A Time to Die (1991)

With the unfortunate passing of Richard Roundtree, I wanted to do a post in honor of him, and saw that this PM flick he was in is available on YouTube, so I figured I'd make it happen. In addition to us, Ty and Brett at Comeuppance, Chris the Brain at Bulletproof, and Simon at Explosive action have all covered this--and in addition to them, IMDb says Entertainment Weekly and TV Guide have also covered this, but the links on the critic reviews page are no good.

A Time to Die has Traci Lords as a fashion photographer who was set up in a drug bust and now has to take pictures for the LAPD for her community service. She also has a son living with her estranged husband that she wants to gain custody of again. One night, on a date with detective Jeff Conaway, she sees the guy who busted her, Robert Miano, and decides to follow him after he leaves. She ends up catching him killing a pimp, and she has all the juicy pictures of it. She has no idea how high in the department this conspiracy goes, so she keeps it to herself, and hopes to use it to blackmail Miano into clearing her name. That should work out well.

This is another fun PM flick. It's right around the time Ring of Fire comes out, so has more of that less action early period PM feel than the full-on exploding car flips every ten minutes feel we're used to with them, but we still do get our exploding car flip, so there's that. Traci Lords also puts in a great performance, which really anchors things; plus Roundtree, despite being relegated to angry police chief--full mustache and all--elevates that part to something more, which adds to the proceedings. On top of that, you have Miano as a great baddie, and the novelty of Jeff Conaway is as good as you'd want--even if he seems a bit handsy with Lords, more on that later; not to mention we have the classic PM quirks, like an angry lesbian couple that seem to always be in trouble with the law, Lords's son who wears business suits to school, and a fashion shoot Lords does with two models who do some choreographed dance routine while she takes their pictures. If you're looking for a fun 90s thriller, this is worth checking out.

While Roundtree's part wasn't big here, it was pure Roundtree, total leading man, commanding every scene he's in, so much so that I thought he was going to end up having a bigger role in this than he did. And I think that's the biggest travesty of his career, is that he didn't get more of those major leading roles, and while Hollywood's loss was our gain with films like this, it was also our loss too, because it would've been great for us to see him in those major leading roles too. Roles that his contemporaries got, like Harrison Ford or Michael Douglas, but that weren't made available to African American actors at the time like they would be later for Denzel Washington or Will Smith. And as great as those actors are, Roundtree was another level of leading man above them. Still, his iconic turn as Shaft to me is up there with Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones, or Christopher Reeve as Superman--imagine if Marvel had been more on top of their film adaptations in the 70s and made a Black Panther film then with Roundtree in the lead? And that's the legacy Roundtree leaves behind, perhaps he didn't get the roles a star with his screen presence deserved, but the roles he did get, he hit out of the park, especially Shaft, and with it he influenced a generation of action film fans like myself, because I don't think I'd be here writing this blog if it weren't for TNT showing all the Shaft films in the early 90s.

The star of the film is Traci Lords, with this being the first of three films she did for PM in the early 90s. It's crazy to think she was only 23 here, as she's playing someone older, maybe like late 20s/early 30s with an established career, ex-husband, and a child. She's already holding her own at this age in scenes with Roundtree and Miano, let alone someone like Conaway. We all know Traci Lords's story with her start in the Gentleman's Cinema industry, but she wouldn't have been able to successfully pivot her career after the way she has if she didn't have the talent to pull it off, which she shows here. This is only her fourth film on the site, which seems low because she's done a lot of direct to video stuff, but in looking at her bio, a lot of it is stuff like this, where she's the lead, or if she isn't there aren't the kinds of names in it that get us to post, like Dolph or Rothrock. Considering she has two more PM flicks we'll have to do, that'll give us a start to get more of her stuff on here for sure, and I think with Shannon Tweed getting into the Hall of Fame this year, she's a candidate for a future induction herself.

In addition to her, we had Jeff Conaway and Robert Miano. Conaway played this drippy detective who's always trying to hook up with Lords, and eventually she does hook up with him. As I mentioned above, he's very handsy with her, which seems off given the disparity in their ages, but I'm sure he passed it off as "I'm just getting into character baby!" A total 70s icon who's star had pretty much faded by this point, but that's why we come to films like this, to see our favorite 70s icons make a go of it, especially after those Taxi royalty checks have been blown that month and they need a little extra bread. With Miano, I realized that I hadn't gone back and updated his tag, so he went from three films to 13, with now this movie being his 14th. He's great in this role as the creepy, villainous dirty cop, walking around with his rubber gloves on and his gun with the silencer ready to cause trouble. With now 14 on the site, I don't know if the Hall of Fame is coming, since he doesn't have a lot of starring roles, but with the amount of work he still does, I could see us doing another 16 that just happen to have him in them and him getting in on The Asylum Rule.

Usually we discuss the film's on Hall of Famer in the first post, but it worked out better that we finish with them. We're now at 43 PM flicks on the site, which puts them in a tie with Cannon for most from a studio. Between what I have in the hopper for each, PM will pass them soon, and after that it's onto the 50 Club. According to IMDb, this is the 20th film from PM, but as I mentioned above, it looks like it came out right after Ring of Fire, which to me signaled a start in the shift from thrillers like this with some action elements in it, to full on actioners, and when that shift happens, that's when we start getting those PM flicks that are some of the best actioners of the 90s, which makes PM that proper replacement to Cannon in the world of low-budget action. But even being something that wasn't a full on actioner, there's still a lot of fun to be had, which is what I love about PM flicks, chances are I'm going to get 90 minutes of fun, something that's not always a given nowadays.

And with that, let's wrap this up. As of this writing, you can catch this on YouTube. The version isn't horrible, so I think it's worth it--and it's one I have added to my PM playlist on my DTV Connoisseur YouTube channel. As far as Richard Roundtree, he truly was one of the best to do it, and will be greatly missed. Here's to you Mr. Roundtree.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103090

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

Executive Target (1997)

It's been a little while since we've last had PM on the site, back in February when they joined the 40 Club. With that in mind, I'd had this as one of theirs I'd been meaning to look at for a while now. Beyond the PM factor, we had one of my favorites Michael Madsen, plus DTVC Hall of Famer Matthias Hues, and greats like Keith David and Roy Scheider. In addition to us, out of the six critic reviews on IMDb, three of them are the guys at Comeuppance, Will at Exploding Helicopter, and Simon at Explosive Action, so that tells you this has to be pretty sweet.

