Beach Fever (1987)

We're at our 1200th post on the DTVC, and I was trying to think of something that would work for this milestone. 1200 isn't a huge number, but it's milestone enough. Then I thought about this one from the late 80s that had Kato Kaelin. It was one I tried to record when it was on USA Up All Night, but it didn't happen, so it's a moment of redemption to get it done now, and thought the nostalgia factor might make it worth reviewing for number 1200.

Beach Fever has Kato Kaelin as a beach bum who meets Sake, a Japanese immigrant who is as many bad Asian stereotype jokes as you can imagine. He and Kato team up to find out definitively how to hook up with women, and in the process Kato meets a nice girl, Sandy, and Sandy has a younger brother who likes to run experiments. One of his inventions is a cologne that makes women unable to control their lust for the wearer. When a pimp and a muscle head get wind of this, they capture the brother, make him whip up some of the formula, and the pimp uses it to make women work the street for him. Can Kato and Sake find them and stop them in time?

Seldom are things worth the wait, and this was one of those ones that wasn't, but just the same, it was so all over the place that it was at least enjoyable as a bad movie to some extent. The dialog was a mess the place, sometimes people talked over each other; we'd have musical interludes when you least expect them, with women singing on the beach; and sometimes the film just didn't make any sense. It was like someone asked ChatGPT to make an 80s Beach Romp with Kato Kaelin in it, plus bad Asian stereotypes, and the Spanish Fly trope, and this is what we got. The other issue of course is how gross and outdated the Spanish Fly thing is--it's essentially normalizing and making light of removing consent, kind of the way Romantic Comedies often normalize and make light of stalking. There isn't a gun or another form of force, nor is there anything slipped into a drink, but the Spanish Fly is coercion nonetheless, as the women don't have any say in who they're hooking up with. By the same token, as problematic as that part of the film is, the Kato Kaelin element combined with how low quality this is does make it an odd entry in any beach romp marathon you might have.

Here is the story around this film for me, and it may be one you've heard me tell before. In the late-90s I was looking through the TV Guide for what films were going to be on Up All Night that weekend, and I saw this listed, along with Kato Kaelin's name, in the 3am block. Watching it might have been enough, but I need to have it, the only problem was, we had a really cheap VCR that only went up to like 13 channels, so to record anything on cable, like on the USA Network that was in the 30s, we'd need to hook the cable box up to the VCR, and turn the VCR to channel 3 to run the cable box through it. What this meant was we couldn't program it, or if we did, the cable box needed to stay on the channel we wanted to record. I figured, 3am, I was fine, no one in my family would be watching TV at that time. On the contrary, I got up at 4:30 to see how it was doing, and found my dad watching Headline News. That was back when Headline News was just a 30-minute version of CNN that ran on a loop, and he would watch the same news stories over and over. I was heartbroken, but there was no way to tell teenage Matt that 25 years later there'd be this thing called YouTube where people would upload movies like this, or that the myriad ones he did tape would either be taking up space in a landfill, or taking up space in bins in his parents' basement. So here I am at 44 making good on the disappointment that teenage Matt endured.

You may notice that the Kato Kaelin tag has more than just this film. That's because when I looked at his IMDb bio, I discovered he'd been in two films we've reviewed, Cyborg 3 and Revamped. Not only that, but he did extras casting for Bad Blood aka Viper and Red Sun Rising. The Kato Kaelin aspect of the OJ trial was one of the more fascinating of the whole thing. Professional House Guest, trips to McDonald's in the Bentley, this mop of Gen X hair combined with the Gen X blank look on his face while on the stand--though I discovered on IMDb that he was born in '59, so he was the one teaching Gen Xers to look like that! The idea that that guy was in a movie that was on Up All Night was too fantastic for words at that time, but now, almost 30 years from the Bronco Chase, it all existed in a different time, a time where we put tapes in big box-like devices and recorded things off of TV on them, a time when USA showed things other than Law and Order reruns and Fast and Furious movies. A time where a guy like Kato Kaelin can be a star just by being a professional house guest to the right famous double-murderer. He was viral before we had the term, no vocal fry or up-talk, no unboxing videos or selfies, just him on the stand looking like someone off the cast of Singles. It's kind of American Dream-ish, right down to the double homicide.

