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.

To Be the Best (1993)

In 2026 I've decided to start something that I started last month without realizing I was starting it, and that's reviewing one PM for the first post of every month. That means we'll have at least 12 PM flicks reviewed this year. Not a bad deal, and I figured for our first one I'd do one I'd been meaning to do forever, which also has an exploding helicopter, so I can tick that off the list too. In addition to us, the PM Podcast covered this, plus Toyman at Bulletproof, and Karl Brezdin at First of the B-List.

To Be the Best is about a kickboxing/martial arts tournament, where the US team is one of many entrants, and their biggest competitor is the Thai team, composed of residents from the Bangkok Chinatown. The coach of the US team is former disgraced fighter Rick Kulhane (Martin Kove) and his two sons Sam (Phillip Troy Linger--and no, he didn't have to let it) and Eric (Michael Worth), who is the team's best fighter. The problem is the evil Alex Cord is hanging around, and he has $500,000 on the Thai team's best fighter Hong Do (Steven Vincent Leigh), and to make sure his bet comes in, he's threatening Eric's girlfriend (Brittney Powell). Will Eric throw the big fight?

This does exactly what you want PM to do, except the middle is a bit draggy, which we'll get to in a second. It starts with some underground fighting, where a man who's a cross between a poor man's Nick Vallelonga and a poor man's Johnny Roast Beef tries to get Worth to throw the fight, and when he doesn't, to show Worth he means business, he has his helicopter pilot take Worth for a ride, hanging him from a cord while he flies him around Vegas. The pilot gets a little too into it though, and crashes into one of the hotels, causing Worth to go flying into one of the suites. It's as amazing as it gets, only to be followed up in the next scene by another underground fight in LA that gets broken up by the police, leading to a two-pronged chase with one set of cops chasing some guys in a white car, and another chasing Linger (which he didn't have to let it) on a dirt bike. The problem was, the movie couldn't keep that kind of energy up, and things bog down a bit with some sparring montages, broken up by a nice bowling alley fight, and then it's just a tournament film, until the end, which is another fantastic group of great action set pieces to finish things off. I think where that leaves us, is this is a great time, and while it's maybe only a top 30 PM flick for me, that's still going to be a fun way to spend your 90 minutes.

We're now at 54 PM films, and this is one of those ones where you'd think it would've been done sooner, but for some reason it kept getting pushed back, and I think the only reason I bumped it up to now is the fact that it has an exploding helicopter, so I can chip away at my paltry number on Exploding Helicopter's Letterboxd list. And what a thing of beauty that helicopter explosion is, and while the movie isn't able to maintain that energy throughout, the fact that had it at all is why we come to PM films. This is also number 58 for Art Camacho, who's not only fight coordinator, but he plays one of the US team as a character named "Runt"--which at no point is that expounded upon, that's just the name they gave him. Definitely in 2026 he'll be our fourth member of the 60 Club. We're also seeing Martin Kove again for the first time since VFW in 2024. He's at 19 now, so we'll see if we get him past 20 this year. And then for our stunt coordinators, this film features the duo of Red Horton and "Broadway" Joe Murphy, with the former as second-unit director, and the latter stunt coordinator. They're at 17 and 16 films respectively, which I think are numbers we'll see get bigger as we do more PM flicks.

Two names that are finally getting tags are Michael Worth and Vince Murdocco. Neither have big numbers--five for Worth, 11 for Murdocco--but they both were such a big part of 90s DTV action, especially these PM flicks, that the tagging was overdue--especially if Ian Jacklin's been tagged, because they inhabit a similar space, though to Jacklin's credit, he has more tags than either of them with 13. Worth is the star in this one, and I think there's a sense that maybe PM was positioning him to do more stuff like this, but this ended up being his last film with them, I think due to him making Fists of Iron, which I believe no one that worked on that other than Art Camacho did another film for PM--Matthias Hues hadn't worked with them before, and Richard Munchkin only did some LA Heat and Hollywood Safari episodes. Murdocco is something else. Just saying "it also has Murdocco" evokes a sense of a certain kind of low-budget 90s actioner, and while that movie is often also a PM film, after 1994's Magic Kid II, he doesn't do any other films for them either, but he also wasn't a part of Fists of Iron, so I don't know if it was due to any kind of issues with PM. They may just not have had a place for him as they moved into different movies and got bigger names. I guess I get it, but how could you not have a place for Murdocco?

What the hell is going on in that image below? Are we looking at a potential 10.0 Mulletude mullet? Sure, the business on top is a little more manager at a hardware store business than you'd want, but the party in the back is almost Sunset Strip hair band rager--probably more like backstage afterparty at a Midwestern tour stop for a hair band, and maybe not the headliner like Poison, but an opening band like Trixter or Hurricane--but I'm quibbling on something that at least has to be a 9.8 on the Mulletude scale, and spending way too much time explaining why I'm deducting two tenths of a point, instead of basking the beauty that is that fantastic ape drape. And the thing is, it comes at a time when I'm not sure what's happening with this movie because it's mired in a bunch of fights and intrigue around Alex Cord being a dick, but then I finally get my shot of the Vegas Strip McDonald's so I can tag that, and then boom, I'm hit in the face that with Hall of Fame caliber mullet, and it's just all Tiger Woods on the 18th hole birdie fist pumps from there. I went back through our old posts, and saw that I gave the Barbarian Brothers a 9.8 for their mullets in Double Trouble, and I guess that's because they're more workman-like and added to the overall Barbarian Brothers charm, but that means I either need to go back and drop that rating, or bring this one up a tad. 9.9 sounds too high for this mullet, even as amazing as it is, so maybe the Barbarians need to go down to 9.5 or so.

Finally, one of the elements running through the film is Martin Kove's character's love of the LA Raiders. I'm sure it was just tossed in, but based on his character's age and when the team moved from Oakland, it wouldn't make a lot of sense that he'd root for them, unless there was some kind of quirk in his character or special unique reason for it, neither of which was mentioned. Being born in the late 40s, if he's from LA he'd have grown up with the LA Rams as his team, because the Oakland Raiders didn't move to LA until 1980, when he would've been in his 30s. To give you a history of NFL football in LA would give you a popsicle headache, but if you're not familiar with the league, you could look the NFL up on Wikipedia and find there are no Raiders in LA, the two LA teams are the Rams and the Chargers, but there is a Las Vegas Raiders. Two years after this film was released, the Raiders went back to Oakland, one year after the Rams moved to St. Louis, leaving the second largest city in the US without an NFL team, until the Rams moved back to LA in 2016, and the San Diego Chargers moved to LA one year later; and then in 2020 the Raiders moved from Oakland to Las Vegas. (I'm sorry, I said I wasn't going to get into it, and I did anyway, so hopefully the popsicle headache wasn't too horrible.) My point is, Kove's character should've been a Rams fan, but it's kind of more PM-ish that he rooted for the Raiders instead.

