Angels of the City (1989)

Continuing our trend this year of doing a PM post to start the month, I wanted to do something with Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs, and decided the first of the two he directed would be a good way to go. (We've done the other one before, Coldfire.) Now you might be thinking, wasn't 57 Seconds the first February post? I'm still under he delusion that I'm posting on Saturdays instead of Sundays, and maybe I need to give up the ghost on that. Anyway, in addition to us, Mitch at the Video Vacuum covered this as part of his "It Came from the Thrift Shop" series, and Jon at PM is looking to cover this one soon too.

Angels of the City is about a group of kids in their late 20s going to USC, but acting like they're in their early 20s. They get an assignment from their sociology professor to interview people from another level of society from themselves, so two guys  decide to interview a lady of the night. Their girlfriends (Kelly Galindo and Cynthia Cheston), on the other hand, are pledging a sorority, and part of their initiation is to pretend to be ladies of the night for an evening. Both the guys and the girls end up in the middle of a turf war between two rival pimps, though the ladies get it much worse when they're kidnapped by one of them, and have to fight for their lives in some of the worst places of LA. Will they make it home alive?

This is quite a movie. Yes, it has the low-budget look of early PM, and you definitely see them trying to make the best of limited resources, like in an early scene where a lady of the night is being chased by some baddies on Hollywood Boulevard, and we see reused footage and locations being looped to extend the chase. But the thing is, the scope of what LHJ and company were trying to do here is admirable, and I think they pull it off in a lot of ways. Essentially it's a darker version of the 80s teen romp film, where a bunch of rich kids run up against the seedy underbelly of the city, but instead of that underbelly being a bunch of caricatures and stereotypes, they're complete people, while the kids, especially the two young ladies, see just how much they've started life on third base. I think the other issue is this movie has a 30-minute epilogue, and while it resolves itself well, there is a sense of "how did we end up here?" Grading PM on a curve though, between the ambition to want to do this commentary on 80s teen romp comedies, and the novelty of watching early PM--including a great death scene for Cole S. McKay--this is worth checking out.

Usually we start with the Hall of Famers, but I wanted to spotlight the film's director, co-writer, and co-composer Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs. In his review, Mitch mentioned that the same year this came out, his Welcome Back Kotter costar John Travolta had Look Who's Talking released in theaters, and while I know LHJ would've loved to have had a film like that himself, I liked that he took advantage of the platform PM was giving him to try to do something deeper. And it felt like everyone else at PM was into it and onboard, perhaps because it's the story of LA that wasn't often told. It's not just that there's a seedy underbelly, but that seedy underbelly exists right next to places like USC where some of the richest kids live; but also that that seedy underbelly is composed of actual human beings who didn't have it as lucky as those rich kids at USC, and to see that juxtaposition come through in every scene, even in what felt like a tacked on epilogue, was really impactful. The only other film he directed after this was Coldfire, but considering the kind of social commentary he demonstrated here, it would be nice if someone else gave him the platform to do more of this.

Many of the PM names you know and love are here. We have Rick Pepin on cinematography, furthering a template that PM used with him, and later Ken Blakey, where you could have an actor without a lot of directorial experience take the helm, and lean on either Pepin or Blakey as their DP. It also serves to give us the "PM look" we know and love later on, even if the quality of the film stock on this early one isn't quite what they use later. We also see Cole S. McKay doing stunts, including a great death scene as one of the rival pimp's goons; plus I've finally tagged stunt coordinator Michael J. Sarna, who starts off with 28 tags! When we look at the PM stunt coordinators, he's right there with McKay, Spiro Razatos, and Red Horton and "Broadway" Joe Murphy, so his tag was long overdue. Paul Volk, someone who probably should also be tagged, does editing duties on this, which I think he earns his money on some of these scenes where things are happening in different locations, and he needs to make them appear to look like one. Finally, Addison Randall was an assistant director, a name we see a lot of in early PM. If you look at their first handful of films, other than this one with LHJ at the helm, all of the other films were directed by either Joseph Merhi, Charles Kanganis, or Addison Randall.

