Bloodfist III: Forced to Fight (1992)

I caught this recently during a Bloodfist marathon on ShowtimeXtreme. I have friends with the channel, but unfortunately, they will probably be dumping it soon. I know when I had the channel myself it provided hours of enjoyment; but it is expensive, and I can totally understand them not keeping it. Perhaps we can get the channel as a tax write-off at the DTVC head offices.

Bloodfist III: Forced to Fight is the first of the series to feature Don "The Dragon" Wilson as someone other than the guy he was in the first two. In fact, all of them after III do that. Anyway, here he's in prison, and he sees his buddy raped and murdered, so he kills the guy that did it. That garners him bad attention from the cats that dug the dead guy, so he's forced to fight to survive. Richard Roundtree is his cell mate, and he's close to parole. He also represents the inmates at their parole and appeal hearings. The question is: will his supporting Donny kill him before his release date? We know it won't kill Donny Dawg.

Almost every action hero has to do the perfunctory prison flick. Don got his out of the way very early in his career, and I must say that was a good move. Though this movie is atrocious, we can forgive him for it, because he didn't have a lot under his belt. That being said, he better not do anymore, like Van Damme did, because the results could be disastrous. I think Crooked was a far better movie choice than In Hell.



One thing I dug about this was the sheer volume of fighting in it. There could've been more if they'd just removed the plot completely, and I can't say I would've been upset with that, but I think the amount they had was enough. In one scene, Dragon fights this big dude in the laundry room. He kicks the guy backward through who knows how many hanging sheets. I'm not sure exactly what they were going for, whether that was a scene played for laughs gone wrong, or if they really thought it would be a cool effect and just got carried away, but it looked like something out of the Three Stooges.

Richard Roundtree's in this, unfortunately not reprising his role as Shaft. As a kid, the Shaft movies were to my mind the most amazing things I'd ever laid eyes on, and as an adult, my opinion hasn't changed much. We get flashes of what made Shaft great here, like when Roundtree goes upside a dude's head with a bat, but nothing like the scene in Shaft in Africa when he killed a bunch of dudes with a car; and none of the great lines like the classic "Close it yourself... Shitty!" from the first one. I think the film makers were a little over their head when they cast Roundtree, and as such, weren't able to use him to his full potential.



This film had all the depraved hallmarks of the routine prison film, which I assume is meant to show us how gritty the prison environment is, but in the end just look whacked. This is especially true in the beginning when D "The D" Dubs' friend gets raped. Eww. Just the same, the film does a solid job in tempering this depravity, especially with how Don is able to get justice against both the warden (played by the assassin in Hard to Kill, an interesting connection between Don and Seagal) and the baddies in prison; and with the way they wrapped up Roundtree's story. I left this movie without the icky feeling I'm usually left with after other prison flicks, and I guess in that respect this film is a nice slice of all right.

If you see this again on ShowtimeXtreme or something, and you're up late typing or paper or battling insomnia, a fella or a lady could do a lot worse than watch this bad boy. On the other hand, if you spend any money, or set aside any time to watch this, you will feel sorely cheated. It's what we in The Biz call nondescript, and in my mind, nondescript is no good.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101481/

Mercenary for Justice (2006)

I first caught this on Spike or something. They've been pretty good about showing some bad action like this. The Seagals and Van Dammes they usually show during the day on weekends, while the lower quality films like the Bloodfists they show at 2am on Friday and Saturday mornings (Thursday and Friday nights if you're like me and the next day doesn't officially begin until 6am.)

Mercenary for Justice has Steven Seagal as a mercenary for justice who has to mitigate between his bad employer, who has kidnapped a friend's wife and young son, and avoiding doing a job that involves breaking a major arms dealer's son out of a high security South African prison. Somehow a bank robbery is involved, along with a CIA agent. The plot is so muddled I have no idea how we get from point A to point B, but we do, and Seagal is victorious.



