Phoenix the Warrior aka She-Wolves of the Wasteland (1988)

It had been over four years since we last had a Kathleen Kinmont film on the site, so I figured it was time, and when I saw that this film was on Tubi, it sounded like a no-brainer. In addition to us, Chris the Brain at Bulletproof, Ty and Brett at Comeuppance, Mitch at the Video Vacuum, and Down Among the Z Movies have all covered this, meaning it was probably long overdue for me to cover it too. 

Phoenix the Warrior is a post-apocalyptic AIP flick with Kathleen Kinmont as our eponymous hero. She rescues a young lady, Keela (Peggy McIntaggart), who just happens to be pregnant, and in this future where pretty much only women survived the apocalypse, a pregnant woman is a big deal. So big that Persis Khambatta and her ruler, the Reverend Mother (Sheila Howard) want her, because the baby Keela is carrying is a special boy that the Reverend Mother could use to power herself--or something. Whatever it is, Kinmont needs to protect Keela and her baby at all costs, otherwise the post-apocalyptic world will be destroyed--or something.

As post-apocalyptic exploitation goes, this isn't horrible. We have a tight 90-minute runtime, Kinmont is a great lead, Persis Khambatta kills it as the baddie, and we get all of the usual post-apocalyptic trappings, like buggies and dirt and fun 80s hairdos. You then have the added element of AIP, which gives this a unique quality the way Corman/Santiago ones are unique, or PM's entry Steel Frontier is unique. For example, I tagged Ted Prior because he gets a set constructor credit, but I think it was more that they reused his set from Mankillers, the corrugated iron shanty town looks like a rundown version of William Zipp's evil drug lord lair from that film. That's the kind of thing that will push a usual post-apocalyptic flick like this up a notch or two, and that can mean a lot when you've seen a lot of these--which I have, more than I expected when I started this site! If you're a connoisseur of these kinds of movies, this is worth a look.

We're now at 9 films for Kinmont, which doesn't sound like a lot, but it puts her in a three-way tie with Shannon Tweed and Dona Speir for third-most all-time among women on the site, behind Cynthia Rothrock's 43, and Julie Strain's 10. The other thing is she was alone as second-most all-time when we last reviewed one of her movies, so in that time Strain, Tweed, and Speir have caught her. I was looking at her bio, and there are some movies of hers we need to do, the problem is they aren't as easy to find, a lot of them haven't made it to free streamers yet--and funny enough, this one is on Tubi twice, as both this title and She-Wolves of the Wasteland. I'll work on tracking down more of her stuff from the late 80s/early 90s that fits our site more, because she should have more films reviewed here than she does. Here's to you Ms. Kinmont, you're one of the greats.

This movie was a staple of USA Up All Night in the 90s, which makes sense considering most of the film has women in bikinis or less. According to the IMDb trivia, Kinmont said the filmmakers asked her to go topless too, but she said no, because she thought the nudity was gratuitous, and they weren't paying her enough--the $50 a day she got barely covered the gas required to drive out the Mojave Desert for shooting. The other thing she said was this was a non-SAG role that she took because the filmmakers assured her the film would only be shown overseas, but when it ended up on HBO and USA, she almost lost her SAG card as a result, and she never saw a dime from that cable money. I guess David Winters and AIP really put the "exploit" in "exploitation," huh? And if Kinmont was only making $50 a day, we have to imagine Ted Prior got nothing for them using his corrugated iron shanty town that he went to all that trouble to make for Mankillers. When you put this up against her doing a love scene with Wings Hauser in Art of Dying that involved him pouring milk and food all over her and yelling at the make-up woman to powder his bare asscheeks, you realize that Wings and PM were probably nothing compared to her AIP experience--okay, maybe not "nothing," maybe just not as bad, right?

