Do or Die (1991)

As we continue in our goal of getting all of Andy Sidaris's LETHAL Ladies films on the site, we have this entry from 1991, which has the distinction of being the only one from Hard Ticket to Hawaii on to not feature the great Rodrigo Obregon. Somehow we'll make it through, and with Pat Morita, James Lew, and Erik Estrada in the cast, that always helps.

Do or Die has Pat Morita as evil villain Kaneshiro, "Kane" for short, who is not happy that our heroes Dona Speir and Roberta Vasquez keep disrupting his criminal plans in previous outings. So when he corners them outside a charity luau, you'd think he'd just kill them and call it good. But then we wouldn't have a movie, so instead he has one of his goons, James Lew, attach a tracker to Speir's watch, they send the ladies on their way, and then he has six pairs of mercenaries that will each go out to kill them. Why not send them all out at once so they win with their superior numbers? Again, if they did, we wouldn't have a movie, so they go two-by-two, while Speir and Vasquez round up the gang, including a newly minted hero Erik Estrada, and they head down to Dallas and Louisiana to draw out the baddies and take them down.

As an entry in this series, this may be one of the weaker ones, but the floor on this series is so high that that still makes this better than most DTV actioners you'll watch, especially when taking the Pepsi Challenge with anything from the 2010s or 2020s. Morita is a fantastic villain, there's a good mix of action and boobs, and all the fun you'd want from one of these is there. Even if we don't have Obregon, we do have the rest of our favorites, including Bruce Penhall, Cynthia Brimhall, Michael Shane as our Abilene who can't shoot straight, Richard Bumiller as the smooth-talking agency man, and Richard Cansino and Chu Chu Malave as our bungling assassins. I think where this might be weaker, is the plot is a bit contrived--again, why is Morita not just killing them, but also, when we have the assassin teams, they're always outnumbered by our heroes, which could be a good statement on how a strong team--a "family" per se?--that sticks together can overcome pairs of baddies--but it felt off because it always felt like the baddies were at a disadvantage, which removed any element of peril. All that said, that just makes this a weaker entry for me, not a bad time overall, and this still delivers on the fun and entertainment you want from a Sidaris LETHAL Ladies film.

Another area where this had a bit of trouble is, when they made Erik Estrada a good guy, it was hard to parse him probably wanting it to be his film, and the fact that these should be Dona Speir's films. She does have her own showdown with one of Morita's baddies at the end without any help from Estrada, but he gets more of the big action scenes, which takes some away from her as the main lead. This is Speir's fifth film in the series, and even with Estrada getting some more scenes, there's also still the overarching sense that this is another one of Speir's films, and that's something that I feel like can't be understated. Recently I recorded a podcast on Olga Kurylenko with Will from Exploding Helicopter (episode 127, coming June 13th, so make sure to look for it!), and I think Kurylenko is probably above Speir in work as far as a female action lead, but Speir holds a special place as a woman in the late 80s/early 90s helming an action franchise when that wasn't being done by anyone else in the US other than Cynthia Rothrock--you may give me Linda Hamilton, but Michael Biehn is the lead for the first Terminator, and Arnold the second. The LETHAL Ladies films after Picasso Trigger are built around Dona Speir as the lead, and, again, I don't think that can be understated, and even with Estrada taking some of the limelight, there's still no question she's the lead. 

Erik Estrada is back, but instead of being his previous baddie self--who was blown up by Speir in the previous entry--he's now playing a new character. It's an interesting idea, especially as I'm looking at the Fast and Furious films as part of my DTVC Extra series that I'm running on the off fortnights where I don't have main podcast episodes. Vin Diesel's approach is to take villains and turn them into heroes in later films, which can be a stretch with someone like Statham's character where he's killing people close to them. What if they did it this way, if Statham just came back as a new character? It worked here, but could it work in something like the Fast and Furious franchise? Probably only for people who watch Sidaris films, right? This is it for him in the series though, which means it could be some time before we see him again here, but we'll see if we can't at least mix in some Light Blast or Night of the Wilding. As much as I say this should be Dona Speir's film, back in the 90s seeing his name on the bill when this was on cable would have been a big seller for me, and it was great that they were able to bring him back for a second film like this.

Going back to the Fast and Furious films, these films kind of follow a similar tract, two or three decades before Vin Diesel created the model. From Hard Ticket on, it's always about teams, working together to take down a horrible baddie, and while they may not be as culturally diverse as the crew in the Fast and Furious films, they were early in spotlighting females in lead roles--and actually unlike the Fast and Furious films where women are always supporting roles, this one goes from Speir as the lead to Julie Strain as the lead. And with this cast working on multiple films together, that sense of family bleeds through the same way Vin Diesel has it bleed through in the Fast and Furious ones. I'm sure if you asked Sidaris, he'd have loved to have had the budget Universal gives the Fast and Furious films, but based on the success of the LETHAL Ladies films, maybe when Fast Five came out we should've expected the series to be that successful too, because Diesel was working from Sidaris's playbook, only with more special effects and fewer boobs and buttockses.

Finally, I learned from this film that Dallas, TX and Shreveport, LA are less than 3 hours away from each other. It's one of those quirks about America, unless we've really been in an area for a period of time, we often don't think about how the states are connected in certain areas, or how far one place is from another. Like in my head, Dallas is further in the center of Texas, and I never think about the fact that Louisiana borders Texas, even though if you gave me a blank map of the US I could name both states and see that they border each other. It's a similar thing for me in Philadelphia, people often don't realize how close we are to New York City and Washington, DC--both cities are closer to me than Dallas is from Shreveport. This was not one of the ones that I saw when it came out--much later I saw it on TBS after 2am, that beautiful classic Sidaris opening credit sequence like comfort food for my alcohol soaked brain as I'm eating leftover junk food and trying to keep the room from spinning, I was in no position to question how the team could drive from Shereveport to Dallas so quickly--but had I seen it in middle school or high school, the geography lesson would have been invaluable. Who said Andy Sidaris films can't be educational?

