One Shot (2021)

This is one I watched last year while I was house sitting for my sister and brother in-law, during my mini-Adkins fest, which was featured in DTVC Podcast episode 101, aptly titled "Adkins Fest," a solo episode I did last year where I covered this and three other Adkins films. In addition to us, our friends at Bulletproof have covered this as well.

One Shot has Adkins as a Navy SEAL who, with his team, is escorting Ashley Greene to a secret military base where a suspected terrorist is being kept. The thing is, he knows about an attack that could kill thousands, so Greene wants to bring him back to the US and get him to talk. The problem is, he's already being tortured by Ryan Phillippe, who runs the base, and that has his fellow terrorists scared that he may already be talking. So said terrorists load up a clown car with hundreds of men, and lay siege to the base. Now it's up to Adkins and his men, against all odds, to fight through all these guys, get the terrorist to the chopper, and get him to the US. Will they succeed? Also, this film is done in all one continuous scene, made to look like one continuous shot, like an extended action version of the Spice Girls video for "Wannabe."

This isn't horrible, but I think it's hamstrung by the one shot device. In a short I think it could work really well, but for 96 minutes, we need cuts to other things happening. We also need cuts to individuals. Ryan Phillippe says something bad, I need a cut to Adkins's face to see him roll his eyes or something. I think it was clever the way they tried to mitigate that though through the one shot device, I guess I just don't know why I need the mitigation, right? Was there a contest to see who could do the best one shot action film? This is like the guy who wrote a novel without using the letter E. Maybe director James Nunn just wanted to see if he could do it, and he did, so in that sense it's successful. One of the other issues people had was the clown car aspect of a military truck showing up with some terrorists, and somehow that truck turns into hundreds of men. That's the kind of thing that's forgivable if you have some crazy PM Spiro Razatos action-directed 90-minute action fest, but here, where a lot of the action is just shooting at each other and we're hamstrung by the one shot device, I can see why people called that out--plus the one shot device in and of itself is saying the film wants to be taken more seriously, and as such something like a clown car effect will be given more of a side eye. Overall, I think this is a solid, fun actioner, kind of squarely in the middle of what you'd want from an Adkins flick.

As of this writing I still haven't seen John Wick: Chapter 4--almost 3 hours in the theater with no intermission means I probably won't see it until it comes out on streaming--but I am excited to see what Adkins does in that film. Here he's just the solid presence we've grown to know and love, and that really carries this thing more than the one shot device. I kind of pulled a fast one last fall when I reviewed Close Range during my Hall of Fame posts, only to be using it to induct Isaac Florentine, but now that we're at 25 films and counting for Adkins, I think his induction this fall is almost a fait accompli--I mean, do we want to force The Asylum Automatic Induction Rule at 30 posts for him? It's bad enough that we'll be doing it for Danny Trejo. One interesting thing is his output has slowed a bit. That may be due in part to the pandemic, but it makes it easier for us to keep up. For example, this is only one of two films he had come out in 2021, the other being Castle Falls. In 2020 he had 4, and in 2019 he had 5. And if he's going to be doing more big screen stuff like John Wick, it'll be even easier to catch up. By my count, I see about 11 films of his we could review on the site, which would put him near the 40 Club if we did them all. Again, probably a sign that we need to get him into the Hall of Fame sooner rather than later.

Director James Nunn has worked with Adkins before, on Eliminators and Green Street 3, of which I've seen the former, and I liked that film better than this. Yes, that one had the classic Adkins story trope, child kidnapped and he has to fight to get her back, but the action, especially between him and Stu Bennett, was great. And maybe that hurt this film more than the one shot device, the lack of a great baddie, because the one we had was sufficiently villainous bad, but he wasn't Stu Bennett charismatic bad, if you know what I mean; and to be honest, Adkins, though his presence carried the film, his character wasn't anything spectacular either, more just a one-note special forces soldier who's only better than your Chad Michael Murray or Jesse Metcalfe in a Willis Emmett-Furla-Oasis flick by virtue of it being Adkins. But maybe this is where I'm being hard on this movie and Nunn, because this isn't an EFO Willis actioner, it is more inspired than that, and being inspired is something we've seen less of over the last 15 years or so of DTV action. For that I think we can applaud Nunn, he's trying to give us something unique, and in that respect I think it worked.

We're now at 4 Ryan Phillippe films here on the site, which I hadn't realized we had that many, but as I looked at them, I remembered reviewing each one, I just needed to click on his tag for a reminder of them. Unlike Jesse Metcalfe or Chad Michael Murray that I mentioned above, Phillippe has made the transition from teen heartthrob to action guy much better, and he works well in the role he has here, dick federal guy giving Greene a hard time, but who can also get shit done. In looking at his IMDb bio, I see that he has some other stuff we can review, but not a lot. It doesn't look like he's leaning into these kinds of roles as much, and is doing things that are slightly bigger and more nuanced. That probably means we won't see him much more on here, but also with those few that this won't be the last time we see him. It'll be interesting to see if they work as well as he did here.

