Black Creek (2024)

This is one that's been in production for some time, a labor of love for DTVC Hall of Famer and 40 Club member Cynthia Rothrock, we've seen myriad DTV stars attached to it who have dropped out, news of premiers and complementary media like a graphic novel, and finally a pre-order date ahead of it's recent release. Now that it's here and available, let's see how it did. In addition to us, Jon at the After Movie Diner and Chris DePetrillo at Bulletproof Action have covered this as well.

Black Creek starts with a sheriff (Patrick Kilpatrick) who gets bumped off by an evil landowner (Richard Norton). When the sheriff's sister (Rothrock) shows up and finds out her brother's been killed, she vows revenge. It sounds like a good idea in theory, but Norton's got a lot of men working for him, who in turn work Rothrock over and leave her for dead in the desert. Luckily, bumbling local drinker Roy (R. Marcus Taylor) finds her and brings her to a local medicine practitioner (Don "The Dragon" Wilson), who heals her in a wonderfully psychedelic sequence. With that out of the way and everyone sufficiently healed, it's time for our hero to get after it and get her revenge. Will she make it happen?

This is a fun deal. It's done on a budget, so there's plenty to pick at on that score if one were so inclined, but if it was between not having this because there wasn't the budget to make it look as clean as possible, or having what we got, I prefer the latter. My two qualms were the length, which at almost two hours was a bit long for me; and I think the script could've used some trimming--a lot of instances where someone says something, and someone asks why that is, and then the first person explains further, when we could've just had the further explanation without the back and forth. Those qualms are overshadowed by all the stuff that worked here though, like Rothrock as one of her best heroes since China O'Brien, Richard Norton as a chilling baddie in one of his final performances, and then guys like Wilson, Kilpatrick, and Keith Cooke giving us the fun performances we want from them when we see their names on the tin. It doesn't skimp on the action either, especially with Mike Möller as action director/fight choreographer. Again, budgetary constraints meant they couldn't do the quick edits we're used to in modern action, so instead we got sped up film that may not have looked as nice, but as a fan of everyone's work here, I was okay with it. This is a really great time that's worth supporting if you're a fan of Rothrock and everyone else involved.

I didn't mean to do Rothrock films on back-to-back weeks (and technically this is her third film in two months, with Darkness of Man back in May), but I felt like I needed to get this one reviewed sooner rather than later, if only to get the word out and support it. The reality for me as I was watching it was we needed a series of Westerns with Rothrock in the lead back in the 90s, and this should've been the callback to those movies thirty years later, but unfortunately we never got them in the 90s, so this has to be the movie that makes up for the movies that never were, if any of that makes sense. On the PM Podcast episode on Guardian Angel (which yours truly was also a guest, but not part of the Rothrock interview), she told Jon that she'd always wanted to do a Western and be the lead, and it shows, because she's a natural at it. Her Rose Jennings character in this is right up there with China O'Brien for me as her best character, even better than Kris Fairfield in the Rage and Honor films, and McKay in Guardian Angel. She also said on the PM Podcast interview that she plans to do a sequel, so hopefully that will happen. I think it's up to us to support this kind of thing though if we want to see it happen.

As I mentioned above, Richard Norton is fantastic in this. It unfortunately ended up being one of his final roles, but if it had to be, I think it's a nice thing that it was in this, making it as good as it could possibly be by his performance. In my Not Another Mistake post, I talked about how he knew exactly what a movie needed from him and he knew exactly how to deliver it, and that's so true here. Patrick Kilpatrick also would've made a great baddie, but I like the twist of him being one of the good guys; and then we have Norton giving us this fantastic villain who is sufficiently evil, but never takes away from Rothrock as the hero. We're going to miss him, but at least we have this performance here as a reminder of how great he was--as if we needed it.

Our third Hall of Famer and second 40 Club member in this is the great Don "The Dragon" Wilson, who plays Xiyang, part-Chinese part-Apache medicine and martial arts practitioner. I wish they would've done more with the Apache side if they felt it was that necessary to include that as part of his heritage, like maybe some advanced knife fighting through a sequence where he takes out three or four of Norton's baddies. That aside, Wilson is as all in as Norton was, which is nice considering, like Rothrock, we've been getting a lot of smaller roles from him lately. And after this, we have Taken from Rio Bravo, where he has almost as big a part as this, but beyond that, I think the rest we have of his to do are all small roles. In that sense, when we get a Dragon role and performance like this, we need to take it and run.

Finally, I want to touch on the length of this movie, because, as you know, I'm a stickler for runtimes. Recently in a writer's group I'm in, the topic came up that, if we want our books to sell, we need short chapters. For me, I don't think about my novels that way. If short chapters fit, I'll use them, like in my first novel Chad in Accounting, or my short action novel Bainbridge; if not, you get something like Don's House in the Mountains, which is five chapters over 275 pages. With that in mind, if Rothrock felt like she needed her movie to be almost two hours to tell the story she wanted to tell, then more power to her. If the mindset is similar to mine, where she didn't want to compromise on the story that was important to her just to get things in under 90 minutes, I can appreciate it.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Currently this is available as rent VOD and purchase on most major streaming sites that offer that kind of thing. I personally got it on Fandango at Home through a promo code I had. This is a great opportunity to support indie filmmakers, and hopefully the more we're able to support these efforts, the more movies they'll be able to make.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27078378

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

Last Kumite (2024)

This is one Ty from Comeuppance and I covered on episode 202 of the DTVC Podcast, and with the names involved, it was only a matter of time before we got a review on the site as well. I addition to us, Chris the Brain at Bulletproof, and Outlaw Vern have covered this as well.