And with that, let's wrap this up. As of this writing, you can catch this and all the other LETHAL Ladies films on Tubi here in the States. While it may be one of the weaker entries, it is still a lot of fun, and delivers in ways that a lot of modern films can't.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101744

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

Project Eliminator (1991)

This is one I watched ahead of a podcast episode I did with the guys from Comeuppance Reviews almost a year ago to the day that I'm writing this post. We were discussing our top five Frank Zagarino films, and as you can imagine, any discussion like that would include this gem. You can check that out, episode 100 in the archives. In addition to us and Comeuppance, Chris from Bulletproof Action has covered this as well.

Project Eliminator is essentially a sequel to the Zagarino film Striker, where he's back as John "Striker" Slade. We start with our hero is getting a ride from a trucker out in the Southwest somewhere, wearing a Canadian tuxedo and sporting a fantastic man mane. He has the trucker let him off and calls a buddy, David Carradine, who has work for him. While he's waiting though, he needs to take out some Point Break-esque Former Presidents robbers, because we can't wait that long for some sweet Zags action. After Carradine picks him up he finds out his job: the creator of a flying laser has been kidnapped by some terrorists that are forcing him to remake it for them. Those baddies include classics like David "Shark" Fralick and Brett Baxter Clark. They don't stand a chance against Zags.

This is a pretty sweet deal. First off, while I prefer my Zags with a crew cut or a nice surfer cut, the man mane was fantastic too. With that, the Zagarino alone would be enough to recommend this, but what we also get is the rare 90s Engaged Carradine. He's yucking it up with Zagarino, playing the piano in a bar, wearing a cowboy hat and a bolo tie. This is no sit down role. This is no Karate Cop, where we last saw him back in 2021, serving up some jackrabbit stew to Ron Marchini, he's actually a fully fleshed out part of this film. On top of that, we get some recognizable toughs, like David "Shark" Fralick, and Brett Baxter Clark--who interestingly enough played a character named Shark in Shootfighter II. If you're going to have a fully man-maned Zags in a Canadian tuxedo, you need a be-five-o'clock-shadowed Clark with nicely poofed and feathered hair giving him dirty looks as a counter. And no, this isn't a Members Only jacket Clark has tucked into his pants, it just looks like it.

We haven't seen Zags since he was inaugurated last fall, which is a shame that we lost track of him that much. We're now at 15 films for him, which normally we'd say isn't great, but for someone like him that we're just starting to push to get more films up for, it's not horrible. Here we get the whole package, and as I mentioned, I prefer him with the shorter hair look, but to get this once in a while isn't horrible. I think I have a couple more that I watched for that podcast last year that we can cover, plus he has some on Tubi that I can grab, so we should see him again soon. One thing that struck me about this one though, is how good he is, but for the late 80s/early 90s, which was such a deep reservoir of great DTV action, he and this film are definitely a few tiers below. I don't know that we ever get back to that level of great DTV film again, but what's great is we can enjoy it now on various streaming services. Getting him to 20 by the end of the year is probably a stretch, but I think if I make more of a conscious effort to get more of his stuff up, we should see him a few more times before the year is out.

As I mentioned above, we last saw David Carradine in 2021 with Karate Cop, which happened to come out the same year as this one. His performances couldn't be more different. I looked and we've also reviewed two others he had in 1991, the Daniels flick Capital Punishment, and the Cirio H. Santiago joint Dune Warriors--also when I wrote the Martial Law post that was listed as '91, but it's now been moved to 1990. That gives you a sense of the fast and loose nature of Carradine's 90s DTV career, which, to be honest, is a large part of what got him into the Hall of Fame. Quantity over quality, but on this scale where you get something like Capital Punishment where his scenes feel grafted in, Karate Cop where he only has one scene that involves him selling this disgusting looking jackrabbit stew in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, and something like this where he's a full participant. It was like the old video store, you went in and never knew what you were going to get--like when I rented Dune Warriors thinking it had something to do with Dune--but you kept going back, because you never knew when you were going to get a gem like this.

Because this came out the same year as Point Break, we can't assume either was ripping off the other by using Former Presidents robbers, it's an apparent case of polygenesis. The other thing here is that the Former Presidents are only in it for a short scene, and then that's it. I don't know that we needed a man-maned Zags in the original Point Break, but the idea of a DTV sequel would've been pretty sweet. At this stage we could still do it, only with Zags in the Busey role, and maybe you mix it up for the Keanu, like Amy Johnston or Natalie Burn. Iko Uwais actually looks young enough that he could pass for Keanu's age at that time. You could do like a whole series of Point Break DTV sequels maybe. I'd be up for writing the scripts if someone wants to give me a call...

