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

Tales of an Ancient Empire aka Abelar: Tales of an Ancient Empire (2009)

I was trying to think when I first saw this listed on imdb. I want to say, almost as long as the DTVC has existed, this has been listed in various forms of development with rumored cast members added and dropped and whatnot. Then we were lucky enough to have the film's director, DTVC Hall of Famer Albert Pyun, come to us for feedback on things like the introduction, and keeping us up-to-date on its status. Well, now it's finally here, on the shelves, released from Lion's Gate. Let's see how it did.

Tales of an Ancient Empire is the long awaited sequel to The Sword and the Sorcerer. It follows the heroine Princess Tanis as she searches for her half-siblings, including the rogue Kevin Sorbo; and her father, an even bigger rogue and better fighter, Michael Paré. She needs them to defeat the evil vampiress Xia, who has taken over her kingdom, Abelar. Will they prevail?



This was a very interesting flick that unfortunately had a very unfulfilling ending. It started a tad slow, with the first 40 minutes or so jumping in and out of flashback mode, but I think it overcame that and became something that was a cool take on the modern sword and sorcery flick, using some cool cinematic techniques, genre mixing, and giving it a more macabre edge; but that ending was, I don't know, not there. It was like a Cliff's Notes version of an ending, with a few still shots, some drawings, and a narrator telling us what happened. We watch the sword and sorcery adventure flick for the end battle, to see our hero overcome the villain, and without that it makes everything else lose its meaning. Also, despite what the cover says, this was a tale centered on the princess, played by Melissa Ordway, and to have Sorbo be the one to slay the villain (or rather, to be told it was Sorbo by the narrator) betrayed that. Even if we know roughly what's going to happen, if we'd only had something, just a little battle, I would've felt better about this, because otherwise it was pretty good.

Before I get any further in, I want to discuss the cover, because, if you've been rockin' with the DTVC for some time, you know my feelings on misleading covers, and this is one. What makes this one different, though, is that Pyun himself on his Facebook page came out against the cover because it was misleading and not the way he wanted to sell his film. I'm not saying there's a Sorbo bait and switch, but he's more the supporting character to Melissa Ordway's hero, and the other guy (Matthew Wellig) is barely in the film for two scenes, while the cover makes it look like he and Sorbo are embarking on this film-length quest together. Pyun said Lion's Gate had the say on the cover, but what I don't get is, why wouldn't they want Ordway on it with Sorbo? She's very attractive, and I imagine she'd sell more copies than Wellig, especially in the demographic that sword and sorcery caters to. You already have enough beefcake in Sorbo, why not add some beauty too, and at the same time not be so obviously misleading the consumer.



Melissa Ordway takes her place in line among the long list of Pyun female protagonists. This is the one thing that I think will frustrate people misled by the cover the most, that I, having seen over thirty of Albert's films, was very comfortable with. I've always liked how he works in very testosterone heavy genres, like action and sci-fi, and instead of sticking with the conventions, he's bucked them by casting women in the lead roles, and not making them women playing men, or women as mere objects for men to ogle, but real women as real heroines. Again, it wouldn't have been too hard to put her on the cover with Sorbo, and by not doing it, it does both Pyun and Ordway a disservice. Also, a previous Pyun protagonist, Victoria Maurette, co-stars. You may remember her from Bulletface and Left for Dead-- the latter I unfortunately haven't seen yet. It was cool to see her working with Pyun on another project, and she was as good here as she was in Bulletface, so hopefully this won't be the last of his films we see her in.

One thing that I thought was really cool about this movie was the pulp comic book feel it had. The imagery, between the actual drawings and the live action scenes, was great. A lot of the shots had the feel of a comic book frame, but in a way that retained their cinematic qualities. There were also some settings that felt like westerns, Japanese samurai films, or Hong Kong cinema. These are the things that I come to an Albert Pyun film for, to see things done that I've never seen, knowing that he's going to take risks and try something new and not play it safe. He could've just made another Hercules episode, and I think a lot of people would've been happy, but he wouldn't have, and I like and respect that. Another thing worth pointing out, the script was written by Cynthia Curnan, and the music done by Tony Riparetti, two people who have worked closely with Pyun on projects in the past. There was a symbiosis between director, music, and story because of that that enhanced the film. This wasn't just a script that was thrust on Pyun to direct, and the music wasn't just laid down as an afterthought. When you have that symbiosis, it makes the movie a little more genuine.