Last Kumite has Mathis Landwehr (in English "Matty Country Defense") as Michael Rivers, youngest son of famous singer Johnny Rivers, and nicknamed "Bloody Rivers" because he's such a devastating fighter. After winning a tournament, he decides to bring his teenage daughter with him to the after party, which is held at a night club, and then decides to have her drive herself home alone while he hangs out with Matthias Hues. Hues wants Rivers to fight in his Kumite in Europe--and maybe get his dad to perform "Secret Agent Man" there as well--and while Rivers refuses, because he's such a great father, his daughter is easy pickin's for someone like Hues to snatch, and now Rivers is forced to get his Kumite on. Will he defeat Hues? And will his dad show up and perform?

This was a nice slice of all right. No, Michael "Bloody" Rivers wasn't the son of Johnny Rivers, but everything else in that synopsis is correct. Did we need the forced-to-fight angle? Probably not, but this film had a bouillabaisse approach to the material that I had to respect, even if we didn't get that Johnny Rivers performance. I mentioned that this had a lot of names above. We have three Hall of Famers, the aforementioned Hues, plus Cynthia Rothrock and Billy Blanks; plus familiar names Michel Qissi, Kurt McKinney, and Mike Möller (who was also fight choreographer); and if that wasn't enough, we had Bolo Yeung's son David, Stan Bush did some of the songs, and director/cinematographer Ross Clarkson has done a ton of great DTV action stuff, most notably many of Isaac Florentine's films with Scott Adkins. So they lined up a bunch of familiar talent, but not only that, they all got what the point of this was, and they delivered. There were definitely some tongue-in-cheek elements, but any that there were were done out of love, which is all us fans want. The hero, Landwehr, has plenty-good martial arts skills, plus fellow fighter Monia Moula was also really talented. Maybe after this they can give us a German buddy cop/cop on the edge kind of deal, they'd be great together in that. Finally, our big bad fighter that our hero had to defeat, Dracko (Mike Derudder), not only had a great name, but he was essentially a juice-head that someone picked up off of Seaside Heights, NJ. Maybe this had its flaws, and it was working on a tight budget, but overall it delivered for me.

While she had more of a supporting role, we have to start with Cynthia Rothrock, because she's our only 40 Club member in the film, this making her 45th film on the site. Her character was Dracko's original sensei, so she helps Bloody Rivers defeat him, because she doesn't like what he's become since leaving the Jersey Shore, and I don't blame her either--she had to beat the GTL out of him. We've seen some scant roles for her recently, like Darkness of Man, so it was good that here, even in a supporting part, she gets a good amount of screentime. At 45 films with a little less than half the year left, is the 50 Club a possibility by 2026? We'd have to do around one film a month for her, and while I have one in the can, Taken from Rio Bravo, and one I'm looking to watch over the next couple days, Black Creek, I don't know if she has enough left that we can do that I can get on a free streamer or one I already subscribe to. We'll see as the year goes on, but making her the fifth member of the 50 Club, and only the third actor, would be really cool.

Our other two Hall of Famers are Matthias Hues and Billy Blanks. Hues is just a straight up scenery chewing baddie, which is exactly what you want from him; and Blanks is a fantastic fight trainer, bringing us back to Showdown where he was great too. Between the two, Hues has been busier lately, with a bunch of stuff out there, some of which we'll probably cover at some point; but while Blanks doesn't have the quantity, he does have a Circuit sequel, Circuit 4: Faith Fighter, which is $2 to rent on Prime. I looked on IMDb, and it has one critic review. What? What are you doing Jalal Merhi? You should be sending that out to all of us so we can cover it. Of course I say that while I have a backlog of screeners I still need to catch up on. Anyway, great to see these two here, and they both turn in fantastic performances.

We should devote at least one paragraph to the film's star, Mathis Landwehr. This is our second time seeing him on the site, after 2017's Ultimate Justice. There's been a long line of next names since I started this site in 2007, and the only one who's really been able to break through is Scott Adkins. Compare that to all the names we've seen who were one or two and done. Matthew Reese in Riot for example. Tony Schiena has had come up a few times. Matt Mullins is another. Amy Johnston looked primed to be a bigger name, but we haven't seen her as much recently--though she is in the newest R. Ellis Frazier film, so we'll have to check that out. Probably the biggest of the ones who never quite made it is Johnny Messner, who now does more supporting work and producing. The thing is, the old guard is still getting after it, and as a result, there isn't as much room to break through as there was in the 90s. One advantage Landwehr might have is the fact that he lives in Germany, and can make a name for himself there first, especially if he's working with an extreme fight talent like Mike Möller. Germany all around has had a much more robust action ecosystem than we have. According to IMDb, he has a couple films in the hopper that look good, so I'll be excited to check them out. Who knows, we might have our next big name.

