We Kill for Love (2023)

It's the weekend after Christmas, and continuing a tradition I've done since I've come back from hiatus in 2019, we're doing another documentary, this time one that Jon Cross from the PM Entertainment Podcast and the After Movie Diner recommended to us. He and I have been doing a series of Erotic Thrillers on the podcast for the past year or so too, so you can check those out as well over in our podcast archives.

We Kill for Love is a documentary that looks at the rise, reign, and fall of the Erotic Thriller during the 80s and 90s. It examines the mix of genres and inspirations that the films draw from, and the unique cultural environment that gave them birth. We also get some great interviews from people like Fred Olen Ray, Monique Parent, and Andrew Stevens. As time goes on though, the forces that gave us this unique cinematic moment serve to be its undoing, and as the 90s become the 2000s, the market starts to dry up. As our documentarians sift through the VHS detritus of what once was, they and their subjects try to make sense of it all. But is there a sense of it all to make? Does a femme fatale with a handgun in her stocking-top ever go out of style?

Overall I enjoyed this, but it does clock in at two hours and 45 minutes, so you're in for long ride. I'm okay with that though. Yes, it's long for a documentary, but too short for a mini-series, so probably from a streaming algorithm standpoint--and maybe a modern attention span standpoint too, it doesn't quite fit, but I almost feel like that makes it all the better, like the subject matter it's covering, it's not of this time either. The biggest thing is the director, Anthony Penta, pulls footage from so many of these movies, that you feel like you're in the 90s discovering them on cable all over again. And then the interviews are fantastic, with all the actors, directors, producers, and film scholars and film writers telling us how these were made, what they were about, and what kinds of messages were below the surface. As someone who was born in 1979, and grew up in the 90s, there wasn't a sense for me that there was a world before these films, they just always existed, but now 25-30 years later, to see the birth, growth, and unfortunately death and postmortem of something that had such a huge impact on my love of film, especially direct-to-video movies, was a lot of fun, and I think worth checking out--one of the few times I'll recommend something with such a long runtime!

When we started the site, I expected to do more Erotic Thrillers, and while the site moved more toward action movies because those films got the most engagement, that was in comparison to horror, comedy, and sci-fi. Erotic Thrillers on the other hand were the only genre that got the hits on the site that action did, the problem was, in the late 2000s, those movies were harder to find. A lot of them didn't make it to DVD, which was where I got most of the movies we reviewed in those early days; but many weren't even on home VHS release, they were only sold to video rental stores and cable movie outlets. Even on YouTube it was hard to get them, because the adult content would cause them to get taken down. It looks like some of them are making it to Tubi and other free streamers, but with those it's dicey because they can get taken down just as quick. So it's still an uphill battle, but there are ways to get these, so I'm going to do my best to get more of them up on the site, because as this film documents, they're a large part of the DTV legacy.

As I mentioned above, the interviews were great. One of my favorites was Monique Parent talking about how much she was working in the 90s, and how all the movies ran together for her. She gives us an unabashed slice of what that world was like in a way that puts you back there in it. From a Hall of Famer standpoint, we had Fred Olen Ray, who ran the gamut on movies he made in the 90s, but Erotic Thrillers were a big part of that. Between him and Jim Wynorski, they talked about why they needed to use aliases, because distributors were like "we already have enough of their movies!", and Wynorski joked that people on IMDb have found most of his films made under an alias, but there are still a few out there that people haven't found yet. Another big name that was interviewed was Andrew Stevens, and not only did he discuss the Night Eyes series, but also how he moved from actor to producer, and the part Night Eyes played in that. I've finally tagged him for all his producer credits on the site, and this makes film 33, so we'll be putting him in the Hall of Fame next October. Finally, speaking of tags, my rule for documentaries has been if someone was interviewed I'll tag them, but not if it's just footage of one of their films. I'm making an exception to that here for Julie Strain, who gets her own tribute segment in the middle of the movie, which was really nice to see. Here's to you Ms. Strain, you were one of the best to ever do it, you've truly been missed.

We've talked a lot both on the site and the podcast about Blockbuster's role in running the Mom and Pop video stores out of business, and then themselves dying off when Netflix came on the scene, because they had no brand loyalty. This movie gets into some other ways Blockbuster had a negative effect on the DTV industry as the 90s went into the 2000s, but also some other ways that their business model led to their own undoing. The first thing they mentioned was how in the early days of Blockbuster, DTV distributors loved them because they could negotiate big one-off deals of like 20,000 copies, as opposed to getting thousands of individual Mom and Pops to order the movie on their own out of a catalog. It meant in one purchase order from Blockbuster they could get their budget back and then some. The problem was, when the major studios got in on the home video market, both for DTV films and their major releases, the indie distributors got frozen out. This led to something though that I didn't consider. Part of the Mom and Pop business model was only having a couple copies of a new release, that way you'd rent something else if you came in and found the one you wanted wasn't there. With Blockbuster having dozens of a new release, it meant everyone got the movie they wanted, which meant they weren't renting as many movies overall as they did during the Mom and Pop era. The other thing was the cheap DVD market that comes in the early 2000s. Suddenly movies you could only get on VHS, or worse, by taping off cable, were now available for $5 in the bargain bin at Walmart; or those low-budget 10 movies for $10 sets, my friends and I would get one of those and watch three or four over a weekend, and got a better deal out of it than renting that many movies. All of these things led to the collapse of the video market, and took Erotic Thrillers down with them. They tried to pivot in the early 2000s to a more soft-core porn approach, but by the mid-2000s porn was so available for free on the internet that it no longer had any market either.

Finally, speaking of porn, this tackles the subject of exactly what is porn, what that means if an actor is working in porn, and do Erotic Thrillers count. I think the first thing is the double-standard between women working in front of the camera, versus directors working behind the camera. Fred Olen Ray can make two or three Erotic Thrillers a year in the 90s with all kinds of sex in them, and still be able to make Hallmark Christmas movies today, while an actor who took their top off in dozens of sexually charged thrillers may not be afforded that same luxury. And I think there's some of that under the surface when some of the actors who were interviewed insist "I never did porn" the way a guy in the 90s would've said "I'm not gay," as if there's anything wrong with either. I think for my age cohort though, which was 10-20 years younger than the actors in these films, we grew up with them, and as such, we might have been the first mini-generation to look at this stuff differently, and not immediately think someone working in the adult film industry should be shunned, let alone if someone got naked in an Erotic Thriller. From there you get younger Millennials and Gen Z who say you shouldn't judge a sex worker, full stop. In the 80s and 90s there was this Conservative brand of feminism that was anti sex work, which this movie labels as left wing politically, but younger Millennial or Gen Z feminism would say isn't feminism at all, and I think for them, hearing the actors in this trying to distance themselves from the porn industry would be off-putting. In that sense, I hope more of these movies become available on streamers so younger Millennials and Gen Z can consume them, because I think they're a missing part of the story of how we get to the sex positivity of the 2010s. Another thread in the film is this idea that you couldn't make these films today in the world of sex positivity, but I disagree. These movies have a lot of strong women with a lot of sexual agency, if anything they were ahead of their time, and could fit in nicely in the modern environment.

