Dark Breed (1996)

We received some very sad news last week, Rick Pepin, the P in PM Entertainment, passed away. I wanted to post something in his honor, and this is one of the films he directed that I'd been meaning to review anyway. In addition to us, Chris the Brain at Bulletproof, the guys at Comeuppance, Simon at Explosive action, and Fred Anderson at Ninja Dixon have all covered this as well.

Dark Breed is about a group of astronauts, including Jonathan Banks and Felton Perry, that return to earth and don't seem like themselves. Former astronaut and soldier Jack Scalia is called in to contain them. But when Robin Curtis is captured by the big wig in charge, Cutter (Lance LeGault), and beaten by two mustachioed gentlemen; and then his ex-wife, who was also on the failed space mission, takes him to a diner and tells him that everyone, including her, have been infected by aliens--but fortunately she's been infected by a good alien, not the bad aliens the other astronauts were infected by--Scalia knows this goes much deeper. Now they need to stop both the bad aliens and Lance LeGault. At least Scalia is handy with a rocket launcher.

This is up there as one of my favorite PM flicks, slotting in at number 12 all-time on my PM Entertainment list. A big part of it is Cole S. McKay's action sequences, which I think are some of the best from PM, including a fantastic car chase where Scalia's character is riding a satellite dish that's being towed by a bread truck like he's on an inner tube attached to a speed boat on a lake. I saw some reviews on IMDb and Letterboxd calling this just a cheap rip-off of Predator or Alien, but how can you watch a car chase like that and have that opinion? I think Fred Anderson in his review summed up my thoughts, saying that even if it is a mix of all those other movies, the action is what makes it such a fun time. Beyond that, Scalia is the perfect hero, giving us plenty of bad ass moments, like when he takes a rocket launcher from a sergeant below him, and shows him how to use it, turning his baseball cap backwards in the process--perhaps giving us the one exception to the rule that men over 40 shouldn't wear their baseball caps backwards. Then you add in the supporting cast, with the great Jonathan Banks as the head alien baddie, Lance LeGault chewing scenery as the head government baddie, a trio of great leading ladies with Robin Curtis, Cindy Ambuehl, and Denise W. Scott, and then the inimitable George "Buck" Flower as an unhoused individual who encounters the aliens. This is the too sweet PM you came for.

It's hard to describe the legacy Rick Pepin, with his production partner Joseph Merhi, created with PM Entertainment. 90s action wouldn't be 90s action without them, but also would 2010s action be what it was without guys like Spiro Razatos and Cole S. McKay having the freedom to do the crazy stunt scenes they did in these films. In wanting to do something in Rick's honor, I decided to review one of the films he directed, even though his work as cinematographer created what we know of as "the PM look," because Jon Cross from the PM Entertainment Podcast said these sci-fi movies he directed were what he especially enjoyed. I think out of those, I'd put T-Force and Hologram Man above this, but it's not far behind them. For us fans of action movies, it doesn't get much better than PM Entertainment, and with Pepin being the P in PM, he leaves behind something that he and Merhi created that I don't think will ever be matched. Not to mention personally giving me hours of enjoyment with all the fun movies they produced. Here's to you Mr. Pepin, you truly were one of the great ones, you'll really be missed.

We're now at 61 movies for Cole S. McKay, but we're closing in on October so we can officially get him into the Hall of Fame. And while I wanted to do a movie he directed for his induction post, this would've been a great one for that too. It also would've been a great one for his entry into the 60 Club, which ended up being Save Me due to movies getting shuffled around and our need to do The Stray for Michael Madsen's passing, but with this being the post in honor or Rick Pepin, we can't use it for his 60 Club post either. Looking at all the films I've seen that he was stunt coordinator/second-unit director on, I have this behind Hologram Man as his best, maybe just above Skyscraper, though it's close. I mean just the car chase with Scalia's character riding the satellite dish, I'd take the Pepsi Challenge with that against any of Spiro Razatos's great PM stuff, and McKay had plenty of other scenes in this that were great as well. He also gets a cameo as a guy attacking George "Buck" Flower, before one of the aliens beats the crap out of him. We'll get him in the Hall of Fame in just over a month, the question is, how many more tags will get before then!

This is our second Jack Scalia film on the site, the other being T-Force, so I'd say that's a pretty good two-film run. He has plenty of other DTV stuff out there for me to review, including The Silencers from this same year, which was also directed by Rick Pepin and action-directed by Cole S. McKay, so we know I'll have to do that one eventually. He's just fantastic here, everything you'd want in an action lead, total bad-assery. Speaking of two-film runs, the only other time we reviewed a Jonathan Banks film was Last Man Standing, a film I have at 4 on my all-time PM list, three places higher than T-Force, so Banks's might be better than Scalia's! Unlike Scalia though, Banks doesn't have a lot of other DTV stuff, so we may not see him again unless he finds his way into a Randall Scandal or something in the future. I recently finally got around to watching Breaking Bad, which he was fantastic in, so seeing him here now gives this an added element that I enjoyed. 

