Steel Frontier (1995)

This is one I discussed on episode 3 of Jon Cross's PM Entertainment Podcast, which was a really fun conversation, and now we're finally giving it a review here. In addition to us and the PM Podcast, Chad Cruise at Bulletproof, Ty and Brett at Comeuppance, Outlaw Vern, Tom Jolliffe at Flickering Myth, and Mitch at the Video Vacuum have covered this as well.

Steel Frontier takes place six years ago, after the apocalypse, where the world is a big Mad Max-ish mess, and a horrible conqueror (Brion James) has gathered up a bunch of baddies and taken over all the peaceful tire farming towns in the LA County area. Is there any hope? Sure, as is often the case, a heroic lone drifter comes into town (Joe Lara). He starts off by joining the gang, and then does a bit of a Yojimbo move to get Brion James's gang to kill each other. Will he eventually succeed? And in true PM fashion, will he require a lot of explosions and car chases to do so?

This one jumped to number 9 on my all-time PM list (which you can find on the DTVC Letterboxd), that's how much I enjoyed it, and Jon felt the same way. This is PM doing the Italian late-80s Mad Max exploitation flick, but doing it in true PM style. The exploitation comes in the form of violence, with explosions and car chases, which is nice because we don't get the usual sexual assault or other sexual exploitation the Italian films liked to do. We get some great Joe Lara as the lead, Brion James is a fantastic baddie, and the addition of Bo Svenson as James's second-in-command was solid too. From there you get all the beautiful PM action goodness you expect when you see the PM logo on the spine of your VHS, including this massive chimney explosion that the IMDb trivia says is the largest PM ever pulled off--and that's saying a lot considering this is PM we're talking about! PM gets it right again, and we're all better for it.

Out of all the Joe Lara films I've seen--which isn't that many, he's only at 8 now on the site--this is my favorite. He's everything you want in the roguish, Western hero, and we can't wait to see him enter this town and take out James and all his baddies. Another place where this movie deviated from the late 80s Italian films is they didn't do the whole "hero captured and tortured by the baddies, then he recovers and gets his revenge" penultimate act, which was refreshing for me. While I liked Hologram Man better as a film overall, this is the better Lara film for sure, and it's too bad he didn't get more roles like this. By my count, we have 7 or 8 more of his films that we could review, and I don't know how many of those we'll actually cover because they look hard to track down, so he may top out at around 12 movies, and I think that's okay considering how good a job he does here.

PM is closing in on the 50 Club at the DTVC, we're only one away now, and this is one I probably could've used for that milestone, but I didn't want to wait on it too long after the PM podcast episode was released. That's okay, I think there are some great candidates for the big 5-0, there's no shortage of fantastic PM flicks. What makes this one so good, is it's their take on this post-apocalyptic/Mad Max subgenre, and they successfully make it the PM version, they never get away from what they were best at. In the PM Podcast episode, Jon interviews both Paul Volk and Jacobson Hart, and they give great insights on what made this work. Hart in particular talked about how PM didn't do sexual exploitation, that their "exploitation cinema" was the action, and they nail it, especially with two great chase scenes, and that aforementioned chimney explosion. When you see PM on the spine, or listed under company credits if you look a movie up after seeing the thumbnail on a streaming site, you expect a certain level of fun, low-budget action, and this one delivers on that in a way that exceeded even those expectations.

Part of why this works so well is the stunt team PM puts together. The stunt coordinator/second-unit director is Michael J. Sarna, who has done a bunch of other PM flicks--including my personal number two all-time from them, The Sweeper, where he was stunt coordinator under Spiro Razatos as action director--plus the David Bradley classic Hard Justice, and a personal video store mainstay of mine, The Perfect Tenant--which I can't believe I haven't covered yet! In addition to him, we have 50 Club member Art Camacho, and soon to be inducted 50 Club Member Cole S. McKay, plus "Broadway" Joe Murphy sans his stunt coordinating partner Red Horton. And as if all those names weren't enough, we have stunt legend Kane Hodder as one of Brion James's gang, though not credited as doing any stunt work. Guess with all the PM names they had they were able to let him take a break on this one! This is part of the PM magic, let these great stunt names do their thing, and the result is this high-octane alchemy that was the secret to their success.

Finally, we'd be remiss if we didn't mention Brian Huckeba's "Chicken Boy" role. As Jon pointed out, this was a kind of character that showed up in Ozploitation films that this movie is in the tradition of, and Huckeba goes all in on his performance. It just makes things that much more fun and memorable, and with low-budget filmmaking every little bit helps. When the guys at Comeuppance reviewed this, Huckeba commented on it, and if you listen to the PM Podcast episode, Jon interviews him in addition to Paul Volk and Jacobson Hart, and he gives Jon some great jewels when recalling his experience on set. It would be easy for Huckeba to look at this part as a one-off in his career, maybe something he shows his family 30 years later so they can all have some laughs, but the fact that he's still this enthusiastic about this part today is great to see. It's more fun for us to embrace it if the people involved are embracing it too.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently get this on Tubi, Prime, the Roku Channel, and Fawesome here in the States. That's a great way to catch this, but also if you see it in the wild on VHS, pick it up. And if you haven't yet, subscribe and listen to the PM Entertainment Podcast on your favorite podcatcher. Jon is delivering the PM podcast we've wanted for years, you need to check it out.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114537/

