LETHAL Ladies: Return to Savage Beach (1998)

For our final DTVC Hall of Fame induction for 2024, we have the one, the only, Andy Sidaris, and what better film to review than his final film ever, and the end to his LETHAL Ladies films, one of the greatest DTV franchises ever. We covered this in a recent podcast episode, number 177 in the archives, with Chris the Brain from Bulletproof Action, and in addition to us, Mitch at the Video Vacuum has covered this as well.

LETHAL Ladies: Return to Savage Beach is the final LETHAL Ladies film, and in this installment, Rodrigo Obregon is back, and he wants some gold hidden on Savage Beach, the same one Dona Speir and Hope Marie Carlton seemingly blew him up on back in that film. To stop them, director Julie Strain has called in all her operatives in all their busty or muscular glory, but even that won't be enough, so the department has called in an old foe: Marcus "Buff" Bagwell, aka "Warrior," doing a heel-turn that would make Vin Diesel proud. Will they be able to stop Obregon and his baddies? Who knows, but what we do know is in the meantime, we'll be treated to all the dressing, undressing, and skinny dipping we can handle.

This is as fun as any of the films. Yes, we only get Dona Speir in a flashback sequence, and mainstays like Bruce Penhall or an Abilene who can't shoot straight are conspicuously absent; but the spirit of these movies is there in full effect. Like when Shae Marks and Julie K. Smith find where the gold is buried on Savage Beach, instead of digging, they decide to try some snorkeling--with tops on at first, just in case there are any coral reefs around that may scratch them, but then go topless once they find out they're safe from the danger of coral reef scratching--at least that's the best explanation I can think of for why they started with their tops on, then went topless. In the image above, Carrie Westcott is serving pizza along with ginger ale laced with Mickeys, because, as Chris pointed out on the pod, ginger ale is what you drink with pizza? It's moments like that that make the series, along with the explosions, nudity, love scenes, Rodrigo Obregon's baddies, and Ava's KSXY radio broadcasts--which this time are accompanied by Ninja Turtles co-creator Kevin Eastman as Harry the Cat, who at the time was married to Julie Strain. The one interesting element, which I don't know if I'd say is a full-on drawback, is because this is the only one that fully calls back the others, it needed to set up a lot of backstory, which felt a bit awkward. It was a small quibble on what was an overall great time though.

Like Dona Speir, Andy Sidaris doesn't have the filmography of some of the other DTVC Hall of Fame directors, but outside of the Bloodfist films, I don't there's a more prodigious, impactful, or iconic DTV franchise. Depending on how you count Malibu Express, this is either the 11th or 12th film--and at the very least, Malibu Express is part of the same movie universe, because Cody is mentioned in Hard Ticket to Hawaii as being Rowdy's brother. Either way, this is a series of over 10 films with no duds, you can turn on any of them and have a great time. We reduce them down to boobs, bombs, and bullets, but if it were just that, anyone could make these and have success. Sidaris adds something more, whether it's him directing, or his son while he's producing, there's a tongue-in-cheek vibe while everyone involved is playing it straight, that makes them even more fun. Also, the decision to put Speir as the lead instead of the Abilene who can't shoot straight was something that can't be understated. He had Bruce Penhall from CHiPs that he easily could've slotted into the next Abilene who can't shoot straight role, but he decided to give that part to Michael J. Shane and make it a smaller role, and give the series to Speir to lead. A true cinematic legend, here's to you Mr. Sidaris, you were one of the greatest.

We also had another Hall of Famer in this, Julie Strain, who, after Speir leaves the series with Fit to Kill, takes over as the lead female, first as a baddie, and now with these last two in the series, as the leader of the organization. One thing I discovered with this post, is she and Dona Speir move into a two-way tie for second-most tags by a woman on the site with 9, moving them past Kathleen Kinmont and Shannon Tweed, but still well-behind Cynthia Rothrock's 43. Could she ever get there? Based on her IMDb bio, probably not 43, but she has a lot that we could cover, which should keep her in the second place slot, or possibly jockeying back and forth with Shannon Tweed for that honor. She left us way too soon, but films like this are here to remind us of what a great legacy she leaves behind.

As we mentioned above, we have Buff Bagwell back, as his previous character, who was a baddie in the previous film. He lets Strain--and us--know that the agent he killed in that movie was a serial killer, so he did them a favor by taking him out. Even Vin Diesel thinks that's convenient, but you could see him watching this after Fast and Furious 7--or whatever it was called--thinking there's no way he could bring Jason Statham back as a good guy, then he listens to the dialog between Strain and Bagwell where Bagwell's like "yeah, so I'm a good guy now," and he must've thought, as he snacked on his Tombstone pizza and drank his Corona, "Jesus, that's all I need to do?" Unfortunately a few years after this, when the WWE buys WCW, Buff got the main event on Raw, and then Vince McMahon fired him soon after, causing his career to take a downturn. Why he couldn't get more DTV films though is beyond me, he was a lot of fun here. I do have a theory on why Bagwell was fired though: it wasn't because his mom called him in sick to an event or anything like that, I think McMahon saw how short he was next to Strain in this, and said "nope, that's it, he's gotta go," because McMahon has a thing for tall guys. His loss should've been our gain though, and maybe we can still get him in stuff, especially if he's wearing shirts like that.

Finally, we had two other potential Hall of Famers in this, with Rodrigo Obregon and Gerald Okamura. Obergon was a stalwart in these LETHAL Ladies films, he appears in almost all of them, and as fitting as it was that Sidaris in this final film chose to callback to Savage Beach, the film in the series where Speir took the helm, it was equally fitting that he made sure he brought Obregon back to be his baddie. Unfortunately like Strain and Sidaris, Obregon is no longer with us, but beyond these LETHAL Ladies films, he's done some others that belong on the DTVC, so he may still get there to the Hall of Fame. Okamura is now at 13 films on the site, with a lot of classics under his belt, and has a ton of stuff left that I still need to do, including some PM flicks, and some movies from the earliest days of DTV. He doesn't have as big of a part in this as Obregon, but one of his scenes involves him standing in front of a huge chair, and then helping Strain and Bagwell dispatch some kabuki ninjas. That's the Okamura we're looking for.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently get this, and all the LETHAL Ladies films on Tubi. If you're looking for something fun to watch, these always do the trick--though Chris made a great point on the podcast episode that they're better watched at night. Speaking of which, you can find that episode in the archives, number 177. As we wrap, congratulations again to Mr. Sidaris, you were truly ones of the greatest.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0127759

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Enemy Gold (1993)

In our continuing quest to get all of Sidaris's LETHAL Ladies films on the site, we come to this one, the first of the post-Dona Speir entries. "Bullets, Bombs and Babes," does it get any better? I'm not sure, but the person who made the poster wasn't a fan of the Oxford Comma. Are "bullets," "bombs," and "babes" all separate, or do the "bombs" and "babes" come as a package?

Enemy Gold is a reset of the LETHAL Ladies films. No Dona Speir, no Cynthia Brimhall, and no Abilene that can't shoot straight. We do have Penhall back, this time in Dallas with Mark Barriere (who had a small part in Fit to Kill) and Suzi Simpson, trying to take down drug kingpin Rodrigo Obregon. The problem is, a crooked member of the agency is standing in their way, and gets them suspended. As you can imagine, this isn't enough for Obregon, so he calls in assassin Jewel Panther (Julie Strain) and they go into the woods of Louisiana where our trio is camping out. At the same time, our trio thinks they may have found some long lost Confederate soldier gold. They're all on a collision course to wackiness.