I wasn't sure if I wanted to review this film or not, considering Seagal is part of a poll asking for attitudes on his worthiness for inclusion in the DTVC Hall of Fame. The reality is that it's films like this that have kept him out so far. Essentially, Seagal is omnipotent. Whatever he wants to do, he does. What makes this omnipotence all the more absurd is how the plot is centered around his boss having him over a barrel by kidnapping the wife and son. The next hour or so of film makes us wonder why, if he's able to pull off all this other stuff just by being Seagal, why didn't he just go and save the two right away, and save us the trouble? This was as poorly conceived as an episode of the old syndicated action series Nightman.

I'm also surprised Seagal took this role, because it makes him as a hero look exceedingly unheroic. In one scene, he and his hot partner rob some huge bank, and in escaping, he shoots and kills plenty innocent police officers. Right on! Later, instead of confronting his adversaries head on, he sneaks around and picks them off with a silenced handgun. To finish off his employer, he goes the very dignified route of putting a bomb in his car and detonating it while the guy drives away. Why am I rooting for him?



Usually in a bad action film I can forgive a ludicrously muddled plot if the bad action is good. But here the bad action is so bad, that the muddled plot gave me a huge headache. I'm not sure what the CIA was doing. I'm not sure what Seagal was doing. The bank thing made no sense. I was clueless when the baddies invaded the prison, then were shot up by I don't know who. I think they just tried to get too smart with it, and as in many cases, when they try to get too smart, they just end up looking stupid.

I was trying to think of something good or memorable that makes this film worthwhile, and I just drew a blank. I haven't even had a chance to see all of the Seagal direct to video stuff out there, but I have to assume this is the worst one. Maybe that's just wishful thinking, but a guy can dream, right? Avoid this bad boy at all costs. Even if you and your friends hate Seagal, and you want to watch something to lambaste him with, watch something else. This one hurts.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0427528/

Bail Out aka W.B., Blue, and the Bean (1989)

My friends and I found this film in one of those 50 movies for whatever low price kind of deals. It said it had Hasselhoff in it, so we figured it'd at least be entertaining for that. The reason my buddy bought this collection originally was its inclusion of a Joe Don Baker classic, Mitchell. If you're as big a MSTie as I am, you must watch Mitchell at least one time in the non-MST3K version. It's a trip. Not only that, but you learn what happened to John Saxon.

Bail Out is about some bounty hunters, headed by Hasselhoff, who work for a shady bail bondsman played by the guy who played Capt. Lipschitz on Silk Stalkings. They're hired for a big score, which is making sure an heiress, played by Linda Blair, gets to her court date on Monday on a huge drug trafficking charge. The fly in the ointment is that the Colombians want her because they need compensation for the $5 million in coke they lost and they think her rich dad should reimburse them. She's kidnapped, and it's up to Hasselhoff and his boys to save the day. Danny Trejo's in this for a moment near the end.



One of the striking things about this film is how dated it seems. I don't mean because it was made in 1989 and we saw it in the new millennium. I mean for 1989 it seemed like it was much older. The film quality was like that in a Charlie's Angels or Rockford Files episode from the 70s. Then there's the use of racial stereotypes: the white guy who leads the show and gets the girl, his black friend who's a smooth talker and knows the streets, his Latino friend who does all the dirty jobs, and their stingy, penny-pinching Jewish boss. This was embarrassing to watch.

The Hasselhoff-age was pretty decent. He had this mullet that I would probably rate a 7.2 in mulletude. I've never been quite sure how I'm supposed to take Hasselhoff. As a young kid, watching Knight Rider, I still didn't know just how much Hollywood expected me to take him seriously, and then I was in first grade for God's sake. Just the same, I remember an episode of Baywatch Nights where he was playing pool in the last five minutes, and he hit this shot that I still refer to as The Hasselhoff, and have only hit it myself a couple times. The 9 ball was just off the rail in the middle of the table, and cue ball was down further, not quite in line with it. He shot the cue so it hit directly next to the 9, slamming it against the rail and back out into the side pocket on the other side of the table. It was hot.