And with that, let's wrap this up. The Roku Channel has this, but when I watched it the audio wasn't synched, so I watched it on YouTube instead, which was fine. However you watch it, it's a solid addition to your PM experience, and one you should definitely check out.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108346

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

Repo Jake (1990)

Our friend Jon Cross over at the PM Entertainment Podcast has been doing a celebration of PM films this month called "SePMtember," and I thought I'd get in on the festivities with this PM flick I'd been meaning to watch for a long time. In addition to us, we have a legit Murder's Row of other reviews, with Chris the Brain from PM, Ty and Brett at Comeuppance, Mitch at the Video Vacuum, and Simon from Explosive Action all having covered this as well. A sign that I'm long overdue to join the party.

Repo Jake is an early PM joint featuring the great Dan Haggerty as the eponymous hero, a burly fellow from Minnesota who moves out to LA temporarily because he hears the repo business is booming out there. Once he gets on with a repo company, it doesn't take much for him to rise to the top of the rag-tag fun group of fellow repoers--and fortunately the people he needs to repo cars from are just deadbeats, we wouldn't want to have to think about people struggling to make ends meet and falling behind on their payments during the recession in the early 90s, would we? Anyway, one of those deadbeats is a pimp and porn producer, and after Jake repos his car, he gets revenge by threatening Jake's new lady friend. Now he has to win a demolition derby-style race for said pimp--oh, by the way, Jake was a former Indy car driver. Wonders never cease.

There are a few places you can go with this. From a PM standpoint it's fun to see the seeds of some of the things that would be hallmarks of their films appear here, like people being thrown through windows, exploding cars, and Cole S. McKay appearing in a scene. The wave is starting to build here, and it's like we're wading in the water, watching the wave come in, waiting for those PM classics to come in push us to shore. There's also the 90s nostalgia. I loved seeing Haggarty come in on a Trailways bus--try not to think of someone with his massive frame having to sit on a bus from Minnesota to LA though, Christ, I'm 5'7" and my back and knees are seizing up just thinking of that trip! But the third element is taking it as a film on its own merits, and that may be where it falls a but flat. We get the classic PM action to start, but they hadn't developed that every 10-15 minutes rule yet, so we get dead spots too. The race scenes were hard to follow, and I couldn't make out where anyone was. And then the music, if it wasn't a wailing harmonica, it was a Casio preset whimsical theme. With all that in mind, while I usually use the term "connoisseur" ironically--and I guess I still am here--you have to really dig this kind of thing to enjoy it, which I did, but not everyone will.

We're now at 52 PM flicks, and if it seems like I've been covering a lot of them lately, you're right. This is three months in a row with a post, four months out of the last five, and 7 of the last 9. This is the earliest one we've watched in a while though, you can tell from that early logo, and between the logo and the script on the opening credits, it was a lot like Shotgun, only without the too-sweet theme song. There were other hallmarks of PM that we could see here too. Like when one of the repo guys fell asleep, and some of his coworkers put lipstick on him, then woke him up and sent him out on a job. That was it, nothing else happened, like the kids who put the pizza box in the oven in Riot and then after Chinese food with Daniels, are never heard of again. Another hallmark I mentioned above was Cole S. McKay, who had a scene driving a car Haggerty is trying to repo. Before you know it, Haggerty is on the hood hanging on for dear life while McKay is driving all over the place. It was a great way to get McKay's 62nd tag on the site. We also have Merhi's direction with Pepin's cinematography on a Jacobson Hart script, and Paul Volk working on post-production. With all these names working together, they were able to refine their craft with each successive movie, which I think more than anything was what made PM so great, each film was part of the process, not just a one-off.

This is only our second Haggerty film on the site, the other being Axe Giant: The Wrath of Paul Bunyan, which we reviewed in 2013. It does seem odd that 1300+ posts in and this is only his second film, especially when we have a classic like Elves that I discuss with Mitch on the podcast every year around Christmas. And it's in that mid-80s to mid-90s period where he did a lot of DTV damage, so I probably should make an effort to get more of his stuff up. He does have another PM flick, from the same year as this, Chance with Lawrence Hilton Jacobs, where Haggerty also plays a repo man, just not the same one he plays here. The thing about him that's so great is he has this avuncular quality that always makes him endearing to watch, whether it's as a race car driving repo man in penny loafers like he is here, or when he's tearing it up on Battle of the Network Stars. For all the things about this film that didn't work, he's definitely one that does.

We generally don't do our McDonald's paragraph this early in the post, but it is the 16th film we've had with a McDonald's, so I feel like maybe they've moved past the penultimate paragraph territory. And the thing is, similar to Presidential Portraits, I wasn't always tagging them in the past, so sometimes when I rewatch things we've already reviewed, I catch one and add the tag. Could we see McDonald's getting into the Hall of Fame on the Danny Trejo rule? I've looked at other fast food places, and none of them appear as much as McDonald's, I think in part because the one from this film and the one on the Vegas strip are in a lot of films from this period. Recently I made a trip to Chicago to see a White Sox game (ballpark number 14 for me!) and before my flight back I hit the McDonald's flagship location, where they have some international offerings, including the Big Arch Burger. Not to be confused with the Arch Deluxe, the Big Arch is two quarter-pound patties with white American cheese and this Arch sauce, along with some other accoutrements. The white American cheese was a bit strong for me, but otherwise I liked it. The best way to describe it? It's like what the rest of the world must think of American cuisine in the form of a burger.

