Magic Kid (1993)

I knew I needed to get more PM on the site, and I also knew I was two movies away from getting Don "The Dragon" into the 40 Club, so I figured this wouldn't be a bad one to cover. Luckily it was on YouTube, because what Pluto lists as this one, is actually the sequel. In addition to us, Chris DePetrillo at Bulletproof has covered this as well.

Magic Kid has Ted Jan Roberts as a 13-year-old martial arts prodigy from Michigan who, with his sister (Shonda Whipple), goes to LA to stay with their uncle (Stephen Furst) and his girlfriend (Sandra Kerns) when their parents (Lauren Tewes and Chris Mitchum) need to get rid of them for a few weeks. Turns out Uncle Flounder's an alcoholic inveterate gambler who's into mob boss Joe Campanella for 10 large, but when they come to collect, Roberts beats the crap out of them. Now the mob is out for blood, so upstanding Uncle Flounder has them running around LA while he figures out what to do, subjecting Roberts's 15-year-old sister to all kinds of adult males hitting on her, and needing Roberts to get them out of various jams. Who knows, maybe The Dragon can help?

This is as ridiculous as it sounds, but has this nice amount of PM that gets it over the goal line. Maybe not as many explosions or car flips, but plenty of fight scenes, where Roberts takes all manner of stunt guys and kicks, punches, and throws them into bodies of water, through panes of glass, and over balconies--and among those stunt guys we have Red Horton and Broadway Joe Murphy, the stunt coordinating team responsible for PM classics Zero Tolerance and T-Force, so it was nice to see Roberts throw them into pools or off balconies too. We also had Art Camacho as not only fight choreographer, but he played Roberts's sensei and hosted the tournament in "Michigan" that led the movie. There were some odd parts about the film, like how it was normalized that adult men were hitting on a 15-year-old girl, or how much of a degenerate Furst's character was despite being responsible for a 15-year-old and a 13-year-old, but when you see that PM logo, and see Wilson appearing as a version of himself, combined with Roberts as a fun hero, it just kinda works.

We're officially at 39 films for Wilson on the site. I say "officially" because we'd had to remove a couple tags due to some erroneous IMDb credits that have since disappeared. Part of the reason why he's taken a little longer than other DTV stars to hit that mark, is, like myself, he went on a bit of a hiatus, only the end of his in 2015 happened to coincide with the start of mine. Even as we're catching up, none of those newer ones other than New York Ninja really feature him in the lead the way his 90s stuff did, and while this movie only has him in a small part in the beginning--appearing in Roberts's dream no less--a smaller part in the middle, and then a nice fight sequence with Roberts at the end, it's more what his character represents here, that 90s action star that we all loved watching, and whose stuff from that time is still iconic. For all of us, he'll always be "The Dragon," and it was great to see him as "The Dragon" in this.

This is our third Ted Jan Roberts film on the site, after Hollywood Safari (which also has Wilson, and at that time was the last of his known DTV films that I had to review) and A Dangerous Place, so out of his six PM flicks, we're half-way through. It's interesting how PM tried to split the difference with him here. They had a young, martial arts prodigy, and at the same time there was this spate of martial arts films directed at kids, so they must've thought the mix was gold, the only problem was, PM weren't great alchemists. They tried to make Roberts the hero in a kids movie, but they didn't know how to pull it off tonally. For example, I mentioned adult males hitting on Shonda Whipple's character, who, even though in real life she was 19--which was weird enough for guys in their 30s to be hitting on her--was supposed to be 15. In one scene a bunch of surfers on Santa Monica Pier are hitting on her, and Sandra Kerns says "guys, the lady said no." What? "The lady said no"? The lady is 15! How about that be the reason they need to back off? There's another scene where Uncle Flounder has the kids sleeping on the beach to avoid the mob. And he even had the audacity to expect them to share a sleeping bag while he had his own. They refuse to let him get away with that at least, and force him to sleep without a sleeping bag, but still, it was a rough deal. And just the whole premise, a man who's almost 40 expecting a 13-year-old to beat up adult mob bosses that are after him for betting money he didn't have. I don't know that they got much better at this by 1997's Hollywood Safari either, but I think it's fascinating just the same that they were trying it.

Speaking of the 40 Club, we had two other members in this film, PM Entertainment in their 45th film on the site, and Art Camacho in his 54th. Also, this was directed by Joseph Merhi, the 13th film he's directed on the site, moving him into a four-way tie for third most among directors. What was interesting though were the other stars. Lauren Tewes as the mother was great. What a great get to have Julie, our cruise director, in a PM flick! Also I see that she was born in Braddock, PA, which is where John Fetterman was mayor, someone who is now known for one of the great heel-turns in politics. And then we had Stephen Furst, aka Flounder from Animal House, as the uncle. He does his best here, but because things were so tonally all over the place, it was a tough sled. Despite that, he came back to direct the sequel one year later. Finally, for Charles in Charge fans, we had Sandra Kerns, who never made another film after this, instead focusing on raising her kids in Pacific Pallisades. I guess if this was it for her acting career, this isn't a horrible way to go out.

