The Scorpion King 4: Quest for Power (2015)

I watched this I don't know how long ago on Tubi, but when I went to grab images for it, it was gone. Rather than rent it just to get images, I held off on this review, until finally our cable company had a free Starz week, and I was able to get it from there. Was it worth the wait? Well, it has Don "The Dragon" Wilson and Rutger Hauer, so two Hall of Famers helps. In addition to us, Bulletproof has covered this as well.

The Scorpion King 4 has Victor Webster back as our hero. While on a mission with a friend, said friend turns on him. That's because said friend is an evil prince in disguise who is looking to unleash a supreme ancient power. Our Scorpion King Friend (SKF from here forward) can't abide that, so it's quest time, and who better to go on a quest with than a fair blond rogue of a woman (Ellen Hollman), with whom our hero can have all kinds of screwball comedy will they or won't they romance. His Girl Friday this ain't, but after all manner of great cameos, will our hero stop this evil former friend and save the world?

This clocks in at a robust 105 minutes, and I had a hunch that would hurt, but with the robust cast, including two Hall of Famers, I knew I needed to review it for the site. I took one for the team, but definitely, that runtime comes complete with ample padding to harm your sensibilities. I don't really know why though? This is trodding the usual sword and sandal ground, so what was so important in there that they couldn't fit it all in in 80 minutes? And then with the cast, beyond Hauer and Wilson, we also had Michael Biehn, M. Emmet Walsh, Barry Bostwick, and Lou Ferrigno, plus a host of MMA fighters like Big Country Roy Nelson and the great Royce Graci, and WWE star Eva Torres. Yet none of those stars spent much time in the film, so they weren't able to help us over the slow parts as much as you'd hope. What about the action? Good action could've mitigated some of these issues too, but unfortunately that wasn't there either, despite us knowing how great Webster was from the Seagal film A Good Man, and Hollman was from Army of One. I think this had great intentions, but maybe those intentions got away from itself. Sometimes less is more.

We're at 39 movies for Don "The Dragon" Wilson, despite this one not having him in it much--or are we? Two films that were in his IMDb filmography, Siege of Firebase Gloria and Saigon Commandos are no longer listed, and I have him tagged for both. Does that mean he's at 37? Letterboxd also no longer lists those, so I guess I need to remove them too. So 37 for Don, which is also a first that anyone has ever lost tags before. Anyway, after Don did The Last Sentinel in 2007, he didn't do anything until he took a part in Lou Ferrigno's 2012 short film Liberator, and then this in 2015. 2015 squares with when I went on my unplanned hiatus, so at that time we thought we had all of Wilson's DTV films covered. Not only has he since done more films, but new ones appeared in his back filmography, and while some have been taken down from his IMDb, some still remain that need to be covered as well, so even losing the two, the 40 Club is only a matter of time for him. With Rothrock already in, I think it'll be fitting for him to be the fourth actor ever in. Had I not been on hiatus and saw this when it came out, this minuscule part of his would've been a disappointment after the hiatus he'd taken; but I'm watching it now in the 2020s, when he's back and working again, so it's really just adding another tag for him, which, if this film gets us nothing else, that's worth it.

Much further from the 40 Club, our other Hall of Famer is the late, great Rutger Hauer in his 19th film on the site. His role is only slightly bigger than Wilson's, but we've been used to these scant Hauer roles from the site's inception, so this was old hat for us--in fact I think "bait and switch" was originally the "Hauer bait and switch" with all the times he's on the cover but barely in the movie. He does have more starring roles in the past that would be good for the site, but a lot of times they close in on that 2-hour mark. Considering it's Hauer, I could probably suck it up. Watching this in 2015 we didn't know we only had 4 years left with Hauer, but he left an indelible legacy, and it will be good for us to go through the ones on the site that fit with what we do here. He made the Hall of Fame based on his reputation with those films, even if I hadn't covered them yet. Truly one of the best to do it, Mr. Hauer will be missed.

Another big name in this who we've had the pleasure of covering one time before, is M. Emmet Walsh. Roger Ebert's rule that any movie with Walsh in it can't be bad is seriously put to the test here. My relationship with him isn't as good as that, as I wasn't a fan of his character in the other film of his we've done here, Red Scorpion--which also means we seem to only do Walsh films with "scorpion" in the title--and even joked on the podcast episode we did on that film with Will from Exploding Helicopter that the scene where Brion James burns him with a cigar was an applause scene--and maybe the better one is in Critters when he's thrown out of a house. Could that be a new site, "M. Emmet Walsh Put Through the Ringer"? He's not really put through the ringer here though, at least not that I remember. It's a shame, the film probably could've used him getting tossed onto a full table of sword and sorcery spread with meats and fruits and goblets, it splitting in half under his bulbous weight, the spread collapsing on top of him, and then we cut back to him, disheveled with grapes in his hair and maybe a large leg of some poultry provenance that somehow made it into his hands in the commotion. He looks at it, shrugs his shoulder, then takes a bite and tosses it over his head. Either way, Mr. Walsh, you are one of the greats, and I kid because I love.

Finally, with this being another lackluster entry in the Scorpion King series, what would I do to fix it? First and foremost, there would be an 88 minute rule. Anything longer needs to go back to the editing room. Not only was this one over 100 minutes, but so are parts 2, 3, and Book of Souls. Okay, so we've made them shorter, now what? We need a hero with more personality, and maybe Webster can do it, but not with that hair and that beard, and he needs better material. If we're only rocking with him for 88 minutes though, maybe we don't need as much. We also need a stellar baddie, as the one we had here didn't cut it either. Maybe a Bruce Campbell? But Webster can't cut it with Campbell then, we'd have a Destro Effect. How about Michael Jai White? Just give him this franchise and let him get after it. Maybe have an installment directed by Jesse V. Johnson, and one by Isaac Florentine. Now the action is where it needs to be. If you've got names like those, think of the names they could add: Iko Uwais, Tony Jaa, Scott Adkins, Amy Johnston, Louis Mandylor? Now we have something. Instead of being a franchise that trades on a name for streams and rentals, it could be a franchise people actually anticipate the next installment of.

And with that, let's wrap this up. I think this might still be on Starz, but if not, I would only do this on a free streamer or one you already subscribe to. It's longer than it needs to be, with not enough action, and not enough scenes with some of the great names.

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

Corbin Nash (2018)

This was recommended to us in August of 2020 on our Facebook page by one of our readers, Kevin Hazell, and it's a little embarrassing that I'm just now getting around to the review. I had planned to do it as part of a move to get more horror on the site overall, and if you look back to what I've reviewed over the past year, you can see how well that's gone--I've done just two horror films since October of 2020, Welcome to Willits and Zombeavers. In addition to us, our friends at Bulletproof Action have covered this as well, so you can head over there to see what they thought.