This is an interesting entry in the series. It has everything you want, plenty of bullets, bombs, and babes, but I think as a kind of reboot or refresh of the series, this newer iteration hits its stride more with Dallas Connection, mostly because Julie K. Smith gives it the energy it needed. We also don't get quite as much Strain as we'd want, but what we get is great. I do like too that it was trying to move this series in a new direction, that Fit to Kill was the end of something, and almost right away we know we're experiencing something new from the Dallas landscape instead of Hawai'i, and Mark Barriere shoots and hits his target when he and Penhall are raiding the drug operation--Penhall even tells him "nice shot." No more Abilene who can't shoot straight here. This also wasn't directed by Andy Sidaris, his son Christian takes over, but he only directs this one and Dallas Connection before Andy steps back in. I don't know that that gives this a different feel though, Christian seems to maintain his father's vision of how these things should look. There are plenty of B n' B sex scenes ("boobs n' butt"), plenty of explosions, and plenty of scenes of women changing. This may not be the best of the LETHAL Ladies films, but it's still a really fun time.

This is now 8 films for Julie Strain on the site, which doesn't sound like many, but 8 puts her in a three-way tie for second-most all time by a woman on the site with Shannon Tweed and Kathleen Kinmont, which is 34 behind Cynthia Rothrock for the most all-time. Her first appearance in the film is her driving a convertible with her hair all over the place, just letting us know she's coming, so when she gets to the Cowboy Club and a guy outside hits on her, we're ready for her to knee him in the nuts and headbutt him. I'd like to believe she's unabashedly Strain from there, but we don't quite get enough of her, because we have the story around the gold, we have Obregon's other goons, and we have Tanquil Lisa Collins's character trying to get our heroes off suspension. This is another thing that's corrected in Dallas Connection, as Strain gets after it right away in that one. Still, she's great here, even in her limited capacity.

As I mentioned above, this is produced by Sidaris, not directed, but he still gets a tag for that production work, which gives him 10 total now. This series alone is definitely consideration for a Hall of Fame induction, and even in the capacity of executive producer, his stamp is still on it. From a DTV franchise standpoint, Bloodfist is the only other one in its realm, but these are iconic in a way that the Bloodfist films aren't. If you say "a Sidaris film," people know right away what you mean, and the fact that these are all on Tubi in all their glory is fantastic. When I was younger, these were either on a premium channel on cable--which I would only get as a free preview--or when I got older, there were edited versions on TBS after a midnight airing of Road House. I still get reminders of that time when I see the opening titles in that classic Sidaris typefont, telling us Bruce Penhall and Julie Strain are in the film, only now I'm not wasted and trying to get the room to stop spinning. Here's to you Mr. Sidaris, you truly were one of the greatest for giving us these films.

The United States is a big country, both population-wise and land-wise, and films like this remind me that even someone who's spent his whole life here doesn't really know it as well as you'd think, because it's so big. For example, in this film, the characters go from Dallas, Texas to the Shreveport, Louisiana area, which seems like they should be far apart, but they're less than 3 hours away from each other. Part of it I think is my Northeast bias, but even then, when I was growing up, I had no idea that Philadelphia and New York City were so close, and they aren't as far away as Dallas and Shreveport are from Kittery, Maine. But I imagine people in Dallas can't believe that Kittery, Maine is so close to Boston, Massachusetts, or that it's as close to Providence, Rhode Island as Dallas is from Shreveport. That's why I watch Sidaris films though, to get more in touch with my sense of American geography.

That felt like it could've been the seventh paragraph, so what could I be adding here? It's the fact that in between the last two times I've seen this, I've actually visited Dallas myself. One of the nights I was there I caught a Texas Rangers baseball game, and on the Lyft ride back I got to see this view of the city at night. For people who haven't been before, it's the fourth largest metro area in the US, but it's not like the three cities above it, New York, LA, and Chicago. My Lyft driver told me, it can't decide if it wants to be Atlanta or LA or New York, but I also got the sense that it could've been a real world city like New York or Chicago, but the state of Texas couldn't let that happen. Texas wants to be too provincial to have a world city--or maybe it's afraid of what losing some of that provincialness by having a world city would mean. We're seeing similar struggles in Florida and Georgia with Miami and Atlanta growing, and the people in those states afraid of the same thing Texans were afraid of with Dallas. What you get with them is this uniquely American thing. Dallas feels like it could be a New York or Chicago, but it also feels like it can't, and I don't know that there's anything more American than that--which makes it a great place to set a Sidaris film.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can get this on Tubi, which is probably the best way. There's also the Mill Creek DVD, which, if you get that, means you won't have to worry if Tubi ever takes it down--which they've done before. It may not be the best entry in the series, but it's still a lot of fun.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106819

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

Fit to Kill (1993)

As we continue to work our way through all of Andy Sidaris's LETHAL Ladies films, we're onto this one from 1993. Maybe not as well known as some of the others, it does introduce DTVC Hall of Famer Julie Strain, so it has to at least be notable for that. In addition to us, Mitch from The Video Vacuum has covered this as part of his Sirens of Skinamax series, and SteveQ at Down in the Z Movies.

Fit to Kill takes place after the previous film, Hard Hunted, where our baddie Kane is still after our LETHAL Ladies, and has employed a new weapon: assassin Blu Steele (Julie Strain). Everyone is trying to get their hands on a huge diamond that Aki Aleong wants to give back to the Russian people through their emissary Rodrigo Obregon, and as more players get involved, Dona Speir realizes she may need to work with her hated rival Kane in order to bring everyone to justice--despite the fact that he's tried to have her killed multiple times. Will they succeed, or will this be the one mission where the baddies prevail?

You know the answer to that, and when our heroes take out the baddies, it's in spectacular fashion involving things like missiles attached to toy helicopters. This was also intended to be the final LETHAL Ladies film, and it has that feel that we're ending something big here, especially when Donna blows up Kane's yacht with all the baddies on it and says "my work is done here." What we get after this is almost a reboot with two films directed by Sidaris's son Christian, Enemy Gold and Dallas Connection, before Andy himself comes back in to finish the series with Day of the Warrior and LETHAL Ladies Return to Savage Beach, so in a way this almost is an end--maybe like Marvel Cinematic Universe phases, this is the end of Phase 1, where we know many stars like Dona Speir, Roberta Vasquez, Cynthia Brimhall, and the Abilene Who Can't Shoot Straight are bowing out, while others like Bruce Penhall, Gerald Okamura, and Rodrigo Obregon are staying on in a different capacity, and then we're also introducing our new lead, with Julie Strain taking over for Dona Speir in Phase 2 of the series. We also see a legitimate heel-turn in Kane (Geoofrey Moore), which was a first in the series--to this point actors who played villains came back as new characters to be heroes. Was Vin Diesel using this as his template for his Fast and Furious heel-turns? It might not be the best of the films, but it's everything you want in a LETHAL Ladies movie, and for that reason I enjoy it like I enjoy all the others.

