Red Scorpion (1987)

I found this at a Bull Moose Music in the used DVD section with another Dolph gem Cover Up. My friends and I watched it and loved it, having no clue about the history behind it. It was the Dolph/Brion James/silliness factor.

Red Scorpion has our hero, DTVC Hall of Famer and fave Dolph Lundgren, as a dude sent by the Soviets to work under cover in Angola and snuff out a rebel leader. He fails, and the Soviets try to kill him. He passes out in the desert, and a tribesman helps him. He rejoins the rebels and leads them to victory against the Soviets.

As you may already know, this film was written and produced by the infamous Jack Abramoff. On the one hand it makes sense, because it's so politically motivated and anti-Soviet. On the other it doesn't, because it's hard to fathom a man like Abramoff is that much of an ignoramus. The film is stupidly anti-Soviet. It depicts the Soviets as these demon-like souless inhumans who are carrying out a campaign of genocide in Africa. Not Stalin's Soviets, but Gorbachev's. This was like bad 50s propaganda, and it came off as silly. (On a side note, this film is the blue print for the Hunt for Eagle One films.) My friend told me he read in Al Franken's book that Abramoff shot this in apartheid South Africa. If that's true, is it any surprise?

I love the idea of Dolph as a Russian. He's done it in many roles, and it never seems to get old. I'm sure it started with his role in Rocky IV, but I think he's played more Russians than Swedes. I get that it sounds weird to have him play a former Swedish special ops dude or something, but to me that would make it all the more fantastic. Maybe I should contact his people and pitch that for his next role. Swedish special agent Sven Frostenheimer!

Brion James is great in this. I don't know if they said "play a Soviet heel" or "do the guy you did in Armed and Dangerous;" or if they said the former, and he did the latter; but I was waiting for John Candy to pop in and help Dolph out. Instead I had to settle for M. Emmett Walsh. Both actors played their parts well in the rah-rah Abramoff theater, but I want to believe Brion did it with a wink-wink and a nudge-nudge, and M. Emmett was Abramoff's homeboy. Maybe I only want to believe that because M. Emmett's character annoyed me so much.

I don't really know if there are any particularly memorable scenes in this. Dolph being tortured by the Evil Soviet dude was kind of funny. He was being pierced with big needles, and then he somehow broke his handcuffs and strangled the guy with his chains. This scene also dealt with a very interesting element of the Soviet torture: the stenographer who records the confession. Dolph didn't do anything to her as he left the torture room, and I'm assuming it was Abramoff's attempt to make Dolph redeemable.

Dolph is plenty beefy in this role. In the African heat he tends to not wear a lot of clothes, so prepare yourselves ladies (and guys too). It's movies like this that make you wonder why Treat Williams ever plays the lead role in an action film. Sorry I'm pickin' on you Treat. I have to assume M. Emmett Walsh's character loathed Dolph so much because he was both jealous and obsessed with Dolph's manness. It's weird that the only American in Abramoff's film was such a tool, but on the other hand, he was a part of what Abramoff and his cronies term The Liberal News Media, so I guess it's not so odd.

This is worth buying for so many reasons. First and foremost, the Dolphage. Second, the Abramoff aspect. Finally, Brion James is great for the few scenes he's in it. You should be able to find it used for like $5-$7, and that's not a bad deal. It's like having a slice of Dolph and a slice of history.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098180/

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Iron Warrior (1987)

When my buddy found Cartel at a used video store in Bangor, he found this film as well. Not only was it huge in being two films from DTVC Hall of Famer Miles O'Keefe, but as MST3K fans, this one was an Ator film. He brought them both over and we had a Miles double header.

Iron Warrior takes place after Cave Dwellers. Unfortunately that means thong is not rockin' with us on this one. This witch is freed from her imprisonment in two rotating hoola-hoops (I'm assuming the flying parallelogram effect was too expensive) and she immediately puts a curse on a king, his princess, and their five or so citizens. The princess seeks out our beefy hero Ator, which makes sense. When they return, they find not the king, but the Iron Warrior, who looks kind of like Death Adder from Golden Axe (I forgot how much I hated that game until my buddy downloaded it recently on the Wii... but I digress). Ator fights him some, then they separate and move on. Eventually Glenda the Good Witch explains the whole deal to Ator: the Iron Warrior is his brother, and there's a box somewhere with what he needs to kill him. He does, then takes out the bad witch with a torch to the mouth. They all lived happily ever after... or did they?



If you saw Cave Dwellers on MST3K, you've got an idea of what you're in for on this one. It doesn't disappoint. Same plot holes, bad props, and oily Miles. For some reason, it just works. We were not disappointed at all in Iron Warrior.