Okay, I know what you've all been waiting for: "tell me about everyone else in this film!" I've already mentioned Sorbo, who plays the co-hero or slightly supporting hero to Melissa Ordway. He's great in that Lee Horsley role as the brave rogue. Paré plays his father, and he's even more heroic and more of a rogue. He appears at the very beginning and the very end. The other DTVC Hall of Famer in this is Olivier Gruner, and he has a small part alongside Sasha Mitchell. Yes, that's right, I said Sasha Mitchell. When was the last time we saw him, huh? He's buffer than he was, so you may not recognize him. He's not listed on imdb as being in the film, but both he and Gruner are listed in the sequel, Red Moon. Then we have Ralf Moeller with a small part as one of the palace guards, Sarah Ann Shultz as one of Sorbo's sisters, Whitney Able as Xia, and Jennifer Siebel Newsome as the Queen of Abelar. Finally, our Pyun mainstays. Beyond Mitchell and Maurette, we had Norbert Weisser at the beginning as Xusia, Xia's dad, and Scott Paulin in a small role as Tou-Bou Bardo, a play on Pyun's classic character name, Brick Bardo. (Also, we had Morgan Weisser, Norbert's son, meaning we have the children of Pyun mainstays in Pyun films now!) Oh yeah, Lee Horsley has a one scene cameo reprising his role from the first film, which was fun to see.

The ending is what makes this one so hard, because it left me with a "that's it?" feeling that was hard to reconcile with the rest of the film that I enjoyed. One thing that's good about this one as opposed to Pyun's other recent efforts, is that you can get it via Netflix and Red Box, so you can try it out prior to buying it (I did buy it-- no regrets though!) to see if it works for you. As a sequel to Sword and as a sword and sorcery flick that tries new things, it's really good, the ending just didn't work for me.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1136688/

Luck of the Draw (2000)

I actually came across this film when looking for more Sasha Mitchell films-- of which there aren't many that we haven't already done. I had it my queue for a while, while other films jumped it in priority; but now it's at the top, as the second film of our Dennis Hopper tribute week.

Luck of the Draw has the star of Gladiator (the underrated boxing movie with Cuba Gooding Jr., not the Ridley Scott blockbuster), as a dude looking for a job after spending a few years in the clink for breaking and entering. After being turned down at a bank, he's in the right place at the right time as a bunch of Dennis Hopper's men hit a limo carrying extremely high quality counterfeit plates. Government agent William Forsythe appears at the hit as well, and a three-way shootout ensues, with the dude carrying the plates falling in front of our hero. Now he sees an opportunity, and he tries to sell the plates through his old partner, Michael Madsen. The thing is, Dennis Hopper doesn't suffer losing his property lightly, and he'll do whatever it takes to get it back.



This wasn't too bad. It was a classic Tarentino-esque heist caper style deal where the violence is more out of fun than any seriousness. The problem is, they betray that lightheartedness when they kill the hero's love interest's dad, played by Frank Gorshin. In a way it's germane to the plot, but it was weird and took the whole thing in a direction it didn't need to go. Also, the whole love interest thing was quick and forced anyway, and I was surprised they didn't do like most heist films do and have her have ulterior motives, i.e. the fact that she even falls for him in the first place is because she sees him take the plates or something. Anyway, that this worked at all was due to the great performances of the large and deep supporting cast, from Hoppper as the main baddie, to Eric Roberts as his right hand man and Sasha Mitchell as his grunt; to Forsythe as the fed; to Frank Gorshin as the father; to Ice-T as the rival crime lord; to Madsen as the hero's friend; all the way to the Patrick Kilpatrick in one of his best roles ever as the Irish hitman. It was those performances among a pretty run-of-the-mill premise that sold it for me.