Finally, we usually dedicate this paragraph to something silly or offbeat about me personally, but considering this film was shot in LA, I think it's important to mention the wildfires and the people affected--including potentially Sandra Kerns, if she and her family still live in Pacific Pallisades, we hope they're all okay. We watch so many films, especially from the 90s, that were shot in LA, it's a part of the world that for decades has invited us into the space where they live for our entertainment, but times like these remind us that people make their homes there, and like any of us, take for granted that that home will always be there. Our hearts go out to everyone affected by these fires, and hope everyone is okay. And God forbid you do need to evacuate, for God's sake, leave your keys in your car in case Steven Guttenberg needs to move it. For people reading who want to help, this CNBC article shows you charities that have been vetted, and how to spot scams: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/01/09/california-wildfire-relief-where-to-give.html

And with that, let's wrap this up. YouTube is your best bet right now, unless you can find a cheap DVD or VHS. This is more for PM or Don "The Dragon" Completists, of which I'm a card-carrying member of both, and if you are too, or either just one or the other, this will get you to the church on time.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107482

And if you haven't yet, check out my newest book, Nadia and Aidan, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Dead Before They Wake (2025)

Recently, filmmaker and actor Nathan Shepka reached out to see if I'd review his latest release, which I was more than happy to do. We've seen two other of his films here on the site, When Darkness Falls and Lock & Load, both vastly different movies, but both very enjoyable. Let's see how this one did.

Dead Before They Wake has Shepka as Alex, a lonely nightclub bouncer whose only companionship is his father, who's close to passing and living in a rest home; and Gemma, a teacher who makes extra cash as a sex worker. All that changes when a lawyer representing a government official asks Alex to rescue a young deaf girl who's being held by some traffickers that have been taking young girls in the city that live in vulnerable situations. The £20,000 he's offered for the job is nice, but really he wants to do the right thing, so he agrees to find her. As this job takes him down a dark path though, will he be able to get out alive? And if not, whom might he take with him?

This was really intense. Even though I watched it lying in bed, I was figuratively on the edge of my seat a lot of the time. It's a dark intense though, no punches are pulled here. This isn't the standard middle class American white girl getting grabbed from the Hobby Lobby parking lot version of trafficking we see in a lot of action movies, this is closer to what it really is, young girls and boys who are either sold by drug-addicted parents, or who have run away from bad situations and are vulnerable to being exploited like this. Nothing's overly elaborate, there aren't rich businessmen flying in on private jets to bid on girls in fancy auctions, these are dark rooms where girls are drugged and preyed upon by local degenerates that have the money. Nate plays a great hero too. He's not Superman, he can't take out five guys at once with lighting quick martial arts skills--even though we do have a really nicely-choreographed knife fight at one point--this is part a dramatic lead with more depth, yet also not afraid to mix it up with a baseball bat to get things done. Then our two main baddies, played by Manjot Sumal and Karim Nasif, are definitely evil, but they aren't scenery chewing baddies, they're just evil, which helps ground the film. And finally the other major standout for me was Grace Cordell as Gemma. Usually her type of character in a film like this is solely there to be our hero's humanity and emotional surrogate, but because Nate is doing more of that already in his performance, she can be more independent--she's a sex worker that doesn't need to be saved by the hero. I had a little trouble with the ending, which I'll discuss further down the post with spoiler warnings, but overall I really enjoyed it. It's an intense, dark thriller, so if you're looking for something in that vein, this will do the trick.

Technically this is the fourth film I've seen of Nate's, but the third one, The Baby in the Basket, hasn't been released yet, so you won't get my thoughts on that one until then. As far as how this one stacks up with those other two, it's hard to say because they're all so different. This is probably closer in feel to When Darkness Falls, but I think this one is much darker than that one. Like there's a scene where a young girl, played by Emily Crawley, gets into a cab that's driven by Karim Nasif. It's so frightening but so dark and depraved too, the way Nasif starts asking her questions about herself that go from slightly off to downright creepy, but we know it's going to get worse, and it does when his friend gets in the backseat and he's all over her, and she's realizing she's in a horrible situation. In these interactions, Shepka and company are not letting us off easy, not to say he did let us off easy in When Darkness Falls, but that was a more straight ahead thriller, while this is absolutely disturbing at times. But it's also not disturbing for the sake of being disturbing, this is a compelling story with great performances too, which elevates it beyond the dark nature of the subject matter and how it's being depicted.

About that subject matter, you've probably heard me either on here, or on the pod, discussing the human trafficking trope that's popular in modern action movies. Part of it comes from Taken, part of it from the "baddie in a can" element that allows us to have villains without a lot of development, because how do you not want to see a trafficker get his comeuppance? It also lends itself well to the damsel in distress being rescued by our white knight hero construct. The usual approach is, middle class, beautiful--many times virginal--white girl gets picked up by some baddies, and it's a race against time before she's defiled by these ne'er do wells. In my short action novel, Bainbridge, I tried to do a take on the Eastern European trafficking I'd read about, where young women apply for what they think are office jobs, but end up kidnapped and shipped across Europe to underground brothels, only in my case I used girls from Mexico trafficked into the US instead. What Nate and company do here though is look at the most common kind of trafficking, the kind that FBI agents here in the US spend countless hours on the dark web trying to crack down on, and nothing like the popular depiction in Jim Caviezel films or whatnot. These aren't girls who found a water bottle on their car at a Hobby Lobby parking lot, the kind of baseless urban legend stuff your aunt may post on her Facebook wall, they're girls whose parents sold them for drugs, or who had no family and were taken in by people who they thought cared for them, or who went to a party and were drugged and kept in a hotel for a weekend. This isn't your fun action movie trafficking, and I think the film is better for it. At the same time, we have Grace Cordell's Gemma character who is voluntarily doing sex work to make some extra cash. When Alex says how he felt guilty paying her for sex, like he was taking advantage of her the way the johns were in the brothels of trafficked girls he found, she's assertive in telling him she was doing sex work of her own volition, she wouldn't be doing it if she didn't want to. It's a great juxtaposition to show both sides, that sex work doesn't automatically equal trafficked; but also, I think it removes this more insidious part of the conversation that has less to do with keeping young men and women out of unsafe situations, and more about controlling this idea of a woman's "virginity" as some kind of sacred thing. I thought it was a good move to use Cordell's character that way to further ground the film, especially when we're dealing with such disturbing material.