The 80s were rife with same-sex platonic partners raising kids, so the fact that this film used that device wasn't too out of the ordinary for the time. We had My Two Dads and Full House as examples of straight males living together and raising kids, and then we had Kate and Allie as two straight women doing the same thing. They were skirting the line of same-sex romantic partners raising kids, but never quite getting there, which meant when you had situations like my parents telling me my mom's best friend was living with her "roommate," and that that "roommate" was pregnant by artificial insemination, it was believable because we had Kate and Allie and Murphy Brown to look to as examples for why my aunt and her "roommate" weren't actually in the committed romantic relationship they actually were in. The thing is though, this movie could've gone there, but for some reason in a lot of exploitation films, homosexuality is depicted as this degenerate thing, like here when women hook up with other women, they're the baddies, while Kinmont's hero and the pregnant woman she rescued would never "engage in that kind of thing." Nope, they're Kate and Allie raising their Murphy Brown child in the post-apocalyptic wasteland, nothing else to see here--until a balding, mustachioed man falls into their laps, and then it's on.

Finally, look at that beautiful Zenith TV set. Not sure how its knobs lasted that long after the apocalypse, but considering everything else I'm accepting in this film, I probably shouldn't worry about it. I did some digging, aka "I looked Zenith up on Wikipedia," and I found out when this film was made, Zenith was already in trouble. The HDTV technology they were starting to pioneer was over a decade away from making it to market, and between their market share dipping due to Japanese competitors, and the cost of the anti-dumping lawsuit they were party to that was filed against those Japanese competitors--which Zenith and their co-plaintiffs eventually lost--they weren't pulling in the money they used to while the debts were mounting up. Over time the company that eventually became LG bought an increasing share in them, finally buying the whole thing in 1999, so LG owns what remains of Zenith now. The irony of course with those dials, was Zenith also pioneered the remote control, so for most of that TV's life the dials weren't necessary, unless a kid had it in the 80s and needed to turn the dial between channels to view some squiggly-lined porn, a practice that also became obsolete when TVs stopped using dials, and internet porn became so prolific. What a scene that would've been in this movie though if the people who prayed to the TVs were sitting around it, turning the dial between channels to watch squiggly-lined porn that was being produced in a post-apocalyptic corrugated-iron shanty town built by Ted Prior for another AIP film. You AIP guys really missed a trick there, didn't you?

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently get this on Tubi, under both its names, though the film is the same. This is fun as a post-apocalyptic actioner between the cast and the AIP touches, and sometimes for a film like this that's all you need.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093731

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

Raw Justice aka Good Cop, Bad Cop (1994)

Wasn't there a Klingon proverb that said "justice is a dish best served raw"? Either way, this had been on my radar for a long time, and when Tubi finally picked it up, I didn't have anymore excuses, so we're making it happen now. In addition to us, the guys at Bulletproof and the guys at Comeuppance have covered this as well.

Raw Justice has David Keith (not to be confused with Keith David) as a former cop who's now a bounty hunter. When he's not wearing the clothes of a lady of the night--and magically making said clothes fit him--in order to fool a mark, he's drinking and ruing his lost love. When said lost love is murdered, Airplane's Robert Hays is implicated, so lost love's father, mayor Charles Napier, calls in Keith to keep an eye on Hays, because Keith can work outside the law. At the same time, he's being harassed by former fellow cop Leo Rossi, who's working for lieutenant mayor Stacy Keach to cover up the murder; and then lady of the night Pamela Anderson comes calling for her clothes Keith took, and gets wrapped up in Keith and Hays's troubles. Just put your goggles on for the last 15 minutes, because you'll need some eye protection when all these loose ends start flying together.

What do we make of a movie like this? It's pretty paint-by-numbers, except it isn't. First off there's the music, which is a cross between the start of the Chili's "Baby Back Ribs" song and what you'd hear in a Roseanne episode supporting a scene change establishing shot. Oh, they're at the Lobo Bar? Now they're back at the Connor's house? Maybe Darlene's apartment in Chicago? Ooh, is David hiding in the bathroom? On the other hand, this had some nice action sequences in it, not PM, but nice enough; and the names are prodigious, with Keith as the disgraced cop on the edge, Robert Hays in a Guttenbergian turn as the awe-shucks guy--yet he also knows kung fu?--, Pamela Anderson pre-Barb Wire but mid-Baywatch slumming it in a David Prior-directed flick, and then Napes, Keach, and Rossi being as Napes, Keach, and Rossi as you want. And before I forget, the great Ted Prior in a small role as another cop helping Rossi, sans mullet but fully-shirted, almost like a Bizzaro Danton. And maybe, for all the things that worked and all the things that didn't, that's what we ultimately needed to get us over the goal line: more New York Seltzer-sponsored AIP action. Where's William Zipp when you need him?