Finally, the Lance LeGault's character in this was named "Cutter." I don't know about you, but every time I hear "cutter" I think of Coors Cutter, Coors's non-alcoholic beer from the 90s. I did like most nowadays, and looked Coors Cutter up on Wikipedia, but the info is scant. They said the beer was introduced in 1991, revamped in 1994, but now mostly discontinued. I remembered it as part of that early 90s non-alcoholic trend that included O'Doul's and Miller Sharps. The one my grandmother drank was Genesee, which I thought was cooler than any of them, and I think if I needed an NA beer that's probably what I'd get. There's been a new trend recently in non-alcoholic beers, with Heineken joining in, and some companies exclusively brewing NA stuff, which I see advertised for sale at sporting events, after venues stop selling alcohol late in the games. For me, I don't drink much anymore anyway, but when I want to enjoy a beer without the alcohol, I get a hop tea instead. You get the hops taste without any of the alcohol side effects--though if I getting them to have while watching one of my teams play, I make sure I get the chamomile ones, because I don't need any additional caffeine while I'm stressing out about the outcome!

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently get this on Tubi here in the States, which I think is a good deal. This is one of my favorite PM flicks, well worth checking out. And also a great one to watch in honor of Rick Pepin, a legend who, with his partner Joseph Merhi, gave us hours of fantastic movies, for which I will be forever grateful.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116026

Pick up my newest book, Nadia and Aidan, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Aftermath (2024)

This is another one Ty from Comeuppance and I covered on the pod, episode 214 in the archives, which we paired with Armor, the Stallone Randall Scandal that we've already reviewed. In addition to us, Chris the Brain at Bulletproof Action has covered this as well.

Aftermath has Dylan Sprouse as a returning combat veteran with PTSD who's back home in Massachusetts, where he and his sister (Megan Stott) are driving over the Tobin Bridge into Boston. As luck would have it, a woman (Dichen Lachman) in police custody is being transported across the bridge as well, as she's set to testify against a terrorist group composed of former special forces soldiers, led by Mason Gooding. Gooding and company aren't fans of her doing that, so they blow up half the bridge, blockade the other half, and are essentially holding everyone who was trying to cross at that moment hostage until they can get her. Will our fly-in-the-ointment hero Sprouse be able to take them all down?

This wasn't a bad deal. Sprouse is solid enough as the hero, Gooding is solid enough as the baddie, and there's some good action that gets you to the church on time. With all the other options out there to watch though, is that good enough? Our review will be only the eighth critic review on IMDb, which for a direct-to-Netflix film with a very limited theatrical release is pretty small. Even in the current ecosystem where critic reviews for direct-to-streaming DTV flicks isn't as high as it was five or six years ago, you'd think high teens or low twenties would be the minimum for this, not seven or eight. I think a big reason is the lack of names. Probably the biggest is Dichen Lachman with her run on Severance, but she's not a star and not on the cover, so the film isn't really selling her--and to be fair, they made Dylan Sprouse look like one of Paul Walker's younger brothers on that cover, so they're not even selling the film on him either. That's too bad though, because while this isn't exactly mind-blowing stuff, it's an entertaining pizza and beer movie, and in this world of myriad streaming options that isn't always a given, so if you get it, you should thank your lucky stars and take it and run.

Let's start with Dylan Sprouse as the lead. Usually in a circumstance like this, he's paired with an aging Hollywood star with a bigger name who they maybe got for one day of shooting, is in maybe two locations, and maybe spends 15% of his screentime not sitting, while Sprouse does all the heavy lifting. It was the classic Randall Scandal formula, while Bruce Willis is tied to a chair, any one of Jesse Metcalfe, Chad Michael Murray, Jamie King, or Ashley Greene are out there running around and punching Michael Sirow or whoever. For Sprouse though, that lack of the big name means fewer eyes and critic reviews find their way to his movie, but I also think it allows him the freedom to show us more of what he can do. Like if they had an Alec Baldwin grimacing and barking orders on a headset from a command center every 15-20 minutes, his face on the tin would get more streams, but I think it also would've weighed things down and taken some of the focus off of Sprouse. It's the modern streaming catch-22: the known face on the tin gets more interest, but the need to shoehorn that character in--played by an actor who's just trying to get it over with too--hurts the overall quality of the movie. Hopefully more of us in the review community will cover more of these to get the word out on them. Either way, Sprouse was solid here, and I'm looking forward to seeing more of what he can do in this space.

Ty and I missed that Mason Gooding is Cuba Gooding Jr.'s son, it took Rich at the DTV Digest to tell us. I don't know if that knowledge would've changed how we felt about his character though. Gooding did a great job playing him, but I think the thing older viewers like me are going to have to get used to is the take younger actors like Gooding will bring to roles like the big baddie in an action movie. This isn't the scenery-chewing fest you'd expect by an actor born in the 50s and 60s, or even someone like Chad Michael Murry in Fortress, who was born in 1981, and even though Murray brought a different energy from those older actors, you could still recognize what he was doing. And to that point, I don't know if we've seen anyone from Gooding's age cohort in a role like this, but I think that different energy added a unique element that helped elevate the film. I'm sure the filmmakers could've found a name actor born in the 60s to play this part and have them chew all the scenery, and we probably would've been okay with it, but I liked that they went this route, and it was good to see that Gooding was up to the task. 