Finally, this is the Last Kumite. Whether or not this movie intends to put a bow on all Kumite movies, or if other adventurous filmmakers out there will defy this film's title and make further Kumite films, only time will tell. Maybe the next one will be the "New Kumite"? The thing about "Kumite," is the way it's spelled looks like Riunite. I haven't had that in forever, but I remember the commercials. Every time I hear "Reunited" by Peaches and Herb, I think "Riunite and it feels so good." The other song that gets in my head with this film's title is "Last Worthless Evening" by Don Henley. This is the last, kuuu-mi-teee, that you'll have to spend. A bit of a stretch, but tell my brain that when the earworm sets in. There's not always a rhyme or reason to it, but the earworm isn't any less real. As an aside, we always talk about the late 80s/early 90s as the golden age of DTV action. I think it was at least a silver age of Adult Contempo too, right? The late 70s/early 80s has to be the golden age, but when you hit like "Higher Love" in 1986, there's a good maybe seven or eight years of a new age of easy listening that made trips to the doctor's or the DMV much more pleasant. What a great time, I could watch a PM actioner, then turn on my radio and hear Michael Bolton and Kenny G charting. As Steve Winwood said so eloquently, I can light the night up with my soul on fire...

And while no one is really paying tribute to my self-styled silver age of adult contempo, at least here we get a nice tribute to the tournament actioners of that time. You can get it on Tubi as of my writing this, which is a great way to go. And if you haven't yet, check out the podcast episode Ty and I did as well, number 202 in the archives.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt17351056

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

Lights Out (2024)

This is one Ty and I covered back on episode 162 of the podcast, our "Dermot Mulroney Double Feature" episode, almost a year ago now, and I've been meaning to get it on the site as well. Beyond the Adkins factor, we've been meaning to get more Grillo on the site too--or fire up the Grillo, as we like to say here. In addition to us, Chris the Brain at Bulletproof has covered this as well.

Lights Out has Grillo as a former soldier who has just left the service, and is looking for work. After beating up Kevin Gage and some other ne'er-do-wells at a bar, he catches the attention of Mekhi Phifer, who gets him involved in the underground fight game. But it turns out Phifer's sister is into mob guy Sage (Dermot Mulroney) and the cop who's working with him, Glenn Close (Jaime King), because her abusive ex-boyfriend hid a duffle bag full of money at her house, and they want it back. Now Grillo doesn't just need to win some fights, but he needs to bring these baddies down, and to help him do it is old Army buddy Scott Adkins. Will he prevail?

This isn't horrible. It's directed by Christian Sesma, and his films have a higher floor, which helps in this sea of options we have on places like Tubi and Hulu. I think from a story standpoint, there's a lot going on, which hampers it a bit. The concept itself is one of those I'd say has enough material for an episode of a syndicated action show, and there are two ways to get something with that much material from 42 minutes to 90s minutes: you pad the hell out of it, or you add a bunch of stuff, and this one went for the latter. Still, the fights were good, Grillo gives us another solid lead, Phifer, JuJu Chen, and Mulroney were fun, we had the novelty of an Adkins appearance, plus Jaime King was playing Glenn Close! (More on that later.) Overall, this is a fun 90-minute time killer.

We're now at five Grillo films on the site, which isn't a lot when you consider how much DTV stuff he's done, but when you look at it all, he doesn't co-star with a lot of names like Adkins or Dolph, he tends to be the star power himself, which means we need to carve out specific reviews for him, something that I think will come more often as we start to finish off some of the old guard--though if they keep making movies at the rates they've been, it may not be as easy. We do have two others of his in the can right now, Black Lotus and A Day to Die, plus I'm looking forward to Hounds of War finally being available on streaming. What we get here is more confirmation that Grillo is a great lead in these movies, and with the baddies we've seen him play, he's someone who can slot into a lot of different roles and elevate a DTV film beyond its budget. The other interesting thing is it looks like James Gunn's DC reboot is utilizing him more than the MCU did, which is DC's gain and Marvel's loss, but also means it could be our loss as well if his profile starts to extend further beyond the DTV realm. We'll see, but in the meantime he has a lot of DTV back catalog for us to get to.

Mr. Adkins is at 29 now, so he's on the cusp of the 30 Club. I wanted to try and get him and Michael Jai White, who's at 28, in around the same time, but with three more Adkins films I have in the can to review, he might not only get in ahead of White, but end up a few films ahead of him in the process. This is a very small role, so had he already been at 29 I would've tabled this for a bit, because it wouldn't have been worthy of his 30th film. This is the second time we've seen him in a Sesma film, the other being a small, yet larger than this, role in Section 8, which also had Dolph. He's still pumping out a few movies a year, and even though some are like John Wick 4, which we probably won't review, most of them are DTV, so once he passes the 30 Club threshold, it won't be long before he's in the 40 Club too. Even with a small role, they all count the same, so the next time we see him here he'll officially be in the 30 Club.