This is our first Pamela Anderson film on the site, just shy of 1300 posts in. I'm not sure why I didn't do Barb Wire back when I was doing Wild Card posts on comic book films, but I must've missed it. With all of the talent in this, it was apparent that she was the one with the real it factor, that it was only a matter of time before she became a big star, though it was more star in the celebrity sense, because she never really had that one breakout acting role. This was maybe 5 years before one could be famous just for being famous, like Paris Hilton, or later Kim Kardashian, so Anderson at least had to try acting, but I think she was one of the first stars to create that famous just for being famous ecosystem, so without her we wouldn't have Kim Kardashian. According to the trivia, she said the love scenes in this were horrible for her, which I definitely saw in the David Keith love scene, where he's really rough with her; but the one with Hays seemed very tame. From a character standpoint, I get why Keith would've gone that route, but he also could've acted it out more than actually going for it. It felt very Jeff Conaway in a Traci Lords PM flick, and you could even see in the shots they used in the film how uncomfortable Anderson was with it, but how she tried to go with it--which again, fit their characters better in the movie, but that doesn't help Anderson out with what she went through at all.

Out of all the names, Napes is the one with the most tags on the site, this being his 13th. After that, David Winters has his 8th (he's a producer), Keach, Rossi, and both Priors have 6, and David Keith has 3. In the scene I took the screen of above, he's in Keith's apartment asking for his help to keep an eye on Hays while Hays is out on bail. From a story standpoint, it's a ludicrous construct, why would Napes do this, especially when we find out he doesn't suspect anyone else, he really thinks Hays did it, why bother getting Keith involved at all? But Napes sells it as only Napes can. "What is my motivation here? Why would I do this if I was this guy?" The paycheck is why, and Napes knows that, and he delivers. The Keach kind of makes no sense, it took a second to even realize it was him. I guess he had to play it this way for us to believe he was the lieutenant mayor to Napes, but I like a good mustachioed no-nonsense Keach if I'm getting Keach in my film. And then there's Rossi. He has this combination Cajun and an impression of the late Leslie Jordan accent that was equal parts hilarious and fascinating. Like I think if I could have one wish, it might be to eat at a Waffle House with Rossi while he's doing that voice the whole time. "You 'bout done with that Heinz 57 sauce? My potatoes are cryin' out for a lil' dab uh two." Who am I kidding, it'd be an honor to have a meal at a Waffle House with Leo Rossi, even if he wasn't doing his Cajun crossed with Leslie Jordan voice. A guy can dream, right?

As I said above, this is now six films for David Prior, but only 5 for directing, which puts him way down the directors tags list--he got a tag for his writer's credit on Dancin' It's On, that's why he has six. That's definitely on me, because I'm behind on my AIP flicks overall--of which this isn't one--but also Prior is one of the DTV greats, and deserves to have more films on here. For all the paint-by-numbers-ness of this, Prior does inject some nice action sequences, from a mall dirt bike chase, to some nice flying cars, to an exploding helicopter. I'm not going to say this is as good as Shakedown, but Prior does his best to get us closer to that. Looking at his IMDb bio, he has another 25 or so films that we could cover here on the site, so I just need to get after it. I'll do my darndest. Here's to you Mr. Prior, you were one of the greats.

Finally, who remembers Montgomery Ward? When our heroes are chasing each other on dirt bikes through the mall, we get a good shot of one here. Growing up, Wards was the anchor at the Newington Mall, which was run out of business by the bigger Fox Run Mall that was opened near it in the late 80s--and the Montgomery Ward along with it--only for the Newington Mall to be torn down and replaced by a massive strip mall with a Barnes and Noble, Kohl's, and Best Buy, which has since almost killed the Fox Run Mall. Anyway, back to Wards, did you know they still exist online? And you can go to the site and request a physical catalog be sent to you? Now I don't know if that catalog has He-Man figures for sale in it, and my parents live over 350 miles away, so I can't just circle the guys I want and dogear the pages so they can find them, but just the idea of a Monkey Wards catalog is fantastic! As an aside, did anyone else call it Monkey Wards? Was that a thing everywhere, or just my neighborhood in my small town in Maine? If you're wondering, I ordered the physical catalog. I had to. Maybe the next Prior film I review will have a chase in front of a Service Merchandise.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently get this as Good Cop, Bad Cop on Tubi--despite that fact that neither character is a cop--which is as good a way to get it as any. With the names and the good bits of action here and there, it's a nice weekend morning time killer--if you find you have time to kill some weekend morning.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110948