Unlike Marvel, which has had trouble replacing Iron Man the main star of their franchise, this series does a great job of bringing us Julie Strain. Right off the bat, in her first scene, she's in this Catwoman-esque spandex bodysuit with over-the-knee boots slinking around a Vegas hotel, ready to assassinate Kane. Even though she doesn't succeed, we know we have someone important here, someone who could really challenge Donna Hamilton and make life difficult for the LETHAL Ladies. You could totally see why when this film is done Sidaris's son would've looked at her and thought "let me do some of these movies with her as my lead." Granted, she plays a baddie for those two films before she transitions to hero Willow Black for the final two films, but either way, she was a perfect choice to center the films around after Dona Speir left. With her being in the Hall of Fame now, our goal is to get more of her films on the site, and while we haven't been doing as well as we could with that, she's at 7 now, and we at least have two more of these films to cover, so we'll be seeing her again soon.

This is the final LETHAL Ladies film for Dona Speir, and part of me didn't want to do this film now so I could save it for her eventual Hall of Fame induction post, but she does have a couple other DTV films we could do for that, and I didn't want to hold off too long on finishing off this series of films. When she blows up that yacht near the end of the film and says "my work is done here," it's the capper on one of the greatest DTV action franchise runs. She starts in Hard Ticket to Hawaii, where, as a de facto sequel to Malibu Express, Ronn Moss was the lead as the next Abilene in line, but she still turns in a great performance. From there, when Moss is out in the next film, Picasso Trigger, we see the shift Sidaris makes, where we have Steve Bond playing another Abilene who can't shoot straight, but I think Sidaris realizes Speir is the one who can carry these, and with Savage Beach he turns the thing over to her, and the Abilene who can't shoot straight becomes a secondary character. So when she says "my work is done here," we can look at what her work was: some of the most iconic DTV actioners of all time, featuring names like Erik Estrada and Pat Morita, but she truly was the lead in them. Normally we would think of the Bloodfist series as the number one DTV action franchise, but watching these again, they have to be above those because we don't have the duds we get in the Bloodfist series, like VI or VIII. So yes, Dona's work is done here, but what great work it was.

As is often the case with the LETHAL Ladies series, we had a bunch of other names in this. In addition to Dona Speir, mainstays Cynthia Brimhall and Roberta Vasquez turn in their final performances in the series. Then we had mainstays Bruce Penhall, Rodirigo Obregon, and Gerald Okumura who we see here and then come back in different iterations in the second phase of the series. You could also say that about Ava Cadell, only in her case she comes back for the final film; same with Carolyn Liu's Silk, though she does come back as a different character in Day of the Warrior too. Our bumbling assassins Chu Chu Malave and Richard Cansino were back as well. This was the last go around for them, though Cansino had a part in Day of the Warrior. Finally, a name we were seeing for the first time was veteran character actor Aki Aleong, who I didn't realize hadn't had a tag yet! I went back through his IMDb bio, and discovered he had six films on here before that, so this marks 7 on the site now. And speaking of an "Aleong," I also tagged Al Leong because this has archived footage of him from the previous film.

Finally, with this being Speir's final film in the series, I thought I'd look at where she sits all time among female action stars. Number one has to be Pam Grier. Her 70s stuff is some of the best ever, and she should've been given the kinds of parts guys like Stallone and Schwarzenegger got in the 80s. Michelle Yeoh has to be next, and while she's getting more love after her performance in Everything Everywhere All at Once, if you go through that bio, it's a string of great action films. Third for me is Cynthia Rothrock, she has some of the best stuff in that late 80s/early 90s Golden Age of action, plus some fantastic Hong Kong stuff. It's here where I start to look at how Dona Speir slots in. Most lists will have names like Angelina Jolie, Linda Hamilton, and Scarlett Johansson, but they're all dramatic actors who have done some iconic action roles--and they're more for people who only understand action as TNT New Classics and other big budget films from the last 30 years. Speir helming a franchise for five films, and costarring in the two films of the franchise before those, put her above all of them. Milla Jovovich has to be above Speir for me, because she also helmed a franchise for 5+ films, and her franchise, Resident Evil, pulled in over $1 billion all time--and the total budgets of those films put together was less than The Marvels. Some other names I was looking at: Zoe Saldana, who was great in Colombiana, and stars in three major franchises, four of the top six highest grossing films of all time, and two of the top five when adjusted for inflation; another big budget star, Michelle Rodriguez, who also has the distinction of being the top women on Exploding Helicopter's top ten actors list; Ziyi Zhang, who had some of the biggest hits of the early 2000s; Olga Kurylenko, who on some levels is just getting started, but she's put out some great stuff, and currently is one of the top DTV action stars, man or woman; and finally Kate Beckinsale, whose Underworld films didn't have the run Jovovich's Resident Evil ones did, but still important as a female-led action franchise. I think looking at all that, I'd put Speir behind them as well, but only because this was her one franchise, and then she was done. That makes this my ranking: Grier, Yeoh, Rothrock, Jovovich, Rodriguez, Saldana, Beckinsale, Zhang, Kurylenko, Speir. So maybe Speir isn't as high as I'd have expected, but she's still in my top ten.

That was a bit of a long paragraph, so let's wrap this up. Currently in the States the LETHAL Ladies films are all available on Tubi. I don't think you need me to tell you how great these are, but I will say if you've already seen them but it's been a while, you could use a rewatch. They only get better with time, and they never get old.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106922

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

Hard Hunted (1992)

As we're trying to get all of Andy Sidaris's LETHAL Ladies films on the site, this was next on the list. I had initially seen it way back in March of '21 when I had Mitch from the Video Vacuum on the Pod to discuss Dallas Connection and the rest of these movies, so it's good to finally get it up on the site.

Hard Hunted involves a baddie named Kane--probably "Kaneshiro," but played by a new actor--who has a nuclear bomb triggering device hidden away in a mini jade sculpture. When Mika, one of our LETHAL Ladies, steals it, he sends Al Leong in a gyrocopter to get it back. Al kills Mika, but our hero, Donna Hamilton, and her partner Roberta Velasquez, get the jade and take it back to the rest of the agents in Hawai'i. Kane won't give up so easily though, and he kidnaps Hamilton, who tries to escape, but gets a nasty knock on the head that leads to a bout of amnesia. Now it's a race against time, as Velasquez, Bruce Penhall, and Cynthia Brimhall try to track her down before Kane and his baddies do. And who knows, maybe our lethal-est of LETHAL Ladies, will regain her memory. If that happens, the baddies won't know what hit them.

This might be my least favorite of these films, which doesn't mean I didn't like it, I just didn't like it as much as the others. The kidnapping and amnesia thing almost turns Speir's Donna Hamilton into more of a damsel in distress, and the part where one of the baddies convinces her that they were a couple, leading to their love scene, was uncomfortable. It may not have been a rape scene in a forced sense, but there was definitely a lack of consent there that put it along those lines. On the other hand, when Dona's character had her faculties, she was fantastic, which made it all the more frustrating when we lose it for that chunk in the middle. My favorite is when she's in the plane after she was kidnapped, and she tosses one of her captors out of the plane, then grabs a parachute and grenade. The pilot tells her "you don't have the stones," to which she says "I don't have the stones?" Then she pulls the pin and jumps out of the plane before it blows up. That's the kickass Speir we want. We also get Rodrigo Obregon back after missing him in the previous film. It's just not a LETHAL Ladies film without him, and he makes all of these better. Finally Al Leong and his gyrocopter were a great addition that added to the fun. While it may be my least favorite, it's still very entertaining.

