Hellbound (1994)

Recently I made a post for Street Knight, and realized that that was the 40th post of a Cannon film. It was kind of an after the fact thing, so I felt like I should give them a fuller post to commemorate their entrance into the 40 Club. They join Dolph, Gary Daniels, Art Camacho, and Albert Pyun in that exclusive group. In trying to think of the right thing to watch, Osvaldo Neto of Toca Terror mentioned this, because it was the last film from the Cannon Group--plus he got me a YouTube link for it so I could check it out! A lot of people have covered this, including, Mitch at the Video Vacuum and robotGEEK's Cult Cinema, so you can go there to see what they thought.

Hellbound is about an ancient demon that was locked in a coffin a thousand years or so ago, and then in the 1990s it was unleashed. When it's unleashed, it ends up in Chicago, where it runs afoul of Chuck Norris. He's the wrong guy to run afoul of. Chuck and his partner (Calvin Jackson), chase the demon all the way to Israel to try and take him down and send him back to hell. The demon won't know what hit it.

And neither will we with all the padding to get us there. I think that's the problem with this movie, it doesn't know if it wants to be a cop actioner, a martial arts flick, a supernatural/religious thriller, or a mix of all of the above, but it ends up struggling on all fronts, which is too bad. This is not the Cannon/Norris classics we're used to, but in a way is a fitting end to the Cannon run, to go out with one of their biggest stars in something that, to a large extent was sauteed in wrong sauce. I think on the other hand, as the Cannon Group's last film (Street Knight was the film produced by Cannon), it's an interesting artifact in and of itself. Like a piece of pottery found at the baddie's archaeological site in this film, we can look at this as a piece of something bigger, a wave that crested in the history of the action movie world, and to that extent I think it's worth checking out.

This marks 41 Cannon films here at the DTVC, and so not only getting them into the 40 Club, but also giving them a post to fully honor them, is very necessary. That feeling we get when we see that Cannon logo flash onto the screen is something that all of us who like the kinds of movies we like know and understand. It's like the smell of comfort food cooking in the kitchen, or the opening chords to a song we love. Even when it's a film like this, which I didn't enjoy as much as some of their others, the mere sight of the logo gets me in a mindset to at least think I'm going to like it. And what's fascinating is, as this wave was cresting, in the late 80s/early 90s, a new wave was forming behind it, PM Entertainment, and by 1994 we could see that one building further out to sea. When you think about it, between Cannon in the 80s to early 90s, and then PM from the early 90s through to 2000, we in the DTV action world had it pretty good.

Chuck Norris turned 80 this year. That means he was already in his 50s when he made this. That might explain the lack of fight scenes, but it's also crazy to think that he's 80 now! It was also fitting that it was his film that was the last from The Cannon Group, because he was such a staple of their films in the 80s. I think my personal favorite of his Cannon flicks is Invasion USA, which I did review here. Whatever your thoughts on Norris's extreme right wing views, he was one of the most influential action stars ever, and his 80s Cannon stuff was some of the best ever.

So why didn't this work then, if Cannon and Norris were such a great team? The thing is, it does have its moments, but it tries to do too much, and when that happens, often it ends up doing too little. The going to Israel part is filled with things like a crazy driver driving them through the city, a kid pickpocketing the partner--because Norris would never let a kid pick his pocket. In Invasion USA we had pitched battles everywhere, a suburban family trimming the tree getting their house blown up by an RPG, just tons of amazing stuff. This may have been trying to be something different, which I respect, but sometimes different isn't always better.

As we move Cannon into the 40 Club, I feel like it's best to wrap this up by talking about their influence on me and ultimately creating this site. The 80s were my formative years on the planet. It was a time of big hair, big music, and big movies, but there was something about the Cannon action flick that stood out for me, whether it was the American Ninja series, the Stallone and Norris actioners, or even the Pyun flicks that I didn't know at the time were Pyun flicks. It's fitting then that they're the first studio/production company to get into the 40 Club.