(And don't think it wasn't lost on me that in the UK teachers get paid enough that Gemma had to turn to sex work to make extra money because her father ran up charges on her credit cards then disappeared. In America teachers get paid so little that just doing sex work on the side would've been believable even without the family member putting her into debt.)

SPOILER ALERT!!! SPOILER ALERT!!! SPOILER ALERT!!! SPOILER ALERT!!!

I used that rant on how poorly we pay our teachers in the US to give a further buffer so I can discuss the ending without spoiling it for anyone who hasn't seen it. The term "Shakespearean," among many Americans anyway, usually means "a story where everyone dies at the end," and that's kind of the case here, which I got, but I thought it was a bit harsh for the characters. First we have the young girl that was trafficked. With all that she went through, and all that Alex went through to rescue her, for her to die after, however it happened, felt unfulfilling. Then Gemma, she's kidnapped by the baddies, tied up and gagged, shot in the leg, then after a melee she gets on top of Manjot Sumal and beats him, only to be shot in the head. For all she brought to the movie, and how we became invested in her, that one may have been harshest of all. And then when Alex dies, I get that there's that sense that he lost everything by letting the darkness of this task envelope him, but I think I just would've preferred a better outcome for him too. You could also make the point that it would've been even harsher if he had died while Gemma lived, because he then misses out on the nice life they could've had together. Ultimately, these are choices filmmakers make to tell the story they want to tell, the way they want to tell it, and maybe my issue as a storyteller is I'm afraid to kill my characters off or give them a bad ending, which I understand, it could be more me than them, it just means this is an area in the film that didn't resonate as much with me, which I think is okay too.

END SPOILER ALERT!!! END SPOILER ALERT!!! END SPOILER ALERT!!!

Finally, while that isn't Wayne Rooney in that shot, it's Graeme MacPherson, it looks a lot like him, doesn't it? As an Arsenal fan, Rooney's not really one of my favorites, but the idea of having a Wayne Rooney look-a-like is fantastic. Like how Robert Bronzi has made an entire career out of looking like Charles Bronson, could MacPherson do the same? And maybe loosely imply he's Rooney without saying it, like MacPherson plays a "former famous footballer" that's either a cop on the edge, or a baddie running a trafficking ring, or maybe best of all, running a Dark Kumite a la Ben Franklin in Bloodsport IV. And though twice helicopters have been blown up using American footballs, I don't think anyone has blown one up with a non-American football, aka a "soccer ball." We'll have to ask Will from Exploding Helicopter to be sure, but it feels like a film with MacPherson looking like Rooney is the place for it to finally happen. I can see the whole thing now, the hero's a former famous footballer who missed a big penalty late in his career. It's always haunted him. But now he's the fly in the ointment in a Die Hard scenario, and at the end, as the baddie's about to escape in a helicopter, his only chance to get him is to kick a soccer ball at the helicopter, with C4 attached to it of course, and he bends it perfectly, blowing the machine to bits in spectacular fashion. Instead of "Sudden Death" we could call it "Injury Time."

And with that let's wrap this up. As of January 7th, this will be available on VOD and DVD here in the States, and then January 27th on VOD in the UK. This is well-worth checking out and supporting. It's dark, doesn't pull punches, and keeps you on the edge of your seat, but also develops compelling characters that are well-scripted and well-acted. It's just really great stuff.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt17044894

And if you haven't yet, check out my newest book, Nadia and Aidan, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Cash Out (2024)

Back in October Ty and I covered this on episode 180 of the podcast. It had a lot going for it as far as a movie we cover, from the Travolta, to the other guest stars, to the fact that it was directed by Randall "Scandal" Emmett, to its availability on Hulu. Even if it was bad, it would be a good amount of material, right?

Cash Out has Travolta as this world-renown thief/bank robber, who finds out his girlfriend, Kristin Davis, was an undercover FBI agent, and she almost busts him on one of his jobs. He escapes to a nice place out in the woods to retire, but his younger brother, Lukas Haas, has a big bank score he wants Travolta in on. Even though he says no, he finds out Haas is still going through with it, and shows up to the bank just in time for things to go south, leading to an Inside Man-esque scenario. Luckily Kristin Davis is the negotiator--or unluckily for the hostages who were just planning to go to work that day or make a bank transaction, and now have Noel Gugliemi sticking a gun in their face and swearing at them. Hey, what's a little PTSD between friends, right? Will there be enough convoluted hackiness in the plot to get Travolta out of this situation?

You know it baby. Convoluted hackiness all day long. We got names, which helps, and a short runtime, which also helps; but the paint-by-numbers plot is actually too little for even this runtime--think more 45-minute episode of a syndicated TV show. There's also the matter of the fact that I'm supposed to be rooting for people who are treating innocent people this poorly. Usually in a film like this I can turn my brain off, but it was really off-putting, not any kind of Robin Hood or anything like that. And then there's Travolta. He's not like a De Niro or a Cage, where there's an Oscar in there; but also not Mel Gibson, where he's a next-level star who is only in this DTV schlock because he's a horrible racist/misogynist/anti-Semite; or Willis, who was a next-level star but had health issues. The movie needed Travolta to be like one of those four, but he's never really been that, which renders the whole thing unremarkable, unfortunately, even for free with a shorter runtime.

This is now five films for Travolta on the site, but only his third DTV flick--the others were Wild Card posts for Battlefield Earth and The Punisher--and in those other two DTV ones, we can see the phenomenon I spoke of above. The first of those was Killing Season with Robert De Niro, who, even though he was mailing it in so bad he couldn't even be bothered to put a stamp on the envelope, was De Niro enough that Travolta wanted to act opposite him, and created enough of a novelty effect; and then the second of those, Paradise City, where Willis was solid enough, plus we had a Stephen Dorff that we didn't have here helping to prop up the proceedings so Travolta could just relax and chew scenery. That's the Travolta we need, put him opposite someone slightly better than him, and let him dominate that space just below. What we need is a Face/Off 2 with him and Cage, directed by John Woo, throw it on one of the streamers like Hulu or Netflix, and let it rack up the views. Unfortunately we don't have that, but we have a lot more Travolta DTV stuff out there, so we'll see if we end up getting around to it.