Finally, for our actual finally paragraph, would you look at that sweet, late 80s Texas Rangers cap. There's a little mark in the middle, which I think was meant to obfuscate it enough to avoid MLB's lawyers calling to complain, but otherwise it's perfect. In 2023 I was lucky enough to be in Dallas for work, and was able to get a Lyft over to Arlington to see a Texas Rangers game (ballpark number 11). I looked online, and no place makes this version new anymore. As far as the ballpark, if you get a chance, it's worth seeing a game there. When I went, I got a cheap seat in the upper deck, but one of the ushers told me to sit in the section below that because they hadn't sold out, something I've never had an usher do before. The problem with the park though is there's no public transportation out there, and it's not in Dallas. For someone who goes to games here in the Northeast, and who doesn't drive, being able to take the subway--or even a light rail option--is much nicer.

And with that, let's wrap this up. As of this writing, you can get this on Prime, which is a great way to go. It's probably a deeper cut PM, you've gotta really like movies like this to enjoy it, but if you do, I think you'll have a great time like I did.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0340312

Pick up my newest book, Nadia and Aidan, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Steel Frontier (1995)

This is one I discussed on episode 3 of Jon Cross's PM Entertainment Podcast, which was a really fun conversation, and now we're finally giving it a review here. In addition to us and the PM Podcast, Chad Cruise at Bulletproof, Ty and Brett at Comeuppance, Outlaw Vern, Tom Jolliffe at Flickering Myth, and Mitch at the Video Vacuum have covered this as well.

Steel Frontier takes place six years ago, after the apocalypse, where the world is a big Mad Max-ish mess, and a horrible conqueror (Brion James) has gathered up a bunch of baddies and taken over all the peaceful tire farming towns in the LA County area. Is there any hope? Sure, as is often the case, a heroic lone drifter comes into town (Joe Lara). He starts off by joining the gang, and then does a bit of a Yojimbo move to get Brion James's gang to kill each other. Will he eventually succeed? And in true PM fashion, will he require a lot of explosions and car chases to do so?

This one jumped to number 9 on my all-time PM list (which you can find on the DTVC Letterboxd), that's how much I enjoyed it, and Jon felt the same way. This is PM doing the Italian late-80s Mad Max exploitation flick, but doing it in true PM style. The exploitation comes in the form of violence, with explosions and car chases, which is nice because we don't get the usual sexual assault or other sexual exploitation the Italian films liked to do. We get some great Joe Lara as the lead, Brion James is a fantastic baddie, and the addition of Bo Svenson as James's second-in-command was solid too. From there you get all the beautiful PM action goodness you expect when you see the PM logo on the spine of your VHS, including this massive chimney explosion that the IMDb trivia says is the largest PM ever pulled off--and that's saying a lot considering this is PM we're talking about! PM gets it right again, and we're all better for it.

Out of all the Joe Lara films I've seen--which isn't that many, he's only at 8 now on the site--this is my favorite. He's everything you want in the roguish, Western hero, and we can't wait to see him enter this town and take out James and all his baddies. Another place where this movie deviated from the late 80s Italian films is they didn't do the whole "hero captured and tortured by the baddies, then he recovers and gets his revenge" penultimate act, which was refreshing for me. While I liked Hologram Man better as a film overall, this is the better Lara film for sure, and it's too bad he didn't get more roles like this. By my count, we have 7 or 8 more of his films that we could review, and I don't know how many of those we'll actually cover because they look hard to track down, so he may top out at around 12 movies, and I think that's okay considering how good a job he does here.

PM is closing in on the 50 Club at the DTVC, we're only one away now, and this is one I probably could've used for that milestone, but I didn't want to wait on it too long after the PM podcast episode was released. That's okay, I think there are some great candidates for the big 5-0, there's no shortage of fantastic PM flicks. What makes this one so good, is it's their take on this post-apocalyptic/Mad Max subgenre, and they successfully make it the PM version, they never get away from what they were best at. In the PM Podcast episode, Jon interviews both Paul Volk and Jacobson Hart, and they give great insights on what made this work. Hart in particular talked about how PM didn't do sexual exploitation, that their "exploitation cinema" was the action, and they nail it, especially with two great chase scenes, and that aforementioned chimney explosion. When you see PM on the spine, or listed under company credits if you look a movie up after seeing the thumbnail on a streaming site, you expect a certain level of fun, low-budget action, and this one delivers on that in a way that exceeded even those expectations.

Part of why this works so well is the stunt team PM puts together. The stunt coordinator/second-unit director is Michael J. Sarna, who has done a bunch of other PM flicks--including my personal number two all-time from them, The Sweeper, where he was stunt coordinator under Spiro Razatos as action director--plus the David Bradley classic Hard Justice, and a personal video store mainstay of mine, The Perfect Tenant--which I can't believe I haven't covered yet! In addition to him, we have 50 Club member Art Camacho, and soon to be inducted 50 Club Member Cole S. McKay, plus "Broadway" Joe Murphy sans his stunt coordinating partner Red Horton. And as if all those names weren't enough, we have stunt legend Kane Hodder as one of Brion James's gang, though not credited as doing any stunt work. Guess with all the PM names they had they were able to let him take a break on this one! This is part of the PM magic, let these great stunt names do their thing, and the result is this high-octane alchemy that was the secret to their success.

Finally, we'd be remiss if we didn't mention Brian Huckeba's "Chicken Boy" role. As Jon pointed out, this was a kind of character that showed up in Ozploitation films that this movie is in the tradition of, and Huckeba goes all in on his performance. It just makes things that much more fun and memorable, and with low-budget filmmaking every little bit helps. When the guys at Comeuppance reviewed this, Huckeba commented on it, and if you listen to the PM Podcast episode, Jon interviews him in addition to Paul Volk and Jacobson Hart, and he gives Jon some great jewels when recalling his experience on set. It would be easy for Huckeba to look at this part as a one-off in his career, maybe something he shows his family 30 years later so they can all have some laughs, but the fact that he's still this enthusiastic about this part today is great to see. It's more fun for us to embrace it if the people involved are embracing it too.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently get this on Tubi, Prime, the Roku Channel, and Fawesome here in the States. That's a great way to catch this, but also if you see it in the wild on VHS, pick it up. And if you haven't yet, subscribe and listen to the PM Entertainment Podcast on your favorite podcatcher. Jon is delivering the PM podcast we've wanted for years, you need to check it out.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114537/

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

Night of the Wilding (1990)

We finish up our DTVC Hall of Fame inductions with, you guessed it, Spiro Razatos! Wait, you thought it was Erik Estrada? I guess I can see where you might have thought that. Anyhow, in addition to us, our friends Ty and Brett at Comeuppance have covered this one as well.

