White Ghost (1988)

For the first time in I don't know how long, we're inducting a new member to the DTVC Hall of Fame!  No, it's not William Katt, it's Reb Brown!  Yes, I probably should have picked a more Reb-centric flick to do for his induction celebration, but I didn't realize he was in this as little as he was.  Well, we're already knee-deep, so we might as well get after it.  Also, our friends at ComeuppanceReviews.net have looked at this, and they joined me for the podcast we did in discussing Reb Brown and his work.

White Ghost has William Katt as our eponymous hero, a former Vietnam War vet who stayed behind after and lived in the jungle while collecting weapons and marrying Rosalind Chao.  Reb Brown, back in DC, suspects that Katt might still be out there as the mythical White Ghost that locals in the jungle think has been haunting them.  Brown gathers a team of special ops guys to bring him in, led by his former commander, Walker.  They're on a collision course to wackiness!

I don't know that this was horrible, but it had some horrible moments, like when Rosalind Chao is captured and has bamboo shoots shoved under her fingernails.  That's a bit much for me.  Beyond that, it has a heavy body count and lots of explosions.  I think for these kinds of DTV 80s jungle actioners, we've seen worse, but we've also seen better.  I think what usually carries it is the stars, and beyond Katt, Brown, and Chao, we had an interesting cast.  Katt's old CO was played by Wayne Crawford, Karl Johnson was Crawford's right-hand man, and in his crew he had John Barrett (uncredited) and Graham Clark (who starred with Brown in Space Mutiny).  I don't know that that's enough of a cast to carry this, especially if you're putting Reb Brown on the bench for all but the last few minutes.

That bit at the end though was pure classic Reb Brown.  He's in front of a helicopter, two-fisting machine guns, and screaming while he mows down Vietnamese soldiers.  Even if this weren't the movie we were reviewing to induct Brown into the Hall of Fame, that still wouldn't be enough.  Reb Brown was made for these jungle warfare romps.  Get him a tank top, head band, and a cache of weapons, and let him loose on the movie.  Even if this was supposed to be a Katt vehicle, it needed more Reb Brown.

Reb Brown enters the Hall of Fame with one of the lower tag counts (this will be his ninth, which is lower than a lot of non-Hall of Famers), but I think why he gets in is his spirit, similar to a Klaus Kinski--but in a totally different way--embodies what DTV is all about.  Also, his films tended to be on the lower end, especially the Philippine jungle ones, but there was never a sense in any movie he did that he mailed it in, and that I think matters more than anything for us as a viewer.  I never thought when I first saw him in Space Mutiny almost 20 years ago that I would have a blog, and on that blog be inducting him into our Hall of Fame, but here we are; and here's to you Reb Brown, you're one of the good ones.

William Katt was an interesting choice for the lead.  The better movie might have been with Brown in Katt's role, and Katt in Brown's, but that's one of the problems with DTV: the bigger name gets the bigger role, unless it's a bait-and-switch.  If you're going to pay Katt that much, you might as well use him.  The other thing too is, in 1988, he was only two years removed from The Greatest American Hero, and was still doing Perry Mason TV movies as a reoccurring character.  It makes me wonder if maybe this was slated for a theatrical release, and then something derailed it, and it ended up DTV.

I think sometimes with these action movies we need to suspend belief when it comes to the amount of weaponry and ammunition they have, but this film actually deals with that in a pretty realistic way.  Katt character collects it off of fallen soldiers and from various abandoned storage locales.  With the way the US funds its conflicts, it's not inconceivable that he could find a lot of that stuff left behind.  It would have been cooler though if he found some other things, like MREs.  Sure, we're action fans, but it doesn't always have to be about shooting and explosions, does it?  Okay, maybe it does.

It's time to wrap it up.  For me, this may be for 80s Jungle Flick completists, but I don't know if I can recommend it beyond that.  After Brown's great screaming action near the very end, there isn't much that I found to distinguish it from a lot of the others out there.  You can get this on Prime, or stream it on YouTube.  I think as far as our DTVC Hall of Famer, Strike Commando and Robowar are two better ones for him, plus Space Mutiny, all of which are also on Prime.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096436

Shootfighter: Fight to the Death (1992)

There was a post a while back where someone hit me with a comment saying something to the effect of "dude, you gotta get Shootfighter up here. Bolo Yeung, William Zabka, it's all good." I can't remember when, or what post, or even the actual comment, I just know it was a long time ago. Anyway, I finally tracked it down after a long time of searching, so here it is.

