Dragstrip Girl (1994)

When I saw this movie I thought it would be perfect for my Mark Dacascos review as we try to get him into the 30 Club. It was directed by Mary Lambert, one of my favorite directors and someone whose work I've wanted to cover more of, and despite the fact that it was a TV movie, I figured direct-to-Showtime and direct-to-video are pretty similar. Then I discovered this movie was part of a series of movies on Showtime called Rebel Highway, so it's even more like a TV series than a DTV movie. I guess my rules were made to be broken, so why not?

Dragstrip Girl is not a remake of the 1957 film, but rather is about young man named Johnny (Dacascos) who dreams of leaving the world he inhabits as a Mexican American in 1950s Los Angeles, to join the rich elite he sees when he parks their cars at their fancy clubs. In particular he's taken a shine to high school girl Laura Bickford (Natasha Wagner Gregson), and concocts a way to lie and con her into loving him. At the same time, to sell his lie, he's stolen a nice car, and the cops are looking for it. As he gets the girl, everything else crashes down around him. Will he manage to make it all work?

This was a fascinating movie. As someone who enjoys the source material, 1950s low-budget genre movies, it felt like Mary Lambert nailed a lot of it, including the bad parts, like the loose ends of the story flying together in the last five minutes, or the massive both figurative and literal right turn the thing takes at the end. The other thing I appreciated in both her direction and Jerome Gary's writing was the ambiguity in Johnny, which Dacascos pulled off well in his performance. There are times where we root for him, which makes sense with him as the lead, but also plenty of times where we want Laura or his previous girlfriend Pearl (Maria Celedonio) to get away from him. And Lambert doesn't shy away from any of this, like when Johnny and Laura have sex, Laura says to him "don't ever lie to me," when Johnny knows full well he's been lying to her this whole time; but then Lambert takes these issues regarding consent where a 21-year-old has conned a 16-year-old into being with him, and while in the construct of this movie is brushing them aside with Laura telling Johnny after the fact "you should've just told me the truth," but she still loves him, we still feel that lack of consent and manipulation hanging over things. The other part of this is Johnny's identity, and Lambert doesn't shy away from that either, as Johnny aspires to be a part of this rich, white world, he's casting aside Pearl for the symbol of that rich, white world, Laura, but Pearl doesn't disappear from the film, reminding us of what Johnny is forsaking in his aspirations, which, again, makes us not want to root for him. It definitely has its flaws, and whether those flaws are intended or not, they're there; but for me the ambiguity Lambert infuses into the whole thing makes this work in a way other movies like it wouldn't.

I originally thought we were now at 25 films for Mark Dacascos, which would've meant I did my math out wrong for getting him in the 30 Club by the end of the year, because if we do one every other month from here out, that would've left us with 29 in November, meaning we'd've had to double up at some point. Then I discovered that we hadn't tagged him for his stunt work in Steele Justice, which means he's at 26, and we're on track for the 30 Club again. This is a unique role for him, no martial arts, a few stunts, but it was more about his acting, which I thought he did a great job with. He gets that Johnny is supposed to be someone we root for at points, but also be someone we look at and say "you're being kind of a jerk, Johnny," or "that behavior's kind of predatory, Johnny." Obviously we like seeing Dacascos show off his next level martial arts skills, but it's nice to see him hit a dramatic role out of the park too. What I would say to that though is, as a dramatic actor, he's good, but as a martial artist, he's one of the best to do it, which is what's always exciting to see from him.

We last saw Mary Lambert here on the site for Mega Python vs. Gatoroid, which was the only other film of hers we've reviewed. I've always known her more for her great music videos, but a film like this is a reason why I'm a huge fan too. In a way she refracts the light off of the lead character, Johnny, and shines it on his two love interests, Laura and Pearl. Not only does he treat them poorly, but they love him in spite of that, and Lambert gives us this without any judgement on either of them. Part of that is the performances too. Natasha Gregson Wagner really plays her character like she's 16, which is even starker when compared to Dacascos's character who's supposed to be 21, but feels older. She's sixteen and feels trapped in her world, and here comes this man in a fancy car to help her escape all that. She doesn't realize what's happening when Dacascos takes her to a Mexican restaurant where everyone he knows hangs out so he can show her off to them. At the same time Pearl is being treated poorly by Johnny too, but there's a part of her that thinks he'll come back to her once he's rejected by the rich white girl and her friends and family, and she thinks he's worth waiting for, even if he's treating her poorly in the process. I don't know if Lambert could've made this movie about Gregson and Celedonio's characters instead inside of this Rebel Highway construct, but I like the way she packaged it as a coming of age story about a guy while ultimately telling the story of the two female leads as well. In a way she subverts the story of the original Dragstrip Girl, which was supposed to be a girl who was a drag racer, but ends up being more about the two guys who have a thing for her.