Finally, this was shot in Albuquerque, NM, which is a place I've never been to before--need to get out there and see the Isotopes play, right? I have been to New Mexico before though, when I visited Four Corners, which, for people outside the US, is the only place in the US where four states touch. There's a whole park on Navajo land dedicated to it, and they have stations set up in each state where you can buy souvenirs. I have a shot of me in a push up stance with a foot or hand in all four states at once. If you're curious, as of this writing I've been to 28 of the 50 states. I read somewhere that the average American has been to 17, but only 2% of all Americans have been to all 50. If you look at the ones I've been to on a map, there's a hole where West Virginia is, as I have all the states around it, and then a huge chunk in the center of the county other than Texas is missing too, including Illinois where Chicago is. What constitutes a visit for me is leaving the airport or getting out of the car off the highway, which means Wyoming counts when my buddy and I shot up 25 to Cheyenne and hit a McDonald's, visitor center, and truck stop off one of the exits; but Illinois doesn't, despite me changing planes in Chicago multiple times, and New Jersey, which I'd ridden through countless times, didn't officially count for me until my wife and I went to Atlantic City in 2014. One area where I'm hampered in my quest, is I don't drive, and a lot of a Americans get a bunch of states on cross-country drives--even something like Four Corners requires a car, which fortunately I had my buddy driving while we were in Colorado on hiking trip. Unfortunately this means I may leave the planet without becoming one of those 2%, a sad reality that I either have to accept, or I need to pack up my bindle and hope a freight at the local train yard here in Philly--which if you're wondering, yes it's within walking distance to me, or I can take the bus some of the way there.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Here in the States you can currently get this on Tubi, which is a good deal. It's a fun Zagarino actioner with the rare Engaged 90s Carradine included. In addition, you can check out the episode where the guys from Comeuppance and I discuss Zagarino, episode 100 in the archives, "Zig-Zagarino."

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0148639

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

Foxtrap (1986)

In our continuing mission to get more Fred Williamson on the site, and into the 30 Club and beyond, this had been in my watch queue for some time, but when I discovered it was on Tubi I knew I had no excuse to not make it happen. In addition to us, there are only two other critic reviews, and one of them is from our friends Ty and Brett at Comeuppance.

Foxtrap has Williamson as Thomas Fox, a bodyguard for hire who's hired by Christopher Connelly to retrieve his niece Susan, who's gone missing in Cannes. Seems simple enough, until Fox gets out there, and discovers Susan is in bed with a local crime boss Marco. After some tangles with Marco's goons, Fox is able to rescue Susan and bring her back to LA. The thing is though, Williamson has been in enough films with Christopher Connelly to know that he doesn't seem like the concerned, benevolent uncle type, and with 20 minutes of movie left, there's plenty of time for Williamson to figure out whats going on. Marco and his goons, and then Connelly and his goons, won't know what it them.

This isn't the best of Williamson's directed films. The plot meanders a bit, we get real time scenes of things like him getting his bags out of his car, there's some brutality of women that's a bit much, a music score that sounds a bit silly at times, and editing snafus like a typo in the credits and a visible boom mic. All of that is mitigated by the Williamson factor though, to ultimately deliver us a fun film. As our hero, he's not a hard-nosed detective on the edge, he's a jet-setting man of the world who's completely at home in Cannes or Rome, but can take out a gang of toughs when he has to too. So with any clunkiness we may have in the film's execution, we have plenty of fantastic Williamson to make up for it, and really, when you come to a Williamson film, what else do you want?

Williamson is now at 28 films on the site. The 30 Club is just around the corner, but I have been slacking a bit in my Williamson posts, with the last one coming back in February. The other interesting thing is he's at 12 directed films with this one, which puts him tied with Keoni Waxman in a tie for fifth-most director credits, and one behind Isaac Florentine and Sam Firstenberg for a tie for third. There are a couple things going on in this film that I think show what makes Williamson great. First off, the film is flawed, but his presence alone makes it work. I thought back to Dolph and some of his clunkers, and I don't really know that he made those work just by his presence alone--granted, those clunkers weren't his directed films, but even the ones he's directed that didn't work as well, like Diamond Dogs, he alone couldn't make them fun the way Williamson does here. The other thing is how he makes his character cosmopolitan and at home in places like Cannes and Rome. A common trope is to have the African American hero be straight out of the inner city and plopped into a European city, and the film will play up the clash of cultures for laughs. Williamson leaves that trope entirely, and I think this movie is much better for it. I don't know if I can put Williamson above Dolph for the number one slot all time for DTV stars, but they're closer between 1 and 2 than they have been.

The music in this deserves its own paragraph, because it is such a huge part of the film. It starts off in the opening sequence of Williamson driving--and as someone who's never had his license and probably can't critique anyone else's driving, I have to say he looks like he's all over the road, often crossing over to the wrong side--and it sounds like what you might hear in a long-form corporate ad video, or maybe an 80s fishing show montage segue between segments. From there we have this synthesizer generated woodwind instrument, which at one point sounds like a big number or letter reveal in a Sesame Street cartoon, as we watch a little French man in a knit cap following Williamson in Cannes. We also get some Smooth Jazz that turns into a Bobby Caldwell-esque late 70s soul song when Williamson has his love scene. We then get this groovy organ sound during a shootout, which makes it hard to feel the intensity of Williamson diving over a car to avoid the uzi fire coming at him, it was probably better used accompanying shots of a grimacing Karl Malden somewhat aggressively driving to a crime scene in an episode of Streets of San Francisco. In some respects, the music adds to the film's charm; but other times, like when the synthesizer-generated woodwind instrument comes on a little more strongly as the chase between Williamson and the French man in the knit cap heats up, I find myself cracking up as I'm mimicking the "doo-dah-lee-dee-doo-doo" sound out loud as I'm watching the movie--which, I guess if I'm honest with myself, also adds to the film's charm.