And if you haven't yet, check out my newest book, Nadia and Aidan, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Deadly Impact aka Impatto mortale (1984)

With this weekend being the Super Bowl here in the States, and with the Kansas City Chiefs one of the participants, I figured we'd do a Fred Williamson film, considering he played in the first Super Bowl for that same Chiefs team. Also, this is a good time for us to officially celebrate his entry into the 30 Club. In addition to us, the guys at Comeuppance and The Video Vacuum have covered this, so we're completing the triangle with our review.

Deadly Impact has Bo Svenson as a detective on the edge who likes to crash cars. He's investigating the murder of a young computer programmer along with his hustler/helicopter pilot buddy, Fred Williamson. They discover the murdered young man had software that allowed him to see when slot machines in Vegas would hit, and some baddies wanted all the money he'd won. Now it's a race against time, as the baddies are looking to kidnap the young man's girlfriend to find out where their money was, and our heroes need to stop them. Will they make it in time? And if they do, how many cars will Svenson crash in the process?

This is a fun one for sure. As Ty and Brett said in their review, this is an Italian production rip-off/cover movie of 48 Hours, and with that in mind we'd rather have Bo Svenson and Fred Williamson than Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy. The two of them are a fantastic pair and have great chemistry, which makes them enjoyable to watch. It is a bit on the dark side (John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band?)--I mean, our baddies are leaving a trail of bodies all over Phoenix that would make most mass killers in history blush. That said, when people aren't being murdered, the car chases are fantastic. Just when you think they could be going on too long, one of the cars suddenly flips over somethings and lands on it's roof. How do you not love that? And Svenson's character in particular seems to love crashing into things--the moment he borrows someone's car you know that's it for it. The helicopter chase we get near the end was fun too, culminating in a sweet helicopter explosion. The other thing is, for the juvenile minded of us out there, of which I count myself among them, the word "hacker" hadn't been coined yet, at least not officially, so the term used in this was "computer penetration," and what we know of as "cyber security" was "penetration prevention." I'm giggling about it as I'm writing it. Finally, speaking of Phoenix, we get some nice shots of the city in the 1980s, plus even better, shots of 1980s Vegas, which looks fantastic. If you can find a copy of this, it's worth checking out.

For years we've been talking about getting Fred Williamson into the 30 Club, and when we finally do it, it ends up being a tiny cameo at the end of The Outlaw Johnny Black, so while this is technically his 31st film on the site, I figured we'd use this one to truly celebrate his entry--though even this one is more of a Bo Svenson film, with Williamson playing his sidekick. In less than a month from my writing this, he'll be 86 years old, and he still has in production credits on IMDb. Even without those, I count around 25 films of his that we could do on this site that we haven't yet, so the 40 and 50 Club are definitely possibilities, I just need to review his films at a more consistent clip--which has been the thing that's kept him out of the 30 Club for so long. There's also the element of him being a director, with him being the only member of the 20-10 Club--20+ films as an actor, 10+ films as a director. We do have a couple more of the films he's directed that we can do here as well, I just need to track them down. One thing I liked about this one, was it was an Italian production, but it didn't take place in the future or after the apocalypse. Not that I don't enjoy seeing Williamson in those films too, but this one was a nice change of pace. One of the greatest to ever do it, finally joining the 30 Club here at the DTVC. It's an honor that's long overdue and well-deserved.

As I mentioned above, this also has Bo Svenson. In looking over his bio, I didn't realize how similar to Dolph he is. Both from Sweden, both came here to study--Dolph mechanical engineering, Svenson metaphysics--both fell into acting, and both are 6'5" and athletic. The big difference I think is the size of the big break each got, where Svenson's came in replacing Paul Newman as Robert Redford's co-star in The Great Waldo Pepper, and Dolph's was as Ivan Drago in the hit blockbuster Rocky IV, which led to the lead in another blockbuster, Masters of the Universe. The two did team up in The Killing Machine, which was directed by Dolph, so we at least have that. As far as team-ups go though, it's his work with Williamson that's the best, and this film is another example of that. In Williamson's later films, Svenson would often play a baddie, so it was cool to see the two of them working together and bantering with each other, as Svenson crashed Williamson's car that only had two notes left on it.

We get to use the McDonald's tag for the twelfth time, as this film has not one but two locations, one in Vegas, and then the one above in Phoenix. While I have had McDonald's in Vegas before, I've never been out of the Phoenix airport to have been able to get it there--I did get it near the Grand Canyon though, so I have had it in the state of Arizona. What's great here is the baddies are using the payphone at McDonald's, which I don't know if we've ever seen before. Before the advent of the mass availability cellphones, I remember using payphones at McDonald's, smelling the fries cooking, the scent almost like an anthropomorphized hand pulling me in like you might see with a pie cooling on a windowsill in an old cartoon, I couldn't wait to get my call done so I could get inside and order, despite having had no plan to get anything prior to making that phone call. It was a business model for them that went away when payphones were no longer necessary, but back in 1984 it was in full effect as we watched the two baddies go inside after their call, seemingly unable to resist the siren song of McDonald's. Here in Philly many of the McDonald's near us have closed, so instead of that great French fry smell, it's the Popeye's fried chicken, which can be just as alluring.