The 3am block of USA Up All Night was a bastion of fascinating cinema, and even without Kato Kaelin, this was exactly the kind of film you'd see there. Another one I remember was Kill, Kill, Overkill, aka Twisted Fate, a schlock fest directed by the late Donald G. Jackson, who was best known for Hell Comes to Frogtown. We also had Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death. In middle school and early in high school, before I discovered alcohol, it was usually sleepovers or a Saturday night by myself, and I'd usually be fading during the 1am block, and may wake up in the middle of the 3am film. Later when I'd drink on the weekends, it was making sense of what I was seeing on the screen while the room was spinning. If it was anything good, I'd need to track down the TV Guide to see what it was, and that was if the TV Guide had the correct listing. But then, how would you find that movie again to watch the whole thing? Video stores often didn't have these, they were too obscure even for them. And even if they did, how would you ask for Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death? Bikini Carwash or Vice Academy made sense, they littered the comedy sections, and the guy with the ponytail behind the counter would wink at you when you rented them; but "hey, do you have this beach movie that has Kato Kaelin in it?" would get you first a "do you mean the OJ guy?" and then a shake of the head with a dismissive laugh followed by a "no way man." But it was something we had, whether it was Up All Night, or the 3am movies on Comedy Central--where I saw another Bill Maher classic, Pizza Man, which I found in a bin at my parents' with the label "Matt's stupid Pizza Guy movie" on it, written by one of my siblings who at one time had been going through all the tapes we had to see what was on them--or the 2am block on TBS, after Road House was done, which was usually a nice Andy Sidaris flick. Now we have all of these films at our finger tips to watch whenever we want, which is nice, but it was also fun back then not knowing what we would get if we were up that late.

Finally, what milestone post would be complete without me making a McDonald's reference, but look at what the kid is making: it's a Shamrock Shake! I just happened to be up in New England for St. Patrick's Day this year, and made sure I got one. I remember during the Pandemic, St. Patrick's Day 2020 was right when things were the worst, we had lockdowns, people cheered for nurses instead of attacking them and shouting inane conspiracy theories at them, and we sprayed our packages with Lysol--not those packages, the ones from Amazon--anyway, at that time, going to McDonald's was out of the question, so I got the stuff to make my own Shamrock Shakes, and they were actually better. The thing is though, while they take more work to make on my own, we're also in a bit of a McDonald's desert post-Pandemic, with all of the Center City, Philadelphia McDonald's closed, and us without a car I'd have to take a bus or walk ten blocks to get to one--and that's not the most fun 10-block walk either. All that to say, if they don't open any new McDonald's between now and next St. Patrick's Day, I'll be like this young man here, mixing my own Shamrock Shake.

And with that, let's wrap this up. As of right now, you can either watch this on YouTube, or you may be able to find the DVD version that has a picture from Kaelin testifying at the OJ trial on it. I'm not kidding, it exists, there's a picture on IMDb, it's pretty fantastic. And with this being a milestone post, I'd be remiss if I didn't thank all of you for your support. We started this thing back in 2007, and I had no idea what it would be, but now, despite a four-year hiatus, we're still going strong, so here's to 1200 more!

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092624

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

Made Men (1999)

Back on DTVC podcast episode 113, "Two Non Bonds," I had Will from Exploding Helicopter on to chat about two films that had former James Bonds in them, and this film, featuring Timothy Dalton, was one of the two we chose. If you haven't checked it out yet, you can find it in our archives, it was a fun conversation.

Made Men has the great Jim Belushi as a former mob guy who stole $12 million and then testified against his boss, so before anyone could find out where the money was, he was put into witness protection. The film starts with some of the mobster's hit men coming to take Belushi away, but when they bump into local sheriff Timothy Dalton, things start to go haywire, and only get worse when Belushi escapes, and the hit men chase him to meth cooker Steve Railsback's, shack in the woods. Now it's a series of shootouts and double-crosses, with character's like Michael Beach's not exactly being who they seem, and all the while Belushi's character vacillates between guy you want to love, and guy you can't stand. In the end, who will end up with the money?

This is a fun late 90s romp, essentially made fun by Belushi's performance, plus Dalton's as the sheriff. Belushi seems to make his character unlikeable by design, and just as we think we may like him, he does something bad. Dalton is just chewing scenery and loving every minute of it as the small town sheriff, but he's also a little sadistic too, which makes it more intriguing. Juxtaposed with all these characters, we have Michael Beach as something of a straight man, because, if we didn't have him, we'd have no one to relate to, and he helps to anchor us among all the craziness. All in all this is just a fun 90s organized crime romp.