This is our second Traci Lords film this month, which wasn't something I planned on, but I wanted to do both this film and Intent to Kill, so here we are. She plays Blanche, a friend of Dacascos and his brother Anthony's (Augusto Sandino) mother, and takes them in when she dies. She does a great job playing a high-end sex worker who has clients back to her place next door to them. The weird part is she's younger than Dacascos but playing older, but I can also see how she was right for this role, even if age-wise it was off. We also had Raymond Cruz, who is probably best known for Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, but he had one of the more prodigious CVs of anyone in the cast when this film was made, having been in Clear and Present Danger, and two Seagal films, Under Siege and Out for Justice. You could kind of see the seeds of Tuco Salamanca in this performance here, and I wondered if Vince Gilligan caught this on cable and was like "there's my Tuco Salamanca!" This wasn't his first time on the site either, all the way back in 2008 we reviewed From Dusk Till Dawn II: Texas Blood Money.

Finally, of all the videos Mary Lambert has directed, one I didn't expect was Boz Scaggs's "Heart of Mine," which was off his 1988 Adult Contempo come back album Other Roads. Why is that important? The song was written by one of my favorite artists, Bobby Caldwell, who was a friend of Scaggs, and Scaggs was the one who told him he could make money writing songs for other artists, like himself. I don't remember the song from when it was new, I knew it first from Caldwell's album of the same name, Heart of Mine, where he did his own versions of all the songs he wrote for other artists--one you might know is Al Jarreau's "All or Nothing at All." Anyway, going back to Scaggs, that album had all the hallmarks of that late 80s/early 90s Adult Contempo album from a singer who was big in another era, complete with him in the midlife crisis leather outfit while leaning on the equally midlife crisis-y sport bike on the cover. There were also a bunch of great artists on it, like David Paich, Jeff Pocaro, and Steve Lukather from Toto, and backing vocals from Phil Perry, Siedah Garrett, and James Ingram--who performed on "Heart of Mine." It was the kind of music Boomers of that era loved when they were entertaining--earlier in the evening, of course. Once the wine has kicked in after dinner though, they pulled out Silk Degrees from the collection and cranked "Lido Shuffle" while their teenage kids were rolling their eyes in their rooms upstairs. I'm joking about all this, but I'm older now than Scaggs was in 1988 when he donned that leather outfit and leaned on that motorcycle, knowing full well I'd have been yelling at the photographer "take the picture before I fall over! I can't stand like this anymore!"

And with that, let's wrap this up. Currently this can be rented on Amazon, Xfinity, or other places you rent movies on demand. I don't know if it's worth a rental, but if it comes up on any streamers, I think it's worth checking out--and to be fair, it would be nice if all the Rebel Highway movies ended up on streamers, there were some other great directors involved in those, including William Friedkin.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109662

And check out my newest novel, Mark in Sales, on Amazon in paperback and Kindle.

Final Heist (2024)

I'd been meaning to do this one for some time, mostly because it was written by Richard Pierce, who's been a guest on the pod and friend of the site. Also it stars DTVC favorite Tim Abell, and we always enjoy seeing him in a film too.

Final Heist is about a crew of bank robbers who plan to quit after one last score, but one of their crew, Liev, (Justin Chu Cary) gets shot and arrested, so the other members, including Willa, his partner and mother of his child (Camila Banus) agree to split and not have any contact. Six years later though, their daughter Sofia (Gabriela Merid) is diagnosed with a rare heart condition, and the only way she can survive is if she gets a partial donor. Her father would be a great match, except he's in a coma after the prison warden (Tim Abell) had him beaten up. So the only thing to do is get the rest of the gang back together: Hailey, Flynn, and Kenzie (Jasmine Shanise, Virginia Ma, and Shonte Akognon respectively) for one final heist--to steal heart tissue they need to save Sofia. Is this gang up to the task after all those years not doing any heists though?

This wasn't a bad deal. It hits all the spots of the usual heist movie, only the crew is all diverse women, and the heist is stealing heart tissue instead of money. How many times have we seen a heist movie with a Cam Gigandet in the lead and a crew of tatted-up spiky-haired white guys that are a mix of Randall Scandal mainstays and former UFC fighters, where they need to do one last job because Gigandet's character's daughter needs money for an operation? Because this movie is giving me something different, I have to give points for that. Then they have Tim Abell as the baddie, and while he's only in the movie at the beginning and the end, he does such a great job in those early moments that he casts a shadow over the rest of the film that we want our heroes to overcome. The movie's not perfect though. For example, an undercover reporter working with Liev is mentioned, but that character never materializes; and then at the end we need to make a lot of Bob Beamon leaps of faith when it comes to heart surgery. The other thing is the movie drags a bit in the middle, but that, along with the heart surgery leaps of faith, is mitigated by the fact that we only have an 83-minute runtime, which always helps. I think if you're looking for a nice time killer, this will do the trick, especially since you can get it on Tubi.