Linda Blair is in this as the damsel in distress slash Hasselhoff romantic interest. I felt she was sufficiently attractive in that role, but I have the sinking suspicion that the movie makers would have gotten someone hotter if they thought they could. It's just the kind of movie this was. In 1989, though, you could do a lot worse than Linda Blair, and for me she was one of the few bright spots in an otherwise crappy film.



I recently had a conversation with a group of people about Saved by the Bell. Some of them had actually made it through their 25-plus years on the planet without having seen this television tour-de-force. The conversation started when I mentioned Zack Morris' cell phone. Anyone who's seen the show enough would know exactly what I'm talking about. Anyway, Hasselhoff has a nice Zack Morris phone in this, and it's held up as some kind of status symbol, which I guess in 1989 it would have been. Now it just looks silly.

There was one memorable scene. Near the end, Hasselhoff needs to shoot a helicopter with a grenade launcher or something. He takes his sweet-ass time waiting for a clean shot while his friends are sprayed with gunfire from the baddies flying it. Finally he blows it up, and then does this great celebration. We had to watch it a few times, one, because it was so funny, and two, because we had so little to be pleased about in this horrible movie.

If you see this by itself in the store, avoid it at all costs. It's such a waste. On the other hand, if you have a friend like we did with one of these 50 movies for whatever price collections, and see this in it, and you need to kill an hour and a half, it might not hurt to give it a try. Out of the 50 movies, this'll probably be one of the best, which isn't saying much, but it's kind of how these things work.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098614/

Styx (2001)

One of the reasons I have become a connoisseur of bad cinema is my constant inability to fall asleep at a decent hour. This is especially true when I'm crashing at another person's place. One time in particular, I was using a friend's couch, and decided to turn his TV on to the digital cable station that plays all 80s music in order to aid my slumber. The last song I remember that night was Styx's : "The Best of Times", and subsequently the song was in my head for two weeks straight. I thought I was over it, until I saw this movie at my local video store. Though I was happy I'd found another DTVC Hall of Famer Peter Weller film, I was dismayed that I would have to endure another week or two of that song in my head.

Styx has nothing to do with the aforementioned band, but rather the river, which I'm assuming the band named themselves after too, at least in some way. Anyway, Peter Weller plays a safe cracker, who with Cocktail and FX's Brian Brown and the guy who played Bobby the Bruce in Braveheart, plans a huge bank heist. It all goes wrong when one of their lesser accomplices is high on coke and botches the plan, leaving Weller and the Braveheart guy narrowly escaping an explosion in the ambulance they drove. Brown, surprising no one, survived as well. Robert the Bruce gets into it big with a loan shark, Eddie Tapioca, and he and Weller have to do one more heist with Brown. There's plenty of double and triple and quadruple crosses, none of which matters. We're watching this for Weller, not the plot.



The Weller is fantastic. This is probably the highest quality Weller that didn't make it's way into mainstream cinema (I consider Buckeroo Bonzai to be mainstream, but maybe I'm wrong). His one liners and facial expressions are so perfect. Every scene he's in is fantastic. I'm not sure how many of the one-liners were his or the product of the script, but I'm certain that either way the delivery was all him. I found myself constantly doing the Tiger Woods "I just hit a birdie putt on the 18th to seal another major" pump fist in response to something Weller did. This was the '68 Bordeaux of bad action performances.

I did a review earlier of a C. Thomas Howell film called War of the Worlds which smashed the myth that Australians just by being in a movie are awesome, because that film's Australian was annoying. Well, this film was definitely not an exception like the Howell movie, because Bryan Brown was the man solely on the merits of his Australianess. In one scene he responds to a Weller query with "absa-fuckin'-lutely". Even better, at the beginning, after they're trying to escape the botched heist, Brown is beating the guy who screwed things up. It's one of the best beatings in a movie ever, especially in the way it seemed Brown would mix in more beatings in the middle of things like taking off his coat or asking how they were going to get away.

