The Last Riders (1991)

For our PM review this month, we have this biker film starring Erik Estrada, along with William Smith, and a small early appearance by Mimi Lesseos. Those are the things I know about the film going in, it's what we get that we weren't expecting that make PM films so much fun! In addition to us, Chris the Brain at Bulletproof and the guys at Comeuppance have covered this as well.

The Last Riders has Erik Estrada as the co-head of a biker gang (along with Angelo Tiffe), who, in trying to retrieve some stole drug money, kills the thieves, only to discover one of them is a dirty cop. Dirty or no, the full weight of the LAPD is coming for him, so he needs to give up his gang colors and go on the run. The first place he runs to is old buddy William Smith, who owns a garage in a small town in southern Nevada. He's happy to have Estrada work there and live in a trailer outside of town, and Estrada's happy to settle down, especially when a single mother (Kathrin Middleton) and her daughter (Minnie Madden) show up and need car repairs. But as he starts his new life, it wouldn't be a PM flick if his old life didn't come back to haunt him.

And boy does it come back to haunt him, which makes for an interesting movie story-wise. In most PM "hero's family is killed and now he's out for action-packed deadly revenge" movies, the family gets bumped off in the first act, and we don't get to know them too well, we just take it for granted that bumping off someone's family's bad, and then from there the hero starts the revenge process in the second act, and gives the baddie their ultimate comeuppance in the third act. Here, the first act is retrieving the drug money, and the second act is him falling in love with Middleton's character and starting a life with her, before she and her daughter are gunned down in the trailer. It's almost like the filmmakers were enjoying watching Estrada and Middleton's characters fall in love, and someone was like "hey guys, we need to get to the revenge part of this, the movie's almost over!" It creates that tonality issue we'd see a lot in early PM, where if you're watching this as a one-off in the early 90s because you found it on cable or at your local video store, you're probably not impressed, but in the context of a bunch of these you're excited to go along for the bonkers PM Entertainment ride. We also get some of the names we've come to know and love, like Cole S. McKay on stunts, Joseph Merhi directing, and Rick Pepin's cinematography. In that sense, you probably need to watch some of the better of these PM films before you get stuck in on this one, and even then, it's low on the list for me; but lower on the list PM is still not a bad way to kill 90 minutes if you're a PM Entertainment fan.

We're now at 58 PM flicks on the site, and what's interesting about this one, is it's their 22nd movie and came out in 1991, but feels like an earlier spine number joint from 1989 when they were still getting the hang of what PM would eventually be--which I guess isn't so crazy an idea when you consider 1989 and 1991 are only a couple years apart, there could be that overlap as they were still figuring out what worked best. And I'm not sure what the best PM moment in this was for me. Maybe when Estrada blows up the trailer with his deceased wife and step-daughter's bodies inside, while he and a tearful William Smith look on. No calling the cops, I imagine the Middleton's ex-husband would like to know what happened to his daughter, even if he was the jerkoff Middleton said he was, but nope, in the world of PM, the fiery funeral is all you need. From there, as he's getting his revenge, the bartender at their biker bar tells him she has feelings for him, and hey, he's back on the market now, even if the remaining embers of his dead wife and step-daughter's bodies are still smoldering near Lake Mead, why not go for it? And I guess that's what I think when I see another PM flick on Tubi, "come on, Matt, why not go for it?", because these things only work in the world of PM--and I don't even know if they work there either, or it's more the fact that they don't work that's so much fun.

One of the more fun aspects of the film was the band at the biker bar that performed over a couple of the montages. They were called The Sheilas, and their sound was in the mold of Pat Benatar's stuff, which is plenty fine for me. Even more fun, the first song featured a flautist. We're not strangers to the flute here at the DTVC, plenty of 80s exploitation films shot in the Philippines made ample use of the flute, perhaps because Italian directors thought jungles and flutes went together like peanut butter and chocolate, but we never actually saw the flautist getting after it like we do here. I never thought of it before, but yeah, a flute solo is exactly the music I need when I'm watching a shot of a biker gang back-angle parking their hogs against the curb. Now, if you're thinking flute music, Jethro Tull probably comes to mind, but can I throw out another name for you? Jazz flautist Ragan Whiteside is one of the best out there, in particular check out her cover of Little River Band's "Reminiscing," great stuff.