Corbin Nash has Dean Jagger as the film's eponymous hero, a NYC cop who finds out from an old family friend, Rutger Hauer, that his parents were vampire hunters who were killed out in LA. So Nash goes out there, gets work as an LAPD detective, and starts investigating a series of mysterious missing persons cases. He gets too close and finds himself caught and held prisoner in some kind of human kennel, where he's fed bad food and forced to fight for the enjoyment of a group of evil vampires, among them DTVC favorite Corey Feldman. Will he make it out alive? And if he does, can he stop these vampires?

 

This is one of those ones where I don't know where to go with it. It's much darker than I prefer my horror, especially with the idea of the evil vampire kennel. By the same token, I liked a lot of the performances, and I liked the action elements. Where does that leave us then? I don't know how to explain what I think is wrong with the film without spoiling it, so as you're reading, if you don't want to go any further, skip down to the next paragraph. The thing is, Nash never really figures out how to beat the vampires, he just gets turned into a vampire by them when they try to kill him, and now imbued with vampire powers, he's strong enough to take them out. It's like Justice League just waiting for Superman to come in and save the day. It would have been nice if, at the very least, he figured his own way out of the kennel. Ultimately though there was enough good in this that I could appreciate it, and maybe with a movie like this, that's not a bad deal.

Normally, we start with the film's Hall of Famer, but in this case, for me the standout was Corey Feldman. He played an evil, transgender vampire, and he completely immersed himself in that role. From the DTV angle, Feldman in that role would be enough of a novelty to make it worth watching, but the fact that he nailed it as well as he did was something else entirely. He elevates the movie beyond simply that DTV level, especially with all the other names in this to help prop it up. At the same time, as I was looking up his filmography on IMDb, I saw something called "Corey Feldman, feat Snoop Dogg: Go 4 It (Video Short)" for the same year Corbin Nash came out. What was this? I had no idea Corey Feldman had a music career, or that he performed this song on the Today show in 2016. Wonders never cease. In terms of what I think of the song? I suggest checking it out for yourself...

Now for our film's one Hall of Famer, Rutger Hauer. We last saw him in 2014, when we did the film Blood of Heroes, which I did as part of the Drunk on VHS podcast. He has a very small part here, only in the beginning, when he's introduced to our eponymous hero through another DTVC favorite, Bruce Davison, who also has smaller part. This was the last film released before Hauer left us in 2019, with the other films he shot before then released posthumously. In addition to them, we had Malcolm McDowell as the "Blind Prophet," whose character is exactly as his name says. He sits on a bench in LA, and the main character talks to him from time to time. All of these guys are as good as you'd want them to be, but there is a sense that, with Hauer and Davison we want more of them, and with McDowell we want more of a character than just the standard blind wise man. With DTV sometimes you take what you can get.

Getting back to the fact that this is only the third horror film I've done in the last year, I looked at some other major DTV genres to see how that compares to them. I've done four Sci-Fi films, two documentaries, and four comedies--of which, two were Welcome to Willits and Zombeavers, so that covers our two horror films, and also means this is the first non-comedy horror film I've done since I did the screener Coven of Evil in September of 2020. I want to say here that my plan is to do more horror in the future, but I said the same thing last year, and look how that turned out. When I first started the blog in 2007, horror was expected to be a big part of what we were doing, but I noticed early on that action films were the ones getting the most traction, and it wasn't so much that I leaned into that to get more people to the site, it was more like I'd get comments saying "oh, this was good but did you see X from this person?", and then I'd watch and review X, which led to more people commenting on X saying "have you seen Y yet?" or "I think Z was even better by them," so then I'd watch and review Y and Z too, and things grew from there. I also think the horror review ecosystem is much larger than the action film one, so my reviews of action films don't have the competition that the horror ones do. An interesting side note to this though: the 1991 horror film Mom is one of our most-read posts, and when I went to its IMDb page, I saw we were only one of 12 critic reviews listed, which is a common number for us when it comes to action movies, but rare for horror. 

 

Finally, this film also has Courtney Gaines in it. That's important, because it marks a reunion with his costar from The 'Burbs, Corey Feldman. Thinking back 36 years to when that movie came out, it made total sense that not only would it be in the theaters, but that it would be a box office hit. Nowadays, could you ever see a film like that making it to the theater? It would a Netflix original, with maybe a limited theatrical release, but beyond that, it would only exist on Netflix, and in order to see it, we'd have to shell out $13 or whatever a month, as opposed to what we did back then where someone bought it on VHS, and we always had it. Yes, you can get The 'Burbs on Blu-ray for $5, but what about the new movie out there like The 'Burbs that's looking to be made now? Netflix will gobble it up, add some big stars, and give it a social media campaign that makes us think everyone who's anyone is watching it, keep it on their streaming site until they decide they don't want it anymore, and then, long after the faux social media buzz has worn off, it disappears, and we barely remember it ever happened; as opposed to The 'Burbs, where people of a certain age all know and remember it.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently stream Corbin Nash on Tubi here in the US, which I think is a good deal. There were aspects of it I didn't like, and it's definitely on the darker side for me, but there were also some performances worth seeing, especially Feldman's.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2948160

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The Blood of Heroes aka The Salute of the Jugger (1989)

Back in June Moe at Drunk on VHS came to me to see if I would be back on his show to discuss this film. After the great time I had with him and Jon from The After Movie Diner discussing Hard to Die, I was excited at the opportunity to do another pod. Of course, the episode devolved into Moe, Jon, and I discussing sub-Reddits about people dry humping bags of dog food. Also, it was after this episode that Moe and Jon decided to create their own night of live podcast programming on Wednesday nights, and they asked me if I'd like to do my own show on their night, which is what led to the creation of the DTVC Podcast with Jamie and me. Finally, this film was also covered by our friend Mitch at The Video Vacuum in his Rutger Hauer-Palooza.

The Blood of Heroes takes place in a brutal, post-apocalyptic future. In it, a game known simply as "The Game," played by "Juggers," is all the rage. It's a macabre spectacle in which a dog's skull is the ball, and the goal is to post the skull on the other team's stake--the catch being that there are no rules governing how you stop the other team from winning. DTVC Hall of Famer Rutger Hauer plays a disgraced former star who leads a barnstorming team from watering hole to watering hole to play for money. When spunky newcomer Joan Chen pushes the team to go to one of the big cities to challenge a pro team, at first he disagrees, but then they all decide to go for it. Will Rocky be able to prevail against all odds? Will the spunky Bad News Bears get it done?

I don't know what to think about this movie. It's not the worst thing ever, but overall it is still a Rocky or Bad News Bears paradigm with the only differences being that it takes place in the future and it's brutal. Rutger Hauer is as great as ever, and the rest of the cast was great too, including Delroy Lindo, Vincent D'Onofrio, and the aforementioned Chen, plus Richard Norton in a small cameo at the end. I guess, for my money, if I'm watching a post-apocalyptic cheesefest, give me Mr. Norton in a leather vest with no shirt and big gun driving an '84 Caprice Classic with no windows and spikes affixed to the front, blowing the shit up out of everything. But that's just me.