With this film, Dona Speir now has 6 films on the site, which doesn't sound like much, but it ties her with Shannon Tweed and Jillian McWhirter for fourth most tags for a woman on the DTVC. Above her are Cynthia Rothrock, who has 42, and then a big drop down to Kathleen Kinmont at 8, and Lisa London at 7. We have one more LETHAL Ladies film that she was in, Fit to Kill, so that'll get her to 7, but after that it's slim pickin's, maybe a couple more that we could do, leaving her shy of 10. I don't know that it matters necessarily though how many she has, because the work she does in these as a female action lead, especially in the late 80s/early 90s, is most important. I'd say in comparing her to Cynthia Rothrock, this might be her Lady Dragon 2, only there Cynthia Rothrock is a more explicit damsel in distress, and her character is more overtly raped. I think with this one, the amnesia aspect might have just been a sign of a series that was running out of ideas, and they wanted to inject some intrigue into it, so this was what they came up with. As I mentioned above though, when Donna Hamilton has her faculties, she's fantastic, and gives us everything we want with her in a LETHAL Ladies film.

After Do or Die, which is the only post-Malibu Express entry in the LETHAL Ladies films to not feature Rodrigo Obregon, he's back with us now, fully scarred and eye-patched and chewing scenery. He's not the main baddie, we leave that to Geoffrey "RJ" Moore's Kane (more on him below), but what we get as sort of an intermediate baddie is fantastic. I remember in 2021 when I watched all of these films for the podcast episode with Mitch, my top actor for Letterboxd that year was Obregon, and my top director was Sidaris, a Holy Grail for a low-budget movie watcher like me--only topped in 2022 by both actor and director being Fred Williamson. For a movie series that's a lot of boobs, buttocks, and sex scenes, with shootouts and explosions mixed in, to have an actor like Obregon be one of the hallmarks is a testament to how great he is. Welcome back Mr. Obregon, we missed you.

Speaking of hallmarks, two of the hallmarks of the Fast and Furious films are one, no one ever really dies, and two, baddies become good guys in later films. Sidaris gave us the blueprint though on how that series should have done it. Ava Cadell plays an assassin in Do or Die, complete with a scene of her putting on her leather pants. She gets blown up, and that's it. Now that she's in Hard Hunted is there this whole story around how she survived the explosion and has been turned to the side of the Good Guys? No, she's just here now as new character who's part of the Good Team, helping them out by running radio station KSXY, through which she relays information to them. What about our baddie, Kane? In the previous film he was "Kaneshiro" and played by Pat Morita; now he's "Kane" and played by Geoffrey Moore. They even use footage from the previous film showing Carolyn Liu's Silk character creating the necklace that she gave Morita, and is now giving to Moore, through which the agency is able to track him. Does any of it matter to us, the fans of these films? Of course not, just like we didn't care that Erik Estrada was a baddie in Guns, and was a Good Guy as a totally different character in Do or Die. The Fast and Furious movies should've just relaxed and, instead of bringing people back from the dead, just had actors play new people. You like Jason Statham, but he was a baddie in Furious 7? Just have him play a whole new character in Fate of the Furious. It might actually be more fun for us--as these Sidaris films are more fun than the Fast and Furious films.

Finally, this is our 10th Al Leong film, which I think is a fitting one, because, while this isn't the best of his 10 films on the site, this might be his best performance. First off, I think he has more lines in this than all the other 9 combined. Second, he flies that fantastic gyrocopter, one of my favorite of all the Sidaris vehicles he uses in these films. The problem of course is, being a helicopter pilot and a baddie means he can only meet one end, and our hero Donna Hamilton was more than willing to send him there. Will from Exploding Helicopter talks about what he calls "Chekhov's Copter," which means a helicopter shows up for the sole purpose of being blown up in a later scene. In this case, we have Chekhov's Copter blown up by Chekhov's Gun, because what happens is, Al Leong is spraying our heroes with machine gun fire, hitting Bruce Penhall in the leg, forcing him to abandon his gun on the beach. Later, after our heroes have been disarmed, Donna Hamilton runs back to where the gun was left, and uses it to dispatch Mr. Leong in explosive fashion. With such fun devices being employed by Sidaris in these films, it's hard to stay angry with him for the whole Donna Hamilton amnesia thing.

And with that, let's wrap this up. This, like all the LETHAL Ladies films, are available on Tubi here in the States. While this might be my least favorite, it still has a lot of fun elements, and is worth checking out if you haven't seen it yet.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104391

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Do or Die (1991)

As we continue in our goal of getting all of Andy Sidaris's LETHAL Ladies films on the site, we have this entry from 1991, which has the distinction of being the only one from Hard Ticket to Hawaii on to not feature the great Rodrigo Obregon. Somehow we'll make it through, and with Pat Morita, James Lew, and Erik Estrada in the cast, that always helps.

Do or Die has Pat Morita as evil villain Kaneshiro, "Kane" for short, who is not happy that our heroes Dona Speir and Roberta Vasquez keep disrupting his criminal plans in previous outings. So when he corners them outside a charity luau, you'd think he'd just kill them and call it good. But then we wouldn't have a movie, so instead he has one of his goons, James Lew, attach a tracker to Speir's watch, they send the ladies on their way, and then he has six pairs of mercenaries that will each go out to kill them. Why not send them all out at once so they win with their superior numbers? Again, if they did, we wouldn't have a movie, so they go two-by-two, while Speir and Vasquez round up the gang, including a newly minted hero Erik Estrada, and they head down to Dallas and Louisiana to draw out the baddies and take them down.

As an entry in this series, this may be one of the weaker ones, but the floor on this series is so high that that still makes this better than most DTV actioners you'll watch, especially when taking the Pepsi Challenge with anything from the 2010s or 2020s. Morita is a fantastic villain, there's a good mix of action and boobs, and all the fun you'd want from one of these is there. Even if we don't have Obregon, we do have the rest of our favorites, including Bruce Penhall, Cynthia Brimhall, Michael Shane as our Abilene who can't shoot straight, Richard Bumiller as the smooth-talking agency man, and Richard Cansino and Chu Chu Malave as our bungling assassins. I think where this might be weaker, is the plot is a bit contrived--again, why is Morita not just killing them, but also, when we have the assassin teams, they're always outnumbered by our heroes, which could be a good statement on how a strong team--a "family" per se?--that sticks together can overcome pairs of baddies--but it felt off because it always felt like the baddies were at a disadvantage, which removed any element of peril. All that said, that just makes this a weaker entry for me, not a bad time overall, and this still delivers on the fun and entertainment you want from a Sidaris LETHAL Ladies film.

Another area where this had a bit of trouble is, when they made Erik Estrada a good guy, it was hard to parse him probably wanting it to be his film, and the fact that these should be Dona Speir's films. She does have her own showdown with one of Morita's baddies at the end without any help from Estrada, but he gets more of the big action scenes, which takes some away from her as the main lead. This is Speir's fifth film in the series, and even with Estrada getting some more scenes, there's also still the overarching sense that this is another one of Speir's films, and that's something that I feel like can't be understated. Recently I recorded a podcast on Olga Kurylenko with Will from Exploding Helicopter (episode 127, coming June 13th, so make sure to look for it!), and I think Kurylenko is probably above Speir in work as far as a female action lead, but Speir holds a special place as a woman in the late 80s/early 90s helming an action franchise when that wasn't being done by anyone else in the US other than Cynthia Rothrock--you may give me Linda Hamilton, but Michael Biehn is the lead for the first Terminator, and Arnold the second. The LETHAL Ladies films after Picasso Trigger are built around Dona Speir as the lead, and, again, I don't think that can be understated, and even with Estrada taking some of the limelight, there's still no question she's the lead. 