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/

Day of the Warrior (1996)

It's October, and you know what that means here at the DTVC: Hall of Fame inductions! It seems like we were just doing these, which sounds about right since I fell behind on them last year and they went into early 2021. Anyway, our first inductee is the great Julie Strain, becoming only the second woman in our DTVC Hall of Fame. This is also our 1100th post at the DTVC, so what better way to mark that milestone than by celebrating Julie Strain and her work. For more on her and the Andy Sidaris films, you can go to the DTVC Podcast episode that Mitch from the Video Vacuum and I did last year.

Day of the Warrior is the penultimate film in Andy Sidaris's LETHAL Ladies films. In this one, a former agent (WCW great Buff Bagwell) has broken off to form a crime syndicate, and he knows where all the undercover agents are, so he's looking to take them out, one by one. That means agent Willow Black (Strain) needs to let all of them know before his men can get to them, and then have them join her in taking the Warrior down. Will they be able to stop him before his nefarious evil schemes come to fruition? Only time and gratuitous hot tub and airplane landing scenes will tell.

 

For me, this is one of my favorites of the LETHAL Ladies series. It has all the elements that you want in a Sidaris film--especially in these late entries--plus you have the great Buff Bagwell! Julie Strain is great as well, as she turns from a villain to a hero, and continues to enhance this series after joining in Fit to Kill. The film adds in a bit more overt camp than the previous entries, and I think bigger than going from villain to hero, Strain navigates that pivot even better. Beyond that, we had great supporting performances, including Julie K. Smith, Gerald Okamura (which we'll get into later), Sidaris mainstay Rodrigo Obregon, and the great Ted Prior. This is what 90s DTV should be, just a fun, 90-minute ride.

While we don't have a lot of Strain's movies here on the DTVC (this is only her fourth), I felt like if anyone belonged in the DTVC Hall of Fame, it's her, especially with her great resume, and it's more on us to catch up and review more of her films. I think one of the problems is our site has become more action-oriented, and she didn't do as many action films, especially beyond the Sidaris movies, so the rest of her oeuvre tends to fall off our radar. What makes her so great, especially in these LETHAL Ladies movies, is, while they have a lot of TNA and women in little to no clothing, the women have a lot of agency, and Strain was one of the best at marrying sexy with agency. In the DTV world, where racy covers can be the difference between a rental and someone moving down the aisle, Strain could make impression as well as anyone, but, similar to others in the LETHAL Ladies series like Dona Speir and Julie K. Smith, while the sexy gets us in the door, we then get the strong female leads that mainstream Hollywood has always been reluctant to create. Here's to you Julie Strain, you were one of the greatest.

 

After Strain, the other great name in this is Marcus "Buff" Bagwell. He proves yet again how great professional wrestlers can be in action movies. The presence is there to match Julie Strain's, which is important if they were moving her from villain to hero, they need a baddie to work on her level. I looked on his IMDb, and he did the sequel to this, LETHAL Ladies: Return to Savage Beach, and then has a couple small parts in a film called Terror Tract and an episode of Charmed, and that's it. How did that happen? He was one of my favorites when my buddies and I watched Monday Night Nitro in the late 90s. I see that he floated around after WWE bought WCW, doing some TNA wrestling as well, then dropping down to more indies; but at his age, he could do more DTV stuff. Maybe not as an action lead, but supporting roles? Then eventually move into bigger roles like this one? I need more Buff Bagwell.