At the end of the credits, the film teases that we should "watch next summer for the FOX and the COBRA." My guess is "the COBRA" was Black Cobra, which came out in 1987, but unfortunately we didn't get more FOX. This is something with the site and podcast, and even my novels, that I always try to make sure I don't do, and that's get too far ahead of myself by promising things that I don't have in the can yet. Take this review for example. If I didn't get a chance to watch this movie, I'd have reviewed the Zagarino film Project Eliminator instead, because I'd already seen that. Same with the podcast, I don't want to tell people what the upcoming episodes will be, because even if I have guests and subjects lined up for them, you never know when someone's schedule, mine or theirs, will jumble everything up. I did hear that at the time Williamson was able to sell films at Cannes to producers just based on the ideas alone, so he probably thought he could do the same with the FOX, until life got in the way, and we're left to wonder what might have been after we see the credits to Foxtrap.

Finally, typos are such a pain in the ass, right? And in a movie in the 80s they have to be the worst. At least when I have a typo in my reviews--and I have tons because I usually can only do one proofread before I post--if I see them I can go back and edit them if I want. Here Williamson has no such luck, "Produced an story by" will forever be immortalized in his film. It begs the question though, at what point is it better to just get the work out there? I mean yes, it doesn't make a great early impression, but this isn't a job interview, I'm not going through hundreds of CVs for a job I posted online, so a couple typos make it easier for me to reject someone; it's a Fred Williamson movie, he already has the position, I'm just ready to see him get after it. If anything, I feel like I should get on him for that parking job. Look at all that space on the right. Between this and when he left his girlfriend behind to be caught by Marco and his goons, he kinda made himself a tough guy to root for, but then he's beating up baddies and smoking cigars while wearing double-breasted suits and dress shirts with the top buttons undone, and I think, "how can I stay mad at you, Fred?"

Or rather, Mr. Williamson, sir. Anyway, let's wrap this up. Right now this is on Tubi here in the States, which I think is a great way to go. Hopefully someone like Vinegar Syndrome will release all of his directed movies on Blu-ray, but until then, I think Tubi is your best bet, and it's worth it to get your Williamson fix.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091072

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

Robo Vampire (1988)

This is one that's been in the can for a while now. Almost one year to the day of this posting, on May 18th of 2022, Mitch of the Video Vacuum and I did a podcast episode discussing this and Ninja Terminator, episode 99 in the archives. It's taken me that long to review either of those films, but we're finally making this one happen now. Also, I asked ChatGPT to review this for us too, and you can see how they did on my Twitter and Facebook pages.

Robo Vampire is about a heroin cartel in Asia that employs a mystic who can turn corpses into vampires, and he creates an army of vampires to protect their shipments. On one occasion the vampires kill a DEA agent, and through a breakthrough procedure, he's turned into a robot cop. At the same time, one of the corpses the mystic turned into a powerful gorilla vampire has a dead girlfriend who wants revenge on the mystic for ruining their plans in the afterlife. All while this his happening, over in Thailand another DEA agent has been captured by other elements of the cartel, and they send in a special agent and his crew to try and break her out and take down their operations there. Will it all work out for everyone?

Does anyone care? As it was termed in a Den of Geek article, it's "cinematic anarchy," or maybe better put, "cinematic bouillabaisse," as anything you can imagine is tossed into this. Just look at our robo cop. He's a mix of the actual RoboCop, a samurai, and the Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz, with a dash of silver lame 80s ski suit tossed in. The team of scientists who perform the procedure to make the robo cop are an 80s British synth pop band moonlighting while waiting on their big break--alas, by '88, if it hadn't happened for them yet, it wasn't going to happen, as the market was changing here in the States. We have the classic footage from another film cut in Godfrey Ho scenario, but to be honest that second film, an 80s Thai actioner, ain't half bad; and the fights between the mystic and the ghost girlfriend of the gorilla vampire are actually pretty spectacular. But then we have vampires who move by hopping around with their hands out in front of them like kids pretending they're riding a horse, and one of their vampire powers is they can shoot missiles out of their hands. And how do we even get a gorilla vampire? I guess its the vampire scarring he has on his corpse face, but the scarring, hair, and fangs make him very gorilla-y. I don't know that the art of cinema gets any better than our robo cop guy slowly getting surrounded by a gang of hopping vampires, his stilted movements accompanied by the requisite robotic sound effects, as he takes in his impending peril. This either works for you or it doesn't, but if it does, God it so works.

This is our seventh Godfrey Ho film on the site, though here he's credited as "Joe Livingstone"--not to be confused with "Ron Livingston," aka "that guy from Office Space." By my count on IMDb, this is one of maybe 40 films he had released in 1988, it's hard to count them all, and normally that would be astounding, but he was recycling old footage and splicing in other films to make them all, so it wasn't like he was out shooting 40 films in one year. It sounds crass, but when I watch one of these, and see the ways he dubs over the original dialog and edits the pieces to make the film at least somewhat coherent, it's pretty remarkable. From that oft quoted by me Den of Geek article, it really is cinematic anarchy, and I don't really know from an artistic standpoint what the equivalent would be. Maybe sampling during the dawn of hip hop in the late 70s and early 80s? Even that though doesn't fit, because you'd also be talking about the rappers laying down one or two tracks, and then those tracks also being recut into myriad songs. It shouldn't be understated though that this is art, it's almost this pop art kind of thing, like a cinematic Andy Warhol giving us Elvis silkscreens or paintings of soup cans. "Americans like vampires and RoboCop? I can give them that, I have the tools here to make it happen." And the "make it happen" is this stunning bouillabaisse that no modern AI could recreate.