And with that, let's wrap this up. As you can see from my long post, this movie packs a lot in, and I've only scratched the surface of it. While it's free to stream on Tubi you should check it out. The Erotic Thriller was a moment in cinematic time, and if you lived it, the nostalgia factor alone is worth it; but if you're younger and curious about this, this is a great starting place.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10404002

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

Victim of Desire (1995)

When I saw that this movie existed, starring Shannon Tweed, Julie Strain, Wings Hauser, and Marc Singer, and directed by Jim Wynorski, I knew I had to make it happen, and luckily I found it on The Internet Archive, so here we are making it happen. What I didn't expect was to have an historical moment on the DTVC in the form of our first ever back door 50 Club entry! Who'd'a thunk?

Victim of Desire has Marc Singer as an SEC investigator looking into businessman Leland Duvall's (Wings) finances after $70 million goes missing. Duvall's also on the hook after a judgement is rendered against him when his defective electric blanket kills over 100 people. When Leland's car ends up at the bottom of a ravine, Singer suspects foul play, so he teams up with an LAPD detective (Johnathan "Johnny" Roastbeef from Goodfellas) to look into what happened, and Duvall's widow (Tweed) seems like as good a place to start as any--and with an erotic thriller like this, you know what we mean by that! As Singer gets in deeper, he gets in deeper with Tweed (insert rim shot) but this leads to all kinds of issues with his investigation, and now Mr. Roastbeef is thinking Singer may be in on it too. It's up to Singer to solve this thing and clear his name, but is he going to be a victim of  desire?

This isn't any kind of classic or must watch, but it's exactly what you're looking for when you fire up a 90s Erotic Thriller--well almost, there isn't as much nudity, this is less on the softcore porn side and more on the thriller side, which works well enough for me, but I can see how that may not work for others. In that sense though the title has a secondary purpose, because if you were a kid in the 90s and saw this on the video store shelf or listed in your TV Guide (who is listed as one of the critic reviews by the way--though they don't review it, just summarize it) and thought "ooh, how much will I get to see Shannon Tweed and Julie Strain naked?" and you end up disappointed, you in fact were a victim of desire. For me, it's the names, the Wynorski direction, and the 90s nostalgia. You get things like Peter Spellos as a coroner eating ribs while he goes over the details of Duvall's death to Johnny Roastbeef, Wings Hauser yelling at Jay Henry Richardson, or Julie Strain giving Shannon Tweed a tension-filled massage when we know Strain is up to something. It's a shame this is only available on the Internet Archive, someone's gotta get a version on Tubi!

Let's get to that back door 50 Club entry. I want to say it was The Sweeper episode of the pod (episode 165 in the archives) where guest Chris "The Brain" Kacvinsky from Bulletproof Action and I were talking about Spiro Razatos, and he mentioned another stunt coordinator for PM, Cole S. McKay. I hadn't heard of him before, despite reviewing a ton of movies on his IMDb bio--and to be fair, I'd only heard of Razatos when Gary Daniels mentioned him in an interview, so other than Art Camacho I was really bad on crediting stunt work overall. So now McKay was on my radar, but in a recent conversation with Jon Cross from The After Movie Diner--and the upcoming PM Entertainment Podcast!--McKay came up, and I realized he probably needed to be tagged. And he was, to the tune of 55 movies! This one we're doing now is 56, which puts him ahead of Art Camacho for third-most all time. Obviously he's a definite Hall of Fame induction this fall, but now I also need to update my 50 Club imaging and the 40 and 50 Club lists--also I discovered that I'd missed a PM tag for one of their movies, so they're at 47 films now. This is not his 50 Club post, we'll do a real official entry in near future, plus this fall he'll be inducted into the Hall of Fame, but for now we'll leave at here's to you Mr. McKay, you're one of the greatest.

This is the second of two originally-produced films starring both Shannon Tweed and Julie Strain, the other being Rowdy Girls, which we've reviewed. (There's also Bimbo Movie Bash which has archive footage of Young Blood, Fresh Meat starring Strain and Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death starring Tweed, but they weren't acting together in that.) It's a shame they didn't do more together, because they have a great antagonistic chemistry. Forget Joan Collins and Linda Evans, this was the Dynasty pairing I wanted to see! And I get why some people seeing this would've been disappointed by the lack of nudity from both actors, but for me the novelty of this being one of only two films they did together makes it a special entry, and one we're lucky to have. For numbers, Strain is now at 10 films, which puts her second all-time among women on the site, after Rothrock's 43, and Tweed's at 9, which puts her tied with Dona Speir for third all-time among women. Since we've pretty much exhausted Speir's DTVC oeuvre, expect Strain and Tweed to keep moving past her, but with Rothrock's lead and the fact that she's been pumping out a lot more stuff lately, they'll probably be competing for second, which I think is all right.

We last saw Wings Hauser about two years ago when we reviewed Original Gangsters, so it's good to get him back on the site. Two years is too long when you consider how much great stuff he still has out there to review, so I need to focus on getting to it, especially some of the great 90s stuff he did that we haven't covered yet. Part of it is availability, but between YouTube, free streamers like Tubi and Plex, and the Internet Archive, more of it is coming to the surface, so I don't have an excuse. And even though this role doesn't have a lot of screentime, the performance he gives us is plenty robust enough to get the job done. It just adds to the overall fun nature of a movie like this to have Wings yelling at people or looking up from his computer with his mouth agape in that way only Wings can do. He's at 23 movies now, and I don't know if we can get him to the 30 Club this year, but maybe by sometime next year. We'll put it on the map to get it done, because he should be there.

Finally, I mentioned above that Peter Spellos has a small part as the rib-eating coroner. He unfortunately left us in November of 2023, but when it came to movies like these, specially ones directed by Fred Olen Ray or Jim Wynorski, he could pop in on these small roles and really deliver something that added more flavor--kind of like the sauce he was dipping his ribs into in this film. My first time ever podcasting was on Drunk on VHS when host Moe Porn had me and Jon Cross on to discuss Hard to Die, and while they both knew who Spellos was, I didn't, so I joked that I thought his last name was pronounced "SPAY-yos," like it was Spanish, which led to a series of jokes and tangents from us after that. Later Jon became friends with Spellos, and I remember him as a guest on Jon's Crosstalk podcast, where not only was he gracious and a lot of fun to listen to, but he also had some great insight on acting. He, like so many other actors at that time, knew what was expected from them in roles like the rib-eating coroner, and as a true professional, he delivered, and in so doing gave the films he was a part of that much more to make them fun for us in the audience. Here's to you Mr. Spellos, you were truly one of the greats, and you will be missed.

