Animal Instincts (1992)

Back in October we had Mitch from the Video Vacuum on the pod to discuss this Erotic Thriller classic, episode 179 in the archives. It's part of an overall effort to try and get more Erotic Thrillers on the site--which I probably won't stick to, but hopefully I will.

Animal Instincts has the great Shannon Whirry as a housewife who's married to police officer divorce' Maxwell Caufield. Money's tight, and he's always stressed out about it, so he's not as keen on having sex with Whirry. When she cheats with the cable guy (Bobby Johnston--"Cain" from T-Force) and Caufield catches her, they discover his love for watching her sleep with other guys. So they put an ad in the classifieds, and the candidates are lined up out the door for a chance to hook up with her, while Caufield watches on a TV in the other room. At the same time, there are some nefarious characters, like David Carradine and Jan-Michael Vincent. As the money comes in from their sexual arrangement, Caufield wants more, and sees a way to get it through Carradine and Vincent. But is it too dangerous?

This is a classic for a reason. Whirry's great, the supporting cast is a lot of fun, and the story idea is perfect for an Erotic Thriller--though this is more a soft core porn film, so the story is even better for that. One thing that was interesting was how Whirry wasn't the femme fatale trope, she was more a woman who wished her husband had sex with her more, and they figured out an arrangement that allowed her to do that. But then we have Carradine as a strip club owner, who's really creepy; Jan-Michael Vincent as a local politician or something who wants to shut down the strip clubs, but who's also really creepy; and then Caufield as the jerky husband who gets turned on by seeing her hook up with other men--and women--who's also kind of creepy too--I mean, how do you do "watching someone else have sex and getting turned on by it" without looking creepy? We also had a few smaller fun roles, like John Saxon as the DA at the end, Mitch Gaylord as Caufield's cop partner, and Delia Shepherd as a rich lesbian lover who wants Whirry to run away with her. If you're new to the Erotic Thriller genre, this is a perfect place to start.

For this review we're giving Whirry her tag, and after updating the previous reviews, this starts her off at three with this one, the two previous films being Omega Doom and Mach 2. What makes her so great is, from an acting standpoint, she solid, which probably gets you to a certain level of roles, like supporting cast member in a Lifetime film; but because she's willing to do these soft core porn Erotic Thriller films, the acting skills make her standout, and I think is a big reason why she was so successful--beyond the obvious, of course. This film, for example, she really plays up the wanting to please her husband aspect, like when she first goes into their bedroom after Caufield sets up the camera, the way she's kind of uncomfortable about it, but still trying to look flirty and seductive, that's not something you'd get from any actor doing a film like this; but when she needs to do the love scenes, she's giving more than the average solid actor of her pedigree would. She's one of the best to do it, and I can't wait to get more of her films on the site.

We do have a Hall of Famer in this, David Carradine! This is now 19 films for him on the site, the last one being Project Eliminator in June of 2023. The interesting thing is, this film came out a year after that one, but he looks a lot younger here. With 19 films, the 30 Club is far in the future, and he may be one of those Hall of Famers who never gets there, which kind of doesn't make sense, considering how many films he's done that would fit on our site, but I think the issue is something like this, where he's not in it much, so I'm probably not reviewing it unless it has another reason, like covering it on a previous podcast episode. Just the same, he's a Hall of Famer for a reason, because he appears in so many films like this. Who knows, maybe if we stick with this long enough, he'll make the 30 Club, 40 Club, and beyond.

I thought this was our first time seeing Mitch Gaylord on the site, and it is as far as him as an actor, but he also did stunt work on Savate, so he's technically been here one other time. Looking at his IMDb bio, he has an amazing four-film run between 1986 and 1994, with American Anthem, American Rickshaw, this, and Sexual Outlaws. The guys at Comeuppance have covered American Rickshaw and gave it a good review, but despite not knowing anything about the other two, I have no idea how they can't be anything other than fantastic. I'll try to track the other three down so at some point we can complete the Gaylord Foursome. I know, you can't wait.