Corey Doctorow came up with the term "Enshittification" to describe how tech companies lock users in and then make their products as shitty as possible while extracting as much money out of them as they can. He's said on multiple appearances that he's okay with the term being used beyond the tech space, so I'm going to point out how this movie shows us the ways that so many things we took for granted in the early 90s have been enshittified now. Start with Las Vegas. In the early 90s it was a place where people with not a lot of money could go and have a fun time. Remember the Roseanne episode where she and Dan went with Tom Arnold and Sandra Bernhardt, and Roseanne got drunk and heckled Wayne Newton because she thought he was an impersonator? They ain't goin' to Vegas now, and even when I went in 2013 I could see it changing, nothing was cheap like it was in the early 90s, and in the 10+ years since, it's only gotten worse, as they'd rather cater to whales like Dana White compensating for inadequacies with six-figure blackjack hands than working-class stiffs looking to escape their troubles for a few days. From there, look at Estrada's job as a mechanic. The first thing William Smith would ask him today is, "how good are you with a computer?" And is Smith going to be able to pay him enough to support his new wife and step-daughter, even if they're living in a trailer by Lake Mead? Even Estrada going to the grocery store, it was like "oh man, the grocery store experience was so much nicer back then!" No memberships, no fugazi sales, Pepsi and ConAgra didn't own everything, Estrada paid a living wage so he can buy food, the grocery store workers paid a living wage too. Things aren't only worse now than they were in 1991, they're worse now by design, and have been for a while.

Finally, what the hell are we doing in that picture above? The cap, the mustache, the T-shirt, even the little cigar, and this guy is hanging out at a biker bar no less! You can't recreate this guy today, he'd either be dripping in irony, or imitated by a younger person who's still not generating the look organically. These weren't just decisions that were made in the morning as this man was leaving the house, these were completely legitimate decisions that no one he encountered that day would've looked askance at. And could there have been another beer that he'd be drinking other than Miller Lite? He's not quite what I would call a Cocaine Dad, which is a term I used for guys my dad's age who were born in the late 40s/early 50s, but when the late 80s/early 90s came, couldn't come to terms with the fact that they were getting older, so they pushed beyond their relevance and tried to look the part of someone ten years younger than them--and while they may not have all partaken in some nose candy, you wouldn't have put it past them either. This guy above has no use for terms like "relevance," he's completely authentic--I mean look at him, he's genuinely into the flautist performing her solo, even if he won't remember it tomorrow. Here's to you that guy in the picture above, you're one of the greats.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently stream this on Tubi. As I said above, I think you'll get more enjoyment out of this after you've seen a lot of the better PM films first, but as a free streamer it does the trick.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102275

And check out my newest novel, Mark in Sales, on Amazon in paperback and Kindle.

Night of the Wilding (1990)

We finish up our DTVC Hall of Fame inductions with, you guessed it, Spiro Razatos! Wait, you thought it was Erik Estrada? I guess I can see where you might have thought that. Anyhow, in addition to us, our friends Ty and Brett at Comeuppance have covered this one as well.

Night of the Wilding is an early PM flick starring Erik Estrada as a defense attorney, the best in the business who never loses and sometimes wears crop-tops in his off hours. After a group of teenagers out on a night of "wilding" crash a party a clerk at a grocery store is having and beat and rape her and her friend, the rich parents hire Estrada to defend them. This presents a problem, because the prosecutor is his ex-wife. He pulls all the bad tricks you'd expect a sleazy defense attorney to do, from victim blaming and shaming to acting like the "wilding" kids were lured into a den of iniquity by a couple of "loose" women, making them the victims. Just when we think it can't get any worse, the prosecutor uses herself as bait to draw the boys out, and now Estrada has to help her, even if it means losing his clients. 