Executive Target has Madsen as a stunt driver serving time in prison who's broken out by a terrorist group while he's being transported. The terrorist group, led by Keith David, and featuring Angie Everhart, Matthias Hues, and Robert Miano among their members, want Madsen to drive for them, and to make sure he does, they kidnap his wife (Kathy Christopherson). First he drives for them in a bank heist, and then the real fun begins: they want him to kidnap the President, none other than Roy Scheider. But Madsen has other plans, and while he does kidnap the President, he takes him to a friend's place, and together they hatch a plan to take David and his baddies down. No matter what, in PM fashion it'll be all car flips and explosions to get us there.

PM does it again. Even at 100 minutes, which would be death for many other films, for PM it's just an extra ten minutes of car flips, explosions, Madsen being too cool for school, David chewing scenery as the baddie, and Scheider being bad ass Presidential. As Simon said in his review on Explosive Action: "this is why I got into this game." Here here. They really don't make 'em like this anymore, but PM made 'em like this back then, and we have them available on streaming sites or YouTube for us to enjoy. And it's classic PM too. When we hear bank heist, we know this can't be a simple smash and grab job, and PM gives us the chase we want. Plus it's the 90s, when we see Madsen on the tin it means he's really going to be in the film, not like today where he might be in for like 10 or 20 minutes. This probably isn't even a top 20 PM flick for me, but that's how great PM was back then that this is so entertaining.

I went back to look at the previous 12 Madsen films we'd looked at to see where this ranked, and it might be the best of his we've done. We have a great performance by him in Vice, and then Final Combination aka Dead Connection is probably the other one I'd consider for the best of his we've covered, but I think that one loses itself a bit in the end, whereas this is consistently PM throughout. Recently we did Dolph's 69th film, and there was a thought of who could catch him. Madsen has the credits, but with this only being his 13th film on the site, he's now 56 behind Dolph, so even if we did one Madsen film a week for a year, he'd still be behind Dolph. The thing is though, I looked on Tubi, and he has like 90 or 100 films on there, and while some are ones we've done before, or they're not DTV flicks so they wouldn't fit on the site, there are at least 60 we could do. Back when I used to do 3 posts a week, that would be feasible, but now that I barely do 60 posts a year it's harder to pull off. Another one we could do that with is Eric Roberts, who has 180+ films on Tubi. So if we did a movie a week for each of them, it would be like a George Thorogood song, "one Madsen, one Roberts, and one beeeeer..."

This is the second time we've seen Roy Scheider play the president on the site, the other being Dolph's The Peacekeeper--and he has another in addition to that, 2000's Chain of Command, which I haven't reviewed yet. Of all the people we've had play the President on here, he might be the most Presidential. Ty and I joke on the podcast about Randall Emmett convincing Donald Trump to play a baddie in some of their movies, but this Scheider performance has me thinking Biden would be one of the best badass Presidents the way Scheider is here, as he seems very Biden-ish. Maybe the best badass ever would be Teddy Roosevelt. Eisenhower was pretty badass too. And don't sleep on George Washington. And while I'm not sure if Bill Clinton would've made a great action star, at least he could play the sax if he was taking Busey's role in a shot-by-shot remake of Bulletproof--and who wouldn't pay to hear Bill Clinton call people "butthorns"?

Usually the film's Hall of Famers are covered in the first paragraph after my initial reaction, but Matthias Hues is barely in this, and I wanted to save my PM paragraph for the penultimate one, so here we are. This is now 19 for Hues, so he's about to pass 20, which doesn't sound like a lot, but as a Hall of Famer, we'd like to get that count higher, so hitting that milestone would be important. According to the trivia, he asked Merhi to be killed off, which may explain the scant Hues we got. We had Keith David as well, this is only 9 for him, but fun to see him acting opposite Madsen, two greats getting after it. We finally tagged Angie Everhart with this being her third film on the site. I'm expecting we'll see her more though, especially with the number of DTV films she did around this time, including more PM flicks. As someone known for her great hair, in this her character has it in a ponytail for good chunks of the film, so it's almost a hair bait-and-switch, though to be fair, we can't really see her hair on the cover, so they didn't sell us on her hair going in, just had us expect it on reputation alone.

Finally, I saved the PM paragraph for last. This is our 41st PM flick we've looked at on the site. The goal is to get as many, if not all, of PM's feature films reviewed on here. According to IMDb, they list 202 titles, of which 48 are LA Heat episodes, so that leaves us with 154, minus the 41 we've already done, so 113 or so to go? That seems pretty daunting--maybe instead of a Madsen project I should do a PM flick every week. A lot of them are available either on streaming sites, or YouTube--in fact, on my YouTube page, I've created a playlist of the PM flicks I've found so far on there. I think at the very least, the action films need to be on here, and there are still a ton of those that need to be covered too. I think what watching this film does is reminds me that, while newer films are good to cover, I should never go too long without covering something from this time, especially a PM flick, because there isn't much happening today that matches what they did back then. Maybe Jesse V. Johnson or Isaac Florentine, but neither of them are doing what PM did at the scale and absurdity we see in something like this. Here's to you PM, you were one of the greatest. As I always say, you don't need the "entertainment" in their name, because when we see "PM," the "entertainment" is a given.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Right now YouTube is the best way to check this out, though Amazon has used VHS and DVD at good prices. This is pure PM, with solid Madsen, great explosions and car chases, and a fun supporting cast. Maybe they don't make 'em like this anymore, but they did back then, and we have the means to watch them now.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119088

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

Assassin X aka The Chemist (2016)

When I came back from hiatus, I was looking at Dolph Lundgren and Gary Daniels's numbers, and started to think about who else had 40+ and 30+ movies reviewed on the DTVC, and from there gave that status a special recognition with the 40 and 30 Clubs. Kind of like how there's the baseball Hall of Fame, but also players in the 500 and 600 home run club. Anyway, I had Art Camacho just below 40, and was going to use this film to celebrate him joining the 40 Club--until I checked again and found 3 movies he was in that hadn't been tagged yet, putting him already above that milestone. I guess instead it's just an Art Camacho celebration, which is well-deserved as well.