Shootfighter has Bolo Yeung as a former underground shootfighting great, who retires as a champ after seeing his buddy's throat ripped out in another fight by Martin Kove. In LA, he trains William Zabka in the world of legitimate fighting, while Zabka runs a dojo teaching kids martial arts to make ends meet. He gets into some trouble with a loan shark, and at the same time, his best friend and girlfriend's brother comes back into town. The best friend is more of a streetfighter, and he reminds Zabka that Zabka only knows how to fight for sport. These money issues and pride issues come to a head when Kove's men come calling, roping Zabka into fighting in their dangerous shootfighting circuit in Tijuana. Can Bolo Yeung get down there in time to save the day?



Hell, if he can swim to Hong Kong to escape communist China, he can get down to TJ, and when he does, it's pure awesome. Everything here is pure awesome. It is a little brutal, in a zombie movie kind of sense, with people having hearts ripped out, throats ripped out, and the skin on forearms bitten off. But it's done in that B-zombie movie kind of way that's more funny than sick-- it's just important to note that it's also R rated. Beyond that, the film really sets itself up as the film The Karate Kid should have been, i.e. totally awesome. Sure, Pat Morita is great, but he's no Bolo Yeung. Kove is still stellar as the head baddie, but then they cut out the Macchio role, allowing us to root for Zabka, which just works out so much better. Then you have all the great martial arts, the blood and gore, and a cameo from John Barrett. This is one of the best of the decade, and that's saying a lot considering it's a 90s movie.

And a huge part of that is Bolo Yeung. Whether he's putting mustard on French fries in Tiger Claws II, dressing like a woman in Breathing Fire, or throwing a crushed Alka Seltzer tablet in Jean-Claude Van Damme's face in Bloodsport, he's always great to watch. It's funny, because of his size and fierce scowl, he's usually cast as the baddie, when he actually makes a great good guy, as evidenced by his role here in Shootfighter.



Anyone who grew up in the 80s has to love William Zabka, right? On some levels, though he is on the side of the good guys here, he does channel that heel element that marked the early part of his career. This will be his third tag, the first two being Gale Force and Interceptor Force, but it won't be his last, because he does have some other DTV films to his credit, including the sequel to Shootfighter. As an aside, he has a cameo in Hot Tub Time Machine, a surprisingly great movie.

John Barrett is in this with a short cameo. I've never gotten why they don't use him in films like this for more than the cameo. I think he's great, a great actor, a great fighter. His one scene is kind of brutal, and it doesn't end well, but I loved the pants he had on. This was one of those early 90s "did he have to wear those pants?" kind of films, but Barrett's worked. I might be out on a limb on that one though.



I had two places I wanted to go with this paragraph. First, I wanted to lament the fact that I'd been to San Diego before, and didn't make it down to Tijuana, and this film reminded me of that regret. The other was a personal story based on Zabka's character's name, Ruben. I knew a kid named Ruben back in college. He was an interesting cat, he could tightrope walk, hitchhiked home from school-- which was over an hour away-- all sorts of crazy shit. Anyway, he told us this story about how he met this girl at a party, went back to her place, and hoped to hook up, but she wasn't ready to move that fast, so he slept on her couch. He's kind of disappointed, but thinking he has an in with this chick, only to be woken up by her gay male roommate trying to do him! He freaked and split from there in only his boxers. About three days after he tells us the story, a girl remarks to his roommate that she saw flowers in his room, and asked who his secret admirer was. "How do you know they weren't Ruben's?" he says, to which she replies "I don't think Ruben would get anything like that..." and one of my buddies jumps in and says "Oh, you'd be surprised what Ruben gets!" I told that story to some friends when I got home for the summer, and that became our catch all phrase, "you'd be surprised what Ruben gets!"