In my Circle of Pain review, I made fun of the script, saying the writers' go to verb was "fucking". It just sounded ignorant, as swearing can sometimes do. But guys like Dennis Hopper throw rules like that out the window. He makes swearing awesome. In one scene where he's on the phone, he calls a French guy a "fucking French frog fuck!" He has a way of taking material like this, that is pretty basic, and making it something more. He's not the only one though, everyone else I mentioned above did the same thing. I mean, how easy would it be for Hopper to mail it in and just be the guy from Speed every time he's cast as a baddie in a DTV movie, but he doesn't do that, he brings it each time, and I think that's why we love seeing him in movies so much.



The love interest was a total hottie, Wendy Benson (since Wendy Benson-Landes). Her character was an unfortunate cross between the main character's redemption, and hottie window dressing, only having a moment of true assertiveness grafted on at the end. I was surprised, because had they used her character better, I think it might have made for a more intriguing movie. I mean, why would a woman as hot as her pick up a guy who looks like Corey Hart off the street and take him to meet her father (which is essentially what happened)? She wouldn't, that's why. What she would do is see our hero outside of the bank, see him pick up the briefcase with the plates in it, and find out where he lives from her boss's paperwork that had the guy's work application with his address on it. Maybe she falls in love with our hero in the process, maybe she tries to use him and leave him-- whatever, it just would have been that little bit that would have made this thing really work.

The hero's name in real life is James Marshall. You may remember him from A Few Good Men, but he's really great in Gladiator, as was Cuba Gooding Jr. (our good buddy whom we haven't seen in a while. I wonder what he's up to...). Here, with his poofy hair, he looked like a Corey Hart impersonator, which is cool, don't get me wrong, but in the context of this film looks kind of silly. I think his character was supposed to be a reformed bad boy trying to make a new life for himself, but he ended up just looking like a boy-- even if he was 33 at the time. If you haven't seen it, go out and rent Gladiator. That'll give you a new appreciation for how good both Marshall, and Gooding Jr. are.



DTVC favorite Sasha Mitchell is in this as a partner for Eric Roberts, the man doing Hopper's dirty work. The only martial arts he even remotely does comes when he beats up Frank Gorshin because he's into Hopper for some gambling debts. I was half-expecting big graphics with words like "Bam!" and "Pow!" to pop up on the screen each time Gorshin was hit, and I could tell as he fake took each punch, he was drawing from his old Batman days for inspiration. Anyway, Mitchell did look like he'd put on some pounds, so perhaps that's why we've seen so little of him over the past few years. That's too bad, though, because the guy is only in his early 40s, and he had the stuff back in the 90s to lead action films, so he'd make a great candidate to carry the torch as the current crop of DTV actions stars get even longer in the tooth.

This is fun for the actors, but not so much for everything else, so you need to ask yourself how much you like these guys. The film is available on Netflix, so that's a bonus. What you're looking at is a classic Tarentino-esque heist film, pretty pedestrian at best, but the performances from all the stars were anything but, and so that made it for me, but it might not for you.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0207036/

Kickboxer 2: The Road Back (1991)

I don't remember when I first saw this gem. I think it's always been a part of my life. The real travesty is that I don't own it. I don't know why that is. Maybe it's always been on my To Buy list. Maybe I've just never seen it at the right time. Maybe I'm just a moron. Who knows?

Kickboxer 2: The Road Back is 90 minutes of pure awesome about a kickboxer, played by Sasha Mitchell, who's the younger sibling to the two kickboxing brothers in the Van Damme movie. Cary Tagawa, playing a Thai businessman, wants revenge for Tong Po's loss, so he figures having Tong Po kick Mitchell's ass will suffice. Mitchell doesn't want to fight at first, so Tagawa has his goons burn his gym down. That was a mistake. He thought he had everything planned out, but he never planned on Mitchell being so awesome.



God I love this movie. It's so amazing. The plot's sweet, the fights are great, and the music is insane. They have the best songs for the beginning, middle, and end. That perfect late 80s crap action give-it-all-you-got rock song with the dude over singing. One of them the guy even does some scat. Wow. And this idea of Sasha Mitchell doesn't want to fight in the kickboxing association, so they burn down his gym. Only in bad action does this kind of thing happen. Can you see Dana White burning down Randy Couture's gym because he left the UFC? But it works so well in Kickboxer 2.