Assassin X has DTVC Hall of Famer Oliver Gruner as a well-paid assassin who uses poisons to avoid any hand-to-hand combat. When it's time to kill a young woman he's taken a fancy to though, he turns on his employers, led by Patrick KilPatrick. Now the bounty is on his head, the hunter has become the hunted--but this prey strikes back!

I saw on imdb that this film won awards, and while I can see why, I also ran into the issue where the shaky cam was so pervasive that I needed Dramamine. That kind of shocked me a bit, because one of the awards this won was for Camacho's fight choreography, so why distort something so great behind a mess of shaky cam and quick edit effects? One thing I've learned over time is that that may not have even been Camacho's call, meaning we don't know who to blame for my nausea. I think without it, this really would have worked in that slimmed-down stylized actioner format, especially with someone like Gruner in the lead, and with Camacho's fight choreography. The other issue is the film's runtime. 102 versus 90 minutes doesn't seem like a big difference, but in movie terms it is, especially in a film like this where the added minutes run contrary to the slimmed-down stylized actioner tone. Overall though, I feel like the good outweighs the bad here, and especially appreciate that this wasn't just cobbled together and shot on the quick in Michigan or Baton Rouge to try and get it on Red Box and Prime as soon as possible; Camacho and the rest of the cast and crew involved are invested in trying to make something great, and it paid off in the awards the film won--and for me makes me want to judge it with the respect it deserves, even if parts of it didn't work for me.

This is no longer the post I had planned it be in celebrating Camacho's entrance into the 40 Club. Before writing this I discovered that he was an inaugural member along with Dolph, Daniels, and Albert Pyun, I had just missed a few films that he had worked on as either stuntman or fight choreographer. Just the same, he is someone whose DTV work deserves to be celebrated just because of the scope and influence he's had over the years. I was looking at his directing work, and he did one of my all time favorite PM Entertainment flicks, Recoil. I'm not expecting every film he does to be Recoil, but there are some elements in that that this didn't have that may have helped it work better. First, no shaky cam; second, a shorter runtime with more action--Recoil hits the ground running and instantly grabs us and won't let go. This film was ambitious in different ways from Recoil, and I appreciate the attempt, it just wasn't the home run Recoil was for me.

It's good to see Gruner back on the DTVC. Yes, he had a small cameo in Showdown in Manilla, but seeing him here as the lead reminds us why that cameo he, Rothrock, and Wilson had was so sauteed in wrong sauce. It's just fun to watch him kicking ass, and between scenes, be the coolest guy in the room. One thing I realized when I was going over his imdb bio to see what other films of his I could do in the future, was that I had totally forgotten to do Sector 4: Extraction, which was written by friend of the site Richard Pierce. He had asked me to review it right before I went on hiatus, and I lost track of it. For that Richard, I'm really sorry, but hopefully we'll get to it soon!

Martin Kove is the film's other Hall of Famer, and like many roles for him, he's not in this too much. On the other hand, he's in this much more than he's been in some other stuff we've seen that credits him. He unfortunately has the distinction of being one of the Hall of Famers with the fewest tags, yet maybe has the biggest filmography, so we have a lot of places we can go to get more of his films up on the DTVC, the issue is finding the ones where he has a bigger role--and I'd settle for a role as big as the one he had here!

Finally, when we see Gruner make his first kill, he has a dog with him that he needs to get rid of, so he just gives it to a child. Very irresponsible pet guardianship I'd say. You adopt a dog to get your hit, then pawn it off on some kid? What if the kid can't keep him? The parents drop the poor fella off at a shelter, then what? You hope he gets adopted again, but there's no guarantee. What if it's a kill shelter? So you've just killed an innocent dog just because you need to get close enough to poison your target? That's the hero we're rooting for? A dog killer? It's little details like that that can make or break a movie. Hopefully in the next Gruner/Camacho collaboration, we'll have a little more respect for our furry companions who aren't able to advocate for themselves.

And with that, let's wrap this up. For a Camacho celebration film, this may not have been his best--I reserve that honor for Recoil--but I think it's an earnest attempt to work outside the box and do something a little different in the action genre. The fact that it's available to stream for free on Tubi means you're only investing your time, which is still very valuable, but at least you're not out as much if you end up disappointed.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3616894

Hollywood Vice Squad (1986)

I was looking to get a film by Penelope Spheeris on the site, and I saw this was on both Prime and Tubi, so I decided to make it happen. Between the great cast, and the 80s nostalgia aesthetic, this had DTV Connoisseur written all over it. Let's see how it did.

Hollywood Vice Squad follows a team of vice cops in LA led by their captain, played by Ronny Cox. When a woman from Ohio comes to find her runaway daughter (played by Trish Van Devere and Robin Wright in her first film respectively), she goes to Cox, and he realizes that she's in the hands of one of the worst pimps in the city, played by Frank Gorshin. Cox puts his two best cops on it, Leon Isaac Kennedy and Cec Verrell, hoping they can get her out in time. At the same time, Carrie Fisher is new to the squad and trying to make her name, so she works to take down an S&M video ring that's using underage actors. Her partners don't take her seriously, so she needs to earn their respect first in order to be successful.

This is a lot of fun, as much fun as a movie like this can be despite some of the extreme content. Evil pimps getting young girls from Ohio strung out on drugs and making them turn tricks, or a BDSM porn ring using underage kids in their films, isn't exactly fun; but there are definitely a lot of fun moments, like this one above where Carrie Fisher is undercover trying to get Marvin Kaplan from Alice to solicit her for sex. To some extent, you can see with all the fun moments where we get the Spheeris films from the 90s like Wayne's World or Black Sheep, and that juxtaposition with the tense, harsh moments, combined with the great cast and 80s nostalgia I talked about, makes this one overall a winner.

