boss, and he puts a $100 million bounty on her head.



This entry brings the series full circle. We're back to the future, we're back to the intrigue and the cat and mouse games of the first film. I liked the mix of 50s-60s exploitation with some cool Noir-ish and sci-fi themes. It wasn't really an action flick like the previous ones, so that might turn some people off, but I was okay with that. What I had trouble with was the dialog. In some instances it meandered and became repetitive; others it contradicted itself. Price asks Pyun mainstay Norbert Weisser why the crime boss' son didn't have body guards. "His reputation is his protection. He knows if anyone even looks at his son the wrong way he's dead." Okay, good point, only Weisser continues: "But he did have guards, and he gave them the slip. That's why they knew to call [Nicholas Guest's character] so fast to warn him that you might kill him." Okay, so which is it, he doesn't need bodyguards, or he has them but he gave them the slip? This happened enough that it affected the overall quality of the film for me.

Despite the dialog issues, the actual story and style really worked for me. Again, as I mentioned in my reviews of the previous two films, if you have issues with low-budget special effects, this might not work for you, but that's not something I have a problem with. There were a lot of really cool images, like the vintage cars, or the cyborgs in 50s style clothing; plus, the sets were great, with the abandoned, burned out buildings. There were also some images that will test your sensibilities, like the scene where Nicholas Guest's character has cyborg sex with Sue Price. I don't know, I kind of like that Pyun just went for it there, but that's the kind of thing you need to see and decide for yourself.



This is a different Sue Price from parts 2 and 3. In those two, she was portrayed as more like a masculine type hero. Here, though, she's very feminine, wearing dresses and heels-- or often nothing at all-- and having sex with guys. It was one of those areas where Pyun inserts depth into what is an otherwise low-budget sci-fi flick, because he took Price's Alex character, who was essentially a tool created by humans to combat cyborgs, and inserted her into a world where cyborgs and humans were no longer at war with one another. Now she's trying to find her identity-- and her femininity, which is much more difficult when she was created to be a cyborg killing machine of a woman. It worked really well to tie the film together.

I didn't see in the credits where this was shot, and the imdb page doesn't list it. It seems like Eastern Europe somewhere, but I'm not sure. As I mentioned above, it's a pretty cool setting, with the abandoned and burned out buildings. I mentioned in the Game of Death post that Detroit is starting to take on some of that feel, that some of the people making that one said it was like one big studio lot with the mass amount of abandoned buildings. It'll be interesting to see if more films like this one are made in Detroit in the future, as opposed to Bulgaria or Romania. I'm not doing the rah rah American thing, I'm just saying anything to help that area recover the better.



A post on a Pyun flick wouldn't be complete without a look at all the Pyun mainstays that made their way into it. We already mentioned Norbert Weisser and Nicholas Guest, both playing cyborgs. Andrew Divoff plays Price's boss-- I didn't even recognize him; and then Simon Poland, who I thought I recognized as an 80s New Wave singer, but was totally wrong about-- I must've just recognized him from other Pyun films. This has nowhere near that epic cast that the first flick had, and based on how short the run time was, I don't know how you could've fit any of them in it anyway. This cast was good enough.

I'd say this one was my second favorite of the four, after part 1, but that was a hard act to follow anyway. These are all available on Amazon, and though I've seen part 4 listed on DVD, I'm not sure if there's a Region 1 release of it here in America. When in doubt, there's always used VHS.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113949/

Hong Kong 97 (1994)

This one was placed on my radar after Albert Pyun himself commented on my Spitfire post that he shot that, this, and Heatseeker all at the same time, which was why there was some overlap in the actors. I liked the Robert Patrick and Ming Na on the cover, and couldn't wait to see what Brion James and Tim Thomserson were like. If anything, it would be a fun ride with that kind of cast.

Hong Kong 97 takes place as control of Hong Kong was being transferred back to China. With that expectation and potential upheaval as the backdrop, we have Robert Patrick, a hired assassin for a major corporation based in the city. After he kills or upsets the wrong person, a large bounty is put on his head. Co-workers Thomerson and James try to help him, while he seeks refuge at the home of former flame Ming Na, who needs to get out of dodge herself with her grandfather, because he's wanted for defecting from China, and could be arrested by the army if he's not out before the transfer. Now Patrick is trying to figure out who's after him, how he can get Ming Na and her grandfather out of the city, and clear his debts, all at once.



I liked this one. It might either be too light on the action and too heavy on the Noir for some people, or too heavy on the action and too light on the Noir for others, but it worked for me. The down times, where we either had Brion James talking in his British accent with Thomerson or Patrick, or the catching up with one another/sexual tension scenes between Ming Na and Patrick, didn't feel boring or like padding. The best element was the use of Hong Kong's transfer to add to the tension. I think the move Pyun made by setting a scene in Ming Na's place while she's packing her things to move out really added that tension the best, because maybe we can't all relate to Hong Kong moving from British to Chinese hands, but we can relate to the feeling of moving, and the time when the move is almost there, that feeling of inevitability and impending change. It pervaded every other element of the movie, and for me, tied it all together.