Christian Sesma is a director who's been on my radar for a bit, especially for films like this that have a lot of names, and a look and feel that gives them a higher floor than most modern DTV. He's far down the list of directors whose movies we've done, as this is only his third, but I see a bunch that could be reviewed which could get him closer to some of the other names sooner. He has a couple with Michael Jai White, for instance, that are definite reviews just because they have White in them. The other thing is almost all of his stuff is on either free streamers or ones I'm subscribed to, so I can move through his filmography a little quicker. Compare that to Jesse V. Johnson, who I have 8 films left to cover, but I think only three of those 8 are on streamers; or Isaac Florentine, whose most recent is still rent only, while Sesma's most recent is already on Hulu.

Finally, the kids always talk about something not being on their "bingo card," and I'd say for Ty and me when we were discussing this, Jaime King playing Glenn Close was not something we had on our bingo cards. What was the mindset there? Was it "we can't afford Glenn Close, but this should really be her part"? Or did King say "I'm only playing this part if I can play her as Glenn Close." And she's a corrupt cop, so it's an Evil Glenn Close. It just added this bonkers element to the proceedings. When she was in Out of Death or Code Name Banshee she wasn't playing Glenn Close, so it's not like this is a thing she does all the time now. I guess as a one-off I'll go with it, and maybe it makes sense, because Close is such a great actor, who wouldn't want to emulate her--even if this is a bit All About Eve if she is.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently get this on Hulu, which I think is a good deal. It has its flaws, but overall it's solid enough to get you to the church on time if you have 90 minutes to kill and you're looking for something to watch. And also remember to check out the podcast episode Ty and I did on this, number 162 in the archives, "Dermot Mulroney Double Feature."

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt16368898

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

Def by Temptation (1990)

This is one I'd been meaning to do for a long time, and finally covered it on the podcast back on episode 198 with Freddie Young from Full Moon Reviews, so now it's time to get it on the site. In addition to us, Outlaw Vern has covered this, plus Entertainment Weekly, The Washington Post, Joe Bob's Drive-In Movie Review.

Def by Temptation is about a succubus (Cynthia Bond), who is killing men who are playing women in New York City. Is it such a bad thing if she's only killing cheaters? When minister-in-training Joel (James Bond III, who also wrote and directed) goes to NYC to visit his friend K (Kadeem Hardison), he becomes the succubus's next target, so someone not-so not-innocent is now in danger. Hardison has to stop her, and fortunately he's found an ally in Dougy (Bill Nunn), the worst of the players at the bar who just happens to be an undercover cop who specializes in the occult. Will they be able to work together and save Joel before the succubus gets him?

This was a ton of fun. It's not exactly direct-to-video, because it made about $2 million in the theater, but it feels DTV, if you know what I mean. It's the kind of late-night horror you might see on cable or at the video store, something that only gets better with time. James Bond III does a great job crafting a unique yet fun and scary tale, and the robust supporting cast does their job rounding out the proceedings and adding extra weight that a low-budget horror film from 1990 may not otherwise have. Just the opening alone is fantastic, where a bartender is on the phone, cheating on his girlfriend, spitting the funniest lines in the process. Then when the succubus takes him back to her place to kill him, and he's running around buck-ass naked, it's both hilarious, and you kind of feel bad for him. You get the fun, but you also get the nuance of making sure we want to see the succubus stopped. Just an all-around great time.

I mentioned above that this was one I'd wanted to do for a long time. How long? In the early 2000s, Troma was doing a sale, and I bought Sgt. Kabukiman, NYPD, Surf Nazis Must Die, Class of Nuke 'Em High, and Toxic Avenger all for $5 a piece. I believe each of those had a trailer for this movie, with Bill Nunn's classic line, "when she drinks that holy water, she's gonna be slobberin' and fartin' and gaggin'." My buddy and I would always say "we have to watch that!", but then I don't know, the beer, the weed, the Taco Bell, the Doritos--maybe a combination of all of them?--would cause us to forget, and the movie never happened for us. This is what makes the world we live in now great. Yes, there are a lot of issues with streaming, but one of the good things is that a movie that once slipped through my fingers might now be available, and while I may need to sit through a series of commercials about online casinos, with my attention span shot anyway, it gives me a chance to look at my phone.

It turns out this is the third Samuel L. Jackson film we've done on the site. In addition to Arena, he was an uncredited extra in The Exterminator, so I need to tag that too. You'd think with how prolific he is, that he'd have more DTV stuff, but if you look at the timeline, he got the role of Nick Fury not long after we started the DTVC, so in that sense it's probably crazier that he did Arena at all than it is that he hasn't done anything else. On the other hand, this is our fourth Kadeem Hardison film, the other three being the Michael Jai White/Asylum Joint Android Cop and two Mark Dacascos films, Instinct to Kill and the all-time classic, Drive. The Jackson we get is rather scant, a bit at the beginning and a bit in the close; but the Hardison is prodigious and he's a lot of fun. A classic for both of them to be sure.