There's something about the Penelope Spheeris movie, whether it's a feature film, a documentary, or a music video, that feels like the 80s and 90s I grew up in, and this film captures that vibe I've always gotten from her films. I'm a little bit younger than the John Hughes slice of Gen X, maybe a little more Nirvana than Simple Minds--I think they call us "X-ennials" because we're between the two generations--but for me Spheeris is up there with Hughes as an influential a filmmaker in that period, plus her influence went further into the 90s. When I look at her filmography, there are probably some others, like Suburbia, that technically fit the DTV definition, so we could include them here on the site, but I think out of all of them, this is the most DTV in tone and feeling, it's very much a late 80s/early 90s late night cable offering or video store pick, which is something I love going back to.

Out of everyone in this, Ronny Cox is the one most known on this site. He's also on the list of people who have played presidents on this site, along with Jerry Springer, Roy Scheider (twice), Rutger Hauer, Mel Novak, and now Vivica A. Fox after our Crossbreed review. In the Captain America post I said I had trouble reconciling him as a good guy after all the baddie turns I've seen him in, and after seeing him in this, I realize that was a bad take. He's great in this kind of positive leader role, and the same way every scene he was in in RoboCop had a sense of impending menace and doom, here every scene had a sense of good and that whatever was wrong with the world would be taken care of. Here's to you Ronny Cox, you're one of the great ones.

Carrie Fisher is the main person on the cover, but her role is more the lead of one of the side stories. It's kind of crazy to think that 1986 was only three years removed from Return of the Jedi. At that time, beyond Harrison Ford, the rest of the cast was having trouble getting roles, and I think this was one here for Fisher to do something outside the Star Wars realm. While I like the film's running time, and overall think it worked, one complaint I might have is that it would have been nicer if her storyline had a bit more meat to it, because the small amount we did get was great.

This is only our second Frank Gorshin film, the other being Bloodmoon, the Gary Daniels classic. Here he plays a real baddie, much more so than the fantastic Riddler he played on the old Batman series--which, as you know, is the definitive version of Batman for me. According to his imdb bio, he has a ton of other credits, especially in the 90s and early 2000s, that we should get a hold of. Hopefully we'll make some of those happen soon, because I can't think of anything better than an alum from one of my all-time favorite TV shows making it into the DTVC Hall of Fame.

On that note, let's leave it here. This is the Penelope Spheeris late 80s late night actioner that you came for. Great cast, great action, and great nostalgia factor. Right now it's on Prime and Tubi, so you can stream for no money. Definitely worth a shot.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091213

Blood of Redemption (2013)

New Dolph Lundgren movie, Netflix shipped it out to me the day it was released, and now we're reviewing it.  Is there anything else you need to know?  All right, let's see how it went.

Blood of Redemption has Dolph as Axel, a bodyguard and fix-it man for mob boss Robert Miano.  When Miano finds out his protection in the FBI is done, he decides to retire, but his son, Billy Zane, isn't interested in that, so with Vinnie Jones, who is the nephew of Miano's partner, Robert Davi, he goes for one last gig, a counterfeiting operation.  But things go bad, Miano ends up dead, and Zane's behind bars.  Now it's up to Dolph to get to the bottom of things.



While I was watching this, my girlfriend asked me how it was going, and my response was "well, at least it has Dolph in it."  This thing was just all over the place from the word go.  Zane's character uses the term "too many moving parts", and that's what this film suffered from.  On imdb it lists three writing credits, and this had the all-over-the-place feel of a film with three writers.  For instance Gianni Capaldi plays Zane's younger brother, and in the middle of the film his character is developed like he'll be a key player, only to have him have zero impact on the film's finale.  Then what are we doing here developing a superfluous character?  We're wasting valuable time, time that could have been some great Dolph Lundgren action instead, but because we have so many writers, we have no consistency.  "Blood of Redemption" denotes a simple formulaic action plot about a man on a revenge quest, instead of this convoluted over-complicated mess that focused so much energy on a web of intrigue and a plot twist at the end that no one didn't see coming.  As is often the case with DTV action: the simpler the better.

In terms of Dolph, he's great as usual, but this is a movie that doesn't use him the way the cover would have you believe.  This isn't really his story, though he's telling it, he's usually talking about things other people are doing.  He actually says at one point "I needed to sit this one out."  Are you kidding me?  Dolph Lundgren in a Dolph Lundgren movie doesn't ever sit anything out!  I'm not watching a Dolph Lundgren DTV flick so he can "sit this one out"!  Cut the shit man, that's as sauteed in wrong sauce as it gets.  Now he does have some great moments, especially one scene where he has to fight a dominatrix, which might go down in the Dolph canon as one of his classics, but the film itself will not.



If you've been rockin' with me for some time now, you know that I'm a solutions oriented guy.  I'm not content enough with saying the movie was bad and why, but what I think could have been done to make it better, especially from a writing standpoint.  As I said in the first paragraph, the obvious first step is to simplify and streamline it.  I'd go for a simple revenge plot, where Billy Zane betrays his father, and maybe even frames Dolph for it, and now Dolph needs to clear his name.  Simple but sweet, and Dolph cuts such a compelling lead that it wouldn't take much to develop him, nor would it take much to develop Zane who's a great baddie.  No convoluted flashback storytelling style either.  Let's just go start to finish and every 15-20 minutes you have an action scene.  Maybe you'll say "but we've seen that before Matt?"  Well we've seen the kind of film that we got before too, and we know which of the two has a proven track record.  Again, simple always over complicated.

As you saw above, this film has a lot of names, so let's go through them.  Billy Zane was as cool as ever.  He was wasted though by not being made the out and out baddie.  Vinnie Jones was great too, and this was a bigger role than we're used to with him, which was nice to see.  The more Vinnie Jones the better, that's what I always say.  DTVC favorite Robert Davi attempts to affect an English accent for his role, and it was interesting how it was really good in the scenes he acted out with Jones, and non-existent in the others.  Hey, why not, he's Robert Davi.  Finally, one of my favorites, Robert Miano, had a small role as the patriarch of the mob family.  Always good to see him.  Great names in a not-so-great film.



