Trancers III (1992)

Having done the first two of these, and being a huge Tim Thomerson fan, and seeing that this was free to stream on Tubi, I figured I'd give it a shot. Throw in that 75-minute runtime, and I was all in. This was also reviewed by our friend Mitch at the Video Vacuum, so you can head over there to see what he thought.

Trancers III follows Jack Deth (Thomerson) living a mundane life in 1990s LA as a private detective. All that changes when a big android/alien dude comes from the future and press-gangs him into going back with him to fight the trancers. Deth's new mission: go back to 2005 and stop the US government's Trancer program before it gets off the ground. There he meets back up with his ex-wife Helen Hunt, who's harboring a woman (Melanie Smith) who escaped the Trancer program. She could be the key to his stopping it. When he gets caught though all bets are off. He has nothing to fear though, right? Only squids can be tranced...

It's fascinating that Thomerson, Hunt, Megan Ward, and a big android alien looking dude in a 75-minute package could drag, but this did. I mean, 75 minutes of Thomerson scowling and burning heaters in a trench coat should be enough to do it, so what did this do wrong? The biggest culprit was Deth spent a good portion of the second half of the film strapped to a chair getting tranced. Come again? He wasn't stalking the hallways, cigarette in his mouth and gun in hand, taking out Trancers? And what happened to that big alien/android guy? How was this not those two in a buddy cop paradigm? One thing thing I'll give it though: the shorter runtime makes all of these issues much more tolerable. It's a lesson to all filmmakers out there, better to be at 75 minutes than 105.

This is Tim Thomerson's 16th film at the DTVC. That's really high for a non-Hall of Famer, which begs the question: could he ever get in? Perhaps he'd already be in if I hadn't gone on hiatus for 4 years or so. Just the same, when a film has a lead of his quality, he can really make up for its shortcomings; but if he's not used right, he can also exacerbate them, and I think that's what happened here. Tim Thomerson is not a man to be strapped down to a chair and tortured most of a film. That's not what we come to a Thomerson movie for, we want the Thomerson we know a love, this guy in the trench coat mean mugging it and burning heaters, and this unfortunately didn't have enough of that.

Helen Hunt is back for the third and last time. Mad About You started in 1992, the same year this one came out. By 1996 she was in Twister, and by 1997 she had an Oscar. I was trying to think how many Oscar winners we've had on here. De Niro, Pesci, and Pacino, plus Scorsese and Kathryn Bigelow as directors; also Ernest Borgnine, Jack Palance, and Angelina Jolie. Probably the one who's had the most tags is Cuba Gooding Jr. Stallone won one for Best Screenplay, as did Quentin Tarantino, who was in the crew of the Dolph workout film Maximum Potential. It's crazy to think our site has had that many Oscar winners, since we're mostly looking at movies like this, but it's always cool when you can see someone either like Helen Hunt, who is pre-Oscar and big network TV show; or if it's someone like Cuba Gooding Jr. or Ernest Borgnine who had the great career and came to DTV after.

Look at that crazy bastard below there. How could you not center the whole film around him and Thomerson? Was it that the make-up work was so arduous that they needed to lessen his role? The two of them along with Melanie Smith should have been going into the bunker where the Trancer project was, and kicking ass and taking names. Just line up the stuntment from LA, put them in military uniforms, and let the crew take them down. In a 75-minute movie, sometimes that's all you need. But if that make-up was too limiting and they needed to do it the way they did, I get that, I just could have gone for more of him.

Finally, it looks like this is only our 12th Full Moon film on the site. Initially I was only seeing 7, but I went back and tagged some that I had missed before; but just the same, 12 is a small number compared to Cannon's 41, PM's 35, and even The Asylum's 30. For one of the all-time great DTV/low budget film companies, that's way too low. At the very least I can finish off the Trancers to get more up here, but I think this also points to a trend in my reviews: I tend to lean more toward action than anything else, which wasn't my intention when I got into this. My early DTV viewing experience was always equal parts action, sci-fi, horror, and comedy--not mention the 90s DTV erotic thriller. This might be as big an indicator as any that I need to mix it up more on the site, which I hope to do more of going forward.

And with that, it's a good time to wrap this up. I wasn't as big a fan of this as I was the first two, but at 75 minutes, that nice runtime definitely mitigates the issues I had with it. Right now all 6 of them are on Tubi, so at least watch the first two and then see if you want to keep going.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105632

Demonic Toys (1992)

This is one I've wanted to get up here for some time, especially after doing the sequel, Dollman vs. Demonic Toys, a few weeks ago. Then Netflix put it on its dump list on Watch Instantly, not as a part of the Stars Play Purge, but the day after as a part of their usual dumping situation, meaning this isn't a Stars Play 11, but it's close, and I still had to get it in if I didn't want to miss out.

Demonic Toys follows vice detective Tracy Scoggins as she and her boyfriend/partner go undercover to buy some illegal firearms. She's just told her dude that she's preggers with his kid, which makes him a little overprotective, and that overprotectiveness makes the bust go south. Now he's dead, and the two dealers are in an old warehouse that stores old toys, which is where Scoggins has them cornered. Problem: there are some demonic toys in there, and they want Scoggins and her baby so their demonic master can be born again. I think she's having a bad day.



This is a good one. Some really nice gore, some fun villains, and and a great cast. This is the quintessential early 90s video store rental nostalgia piece, and it really brought me back. I know Puppetmaster is more the film that people first think of when they think Full Moon, but it's what we get in Demonic Toys that captures what I think Full Moon is about more. A great mixture of comedy and kills; random stuff like a guy in a Big Foot suit attacking Bentley Mitchum, or Bentley Mitchum driving a chicken mobile; and memorable, iconic characters that we look forward to seeing in the sequels. Load up your junk food and booze, and make this thing happen.

Tracy Scoggins was great here as the heroine. I was wondering why we haven't done more of her stuff, but when I looked at imdb, I noticed she has a lot more TV credits than she does DTV flicks-- in fact, after Dollman vs. Demonic Toys, it's almost exclusively TV. I'll have to go back though and check out some of those late 80s/early 90s flicks they list of her. One I do remember that I saw back in high school was Alien Intruder with Billy Dee Williams. That might be one to put on the radar.