Back in October of 2021 I did Royce on Will's Exploding Helicopter podcast--if you're not subscribed to that too, you should be--and on it, I discovered, I kind of like Jim Belushi. Why is that so shocking? I wondered myself, and when we watched this, I enjoyed him here too. In my head I decided it was just that he played a standard, doughy, white, Boomer dad on national TV, something safe and fun for middle America in flyover country, and I associated him with that image. But then for this review, I went back to my K9: PI review, from all the way back in August of 2007, and read this that I wrote then: 

"I've never understood the whole Belushi thing. I don't see how he not only gets work, but network sitcoms, and not only network sitcoms, but ones that people watch enough so that they stay on the air beyond the pilot. I asked my friends, to see if maybe it was just me, but it seemed unanimous that people think he's a tool. I'm sure as a dude in real life he's probably not so bad, but as an actor and funny man, it just ain't there. In fact, it's beyond not there, it actually hurts a little."

Did I say that? K9:PI was a rough one, and at that time, when the blog was just starting, I tended to go heavier in my opinions, and Belushi took the brunt of the pain I endured for that one. We all grow as people though, and 28-year-old me is different from 44-year-old me, and my tastes have changed. Like when I was a kid and I hated pickles and mustard, and now I need both on my burger. Jim Belushi is my pickles and mustard now I guess.

Timothy Dalton was the reason I was watching this though, not Belushi, and he didn't disappoint either. I knew he could do comedy, like when he did The Beautician and the Beast, but in that he was more of a straight man, and this was more of a scenery-chewing fun character. I haven't seen License to Kill in probably 30 years, and I've never seen The Living Daylights--though it has a great theme song by A-ha--so I think they could both use a rewatch. Interestingly enough, only The Living Daylights is part of a streaming package I subscribe to, HBOMax, while somehow License to Kill isn't part of any of the major ones--according to Letterboxd it's on Paramount+ on Apple+, which apparently is different from the Paramount+ I subscribe to, because it's not on that. How are they not all in one place so you could do a marathon of them? Especially for someone like me who's barely seen any of them? Come one streamers, get your act together.

Surprisingly, of all the names in this, Michael Beach was the one who was already tagged, having been in two movies on the site, the last almost ten years ago to the day of this posting on June 19th of 2013 when we looked at Assassins Tale as one of the screeners we received from Kevin at MTI video at that time. When we first see him as part of the mobster's goon squad coming to take Belushi, we know from experience that Beach generally isn't in a movie with a role like that, and sure enough we find out there's more to him as the film goes on. As I mentioned above, what he does best here is plays the straight man, or anchor to keep us grounded while we're dealing with all these cooky characters. Near the end, when he has Belushi at gun point and he wants the money, he loses his patience, the same way we as an audience have lost our patience with Belushi's character and his constant lying and messing around. It was one of those performances that I didn't realize I needed until after I'd watched it and was discussing the film further, but it was very necessary, and Beach did great with it.

Finally, when you go to the IMDb page for this film, under film connections it mentions three sequels that, when I looked them up, seem to have nothing whatsoever to do with this film. I looked up the director of those three films, Steve Rahaman, thinking maybe he did a film called Made Men too that this was confused with, but he didn't. It's one of the more fascinating things about IMDb, that you can edit the site on your own, so is this a case where a filmmaker is attaching his films to another film in the hopes that people will come across his films? Or did some random person just add those films to the connections page thinking they belonged together. It worked for me, because I was curious enough and looked up the films and Rahaman's other work. IMDb is a bit like the Wild West, but we movie bloggers and reviewers rely on it for so much. Look at Don "The Dragon" Wilson, who had films listed on his IMDb bio that were subsequently removed. That brought his tag count down, and has delayed his entry into the 40 Club; and it lowered his exploding helicopter film count on Will's site. I guess to some extent, we need to take what we see on IMDb with a grain of salt.

And with that, let's wrap this up. As of this writing, you can get this on VHS, DVD outside the US, and, the way I did it, on YouTube. As you can see from my images, the YouTube version is only so good, but it'll get you to the church on time. And if you haven't yet, check out the podcast episode I did with Will that covered this, 113 in the archives, "Two Non Bonds," where we discuss this and the Pierce Brosnan film Live Wire.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0175877

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

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!