And with that, let's wrap this up. I watched this on the Internet Archive, and you can tell by the screens that it wasn't the best quality, but it got me to the church on time. I don't even know if a VHS exists, but hopefully someday soon it'll be more available. Maybe it's not a classic, but it's worth checking out.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118079

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

The Return of Swamp Thing (1989)

Back in March I had Mitch from The Video Vacuum on the podcast to talk about directors Fred Olen Ray and Jim Wynorski, and for our Wynorski portion we discussed this film. It was one that I hadn't seen before, which I couldn't believe, especially since I like older comic book movies. In addition to us and The Video Vacuum, among the 100+ critic reviews on IMDb, this has been covered by Fred the Wolf from Full Moon Reviews, and RobotGEEK's cult cinema.

The Return of Swamp Thing takes place after the first one, where Swamp Thing is still doing his swamp thing, and Louis Jordan is back trying to make his own swamp thing like creatures. At the same time, his stepdaughter, played by Heather Locklear, comes to his swamp mansion to try to make amends. Back at her home in LA, she runs a plant shop, and has a thing for plants, so when she gets saved by Swamp Thing after a nightly stroll brings her into the path of some deranged swamp locals, it's love at first sight. Now she and Swamp Thing need to work together to bring her stepfather down, but of course, she can't last long without being a damsel in distress, and next thing you know she's strapped to Louis's machine. Can Swamp Thing save her in time?

 

This is a great time. For me it's up there as one of my favorite comic book movies. Different from the Wes Craven first one, Swamp Thing is more of an action hero here, which works better for me. At the same time, Wynorski turns up the tongue-in-cheek factor, and then brings in influences from old sci-films from the 50s and 60s. One in particular was when we saw all of Jourdan's botched experiments, one of which would have been the frightening reveal in one of those old movies, but he throws out a bunch of them as a form of dark humor. On top of that, Heather Locklear seemed to really get what Wynorski was going for with this, and played her part accordingly, which helped complete the overall vibe. This may not have had a billion-dollar budget with teaser trailers and stingers and whatever other stuff modern blockbusters had, but it was still a lot of fun.

Out of the great schlock auteurs, Wynorski is one that we haven't covered as much on the site, I think in part because he doesn't have as much action as a lot of the others, and we've tended to lean more toward action over time. That doesn't mean he's any less great, and despite the lack of quantity here, the quality has been big, between now this one, Chopping Mall, and Hard to Die, which led to the formation of the DTVC podcast after I was a guest on Drunk on VHS and we discussed that film. A distinction that he has with another great schlock auteur, Albert Pyun, is that they've both done a comic book movie. With the sheer volume of Wynorski out there, this definitely won't be the last time we see him here, but this film was a reminder of how much more I should be doing his work, because say what you want, his movies are often a lot of fun.

 

As I mentioned above, Heather Locklear was great in this as well. Mitch and I were trying to figure out how she was cast in this, and I think at the time she was known as a Soap actress, even if they were nighttime Soaps, and at that time that was a bigger issue than it was when she was on Melrose Place, when she started getting big budget Hollywood roles. It's amazing to think that that would have been the bigger decider on whether or not she got parts, as opposed to the range and ability to do comedic parts that she showed us here, but that's Hollywood for you. I was thinking this'll probably be the last time we see her on the DTVC, but a quick scan of her IMDb bio turned up Double Tap, a DTV flick from the late 90s that has been covered already by the guys at Comeuppance and Bulletproof Action. Something for us to look forward to.

It's interesting to think this came out the same year as Batman, a movie that changed what we thought comic book movies could be. I remember myself as a ten-year-old going with my friend, expecting the Adam West version of Batman, and being utterly shocked. What we see here in Wynorski's film is more of that comic book feel, I could imagine this being a series of drawn panels I would've been reading at that time, and it's a bit of a shame how post this period we don't have that much anymore. Ang Lee tried for it with his Hulk, but it was too literal and didn't work for me. I like Sam Raimi's Spider-Man movies for that vibe, but they don't quite hit that note the way this does for me, as they still leaned more in the Hollywood blockbuster lane. That then begs the question of where this sits on the comic book movie list for me. I think might it crack my top three after Batman '66, The Punisher '89. Other comic book movies among my favorites are Batman Returns, Superman II, Blade II, and Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance. Out of those, I think maybe Batman Returns and Superman II are better than this one, so maybe I just need to see them again in case there's some recency bias. Also of note, The Punisher came out this same year, but didn't get a theatrical release. You have to wonder how that may have influenced the comic book movie world.

 

Finally, in the film's opening credits we see a comic book panel with the Joker and what looks like Scarecrow. Going back to the fact that Batman comes out this same year, I think prior to that DC wasn't as protective over Batman, so the characters were more available for things like this. Only a couple years later in 1991 when I was collecting the DC Cosmic Trading Cards, Batman was conspicuously absent, with even Superman included (boy had the mighty fallen there, with Superman IV: The Quest for Peace hurting that franchise two years before). With the way that Batman has been getting darker and grittier since Burton's film in '89, it would be nice to see if they could swing the pendulum back. I know Affleck's Batman was less that, but could we get a Batman where he's just a comic book hero the way Swamp Thing is here? It doesn't have to be the '66 TV show level, but maybe we don't need 3-hour dark epics, maybe we don't need a Joker who's all deranged and deformed. The reality is though, I think I'm in the minority on this, as most people who like modern comic book movies never liked comics.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Currently this is available on Tubi, which is a great deal. Seeing a schlock auteur like Wynorski tackle a comic book like Swamp Thing is a lot of fun, and well worth checking out. Also check out the podcast I did with Mitch on this, episode 94 in the archives, it was a great conversation.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098193

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

Bad Bizness aka More Mercy (2003)

This is a film I'd been looking to do for a long time, as I'm trying to get as many Albert Pyun films reviewed on the site as I can. Finally it made its way to Tubi, under the alternate title More Mercy, so I was on it. In addition to us, our friend Mitch at the Video Vacuum has covered this, so you can go to his site to see what he thought as well.

Bad Bizness stars Traci Bingham as a hotel detective at a resort in Bali where women are being murdered. Call women, women of the night, moonlighting models, Bingham's not sure what the connection is, but there is a connection. Her boss, Norbert Weisser, would just as soon sweep this under the rug, as would his boss, Master P, so they give Bingham and her partner, Brent Huff, a shot at finding out who did it before they have to call in the Bali police and the whole thing goes sideways. In order to find out who this killer is, Bingham needs to delve into the seedy world of female surf magazines and the photographer/madam who runs them. All fingers point to a sleezy ponytailed rich guy with a soul patch as the killer, but something tells us the viewer that's just too easy...

When I first started the site, I called this The Direct to Video Connoisseur as this tongue-in-cheek concept evoking an image of an Alistair Cooke-type watching Dolph Lundgren action flicks while wearing a robe and ascot or something. After watching this film though, I began to feel like I was becoming a real connoisseur of sorts. Seeking out a movie simply because Albert Pyun started it and Jim Wynorski finished it, it's like discovering a movie Scorsese started and Spielberg finished; or Kurosawa started and Bergman finished. And ultimately that's the value this movie has now, almost 20 years later. The movie itself doesn't have a lot of mystery, but it seems like there's a lot of mystery surrounding the production: when did Pyun stop and Wynorski take over? Why did Pyun stop in the first place, was he fired or did he quit? A Fred Olen Ray film, Final Examination (which I haven't seen yet) was filmed in the same location around the same time, shares a lot of the same cast, and also has Pyun as a producer. Is there a connection? Was Pyun supposed to film that too? Information online is scant, so it would be interesting to learn more if we can.