Finally, the clown car effect in this film brings up an interesting question: what can a DTV action film get away with as far as verisimilitude? I think really it all depends on how great the action is, how great the hero is, and how many iconic moments we have. Also, how serious are they trying to play it. The obvious one is the one guy beating up a bar full of baddies. We assume one guy, no matter how skilled, wouldn't be able to do that, but if the action is choreographed in a way that's exciting, we'll go with it. Another big one is the baddie who has endless resources, including an endless supply of goons, which is what we see here with the clown car effect. Sometimes it's ninjas, which work great because you can recycle stunt people for them and no one will know. In the 90s we always loved the beefy guy in a black suit who was just waiting for our hero to knock him out, or even better, spray him with uzi fire so he can shimmy to his death. The thing is, if you're putting out a schlock low-budget actioner, all of these things are seen as charming more than things we'd ding the film on when we're discussing it. When you put out a film that's all one shot though, you're looking to give the film a level of credibility that say a PM actioner or a Corman-produced Philippines romp wouldn't have, and as such, the clown car effect we get here is less charming and more something we'd give an eye roll to. When you want the film to be taken seriously on that level, it's more important to get those other parts right.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently stream this on Hulu, so if you have that subscription you're good to go. I think this is worth checking out, especially if you're an Adkins fan. It's not his best of his recent ones, but it does the trick.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14199590

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

Operation Seawolf (2022)

This is one I rented back in December when I had a discount from my cable company. I figured that would be it and I'd review it here, but then it appeared on Tubi and Ty from Comeuppance and I decided to take advantage of that for the podcast, so he watched it on there and we discussed it on our episode titled "A Dolph and Hotch UnSub with Grillo Cheese," because we covered this and Shadow Wolves with Hotch from Criminal Minds. Anyway, we now covering it for the site too so we have it here.

Operation Seawolf has Dolph as a WWI sub commander who now, in the closing days of WWII, is sent on a mission to attack America's homeland. He gets a new sub, which is under another command, and now that he's taking over, they're not so sure they want to follow him. At the same time, Frank Grillo is giving orders from a chair in an office in the US, and he's telling Hiram A. Murray's anti-sub ship to find and take this submarine out. Will our man Dolph prevail? And should we be rooting for him since he's a Nazi?

This was actually good. More a drama than an actioner, but also a lot more Dolph than you'd expect from the cover--again, perhaps the fact that he's a Nazi may have meant we couldn't have him front and center on the cover. And they do attempt to mitigate the Nazi thing by having Dolph be someone who's against Nazis but wants to do his duty for his country, plus by having Hiram Murray's all-black unit being the one hunting them down. I think they do a better job with the former, but unfortunately they don't develop Murray's character and his crew enough to make them enough of a factor. What makes this all the way through is Dolph's performance. It's fully invested, and involves a lot of screentime, the latter of which is something we haven't from him in a long time--maybe since 2016's Don't Kill It as far as his DTV work. The Dolph performance combined with the ability to screen it free on Tubi makes this a definite watch.

We're now at 67 films for Dolph, with one more left in the can, 4Got10. Unlike Seagal though, who we finished up recently, Dolph has other ones coming up that will keep us busy before we need to dive into ones like Small Apartments or Seal Team or even Sharknado 5. The thing is, most of his new stuff involves him taking on smaller roles, which makes sense at this stage in his career, but something like this where he plays a mature character whose story is anchoring the film is a nice change of pace. Yes, the screens I took show him looking haggard or falling asleep, which might make you think this is more silly than serious, but it works, and it works because of Dolph's performance. As we make our way to getting him into the 70 Club, we'll probably see more smaller good roles, so when we get something more robust like this, we need to hold onto them like grim death.

We're firing up the Grillo again for the second time on our site. This is no Boss Level, what we have here is primarily a sit down role, where from time to time he stands up and uses a pencil to mark things on a map. He's supposed to be a WWII Commander, but he has a 2020s haircut and nicely sculpted modern five o'clock shadow. That's okay though, I'd rather have Grillo doing this role than anyone else, and the haircut and five o'clock shadow aren't as bad as Mickey Rourke's cowboy hat in War Pigs. We do have some more Grillo in the can, so this won't be the last time we fire up the Grillo, but it'll be interesting to see how much of his stuff we get on the site with all the other names we need to get to. He's a lot of fun, even in a small role like this, so even if we only see him every six months or so, it's better than nothing at all.

Ty and I remarked that perhaps the most surprising thing about this after the size and quality of Dolph's role, was the fact that we had an interesting sub movie! Most of the time DTV sub movies turn into the dreaded sub slog--you know the type, "excitement" by repetition with multiple scenes of commanders looking off somewhere with grim expressions on their faces saying "fire," while young male supporting characters push some buttons and look into some periscopes, while footage of torpedoes cruising through the water head toward a target as we're supposed to be watching with bated breath for something to happen. Where this works is the story is more compelling, and Dolph's performance makes it even more so. Then when we get action, more of it is above ground than below, which also helped. When you've been doing this as long as we have, eventually you see everything, and a sub movie that's not a slog is now one we've finally seen.

Finally, as we've been doing, we'll give Dolph another paragraph due to the volume of films of his we've covered on the site. Unlike Seagal who has a couple films in development, but no idea when they're coming out, Dolph has two films slated for release this year, plus what looks like three more DTV flicks and three big screen flicks coming after that. I don't know that he'll continue that pace, but we know he'll hit 70 this year, and if he keeps pumping out a few films a year, he could hit 80 in 2026--if we're still writing the site then. The thing is, his influence and ability to move the needle hasn't slowed much, meaning when he has something new come out, we need to prioritize it over other stuff we might have in the can. So not only does he have more then ten films between him and the person with the second-most films, Gary Daniels, but there's no way for him or anyone else to catch up when I'm a position where I need to review Dolph's new films before anyone else's. It's a massive legacy, one that will probably never be surpassed.