This is a fun one. It is early PM, so the action isn't exactly what you want--more on that in a second when we get to Spiro Razatos--but it does deliver in the great early 90s nostalgia ways you'd want, from the fashions to the dialog, and for me that does the trick. Estrada is great as well, plus we have a small role by Joey Travolta, meaning he did both this and the AIP "wilding" movie. Similar to Bad Ass, this is also ripped from the headlines, drawing from the Central Park Five case at that time, this one follows the same playbook of removing the racial element by having the attackers be three rich white kids. As we know now, the Central Park Five were all exonerated after it was discovered they were falsely accused, but the furor that was stoked at the time surrounding themes like violence by teens, violence by young blacks, violence in New York, and violence against women, led to not only movies like this one, but also the Central Park Five being falsely convicted and losing 13 years of their lives. What we get here, in true PM style, is part ripped from the headlines, but also part plot that veers off course into a series of other killings, leading to a great foot chase, and then a sudden car flip. That's one thing that is great about PM, something that in 1990 that was supposed to be playing on exaggerated fears the public had based on narratives around stories ripped from the headlines, can now be enjoyed for the schlock early 90s movie it's become over the past 30 years.

You might be wondering, why this the film for Spiro Razatos's induction? And you'd be right in wondering that, as he really only does some stunt work here. The thing is, among his PM work, we've done all his greats except for Pure Danger, which I wasn't able to find. There were some others, like Extreme Justice and Maniac Cop 2, that he was action director on that I could've done instead, but I've also really wanted to do this film for some time too, so I figured it was good enough since he did do stunt work on it. I first got wind of who he was when I read an interview Gary Daniels did where mentioned him when they did Recoil together. As I dug deeper I discovered how big of a deal he is, especially now where he's action director on huge blockbusters like the Fast and Furious series; but not only that, he's responsible for a lot of the films that made PM as great as they are. The Sweeper, Recoil, Riot, Rage, and Last Man Standing, plus non-PM classics like One Man Force. With the vital role he played in making 80s and 90s action what we know it as, it was really more that I should've gotten him in sooner, and the only reason I didn't was due to my own ignorance. As we induct him here, this will be his 26th tag, so not quite 30 Club, but I imagine it'll be soon for him. Truly one of the all-time greats.

What is Erik Estrada wearing here? That crop top is fantastic. What you can't tell from the screen is he also has his reading glasses on. Rich attorneys with mansions in Bel Air always wear crop tops and reading glasses, don't they? At least they did in the early 90s, when it was a simpler, nicer time. Here in Philly, there's a movement to get a subway extension along the Roosevelt Boulevard corridor, and the person leading the movement is selling shirts for it, including a crop top version. In one of the pictures, a guy was wearing it, which I guess is more evidence that if you live long enough you'll see fashions come back that you never thought would--like today when I passed a kid wearing a Von Dutch trucker hat. We've seen a little bit more Estrada than we usually do on here lately, with us covering the two Andy Sidaris films he did as well. I think when I started the site I expected him to be a bigger part of it, but it didn't happen unfortunately, and I don't know when we'll see him again on here. Hopefully soon, but if not, we love you Mr. Estrada, crop tops and reading glasses and all.

PM is now at 42 films on the site, and according to IMDb, I think this is their 11th film, so it really is an early one. There are still elements of action there, especially at the end when we get a car flip seemingly out of nowhere, but it has more of the suspenseful storytelling around it that was a hallmark of some of those early ones, like the ones Wings Hauser did. This one also had the classic pairing of Joseph Merhi as director and Richard Pepin as DP. Of all the great director/DP pairings ever, for DTV action fans this might be the most iconic. While I say this is early PM, it's only a year later that we get to Ring of Fire, the PM take on Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, and something that we think of as a classic PM flick, so that "early period" really only lasted a couple years before they were "PM Fuckin' Entertainment," and then I think they start their peak in '94 with Zero Tolerance, and that wave builds through T-Force, Hologram Man, Last Man Standing, into the Gary Daniels "three Rs," The Sweeper, and Skyscraper, giving us some of the greatest DTV actioners ever. You can also see the wave cresting at the same time as they started the LA Heat TV show in '97. We still get some greats after that, like the last of the Daniels three Rs, Recoil, and The Underground with Jeff Fahey, but nothing like the volume of that peak period. And that's what makes that peak period so astounding, the volume of great films they put out in such a short time, and when I think of a movie like this one as part of their "early period," it really drives home how short that peak period was.