Finally, anyone with Boomer parents who was young, at home, and out of work like I was, had a newspaper thrust in front of them and was instructed to look through the classifieds for a new job. From there it was also getting a pile of resumes and "hitting the pavement," which, living in a rural area with nothing within walking distance, I was spared that "hitting the pavement" indignity. I was also spared the indignity of the classifieds soon after, when Craigslist became a thing. It was beautiful, no pavement hitting, no sifting through classified ads in the newspaper, I could scroll, find something good, then call them--or if I were feeling ambitious, make a trip over to where they were located and apply in person. The thing was, though, how to explain Craigslist to Boomer parents who only understood classified ads and "hitting the pavement"? And what's crazy, there's now a younger generation raised on Indeed and LinkedIn, who can't believe there was ever such a thing as classified ads in a newspaper, and the idea of "hitting the pavement" gives them crippling anxiety. What an age to have grown up in, a bridge between the old and new, while Shannon Whirry has a love scene with Mitch Gaylord, and Maxwell Caufield watches from another room.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Mitch found this on the Internet Archive, which is a great place to find some of these, as they're often too graphic for YouTube, and Tubi is only catching up on them now. If you haven't seen it in a while, or looking to get into Erotic Thrillers, this is a great one to watch. And if you haven't yet, check out the podcast episode Mitch and I did on this film, number 179 in the archives.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103696

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

The Big Score (1983)

This movie was further down on my to review list, but when I did Blood Street with Stack Pierce, who's also in this, I realized it had been a while since I'd done a Fred Williamson flick, and I'm always saying I need to do more Williamson, so why not bump it up the list and make it happen? In addition to us, our friend Mitch at the Video Vacuum has covered this, as has the great Roger Ebert, so you can go to their sites to see what they thought.

The Big Score is a Williamson Po' Boy Production where Williamson plays, you guessed it, a hard-nosed Chicago cop. In trying to take down a coke kingpin with fellow detectives John Saxon and Richard Roundtree, the baddie gets let loose through the work of his slick lawyer, and Williamson is under fire when the drug dealer's money goes missing. Now the baddies want their money back, and while the cops sort out what happen to it, boss Ed Lauter takes Williamson off the force, but for a cop like him, getting taken off the force is only a minor impediment. He's going to use all his resources, and stop at nothing to take down this baddie and get those drugs off the Chicago streets.

 

As you can tell from the synopsis, this is a pretty paint-by-numbers Williamson cop action thriller, but between the cast, and the story and direction, this worked for me. Williamson is a bit grittier here, I think he's going for more of a Chicago gritty cop story, and while I love cool as the other side of the pillow Williamson, this gritty Williamson works as a change of pace. John Saxon and Richard Roundtree are no strangers to this kind of movie either, and help fill out the vibe Williamson was going for, which makes it more authentic. At the same time, this is still fun Williamson, maybe not to the level of fun of his Dakota "Dak" Smith or Black Cobra movies, but I also think this might be a better quality of movie than those are. Either way, this is worth it for a nice Williamson night.

With this film, Williamson is now in a very exclusive club here at the DTVC, the 20-10 Club for people who have starred in 20+ films and directed 10+ films. How exclusive? Williamson is the only member. (If you're wondering, I think Dolph is the next closest, with his 60+ acting credits on the site, and 7 so far directed.) According to IMDb, Williamson has 20 films he's directed (plus one more that's been announced), and I think I've seen 13 or 14 of them--it would be more, but the version of Adios Amigos on Tubi is horrible, Vinegar Syndrome or a similar outlet needs to do a boxed set of his Westerns to correct that--but I'm digressing here, the point is, I think after Mean Johnny Barrows, which was his directorial debut, this might be my second favorite of his directed films that I've seen, which makes it a fitting one to make him the inaugural member of the 20-10 Club. The other big milestone for him is the 30 Club, and with this review he's now 5 away from that. I think for someone of his stature in the DTV world, that's a milestone that's long overdue, so hopefully we'll get there soon for him.

One of the biggest selling points in a Williamson film is the names he's managed to corral for it, and this one is no exception. Of those names, Richard Roundtree is one I always enjoy seeing. In the 80s he was pigeonholed by Hollywood into a "blaxploitation star," which gave Hollywood an excuse to not cast him as a leading man, despite the fact that he had the screen presence to rival any of the white leading men who were popular at that time. I think there's a sense when Williamson casts him in one of his lower-budget films that he also thinks "I shouldn't be able to get this guy in my movies, he should be too big for them." In 1983, we were a good ten to fifteen years out from names like Denzel Washington and Will Smith finally getting the kinds of roles Roundtree should've gotten. While we had him here though, one scene I really liked was where he acted opposite Stack Pierce. It was great to see those two in a scene together.