Night of the Wilding is an early PM flick starring Erik Estrada as a defense attorney, the best in the business who never loses and sometimes wears crop-tops in his off hours. After a group of teenagers out on a night of "wilding" crash a party a clerk at a grocery store is having and beat and rape her and her friend, the rich parents hire Estrada to defend them. This presents a problem, because the prosecutor is his ex-wife. He pulls all the bad tricks you'd expect a sleazy defense attorney to do, from victim blaming and shaming to acting like the "wilding" kids were lured into a den of iniquity by a couple of "loose" women, making them the victims. Just when we think it can't get any worse, the prosecutor uses herself as bait to draw the boys out, and now Estrada has to help her, even if it means losing his clients. 

This is a fun one. It is early PM, so the action isn't exactly what you want--more on that in a second when we get to Spiro Razatos--but it does deliver in the great early 90s nostalgia ways you'd want, from the fashions to the dialog, and for me that does the trick. Estrada is great as well, plus we have a small role by Joey Travolta, meaning he did both this and the AIP "wilding" movie. Similar to Bad Ass, this is also ripped from the headlines, drawing from the Central Park Five case at that time, this one follows the same playbook of removing the racial element by having the attackers be three rich white kids. As we know now, the Central Park Five were all exonerated after it was discovered they were falsely accused, but the furor that was stoked at the time surrounding themes like violence by teens, violence by young blacks, violence in New York, and violence against women, led to not only movies like this one, but also the Central Park Five being falsely convicted and losing 13 years of their lives. What we get here, in true PM style, is part ripped from the headlines, but also part plot that veers off course into a series of other killings, leading to a great foot chase, and then a sudden car flip. That's one thing that is great about PM, something that in 1990 that was supposed to be playing on exaggerated fears the public had based on narratives around stories ripped from the headlines, can now be enjoyed for the schlock early 90s movie it's become over the past 30 years.

You might be wondering, why this the film for Spiro Razatos's induction? And you'd be right in wondering that, as he really only does some stunt work here. The thing is, among his PM work, we've done all his greats except for Pure Danger, which I wasn't able to find. There were some others, like Extreme Justice and Maniac Cop 2, that he was action director on that I could've done instead, but I've also really wanted to do this film for some time too, so I figured it was good enough since he did do stunt work on it. I first got wind of who he was when I read an interview Gary Daniels did where mentioned him when they did Recoil together. As I dug deeper I discovered how big of a deal he is, especially now where he's action director on huge blockbusters like the Fast and Furious series; but not only that, he's responsible for a lot of the films that made PM as great as they are. The Sweeper, Recoil, Riot, Rage, and Last Man Standing, plus non-PM classics like One Man Force. With the vital role he played in making 80s and 90s action what we know it as, it was really more that I should've gotten him in sooner, and the only reason I didn't was due to my own ignorance. As we induct him here, this will be his 26th tag, so not quite 30 Club, but I imagine it'll be soon for him. Truly one of the all-time greats.

What is Erik Estrada wearing here? That crop top is fantastic. What you can't tell from the screen is he also has his reading glasses on. Rich attorneys with mansions in Bel Air always wear crop tops and reading glasses, don't they? At least they did in the early 90s, when it was a simpler, nicer time. Here in Philly, there's a movement to get a subway extension along the Roosevelt Boulevard corridor, and the person leading the movement is selling shirts for it, including a crop top version. In one of the pictures, a guy was wearing it, which I guess is more evidence that if you live long enough you'll see fashions come back that you never thought would--like today when I passed a kid wearing a Von Dutch trucker hat. We've seen a little bit more Estrada than we usually do on here lately, with us covering the two Andy Sidaris films he did as well. I think when I started the site I expected him to be a bigger part of it, but it didn't happen unfortunately, and I don't know when we'll see him again on here. Hopefully soon, but if not, we love you Mr. Estrada, crop tops and reading glasses and all.

PM is now at 42 films on the site, and according to IMDb, I think this is their 11th film, so it really is an early one. There are still elements of action there, especially at the end when we get a car flip seemingly out of nowhere, but it has more of the suspenseful storytelling around it that was a hallmark of some of those early ones, like the ones Wings Hauser did. This one also had the classic pairing of Joseph Merhi as director and Richard Pepin as DP. Of all the great director/DP pairings ever, for DTV action fans this might be the most iconic. While I say this is early PM, it's only a year later that we get to Ring of Fire, the PM take on Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, and something that we think of as a classic PM flick, so that "early period" really only lasted a couple years before they were "PM Fuckin' Entertainment," and then I think they start their peak in '94 with Zero Tolerance, and that wave builds through T-Force, Hologram Man, Last Man Standing, into the Gary Daniels "three Rs," The Sweeper, and Skyscraper, giving us some of the greatest DTV actioners ever. You can also see the wave cresting at the same time as they started the LA Heat TV show in '97. We still get some greats after that, like the last of the Daniels three Rs, Recoil, and The Underground with Jeff Fahey, but nothing like the volume of that peak period. And that's what makes that peak period so astounding, the volume of great films they put out in such a short time, and when I think of a movie like this one as part of their "early period," it really drives home how short that peak period was.

Finally, it's been a while (cue the Staind lyrics) since we've had a McDonald's sighting at the DTVC. I used to make a point of showing them all the time, and have finally decided to tag them. I tried a search of my site, and if it's accurate, the last time we posted was in May of 2011, with Mutant Zombie Vampires from the Hood, which also featured a McDonald's from LA. Sorting out the films where I just mentioned McDonald's, I think this is the 11th film with a McDonald's sighting in it--I didn't count Toxic Avenger, which features a classic McDonald's Styrofoam container, but doesn't show an actual McDonald's as far as I know. 11 tags, does that mean sometime down the road McDonald's could be inducted into the Hall of Fame? Honestly, I don't eat there as much anymore, not because I'm above it or anything, but because all the Center City locations here in Philly have closed, as have the South Philly ones along Broad Street. I'd have to walk ten blocks to the nearest one, which isn't horrible, but why do that? One funny thing is there used to be one on Walnut Street, and Google Maps still shows it as open, despite the fact that the building has been completely torn down, so I guess people order from there still and it causes a mess for delivery drivers.