Many people know Kristin Davis from Sex and the City, which I get, or her great appearance on Seinfeld, but for me it'll always be her run on Melrose Place. Our site doesn't have quite the same number of alumni from Melrose as we do from 90210--probably the one we've seen the most is Patrick Muldoon, who was great in Rage and Honor 2, but we also had Courtney Thorne-Smith in Side Out and Heather Locklear in Return of Swamp Thing, so we're not complete bereft of Melrose on here. After Melrose and the Seinfeld appearance, I think my next two favorites from Davis are the TV movies The Ultimate Lie, where she plays a call girl who mistakenly gets her dad as a client (Jay Harangue does a fantastic job giving it his treatment on his YouTube channel); and A Deadly Vision, where she plays a server ("waitress" back then) with psychic visions of a killer. This unfortunately doesn't reach those heights, but it could have, because she was great at the beginning as Travolta's girlfriend who ends up turning on him. From there it's blah negotiator stuff, that they try to dress up with banter between her and Travolta that falls flat too. I saw she had a film called Deadly Illusions with Dermot Mulroney and Greer Grammer that's on Netflix and looks like it has potential, but it also had a buck-54 runtime, which just sounds too onerous. Just give me a 90-minute remake of The Ultimate Lie with her playing the mom and Dermot Mulroney as the dad, and then any actress born in 1998 as the daughter. You'll have gold.

Getting back to the whole PTSD thing, it may sound like I'm being too sensitive, but this wasn't a fun robbery, we had Noel Gugliemi, who's made a career out of being scary, pointing a gun at people and yelling and swearing at them. There was nothing fun or nice about that, certainly not lovable rogue or anything like that. I think Emmett recognized that somewhat, because at the end they tacked on that Travolta wired a million dollars into each of their bank accounts for their trouble. It's an interesting conundrum, because it's easy to say "hell, I'd go through all that for a million dollars," but for the hostages, they don't know they're getting a million dollars, they're in a situation where they're being held at gunpoint by some angry, aggressive individuals. It's why when we have lovable roguish heroes who break the law, they don't do shit like that. They're nice, even fun, and the people being inconvenienced don't mind it because the roguish heroes are so charming. It's just more of the slap-dashery/convoluted hackiness we've grown to love and expect from these Randall Scandals, and to be fair, I think I would've forgiven it if the movie had been more exciting. That was the bigger offense, that they tried to stretch 45 minutes of material into 90 minutes of movie.

Finally, between this site, and my old "Matt, Movie Guy" Tumblr (which still exists, I just haven't updated it in forever), I've become obsessed with shot composition over the years for all my screen grabs. Recently I was on the LAMBcast to discuss the new Nosferatu, where I said some of the shot composition was so great, Wes Anderson would've had to leave the theater to have a cigarette, but that was probably more projection on my part, because I was marveling at all Tumblr post material Eggers was giving us. With that in mind, I present to you the lost opportunity above. You have this beautiful shot of Travolta looking at something--dog urinating on his outdoor potted plants? Bad Tik Tok video that makes no sense to him? Another script to a Randall Scandal movie? Either way, it looks great, especially centered in the frame like that with the wall in the background, except what the hell is that thing on the left there? It just borks up the whole thing! Come Randall Scandal, you're killing my perfect screen grab... or giving me material for a seventh paragraph, which I was really struggling for, so maybe it's not all bad.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently get this on Hulu, which isn't bad, but this isn't exactly great either, which is too bad. What's good is the podcast episode Ty and I did on this one, number 180 in the archives. Check it out wherever you get your podcasts!

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt24131288

And if you haven't yet, check out my newest book, Nadia and Aidan, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Animal Instincts (1992)

Back in October we had Mitch from the Video Vacuum on the pod to discuss this Erotic Thriller classic, episode 179 in the archives. It's part of an overall effort to try and get more Erotic Thrillers on the site--which I probably won't stick to, but hopefully I will.

Animal Instincts has the great Shannon Whirry as a housewife who's married to police officer divorce' Maxwell Caufield. Money's tight, and he's always stressed out about it, so he's not as keen on having sex with Whirry. When she cheats with the cable guy (Bobby Johnston--"Cain" from T-Force) and Caufield catches her, they discover his love for watching her sleep with other guys. So they put an ad in the classifieds, and the candidates are lined up out the door for a chance to hook up with her, while Caufield watches on a TV in the other room. At the same time, there are some nefarious characters, like David Carradine and Jan-Michael Vincent. As the money comes in from their sexual arrangement, Caufield wants more, and sees a way to get it through Carradine and Vincent. But is it too dangerous?

This is a classic for a reason. Whirry's great, the supporting cast is a lot of fun, and the story idea is perfect for an Erotic Thriller--though this is more a soft core porn film, so the story is even better for that. One thing that was interesting was how Whirry wasn't the femme fatale trope, she was more a woman who wished her husband had sex with her more, and they figured out an arrangement that allowed her to do that. But then we have Carradine as a strip club owner, who's really creepy; Jan-Michael Vincent as a local politician or something who wants to shut down the strip clubs, but who's also really creepy; and then Caufield as the jerky husband who gets turned on by seeing her hook up with other men--and women--who's also kind of creepy too--I mean, how do you do "watching someone else have sex and getting turned on by it" without looking creepy? We also had a few smaller fun roles, like John Saxon as the DA at the end, Mitch Gaylord as Caufield's cop partner, and Delia Shepherd as a rich lesbian lover who wants Whirry to run away with her. If you're new to the Erotic Thriller genre, this is a perfect place to start.