These two performances were extremely necessary, because this was a wafer thin plot mining material that's been way over used. You can only double cross characters so much before it's just hack writing. You could see Weller and Brown hoist this fucker onto the roof of a late 50s model Cadillac and carry it from start to finish with impeccable style. Robert the Bruce wasn't bad either.



Robert the Bruce's gambling addiction was probably the only thing handled with style by the writers. First, there was an amazing five-card draw game, which is a rarity in films now after the meteoric rise in popularity of Texas Hold 'Em. After the game, The Bruce was confronted by a loan shark, beautifully named Eddie Tapioca. I get the sense that the immense creativity of the beginning of the film couldn't last to the end, and that's why the writing was so bad the further you got in. But these early gambling scenes were solid.

When you see this film on the rack of your video store, or listed in your program guide, you have to ask yourself one question: how much do I like Peter Weller. For me, the answer's obvious, and if it's obvious for you too, get your hands on this at all costs. Who cares how bad and unoriginal the plot is? This is vintage: Weller, maybe the best of all the films of his I've reviewed on this site.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0250756/

King Cobra (1999)

This was a late night deal I did to battle a bout of insomnia. It didn't work out so well, in that I lasted through the whole thing. It drew my attention because it had the late Pat Morita and the even later Hoyt Axton. I'm also a fan of snake movies.

In King Cobra a poor man's Carrot Top (which if you do the math out, that would mean poor man's as in guy collecting bottles to buy a forty) goes over his boss's head in a lab experiment and things go horribly wrong, leading to an explosion and the creation of a 30-foot cross between a rattler and a King Cobra. As most of the beasts are wont to do, this one terrorizes a small town. As people die, the boss scientist comes looking for it. A doctor looking to leave town and his police officer girlfriend help the scientist, along with Pat Morita, resident herpetologist. The doctor is about as close as you can get to being Jonathan Silverman without actually being him. Anyway, more people die, before Morita has a last stand with the snake. Then he dies, and the police woman tries to kill it. Just as the cobra's about to bite her, the doctor drop kicks it (I'm not kidding), and the two stick it in some device that gases it. There's a special appearance by Erik Estrada.



This movie has a built in bad movie warning in the opening credits. The moment you read "Special Appearance by Erik Estrada", you either say to yourself "sweet", or you say "this looks dumb". I'm the kind of guy that says "sweet", and as such am not scared off by such warnings. I hope you the reader aren't either. As far as the appearance went, it was just Estrada overacting as a gay guy planning a beer festival that coincides with the snake's arrival. In my mind, the actual line in the opening credits telling us there'd be a special appearance was better than the actual appearance.

The snake was of great quality. Instead of going the CGI route that most of these bad monster films are going, this one went animatronic with stop motion animation. The result was a higher quality and funnier snake than the CGI ones. It's like the CGI monster is the sweatpants of the genre, and the film maker that uses it is just telling the world that he or she has given up. Well the people who made this one haven't given up... at least not yet.



Pat Morita is fantastic in this. At three or four in the morning, by myself, I was laughing out loud at the end where he had goggles on, and was wavering as the snake kept biting him. It almost as if the animatronic snake was making an expression of "will you just die already." He just looked so silly, especially with the goggles. I guess the idea was that his blood had lots of anti-venom, so the snake had to bite him a lot. Either that, or they needed to pad the film, so they shot the snake, then shot Morita staggering as he tried to outlast the attack, then looped it over and over.

This was Hoyt Axton's last film. In it, he looked a lot like an aged Joe Don Baker, which is funny, because Hoyt did the theme song to Mitchell. For groups of people watching this, the near Joe Don-ness of him is a sweet addition. It's like I don't have to think to make jokes when he's on screen, I just go to my Mitchell well. "Bite me Mitchell".