There's one scene where Ator comes across the IW in a room with spears. The IW throws one at Ator, who catches it, and throws it back, and then the IW catches it after Ator throws it, and throws it back to him. I've never seen anything like it. It was too ridiculous to make fun of. We just laughed at it. To finish the stalemate, the princess catches one aimed at Ator, and they decide to leave. Ator has the audacity to then thank her for saving his life.

In a scene derivative of the famed boulder run in Indiana Jones, Ator and the princess are plagued by two. They look like they're going to come together and sandwich the princess, but Ator carries her out of a hole with a rope, and the two boulders collide and explode. I don't know why they explode, but they do.



I have a healthy does of respect for Miles O'Keefe after these films. Unlike Joe Don Baker, who ripped MST3K for his treatment in Mitchell, and was roundly dismantled by them in Final Justice, Miles never said anything about MST3K's work with Cave Dwellers. It's possible that he's not in any first run films, so no one's asked him, but I like to think it's because he has more class than Joe Don Baker. There's a sense with Miles that he's doing these films to make a paycheck, and you can't fault him for that.

If you see this for sale at a used video store like my buddy did, consider yourself lucky and snatch it up quickly and hold it close to your bosom. If you're lucky enough to have a video store near by that still has this for rent, rent it as soon as possible. This film is a fun time for everyone; what can be wrong with that?

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093276/

Bloodsport 3 (1997)

I had seen Bloodsports 1, 2, and 4, so I guess it was inevitable that I'd get out there and see this one. I'm not sure if there's a plan to make a fifth in this series, but I hope so. I'd like to write it maybe. Here's an idea: Bernhardt has to go to Colombia, undercover, to fight in a Colombian Kumite and take down a drug lord. The catch is, he has to beat the famous Mexican wrestler King-- the one from Tekken fame. Bernhardt has to find a way around the dreaded Giant Swing.

Bloodsport 3 takes place who knows how long after part two. Evil crimelord John Rhys-Davies wants to hold his own kumite, and have Bernhardt throw the final fight so he can make some serious cash on the betting. Bernhardt refuses, so Rhys-Davies blows up James Hong's apartment with him in it. Bernie's pissed, so he asks Pat Morita for advice. Morita suggests he learn from Hong's brother, the guy who ran the last Kumite. He trains, only to find out Rhys-Davies doesn't want him in the kumite anymore, because he can't rig with Bernhardt in it. In a ruse reminiscent of Conan the Barbarian, Berndoggy dons a cloak and sneaks in. Once in, the fans would get suspicious if Rhys-Davies made him leave, so he's gotta stay. In the end he beats this big Kazakh warrior. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention it's told in flashback format by Bernhardt to his son while he's teaching the kid some discipline.

I actually think this wasn't as bad as 2 or 4. Unlike the others, where Bernhardt plays an underdog, in this one he's a pissed off favorite. It's pretty cool. I just saw The Quest the other day, which is a film Van Damme did with Frank Dux that's pretty much Bloodsport set in 1925. It was boring. Bloodsport 2 was pretty much just Bloodsport one without Van Damme and Bolo Yeung. This film actually switched up the Bloodsport paradigm some, and it's a shame more films like this don't do that.

On the other hand, the requisite training scenes mired this film in every-other-movie-ness. I can't really figure out why he needed the training, if he was understood to be the best fighter in the world. It's like they did it because they felt they had to. That was one thing Bloodsport 4 did away with. I could see a few scenes of him in the gym trying to make it work, but a whole trip to the mountains to learn to fight all over again just seemed superfluous.

This may be my favorite Bernhardt role. It was just cool at the end to see him so pissed off and determined. If they carried that through to the end baddie, it would have been perfect. Sasha Mitchell did a similar thing in Kickboxer 4, and I'm a big fan of it. I like the idea of the hero being a bad ass who kicks it into gear and delivers some brutality.

This is a good bad action movie for a bad movie night rental. I've seen it listed sometimes on channels like Encore Action, and it's worth TiVoing if you catch it on one of those. It helps some to have seen 2 first, but only so much. You could buy it, but don't pay more than a few bucks.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115714/

Braindead aka Dead Alive (1992)

After experiencing the masterpiece that was Bad Taste, we were eager to see more of Jackson's work. The Internet was rather new to us then, so it took a while to get a good filmography of him. Eventually (like six months later), we found this. It did not disappoint.

Jackson followed up his success in Bad Taste with Dead Alive, a zombie movie about a guy whose mom's bitten by a Sumatran rat-monkey, and rises from the dead. As in most zombie films, the problem spreads, and more people become undead. The guy tries to keep them all locked in his basement to stem the tide, with no success. Two zombies hook up and make a baby, which the guy takes for a walk, and then has to beat against a tree. Great zombie action.

This movie was simply awesome. Maybe the greatest zombie picture ever. It's definitely up there with Night of the Living Dead. It lived up to the reputation Jackson had built with what I termed The New Zealand Citizen Kane, also known as Bad Taste. No one's pulled off campy horror better than Jackson.