Finally, it's been a while (cue the Staind lyrics) since we've had a McDonald's sighting at the DTVC. I used to make a point of showing them all the time, and have finally decided to tag them. I tried a search of my site, and if it's accurate, the last time we posted was in May of 2011, with Mutant Zombie Vampires from the Hood, which also featured a McDonald's from LA. Sorting out the films where I just mentioned McDonald's, I think this is the 11th film with a McDonald's sighting in it--I didn't count Toxic Avenger, which features a classic McDonald's Styrofoam container, but doesn't show an actual McDonald's as far as I know. 11 tags, does that mean sometime down the road McDonald's could be inducted into the Hall of Fame? Honestly, I don't eat there as much anymore, not because I'm above it or anything, but because all the Center City locations here in Philly have closed, as have the South Philly ones along Broad Street. I'd have to walk ten blocks to the nearest one, which isn't horrible, but why do that? One funny thing is there used to be one on Walnut Street, and Google Maps still shows it as open, despite the fact that the building has been completely torn down, so I guess people order from there still and it causes a mess for delivery drivers.

And with that, let's wrap this up. As of right now you can get this on YouTube, and the version isn't horrible. Hopefully someday a company like Vinegar Syndrome, or maybe even Mill Creek, will put all of PM's flicks on Blu-ray, or maybe Tubi will get more of them so we can at least stream a decent copy, but until then, this YouTube version will work. And again, here's to you Spiro Razatos, one of the best to do it, we action fans are forever in your debt.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100259

Looking for more action? Check out my short action novel, Bainbridge, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

 

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!

Caged Fury (1990)

For the second of two films I'm doing for Seth at The Lost Video Archive's Week of Hong, I'm taking a look at Caged Fury, a women in prison film with James Hong, Erik Estrada, Michael Parks, and Richie Barathy, among others. It looked like it could be intriguing. Let's see how it did.

Caged Fury is about a girl named Kat who goes out to Hollywood from Utah. Along the way, she picks up a girl who was hitchhiking and didn't like her driver after he tried to get payment out of her in a carnal way. In LA, this hitchhiker hooks her up with her boyfriend, who just so happens to know a talent agent. If a thing sounds too good to be true, it probably is, and she and her hitchhiker friend end up in a faux jail, filled with white slaves. Luckily for her, she made friends with Erik Estrada the night before, and he and his buddy, Richie Barathy, are looking for her. Plus, her sister, who looks nothing like her, is also on the case. Then there's police detective James Hong. All three of these forces must be able to put something together to stop this.



But can they make this movie any good in a very limited capacity? I'm going to have to say no. It's probably one of the things that truly derails this film, the fact that Hong, Estrada, and Michael Parks aren't in this that much. I liked Barathy, and when he goes ape shit on the faux prison, taking fools out-- including Ron Jeremy-- it's pretty fun. Best part for me was when he kicks through a wall. There were some other moments that were funny in an 80s/90s B-movie kind of way, plus some familiar faces like Melissa Moore and Gregory Scott Cummins, and all of that together might-- might-- make it a fun choice on a bad movie night. On the other hand, there isn't enough T-n'-A to make it a good exploitation flick, but there's also too much of a dark aspect to make it a really fun movie too, and that makes this kind of hard to fully recommend.

We'll start with Hong again, though there isn't much to work with here. He has like two scenes. That's it. Our heroine's sister goes to the police station to find out what happened to her sister, and talks to him; then later, his dumbass partner takes the emergency call from our heroine, and it's Hong who puzzles out that she's the girl her sister was looking for, and they manage to trace where the call comes from, though not in time to save a bunch of women from being shot to death by the guards. He still has that trademark tongue-in-cheek humor that makes having him in this, if only for two scenes, a lot of fun. Still, I just wish there were more of him.



I believe this is our first women in prison film at the DTVC. I don't know, it's always been a genre that sounds like fun at the time, but, when done wrong, can be very disquieting. There isn't so much a chauvinistic quality to them, as opposed to a seeming desire to see women put through a lot of violent, sexual abuse, which doesn't work for me. Just women in jail with shower scenes and lesbian scenes and a butch guard and warden who get their comeuppance later, that sounds good, but that's not always what we get, and that's not what we got here, which was too bad.

Erik Estrada looked like he was primed to be this film's star, only to see him drop off the map like Hong and Parks. How did this happen? He and Barathy beat up a bunch of bikers early in the film to save our heroine, then he's gone, then he comes back with Barathy to investigate the girl's disappearance, is shot in the arm, and then proceeds to let Barathy save the day, while he swoops in at the very end and gets the girl. Not one of Estrada's finest moments.