All that said, Gooding's baddie did one of the worst things I could think of a baddie doing: blowing up the Tobin Bridge. Really, blowing up any bridge that sees a lot of traffic in a major city is a horrible thing to do. Not just the poor people trying to get home who were stuck and held hostage for however many hours, but the millions of people whose commutes will be negatively affected for months. I mean, what selfish bastard could do something so shitty? And the thing is, in American cities, public transit infrastructure has been so diminished that there's no way it could handle the added stress of so many more people using the system. Maybe that's the whole point of the movie though, to remind us that America has pivoted over the last 75 years or so to the least efficient mode of people movement, the car, at the detriment to the most efficient, high-speed rail, and while the idea of a terrorist group blowing up a bridge like this is an extreme example, our crumbling infrastructure means more bridges will be falling out of commission, and the fact that we've diminished our public transit systems to such a degree that driving is the only option for most Americans, these kinds of infrastructure concerns will be that much more burdensome, leading to billions of dollars in lost revenue, something we could prevent by spending a fraction of that to invest in better transit systems. So as much as the baddie is a jerk for doing this, I think the movie's message that we're too car dependent, even in a city like Boston that has a robust transit system by American standards, is a good one.

Finally, you're probably thinking "wasn't that the 'finally' paragraph?", which in many cases it would be, but I wanted to mention that Tanner Zagarino has a small part as one of Gooding's henchman. Yes, he's the son of DTVC Hall of Famer Frank Zagarino. The part is small, Sprouse takes him out early, then steals his mask to infiltrate the rest of the baddies. I looked at his IMDb bio, and the only other things he did of note are Pool Boy Nightmare, a Lifetime movie costarring Jessica Norris (of Santa's Summer House fame), which Jay Harangue did his magic on on his YouTube channel; and The Price We Pay, a heist thriller with Stephen Dorf and Emil Hirsch that, based on the IMDb description, is probably too much for me, but the guys at DTV Digest covered in episode 250 of their show. Anyway, none of that is what we at the DTVC want though, we need Airboss V with Tanner taking over his father's role, or hell, maybe a Project Shadowchaser reboot! Could we get Bryan Genesse's son to co-star? I think you're pickin' up what I'm puttin' down, aren'cha?

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently get this on Netflix, and it's available no matter your pricing tier. If you're looking for a 90-minute actioner to get you to the church on time, this will do it. Also check out the podcast episode Ty and I did on this one, 214 in the archives.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt26545708

Pick up my newest book, Nadia and Aidan, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Accident Man: Hitman's Holiday (2022)

This is it, Scott Adkins official entry into the 30 Club! While we no longer display the list along with the 40 and 50 Club, it's still an exclusive club, and great that we were able to get Adkins in. This was also a film we covered on the podcast, episode 213, the "Scott Adkins Double Feature," which we did with Will from Exploding Helicopter. In addition to us, Chris the Brain at Bulletproof and Outlaw Vern have covered this as well.

Accident Man: Hitman's Holiday picks up where the first film left off. Mike Fallon (Adkins) is now living in Malta and still carrying out hits. To keep him sharp, he has Wong Siu-ling (Sarah Chang) as his Cato, attacking him at any moment. When his old friend Fred (Perry Benson) comes to town, looking for a lady that he met online, Fallon decides to have him help with his hits, which works great, until a hit gets put on the son of a local mob boss. Now said mob boss is holding Fred hostage while Adkins has to protect the son from all manner of assassins that are looking to claim the bounty--including his old mentor Big Ray (Ray Stevenson)! It's going to take everything in Fallon's bag of tricks to make it out of this alive.

This was a lot of fun. Some of the humor was a bit much, like when the mobster's son is covered in diarrhea after he passes a watch with a homing device on it through his system, but overall, a lot of this works. It's also a labor of love from Adkins, and that commitment shows, not just from him, but everyone else involved. The stunts are top notch, the fight scenes are electric, and the performances are exactly what you'd want to get us from action sequence to action sequence. I also liked that it was set in Malta, instead of set somewhere else and shot in Malta. That, combined with a lot of the UK inside humor (some of which I got and some I didn't), gave the film a further authenticity that got it over the goal line, especially when a movie like this needs to be made on a budget. It might be a little extreme in mixed company, and the diarrhea part probably isn't great if you're eating, but if you and some like-minded friends are looking for a fun actioner, this is worth it--again though, probably more just a beer movie than a pizza and beer movie.

I haven't seen Diablo yet, but when Jon Cross told me about it on season 2, episode 22 of his After Movie Diner podcast, it sounded like a candidate for Adkins's 30 Club post; but this one, which is a passion project of his, feels like an equally worthy one, because you can feel his desire for this to work in every scene. It's a 90-minute reminder of just how great he is, as if we needed it. Whenever we add a new member to one of the clubs, the question is, what's next for them, and in Adkins's case, we already have Take Cover and Incoming in the can and waiting to be reviewed. From there, once Diablo is a little cheaper to rent, or even better on a streaming service I already have, we'll cover that, and then I see another 10 or 11 more that need to be covered, so 40 Club is easy, as long as we get the reviews in. He's one of the best in the game right now, so it's good we can add him to the 30 Club finally.

This is unfortunately one of Ray Stevenson's final films, which is really sad, because his larger-than-life presence added an extra element to all the movies he was in, whether it was something like this, or a nine-figure-earning blockbuster like the Thor films. My two favorite roles of his have each been covered here, in Kill the Irishman and Punisher: War Zone. The moment Adkins sits down across from him while he's having his English breakfast, that presence is alive in the film, and even though he's not in it as much, you can sense him looming around the proceedings, so we know, no matter what Adkins does, he'll have to deal with Big Ray eventually. Technically Canary Black qualifies to be on the site, because it didn't make $1 million at the box office, so we could see him again. Either way, Mr. Stevenson, you truly were one of the greats, here's to you!