And with that, let's wrap this up. As of right now, you can stream this free on Tubi. Between the story and Dolph's performance, that's more than worth it. And if you haven't yet, check out the podcast episode where Ty and I discussed this, episode 120 in the archives, "A Dolph and Hotch UnSub with Grillo Cheese."

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13429928

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

End of a Gun (2016)

It's a yearly tradition at the DTVC, our Steven Seagal birthday post. This is also one I've been meaning to get to for a long time, but as long as I've been back from hiatus, this has only been available as a rental. Then a miracle happened, and RedBox's streaming service of all places had this free with ads. Wonders never cease in the world of DTV and Seagal films.

End of a Gun has Seagal as some kind of former DEA/CIA/whatever who one night in Paris/Bucharest finds Jade Ewan being hassled by her jerky boyfriend. He of course insinuates himself, gives the jerky boyfriend some slap chop routine, and next thing you know there's a shootout and the boyfriend is dead. Thing is, the boyfriend works for a drug kingpin and had an obscene amount of money in the trunk of his car, and said car has been impounded by the French police in Bucharest. As the drug dealers try to find a way to get the money, Ewan uses her ample feminine wiles to convince Seagal to get it first, which he's all too happy to do. But can he trust her? And what will happen when the drug dealers find out and come for him? It'll probably end in some kind of showdown in an abandoned factory, right?

This is every bit the 2010s Keoni Waxman-directed Seagal actioner you'd expect it to be, only with a twist. The twist is, spoiler alert, Seagal doesn't get the girl. And there's even a hint--only a hint, Seagal wouldn't allow us to have more of that--that the girl really isn't interested in him. How can you not be into Seagal though? Between the chia pet goatee, the fake Cajun accent, and the frequent doubles, what's not to like? But we're at a stage now where I've watched and we've reviewed all of these Seagal DTV efforts--I still haven't reviewed The Onion or Clementine, but you know what I mean, this kind of movie, we've now done them all--and when you find something unique about one, it's hard not to hold onto it like grim death. And that may also explain why this one is kind of harder to get than a lot of the others, Seagal took a look at it after the fact and was like "I don't like how it looks like Jade Ewan wasn't into me." These films seem to have a kind of charm in spite of themselves though, right? And out of the seven films he had released in 2016, this one might have more time with him standing than the other six combined, so there's that too. All that said, this is a fun time killer in that 2010s Seagal DTV kind of way, but you should only go out of your way to watch it if it's the last one for you, like this is for me.

We're now at 39 films for Seagal as we celebrate his 71st birthday. His output has slowed down considerably, but he does have two films in pre-production according to IMDb, so perhaps we'll have more in the near future--plus I can finally do The Onion film to get him into the 40 Club too if neither of those films happen. And if they don't, what is Seagal's legacy? Starred in some of the best late 80s/early 90s actioners, and then went on to have one of the goofiest DTV action careers--and this film is indicative of all of that. There's something fascinating about it all, isn't there? And I think it's for that reason that no one on the site other than Dolph and maybe Willis moves the needle the way Seagal does. Action fans have come for the awesome, classic early stuff, and have stuck around to watch the car wreck that is the newer stuff. And they aren't serious car wrecks either, they're like you hear the squeal of tires outside, then the crash, and then yelling, because some asshole wasn't paying attention and crashed into someone else at an intersection. No one's hurt, and ultimately it's just a matter of cooler heads prevailing and the parties involved trading insurance information, but in the meantime, I just need to look out my window and watch what's happening, which I guess is why I need to come back to these Seagal films time and again, I'm just drawn to the whole alchemy of goofy and former glory.

Why is my one shot of Jade Ewan obscured by this man's back? Because that man's supposed to be Seagal, but, as we know, he never does his reverse shots. The thing with Ewan, is she's stunning, complete with an English accent that would make any American straight male like Seagal putty in her hands, and there's really nothing wrong with that, but as we also know, Seagal can't have it seem like someone is getting over on him. The movie tries to split the baby on that, by having her double-cross him, but him act like he figured on that, but he wanted to help her anyway, or whatever, which of course no one is buying. Before Jade was in this, she was in the British pop group The Sugarbabes, who I remember having a hit here in the States with "Hole in the Head," but it looks like Ewan wasn't in that iteration of the group. She's currently on a Netflix show, Luis Miguel, where she plays Mariah Carey. I haven't seen any of that show, but here I thought she did well as an actor--maybe too well when acting opposite Seagal, or opposite his double, like she was in this scene--so I can imagine she's probably good in that show too.

This is the last of the 9 Keoni Waxman/Steven Seagal films we had to review, so it's almost like the end of something with that, isn't it? From 2009 when he and Seagal did The Keeper, until 2016's Cartels (I believe it was their last collaboration--it was one of these 2016 movies) Waxman almost worked exclusively with Seagal, the one exception being Hunt to Kill with Stone Cold Steven Austin and Gary Daniels. Maybe it's not Scorsese and De Niro, but this collaboration has been one of the most fascinating in DTV history. We always joked that Waxman is the Seagal whisperer, because he seemed to do the best at working around all of the things Seagal expects out of his movies. By the same token, it has to be tiring, and after Cartels in 2016 he hasn't worked with Seagal since. I've been using the word "fascinating" a lot in this review, but these 9 Waxman/Seagal films leave behind a fascinating legacy. The 2010s were about turning the DTV film world into assembly line productions, kicking out cookie-cutter movies with known names on the tin to get as many streams and rentals as possible; but these Waxman/Seagal films, though they were as much a part of starting and establishing that trend, they also give us something a bit more. Between the goofiness and the benign car wreck quality of what Seagal's career has become, there's a sense that Waxman is trying to not only work with Seagal, but also almost highlight the goofiness and benign car wreck quality in his own subtle way. I don't know if he's doing it on purpose, but, again, it's just fascinating.