I was trying to think of teen romp films that this could be answer to, and the two that first come to mind are License to Drive and Adventures in Babysitting. Another could be Risky Business. There's a cutesy, Hollywood idea of what sex work is, and what it means to be pushed to the margins of society, and the main characters experience it, live through it, and end up on the other side sleeping in their comfortable beds, while the people who are struggling no longer exist. And I think maybe that's why LHJ wanted the 30-minute epilogue, because it wouldn't have felt right to him to just roll credits after the young ladies escape their ordeal. He adds another layer in that epilogue too, where the sociology professor is more fascinated by what the girls experienced than concerned, so even he's coming from a place of seeing sex workers and other people struggling as more a novelty than as actual people. Ten years later when I was in college studying anthropology, my professors seemed more sensitive to this, making sure we looked at people as fellow human beings, and not subjects in a case study for a paper, and maybe that was why I was more sensitive to what LHJ and company were going for with the professor character in this film.

Finally, at the beginning of the film the radio announcer mentions Magic Johnson, and later a guy delivering Chinese food is wearing a Magic Johnson jersey. In 1989, the Lakers were a year removed from winning their fifth title with Magic, and despite the rise of the Pistons and the Bulls, plus the Trailblazers in the Western Conference, there was no reason to believe that run wouldn't continue. Two years later they lost to the Bulls in the Finals, and then Magic revealed he was HIV positive, and that was it. Now, no one should feel bad for Lakers fans, because they've won six more titles since 2000, which puts them in a tie with my Patriots for the most among the US Big 4 sports during that time, but it is interesting to think how we get so used to the world being one thing--that Magic Johnson had to retire early because he was HIV positive--that it's hard to put into perspective what that time capsule looked like right before it. Yes, the Lakers were declining a bit from their 80s dominance, but there was a sense that they still had another six or seven years left with Magic, they just needed to retool and within a couple years they'd be back. But alas it never happened, and the 90s were a lost decade for the Lakers, until they drafted Kobe and traded for Shaq. Again, not feeling bad for Lakers fans, just saying the mentions of Magic Johnson here forced me to look back at that slice of time and think about how different things were.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently get this free on Tubi here in the States, which I think is a great way to go. Between the novelty of early PM, and just the scope of what Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs and company were going for, I think it's worth checking out.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099042

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

L.A. Heat (1989)

In my desire to get more Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs on the site, we ended up hitting a milestone as well. PM Entertainment becomes the seventh member of the 40 Club with this post. With the kind of contributions they've made to the world of DTV action, it's much deserved. This is also a complete the triangle review, as Ty and Brett at Comeuppance, and Mitch at the Video Vacuum have covered this as well.

L.A. Heat has LHJ as a cop who's kind of on the edge, but has never fired his weapon on the job--which for most cops is common, but for a cop in a PM film it's absurd. So as his partners get killed off by Clarence, a cop-killing drug dealer, LHJ needs to pull out all the stops. That includes working with a drug dealer named Spyder, who also has a bone to pick with Clarence, but then when a mob boss named Sylvio also gets involved, all bets are off for LHJ, and the lack of results gets him kicked off the force. Will he be able to pull himself out of his doldrums and get his cat to stop eating his food in time to get up off the mat and take these guys down?

For a PM flick, this isn't the best, but it's not the worst. As an early PM flick though, it's fun to see how they're not quite there yet as a studio, but they're getting there. We get shootouts that are good, but not PM good. The car chases are scant, and lack the volume of car flippage later PM will have, but we can see how they'll build off of these. LHJ does what you need him to as a cop on the edge, plus I liked that they dealt with issues in how the police treat people of color in LA prior to Rodney King in a way that wasn't afraid to tell it like it is. This also had a heavy Beverly Hills Cop vibe, with a lot of the action scenes accompanied by a strong "Axel F"-esque synth score, which was fun for me to listen to. The action isn't at the volume or as inspired as what we'd see later on in the 90s from PM, and I think if we're comparing this to that standard, few DTV actioners meet that; but as studio that was still hitting its stride, and as someone who fancies himself a DTV Connoisseur, watching this knowing what PM would eventually become, I enjoyed what we had here.