Pyun was having a bad spell here at the DTVC. For a Hall of Famer, two stinkers in a row is a mini crisis. But this film was a big reason why he got in the Hall of Fame, so I was waiting for just this occasion to pull it for him. That way if his newest film, Left for Dead, sucks, he'll at least have this extremely positive review in the middle.

Sasha Mitchell is great in this, as he is in Kickboxer 4. With the strength of this performance, it's kind of a shame he doesn't do more DTV films. According to IMDb, he hasn't done anything since 2005, and a DTV work since 2000's Luck of the Draw with Michael Madsen, Dennis Hopper, and Ice-T. Have to check that out, because we're running out of Mitchells to review. His kickboxing skills are sweet to watch. He's built perfectly for delivering solid knees to the face of his opponent while having him locked in the Muay Thai clinch. We need him back.



Cary Tagawa is great as the baddie. The idea of using unlimited Thai funds to usurp Peter Boyle's upstart kickboxing federation in order to get Tong Po a rematch with the youngest Sloan brother in order to retain Thai honor is fantastic, and Tagawa plays his part without the slightest twinge of irony. He really is one of the great DTV baddies, and we need only look to two Dolph Lundgren greats, Bridge of Dragons and Showdown in Little Tokyo, for proof of that. As an aside, if you ever wanna see a softer side of Cary, check him out in the bland Disney made-for-TV flick Johnny Tsunami, where he plays the cool surfer grandfather.

This has so many people in it. Peter Boyle, the dad from Everybody Loves Raymond is the guy starting a kickboxing federation. Albert Pyun mainstay Vincent Klyn plays Tagawa's righthand man. That means with Tong Po, you have three people playing Thai characters, and none of them are Thai. Miami Vice fans will love John Diehl as the accountant/manager/whatever to Mitchell. One cameo I dug was Brian Austin Green as the young punk who Mitchell teaches a lesson to at the very beginning. You may remember Green as David Silver on Beverly Hills 90210. My favorite moment from his run on that show was the time he was working the wheels of steel with this dude from the ghetto, and the kid was surprised at how good he was. Silver's response: "I may be white, but I'm not vanilla!"



My friend at Movies in the Attic (you can find a link to his site in the section listed "Other great sites") told me that Van Damme didn't do this film because he didn't get a long with Albert Pyun after a falling out during Cyborg. I didn't know that. I wonder what the film would've been like with the Muscles from Brussels. Don't get me wrong, I like Mitchell, and I like this with him; I'm just curious. What would be cool is if part 6 had Van Damme fight Mitchell, then team up and beat a bunch of other guys up. Can we do that?

If you haven't seen this, you can't call yourself a bad movie honk. I probably should've posted it sooner, but I wanted to save the best Kickboxer for last, and I also wanted to see it again to put all the great parts fresh in my mind. However you gotta make this happen, do it. You won't disappointed.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102202/

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/

Kickboxer 3: The Art of War (1992)

I first saw this film on TV who knows how long ago. I didn't remember liking it, but I wasn't sure if it was this one or 2. I decided to put it on my Netflix queue along with 4: The Aggressor, which came packaged together, just to see if it was the one I didn't like. I could've been wrong, you know?

Kickboxer 3: The Art of War takes its name from the famous Sun Tzu book. There's a line in one scene where Sasha Mitchell's trainer quotes from it. Anyway, the film's about Mitchell, who, in dire need of cash, heads down to Brazil to fight some Argentinian. While he and his trainer are eating, a street urchin steals his camera. Mitchell befriends the thief along with the kid's sister, only to have the sister kidnapped by a dude who looks like a cheap Joe Isuzu, and who runs a brothel with street urchins he's taken off the streets. This low-rent Joe Isuzu also manages the Argentinian set to fight Mitchell, and after he asks Mitchell to throw the fight, Mitchell insults him. Luckily for him, Mitchell and his trainer try to free the girl, and are captured by Isuzu, who takes the opportunity to force Mitchell into an unorthodox training regime in an attempt to tire him out for the fight. It would've worked, except Mictchell's trainer's Asian, and like every Asian in every martial arts film, he knows a few herbal tricks up his sleeve that get Mitchell ready to hand out an ass-beating. Good stuff. Good pants by Mitchell in the final scene as well.