For this review we're giving Whirry her tag, and after updating the previous reviews, this starts her off at three with this one, the two previous films being Omega Doom and Mach 2. What makes her so great is, from an acting standpoint, she solid, which probably gets you to a certain level of roles, like supporting cast member in a Lifetime film; but because she's willing to do these soft core porn Erotic Thriller films, the acting skills make her standout, and I think is a big reason why she was so successful--beyond the obvious, of course. This film, for example, she really plays up the wanting to please her husband aspect, like when she first goes into their bedroom after Caufield sets up the camera, the way she's kind of uncomfortable about it, but still trying to look flirty and seductive, that's not something you'd get from any actor doing a film like this; but when she needs to do the love scenes, she's giving more than the average solid actor of her pedigree would. She's one of the best to do it, and I can't wait to get more of her films on the site.

We do have a Hall of Famer in this, David Carradine! This is now 19 films for him on the site, the last one being Project Eliminator in June of 2023. The interesting thing is, this film came out a year after that one, but he looks a lot younger here. With 19 films, the 30 Club is far in the future, and he may be one of those Hall of Famers who never gets there, which kind of doesn't make sense, considering how many films he's done that would fit on our site, but I think the issue is something like this, where he's not in it much, so I'm probably not reviewing it unless it has another reason, like covering it on a previous podcast episode. Just the same, he's a Hall of Famer for a reason, because he appears in so many films like this. Who knows, maybe if we stick with this long enough, he'll make the 30 Club, 40 Club, and beyond.

I thought this was our first time seeing Mitch Gaylord on the site, and it is as far as him as an actor, but he also did stunt work on Savate, so he's technically been here one other time. Looking at his IMDb bio, he has an amazing four-film run between 1986 and 1994, with American Anthem, American Rickshaw, this, and Sexual Outlaws. The guys at Comeuppance have covered American Rickshaw and gave it a good review, but despite not knowing anything about the other two, I have no idea how they can't be anything other than fantastic. I'll try to track the other three down so at some point we can complete the Gaylord Foursome. I know, you can't wait.

Finally, anyone with Boomer parents who was young, at home, and out of work like I was, had a newspaper thrust in front of them and was instructed to look through the classifieds for a new job. From there it was also getting a pile of resumes and "hitting the pavement," which, living in a rural area with nothing within walking distance, I was spared that "hitting the pavement" indignity. I was also spared the indignity of the classifieds soon after, when Craigslist became a thing. It was beautiful, no pavement hitting, no sifting through classified ads in the newspaper, I could scroll, find something good, then call them--or if I were feeling ambitious, make a trip over to where they were located and apply in person. The thing was, though, how to explain Craigslist to Boomer parents who only understood classified ads and "hitting the pavement"? And what's crazy, there's now a younger generation raised on Indeed and LinkedIn, who can't believe there was ever such a thing as classified ads in a newspaper, and the idea of "hitting the pavement" gives them crippling anxiety. What an age to have grown up in, a bridge between the old and new, while Shannon Whirry has a love scene with Mitch Gaylord, and Maxwell Caufield watches from another room.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Mitch found this on the Internet Archive, which is a great place to find some of these, as they're often too graphic for YouTube, and Tubi is only catching up on them now. If you haven't seen it in a while, or looking to get into Erotic Thrillers, this is a great one to watch. And if you haven't yet, check out the podcast episode Mitch and I did on this film, number 179 in the archives.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103696

And if you haven't yet, check out my newest book, Nadia and Aidan, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

I, Portrait (2021)

Friend of the site Nate Hill reached out to see if we could review some more of his films, starting with this one. Considering how much I enjoyed the first four I watched, that was a no-brainer. In addition to us, Romey Norton at Film Focus Online has covered this as well.

I, Portrait follows famous painter Carmen (Natalie Heslop), who has just married casting director Julian (Hill), and is looking to get back into painting after taking a break. The thing is, if she paints blindfolded, and focuses on what she's painting, whatever she paints becomes reality. Her husband indulges it, if only to have the blindfolding lead to some sexy lovemaking, but the next day Carmen's old friend Stephanie (Sienna Stass) shows up unexpectedly. Could the painting be connected? After getting the initial pleasantries out of the way, Carmen gets the sense Steph wants to hook up with her husband, which naturally would be upsetting to anyone, but when Steph decides to overstay her welcome, now things seem like they're turning downright sinister. Will Carmen get to the bottom of everything in time?

Overall, I really enjoyed this. It brought back memories of 90s Erotic Thrillers, but in a modern, Australian setting, which made it all more refreshing. I had some qualms about a few things, one of which is the ending, which I'll get to in a later paragraph so I don't spoil it for anyone, but there were some real inspired moments too. My favorite scene came when the three of them went out to eat after Stephanie arrived. No dialog, just music and shots of each of their faces, but in those shots, we could see how Stephanie was making eyes at Julian, how Julian was appreciating the attention, and how Carmen wasn't. It built tension and moved the plot in a really creative and organic way that I always love seeing. One of the qualms actually also highlighted something I liked about the film. As the tension was building to the end, there's a break where Carmen and Julian go to a club and listen to a singer, Leslie Lawrence, who's performing this haunting, but also apt song called "Rain." The problem for me was, it was the whole song, and at this point I want to get to that ending because of how well it's all built up! I felt like when I order food, and the app says it'll arrive at one time, but it's 30 minutes later. You can't leave your audience hungry like that! But the fact that that tension was built so well, and that song fit so well, was another aspect I appreciated, so it's a good problem to have. Speaking of songs, Nate's long-time collaborator Jane Badler sings the opening, "Yesterday's Tomorrows," which had a 90s feel and got me in the 90s Erotic Thriller mindset; and then "Secret Smiles," written by William Katt--yes that William Katt--and performed by "Billy Katt," who I assume is him too, so really cool to have him do one of the songs. If you're wondering why William Katt is tagged here, that's why. For me, even with the qualms, this is 80s minutes of Erotic Thriller fun, and well worth checking out.