This was distributed by Troma, with Lloyd Kaufman and Michael Herz as executive producers. When I started this site back in 2007, Troma was a huge part of my DTV watching life, and I figured I'd have more of their films reviewed than any other company--I didn't even have PM on my radar then. But as I've said before, soon after I started, people were reaching out about the action films I was reviewing. At that time there weren't many of us doing low-budget action--and there really aren't many more now--while the horror review ecosystem was much more robust, which meant those reviews were more likely to get lost in the shuffle. Take this film for example, it has 30 critic reviews. For a somewhat obscure low-budget horror flick from 1990, 30 is a lot. A good comp might be One Man Force, a classic that came out in 1989, which only has 10 reviews, of which four are Bulletproof, Comeuppance, Explosive Action, and us. So that means we have nearly 50 PM flicks reviewed, while this is only our 13th Troma flick. I'll see what I can do about getting more up in the near future.

Finally, saxophone great Najee plays himself in this, and also performs a song. What you may not know about me is I'm a huge Smooth Jazz fan, especially if it's saxophone-led, so Najee is one that's right up there for me. I love his cover of Anita Baker's "Sweet Love," and of course, "Tokyo Blue," you could play that whole album, also called Tokyo Blue, it's great top to bottom. Another song is "All I Ever Ask," which isn't bad either, but features Freddie Jackson, who also stars in this as himself. Was this where they met before their collaboration? Another nice hit off that album Just an Illusion, he covers Color Me Badd's "I Adore Mi Amor." If you're not into Smooth Jazz, give it a try, it's not just for Weather Channel's "Weather on the 8s" anymore.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently get this on Tubi, which I think is a good deal. It's a horror classic with some great names, really well put together by James Bond III. And also check out the podcast episode Freddie and I did on this, number 198 in the archives.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099395/

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

Savage Salvation (2022)

Since we discovered Cole S. McKay had over 50 films on the site back in March when we did Victim of Desire--which he was stunt coordinator on--I've been meaning to give him a proper 50 Club induction post, and I thought this would be a good one since I'd been meaning to cover it for some time as well, and he's the stunt coordinator. Let's see if it was worthy of McKay's 50 Club post.

Savage Salvation is a Randall Scandal starring Jack Huston as a guy who, with his girlfriend, Willa Fitzgerald, is addicted to heroin, but when he proposes to her, she proposes they kick, and they make a go at it. But this is a Randall Scandal, and there's always a Randall mainstay waiting in the wings to cause an issue. This time it's a be-corn-rowed Swen Temmel--Michael Sirow must've been busy--who gets Fitzgerald back on the stuff, causing her to overdose and die. Now Huston is out for blood, and he won't stop until vengeance is served. Hot on his trail is local sheriff Bob De Niro, toting an understated Southern accent and an understated mustache. He wants to get to him before the authorities do. But will he get there before Huston has killed everyone dealing heroin in the area?

This is a bit of a tough one to render a verdict on. Not a lot happens in the first 45 minutes, and while it would've been great character development in an indie film about addiction starring Huston and Fitzgerald, this ain't no Sundance entry, so that means that the 45 minutes isn't really anything that couldn't be done in 15 to get us to the action sooner, especially with an actor as good as Huston selling us on his killing spree. Also, we get a taste of the spree at the very beginning, so since we know it's coming, the 45 minutes is just prolonging the inevitable. And the spree itself isn't horrible, but it is a little over the top (Stallone style). Like when Huston starts the spree by killing Temmel, he shoots him in the eye with a nail gun, so Temmel is just sitting there with a nail in his eye. And Huston is giving him the tough "tell me where your supplier is," and instead of Temmel just screaming in pain like anyone else who just had a fucking nail shot into his eye, Temmel is whimpering and begging Huston not to kill him--with a fucking nail sticking out of his eye! What do I do with that? And what am I supposed to tell you to do with it? We had other things, like Quavo as the main baddie, who's great, but he's in one or two scenes, so totally wasted; yet this is also a Randall Scandal, we expect someone like Quavo to have limited screentime--he was probably playing poker with Scandal down in Puerto Rico where this was shot, and lost a hand and the bet required him to be in this movie. Some of the other stuff that made no sense, like when Temmel lies to Fitzgerald, telling her Huston had been using behind her back, which is what gets her to use again. Just by me living in Philly and seeing people on heroin all the time, I'd know if someone around me was using, forget a former addict like herself! Yet she just believes him. Then when she dies, instead of calling 911 like a normal person, Huston dresses her in her wedding dress and takes her to be baptized, where John Malkovich looks on, trying his best to sell the bonkers-ness. Speaking of De Niro and Malkovich, they're probably the reason Huston is in this, and I don't know whether to be amazed or disappointed by how well they're selling the bonkers-ness of the whole thing to me. Ultimately the fact that this is long is what kills it, instead of 100 minutes we needed like 80, and I think that would've better allowed us to revel in the bonkers-ness.