It's time to wrap this one up. I think for me, it really is the novelty that this is the last Cannon Group film. It feels like you're moving, and you're cleaning up the house and taking one last look around, going through some of those last memories. For me as a movie it has its flaws, kind of like when you have that one last meal at that place before you move, and they get the order wrong, but you're enjoying the company and the people you're with before you leave the next day.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107101

The Expendables 2 (2012)

When I saw The Expendables over two years ago, I loved it. I don't know exactly what I was expecting with this second installment, but considering how much I liked the first, and looking at the names they had for part 2, I knew I had to give it a look, so let's see how it went. Also, some of our friends have already hit this one: Ty at Comeuppance Reviews, Explosive Action, The Video Vacuum, and Freddie at Full Moon Reviews.

The Expendables 2 has Sly Stallone and his band of merry mercenary men, on a mission in Eastern Europe to get something out of a safe in a plane that went down over Albania. They have a woman with them working as their safe cracker, and while Stallone doesn't like this idea, it's really more baddie Jean-Claude Van Damme he should be worried about, because it's Van Damme who has stolen this merchandise from them after they got it out of the safe. The merchandise: the a location of some weapons grade Soviet plutonium, which Van Damme hopes to sell on the black market. Can Stallone and his crew stop him?

In the initial scene, as the marauding Expendables were blasting their way to the base of some Nepalese separatists who had some Chinese businessman hostage, I thought to myself "What am I doing here? Didn't I already do this two years ago?" The film does get better though; it has tons of inside jokes for us action fans, it has some nice big action scenes and solid pitched battles, and Van Damme was excellent as the head baddie. I also loved Nan Yu's Maggie character, and Chuck Norris, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Bruce Willis all have fun small supporting roles. While not the novelty that the first one was, it was still a fun time, and I'm not sure you can ask for anything more than that from your action movie.

For me, Jean-Claude Van Damme won this movie. It probably hurt his soul to have to lose that last fight to Stallone, but let me tell you JCVD, you had me when you roundhouse kicked that knife into The Kid's heart. Was that not one of the best baddie kills ever? Scott Adkins holds it up so the point is facing The Kid's heart, and Van Damme roundhouse kicks the butt end. See, here's the thing Mr. Van Damme, while the fights in the movie are fake, the performances are real, so while you fake lost your fight with Stallone, you beat him by turning in the best performance. 

And then there's the film's other Hall of Famer, Dolph Lundgren. He seems to be more comic relief, right? I loved the inside joke about his history in getting into the film biz. On the other hand, he didn't have the big role he had in the first one. The story didn't revolve around him in any way, he didn't have any big fights, he just cracked some jokes and carried some big guns. It was almost like he was there to be the butt of the jokes too. I don't know how I feel about that. Yes, it's good that he can laugh at himself and not take himself so seriously, but damn it, I don't want him to be Stallone's Harpo Marx.

This gets me to a main problem The Expendables series has. Because we have so many stars, their overall star contributions are severely diluted. Even our baddie, Van Damme, wasn't in the film that much. But let's look at it by the numbers: Scott Adkins, 1 fight, and that was with Jason Statham; Statham only had 2, that one with Adkins and another, and though both were really sweet, it was still only two in a 110-minute film; Dolph had none; Van Damme just had his one with Stallone; and Jet Li was in and out so fast he also had none. It felt like this kind of thing was mitigated better in the first one, and who knows what will happen in the third--at the very least I'd like more Charisma Carpenter.

When I watched the first one with some friends a couple years ago, my buddy's wife commented: "Why does the girl always have to be kidnapped?" I don't know if Stallone's botox and HGH gave him supersonic hearing, but he answered her complaint just the same, because, not only do we not have the damsel in distress construct, but we have a woman in the crew who is equal parts feminine and powerful in Nan Yu. One could make the complaint though that there was still an element of chauvinism in the fact that all the other guys in the cast--other than Adkins, and Liam Hemsworth of course--were much older, while the one female was in her early thirties. But hey Stallone, you wanna go James Woods, it's whatever floats your boat.