Erik Estrada is back, but instead of being his previous baddie self--who was blown up by Speir in the previous entry--he's now playing a new character. It's an interesting idea, especially as I'm looking at the Fast and Furious films as part of my DTVC Extra series that I'm running on the off fortnights where I don't have main podcast episodes. Vin Diesel's approach is to take villains and turn them into heroes in later films, which can be a stretch with someone like Statham's character where he's killing people close to them. What if they did it this way, if Statham just came back as a new character? It worked here, but could it work in something like the Fast and Furious franchise? Probably only for people who watch Sidaris films, right? This is it for him in the series though, which means it could be some time before we see him again here, but we'll see if we can't at least mix in some Light Blast or Night of the Wilding. As much as I say this should be Dona Speir's film, back in the 90s seeing his name on the bill when this was on cable would have been a big seller for me, and it was great that they were able to bring him back for a second film like this.

Going back to the Fast and Furious films, these films kind of follow a similar tract, two or three decades before Vin Diesel created the model. From Hard Ticket on, it's always about teams, working together to take down a horrible baddie, and while they may not be as culturally diverse as the crew in the Fast and Furious films, they were early in spotlighting females in lead roles--and actually unlike the Fast and Furious films where women are always supporting roles, this one goes from Speir as the lead to Julie Strain as the lead. And with this cast working on multiple films together, that sense of family bleeds through the same way Vin Diesel has it bleed through in the Fast and Furious ones. I'm sure if you asked Sidaris, he'd have loved to have had the budget Universal gives the Fast and Furious films, but based on the success of the LETHAL Ladies films, maybe when Fast Five came out we should've expected the series to be that successful too, because Diesel was working from Sidaris's playbook, only with more special effects and fewer boobs and buttockses.

Finally, I learned from this film that Dallas, TX and Shreveport, LA are less than 3 hours away from each other. It's one of those quirks about America, unless we've really been in an area for a period of time, we often don't think about how the states are connected in certain areas, or how far one place is from another. Like in my head, Dallas is further in the center of Texas, and I never think about the fact that Louisiana borders Texas, even though if you gave me a blank map of the US I could name both states and see that they border each other. It's a similar thing for me in Philadelphia, people often don't realize how close we are to New York City and Washington, DC--both cities are closer to me than Dallas is from Shreveport. This was not one of the ones that I saw when it came out--much later I saw it on TBS after 2am, that beautiful classic Sidaris opening credit sequence like comfort food for my alcohol soaked brain as I'm eating leftover junk food and trying to keep the room from spinning, I was in no position to question how the team could drive from Shereveport to Dallas so quickly--but had I seen it in middle school or high school, the geography lesson would have been invaluable. Who said Andy Sidaris films can't be educational?

And with that, let's wrap this up. As of this writing, you can catch this and all the other LETHAL Ladies films on Tubi here in the States. While it may be one of the weaker entries, it is still a lot of fun, and delivers in ways that a lot of modern films can't.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101744

And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, Holtman Arms, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Guns (1990)

As I'm continuing my work to get all of the Andy Sidaris LETHAL Ladies films here on the site, it was time for this gem from 1990. Beyond the usual suspects, the film also featured Erik Estrada as the baddie, and Danny Trejo as his main henchman. How does it get better than that? In addition to us, our friend Mitch at the Video Vacuum has covered this as well, so you can go to his site to see what he thought.

Guns has our crew at it again, this time we start in Hawai'i, where baddie Erik Estrada hires two assassins to kill Dona Speir's DEA partner, this time played by Roberta Vasquez. A case of mistaken identity leads them to kill the wrong person, but now Speir and Vasquez are on the case, along with Bruce Penhall and Michael Shane (back again as our Abilene who can't shoot straight). They track the killers to Las Vegas, where they suspect Estrada may be in on it. Not a job they can handle alone, so they team up with other old friends, including Edy (Cynthia Brimhall), who sold her restaurant in Hawai'i and now sings while working undercover there. The thing is though, could this be exactly what Estrada wants? Turns out, if they all aren't in Hawai'i, they can't stop his arms shipment coming through there.

This is an interesting entry in the series for sure. It has a fantastic cast, but in some ways that spreads us thin because we have a lot of moving parts. In later entries Sidaris does a better job of using a bigger cast like this so we feel like we don't lose anyone along the way. This one also has less nudity, which is interesting, because a big reason why Hope Marie Carlton was removed from the series after Savage Beach was she refused to do nude scenes, so had she stuck it out she may have only had to do one or two. The action was pretty solid though, as we had ninjas (one of whom was played by James Lew), exploding planes, and exploding Estradas. There were some bittersweet moments as well, as we lost Lisa London's Rocky early on, killed in the line of duty; and this is also bodybuilder John Brown's last entry in the series. The other thing was, with Estrada as the main baddie, our great Sidaris mainstay Rodrigo Obregon only has one scene, which is enough to get him a tag here, but not enough of him in a Sidaris film for my liking. Overall though, this gives you what you came for, and like all of Sidaris's LETHAL Ladies films, it's a fun watch.

With that larger cast, we don't see as much of Speir as the action lead, but the film makes no mistake that she's it. William Bumiller plays a DEA higher-up on the case with them, and there's some sense that he kind of calls the shots, but ultimately when things need doin', it's Speir that gets 'em done. She has three great scenes in particular, first being that one I took the screen of above, where she downs an airplane with her rocket launcher. Later, when ninjas invade her workout session with Shane and John Brown, she comes in and saves the day, shooting Lew with a large gun. And then finally, her end showdown with Estrada, where she brings her rocket launcher back and makes sure to use all four rockets on him. Even with her role being smaller in screen time due to the size of the cast, she reminds us why she's one of the all-time queens of action with each scene she's in. Beyond her, we have Cynthia Brimhall returning to play Edy, and Roberta Vasquez returning too, but to play a new character as Speir's partner. Same thing with both women in this, characters with a lot of agency who can take care of business and don't need their men to bail them out. The three of them should've been the real Charlie's Angels, I would've loved to have seen what they and Sidaris could've done with that movie adaptation. I've been on the fence about Speir's addition to the Hall of Fame, but I think, despite the low number of tags she'll have when all is said and done, the place she has as one of the all-time action queens is too hard to pass up.

Speaking of tags to get into the Hall of Fame, Danny Trejo is now at 29, and as we discovered with the Asylum, 30 Club is automatic entry. Whether we do another Trejo film before the fall '23 inductions, I think we should get him in anyway, because with that many tags and his volume of DTV work, he deserves it--but I think he will get at least one more tag before then, because he was in 4Got10, one of the last Dolph DTV films we have to review on the site. To get to this film on his IMDb bio, you need to page down a lot, but even in 1990 he was working a lot, as that same year he also had Marked for Death and Maniac Cop 2 come out. Here he plays Estrada's main henchman, so he's in the film a fair amount. This is unfortunately his only Sidaris film, but the fact that he was in it among his many other acting credits is really fun, and he does a great job with it. Truly one of the greats who will finally be getting his due with the DTVC this fall.