One difference between the Demonic Toys in this as opposed to Dollman vs. Demonic Toys, is that here they do a lot more killing. And when they kill, it's pretty nasty. Lots of chunks bitten out of people, that kind of thing. Compared to a lot of Full Moon flicks I've seen, that type of gore was a bit of a departure, but I loved it. A big gross jack-in-the-box popping out and biting a dudes neck works every time-- in fact, the more the better.

Bentley Mitchum was something of a revelation. Maybe he'd just been miscast before, but I didn't know he had this much personality or this much craziness. He has some sweet freakouts, plus, he's really awesome early on smoking a cigarette while putting together a batch of fried chicken for delivery. He has to bring it to the security guard at the warehouse, and that's how he ends up fighting the toys. He just made the film that much more entertaining, and it's too bad he's so often cast in these one-note parts that don't allow him to get after it like he did here.



In some of Scoggins' dream sequences, there was this clock (a pic of which I stuck on the image page) that had a seven with a massive tail on it. It looked like a "Z" for God's sake. There's just a lot of flamboyance in that, a lot of aplomb, almost dandy-ish. It's like the Anthony Newley of sevens. Like, I think that seven drinks a lot of Beaujolais-- or maybe a lot of Claret. Right now, that seven is getting a suit made on Savile Row.

All right, enough of that, let's wrap this up. However you can get this, I say go for it, it's worth it. A solid Full Moon effort, and one that really brings you back to those video store days. I don't want to say they don't make 'em like this anymore, it's more like even when they do, they're still of the 2000s or the 2010s, which tempers some of that nostalgia for me. Sometimes I just feel like watching a good 90s flick, and this is it.

For more info:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104083/

Dollman vs. Demonic Toys (1993)

This is another one that I'd been planning to do for some time, and when Emily of Deadly Doll's House of Horror Nonsense came to me for posts featuring miniature baddies for her Vertically Challenged Villains Month, I figured I'd bump this one up and do it now too, like I did with Puppet Master II. I should point out, it's been a long, long time since I've seen Demonic Toys and Bad Channels, two of the three films that this is a sequel of, the third being Dollman, which we did sometime ago. It might mean I missed some things I'd have picked up on if those other two were fresher in my mind.

Dollman vs. Demonic Toys is like a comic book crossover of Full Moon projects, featuring Dollman Brick Bardo (played again by Tim Thomerson), who, after beings stranded on Earth, goes out to California to find Nurse Ginger (Melissa Behr), who herself was shrunk and left shrunk at the end of Bad Channels (actually, in Bad Channels it was Bunny, not Nurse Ginger who was left shrunk, but does it matter?). He makes it to her house and they form a romance, hoping to live happily ever after. Not so fast cowboy. Enter Tracy Scoggins, who has been hunting the Demonic Toys. She hears about Ginger and Brick, and thinks Brick would be perfect to take down the Demonic Toys due to his size. His big gun doesn't hurt either. The Demonic Toys won't know what hit them.



This is exactly as I described it, a comic book crossover in movie form. That's what it felt like, a cool one-off. Even the length, just over an hour, fits that vibe. As someone that grew up with comics and loved it when one-off issues were released with characters from different books put together, to see something like this that captures that vibe is really cool. Tim Thomerson is his usual awesome self reprising his role as Brick Bardo, and the showdown between him and the Demonic Toys is everything I could've asked for. Scoggins and Behr were also great, as was Phil Fondacaro, who had a small part as a security guard (no pun in tended). Add to that Quiet Riot in the film's soundtrack, and you can't lose. Even though a chunk of the film gives you enough backstory that you can watch this without seeing the previous films first, you should at least take advantage of Dollman and Demonic Toys on Watch Instantly beforehand, because it'll make this one a little more fun.

I guess we start with Tim Thomerson, right? He's so deep into his Brick Bardo character that there's no question about anything being silly with him fighting an over-sized baby doll or duking it out with a Conan O'Brien action figure. He plays it so straight, yet so cool, that it all works and makes it that much better for all of us. In fact, the entire cast plays it pretty straight, which makes all the difference in films like this. Thomerson also has an interesting distinction here at the DTVC: he's one of the few non-Hall of Famers to have more tags than some of the inductees. The question is how to rectify that: get more films for those Hall of Famers, induct Thomerson this fall, or both?



I want to stay with this shot of Thomerson here, because it's archive footage from Dollman, which was directed by Albert Pyun. I wasn't sure if I should the tag Pyun, because it is his footage that's being used. I mean, I've tagged actors for smaller appearances than the amount of footage from Dollman that we had in this. I wonder how that works as far as Pyun goes for money, or if Band owns the rights. Same with the actors, like Michael Halsey, Vincent Klyn, and Jackie Earle Haley. I don't believe they're credited either. Should I tag them or not too? There's also the character name "Brick Bardo", which Pyun has used a lot. Was there any dispute about who owned the rights to it after the fact? Another interesting Pyun connection here was Anthony Riparetti, who worked on the music. He's worked on a lot of Pyun's films, usually credited as "Tony" Riparetti.

I loved the Conan O'Brien action figure. How is that not awesome? He of course predates Conan's run on Late Night by about a year, but still. It's too bad Conan doesn't have the rights to all his characters, because you could have a great crossover with them and the Demonic Toys. Imagine Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, the Reverend Otis K. Dribbles, the Masturbating Bear, Pimp Bot, maybe even the Ear of Corn, all fighting the Demonic Toys, or maybe the Puppets from the Puppet Master series. A guy can dream, right?



As I mentioned above, this film clocks in at a cool 64 minutes, which isn't much. I always hear the term "feature length" tossed around, and wanted to find out exactly what it was, so I did what anyone would do, I went to Wikipedia. According to them, there are multiple definitions for feature length, some as short as 40 minutes, but the rough standard for an adult feature is 80 to 210 minutes. Do I think this one at 64 minutes should've been longer? No, 64 worked, and I imagine, if Band were forced to make it 80, he'd just add five more minutes of archive footage from each of the three original films, and one more minute of credits, and he'd have his 80. Give me shorter with less padding every time. I always say, anything after 88 minutes is borrowed time and better be damn good.