And with that, let's wrap this up.  The Expendables 2 is a very fun movie. It doesn't do anything so horrible to turn me off, the action is there and big, and there were plenty of humorous moments. On the other hand, you've been on this road before, you know what you're going to see, no wheels being reinvented, which isn't exactly a bad thing, but for something that's supposed to be bigger and badder than the original, it's not a good thing either.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1764651/

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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/

Missing in Action (1984)

Missing in Action is, of course, not Direct to Video at all. It's very far from it, especially when you consider it made almost ten times its budget in US box office sales alone. That's why it's good to have weeks like this where I go outside the DTV box, and I'm glad my friend at Movies in the Attic selected this one for inclusion. It not only made Norris the star he is, but it proved to both Golan-Globus and Hollywood what audiences looked for in an action film, and paved the trail for the genre's renaissance in the 80s and 90s.

Missing in Action stars Norris as a Vietnam vet who escaped from a POW camp years after the war ended, and is selected to join a US diplomatic mission to mend fences with the Vietnam government. But Norris knows those Commie bastards are holding out on him, so he grills James Hong, the general in charge of Vietnam's diplomatic efforts, until he tells him the whereabouts of the other missing POWs still being held there. After, he's thrown out of the country, and has to go to Thailand where M. Emmet Walsh helps him invade Vietnam via the water so he can liberate his fellow soldiers.



If this is credited as being the film that made Norris big, it's understandable. From the beginning he's amazing, whether he's in the bush toting a machine gun, sneaking around a hotel picking guys off Apache style, or saving M. Emmett Walsh from a beating in order to drive the price down on his boat, it's all great. Again, I'm sure this more brutal and violent Norris is what made him clean up his act and become the Walker: Texas Ranger Norris, but it was sure good fun while it lasted.

I must amend my first paragraph slightly. First Blood was released in 1982, and made double what Missing in Action did, and was probably the main reason Missing in Action was made at all, making it more the film that paved the way to our 80s and 90s greats. It also had a budget $12 million higher, which is telling about the Golan-Globus success model. Why do for $14 million what we can do just as well for 2, and still make $22 million off it. Where Golan-Globus starts to fail is when they try their hands at things like Superman IV. Missing in Action was a very serviceable Rambo derivative with its own stand alone star in Norris. Had they stuck with that type of film, we might still have a Golan-Globus.



Joseph Zito directed this, along with Invasion USA, Red Scorpion, and Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter. Of those, only the last one isn't blatantly anti-Communist. It's interesting, because I couldn't find anywhere on his bio that suggests he holds those kinds of political views. It's also interesting to note that he might be the most successful director we've ever featured on here, because three of his films, this one, Invasion USA, and Friday the 13th IV, all held the number one spot in the box office. Joey Zito is gold, baby.

If I hadn't made this clear before, James Hong is the man. The guy has almost 350 acting credits on his imdb bio, starting as far back as the Golden Age of TV. I believe this is the fifth film of his I've reviewed, which is startling considering how many DTV films he's been in, but even worse, I don't have him tagged. How did that happen? What an egregious oversight. Like Richard Lynch, I need to do more of his films, and consider him for induction into the Hall of Fame in 2010.



I'm a huge Anthony Bourdain guy, and love his show, No Reservations. He had an episode on Vietnam, and it's interesting to consider if he had had the same show in 1984, would he have gone then too? Probably not. Not only was 1984 too soon for the wounds of the Vietnam War to have healed, but we were also still engaged in the Cold War. Even in the early 90s, when I first saw this, the themes were somewhat relevant. Just the same, even if the plot is strictly a product of its time, the overall style of the film lives on in a lot of today's action films, and I imagine it still will. Vietnam becomes Columbia, the Middle East, North Korea, Myanmar, and hopefully in twenty years we'll see action films based in those locations and think how much they too are a product of their times.