Because we know Rich and have had him on the podcast, you're probably expecting this paragraph to include inside information, like me asking where his original script may have deviated from the finished project, because the movie also lists the director as a co-writer, so he probably took Rich's original script and altered it to fit the realities of their production. But because I watched this the night before I'm writing the review, I didn't get a chance, so maybe we'll be able to ask him on a future podcast episode. Also, I thought I'd given Rich a tag for the other film of his we'd reviewed, Sector 4: Extraction, but for some reason I didn't, so we've corrected that mistake here. This film is very different from Sector 4: Extraction, which was more of a vanity project for the star, DTVC Hall of Famer Olivier Gruner, this is more you're classic heist film with the unique elements I listed above. Either one from a writer's standpoint is fantastic to have made though, and it's really cool to see all the credits Rich has on IMDb now. In terms of future ones to get that tag number up, there's plenty of stuff available, so we look forward to watching more of those, and having him back on the pod as well!

The other name readers of the site will know from this is DTVC favorite Tim Abell. He gives us the performance we'd want from a Charles Napier in a 90s film, the kind of baddie who doesn't need a lot of screen time to affect the proceedings, and the reality is I can't think of many current actors who can do what Abell does here. His baddie is this perfect mix of sinister and smarmy, and he plays it so well in the few scenes he has in the beginning of the film, that his presence looms over everything else even if we don't see him again until the denouement. It's the kind of thing that takes something that's more paint-by-numbers like this, and makes us root for the protagonists, because no matter what, we don't want to see that guy win. A masterclass on how to play a great baddie, especially with limited screen time.

You may have noticed there's no genre tag for this review, only the "prison" subgenre--and even that's a stretch, because this isn't exactly a prison film. That's because I couldn't think of a proper genre for it to fit into. IMDb said "Crime" and "Thriller," which are two genres I don't have tags for, but also, "Thriller" doesn't really fit for this, and what the hell is "Crime" as a genre? For the genres I have, there isn't near enough action to qualify for that; it has some offbeat moments, and the "offbeat heist" score that plays as they plan out the job is pretty ubiquitous, but I don't think it's necessarily a comedy per se; "suspense" is a genre we use, but again, going back to that ubiquitous offbeat heist score, that betrays any attempt at serious suspense, and is also a reason why I wouldn't call it a "thriller." I guess there's the subgenre of "heist" films that this fits into, and maybe I should start tagging that, but I have so many tags now that that could add a lot--like would I need "Die Hard" for a tag, or "tournament fighting" or "romp comedy"? I did a scan to see how many other movies don't have genres, and while there aren't many, there are some. For example, Dolph has two, Shark Lake, which has the "sharks" subgenre tag, and Final Inquiry, which is unique in that it also doesn't have a subgenre like "sharks" or "prison" either. 

Finally, one of the production companies working on this was MarVista Entertainment, who has been around for a bit, but browsing IMDb it looks like the only other movie of theirs we've covered was one of the Lost Boys sequels, The Thirst. Anyway, this isn't about MarVista Entertainment, it's about how the name "MarVista" makes me think of how Steven Williams said the name "Marvosa" in Bloodfist VII, which was one of the greatest things ever. As I said in my review for that, I think they added a character named "Marvosa" just so Williams could say it. I think that should be a rule at MarVista Entertainment, at least one character needs to be named "Marvosa." That would up the average reviews on IMDb for their movies by at least a point, and when you're working on tight margins with films like Tubi Originals, that point could be significant.

And with that, I'll dispense with the free advice and wrap this up. As a Tubi Original, you can currently stream this free there, which I think is a good way to go. The diverse cast and the twist on the heist film elevate it beyond the usual paint-by-numbers heist film, and the short runtime with Abell as a great baddie gets you to the church on time.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt30254708

And check out my newest novel, Mark in Sales, on Amazon in paperback and Kindle.

Scorned (1993)

This is one Jon Cross from After Movie Diner and the PM Entertainment Podcast and I will be covering on an upcoming episode of the DTVC Podcast, which makes this one unique, because I usually do the podcast episode first and the blog post after, but I wanted to get some Shannon Tweed up this month and this felt perfect for that post too, so I figured why wait?

Scorned features Tweed as a woman married to a man who's trying to move up the corporate ladder (Dan McVicar), and in so doing, has her sleep with a potential client. When Andrew Stevens swoops in and gets the position her husband was supposed to receive, said husband does the most sensible thing in that situation and kills himself in his old office before he has to vacate it for Stevens. As if this isn't bad enough, Tweed discovers the company won't pay out his life insurance. At this point she has nothing to lose, so she takes on a fake identity as a high school tutor, and gets herself moved into Stevens's family's pool house, where she seduces him, his son, and his wife, while trying to make their lives hell as payback. Will Stevens find out what she's doing in time to stop her?