Our first PM review was back in May of 2007, very early in our history, when I reviewed the Van Damme film Inferno aka Desert Heat, which I didn't know at the time was a PM flick, and which also featured Danny Trejo giving Van Damme a foot massage. We've come a long way with PM since then, as we've added reviews of some of the films they've made that bolstered up the tail end of golden age of DTV action. When we think of that '85 to '95 window where DTV action was so fantastic, '90 to '95 was almost all PM when it comes to the best of that period, and the stuff they did in the late 90s did a lot to extend that golden age a bit further. The things that we came to know PM for, the car chases with cars flipping and exploding all over the place, the inspired fight scenes with accomplished martial artists, and the stunt work that was next level, all came after this film, but you could see the seeds of it planted in this movie. Truly one of the greats, PM not only deserves to finally join the 40 Club, but with so many more PM films left to review, the 40 Club is just the start.

This is now our 4th LHJ flick on the site, but this is only the second one starring him, after Quiet Fire, another PM joint. What I liked about him here, is he was the cop on the edge, but when he was with his love interest, he was able to show the humor and charisma he had when he was on Welcome Back Kotter. I don't think we got enough of that in Quiet Fire, but it was fun to see here. In looking at his IMDb bio, he has some more PM flicks from around this early period of theirs, but other than some voice work in '93's Firepower, after Quiet Fire in '91 he really doesn't do anything more, but that is 4 more PM flicks of his between this and Quiet Fire that I need to cover, so we'll see more of him on here. Future Hall of Famer? I don't know if he'll have the numbers to get there, but I think his work in this early PM period is important enough to maybe consider it if we do get the numbers, because he does have other work beyond PM that we could do too.

You may have noticed that Joseph Merhi has been tagged for this post, but not Richard Pepin. Currently I'm only tagging one or the other of them for the films they've directed. The thinking behind that is that the PM Entertainment tag covers their work as producers, and PM Entertainment's Hall of Fame induction and now 40 Club entry covers their contributions to the world of DTV action. The thing is though, Richard Pepin was director of photography on this, and for anyone else, like say an Art Camacho or Isaac Florentine, that would be enough to get them another tag. With that in mind, it's possible that both could get a bunch more tags for any work they did on a film beyond producer--or if they were a producer on a non-PM film. This is an issue we've also run into with another producing team, Golan and Globus, and in their case they actually have their own tag separate from Cannon films, but they also don't have the 100% overlap with Cannon that Merhi and Pepin have with PM films--currently Cannon has more than Golan-Globus. Anyway, with his 10th director tag on here, Merhi joins an exclusive club of directors with 10 or more tags, which starts with Albert Pyun and his (I believe) 43, then Fred Olen Ray with 15, Isaac Florentine (I believe) and Sam Firstenberg with 13, Keoni Waxmen, Fred Williamson, and Art Camacho with 11, and then Cirio H. Santiago who also has 10. That makes Merhi the 9th to join the ten director tags club, which is almost as exclusive as the 40 Club, but also almost as exclusive as the 30 Club for just acting tags, which I believe is 8 right now. If you're wondering, Pepin is at 7 directing credits, so he's knocking on the door as well.