Finally, I caught this billboard advertising Arizona State football games on the radio as this car flew past it. It reminded me that in 1984 the Phoenix area didn't have an NFL team yet. I looked it up, the St. Louis Cardinals moved there for the 1988 season--in fact St. Louis has lost two NFL teams in my life, first the Cardinals, and then they got the LA Rams in 1995, where they stayed until they moved back to LA in 2015. It's a strange concept to the rest of the world I think, that in US pro sports--and Canadian when those teams play in the US pro leagues--teams can move around like that. In fact, two of Phoenix's four professional teams are from other cities, as they got their hockey team, the Coyotes, from Winnipeg--don't worry, Winnipeg eventually got Atlanta's NHL team, so they have NHL hockey again. This also shows how much Phoenix has grown in the 40 years since this film was made. They went from having only one top tier professional team, the Phoenix Suns of the NBA, to now one in each of the four sports; and is also now the fifth largest city in the US by population if you just go by city limits, more than doubling their population between the 1980 census where they had just shy of 800,000 people, to the 2020 census, where they had over 1.6 million people. You'd like to think this film helped that trend of growth, but actually there was a 10% dip in population growth between 1970 and 1980, where they had 35% growth, and 1980 and 1990, where they only had 25% growth. My hunch is seeing Svenson driving around like a maniac scared some people off.

And with that, let's wrap this up. I caught this on Plex here in the States, but you can see that that version they have available isn't much better than a VHS rip on YouTube--in fact, you even get the same tracking issues at some points--and Plex is one of the worst for commercials, every 15 minutes you get about 150 seconds-worth, which is a pain, but it's better than nothing, and this is worth checking out however you can.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087461

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

The Kill Reflex aka Soda Cracker (1989)

This is one that was on Tubi, and in the interests getting more Williamson on the site, I needed to make it happen. Also, I was a guest on the Comeuppance podcast where we went over our top 5 Williamson flicks, and I figured I should watch this on the off-chance it makes my list. In addition to us and Comeuppance, there are only two other critic reviews on IMDb: action mainstays Bulletproof Action, and Down Among the "Z" movies with Steve Q.  

The Kill Reflex is a film based off a novel called Soda Cracker, where Williamson plays the eponymous hero--Soda Cracker, not The Kill Reflex--though a copy of this says "Fred Williamson is the Kill Reflex." Anyway, Williamson's partner is killed, and he wants revenge. He and new partner Maud Adams have to deal with pressure from the top, which makes them think something fishy is afoot, especially after he sets his sights on local drug kingpin Bo Svenson, whose recent release from prison seems to coincide too well with Fred's partner's untimely death. But as they dig deeper, will they like what they find? Could Fred's partner have been dirty? At least he's taking his partner's son to the shooting range.

This isn't the best Fred, but it's the kind of Fred that's good because it's Fred, if that makes sense. The movie starts with him waking up his partner and partner's wife by playing loud music and making them breakfast. The story isn't giving us much beyond that, but I can see why Fred would've wanted to adapt it into a film. He loves the Chicago hard-boiled detective type, and this is definitely that. From an action standpoint though, this is more drama, and I think Fred excels more when his movie has less story and more action. The other thing this one lacks is names. We have him, Maud Adams, Bo Svenson, and then small parts from Frank Pesce and Phyllis Hyman. I think this could've used any of a Gary Busey, John Saxon, David Carradine, Jim Brown, or Robert Forster to enhance the proceedings. Still, as a Fred fan, this is a fun enough watch.

We're still on the march to get Fred into the 30 Club. After doing the podcast episode with Ty and Brett, I have a few Fred flicks in the hopper--though I also dug into more of his older Blaxploitation stuff too, which may not fit as much on here, at least not until we cover more of his DTV stuff first. That means we're at 23 for him, and at the rate I'm doing reviews overall, let alone Williamson reviews, we may not get there until next year. Another list he's moving up is the director list, with this being his 9th directed film on the DTVC. That puts him in a tie for seventh with Jim Wynorski and Jesse V. Johnson, but other than Albert Pyun's 42 director credits, no one else has more than 15, so he could move up this list. (Also of note, Dolph is quietly moving up this list too, with 6 director credits so far. We might have to create a 60-10 Club for him!) This film is another one for Fred completists more than anything. I don't know that I can recommend it outside of being a Williamson movie, but often with his movies, he's the biggest factor in it working, so maybe a good Williamson quotient is all you really need.