This is a critical picture in the evolution of the action film, and also one of the roles that made Chuck Norris the household name he is today. I can't think of any better Thanksgiving entertainment, but if you can't watch it today, it's plenty good to watch on a non-holiday too.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087727/

Invasion USA (1985)

We continue our celebration of Golan-Globus with Chuck Norris in Invasion USA. Perhaps a product of its time, it still has had an amazing impact on many of today's action films, especially the use of urban and suburban environments and taking everyday life and plunging it into a warzone. With the landscape in the US having changed drastically after 9/11, a film like this is both improbable now, yet at the same time would be kind of scary to imagine really happening, if it wasn't for Golan-Globus' trademark cartoonish violence (which is a good thing).

Invasion USA takes place primarily in Miami, but is about an Eastern European terrorist organization that seeks to destroy the US from the inside out by attacking its infrastructure and causing anarchy. They do everything from impersonate police officers and commit violent crimes, to blowing up houses in residential neighborhoods with RPGs. The CIA know only one man could be behind this, and they know only one man can take him down: Chuck Norris. First Norris declines, because he had a chance to kill the guy before and the government wouldn't let him; but when the bad guy's attempt to kill Norris leaves his grandfather dead, Norris changes his tune.

This was the movie Red Dawn should have been. Sure, elements of it were ridiculous, like the nice suburban neighborhood with people trimming Christmas trees suddenly under siege by bad guys firing RPGs into their houses, but at least the overall concept was a little more believable than the Soviets invading high schools in small town Colorado. And regardless of whether it was believable or not, it was way more awesome. How Red Dawn has become this cult classic, while this is overlooked, is beyond me. And Invasion USA's ability to take malls, office buildings, what have you, and turn them into pitched battles in the blink of an eye, has been emulated in the genre ever since. This is one of my all time favorite action films.

Invasion USA also brought home the difference between pre-Walker Chuck Norris and now, because pre-Walker Norris was amazing. This early to mid 80s Golan-Globus Chuck Norris really was part of the blueprint that built the one-man army action hero as we know it today. This may not be his best role, but it's one of my favorites.

The bad guy is played by Richard Lynch, a DTV mainstay who's been in more things than I can list. Strangely enough, the only other movie I've reviewed of his is Cyborg 3. My goal will be to get ten more films up of his by next October, when he'll be up for induction into DTVC Hall of Fame. As far as this goes, he was an awesome baddie with an interesting twist: he was deathly afraid of Chuck Norris. I'm not sure I've ever seen that before. Maybe Tong Po fearing Sasha Mitchell in Kickboxer 4: The Aggressor.

This is pretty violent, but never in a brutal kind of way. If it wasn't for the language and the misleading images of policemen committing serious crimes, this would be good enough for my three-year-old nephew to watch. I'm not kidding. In the 90s, this level of violence was taken to the next level with films like Terminator 2, which showed some more vicious deaths, and even the Death Wish series, which was another Golan-Globus staple and a contemporary to this film, had a more brutal slant to it; but right here, this stuff could not be taken that seriously. I have a feeling Norris wanted to distance himself from this kind of entertainment, which was why he took the role of Walker, but that was all of our losses in the end. We needed Matt Hunter, Col. James Braddock, and Maj. Scott McCoy more than we needed Walker: Texas Ranger.

There was an actor in this named Alex Colon. His real name is Colón, and since he's no longer with us, I don't want to make fun of him, I just wanted to point out how when his name popped up on the screen, it was during an action shot of Norris driving this swamp buggy, which made it look like it was a 70s TV show called Alex Colon. I don't know if he'd be like a proctologist solving cases, but it just seemed funny.