We are two-for-two this week on Full Moon flicks, the other being Puppet Master II. I daresay I like this one even more. If you like Full Moon, you like Thomerson, and you like the old comic one-off with tons of different characters, this is your flick. Right now it's on Watch Instantly. I can't think of a 64 minutes better spent. (Okay, maybe I can think of a few ways, but not many.)

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106743/

Puppet Master II (1991)

I had been planning to do this one for some time. I mean, I'm planning to do them all at some point, but I'd already done the first Puppet Master, so the next logical step would be part 2, plus it's on Watch Instantly, so that's another bonus. But then Emily at Deadly Doll's House of Horror Nonsense shot me an e-mail asking if I had any movies to review about short baddies for her Vertically Challenged Villains Month, and I thought it would be a great opportunity to make this one happen.

Puppet Master II I think picks up where part 1 left off. We're at the famous hotel, now abandoned, and some twenty-something kids sent by the government bureau of paranormal activity are there investigating its goings-ons. At the same time, our stringless animated puppets are hard at work getting their old master, Toulon, risen from the dead, which they do, but he dresses like the Invisible Man, which is kinda creepy. Anyway, Toulon thinks one of the girls on the crew looks like his long lost love, and he wants her and him to be reincarnated into the bodies of large, human-sized dolls. She's not so amenable to the idea, and hopefully, for her sake, her beau will rescue her in time.



I enjoyed this one more than the first. It had a better puppet quotient, their time was spread out throughout the film, and we had fewer gaps between puppet kills. I liked that they added tangential characters that could be killed earlier on, so we didn't have that huge chunk of nothing we had in the first one. The addition of Toulon wrapped in bandages created an extra layer of tension and suspense without breaking the special effects budget, which worked really well too. This is the fun horror movie that I wanted from the first one, but didn't get until the last twenty minutes or so. Here we have 88 minutes with very little padding and a lot of action.

The Puppet Master series is to Full Moon what The Toxic Avengers are to Troma. While there are plenty of other films we associate with both companies, and while both companies put out completely different styles of horror flicks, both the Puppet Masters and The Toxic Avengers have that iconic quality that transcends their niche markets. It's weird then that I've seen the Toxic Avenger flicks much more than I've seen the Puppet Masters. I think a big part of that comes from the fact that I've never introduced people to the Puppet Master flicks the way I have the Toxic Avengers, and whenever we introduce a film to someone, it's usually a rewatch for us, right? It's one of the great things about having this blog though, I have a reason to go back and revisit films like this that I otherwise wouldn't.



Recognize her? It's Charlie Spradling. She played Paulette in Ski School, one of my all time favorite films. She was hot there, and she was hot here. In one scene, she goes from topless in only her panties to putting on the guy she's with's dress shirt. What is it about that that's so hot to us straight guys? It would make sense for gay guys, because they're both men, so one has a dress shirt, the other puts it on, he looks nice in it, I get that; but why do women look so hot to us straight guys when they wear our shirts? The shirt isn't made for them with their bodies in mind. I guess it's the fact that it's the shirt and nothing else that's hot, I mean, I don't know how hot I'd find a girl I was dating if she wore my jeans too. And it doesn't work around the way either, does it? Would a woman find us hot in her blouse?

The killing of kids is a tricky thing in any movie, and though I'm not sure it was pulled off well here, I give them points for trying. What they do is make the kid a total brat, and he picks up the new flamethrower puppet (Torch?) and starts abusing him. So the puppet sets him on fire-- though it's never shown. Technically, we don't know for sure if the kid is killed, because there's the cut away, but I'm pretty sure it happened. If it hadn't been being burned alive, I think it would've worked better-- I mean, violence towards kids in real life is abhorrent, but in a movie, with the kind of brat this was, it was a borderline applause scene.



Does that stuff not look like mint chocolate chip ice cream to you? It does to me. I don't remember the last time I've had some, I'm kind of getting a craving for it. Fun fact: I remember hearing that Timothy McVeigh's last meal was two pints of mint chocolate chip (just confirmed this on his Wikipedia page). I like me some mint chocolate chip, but I'm not sure I like it last meal good. Anthony Bourdain said all chefs have a last meal dish. It's like their standard for best food ever. Can you do that though? Can you have a gourmet chef whip up a rare and expensive meal? I'd say us tax payers made out all right with the two pints of mint chocolate chip-- damn, I might have to get me a pint tomorrow.

All right, enough of that, let's wrap this up. I want to thank Emily again for including my posts in her Vertically Challenged Villains month. Though you should watch Puppet Master before you watch this one, I enjoyed this one much more than it's predecessor. When you think Puppet Master, this is the movie you think of. Full Moon at its best, just a fun horror flick.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100438/

Puppet Master aka Puppetmaster (1989)

For Halloween week of 2010, I had planned to do this movie along with Bloody Birthday and Schizoid, but when those other two movies got almost no response, I scrapped Puppet Master and went with the Lorenzo Lamas flick Body Rock instead. At this stage of the game though, I think I have more horror fans than I did then, so now is probably a better time to give this one a look. Let's see how it did.

Puppet Master is about a puppeteer that has figured out the Egyptian secret to giving life to inanimate objects, and he uses that power to give life to his puppets. Unfortunately, baddies want to get their hands on that power, so he kills himself and hides his puppets. Fifty years later, a group of psychics get a call that one of their buddies has died in a California hotel-- the same one the puppeteer killed himself in fifty years before. When they get there though, weird things start happening, and members of their crew turn up dead. Who could be responsible? And what was their friend up to?



Wow, this is a tough one to call. The first hour or so is so dull I almost lost it. Talk about padding, there was more here than the shoulders of a blazer from the 80s. But then the last half-hour was some really fantastic horror, great deaths, great tension, really inspired shots and imagery. Where was this movie in the early going? I'm not saying I needed more puppets, because I understand that this was probably made on a scant budget, and also because you don't want to overuse the puppets and dull their effect later. I get that. But you couldn't have a few more people end up dead and spread them throughout? I mean, the first 12 minutes is an introduction that went seven minutes too long. Then we get a few cool things, only to be saddled with nothing until about the 55 minute mark. It was a pile of build-up and backstory that either had no effect on the end, or was repeating stuff we already knew. I can understand why this is a cult classic, because that last half-hour to forty minutes is fantastic; but it can't make up for what came before it, which put me to sleep.