As a kid, the Pink Panther movies played on WSBK TV38 in Boston, usually on a TV show called The Movie Loft that aired movies when the Red Sox or Bruins weren't on. I absolutely loved them, and I loved that this film added the Cato element with Sarah Chang's Siu-Ling character. I think may favorite was Pink Panther Strikes Again, when the film looks like it's wrapping up and Inspector Clouseau is in bed with the leading lady, only to have Cato show up, hanging out over the canopy over the bed before falling in and a fight ensues. It was the hardest I'd ever laughed at anything to that point, and there haven't been many times since then that I've laughed like that. Nothing happened in this that was that funny, but it was fun enough to be reminded of it and have that element in the film. If Adkins does more sequels, hopefully they'll bring her character back for them.

Finally, we have a killer clown as one of the assassins. In real life I feel like professional clown is a noble pursuit, something very few are cut out for. Take me, for example, it's not one I could do, because I don't drive, and you need to be able to drive the small car. My favorite TV episode of all time, and one TV Guide called the greatest, involves a clown, the famous "Chuckles Bites the Dust" episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, where she can't stop laughing at his funeral. Similar to the scene from Pink Panther Strikes Again that I mentioned above, there are very few times I've laughed that hard. As of this writing, all of the episodes are on Hulu, so you can check it out, season 6, episode 7--and back then TV shows weren't serialized, so you don't need to have seen all the episodes before it to understand what's happening, you can just fire it up.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Currently you can get this on many major streamers here in the US, so if you have Prime without commercials, that may be the way to go; or if you don't, Tubi is the best out of the others when it comes to ad breaks. And also check out the podcast episode I did with Will from Exploding Helicopter on this one, number 213 in the archives. And finally, congratulations to Scott Adkins for his entry into the 30 Club, it was well-deserved, and the 40 and 50 Clubs await!

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9669176

Pick up my newest book, Nadia and Aidan, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Bedroom Eyes 2 (1989)

This is one we covered on the podcast, episode 207, with Jon Cross from The After Movie Diner and The PM Entertainment Podcast, along with the first Bedroom Eyes, and because of the Wings factor, we had to get it on the site eventually too, so that's why we're here now. Also, we want to get more erotic thrillers on the site, so that helps too.

Bedroom Eyes 2 picks up however many years after part one left off, with Wings Hauser taking the baton from Kip Gilman in the lead role of Harry Ross. He's apparently married Carolyn (not spelled "Caroline" this time), the woman who used his toes to have an orgasm in a restaurant in the first film. The only problem is, she's cheating on him with an artist she's showcasing at her studio. To get revenge, he hooks up with Linda Blair, whom he met at the local aquarium, because he likes to go there? Anyway, the fun starts when JoBeth returns, the woman who tried to kill him in the first film, and did kill some other people, so it's kind of odd that she's on the streets now. Anyway, he needs to find out why she's out, and what she's up to, toot sweet, otherwise he could be her next victim.

Essentially, you're getting what you get from this one. Plot holes, elements that stretch credulity, needing to don safety goggles with all loose ends flying together at the end. But then you get the erotic elements of the erotic thriller, the sex, the stocking tops, the lingerie, which wouldn't be enough on its own to save a movie like this, so that's where Wings comes in. Maybe not something you'd put on your top ten Wings list, but it's Wings enough to make you satisfied if you're coming for the Wings factor, which on some levels we were. I think the final mark in the plus column for this is the 85-minute runtime, which always helps--even if it was a little scary when we got near the end and there wasn't much time to resolve everything, I just had to put on my seatbelt and go for the ride, but an okay ride it was.

We're now at 25 films for Wings, which seems like a paltry number for an inaugural Hall of Famer, but we lost him for a bit while we reviewed films from other Hall of Famers. A big part of that was that he didn't do anything DTVC worthy after 2010's Rubber, but then also with his older stuff, things were either hard to find, or I wasn't sure how much I wanted to do them based on who else was in the cast. The availability issue has changed over time, and more of these movies that I had trouble tracking down are now easier to find, like this one here (more on that in the next paragraph). Hopefully that means soon Hauser will be in the 30 Club and beyond soon. He truly was one of the best to do it, and we get a lot of that here. He's no Kip Gilman, he brings all the frenetic energy you want, he's a big guy, he's unpredictable, and that carries what would've been a run-of-the-mill late 80s erotic thriller. If anything, he's fun to watch in this, which for me is enough as a huge Wings fan.

Though, as you may have noticed, it's hard to see anything with this film quality. You'd be right in thinking I got this off of YouTube or Internet Archive from someone's VHS rip upload, and while this probably was a VHS rip upload, it's from a pay subscription streamer called Cultpix. That's right, and they charge almost $7 a month for that kind of quality. And beyond the quality, I suspected this was a VHS rip because it includes the open and close from when it aired on Joe Bob's Drive-In Theater on The Movie Channel back in the early 90s. Yes, that was fun to see, and would've been fun if I was watching someone's VHS rip on YouTube for free, but when I'm paying $7 a month, I expect a quality version. I mean, Christ, could I start my own subscription streaming service with a bunch of VHS rips? PoirierFlix? Or maybe use the DTVC name? Direct to Video Connoisseur Flix. I'll check at my parents' to see if my copy of Bill Maher's Pizza Man on an old SLP VHS marked "Matt's stupid pizza guy movie" by one of my siblings is still kicking around so I can add it to the streaming library. (And if you're curious, I'm one of four critic reviews on that movie.)