The main character, the doctor, is almost Jonathan Silverman. When he drop kicks the snake at the end it is priceless. I've never seen anything like it in all the years I've been watching movies. I was beginning to doubt my decision to stick with the film as long as I did, but in quick succession at the very end, I got Morita's hilarious death scene, then the even funnier snake drop kick. I'm not sure whose idea it was, but whoever thought of it should get a Nobel prize in herpetology or something.

If you see this on Sci-Fi or something, TiVo it. At the very least, you can skip to the end. The drop kick alone makes it for me one of the best of the bad horror films on Sci-Fi. I'm not sure it's worth buying it or renting it for that, but TiVoing won't cost you much beyond the space it takes up on your DVR. You don't need to see the rest of the film, but you won't forgive yourself if you miss the Morita death scene, followed by the drop kick.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0138797/

Crooked aka Soft Target (2006)

When I spotted this gem in the video store, I was ecstatic, so much so that my friends found it comical. This film listed DTVC Hall of Famer Gary Busey, potential HOFer Don "The Dragon" Wilson, and former Kansas City Chiefs standout and blaxploitation hero Fred Williamson as its stars. I found out from the opening credits that it also had Martin Kove. Simply amazing.

Crooked starts with Fred Williamson playing poker with a fellow cop while watching a prisoner in protective custody. The prisoner orders hookers, and things get weird. They're ambushed, and it looks like an inside job, because Williamson would never let a bad guy kill him at close range, and he was killed at close range. Busey, the department head, smells a rat, and it would seem Martin Kove, just by who he is is that guy. Don and his partner, Savate's Olivier Gruner, go in search of a hooker that witnessed the hit. All the while the mob wants to get her so she can't talk. Who can Donny and Olivier trust? Does Donny care when he's doing the hooker after he and Olivier find her? And what's Busey's role? Who knows? The whole thing ends in a hail of gunfire.

This film almost completely delivers. Unfortunately, we are victims of a Fred Williamson bait-and-switch. He's dead early on. I'm not sure I dig that. Kill someone else off and give us more Fred. Well, don't kill off Don or Busey in lieu of Fred, we need them too. And Martin Kove needs to lurk. I just could've used more Fred smoking cigars and sleeping with blonds. Maybe that's just me.



That aside, the rest of the star power was great. Don did his thing, even if this was a glorified Bloodfist with more people in it. A plot where Don doesn't know who he can trust and is all alone except for the girl he's protecting sounds like all the Bloodfists post III. The only difference here is that Donny has Olivier Gruner on his side. What Gruner did was add to the already high level of martial arts D "The D" Dubs brings to the table, which meant the action on the whole was better.

I've been receiving e-mails regarding the lack of Gary Busey films on the DTVC, and I must say I'm very sorry about this. With this review, he now only has two movies up, which is the fewest of any Hall of Famer. (Kinski only has three up). I feel really bad, and I'll try my best to rectify the problem in the coming weeks. This is the first of a few I've got on deck, and hopefully that will placate the Busey faithful.



As far as this one went, the Busey was of excellent quality, making it very Abusive. His two best parts come close together near the end of the film. The first is a flashback Wilson has where Busey consoles him after the death of his father. You can tell there's a lot of ad libbing going on, which makes the scene especially authentic from an Abusive standpoint. Later, he's offing a cop in the force who he thinks is onto him. He calls her over and again seems to ad lib dialogue about what a great job she's been doing. Then he's like "I need a hug" and he pulls her close, and mid-embrace he shoots her. I loved it. You can look to the Busey voice-over at the beginning of the film as extremely Abusive as well.

Lastly, the ending was great. It had a plot twist that's only a plot twist to those who watch a lot of bad movies. The way they use Martin Kove was so unexpected based on all of his previous work in the genre. It's like he's expected to be a baddie so much, that when he's ever revealed to be anything different it feels like an ingenious plot twist.