Rutger Hauer is pretty great in this, but when is he not? And this is no bait-and-switch, this is Hauer in his 80s prime doing is Hauer best. One area where this film differs from the classic Rocky or Bad News Bears paradigm is that we have a character like Hauer who was once one of the best, and only had to stop due to a falling-out with one of the higher ups in the city. That gives the Bad News Bears aspect of the team a level of quality that makes them less rag-tag, but it only works if Hauer sells it with his natural charisma and awesomeness, and he does that in spades

As I mentioned above, DTVC Hall of Famer Richard Norton also appeared in this at the very end. He's an Aussie, and this was an Aussie production, so it makes sense, but I felt like he was there reminding me of what a post-apocalyptic cheesefest was really supposed to be like. Okay, maybe this film was trying to do something new with it, and I applaud them for that, but to what extent is it really new if the end is the same, and a lot of how we get there is the same? Maybe it was bloodier and more macabre, but it's still The Bad News Bears. Seeing Norton, I rued the fact that we weren't driving old cars with black paint jobs and spikes and bars attached to it, that we weren't seeing big guns and exploding huts, that we weren't seeing Norton and Hauer kicking massive amounts of post-apocalyptic ass. I guess we could also say that this idea of brutal futuristic sports was not entirely new either, considering we had films like Rollerball and Death Race 2000 that also banged home this idea, so who knows.

According to Wikipedia, "The Game" is actually played in real life, known as "Jugger," and they don't use a real dog skull, and I'm assuming it's also not as bloody or dangerous. I guess based on the movie it originated simultaneously in both Germany and Australia, and they have international tournaments for it and whatnot. Here in the States I see it becoming more hipster than Ultimate Frisbee and kickball, as thin, bearded, not-quite-athletes talk about how they play Jugger, and how they stopped playing Ultimate or kickball because everyone was playing those sports. Lots of craft beer and food carts at the games too.

As I mentioned above, this had a pretty robust cast. Joan Chen was Hauer's costar, and if it weren't for the fact that he's a Hall of Famer, the first paragraph after the synopsis could have just as easily gone to her. For the kids who love Twin Peaks, she's great, so you'll love that. She's small enough yet driven enough that her character works as the newcomer Hauer believes makes the team good enough to challenge the pros. And then there's Vincent D'onofrio as the kid who joined the team just before Chen. This is the third film of his we've done here, the first being the fantastic Kill the Irishman, the second the lackluster Fire with Fire. Then we had the great Delroy Lindo, who my wife and I loved in Crooklyn. He's as great here, even with a smaller role. Finally, I should have mentioned this earlier, this film was written and directed by David Webb Peoples, who wrote Blade Runner, Unforgiven, and 12 Monkeys.

So ultimately I'm not saying this movie is a pass, just that it didn't work for me. No matter how you package it, it still seems like The Bad New Bears, only bloodier. As far as purchasing it, used VHS or DVD is the way to go. I want to thank Moe again for having me on Drunk on VHS with him and Jon. If you want to check out that podcast episode, go to the After Movie Diner (link in sidebar) and look for the Drunk on VHS archive.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094764/

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Crossworlds (1996)

In looking to get more Rutger Hauer on the DTVC, I found this potential gem on Watch Instantly. I also saw the name Jack Black, which made it all the more intriguing. It's just a question of whether or not this is a Hauer bait-and-switch. Let's hope it's not.

Crossworlds is about a world in another dimension or something that's been ruled by an evil dictatorship, the only threat to their hegemony a small resistance group. This regime isn't satisfied by ruling this world though, no way, they want other worlds, and other dimensions. To do this, they need a staff and a crystal in order to open inter-dimensional gates-- the staff in a US museum, the crystal being held by an art student, played by Josh Charles. Now the resistance and the tyrant are fighting for Charles and his crystal, with the fate of the universe in his hands. Will he make it happen?



I'm not sure where to go with this one. It's not bad, but we get a good chunk of set up and plot exposition so they can lay out the intricacies of this sci-fi world they've created. That's never a good thing, and the film suffered for it. When things were moving though, it was pretty enjoyable. Hauer was in it a fair amount, playing a resistance agent called out of retirement, so at least this wasn't a bait-and-switch. Though Charles's character was a little fatuous-- the classic everyday Joe somehow turns into a hero in a few days crap that's always less believable than the idea of staffs and crystals creating inter-dimensional gateways-- he made it work better than most. I also liked Stuart Wilson and Perry Anzilotti as baddies, and Andrea Roth as the resistance agent sent to get Charles and meet up with Hauer. Let's say not the best, but not horrible either.

While Hauer has more of a supporting part, as I said above, it's not an out-and-out bait-and-switch. He plays something of a cantankerous retiree, wise and no nonsense, which he's very good at. I went through the Hauer tag, which is now up to 16 films and one imdb credit where he doesn't appear (Hunt for Eagle One: Crash Point). There's really only about four or five true Hauer bait-and-switches, which is interesting, because the bait-and-switch was named for him. I don't know if I should seek out more bait-and-switches in the future so that term can have more meaning, or if I should avoid them like I usually do so we get more quality Hauer up here.



Earlier this week I reviewed Do You Wanna Know a Secret? starring Joey "Joseph" Lawrence, and wouldn't you know, the main character in this film is named "Joe" but always has people call him "Joseph". Whoa! I wonder, if Joey "Joseph" Lawrence had seen this movie and seen how the character getting angry when people didn't call him Joseph was played for laughs, would he have still insisted on the name change? One thing people don't realize about the Ricky/Rick Schroeder situation, was that that was an accident. A buddy had radio hosts Mark and Bryan give him a wake up call on his birthday, and when he answered the phone and they asked if he was Ricky Schroeder, he responded "yeah, this is Rick", and they thought he was correcting them and they made the big deal about it. Maybe that's what happened with Joey "Joseph" Lawrence too. Did Joey McIntyre ever convert to "Joe" or "Joseph" too?

I want to go back to the idea of the average guy who's turned into a hero over a few days. It's always been silly to me, and often needlessly so. In this film, for instance, Josh Charles's character was given this crystal as his birthright from his father, and even though his father died when he was young, his mother knew all about it. How hard would it have been to have had his mom send him to the Marines so he could learn how to fight, or at the very least take a few Judo lessons. Then, when all this crap happens, instead of expecting us to believe the guy that five minutes ago was whining and freaked out actually has something legitimate to bring to the table, at least there's something in his background that makes sense. Otherwise, if we're getting an average everyday guy kind of character, keep it consistent, maybe have him whine and freak out less as the film goes on, but have the female lead, who we know can fight, continue to be the hero.



Jack Black has a small cameo as one of Josh Charles's boozing buddies. Not as cool as his appearance on Yo Gabbah Gabbah!, but still pretty sweet. He crushes a beer can on his forehead, and yells a lot, but in that funny Jack Black sort of way. When he did this one, he was only a few years away from breaking out and becoming the big star he is today. As an aside, this is not the first Jack Black film we've done at the DTVC. He had a small part in Waterworld.