And with that, let's wrap this up. As of right now you can get this on YouTube, and the version isn't horrible. Hopefully someday a company like Vinegar Syndrome, or maybe even Mill Creek, will put all of PM's flicks on Blu-ray, or maybe Tubi will get more of them so we can at least stream a decent copy, but until then, this YouTube version will work. And again, here's to you Spiro Razatos, one of the best to do it, we action fans are forever in your debt.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100259

Looking for more action? Check out my short action novel, Bainbridge, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

 

DNA (1998)

This is one I've been meaning to do for a long time now, and even with it's availability on Netflix Instant for almost as long, I still haven't managed to make it happen.  Well, now we're finally rectifying that and getting after it.  One of our friends who already got after it is the great Exploding Helicopter, written though by guest reviewer and other friend of the site, Ninja Dixon.  You can go there to see what they thought, and read further to see what we thought.

DNA has DTVC favorite Mark Dacascos as a doctor in a small hospital in Indonesia who is approached by Jurgen Prochnow to further his work on an experimental serum that boosts the human immune system.  The problem is, he's trusting Jürgen Prochnow, and that proves costly as Prochnow double crosses him and uses the serum to resurrect this alien killing machine that looks exceedingly derivative.  Now Dacascos, with the help of a beautiful CIA agent (Robin McKee), is looking to take Prochnow down and stop this beast.



While this is a DTV flick, it looks so much like it could have been widely released theatrical flop from the same time period, between the special effects and the canned dramatic wannabe John Williams orchestral music.  In that sense it's cool to see Dacascos in a film like that, but beyond that, what are we doing here?  Who knows why it wasn't a theatrical picture, but one guess is how derivative it is.  How many times have we seen this before?  And while we see it so much still on SyFy, at least those ones are bringing a camp element that this doesn't.  All time special effects great William Mesa directs this, so he gives the film a competence that on some levels works against it, because the story is such well-worn territory that it's crying out for camp.  At the same time, this is still 1998, so even his great special effects look dated at times, not to mention he probably didn't have the budget here to do what he could in some of the pictures he's known for.  The film's one exploding helicopter comes to mind as an area where his visual effects missed in a hilariously bad way, probably due to that lack of budget, and it stands out as a fun schlock moment, one that unfortunately wasn't indicative of the film as a whole.  Overall, while this isn't horrible, it's too unremarkable for a recommendation.

Mark Dacascos is a solid lead as always.  Don't know if I liked the hairdo after the beginning, but beyond that he's good.  I'm not sure why he didn't get more bigger roles, but I wonder if it was a film like this being relegated to DTV in the late 90s that held him back.  I wonder too if he lacks a certain on-screen charisma, which isn't as evident in his films where he's allowed to showcase his superior martial arts skills, but in a film like this rears its ugly head and holds him back in the lead.  I don't know.  One thing that would be really cool is if he can get a spot in the next Expendables film.  I know for guys like Scott Adkins and Gary Daniels, seeing them opposite more of the heavy hitters did a lot to showcase them to newer audiences, and I think that would be key for Dacascos as well.



Okay, do we want to do Jürgen Prochnow, or Proch-later-- Hey-oh!  The thing I don't get is, how does Dacascos not know what Prochnow brings to the table?  He's one of the ultimate baddies, of course he's going to double cross you and try to kill you-- Cenk Uygur voice: "of cooooourse!"  He is one of those ready-made baddies though, where you can just take him out of the package and insert him into your film and you're good to go.  I don't know what this one was trying to do by passing him off as a potential good guy for the first ten minutes, they weren't fooling anyone, but hey, good of you to try though.  Here's to you Jürgen Prochnow, you're one of the good ones.

Robin McKee as the CIA agent helping out Dacascos was so 1998.  She doesn't have a lot of other roles on her CV, and most of the ones she does have are small ones, but here she is 1998-ing it up.  Between the hair, the outfits, the make-up, it was all like "just give me the Friends look", and I gotta say, I loved that time.  It's an interesting fashion period, because the kids today miss it in favor of the more notable early 90s fashions, not the way guys getting their tips frosted has been embraced by them, even if they lump it in with early 90s Chess King style, as if the 90s existed as a monolith (sorry if I sound bitter about twentysomethings butchering my decade...!).  The only places I ever see the 1998 aesthetic exist today outside of movies like this are in tributes to Friends or Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and it is there that it will survive and exist for posterity.



What travesty did this film commit that truly sunk it for me?  No, not the fact that it's story was derivative, it was the addition of the kid.  Argh!  Why do movies do this to us?  And this isn't an indictment of the kid playing the part, it's an indictment of the actual plot device in toto.  Kids in action movies are annoying.  Period, end of story.  And this film makes it worse by committing the classic two wrongs don't make it right, by killing the kid off later on.  You can't do that.  The only thing worse than kids in action movies is killing kids off in action movies, so you can't fix the mistake of including him by having his death scene near the end.  All sauteed in wrong sauce.

Okay, let's wrap this up.  Beyond being there for a Dacascos completist or exploding helicopter connoisseurs, or maybe even Philippine movie connoisseurs-- check out the great Jim Gaines with a cameo up there!--, but it's a pass for me.  Even the nice run time and availability on Instant can't save it for me.  While it's not bad, it's not all that good either, and the fact that it's that unremarkable kills it in a sea of other options for you.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118912/

2-Headed Shark Attack (2012)

I'd been hearing a lot of great things about this one, and couldn't wait to make it happen. Then Netflix Watch Instantly aided in the process, and I had no more excuses, the time was now. Before we get into my take, three of our buddies have hit this as well: Mr. Gable at Mr. Gable's Reality, Tromeric at Guts and Grog Reviews, and Mitch at The Video Vacuum. Go see what those guys are up to, you won't be disappointed.

2-Headed Shark Attack is about some semester-at-sea program that looks like it came from one of those "universities" that advertises medical assistant programs during Maury and Jerry Springer episodes. As you can imagine, with something that well run, there wouldn't be any problem with a bunch of college kids out on a yacht in the middle of the Atlantic-- er Pacific-- Ocean, especially with a 2-headed shark lurking in the water. That's right, one shark, twice the killing power, and a whole smorgasbord of co-eds served up by professor Charlie O'Connell, who doesn't know his head from his ass. But hey, if you survive the semester, you get to wear scrubs and work in a doctor's office!