This is so worth a rental when you and your friends have a bad movie night. I got it on a two-for-one night, so it was an even better deal for me. You'll see it at your video store as either Crooked or Soft Target, so be on the look out for both. You won't be disappointed, because this has it all: bad action stars, boobs, martial arts, explosions, and bad guys reacting in funny ways after they've been shot. I can't think of a better bad movie night movie.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0441035/

Late Last Night (1999)

My buddy and I saw this on ON Demand. We were shocked to find out an Emilio Estevez movie came out and slipped our notice, and we figured it'd be worth watching. The addition of Wings' Steven Weber made it all the more intriguing. We found out subsequently that the film was made for cable TV; Showtime I think.

Late Last Night has Estevez as a guy who's just been given the ax by his wife. Looking to blow off some steam, he calls Steven Weber, who takes him on a mad romp of the town. They meet some strippers and do coke with them, go to a warehouse party that's raided, and after Estevez luckily avoids jail, he and Weber finish the night playing a round of golf in the dark. Estevez realizes throughout this that he loves his wife, and goes back to her to give it another go-round.

This was a great film. Though it sounds like a run-of-the-mill all-nighter adventure film, this really does have some great and memorable scenes. For my buddy and I a favorite one was when Weber pretended to be a valet and stole a car for him and Estevez. The car had a 70s compilation CD, and they listened to Hamilton, Joe Frank, and Reynolds' "Don't Pull Your Love Out on Me Baby". Weber's analysis of the song is priceless.



Weber overall made for solid viewing. It was like he played his Wings character, only without the goofiness. There's some speculation, primarily in the form of Estevez's psychiatric evaluation from Catherine O'Hara, that Weber's character isn't real, but just Estevez's wilder alter ego. I'm not sure I buy it, because Weber interacted with people throughout. It was more like he was the devil on Estevez's shoulder in the form of a real person. And Weber played it perfectly.

Estevez is good in this too. He does well as the guy who's totally out of his element in most of the circumstances Weber puts him in, and we as the viewer can't help but sympathize with him. This is especially true when he's arrested. We know he's only in trouble from what Weber's done, and we feel bad that he's going to go through this ordeal, despite the fact he might not be entirely innocent. When he's interrogated by O'Hara, we think she might take pity on him and let him go, but she doesn't. Instead, just as he's about to be processed, we find out the coke in his pocket was baking powder that the strippers switched on him earlier, and he's released.

There are plenty of attractive women in this, foremost among them Dancing With the Stars and General Hospital's Kelly Monaco, who is naked. In a flashback scene, Estevez's wife finds his porno mags, and when she dumps one on the table it opens to her centerfold. Then it comes to life as Estevez fantasizes about hooking up with her. This scene alone should've gotten her the win against J. Peterman in Dancing with the Stars.



There was one scene in this that my buddy loved. It's in the trailer, which you can view if you want on imdb from this movie's page there. Estevez and Weber are using the escalator to get to the subway. They look over and see a man in a Santa Claus suit taking a huge swig off a liquor bottle. There was something classic about that, and I couldn't blame him when he rewound it to watch it again.

The ending for me was pure genius, when Weber and Estevez play golf in the middle of the night. It was a perfect denouement to a wild movie like that. Weber had stolen a large Cadillac and picked Estevez up at the jail. He assumed correctly that there would be a set of clubs in the trunk, and he drove the Caddy right onto the course. They used the headlights to haphazardly light their play. Movies like these tend to have trouble winding the energy down and wrapping things up properly, and this late night golf game did the trick for me.

This is worth a look, especially if you're renting a movie with mixed company (i.e. people who don't really like bad movies). I think my buddy found it on Encore ON Demand, so if you have that, give it a try. For a made for cable TV movie, this is much better than most of the things that make their way onto the big screen.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0167250/