From a technical aspect, this had the pernicious modern DTV rapid-jumpcuts coupled with bad camera effects, which just made things even worse.  In one of Capaldi's fight scenes, there was this effect that I guess was supposed to mimic what a seal's vision is supposed to be, I don't know.  I know it made me sick to my stomach though it was such a mess.  Even worse was the gratuitous use of the character title cards.  I mean, it was so bad that characters were literally introduced to us in a prior scene, then they did that.  What?  What the hell are you doing?  And see that one with Dolph?  Guess when that comes in?  At the very end.  How the hell is that helping us?  All it's doing is disrupting the flow of the film, and believe me, this movie needed all the help it could get to maintain any kind of flow with the way it's story hashed out by multiple screenwriters was all over the place.

I wish I could recommend this.  I wish on the strength of Dolph alone I could recommend it, or because of all the other great names.  Unfortunately Dolph has been bitten by the bad DTV bug, and even he couldn't save it.  I mean this was so much cliched modern DTV that I was surprised that "Wake Up to the Bleeding" or whatever it's called song didn't come in at the credits.  You know the one I'm talking about, the one that's in all those UFC punchfighting flicks.  Anyway, whatever, this is available from all the usual suspects on DVD if you want to check it out.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2510268/

Hitman's Run (1999)

I saw this one on Netflix Watch Instantly, and with the cast it had, figured it would be a good one for the week of Eric Roberts's birthday. This is also a great time to bring up the blog Eric Roberts - His Movies, which is a site dedicated to looking at Eric Roberts flicks, from the popular to the rare. Check it out.

Hitman's Run has Roberts as a mob hitman who lets an old friend go that he was supposed to kill, which gets him into hot water with the mob, so he goes into witness protection. Two years later though, some kid hacks into the FBI database and gets the names of everyone in witness protection, and wants to exchange the disc for info on his dad. The mob takes it, and targets Roberts's family. Now he has to get the disc himself, and take out the mobsters.



This had some flaws, major and minor, which proved to be its ultimate downfall. It started with a chase scene that went on way too long, especially with nothing happening in it. There's only so many shots of cars skidding through sharp turns and close-ups of guys gritting their teeth while doing the wax-on wax-off steering technique that I need to see. Of course, the only thing worse than one bad chase is two, which is what we got here. Then they introduced the annoying quirky sidekick, complete with bad jokes and obnoxious behavior. I've never gotten that move, but it happens so often, and has felled many a mightier flick. Finally, and this was the biggest one, when you've got someone like Eric Roberts in the heroic lead, someone who is usually a great baddie, he has to be a really likable character. A mob hitman who rats on his employers instead of facing them? I mean, really, who should we be rooting for, Roberts, or Robert Miano? All of this could've been saved by some solid action, but that didn't exactly happen either-- a lot of shootouts that seemed mailed in. It's kind of disappointing when you consider this was directed by Mark L. Lester, the man who helmed Commando and Showdown in Little Tokyo. I guess you can't be good all the time.

This should in no way be looked at as an indictment of Eric Roberts, because he was still as good as could be expected with what he was given. I think we said the same thing about him in Border Blues. It wasn't his fault that the basic premise of his character was so blah. What he should've been was an undercover cop who makes a huge bust and goes into witness protection. Make him genuinely likable. I get that they wanted some kind of redemptive aspect, but it didn't work, and as a result, took the film down with it.



Yep, that's C. Thomas Howell. He plays an FBI agent, and though I think his character was supposed to have survived an attack by the mob through the use of a bulletproof vest, after the attack, we never see him again, so I guess he dies. I really liked his FBI agent character though, so the lack of him in the movie was another missed opportunity. He had this like ADD quality that made the character very dynamic-- literally.

And there's Brent Huff. He's in the film even less than Howell. I figured I'd give him a mention, because I know there are some readers who are familiar with his work, especially in Filipino low-budget imports. He's actually still doing a lot of work, including an appearance on Mad Men. Good for you Brent Huff, get after it. I know this won't be the last we see of you on here.



Finally, I wanted to discuss the casting decision for the part of Robert Miano's son, because it was totally sautéed in wrong sauce. Seriously, was David Charvet unavailable? No Bryan Austin Green? The guy looked so ridiculous when he tried the whole mean mugging routine and the whole tough gangster face. That's a part that needs someone who works in it, otherwise we can't take his ability to threaten anyone seriously-- and it's his ability to threaten upon which the film hinges. I mean what, Ed Cavanaugh was busy?

This is available on Hulu and Netflix Watch Instantly as of this posting. I'm not so sure it matters. Look at the cover (which is what I should've done!). If that sells you, maybe you'll like this; but if you're like "wow, Roberts looks kinda like a tool there, I bet this movie sucks", then you should trust your gut and stay away.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0174741/

Out for Blood (1992)

Usually I have a great introductory paragraph, maybe where I tell you how I came across the film, or when I first had a chance to view it. Simply put, this was a Don "The Dragon" Wilson PM Entertainment actioner I hadn't gotten to yet, and now I am. Need I say more? Also of note, our good friend Ty at Comeuppance Reviews covered this as well, so you can check out his post and compare.

Out for Blood is PM Entertainment and Don "The Dragon" Wilson's answer to Death Wish, with Wilson as a lawyer whose wife and kid are killed after they stumble upon a drug deal, and Wilson is severely wounded. Afterwards, he suffers from amnesia and doesn't exactly remember who did it, only that they were drug dealers, and he's going to kill as many of them as he can until he finds the right ones. Throw in the detective from all the Ring of Fire flicks, Robert Miano, the villain from Chain of Command, and a special appearance from an old friend.

This one does the trick. It's vintage PM Entertainment/Don "The Dragon" Wilson, from the fight scenes that almost come out of everywhere, to the shootouts that seem to go nowhere until a stuntman falls to his death, to the explosions that really make no sense--except in our action-loving hearts. "Hey, we paid for the fire experts, and we're gonna use 'em. I want two stuntmen ablaze in the next scene." "Hey, we paid for the pneumatic catapult, and by God, we're going to use it, I don't care if the stuntman looks nothing like Mr. Wilson." This is why we love PM Entertainment, and why it seems like they get the best out of Wilson.

I always talk about how the charm in Wilson is his "awe shucks" demeanor, but he sheds it very effectively to don his Bronson persona. This is the kind of Wilson we want though, kicking ass and taking names--and when he's not kicking ass, he's making great sarcastic comments about kicking ass. Line up the beefy guys with mullets, and let Wilson have at it. Yes, we want that. Five guys on a rooftop getting beat up? Yes! Cruising around on the hood of a car? Give me more. When it's done right, Wilson DTV action is a thing to behold, and when it's done poorly, it hurts. This certainly didn't hurt.