Finally, with this probably being the last Seagal post on the site for some time, I figured I'd do one final paragraph on him. When I started the site in 2007, Seagal DTV was something I was just getting into, but even then, in a short period between 2003 and 2007, he put out 13 DTV films, all of varying levels of quality. You had absurd moments, like him playing a professor in Out for a Kill and decapitating a man by throwing a samurai sword at him from a second story window; but also there were some pretty solid moments, like The Foreigner and it's Le Samourai vibes. Over the 39 films of his we've reviewed, we've seen Seagal's accent become more Cajun'y, his goatee more chia pet-ish, and his ratio of sitting to standing tilt further to the side of the former. Through it all, Seagal's films always provided fun content for the site, whether the film was good or bad. He's the first of the big names that we're nearing completion on, and as we do the same with Dolph, Van Damme, Gary Daniels, et al, this will free up more posts for names like Fred Williamson who we've been trying to catch up on, or names like Frank Zagarino who we've just gotten started on. Also, while we may not be reviewing much more Seagal here on the site, expect more of him on the DTVC podcast, so if you're not subscribed, make sure you are so you catch all our upcoming episodes.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Right now RedBox streaming is the only way to get this free, and I think that's the way to go. It's really for Seagal completists only, but being a Seagal DTV completist is a lot of fun, so why not?

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2268433

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

My Dinner with Andre (1981)

In the past I used to celebrate my birthday, April Fools' Day, with a post on the site. From 2009 through 2011 I posted movies called "April Fools' Day," and then I guess when I ran out, I stopped worrying about it. But with me posting every Saturday, and with April Fools' falling on a Saturday this year, I thought I'd do something fun to celebrate again. Having exhausted films about April Fools' Day, I decided to post something as a joke, and after this film came up during a recent podcast recording with the guys from Comeuppance, I thought this would be a perfect one to review.

My Dinner with Andre has Wallace Shawn as Wallace, a struggling playwright who goes to a French restaurant after an old friend in the theater world, Andre--played by Andre Gregory--invites him to dinner. Andre has dropped off the radar for a bit, and now he's telling Wallace about all of his experiences. As Wallace listens, he tries to take in everything Andre's telling him, but also respond to some of his revelations with his own weltanschauung. Is an electric blanket a comfort, or an indulgence that prevents one from experiencing life?

I don't really know the answer, but I really enjoyed this. For someone who complains about films not having enough action, or for being over 90 minutes, you wouldn't think I'd enjoy a film like this, but it all really worked for me. I loved Andre's anecdotes. I loved Wallace's responses. I loved the waiter looking askance at them and just wanting to serve them their food, or the rest of the staff closing down the restaurant in the background. I loved the shots of Andre talking and listening to Wallace while his reflection appears in the mirror behind them. The thing is, when I complain about a film having more talking and less action, or being over 90 minutes long, I'm complaining because the talking isn't interesting, or the film has no reason to be longer than 90 minutes. When it's filled with something that interests me, the talking can go on as long as it's sustainable. Roger Ebert in his review made a great point: "In another sense, they are simply carriers for a thrilling drama--a film with more action than 'Raiders of the Lost Ark.' What 'My Dinner With Andre' exploits is the well-known ability of the mind to picture a story as it is being told. Both Shawn and Gregory are born storytellers, and as they talk we see their faces, but we picture much more..." And I think that's the ultimate success of My Dinner with Andre, that a film with no action can have so much action.

From an April Fools' perspective, it is fun to throw in a My Dinner with Andre in among Andy Sidaris films, PM actioners, and schlock horror with Julie Strain and Brinke Stevens. The thing is though, from a DTV perspective, My Dinner with Andre only has $5,073 listed on IMDb as the box office gross, which, accurate or not, puts it well under my limit for what I consider DTV enough for the site. Granted, it probably has pulled in more money than that, but the independent spirit is still there. What's fascinating is the different ways the craft of film making is undertaken to give us such extremely different results through the same medium. Here we have Louis Malle meticulously crafting scenes so in the mirrors it looks like we're seeing a busy restaurant in the background. Compare that to Spiro Razatos in a 90s PM flick putting together some of the best action scenes, leading to him being one of the best in the business currently. Film can be so many things, and so while this is an April Fools' post because My Dinner with Andre is so different from the kinds of films we post here, in the end it's all still film and there to be enjoyed.