Unlike his earlier effort, though, the special FX in this one are even better. It's gorier and sicker, and we love every minute of it. One of the best moments was the Lawnmower Scene. As part of a party scene, which was one of the goriest and funniest ever, a man takes a lawnmower, lifts it up, and runs through some zombies with it. It's fucking beautiful. A buddy showed it for a project on Moby Dick in his junior English class. I was so mad I wasn't there to see it.

There's a priest in it, and when the zombies attack him, he exclaims: "I kick ass for the lord!" He whips out these karate moves, and almost takes out all of them before he's bitten and becomes one too. He then sleeps with a female one and a zombie child is born. I don't remember zombies having kids in any other film, but the zombie baby in this one was pure comedic genius. The guy takes it for a walk, but it acts up, and he starts to fight with it. No one else knows it's a zombie, so they think he's beating his child. It sounds horrible, but Jackson pulls it off so well.



It's too bad Jackson has gone away from his roots in doing the Lord of the Rings and King Kong movies. We as fans of bad horror and horror spoofs are left wanting. There really isn't anyone out there other than Sam Raimi that does this better, and he's doing Spiderman. Jackson has a keen insight and sense of satire that's missing in his newer, bigger films. I don't want to come off as That Guy who only likes a dude when he's obscure, but can't like him when he's famous, I just think it's weird that he made his name on these great horror films, and now he's abandoned the genre. We need him to save us from the Saw 41's and The Hills Have Eyes 37's.

Either way, this is a must have for any horror fan. If it costs you $20, pay it. It doesn't get much better.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103873/

Dark Waters (2003)

I saw this film originally on the Sci-Fi channel really late at night. My only reason for watching it was my man, DTVC Hall of Famer Lorenzo Lamas. What other reason do you need?

Dark Waters is about this secret government project to create sharks that can be used as killing machines. They attack an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, and people are worried. Lamas plays a marine biologist, who, along with a beautiful colleague, are forced into investigating the phenomena by a rich man who runs a research laboratory that was started by Lamas's dad. Also, Lamas and the colleague were making a living as scam artists, so if they complete this mission, the rich guy will clear their names. Lamas and his crew take this super, special submarine, which is destroyed by the sharks, and only Lamas, his homegirl, and some other dude survive. They're picked up by the Navy, who hold them prisoner while they complete the shark project. It turns out Lamas's dad is running the project, but he wants to shut it down... I think. The submarine explodes, the sharks die, and only Lamas and the girl and a few others survive.

Lamas is a trip in this. One thing that's funny is how we as the audience know what kind of a martial artist he is. In this film his character really has no reason to be a good fighter, but when he needs to fight the Navy dudes holding him and his friends hostage, we're not surprised when he dispatches them easily. I guess we should be happy he got to use his martial arts in this, even if it was kind of silly in terms of the plot.

This was a bad monster flick. I'm not being facetious. If you like monster flicks, this was a bad one, because the monsters, i.e. the sharks, were barely in it. The plot veered off on this weird Lamas and his buddies being held hostage course. A film like this needs an identity. It was marketed as a monster movie, so it needed the monsters. It's possible the film makers ran out of money on Lamas's haircare products, and couldn't keep the CGI sharks in the film enough.

The ending was kind of weird. The sub was destroyed to kill the sharks--with all the sailors on it too. There were a couple of sailors that I could see as Evil, but they were all high up the chain of command. The whole thing left a weird taste in my mouth. How do you reconcile a bunch of poor E3's working on a sub, that just happens to be one where their superiors are working on a horribly twisted project, all dying? I would've felt better if they popped up from the water with life jackets on.

The only real use for this film is to have on in the background when you're up late writing a paper, or if you can't sleep and Sci-Fi happens to be airing it. It's just too blah for any other purpose.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0391908/

Looking for more action? Check out my short action novel, Bainbridge, and all my other novels, over at my author's page! Click on the image below, go to https://www.matthewpoirierauthor.com/

Shakedown (1988)

My buddy scooped this at a used video store a few years ago. The moment we saw it, we knew we had an instant classic on our hands. The following weekend I took it with me to Bangor to show my buddies up there, and they were as enamored with it as we were.

Shakedown features DTVC Hall of Famer Peter Weller as a Legal Aid attorney who has a client that's been framed for murder. He has a buddy on the force, played by Sam Elliott, and they surmise that there are some crooked cops doing some crooked things that don't want P Dubs and Elliott snooping around. At the same time, the prosecutor trying Pete's defendant is a former flame, and the two rekindle their romance, despite Weller's pending engagement to another woman. After some crazy action, things get hairy, but finally our heroes are able to prevail. Oh yeah, and there's a tribute to Dr. Strangelove at the very end.