This had some major boom-mic-age. And I'm not talking for a second either. It seems like that at first, because right away we see the thing bob up and out of the shot. But then we go back to Wilson, and it's there again, just chillin' over his head. And then we go back, and it's there again, and this time a little lower, if that's possible. It's one thing when it's for a split second, but this was major, and it was awesome.

One of the best mullets ever was sported by Todd Curtis, who you may remember as the main baddie in Chain of Command. He was dressed like a cowboy here too, which I didn't get, but I figured I'd just go with it and not ask any questions. He didn't have a fight with Wilson though, which was unfortunate. They thought a fight with Ken McLeod would be better. Who knows?...

Recognize that face? Yep, that's DTVC favorite Don Niam, from Undefeatable. That's the only close-up in the film, and it happens in like one second. According to IMDb, it's his first ever role, so not bad. Right after that close-up, he's decked by Wilson and knocked out, and then we see him from a distance lying on the ground, or being dragged out of a van. Gotta love Don Niam.

And you gotta love Out for Blood. A vintage PM Entertainment/Don "The Dragon" Wilson collaboration. As far as I know, it's out-of-print on DVD, but can be bought at Amazon, plus they have it on Video-on-Demand; the problem is, when you click on the IMDb Amazon link, it's mixed in with a bunch of similarly titled vampire flicks and whatnot. Anyway, if you can spot this cheap, either on VHS or DVD, go for it, because it's worth it.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107762/

Looking for more action? Check out my short action novel, Bainbridge, and all my other novels, over at my author's page! Click on the image below, go to https://www.matthewpoirierauthor.com/

The Debt aka Back to Even (1998)

I first got wind of this when I saw an ad for it on the back of the sleeve of Prayer of the Rollerboys. It looked like it had to be the most amazing thing ever-- I mean, Michael Paré and Lorenzo Lamas, how much more awesome can you get, right? The only way you could screw up a pairing as awesome as that would be to turn it into a suspense/thriller yarn, but why would anyone do that?

The Debt is a suspense/thriller yarn about an expert copy printer, Lorenzo Lamas, who gets into his bookie friend/not friend Michael Paré for a lot of money, and in order to get back to good, he has to find these counterfeiting plates the mob stole from him.



"Okay, here's the deal, I have Michael Paré and Lorenzo Lamas, and I want to make a movie with them. Oh, God no, I wouldn't dream of making an action film, why would I do that? No, I got this rejected Lifetime movie script. Yeah, I figured Lamas and Paré would be perfect. If this works out, I'll hire Steven Seagal and Dolph Lundgren to star opposite Meredith Baxter-Birney in a film about one woman's struggle to find justice when the system's against her. Oh yeah, it should be great."

Seriously, what were these people thinking? And based on Lamas' then woman Shauna Sand getting a high billing, I have to assume he had something to do with the making of this bad boy. But who looks at Lamas and says "I see a nerdy printer." Even if he does all right pulling it off-- even if he hits it out of the park, which he didn't do-- it's still Lorenzo Lamas. He needs to be kicking ass all over the place. And Paré was definitely better, but again, would I rather see him as a bookie thug, or toting enough weapons to supply a small rebel movement in a Third World country into an abandoned warehouse to blow up some baddies? We know what the answer to that is, and for some reason, the only assholes who couldn't see this were the ones that made the damn movie.



Do I sound angry? Well, I feel I have every right. Great low-budget action stars like this aren't paired together often, and it just seems like over and over when they are, the result is crummy and they're poorly used. Look at Retrograde, where Dolph and Gary Daniels were wasted together; or even worse, Daniels and Seagal in Submerged. Is it too much to ask for that when I see Lorenzo Lamas and Michael Paré listed, I get a kick ass action film? Apparently the answer is yes.

This is Lamas' twentieth film here at the DTVC, putting him in a tie with Seagal for second all time, and I imagine he'll be passing that soon, since I have other films of his coming down the pike, while all of Seagal's are up, and we're just waiting for the next new one to come out. I also made a bold prediction in the Hawk's Vengeance post that Gary Daniels might end up being the most tagged DTVC Hall of Fame actor ever, and he definitely has a shot, but Lamas could give him a run for his money. I have a few places I might go next with Lamas. There's Blood Angels on Watch Instantly, Lethal with Frank Zagarino in my queue, and the rest of the Snake Eater series I just found on VHS. So many Lamas choices, so little time.



2010 is supposed to be the year of the Paré, and we're still working in that direction, ending in October with an induction for him into the Hall of Fame. The problem is, even though he's been awesome in all the movies of his we've reviewed, the movies themselves have sucked. We need to get that signature film up there to cement his induction. I'll keep working at it, and we'll get it done.

In one scene in The Debt, Lorenzo Lamas gets kicked in the nuts. I know how he felt, because finding out a movie starring he and Michael Paré is a crummy suspense/thriller yarn was a total kick in the nuts to me. For all you guys out there, I want to save you from that pain, and for all the ladies, if you've ever wondered what all the fuss is about with the whole getting hit in the balls thing, here you go, have at it.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0165098/

Confessions of a Pit Fighter (2005)

I saw this at the local video store, forgot about it, then saw a trailer for it on another DVD. Between the Flav, The Armand Assante, and the Quinton Rampage Jackson, I had a good feeling. Of course, it could still go terribly wrong, so I went in with my guard up.  

Confessions of a Pit Fighter is about a dude from East LA who killed a man in a pit fight, and went to jail for a while for it. When he gets out, he finds out his brother is pit fighting, trying to make some scratch for his pregnant homegirl. What none of them know is that Flavor Flav and Armand Assante are in cahoots organizing pit fights, and they have a horse in the race in the person of Rampage. He kills the pit fighter's brother in a fight, and now the guy is out for revenge. 

 

This wasn't too bad. I mean, don't get me wrong, it was horrible, but it was fun to watch. No women were raped, nobody's eyes were gouged out-- nothing gross like that. Just a bunch of pit fights that were pretty well choreographed, and Flavor Flav, Armand Assante, and Rampage. Anyway you slice it, good fights, funny plot, great supporting cast-- just a plain old good time.