We're actually at 58 movies for Cole S. McKay when we're finally getting him in the 50 Club, which puts him third all-time behind Dolph and Gary Daniels, and three ahead of Art Camacho, who's now in fourth place. While this isn't one of the PM classics where McKay made a name for himself on this site, it's fun to see him plying his trade in a Randall Scandal like this in 2022 with Jack Huston, Robert De Niro, and John Malkovich. When the movie turns from an indie drama about addiction to a revenge actioner around the 45-minute mark, you can almost feel McKay take over. It's not a full-on PM-fest though, and I wonder if there weren't moments where McKay looked at the cars on-set and asked Randall Scandal "you sure you don't need me to flip one of these?" Looking over his CV on IMDb, there are dozens of other films of his that are ripe for our site, a couple of which I've already watched and am just waiting to review, so it's possible he could be in the 60 Club by the time we get him into the Hall of Fame this October, which would tie him with Gary Daniels, and down the road he could pass Dolph for the most credits all-time. And the other thing is, we just started tagging him back in March, I easily could've missed some movies we've reviewed that he worked on, so he could possibly already be in the 60 Club. It just speaks to how prolific he was, especially in the 80s-90s window that we look at as the Golden Age of DTV films, but even now he's still getting after it, working to make even a Randall Scandal like this more palatable. Here's to you Mr. McKay, you're truly one of the greatest to do it.

Part of the reason I wanted to do this is it's another Bob De Niro Randall Scandall, of which we've done two others, The Killing Season and Freelancers, and I'd say this is my favorite performance of those three. He feels a little less somnambulistic here, which on the one hand helps, but on the other watching him go through the motions to get a paycheck is part of the fun of seeing him in these. Maybe having Jack Huston and John Malkovich helped. Speaking of which, Malkovich was more engaged than we'd seen him in these before too. Could Huston's presence have rubbed off? "We want to turn in a performance worthy of the kid's grandfather" maybe? Or maybe the fact that Huston was probably excited to work with them was what rubbed off on them. Either way, I guess I did appreciate it more that De Niro and Malkovich weren't mentally picturing the new kitchen island they were getting installed with the money from this film as they were reciting their lines. As an aside, with "Huston" pronounced "HEW-ston" the way the city in Texas is pronounced, as opposed to the street in NYC, which is "HOW-ston," would Huston's name have been pronounced "HUSS-ton" if he'd been born in Manhattan?

In 2023 we reviewed the documentary The Randall Scandal: Love, Loathing, and Vanderpump, which birthed the term "Randall Scandal" that we give to all his movies now, and also call him, which may or may not be confusing. It gave us insight into how some of these Randall Scandals are made, and the abuse of people working under him that was part of the process. For example in this one, I saw that it was shot in Puerto Rico, and one of accounts from one of his assistants told how Randall demanded the assistant bring him his poker table from LA. The poor assistant had to fly it down there himself, on his own dime, and of course was never reimbursed. Knowing this kind of abuse was happening behind the scenes, there's also a question of whether I'm feeding into it by giving films like this a spotlight on my site. That's definitely something, now that we know how the sausage is made, we probably should be eating more plant-based stuff, but there's also something to be said for us using the reach we have to let people know about these movies too. I imagine a lot of people see this on Hulu and think it looks like a pretty good deal, but if they go to IMDb first, and see us among the currently 20 critic reviews, they may see us discussing how the sausage is made, and opt for a plant-based alternative themselves.

Speaking of making more humane food choices, the baddies were based at a dairy farm, where from what I could tell, the cows were pasture raised. Granted, they were just all hanging out outside the barn, it's possible when they were milked they were stuck in a concrete enclosure, and while I want to give Quavo as our baddie the benefit of the doubt, I wouldn't put it past him to be taking calves from their mothers at a young age so he can get more milk out of them too. Still, if our baddies were running a humane dairy farm, does that mitigate some of the hard feelings we have about them dealing drugs? I mean, what happened to all those cows after Huston killed everyone? Did De Niro get them adopted at a sanctuary farm? Or did they get shipped to a factory farm, forced to live their lives confined to a small space on a concrete floor? I imagine any vegans are reading this saying "there's no such thing as humane dairy, Matt, unless it's plant-based." So in that sense, maybe I shouldn't be giving our baddies the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps if the baddies were holed up at an almond farm, and Huston used those for cover the way he used the cows for cover when he attacked them. It could've been Randall Scandal's nod to A Midsummer Night's Dream, right?

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently get this on Hulu here in the States, plus I've seen it on DVD at Target, which is a rarity for a movie we're covering here. It's a bit long, and suffers from a bit of an identity crisis, but the bonkers-ness of a Randall Scandal combined with some of the names may get you over the hump. And congratulations to Cole S. McKay and his entry into the 50 Club! It was a long time coming, but good to finally give him that recognition for all his great work.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13055982/

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

A Hard Place (2025)

Filmmaker J. Horton reached out to see if we could cover his newest film, A Hard Place, and I was more than happy to oblige. Trap is one of his I really enjoyed, and his most recent film before this, Craving, came out really well, so I was excited to see how this one did. 