This can be tough to get at, but it's so worth it. In my mind, one of the best of the 1990s, and it's to bad it's taken me this long to get at it, but here we are now, better late than never. Also, have you noticed I write less on the ones that are really awesome than I do on the ones that I didn't like? Maybe I need to fix that in future posts.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105395/

American Ninja 3: Blood Hunt (1989)

I probably would've reviewed this sooner, but David Bradley's been in my dog house since the fanny pack incident in Cyborg Cop. It still just boggles my mind that a so-called action hero would allow himself to be made to wear a fanny pack. If it hadn't been for Hard Justice, he night have been banned from the DTVC for life.

American Ninja 3 takes place after the first two, but DTVC Hall of Famer Michael Dudikoff is conspicuously absent. Very conspicuously. Anyway, Bradley, Steve James as Curtis Jackson, and some other dudes come to this island for a martial arts tournament, unbeknownst to them so a pharmaceutical mogul can find the strongest one so he can carry a biological weapon in his system. For whatever reason, they ignore the obviously stronger Jackson, and go for Bradley instead, and Jackson and another competitor, whom Jackson affectionately refers to as "Junior", must go in and rescue him. Oh yeah, and an Asian chick who was working for the mogul is actually a ninja too, and she wants to help save Bradley too.



The first, and most important question here is: why? Why was this made? Cash grab, maybe. This was too much to put on Bradley right away. For his first major role, he had no chance of filling Dudikoff's impressive shoes. I know I shouldn't throw terms like racism around lightly, but what other explanation was there to cast Bradley as the main hero over James, who obviously fit the part better. And you could tell James didn't like playing second fiddle to Bradley, and it only made the film that much worse.

One thing you notice about the first, second, and fourth films, is there's a sense of tongue in cheekness that adds to the entertainment value. This film tried that too, but fell on its face. It really was an MST3K quality film, and on that score, it was plenty worthy of making fun of. It was like a YouTube high school project video, where you almost expected the actors to look at their friend behind the camera for the signal that he pushed the stop button to end the scene.



I was asked a couple weeks ago what my top ten films of the 1990s are, and it made me think what a DTV top 10 of the 1990s would be, and somewhere around 7 or 8, I would have to have Hard Justice. Now, to be fair, Bradley had nine films between that one and American Ninja 3, which was his first, so I can't be too hard on him here. The fanny pack is still more unforgivable. In that case, he had four films under his belt (no pun intended), though three of those were American Ninja films, so maybe he didn't know what he was doing by rocking the fanny pack, but I don't know. I haven't made any movies, and I know I wouldn't rock a fanny pack unless I wanted to look ridiculous.

Someone who never looked ridiculous was the late Steve James. Though imdb didn't say it explicitly, I have to believe he was the inspiration for Jax in Mortal Kombat. He did kind of mail it in here, which may have been as much lack of interest as it was his illness. Like Swayze and Ron O'neal, James was killed by pancreatic cancer four years later. I don't want to get too somber here, though. He wasn't as good as he was in American Ninja 2, but he was still good enough to be one of the film's few bright spots. Just check out the too sweet "Shalom, y'all" T-shirt.



There was a dude in here who looked a lot like Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo, which was pretty cool. My three-year-old nephew watches a show called Yo Gabba Gabba!, and Mark Mothersbaugh has a segment on there where he draws a picture on the board and it comes to life, a la Bill Cosby's Picture Pages. I wonder if they really wanted Mark Mothersbaugh, and he was like "What, no Dudikoff? Then no Mothersbaugh either."

There are two reasons to see this: if you're an American Ninja completist, or if you need a really bad movie to make fun of. You probably should see it for the latter instead of the former. What's great is it usually comes packaged with part 2, so it's like you're buying part 2, and you get part 3 for free, so you don't have to feel like you're ripped off when it sucks.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096804/

To the Death (1993)

My friend at Movies in the Attic suggested this title. I like John Barrett, even if American Kickboxer sucked, and I always like to see Michel Qissi. As I've reviewed more and more films, I've come to realize that films from the early nineties tend be less of a crap shoot than their modern counterparts. Sometimes it's good to take one of these in to cleanse the pallet after a bunch of films made in 2009.