Recently I had a chance to go to a French restaurant when the president of our product at work took us out to one. I couldn't remember the last time I'd been in one, but the idea of it, escargot, red wine, a dish like coq au vin, now combined with the idea in this film of sitting there in a large cardigan sweater talking about whatever, just seems so fantastic. I don't know if this movie would have been as endearing to me if I hadn't been to a French restaurant as recently. Like Wallace Shawn though, I don't have a lot of money, so it would be me taking the subway here in Philly--which isn't as bad as what we see in New York in the early 80s, but it's not fantastic either--and probably hoping someone like Andre Gregory or the president of my product would be treating me. Even going alone, sitting at a table, drinking my wine and eating my way through the courses, sounds nice enough. It's another great piece of why this works, the setting of the French restaurant stands out as an oasis amidst the harshness of New York at that time. To complete the picture we have the waiter, Jean Lenauer, who in his expressions and mannerisms, shows us that as much as this is an oasis for the patrons, it never fully is for him, yet he still takes pride in keeping up the appearance of the oasis for everyone else.

With such a prodigious acting career, I was curious if at any point Wallace Shawn had had a film here on the site, but it doesn't look like it. Same with Andre Gregory, but he was closer, having appeared in the Sly Stallone/Wesley Snipes action classic Demolition Man. Louis Malle was someone I was introduced to in high school, when we watched Au Revoir Les Enfants in French class. Later, when I had my Matt, Movie Guy Tumblr, I did a blurb on Elevator to the Gallows, which I watched one Saturday with Mon Oncle and Jules and Jim when I was snowed in. It's a funny thing, Tumblr, I go back to it from time to time, but it's like an old abandoned restaurant or something, posts strewn around like old furniture and cooking equipment, collecting dust, capsules of time. It's not like MySpace though, which no longer exists like it did, Tumblr is there for you to visit, some kind of former digital boom town whose population has shrunk exponentially, but everything remained intact for the rest of the world to experience.

Finally, seeing the Lloyd Kaufman and Troma tags is probably setting off your April Fools' radar, but those are actually legit tags. Louis Malle actually used Lloyd Kaufman and his fledgling Troma production studios to help him with the New York production of the film. Wonders never cease, right? Just three short years later he'd be producing Toxic Avenger. One of the things I realized about the Lloyd Kaufman tag: I tagged him for his appearance in Doomed: The Untold Story of Roger Corman's The Fantastic Four, but never went back and tagged the Troma films he was involved in. With that done, he now has 10 tags on the site, though the Troma film with the most views on the site, Buttcrack, is the only one we've covered that he wasn't credited on. So he was credited on My Dinner with Andre, but not Buttcrack. Again, wonders never cease.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Currently you can get My Dinner with Andre on HBOMax, or you can buy the Criterion DVD. It's a unique film, one that I really enjoyed, but you may not, and that's okay too. Either way, happy April Fools' Day everyone!

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082783

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

Delta Delta Die! (2003)

In looking to get more Julie Strain on the site, I saw this on Tubi and figured it would do the trick. I also hadn't done horror in a while, and this looked like a fun one, especially considering it was produced by the great Charles Band. With all this going for it, let's see how it did.

Delta Delta Die! is about a sorority that is renown for their fantastic meat pies. Turns out, those meat pies have a secret ingredient: the flesh of meathead jocks. Led by their house mother, Julie Strain, the ladies need to lure as many men as possible to the sorority house so they have enough beefy man flesh to fill their buffet. The problem is, intrepid intern Tobias is onto these ladies, and he has a plan to stop them: call in former sister Brinke Stevens, who has a history with Strain. Stevens is up to the task, so she comes to town to help Tobias take these women down. But will Julie Strain go down that easily? 

This was fun, but kind of unremarkable. Except for Julie Strain. She comes in and really gets after it, killing poor jocks, throwing their parts into a blender, chewing on them and spitting them out, all while wearing a top that shows off her boobs. Then we have Brinke Stevens, another B-movie horror legend, who's on a collision course to wackiness with Strain, and we're treated to a Russ Meyer-style wrestling match between the two of them for an end fight. I think from the unremarkable standpoint though, there wasn't much going on in the scenes the two of them weren't in. Yes, if I take myself back to 2003, as a 24-year-old I would've easily been lured into the sorority house by the ladies, but fortunately in 2003 I was a bit heavy, and at 5' 7", definitely no chiseled jock, so I guess I could take solace in knowing I wouldn't have been a target of them. And to that point, I think turning the usual serial killer targeting women thing on its ear was a nice change of pace, and Strain is the woman you'd want to deliver that kind of evil. I don't know if this is a go out of your way for it movie, but if you want something that brings you back to a different time, this is a fun one.

We're now at 5 films for Julie Strain on the site, so we have a long way to go to get her tag count up to a respectable level. This is also our first film since her Hall of Fame induction back in October of 2021, so we've had ample opportunities since then to review more of her stuff. And watching her here reminds me of why I should be getting more of her stuff up, because she took what was a rather unremarkable low-budget horror film and made it something more. She just has such a fantastic presence, and she absolutely goes for it in every scene. It's a shame we lost her, and a shame I'm only now catching up to getting more of her films on the DTVC, because she's one of the true queens of DTV and low-budget films. I think one fear I sometimes have when I see one of her films listed, is that she might not be in it as much. Another concern is, like Battle Queen 2020, that the Tubi version is edited so we don't get the whole thing--and I'd love to cover that one, because it's her and the great Jeff Wincott! Either way, I need to get over those concerns and just review more of her stuff, and I'll start making that happen.