I just can't see how someone read this script and didn't say "wow, not much happens here for a good chunk of this. Maybe we need to fix that." Going in, I was looking for the right combination of campy and creepy, and when we get to the end, it was all there. Again, I understand that they didn't want to overuse the puppet, both because of the budget, and to keep the effect of them potent; but how hard would it have been to add some more victims, have them offed off-screen, or maybe do it where a shadow falls down on them or something. They actually did this with the poker death, so it's not like they didn't understand the concept of it. I don't know, it's either that, or they take some of the later deaths and move them to other parts of the film to break up the monotony, because that long a period of inactivity is too much.



One area where this padding was most evident came in the White Witch character, because she goes through all this witchcraft stuff, as if it will have some kind of protective effect, and then when the puppets attack her, she's just like every other helpless lady. Either don't waste our time with the witchcraft stuff, or have it have some purpose later on in the plot-- which is what I would've liked, because she was a great character, she just unfortunately didn't amount to anything.

Barbara Crampton has a small one-scene cameo, and she's excellent. She plays a girl who has taken her boyfriend to the White Witch, who's working as a fortune teller, to find out if he'll make a good husband. This kind of thing was great in breaking up the monotony, but it really didn't happen beyond this one scene. Crampton was funny, and carried the whole routine. On the other hand, this comes around the 15 minute mark of the film, so I didn't know I'd have a good half-hour-plus before something happened again.



I want to finish here with a question about dating and relationships. In this scene, the main character turns down a chance to sleep with the White Witch, presumably because she carries around the stuffed a preserved remains of her dead dog with her. It got me wondering, how hot would a chick have to be for me to sleep with her under those circumstances? No matter what gender you're attracted to, I think it's a valid question: how hot does someone have to be for you to ignore the fact that he or she carries their dead dog around with them? And talks to it too, we can't forget that. I don't know, I gotta say it's not as much of a deal breaker as it sounds.

But we're getting off track here. This is roughly an hour of padding followed by 30 minutes of fantastic horror. Maybe for some (and I imagine a lot, because this is so popular) that's not as much of a loss, or maybe that padding didn't seem as arduous; but it was a bit much for me. That's too bad, because that ending was almost worth the slog.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098143/

Trancers II (1991)

This movie has been long overdue, considering I did Trancers over six months ago. I should've had them all reviewed by now, forget just being on part 2. But we can't go back and fix it-- actually we can, I can just mess with the dates of the posts and make it look like I did them months ago, but I'd never do that--, so I'll just do my best to get them done as quickly as possible from here on in. If you can't wait for me, though, and I don't blame you, Mr. Gable at Mr. Gable's Reality has looked at the others, so you can see what he has to say.

Trancers II takes place six years after part 1 left off. Jack Deth (DTVC favorite Tim Thomerson) is settling down with Helen Hunt, living in Hap Ashby's mansion. Turns out Winslow has a brother though, played by none other than Richard Lynch, and has as one of his top hatchetmen none other than Jeffrey Combs dressed like he was just released from a parallelogram hurling through space. So back in the future, McNulty is sent back in time to give Deth the word-- this time his ancestor is a 15-year-old girl-- and hopefully find Deth's wife from back in the future too, who was also sent back to the past, and is in the extremely hot body of Megan Ward. Will Jack Deth prevail again?



Though this wasn't the 76-minute awesomefest the first one was, it was still pretty good. It had some great one-liners, some great action, and some great performances from the entire cast, which as you could see from the synopsis, was rather prodigious. It wasn't the total 80s sci-fi tongue-in-cheek Film Noir actioner that made the first one so great, and instead it had a tendency to dwell too much on a pretty heavy duty plot that weighed things down at times, but overall, it was a fun time, and worth checking out.

Tim Thomerson is back as Jack Deth, probably his most notable role, and while he didn't have as great of material to work with here as he did in part 1, it was still pretty sweet, and he delivered. He also had to love that he got to make out with both Helen Hunt and Megan Ward. One thing that's never really been discussed before, are Thomerson's numbers for a potential Hall of Fame induction. In an actor, the two things the panel usually looks for are a big DTV resume, and one memorable role; and Thomerson has both of those. Not to mention, the fact that his birthday is only seven days after mine helps his cause: all good people are Aries.



Not an Aries, but someone who celebrated her 42nd birthday only three days ago as of this posting, is Megan Ward. She is really hot, and Charles Band understood that, because he had no shortages of close-ups on her face throughout the movie. Usually, if you're Tim Thomerson, or really, if you're any guy, you're thinking Helen Hunt as my wife, I'll take that. But then Megan Ward comes along and throws herself at you too. Not only that, but she's also your wife. I don't know how I'd feel at 45, if I were married, if my wife left and came back in the body of a 22-year-old Megan Ward. I think I'd feel kind of guilty, because I'm still 45, with saggy pecs and a spare tire around my waist. I guess if you're as awesome as Tim Thomerson, though, you're not worried about it.

Let's round out the rest of this cast. Richard Lynch, as we already know, is a first-rate baddie, and nothing changes here. I'm not going to give away his death scene, but for me, it's second only to the rocket launcher blast he took in Invasion USA for his best death ever. Jeffrey Combs could've had a bigger role, because he didn't have much to do, which for me was a disappointment. He also wasn't playing a crazy guy. He had slicked back hair and a goatee, which, when combined with his black turtleneck and black coat, made him look like he was one of Zod's gang. "Kneel before Combs!" I'd have liked to see Thomerson deal with Combs shooting red lasers out of his eyes. From the last movie, we also had Telma Hopkins, who you may remember from Family Matters, and veteran character actor Art LaFleur. Finally, in a one scene cameo, Barbara Crampton played a TV talk show host interviewing Lynch. One more I want to mention too was Alyson Croft, who reprised her role from first film as Art LaFleur's ancestor, now a 15-year-old. She was great, smoking cigars and making hard-assed detective comments, eliciting "Damn it McNulty!"s from Thomerson. That whole dynamic was one of my favorite parts of the film.