A Hard Place follows a group of criminals who, after a big score, need to lie low for a bit, so they find their way out to the country to wait for their contact to show up and help them get out of dodge. Unfortunately, as they're waiting, these green tree monsters show up and start eating some of them. Fortunately though, a group of locals are all too willing to help, which is nice, except, could these nice locals have ulterior motives? It's getting to where you can't trust anyone anymore! Among the criminals there's Fish (Rachel Amanda Bryant) who doesn't seem like a criminal as much as someone caught up in a bad situation, and among the locals there's Naja (Ashley Undercuffler) who may not be as untrustworthy as the others. Will they manage to survive all this when the shit hits the fan?

This was a great time. A nice mix of gothic horror and zombie/monster movies, with some offbeat dark humor that manages to work tonally with the rest of the film and doesn't feel out of place--not an easy needle to thread, but Horton and company managed to pull it off. There were a couple elements that didn't work for me though. I thought there were too many characters to keep track of, and I would've preferred if the story focused more on Bryant and Undercuffler's characters, but I think those are more personal tastes on my end, and I get why Horton decided to go in a different direction. And with all those characters, we got some great performances beyond Bryant and Undercuffler. Felissa Rose delivers exactly what you want when you see her name on the tin, and I think the same could be said of Lynn Lowry; Scott Alan Ward is great as the creepy, silent type; and Natalia Santacoloma has a small part, but came off really strong, especially for someone her age. Beyond all that, the locations add a lot of atmosphere, and the practical effects all looked great, which was refreshing to see. This is just a fun horror movie, you can load it up on a Saturday night with your friends, and also support indie creatives at the same time, it's a win-win.

Out of the J. Horton films we've reviewed, of which this is now 5, I think Trap is still my favorite, but this is up there. It's one of those movies where a lot of things get thrown at you, but in a way that made me want to see what was coming next. That's not easy to pull off, because the audience can get lost or overwhelmed, but here it manages to keep the intrigue up and the confusion down--though a little confusion is good, I think. And then out of these five films, I think Monsters in the Woods had the most comedic bent, and while A Hard Place isn't a comedy per se, it injects a lot of off-beat, comedic elements, yet still keeps the tone of the film where it needs to be, and maintains the film's stakes even with the moments of levity. The best might be the educational films on human reproduction, that are like dystopian creepy but hilarious too. It's just really great stuff.

On our Invasion Force review we talked about the term "meta," and how popular a term that is with the kids. We get a little of that here, as we have a zombie movie within this movie, starring Bai Ling, Glenn Plummer, and Sadie Katz. It has that meta element, where it sets the vibe for what the actual movie is going to be about--and speaking of being confused, early on I wasn't sure at points if I was watching the movie or the movie within a movie, which I think is one of those times where a little confusion is good, it added to the overall feel of the movie for me--but it's also a creative way for a filmmaker like Horton who may have names like Bai Ling and Glenn Plummer for only a day, to have them in the film throughout, but they don't have any impact on the story itself, allowing him to make changes as they shoot the rest of the film without worrying about whether or not he can get them back for reshoots. We've actually seen this done before, with Welcome to Willits and Dolph playing a cop on a police procedural that Bill Sage is watching while the drugs are turning on him. It just adds another layer to the film, and is more fun than the usual one-scene cameos with names like these. Before we end this paragraph, I need to mention Sadie Katz, whom we saw in Nipples and Palm Trees back in March of 2013. That was another indie screener, and she turned in a fantastic performance in that film, so it's great to see her back on the site all these years later, mixing it up with Bai Ling and Glenn Plummer.

As I said above, one area that this didn't work for me was the number of characters we had, and how those characters caused us to lose Rachel Amanda Bryant and Ashley Undercuffler's characters for portions of the film, as they were the two most compelling for me. The end of the film teases that there might have been more of a connection between them, but it wasn't fleshed out enough for me, so when that tease happens it made me feel like we missed out. I don't know what I would've cut out though to make their scenes more substantial, I think it's just one of those realities when you have a big cast, people will connect with some characters more than others.

Finally, anytime I think of the title of this film, A Hard Place, the Rolling Stones' "Rock and a Hard Place" gets stuck in my head. I remember it was off the Steel Wheels album, which I bought the tape of back in 1989 as a ten-year-old. I played the video on YouTube before I wrote this paragraph, and realized I probably hadn't heard the song since 1989, but also had heard it so much back then, that I still knew all the words, and remembered the video playing on MTV. Also, Mick Jagger was 46 when that album came out, guess how old I am as I'm writing this. And yet all these years later, and however many songs I've heard in between then and now, when I see "A Hard Place" written somewhere, or I think of the title of this film, that's the song that comes into my head--and I still mishear "put on a clown face" when Jagger sings "put on a kind face." Don't ask me what I thought Jagger would've meant by "put on a clown face," I was ten, it made sense then.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently rent A Hard Place on Apple TV+ and Amazon Prime. This is worth your rental money, and you get to support indie creatives, so you get to enjoy a fun movie and do a good deed. Does it get much better than that? And thank you to Jason Horton for sending the screener for our review, I really enjoyed this.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10555668

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

Steel Frontier (1995)

This is one I discussed on episode 3 of Jon Cross's PM Entertainment Podcast, which was a really fun conversation, and now we're finally giving it a review here. In addition to us and the PM Podcast, Chad Cruise at Bulletproof, Ty and Brett at Comeuppance, Outlaw Vern, Tom Jolliffe at Flickering Myth, and Mitch at the Video Vacuum have covered this as well.