Remember when sending emails looked like that? I didn't, I was so used to how they looked now, I'd completely forgotten. Even the Arial font doesn't look like that Arial anymore. It's an interesting thing about time and this movie, because it also felt like a 90s movie that was made in the 2000s. Like the clothes and technology--like emails and cellphones--were definitely early 2000s, but the vibe of the movie was like something from 10 years before. So I was watching a film from 20 years ago that felt like it was made ten years too late. It was a difficult thing to wrap my brain around. And then in that mental miasma, Julie Strain showed up in a top where her boobs came through, and killed two jocks and ground their flesh up in a blender while chewing on and spitting out bits of their flesh, and it all made sense again, only to have the scene change and my brain warped again by the mix of something from 20 years ago that felt like it was made 10 years too late. Is there a term for that? "Deja vu all over again"? "I'm older than I'm younger than I was"? Maybe the Germans have something for it, like "Scheissezeitgehirn"?

The other B-movie legend in this is Brinke Stevens, someone who also hasn't been on the site much. In Droid Gunner she played a mutant with feline features; and then in 24 Hours to Midnight, she was the voice of the Rothrock ninja called in by Fong to add in scenes Rothrock wasn't there for after she quit the picture. The thing that makes Brinke Stevens great here, is she's the only person who could take Julie Strain down, anyone else we wouldn't believe it. Unlike Strain, who I know needs to be on here more and it's my bad that she isn't, Brinke Stevens, while someone I've always enjoyed seeing, does much more horror, and over time the DTVC has slanted more action. That wasn't our intention, but the action reviews always garnered more engagement from readers, which led to more requests and recommendations, which then led to more action films getting reviewed on the site at the expense of the other genres. Perhaps if I do get to more horror stuff down the road, we'll see more of her here, because Stevens is truly another one of the greats.

Getting back to the lack of horror on the site, in the 90s and 2000s, my friends and I watched as much, if not more, DTV horror, and something like this would've been a rental we'd have gotten for a get-together. As I've mentioned above though, as I was posting reviews, the action ones were getting more engagement. One area where you see why, is a DTV horror film might have 20 or 30 external reviews, whereas a PM flick might only have 5-7. The action review ecosystem was much smaller then, and people looking for that kind of thing had fewer options. The result is, we're at a place now where the last horror film I reviewed was Ash and Bone in February, which was a screener request, and then the last one I did on my own before this was Black Friday back in November. I don't know if that will ever change though, because we have become so action oriented--compare the now 146 horror tags versus 809 action tags--but I could stand to mix in horror more often I think, if only because it was such a huge part of my DTV origins, and I don't think we'd have a DTVC without it.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Here in the States you can get this on Tubi. Outside the US, I'm not sure, and I'm not sure you need to go too far out of your way for it. Strain is fantastic, and Stevens is a great foil to Strain, but beyond that, it doesn't have a lot going on. 

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0349343

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

Lady Bloodfight (2016)

This is one I've been meaning to get to for some time, evidenced by the fact that it's not only a complete the triangle film, with Brett and Ty at Comeuppance and Mitch from the Video Vacuum having already done it, but it's also what I've now dubbed a "superfecta," as this is one that Chris the Brain at Bulletproof Action has done as well--the superfecta bet being the one where you select the horses that come in 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and now me with 4th. We'll see if that term sticks.

Lady Bloodfight is a take on Bloodsport, only with female fighters. In this case, two rivals, Wai (Kathy Wu) and Shu (Muriel Hofman) fight to a draw in the previous tourney, so to claim victory, they need to train new fighters to win in their stead for the next one. Wai starts by training a Ling (Jenny Wu), thief who broke into her dojo, and then Shu follows by training Jane (Amy Johnston), an American from Pittsburgh who has come to Hong Kong to find out what happened to her father when he came to compete 18 years ago. Will one of these women prevail?

This is the real deal. The fights are great, it's well-shot, well-acted, it just all works the way you'd want it to. It's directed by Chris Nahon of Kiss of the Dragon fame, and written by Bey Logan of The Medallion and White Tiger fame. Yes, the plot is a bit derivative, but it has some unique elements that give it enough for me, especially when you pair it with the action and performances. I think Amy Johnston is set up to be the hero, and it does work from that perspective; but the rivalry between Wai and Shu is prominent as well; and I think the Ling character was compelling too, making it a shame we didn't get more of her, but I also understood to get us down to 100 minutes we needed to cut things somewhere. Another thing that could've been cut was the whole conflict between Jane and Shu, as it felt a bit contrived, like conflict for the sake of conflict, and for a fight movie I don't know that we really needed it--though it did give us a great scene between Ling and Jane in the aftermath that was really good. Even that complaint is a small one, because overall this worked, and I really enjoyed it.

This is now three Amy Johnston films so far on the site, and in each one she's given a great performance. The numbers aren't quite there yet, but when you think about how a Mimi Lesseos only has five films where she was the lead, Johnston could be on her way to being one of the top female action stars, especially in the DTV realm. After Rothrock, there's a large drop down to names like Kathleen Kinmont, but Amy Johnston should have more films where she's the lead than Kinmont did. Zoe Bell is another one that I need to catch up on, and in looking at her CV, she has more stuff I could review on the site than Johnston does. Either way, the potential is there for Johnston to be among those names, especially with the roles she's had so far. She has those action lead qualities that make us want to see what she has coming next, so hopefully we keep getting stuff like this from here--and if we do, it's going to be exciting to follow her growth. One thing that could possibly derail her: getting cancelled like Gina Carano did. Please Amy, we implore you, don't tweet any dumb stuff!