We didn't have a new McDonald's appearance in this, but we did get a Wendy's with that old sign that looks so beautiful. As a kid, we didn't have a Wendy's in our town, only McDonald's and Burger King, so getting Wendy's somewhere was a treat until I was in high school and Portsmouth, NH finally got theirs--which is still there I believe. What I liked about it here, is, in as much as I could see due to the poor quality version, is the old Wendy's sign gave the scene this gritty streets-at-night feel that added to the ambiance. Could you have that now with the current sign? Like if a character had just cheated on his wife and was wandering around the city at night after the fact, would the current iteration of the Wendy's sign add anything? I was trying to think of other old signs like that that would add that kind of ambiance. Maybe old Taco Bell? We do have a KFC in the shot too, but I don't know that it's adding anything the way the Wendy's is. I did a search, and the old Arby's is kind of cool, with the big cowboy hat, especially if it were in an urban setting at night.

Finally, this movie was shot in Toronto, which often passes for New York City in films. As you may or may not know, I've never been to Canada before, despite growing up in Maine, only about 4 hours or so from the border. Recently I watched Ms. Marvel on Disney+, and as Kamala Khan was visiting Pakistan and experiencing the county of her heritage, I thought about what that would be for me. Ireland on my mother's side, and then based on my last name you're probably thinking it would be France on my father's side, which might be the case, but as far as I know it can only be traced back as far as Canada. When my sister did one of those DNA tests, his side of the family came up as any one of Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, Sicilian, or Mediterranean French, so if they weren't the last one on the list, somehow they picked up a French last name and ended up in Quebec from one of those places--which had to be a shock to the system after the first winter--and then from there, in the 19th century, they moved to New Hampshire in the US. I was thinking Montreal then, but my dad said when he did a trip there when he was in his 20s, he was told our relatives lived way up in the country, which I'd have no way of getting to without driving, so I guess I'd have to settle for Montreal, which I can take a train to from Philadelphia. I won't become a Canadiens fan though.

And with that, let's wrap this up. As I mentioned above, this is available on Cultpix, which I don't think is worth it, but if you see the VHS hanging around in a used shop or something, it's worth picking up, if only for the Hauser factor. And also check out the podcast episode I did on this with Jon, episode 207 in the archives, where we look at this and the one before it.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099113

Pick up my newest book, Nadia and Aidan, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Armor (2024)

This is one Ty and I covered on a past episode of the podcast, number 214 in the archives. A Stallone Randall Scandal was too good to pass up, and as such, it needed a review on the site as well.

Armor takes place in Mississippi, where disgraced, alcoholic former cop Jason Patric drives an armored car with his son Casey (Josh Wiggins), whom he also makes fun of in front of Casey's spouse when they're nice enough to invite him over for dinner. With a likeable hero like Patric, we have an equally likeable baddie in Stallone (his character name is "Rook"), and the two are on a collision course to wackiness when Rook plans to rob Patric's armored car. They end up in a standoff on a bridge, where Patric and his son try to hold off Stallone and his bad of ne'er-do-wells. That's pretty much it, standoff on a bridge, with maybe a flashback mixed in, and some of the fakest CGI water you've ever seen.

This is as lazy a Randall Scandal as you'll see. One location for the most part, Stallone showing up to be Stallone, Patric wishing he could be anywhere else--you can almost hear him yelling "I was in The Lost Boys damn it!" And that's the thing, if we liked Patric's character, this might matter some, but he's a jerk to his son, he's leading AA meetings while drinking, why am I rooting for him? And while Stallone's character is pretty cool, he has a lot of jerks in his team, like Dash Mihok's character. So this ends up being like an AITA ("Am I the Asshole") post on Reddit, where someone responds "ESH" ("Everyone Sucks Here"). And the thing is with a Randall Scandal, do they really care that we care? Not really, right? Did you stream it? I did. Then that's all that counts.

Speaking of counts, this is our sixth Stallone film on the site, but his first ever DTV movie. Not a bad deal to make it this far without one of these. And the moment I heard his voice, that unmistakable Stallone voice, it felt completely out of place here. What is that voice doing in this Randall Scandal? I don't think I'm alone in that either, because this movie has 29 critic reviews on IMDb, which used to be the going number for an earlier Willis Randall Scandal, but the later ones didn't quite hit those numbers. Like Fortress and Fortress: Sniper's Eye, which did 18 and 15 critic reviews respectively (though the first one also had an astounding 135 user reviews!), people had kind of had enough of these, but I think the novelty of Stallone in one was a big enough draw. He does have another one that was released this year, Alarum, so when that makes it to a free streamer we'll probably make it happen. He just turned 79 a few weeks ago, so the fact that he's pumping these out at all is fantastic. We'll take what we can get at this point.