We've seen a lot of great Gerald Okamura scenes in our time here at the DTVC, but Elvis Impersonator is by far the best. It just doesn't get much better than that. And then, while he's doing his Elvis impersonation, Julie Strain is there in the lounge in a red gown yucking it up as he's singing, making the whole thing even better. I would say, in terms of Las Vegas casino scenes, it would be behind only Mick Fleetwood taking one between the eyes from Robert Patrick in Zero Tolerance for me. If I knew that every time I went to Vegas I'd see Gerald Okamura as an Elvis Impersonator, I'd probably move out there.

 

Usually I tell you how you can find something in the last paragraph, but I wanted to do it here to continue my rant about how streaming services dump films from their library. Last year I was able to do a marathon of all 11 of the LETHAL Ladies movies on Tubi. When I went to grab images for this review, I discovered that they were gone, and to see them on Prime I had to subscribe to the Full Moon channel. What? Luckily this is on YouTube, but look at the quality of YouTube screens? I'm not saying it's at the level of Metallica and what they did to Napster in the late 90s, but Full Moon pulling these off of Tubi is pretty bad. These should be free and great for everyone. If you don't do it for us, do it for the kids.

And with that, let's wrap this up. This is one of the most fun of the LETHAL Ladies movies for me, though you really can't go wrong with any of them. In particular, newly inducted Hall of Famer Julie Strain does a great job. If you haven't seen this, definitely check it out on YouTube--and hopefully soon Full Moon puts these back on Tubi.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116039

And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, A Girl and a Gun, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

The Final Sanction (1990)

We start our five-movie 1000th post celebration at 998 with this AIP gem, suggested by our friend Simon at Explosive action. I'd been meaning to get more AIP on the site for a long time, but I felt like for a 1000th post, maybe Deadly Prey would be more iconic for that, which I've already covered; but at the same time, I felt like a celebration like this deserved a nod to AIP and all of the great David Prior action that made DTV what it was in the 80s and 90s. In addition to us, Ty and Brett at Comeuppance have done this, as has Mitch at the Video Vacuum; and if you haven't done so yet, check out the Explosive Action YouTube channel!

The Final Sanction has the crazy Grinchy idea of settling the Cold War with a mano-a-mano battle between the Soviet's best and the US's best, Robert Z'Dar and Ted Prior respectively. We watch as each train for their fight in their own unique ways, with Z'dar throwing shovels and getting mentally tortured by William Smith, and Prior crushing cheeseburgers. Who will emerge victorious?

This was a fantastic fun time. With a plot like I described above, it can only go one of two ways, right? And fortunately this one went the right way. This is the AIP you came for, and I think a perfect pick by Simon for a celebration like this. Almost 1000 posts in, this is the kind of movie I started this blog for, and while I tend to get caught up in doing all the most recent Dolph posts or whatever, these kinds of movies consistently deliver the bad movie fun I'm looking for. In a sense, they were made with that in mind, so instead of jacking up the runtime and trying to make something more "serious," they're banging this thing out with as much action as they can squeeze in and let the devil take the hindmost. You can't not applaud them for that.

This is only the third David Prior flick we've covered here at the DTVC, which is a major oversight on my part. He deserves his due among some of the DTV greats, like Pyun, Wynorski, and Fred Olen Ray. I recently had Jacob Gustafson on the podcast--who wrote the fabulous Awful Awesome Action Vol. 1, which you can get more details on on our DTVC Book Review page--and he talked about Prior's late 80s early 90s output. It was like 3 in '87, 4 each in '88 and '89, and 6 in '90. You don't know when he actually shot all of those, if some were in the can before that and held back on release, but that's still 17 flicks in four years, which is something we love here at the DTVC. I say this all the time, but we're going to make sure we get more of his stuff up in the near future--for that podcast we looked at Mankillers, so we already have that one in the can.

The great Robert Z'Dar left us in 2015, right around the time I unfortunately went on an unplanned hiatus, so I wasn't able to give him the tribute he deserved then. A total icon who did it for multiple companies over many years, he's someone who will definitely be missed. In this one we get all of the best of him. He's totally buying in on this plot and his character, and he's giving it everything in every scene. I think that's part of what makes a classic like Samurai Cop work so well too. If you're looking for great Z'Dar after checking out Samurai Cop for the first time, I think this is a great place to go next, it's classic Z'Dar. Here's to you Mr. Z'Dar, you were one of the greats, and you will be missed.