Among the other names, there were a bunch. I mentioned John Saxon, Stack Pierce, and Ed Lauter above. We also had Nancy Wilson, D'Urville Martin, Frank Pesce, Michael Dante, and Joe Spinell. Those kinds of names get us by when the Williamson film is lacking due to budgetary constraints, etc., so when the film is more solid like this one is, it just enhances it that much more. John Saxon in particular was great here, as he was made for grittier police films, usually as a baddie, but in this case a good guy as one of Williamson's fellow detectives. This is only his fifth film on the site, which sounds low, but as I was looking over his IMDb bio, that's actually about right based on the movies he's done. I don't know that I'll specifically look to get more of his films on here, but seeing his name on the tin always helps in picking out a movie to watch.

 

As I mentioned above, Roger Ebert also reviewed this, and while he only gave it 2 and a 1/2 stars, he actually enjoyed it. One mistake he made in his write-up is he confused Three the Hard Way with its sequel, One Down, Two to Go, but I got what he was saying when he compared this with that movie. I think we have this idea that the more mainstream critics don't get the stuff we watch, and for some that may be true, but Ebert showed in his review of this one that, at least for him, he can enjoy anything that's good and give it a fair shake. For me personally, I don't consider myself to be a film critic, but rather a movie blogger, whose only training was the writing courses I took in college--which themselves don't always show through when I'm pumping out a review with only one read through before I publish it--so I don't see myself as trying to swim in the same pond as an Ebert; but it is interesting how blogging, and now social media and podcasting, have democratized the film critique and discussion space to such an extent that I'm on IMDb and I'm seeing Roger Ebert's reviews mixed in with mine and fellow bloggers/reviewers that I've become friends with through this process. When I was a kid watching him with Gene Siskel, I never could've imagined that there would be things like blogs or an IMDb that could have allowed for that possibility.

And with that, let's wrap this up. As of right now, this is only available on YouTube and DVD, which is good enough, but hopefully it'll get the higher quality release it deserves. This is a solid Williamson outing, and worth checking out, especially if you're looking for more Williamson to watch.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085245

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

Hands of Steel aka Vendetta dal futuro (1986)

Back in 2010, our friend Simon at Explosive Action sent us five films that he ripped from his Japanese VHS copies.  They were: Deadly Prey, Robowar, Strike Commando, Strike Commando II, and this flick.  Somehow though, this one was lost in the shuffle, and we're only just getting to it now, more than two years after the most recent one we've done of them, Strike Commando II.  I guess better late than never, right?  Also, our friends Ty at Comeuppance Reviews, Fred at Ninja Dixon, and Jason at robotGEEK have all hit this one too, so you can go to their sites to see what they thought.

Hands of Steel has Daniel Greene as Paco Queruak (I'm not kidding about that name), a cyborg with no memory of his past who is programmed to kill a charismatic leader and environmentalist who threatens the evil John Saxon's corporation.  When he has memories of his past he doesn't fulfill his job, and runs back to his home state of Arizona, where he finds love, takes on a bunch of truckers, and beats the tri-state arm wrestling champ.  But hot on his heels are Saxon and his men, looking to take him out before the FBI finds him.  Will they succeed?



This is a Sergio Martino joint, and as such, you know what you're in for: a straight up Italian no-budget schlock fest, and that's what you get.  It might have a bit of a slow start, but once it kicks in, it's equal parts hilarious and bad action, everything you'd want when you fire something like this up.  The sets, the futuristic props, the Daniel Greene, the John Saxon, it's all there.  Some of my favorite moments included when the old guy who owns the junk yard is offed by a baddie, and the "Indian Style" arm wrestling match, which is simply the usual arm wrestling match, only with rattlesnakes posted on either side of the table.  Oh, and then there's the too sweet laser at the end.  This is as fun a time as you think it would be.