Maud Adams was in this, a mere six years after she was in Octopussy. Interestingly enough, this is back-to-back reviews with an Octopussy alum, after we did The Return of Swamp Thing with Louis Jourdan last week. You'd think being a "Bond Girl" would get you bigger parts, but it doesn't look like it worked out that way for her, which might have been a commentary on how some of those Roger Moore Bond flicks were received by the industry--even if they're some of my favorites. I think her part here is really any woman from the late 80s--lots of coats with shoulder pads, lighter shades of lipstick, and hair that's teased but not too teased. I just think of how many family Christmas parties I went to around this time where aunts dressed like this. She does great though in this role, her and Williamson have good chemistry, and she works well as a detective. We've seen her one other time on the DTVC, in another film with Williamson, Deadly Intent, and while she didn't do a lot of stuff, she has some more DTV stuff in her filmography, so I imagine we'll see her again.

We also had soul singer Phyllis Hyman in this as Bo Svenson's girl. This was one year after she did School Daze, and looking at her bio on Wikipedia, it seems like her career was still going well enough at this time, so I wonder if she did this part as a favor for Williamson. One of the great female soul singers who happened to be around when there were so many greats that I don't know if she always gets her due, especially when she didn't have as many hits; she also struggled with bipolar disorder, which caused her to turn to drugs and alcohol, and tragically take her own life in 1995. If you watch the Whispers' Unsung episode, they talk about how they were on the bill with her at the Apollo when it was announced that she died, and rather than cancel they decided to go on with show in her honor. Another one of the great soul acts who are overshadowed by the number of great acts from their era.

Finally, because this was based on a novel, I was curious to know if the author, Jaron Summers, had written anything else, or if this novel was still available. It looks like no to both questions. According to IMDb, he was a screenwriter, mostly for TV shows, who hasn't done any work since 2012. A lot of the work he did do was an episode here or there for TV shows like Miami Vice or The Incredible Hulk, so exactly the kind of thing that would've lent itself to a novel that could've been adapted into a film like this one. I wonder where the idea came from though: was he eating a lot of soda crackers, and thought "what if there was a hard-boiled detective who ate so many of these his colleagues called him 'Soda Cracker'?"

And with that, let's wrap this up. As of this writing, you can catch this on Tubi under the name Soda Cracker, but at least once since I've watched it a few months ago Tubi has threatened to take it down, and while it's survived, they could pull it at any time--the dangers of living and dying by streaming services. Also, if you go back into the archives on the Comeuppance Reviews podcast, episode 61, "Best Freds Forever," is the one I was a guest on where we discussed Williamson. It was a great conversation, definitely worth checking out.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097663

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

Three Days to a Kill (1992)

We have a bad tendency of losing Fred Williamson for long stretches here at the DTVC, but with his last post coming back in October, I don't know if this stretch is that bad. For example, Seagal went from September to January between posts, so October to February is almost the same thing. Anyway, I saw this was on YouTube, it was directed by Williamson as well, and had some other great names, like Bo Svenson, Chuck Connors, and Henry Silva. In addition to us, our friends Ty and Brett at Comeuppance have covered this too--almost a year to the day that we're writing this one--so you can go there to see what they thought.

Three Days to a Kill is not a movie where Steven Seagal plays an ex-CIA or whatever in Eastern Europe, but instead is about a US ambassador getting kidnapped ahead of a big speech, and Navy big wig Chuck Connors calling in ex-CIA guy in Chicago Fred Williamson to get the ambassador back. Williamson needs a demolition expert if he's going to do this right--whatever this is--so he has bank robber Bo Svenson sprung from prison so he can help with the job. Turns out the guy holding the ambassador hostage is none other than drug cartel head Henry Silva. What is his connection to sexy dancer Yolanda (or as Williamson calls her, "Yo-LANN-da")? And can they trust her?

 

It's difficult to say how much we have here beyond Williamson and some of the other cast members, but the question is, how much does it matter? No one props ups scenes on his mere presence alone the way Williamson does, and we get enough of him here for that to really count. Yes, the plot is uneven with some dead spots in the middle, and the way they treat Yolanda's character at the end is pretty rough; but when you're coming for a late 80s/early 90s Williamson flick, this has enough of what you want to make it work. I feel like in this day and age, that counts for a lot.

Beyond the fact that this is 22 films for Williamson now at the DTVC, this is also the eighth film directed by him that we've covered here. While that still puts him behind a lot of directors here on the site, other than Albert Pyun, he's not behind many of them by a lot. That for me is one of the biggest things about him, it's not just that he makes the movie often by just being in it, often he's the one making the movie, which is a reason why he's one of the greatest DTV stars ever. If you check him out on Tubi, he has a ton of stuff on there, so not only do I not have any excuse to get him in more posts, but no one has any excuse--at least not here in the US--to not catch more of his films.

 

Initially I thought this was my first Chuck Connors film on here, and I had this whole thing lined up about how I watched The Rifleman with my dad growing up, but it turns out he was on here before in Last Flight to Hell with Reb Brown, and I covered all of those points then--including his short stint with the Boston Celtics. If you look at his bio, he has a lot of DTV films around this time, many of which haven't been covered by us, but have by our friends at Comeuppance and The Video Vacuum. Unfortunately not as many of them are available on Tubi or YouTube, so I need to find some way of tracking them down. I don't know if I'd say Connors is good in this, but what does good or bad look like when it's Chuck Connors in a Fred Williamson late 80s/early 90s DTV flick? Exactly, we're just happy he's there.