On the other end of the tag spectrum, this is only Erik Estrada's fourth, and first since we did Caged Fury in 2012. There are a couple of his I should've done by now, including the 80s classic Light Blast, and the PM flick Night of the Wilding. His performance here was a reminder of why I shouldn't have taken so long to get more of his stuff on here. It's not like he has a ton of DTV work, with more TV appearances and TV movies to his credit, but there's enough that he shouldn't have gone 11 years between posts. At the very least, we'll see him again soon when we do Do or Die, the next film we have to cover in Sidaris's LETHAL Ladies series.

Finally, a chunk of this film took place at The Rio hotel and resort in Vegas, which is a place I've actually been to. When I visited my friends in Vegas in 2013, they had a suite comped due to their poker play that we stayed in. I feel like this entrance was exactly as it looked then, over 20 years later. Last fall I had to go to San Francisco for work, and my initial flight to Oakland was cancelled, so I had to get another that involved an 8-hour layover in Vegas, but other than that, I haven't been back to Vegas since then. Seeing the Rio though brings back memories to that trip ten years ago. I was there for a week, but after about three days I'd exhausted everything I could do, and everything else cost money, and consistent streams of money. One thing that's interesting about the way Sidaris uses Vegas, is he doesn't focus on gambling. No one is playing the slots, or betting on NFL games, or belly-up to the blackjack table. We see the Rio because that advertising is helping to keep down costs and allows Sidaris to make his movie the way he wants to make it, but the Rio we're sold is less about gambling and more about luxury suites with maybe a Chuck McGann magic show or a Cynthia Brimhall musical performance thrown in. For people who have never been before, I think Vegas is worth it once, but a week is probably too long. Mix in a trip to see the Grand Canyon too.

And with that, let's wrap this up. As of this writing, all of Sidaris's LETHAL Ladies films are free to stream on Tubi and Plex here in the States. There's also a Mill Creek Blu-ray set. While this isn't my favorite of them, I don't know that there's a bad one of this series, and with that in mind Guns is definitely a great time.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099720

And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, Holtman Arms, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Savage Beach (1989)

After going seven straight reviews on newer movies, it was time to go back to the 80s, and back to our work on reviewing all of Andy Sidaris's LETHAL Ladies movies, which I've been doing since 2021 when I watched them all in one go for my podcast episode on Dallas Connection with Mitch from the Video Vacuum, which you can check out in our archives, episode 82. In addition to us and Mitch on his site, Joe Bob Briggs has also covered this, in a review he wrote in 1989 for the Orlando Sentinel, so you can see what he thought too.

Savage Beach follows our favorite DEA agent Dona Speir and her civilian sister Hope Marie Carlton, busting drug dealers while working under cover as air couriers in Hawai'i. On one such delivery trip, they get caught in a storm and end up stranded on a deserted island. Turns out it ain't so deserted, between the Japanese WWII vet who's been living there for 40 years, and then the Filipino Marxist dissident (Rodrigo Obregon), US Navy officer (John Aprea), and mysterious other guy who snuck into their group (Bruce Penhall) coming to find gold. Everyone is on a collision course to wackiness, but will our lethal ladies survive this savage beach?

This is another great one from Sidaris. Yes, there are a ton of moving parts, some of which don't exactly make any sense, but does it matter here? I'm okay with a guy on a computer talking about "probability vectors" if he's saying it to John Aprea, Bruce Penhall, and the great Rodrigo Obregon with a fantastic mustache. Joe Bob Briggs described the stranded WWII vet as "Claymation" due to the make-up they used to make him look old. In another movie maybe that's a detriment, but here it just added to the fun. One issue was, due to the myriad moving parts, we didn't get as much Dona Speir as the lead doing her action lead thing until the end, but that's a "minor quibble" (as the guy from Trekkies said) in what is an otherwise fun ride. Like all of Sidaris's other films, there is plenty of toplessness from both the women, and a couple of the guys, so if you're in a mixed group of movie watchers, this may not be as good a pick, but also like all of Sidaris's other films, if everyone knows what this will be going in, this is a sure bet for a fun movie night.

Going back to Speir as the lead, this is the first one in Sidaris's LETHAL Ladies films where he completely pivots to having her be the focus and completely diminishes the Abilene who can't shoot straight character--which is now "Shane Abilene," played by Michael Shane, who I believe was a Playgirl model in his own right--as an aside, I remember when my mom turned 30, her best friend got her a Playgirl magazine as a birthday present. I wonder if Shane was in that issue...? Anyway, this is supposed to be about Dona Speir. In the last Sidaris review I did, Picasso Trigger, I talked about how I had her fifth after Pam Grier, Michelle Yeoh, Cynthia Rothrock, and Zoe Saldana among top female action leads, right above Milla Jovovich and Michelle Rodriguez. You could make a case that Jovovich and Rodriguez could be above her, but not only did Sidaris give Speir the franchise with this film, but he did it in 1989, at a time when the film industry wasn't keen on female action leads, let alone giving women the leads in a franchises. The idea that we'd write off her contributions because she's taking off her top because her character is changing her clothes while piloting a plane that's about to crash land is also very 1989. Speir has "it" as the lead in this, and from the moment that plane crash lands, we know she's going to do whatever needs to be done to take care of this situation; and when she and Carlton are caught by Obregon, Aprea, and Penhall, and Obregon says "let's tie them up!" she warns them that that will be a mistake--we're not just here to be damsels in distress, we've got guns and we know how to use them! Yes, the myriad moving parts diminishes a bit of her first time officially taking the helm in this film, but she still takes it and affirms why Sidaris was right in making that move in the series.

Look at that James Lew hair! We haven't seen him in over two years, when we did Star Raiders, a film where he played a baddie who had the top half of his head missing, so to come back with this entry where he's sporting that beautiful lettuce is fantastic. Also love the skinny tie. This is how we need our Lew in a film, and I know father time has come in to steal that amazing moss from the top of his head, a true travesty, we can come back to gem like this movie and see it in its full glory for us. On top of that, we get a great fight between him and Al Leong, who, I had no idea, didn't have a tag before this post! It turned out, that kind of made sense, in that this is only his 9th film on the site--compared to now 15 for Lew. As I looked over his filmography, I see a few reasons for this: one, he doesn't have as many DTV credits as Lew, and also doesn't have as many of the meatier roles Lew's had--a lot of Leong's parts are "Asian Thug" in bigger screen roles. That's one thing that's great here, is Leong has a bigger part, but also we get to see him fight Lew, two 80s/90s bit part character actors facing off. In his review of this, Mitch said everyone has their favorite Sidaris moment, and for me it's in Hard Ticket to Hawaii when harold Diamond and Ronn Moss pass a man riding his skateboard with his hands, and Moss says "Man, he must be smoking some heavy doobies," but after that, that fight between Lew and Leong, just for the novelty of it, has to be up there. Here's to you James Lew and Al Leong, you are two of the greats.