Finally, I want to go back to PM's enduring legacy as we celebrate this milestone of theirs. As Cannon starts to fade out in the early 90s, PM comes in and picks up the ball at that same time, filling our video store shelves and cable TV line-ups with fun actioners loaded with high-octane stunts and action effects that we don't really see on the same level with DTV actioners today. The 90s wouldn't be the 90s without their contributions, and I don't know that a site like mine would exist at the level it does without their films. While some of their movies are available to stream, ones like this are only available on low-quality YouTube uploads, which, don't get me wrong, are better than nothing, but for what PM brought, it all should be available for everyone to consume either on Tubi, or later with nice Blu-rays from companies like Vinegar Syndrome. Maybe with an LA Heat it's a boxed set of this and the sequels--and yes, this film isn't the great PM stuff that they would later be known for, but it is also nice to watch it and see where that whole thing was headed. When we compare the 90s with the 2000s, and later the 2010s, PM is a big part of why those later two decades don't come close in the sheer volume of fun DTV action classics, and it would be good if more of those classics were available in a better physical medium. 

And with that, let's wrap this up. As far as I can tell, YouTube is the best way to go to catch this as of this writing. Used VHS or DVD might also be a possibility if you stumble upon it, but Amazon won't be much help, as it confuses this title with the PM TV series of the same name. There are a lot more PM flicks out there that are better than this, but as an early PM entry that gives you a sense of where this is all headed, it can be a fun sit.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097699

And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, Holtman Arms, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Death Wish (1974)

Obviously this is not a DTV flick, though back when I did my Wild Card posts at the end of the week, this would've been one, because, while it isn't DTV, it had a huge influence on DTV bad actioners, even if very few ever truly capture what this one was going for. Anyway, even though we don't have the Wild Card post anymore in practice, I wanted to look at this one because our friend Kenner at Movies in the Attic (link is to his review of the Death Wish series) sent me VHS copies of part IV and V, but I wanted to watch the earlier ones first, and figured I'd review them as I did so.

Death Wish stars Charles Bronson as Paul Kersey, a successful New York architect whose wife is murdered and daughter brutally raped and traumatized by a home invasion. His job sends him to Tuscon after to work with a rich landowner, Stuart Margolin, and the guy changes his worldview. Instead of being anti-gun, he's now in favor of an armed response to the New York crimewave, and when he gets back, he starts a vigilante campaign, luring muggers and other criminals into thinking he's an easy mark, then gunning them down. It creates an international sensation, leaving the NYPD between a rock and a hard place: they want him to stop, but they don't want to arrest him when he's so popular. They assign detective Frank Ochoa (Frank Gardenia) to the case, and he has a tough job as he tracks Bronson throughout the city-- especially when he's not even sure he wants to arrest him if he does find him.



I am in firm agreement with Kenner on this one. It's a truly great film, and not simply for its action elements-- in fact, it has relatively few. What it does do is blur the social commentary, blend the brutal with the black humor extremely effectively, while throughout never getting away from the core of the film, which is one man's struggle with a brutal tragedy that he ultimately can't do anything to fix. And like Kenner, I thought the fact that he never actually tracks down his wife and daughter's attackers, and is instead killing thugs in general, gives this a very different kind of revenge motif. Is it justice he's after? Catharsis? A sick thrill? Or maybe a combination of all three. But you can't help rooting for Bronson and being compelled by his character. Often imitated, but never duplicated, Death Wish.

Charles Bronson has a strong charismatic presence, but I don't think he gets enough credit for being a solid actor too, which he shows here. He starts the film as a cool guy, but very mild mannered. There are some jokes made about him being a bleeding-heart Liberal, but we find out later that there's more to it than that, and he wears those layers well. Later, as he starts fighting back, it's not an all at once suddenly he's a badass situation, it's something his character has to get used to, and Bronson does a great job with that as well. I loved the metamorphosis, and when we consider these scenes aren't shot chronologically the way we see them, it demonstrates the kind of quality of acting Bronson brought to the table. I also had to throw in a shot from early in the film of him in a Speedo. Any light beer commercial that wants to define manhood based on swimwear choices needs to shut the hell up (anyone remember that commercial?), because Bronson's much more manly than light beer, and he wore a Speedo.