This is a classic of the Erotic Thriller genre for a reason. You have iconic images like the one above, it hits all the Erotic Thriller bingo card spots, but then you have Tweed turning in this chilling, yet sympathetic performance, a supporting performance from Kim Morgan Greene as Stevens's wife that was better than it had any business needing to be, and then Stevens as a director who understands what makes these movies work, and is able to deliver them at a higher level than most. It has some plot holes, which I won't discuss to avoid giving anything away, but they leave you thinking "why didn't they see that before?" There are also some stunt moments that look a little silly--though we won't put the blame on our man Cole S. McKay as stunt coordinator for that, I don't know if he had the freedom he'd have on a PM flick, because I don't remember a PM flick featuring two dummies falling down the stairs meant to represent two women falling down the stairs together. Overall though, as I said, this is a classic. If you haven't seen it before, or you haven't seen it in a while, definitely try to track down a copy and check it out!

With this movie Shannon Tweed moves into a tie with Kathleen Kinmont for third all-time among women at the DTVC with 10 films, one behind Julie Strain's 11, and way behind Cynthia Rothrock at 47. Obviously we'd like to get that number up, but when you go through her IMDb bio, a lot of the stuff she's done isn't available anywhere. The streaming world is still coming around to embracing the 90s Erotic Thriller, but also some of those films she made then had very limited releases, or only a cable TV release, and now they're possibly gone to us forever. Even this one, something considered a classic in the genre, isn't on any streamers and isn't easy to track down as a physical copy. It's a world that deserves to be seen, so hopefully as many of these movies can be made as available as possible. Back to this one, out of all of the films of hers we've covered so far, this is probably her best performance, and the film itself might be best of those too. She goes for it in every way, and gives us a femme fatale that we almost root for. Out of the ten, I think this is only the second Erotic Thriller of hers we've done, so I think as we get deeper in on this genre, it'll be fun to see more of these, because she's one of, if not the Queen of Erotic Thrillers, and a big part of why that genre was so popular in the 90s.

Another part of that was Andrew Stevens, who directed, produced, and starred in this. While the Queen of the Erotic Thriller could be up for debate (though Jon and I had it between Tweed and Joan Severance), it feels like Stevens is the King. In the We Kill for Love documentary, he talked about how he was transitioning from actor to producer, but understood that as an actor he still had enough of a name to get funding for a movie and sell it better to distributors. What that means, at least for me, is that as an actor he wanted Tweed and their other co-stars to have more of the spotlight, which helps make this a unique entry, because it's told from Tweed's standpoint, when most of these are told from the male lead's point of view. Also, Stevens and his DP, Christian Sebaldt, crafted some really inspired shots, like the one above that looks like something out of a De Palma film. He knew how to make an Erotic Thriller, and the genre wouldn't have been what it was without him, which really comes through in this one.

As I mentioned above, we do have another Hall of Famer in this, stunt coordinator Cole S. McKay, who does stunt coordinating on a lot of Erotic Thrillers. I don't know if I'd say it's his hallmark, but we do get someone thrown through a window. It is interesting that the film decided to go with the dummies falling down the stairs instead of hiring two stuntwomen to do it, and maybe it's safer that way, but beyond PM, I've seen stuntmen fall down the stairs in other Erotic Thrillers McKay was stunt coordinator on, so I wonder if it was a budget and safety thing here. Watching all of these in the 90s when they were new, I had no idea who Cole S. McKay was, but we do take for granted that stunts should look a certain way, without considering who's doing them and what kinds of risks are involved. It's fun now since I've been doing this site and I know who he is to go back and watch these, and admire his work in making it all look realistic--or not if he needs to go with dummies instead of actors.

Finally, what do we have here? A Red Sox cap? How do you not love that? Maybe if you're a Yankees fan, but I can at least appreciate a Yankees cap in the wild too (though to be fair, I didn't mention that Traci Lords's character was wearing an oversized Yankees shirt to bed in the Intent to Kill review--must've slipped my mind!). The team was pretty rough at that period, I couldn't have imagined them not only winning four World Series in the 2000s and 2010s, but also that the ownership group that brought those World Series would be so disliked by Red Sox fans after--me included--because they decided to stop spending and are now treating the team like "hey, aren't you happy we've won four?" Yes, it's been 30 years since that hat was shot in this movie, but it would only be a short 11 years between that and 2004, when the Red Sox broke the curse, which to me that 11 years felt much longer than the 20 years since. With baseball season starting, I'll still be rooting for my Red Sox, even if the owners don't care as much about spending to win as they used to.

And with that, let's wrap this up. This is not an easy find, but if you can find it, it's worth checking out. I believe there are some used VHS and DVDs out there, so as long as the dealers aren't gouging you'll be good. And keep an eye out for that podcast episode later this month!

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111093/

And check out my newest novel, Mark in Sales, on Amazon in paperback and Kindle.