This is the first time we've seen Ted Prior since we reviewed another all-time cult classic, Deadly Prey, which was also directed by his brother. Ted and David teamed up on a lot of AIP flicks, so we have a lot of work to do to get caught up on them, but I think it will be a fun ride. What makes Ted great here is he really plays up the other side of the coin to Z'Dar's cold, emotionless Soviet soldier; he's the rude, chauvinistic, burger crushing American that is part loose cannon, part honorable soldier who we trust will get the job done when the chips are down. Again, like Z'Dar, if he doesn't sell this to us, none of the film works in the fun way we want it to. The fact that a lot of the Prior brothers' AIP work is on places like Tubi and Prime and I haven't gotten to them yet is a travesty, but we're going to try to make it happen soon.

I want to finish this by talking about another element that these movies have that modern movies don't--and it's not the modern movies' fault. There's a nostalgia factor in seeing these late 80s/early 90s movies that, when we watched them back then didn't exist, but now make them even more fun. Whether it's a Bud Dry truck in Skyscraper, or Ted Prior washing down his cheeseburger in this with an RC Cola, they're little touches that add to the enjoyment. They pad out slower moments in ways that are a lot of fun as well--though to be fair, this movie at a cool 85 minutes didn't have much in the way of slow moments.

Let's wrap this baby up. Right now you can stream this movie, along with many more of David Prior's AIP flicks, on Amazon Prime. When I first started the blog in 2007, we had to scramble to find them on VHS, which I think also hampered my ability to get more on the site. Now, with so many available to stream, this is a great time to be a DTV movie fan, and this gem should be at the top of your watch list. Thank you again to Simon at Explosive Action for this suggestion, and as I said, everyone should check him out on his YouTube Channel!

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101876

Surf Nazis Must Die (1987)

I know what you're thinking: "Poirier, you're like 725 posts and over four years into this blog, and this is your first Troma flick? What's wrong with you?" Honestly, I don't know. I wanted to wait on them initially, because most of them I see more as independent films than DTV-- Surf Nazis Must Die for instance screened at Cannes. Then you may remember in 2010 the readers voted to do Hong Kong films instead of Troma for a multi-week feature I did. After that I went on hiatus, and when I came back, I wanted to concentrate on some of the great bad action of the 80s and 90s, just to get my passion back for the blog. Now it's September 2011, and I think it's time to break the seal and start hitting some of these bad boys which were so influential to me growing up, and made me love low-budget cinema; and I can't think of a better place to start than Surf Nazis Must Die.

Surf Nazis Must Die takes place in an LA ravaged by an enormous earthquake. In the aftermath, gangs have taken over the beaches, and one gang in particular, the Surf Nazis, are extremely vicious and equally ambitious. As they assert their brutal hold over the shore, they kill a man named Leroy, and his mother living in a nursing home is pissed. It proves to be a fatal error on their part.



I loved this one. For sheer gore fans, this probably won't cut it-- think of it as the anti Hobo with a Shotgun-- but it works as an exploitation flick, and the gore will get there, you just need to wait until the end. I like that, that they don't spend all their nickels at once, but they also don't bore you as they're readying us to spend them. Great sets, great costumes, great music, cool characters, sinister villains, and some really exceptional surfing scenes. For any new directors looking to do a modern take on exploitation, look no further than right here.

One interesting plot device that I liked here was that we saw much more of the villains-- the Surf Nazis-- than we did of the heroine, Mrs. Washington. It made for an interesting dynamic, because we certainly weren't rooting for the Surf Nazis, but the beats in the film kind of played out where we were seeing scenes and character development with the baddies that we'd be expecting the heroine to go through. Especially the end scene, where Mrs. Washington is chasing Adolf and his girl, it's like the roles are reversed.



As I mentioned above, the surfing scenes in this are great. We find out in one of the featurettes that they were shot by a professional surfing cinematographer, and they were done in Hawai'i instead of California, where the rest of the film was shot. That too added a different element, made it more like exploitation films from the past, where a gang rode motorcycles or surfed or did some other kind of marginal sport, and parts of the film would be dedicated just to them plying their craft.