As I mentioned in the first paragraph, this was shot at the same time as Spitfire and Heatseeker. I think out of all three, Hong Kong 97 worked the best. The biggest cast overlap was Tim Thomerson, who appeared in all three films. Then you have Brion James, who was in the beginning of Spitfire, then had a major role in this, and Tina Cote, who had a major role in Heatseeker, then appeared in the opening credits to Spitfire. I thought I remembered Robert Patrick being in Spitfire for a second too, but I can't find any proof of that. What would've been cool is more Thom Mathews and Norbert Weisser, even Vincent Klyn. There should be some kind of Albert Pyun mainstay battle royale with all of these guys together-- maybe that could be the Mean Guns remake...



You're probably wondering why I included an image of Robert Patrick nude, crouching down, and shooting a gun. I just wanted to say I was impressed with Pyun's excellent Skin-a-max style directing in this scene. He displayed a great ability to avoid showing Patrick's junk without making it look like he was purposefully obscuring that area. I wonder what Patrick thought when he saw that in the script: "sweet, I'm having sex with a hot chick, and then... I run around the hotel room buck naked, dodging bullets and firing at gunmen crashing through my window? I need to talk to my agent..."

I know a lot of the readers are big Tim Thomerson fans, so I should warn you now that he gets killed off about midway through. He's great while he's there, especially talking with Brion James, and Brion James survives, so at least you have him to make up for anything you're missing with Thomerson. Seeing Thomerson reminds me yet again that I need to get those Trancer films up, so hopefully I'll do that soon.



You gotta love Ming Na. She was also great as Chun Li in Street Fighter, which came out the same year as this. You could see here, though, playing off Robert Patrick in their non-action scenes, where she would start the ball rolling into her better acting gigs, like ER. As far as Van Damme leading ladies go, I'd say she's in a tie with Mia Sara for best of all time.

This is only available on VHS. Amazon has it pretty cheap used, so that's a great avenue to go. I personally liked it, and it has a great cast to boot. Definitely worth giving a look.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110052/

The Librarians aka Strike Force (2003)

There's a weird story surrounding this film. I looked Daniel Bernhardt up on imdb, and saw a movie called The Librarians listed that also starred Burt Reynolds. According to Amazon, it wasn't available to buy. Anyway, so I'm waiting for word about that one, and in that time, I find a movie at my local record store called Strike Force, which listed William Forsythe, Erika Eleniak, and our hero, Daniel Bernhardt. I bought it along with the Rothrock classic Outside the Law, watched and reviewed that one, and Strike Force was lost in the shuffle. So I find Strike Force while digging up Dolph Lundgren's Cover Up, and figure I'll give it a shot. That's when I type it into imdb's database, and it comes up The Librarians. Crazy how the world of DTV movies works, huh? (Is that the longest opening paragraph to a post ever?)

The Librarians has Forsythe heading a mercenary team, including Bernhardt, that specializes in rescuing kidnapped peoples. They're hired by an old friend to find his grand daughter. She's been kidnapped by a dude who's into all kinds of bad stuff, including white slavery. Erika Eleniak is after this dude as well, because he captured her sister. Forsythe and his crew really have their work cut out for them dealing with this guy-- at least that's what the movie tells us, but they seem to make it look easy.



This is pretty funny. It's not awesome, at any point. I got the sense that Forsythe was tired of playing bad guys, so he made this movie with a buddy of his so he could play the good guy for once. Not only that, but I think he hates punk kids. The evil white slavery et al gang he fights call themselves the Techno Kids. This is pretty much Forsythe's personal applause movie. Is it as bad as any of Kevin Costner's (For the Love of the Game, for instance), probably not. The action's pretty good, but disappears quite a bit in favor of silly conversations where women remark on how "smooth" Forsythe is, or where Forsythe tells us why what he's doing means so much to him, which is really annoying. Of course, we also get to see Forsythe's perma-scowl the whole time, so it's funny.

I think more than anything, Forsythe was in over his head here, and though it comes off as ridiculous, it actually could've been more enjoyable in parts. Bernhardt fights Matthias Hues in one scene, and that should've been hot. Instead it was a series of silly images of Bernhardt doing roundhouses at nothing and Hues flying backward. Yes, it was great to make fun of, but I was also disappointed that I was promised a fight between two great DTV action stars, and got a bunch of crap. That's the problem with these kinds of things: is it worth renting this to make fun of, when it's so bad?