Beyond all of that, this thing is pretty low budget, and doesn't always make a lot of sense beyond the love scenes. There's a strip club, but it's in a theater where you might see a play, so the woman dances on the stage, and the men sit in the audience. The changing room for said strip club is a restaurant bathroom. Master P literally phones in all of his scenes from a Las Vegas hotel room, in a role that would have made Eric Roberts and Bruce Willis proud. And speaking of hotels, the one that this one takes place in looks suspiciously like it's in Hawaii instead of Bali. But at the same time, there are elements that make this a bit more fun 20 years later. Julie K. Smith is a great addition as a lesbian woman whose partner is killed by the serial killer. Traci Bingham is exactly the kind of strong female lead, especially a woman of color, Pyun would center his movie around; but she's also the kind of strong female lead Wynorski would want in one of his soft core boob fests, and I like that he teases us with that side without ever fully giving it to us, as Bingham remains fully-clothed and doesn't have a full love scene--and why does she need to, when we've got Julie K. Smith to do the honors. Even the fact that a sleazy guy with a ponytail and a soul patch plays on our 90s sensibilities of what bad is so much that we have to think he's the killer helps to make this a fun ride. But I think you also have to be a certain kind of viewer to have fun with it like that, as this isn't for everyone.

While Albert Pyun is now listed as having 44 tags, he only has 43 films, because we did Mean Guns a second time (at his request). We don't have many left to do at this point. I was finally able to track down Raven Hawk online, and then Cool Air and Left for Dead are available to rent; plus we have the aforementioned Final Examination that he produced. There are two others that he released in the 2010s, The Interrogation of Cheryl Cooper and Interstellar Civil War. I can't find a way to watch the latter, but it looks like through Pyun's site I can rent the other one. That still would put him just shy of the 50 Club, but even without that, he's by far the most tagged director on the site. There are definitely directors like Wynorski and Ray who have the output available to catch him, but I'd have to be doing this site for years more for anyone to get near 40 movies like him--I think Ray has the second most of a director with 15, so that means he's almost 30 behind Pyun. That gives us a sense of just how big Pyun has been for the DTVC, a legacy that will never be surpassed.

Jim Wynorski is one, on the other hand, who we haven't seen as much on the DTVC, but hopefully that'll change soon. He's credited in this film under the name Bob E. Brown, which could be a reference to the R & B singer and member of New Edition; the hair metal video vixen (my favorite of which is Hurricane's "I'm Onto You"); or even the former American League baseball president. I think part of the reason why Pyun has so many tags, and someone like Wynorski so few, is Pyun worked with a lot of big names, and the names tend to make movies move up in my review queue, so he got a bit of a head start because his films overlapped more with how the site evolved in the late 2000s-early 2010s. Now that we've exhausted most of Pyun's filmography, where Wynorski may have room to get more films in, we have directors like Jesse V. Johnson and Isaac Florentine eating up some of that space. When I look at Wynorski's filmography, it's really just the names that make the difference, because otherwise he has a lot of movies that belong here--and one feather he has in his cap that Pyun doesn't: he's worked with Dolph.

As far as I can tell, we haven't played the Pyun Mainstay game since 2013, so I figured we'd bring it back and give some shine to one of the most mainstay-iest of mainstays, Norbert Weisser. This is his 18th film on the DTVC, only one of which, Android, wasn't a Pyun film. That's the most of any Pyun mainstay, and while we have someone like a Thom Mathews who's had 10 films on the site and all of them were Pyun flicks (remember, Mean Guns was reviewed twice, so that's why he has 10 instead of 11), 17 out of 18 is pretty prodigious. I wonder what he thought when Pyun was no longer directing. Maybe it didn't matter, since most of his scenes were shot in this chair right here. 

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently find this in the States on Tubi under the name More Mercy. It really is for Pyun and/or Wynorski completists, and late-night cable cinema from the late 90s/early 2000s connoisseurs. If you start it and you're like "what am I watching?", you're probably safe to turn it off. But if you start it and you're like "why do I watch stuff like this?", you're probably best to stop questioning it and settle in for the next 90s minutes or so.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0373163

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

 

 

 

Chopping Mall (1986)

For the second in our Three for Halloween, I wanted to do something from the 80s.  I thought the best way to start my search would be to look up some of the best directors in field, which brought me to Jim Wynorski, and that brought me here to Chopping Mall.  On top of that, my wife Jen and I have been watching dead mall videos on YouTube, so this seemed like it could give us an added burst of stroll down memory lane.

Chopping Mall takes place at the same mall from Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Commando. Apparently after what Arnold did to the place, the mall contracts with a security firm that uses robots to patrol the space after hours.  At the same time, six kids are having a party at the furniture store they work at after the mall closes.  Sounds like they're all on a collision course to wackiness!

This movie did everything I'd want it to do, and the 77-minute runtime didn't hurt either.  Great kills, funny characters, and all the 80s nostalgia we could handle.  This is the kind of horror movie I love.  Maybe it's silly and predictable, but even that element works for me.  It's just fun to watch something like this, poke fun at it, talk about the actors we recognize, and reminisce about what it was like going to the mall back then. 

Among the actors you'd know, of course there was Barbara Crampton.  Her character devolved into the whiny one who can't handle the stress and breaks down, and, SPOILER ALERT, ultimately justifies the use of the flaming stuntperson.  We also had Tony O'Dell from Head of the Class--Howard Hesseman and Robyn Givens would have been proud.  Character actor Gerrit Graham bites it early on, which I imagine allowed him to run to other micro That Guy roles in other films and TV shows.  The heroine was played Kelli Maroney, who, among some other B movies and TV roles she had, was also Cindy in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, one of the cheerleaders at the pep rally, meaning she was in two films that were shot at the Sherman Oaks Mall.  Finally, DTVC fans will remember Arthur Roberts, the villain from Revenge of Ninja.  He plays one of the girls' fathers, but does not don his ninja garb.

And then there was this guy, Mike, played by John Terlesky.  They just don't make 'em like him anymore.  A face chiseled out of granite, a mullet that is equal parts business on top and party in the back, smacking his gum and wearing tight jeans and sneakers, all of it was great.  And we knew the moment we saw him sitting on a desk when he was supposed to be working, talking about partying that night, that he wasn't long for this world. That's the thing, this guy didn't evolve to survive past the 80s, and by 1986 his species was already starting to be selected out.  Whether it was killer robots rampaging through a mall after hours, or Bill Clinton's election, the 90s were coming to take him down, and replace him with a guy with poorer hygiene and poorer style.  None of us knew it then, but Bender would eventually have the last laugh.