This was, in fact, the one I remembered as being bad. The street urchin thief annoyed me, the plot was pretty lame, the bad guy wasn't cool, and the Argentinian didn't impress me. If you're going to replace a villain on the scale of a Tong Po, you gotta bring me more meat than that. I need a reason to watch this film instead of just watching the first Kickboxer with Van Damme in it again, right? For instance, Bloodsport 4 has Ben Franklin as the baddie. That's why me and my friends watch that on occasion instead of the original. If the bad guy in this film actually was Joe Isuzu, we may have something to talk about, but as it was he was a low-rent version. I guess the real Joe Isuzu was busy making Empty Nest at that time.

Sasha Mitchell was all right in this. He was no him from 4: The Aggressor, and with that as my standard, I have to say I was somewhat disappointed. Here he was a bit too Cody from Step by Step, which is kind of a waste, because part of the novelty is seeing Cody from Step by Step playing a bad ass who's nothing like his character on the popular TGIF sitcom. Overall, a darker Mitchell would've worked better.



One thing that was kind of cool that the film played on a bit was the rivalry between Argentina and Brazil. It's something we hear very little about in the US, but anyone who's a soccer fan like me knows all about it. Of course, with the bad fighter in this being from Argentina, this rivalry is told from the Brazilian standpoint. As such, I feel it's necessary to, in the spirit of fairness, give Argentina equal time here. If you're a wine drinker without a lot of money (and I definitely am), you can't go wrong with the wide variety of great Argentinian Malbecs available in the States right now. For ten bucks, you can get a bottle that drinks as well as a Merlot or Chianti that costs twice that much.

The early 90s bad movie, especially bad action or bad horror movie, has one great feature: the horrible clothes. If this film delivers on anything, it's the startling array of hilarious fashions, many of which are worn by our hero. In the final showdown between Mitchell and the low-rent Joe Isuzu, Mitchell is sporting these hideous pants that even the dumbest lunkhead bodybuilder on Muscle Beach at that time would've turned his nose at. They're like some weird print and they taper down his leg so they bite the ankles like a cheap pair of sweatpants. It's just totally sauteed in wrong sauce, yet at the same time, was probably the only entertaining part of the film for me. Go figure.



This film is so not worth your time. Even if you see it pop up on your program guide one Sunday afternoon when you're killing time before you gotta do something else, I say avoid it. Watch an old episode of The Banana Splits or Simply Ming or something instead. It should go without saying don't rent this. If you and your buddies want a bad Mitchell film to watch and laugh at, go with Kickboxer 4: The Aggressor instead. And if you've already seen that, rent it again to get your Mitchell fix before you consider this sack-of-asscrack.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104609/

Gangland (2000)

I first saw this film on Encore Action. On my program guide it listed Sasha Mitchell and Costas Mandylor as its featured actors, which was enough for me. Upon watching it, I saw that it also has Coolio and Ice-T for about ten minutes at the very beginning, and the chick who plays Painkiller Jane for a few seconds somewhere in the middle. Now, seeing it again on DVD, I find out that it's selling itself, not on Sasha Mitchell and Costas Mandylor, the film's stars along with the chick from Renegade; but it's listing the three people who're in it for a total fifteen minutes of screen time. If I didn't like the idea of a Sasha Mitchell Costas Mandylor feature so much, I'd take the people who market this to small claims court for false advertising.

Gangland takes place three years from now in a post-apocalyptic future where a US dealing with nuclear fallout is also dealing with a flesh eating plague. Vincent Klyn (Warchild from Point Break) has a huge gang of dudes in leather jackets and pants that are threatening to take over what's left of the country. Tim Thomerson has developed a cure for the plague and plans to take it to the only safe zone in the country, Phoenix. Klyn catches him in an attempt to control the cure. While all this is happening, Costsas Mandylor meets Sasha Mitchell in jail (Klyn's reappropriated a local prison for his own ends.) They escape, bump into the chick from Renegade, and take down Klyn-doggy. All in a day's work.