Let's start with Armand Assante. This guy is great. We've had many people play mob bosses here at the DTVC, but I don't think anyone has pulled it off like he did. He channeled Pacino and Brando, but gave us enough Assante, with a dash of bad movie tongue and cheek. The other film we covered of his was The Killing Grounds, and in that one he played a cop mitigating racial tensions between Germans and Turks in Berlin. He was believable in both roles, but I think he had more fun here. I definitely had more fun with this movie than that one.

As you may know from previous posts, I'm a big UFC fan. I think if any big name fighter has the personality to pull off an acting career, it's Rampage. He's always funny in interviews, always has something great to say. The one problem I had with him here as the baddie was his lack of lines. At one point I thought they were saying his character, who was from Brazil, couldn't speak English. Then he walked up to the main character at a party and says "He smells like a bitch", which was hilarious. Let this guy talk. The other problem I had was how he looked like he was on the verge of tears every time he hit someone. Don't do that Rampage. This film also reminded me that I haven't seen Never Surrender yet. We'll get on that. 

Flavor Flav! I must confess (Confessions of a Pop Culture Junkie), I watched the first two seasons of Flavor of Love. It was just so fascinating. No TV network casts reality shows the way VH-1 does. The people they find are so amazing. Anyway, I'm getting off topic. Flav was good here. Better than Treach in Art of War III. Way better. Rappers can act. Yes, Flav wasn't trying to play a secret agent, and I bet he'd have just as much success, but based on what I've seen of Treach, I couldn't see him pulling of Flav's role here either. 

The hero was played by a dude named Hector Echavarria. He also directed Never Surrender. He's an Argentine dude, and according to imdb, he has a lot of projects on the way, so we'll see what happens. If Never Surrender is good, he may find his way into the Potential Hall of Famer section of the blog. I liked him here as the hero, and his martial arts skills were pretty solid. 

I'm going to cheat here and work in an extra paragraph, because Art Camacho directed this, and it may be his best work ever. This wasn't that bad. I think I'd put Crooked aka Soft Target, which had Don "The Dragon" and Olivier Gruner, above it, but this was a close second. I'm still kind of afraid to check out Half Past Dead 2, but maybe after this effort, Camacho's earned my viewership. Big if, though. 

This is worth a rental. It's bad, but a good bad that you can make fun of. I thought it was funny enough anyway. It doesn't try too hard to be something it isn't, and the cast you're renting it for all turn in solid performances. If you didn't listen to me on Art of War III, listen to me here. (And if you really didn't listen to me on Art of War III, I'm sorry.) 

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0463947/

Storm Catcher (1999)

We're getting down to the nitty-gritty on Dolph films. After this it's just Cover Up, and his newest picture, Direct Contact, set to be released on Tuesday. This is both exciting and sad at the same time. Exciting, because we'll have every Dolph DTV film reviewed here at the DTV Connoisseur. Sad, because we'll be out of Dolph films... until he releases more.

Storm Catcher has Dolph as an Air Force major flying a B-2 bomber with the next generation of stealth. Some home-grown terrorist organization sets him up, steals the plane, and plans to bomb the White House with it. Dolph isn't having that, and he's pissed that the baddies have used him as a patsy, stabbed his hot wife in the back, and tried to kill him in the back of an ice cream truck.

This film is pretty sweet. As you may remember from my post a long time ago on Agent Red, the scene when Dolph's partner steals his space suit and breaks into the hangar to steal the plane, is actually used in the beginning of Agent Red, only re-cut so it's like Dolph is going in to steal it for the US. It's so much better in Agent Red, especially the scene in the helicopter before, when his commander asks him "you think you can fly it?" and he replies "hell if I know." Beyond that cool connection to another Dolph film, Storm Catcher is really just another solid, yet silly, Dolph Lundgren actioner, and really, what more can you ask for?

Dolph has like four movies coming out this year. Direct Action next week, and Command Performance, Icarus, and Universal Soldiers: The Next Generation all set to be released at a later date. I'm kind of giddy just talking about it. When I was younger, like in high school, I would get excited when bands I liked released new CDs and TV shows would have new seasons and movies would come out about this or that that I really wanted to see. I usually don't get that feeling anymore, but it's back, just talking about all these new Dolph films.

I had seen this who knows how long ago with my friends when I first bought it. We generally don't watch it anymore, other than to juxtapose the scene in it with the one that Agent Red stole as a bumper between other Dolph films during our Dolph Fests. Watching it again for the blog, though, I saw something that I cannot believe me and my friends missed on first viewing. In fending off a knife-wielding attacker, Dolph picks up your run-of-the-mill black metal-framed college dorm futon, and uses it as a battering ram on the guy. It's just fantastic. The only explanation I can think of is that I fell asleep, and my buddy was using his laptop.

Dolph's wife is played by a model named Kylie Bax. Being a model, you can imagine she's extremely hot. She's also an extremely bad actress. And she has a New Zealand accent, which you think would cover up any acting inadequacies. She's also in the Dolph classic Jill the Ripper, but I don't remember her. Dolph's daughter is played by a girl named Yvonne Zima. Nothing special about her, except her name. Do you remember Zima? Do they still make it? When I was a freshman in high school, our science teacher asked us if we'd tried it. We were like "no, we're 14!" Anyway, he was fired at the end of the year for giving another class of students non-alcoholic champagne.

I always check out the keywords people tag onto films on IMDb. For this one, the first thing that popped up was "Policewoman killed." What? First off, I didn't remember a policewoman killed in the film. Second, why would anyone tag something like that? What significance does that have to the movie? And third, did anyone know there are over 100 films with the same tag? Really? Does anyone actually seek out movies based on whether or not they have a policewoman killed in them? Do they have collections of the best policewoman killing films? Is this a fetish or something? Maybe I'm the one that's closed-minded here. I don't know.