The Rockford Files is one of my all time favorite shows, so it was sweet to have two-time Emmy winner Stuart Margolin in this as the Arizona landowner. In honor of that fact, I uploaded an MST3K riff on The Rockford Files on the image page. Here he's as far from Angel as he can be, and I almost didn't recognize him. He plays a really great character, a kind of antithesis to the New York urban elite, and I loved watching he and Bronson play off each other.

This had some great cameos and co-stars beyond Stuart Margolin. We had the late Frank Gardenia, who was excellent as the detective tracking Bronson. We had cameos from Jeff Goldblum, who was in the gang that killed Bronson's wife and raped his daughter; and Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs, who had a short scene near the end as a member of another gang. The latter was unremarkable, just a cool novelty; but the former, the Goldblum one, was a trip, because he was a scary dude, channeling some Clockwork Orange or something. I think because we know going in what happens to Bronson's family, that scene of the attack had to be particularly chilling to draw us in, and Goldblum was a big part of why it did.



One thing I thought was interesting as I was watching this, was the fact that in New Hampshire, the state I almost live in, none of what Bronson was doing would have been illegal. They have a stipulation in the law that if one is attacked, one has the right to use deadly force in self-defense. If we look at what Bronson does in Death Wish, he never provokes an attack, he has a licensed handgun-- or, at least it would be in New Hampshire, a man of his stature would have no trouble getting a concealed weapons permit--, and he's simply defending himself from muggers. If no one were to attack him, no one would be killed, and as a citizen, it is his right to walk the streets at any time of night and not have to accept that he might be attacked. I don't know how New York mitigates these aspects of the law, but it is an interesting dynamic to consider, because I'm sure New Hampshire isn't the only state that has that stipulation in the law-- though New Hampshire's motto is Live Free or Die, so you never know.

This is currently on Watch Instantly, but if you can get it on DVD in widescreen format, I'd go for it. This is a true classic, and a real landmark film that has had a huge influence over the action genre. On top of all that, it's actually really well made and deals with a lot of social and moral issues in a compelling, yet not preachy or agenda driven kind of way. It's a movie that's surprisingly as relevant today as it was 37 years ago.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071402/

Firepower (1993)

I don't know if anyone's seen the trailer for this, but it looks awesome. Really, does anyone do trailers better than PM Entertainment? Their trailers always make their films look like the most amazing 90 minute action fests the world has ever seen. It's like, we look at one of those, and we think "Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs III is the best action hero since Steve McQueen!", then we watch the movie and we're like "um... all the action was in that one car chase?"

Firepower takes place in the future, three years ago, in a world where the US government is dealing with the consequences of "Free Zones", places where all manner of lawlessness is legal. The problem with that idea no one thought of at the time: society's worst criminals can just pop outside of the zone, create all manner of havoc, then run back to the zone before the cops can catch them. Oops. Now Chad McQueen and his sidekick, Gary Daniels, are two cops who won't stand by and let these baddies get away with their transgressions, so they go pseudo-undercover as fighters in an underground fighting ring in the zone, looking to take down one of LA's worst crimelords.



As the saying goes down South, "this movie is dummern' a sack o' hammers", and for the most part that's a good thing. For instance, a poor move that I would kill most films for: the gratuitous killing of McQueen's wife, is pulled off so clumsily it's more funny than mean spirited. Why then does this movie not work when it should be so bad it's awesome? Gary Daniels is the sidekick to Chad McQueen. Let me just reiterate that. Gary Daniels, Mr. Ten Kinds of Awesome, rocking a too sweet mullet, has to endure a demeaning decapitation at the hands of the Ultimate Warrior, because he's just the sidekick, and it's McQueen who gets to triumph at the end as the hero. That's like casting Dolph Lundgren in a movie, and having him play sidekick to Joe Lara. Other than that, this is a great dummern' a sack of hammers good time, a rip-off of other greats like Escape From New York.