To the Death has martial arts star John Barrett as, what else, a champion kickboxer. He retires at the top, much to the chagrin of Michel Qissi, the top contender, who wants a look at Barrett so he can hush all the critics who say he isn't as good. At the same time, this dude who runs an illegal fighting ring wants Barrett, and he's less than stoked when Barrett turns him down. It's not long after that that Barrett's wife dies when a bomb blows up her car while she's driving it. Barrett blames Qissi, and his life spirals out of control through alcoholism. The illegal fight guy entices Barrett to join him, and Barrett takes him up on it. Bad move. Those illegal fight guys are always bad news, and this one's no different. Now Barrett has to find a way out, and he may have to rely on his old nemesis, Qissi, for help.



This was pretty sweet. It had some dry spells of no action, but for a 90 minute movie, they came and went quickly. John Barrett is probably a better actor than he is a fighter. If you compare him to someone like a Jerry Trimble or Don "The Dragon" Wilson, he comes across much better when he delivers his lines, but the action isn't always there in his fight scenes. I think, though, this film is better than American Kickboxer, because the fight scenes that are there don't expose Barrett as much. Plus, Michel Qissi gives the film some much needed credibility. And then, in those scenes without action, Barrett just sounds cooler when he talks than say, Wilson, which makes those scenes easier to take than usual.

This is the third John Barrett film we've done here, the other two being the aforementioned American Kickboxer, and the classic Gymkata. He doesn't have that many roles to his credit, which is somewhat puzzling. Maybe his martial arts skills aren't as spectacular on-screen as some of the stars I mentioned above, but his voice is very smooth and comes off as very realistic and he delivers his lines well, which is a major departure from most action stars, who let their skills do the talking. It amazes me that a guy who can fight, and can act, didn't get more work. Maybe he didn't want it.



It's always odd to see Michel Qissi in a film when he doesn't have his Tong Po make-up on. One thing that's interesting to note: in Kickboxer 4, someone else plays Tong Po. I never knew that. Isn't that horrible that I reviewed that film and didn't do my due diligence? I need to get my act together. Anyway, Qissi is good here as a bad guy. He has even fewer acting credits than Barrett, but I think in his case it's because he isn't a great actor, and his English leaves a bit to be desired. I'm sure it didn't help too that his most famous role, Tong Po, requires him to wear make-up that makes him unrecognizable when you see him as anyone else.

The female lead in this is a woman named Michelle Bestbier. It got me thinking, what exactly is the best beer? It's a tough question, and I think beer is one of those things where you can't compare them all equally, you know? PBR is one of my favorites, because it's really inexpensive, and I'm not inundated with horrible commercials telling me to drink it. A hidden gem high-end microbrew you may not know about is Southampton IPA. It may be hard to get outside of the East Coast. As far as other regional beers go, I liked Lone Star when I was in Texas, and Rainier was I was in Seattle. Bud Light is my favorite Beer Pong beer. And Newcastle is my favorite when I'm watching soccer. And you can't forget Guiness, just because. As I write this, I keep thinking of others, like Sam Adams Light to go with Indian food, or Tsing Tao with Chinese food. I guess I just love beer, and tons of it.



A man named Ted Le Plat reprises his role from American Kickboxer as Willard, the beat reporter covering the world of kickboxing. He kind of looks like Owen Wilson, which I think I mentioned in the American Kickboxer post. Barrett almost reprises his role from the previous film too, only he's Rick Quinn, not BJ Quinn. As far as I can tell, there's no relation to the two characters either.

If you see this in a bargain bin somewhere, go for it. Don't spend more than a couple bucks, though. It's plenty funny and what you'd expect from a 1993 kickboxing film. It's only available on VHS, so you'll only find it in some used bin somewhere, but if you're looking, and you see it, go for it.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108349/

Gymkata (1985)

Well, this is it, the 200th post on the DTVC Connoisseur. For milestone posts, like 100 and 150, I usually reserve them for Dolph Lundgren movies. I was going to do the same for this one, until a fellow bad movie fan, and owner of the site Movies in the Attic (there's a link to it in my "Other Great Bad Movie Sites" section), asked me why I haven't reviewed Gymkata. It was a great point, and I couldn't really give him a good answer. It's a classic, and one I've seen multiple times, but for some reason I never considered it for the site. I guess it just slipped my mind. Well, here it is, the DTVC's 200th post.