This is on Watch Instantly, so it's not much of an investment here in the States. I think in that capacity, or as a $2 thrift store pick up, this isn't bad. Decent Hauer, not too long of a running time, and some pretty good action. Not the best, but we've seen a lot worst.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115985/

Split Second (1992)

This film was brought to my radar through a Tumblr site, Rise. Really cool stuff there, especially some great pics from 80s flicks and TV shows. They posted a covershot from Split Second (not the one I used here), and I thought it was pretty sweet and reblogged it. I also realized that A) I needed to get some more Rutger Hauer up here, and B) I'd never seen this one before. So I put some work in and found out a buddy that's a pretty huge Rutger Hauer fan had it, so here we are.

Split Second takes place 3 years ago, when London is partially flooded due to Global Warming induced rains. Insert Hauer as a police detective who doesn't follow the rules, is reckless and dangerous, and has discovered a serial killer that he thought was gone is back and viciously killing people. But what is this thing? Is it even human? And does he have the firepower to stop it?



This one falls short for me. Liked the premise and loved Hauer. It felt like it would've made a great 90s syndicated TV show, with Hauer as the lead reoccurring character, and this would've been a sweet one episode in said TV show. It just didn't quite have enough material for 90 minutes worth of movie. The first 40 minutes were pretty lackluster, then it picks up with the introduction of Kim Cattrall's character, and more consistent danger from the baddie that gives Hauer more than just mean-mugging and great one-liners to do. Then we get an extended ending which we needed to transition to quicker, something that I might have forgiven more had we not had a stagnant first 40 minutes or so, because it was good once we got there, but I'd already had enough "let's get on with it"s. This definitely had its moments, but overall was a miss.

I will say one thing for it though, this is some fantastic Rutger Hauer. This is certainly no Hauer bait-and-switch, this is the kind of too sweet Hauer that makes me fall for the bait-and-switch, the kind of Hauer that got him in the Hall of Fame in the first place. Everything is awesome, from the leather duster, the shades, the cigar and cigarette smoking, and the sweet one-liners. His character was a bit of a dick though, which was a bit of a drawback, but they made up for it by giving him a huge gun. Too bad even his awesomeness couldn't carry this film through its dead spots.



This is some interesting Kim Cattrall. First off, she's something of a main character, but doesn't appear until around the 40 minute mark. Second, her hair is kind of weird, like a bob, but with the area right next to the ear shaved. What, is that supposed to be futuristic? Also, she has a shower scene, and boobs are shown. I know some people watch these movies for things like that, so yes, Kim Cattrall nude scene in Split Second. (And no, I didn't post any pics of it.)

The late Pete Postletwaite has a small part in this as the jerk fellow officer that's always giving Hauer a hard time. You can see from that image how far that gets him. In 1992, he made appearances in three TV shows, and four movies, including this one, Alien³, and Last of the Mohicans. I've always loved Pete Postletwaite, and he will be missed. Here's to you Pete, you were one of the good ones.



I don't want to give too much of this movie away, but let's just say it [cough cough] emulates [cough cough] a few sci-fi classics that came before it. I don't have a problem with that at all. As long as there's stuff happening, a rip-off can be a lot of fun. With this one, it's almost as if the rip-off is an afterthought though, like they were writing a classic serial killer suspense thriller, and then couldn't figure out how to end it, and came up with all this madness. Problem is, the serial killer suspense thriller stuff was too boring, so by the time we got to the fun rip-off, I was too bored. On the other hand, I can see how many people would go into this, be bored by the beginning, then have so much fun with the end, that they forget the horrible beginning. I know this feeling. When I saw Iggy Pop in concert, he was so good, I literally forgot about the horrible opening act. I mean that too, a buddy I saw the show with brought up the opening act, and I was like "what opening act?"

According to Amazon, there actually is a region 1 DVD of this, and it'll run you about $125 used. I'm not kidding. Obviously, that's not what you want, and on VHS you can get it used for much cheaper, under $5. If you see it for a couple bucks, it's worth it for the great Rutger Hauer, but otherwise, it leaves quite a bit to be desired.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105459/

Blast (1997)

This is not the easiest find, which is too bad, because it's chock full of great names. If you like your Albert Pyun films filled with Pyun Mainstays, this is the movie for you. One of the difficult things about tracking down a copy, is its name makes it ambiguous in search engines. Plus there's an Eddie Griffin movie of the same name that came out later. I was fortunate enough to have a buddy overseas send me his DVD-- being the DTV Connoisseur has its privileges.

Blast takes place during the Atlanta Olympics in 1996, where the villainous Andrew Divoff and his terrorist gang have taken over a swimming practice and the American women's swim team hostage. One kink in their plans: janitor/former Tae Kwon Do champ Linden Ashby is still kicking around the facility. Bad news, right? And he better save the day, because the rest of the assembled Pyun talent can only sit on their hands while Divoff bumps off swimmer after swimmer.



All right, so let's start with the good. Great cast. Let me rattle them off: Divoff, Ashby, DTVC Hall of Famer Rutger Hauer, Tim Thomerson, Vincent Klyn, Thom Mathews, Yuji Okumoto, Tina Coté, and Norbert Weisser; plus Kimberly Warren from Mean Guns. Wow. Other than Divoff, who cut a sweet baddie, everyone else was spread throughout the film with parts of varying sizes, but every one of them was solid. This had some good fight scenes and action as well, especially when Ashby was taking out Divoff's men Die Hard-style. I also liked the way Pyun cast this as a 50s/60s Red Scare type film, using terrorism as the monolithic evil, instead of the USSR. The one fault I had with the movie though, was how big the story was. There was just too much going on, and it weighed the film down at points. This effect was lessened to some degree because of the cast involved, but I went through periods where I forgot Linden Ashby was in the film at all-- and he was the lead hero! Overall, though, Blast isn't bad.

Look at that cast. If you play the Pyun Mainstay drinking game, you'll be pretty drunk by the movie's end-- you may not even make it. It depends on what you consider a Pyun mainstay, but we have Norbert Weisser, whom imdb says has been in 18 Pyun flicks, Vincent Klyn who's been in 13, Thom Mathews who's been in 12, Tim Thomerson who's been in 9, Tina Coté who's been in 7, Yuji Okumoto who's been in 6, and Andrew Divoff who's been in 4. All we needed was Scott Paulin, Nicholas Guest, Ice- T, and Michael Halsey. And cyborgs, we didn't have any cyborgs here either.



Andrew Divoff is such a sweet baddie. I daresay this film is Div-tastic. He's probably best known for the Wishmaster series, of which I have done none of yet at the time of this posting-- I know, I suck as a human being. Anyway, in Blast, he might be one of the better Die Hard terrorist style baddies, because he has the chops to live up to Alan Rickman as Hans Gruber. If Blast shows us anything, it's that the more Divoff, the better. Div-tastic.

As I mentioned above, I liked the way Pyun drew on the old Red Scare movie. He has a couple screens of text at the beginning, talking about potential terrorist attacks in Atlanta, then ends with a screen telling us that what we were about to see was what could've happened. We're almost a month away from the ten year mark of the 9/11 attacks, and after that happened in 2001, it made sense that the discourse shifted to make terrorism the new Cold War-esque enemy, but here in 1997, Pyun was ahead of that curve (as he often is with this kind of thing). Yes, the film devolves into Die Hard at a swimming practice facility (which I think is the prison from Mean Guns, but I'm not totally sure on that), but it does have those old Red Scare film elements that give it that extra layer beyond the simple Die Hard rip-off.