Also reprising his role is Biff Manard, back as Hap Ashby. He wears a lot of Angels gear, which back then would've been the California Angels, but now are the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, and in between, they were the Anaheim Angels. In 2009, I was out in LA, and a buddy and I took the commuter rail from Union Station (which also appears in Trancers II) over to Anaheim to see the Angels play my Boston Red Sox. Very cool experience, and I recommend anyone who's visiting LA, baseball fan or not, to go check out a game there if you're in town during baseball season. The ballpark is right at the train station, so it's really convenient. (As an aside, my Sox lost that game.)

Maybe not as amazing as its predecessor, this still delivers and is well worth it. It's currently on Watch Instantly, but as I've been saying lately, the quality of Netflix's service has left something to be desired, and who knows how long after this posting that it'll still be on Watch Instantly (within days of my Dance of the Dead post, Netflix put up a note saying it'll be gone on October 1st.) For a more sure bet, look for this on DVD or used VHS. Either will do.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103116/

Dollman (1991)

This movie has the triple threat of Charles Band, Tim Thomerson, and DTVC Hall of Famer Albert Pyun. Throw in its availability on Watch Instantly, and it was a must. I mean, how do you not love the idea of Tim Thomerson as a cop from another planet who chases a criminal to Earth, where he only stands 13 inches tall?

Dollman is pretty much what I just said above. Thomerson plays Brick Bardo (classic Pyun name), a renegade, violent cop from a planet 10,000 light years away, who chases after the living severed head of one of his oldest enemies, into a ban of energy that transports them in their space ships to Earth, the South Bronx to be exact, where they're only 13 inches tall. Bardo finds he can help a local woman in her fight against crack dealing gangs that have taken over her neighborhood, but she isn't sure she wants his help because he's so violent-- even at 13 inches!



This is a lot of fun. Sure, it has a couple too silly for words moments, like when Bardo jumps out of an upper story window to the street below, where he grabs onto a moving car and rides it to where the baddies' hideout is; but for the most part it's just a fun low-budget sci-fi actioner, with a lot of familiar faces and some pretty gory shoot-outs. The film starts with a hostage situation in a laundry mat on Bardo's home planet, and he shows up, everyone there expecting he wants to help. Nicholas Guest, the cop on the scene, asks him what he plans to do. "I'm going to wash my whites in hot water, and my colors in cold water with a warm rinse." "What?" "This is where I do my laundry, and that's what I plan to do." It starts out this awesome, and pretty much keeps it going from there. Throw in appearances from other Pyun mainstays Vincent Klyn and Michael Halsey, and a baddie played by former child actor and current it actor Jackie Earle Haley, and you have a formula for a good time.

We've been on a pretty good string of Albert Pyun films lately, so hopefully we'll keep that up. It's hard to go wrong with a movie about a violent cop played by Tim Thomerson that's only 13 inches tall and likes to blow people apart with his custom made firearm, and with a running time of 75 minutes without the credits, that's usually an even surer bet. Beyond the camp, there were also some really cool sets and shots, especially of Tim Thomerson with a fallen building behind him that looks like an old mushroom box or something. Obviously, this movie is more about fun than anything, but it's always good to see some shots that are more on the artistic side, because it tells us, the viewer, that at least the process is being taken seriously, even if the content isn't meant to be.



This role by Jackie Earle Haley came a few years before his 13-year hiatus, which saw him come back in 2006 with an Oscar nomination. Not a bad deal if you ask me. I actually really liked him on the few episodes I've seen of Human Target. Here he plays a gang lord who comes across the severed-head bad guy Thomerson was chasing, and while he's trying to carve out supremacy in the South Bronx, he's also after Thomerson because the severed told him he could become a problem. It was a good role. I don't know that we could get him in another Pyun film now though.

"Back off Warchild, seriously." It's time to take inventory of this film's Pyun mainstays, starting with Thomerson. There was also Nicholas Guest, Michael Halsey, and DTVC favorite Vincent Klyn, listed here as "Vince Klyn". None of them get more than a scene or two outside of Thomerson, but it's always good to see them.



According to imdb, Dollman was filmed both in LA and in the South Bronx, so I'm not sure how much of the South Bronx stuff was filmed on location or back out in LA. I've actually been to the Bronx before-- maybe not the South Bronx, I'm actually not sure where exactly I was, because we were lost. I was with a couple classmates in college going from UMaine to DC for an anthropology conference, and the girl driving had these weird directions that involved getting off of one Interstate in the Bronx, then getting onto another. It was a trip, and when I saw the highway we wanted, the girl was like "we can't go that way, it's a one-way street", and I was like "Jesus, just go, let's get the hell out of here." It's always funny to get rural Maine mixed with the city, because rural Maine never has any idea how to cope with it. I would like to go there again under better circumstances though. The parts we were in didn't look that bad.

You've probably learned more than you wanted to about my brief experience in the Bronx, so I'll wrap this up. Simply put, 75 minutes, Albert Pyun, Tim Thomerson as a 13-inch violent Dirty Harry style cop, and a good amount of gore and fun. What more could you want?

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101751/

Trancers (1985)

This is one I've been meaning to do, probably almost as long as I've been doing the DTVC, and with it available on Netflix Watch Instantly, it's only been a matter of time. Our friend at Mr. Gable's Reality has looked at this one before, and has also looked at some of the other ones, so you can check that all out on his site. As an aside, I hyperlinked your cover photo for this, so I hope you're not upset.

Trancers has DTVC favorite Tim Thomerson as a police officer in 2247, whose mind is sent back in time to 1985 LA, in order to stop a criminal mastermind who is trying to whack the ancestors of the three oligarchical benevolent leaders of 2247, essentially vaporizing their entire lineage. The criminal has a scary, diabolical technique, where he turns weak-minded people into Trancers, virtual zombies who look like regular people until confronted by Thomerson, then they attack him and look more like zombies. It's a race against time, as Thomerson and Helen Hunt, the girl from 1985 he's befriended, try to protect the ancestors before the baddie can get them.

