Firehawk (1993)

As we continue on in our October Hall of Fame month, I wanted to spotlight a film that featured two Hall of Famers that we don't get on the site enough, Martin Kove and Cirio H. Santiago; plus legend DTV producer Roger Corman--who usually produces Santiago's films. Seeing that this was on YouTube made it a no-brainer. In addition to us, Ty and Brett at Comeuppance have covered it too, so you can go to their site to see what they think. Now, without any further ado.

Firehawk has Kove as a helicopter pilot in Vietnam who takes his men on a mission into the jungle, only to have the helicopter malfunction, forcing it to make an emergency landing. It's the sloggiest of the jungle slogs when they're stranded, but the problem is, we also have Kove as the hero, which means he may be up to no good. As his men slog through the jungle, hoping to be rescued, fractures and fissures form, tensions brew, and there's a fear that a traitor may be in their midst. Or maybe they're just losing their minds at being stuck in this Philippine jungle slog. Either way, will someone figure out what the score is before too many people die?

 

For a 90-minute movie, this feels a bit longer than that, and I think that has to do with not only the slog aspect, but the fact that we've added the stranded element. Anyone who's been in a car far from home that has a flat tire or breaks down, or has been waiting at the airport for a plane that's been delayed indefinitely, knows the sense of dread, helplessness, and boredom that you feel, and that I couldn't help feeling when I watched this. There were plenty of shootouts and scenes of Kove chomping a cigar that attempted to mitigate that, but it just felt too flat tire-y. This isn't horrible by any stretch, there are a lot worse ways you could spend 90 minutes, but I think if you were looking for a bad movie night flick among friends, you may end up with people going to their phones if you choose this one.

With his addition to the second season of Cobra Kai, there's been a bit of a resurgence in interest in Martin Kove, which I think is fantastic. By the same token, this late 80s/early 90s incarnation of him is much more enjoyable for me. This is him as the DTVC Hall of Famer/pillar of the video store that he is, chewing cigars and scenery, vests with no shirts underneath, not sure if we can trust him and not sure if we care. Talking about the feeling you get when you're stranded due to a flat tire or something, Kove is both the person you'd love to be stranded with, and the person that you start to not trust because his decisions start to look bad, which makes the feeling of helplessness that much stronger. I think it may have even been what Santiago was going for, but the problem is, is it something we'd really enjoy experiencing?

 

Speaking of Santiago, we're finally hitting ten films for him, which for a Hall of Fame director is big. After Albert Pyun, he's currently the only director in the Hall of Fame strictly as a director, and Pyun is in the 40 Club, so we need more Santiago on the site for sure. Whether it's Vietnam in the Philippines, or post-apocalyptic actioner, Santiago has a slew of fun ones from the mid-80s to the mid-90s that I've barely scratched the surface on, it's just a matter of us getting there, so hopefully we'll start soon. One thing about this, is you can see how much in his element Santiago is in the jungle slog. There's a sense that he and Corman had an understanding that when Corman gave him a script and a budget, Santiago knew where he was headed. On the other hand, Santiago does these a bit differently from the Italian directors who handled them. He comes from a different tradition of film making, which makes these a unique addition to the usual Vietnam in the Philippines and post-apocalyptic films from this era, and something I enjoy as a change of pace.

Roger Corman is the third Hall of Famer involved in this, though he's uncredited as executive producer. He has over 400 production credits on IMDb, the most recent of which is 2019's Abduction, a Scott Adkins film I still haven't reviewed. When you think of DTV and B-movie producers, the conversation starts with him. You can look at Golan and Globus, Pepin and Mehri, and Lloyd Kaufman, but it's like if you add all of their stuff together it almost matches Corman's output. Beyond the great stuff that he had with Santiago, he's also responsible for the Bloodfist and Death Race films, plus was the subject of a great documentary on his failed Fantastic Four film, which we've covered here. We wouldn't have the DTV world we have now if it wasn't for him, so we owe him a lot. Here's to you Mr. Corman, you're one of the best.