I don't know where to go on this one. Loved the last 30 minutes. Didn't care for a good chunk of the first hour. Useless scenes of bad, poorly acted dialog, that got us nowhere, and, most importantly, left us severely bereft of any 2-headed shark attacks. Also, this film starred Carmen Electra, and she was woefully underused. How did you drop the ball on that one Asylum? That last half-hour though, that was what I came for. Where were you all my life? I loved the camp aspects, the bad Jaws rip-offs, the CG and rubber sharks, all of that worked, I just wish there was more of that and less of college kids reciting bad dialog poorly. I was looking for something to rival Shark Attack, Shark Attack III, or Cruel Jaws, and unfortunately, I didn't get that.

That lack of Carmen Electra might be one of the most egregious mistakes this film made. Come on Asylum, you do a great job with Tiffany and Debbie "Deborah" Gibson, but all you do with Carmen Electra was give her one sunbathing scene, and a few other lines? This should've been her show. She should've been the professor, not Charlie O'Connell. Seriously, Charlie O'Connell? What, were Don Swayze and Frank Stallone busy? But I do see that you had no qualms about making Carmen Electra top billed despite the fact that you gave her smaller part. After how amazing last year's Mega Python vs. Gatoroid was, I was looking at something in that ballpark. While this wasn't horrible, it wasn't that great either.



In any shark attack film, it's important to discuss the main villain, and I think this 2-headed variety wasn't half bad. The problem for me, is that this shark film, unlike the ones I enjoyed, is that this one went away from what made it great for a good chunk of time-- the shark. In those other films, we had a scientist (O'Connell's character loosely qualifies) on a beach location, called into confront a problem, and trying all the tricks in his scientist toolbox to save the day; all the while, on a pretty steady clip, people are being eaten. The way this started off, I thought we were in for the same thing. But, because they had this silly semester-at-sea construct, we were stuck on the boat for an inordinate amount of time, then stuck on the island after the boat's hull was breached. Sometimes, just keeping it on the beach is the best way to do it.

I'm not sure I've watched a movie for this blog that was harder to capture images for. Fred Olen Ray's son, Christopher, directed this, and it looks like it was all shot on a handi-cam. Either the camera is moving at all times, or the actors are. Hey, I'm all for dynamic shots, but there's a point where you need to cut back on the Red Bull. Leave the jumpcuts and constant motion for the attack scenes, and let me relax my eyes for a second the rest of the time. Hey, people have blogs to write and images need to be captured in the process. Can you help us out a little?



I wanted to quickly mention Brooke Hogan's character, because I like what they did with it here. Normally her part would've been played by a guy: the total dick who's also kind of heroic and can save the day. I liked that they gave it to Brooke Hogan, and I think she did pretty well with it. It would've been much better though if her character wasn't the one this hinged upon. We needed Carmen Electra as the scientist and shark expert. And we needed this on a beach. And we needed Electra to want to close the beaches. And we needed mayor M. Emmett Walsh to tell her that's not possible during the peak tourist season.

Okay, so we've seen a lot worse from The Asylum, but we've seen a lot better too. Netflix Watch Instantly is the best place for this, because, at 87 minutes, it's not the longest investment, and if you can stream it, all you're investing is time. It's quite possible that the good in that first hour will outweigh the bad for you, but it didn't for me; on the other hand, there is a very solid finish, and that might be enough to get you to the church on time.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2043757/

Living to Die (1990)

It's always good to get another Wings Hauser flick in, and this one, which is both directed by and stars the man, is a PM Entertainment flick as well, so I figured I would be in good hands. When it comes to great Wings, our friend Ty at Comeuppance Reviews is no stranger either, and you can click on the link to see his review of this as well.

Living to Die has Wings as a former cop living in Vegas as a PI or something. He gets a job from a local businessman (named "Minton", but pronounced "Mitten"), after the guy gets the squeeze from Arnold Vosloo over something to do with a dead hooker. As Wings digs deeper, he finds out said hooker ain't dead, and that he has a thing for said not-so-dead hooker. Is she trouble though, or really a down on her luck dame in need of his help?



This is one of the best Wings Hauser flicks I've ever seen. This is one of the best movies I've seen period in I don't know how long. It starts off with quintessential Wings, with his trademark mouth half open shit eating grin as he hits on a female police officer. Then they pick up this paranoid dude that's being transported to a safe house, and as the guy freaks out, Wings freaks out even more, yelling "Are you on glue or something!" And the movie lives up to that awesomeness from there. Wings hits all the right notes in blending Film Noir with PM Entertainment sensibilities. One moment he's telling a dame that she and Vosloo were "trying to put the bite on Mitten", and then a few scenes later a guy has his brains splattered on a concrete wall. Not to mention there's a sweet smooth jazz score that sets the mood and makes me want to watch The Weather Channel. But ultimately, this is about the Wings, and it's all Wings all the time, from the lines, to the demeanor, to the mouth half open shit eating grin. I loved this movie, and I don't get to say that that often.

I went back through the Wings archives, and he has a surprisingly high rate of success here at the DTVC. It seems like for every bad one he has two good ones, which is like Dolph Lundgren territory. That makes this one potentially being his best a big deal, but I think it's the case. Between that beginning which is fantastic, to the middle where he's playing that combination of a Noir and a PM Entertainment lead perfectly, to the end, which I don't want to give away, but where he was excellent too. It's a great combination of a pretty cool movie, and the vintage Wings that you come to a movie like this for.



There's nothing like a good Zack Morris phone appearance in a movie. It's better than a boom mic. It's also one of the great things about watching movies from the early 90s, to see things like that that bring on a sense of nostalgia. This thing wasn't called a Zack Morris phone back then, it was a sign of conspicuous consumption. It was the iPhone of its time, only it didn't come with the advertising blitzes that cell phones come with now. No one cared about 4G or updating their fantasy teams back then, the mere fact that you could make a phone call without leaving your poker game was enough-- and these guys played five card draw, not Texas Hold 'Em.

To continue on that point, look at Wings drinking from that Bud Light can. Remember when Bud Light cans looked like that? Maybe it's because I was 10 or 11 at the time, but it seems like Bud Light was much cooler back then. Again, at 10 I probably didn't know exactly what constituted cool, but it felt like Bud Light was a trend setter, not the choice of posers that it looks like now. Were the guys in the Bud Light commercials as not cool then as they are now? Was it a poser beer back then too? Man, I don't know, I just see that old silver can and I think cool, and I see the new blue one and I think "Here we go, bunch of tools."