Daniel Greene as the hero looks like the kind of guy you'd see playing a guest role on Murder, She Wrote or something in the 80s, maybe rocking a sweater over a button-up shirt, or if he's playing the young boyfriend/doughnut salesboy maybe some more revealing clothing.  Not necessarily the heel, but if you needed him to be he could do that too.  Somehow he found himself here as the lead, and while his torso screams it, his face, hair, and demeanor screams a bridge too far.  Yet that's what makes it so fun, and when he's paired up with a great heel like Italian D-flick mainstay George Eastman, he's fine, so it all works.  As an aside, I see that he had a part in Arthur 2: On the Rocks.  I totally forgot that sequel happened.



John Saxon is back and he's great.  How he ended up in this, I have no idea, and he's not in it much, but he's great as the head baddie.  His final showdown with Greene and the big laser is the tops.  The thing is, he's just so cool, whether it's Enter the Dragon or Mitchell or this, he's just so much fun to watch, and he's a great addition to any film.  When we start to really see him, and he's in a helicopter shooting down at out hero, it's such a great moment, I almost wanted to see him succeed, he's that awesome.  Here's to you John Saxon, you're one of the good ones.  Also, according to imdb, he only shot his scenes in Italy, because this wasn't a SAG film, and as such refused to do any of the shots in the US.  He credits that with saving his life, because there was a helicopter crash during shooting in Arizona that claimed the life of co-star Claudio Cassinelli, and he would've been on that helicopter too.  He hasn't done a non-SAG film since.

All right, so we mentioned Greene, Saxon, and the late Cassinelli, who played a hit man hired by Saxon to track down Greene.  We also had Janet Agren as Linda, the woman who ran the arm wrestling joint/cheap motel Greene goes to while he's on the run.  She made a great living as a D-movie actress in Italy until 1991, when she gave it all up.  Who could give up all of that?  We also mentioned George Eastman above.  He plays Raul, the heel and bad trucker who tries to kill Greene on multiple occasions.  I think the only other flick of his we've done is 1990: Bronx Warriors.  There was also a guy working for Saxon who looked like JC's buddy from Sidehackers.  He always had these shades on and looked ready to tell Saxon "right-on daddy-o".  It's touches like that that make films like this a lot of fun.



I've mentioned this before when talking about the great Bruno Mattei, but I feel it's worth bringing up again while discussing Sergio Martino.  As bad as these films are, these directors come from a certain pedigree that gives these movies a certain, I don't know, watchability, because, as bad as they are, they're shot and planned out with a certain amount of craftsmanship.  This is the difference between these flicks and their modern counterpart where stuntmen and other non-directors are helmed to directed them.  It's not just these Italian directors too, Albert Pyun, Fred Olen Ray, Isaac Florentine, they all direct and give us something we can sit down and watch.  Cameras aren't all over the place, they aren't afraid to give us a still frame, or lock into a good shot.  We took this kind of thing for granted in the 80s and 90s, and now I can't watch a modern action flick without getting a headache.

Okay, time to get off the soap box.  You can actually get this on DVD-R from Amazon, so it's not as hard to get as it used to be.  You can also do used VHS, both foreign and domestic.  It's a lot of fun and worth checking out in any case.  Thank you again to Simon at Explosive Action for hooking us up with this.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091166/

Maximum Force (1992)

Our friend Johnny Sullivan, screenwriter of the great Recoil (Twitter @johnnyblackout), left a comment on my Facebook asking if I'd seen/reviewed Maximum Force, starring Sam Jones.  It had been on my radar, but his mention, combined with a few other people suggesting it-- and the fact that I wanted to get more Sam Jones on the DTVC anyway-- jumped this near the top of my list.  Luckily I knew someone who had it, and was able to check it out.  Also, our friends Ty at Comeuppance Reviews and Explosive Action looked at this one as well (can you imagine either of them missing something like this?), so you can check that out to see their takes.

Maximum Force is a PM Entertainment actioner about a crime boss named Tanabe, played, of course, by the late Richard Lynch.  He's rich, and owns a lot of LA's police force.  Enter Sam Jones, Sherrie Rose, and a young electronics and gun expert played by Jason Lively.  Each has his or her own reasons for taking down Lynch, but it's police captain John Saxon who has the biggest reason, and he decides he can bring these folks together to join forces and get the job done.  Problem is: Lynch won't go down that easily, and hopefully for him police chief Mickey Rooney will help him remain in power.