 

Finally, Captain America himself, Matt Salinger is back, as the racist member of Kove's platoon. I was trying to remember if we'd seen Salinger play a heel before, and I couldn't think of it, maybe in one of the Seagal films he did. In the paragraph above we were discussing the Corman Fantastic Four that never was, but we have Salinger here who was in the Pyun Captain America that actually was. This was Salinger's follow-up to Cap, so it's interesting how he goes from the greatest American hero in one film to a racist wearing a Confederate flag bandana in the next; but also how he goes from one DTVC Hall of Fame director in Pyun to another in Santiago in the next. If you go to his IMDb page, he uses his Captain America still for his profile pic, which I think is fantastic. The way that Disney and Marvel have tried to act like those great earlier films never existed is an abomination, and I like that people are resisting that.

All right, since we're talking about another movie, it's time to wrap this up. You can currently stream this free on YouTube. I think that's the way to go, but be warned, even for free, it's pretty jungle sloggy. Still there's some fun Kove as well, so if you're pining for some while we're waiting for the next season of Cobra Kai, this might do the trick.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106914

The Marksman (2005)

This film's been sitting in my Netflix queue for sometime now, and I finally bumped it up when I realized I hadn't reviewed a Wesley Snipes movie in a while. I think maybe part of me had pushed it down because I was so focused on getting movies with other stars up, and the previous Wesley Snipes films didn't exactly do it for me. Why sit through a notsomuch, when I can be entertained by a Nemesis or Stone Cold.

The Marksman is about some special military soldiers called painters that place tracking beacons in targets so planes can hit them with missiles. Snipes is one of them, and he's sent with a special forces unit to plant devices in a hijacked nuclear facility in Russia. But Snipes thinks things aren't what they appear, and he's right. Before he can get to the escape chopper, he sees the special forces betrayed and almost killed. Three are captured, and one hides out and finds Snipes, so they can go back in and save them. Emma Sands is working with the NSA, and she's the only person Snipes can trust. Luckily he doesn't rely on her fully, because by the time she realizes what's going on and who's behind it, the missile's in the air and ready to blow them up. Snipes has something up his sleeve, though.



I don't know what to tell everyone. This was okay. But does okay cut it? Explosions? Sure, there were some. Car chases? Not really. Martial arts? Considering how good Snipes was in the Blade films, the few minutes here and there were pretty lackluster. Nice shootouts? They were okay, but pretty run-of-the-mill. Nothing like the graveyard shootout in Pistol Whipped. Am I being too harsh on Snipes? He was good, but the movie was pretty blah.

The Blade movies were so good. Sure, they were effin' ridiculous, but they were awesome too. Yes, this movie would've been enhanced by a Ron Perlman with a small bomb stuck on the back of his head. Yes, this movie would've been better if a previously incapacitated Snipes regained his strength and took out a slew of Eastern European foot soldiers to Crystal Method's "Name of the Game". Is it so wrong to find that kind of shit awesome? Why do I need slow moving scenes with weird jumpcuts and bad techno only to end in Snipes shooting someone and sneaking off and trying to contact Emma Sands? Give me a Dominic Purcell as Dracula saying in a deep voice with no irony whatsoever "I saw Christ die." Yes, I want to laugh out loud every once in a while.



It's because of Blade, though, that I'm not giving up hope. He has a film coming soon called Gallowwalker, where he plays a gunman whose victims come back to life as zombies. That just sounds brilliant, doesn't it? This is the sixth Snipes film I've reviewed. Chaos, the one he did with Jason Statham, doesn't really count, because it was more a hidden gem that should've been a major release than a DTV actioner. Of the other four, my verdicts fluctuated between this wasn't bad to this didn't do it for me. This one's in that range as well. I just need that punch me in the face killer, and stylized military suspense thrillers with no identity won't get me there.

On initial viewing, I was like, wow, Emma Sands is hot for her age. Then I looked her up on imdb and saw that she's only two years older than Snipes. Oops. Is that still a compliment? She looks good for her age, but I thought she was older? Maybe I should stop while I'm ahead. She was able to parlay her success in this role to work on a BBC drama Doctors, and then a reoccurring part on General Hospital, on which she starred a long time ago with Demi Moore.