This is now five films for Nate on the site, and I initially planned to rank them, but this one kind of throws the idea of ranking them out the window. It's more serious than the other four I've reviewed, but what I think I loved most was how, as serious as it was, it didn't forget to include the fun, which is the best part of the Erotic Thriller. I joke about how when I saw Lady Terror, I didn't get the humor in it and had to watch some of Nate's other films, but I wonder if I'd seen this one before that if I would've gotten it more too, because here he isn't as much tongue-in-cheek, it's more straight ahead, and the fun is the fun you find in a well-made Erotic Thriller, so it would've made a good comparison point. One thing I think I would've liked more out of this one though, is if his character was kept out of things a bit more. I think there's an idea of a love triangle, but really it's more about the tension between Carmen and Stephanie, and Julian worked better for me as another vessel for that tension between them.

Speaking of which, the performances by Natalie Heslop and Sienna Stass really made this for me. None of this works if they both weren't all in, not just on the sexual stuff, but the tense interactions and the physical confrontations too. When Stephanie first shows up at the door, we gotta know that she's bad news, and then get the anticipation of the tension that will come as Natalie starts to pick up on that bad news. There were a few moments where I think that could've even been played better. For example, after the dinner date with Julian, the two go horseback riding, and then Natalie offers to do Stephanie's make-up. I think we needed something more there, whether it's Natalie doing Stephanie's make-up to make her look plainer compared to how she looked when they all went out to eat, or maybe she has insecurities, and she purposefully makes Stephanie look hot so it's almost a self-fulfilling prophecy in her mind that Julian will cheat. Right after that scene, Carmen's friend Kelly shows up, and Carmen rudely introduces Stephanie to her as "this is Stephanie, she's from the country," not, "this is Stephanie, she's my old friend from high school." If there could've been some more palpable tension during the make-up scene, like there was at the dinner scene, that rudeness, and then Stephanie's response, would've worked better. Again, that's a minor qualm on what were two great performances.

SPOILER ALERT!!! SPOILER ALERT!!! SPOILER ALERT!!! SPOILER ALERT!!!

If you're reading after this, you've been warned, but I needed to talk about the ending, and I didn't want to spoil it for anyone who hasn't seen this yet. I don't know that it would ruin the film for you, and you may disagree that it was even an issue. Leading up to the end, it was great. As I mentioned above, the tension was building, then we get the confrontation, which was everything you want in an Erotic Thriller showdown. But then, as the fight goes to the pool, Julian wakes up from his concussion, and joins the fight, ultimately helping Carmen hold Stephanie's head underwater and drown her. It was too cold blooded an ending, I need the baddie to somehow either die by their own hand, or leave the heroes no choice, and here once they'd sufficiently restrained her, drowning seemed excessive. Now, Nate mentioned a possible future film where he marries the characters from his films into one universe, and if the plan is to say actually Carmen and Julian let Stephanie up and called the cops, and then maybe Phillyda Murphy's Candace Knight breaks her out of the mental hospital she's confined in and the team up to try to take out Jasper, I'll take all this back. Short of that though, it just didn't sit as well with me as the rest of the film.

END SPOILER!!! END SPOILER!!! END SPOILER!!! END SPOILER!!! END SPOILER!!!

Finally, if you've been rockin' with us for any amount of time, you know I'm a bit of a transit geek, so when I saw a Melbourne commuter train in the beginning I was stoked. A quick perusal of the Wikipedia page--which I did during the commercials on Plex--told me that Melbourne's transit underwent a similar period of being diminished in favor of the car as it did in the US, but starting in the late 90s, there's been a resurgence there, supported by the government, that we haven't had here yet. They also farmed out the service to a private company, which we're starting to see here now as well with Brightline service. Anyway, beyond my geekiness, I thought the inclusion of the commuter train was important to the story too. Trains often portend ominous events, and this one appeared at the same time we first saw Stephanie, so it was all kind of Hitchcockian in that way; on the other hand though, the fact that it was a commuter train, something people take to and from work every day, brought home Nate's theme of his stories, how everyday people can find themselves in extraordinary circumstances, and while Julian would never take a commuter train, using it in the background as that metaphor allows Nate to reinforce that theme. It's just more really great stuff that I love seeing in a movie.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Even though IMDb says this is on Tubi, as far as I can tell it's no longer there, so Plex is the best option here in the States, or you can rent it from Prime--which isn't a bad way to support indie creatives either. This is just a fun Erotic Thriller, it's not trying to be anything more than it is, but with the cast and crew fully invested, it fulfills exactly what you want when you fire it up on your streaming device. Can't wait to see what Nate's got for us next!

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6831966

And if you haven't yet, check out my newest book, Nadia and Aidan, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Chris Claremont's X-Men (2018)

It's almost Christmas, and you know what that means? Our annual unofficial Christmas documentary post. Since I came back from hiatus in 2019, I've done a documentary at this time every year except for two: 2020, where I was late and did the He-Man documentary in January of 2021, and in 2022, when I did the Dolph flick Pups Alone instead. Anyway, in addition to us, RobotGEEK's Cult Cinema has covered this as well.