So as far as Daniels goes, then, this isn't a Gary Daniels movie, it's a Chad McQueen movie. That's very hard to type. Was Daniels great in it? Yeah, solid martial arts, too sweet mullet, sounds like a winning combination. Too bad it wasn't his movie-- even if he was on the cover! The Ultimate Warrior had a higher billing than him! I'm not calling this a bait-and-switch, I'm just saying Daniels is not the number one guy, which was a bad move on the part of the film makers. If I need a Gary Daniels fix, I'll go somewhere else, like Rage or Bloodmoon. We'll work on trying to get a more Daniels-centric film here in the future. Cross your fingers for Cold Harvest.



Check it out, it's Art Camacho. One of the biggest names in DTV action, but more often than not for what he's done behind the scenes, from great choreography to some solid directing efforts. Right now, it's only as a director that we have him tagged, but in this post we'll tag him as an actor, and with his induction into the Hall of Fame this fall, I'll go back and tag him for all the other films he's been involved with as well. A true pillar in the DTV community.

Yes, I did say the Ultimate Warrior was in this. I, like many others, believed the urban legend that he killed himself, which never happened. He's actually alive and well, and apparently said some mean things about Heath Ledger's death. In Firepower, he plays a bad guy named Swordsman, but without his trademark warpaint, he looks more like a buff Alice Cooper. Because of the way this film cast McQueen as the lead and not Daniels, we're denied a great end battle between the two, which was a major disappointment. Warrior just kicks his ass and decapitates him.



I'm at a loss again for a seventh paragraph. I could go topical and discuss how in 1993 AIDS was still a very feared and deadly epidemic, when now, three years after "the future", we've reached a point with expensive drugs and a broader education in this country that it isn't the front page headline grabber it was then. That's boring though. The thing is, looking at these dummern' a sack o' hammers visions of the future we see in bad action movies, I wonder if these people lived in the same 1993 I did. 2003 looked bleak, but 1993 looked bright. The Iron Curtain was down, there was peace in the Middle East (we didn't know then it wouldn't last), and Bill "don't stop thinkin' about tomorrow" Clinton was our new President, playing his sax on The Arsenio Hall Show. Is that what the problem was, it looked too bright and rosy? Too Liberal, maybe? Would Liberals create a "Free Zone", a la a US Conservative view of Amsterdam? Maybe that's why Tea Baggers are so scared right now, they looked at 1993, and instead of seeing things going pretty well, they saw Firepower-- dummern' a sack o' hammers.

This is a fun, stupid, bad actioner from the early 90s. In terms of the PM Entertainment trailer, it lives up to what it sells quite a bit. Just don't go into it expecting a Gary Daniels film-- even if he is all over the cover. This is a Chad McQueen film... which still sounds odd to say. Oh yeah, as an aside, Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs is tagged because his voice is the play-by-play of the fights. He never actually appears beyond that.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106915/

Quiet Fire (1991)

I found this movie on Netflix when I was looking up more Robert Z'Dar films to review. I'd been meaning to get some Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs up for some time, so I was able to kill two birds with one stone. Even better, it's a PM Entertainment picture.

Quiet Fire is about some dude running for senator on a great war record who's trying to bump off a fellow soldier who knows he's lying. He succeeds in bumping the guy off, but not before he tells what he knows to another of their fellow soldiers, Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs. Now Jacobs is on the run from the senator's hired thugs, and he can't turn to the cops (one of whom is played by Mr. Z'Dar), because they're in on it too. When a couple drag queens/female body builders/hired assassins kill his girlfriend in an attempt to get to him, he gets fed up and returns to his old special forces in the Army ways.