The thing is Godfrey Ho does the mash-ups that Hollywood either can't do due to rights restrictions, or because they take themselves too seriously to come up with it themselves. I mean who wouldn't want RoboCop vs Vampires? Imagine RoboCop walking into some cutesy Eastern European night club, taking out a bunch of leather-clad Euro Trash vampires? Or hell, mash it with Twilight, have Robert Pattinson hopping around with all his angst and his hair. We could even borrow from The Wizard of Oz and have RoboCop's joints get rusty with all the precipitation in Oregon. But no, Hollywood takes themselves too seriously, so we have to hope Godfrey Ho will do it for us, but he gets it all wrong because he doesn't understand how any of these things work in American culture, and while the gets it all wrong is a ton of fun to watch, why can't someone who does get how it works get it all right for us? Like look at the actors dressed to look like an 80s British synth pop group? Hollywood could actually get the guys from Duran Duran! Or hell, imagine Human League or the Thompson Twins in lab coats designing RoboCop so he can blow up the kids in Twilight. Yes, the results of Ho's films are often goofy, but he tells us what's possible in cinema if we just go for it. Why can't we go for it more instead of just pumping out the same franchise drivel?

As I mentioned above, I asked ChatGPT to write a review on Robo Vampire, and posted screens of the results on the DTVC Facebook page and Twitter account if you want to see them. Part of the reason why I did that, beyond wanting to see what it could give me, is that AI is seen as the next bastion of the Godfrey Ho Effect, but a lot of times the way people discuss it, they act like this is AI thing sui generis, because they have no idea who Godfrey Ho is or what his films are like. One of the things I saw from the ChatGPT review, is it's a solid enough review, but it doesn't have the artistic soul that a review written by a human does, the same way if AI did a mash-up of Twilight, RoboCop, and the Human League video for "Human," it couldn't give us something as fun as Robo Vampire. It works in a pinch if you're a high school kid who needs to get a paper done--and I remember myself in high school in the mid-90s when the world wide web was new, finding some Truman Capote fan sites and copying details from their breakdowns of In Cold Blood on the Geocities pages to do my book report, my junior English teacher none-the-wiser as he gave me an A, so I get that part of it--but in terms of replacing actual art, even in this bouillabaisse form from Godfrey Ho, there's always going to be that need for the soul of the artist to drive it.

Finally, look at that, is that a White Castle? The design is all off, but I can just taste those fantastic sliders at the mere mention of it. I haven't been to one in forever, since they closed the one near Penn Station in NYC. My wife told me when she went to high school here in Philly, there was one near her school, but that one's since been closed, and there aren't any more in the Philly area. How can that be? I'm going to a Mets game in July, maybe I'll need to make an extra stop on the 7 train on the way back. Some people say the ones you get frozen in the grocery are just as good, and they do work in a pinch, but I can never get them to come out the way they do when I'm getting them freshly made. Recently there was a Wawa on the corner of 12th and Market that closed, and it looks like it's still vacant. Put a White Castle in there, and it would do a killing with all the tourists--though maybe that's not a good thing, because every time I tried to go I'd have to deal with the tourists like I do when I want a snack at Reading Terminal Market.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Here in the States you can get this on Tubi for free. It's just the taste of Cinematic Anarchy or Cinematic Bouillabaisse you're looking for. And if you want to hear more about Godfrey Ho, you can check out episode 99 in the archives that I did with Mitch from the Video Vacuum, and episode 69 that I did with Jon Cross from the After Movie Diner, which is where he first references the Den of Geek article I was talking about.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0121694

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

White Elephant (2022)

This was another in the Bruce Willis DTV films Ty from Comeuppance Reviews and I have been looking at on the podcast. He'd already seen it on AMC+, but once Hulu got it I was able to make it happen too, which we did on ep 123. We figured with the cast, and the fact that it was directed by Jesse V. Johnson, that it may be better than the usual DTV EFO Willis films.

White Elephant has Michael Rooker as a hitman for mob boss Bruce Willis. He's been training his replacement in anticipation of retirement. Problem is, during one of his replacement's jobs, he's caught by two police detectives, one of whom is played by Olga Kurylenko. Willis wants them both dead, and while her partner was an easy job, Kurylenko proves to be a bit tougher, which means Rooker needs to get involved. He sees similarities between her and a woman in his life who died, and that makes him sympathetic to Kurylenko's plight, causing him to go rogue and join her side. They run back to his fortified mansion in the country, and prepare for the final siege of Willis's men. Will they survive? Either way, consigliere John Malkovich is staying out of all of it.

Ty and I were right on this one, it is a pretty good deal. Rooker and Kurylenko are solid, plus it has the Jesse V. Johnson action you're looking for. That end fight is everything you'd want, but also the action scenes before it are great too and do a great job building to that final siege. We also have good Willis mitigation, with him playing the mob boss he doesn't need too many scenes, though Johnson pushes it by having him get shot in an assassination attempt, and later in the hospital it looks like we have a double who gets comforted by Rooker. Overall though, we have a nice runtime, fun cast, and solid action scenes. To me this is everything you want in a DTV actioner.