With men as the action leads, the bonds that characters form are in more of a bro vein. "Thanks for havin' my six man." "Let's grab a beer and get into a bar fight." "They killed my bro, time for a dysfunctionally masculine cry, followed by a vengeance mission." With women though, emotions are considered okay, and if the characters form more of an emotional bond, like Johnston and Hofman form as Hofman is training her, we as the audience are more okay with it--which shouldn't be the case, we should be okay with dudes doing that too. Anyway, I liked how they used the bond Johnston and Hofman were forming to juxtapose with how Kathy Wu's character was training Jenny Wu, where Kathy was stricter and harsher. The problem was, with harsher one, we don't get enough development of Jenny Wu's character, in part because we couldn't, but it made the juxtaposition less complete; but even bigger, when Hofman's character gets upset with Johnston after she takes out a gang of guys who mugged her earlier in the film, it also doesn't fit with the emotional bond Hofman and Johnston have formed. To make it work, they needed to play more into why Hofman's character would've been hurt by what Johnston's did--maybe go back to what happened in the past between Hofman and Wu. It's that thing where action filmmakers are trying new things when they have women in the lead, but ultimately they need to fall back on old male-lead tropes. Hopefully as time goes on they'll be able to break away from them more. A great example getting out of those male-dominated cliches was Zoe Saldana's Colombiana.

Amy Johnston's lead was solid enough that we didn't have a Destro Effect, but I really liked Jenny Wu's Ling character, and I also liked how they used the harsh methods Kathy Wu's character employed to train her to create some ambiguity in Ling's motivation. In a different world, Ling would have been the hero of this movie, and maybe she has to fight her trainer, Wai, in the finale. That was another aspect of this that was different from other tournament fight films, there wasn't a Bolo Yeung or Michel Qissi looming at the end of it all. The closest we had was Mayling Ng's Svietta, who was great as the Tong Po-esque baddie, but with the construct of Wai and Shu needing to train fighters to win for them, Johnston had to fight Svietta earlier on. Maybe the better approach is if Ling and Johnston's Jane befriend each other, and Svietta is the evil looming in the finale. As an aside, I didn't realize this, but this is the third film for Ng on the site too, the other two being Acceleration and Debt Collectors. Hopefully we'll see her again, because she was also great here.

Finally, from a personal standpoint, this film features two cities I've always wanted to visit, Hong Kong and Pittsburgh. Obviously one is much further from me in Philadelphia than the other, but it's interesting how Philadelphia and Pittsburgh are connected--or not connected. My wife and I don't have a car or drive, so there is no driving option for us to get from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh for me, but that seems to be the best way to get there. There's really only one train a day that connects the two, and going west, that train gets to Pittsburgh in the evening and comes back to Philadelphia the next morning. So that means to do anything there, like catch a Pirates game, I'd need at least a two-night stay. You can also do the Megabus, which also only has one trip a day, so if I'm doing that the train's nicer than the bus; or Greyhound, which has more bus times, bit do I want to take a Greyhound just to say I've been to Pittsburgh? Compare that to Boston, which is roughly the same distance away, but has myriad train options, plus flights aren't as expensive either. You could make the point that the big difference between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh versus Philadelphia and Boston, is one of those two has one of the largest cities in the world between it. Fair enough, but I don't think you could find a similar situation in Europe where two large cities like Philadelphia and Pittsburgh are connected by only one train trip a day. The answer is always "Americans just love their cars," but the Germans love their cars even more, and they have no problem connecting major cities with trains, and trains that are faster than traveling by car too.

Since I've spent a paragraph ranting about the lack of train travel outside the Northeast Corridor in the US, it's probably better to wrap this up. Here in the States this is available to stream on Prime, Plex, Pluto, and my favorite, Tubi. If you haven't seen it yet, it's time to make it happen, as this is a lot of fun, with some fantastic martial arts action. It's the great irony of America: tons of great content to stream for free, but you have to drive everywhere so you can't watch any of it on a long trip. Maybe Tubi, Netflix, Amazon, etc. should team up with Amtrak to get us more train service... sorry, I said I was done ranting...

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4327752

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

WEAPONiZED (2016)

For our non-podcast post this week, I had planned to look at a different film, but with Tom Sizemore's passing, I felt we needed to pay him a fitting tribute. The question was what movie to choose, because Sizemore had a lot of films that he wasn't in a lot. I felt like this one would be a pretty good bet, because it not only had him, but Mickey Rourke, Johnny Messner, and Michael Pare. Let's see how it did.

WEAPONiZED takes place in the future, or not, but has Messner as a detective working on a case of a mass shooting that seems pretty open and shut. They have the guy on camera doing it, and they arrest him. Only the guy seems to have no idea he did anything. After proclaiming his innocence, suddenly he decides he's guilty, then jams a pen in his eye to kill himself. That seems fishy to Messner, so he investigates, and Mickey Rourke gives him some breadcrumbs. Turns out arms contractor Tom Sizemore, with Rourke's help, has developed the ability to move one person's consciousness into another's, essentially weaponizing them. Now Messner needs to expose this in order to save the day.