After a couple rants on nostalgia, I might as well look at some of the supporting cast. Arnold Vosloo is the other big name, though in 1990 he wasn't so much. He's great as the con man, especially with his South African accent. Asher Brauner is Minton (again, pronounced "Mitten") the bad businessman, and his character is interesting because he starts off as a not so bad guy, but becomes more of a heel as the film goes on. Our Film Noir femme fatale is played by Darcy DeMoss. She's pretty hot, but has a TMI love scene with Hauser that was a bit much. I guess being the director has its privileges, and we shouldn't be mad at him for that. Finally, we have PM mainstay RJ Walker, who is sporting some sweet hair in this. It's like the inspiration for Will Farrell in Zoolander kind of hair.

This is available on DVD or VHS, and you can even get it new for sale at Amazon. This is the Wings Hauser you came for, in my mind it doesn't get any better, so if you dig Wings, this is worth the effort to track down. I don't think you'll be disappointed.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100039/

Born to Ride (2011)

I came across this on Watch Instantly, and thought the idea of a biker flick with Casper Van Dien, William Forsythe, Patrick Muldoon, and Branscombe Richmond sounded pretty good. On the other hand, I've seen enough of these movies to know that that combination could go horribly wrong-- in fact, there was probably a better chance that it'll go wrong--, but I figured I'd give it a shot and see how it goes.

Born to Ride has Van Dien as a guy who rides motorcycles with Patrick Muldoon, and as the two of them are setting out on a long trip, they see an older dude getting worked over by some muggers. The guy gets stabbed, and on his deathbed, he gives Van Dien a box of money and stuff to give to his daughter in South Bend, Indiana. At the same time, in Arizona, a couple guys hatch a scheme to blackmail a senator while he's taking a payoff from William Forsythe. Forsythe is pissed at this, and he hunts the two guys down, though not before they hide the tape in one of Muldoon's bags. Now Forsythe's goons-- including Branscombe Richmond-- are hot on their trail. Will our heroes survive?



I think I got what I deserved on this one. All the warning signs were there, but I went for it anyway, and I paid the price. Where to start. Maybe the fact that the cover makes this out to be an all out biker flick when it isn't. There's no counterculture going on here, no badassness, none of that cool stuff we want from a biker flick. On the other hand, there's no action, no suspense, no drama, nothing to grab onto as a viewer. I'm not sure what this was supposed to be, a feel good Hallmark Movie event, a celebration of getting out there and hitting the open road, a 90s-style suspense yarn-- it was too all over the place to tell. And by the end of the 90 minutes, I'm left wondering why this movie was made at all.

As you know, I try to be solutions oriented here at the DTVC. I'm not just going to tell you what's wrong, but when the retort "do you think you could do any better?" comes, I like to see if I can. I think one way would be to pare this thing down, keep the blackmail aspect, but have Van Dien and Muldoon have to rescue the blackmailers or something. Either that, or go The Savage Seven route, have Van Dien and Muldoon stop at a reservation, and find the people there fighting greedy developer William Forsythe and his baddies. In that case, you make Branscombe Richmond a good guy, maybe a tribal leader who gives Van Dien and Muldoon some direction in their lives, something to fight for beyond just driving around and not caring about the world. It may sound like an overdone plot, but at least it works.



The fact that this went bad wasn't the fault of the actors involved, foremost among them Casper Van Dien. The character was actually pretty cool, but wasted in this script. He doesn't even confront Forsythe and his baddies, he just finds the tape and calls the cops. Let this guy do something. He has two fights in 90 minutes. He spends more time overcome with emotion than doing anything biker film-like, which would be great if this were a Hallmark pictures original; but then, why is there the Forsythe/blackmail angle in this? Again, all over the place, and ultimately not getting anywhere.

The other names in this were pretty good too. Patrick Muldoon played a real LA biker with his surfer-dude way of talking. It was pretty funny, but at the same time he could mix it up in a fight too, he just unfortunately didn't get too many opportunities for that either. William Forsythe was equally underused as a villain, going from menacing at the beginning, to just another guy yelling into a cell phone and smashing a tennis racket in anger. He would've been fantastic as an evil land developer. Finally, Richmond was an ill-conceived straight man for an even more poorly conceived comic relief bumbling hatchetman in the form of Forsythe's brother in-law. Completely sautéed in wrong sauce, as was much of this movie.



One area that, from what I could tell, was this movie's raison d'etre, but, like most of the film, was barely fleshed out, was this idea of hopping on a bike and tearing up the open road. No schedule, no place to be, the only destination is where we end up. It does sound fantastic. It would be great to get a small Indian motorcycle and see what this country has to offer, and through a movie we're supposed to be able to live vicariously through actors who are living out the things we couldn't do. It's another place that this movie could've been better but wasn't. What if they canned the whole blackmail/chase scenario, and made the movie episodic, three or four smaller stories where Van Dien and Muldoon help out some people in need, three or four human interest pieces that show America's vast regional diversity.

Unfortunately, this movie didn't do that, and really, didn't do anything else either. I have to confess, I was even taken in by the cover, because I thought it was of a woman in black leather pants, but it turns out they're just dark blue jeans. It's a metaphor for the whole movie, we're going in expecting some biker black leather action, and all we get is some dark blue designer jeans on some motorcycles. Don't fall prey to this one, take a pass.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1721491/

Instinct to Kill (2001)

I wasn't sure what to expect from this one, but I liked that it had Mark Dacascos, and I liked that he was reunited with Kadeem Hardison, whom he was great with in Drive. If this ends up being half the movie Drive was, we'll be in pretty good shape.

Instinct to Kill has Tim Abell as a psychopathic police detective, who splits time away from the force between being a serial killer and an abusive husband. It's his battered wife that finds out about the serial killing and turns him in, and when he escapes from prison, he wants revenge on her. She decides she's had it with being a victim, so she goes to Dacascos to learn to defend herself. Problem: she's not through with the training before Abell comes after her. Now Dacascos and her and Abell's old police partner, Kadeem Hardison, need to work together to take him down.