This movie would be sweet bad action accept for one thing that really irks me: constant fade-outs. I hate constant fade-outs. It's like they're always going to commercial or something. I know these aren't the best film makers in the world, but do they have to make it so obvious? I've seen better film making on YouTube. Doesn't it seem annoying to them too when they're editing? Maybe it's just me...

Sasha Mitchell's the bomb in this. His martial arts technique is almost identical to Guile from Street Fighter II. It was so cool watching him go to work on bad guys, I almost forgot he couldn't act. It's too bad he doesn't do more work, because, at least to me, it's evident in a movie like this that he can hold his own. Of course, it was hilarious when he was yelling in anger about his brother's killing. I think someone should make a movie where he plays Cody from Step By Step and kicks people's asses. Now that's a hit.

Kathleen Kinmont's in this as well. I have a bad habit of calling her the chick from Renegade, and considering this is the second, and probably not the last film I've reviewed that has her in it, I should probably start using her name. I didn't like her in this, because she was trying too hard to do dark and brooding. I know her sister, played by Painkiller Jane, was killed off, but as an actor she didn't do the part well. She's better doing the off-beat kind of stuff she did on Renegade. Leave the brooding to Costas Mandylor.



I'm a huge Vincent Klyn guy. It's not like Man Crush level, but pretty close. No one else could pull off playing a character named Warchild in a movie like Point Break, and make it work. I think that's something pretty cool to hang your hat on. He's also a mainstay in newly inducted DTVC Hall of Famer Albert Pyun's films-- you may remember him especially in Cyborg. In this film, as in those other two, he does a great job playing an awesome baddie that we still don't want to root for. That's all we want in a bad guy, right?

Beyond the overuse of the fade-out technique, my other major issue was Klyn's second in command. He was some geeky ponytail guy who also was the film's writer and stuff. He didn't look like a kick ass bad guy, he looked like some creepy guy who might hit me with his sack of 8-sided dice to keep me and my friends from giving him a wedgie. He annoyed the piss out of me, and I was kind of disappointed that Costas Mandylor finally dispatched him by setting him on fire. He should've beat him to death with a keyboard in the middle of a LAN party or something. Who thought this guy worked on camera?



The two best parts about this were the bad one-liners and the fact that everyone from Costas Mandylor down to Tim Thomerson the scientist could fight. Best one-liner: Klyn asks Mandylor if he thought it would be that easy to kill him, and Mandylor says "We had to give it the ol' college try." Yes! Best fight came when Tim Thomerson, with no prior mention of him having any fighting skills, takes out some baddies in hand-to-hand combat. It wasn't just like hit someone over the head with a vase when he's not looking, he was blocking punches and delivering expert blows to the gut. It was like just by virtue of being in the movie anyone could fight. I loved it.

Before I recommend this film, I must warn everyone that I'm not kidding about how little Coolio, Ice-T, and Painkiller Jane are in this film. The box may make it sound like they're the main characters, but it's the old fashioned Direct to Video bait and switch. On the other hand, for myself, being the Direct to Video Connoisseur, Sasha Mitchell, Vincent Klyn, and Costas Mandylor are plenty good to make the film worth while. If that sounds like a good time to you too, pick this bad boy up. Just don't pay too much for it.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0265198/

Kickboxer 4: The Aggressor (1994)

I first saw this film on FX. I had seen the first three (one with Van Damme, and two and three with Sasha Mitchell), and I had some time to kill before I met a friend for lunch. Not only did this movie put me in the right frame of mind, but it gave us something to talk about over our meal.

Kickboxer 4: The Aggressor has Sasha Mitchell falsely accused of murder by the Evil Tong Po, and sent to prison. About a year and a half in, he's called out by federal investigators because his woman has been kidnapped by the Po Dawg. They send him down to the compound in Mexico, where Mitchell sneaks into the kickboxing tourney Po's throwing. As you can imagine, the Evil Tong Po wants nothing to do with Mitchell, because he kicks Po's ass whenever they fight. He was right to be worried: a pissed off Mitchell chases him to some outside banquet setting, and beats the tar out of him.

You know a movie is good, when the bad guy kills people for strange reasons. The Evil Tong Po kills some of the tourney fighters after he announces the fight is to the death, and they don't want to fight like that. His guys on the balcony with Uzis mow them down. I just didn't get that at all: "What, you don't want to break people's necks in the tried and true bad action movie method of turning the head to one side? I'm going to shoot you for that."