Two other big names in this, Bo Svenson and Henry Silva, have made a couple appearances here on the site before, but for some reason neither had been tagged like Chuck Connors had. I'm not really sure what prompts me to tag an actor or not when I'm writing a post. Often if it's just their first post, I won't tag them, even if they're really big--which doesn't explain Chuck Connors, but I didn't say it had to make sense. Both of these guys, like Connors, had a pretty prolific late 80s/early 90s DTV run that I haven't really scratched the surface on yet. I think, though, that the appearances in these movies by guys like this was another reason why we enjoyed them so much. They added an extra flavor to the proceedings that bolstered the films' charm. While many of the issues plaguing modern DTV are things we can blame the industry on, I think this is one they can't do anything about. In the late 80s/early 90s, we had a cadre of great actors from the past who came into these films and delivered professional performances. Svenson isn't as old as the others, so he's more in the Williamson category; but guys like Connors, Silva, Ernest Borgnine, Charles Bronson, and Klaus Kinski--among many others--could be counted on to show up, deliver on the scenes they're in, and remind us of who they were in the older stuff we remembered seeing them in as we were growing up. The equivalents today would be a Bruce Willis or a Robert De Niro, but it doesn't seem to work the same with them as it did with these guys back then. Is it really just that those older guys cared more?

 

Finally, one thing I love about a Williamson-directed film, is when he includes shots like these of the local area he's shooting in. How do you not love the idea of 2 all beef hot dogs with trimmings, hot tamale, and a 12 oz. soda for $2.79? I mean, even if you're a vegetarian, the concept still has to be great, right? The thing is though, this is just a special, you can't just get this every day--though the permanence of the sign leads us to believe differently--which makes me wonder what this normally would set us back? $3.79? $4.79? It has to be a ".79" so the left digit bias kicks in. "What, you want $3 for 2 all beef hot dogs, with trimmings, hot tamale, and a 12 oz. soda? Sorry, that's a little too rich for my blood." But set it at $2.79, and I think, not only is that not $3, but significantly cheaper than $3, so when I pass that sign, say while I'm hip-deep in a chase scene, I'm sufficiently swayed to stop in and try them out for lunch.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Currently this is only on YouTube, which means you can watch it, but it really needs to be on one of the major streaming sites with a higher-quality version. This isn't anything that would make a Williamson top five list, but it's a fun time between him and the rest of the cast involved.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101253

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

 

 

 

 

Deep Space (1988)

When I heard that the great Charles Napier passed away, a bunch of potential movies for a tribute post popped into my head, but none of them felt quite right, because they featured Napier in his usual supporting role. That just wouldn't cut it here. Then I thought of Deep Space, which also just happened to be on Watch Instantly. Now this will do.

Deep Space is a Fred Olen Ray directed piece that actually has nothing to do with deep space. The US government has engineered a killing monster and keeps it incubated in a satellite orbiting above the earth, the idea being they send the satellite down to wreak havoc on a country that might threaten democracy, freedom, and money. Something goes wrong though, and the thing crash lands in SoCal, prompting a meddling teen and his girlfriend to investigate, and wake the thing up. When police detective Napier is sent out to investigate, things don't add up, so he pursues it, along with his buddy (Ron Glass from Barney Miller fame), and against police chief Bo Svenson's wishes. The question is, can even the great Charles Napier kill the ultimate killing machine?



This movie would've been perfect had the end scenes not been so dark that I could barely make them out. Otherwise, everything else was great. Maybe my screen was too dark, but I doubt it. Anyway, this was pretty solid Fred Olen Ray fare, schlock horror, sci-fi, and action all mixed into one for a fun time; but the thing takes on another level with Napier as the lead. As great as he is as a supporting character, he's that much better when it's his show. He also carried a lot of the down times that would've torpedoed this with a lesser actor. Overall, I think you'll enjoy this, and maybe you'll have more luck with the ending being dark than I did.

If we needed to do an In Memoriam post for Charles Napier, this is one the best ones to choose. We see him in a kilt playing the bagpipes, we see him in an apron cooking steaks, we even see him in bed after a long night of drinking answering the phone with a pair of panties draped around it. And that's not even getting to how much ass he kicks. In one scene he's chasing one of the monster's spawn into this woman's house, and she's cowering in the corner afraid of it. He says to her "Let me borrow your bat and I'll go after it." Not "give me your bat" or "give me the goddamn bat lady!", but in a calm, polite manner "let me borrow your bat." Then, when the thing attacks her, he gets her to push it into the air, so he can bat it through the window. If you're a Napier fan and haven't seen this, put it on your list.