Check that out, Shannon Elizabeth as a credited extra. She gets a fair amount of screen time as a hostage, but she really doesn't have any lines beyond sobbing in mortal fear, hoping Divoff's cronies don't choose her to be the next sacrifice. I thought this wasn't the first Elizabeth film we've done at the DTVC, but it turns out, as I went back into the archives, that I haven't actually done Jack Frost before. How did that happen? I could've sworn it was one of the first ones I did four years ago. Anyway, Blast came out about two years before Elizabeth's breakthrough in American Pie, and now it looks like she's fallen back into the DTV world-- when she's not playing poker, of course.

This is definitely for completists or hardcore B-movie fans, because if you don't think it's awesome to see names like Tim Thomerson, Yuji Okumoto, and Andrew Divoff on the marquee, you'll have much more trouble with the down times when the weight of the plot becomes too heavy for it. On the other hand, if you love seeing names like that, I think you'll really enjoy this one. As far as I know, here in the States this is out of print and only available used on VHS, making it probably that much more a purchase for completists and hardcore fans only; and I know there's a Region 2 DVD floating around, so if you're in Europe or another area like Australia that is Region 2 compatible, you might have better luck.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115701/

Hobo with a Shotgun (2011)

This had a very limited theatrical run, earning a shade over $600,000 at the box office, but it stars DTVC Hall of Famer Rutger Hauer, and the subject matter looks like it's right up our alley. I waited for it to come out on DVD, which it did about a week ago. Let's see how it went.

Hobo with a Shotgun takes place in a fictional depraved city that's ruled by an equally depraved crime boss (Brian Downey from Lexx) and his two sons. After seeing their tyranny for a few days, hobo Rutger Hauer decides he's had enough, and wants to take the city back for the people through the business end of a pump action shotgun. Naturally, the crime boss thinks this is an untenable situation, and he wants Hauer out.



Wow, 70s Grindhouse excess in 2011, right there for your consumption. It's a lot to swallow, so be prepared. Excessively gruesome, violent, and gory, Hobo with a Shotgun doesn't pull any punches-- in fact it's more like Hans Gruber telling his men to fire on the police department's SWAT vehicle. "Hans you motherfucker you've made your point, let 'em pull back!" "Thank you Mr. Cowboy, I'll take it under advisement. Hit it again." Oh, and does it hit it again. At the end of it I felt like Clarence Gilyard was in my face saying "Oh my God the quarterback is toast!", because I was toast. Good or bad, I don't know, but I had fun, so you can take that for what it's worth.

Rutger Hauer can still carry a film as the heroic lead, even into his late 60s-- something to give guys like Steven Seagal hope. This is the kind of action hero you're rooting for from the jump, and the baddies are so bad that we need a Rutger Hauer to come in with a pump action shotgun and sort them all out. As a hall of famer, he's one of the original standard bearers, along with someone like a Klaus Kinski, who helped create and define the world of DTV so guys like Dolph Lundgren, Michael Dudikoff, and Gary Daniels could thrive in it, and guys like Jean-Claude Van Damme and Seagal could drop into it after their big screen careers were done. He reminds us of that legacy here, both that the DTV industry had its roots in the 70s Grindhouse, and that he is one of the point men that got us to where we are today. Vintage Hauer.



In the past I have gotten on films for goriness that I felt was depraved or way out of place, so it may seem like I'm talking out of both sides of my mouth for enjoying it here. Let me explain. This movie hangs its hat on extreme, out of control, borderline silly gore, and from the start this is what we're sold, and it never wavers. This is totally different from an action film that wants some cheap "dark" cred by grafting in an out of place and disturbingly bad torture scene where someone loses an earlobe or fingers or something odd like that. This movie does everything with the volume cranked up to eleven, and the gore is so over the top that it's meant purely to have fun with, not as cheap "dark" cred, and that's why I enjoyed it.

One of the funnier parts of the film came near the end, when the head baddie called in two armor clad badasses called The Plague. Look at that one, he looks like the mask from the cover of Quiet Riot's Metal Health album. Remember that bad boy? The video for "Come on Feel the Noise" also had that mask in it. Too bad Kevin DuBrow is longer with us. Here's to you Mr. DuBrow, you were one of the good ones.



This is the second film we've done recently that was released by Magnet, the other being the Wings Hauser flick Rubber. For me this is a two-for-two, but I know a lot of people have been lukewarm, or less, on both, and I can see that. Either way, I think it's great that there is a distribution house out there fighting the good fight and getting these movies out there for us to see-- and based on the fact that a lot of people have said they didn't like either or both of these, it shows the kind of risk they take financially in bankrolling projects like this. Luckily the good citizens of Canada and Halifax, Nova Scotia provided their tax dollars to defray a lot of Hobo with a Shotgun's cost.

You can get this pretty much anywhere, the question is: are you up for it? This isn't an action flick so much as an amped up gorefest/exploitation flick that's like bad horror in the style of bad action, if that makes sense. If you're thinking something like Falling Down with Rutger Hauer in Michael Douglas's part, you'd be way off, and may be upset with what you find. If not, if you're up for this, then I think you'll enjoy it.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1640459/

Dead Tone aka 7eventy 5ive (2007)

I first had this film in my Netflix queue under its original title, 7eventy 5ive. I actually think I had it on there twice, under that title and the Seventy Five, neither of which is spelled right. Anyway, it ended up in the Saved portion of the queue, where either films that will be released soon go, or films that are out of print go, and I figured, since it wasn't a new release, it was there for the latter reason. Then mysteriously some film called Dead Tone rose to the top of my Saved queue with a release date of February 9, 2010. I didn't think anything of it, because I have so many movies in my queue that I lose track of them. It was only when I looked it up on imdb before I reviewed it that I learned the truth: it was 7eventy 5ive re-released as Dead Tone.

Dead Tone is about some kids having a sleepover while their parents are having a cocktail party in the same house. They make some prank calls, call the wrong guy, and he shows up with an axe and murders all their parents. Ten years later, some twenty-somethings are being murdered in a similar fashion, and detective Rutger Hauer learns someone is killing the kids whose parents were murdered back then. Now a group of kids, some of whom were there that night, go to a secluded mansion for a party, and one of them is a total asshole who (inexplicably) convinces them all to play the prank phone call game-- with the same disastrous results.



As much as this is a bad Scream rip-off that didn't get the point of why Scream was good, as a slasher film it didn't seem any worse than say the new My Bloody Valentine or Friday the 13th films-- or really any bad teen slasher film. Former NFL player Kyle Turley was the killer. How much scarier can you get than a former NFL player wielding an axe? You can't escape him, he can out run you, out fight you. There were some great kills too. These are the things you look for in a great horror film, and it had them. Even if it was a little off in the execution and didn't quite work, I can think of many, like See No Evil, that had a better fate than Dead Tone.