Intent to Kill (1992)

For this month's PM flick, I thought I'd do the last of the three early 90s PM flicks Traci Lords did that I needed to review. In addition to us, this is a Superfecta movie, because Christ the Brain at Bulletproof, Ty and Brett at Comeuppance, and Mitch at the Video Vacuum have all covered this; plus Jon Cross at the PM podcast did an episode on this as well.

Intent to Kill has Traci Lords as a cop on the edge. Her chief and mentor (Yaphet Kotto) wants her to be safe, so he takes her off the assignment she had to take down a Colombian drug cartel member (Angelo Tiffe), only to have her find more trouble elsewhere. Her live-in boyfriend (Scott Patterson) is a deez, dem, and doze Italian American from North Jersey who does his hair and slaps on cologne to get the paper so he can flirt with the neighbor who likes to ride her bike in her dental floss bikini. As you can imagine, she catches her beau in their waterbed with a lady he met at the bar, then proceeds to go Mitchell on his antique car he loves so much. Now it's on her to stop this Colombian and his cronies, only she not only has to deal with them, but her jealous ex that's trying to sabotage her career.

This one is a lot of fun. It's everything you want in a PM flick: a strong lead, great car flips and stunts, fun supporting stars, and this crazy PM world where danger is everywhere and our hero needs to shoot her way out of it at a moment's notice. At the same time, there's a lot you wouldn't expect about Lords's character being a woman in a man's world, and how even the people that want to help her succeed, like Yaphet Kotto's character, still impede her progress. The end was a little bit off for me, because Lords's character gets herself in a bad situation that wasn't consistent with how she was in the rest of the film, but I also understood it was their way of getting rid of Scott Patterson's character, and considering how he was, in PM world he had to go--hey hey, ho ho, Scott Patterson's got to go! You either like PM flicks or you don't, and if you do, this is right up your alley.

These three Traci Lords early 90s PM flicks all feature great performances by her, which is kind of crazy when you consider how young she was acting opposite all of these older guys. It's not just that she holds her own, it's believable that she would be the best and most capable among the older male characters she's acting opposite of. Looking at her career, in '95 she was starting to get parts on network TV shows like Melrose Place and Roseanne, and I think there was a sense that a bigger breakout was coming, but it never quite came, and she ended up coming back to PM to close out the decade with two more films. This is now her sixth film on the site, which doesn't sound like a lot, but there's a five-way tie for sixth most all-time among women on the site at seven movies, so she's one away from that, and we have another film coming this month with her in it, so she'll be hitting that in a couple weeks. The question from there is, is the Hall of Fame in sight? Everyone in the top five all-time for women on the site are in, and the bottom of that list is nine films, so I'd say it's in sight.

We're now at 56 PM films at the DTVC, which sounds like a lot, but we have another 50 or so to go to have them all, and if we're doing one a month, we won't get there until 2030, so we still have some work to do. This has a lot of what you want in a PM flick. For example, when Lords catches Patterson in bed with another woman, the bed is a waterbed. Like when Patterson runs after Lords, the woman he's sleeping with is bobbing up in down due to the waterbed waves. That alone is amazing, but then he chases Lords out to his car, where she proceeds to do a Mitchell with the woman's panties and the gas tank of his car, lighting the panties and blowing up the back of the car. How amazing is that? Only PM would think to do the waterbed/Mitchell combo like that, because they're probably the only ones who could pull it off. I also mentioned above the DP duo of Blakey and Pepin. We get these beautiful shots of the LA streets at night from Blakey, and then Pepin gives us these fantastic, clean looks of the action moments. Finally, we have the stunt team of Red Horton and "Broadway" Joe Murphy working on this one, combined with Scott McAboy as second unit director. It gives you that quality of PM you want when you fire one of these up and want to escape for 90 minutes.

What do you do with Yaphet Kotto in this? He's the police chief, he sits in his office and tells Lords she's causing so much trouble it's driving him to drink bourbon in the afternoon, yet when he sees her at the bar after she catches Patterson in bed with another woman, he proceeds to drink from her Bud Dry sitting in front of her, so maybe his character has more of a drinking problem beyond Lords's antics. He never leaves the station except for that visit to the bar, the rest of the time he's either in his office or out among the desks that the rest of the detectives are sitting at. We have seen Kotto before, in the Busey film Eye of the Tiger, and it's weird seeing him in stuff like this, but in looking at his IMDb bio, it's closer to 50-50 on the low-budget DTV stuff than you'd expect from someone who had the career he had. That then begs the question, is the Hall of Fame a possibility for Kotto? It looks like it's more in play than I expected.