You'll notice that the alien looks kind of like the one from Alien. He attacks people in a more The Thing kind of way, with tentacles that come out of his body and pull people to him. From there, it's just buckets of blood tossed on the wall. I like all of that stuff. Sure, it's good to have great special effects, but a bucket of blood splashed on the wall and some screaming in the background is good too. What I can't abide is making the scene so dark I can't make out the action, especially when I want to see Napier going at this alien thing with a chainsaw. Fred Olen Ray giveth, and Fred Olen ray taketh away.

I loved the Ron Glass. Growing up, my parents always watched Barney Miller, though I really don't remember any episodes specifically. Seeing Glass here makes me want to go back and see some old Barney Miller episodes. Unfortunately, they aren't on Watch Instantly or Hulu, or even TV Land. What's the point of having a channel like TV Land if it doesn't show Barney Miller?



Speaking of TV shows I love, we had Julie Newmar here as a psychic or something that gave Napier anonymous tips on the case. We all know her as the first Catwoman on one of my favorite shows of all time, Batman. You may recall we had the voice of Eartha Kitt in Pink Chiquitas, meaning we only need a Lee Meriwether to have all the Catwomen on here. Of course, during our look at comic book movies back when I did Wild Card posts, we also reviewed Catwoman-- I won't say anything else.

If you miss this while it's on Netflix Watch Instantly, then the only other way to make it happen is used VHS. I think, if you're a big Napier fan, or a fan of camp Sci-Fi, this is worth it, especially as a cheap bargain bin find. Keep your eyes peeled for it, I think you'll have a fun time.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092863/

The Killing Machine (2010)

This was something of a long time coming. As far as I knew, it wasn't out here in the States, because Netflix had it buried in my "saved" queue. Then Mr. Kenner at Movies in the Attic commented that we had "slowed down" here at the DTVC, because we hadn't gotten to the new Dolph film, and I found out then that Amazon had it, but I didn't have the money to buy it. He said it was on RedBox, but their website didn't list it, and the one nearest me didn't have it. Anyway, a few weeks ago its status changed to "Available November 16, 2010", which is different from the usual "Released" on such and such date. (Hunt to Kill had a similar status). I guess we're saying better late than never, but it did suck that I had to wait because Netflix didn't have it the moment it came out for whatever reason.

The Killing Machine has the DTVC's greatest Hall of Famer, Dolph Lundgren, as Icarus, a former KGB hitman that comes to America for a new start, gets a wife and daughter, then finds out the Russian mob finds out who he is, and they make him do some hit jobs for them. This causes a strain on his marriage, so he shacks up with a total hottie. One thing leads to another-- as they always do when one is a hitman for the mob-- Dolph ends up on the mob's bad side, and needs to protect his family from their wrath.



Man, as much as it pains me to say this, The Killing Machine didn't work for me. It had plenty of great points. Dolph turns in one of his best performances, I loved the Noir-ish feel of it, there were some other great characters, loved Bo Svenson, and the action, when it was there (and we could see it) was pretty stellar. The whole thing with the family, though, didn't fit. It felt like a Lifetime movie was crammed into a Le Samourai French Noir thriller/action flick. In the making of featurette, Dolph said he was intrigued by the idea of an assassin who is also a family man, and his attempt to marry the two lives. I like that he tried it, but in the end, I would've been better with his character having no family, a solitary assassin who runs afoul of his masters.

Dolph said in that same featurette that he wanted to go for a Noir theme, but then wanted to advance the genre somehow. I saw Noir in the storytelling, but not in the directing. Overly rapid jumpcuts, though not as bad as in some of those UFC actioners, was bad enough, but then the LSD cam with the trails on the screen, or the scratched DVD cam where the picture moved in fits and starts, was as far from Noir as I can imagine. When I think Noir, I think of long takes, wide takes, close takes, frames with curious or ironic elements combined. When I think of what Dolph said he was going for, I think of a Steven Seagal flick, The Foreigner, which really married Film Noir and DTV action perfectly. Plus you also had the Lifetime movie aspect with his wife and daughter. The wife was a great actress, but when I think Noir, I think Lauren Bacall in The Big Sleep, Rita Hayworth in Gilda, or Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity. I'm not saying the actress who played Dolph's wife wasn't capable of that kind of role, I'm saying her role as written was too Lifetime movie to fit a Noir-ish theme.



Anyone who watches the NBA knows what I mean when I say the "Star Rule". In short, it means that star players get preferential treatment from the refs. It was originally known as the Jordan Rules. It definitely could be inferred that Dolph benefits from these star rules here at the DTVC, because I forgive things-- like the constant jumpcuts-- that I'd kill other films for. Let's understand this, Dolph is the Babe Ruth of DTV action. Without him there'd be no Direct to Video Connoisseur. Just his presence on-screen is awesome enough to make up for any poorly lit jumpcut laden action scene that I can't make heads or tails of. That being said, at the beginning and very end (actually the same scene shown twice), we get some amazing vintage Dolph action out of him, as he takes out Bo Svenson's thugs. And I admit freely that he turns in an excellent acting performance, to the point that even in the Lifetime movie scenes, I wasn't thinking about how little action there was, I was actually digging it. Still, I'd rather see him as the stoic Noir-ish assassin-- he looks great in a tailored suit-- than I would the Lifetime movie leading man.