This is pretty sweet.  It has that PM Entertainment everything but the kitchen sink approach to action, starting in the first five minutes with a chopper explosion.  That's right, they knew they needed to have a helicopter explosion in there somewhere, so they figured they'd just get it out of the way at the beginning.  Also, they expertly navigate Lynch's opening background speech to his underlings, by mixing in action scenes with Sam Jones and Sherrie Rose, then punctuating Lynch's speech with a death by Saran Wrap of one of his goons.  For people out there making action movies, this is how you do it.  PM Entertainment had this right more often than not, and as far as I can tell, you guys are getting it wrong more often than not 20 years later.  Stop getting it wrong, or we'll turn our backs on you and go exclusively back to when these movies were good.

One of the problems Johnny and others have had in looking for Sam Jones films on the DTVC is the lack of a tag.  That was a mistake on my part, and it's now been rectified, and right out of the gate this is his eleventh on here.  The key with Sam Jones as a hero is to cultivate that Tank Concrete/Lump Beefbroth aesthetic, without falling into 300-pound Pork Roast territory.  It's a bit of a tough line to straddle, but this film does it well.  When I think of the perfect Sam Jones role, the one we'd all like, it'd be something like a reality show where he confronts RATers or guys who proposition 12-year-old girls on the Internet, kind of in a Chris Hanson Dateline kind of way, only with a real strongman aspect.  Like he gets them in a headlock, and he's like "Oh, you think it's okay to spy on women through their webcams and mess with people's computers?" or "Oh, you think it's okay to talk to 12-year-old girls about sex in chat rooms?", and they're like whimpering and breathing hard and their faces are turning purple, and we're loving to see these shitheads get their comeuppance, before they're shipped off to jail.  That's the kind of Sam Jones we want, and any movie that casts him in the lead, needs to cultivate that, otherwise he's just a beefy guy in a flat top.



How often do we ever get to see John Saxon as a good guy?  It's few and far between.  I've realized that he's one that, while he seems like he should be on here a bunch, isn't really.  The only other two to this point are Enter the Dragon, which we did for our 300th post, and Final Payback, a Richard Greico flick.  He's so much fun to see though, so I need to look out for more of his stuff.  In this one, I couldn't help seeing him in Mitchell, and listening to his lines riffed by Joel and the 'Bots on MST3K.  There was one scene where he was telling us the background of Jones, Rose, and Lively, and he sounded like his character in Mitchell, talking to Joe Don Baker about some payoff while his Christmas presents are in the background and he's holding a Slim Jim in his hand.  I just wanted to bark out Mitchell lines.

Above we mentioned Sherrie Rose teamed up with Jones to take Lynch down.  We see her a lot on here, but not always in big roles, but this was a big one.  She had some fight scenes, and she shot Sonny Landham, who had a very small scene as a pimp, while Rose was acting as a prostitute undercover.  Michael Delano played a snitch that Sam Jones pushed around for info-- though in true PM style, that involved Jones handcuffing him to a side-view mirror, then Jones driving around as a stuntman hung to it.  Delano was yelling "This isn't right!", then he said "I want a phone call!", so Jones drove his van through a phone booth.  So great.  There were also a few quickies: Ken McLeod was a bouncer in two scenes and got punched in the face by Jones; Ron Yuan had one scene where he fought in Lynch's underground fight club; then we had Asbjørn "Bear" Riiis as Jones's friend "Bear", who shows up at the end, takes a bunch of guys out, then is shot; and then we had Jeffrey Anderson-Gunter listed as Rastaman, as one of Lynch's underlings.  Finally, we had Mickey Rooney as the police chief.  How do you not love him?  He has one scene with Saxon where he tries to buy him off, then another where he gives a monologue about corruption and how money rules everything.  It's the kind of thing we love at the DTVC, small parts by guys like this who have four Oscar nominations and are known for much better stuff.