I probably should've reviewed this on Monday, because that was Daniel Bernhardt's 44th birthday. Well, I'm sorry. Happy belated birthday, Danny. This is his ninth film here at the DTVC, which is more than some Hall of Famers (Cynthia Rothrock, for instance). He'll be tied with C. Thomas Howell for most among non HOFers. What scares me about Bernhardt is that he's following Howell's path. In Howell's case, he's made enough films to be considered, it's just a matter of if they're good enough or not, and a lot of them aren't. Bernhardt doesn't have the resume, but his recent spate of films hasn't done him any favors either. This movie makes it three posts in a row where Bernhardt wasn't the main star of the film. That's even worse when you consider those three are the three newest films of his we've reviewed. According to imdb, he hasn't been top billed since 2004's Nature Unleashed: Tornado. He has a new film that hasn't been released yet, called Ultimate Champion, where his name is right under UFC star Stephan Bonner's. We'll see what happens there, but it's not looking good for the Poor Man's Van Damme.

This is the second film we've done with the great Burt Reynolds, the other being the Albert Pyun mess Crazy Six. I looked him up on imdb, and saw he was in a movie called In the Name of the King. Remember that one? Jason Statham, in the theaters about two years ago? Wow, I never actually saw it, but it looked hilarious, and I saw that it only made about $5 mill in the box office. Maybe I should do a week of movies that should've been DTV, but weren't. So far I got that one and Basic Instinct 2. Can anyone think of any others?



I want to devote a paragraph to this guy. Ed Lauter. He was also in two other recently reviewed movies: The Sweeper and Mercenary. A That Guy if there ever was one, he's usually cast as a detective or government agent of some sort. Often, he's not a good guy, so if you see him, he's probably up to now good. Considering he's shown up so much recently I needed to give him some love, so this is for you Ed Lauter, you're one of the good ones.

If you can get this cheap, go for it. I found it on DVD for $3, and that may have actually been too much, but in NH we have no sales tax, so it was a solid $3. That's definitely the breaking point. At the very least, it's funny to watch Forsythe go through all the trouble just to make himself a good guy. We're sorry you make such a great bad guy, it's not our fault.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0362820/

Adrenalin: Fear the Rush (1996)

Many readers have e-mailed me asking why I don't give as much attention to bad movie directors as I do bad movie actors and actresses. I must admit that this is a serious lack of sound judgment on my part, and I am now, starting with this blog, attempting to remedy that issue.

It came to my attention that Albert Pyun has directed multiple films which the DTVC reviewed. Not only that, but he's responsible for a couple classics like Cyborg and MST3K's Alien From LA. When I went to imdb to look up info for the film I'm reviewing here, I saw his name and thought: "That sounds really familiar". As it turns out, he's something of a Direct to Video Martin Scorsese... or maybe Paul Verhoeven.



Adrenalin: Fear the Rush takes place in a future that's now the past (i.e. 2007), where a bunch of people are infected with a virus, and those that aren't have walled themselves in. Our story is set in Boston or Bucharest (it's not really clear) in one of the zones outside the walled in area. Some mutant that looks like a dude from The Hills Have Eyes is killing people, and beat cop Natasha Henstridge is called in to save the day. She sucks, her partner's killed, so now DTVC Hall of Famer Christopher Lambert is called in with some other people (one of whom is the android that gets his head knocked off in Omega Doom-- also a Pyun film, go figure). They don't do much better, until the very end, when they finally use their guns and shoot him.

Between the title and cover, one might get the impression that this film is pretty silly. I'm here to tell you that the movie delivers. It's that silly. The biggest issue for me was the "is it Boston or Bucharest" thing. The police cars are marked "Policias", and everyone has what looks to be Romanian flags on their shoulders. By the same token, the film is adamant that we're in Boston in 2007 AD.



That's another thing I love about the futuristic bad movie: when they put the date up as being whatever time AD. As opposed to what, BC? I've always wondered if they feel it adds a level of sophistication to their otherwise lackluster film. For me it's more of a sign post that lets me know what direction the movie's taking me, and that I should buckle up, because it could be a bumpy ride.

Natasha Henstridge plays a cop who for some reason doesn't shoot the mutant thing when she has a chance in the first twenty minutes of the film. She had a gun, and he didn't, and she had a clean shot at him. I understand that Pyun didn't want her to kill the baddie in the opening moments, because there'd be no film left after that. Just the same, I need a better reason for a trained cop to not a shoot a mutant that's just killed and mutilated a baker's dozen's worth of people beyond simply "if you kill him now, we'd have no more movie".



Lambert is great in this. It may not be his best effort, but his voice is in full effect, and he looks hilarious in this shielded riot helmet thing. In the immortal words of Shakespeare "What, is my beaver easier than it was?" (King Richard III). In your case, Lambert, it was sillier than it was, and it made up for the fact that you didn't have the great hair you had in Beowulf and Druids. Even better, at the end, he survives something like seven gunshots to his torso. Don't ask me how.

This film is twenty kinds of silly, despite being a tad on the brutal side in terms of violence. I wouldn't recommend buying it unless you're a Lambert completist (which I'm not). Your best bet is to rent it whenever your local video store has a two-for-one deal. I did it recently with Steven Seagal's Submerged, and I felt like I got my money's worth with both. So did my friends.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115471/