Dolph gets a little introspective on us in The Killing Machine, at least it seems so. He sits with his character's daughter, who tells him how he's never around and how she wishes he didn't always have to go away for work. I think this is Dolph working out on-screen what it's been like to miss his family as he goes off to make these films, and maybe he's even sending a message to us fans that there is a human Dolph Lundgren who doesn't take out five guys at once and come out of ten-on-one gun fights with only a wound to his left shoulder. Usually, I'd dump on a film that cut out a potential action scene for something like this, but as I've said above, Dolph has earned this credit with us as an audience with all the great work he's done in the past, so I'm okay with it-- in fact, I liked it.



Finally, Samantha Ferris played a great character, among many great characters in this film. She was a woman who commandeered some very masculine traits-- and even rocked suits-- but also really retained her femininity in the process. In the featurette, we found out her character was originally supposed to be a man, and some of that is retained in the dialog. But to say she was androgynous, or a butch lesbian, wouldn't really capture what she brought to the table. Unlike the character of Dolph's wife, that didn't fit the Noir aesthetic, this character not only embodied it, but she advanced it in exactly the way Dolph said he wanted to with the whole film.

So I don't know what to tell you. It's not horrible, it just suffers from a bit of an identity crisis. Dolph's Film Noir mixed with Lifetime movie goes together like chocolate and Doritos: they're both good, but together they don't work as well. Also, I should point out, this is a pretty macabre Dolph. Early on, we see a guy get fish hooked pretty brutally, with his tongue hanging halfway down his face. It was a little ridiculous. Some of the other stuff was better, like when he sends a dude eye-first into the bar holding his weights on his bench press, but expect a a little more gore than you're used to with Dolph, maybe along the lines of Missionary Man. Anyway, I guess my final analysis is fun, but not that fun.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1261862/

The Delta Force (1986)

Looking only at the Golan-Globus films we're covering this week, this was probably the biggest of the six. It has a pretty star studded cast, with Norris, Martin Balsam, Lee Marvin, Bo Svenson, Shelly Winters, Robert Vaughn, and the late Steve James. What's fascinating is how it starts off as essentially a TV drama, and turns into a Norris beatdown.

The Delta Force is based on the real life hijacking of TWA flight 847 in June of 1985. A flight full of Americans leaving Athens is hijacked by two gunmen, and taken first to Beirut, then to Algeria, then back to Beirut, all the while the hostages are threatened, harassed, and the Jewish passengers are singled out. Lee Marvin heads the Delta Force, a special forces unit sent in to retrieve the hostages and take down the hijackers. Right below him on the chain of command is Chuck Norris, and when he finally gets a chance to sink his teeth into the terrorists, it bad news for them.



This is a hard one to deal with because the first hour and a half plays out like a TV movie drama about a plane hijacking. It's not bad, and does a great job keeping things black and white and letting us know that no matter what, no matter what cause someone is fighting for, violence and hostage taking, especially against innocent people, is unacceptable. Then, the last half hour plays out like some of the best action I've ever seen. Norris drives around in this motorcycle equipped with missile launchers machine guns, then finds the head terrorist, and beats the crap out of him in one of the greatest applause scenes in movie history. It's really a question of, do you like your TV drama topped with a half hour of amazing action?

It is very important to discuss the political implications of Golan and Globus making a film like this. They are Israelis, and the Lebanese terrorists who committed this act at the time were fighting to get Israel out of their country, of which they occupied the southern section of it. I don't think comparing the way the Muslim terrorists treated the Jewish passengers to the way Nazis treated Jews was right, because Palestinians and the Muslims of southern Lebanon have legitimate grievances against the way Israel has treated them; but the rest of the film in my mind was totally above board. If an aggrieved segment of the population decides they need to resort to violence against noncombatants, they should expect their violence to be depicted as despicable, as it was here, and it's no less despicable if the people depicting it have a personal stake in the telling.



After 9/11, watching a movie where hijackers take over a plane full of Americans is hard to take, which meant watching Chuck Norris beat the crap out of them at the end was all the more enjoyable. That brings up an interesting issue, though. In school, we looked at two main goals that terrorists have when they carry out their crimes. The first is to hurt a small percentage of the population in order to scare the rest to do what they want. The other is to anger the rest of the population to the point they overreact, which in some cases can be worse. The US spent all of its goodwill it garnered after 9/11 with the Guantanamo prisons and the war in Iraq, but after seeing this movie, I can see better why Americans supported those measures. Because the terrorists who committed the 9/11 atrocities died with their victims, we didn't have anyone for Chuck Norris to kick the crap out of, so to speak, and we needed that.