Speaking of the Troma DVD, it has all kinds of great stuff, from deleted scenes, to interviews with director and producer. For a movie like this, the story about the process is always almost as fun as the movie itself. I got the DVD on sale from Troma's website in 2000 for like $5, and looking at their website, that's still the DVD they offer, only now it's $6. Not a bad deal.



Do you recognize the handsome devil on the right? It's DTVC favorite Ted Prior! He has no real speaking line, doesn't run around without his shirt and shoes killing people, and definitely no scalping. It was just a cool novelty, he played a member of one of the rival gangs, the Designer Wave, and in fact, I didn't notice him until I saw his name in the credits. See kids, it pays to stay for the credits.

As I mentioned above, the DVD from the Troma website for $6 pre-shipping is the way to go. Don't download it to iTunes, don't stream it on Hulu, don't let your VHS nostalgia get the best of you. The DVD has all the extras, it's the director's cut, why mess around?

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094077/

The Hostage (1998)

Who knows when this first came on my radar. Probably as a Cynthia Rothrock flick. But then I see that it also has Ted Prior--yeah, that Ted Prior, Danton from Deadly Prey--and I'm all in. Now, I can't find confirmation of this, but The Hostage is also supposed to be an AIP flick. Ted Prior is the only connection I can find between this film and the famed production/distribution company though.

The Hostage is about a gang of high-end thieves who plan to break into a really rich businessman's house, hack into his computer, and download all his money. Ted Prior plays a down-on-his-luck former special forces dude who signs on with this crew so he can make some cash that he and his daughter can live off of. Things go wrong, though, and the guys are holed up in the mansion, holding the rich dude hostage, while the feds have them under siege outside, led by agent Cynthia Rothrock. Will the thieves get away with the cash?

I don't know if you can tell from the pictures, but this is pretty hard core, as in the film stock they shot on was the same video quality of most porn films. How in the hell did Rothrock get roped into this one? What, was she in her hotel room near where they were planning to make the film, when a producer visits and says "Hey, we got some bad news. The film reels and cameras didn't make it out from LA. Yeah, it looks like we'll be shooting on video. I know I know, we're not happy about it either, but, what can we do. The other guys said you'd be pissed, but I said no way, Cynthia's a true professional..." I don't really know after that whether this was a good or bad movie, because, shot as it was, I couldn't take it seriously. Yes, script-wise it was pretty un-proofread, and after Rothrock, the acting wasn't the greatest; but it was fun for what it was, real bottom of the barrel stuff.

I have to imagine, for someone like Rothrock, she loves that people like me are big fans, but there are some drawbacks, like when I have a movie blog that spotlights her films, and I find something like this. She was great in it though, she just didn't have a big part, and never did any martial arts. I'd have loved to see her and Ted Prior go at it. She spends the entire film leading the police siege of the mansion, though she does pick up a gun and shoot some guys near the end. One great scene I liked came after she walks away from some of the local cops, and one of them remarks that she's a total bitch, and this other guy says "hey morons, you're only saying that because she's a woman. If it was a guy, you'd be like 'Yes sir' and all excited to get after it." The people who made Death Race 2 could learn a lot about their own misogyny from The Hostage.

Ted Prior's back. I know, you probably never thought we'd see him again. He's aged a bit, and now looks like a cross between David Bradley and Rick Hill, which is a good combination to have. He has a little more action than Rothrock, but this is nowhere near the level of awesomeness that Deadly Prey was, it's more just the novelty that the guy from that was in this.

This beefy guy below was one of the highlights of the film for me. He was the leader of the gang, and he had this great voice and very doughy demeanor that was all pretty funny. It's guys like this that make a movie like this worth watching--almost.

Dana Plato had a small role as Prior's sister in-law. She died a year after this came out. In her early scenes, I couldn't really tell it was her, because the film was poorly lit, but at then end, when she comes back, I could see her better, and you could tell that she wasn't well. She had three more films released after The Hostage, including a soft core porn film called Different Strokes.