People think I'm hung up on runtime, and that's not entirely true, I just feel like there's no need to tell in 90 minutes what you can tell in 77--and no need to tell in 150 minutes what you can tell me in 90.  This movie could be an interesting case study in this concept, because the original version was called Killbots and was 90 minutes long.  I've never seen that version--this version here was what was packaged for the video market--but I can't imagine that extra 15 minutes did anything good for this.  The other advantage to a shorter runtime is it's easier to sell to people to watch with you.  Case in point, Jen watched with me, and I don't think she would have if it were longer.  Again, all filmmakers should take Roger Corman's advice and keep it under 88 minutes--and anything over that should be seen as borrowed time that needs to be justified.

In 1986 the mall was the king of commerce, and none of us could imagine the world we're in now where malls are dying and trying to find ways to repurpose themselves.  The internet is part of their demise; in addition, I think the move toward urban versus suburban living, particularly among Millennials, has shifted some of the commerce that malls once cornered back to small shops downtown--plus those small shops can now use the internet to hedge against any loss of foot traffic in ways they couldn't before; but I also think stores like Target, and later Walmart in following Target's model, turned the strip mall department store into something cool that obviated any need to go to the mall.  When we lived in Delaware County, PA, the Springfield Mall had Target as one of its anchors, and I decided to take a walk through after getting what we needed, and nobody else was doing that.  Why would they?  Unless they have a thing for malls like I do, they just got everything they needed at Target.  You couldn't say that about K-Mart back in 1986.  It'll be interesting to see what becomes of the mall in the future, especially as more and more of these spaces die out. 

All right, enough of my mall rant.  As far as I could tell, this is only available on Amazon Prime, so if you have that, I would check this out.  A great 80s mall horror action romp that at 75 minutes really can't be beat.  I think growing up in the 80s, we probably all dreamed of staying in the mall after hours, so this is a great way to indulge those fantasies while watching adorable killer robots bumping off kids in their late 20s who were playing teens.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090837

Hard to Die (1990)

A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to be invited onto the Drunk on VHS podcast with Moe Porne and Jon of the After Movie Diner.  The subject was this Jim Wynorski joint (where he's credited as Arch Stanton).  The discussion moved from Wynorski's Ozu-esque establishing shots, to his Hitchcockian use of shadows and lighting to create tension in his audience.  Okay no, we actually spent very little time talking about the film, instead doing 80 minutes discussing Hobo Butt Flutes and a crime series starring Peter Spellos only his name is Pedro Spellos, with the "e" a long "a" sound and the "ll" pronounced the way it is in Spanish.  It was a great time, they're both really cool guys, and you should definitely go to their sites and check out what they have going on.  Also, if you want to hear what my voice sounds like, you can check out the podcast here. (On the page, right click on the download link and click "save link as".)

Hard to Die is billed as Die Hard with lingerie workers or something, or maybe it's billed as a slasher film crossed with Die Hard, or a spoof of Die Hard, I have no idea, but it really has nothing whatsoever to do with Die Hard.  It's about four women who work at the main office of a lingerie company, among them the great Gail Harris (credited as Robyn Harris), Debra Dutch (credited as Debra Dare), and Melissa Moore (credited as Melissa Moore, and she meets a far better fate than the Bacon Grease Foo of Samurai Cop).  These poor ladies are burning the midnight oil for their be-ponytailed jackass boss who I'm assuming Wynorski's casting director pulled from the nearest Chess King.  Anyway, after the sprinkler system goes off and the ladies need to have their nude shower scenes to clean up, someone starts bumping them off.  Early money's on the gross creepy Orville Ketchum (Pedro Spellos), but we B-movie watchers and former fans of Murder, She Wrote know the obvious choice is seldom the correct one.



I think this movie will work on you in two opposing ways.  First, it'll hit you with that nostalgia factor.  This is USA Up All Night kind of fare for sure, only if you find it on VHS you can get it uncut, which is even better. Second though, it's pretty unremarkable and not a lot happens for the first 45 minutes or so.  I think with those two factors, because I'm writing this review in 2014 and not 1994, the nostalgia factor wins out, at least it did for me.  If this were made today with the modern state of DTV, I'd be killing it; but it's Wynorski and he made it in 1990, so it works.

This is where we usually talk about the film's main star, but other than Pedro Spellos, the star would be the director, Wynorski, so I guess we'll start there.  That's him below in his director's cameo.  He put himself in the film but not his name in the credits, as he went by Arch Stanton, which I think is fantastic (according to imdb it's the name on a grave in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly).  If I ever had a son or a male cat, I'd name him Arch Stanton.  When I first started this blog almost seven years ago, I expected to have tons of Wynorski flicks reviewed, but this is only his sixth.  It shows you the degree to which the DTV world has changed in that time, with new DTV films starring major Hollywood actors coming out more often and companies like The Asylum making huge noise with schlock fare like Sharknado, Wynorski's great 90s flicks have been lost in the shuffle-- not to mention the submissions from independent film makers and distributors looking for me to review their films, which is something I love to do but something I never expected when I started either. With the state of the modern schlock flick and B-movie goof fest, in particular The Asylum and their imitators, we either forget about guys like Wynorski or Fred Olen Ray who really did it right, or we elevate their work to a higher level because we're just craving that kind of thing after being denied it for so long.  If anything, it's a reason for me to keep going into the past as much I'm trying to keep up with everything new that's coming out, because it's the 90s flicks that got me and a lot of other people into this kind of stuff in the first place.



Pedro Spellos.  We last saw him here in the Ray/Wynorski collaboration Dinosaur Island, where he played a doughy virginal man whose grossness didn't turn off the Amazon woman on the island that he was betrothed too.  Just when you thought he couldn't be any grosser, he reprises his role of Orville Ketchum from Sorority House Massacre II, making him something of a Wynorski mainstay.  As gross as his character was and as much as I wanted him to be killed off quickly, I understood that he probably worked for a warm meal and was willing to schlep gear, so Wynorski had to keep him in the film as long as he could to keep the budget down.

Other stars in the film were Melissa Moore, who we've seen a few times in classics like Samurai Cop.  She seems like the Audrina from The Hills of the 90s B-movie (ouch, did I just admit I watched The Hills, or maybe I admitted that on here way before...).  Gail Harris (listed as Robyn Harris) played the lead.  She was in the three Circuit films with Olivier Gruner that we reviewed sometime back.  Jon loved her Northern accent, and we enjoyed imagining her as a butty in a Northern mine.  One of my favorites was Debra Dutch (credited as Debra Dare) as another of the girls.  She made these great exaggerated facial expressions, like she used to do silent film work or something.  In any slasher film you need someone like her that you root for, even though you know she's at impossible odds to be the Final Girl, and Dare/Dutch was that for me.



Finally, take a look at that guy's hat.  Boston Red Sox baby, getting some shine in 1990.  In 1990 the Red Sox would be swept again in the ALCS by the Oakland A's, getting swept before in 1988.  With how good the Sox have been the last ten years, we forget what they were between 1986-1990: three trips to the ALCS, with one trip to the World Series in 1986 that ended in disaster.  Now the Red Sox don't lose those games, and the 11-year-old me in 1990 could not have fathomed the 34-year-old me watching them win a third World Series in 10 years this past fall.  Nor could he have imagined the dump that was Fenway then turned into the amusement park it is now.  I don't know which is worse: drunk belligerent assholes and peeing in troughs back then; or that God awful "Sweet Caroline" thing they do in the middle of every 8th inning now.  Ugh!