You also know a movie is good when people don't do a great job playing dead. In one scene, the Evil Tong Po shows Mitchell the undercover federal agent and chick that he killed. If you keep your eye on the woman as Po and Mitchell go back and forth, you can see her breathing. As a DTV veteran, I look for that kind of stuff in the background, because I've heard the dialogue so many times before.

I dug Mitchell in this. He's understandably pissed off, and as a viewer, you just can't wait for him to start kicking ass. The Evil Tong Po comes off more as the annoying kid who played a prank on Mitchell (kidnapped his wife), and now he's paying the price. I just never saw Po as a potential threat to our boy.

Class of 1999 II saw Mitchell as a bad guy, and I couldn't get behind it. On the other hand, I liked Mitchell as the brooding, angry, good guy. It added a dimension to his ass kicking. I wish he'd go back to DTV, but according to IMDb, he hasn't done anything since ER in 2005. If he's through, that would be an unfortunate waste of talent.

The problem with this film is the Evil Tong Po. By number four, we've had it with him. He was an amazing villain in the first one, where he fought Van Damme at the end. But here, we knew he was going to get the snot beaten out of him. Besides, Po is kind of gross looking. I nearly threw up when I saw him licking Mitchell's wife. I would've like Po replaced by a real villain like Gary Busey. I know what you're thinking, how could Busey be a threat to Mitchell? The answer's simple: they could've made him a cybernetic Gary Busey, with super human strength that Mitchell would've had to overcome. That would've been hot.

This movie's worth a look at if you've seen the others. It's packaged with some other movie--I can't remember what, but that kind of defrays the cost for you. This movie has all the elements for a bad movie night rental: bad acting, bad script, bad plot, and bad editing. Your friends will enjoy it.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110255/

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/

Class of 1999 II: The Substitute (1994)

I caught this movie at 3am on a Monday morning a couple years ago after finishing a 25-page paper for a grad school class on China challenging the global economy. I needed a relief, and this movie was okay for it.

Now people often ask why Sasha Mitchell isn't in the DTVC Hall of Fame. It's a close call, I agree, but he needs more of a body of work. His decision to do guest spots on ER instead of making another DTV film has hurt him on a lot of ballots. We know how much work it takes to do those movies, so it's not like he can't do both.

What makes Mitchell great, of course, is his role as Cody on the TGIF hit Step By Step. In my China class, I mentioned watching this film after doing my paper, and the first remark a classmate made was "Cody from Step by Step?" It's amazing how one finds a fellow DTVer almost anywhere, but I digress.

Class of 1999 II: The Substitute takes place somewhere in the near future after the first movie. Don't worry if you didn't see the first one, because there's plenty flashbackage to get you up to speed. Mitchell is the last of the cyber teachers from the first movie, and he's signed on as a sub at a school. He starts immediately killing the bad students. The movie also has Rick Hill, who in my mind is a top notch That Guy, playing a detective tracking Mitchell.

I guess the one thing I dug about this movie was that it took place in the future, which was the past by the time I watched it. I love the idea that in 1994 kids were so bad that a script writer felt in five years drastic measures would be needed. Not only that, but I loved even more that in five years there'd be some kind of technology that would allow someone to make robot teachers like this. This is what I watch DTV for, and this movie delivered.

I have some big qualms, though. First, there's a plot twist, that I won't give away, but one that requires an enormous leap of faith, even for a bad action movie. Second, I just can't get behind Sasha Mitchell as an unfeeling robot killer. He could be a bad guy in the right film, just not this one. In thinking of Boa vs. Python, I'm left wondering why Mitchell didn't hop on that project. Maybe he just doesn't have a great agent. If it's the guy that suggested Class of 1999 II, Mitchell should find a new one.

Overall, I'd avoid this in most cases. At 3am, if you're wide awake after writing a 25-page paper, and nothing else is on, go for it. If you see it at the video store, pass. If you want to see some Cody from Step by Step, look to Kickboxers II, III, and IV, which are more fun and deliver more dollar value.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109442/

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/