We're now at 12 Willis films on the site, but with Ty and I covering so many for the pod, we now have 8 in the can that we could review at any time--and that's 8 and counting as Ty and I do more of these for the podcast. By my count there's roughly another 20 I could watch and review, which is huge, because by that math that would put Willis in the 40 Club. While that's far off, I think DTVC Hall of Fame consideration needs to be in play. If more of them were like this it'd be an easy decision, but they aren't, we have a lot of EFO tossed together stinkers to consider too. Is that possible that we could be keeping one of the greatest movies stars of all time out of the Hall of Fame because the quality of his DTV stuff isn't there? The other thing is the automatic induction if he hits 30 films, which is very possible too, and is even more fascinating. Using our baseball analogies as I'm wont to do, it's like he's amassed a first ballot hall of fame career in Hollywood, but has a Craig Biggio career in DTV. For those who aren't familiar with Craig Biggio and American baseball, Biggio did pretty well as a player, but wasn't an all-time great that you'd want for a hall of fame; but he had over 3000 hits, and anyone who has over 3000 hits is in the hall of fame, so he was put in too despite not having the greatest career. Will Willis be our Craig Biggio?

The last time we saw Michael Rooker on here, it was 2010 when we did The Marine 2. This is a much better film than that was, and Rooker has a much better role than he had in that one. My introduction to him was in Mallrats, but I know a lot of people are familiar with him through his work as Yondu in the Guardians of the Galaxy series--and I think that's my favorite name to say, "Yon-duuuuu." It's good to see him here playing an aging character who's coming to terms with the life he led, a kind of character we don't often see Rooker play when he's in supporting parts or cameos in bigger things. With him being a part of three major franchises, Marvel, DC, and the Fast and Furious, he'll probably have no problem paying the bills, but it'll be fun to see if he does more of this kind of thing in the future, as he was really good here. Also of note: he did two DTV films in 2022, and both were with Willis, the other being the Tubi Original Corrective Measures, which we've also covered on the podcast on episode 116.

With this post, Jesse V. Johnson crosses an important director milestone at the DTVC, he now has 10 directed films reviewed, which I think makes him the 10th director ever to have that honor. As of this writing, I haven't seen Hell Hath No Fury or One Ranger yet, but I'd say out of the others, this is my favorite of his since Avengement. Looking at who's doing DTV right now, it's probably him and Isaac Florentine as the best, and you know when you see his name attached that there's going to be a minimum level of quality that, even if it's not one of his best, will at least put this above a lot of the other DTV stuff out there and make for solid watch. In this world where we have so many options, and with EFO out there drawing us in on the promise of big names but not delivering, to feel confident knowing I'm going to get a certain level of quality can't be understated. Looking at the podcast episode Ty and I did, we paired this with Survive the Game, which was exactly the EFO rough sit I'm describing, so even we banked on the Jesse V. Johnson mark of quality to mitigate the pain we were getting from the EFO film we chose. It'll be exciting to see what Johnson does next, but he's already putting together one of the best DTV action directing careers.

Usually the "finally" paragraph is some personal anecdote or aside that is only tangentially connected to the film, but I couldn't write the whole review and not spotlight Olga Kurylenko. I'm always talking about the top women in action, but I've been leaving her out of the conversation, which is bad on my part. If you look at her CV, she's as good as anyone going right now, and compared to some other names like Amy Johnston or Natalie Burn, she's even better. On my Andy Sidaris LETHAL Ladies posts, I talk about how high up the list of women in action Dona Speir is, but looking at this CV I think Kurylenko might be ahead of her too. At this point this is only her third film on the site, so I need to dig in and watch and review more of her stuff, but she could already be behind Rothrock as second best DTV female action star. Total oversight on my part to not have been spotlighting her more.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Here in the States it's AMC+ and Hulu, which isn't a bad deal. This is a solid actioner that delivers what you're looking for, no need to worry if you queue this up on a Saturday night. And the podcast episode is 123 in the archives, definitely worth checking out. You can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, or your favorite podcatcher so you don't miss the next time Ty and I cover more Willis flicks.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14686544

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

City Hunter aka Sing si lip yan (1993)

This is one I watched a few years back when I was doing my Gary Daniels list on Letterboxd, and I planned to review it soon after, but it never happened. And then late last year, I was a guest on Scott Murphy's All 90s Action, All the Time podcast, and we were covering this film, so I watched it again, with the plan to review it soon after as well. Now with Daniels's 60th birthday coming in a few days, I figured this is as good a time as any to get it done.

City Hunter has Jackie Chan as the hero, Ryo Saeba, based off of the Manga comic of the same name. He gets a job to track down a rich newspaper magnate's daughter, who ends up taking a cruise, meaning Chan has to follow her onto it. The problem: terrorist Richard Norton and his gang, led by his head henchman Gary Daniels, are taking the cruise hostage so they can extort the rich people onboard for their money. Now it's up to Chan to be the fly in the ointment. He's not alone though, we have a baccarat player who's also an expert card thrower, and a government agent undercover as a young lady hoping to pick up some rich businessmen, who are also able to help him. Will they ultimately prevail?

There are a few places to go to with this. Let's start with the action and martial arts. Exactly what you want from Golden Harvest starring Jackie Chan. Some really inspired scenes, culminating in a great finale between Chan and Norton. We also had the iconic scene with Chan and Daniels where they played Street Fighter characters, giving us a sense of what it would be like if Daniels ever got to play Ken. The other place to go is the comedy, and one could make the point that a lot of it didn't age well: we have homophobia, gross chauvinism, with a dash of racism thrown in; beyond that though, I think some of it just wasn't funny. Bits would go on past their saturation point, leaving me wanting the old Vaudeville hook to come off-screen and pull whoever was in the joke off the stage. Some of the humor did work though, especially with Chan, who is not only a fantastic martial artist, but also a great physical comedian, and he delivers that Buster Keaton vibe you want when you see Chan on the tin--and like Keaton, who did black face in College, Chan employs some brown face here when he plays Dhalsim in the Street Fighter scene, but I digress. I think between the novelty of seeing Daniels and Norton together in a Jackie Chan Golden Harvest film, plus the level of the martial arts, this is worth checking out, even if some of the humor will make you cringe a bit.