Because I watched all of the Sidaris LETHAL Ladies movies in 2021, that year for Letterboxd my top actor was Rodrigo Obregon and my top director was Andy Sidaris. Beyond the fact that that was fantastic to post that on Twitter for my year-in-review, it also goes to show what a great run Obregon and Sidaris had together. Mitch calls Sidaris "the Skinamax Alfred Hitchcock," and like all great auteurs he has his mainstays, but it's hard to think of another pairing between actor and director that have been as fruitful and iconic. Yes, Scorsese has had his collaborations with De Niro and DiCaprio, or Ozu with Setsuko Hara and Chishu Ryu, or Kurosawa and Mifune, or Fellini with Mastroianni--the lists are endless, but there's something about Sidaris and Obregon that has a comfort food quality, like that first bite of an In-N-Out Double-Double when I'm on the West Coast, or a Wiz Wit cheesesteak at Tony Luke's--it's comforting, but almost unctuous in its comfort. I hadn't tagged Obregon before this, so I rectified that issue, and while the bulk of his now 6 tags are Sidaris films, he does have one that wasn't: the Olivier Gruner/Isaac Florentine Western actioner Savate. Also, if you're wondering, 2022's Letterboxd top director and actor for me were both Fred Williamson. I think if it wasn't going to be Sidaris and Obregon again, Williamson sweeping both was the way to go.

Finally, I wanted to vent about a pet peeve of mine. Often, and it seems to be in commercials more than anything, so that probably explains the inanity enough right there, but we see this thing where someone asks, thinking they're so smart and clever, "why does Hawai'i have interstate highways?" Oh you're so witty! That's hilarious! Don't forget your sly grin emoji! Why does Hawai'i have interstate highways? Because interstate highways get money from the federal government for their upkeep, and the people of Hawai'i pay federal taxes. Alaska and Puerto Rico have them too, yet no one mentions those in their witty commercial conversations that are telling us absolutely nothing about the product their selling--seriously, what does Jason Bateman asking about why Hawai'i has interstate highways have to do with a car's performance? Yes, they aren't technically interstate, but neither is Interstate 4 in Florida, or Interstate 27 in Texas. Also, the reason why we have 21 as our drinking age is due to the fact that the Interstate Highway system in America is funded by the federal government. When a group of prom-goers crashed their car in the late 80s, a group of Karens known as Mothers Against Drunk Driving lobbied the federal government to raise the drinking age, and they used federal highway funds to pressure states to raise the age to 21. Don't want go back up to 21? Fine, your Interstate Highways can fall apart then. So while you can go to prison or get killed in a war at 18 here in the States, you have to wait until 21 to buy a sixer of Pabst Blue Ribbon pounders. If only we had Twitter and Tik Tok in the late 80s, we could've shamed those MADD Karens into submission on social media before they got up a head of steam. Those Gen Z kids would've known what to do with them!

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can still stream the Sidaris LETHAL Ladies films on Tubi here in the States, so unless you invest in the DVD boxed set--which I will be soon--Tubi is a good deal--and if you're over 21, you can drink legally while watching them. This is a fun entry in the series, and notable both for Speir taking over the helm from the Abilene who can't shoot straight, and for the Lew-Leong fight. 

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098257

And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, Holtman Arms, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Picasso Trigger (1988)

In our continuing goal of getting all of the Sidaris LETHAL Ladies films on the site, we come to this film here, the fourth one we've covered so far. With 12 total in the series, I guess we can say we're a third of the way there, so we're not quite like Tommy and Gina living on a prayer. In addition to us, our friend Mitch at the Video Vacuum has covered this--and he was on our podcast episode about Dallas Connection where we discussed all the Sidaris films--and Bulletproof Action--though not Todd Gaines, who's renown for being big on all of these movies.

Picasso Trigger has John Aprea as a crime boss of the same code name who is killed by fellow crime boss Rodrigo Obregon. From there, Obregon tries to kill off all the agents that put his brother in jail, which means the Agency needs to call their best agents into action to take him and his cronies down. Leading the crew is a new Abilene, Travis (Steve Bond), who still can't shoot straight, but is doing well with the ladies, moving between Dona Speir, and the mysterious agent Pantera (Roberta Vasquez), whom he dated in college. Will Abilene and his crew be able to take all these baddies down?

This, like the others in the LETHAL Ladies series, is a lot of fun. I think this takes what was established in Hard Ticket to Hawaii and turns it up even more. We have all the guns, explosions, remote control toys, dirt bikes, jet skies, and Ferraris you'd want, plus all the boobs and buttocks. There are also a lot of names in this, from the classics we all know and love like Speir, Obregon, Hope Marie Carlton, Cynthia Brimhall and Harold Diamond, but we also get DTVC favorite Keith Cooke, Bruce Penhall in his first appearance in the series, and Dennis Alexio, one short year before he was killed in Kickboxer so Van Damme could go to Thailand and have a great drunk dancing scene. On the other hand, this might not be as much of a classic as some of the others--like Hard Ticket to Hawaii--so if you're introducing people to the series, or you're getting into them yourself, you might want to try one of those others first, and come to this one after. Still worth your viewing though.

By the time we get to this third film, you could sense that the Abilene who can't shoot straight may have lost its luster a bit. I think more than anything that's because Steve Bond, while good, isn't as remarkable as the original Darby Hinton, or Ronn Moss after, who was also a step down from Hinton. I realized when I wrote the Hard Ticket to Hawaii review that I'd jumped the gun on when Sidaris moved from lessening the role of the Abilene who can't shoot straight character and making Dona Speir the lead, as it wasn't this movie, but the next one, Savage Beach. I think I've mentioned this before, but that run by Speir in her seven Sidaris films has to put her up there as one of the greatest female action leads. When you look at some of the names people generally throw out there like Milla Jovovich and Angelina Jolie, she's right up there with the number of credits, and she was doing it before them. For me I might have her top five, after Pam Grier, Cynthia Rothrock, Michelle Yeoh, and Zoe Saldana. After Speir I'd have names like Michelle Rodriguez, Jovovich, Jolie, etc. Yes, these movies are a lot of fun, and have a lot of T n' A, but that shouldn't diminish from what Speir was doing here and her role as an all-time action lead.

Obregon's hatchet men were played by Keith Cooke and Bruce Penhall. For Cooke, this was his first role before he jumps into Rothrock's China O'Brien series as Dakota. He also used his birth surname here, Hirabayashi--Cooke is his mother's maiden name. He doesn't do any martial arts in this, which is kind of too bad, considering Harold Diamond is in this, I'd love to have seen them get after it. Penhall of course would come to be known for these films, but in this first of the 8 he did, he plays a baddie. It's like the Fast and Furious movies where the baddies join the good guys in later films, only instead of the mental gymnastics required to believe that after Jason Statham's character was trying to murder Vin Diesel that that would suddenly be water under the bridge; here Sidaris just has Penhall play different characters, first Bruce Christian in the Speir films, and then Chris Cannon when the series shifts to being led by Julie Strain.

This is our second Harold Diamond film on the site, the first being when we did Hard Ticket to Hawaii. He's a fascinating specimen of the late 80s/early 90s. The hair, the voice, the shirts and jumpsuits that absolutely must be worn open, it all works so much on that level; but at the same time, he's a great martial artist, which makes him a lot of fun to watch. Especially good here was his fight scene with Dennis Alexio, which Diamond choreographed. Looking at his IMDb bio, he hasn't done much. He has 10 credits, but as far as what we'd do here, he has these two Sidaris movies, two Amir Shervan films, a Zagarino actioner, and then in 2017 he was in an Asylum joint, King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, where he plays Merlin. Interestingly enough, that was going to be the film I was going to do for their DTVC Hall of Fame induction post, not knowing Diamond was in it, but I opted for Fast and Fierce: Death Race instead after I fell behind and didn't end up doing their post until the May after. Now knowing it has Diamond makes it more intriguing.