This one wasn't bad. It was mostly carried by Tim Abell, who was an exceptional baddie, but from there, Dacascos was great as the hero, and Melissa Crider solid as the woman fighting back. It had a few good fight scenes too, especially a couple between Dacascos and Abell. The problem was that I think it initially was supposed to be more about Crider taking down Abell-- hence the original title of The Perfect Husband-- and that left us with some inconsistencies, as Dacascos felt shoe-horned in in parts, or his role felt beefed up as opposed to naturally centered on him. That's a difficult thing to mitigate, because Dacascos is so good, it would be hard not to have him and Abell go at it. Overall, not bad though.

Let's start with Dacascos. This is not the kind of role where he's going to get a ton of fight scenes, meaning it's not in the ballpark of something like Drive, but he's still pretty solid. His fight scenes were choreographed by James Lew, and I think Lew wanted to go with more realism and less flash, which worked within the framework of the film, but left something to be desired as an action fan. The other thing that worked against him, was the wife's revenge/redemption aspect, because that undermined him as the hero. He had to be defeated by Abell so she could finally deliver the final shot and confront her demons.



As I said above, Tim Abell was absolutely chilling as the baddie. Every time he was in a scene, there was a sense bad things were going to happen-- and when I say bad, I mean evil. Think along the lines of Javier Bardem in No Country for Old Men. That really made this movie for me. Everything centered on how horrible he was, and how badly people needed to stop him. He's been a baddie in films we've seen before at the DTVC, including Storm Trooper where he also played an abusive husband (though nowhere near what he was here), and The Base, where he was also a baddie opposite Dacascos. It's this role, though, that earns him his DTVC tag. Great stuff.

This was executively produced by Mark L. Lester. Yes, that Mark L. Lester. This did not feel like a Mark L. Lester film though, except for one scene where Abell disguises himself as an old lady pushing a stroller, which he rolls into the back of an unmarked police car with two detectives inside staking out his old house. The cops look at him, not knowing what to think, then they see the bomb in the stroller, but it's too late, the whole thing blows up. There's also a pretty big shoot out in a hospital that was Lester-ish. But, alas, he was only the executive producer, so this was not as awesome as Showdown in Little Tokyo, et al.



Abell's character was something of a master of disguise, though it seemed like he always looked kind of like himself-- it was like people who worked with Clark Kent not knowing he's Superman because he's wearing glasses. Anyway, in this one scene, it looks like he's disguised as Chris Meloni. My favorite Chris Meloni role is as the cook in Wet Hot American Summer. I think a lot of people are used to seeing him as Stabler in Law and Order: SVU, but he's one of the better comedic actors working today, and hopefully we'll see more of that now that he's left that show.

I give this a somewhat cautious recommendation, just because, while it has some action, action isn't the main focus. Dacascos is good, and Abell is even better, so there's something there to hang your hat on. Still, this isn't the exceptional action flick we're looking for from Dacascos, especially with Drive on his resume.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0291265/

White Cargo (1996)

I don't know why I went in for this one. David Bradley is one factor. Shannon Tweed another. Tiny "Zeus" Lister a third. Is that enough to go out of my way to get my hands on something? I don't know if I'm qualified to answer that question...

White Cargo has Bradley as a jack of all trades independently wealthy police detective who works just for the fun of it, investigating a murder that leads him into a dangerous underground world of drugs, models, models as escorts, Asian and Italian mobs, and his ex-wife. Can he take the heat? He's David Bradley, if not, he can always pull one of those mini handheld fans out of his fanny pack and cool himself down, right?

Okay, no fanny packs here, just a lot of double-breasted suits. I don't know if I can recommend this, but I liked it. No real action other than the end. Not exactly stylish enough to be good Film Noir though, or sexy enough to be a sexy suspense thriller. It was just Bradley, betting on horses, investigating murders, trading proverbs with wise old Chinese men, eating pasta with Italians, playing blues on his guitar when his ex stands him up, and doing karate when people give him a hard time. Then there's Shannon Tweed, who is hot as a modeling executive, but she doesn't have a huge part; and Tiny "Zeus" Lister (Tommy "Tiny" Lister before I get a comment from someone trying to correct me) plays a bartender at the bar Bradley owns and lives above who helps him raid a drug warehouse. I don't know, it's a funny combination of stuff that just works as funny for me, but it may not for everyone else.

This might be one of Bradley's better roles, outside of the amazing Hard Justice. There's something about it that allows him to do what he does, without forcing him to overreach. It's as if it's so silly and over the top (Stallone style) that Bradley can't go wrong with how he plays it. Also, his martial arts, though not a large part of the film, when it's there, it's solid. All around, he enhanced the fun factor, which is a good thing.

What is that, Karl Kani Tiny "Zeus" Lister is wearing? Remember Karl Kani? It was like before Rocawear and Phat Farm, right? An urban Chessking, so to speak. If Color Me Badd wore Chessking, then Bel Biv Devoe rocked Karl Kani. I don't really know what Lister was doing here, like 90% of the film he's just a bartender, laughing at Bradley's jokes, holding onto money for him, and shaking his head when Bradley scores with a new chick. Then, apropos of nothing, he's sneaking into the drug warehouse to back up Bradley, and later wields a machine gun. Was that on his resume when he applied for the bartending job at Bradley's? "Ooh, you're handy with a piece, huh? And able to covertly enter heavily fortified buildings? Hmm, those are qualities I may need someday... I'll tell you what, I think you're our best applicant so far..."

This is like our fourth Shannon Tweed flick on here. You'd think it'd be more, but she does more erotic thrillers and sexy suspense yarns that aren't exactly what we do here at the DTVC. Her role in this was kind of odd, because at first it made sense, where she's the modeling agency exec who's getting her clients to have sex with rich people for big money (no whammies); but then she's kidnapped at the end of the film--why, I must've missed--and then is rescued by Bradley, which is when she decides that she too can handle a piece and knows the layout of the drug warehouse. There also wasn't a lot of her in this movie, which was a bit of a disappointment, just because she was one of the more talented members of the cast.

This guy here was like a combination of Brent Huff and Torgo from Manos: The Hands of Fate (and before more correction comments, yes, I know the Spanish word for hands is "manos"). It was just a cool novelty to have a character that was that combination of those two people. He takes the business end of a shotgun to the torso, which sends him five feet in the air and ten feet back into a bookshelf. Great way to go.

Amazon does have this on VHS, but you have to navigate some interesting titles to get there if you follow the link from the IMDb page. This is really for the big time DTV fan, and even then I'm not sure if it'll work for you. I don't know, it just has so many quirky attributes that as a whole, it all worked in a funny way.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114925/

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