Michael Parks plays our heroine's father, and he has some really good scenes, including a couple with some genuine emotion. How did Michael Parks find himself in these kinds of movies? But this was the kind of thing he did, and has done for a long time. It's been good to see him used in some more mainstream films lately. He's a guy who definitely deserves his due, and even I need to showcase him more on here.

But this week is about showcasing James Hong, and, unfortunately, this film doesn't feature him much, and suffers for that. Thought it had its moments, it needed more from its stars to carry a plot that wasn't sexy and exploitation enough, but too dark to have fun with. Ultimately, this is a pass for me, but with its availability on Watch Instantly, you may want to take your chances.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097004/

Border Blues (2004)

I don't really know what I was thinking about with this one. I was blinded by the great names, Gary Busey, Eric Roberts, and Erik Estrada. Those are nice names to be blinded by though, right? But a film made up of a couple episodes of a Russian TV show, that's a warning sign, and in this business, warning signs should always be heeded.

Border Blues follows the story of a Moscow detective who emigrates to LA, only to discover he can't get a job with the LAPD and has to work in the kitchen of a Russian restaurant. When his boss sends him to Tijuana to get some tile with a coyote on it, and his broken English gets him mixed up with an actual coyote (the kind who smuggle people across the border, though the animal would've been great), he finds his chance to be a hero when he's put in contact with Eric Roberts, a man who at the time has been given the task of getting a Russian woman and her child across the border, but is instead holding the pair hostage because he's a nutjob. All of this is happening while Roberts is the main suspect back in the US for a series of letter bombs sent to drug companies, which has him in police lieutenant Gary Busey's sights, and Mexican Federale Erik Estrada's sights.



This actually could've been really good, but they mismanaged the whole story with Eric Roberts's character. He was a total weirdo, obsessed with the Russian woman's daughter, insinuating himself into her life and acting like some father figure, to the point that he tied the mom to a chair in the basement so she wouldn't take the child with her when he went to run an errand. With all that psycho weirdness, the film tried to do an about face and make the guy redeemable. It muddled the whole thing and made it much messier than it needed to be. There were some other weird things, like how the Russian detective knows these LAPD detectives for like 20 minutes, and suddenly they're offering to watch his dog for him while he goes to Tijuana. I know us Americans come off as really informal and overly friendly, but it's really a superficial thing. When we ask at the check-out line "How are you doing?", we really don't want the truth; and when we seem nice after talking to you for 20 minutes, that doesn't mean we're interested in watching your dog for you. I feel like a lot of these issues came up in making the TV show into a movie, but maybe I'm wrong about that.

One area that this film really excelled though was in Gary Busey. His character was kind of ambiguous. We couldn't tell if he was sarcastically telling people he saw visions of the future, or if he really believed he could, but that ambiguity helped make the character. The rest was Busey simply being Busey, with great lines, great scenes that almost made no sense, and great facial expressions. Because he was a higher up on the police force, it made sense that he wasn't on-screen much, but when he was there, he was vintage.



Eric Roberts was great too, it was the writing that let him down more than anything. Why they didn't just let him be a weird psycho is beyond me, because that was working; but when they tried to walk him back from the ledge and make him redeemable, it fell apart. Every time he took the child away from her mother, every time he walked in on them and leered at the mom with these creepy eyes, it made my skin crawl. Not only that, but he fired at the Russian detective when the guy tried to rescue the woman and her child. Then the Russian guy is acting like Roberts isn't such a bad guy at the end when Erik Estrada is coming to take him down. Just let him be a nutjob, is that so hard?

I thought this was our first ever Erik Estrada flick at the DTVC, but I am mistaken. He had a special appearance in King Cobra (remember that post back in August of 2007?). Unlike Busey, who had a great supporting part, Estrada doesn't show up until near the end, and his part is so scant that it's disappointing. Making that disappointment stronger, was how good Estrada was as the corrupt Federale. Where was this earlier in the film? I even had trouble finding a nice enough pic of him to screencap, because he doesn't have any good closeups. An interesting side note: according to imdb, he doesn't speak Spanish, which I guess explains why he plays a Spanish speaking character who relapses into English.