With Daniels turning 60 in a few days, it's interesting to look at this one from 30 years ago, when Daniels's career was in its earlier stage. Even more interesting is, only two years after this, he did Fist of the Northstar, which was the one he expected to catapult him to the big time, but unfortunately didn't end up working. From there though, he spends the next 10-15 years putting together one of the greatest DTV CVs ever, with films like Bloodmoon; the "three Rs" of PM, Rage, Riot, and Recoil; and Cold Harvest. But then something happens, the 2000s come, and guys like Seagal and Van Damme drop down to DTV, and while someone like Dolph was able to survive, Daniels was given fewer leading roles, in some cases needing to settle for religious films shot in Thailand. He wasn't alone in this though, Rothrock and Wilson also suffered a similar fate, the only thing was, it seemed like Daniels came out on the other side in a bit better place, getting some starring roles again in films like Skin Traffik, Misfire, and Rumble. But when we come back to this one, he has a smaller role, but you can see where he was going, and it's not a surprise that he'd get a part like Kenshiro in Fist of the Northstar, the surprise is that he never quite made that big screen level.

This is our first Jackie Chan film on the site, after almost 1200 posts. I know he doesn't do a lot of DTV stuff--and this technically isn't DTV either--but you'd think we'd at least have a Wild Card post or something like we've had for guys like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sly Stallone. I think the big reason why we haven't seen more in his case, is he doesn't have a lot of films like this that have other names, which is the kind of the thing we have to review it whether it went DTV or not. Due to issues with the director, Chan said this is one of his least favorite films, but his martial arts and stunt scenes are what you want from him. What's interesting, if you compare him with Daniels, this is also two years out from Rumble in the Bronx, the movie that got him fame here in the US, and led to a string of big budget Hollywood hits, so while it didn't work out for Daniels, Chan was that marquee Hollywood name for a time. For me, that's what got me to go back to his Hong Kong stuff like this film, after seeing Rumble in the Bronx in the theater, and fortunately as a result of that success, more of it became available. If this ends up being the only time we see Jackie on here--or if we don't see him again for another 1200 posts--at least we got him this one time on the DTVC.

The other Hall of Famer in this was Richard Norton in what is now his 25th film on the site, meaning the 30 Club is on the horizon for him. He's probably one who should've been there sooner, but we tend to lose him for months at a time, and often review films like this one where he's a secondary name to someone like Daniels, which is too bad, because he's big enough on his own, as he demonstrates here. Between the total scenery chewing of his baddie, to the great final fight with Chan, it's all there, everything we love about Norton. One thing that's helped him in recent years has been the advent of YouTube and the availability of some of his rarer titles on there. Something like a Blood Street that I had trouble tracking down, I can now find on YouTube and get reviewed on the site. I think as we wrap up guys like Daniels and Dolph, we'll have more openings for guys like Norton, so it'll be cool to get some of those up on here.

One thing I realized when I reviewed Operation Seawolf a few weeks back, is I'm reviewing Dolph films at a greater clip than Gary Daniels films, and the proof is there in looking at the archives: my last Daniels post was in early December, and since then we've done three Dolph films. I could make excuses, like how Dolph has had more films come out recently and I've needed to prioritize them, but I've also had movies like this in the can for a while now that also have needed a review. Either way, we're now at 57 films for Gary Daniels, three away from joining Dolph in the 60 Club--and joining Dolph as the only stars to have as many films as they have years on the planet--and he's still the only other member of the 50 Club with him. I don't know how much the lack of Daniels has been my fault though. If you look at his IMDb bio, Repeater just came out on Tubi, so I can get that one in; but The Gardner is still only available to rent, Astro wasn't that great and is one I'm reviewing just because it's Daniels, and then he has a couple more religious films, which I do plan to do at some point since I've already done one of his others, but how do you make them a priority when there's so much else out there. All that to say, we'll get Daniels in the 60 Club, but Dolph my still put some space between them for first and second most tags all time.

And with that, let's wrap this up. As of this writing, you can stream this free on Tubi here in the States. That version is the Hong Kong release with English subtitles I believe. There's also an American cut with dubbed voices that may be more your speed, and I think that may be on Amazon. No matter how you see it, this is a fun one that you'll want to check out. And also you'll want to check out the conversation I had about this with Scott Murphy on his podcast All 90s Action, All the Time. If you haven't already, you can subscribe to it on your favorite podcatcher.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103950/

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

Young Rebels (1989)

This is one I did on the podcast back in August, episode 105, with Jacob Gustafson of the Awful Awesome book series, and I've had it in my queue to review all that time. I guess there's no time like now to finally make it happen. In addition to us, this is a Superfecta Film, as Comeuppance, The Video Vacuum, and Bulletproof have all covered it before as well.

Young Rebels has neither youth nor rebellion, but rather is an Amir Shervan joint about a guy, played by Jon Greene (as Johnny Greene) who has a down-on-his luck brother that's into a mob boss for a lot of dough. To settle the debt, Greene agrees to fly a helicopter to pick up some guys in Mexico for the mob boss, but when that goes south, the mob boss, as mob bosses are wont to do, decides he wants his revenge, so he starts by killing Greene's brother. Turns out he messed with the wrong guy, so Greene gathers up some friends, including Tadashi Yamashita, to take the mob boss, and the mob boss's son, Robert Z'Dar, down. It's going to be a blood bath--or maybe just an extended shootout and extended strip scene bath, but a bath nonetheless.