Finally, going back to the cinematography, and just looking at PM films overall, they did more than just set their films in LA and shoot in LA, they made LA a character in their films the way we think of New York City as a character in movies. And I'm not talking about LA as a novelty location like in Beverly Hills Cop, or suburban LA like in License to Drive, but like really making the city of LA a character, using more local locations, and not being afraid to be specific. Like when Lords is following a lady of the night who was connected with one of the Colombians, we saw places like Frederick's of Hollywood, but in the context of a gritty Hollywood in the middle of the night. I think a lot of filmmakers and studios were afraid to give people that LA, thinking the audience wouldn't get it, but it feels like the PM folks didn't care, which I think is great. And now 30 years later it's a time capsule that we can go back and watch.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can get this on Fawesome, or there's a decent copy on YouTube too, which I added to my PM playlist on my YouTube channel. This is another good one from PM and Traci Lords, worth checking out.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107222/

And check out my newest novel, Mark in Sales, on Amazon in paperback and Kindle.

Checkmate (2025)

This is probably the perfect movie for a review that was supposed to be the last one of February, but technically is the first one in March. It also has Lorenzo Lamas in it, someone we haven't seen in a long time, so that was a selling point too. I don't usually do the procedural serial killer film, but based on those other factors I thought I'd give this one a try.

Checkmate has Joyce Glenn as Brittany, a police detective in Louisville who's been put on ice after she shoots a hostage in a stand-off. Her psychiatrist (Sarah Pribis) has to clear her to go back to active duty, but isn't sure she wants to do that yet, so office work it is. But when a killer is using a chess theme to toy with the police department, the fact that Brittany knows a lot about chess has Captain Sommers (Lamas) make the tough call to put her on the case. And she's coming up with answers, but when a rich kid ends up as one of the victims, the weight of the state government is coming down on her, and she only has 48 hours to solve the crime before the feds are called in. When the ME gives her a clue to who the killer might be, can she figure it out before it's too late?

Again, this isn't exactly a genre I watch a lot, so some of the issues I have with it might be things that people who like these movies more don't see as a problem, but overall I thought this was a pretty good deal. The main issue for me was the story got repetitive. Person murdered, crime scene moment, Brittany finds a new clue, Lamas tells her she only has X amount of time to solve this, problem with boyfriend or father, wake up from a nightmare, repeat. For me, to get to the 90-minute mark, I could've done with less of that, and more of a few different areas. One, I think more between Brittany and her boyfriend Brad (Andra Fuller) could've replaced one of the murders. Early on we get the sense that he's kind of a creep who can't get the hint that she's not interested, which we find out later isn't the case. And developing that relationship more would've developed Brittany's character more as well. Two, Brittany seems to be the only woman working in their department. If that wasn't meant to be important, we needed at least one other woman, but if it was, that could've been explored more too. Finally, this was shot and takes place in Louisville. That's a unique location, all anyone knows about Louisville is the Kentucky Derby and baseball bats, but the movie didn't lean into that uniqueness at all. It could've been set in Anywheresville, USA as a result. All that said, this does what you want a movie like this to do, Glenn was great in the lead, I liked Dorien Wilson as the father, and Lamas was solid and we got a good amount of him--I don't want to spoil much more beyond that though. I think if you like serial killer procedurals, this one is worth checking out.

Normally we start with the film's Hall of Famer, but I wanted to discuss Joyce Glenn here first because she's the star. The only thing I want from a lead character in a movie is to be able to root for them and care if they succeed, and she gives us that. I think it's particularly important here, because there's this added element of the case is about to be taken away from her, so if we don't care enough, we'd be like "fine, let the Feds handle it." This is one of the things I like about these Tubi Originals, they give an actor like Glenn who's been doing more supporting stuff a chance to lead a film, and while you need to have a thick skin with this kind of thing (some of the reviews of these are harsh, to say the least), if you take it and run with it like Glenn did, hopefully other people making movies will see it and cast you as the lead in their projects as well. I don't know that a movie like this could have a sequel, because you can't have it be "Checkmate 2" and go back to that chess well again, but can it be a sequel if it's not called "Checkmate 2?"; but I think another serial killer procedural with Glenn at the lead and Lamas and Wilson back would be worth the watch.

We last saw Lorenzo Lamas back in October of 2021 when we covered Atomic Eden, where Lamas had a cameo at the end, so he got the tag. And I think that's why I hadn't done another Lamas film in so long, because I was afraid they were going to be like that with scant Lamas, and at least Atomic Eden had more names to discuss. I took a chance on this one though, and I'd say we were rewarded. He has a solid supporting roles as a good leader who cares about Glenn's character, believes in her, and wants her to succeed. This could've done that the other way and had him be a jerk who's opposing her, but doing it the way they did allowed Glenn to lean on Lamas's experience in the scenes they had together, which gave the movie a more organic feel overall. (The same thing is true of her scenes with Dorien Wilson, so I wonder if the filmmakers decided to go with more of that, than her scenes with Andra Fuller's Brad, because there was more chemistry between Glenn and Wilson or Lamas.) This is now 36 movies for Lamas, so the 40 Club is something we should aim for with him. I have him seventh all-time among DTV stars, but with Adkins at 8 close on his heels, we should get him to 40 before Adkins hits that mark at least. I see our old friends The Asylum have another Tubi Original with Lamas in it, President Down, with Gail O'Grady as the Commander in Chief, so we'll have to do that at some point. Also, based on how he looks here, could he play the lead in a Jim Jarmusch biopic?