76 minutes. That's right all you filmmakers who feel like you have to add filler to make your movie more substantial, Trancers clocks in at a cool 76 minutes, and it's probably more awesome than your 100 minute painfest. I'm just saying. Also, put the computer away--or only use it when you have to, as opposed to using it as a crutch--because this looked really nice, and in 1985, they weren't greenscreening and CGI'ing us to death. This was just a really fun low-budget sci-fi flick that has only gotten better over time.

Tim Thomerson was great, as always, but I think this might be the first one we've done where he was the main star. If anyone is awesome as the Film Noir-style detective, especially with the voice for the cool detective narration, it's him. This will be his ninth film we've done, and of the other 8, only two, Gangland and Gale Force weren't Albert Pyun films, so it's usually as a Pyun mainstay that he finds himself on here. The Trancers films are as big a part of his legacy as his work with Pyun, so I'm glad I'm finally getting this first one reviewed.

This is only the second Charles Band directed film we've done, the other being the Gary Busey flick, The Gingerdead Man. The bigger thing of course that he's known for is creating Full Moon Pictures, which is probably something that should get him a Hall of Fame induction, it's just we haven't even done that many of those films either. It's something I plan to rectify, especially since a lot of the Full Moon catalog is making its way onto Netflix Watch Instantly.

Helen Hunt is very hot in this, as she usually is. I wonder what Tim Thomerson thought when she won her Oscar, or even before that when she was on Mad About You, making $1 mill an episode the final season. Did he think "I had a love scene with her" or "I carried her over my shoulder while she wore a cute Santa's elf costume"? Maybe he didn't, but I thought that as I watched this film. He probably sat back during the Oscars with a glass of good scotch and a cigar, and thought "The kid made it. Good for her." That's why he's Tim Thomerson and I'm not.

There's a great scene in a nightclub with a punk band singing "Jingle Bells," and it had me thinking. Recently a buddy posted a picture on Tumblr of Johnny Rotten with a crazy look on his face and the caption "Johnny Rotten just found out what kids today consider Punk." This movie really drove that home, because in 1985, punks were scary, and it took badasses like Tim Thomerson to deal with them. They didn't marry Ashley Simpson or Paris Hilton, they didn't have their A&R men get their songs featured on The Hills--they probably didn't even have A&R men--and they weren't very nice. Pop Punk should be an oxy moron, not a genre to describe Good Charlotte and Avril Lavigne.

What's 76 minutes and availability on Netflix Watch Instantly, right? Not a big deal, and the return is pure awesomeness. Get after this one if you haven't already, and get after it again if you haven't in awhile--you won't regret it.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090192/

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Arcade (1993)

This is one of about five or six Albert Pyun films on Netflix I have left to review, so I thought I'd go for it. The deciding factor when faced with multiple Pyun options? John de Lancie, of course. This wasn't a first choice among potential Albert Pyun films, though. First, I wanted to do his newest one, Bulletface, but that one isn't available on Netflix, and I don't have the money right now to buy it outright, no matter how good a bargain it's offered at. Another I'd wanted to do was Heatseeker, but that one's only available on VHS, so I put it out of my mind for a while. Can you guess what happened then? I get Arcade home, watch it, capture images of it, and then later in the week, I come across Heatseeker in a buddy's VHS collection tucked away in his garage. "Oh, I must've bought it when that video store went out of business. Sure, you can take it, I don't think it was any good anyway..." Since we already had Arcade, and it's fresh in my mind, I decided to do that now, and Heatseeker we'll do next week, satisfying our Gary Daniels crowd at the same time.

Arcade stars the lovely Megan Ward as a teen dealing with her mom's suicide and her dad's inability to cope with her mom's suicide. She and her friends are big time gamers (including the kid from A Christmas Story, Seth Green, and AJ Langer), and they invite her to join them for a launch party for the game Arcade, the latest in virtual reality technology, and shilled by the one and only John de Lancie. Ward's boyfriend disappears while playing the game, and she soon discovers the game is what, as my nephew would say, disappeared him, and she has trouble convincing anyone to believe her, meaning they're disappeared too. All except for the kid from A Christmas Story, because he has a crush on Ward, and we all know if someone has a crush on someone, he or she will believe anything that person says. They investigate, go to de Lancie and his head programmer, Pyun mainstay Norbert Weisser, devise a plan, and then play the game to get their friends back.



Even though this was a DTV movie, it played out more like a Nickelodeon original film, maybe a Goosebumps story arc or something. That doesn't mean Pyun doesn't add his own personal touches to make this something bigger than that-- there are welcome cyber punk elements, and of course, the inclusion of Norbert Weisser-- but he was fighting an uphill battle. Looking at it in situ, though, as opposed to what the average DTVC reader would want out of a movie, for a 1993 pre-teen video game thriller, it works. The thing is, most of our readers are looking for Mean Guns, not Arcade, and there's nothing wrong with that, it just means that though this film isn't bad, it's probably not for you.

We love Albert Pyun here at the DTVC, not only because he directs the kinds of films we all enjoy, but because he's been kind enough to comment, which is always great. With that in mind, I feel bad that I haven't been able to reciprocate that support as much as I'd have liked, primarily by not checking out his newest film, Bulletface. Unfortunately it's only available through his website, http://www.albertpyunmovies.com/, and though you can buy it for a very reasonable price, I just don't have the money right now to get it. To give you an idea of what I get for my $17 or so a month from Netflix: in May alone, I received 10 movies at home on DVD, and got another 15 on Watch Instantly-- and that includes 10 days where I didn't watch anything while I was on vacation! So $11 before shipping, with the Inferno version of his film Left For Dead included, definitely sounds like a great deal, but on my limited budget, it becomes almost frivolous. That doesn't mean I won't buy the film as soon as I can, just an explanation as to why I haven't gotten to it yet. I also want to make clear to anyone wondering why I don't just get a torrent of it for free: as a policy I don't download movies that are still in print, but that goes double for Mr. Pyun's work. I want to support his movies as much as possible.



All right, with that out of the way, let's get back to Arcade, and its lead, Megan Ward. I think the role I remember her best in was PCU, but she's also done her share of TV dramas and whatnot. Total hottie as well, which doesn't hurt. What adds to her overall hotness in Arcade is her ability to roll with the punches, and transcend all the ridiculousness inherent in a movie like this one. There's something endearing about a girl (or 24-year-old woman at the time in her case), who can wear a skintight body suit and oversized racing helmet, and not let onto us just how silly the whole thing is, even if she might be thinking it just as much as we do.