Finally, last June Richard Lynch passed away, leaving behind a prodigious filmography of 160 credits, of which we've barely cracked the surface of the films he did that belong on here.  My personal favorite role of his was as the baddie in Invasion USA.  The travesty is that we've been planning to put him into the DTVC Hall of Fame for a few years, and just haven't made it happen.  Right now he's in the "In Memoriam" section, but we'll move him to the Hall of Fame soon.  I can't think of anyone who embodies that title more.  Here's to you Richard Lynch, you were one of the greatest.

As far as I can tell, this is out of print, but available used on Amazon both as DVD and VHS.  For PM Entertainment, it's not the best, but it's still really good.  If you're a collector, the Amazon prices aren't bad; if not, I'd keep an eye out for it in a bargain or used bin.  Also, you can stream it on Amazon too.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104831/

Enter the Dragon (1973)

When I first started the DTVC, I had no idea I would be still writing it two years later, or that I'd be writing my 300th post. When I look at the archives, I see films like Bad Taste, that were DTV, that would've probably been a better choice for number 300, but because I was trying to get as many films up as possible in the early going, have already been covered. I tried to think of what would really fit a milestone post, and I came up with this. Even if it isn't DTV, it's had a such a huge impact on so many DTV films, that it deserves a place here on the blog.

Enter the Dragon has Bruce Lee working for the British in Hong Kong. He's sent to infiltrate this guy Han's stronghold by way of entering in a fighting tournament Han hosts. Also in the tournament are John Saxon and Jim Kelly. Lee has to do his thing in the tournament by day, and then sneak around the compound by night looking for incriminating evidence so the Brits can call in their forces. The whole thing ends in a huge melee.



I think you know what I'm going to say, otherwise this wouldn't be post 300. This is obviously a classic. I might go out on a limb here for a second, though, and say this isn't necessarily a great film on its own: the plot is pretty uninspired, there's plenty of ridiculousness, like Jim Kelly beating up two cops and driving off in their cop car-- what I'm saying is there isn't much to separate this film from others in the genre.

There isn't much, but the one huge factor this does have that the others don't is Bruce Lee. He's what turns the whole film into a classic. He's so powerful a presence that he can steal a scene just through one look. You almost feel robbed with every second he's not on the screen. It's like watching a bad Film Noir from the 40s with Humphrey Bogart in it. Some actors just have the ability to transform ordinary crap into brilliance. The shame is that this would be the last film of his released while he was alive, because he died the same year, in 1973.



I'm sure I don't need to tell anyone reading this about how huge Enter the Dragon's impact has been in the movie industry. Mortal Kombat was almost a straight remake. What about Bloodfist 2? Just think of all the martial arts films that involve some kind of tournament run by an evil crime lord. All because one man elevated a mediocre movie into something truly amazing, and a generation of film makers saw him and said "I want to make a movie with him", and a generation of actors said "I want to be him".

After Bruce Lee, the next big name in the film is John Saxon, who plays a smooth talking fighter with a compulsive gambling problem. Most of us are familiar with Saxon either through his work in the MST3K hit Mitchell, or his role in Nightmare on Elm Street. I think it's a no brainer that this character in Enter the Dragon is his best. He's cool, funny, flawed, yet at heart a good guy. We wonder at the end if he chooses not to fight Lee because he knows he can't win, or because he really has altruistic motives, but it's immaterial, because he still makes the right decision.



I mentioned above Jim Kelly is in this. He's pretty sweet, as always. When I was in high school, one of my friends wanted to have an MST3K style party where we each rented a bad movie to make fun of. I thought I was a shoo in for the movie of the night with Black Belt Jones 2 aka The Tattoo Connection. It was great, and it had Bolo Yeung. I would be undone, though, by my friend's selection of Bad Taste. "Look Poirier", he said "so great your VCR will cry out for windshield wipers. We have to get it!". That film would go on to be the biggest movie among my group of friends, with us watching it literally hundreds of times; and with it's director, Peter Jackson going on to win an Oscar; while I haven't seen The Tattoo Connection since.

We all love Bolo Yeung here at the DTVC. Wanna guess how old he is? 70. I am not fucking with you. 70 years young. I haven't seen him in anything recently, so I don't know if he looks good for his age or not, but he was 50 when Bloodsport came out, and I thought he looked pretty good for 50 then, considering I had no idea he was even close to FIFTY! According to imdb he swam from China to Hong Kong in the '60s to escape Communism. How is he not the greatest man that's ever lived?