When it comes to CGI, I'm not as much of a stickler on it, and especially when we're talking about DTV movies being made on a budget, I tend to let it slide--in fact, in some cases, like when it comes to depicting large animals, or really any animals at all, I prefer CGI. Leave the animals alone, I'll take a poorly CGI'd tiger over a real one in a movie any day. All that said, the CGI in this when the "water" is rushing into the armored car was a bit much. The CGI water in Black Dawn thought this looked ridiculous. I mean, I don't know how well you can tell from that picture, but it was like a low-budget effect from a cheap local TV show that's doing a silly bit between segments. Again, it just speaks to the overall lazy vibe these Randall Scandals give off. Do we pay a company a little but more to make it look better, or do we just go with this? And then Randall, from his poker game off-set, just waves at them to get them to leave him alone, before he gets bluffed into folding pocket kings and loses $2000, followed by him throwing a temper tantrum, which all leads to us seeing that cheap CGI water above.

This may be a bit of a spoiler, but if you've seen enough of these Randall Scandals, you won't be surprised by what I'm about to say. Rook, our baddie, turns kind of good, and then escapes with no repercussions for what he's done. Emmett, being the kind of person he is, I think he likes it when the bad guys win, which maybe can work if you make the baddie fun enough, but he seldom does that, so we get this awkward "we're letting the bad guy off" construct that doesn't exactly work. Look at A Day to Die, which we haven't reviewed yet but did do on a podcast episode. Leon as the baddie, kidnaps Kevin Dillon's pregnant wife, keeps her tied up, and menaces her, but in the end after they fight the crooked cops together, Leon joins Dillon and his wife in Caribbean or wherever they escape to. How could you spend any time with that guy after he did that to you? Or Cash Out, where 12 people are held hostage in a bank robbery and treated roughly by Travolta and his gang, but then because he gave them each $1 million after he escaped with all the cash it's okay? If you watch the Randall Scandal documentary you can see the psychology behind this, he treats people poorly all the time and feels like it's his right to get away with it, and movies like this are just a reflection of that.

Finally, Stallone's character's name, "Rook," reminded me of a famous post-NBA game press conference by former Memphis Grizzlies head coach David Fizdale. He was upset that his team was on the bad end of a lop-sided officiating performance, with more calls going in favor of the San Antonio Spurs, a veteran team that had won multiple championships in the past. At one point he said "they're not gon' rook us," meaning "they're not going to treat us like rookies," and every time someone in this movie called Stallone by his character name, "Rook," my first thought was "they not gon' rook us." He also famously finished the press conference with "take that for data!" Here's the link to it, it's a thing of beauty.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently get this on Tubi here in the States. If you're that curious to see what a Stallone Randall Scandal looks like, Tubi is the place to watch it. And if you haven't yet, you can check out the podcast Ty and I did on this, episode 214 in the archives.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt29252358

Pick up my newest book, Nadia and Aidan, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

12 to Midnight (2024)

This is one Ty and I covered on episode 210 of the podcast, and I figured with the Bronzi factor, it was worth covering on the site as well. I don't know how true that is actually, but I'm going with it.

12 to Midnight has nothing to do with the 10 to Midnight that it's cribbing its title from--thought that would be an interesting idea for a prequel, no?--but it seems like it might when we find out early on that Bronzi's wife was murdered by serial killer who's still on the loose, and could kill again. But this thing ain't shaping up to finish with Bronzi confronting a nude dude, oh no, it's a backdoor werewolf movie! Fortunately Bronzi's of Eastern European descent, and as such, this isn't his first werewolf rodeo--which, for an animal lover like myself, that may be the best kind of rodeo and the only kind worth supporting--so he's onto what's happening pretty quickly. Well, not quickly enough to spare myriad other victims from the werewolf's wrath, but if he didn't have that Eastern European background, this could easily be a 150-minute slog, so I'm not complaining. It's going to take everything in Bronzi's bag of tricks to bring this werewolf killer to justice.

This wasn't half-bad. You take the concept of Robert Bronzi having a career based on being a Charles Bronson look-alike, which is bonkers enough on its own, mix in Tito Ortiz and werewolves, and I think you have yourself a fun 90 minutes. To be honest, this is doing a lot better than a lot of modern DTV. It knows what it is, doesn't try to be anything it isn't, and the result is something that's pretty fun. That all being said, this is bonkers, and if you're looking at the cover expecting a hard-boiled actioner, you don't really get that. Bronzi has some cop on the edge in him, but once we add in werewolves, all bets are off. Sadie Katz, who we've seen before, looks like she could add in her own "sheriff on the edge," which would've been a fun twist on that premise, but, again, werewolves throw all that out the window. Sometimes you need that though. I don't know how many rough-sit Randall Scandals we've seen that probably would've been more palatable with the inclusion of werewolves. At least half the Bruce Willis ones anyway. 

We've now seen Bronzi twice on the site, which is four behind the actual Bronson's six. It's possible he could catch him, because Bronzi has a bunch of other stuff out there, and we don't really have anything more DTV-wise for Bronson--I'm a little less lax on what I consider DTV than I was in the past, and I don't know that any of the six we've already reviewed for Bronson qualify as DTV by the standards I have now. Anyway, everything, including the title, is meant to evoke Bronson. Throughout the film, characters tell Bronzi he looks familiar, so they're leaning into it, but I don't know how much I like that part. I almost would rather they act like we don't get what's happening, right? "Wait, what? You think Bronzi looks like Charles Bronson? That's crazy! I don't see it though... no, we cast Bronzi because he was the right man for the picture." "A picture about a cop from Eastern Europe living in Pennsylvania who kills werewolves? Bronzi's perfect for that?" "Exactly!" I don't know how many movies we'll see just for Bronzi, but he has enough listed on IMDb that I think we'll see him again, and considering how this one was pretty fun, it might be sooner than later.