I've never been a big fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation, so I have no idea why I know so much about it, or why I love seeing any of the cast members acting in anything else. And it's not like I'm ashamed of it or anything. I mean, I'm writing a blog about Direct to Video movies, I certainly don't think being a Trekkie is anything bad, right? I really don't like the show, yet I love watching it. Does that make any sense? Anyway, John de Lancie has a small part in this as the salesman for the video game company. Pretty sweet if you ask me.



Even sweeter is Norbert Weisser's knit tie in this scene. You can't really see it from the image, but it's there. I love ties. I own a bunch that I've collected over time at various Goodwills and thrift stores. This astounds my friends, because I've never had a job where I needed a tie, meaning I seldom wear one. Maybe that's why I think they're so cool. It's also one of the most often screwed up aspects of men's attire. I don't know how many times I see guys on TV, or even more so in my everyday life, draping some Godawful excuse for neck wear over the front of their shirts. It just breaks my heart. (I think the most often screwed up aspect of men's attire is the size of the dress shirt. I don't know how many times I see guys in these billowing adornments that make them look like they raided their father's closet as a child.) One of the more difficult ties to wear right is the knit, which is why I tend to stay away from it, but Weisser really pulls it off here, adding a touch of style to an otherwise drab lab suit.

I've totally gone off topic here, which is what usually happens on that seventh paragraph, so let's reign it in and wrap it up. Arcade is probably not for most of the DTVC's readers, especially those looking for something more like Nemesis or Mean Guns; but at 80 minutes, it's a fun trip down memory lane, and has a lot of familiar faces. As long as you know what you're getting into, I think you'll have a fun time.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106302/

The Gingerdead Man (2005)

This just seemed like a no-brainer: Gary Busey in a movie about a murderous gingerbread man. But I've read this book before, and I've been around the block enough to know a Busey bait-and-switch when I see it. I could only hope I was wrong.

The Gingerdead Man has Busey as a mass murderer who is convicted and sent to the gas chamber. His mom takes his ashes and puts them in a box marked "Gingerbread Spice", and sends to the bakery owned by the mom of the girl who testified and put Busey away for killing her dad and brother. The spices are put into the gingerbread batter, and voila, mass murdering gingerbread man.



I don't know what this sack-of-asscrack was. After Busey's one scene at the beginning, I kept hitting the display button on my remote to see how much time was left. My friends and I tried to make fun of it, but it was just too blah. The best parts of this were the one scene with Busey, the Busey outtakes, and the interview with him during the making of featurette. This just hurt too much otherwise.

And believe me, we went into it with an open mind looking for something silly. They just didn't pull silly off well. The jokes weren't funny, the idea of a murdering gingerbread man probably sounded better on paper, and the lack of Busey meant nothing to hold onto. Supposedly he's the voice of the Gingerdead Man, but it sounded so weird it didn't matter. When I want Busey's voice, I want him as the cop talking to Johnny Depp in Fear and Loathing, or him taking on Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon. Here he sounded like the Leprechaun, which was just dumb.



On the other hand, Busey is so amazing that his few scenes and outtakes and whatnot were worth having this on my Netflix queue. I don't know how I'd feel if I spent $10 buying it, but with the small investment I did put down, I think I got my money's worth. My friends agreed. We just wanted more Busey, and we got so little. I'd give the movie an Abusive rating of 2, and the extras a 4. I'm sure Busey was attracted to this role because it allowed him limited screen time and some added voice work, making it easy money, but his fans out there need more. He was so good in that first scene, and the rest of the cast was so bad overall, that it just felt like a wasted opportunity.

Most of the other actors you'll probably recognize from commercials and bit parts in this or that movie. One of them seems to be more on the rise than the others, based on his imdb bio, and that's Jonathan Chase, who played Brick Fields. He's been in some TV shows, and also had a part in the Shia Labeouf crapfest Eagle Eye. There's two other credits he has that look particularly interesting. First, Another Gay Movie, with Scott Thompson, who I think is hilarious; and second, 7eventy 5ive, a horror movie which also has DTVC Hall of Famer Rutger Hauer. That's in my Netflix queue, and this film reminded me to not only bump it up, but also that I haven't reviewed a Hauer film in a while. Of course it's also listed as "Very Long Wait", so who knows if I'll get it...



An actress named Daniela Melgoza has a small role playing a Latin girl working at the bakery who's knocked out by the Gingerdead Man, stripped naked, decorated like a cake, and thrown in the freezer. Maybe not her best moment in her short acting career, but according to imdb, she did a film version of Richard III with David Carradine and Danny Trejo that was made in 2008 where the eponymous lead is a Mexican drug cartel leader. I'm curious to see it, but can't find a release date. I hope it's out on DVD sometime in 2009.

This movie sucks bad, but for the few seconds Busey's in it, he's good. I don't know what that does for you. What I do know is don't be fooled into thinking this is a fun goofy horror film, because it's not: it hurts, and at 70 minutes the hurting doesn't end quick enough. It's fun to watch Busey in things, but sometimes I wonder if it's not better to just watch Point Break again if I want my fix.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0364376/

Point Doom (2001)

I first heard of this film when I saw a trailer for it at the beginning of the Don "The Dragon" Wilson film Whatever it Takes. Both films were produced by David DeFalco. In the trailer I saw Richard Greico, Ice-T, and Andrew Dice Clay, and figured it was worth throwing on my Netflix queue. Maybe I'm just subconsciously a glutton for punishment.

Point Doom is about an LA talent agent played by Richard Greico. He's looking for a nice girl to settle down with and thinks he found her at his friend Andrew Dice Clay's strip club in the person of waitress Jennifer O'Dell. The only thing is she's involved with a biker dude (played by the guy who gets his brains blown out by Dolph in Missionary Man) who's very possessive, addicted to drugs, and into it bad after he double-crosses and kills a bunch of fellow bikers for a shit ton of coke. Now Greico's caught up in this tangled web of crap. Is he in over his head? Probably, but not in the world of movies.