This is a bit of a tough sit, and I think the reason is the idea of someone controlling someone else's body has been used before. Once we see where it's going, it's more a matter of waiting for Messner to find out too, and for us to figure out the mechanism through which it happens--and the idea that one's consciousness could somehow just be magically transported into someone else's brain is a large bridge to cross. All that being said, we have fun performances by Rourke and Sizemore, with a little Pare in full Brooklyn accent sprinkled in. I think Messner really goes for it too, but in watching him here I feel like he deserved better. We get glimpses of his character being some kind of cop on the edge, plus detective savant, but it's never fully realized. We also had a couple interesting supporting roles with Taylor Cole and Jon Foo. Taylor Cole, who we've seen before in an April Fool's Day, is playing Messner's wife, and while that's mostly one-note, she has one interesting scene where her mind is being controlled and she attacks Messner. More of that would've been fun, because we've seen the supportive wife to the hero that she plays the rest of the time too much. And then Jon Foo, who plays Jin in Tekken, is a computer hacker guy helping Messner. He gets to use his martial arts when Sizemore sends some goons to take him down. It was another moment that the movie zigged where another film would have zagged, because usually the guy who helps the hero gets killed, but again, we didn't get enough of that kind of thing. Ultimately this doesn't give us enough of those inspired moments for this to fully work, which is unfortunate. 

For someone as big as Tom Sizemore, this is only his 6th tag on the site, and of those, one was for his screenwriting credit on Asian Connection. I think this film is a good indicator of why that is, because I don't know if I would have reviewed it if not for a Sizemore in memoriam post, because despite the names, there isn't a Hall of Famer or other big name, and you just never know with Sizemore on the tin how much you can expect to see him. But like the last film of his we reviewed, Abstruse, there's this effortless quality that he brings, like he's acting well without even trying. It's not mailing it in though, it's something more like an acting savant, and I've always been drawn to that when I see his performances. My favorite of his roles was in Point Break, where he pours the beer on his cereal, and then later lays into Busey and Reeves when they screw up his bust. His pairings with Kathryn Bigelow, Point Break, Strange Days, and Blue Steel, might be my favorite director/actor pairing, even above ones like Scorsese/De Niro or Kurosawa/Mifune. The legacy he leaves behind is a complicated one, but I think he goes down from a raw talent standpoint as one of the best, and while he has left us too soon, he also has so many great performances, even in small roles in DTV films, that are waiting to be discovered. Here's to you Mr. Sizemore, truly one of the all-time greats.

According to the trivia on IMDb, when Sizemore did Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man with Mickey Rourke, he criticized Rourke, saying he didn't act, just smoked cigarettes. They do have a couple scenes together in this, and Rourke doesn't really make any sense, with his glasses, long hair (described by Ty from Comeuppance as a "Nic Cage wig"), and Breathe-Right (TM) strip on his nose. It's not like Sizemore and Madsen, Rourke is something else entirely, and Sizemore acts opposite him accordingly. It's a unique element of this movie that gives us something you don't usually get. The problem is, for all the unique elements we get, we also have not-so-unique constructs that don't always work--like Rourke with a Nic Cage wig and Breathe-Right strip on his nose. We as the viewer are like Sizemore, wondering what we're supposed to do with this, and when Rourke tells Sizemore "I want out," Sizemore's like "fine, you're out." The thing is though, when Messner or his partner act opposite Rourke, they're treating him like he looks perfectly normal. That's the key with Sizemore, he knows how ridiculous Rourke looks, and he wants us to know he knows, yet he's a professional and talented enough actor that he can show us without breaking character. And then like a true actor, he uses the disdain he has for Rourke to fuel the scene where he has to kill him.

Initially this was only the third Messner movie on the site, which didn't sound right, especially since Ring of Death wasn't one of those movies. So I checked, and this is actually his sixth. Still not a lot, right? We do have some others of his in the hopper, like the Dolph flick 4Got10, or a couple Willis flicks that we've covered on the pod, A Day to Die and American Siege, the latter of which where he plays Jon Hamm playing a White Separatist Militia leader. (Interesting enough, Messner is 11 months older than Hamm.) The complaint with Messner here is the one we usually make, that his personality and charisma take a back seat to a one-note, brooding hero, but this character did have a bit more personality, which was good. I'm still pushing for that buddy cop movie series with Michael Jai White. Maybe the first film could have Rourke looking like he does here as the main baddie. Absolute gold.

Finally, I watched this film from a hotel room in Boston while I was there for work, and the TV was higher-def than I'm used to. To watch the movie, I cast my Tubi app to the TV, which was cool that I could do that, but with the TV's resolution, the movie didn't look like a movie anymore, there was no film quality to it, it was too clear. I almost blamed the movie for that, but watching it on my computer to get images, it looks like a normal movie does. I think that added quality didn't do the movie any favors. It stood to benefit from a little low-def'ing. It's just another added issue that DTV films have to contend with, these fancy new TVs create a clarity of the picture that the original film hadn't planned on. Does that mean to keep doing the site, I can't get a fancy new TV? It's not anything I need to worry about now, but down the road I guess. What a thing to complain about, right? My company is good enough to pay for me to stay in a nice enough hotel that the TV makes my DTV movies on Tubi look too clear.

And with that, let's wrap this up. If you need a Sizemore to celebrate his life, this might do the trick--though better to do Point Break. Beyond that, this film has some unique elements that buttress an otherwise not unique film concept. Is that enough to get you over the hump? Probably not, but it did the trick for me here. We're going to miss Tom Sizemore, such a talent, someone who embraced quantity in his projects, but also maintained a high level of quality in his performances. It bears repeating: truly one of the greats.

For more into: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4776564

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