I don't know how you'd find this outside maybe the torrent route, and I don't know if you want to find it unless you're a Rothrock completist, or the idea of her and Prior in a film intrigues you. As a note: they never share any screen time together.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0256082/

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/

 

Deadly Prey (1987)

I'd been meaning to get my hands on this for some time, when our favorite reader from down under, one Simon from Explosive Action, sent me a copy of his. I couldn't wait to put it up here. I think this is one of those "this is why we do this" kind of films.

Deadly Prey is about a man named Logan who runs a romance novel publishing house. No one at his company can find the perfect model for the cover of their new series, so Logan sends some of them out to the streets to just grab someone. As luck would have it, they find themselves a gem in our hero, the hunky Mike Danton. Only catch is, Logan and Danton were once lovers. They had both moved on, Danton finding a beard and assimilating himself to straight society, while Logan found another beefcake to try and replace his lost love. Now that fate has brought them back together, can they heal these wounds and rekindle the old flame?

Before I get into the subtext of the two main male characters having a metaphorical romantic relationship, let me first say that it is one of the most awesome action films of all time. The biggest problem with the current DTV action genre is they try so God damned hard to not be Deadly Prey, because they think it's too cheap and silly. But Deadly Prey works, and it's exactly what we as the DTV action buying audience are looking for. In trying so hard to distance themselves from it, they alienate us, their core audience, which is just asinine. Listen guys, I know you've studied all the greats, you consider yourself real professionals, and you want to make "real movies." Guess what: you're making DTV action films. Acting professional is making something more like Deadly Prey and less like The Bourne Identity.

Now to the movie. Are we sure Tennessee Williams didn't write this? It's more than just sweaty, beefy guys wrestling in the dirt. It's in the subtext in the way guys talk to one another. Look at the scene where Danton is tied to a chair in Logan's tent. The tone of the conversation is like two former lovers figuring out why the other changed for the worse. And it doesn't help when the man tied to the chair is shirtless, sweaty, and full of pecs. Then the end of the movie, wow. "Take off your shirt! Take off your shoes! Now run!" I wish I could quit you. (I want to make clear that any gay metaphors I point out do not mean that I think they're a bad thing, just that they're there.)

Recognize this guy? It's Santa from Space Mutiny. Who'd'a thunk he gets actual work beyond that? He plays Danton's beard's father, and he goes to try and rescue Danton. I don't know that his character was any kind of gay metaphor. Maybe he was Karl Malden's character in A Street Car Named Desire. It fits with what I'm about to get into in the next paragraph.

A rape, and then later cold blooded murder, of the hero's wife in a film would usually anger me, and I'm sure anyone could go into my archives and find myriad instances of me killing a movie for doing just such a thing. But this is a totally different circumstance, and I'll tell you why. First, the rape scene was very much like Blanche DuBois's (Vivian Leigh) rape at the hands of Stanley Kowalski (Marlon Brando) in A Streetcar Named Desire, and in that context it represents Tennessee Williams' metaphor of wanting to be ravaged by brute in a similar manner. You can even take that metaphor further to earlier in the film, when Logan, who is the one that rapes Danton's wife, calls out "Danton!" in exactly the same manner Kowalski yells out "Stella!" in that famous scene. Then the death of the wife at the hands of Logan's lieutenant (or his new lover, metaphorically), and Danton's subsequent killing of the lieutenant, represents both Logan and Danton freeing themselves of the new lovers that have entered each life since the pair split up. Notice Danton never kills Logan, rather sends him off running after making him take off his shirt, and then yells into the sky for the film's final shot. The whole hunt itself represents the search for the right partner, and Danton finally admitted to himself that he couldn't quit Logan.

All right, let's get into something that's real, not a metaphor. Do you remember New York Seltzer? I had forgotten the stuff existed. Can you still get it, and if so, where? I almost died when I saw it in the movie. And Root Beer flavor to boot--though maybe that was the only flavor, I don't remember. And in the credits, they get a shout out. How awesome is that?

This is one of the best action films ever. If you see it anywhere, get it. I was lucky enough to have Simon send me one transferred to DVD. I guess it's one of the perks of the job, right? Anyway, get this however you can, you won't be disappointed.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092848/

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/