This was a pretty bad film. Maybe not even pretty bad, it was atrocious. But it's got so many famous people in it it's hard to write it off immediately. Between Greico, Ice-T, O'Dell, and The Dice Man, it's all right. Then you throw in Angie Everhart in a weird role as a woman with epilepsy, Sebastian Bach as a biker, the guy from Gremlins and Gremlins 2 also as a biker, and then the guy who gets his brains blown out by Dolph in Missionary Man, and just on star power alone you can almost transcend everything else's atrociousness. Maybe that was producer David DeFalco's plan. The reality is you can't polish a turd.

Greico was Greico. I think he was better here than in the depraved Final Payback. It's always hard for me to fully place Greico, because the name evokes memories of his 80s glory, yet films like these remind just how far he's dropped. I guess everyone's gotta eat, but I get the sense that in each of these poorly made DTV stinkers he doesn't quite feel right: like he's playing back the 80s in his mind and wondering how he fell so far. This wasn't the way his career was supposed to go, and he can only hope another Tarentino will resurrect his career the way Travolta's was in Pulp Fiction. John, not Sam.



Ice-T's popping up rather frequently here at the DTVC. This will be the sixth film reviewed that he was in, making him tied for second with Norbert Weisser behind Daniel Bernhardt for the most movies of a non-Hall of Famer. Looking at the films lined up for future review, there's a good shot he can catch him soon. That begs the question: why isn't he in the DTVC Hall of Fame? The reality is it's a personal taste thing with some of the committee. He's kind of in that C. Thomas Howell area, where the resume's there, but a lot of people just don't like him. I must say he's growing on me. He was cool in the small amount he's in this film. Other than a part when he's slicing up his own hand with a knife, he was great as a drug lord looking for money from the guy from Gremlins. With a good showing in Crazy Six as well, I'm looking forward to what's next from him.

Art Camacho directed this. I see his name in a fair number of all the bad movies I watch. I decided to finally look him up and found he's directed five films I've reviewed if you include this one (also Crooked aka Soft Target, Final Payback, Gangland, and X-treme Fighter). Not only that, but in his roles as fight choreographer, producer, stunt man, and bit part actor, he's been in countless others. For the time being I'm just going to tag the films he's directed and call it good. Maybe if I have the time I'll go through the others and tag them as well. He's a pretty busy guy.



In terms of all the other stars, Angie Everhart's part made the least sense. She played O'Dell's sister. The deal was she had epilepsy, and the film treated it like a debilitating disorder where she couldn't care for herself, as if she was severely mentally handicapped. She wore these drab clothes in an attempt to make her less attractive, which, considering it was Angie Everhart, didn't work. In one freaky scene, the baddie, after attacking O'Dell, grabs Everhart, and she goes into convulsions. Eww. Then she's kidnapped by the same baddie, and her health issues suddenly play no part, probably for the convenience of the plot. She's treated pretty roughly. After she's rescued, instead of being allowed the comfort of her sister, she's taken away by the Dice Man so Greico and O'Dell can get it on. It was just weird.

I can't really see recommending this. It's got some sweet B,C, and D-list actors, but beyond that, it sucks. It's supposed to be a sexy suspense thriller, and it's really none of the three. I can't lie, I like really bad films, so I picked this up, but you've gotta be in that small percentile of people like me who take it too far and need a film like this to pull us back from the ledge. Your best bet is to stay away from it.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0186454/

Groom Lake (2002)

I don't remember how I got wind of this film directed by and starring William Shatner, but I did, so I thought I'd keep my eye out for it. I eventually saw it on Sci-Fi, which wasn't a bad deal.

Groom Lake is about a young couple who travel out to the desert to spend the rest of their time together, because the girl is dying. They end up in a small town, where the two are caught up in the paranoid town members anti-alien sentiments, and Shatner and his buddy Dick Van Patten's attempt to help an alien get home from a military base. The girl is captured by Shatner when he thinks she and her boyfriend were spying on him, and the boyfriend must team up with one of the paranoid villagers to rescue her. Then they find out Shatner's the altruistic one, while the paranoid villager kidnaps the alien to take into to town so he can make himself famous, right as Van Patten's about to prepare the alien ship for take off. In the end, the alien makes it, and before he goes, he tells the girl that she's not dying, but moving onto something better when her human form goes.

The Shatty factor was a tad lacking in this. You can kind of feel him in the film when he's not on screen, and I guess that's all right, but it's not as cool as seeing him on screen, delivering lines in his classic pausing style. I'm surprised, considering the high regard with which he seems to hold himself, that he didn't put himself in the film more. I mean, it's his film.

The female lead, played by Amy Acker, is hot. For a good chunk of the film, Shatty Shatty Boom-ba-Latty has her wearing these tight vinyl pants with a snakeskin print on them. It makes no sense, for a woman whose seems to be really down-to-Earth, to be wearing pants like that on a long road trip; but I looked at that as a little Shatner touch, and I can't complain about it. I never really watched the show Angel, but I guess Acker was a mainstay on that show. Not a bad deal.

As far as the actual movie goes, it's a pretty silly alien invasion film, except for one really odd scene. The Acker's bopyfriend drives them out into the desert to camp, and he flips their Suzuki off-roader with some bad driving. He leaves her to go get help, and while he's gone, she's sexually assaulted by some townsfolk. I guess the idea was they were stripping her down and groping her to see if she was an alien or not, but it was kind of disturbing, especially for a girl who was terminally ill. It was completely out of place and left a bad taste in my mouth.

Other than that scene, this wasn't so bad. I think Shatner was going for the 50s sci-fi tribute with a little Descartes and Nietzsche thrown in. If it had more Shatner in it, it would've been even better. It was pretty nondescript, with nothing special other than the Shat in it, or if you're a Buffy/Angel fan, Amy Acker. Otherwise, you'd have more fun watching MST3K's Prince of Space or Invasion of the Neptune Men.

You should do what I did on this one, and catch it on Sci-Fi the next time it's on. It's too blah to spend any money on it, even for the Shatner Factor. I probably wouldn't TiVo this either: just see it if you're up when it's airing and you're not doing anything else. Maybe while you're writing a paper at 3am.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0270393/