I know in my last post I ripped Wanted for being a sack of asscrack, and I think I'm going to do it some more, though not just Wanted, but most new movies in general. There's a scene in this film where fruit is thrown in the air, and people throw daggers into them. All we see is the fruit going up, someone throwing a dagger off screen, and then the fruit falling with a dagger in it. I bring this up, because if this had been made today, the whole thing would've been done with CGIs, and the film makers would've been extremely proud of themselves, like in Wanted when they had bullets flying into each other. Why do they think we need that? It worked fine in Enter the Dragon without that crap, in fact it worked better, because it looked much more realistic.

If you haven't seen this, what are you waiting for? This is a must watch if there ever was one. If you haven't seen it in a while you probably should catch it again too. This is really what's about. So much has come from this one film, and I'm sure so much will come from it in the future. A true masterpiece with a true master of the craft in Bruce Lee.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070034/

Final Payback (2001)

I saw this on my program guide a while back, and it looked promising. It had John Saxon, Martin Kove, Corbin Bernsen, Laura Herring, and last but not least, Richard Grieco. How could a movie with this kind of star power be bad, right? Oh, it can.

Final Payback stars Grieco as a cop framed for John Saxon's wife's murder. Saxon was his boss in the department, and Grieco'd been having an affair with his wife. Anyway, he knows he's been set up by the cops, so he has to clear his name. At the same time, Martin Kove, another higher up in the department, has hired two former thugs that he has under his thumb to assassinate Grieco. Also, Bernsen is running for mayor, and has a big news conference planned, and he needs Kove to have the Grieco situation dealt with to avoid bad publicity. Finally, Laura Herring plays the estranged girlfriend with a soft spot in her heart for the degenerate Grieco. For all her troubles as the only redeemable character in the film, she's killed by a bullet meant for Griec's.

This was a pretty depraved movie. It was trying very hard to be a suspenseful thriller with a harder, dirtier edge; but it just came off blah. If the basic premise is pretty much a Hallmark family mystery, adding gore and other bad stuff doesn't make it not that, it's just means it has no identity. Or worse, it's just plain disturbing.



The Laura Herring death may have been the worst. One thing I've always been annoyed with in bad action, horror, sci-fi, etc., is the propensity for the film makers to kill off people who go out of their way to help the hero. I'm just not sure why this makes me root for the hero, when he pawns off his life risking tasks on others. Here I was even more frustrated, because Grieco was so insistent on Herring helping him. It wasn't like she offered a hand, and then was offed; Grieco was fully responsible for her dying.

John Saxon played the same character he's played in Mitchell and the first Nightmare on Elm Street. The problem here, is there's none of that great Johnny Mathias shooting type of Saxon that would've made him cool. He wasn't pulling Gunderoos out of drawers, or trapping people with ceder lattice. He didn't even try to confuse Grieco with an over complicated business deal to buy him off while wielding a Slim Jim. It was just a waste.

Grieco has amassed a fairly respectable resume of DTV movies. I wonder if when filming 21 Jumpstreet he thought he'd have a better, or at least as good of, a career a Johnny Depp. I guess things don't always work out the way we planned them, so while Depp is making horrible films like Sleepy Hollow, From Hell, and Secret Window, Grieco's making this. I guess the only difference is the amount of zeros after the paycheck, which I would imagine is a huge difference.



I was trying to think of what was good in this. I'm drawing a blank. Martin Kove was Martin Kove, which is great if you're watching Karate Kid, but it's not enough to sell this bad boy. Corbin Bernsen is barely in this, and even if he was, would it matter that much? As far as I can tell, he was only great in that Seinfeld episode where he met George at the Tonight Show, and even there, George did all the work. I wouldn't even watch this for the Grieco factor, because he's all gross and degenerate-like: remember, this is supposed to be a Hallmark movie with an edge.

Don't be lured into this sack-of-asscrack. If you see it at your video store or on your program guide, and you see all the great actors listed, remember this review and run the other way. Let me spare you the pain I endured. This is hardcore bad, and should only be viewed by real masochists.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0223284/