Okay, I'm getting way off track here-- much like our podcast did-- so let me reel it in and wrap this up.  Used VHS is the way to go, and it's a little pricey.  If you were to find it in a VHS bin consider it a great score and even at $5-$10 it's worth it.  I know more of these are popping up on Instant too, so hopefully it'll be on there soon as well.  Also, I want to thank Moe at Drunk on VHS again for having me on his podcast and he and Jon at the After Movie Diner for the great time recording it.  Again, check out what those guys are doing if you haven't already.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103111/

Dinosaur Island (1994)

This was suggested to me on Instant, and right away I saw that it was co-directed by two of the greatest schlock auteurs, Fred Olen Ray and Jim Wynorski.  How can that not be good?  Throw on DTVC favorite Ross Hagen, and I was sold.  (The 79-minute runtime didn't hurt either.)

Dinosaur Island is about a troop of soldiers, led by Captain Ross Hagen.  He's bringing three guys back to the US to stand trial for misconduct.  They're relatively good guys, just a bunch of goofballs and trouble makers.  Anyway, the plane goes down and the troop washes ashore on a remote island.  There they find a bunch of beautiful native women who are terrorized by a massive dinosaur.  If they can kill the dinosaur, then they can live with these women happily ever after.



This movie was a lot of fun.  An exploitation send-up of the 50s deserted island savage women movies.  It's very USA Up All Night, and I'm sure this aired on it at some point.  It's perfect for a bad movie night, because it does a great job of making fun of itself, but there is plenty of room to make your own jokes too.  Now it is very R rated, so make sure you're in like-minded company if you do a group viewing, but if you know people that dig this kind of thing, it's great.  Wynorski and Ray deliver.

Ross Hagen is great in that Poor Man's William Holden role that we saw in those films of the 50s.  He uses terms like "terra firma" and won't let his guys forget about their mission; but he's also able to have a good time and joke with the guys too.  I was worried that we'd lose him here, because there's a point near the beginning where the film looks like it's going to focus entirely on the three guys, but fortunately my fears were assuaged, and he came back.  He's always so much fun, and he doesn't disappoint here.



The dinosaurs were absolutely fantastic schlock mega cheese.  So much fun to watch.  They were like a mix of Harryhausen and 1950s film technology.  And the shots of them with the actors were so dead-on, totally nailed those old movies.  Again though, while they may have been making fun of the genre, the way it was made left plenty of room for your own riffs, which I think makes a movie like this that much better.  Sometimes with the modern send-ups, they make the monsters so poorly, and use a lot of bad CGI, that we're left with only laughing with the film makers.  Ray and Wynorski know how to make these films right for their audience, and they pull it off.

Speaking of which, it doesn't say on imdb how this collaboration happened, if it was a collaboration at all.  Who knows if one guy started it and the other finished.  We don't like to think of it like that though, do we?  We like the idea of these two schlock titans teaming up like Lucas and Spielberg to give us the Indian Jones of low-budget films-- not to mention Roger Corman produced it, an even bigger figure in the schlock film industry.  As a side note, in the credits DTVC Hall of Famer David Carradine gets a thank you, and according to imdb, some of the film was shot on his land.  Too bad he couldn't be in the film too.



Look at that credit.  That came near the very beginning, and lets you know what kind of movie you're in for.  The thing is though, even with a warning like that, where they're all like "this is going to be a goofball fest", there are things that make no sense and are so much fun too.  On the image page, I took a screen of this shot of a dinosaur I guess howling at the moon as the sun set.  It was in this 70s-style TV film stock though, like it was a 70s PSA about saving the dinosaurs or something.  "A dinosaur is a terrible thing to waste."  "Somewhere a dinosaur is crying."  I don't know, but it was pretty fantastic whatever it was.

This is tons of fun, and a great USA Up All Nite throwback.  The availability on Netflix Instant makes it a no-brainer.  Wynorski and Ray deliver, and Ross Hagen is a nice slice of all right too.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109627/

Storm Trooper (1998)

I first got wind of this when I saw it reviewed over at Mr. Gable's Reality, which is a really great site if you haven't checked it out. Anyway, beyond the cast, that included Zach Galligan (the guy from Gremlins, not The Hangover), the bad guy from Revenge of the Ninja, Ross Hagen, Carol Alt, and Corey Feldman, it had one of the coolest dudes ever, Rick Hill, also known as The Deathstalker. When I found out Netflix had it, I knew I had to make it happen.

Storm Trooper isn't about dudes in white suits with cool white ski helmets who fight the rebels in Star Wars, it's about cyborg soldiers-- or cops, we're not, and I don't the film makers are sure which-- one of whom escapes, and the military wants him back. He avoids death at the hands of Kool Moe Dee and Ross Hagen, only to wind up in the home of the unstable Carol Alt, who has just murdered her husband in cold blood and is now taking a shower with his dead body in the tub with her. Anyway, Zach Galligan, charged by the bad guy from Revenge of the Ninja with bringing in the cyborg, realizes after Hagen and Cool Moe Dee's failures, that he needs to call in the big guns, i.e. Rick Hill. Now it's on.



Let me use an analogy to explain how this movie works. Just bear with me, it'll be quick. Think of it as a party one your buddies/girlfriends drags you to, that you decide "hey, I ain't got anything else goin' on on a Saturday, why not?", only you get there, and you're thinking maybe you should've stayed in an caught up on your Dickens, because this thing ain't workin'. The chicks/dudes are either not that hot, or have significant others they can't stop talking about, the music sucks, and the company is almost worse. You go to the fridge, because you need a beer quick and fast, and it's as you start getting that bad boy in your system, that someone tells you "hey man, did you know Rick Hill is supposed to be coming?" Rick Hill? Oh man, that guy is awesome. Now this will be a party. And sure enough, he shows up, and kills it. We're talking things like leading the group in singing some Dokken, bowling with an empty half-gallon Bacardi bottle into the party-holder's cheap golfing trophies, prank calls, body shots with the previously unappealing members of the opposite sex-- whatever else you can think of. Then, like any other cool dude, he leaves early, because one should never be the first to get there or the last to leave, and that's it. But you've had a great night, with tons of stories, and you're glad you didn't stay in and catch up on your Dickens.

And that's it in a nutshell (or a rather large, paragraph-long analogy). The moment I see Rick Hill's name in the opening credits, I'm waiting, watching the front door, for him to get there. And when he does, he more than doesn't disappoint, he's pure gold. No one in this film was able to handle this awful DTV movie material like he was. Okay, Ross Hagen was good too, but he's in the movie for like five minutes, so that doesn't count. I realized that, like that life of the party guy I described, I had taken Rick Hill and what he does for granted all this time. Maybe because it's been too long since I've seen Deathstalker-- something I plan to remedy soon!-- but I found in Storm Trooper, as everyone else seemed so out of place, reciting the bad dialog filled with non sequiturs without a clue as to how bad it sounded, here's Rick Hill, completely comfortable and affable, reminding me why I go for movies like this. Here's to you Rick Hill, you're one of the great ones.