Gymkata stars gymnastics great Kurt Thomas (not the journeyman power forward) as a gymnastics champ recruited by the US government to be trained so he can compete in a centuries old ritual called The Game in a small khanate called Parmistan. The Game involves the entrant running through an obstacle course while Richard Norton and a bunch of faceless foot soldiers try to kill him or her. If someone wins, he or she gets one wish granted. The US want Thomas to enter so he can win the wish and have the US set up a Star Wars command post there. Things get complicated when the khan's daughter comes to the US to help Thomas train and they fall in love. The khan had planned on her marrying Norton, and Norton's not pleased. He's got a coup planned for after the game too. Thomas will have to use all of his martial arts and gymnastics prowess if he wants to get out of this alive, let alone get the girl.



I don't need to tell you how awesome this is. It wouldn't be post 200 if it wasn't. If you're a MSTie, you're probably familiar with Gymkata, because Joel, Mike, or the 'bots will shout out the title whenever people in the movie they're watching engage in fisticuffs. The movie lives up to their constant usage, as it's that silly. Probably the funniest is the seemingly random placement of gymnastics equipment so Thomas can utilize it to dispatch of his foes. In one scene he finds a bar spanning two buildings in an alley. Hilarity ensues as he spins a few times, then somehow kicks the guys chasing him while rotating on the bar vertically. Later, while fighting his way through a town used as an insane asylum, he finds a concrete pillar with two metal handles on the top, making a perfect pommel horse. He does flair after flair, kicking nutcase after nutcase that charges him. Love it.

There's more to it than the silly marriage of martial arts and gymnastics. The khan is some goofy old man. I looked him up on imdb, and one of his recent credits came on an episode of Even Stevens, where he played "Old Guy #2". Awesome. He was also a former wrestler and body builder, and I mean former, considering he's 86 years old now. If you were going to remake Gymkata now, you'd probably cast Jerry Stiller in the role of the khan. When I think of a khan ruling a small kingdom in Central Asia, I think of Jerry Stiller. I'm serious, I do.



American Kickboxer's John Barrett is in this as Gomez, another competitor, and pal of Thomas. The idea is that a lot of countries want the Parmistan land to start a Star Wars base, and they have people like Gomez trying to beat Thomas. Thing is: Gomez sounds American too. Is he from Canada? They don't say, but the idea of Canada wanting to beat us for a chance to start a Star Wars base is beyond ludicrous, it's fantastic. Why not, right? Also, Barrett is much more likable as Gomez than he is as BJ Quinn in American Kickboxer 1, for what it's worth.

Kurt Thomas was one of the greatest figures in Gymnastics history, but due to Carter's boycott of the 1980 Olympics, he missed his shot at a gold medal. I understand why he made the boycott decision, though, despite how it cut Olympic dreams like Thomas' short. The USSR was so prosperous in 1980, especially with all the cash it was dumping into war in Afghanistan, that if American Olympic athletes went over there, they'd be too tempted to defect, like Cuban ones do here. He was just trying to save our athletes so we'd have them for future games. Thomas' loss is our gain, with this one attempt into the foray of bad action films. Gymkata may be one of the best things to come out of The Cold War.



Richard Norton is too sweet for words, and he's great here as the lead baddie. This is only the second film of his reviewed on the DTVC, but fans of bad movies, especially action and martial arts, are very familiar with his work. As I review more Cynthia Rothrock films, Norton's sure to get more run as well, considering he's done about ten movies with her. At 58, it'll be interesting to see how many films he does in the future, but in 1985, he was 35, and right in his prime. Even though he's a baddie, this is easily one of his best roles. The only drawback was how little he's in it. Also of note: he trained Thomas for his fight scenes. I wonder how that felt when he had to have Thomas beat him for the final fight.

If you've never seen Gymkata, and you consider yourself a bad movie honk, what are you waiting for? This is required viewing. Throw it on the top of your Netflix queue immediately. I'd only buy it if you have a bad movie collection, and in that case, it should be one of your staples. Gymkata is a classic, and if you're just starting out in the world of bad movies, I couldn't think of a better starting place. It's just too many kinds of awesome.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089243/

American Kickboxer aka American Kickboxer 1 (1991)

When I was younger, it never crossed my mind as silly that a movie would be called "Anything: Part 1". All movies are technically a part one. It takes a sequel to make that official, but usually it's up to said sequel to distinguish itself from its predecessor with a "part 2". Anyway, this movie actually is packaged as American Kickboxer 1, but since imdb listed it simply as American Kickboxer, I felt both titles would be apt to head the blog entry.