Steel Frontier takes place six years ago, after the apocalypse, where the world is a big Mad Max-ish mess, and a horrible conqueror (Brion James) has gathered up a bunch of baddies and taken over all the peaceful tire farming towns in the LA County area. Is there any hope? Sure, as is often the case, a heroic lone drifter comes into town (Joe Lara). He starts off by joining the gang, and then does a bit of a Yojimbo move to get Brion James's gang to kill each other. Will he eventually succeed? And in true PM fashion, will he require a lot of explosions and car chases to do so?

This one jumped to number 9 on my all-time PM list (which you can find on the DTVC Letterboxd), that's how much I enjoyed it, and Jon felt the same way. This is PM doing the Italian late-80s Mad Max exploitation flick, but doing it in true PM style. The exploitation comes in the form of violence, with explosions and car chases, which is nice because we don't get the usual sexual assault or other sexual exploitation the Italian films liked to do. We get some great Joe Lara as the lead, Brion James is a fantastic baddie, and the addition of Bo Svenson as James's second-in-command was solid too. From there you get all the beautiful PM action goodness you expect when you see the PM logo on the spine of your VHS, including this massive chimney explosion that the IMDb trivia says is the largest PM ever pulled off--and that's saying a lot considering this is PM we're talking about! PM gets it right again, and we're all better for it.

Out of all the Joe Lara films I've seen--which isn't that many, he's only at 8 now on the site--this is my favorite. He's everything you want in the roguish, Western hero, and we can't wait to see him enter this town and take out James and all his baddies. Another place where this movie deviated from the late 80s Italian films is they didn't do the whole "hero captured and tortured by the baddies, then he recovers and gets his revenge" penultimate act, which was refreshing for me. While I liked Hologram Man better as a film overall, this is the better Lara film for sure, and it's too bad he didn't get more roles like this. By my count, we have 7 or 8 more of his films that we could review, and I don't know how many of those we'll actually cover because they look hard to track down, so he may top out at around 12 movies, and I think that's okay considering how good a job he does here.

PM is closing in on the 50 Club at the DTVC, we're only one away now, and this is one I probably could've used for that milestone, but I didn't want to wait on it too long after the PM podcast episode was released. That's okay, I think there are some great candidates for the big 5-0, there's no shortage of fantastic PM flicks. What makes this one so good, is it's their take on this post-apocalyptic/Mad Max subgenre, and they successfully make it the PM version, they never get away from what they were best at. In the PM Podcast episode, Jon interviews both Paul Volk and Jacobson Hart, and they give great insights on what made this work. Hart in particular talked about how PM didn't do sexual exploitation, that their "exploitation cinema" was the action, and they nail it, especially with two great chase scenes, and that aforementioned chimney explosion. When you see PM on the spine, or listed under company credits if you look a movie up after seeing the thumbnail on a streaming site, you expect a certain level of fun, low-budget action, and this one delivers on that in a way that exceeded even those expectations.

Part of why this works so well is the stunt team PM puts together. The stunt coordinator/second-unit director is Michael J. Sarna, who has done a bunch of other PM flicks--including my personal number two all-time from them, The Sweeper, where he was stunt coordinator under Spiro Razatos as action director--plus the David Bradley classic Hard Justice, and a personal video store mainstay of mine, The Perfect Tenant--which I can't believe I haven't covered yet! In addition to him, we have 50 Club member Art Camacho, and soon to be inducted 50 Club Member Cole S. McKay, plus "Broadway" Joe Murphy sans his stunt coordinating partner Red Horton. And as if all those names weren't enough, we have stunt legend Kane Hodder as one of Brion James's gang, though not credited as doing any stunt work. Guess with all the PM names they had they were able to let him take a break on this one! This is part of the PM magic, let these great stunt names do their thing, and the result is this high-octane alchemy that was the secret to their success.

Finally, we'd be remiss if we didn't mention Brian Huckeba's "Chicken Boy" role. As Jon pointed out, this was a kind of character that showed up in Ozploitation films that this movie is in the tradition of, and Huckeba goes all in on his performance. It just makes things that much more fun and memorable, and with low-budget filmmaking every little bit helps. When the guys at Comeuppance reviewed this, Huckeba commented on it, and if you listen to the PM Podcast episode, Jon interviews him in addition to Paul Volk and Jacobson Hart, and he gives Jon some great jewels when recalling his experience on set. It would be easy for Huckeba to look at this part as a one-off in his career, maybe something he shows his family 30 years later so they can all have some laughs, but the fact that he's still this enthusiastic about this part today is great to see. It's more fun for us to embrace it if the people involved are embracing it too.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently get this on Tubi, Prime, the Roku Channel, and Fawesome here in the States. That's a great way to catch this, but also if you see it in the wild on VHS, pick it up. And if you haven't yet, subscribe and listen to the PM Entertainment Podcast on your favorite podcatcher. Jon is delivering the PM podcast we've wanted for years, you need to check it out.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114537/

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