This might be one of the best action films of all time, so I'm glad my friend at Movies in the Attic gave me an opportunity to review it. If you haven't seen it, it's must watch material. Throw it on your queue immediately.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089348/

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

The Cutter (2005)

I'm not a big Chuck Norris guy. I kind of liked watching Bruce Lee kick his ass, and Good Guys Wear Black wasn't so bad. Walker, on the other hand, was just a whole mess of Conservative propaganda served up in a dude in a pick-up who drove around and beat the crap out of stunt men. The only way I could handle that was on Conan with the classic Walker: Texas Ranger Lever.

The Cutter has Norris as a disgraced cop-turned-PI who's helping a woman find her uncle. Her uncle's an expert diamond cutter, and he's been kidnapped by none other than DTVC fave Daniel Bernhardt. Bernie needs him to cut some huge stones that he's stolen from some archaeologists. Norris chases him around, Bernie kicks his ass, an asshole FBI dude gets in the way, and finally for no good reason other than he's Norris, he bests Bernhardt and saves the day. Tracy Scoggins is in this as well.



Bernhardt was awesome in this. If he didn't murder seven innocent archaeologists in cold blood, he'd have been perfect. As it was, he was way more of a sympathetic figure than Norris was. This film had some religious undertones, which wasn't a surprise considering Norris' recent support of Huckabee as a presidential candidate. It was cute listening to Norris quote the Bible here and there. Otherwise, this is the same schlock fare of good guy with a good heart who triumphs over the bad guys, and its predictability is hard to cope with.

Norris is a pretty bad actor. I think I always knew it, but here it was worse than usual. He was like a Rudy Giuliani or Peyton Manning on SNL. The thing was, most of his fellow actors weren't that bad, which exacerbated his lack of ability, like a Will Farrell trying to work with Britney Spears in a sketch. I can accept this poor acting if the martial arts are there, like I do with Don "The Dragon" Wilson, but Norris was lacking there too. He got his ass kicked by Bernhardt for most of the film, and when he did best him it was because the plot demanded it, and it was really unrealistic.



Let's get back to Bernie. Here's a cat that's totally lobbying the panel for induction into next year's Direct to Video Connoisseur Hall of Fame. He was too sweet in this as an international professional criminal. The mustache was a great touch when he was sneaking into the country. His demeanor far surpassed Norris'. I know he was presented as the slick European juxtaposition to Norris' good ol' American values, but I can't lie, Bernie sells the former better. I love a beat up old Chevy truck as much as a fully loaded Mercedes, but if the beat up old Chevy ain't getting me from point A to point B, give me the fucking import and let's go balls to the wall all the way to Albuquerque. I wouldn't have minded it at all if Bernhardt succeeded in his plans and won the movie. I also know a Norris production could never be that creative to give as cool an ending as that.

Marshall Teague is in this as Norris' good buddy in the local police department. You may remember Teague as the guy from Road House who fucked guys like Dalton in prison, and had his throat summarily ripped out for making said declaration. After a role like that, I have trouble trusting those dudes. He needed to double cross Norris, and it never happened. He should've been on the take helping out Bernie, and Norris could've found out and ripped his throat out too. Had that happened, it would've been the coolest non-Bernhardt thing in the film.



Tracy Scoggins is in this. Many probably remember her from Babylon 5 and her great role as Cassandra in Highlander: The Series. That story arc with Methos and The Four Horseman might have been one of the best ever for a syndicated TV show. This also has Joanna Pacula, who was in the previously reviewed Warlock: Armageddon. I wonder how she felt acting with Norris after acting with Julian Sands.

This is not a movie to rent by yourself. You need about four or five like minded people to sit with you and help you make fun of this. Bernhardt's awesomeness is overshadowed by Norris' stupidness, and it'll take some work from you and your friends to withstand Norris by mocking every minute of this film. If you watch it alone you might stab your eyes out, and we here at the DTVC don't ever want to see anyone hurt by these films.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0432267/