That's Corey Feldman with an eye patch. I wish I could remember off hand the noise he made after Rick Hill kicked him in the stomach, it was like an air compressor or something, but even funnier. Even though his name is all over the cover, he's not in this much, a bit of a Feldman bait-and-switch. I will say, after Rick Hill and Ross Hagen, he was the next most comfortable in working with what this movie was giving, so that was a good thing. I think, even though he's barely in this, seeing him in it with an eye patch like this has to be worth it for Feldman fans. Maybe for Corey Haim fans too.

This is only our second Ross Hagen film, the other being Alienator, and that one had much more Hagen than this one did, because he's only in this one for like five minutes. Have you seen his imdb picture? He looks like Charlton Heston. You probably know him more for his MST3K movies, like Sidehackers and The Hellcats. He's actually still making movies and acting, his most recent work lending his voice for the too sweet video game Red Dead Redemption, as London Ricketts. Another of his more recent ones was in 1999, he played Det. Crank Gabovsky in a Skin-a-max flick directed by this film's director, Jim Wynorski, who's kind of in that Fred Olen Ray category of director who does everything from Skin-a-max to low-budget action. (In fact, Olen Ray did Alienator.) Anyway, I saw that on his imdb filmography, with that character name, Crank Gabovsky, and new I had to mention it.



Your guess is as good as mine as far as Carol Alt went in this. The character made no sense, and she made it make even less sense the way she played it, maybe because as a not so experienced actress, she didn't know what to do with what they gave her. Anyway, it was fitting then, the way they decided to end it, because it's almost as if they gave up too, and just threw the baby out with the bathwater. In a way, it worked, because, if you go with the party analogy, the life of it, Rick Hill, had already exited, so why not have a reminder that it's probably time for you to call it a night too, before things get any weirder-- that chick/dude you've latched onto, don't ignore the red flags, he/she is that unstable! Cut your losses and be happy with the Rick Hill.

And that's the crux of it. Rick Hill or bust, but it's definitely not bust with Rick Hill this time around. Considering you can get this on Netflix, it's not a bad deal. All the other names range from all right to not that great, but only one name matters, and he delivers. Also, if you haven't already, go check out Mr. Gable's Reality.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0145495/

Ablaze (2001)

Being that we're making a final push to get the rest of Michael Dudikoff's DTV oeuvre up at the DTVC, I knew I'd have to do this bad boy sooner or later. Let's get through it together, like we're peeling off a Band-Aid, all at once.

Ablaze is a convoluted mess of a plot about a fireman who does police work with Ice-T and works in a fire station with Michael Dudikoff. Either that, or it's about Tom Arnold, who owns both an oil refinery and a hospital that makes patients pay for play (this film might have been ten years before its time in that aspect!). In a stroke of what would've been irony had it not been in a contrived movie, Arnold's refinery has a massive explosion, causing an enormous disaster in the city, and his hospital is the nearest source of emergency care, causing altruistic doctor Amanda Pays to dump Arnold's bottom line based health care in favor of humanitarian medicine. Then something called a firestorm threatens the hospital, and Dudikoff has to bring the firemen in to save them.



On the sleeve the disc came in from Netflix, the synopsis read like this:

A by-the-book investigation into a hotel fire generates quickly into a mad rush to find a deadly arsonist as killer infernos begin raging all over the city. The cops soon discover that someone is creating deliberate death traps -- picture-perfect fires for a serial arsonist turned serial killer! Heading up the investigation is none other than Tom Arnold. (That's like tossing gasoline on a smoking ember, isn't it?)

Had that been the actual movie, it might have been great, and in the first ten minutes, where there's this too sweet chase with Ice-T and our fireman hero going after some serial arsonist, it looked like that's what we were getting. But that wasn't the movie, and instead we got a convoluted disaster pic with no identity, manufactured tension that often made no sense, and a great cast that was essentially wasted-- and when I say wasted, I mean they weren't in the movie nearly enough. Dudikoff, Ice-T, Tom Arnold, and William Zabka were all wasted, receiving little to less screen time. Amanda Pays had a little more to do, but it wasn't enough to save this from leaving me thinking "what's the point?"

I think Soldier Boyz thinks this was the dumbest movie Michael Dudikoff has ever done. A former special forces soldier recruiting kids from a juvenile prison to rescue a girl from Vietnam thinks Ablaze was ludicrous. Usually I applaud Dudikoff for playing it straight and lending bad films like these credibility, but in the case of Ablaze, it ended up being a bad look for him. This was not a movie that needed credibility, it didn't need humoring, it needed someone on the other side sharing in every moment that left us nonplussed, not pretending that we shouldn't be stunned or not knowing how to respond. Tom Arnold, for instance, did do that for us. In every scene he was in, you could see him mailing it in with fourth class postage, and that's what this film was worthy of.



I shouldn't be so harsh on Ablaze, because in watching it again yesterday for the blog, I could see where it went wrong. It was this constant adding of pieces, tacking things on, trying to fix things, but only making them worse. It was someone thinking he or she had a concept for a disaster movie, but not seeing that it was an idea sautéed in wrong sauce. The thing that I think was unforgivable, though, was gathering this huge cast and pretty much having them there for their names on the box.

I was joking with a buddy the other day about how growing up, we all feared that going into high school, we would get picked on by kids who were like William Zabka. Of course, we grew into teenagers, actually went to high school, and learned there were no William Zabkas, and the only fears we had were of the teachers catching us making a dime-sack transaction in the bathroom. Still, Zabka to this day resonates as one of the ultimate 80s baddies. I mean, we almost expected to see his face during the big Darth Vader reveal at the end of Return of the Jedi. In Ablaze, he does play a bad guy, Tom Arnold's right-hand man, but he's as wasted as everyone else, getting killed off early on.



As much as this movie was bad, it was also weird, but weird in a bad way. One of the weirdest was the running story of an aging starlet in purple, snake skin print leather pants, who was acting as a nurse or something. She helps out a kid, talks to our hero, then, inexplicably, disguises herself as a patient and walks out into the inferno between the hospital and the waiting firefighters, and gets herself burned to death. None of it made any sense, and just added to my disdain for the film-- though ladies, you shouldn't let this paragraph deter you from wearing purple leather pants if you're ever so inclined.

This is available on DVD through Netflix, or to buy in a lot of bargain bins (I found it at Big Lots, though of course I passed on it). Seeing all the names will probably be enticing. Don't let them fool you, this is a 90 minute painfest with little to redeem it. If you're a major chase scene connoisseur, you may want it for the opening scene, which was legitimately good, otherwise, stay away.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0217979/

Storm Catcher (1999)

We're getting down to the nitty-gritty on Dolph films. After this it's just Cover Up, and his newest picture, Direct Contact, set to be released on Tuesday. This is both exciting and sad at the same time. Exciting, because we'll have every Dolph DTV film reviewed here at the DTV Connoisseur. Sad, because we'll be out of Dolph films... until he releases more.