Speaking of doppelgangers, Tito Ortiz has a name of his own from his time in the UFC, but he also fills a Vin Diesel niche if you need too. He needs to practice his Diesel yell ("The buster kept me out of handcuffs!"), but the rest is there. He's also a big guy, which helps too for action movies. We don't get to see much of any of that here, because he's down the list on supporting characters, more here to be a face they can add to the tin, which is fine, because he does have some films with bigger parts, like another Ty and I covered, Operation Black Ops. (Yep, that's right, technically "Operation Black Operations.")The other thing is, how much do we need movies with him as the star? Give me a Michael Jai White movie where Ortiz plays the leader of a biker gang or something. Either the kind of biker gang White needs to take down, or the kind where they and White have a common enemy, so Ortiz helps White bring down the baddie. As long as he's living his life .4 kms at a time, I'll be happy.

Another name we're seeing again is Sadie Katz. She plays a hardo police sheriff, who has a change of heart when she sympathizes with Bronzi's personal motives. The characters in the movie used a different term than "hardo" to describe her, which may have been a bit much, but she also came in hot in a way that made her character off-putting to start, so she was really working uphill to become likeable by the end. I think there's a happy medium between Lt. Chapman on Rockford Files and instantly friendly that her character could've existed in to start with, because when she does warm up to Bronzi, it's hard to believe it, no matter how well Katz can sell it. Since we first reviewed one of her films in Nipples and Palm Trees over ten years ago, she's amassed a great genre career, which would make her a big get for a film like this. That's one of the things about doing the site this long that's really cool, to see names that are just starting out grow into something bigger.

Finally, this film features a railroad connecting areas of Pocono County, PA, which as it exists in reality is something just for tourists, and doesn't function as a passenger rail service like it's depicted in the film. It's funny how the concept of rail is great in movies in America, but we can't fund them in real life, so for people watching outside the US, we can add a functioning, robust intercity rail service to the other myths movies perpetuate about us, like we're all pretty and speak region-free American English. And it looks like rail service in Pennsylvania is only going to get worse. Republicans in the senate here are blocking a budget that would help fund not only SEPTA, the Philadelphia transit system, but transit systems in other PA cities as well. It's part of this whole "us folk in Pennsyltucky want to make life difficult for those Liberal Elites who like riding their hoity-toity subways--plus oil companies give us a lot of money to attend Super Bowls and stuff, so there's that." The thing is, they're not very bright, and don't understand that properly functioning, robust transit systems are the engines that power cities, and for those Pennsyltucky senators whose own districts rely on tax revenue from cities like Philadelphia to keep their dead coal communities afloat, it means their communities will suffer too, perhaps even more, when Philadelphia isn't generating enough tax dollars to prop up their failing infrastructure. (Also, coastal elites don't ride the subway here in Philly.) But that's America for you, the country where passenger trains are more likely to exist in Robert Bronzi DTV werewolf movies than in reality.

And with that, let's wrap this up. IMDb lists this to rent on Prime, but as of this writing, you can also stream it free on Xumo too. Despite the bevy of commercials Xumo loads into its movies, I think that's the best way to go with this one. And also check out the podcast Ty and I did, number 210 in the archives.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt21913192

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

Save Me (1994)

This is one I covered on a two-part episode with Jon Cross from The PM Entertainment Podcast and the After Movie Diner back in November, number 184 (part 2) in the archives, when we looked at a couple of Harry Hamlin erotic thrillers. The other thing is this is Cole S. McKay's 60th film on the site! That makes him our third member of the 60 Club, and ties him with Gary Daniels for second-most ever, behind Dolph.

Save Me has Harry Hamlin as an investment broker whose wife (Olivia Hussey) has left him and taken their son with her. Also, he was the top broker at the firm, so he's been able to coast on that reputation and do very little work since then. Anyway, one day he's out on his lunch break, and he sees a gorgeous woman (Lysette Anthony) go into a lingerie shop, so he follows her and spies on her. After another time, she gives him a note that says "Save Me" with a phone number on it. Seems she's trying to get out from under the clutches of her abusive partner Michael Ironside, which Hamlin is only too happy to oblige her. He skips work or leaves early so he and her can hook up in his Mustang. But when will this Noir-ish femme fatale show Hamlin she's not all she seems?

This isn't horrible as a fun, time-killing watch. It pops in at around 90 minutes, you get some fun performances, and the "erotic" in "erotic thriller" is there sufficiently well, even if it's not full on Shannon Whirry Skin-a-max kind of stuff. The business aspects of the story are a bit of a trip though. Hamlin has a jerk for a colleague played by Steve Railsback, and at some point their boss, Joseph Campanella, promotes Railsback to Hamlin's manager. Railsback then puts Hamlin on a performance improvement plan, aka "probation," which would lead one to believe that means one more slip-up and he's out, but according to this movie, it means Hamlin's untouchable during the probation period? Like he can tell Railsback "fuck you," and Railsback can't do anything about it? And Hamlin's character isn't necessarily likeable either, he's just more likeable than Railsback. You almost get to a point where you want Anthony to smoke them all and move onto the next town. But therein lies the charm, maybe? The erotic thriller isn't meant to be compelling cinema, it's meant to get us to the church on time, and I think this one does that.