As an anthropology nerd, I did like the mix of Russian, American, and Mexican cultures, especially with a Russian mother and daughter trying to sneak into the US. It seems like it would be easier to go the other way if you're Russian, though, through Canada. It's a border that's not policed as heavily. Of course, you'd have to get into Canada first. I don't know why I'm talking as if I know anything about any of this stuff, considering the only time I've left the US is to fly to England.

This is available on DVD through Netflix, which is a bonus. If you're a Busey or a Roberts fan, this might have some value, but it's rather minute, and I'd only put it in your queue if you've seen the bulk of their better films first. It's not God awful, but it's not great either, and anything that might have worked about it fell apart with the muddled ending.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0461471/

King Cobra (1999)

This was a late night deal I did to battle a bout of insomnia. It didn't work out so well, in that I lasted through the whole thing. It drew my attention because it had the late Pat Morita and the even later Hoyt Axton. I'm also a fan of snake movies.

In King Cobra a poor man's Carrot Top (which if you do the math out, that would mean poor man's as in guy collecting bottles to buy a forty) goes over his boss's head in a lab experiment and things go horribly wrong, leading to an explosion and the creation of a 30-foot cross between a rattler and a King Cobra. As most of the beasts are wont to do, this one terrorizes a small town. As people die, the boss scientist comes looking for it. A doctor looking to leave town and his police officer girlfriend help the scientist, along with Pat Morita, resident herpetologist. The doctor is about as close as you can get to being Jonathan Silverman without actually being him. Anyway, more people die, before Morita has a last stand with the snake. Then he dies, and the police woman tries to kill it. Just as the cobra's about to bite her, the doctor drop kicks it (I'm not kidding), and the two stick it in some device that gases it. There's a special appearance by Erik Estrada.



This movie has a built in bad movie warning in the opening credits. The moment you read "Special Appearance by Erik Estrada", you either say to yourself "sweet", or you say "this looks dumb". I'm the kind of guy that says "sweet", and as such am not scared off by such warnings. I hope you the reader aren't either. As far as the appearance went, it was just Estrada overacting as a gay guy planning a beer festival that coincides with the snake's arrival. In my mind, the actual line in the opening credits telling us there'd be a special appearance was better than the actual appearance.

The snake was of great quality. Instead of going the CGI route that most of these bad monster films are going, this one went animatronic with stop motion animation. The result was a higher quality and funnier snake than the CGI ones. It's like the CGI monster is the sweatpants of the genre, and the film maker that uses it is just telling the world that he or she has given up. Well the people who made this one haven't given up... at least not yet.



Pat Morita is fantastic in this. At three or four in the morning, by myself, I was laughing out loud at the end where he had goggles on, and was wavering as the snake kept biting him. It almost as if the animatronic snake was making an expression of "will you just die already." He just looked so silly, especially with the goggles. I guess the idea was that his blood had lots of anti-venom, so the snake had to bite him a lot. Either that, or they needed to pad the film, so they shot the snake, then shot Morita staggering as he tried to outlast the attack, then looped it over and over.

This was Hoyt Axton's last film. In it, he looked a lot like an aged Joe Don Baker, which is funny, because Hoyt did the theme song to Mitchell. For groups of people watching this, the near Joe Don-ness of him is a sweet addition. It's like I don't have to think to make jokes when he's on screen, I just go to my Mitchell well. "Bite me Mitchell".



The main character, the doctor, is almost Jonathan Silverman. When he drop kicks the snake at the end it is priceless. I've never seen anything like it in all the years I've been watching movies. I was beginning to doubt my decision to stick with the film as long as I did, but in quick succession at the very end, I got Morita's hilarious death scene, then the even funnier snake drop kick. I'm not sure whose idea it was, but whoever thought of it should get a Nobel prize in herpetology or something.

If you see this on Sci-Fi or something, TiVo it. At the very least, you can skip to the end. The drop kick alone makes it for me one of the best of the bad horror films on Sci-Fi. I'm not sure it's worth buying it or renting it for that, but TiVoing won't cost you much beyond the space it takes up on your DVR. You don't need to see the rest of the film, but you won't forgive yourself if you miss the Morita death scene, followed by the drop kick.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0138797/