So if you're a huge Dolph fan, you need to make this happen. The biggest thing is the scene in it that was stolen for use in Agent Red. There's also the futon wielding scene. Dolph has some great lines, there's plenty of funny stuff in it: it's an all around good time. If you're not a huge Dolph guy, you may not find this as entertaining, so be careful before you unload a bunch of cash on it.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0179477/

Looking for more action? Check out my short action novel, Bainbridge, and all my other novels, over at my author's page! Click on the image below, go to https://www.matthewpoirierauthor.com/

Guardian Angel (1994)

Cynthia Rothrock was inducted into the imdb Hall of Fame recently, and I've been trying to get as many of her films up as possible. That's proven to be doubly challenging. First, I have so many other films that need to get up as well, it's hard to fit her in; and second, a lot of her films just aren't on DVD, which makes it harder to get at them when I can't get them through Netflix.

Guardian Angel is about Rothrock as a cop whose fiance is killed on the job by a woman set-up by the counterfeiter she works for. Depressed, Rothrock turns in her badge and moves into an RV. She's hired as a bodyguard by a man that needs her protection from the same woman that murdered her fiance. It's the chance at revenge she's wanted, but is it worth it?

This wasn't all that bad. Solid action and martial arts. Not as action packed as some of her other work, and the woman playing the bad guy (bad gal, I guess) wasn't very convincing as someone that could challenge Rothrock. Brian Thompson was better in Rage and Honor as her bad guy. This is what it is: good bad action, but there's nothing very spectacular about it.

This is the fifth Rothrock film I've done, but only the third that she's been the star in. The other two were the Rage and Honors, and this pales in comparison to those. When she and her partner go to a party undercover, their style was like a woman from a Color Me Badd Video, which was a unique touch for one of her films that I had to appreciate. What we really want to see is her great martial arts skills though, and she does display those often enough for this to be a solid performance.

Marshall Teague plays her fiance. You may remember him as the guy in Road House who tells Swayze he used to fuck guys like him in prison, to which Swayze wastes no time in ripping his throat out. In this film he's barely there, so I'm wondering if he had too many TV detective shows booked. He was in everything: Columbo, MacGyver, PS I Love You. And he's still in everything. Okay, maybe not. I don't know why I said that.

Art Camacho sneaks in here with a bit part. I know I keep saying I'll have to go through and tag every film he's had some association with. Right now it's just the ones he's directed. I have a feeling when all is said and done he may be tagged more times than our hero Dolph Lundgren. If that's the case, I may have to avoid tagging him until I get more Lundgren up there so Dolph's still the main man. It'll be like pitchers in the Japanese league walking Kevin Bass so he wouldn't break Sadaharu Oh's home run record.

One final thought, the description from Netflix is for a totally different movie. I don't know what it is, but it's a better movie than this one, at least it sounds like it. This happens often, and if you're using Netflix to watch the kinds of movies I do, just be aware of it. The movie you're expecting may not be the movie you get.

There are plenty of Rothrock films to watch before this one, and really it's just a poor job on my part to not get my hands on things like China O'Brien and Lady Dragon, and instead inundate you with this good but not great kind of fare. I'll see what I can do to get her more iconic work up here.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109950/

Looking for more action? Check out my short action novel, Bainbridge, and all my other novels, over at my author's page! Click on the image below, go to https://www.matthewpoirierauthor.com/

Whacked! (2002)

I have no idea where I first got wind of this. It's almost like it appeared out of no where. One day I was looking for something to watch, and there it was. I'm not sure why I watched it, or why I kept watching it after it started hurting. Maybe I knew I'd write a blog about this kind of thing someday.

Whacked! is about two adopted brothers: one a CIA agent, the other a mafia hit man. They come together when Judge Reinhold discovered some dude's been stealing money, and he fears for his life, so he goes to the CIA agent for help. When the brother shows up to kill him, all kinds of wackiness ensues. Carmen Electra is like their adopted sister too.



This is so bad. I don't even know how to describe how bad. Really bad. So bad I went to the doctor, and guess what he told me, guess what he told me? He said girl you better try and have fun no matter what you do. But he's a fool. And this sucks. Boring as hell. And the tediousness is exacerbated by these annoying flashbacks. During the film, the two main characters would be talking, and then there'd be this forced piece of dialog that would say something along the lines of "Just like that time at so-and-so's", and instead of trusting us to take their word for it that what they were discussing happened, we're saddled with a ten-minute pain interlude. How movies like this are made is one question, but why people like me subject myself to them is another entirely.

Patrick Muldoon plays the CIA agent brother. You may remember him as either the stalker dude from Melrose, or the dude who got the crap beaten out of him by Richard Norton in Rage and Honor 2. Nothing happens in this film that is anywhere near as cool as Norton telling him to keep his hands up while punching him repeatedly on top of that crane thing. It brings up an interesting question: how would you feel if your crowning cinematic achievement was getting the snot beat out of you at the end of a film you were a baddie in? Since I don't have a crowning cinematic achievement, I'd have to say I'd be delighted.



The mafia hit man brother is played by some beefy, Play-Doh-y faced dude. I was going to crack on him unmercifully here in this space, until I read his bio on imdb, and found out he's lost both parents, a brother, and a sister. That's rough. He also doesn't look as beefy or Play-Doh-y in his picture there. Just the same, in Whacked!, he looks like a Muppet or something. I just can't figure it out. It was kind of disturbing.

But no where near as disturbing as Judge Reinhold was in this. He had this gross ponytail, and he hooks up with this really hot chick, and when he does, we get to see his pasty white body in a pair of tighty-whities. Eww. The scene where the chick's eyeball is cut off as it hangs from her face in Hostel thinks that's disgusting. You're going to give this an R rating, but Bad Lieutenant an NC-17? Where's the logic in that?



I'm not really sure what Carmen Electra was doing in this. I'm probably less sure what she was doing in this, then the ten seconds she was in Max Havoc. Now she's doing films like Meet the Spartans, which I didn't think was that bad. Hopefully there will be enough movies out there to make fun of that the people who make those other kinds of movie will keep her employed so she'll never have to do a movie like this again. We at the DTVC are pullin' for you Carmen.

Like the plague. That's how you want to avoid this. Like it might kill one-third of Europe. It'll at least hurt enough. I just don't know how something this void of redeemable qualities is ever made. And I love really bad films, don't get me wrong. This just had too much blah and not enough fun.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0289616/