That made me wonder why it wasn't held in any better regard, why it was relegated not only to DTV-dom, but this kind of lowest of the low that gets re-released with a new name in the hopes maybe someone would rent it. Sure, the original name was stupid as all get out, which probably necessitated a reboot, but still, I needed some answer as to why this was lost in the shuffle. One thing I realized while watching it was that the only redeemable character was the rich dude who owned the mansion, and the film tried everything it could to cram him into the heel role. The truth was, the guys that were supposed to be the heroes or the ones we wanted to root for were total assholes that deserved the axe much more than the so-called heel. That then leaves another question: why would you not make your heroes cooler characters? How could you not see this flaw during the movie making process?



That's when I went on imdb for a little info on who made this bad boy. I found a name, Deon Taylor Entertainment, which had a bio, written and submitted by them, that extolled the virtues of one Mr. Deon Taylor. It spared no expense telling us how great he was, how he conquered the "music game", how he had a career in the NBA and still tears it up in the NBA Entertainers League. Now I'm seeing a pattern. I'm seeing Deon Taylor pitching his film, telling people it's the greatest thing ever, because he's the greatest thing ever. I can see him wanting heroes that are assholes like him, thinking they're the bomb when they aren't, like he probably thinks his movie's the bomb, when it isn't. And through all this, I can see distributors at the big dogs thinking "get this guy out of here so I don't have to listen to him again!" (I'm just as sure as I said all of this that if Mr. Taylor reads this he'll call me a "hater" who lives in his parents' basement while Mr. Taylor is out stacking cash. It works as a security blanket to insulate one from criticism, but sometimes criticism is what it takes to make movies that are likable.)

The main reason why I even considered this film is Rutger Hauer, and, as you can imagine, it was a good old fashioned Rutger Hauer bait-and-switch. I feel kind of dumb, because this is the newest Rutger Hauer film I have up here, and it came out in 2007 (or 2010). He just turned 66, so one would think he'd have a ways to go before he was done, but it just seems like these small roles are more par for the course with him. I can understand that on some levels, but when he does a movie like Dead Tone, there's almost a Kinski-esque element to it, like he's taking the worst movie with the shortest shooting time for the most money.



And there was some money involved in this film. In the opening credits, listed as producers, I saw some famous athlete names, a few of which are above. You had former Sacremento Kings Bobby Jackson and Mitch Richmond, former Denver Broncos Ray Crockett and Steve Atwater, and my personal fave, former Pats linebacker Willie McGuinest (I still have his jersey from the 1996 season, my only Pats jersey). I'm sure they could pony up some cash for Mr. Hauer's services. As far as other actors you might recognize, Flavor Flav was some kind of host to open the movie, playing himself. Cherie Johnson, from Punky Brewster was one of the kids. Other kids included the wannabe wrestler from The Gingerdead Man as the rich kid who owned the mansion, Aimee Garcia from George Lopez (never saw the show, so I didn't recognize her), and then this dude Austin Basis, who for some reason I forgot to capture an image of, but it was killing me the whole movie trying to figure out what I knew him from.

This is neither cute low-budget horror film or fun teen slasher film. It could've been both, but the hubris of its director/producer/writer killed it. I'm sure he's telling people he also conquered the "movie game", but he didn't even come close. Anyone can remake Scream with none of the charm, satire, or creativity, and with all of the stupidity-- you don't need a super sized ego for that.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0462160/

New World Disorder (1999)

I saw this from somewhere in the middle of it on TV a long time ago, and was intrigued by the idea of 80s Tiger Beat mainstay Andrew McCarthy as a bad guy. But I lost track of it, started the DTVC, and my attention was taken by other things. I never forgot about it, though-- I was just never sure it really existed, chalking it up to an overactive imagination and falling asleep with the TV on-- I must've only dreamed Andrew McCarthy was a bad guy in a bad DTV actioner, it can't be real. Then I look through Netflix for any Rutger Hauer flicks I may have skipped or to see if he had anything new out, and what do I come across? You guess it, New World Disorder, starring Andrew McCarthy as the baddie. Oh, be still my heart...

New World Disorder has McCarthy as this gang leader who steals microchips and sells them on the black market. He just so happens to rob a factory while two dudes are finalizing a multi-billion dollar program that would give the possessor the ultimate in Internet security. One of the men dies trying to protect it from McCarthy, and the other hides, McCarthy thinking he's dead. Enter Hauer as the local cop with no computer savvy, and this hot shot FBI chick who's all about computers. They clash at first, then fall in love-- the usual fare-- but at the same time, it's a game of deadly cat and mouse as McCarthy and the cops try to get their hands on this program.



Pretty good, but not in a serious way. Probably funniest was how everyone had their data stored on Zip disks. Remember those? I think our high school year book was stored on one, and we thought ourselves the height of technology. McCarthy as a bad guy worked as horribly as you'd expect, which of course meant he worked perfectly in terms of the humor quotient. I'm not sure if the person who made this has seen Mannequin or Pretty in Pink, nor am I sure he or she has seen The Hitcher or Blade Runner, but Rutger Hauer is a legit bad ass, and Andrew McCarthy isn't, and when you try to get postmodern with it and switch the roles, it's just funny, and not in a good way, like Pierce Brosnan singing in Mama Mia!. Also, the classic late 90s techno geekdom was funny too. There's the perfunctory club where everyone is in latex or PVC clothing dancing to bad Aphex Twin wannabes, the young expert computer hacker, and all the cute animations telling us what all the programs are doing. You'll be partying like it's 1999.

Rutger Hauer was great. He's one of those rare actors that works in a big screen multi-million dollar production or a cheap sack of asscrack like this. In fact, he's the one who delivers it from sack-of-asscrackdom. As he's gotten on in years, his roles have been fewer, and the Rutger Hauer bait-and-switch has been more prominent, so it's good to go back to the 90s, when seeing his name on the cover meant seeing him for more than ten minutes in the movie. Total Hall of Famer in every sense of the term.



Tara Fitzgerald is supposed to be a hot shot kid showing Hauer the ropes in the computer world. In fact, though she was 32 when this was made, her character was 26, but she didn't look 26, she looked more like 32. I know older people play high schoolers all the time, and six years isn't that big of a deal, but here it kind of was. People tell me all the time that I don't look like I'm 30. I used to take it as a compliment, but now I understand better what they mean. There's no difference between looking like 27 and looking like 30, it's the word that 30 that sounds old. When someone looks at me and is surprised, it's because they don't associate 30 with looking like 27, they associate it with looking like 35. I guess what I'm saying is at 32, Tara Fitzgerald looked, at least in this film, like 35, so she didn't pass for 26 at all. I'm not saying she's not hot-- all right, I'll stop while I'm behind.