Chris Claremont's X-Men is about Chris Claremont's run on one of Marvel's greatest franchises, and how it wasn't one of Marvel's greatest franchises until he was given the book, and did amazing things with it. The documentary looks at his rise at a young age in Marvel, how he was kind of given X-Men because it wasn't doing well, his work with John Byrne, Louise Simonson, and Ann Nocenti that gave us so many classic X-Men storylines, and then Marvel's push to make more money, saturation in the market, and the rise of youngsters like Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld that led to Claremont's exit. Overall, the legacy he left is massive, and comics wouldn't be the same without him.

This was a fantastic documentary, but my biggest complaint--and one that Freddie Young at Full Moon Reviews shared when he was on podcast episode 189 with me--is that it could've been longer! You can probably count on one hand how many times I've wanted a movie to be longer, but at 71 minutes this film could've used another 20 minutes of background. What it gives you though is the genesis of how the modern X-Men came to be, and how it cemented itself with Spider-Man as the number one properties Marvel had in the 80s going into the 90s. One area that they didn't get into was the post Claremont period, especially in the 2010s when Disney bought Marvel, but Fox still had the rights to the X-Men, so Disney had Marvel diminish the X-Men in the comics in favor of the Avengers so younger audiences would be less inclined to see the X-Men movies. Because this came out in 2018, it couldn't have foreseen the Disney purchase of Fox and how that dynamic may be changing now, but I think Disney trying to diminish his legacy was an important element they left out. They also left out, as far as I remember, that Claremont came back to Marvel to work on new X books. Beyond that though, this is what you want from a movie like this, especially if you grew up reading the X-Men comics like I did.

I started collecting comics in earnest around the time Claremont was being forced out by Marvel's heads, which is something I had no idea about, but I knew the name Chris Claremont. All the back issues, all the great storylines he conceived, like Dark Phoenix and Days of Future Past, and all the great characters he had a part in creating, or like Wolverine, developed after they were created by someone else. X-Men as a property wouldn't have been worth Fox buying the rights to in the first place if it wasn't for Claremont's work, and even with Disney trying to diminish it, after a lackluster 2023, it's now those same X-Men characters that they're hoping will help right the ship. Another way to think of it though, the fact that the MCU was able to be as successful as it had been without the X-Men, and without Spider-Man to start, is a testament to their ingenuity, but also testament to the legacy and shadow cast by Claremont; but also I think too, the fact that the Fox adaptations of his stories and characters wasn't as successful shows that you can't just recreate someone else's work. I saw he did get a thank you credit for 2019's Dark Phoenix, but I wonder if he couldn't help the other Fox productions because he was under contract with Marvel? Another area this film missed.

What they didn't miss was Claremont's focus on female characters. He said in the film that when he created a character, he asked himself "could this character be a woman?" The volume of female characters he created was immense, and really filled a gap in Marvel's universe, one that was really apparent when the MCU started and we didn't get a female-helmed film until Captain Marvel. The thing is though, with Fox having the rights to Storm, Kitty Pryde, Rogue, Jean Grey, Emma Frost, etc., it wasn't like they were jumping to make any female-helmed films either. It was a massive missed opportunity I think, but now that Disney and Marvel Studios no longer have the excuse that a lot of their best female characters are with Fox, let's see what they put together in the coming years. The other legacy of Claremont's work, is the large amount of young women who grew up comic book fans. Hopefully Marvel Studios will lean into that legacy more.

In my review on the Image Revolution documentary, I talked about how much I loved Jim Lee and Rob Liefield in the early 90s, but this film paints a different picture of their role. A big part of it was the higher-ups were more interested in making the X-Men property bigger than just The Uncanny X-Men, but with each new book, Claremont was spread that much thinner, until it was all taken away from him and split up. Would the bubble have burst if the Marvel execs hadn't been so keen on maximizing dollars? Sure, I wouldn't have had that iconic X-Men #1 five cover set, and maybe we don't get Deadpool or Cable from Liefeld, but the two of them left to form Image anyway, which hastened the bursting of the bubble that we eventually got. If instead of four Spider-Man books, and five or six X books, we had one of each that we as fans could focus on--and only one cover of each issue, and not an overly expensive milestone issue--maybe us kids would've stuck with it. We have this idea that businessmen, especially billionaires, are really good at business, but more often than not, they're just really rich from generational wealth, and just want to make as much money as possible on one thing, then move onto the next, not worrying about who might be left in the wake. Someone running Marvel properly in the early 90s might've handled that all differently, and maybe we don't get the bubble burst.

Finally, mixed in with the images of comic book panels and people giving interviews, the movie had cosplayers dressed as some of the most well-known X-Men. Cosplaying is an art I've always appreciated, to just take characters and make them your own like that is great. It's like visual fan fic, or like me in my novels, where I create my own ideas inspired by other things I've seen and heard. In Philly it's particularly interesting, because the convention center is located across the street from the Trader Joe's where I often go on Saturdays to get some groceries. It's common when we have cosplay conventions for people to pop in to get stuff while in their full outfit. And it makes sense too, because I know for me, wherever I travel, if there's a Trader Joe's, I can get stuff cheap--for example, if you're ever in San Francisco, that Trader Joe's and Target are both Godsends compared to how expensive the rest of the city is. And Philly's no different. If you're here for a cosplay convention, and you need a cheap snack and a drink, you're much better off hitting the Trader Joe's, than overspending at Reading Terminal Market. As an aside, if you're in Philly and want to get a cheesesteak, don't get it from the Market, they're all mediocre at best. Let me know if you're in town, and I'll point you to the best spots.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Currently you can get this on Tubi, Prime, and other major streamers. If you're a comic book fan, this is a must, but I also think for non-comic fans, to see the origin of some of these stories and to get a better sense of how the business worked in the 70s and 80s, it is really interesting.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7929156

And if you haven't yet, check out my newest book, Nadia and Aidan, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

One More Shot (2024)

As we get Scott Adkins and Michael Jai White closer to the 30 Club, we had to do this gem from 2024 that featured both of them. This was one we covered on the podcast back in September with Rich Hawes of the DTV Digest, episode 176 in the archives, so you can check that out, and in addition to us, Chad Cruise at Bulletproof has covered this too.