Finally, this movie has something in common with another film released the same year, The Secret of King Mahi's Island, they both have explosives attached to a boomerang used as a weapon. Unlike the Daniels flick that uses it to blow up a helicopter, in this it's used to blow up Penhall. Was this a case of polygenesis, or was there an explosive boomerang that predated these movies as the inspiration? I thought maybe a Bond movie I've never seen may have done it, but I couldn't find anything. Also there was the DC baddie Captain Boomerang, who employed explosive boomerangs. Could Sidaris and one of the writers of The Secret of King Mahi's Island have been into comics and liked the idea of that? One element of this movie that I'm pretty sure was sui generis, was the use of Chekhov's Pacemaker. In the opening of the film we find out that baddie John Aprea has a pacemaker, and as we know, you can't mention that a character has a pacemaker in the opening unless you plan to use it at the end, which Sidaris does. How he does is another stroke of brilliance: a homing missile launched from a modified crutch.

And with that, let's wrap this up. As of right now, this is available to stream free here in the US on Tubi. Take advantage of it while you can, because last year these were all taken down. At that time, when they were all available, I watched all 12 in preparation of my podcast episode with Mitch, so when Letterboxd told me who my most watched director and actor of the year were, I got Sidaris and Obregon. So far this year Sidaris is behind Scorsese for me, 4 to 2; but Obregon is way behind guys like Adkins, Dolph, Zagarino, and Hues, especially after I did a bunch of their movies in anticipation of podcast episodes on them. It looks like I need to binge another complete series to get them both back up there.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095867

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

Hard Ticket to Hawaii (1987)

In March of 2021 I did a podcast episode with Mitch from the Video Vacuum on Dallas Connection, but really it was on all the Sidaris LETHAL Ladies movies. Since then I've been trying to get all of those films reviewed here on the site, which brings us now to this gem. In addition to us and Mitch, our friends Todd Gaines at Bulletproof action and RobotGEEK's Cult Cinema, have covered this.

Hard Ticket to Hawaii is kind of a sequel to Malibu Express, only now we have Cody's cousin Rowdy (Ronn Moss), and he works for the DEA with Donna (Donna Speir) and Jade (Harold Diamond). When Speir and her close friend, Taryn (Hope Marie Carlton), come across some stolen diamonds, they open up a world of hurt for local drug kingpin Seth Romero (Rodrigo Obregon), and he wants revenge. He takes their friend and fellow DEA agent, Edy (Cynthia Brimhall) hostage, and now it's up to Rowdy and crew to go in and get her out. At the same time, Donna and Taryn were transporting a large snake that got loose, and said snake has been contaminated with cancer. With all this happening, when will our heroes find time for topless hot tub moments and love scenes?

This film is simply fantastic. What else is there to say? Like I don't even know if that description does the movie justice, but by the same token, if you haven't seen this, I don't know how much I want to tell you and risk ruining you experiencing it all organically. It has a mix of serious and tongue-in-cheek that few films are able to pull off well, but Sidaris just gets it, and his cast does too. The one nit you may pick is that a lot of the backstory is delivered in dialog. "You're did this, this, and this some time in the past." "But do you remember when you did this, this, and this?" The thing is though, we always say, don't let the plot get in the way of the action, and I'd rather a line of dialog do what a five (or, gasp, ten!) minute scene would do so we get more people getting blown up with rocket launchers, more topless hot tub scenes, and more dirt bikes driving through walls of houses. This is the pure 80s Sidaris gem you came for.

While this is technically the sequel to Malibu Express, this is really the one that sets the stage for what the next ten of Sidaris's LETHAL Ladies movies will be; only after this one, the Abilene who can't shoot character gets diminished, and Donna Speir's character becomes the lead, up until she leaves the series and Julie Strain comes in. We also get our first Rodrigo Obregon as the baddie in this one, and he sticks around for all of the next ten films--meaning he probably should get a tag on here soon too. This establishes what I understood late-night cable viewing to be growing up, and while before I revisited all of them for the podcast episode I did with Mitch I couldn't tell you one movie from another, they still had that indelible impact that played a large role in getting me here to creating this site, and I think that can't be understated. In the trivia Sidaris said he funded this with the money he made from Malibu Express so he wouldn't be beholden to a studio. We here at the DTVC always want to support indie filmmakers, but also, it means we wouldn't have had the classics we ended up with had Sidaris been forced to compromise, and for that I'm grateful.

Also according to the IMDb trivia, Donna Speir said she was intoxicated for much of the production, but that Andy and Arlene Sidaris liked what she did and offered her a chance to come back in the sequel, which led to her getting sober. That decision to bring her back also changes the tenor of these movies from standard actioners led by fun, philandering playboys, to more female-driven films which weren't the standard at that time. We talk about how so few movies we do here on the DTVC pass the Bechdel Test, but this one does--even if Hope Marie Carlton is topless in one of the scenes. There's another scene where Sidaris plays a seedy filmmaker meeting with an actress he wants to cast. She says to him "you practically raped me last night!" and he tries to gaslight her and tell her how much he likes her as a person and wants to see her succeed. Not only does it give us a glimpse of what Hollywood was almost 30 years before Me Too--I mean Sidaris sounds exactly how Weinstein sounded when he was caught on tape trying to explain away an assault on an actress when he was talking to her the next day--but it also puts these LETHAL Ladies movies into a different kind of exploitation category. Because of how ahead of their time they were as far as female action leads, maybe we should be putting Speir up there as one of the best female action leads of all time.

Anytime I'm watching a movie from the 80s, it's fun to immerse myself in the trends and fashions that were cool at that time, but it was interesting here to see a couple trends that are popular now. One, on a few occasions the women wear leggings and boots, which is pretty much standard attire nowadays. When Speir and Carlton join Moss and Diamond in storming the baddie's lair to rescue their friend, they could've been wearing the same thing today and no one would've noticed--Moss on the other hand in his Speedo would've been a bit much. Also in storming the baddie's lair, Diamond opted for a man bun to keep his hair out of his face. It's not like the modern man bun though, it was more like what an older female guest star on All in the Family would've sported. Beyond that, there was one old term that I loved hearing. When one of the baddies passes Moss and Diamond by riding a skateboard upside down on his hands, Moss says "he must be smoking some heavy doobies." I don't remember the last time I referred to a joint as a "dooby." And not only that, but "heavy doobies," Just more of why this movie is so amazing.

Finally, people may think the snake in this looks ridiculous, but to me, what looks ridiculous is when people use real snakes in movies instead of just leaving the snakes alone to be snakes in the wild; or when people in Florida need pythons as pets, then let the snakes escape, so now they're in the ecosystem trying to swallow deer and alligators. Give me all the rubber snake puppets you have as the alternative. Just like, I want CGI lions, tigers, and bears, no matter how fake they look, instead of needing the real animals on movie sets. You want to have a real cat sitting on crate like we had during the end credits of this? That works for me. You need to have a chimp playing basketball? No, leave the damn chimp alone. If Lucas can use computers to insert Hayden Christensen into the end of Return of the Jedi, we can use computers to replace animals in our movies--with Hayden Christensen? And if it's not a computer, I'm happy with the puppet snake they used here.

And with that, let's wrap this up. As of my writing this, you can get this on Tubi here in the States. It's an absolute must watch, but also with it on Tubi, it's good for a rewatch as well if you haven't seen it in a while. Finally, you can find the podcast episode Mitch and I did on Sidaris movies in the archives under the title "Dallas Connection."

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093146

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