Is it wrong that Jefferson Starship's "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now" would start in my head every time I saw McCarthy on screen? The best was how he'd still do that wide-eyed stare at people for no reason like he did in his heartthrob roles. He'd be like getting ready to torture someone for information, and his eyes would get all wide, like they did when he talked to Kim Cattrall in Mannequin. Speaking of Mannequin, I had a conversation with someone the other day who was describing that movie to me as if I'd never heard of it, because I guess she hadn't. It was surreal, like me telling all of you about this movie called Indiana Jones where Harrison Ford plays some kind of archaeologist adventurer or something. She was like "Kim Cattrall I guess was in it, but I didn't really recognize her from Sex in the City, and the deal was she'd turn into a person, but only Andrew McCarthy could see her... it was weird." I was kind of stunned at first, then replied "yeah, Mannequin, it was a big deal when it came out. You've never seen it?"



Finally, I want to vent about one of my pet peeves in movies: bad guys who are suddenly dumb for the convenience of the plot. I think I may have brought this up a long time ago, but this time it was so egregious I couldn't let it pass. What happens is McCarthy kidnaps the FBI agent so he can exchange her with Hauer for the program. At his hideout, he has her taped to a chair and gagged so she can't warn Hauer of her whereabouts while they're on webcam. Perhaps she looked more like Jerry Lewis in King of Comedy, but the point was, she was restrained so she couldn't adversely affect McCarthy's plans. Fast forward to the end, where McCarthy is holding her, completely unrestrained, at gun point, as he confronts Hauer. You can guess the rest, she hits the gun out of his hand, and Hauer takes him out. It just makes no sense. It's not like they were in public and her being tied up would've drawn someone's attention, they were in McCarthy's hide out! Who thinks of this kind of dumb stuff? We're supposed to believe that this criminal mastermind who carries off all these complicated computer chip heists can't think to at least tie his hostage's hands behind her back, when he already had her tied to a chair earlier? And this kind of thing happens more than I can count in movies like this. It just makes no sense.

Okay, enough of that. I do think this is worth throwing on your Netflix queue. Hauer is great, the time warp to 1999 techno geekdom was cool to see, and of course, there's Andrew McCarthy as a baddie. ... And we can build this dream together, standing tall forever, nothin's gonna stop us now... Sorry if I got that one in your head.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0174982/

Wilder (2000)

I found this on Netflix's Watch Instantly feature, and figured I'd give it a go because I wanted to get another Hauer flick up. I didn't have great expectations for this, and often my instincts are right.

Wilder has Pam Grier as a detective investigating a murder, and her prime suspect is an Ob-Gyn played by Rutger Hauer. But if Hauer was really the baddie, then the movie would be over in twenty minutes, and we still had another hour or so left, so things weren't as they seemed. Turns out more women are being murdered, and they all had sicknesses stemming from radiation poisoning that would've killed them anyway. Now Grier realizes she's up against it, as the DA looks like he's in on whatever fix there is, and all signs point to a pharmaceutical firm trying to cover it's ass. To make matters worse, Hauser's flirting with her, and she's starting to fall for him, even though he's still the prime suspect to everyone else.



This was Lifetime Movie Network at it's finest, and I can't figure out how they got Hauer and Grier to play their parts. This needed Meredith Baxter-Birney and Bruce Boxleitner. Or maybe Victoria Rowell and Gerald McRaney. The actors just didn't fit here. They had too much edge for a Lifetime drama. On the other hand, their being out of place was the only thing that made it interesting, as it was pretty much just a Lifetime Movie Network throwaway pic.

Rutger Hauer was funny. He wasn't a baddie, which was cool. I got a kick out of watching him flirt with Grier. I think it does get old seeing him be a bad guy all the time, and it wasn't like we never saw him here, he was one of the stars, so there was no Hauer bait-and-switch. All-in-all, I can't complain about him, it was just that the movie sucked. I have a few in mind for the next film of his: Mentor, an indie flick that showed at Tribeca; Mirror Wars, a Russian airplane film with Armand Assante and Malcolm McDowell; or Bleeders.



One of the actors in this also starred in Punisher: War Zone. That wasn't a bad movie. It wasn't great, but it wasn't bad, and interestingly enough, it only made $7 mill in the theater, so it's sorta kinda a possibility for inclusion. What was crazy was the sheer amount of ludicrous violence in it. In one scene the Punisher punches through a dude's face. Wow. Again, it was not the Lundgren Punisher, but what made this one better than the Travolta one was that it wasn't trying to replace the Lundgren one. They weren't saying the Lundgren one was bad, they were just doing their own thing.

So this is it. I'm out. I have nothing else for you. I just talked about pam Grier a few posts ago when she starred in the Busey hit No Tomorrow, so I won't tread over that territory again; and otherwise, the movie just didn't have anything else. It was a bad Lifetime movie, straight up. If you like that kind of thing, and I ain't mad atcha if you do, check LMN in your local listings. Otherwise it's not worth it, even for the Hauer factor.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0246332/



But... since I have a paragraph, let me talk about another movie I just rented that came out last year and did pretty well: Wanted. That bastard was atrocious. I ain't lying. My roommate and I were trying to watch it, and at a few points we almost quit on it. First off, you can guess the whole thing almost from the beginning. Second, it was either really bloody or a bunch of CG special effects. Those were your options. It may have the biggest body count I've ever seen in a movie, in that a whole train full of people was sent plummeting into a ravine. Why would you do that? And it was the hero's fault it happened, and he didn't seem to care, and neither did anyone else. Just the same, the thing pulled in like over $130 million. This is why I almost never go to the movie theater anymore, because this is the crap they try to sell me, and it actually works with enough of the population that they can keep selling it. And the film had two Oscar winners in it in Morgan Freeman and Angelina Jolie. All I can say is this new Star Trek film and X-Men film better be good.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0493464/

Scorcher (2002)

This is not one of the fictitious films Ben Stiller's character starred in in Tropic Thunder. Though that would be awesome, instead I picked this 2002 film because it stars DTVC Hall of Famer Rutger Hauer, and future Hall of Famer Mark Dacascos. Really, if I could, I'd love to see the fake one in that movie with the monks that had Robert Downey jr.'s character and Toby McGuire. That was hilarious.

Scorcher is a disaster movie where all sorts of bad stuff is happening to the Earth, and if no one does anything to stop it, we'll all die. In this case, the Chinese have made the tectonic plates under the Pacific shift after some underground nuclear testing. John Rhys-Davies and his daughter are experts in the field, and they tell our president, Rutger Hauer, that a nuclear bomb must be set off in Los Angeles to stop them, or we'll all die after the Earth incinerates itself. Mark Dacascos is called in to make sure he and his team get the bomb down there after LA is evacuated. As an aside, Dacasos's daughter doesn't make it out of the city, and is stranded. She's captured by some nutjob with a burned face who wants to set her on fire. It's not a question of whether Dacascos will pull everything off, just a matter of how plausible it will be by the time the 91 minutes is up.



You want your answer? Not very. These kinds of low budget disaster films are usually crap anyway, but this one just got bogged down in the miasma of trying to fill 90 minutes worth of movie with 15 minutes worth of movie material. Really. Syndicated action shows have done more in 42 minutes. So to fill time, they had random ambushes, the thing with his daughter, and a conflict where this creepy guy who's been in every CBS crime drama is a bad guy sent to make sure Dacascos has a hard time. What we got was a total snoozefest.