Skip this. It's just not worth it. I've softly recommended a few Snipes DTV films-- you know, the classic "you could do worse" or "if there's nothing else, give it a try." I'm not even going the soft recommendation route. You got better things to watch with your time.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0457090/



But since I have an extra paragraph, why not discuss another film that came out on DVD recently, the new Friday the 13th. I don't know about you, but I grew up on the old ones. Sure, they were silly, but that's what made them so great. Jason was this supernatural killer that beat women in sleeping bags against trees and punched boxers' heads off, and that's how we liked it. Think of part four with Corey Feldman and Crispin Glover. Do horror movies get any better than that film? Four words: "No wa-hay, not to-ni-hight." With this in mind, my buddy and I rented the new one, and it sucked balls. First, they tried to make Jason realistic, like he was a real human being. Really? Real human beings that raised themselves after their moms were killed when they were ten have the capacity to build intricate tunnel systems under the ground wired with electricity? Really? Jason shooting an arrow through a man's head driving a speeding boat from 500 yards out is much more believable if we see that he won an archery tournament when he was ten? And that sleeping bag scene I talked about above, that's somehow better if the woman is instead hung upside down in it over a fire? In trying to make something silly from the 80s more "real", they came off even sillier. And not in a good way. Who comes up with this stupid shit?

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0758746/

Pistol Whipped (2008)

I first found out about this film when I saw it on the side of one of those red things that dispenses movies at the grocery store. I actually didn't rent it there, but made a mental note of it and got it from Netflix. I've never actually used the red thing, and I've never met anyone who has. Is it a good deal? How does it work?

Pistol Whipped has Seagal as Matt (just Matt), and ex special forces cop whose life has gone downhill after he was relieved of duty following an incident on the job. In debt due to a lot of bad gambling debts, Lance Henriksen hires him to do some super secret hits on some bad dudes. Things get hairy when one of those bad dudes is the husband of his ex-wife, and step-father to his daughter.



I must say, this was a pretty good deal. Had this come out fifteen years ago, it would've been considered a solid Seagal effort as a mainstream theatrical release. It's right up there with some of his better ones. The end battle in the cemetery was amazing. I've watched so many bad, overpriced sacks-of-asscrack in the theater that just don't know how to have a great denouement. To find it in a 2008 Steven Seagal DTV actioner shows not only how far the DTV genre has come, but that it's getting harder and harder for us action movie honks to get that same satisfaction in the theater anymore. It's a shame.

Other than Out for a Kill, where Seagal decapitates a man by throwing a samurai sword at him from a second story window, this is Seagal's best DTV film, in my opinion. His fighting and one-liners were top notch. In one scene, while bedding soap opera actress Rene Goldsberry, he tells her "any stupid motherfucka can fry an egg", or something like that. When she tells him that in order to get ahead in the corporate world, she needed to grow a dick, he replied "I find you a lot less attractive if you grew a dick, especially if it was bigger than mine." After the cemetery scene, when he's killed the head baddie, he asks him before he croaks if he wants to be buried or cremated. The guy says cremated, and when he closes his eyes, Seagal lifts him up, throws him through the window of a nearby hearse, then shoots it till it blows up, and says "You've been cremated." God, this is exactly the reason why I have Netflix hit my bank account for $17 a month.



Lance Henriksen plays kind of a bad guy. He's the one hiring Seagal, but he's got him by the balls. I've never been sure on how I feel about him. He just seems like a cat you get when you can't afford a guy like Donald Sutherland. What would be nice, especially in a role like the one he played in this film, is if directors go outside the box, and instead of taking an obvious choice with Henriksen, try a Peter Weller, or Gary Busey. I think we all expect the Lance Henriksen, and we're bored by it-- at least I am.

According to imdb, Matt Salinger is in this as the card dealer at the beginning of the movie. The same Matt Salinger who played Captain America in Albert Pyun's film, and the one that's the son of JD Salinger. I totally missed that, and without the film in front of me, I can't go back and check. I'm usually so good at that sort of thing, and I thought about lying and just saying I saw him in the movie, but who would I really help by doing that?