For a PM Entertainment actioner, this was a little light on the actual action. Yes, it was ten kinds of ridiculous, and plenty good to make fun of, you just have to decide if that's enough for you. One thing I can say is, just when you think the movie's as silly as it's going to get, it gets sillier. I personally gave up when the two female body builders showed up as professional killers. I mean, this was done with a straight face, and we were supposed to take it seriously, which made it all the more amazing to me. One of them looked like Pee Wee Herman on steroids in drag, and the other one looked like the American Gladiator Malibu going to a Halloween party as Taylor Dayne. There was a scene where they were reporting to the senator to let him know they failed in killing LHJ, and Robert Z'Dar and his partner are there, openly laughing. I know they were technically laughing at their failures, but I think it helped that they were so ridiculous.

I've mentioned before that there are subtle differences between PM Entertainment and the more successful Golan-Globus, but I think after seeing this, the differences are probably more stark. Golan-Globus almost has this everything-but-the-kitchen-sink mentality, while PM Entertainment's is "who cares?" Illegal chop shop or garage at some dude's suburban LA home? Who cares? Robert Z'Dar's partner looks like he has old lady's hair with his long gray ponytail, maybe we should fix that. Who cares? Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs' martial arts look beyond unconvincing. Who cares? The truth is, they're right. This is an early 90s Direct to Video action film directed by Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs and starring Robert Z'Dar. The only people who care love this crap, so why worry about it.



One thing I love about Robert Z'Dar is his voice when he's trying to hide his Chicago accent. I don't even know how to explain it to someone who doesn't know what I'm talking about. It's like John Tesh radio hour wannabe, or smooth jazz DJ. I can just see him saying "all right, that was Wham!'s 'Careless Whisper', followed by Taylor Dayne's 'Love Will Lead You Back', and finally, Carole King with 'It's Too Late'. Let's take a little break and pay some bills. This is Robert Z'dar, and you're listening to Soft favorites, 92.9FM." Wow, that was two Taylor Dayne references in one post, I bet that's a record (if it isn't I'm sure someone will comment and correct me-- "You're wrong about that being a record for Taylor Dayne references in one post. Back on August of 2009 you mentioned her five times..."). Anyway, I was just doing my best to write a paragraph about Robert Z'dar without referencing his enormous face... oops... God damn it!

On May 7th of this year, we'll mark our third anniversary, and it's surprising to me that it's taken this long to get a Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs film reviewed. I would say even more amazing is no one's mentioned it either. His PM Entertainment films are as quintessential bad 90s action as anything. I don't know about anyone else, but I think one out of every five movies I rented had a trailer for one of his films on it. He's still making stuff, including one on Netflix's Watch Instantly called Killer Drag Queens on Dope. I saw the trailer, and it looks pretty horrible film quality-wise, but who knows...



Finally, there's a scene where LHJ's woman goes to an electronics store. Check out the 1991 prices on VCRs. $279.95? You know why it costs that much, don't you? That's right, it's got four heads. We're talking top of the line shit right there. I've noticed a trend towards nostalgia lately in some of the blogs I read, for the good ol' days of VHS. I've been guilty of it myself. This isn't like records versus CDs, where the records actually sound better than the CDs; in the case of DVDs versus VHS, DVD is better hands down. What I like though is the feeling I get when see an old VHS, especially one sold from an old video store, of the late 80s and early 90s, watching bad movies on a Friday or Saturday night sleepover with friends. The junk food, the soda, rewinding our favorite scenes and watching them over and over-- all of it. The only reason why I need VHS to feel this nostalgia, is DVDs weren't invented then. Believe me, in no way is VHS superior to DVD, just like tape Walkmans aren't superior to iPods, but sometimes it's just fun to look back to an earlier time.

How bad do you like your action, that is the question. This is closing in on the Penhall/Strain level, which is sometimes too much for a lot of people to take. In addition, it's a little light on action, and though it makes up for that with ridiculousness, there are more fun movies to make fun of out there. Considering we needed to get more Robert Z'Dar up and finally review something with Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs, we could've done a lot worse, so I'd put this in a special category as great for the site, but maybe not something you want to go out of your way for.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102743/