Storm Catcher has Dolph as an Air Force major flying a B-2 bomber with the next generation of stealth. Some home-grown terrorist organization sets him up, steals the plane, and plans to bomb the White House with it. Dolph isn't having that, and he's pissed that the baddies have used him as a patsy, stabbed his hot wife in the back, and tried to kill him in the back of an ice cream truck.

This film is pretty sweet. As you may remember from my post a long time ago on Agent Red, the scene when Dolph's partner steals his space suit and breaks into the hangar to steal the plane, is actually used in the beginning of Agent Red, only re-cut so it's like Dolph is going in to steal it for the US. It's so much better in Agent Red, especially the scene in the helicopter before, when his commander asks him "you think you can fly it?" and he replies "hell if I know." Beyond that cool connection to another Dolph film, Storm Catcher is really just another solid, yet silly, Dolph Lundgren actioner, and really, what more can you ask for?

Dolph has like four movies coming out this year. Direct Action next week, and Command Performance, Icarus, and Universal Soldiers: The Next Generation all set to be released at a later date. I'm kind of giddy just talking about it. When I was younger, like in high school, I would get excited when bands I liked released new CDs and TV shows would have new seasons and movies would come out about this or that that I really wanted to see. I usually don't get that feeling anymore, but it's back, just talking about all these new Dolph films.

I had seen this who knows how long ago with my friends when I first bought it. We generally don't watch it anymore, other than to juxtapose the scene in it with the one that Agent Red stole as a bumper between other Dolph films during our Dolph Fests. Watching it again for the blog, though, I saw something that I cannot believe me and my friends missed on first viewing. In fending off a knife-wielding attacker, Dolph picks up your run-of-the-mill black metal-framed college dorm futon, and uses it as a battering ram on the guy. It's just fantastic. The only explanation I can think of is that I fell asleep, and my buddy was using his laptop.

Dolph's wife is played by a model named Kylie Bax. Being a model, you can imagine she's extremely hot. She's also an extremely bad actress. And she has a New Zealand accent, which you think would cover up any acting inadequacies. She's also in the Dolph classic Jill the Ripper, but I don't remember her. Dolph's daughter is played by a girl named Yvonne Zima. Nothing special about her, except her name. Do you remember Zima? Do they still make it? When I was a freshman in high school, our science teacher asked us if we'd tried it. We were like "no, we're 14!" Anyway, he was fired at the end of the year for giving another class of students non-alcoholic champagne.

I always check out the keywords people tag onto films on IMDb. For this one, the first thing that popped up was "Policewoman killed." What? First off, I didn't remember a policewoman killed in the film. Second, why would anyone tag something like that? What significance does that have to the movie? And third, did anyone know there are over 100 films with the same tag? Really? Does anyone actually seek out movies based on whether or not they have a policewoman killed in them? Do they have collections of the best policewoman killing films? Is this a fetish or something? Maybe I'm the one that's closed-minded here. I don't know.

So if you're a huge Dolph fan, you need to make this happen. The biggest thing is the scene in it that was stolen for use in Agent Red. There's also the futon wielding scene. Dolph has some great lines, there's plenty of funny stuff in it: it's an all around good time. If you're not a huge Dolph guy, you may not find this as entertaining, so be careful before you unload a bunch of cash on it.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0179477/

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

Gale Force (2002)

It's been a while since I've managed to get a Michael Dudikoff film up here. He's a card carrying member of the DTVC Hall of Fame, and with good reason. Unfortunately, though he is still alive, he hasn't made a film since 2002 (according to imdb, this is his second to last film.). Hopefully he will give us a little something something in the future. Maybe another American Ninja film. A guy can dream, right?

Gale Force is about Lifetime Movie mainstay Treat Williams as a cop who needs cash quick, and is in trouble with the force after he accuses the mayor's daughter of staging her own kidnapping. His boss has him do a reality show where he and the other contestants will go to some island and search for treasure. Meanwhile, the show's beleaguered host has set it up so mercenary Michael Dudikoff and his crew of soldiers, including 80s teen movie bully William Zabka, will steal the treasure and give him a cut. All of this is derailed when a hurricane sweeps through the area, and the executive producer is too money hungry to abandon making the show before it hits (I guess none of these people had ever heard of insurance). Anyway, it's up to Treat to save his fellow contestants from both the natural disaster and Dudikoff and Zabka.



This movie has a bunch of people in it. It has Booger from Revenge of the Nerds, the hot chick from Dear John and The Big Easy (TV show, not movie), and Mr. Kotter's wife from Welcome Back Kotter. This is great when you add these types of people to a Michael Dudikoff and a William Zabka.

What's bad is when you have people like this, and you load the movie up with tons of Treat Williams. This would've been way better if Treat Williams played Dudikoff's role, and Dudikoff was the hero. Then switch it so Zabka plays Mr. Kotter's wife's part, and she plays Treat's second in command. That would've been way more awesomer. As it was, I'm still having trouble with Treat Williams as the main hero. It never worked in the Substitutes, and it doesn't work here. He's more the husband who doesn't believe his wife's being stalked at first, but then has a change of heart at about the 47 minute mark (with commercials) after her brake lines have been cut. The wife can be either Judith Light, Joanna Kerns, or Meredith Baxter-Birney.



One thing the film did mitigate well was the Treat/Dudikoff final fight. I was afraid they'd have Treat kick his ass, which would've been a bitter pill to swallow. Luckily they had Dudikoff beat him down, then die in a helicopter accident. Under no circumstances should Treat Williams ever take down Michael Dudikoff, just on levels of awesomeness alone. I mean come on: American Ninja 2 vs. Deadly Matrimony or Every Mother's Worst Fear, it's no contest.

I loved the idea of the executive producer who, upon finding out a storm will threaten the lives of the people on the show, decides they need to stay where they are because he's afraid of losing money. Who comes up with this? The amount of money the studio would lose after all the lawsuits from family members of the deceased would far outweigh any gain from not evacuating the people. Of course, if the people were evacuated ahead of time, that would mean there'd be no movie. Maybe what they should've done was have Dudikoff go to the island, and find out an evil man is cloning ninja warriors, and have to work with William Zabka to take them down. I know what you're thinking, that's the plot of American Ninja 2. So what? It's better than this.



I loved that William Zabka was in this, even if it was on a limited basis. He played almost the exact character he did in the Karate Kid movies, Just One of the Guys, and Back to School. It would've been a better movie for me if he'd just had a scene where he beat up Treat Williams and smashed his boom box. Or even better, he could've picked on Booger, allowing Booger to reprise his role from Revenge of the Nerds.

But I digress. This film is a waste of space. The lack of Zabka and Dudikoff coupled with the volume of Treat-age makes for a bitter formula. Instead of seeing this once, you should see American Ninja and Karate Kid again. This film is definitely not the way to get your Dudikoff/Zabka fix. If you're asking yourself "who actually needs to get a Dudikoff or Zabka fix?", feel good knowing you're a normal human being. I, on the other hand, probably am not.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0301327/