If it feels like we were just celebrating Cole S. McKay's entry in to the 50 Club, that would be right, the thing is, he had over 50 films when we finally decided to tag him, so he skipped the usual 30 and 40 Club posts and came in in the mid-50s. The plan was to review something more action-oriented, or maybe one of the films he directed or starred in, for this 60 Club post, but reviewing The Stray last week changed all of that, and I didn't realize until I started putting everything together for this post that it would be his 60th, but I figured I'd go with it instead of moving everything around. (I also discovered that Kill 'Em All 2, which I'd planned to do here, is now gated by Netflix and unavailable if you don't have an ad-free version? Do these streamers just get more ski mask and gun-y by the day?) Anyway, since we tagged him a few months back, McKay has been cruising up the all-time lists, first passing Art Camacho, now tied with Daniels, and I think passing him will only be a matter of time, since we don't have many Daniels films left to cover, and there could be over 100 other McKay films that qualify--just 1994 alone he has like 25 movies, of which we'll now have done 8. Just his PM stuff will probably push him past Dolph. And while this movie doesn't have a ton of stunts, the ones it does have, like the person trying to run Hamlin down in a parking garage, are all excellent. We take stunts in a film for granted, and I think a big reason for that is McKay and his teams always makes them look great. 60 Club and beyond!

I believe this is our first Harry Hamlin film on the site, but we have looked at him twice on podcast, one being the two-parter I mentioned above that includes this movie, episode 184 in the archives; and the other being episode 132, "Short Shots," where we looked at a series of short films with Rich Hawes from DTV Digest, and Hamlin was in a short film called One Clean Move, which also starred Gary Busey and Luca Bercovici. The thing about these erotic thriller roles is he seems like a drip a lot of times in them, which, after seeing him in Mad Men, makes me think was more by design than I realized. Did he read these scripts and think "this guy is kind of up his own ass" or "I don't know if I'd want to spend ten minutes with someone who acted like this" and then just leaned into it? Take this movie. It looks like his character barely does any work, and often can't even be bothered to finish his day sitting in the office. When his friend (played by Neil Ronco, who also wrote the script--but wasn't the guy who invented an As Seen on TV rotisserie cooker) invites him and Lysette Anthony up to their cabin to spend a weekend with Ronco and his wife, Hamlin proceeds to use it for as a sex escape bed and breakfast with Anthony, the two of them making the beast with two backs all over the place there. Yet Ronco continues to be this guy's best friend. It creates this gray area though where we don't know if we should root for Hamlin or not. Maybe it doesn't matter if we're just having fun.

This is not our first Lysette Anthony film on the site, that distinction goes to Strippers vs. Werewolves, but this is her first starring role. She's everything you want in that erotic thriller/film noir femme fatale. She's alluring, seemingly vulnerable, yet can be diabolical when it's needed. Another name we've seen here before is Michael Ironside, who plays the psychologist that's also Anthony's lover. We never know if we can believe him or not, because he's Ironside, exactly who you want in a role like this to be this mysterious. Then there's Steve Railsback, a name we've also seen here before, but I think this is my first mention of him. He's had a great DTV career that we haven't really even scratched the surface of, the kind of name that probably should be in the Hall of Fame if we'd been reviewing more of his films. I'll definitely look for more of them now. And finally, you may have noticed two other names we tagged, Kato Kaelin and Jesse V. Johnson. Kaelin plays a broker at the firm Hamlin and Railsback work at, but I couldn't find him in the movie so I wasn't able to get a screen. And then Johnson is listed as a set designer. It's a tag, and while it doesn't count toward his director tags, it adds to his overall count, which now stands at 15. Other names that round out the cast were Bill Nunn, Olivia Hussey, and Joseph Campanella. They all do great and add that much more flavor to the proceedings, which is what you want when you see their names in the cast list.

Finally, the title of this film gets the Aimee Mann song of the same name from the movie Magnolia stuck in my head. Her hit with 'Til Tuesday, "Voices Carry," is one of my favorite songs ever. I don't know if I can name ten songs that came out after it was released in 1985 that I like better than it. I tried to get into more of  'Til Tuesday's stuff, but none of their other songs really worked for me the way that one did. I remember one time VH-1 was playing 80s stuff, and the VJ said that, while he liked "Voices Carry," their album after that one, Welcome Home, was one of his "all-time faves." It was my first time hearing "favorites" truncated down to "faves" like that, and I found it intriguing. Like, I don't know if I've ever been able to use the term unironically myself, but I do use it quite a bit in a more ironic sense, and you'll find it from time to time here on the site, like in my The Most Dangerous Game review where I call CT "one of my faves from The Real World." It's funny how I pick up these little verbal affectations over time, and how much they've become embedded in my speech, but yet how I also remember exactly where I got many of them from, all these years later.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently get this on Tubi here in the States. Sometimes you just need a 90s Erotic Thriller with names you know, and this is one that'll get you to the church on time. (If you're wondering where I got that expression from, you should listen to more David Bowie.) And for the podcast episode on this that I did with Jon Cross, you can check out episode 184 in the archives, parts 1 and 2.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108045

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