I thought Seagal's love interest looked familiar, and when I looked her up, I found out why: she's on the soap opera One Life to Live. My mom used to watch that when I was 5 or 6, but she wasn't on it then. I remembered her because I was flipping through the channels one afternoon, and saw her in a scene where she was being burned at the stake in a cheerleader's uniform. Because it was a soap opera, I only saw it for a second before it went to commercial, and then I found myself engrossed in a cooking show and forgot to turn back before General Hospital was on; but I thought, what an interesting concept. You could make an entire teen horror flick based around that. It makes me wonder how many other things I've seen that I thought were created organically, that were probably just ripped off from soap operas I've never seen.

This is so worth it. Don't hesitate to pull the trigger. It's what you're looking for when you go to the video store, it's the reason you have Netflix, and it's the reason you read this blog, so I can tell you about gems like this. Everyone's happy.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1014801/

Black Dawn (2005)

If you've been rockin' with me and the Direct to Video Connoisseur for a little while now, you may have noticed I'm on a quest to find this one Seagal film I saw the end of on USA, where he throws a samurai sword from a second-story window and decapitates this old Chinese man. I actually think I may have found it now, and the film's on my Netflix queue, but I didn't know that when I rented this little gem.

Black Dawn has the Seagal-inator as Jonathan Cold, a former CIA agent who is an expert in martial arts and nuclear technology. He's gone missing for a while, but has resurfaced when he was hired by two That Guys to help in the sale of their nuclear technology to this Eastern European terrorist group. The kink in the deal comes when Seagal's former pupil, a hot chick, while working for the CIA, stumbles upon the deal, forcing Seagal to abandon his plans and save her. Now he's gotta retrieve the stuff before the baddies can blow up the world.



This is a pretty good deal. It's the kind of film you have in mind when you see a Seagal direct to video action flick on the shelves at your local video store. As always, he's a former something (in this case CIA), he's playing both ends against the middle, and he's only got one person he can trust. There are some great car chase scenes and explosions, and Seagal gives us some solid fight scenes. Probably most memorable for me came when the baddies were after Seagal and his woman, and he's escaping in a dump truck-like deal. He actually discharges the back part, leaving it in the middle of the road, so the bad guys can crash into, causing a ridiculous explosion. It was hilarious.

I've done a huge chunk of Seagal's DTV films on the blog, and I must say it's all relatively solid. It may be extremely cheesy and at times heavy handed, but it seldom takes itself too seriously, and Seagal usually puts in a decent showing. Another great attribute of his new work is his use of Ebonics. I'm not sure where he picked that up, maybe when he worked with Ja Rule or DMX, but for us bad action fans, it's hilarious. In 2008 he has one movie already out with Pistol Whipped, and another completed with Kill Switch. Having just turned 57 last April (and people said I was old turning 29 nine days before that!), it's great to see him still kicking around and turning out quality work. If you compare that to Harrison Ford, who is nine years older, and who looked silly in 2006's Firewall, forcing him to make the new film Indiana Jones and the Cash Grab, I can only hope Seagal either A, is still awesome when he's that old, or B, will bow out gracefully if he's not. Though, I'd go see an Under Siege 3 if it was made in 2017...



The two baddies that want Seagal's expertise in selling the nuclear technology to the Easter Europeans are major That Guys, one more so than the other. The first is the one Seagal breaks out of jail, and he's more of a soap opera That Guy, though he's done his turn on Renegade and whatnot. His younger brother, who's more of the real bad guy, has been in way more. He has almost one hundred credits of That Guy roles, appearing in everything from Pearl Harbor to Cold Case to The L Word. You'd know him the moment you saw him.

Matt Salinger's in this for one quick scene. You may remember him as the son of JD Salinger who played Captain America in the Albert Pyun adaptation of the Marvel comic. I didn't know he still worked, but there he was, and according to imdb, he's in the new Seagal flick Pistol Whipped. Good for him. Here, he sports a silly Russian accent. I'm not sure I get that. Why not have him dressed like Captain America while selling the nuclear technology? That's what I would've done.



I must confess, when I saw this again recently, I fell asleep for some of it. I'm not sure how much that matters, but there may have been something awesome in it that I missed. If you're reading this and have already seen the film, don't hesitate to post a comment if you think I'm leaving something out. That goes for all of the films I review here on the DTVC. I do my best to stay awake, but when the plot drags, as it did in this one at the end, the beer takes over and I doze off. That's why it's necessary to watch these bad films with other people, so they can keep you up with their constant jokes, and you can return the favor. I actually did do that for this one, but the person I was watching it with fell asleep too, so it didn't matter.