I want to get into the people involved in creating this a bit, because I think they're worth highlighting as well. First we have director Jamal Hill, who grew up here in Philly. He has a fair amount of directing credits to his name, including Deuces with Larenz Tate and Meagan Good, and that shows in the film we get. It's competently made, even if it was a genre film made on a budget, and in some ways it's the genre film made on a budget that needs a solid professional director to carry it home, because it's easier to miss things when everything's tight and done on the quick. Our DP was Tyler Eckels, whose work I'd also seen in 72 Hours, a Phillippe Phactory film Ty and I covered on episode 224 of the DTVC Podcast. Unlike that film, which wasn't as well-lit or the color was turned down in post-production, here we get some nice shots, especially with the Louisville skyline in the background; and overall this movie looked nice, which we don't often see nowadays, everything's usually darker and more washed out, so that was refreshing too. I did think the screen POV shots like the one below weren't as effective, but that might've just been me. And last but not least, the screenwriter was Patrice Escoto, and I think she does a solid enough job on this. I wondered though how much of her script she expected to be in the final product. There were some lines that felt more like placeholders that look good in an initial draft, but when spoken out loud don't sound as natural. Also the story gives away the game in the opening scene, which may not have been as obvious in writing it, but seeing it live I think they could've used a couple more red herrings. The story does a good job in making Brittany a compelling lead though, and Glenn then takes that and fleshes it out, which is the most important thing. 

Finally, as I've mentioned a couple times, this took place in Louisville, Kentucky. I've been to the state of Kentucky before, but not Louisville. I bring this up because I think for most people, outside of the Kentucky Derby, we don't know much about Louisville, and it felt like this movie missed a trick in not giving us a more complete view of the city. I browsed Google Maps a bit, and saw a place called Burger Boy that looked like a nice deal, and even if they couldn't shoot there, could Brad have brought food from there when he and Brittany had an eat-in date?--instead of the "Thai" he said he was bringing, that ended up just being a salad. I also saw a coffee shop called Blak Coffee that looked nice, and even if you couldn't have shot there, maybe Brittany brings her dad a coffee from there when they meet at the park. It doesn't have to be like Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives, but Louisville isn't New York or Chicago, if a film features it we need more to make it its own character in the story--or at least I'd like more.

And with that, let's wrap this up. As a Tubi Original, it's available on Tubi, so you can stream it for free, you just have to deal with commercials (which, there's one for a credit card collaboration with a retail chain that has this song that goes "wake up call," but it sounds like "wake up, Carl," so that gets in my head and my cats are wondering "who's Carl?" as I'm singing it to them). I think this is worth checking out on there, especially if you're a fan of these kinds of procedurals, and hopefully we'll get more like this from the people involved in the future.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt35675045

And check out my newest novel, Mark in Sales, on Amazon in paperback and Kindle.

Judgement Day (1999)

I was looking to get more Ice-T on the site, and I saw that this was on Tubi. In addition to him, it has Mario Van Peebles, was written by Fred Olen Ray, Cole S. McKay was stunt coordinator, and has stars from two of my favorite shows, Barney Miller and Beverly Hills, 90210. In that sense, it was less about whether I should review it, and more about why I hadn't done it already! In addition to us, Matt Spector at Bulletproof has covered this as well.

Judgement Day is about an asteroid that's heading for earth in three days. Higher-ups Max Gail and James Eckhouse want to use a device developed by Linden Ashby to intercept and destroy it, the problem is, Mario Van Peebles and his religious cult have kidnapped Ashby because they don't want the asteroid stopped. Gail thinks he has a leak in his department, so he gets FBI agent Suzy Amis to track Ashby down, but she can't do it alone, so she gets Ice-T out of prison, because he has a score to settle with Van Peebles himself. It's a race against time now, will it be relief accompanied by smiles and hardy handshakes in the war room, or doom and destruction?

You can probably guess the outcome, and to be fair, who wants to be deprived of those smiles of relief and hardy handshakes after the planet's been saved? Especially knowing Wojo and Jim Walsh are in the war room hoping Linden Ashby's device works. On the way there, there's almost a 48 Hours interplay between Amis and Ice-T as they track down Van Peeble's base of operations, which is a nice twist on the disaster movie that I'm surprised The Asylum hasn't used more often. That said, the Fred Olen Ray story has that feel of a few story templates fused together, and it might not have worked, except for the prodigious cast I listed above. For example, in addition to Van Peebles, Tom "Tiny" Lister is his right hand man. A rival drug dealer Ice-T and Amis go to for info is played by Coolio. Amis's boyfriend is Larry Poindexter--and no, unfortunately he doesn't drive a car while blasting Guns N' Roses' "Move to the City." Once you have all these names, it's just a matter of getting in and out in 90 minutes, having a few good action moments spread throughout, and then letting those names cook, and I feel like this one does all that.