This is pure Shervan. All of our late 80s action movie excess is run through Shervan's Iranian filter and reflected back at us. How long should a strip scene go before it crosses from sexy into uncomfortable? Shervan has no idea, American guys seem to spend hours in these places, so why not make it as long as possible? And does seeing a sweaty doughy man responding to the strippers make it more uncomfortable for the viewer? Why would it, don't American men go to these places with other guys all the time? What about the shootouts taking place in late 80s finished basements, known at the time as "dens,"--before we had to give everything cute names like "man caves"--how long should those be? I mean, Americans like action and they love their guns, the longer the better, right? And to that point, who cares how good the dialog is? Does it even need to make that much sense? It makes sense enough to me, that should be all that matters, right? While this doesn't have the all out classic level of ridiculousness that Samurai Cop does, for the kind of movie this is, it hits all the right spots.

We last saw now DTVC Hall of Famer Robert Z'Dar back in October when we did his induction post, which was also an Amir Shervan film, Killing American Style. Like that one, this was a bigger role for Z'Dar, which let him do more. The problem here was, part of that doing more was watching a woman do a strip tease with a long necklace of pearls that she drags through parts of her body that maybe she shouldn't have, and Z'Dar has to react to it like he's into it. There is no real face someone can make to show they're into it that doesn't look ridiculous, especially on camera, which means Z'Dar was already working uphill before he even agreed to do that scene, but he ends up making it more cringey for us the viewer. The question is, where do we go from here with Z'Dar? He does have some stuff on Tubi and YouTube, but the reality is, a lot of it is two or three notches below where we usually go with all the stuff that's available now. There are a couple though, like Red Line and Double Blast, which our friends at Comeuppance have already covered, that I think we need on here, so this definitely won't be the last we see of Mr. Z'Dar.

We're now at three Amir Shervan films on the site, and I slot this one between the other two, right after Samurai Cop and before Killing American Style. It's a fascinating filmography though, where he's an established director in Iran, then is forced to come to the US after the Iranian Revolution, and while the next generation of filmmakers there are, despite the restrictions put on their work by the government, a few years out from putting out some of the best stuff in the world at that time, Shervan is giving us what are objectively some of the most off the wall low-budget actioners ever. As we get into the later part of the 90s, in Iran we get Kiarostami's Taste of Cherry, Makhmalbaf's Gabbeh, Dariush Mehrjui's Leila--and Mehrjui was actually a contemporary of Shervan's before Shervan left Iran--and Majid Majidi's Oscar nominated Children of Heaven--and even before that, in 1992, one of my favorites, Nargess, directed by Rakhshan Bani-etemad, all while Shervan is giving us Samurai Cop and Young Rebels. It's really fascinating to consider these two tracks in parallel, that we have a set of directors who are the darlings of international cinema working in the country Shervan was forced to flee, while he's struggling to put together some schlock actioners that he thinks are what Americans at that time wanted. What we get isn't maybe something worthy of the Criterion Collection, but it's fun just the same, making it a short but sweet legacy in the DTV action world.

Our hero is played by Jon Greene, and when we look at his filmography on IMDb, it's a lot of "police officer," "police detective," or "police sergeant"--in fact, we've seen him before as "Officer Baylor" in Crack House. This was his one time to shine as the hero, the problem was, I think in Shervan trying to push the "young" element in the film, he ended up making him into the guy I used to see in the convenience store on a Friday when I was growing up who definitely looked like he was onto cooler and better things than me and my friends who were loading up on junk food before a night of video game playing. Was that guy really about do something cooler than that though? When I finally got to be his age, I learned that life generally wasn't that much cooler, that maybe finishing every level in Super Mario 3 without warping was better than getting wasted and having a hangover the next day, and now it's even worse, as guys that age post on social media what they're doing to try and make it look even better. At least that guy back then, or me 10 years later, didn't need to worry about making everything look better to keep up with the Joneses on Instagram, didn't need to worry about how our sneakers looked, if our T-shirts had designer logos on them, if the place we were at was more of a destination than what our friends were posting. No, that guy in his mullet, dirty high-tops, and faded jeans was living his best life before we coined horrible terms like that and needed to hashtag it on our social media posts about what we were doing. 

Finally, as I mentioned above, parts of this film take place in the finished basement, or den, of the house where they were filming. When I was in high school, a friend of ours had one of those finished basements complete with a bar and a bathroom, and he used to host big sleepovers with five or six of us on a weekend. We could sneak out the backdoor to smoke weed, or go to get late night food, often the friends with cars letting them roll in neutral to avoid waking up his parents before they started the engine. Nowadays, that den would be called a "man cave," the dad wouldn't let his son use it for sleepovers, and Ring cameras would patrol the backdoor so no one could sneak out. Were we "young rebels," or just kids in a small town in Maine who were looking for something to do? And to go back to the previous paragraph, we couldn't wait until we were old enough to have our own places where we could smoke our weed and come and go when we felt like it. The problem, as I'm sure you know, is your own place comes with bills, which means you need a job too. Now we don't even need to sneak out to get weed, I can take a bus to New Jersey and get gummies legally--and if I snuck out at 1am here in Philly, I don't know what kind of unsavory characters I'd run into, but I can order my Taco Bell through Doordash so I don't need to sneak out to get it. Here's to you 90s den and all that came with you, you were one of the good ones.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Here in the States you can stream this free on Tubi. That's your best bet. It's not quite Samurai Cop, but it will anchor your Saturday movie night well enough. As the guys at Comeuppance said, they don't make 'em like this anymore, and I agree with them that that's not a great thing.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2394099

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