Rent this. It's what you want when you pick up a Seagal flick: silly character name, Ebonnics, explosions, solid fights, and hot chicks. Get your beer or Mountain Dew, plenty of chips and pizza, and a bunch of friends, and have a blast. This was definitely a fun time.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0443450/

Captain America (1990)

In looking up information on imdb for this film, I discovered there are two Captain America movies from 1979 that were made for TV and starred Reb Brown. For those of you who don't know that name, Reb Brown played the hero in Space Mutiny. "Wow" is all I can say. How did that one get by me? I guess even a connoisseur of bad films misses a few here and there.

The 1990 Captain America doesn't have Reb Brown, but instead JD Salinger's son Matt. Taking some liberties with the original story, Red Skull is Italian, and the person who invents the super soldier serum is an Italian woman. She comes to America after her process is usurped to make the Red Skull, and she teams up with Michael Nouri and Bill Mumy in the US Army to turn Mr. Salinger into the Star Spangled Sentinel. He doesn't have much time to train, and is bested by the Skull, who straps him a la silly serial film to a bomb aimed at Washington DC. Right before it hits the White House, Ol' Cap changes its course, but not before a young boy sees him do it and is inspired to grow up and become Ronny Cox. Instead of creating a corporation in Detroit that creates murderous robots and hiring the dad from That 70s Show as his hatchet man to kill Miguel Ferrer, he becomes a nice, environmentally friendly president. This upsets the Red Skull, so he kidnaps him, and it's up to our hero to save him. Also has Darren McGavin and Ned Beatty.



Word on the street is there's a new Cap being made in the mold of these new millennium Marvel movies. If it's like Spiderman or X-Men, it might be all right. On the other hand, we have a whole bunch of misses to consider too. I don't get why these films take themselves so seriously. They're comic book movies, and comic books are by nature silly. Instead of wasting the cash to ruin another Marvel character on the big screen, why not just re-release this in 2010 for it's 20th anniversary. It'd be better than Ben Affleck speaking in breathy tones.

Don't get me wrong, this film is bad. Director Albert Pyun really outdid himself here. Why the Red Skull is Italian is beyond me. He also looks less like the Red Skull, and more like the Thing from the new Fantastic Four movies. In the very beginning he looks like the Red Skull, it's just the 45 years later that he looks different. I don't know whose idea that was, but it should've been nixed from the jump.

I had trouble with their cast as the president. Ronny Cox is always a bad guy to me. I know some of you out there may know him from Stargate: Whatever, but to me he's the bad guy in Robocop and countless other films. Casting a president is a very big deal. Many bad films just mail it in and go for Roy Scheider, and I can't argue with that approach. It takes an inspired film maker like a Dolph Lundgren to cast Jerry Springer as the leader of the free world.



Matt Salinger wasn't bad as Cap, but the film itself used him poorly. He was often running away, which makes no sense when you consider he's Captain America. If he has the stones to take out the Red Skull, why's he running from some Italian dude with a ponytail riding a scooter? The new movie should just be this movie with less Cap fleeing in fear. They'd have a hit on their hands.

Ned Beatty is great in this, as he is in everything. He should've been the president, come to think of it. The Red Skull could've caught him and told him he was going to make him squeal like a pig, boy. It would've been sweet. With Ned Beatty still alive, this is another wrong the next film could make right. Maybe have him reprise his role from The Rockford Files. I don't know why film makers don't think of things like that, but they need to start concentrating more on their target audience.



For anyone who hasn't seen this, it's a must watch. It's one of those seminal bad action films that's turned into a rite of passage for all bad movie watchers. It's kind of difficult to find, with it only existing on VHS; and with the new movie coming out, I fear the film industry will try to Stalinize it's existence like they did with Dolph's Punisher after the Jane/Travolta sack-of-asscrack was released. If you can get your hands on it, though, it's well worth whatever you pay for it. Okay, maybe only if you don't pay too much...

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103923/