One More Shot picks up where One Shot left off. Our hero is transporting Amin, the guy who knows where the bomb is, back to Washington, DC, but to get there, they fly into Baltimore-Washington International Airport (BWI) and plan to drive him the rest of the way, and on the ride, get the Amin's wife to convince him to tell them where the bomb is going to go off. A gang of mercenaries led by Michael Jai White have other plans though, and as Adkins is talking to his own wife on the phone to tell her he'll be home soon, he sees some suspicious guys walk through the airport that he just has to investigate, and sure enough, they're baddies. "Just when I think I'm out, you pull me back in!" Oh you're back in Mr. Adkins, will you be able to protect the asset and take out all the baddies?

This is a pretty sweet deal. It actually fits as a good companion to the first one, and there's talk of a third one coming too. A lot of action, well staged, well choreographed, and well shot. Adkins is great in the lead, White is great as the baddie, and Berenger is great as the grizzled CIA vet. There were some issues though too. It's a little long, I don't know that it needed to be a buck-forty-five; Alexis Knapp was good, but I don't know if she fit the role she was cast in; and the one shot element made for a more dynamic experience, but the fact that the camera was moving all the time was a bit much for my personal taste, where I like good still shots--especially of actors so I can get my screens! But those are more minor issues compared to an overall winner. If director James Nunn needed to make a sequel, this is what we'd want for that.

We're at 28 now for Mr. Adkins, so he's closing in on that 30 Club membership. What I like about him here, is this is a classic Adkins-led actioner, one where he isn't forced into action because one of his kids has been kidnapped, he's just a special forces guy who wants to go home and see his family, but out of duty he can't ignore it when he sees something suspicious. There's almost something Dante from Clerks "I wasn't even supposed to be here today" about it, but also that he knows he's the only guy standing between the baddies and success, so he needs to get after it. In terms of getting him to 30, we have Lights Out in the can already, plus a film called Incoming that I saw before that was finally back on Tubi. The problem is neither is a good 30th film post for him, so we can only do one or the other first, and then the other will need to be saved for 31.

Our other Hall of Famer is Michael Jai White, and while he doesn't have as big of a role, as his baddie duties are split with another baddie, what we get is good enough, especially in his fight with Adkins. This is 26 for him, which means he's closing in on the 30 Club too, the only issue is his two most recent ones that we could do on the site, MR-9 and The Island, are stuck on Starz, while his other newest one, Don't Mess with Grandma, isn't on anything yet. Still, he has some back catalog stuff we could get to as well to get him over the hump. Another thing worth mentioning is that his film from the end of last year, Outlaw Johnny Black, was our most popular post by far, and shows that between that and Black Dynamite, White brings something extra to the table that we love seeing. He gives this film some added muscle in a smaller role, but we love him in those leading roles even more, so hopefully I can get more of those up soon too.

Beyond Spiro Razatos, and guys like Chad Stahelski and Darren Prescott that worked with him at PM, I'm not as up on the other names in the stunt business as I should be, but Rich mentioned that the fight choreographer in this, Tim Man, and the stunt coordinator, Dan Styles, have an exceedingly great track record in recent DTV action, especially as part of this new movement of great DTV action coming out of England. I was looking at it, and Man has 11 films we've covered, and Styles has 8, many of which they've worked on together, and these are some of best ones we've had in the last 15 years or so, Avengement, Accident Man, I Am Vengeance: Retaliation, to name a few. We're talking not only the biggest names in action, like Adkins and White, but the best DTV action directors, like Jesse V. Johnson, Isaac Florentine, Ross Boyask, and in this film, James Nunn. Now you may be asking, "Matt, if you're the DTV Connoisseur, how do you not know this stuff already, why do you need Rich to tell you?", and that's a fair question, but that's why I have such great guests on the pod, like Rich Hawes from DTV Digest, because they provide great information that I miss, and that's why if you're not listening, you should be.

Finally, this took place at Baltimore-Washington International Airport, but was shot at London Stansted Airport. I've been to Heathrow and Gatewick before, the largest and second largest airports, but not Stansted--which means maybe I need to do a "research" tax write-off trip?--but one interesting thing I discovered when I looked into it, is when Obama and Trump flew on Air Force One to the UK, this was the airport they landed in, so it works in the "official government business" aspect it was used for in this movie. I also found out that London has six airports, which is double the amount New York has, the city that is second to it in overall traffic in the world, but it looks like one reason for that is because it's hard to expand Heathrow due to it's location. In America, we don't give a shit about people's houses when it comes to things like airport or highway expansion, especially people in underrepresented groups--we're seeing it here in Philly with the desire to build an NBA arena right next to Chinatown, even knowing what the arena in DC did to their Chinatown when they did the same thing. Hell, as Todd Liebenow pointed out on the Deadly Prey episode of the pod (175 in the archives), we even got an action movie out of just such an expansion, when Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson expanded and all the houses they were displacing needed to be demolished, they let the Cannon folks blow them all up in Invasion USA. Maybe this is how we get the third One Shot movie: Heathrow expands, they can blow up all the houses, and everyone's happy--except for the people who lost their homes, but small price to pay, right?

I kid of course, the last thing any of us want to see is people lose their homes over airport or highway expansions--or sports arenas like here in Philly. Instead, the thing to see is this film. It does help to have seen the first one, which is on Hulu, and then this one is Netflix, so you're bouncing between streamers, but if you have both, watch them both. And then listen to the podcast episode we did on this one with Rich Hawes from the DTV Digest, number 176 in the archives.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27110516

And if you haven't yet, check out my newest book, Nadia and Aidan, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!