I must point out again, though, that this wasn't all seriousness. That last half hour was amazing action, and we wanted it more because we had the first hour and a half of these bastard terrorists that we wanted to get their comeuppance. When the head baddie sneaks into that abandoned house, and Chuck Norris jumps through the window with his motorcycle, I have to believe the whole theater cheered. This was the problem for me with Walker: Texas Ranger, the bad guys were often way cooler than he was, so I couldn't root for him. I was rooting for him here, though, and it was great. As fine an example of pre-Walker Norris as there is out there. I wonder, too, looking at the paragraph above, if maybe we could convince Norris to get back into his pre-Walker days and do movies like this again, just so we could all feel better as a nation.



Before I wrap this up, I have to give a shout out again to DTVC favorite Steve James. It was good to see him in a film that didn't involve ninjas, though it would've been nice to see more of his martial arts. I thought this might have been the most successful film he's ever been in, but he had an uncredited role in Weird Science. Let's say this was the most successful film he had a major role in. A great actor who left us before his time.

It's hard to figure out what the right conclusion is for this movie. As an action fan, really the only last half hour is important, but it's vitally important. As an anthropology major who focused on Middle Eastern studies and problems of violence and terrorism, I appreciated the way the hijacking was depicted, even if the story was told by two Israelis. I guess it would've been better if the film had a clearer identity-- either TV drama or low-budget actioner-- but on some levels it still works. Just know that of the total running time of two hours, only the last thirty minutes is action packed. (But it's really action packed!)

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090927/

Inglorious Bastards aka Quel maledetto treno blindato (1978)

I was discussing movies with my buddy at Movies in the Attic, and I mentioned that I was going to see the new Tarentino film Inglourious Basterds. He asked if I'd seen the original. I didn't even know there was an original. Not only is there an original, but it stars Fred Williamson. I threw it right on my Netflix queue.

Inglorious Bastards is about a group of soldiers in WWII, stationed in Nazi occupied France at the end of the war. They've all been arrested for committing various crimes while in service, and they're being transported off to the brig, when their van is attacked. They escape, and try to make their way to Switzerland, fighting off the Nazis they encounter along the way. Eventually they find the French resistance, and in a twist of fate, they are pressed into service in exchange for the freedom. Their job, help carry out a bomb plot on a train carrying a rocket.



This movie is great. I've always said Raiders of the Lost Ark was the first adventure film to have a roller coaster effect of continuous action, as opposed to large pockets of lull leading up to one big period of action at the end. Well, I take that back, because, if anything, Raiders borrowed that paradigm from this film, which predated it by three years. It was definitely a take off on The Dirty Dozen, and as an overall film, The Dirty Dozen was better; but taken on its own Inglorious Bastards is equally entertaining. It's just a fun action movie.

Enzo Castellari directed this. The other film of his I've reviewed here is 1990: Bronx Warriors, which was another great flick. His stuff is often a little before DTV, (this movie was made in 1978, for instance), so I've kind of bent the rules to include him here. That being said, a lot of what he's done influenced a lot of what we see in DTV and low-budget films now, and the late 70s early 80s is right on the cusp of the VCR age. Plus, his casting Fred Williamson, a DTVC Hall of Famer, only makes the inclusion of his films that much more appropriate.



Speaking of the man, Fred Williamson, he's great here. He makes the film for me, even more than Bo Svenson, who was also good. I know he was a Castellari mainstay, but I think it's cool that he was cast in this, when Jim Brown was cast in The Dirty Dozen. Jim Brown was the better football player, but Fred Williamson is the better actor. While many posts of newer films I do with Fred Williamson in them only have him in small parts, he's in this movie quite a bit, and we're all better for it.



I could've sworn I'd reviewed a Bo Svenson film on here, but I guess not. At least I couldn't find one on imdb. Also, according to imdb, he was in the Tarentino Inglourious Basterds as an American Colonel, and I didn't remember seeing him. Enzo Castellari was in it too, as himself, and I don't remember that. I guess I'm just getting old, huh? Regardless, Svenson was awesome here. Another Swedish acting great, he'll finally star alongside Dolph Lundgren in the forthcoming Icarus. I can't wait to see it.

If you haven't seen this, you need to rent it. As I'll point out below, it has very little in common with the new Tarentino film, so you don't need to see it to compare the two. It's on Netflix, and well worth a spot in your queue.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076584/



I finally got around to seeing the new Tarantino film, Inglourious Basterds, this week, and I think it was really good. It wasn't really anything like the Castellari film of the similar name, except that they were both set in Nazi occupied France. It was a little gruesome in parts, but I'm sure Tarentino will tell you he was going for that. Unlike the Castellari film I reviewed above, this isn't nonstop action. It has more of that Hitchcockian element of inevitable action. In every scene, I felt like there was a time bomb underneath the table, that we could see, but some or all of the characters couldn't. Unlike Hitchcock, though, who wouldn't let the bomb go off, Tarentino often did, and because he's Tarentino, we knew he would, and it made it all the more tense. I still think I like Pulp Fiction better, but this is right up there. The sets were great, Brad Pitt was spot on as a Southern Army Lieutenant, and Nazi Colonel Christoph Waltz was a perfect combination of evil cunning and sophistication. If you can handle the gore-- and on the other end of the spectrum, the frequent subtitles-- you're in for a good time.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0361748/