American Kickboxer 1 is about the middleweight kickboxing champ, BJ Quinn. He's a mess, and wins a title fight under dubious circumstances. At the same time this young dandy of a Frenchman is climbing the ranks and wants a title shot. They both attend a party, and fisticuffs ensue. A drunk Quinn decks an innocent bystander trying to break up the fight, killing him. He luckily only gets twelve months in jail, cut to ten with good behavior, and he leaves prison to enter a world dominated by the French dandy. His life spirals out of control, until he gets it together after getting his ass kicked by the Frenchman at another party. With the help of a former rival, he gets back on his feet and bests the Frenchman in the ring.



I must stress before I go further that this is not an action film. It's a sports film, closer to Rocky, than it is to Kickboxer. Our hero never ends up fighting his way out of an alley, or escaping baddies in a car chase. This is about a gifted athlete who loses his confidence and tries to regain it. There were some cool allusions to Raging Bull, which I think is the best sports movie (after Pentathlon, of course!), but for the most part this was a poor Rocky retread of a plot.

The protagonist, BJ Quinn, was not at all likable. I'm not the only one who's said that, as a dude on imdb echoed that sentiment. He killed a man with his fists, which, considering he's a trained kickboxer, make that assault with a deadly weapon. He may not have intended to kill him, but involuntary manslaughter doesn't sound like too far fetched a charge. He should've done a few years at least, and he was upset he got twelve years. I think the writers wanted it to be like the French dandy had a hand in his conviction, because he lied in court, but it didn't come across that way. Quinn was guilty whether the Frenchman lied or not. They should've devised a way to have Quinn attacking the dandy and accidentally killing the guy: something that would've actually been the dandy's fault.



The dandy was awesome. I've talked about the Destro Effect in earlier posts, which stems from my childhood when I always thought COBRA was way cooler than GI JOE, and I wanted them to win, even though they never would. A scriptwriter needs to develop baddies in such a way that we never root for them. Because he failed, the director tried things like putting him in weird outfits, which worked somewhat, but not enough. My favorite scene with the dandy came when he entered the room and headbutted a gym locker shut. Awesome. I call him a dandy based on his fighting attire of spandex, a Speedo over that, and a tassel skirt over that. He was a dandy, but he was cool.

There was a guy in this named Ted le Plat, who played a bad sportswriter, and this guy looked almost identical to Owen Wilson. It was so uncanny I had to look him up on imdb. Strangely enough, he stopped making movies right around the time Bottle Rocket came out, which was Owen Wilson's first film role. Coincidence? Probably...

One of the greatest joys of being alive is The Mullet. It is a thing of pure beauty. And this film is chock full of them. You've got the I Just Got a Job as a Roadie for Styx This Summer Poodle Cut with matching mustache. Then there's the Southeast Asian Spiked Ape Drape (though honestly, it was a kind of weak representation: I'd give it a 5.9 in Mulletude). And most prevalent is the Total Business in Front Party in Back Beaver Pelt, again, in most cases, with matching mustache. I'd recommend this film on Mullet Watching alone.



The music in this great too. I think I mentioned in the Rage and Honor post that I love the synthesizer, and this film gives me that. Also, it has two great songs: there's a Monster Ballad that plays in the background of a flashback montage; then there's an original hit from some Journey cover band. With all the crap movies in theaters today giving me tons of overdone pretentious string orchestra stuff, it's nice to know I can go to the well with something like American Kickboxer 1. There's a Sam Adams commercial where a guy says "Drink that and know that's what beer's supposed to taste like." Well I say watch American Kickboxer 1 and know that's what movies are supposed to sound like.

If you haven't seen this, you need to. This is the kind of film that got us bad movie honks into pouring through bargain bins at local video stores and looking up names like Joe Estevez on imdb. Again, I must reiterate that this is not an action film. Just the same, it's tons of fun, and well worth a night in with a bunch of friends.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101325/