The Dr. Strangelove thing comes when Elliott, trying to keep the cops from escaping, gets on their plane, sits on the wheel before its pulled in, and throws a grenade in it while it's flying. The shot looks just like the end of Strangelove, when the dude is riding the A-bomb. I also think it was an inspiration to Jerry Bruckheimer and the people who make the XXX movies on how absurdly an action movie can blur the line between what's plausible and what's downright ludicrous.

This film features one of the all time greatest movie scenes. Weller, while cheating on his fiancee with his old flame, is debating coming clean. He's fallen for the old flame, and wants to leave his current woman, but can't quite find the words. The old flame tries to brow beat him, and Weller's response is a speech to end all speeches. I won't write down the whole thing, but I'll give you some quotes. "Is this going to be some kind of female territorial doo-wop?" "...because it's kickin' the life outta me, see?" "Why do you think it's some god damned manifest destiny for me to pickin' shit with the chickens the rest of my life?" Not only are these lines too sweet, but they're compounded in their glory by Weller's in ability to properly remember them, and the director's decision, not to reshoot the scene, but to just go with it with all of Weller's mistakes evident. I love it so much.

Another favorite is Weller's cab ride to the court to get a tape to the judge that will exonerate his client. The cops are trying to keep him from doing that, so the cabbie is speeding recklessly down the road. At the courthouse steps, the car gets caught on a crane hook, and the crane lifts it over the blockade of cop cars. Weller's face during this crane ride is priceless. We had to watch it multiple times and play it in slo-mo.

This movie is so worth your time. Don't hesitate if you see it at the store. $5 is a good price, and I'd snatch it up for that. This film should be in everyone's video collection.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096087/

Looking for more action? Check out my short action novel, Bainbridge, and all my other novels, over at my author's page! Click on the image below, go to https://www.matthewpoirierauthor.com/

Voodoo (1995)

I first caught this film really late at night on Joe Bob Briggs's TNT show. I wonder sometimes, since TNT has been doing that New Classics thing for like 5 years or so, what did they do with all these low-budget greats they don't show anymore? Did they have an auction? I'd love to have gotten my hands on some of the too sweet movies they used to show. Who the hell wants Jersey Girl when you can have anything with Dudikoff or Piper?

Voodoo has Corey Feldman as a dude who transferred schools to be closer to his homegirl. She's a tad on the lukewarm side to his presence, so he has to pledge a fraternity to get a place to stay. The fraternity is a bunch of voodoo zombies. Feldman meets up with one of the kids' dads, who's been tracking the kid all over who knows where. He tells Feldman to put a salt packet in one of the zombie's beers, because zombies can't handle salt. Later, as Feldman tries to take down the boys, they kidnap his homegirl, and he has to save her. It's a mess.

I'm not sure I understand why Corey Feldman can't get better roles than this. I know he was quite the addict in his day, but now that he's sober, how is he any less the great actor he was in the 80s? My only theory is that most of the people that cast for those things only remember him as the precocious teen from the Corey movies. That's too bad, and I can only hope that film makers from my generation will rediscover Feldman. He deserves a second shot.

The whole salt thing is great. I think I've seen that in other zombie flicks too. Growing up in Maine, I feel pretty safe from the zombie invasion, because we have salt everywhere after it snows when the plows throw it down. If the zombies tried to get us in the summer, we could just use the tourists on the beaches to lure them to the salt water. October is really the only time we have to worry about.

There is some ludicrous stuff in this. The head zombie at one point takes over the mind of a rival fraternity leader, and has him kill all his fellow frat brothers. If he has that ability, why didn't he do it to Feldman and have him kill a bunch of people? He'd still be plying his zombie trade if he'd thought of that.

The other one is the fraternity process. You can't just show up and live there. You've got to go through the whole pledge process first, then they let you move in. Maybe that's why he moved in with them: because they don't have those rules being zombies and all. A more realistic scenario would have been him moving up to the campus in the summer, and the zombies needing to rent out rooms to make extra cash while some of their zombies are home. Feldman's girlfriend really seemed like the summer school type.

A man named Jack Nance plays the dad that helps Feldman out. He starred with Feldman in another classic called Meatballs 4. If you're a David Lynch fan, you probably also recognize Nance, as he was a Lynch mainstay appearing in a bunch of his films and the Twin Peaks TV series. Unfortunately Nance passed away in 1996, dying of head trauma suffered after a fight in a donut shop. I'm not kidding.

I dug this. I'm not saying to go out and spend crazy money on it, but $5 to have a Corey Feldman zombie movie isn't a bad deal if you ask me. I think it's even cheaper, as it's often packaged with more horror movies in one of those bargain packages.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114872/

Looking for more action? Check out my short action novel, Bainbridge, and all my other novels, over at my author's page! Click on the image below, go to https://www.matthewpoirierauthor.com/