Let's start where we always do, with the film's Hall of Famer, in this case Rutger Hauer. Amazing casting choice as the president. Almost as good as Jerry Springer in The Defender. In one scene, he says, after given an explanation by Davies of what's happening to the planet, "In English, please." You mean in Dutch, right? As is always the case, though, with movies like this, we see very little of Hauer. He gives a state of the union address that's pretty take-it-or-leave-it. For the most part he's just a dupe that has no idea what's going on and is easily swayed by his generals. Just not what I want from my Rutger Hauer president. He needs to kick ass, cut through the red tape, and get shit done. Good casting decision, but missed opportunity.



Dacascos isn't bad, but this is kind of a step backwards from I Am Omega and... and... wow, the last Dacascos film I did before I Am Omega was Redline back in June of '08, which also had Rutger Hauer. I didn't know it had been that long. He was definitely better in either of those than he was in this, but not for lack of trying. He was saddled with a bad script and poor plot premise. There just wasn't much for him to do. I also noticed he seemed to be trying to mask his Hawaiian accent some. Bad move. The Hawaiian accent, like the Southern or New York accent, is one of those ones that works, and doesn't need to be covered or changed. It's not like he's from Maine, like I am. Now that's not a cool accent. I do my best everyday to avoid dropping my "R's". I'm thinking after this picture it's time to go ahead and finally cover Kickboxer 5. I know what you're thinking "do you have to?" I do. Sorry.

The subplot with Dacascos's daughter was pretty superfluous and really annoying. First off, the guy that captured her had a gross face. Why? Second, we knew she wasn't going to be killed, so each scene where she tried to escape or tried to get her Blackberry or whatever was just exasperating. And finally, we knew that crap was only in the film because there wasn't much to tell about military guys taking a nuclear bomb to some place in LA and setting it off. The moment they started adding stupid crap to pad out the film should've been the moment they realized they needed to make something else. Maybe a post-apocalyptic actioner where Hauer is still president, and he and Dacascos are trying to hold together the remains of civilization. Sounds better already.



John Rhys-Davies is in this. I bring it up because he's not in the new Indiana Jones movie, at least according to imdb. I haven't actually seen the film yet, so I don't know. I plan on watching it, I just don't want to pay for it, because I saw it as a transparent cash-grab. Now, I must confess that I did, in fact, contribute to the film's earnings, when I had the Indiana Jones burger at Burger King. That was my one moment of weakness. No matter how principled I am, fast food will always bring me down. Ugh! I hate myself sometimes...

This might not be so bad if you see it on Sci-Fi or something, but to go out and rent it is a bad idea. There just isn't enough material to make a full length movie, and the stuff they add is just that, stuff they add, and it doesn't fit organically within the film. I'm sure at the drawing board it seemed like a good idea, and they did manage some grade A talent, but in the end it just doesn't come off, and worse over, it's just plain boring.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0303017/

Deathline aka Redline (1997)

This movie was first recommended to me by Amazon after I bought or searched for something else. Like the Netflix recommendations, the Amazon ones aren't always great, and tend to be movies I want no part of. They'll also suggest a book for me based on something I bought for a class five years ago, which seems even dumber. I've always wondered why those futuristic movies with computers that anticipate our every thought don't use something like Amazon as a rubric. You could have a guy going into a GAP and getting sold a skirt because he let an ex-girlfriend use his card. The robot would insist on him taking it, and malfunction when he refused.

Deathline (or Redline if you get it on Netflix) is a dark futuristic tale about an arms dealer played by Rutger Hauer that's sold out and murdered by his partner, Mark Dacascos. They're working in Russia, and the Russian army decides he's better alive than dead, so they bring him back to life, and point him at Dacascos to eliminate him. Hauer likes this idea, but is distrustful of the Russians; he meets up with a woman that looks strikingly like the woman that helped sell him out with Dacascos, and they hook up. As they try to take Dacascos down, Dacascos is trying to solidify his ties in the Russian criminal underworld. Everything's a mess and everyone's trying to double-cross everyone else, and the only thing we can count on is Hauer is our man.



This was pretty cool. I liked their take on the future, where it's a Russia dominated by American consumerism. It was like a reverse Clockwork Orange, where the Russians spoke English as opposed to the Brits speaking with Russian slang words. In 1996-7 that view made sense, but now with the boom in Moscow, it's less likely. Just the same, it was a future that took more thought than some of the others in films I've reviewed here, like America only allowing families one child or a Boston with a Little Beirut. The action was really solid too, with Hauer and Dacascos turning in performances worthy of their names. And there were a lot of boobs.

Looking at his bio on imdb, this looks like one of the last films Hauer's done where he carries it as the lead action protagonist. Considering he's 64 years old, I can understand that. But I don't think he'd be as silly as Harrison Ford in Firewall. I think that's because Hauer might actually be cooler than Ford. Is that possible? Let's see: Ford has Blade Runner, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Last Crusade, and the Star Wars movies. Hauer also has Blade Runner, then he has The Hitcher, Blind Fury, and Nighthawks... okay, it looks like Ford has that one... unless you deduct points for Firewall, Air Force One, Six Days, Seven Nights, Hollywood Homicide, and all those Tom Clancy penis envy films... I guess Hauer's still the man.



This is the fourth Dacascos film I've done, and the second where he starred opposite DTVC Hall of Famer Rutger Hauer. The other was Hunt for Eagle One, which was a politically unaware sack of propaganda asscrack. Even though I've seen plenty of Dacascos' other, better films, I think I've done him a disservice by having the Hunt for Eagle Ones so prominently featured, with only China Strike Force and now this film as the only other representations of his work. Redline and his work on Iron Chef America have reminded me of just how dumb that is. He's put out a lot of stuff recently, and I'm looking forward to reviewing it in the future.

Hauer scores huge in this with the Italian actress Yvonne Scio. She's like 25 years his junior, and ten kinds of hot. How can you not dig that? And he doesn't come across like Van Damme with his "Don't you guys wish you were me?", nor does he come across like a Dudikoff with a "Man, I'm lucky to be hooking up with this chick", nor does he come across like the Kinski "Who wouldn't want to have sex with me? And if they don't they aren't worth my time, because I'll find someone else more willing." He comes off like "Yep, this'll work." I think I like all four approaches, but in this case, with the woman involved, Hauer's fits best. Maybe it's a European thing (even though only Dudkoff's not European of the four I listed.)



You gotta get this. It's pretty awesome. imdb lists it as Deathline, but Netflix has it as Redline, so look for both, but don't mistake it for Red Line, a film with Corey Feldman and Michael Madsen. Anyone who's a huge Rutger Hauer fan will love his role in this. He kicks tons of ass and beds some nice chicks. It's a shame that those days are probably done for him, but we'll always have these. And Dacascos is worth looking into more if you haven't already, and this film is a good starting point if you haven't.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0124349/