We're at 19 movies now for Ice-T, and I think this might be my favorite of his performances. Also his screen time in this is probably more than four or five of the other movies of his we've covered combined, which was refreshing too. He's in the Hall of Fame for a reason, and this reinforces that. The moment he's onscreen, you know it's going to be good, but then there's the mix of hard edge and off-beat and quirky that allows him to thrive in the 48 Hours paradigm. The other thing about Ice-T is he was a rapper first, and this movie uses one of his songs, which is also fantastic. I don't know if between rights issues or studio time if he recorded a fresh track that it's realistic to expect every Ice-T movie to have his music in it, but it would be nice if more of them did, because it was a great touch here. We haven't done one of his films in two years, so I need to rectify that and get more of his stuff up more frequently, because he's always a great time.

I'm going to try not to go too fast and furious (Vin Diesel style) as I get through the other names in this, but there's a lot, so buckle up. First, among Hall of Famers, we have Cole S. McKay as stunt coordinator, plus he's in one scene which you can see above. We're at 65 for him now, and I have at least one other movie of his in the can that I need to review, so he'll be up to 66 soon enough. Then we have Fred Olen Ray as screenwriter. I think this is the fifth movie of his we've done that he wrote, but because he didn't direct this doesn't add to that total for him, which I think stands at 17, second-most all time among directors. Mario Van Peebles is great as the baddie, he gives you everything you want there, and is a name we always enjoy seeing on the site. Same for the late Tom "Tiny" Lister, who plays Van Peebles's righthand man, and gives you everything you want in that role. Then we have Linden Ashby, someone we've seen a few times and probably should be tagged. His part's not as big, but it's vital, so it was good they cast someone like him in the role. I mentioned Larry Poindexter. He probably gets it the worst in this, but that's okay, he'll always have American Ninja 2. Then as a big Barney Miller fan, how do you not love Wojo? We've seen him here before too, in particular DC Cab comes to mind, but here he's great as higher up tasked with stopping the asteroid. Fans of Firestorm (not sure if there are any of those out there) would know Suzy Amis, who ended up marrying James Cameron after this and hasn't done another movie since. If you're going to go out, why not have it be an Ice-T DTV flick written by Fred Olen Ray and directed by John Terlesky. That's right, Deathstalker II and Chopping Mall's John Terlesky directed this, as he did another Van Peebles/Ice-T film we did a couple years ago, Guardian. Finally, we'd be remiss if we didn't mention the late Coolio in a one-scene cameo. I don't know how many movies aren't improved by a Coolio one-scene cameo, and this film certainly wasn't an exception.

One name you may have noticed that's missing above is James Eckhouse, aka Jim Walsh from Beverly Hills, 90210. I wanted to give him his own paragraph, because I think he's one of the best TV dads of all time, but he never gets included on that list. Maybe that's because he was a little young to be playing a father to kids born in the early 70s, considering he was only born in 1955, but I always loved how he and Carol Potter's Cindy Walsh were the two grounding forces on the show. That might be why the show wrote them out eventually, because I think they wanted to untether the kids somewhat and let them find their way without the Walshes there to provide stability. Who knows what the reason was, but I'd take the Pepsi Challenge with James Eckhouse's Jim Walsh against any other TV dad out there, other than maybe Hugh Beaumont's Ward Cleaver and Robert Reed's Mike Brady. So, here's to you James Eckhouse, you're one of the great ones.

Finally, we get two common movie lines in this. The first one is so common Will at Exploding Helicopter has a Letterboxd list for movies that feature it, and that's "we've got company," which we get when Tom "Tiny" Lister is trying to drive off with Van Peebles, his wife (Shireen Crutchfield), and their bounty, Linden Ashby, when Lister notices the cops are coming and gives us the line. The second one was "it's the 90s." Anyone who lived through the 90s knows what this means, anything that was considered outside the bounds of conservative, buttoned-up, Reagan 80s culture was now given a grudging acceptance with those three little words, "it's the 90s." Women standing up for themselves? "Hey, it's the 90s, am I right?" Gay people demanding more rights? "I mean, to each their own, it's the 90s after all." Sinead O'Connor ripping up a picture of the Pope? "Okay, let's not get carried away..." Here it's within an off-beat, quirky, and slightly homophobic back and forth between Ice-T and Suzy Amis that we get the line, when Ice-T asks why she's not married, then asks if she's a lesbian, to which he explains he doesn't have a problem with it if she is, because "it's the 90s." Maybe we need a little bit more "it's the 90s" in our society today, because, man "it's the 2020s" covers a whole host of bonkersness that I don't even want to start on.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently stream this on Tubi here in the States, which I think is a great deal. The names alone sell it, but in a sea of thumbnails on a streaming services, sometimes that's all you need. Hell, it's the 2020s, am I right?

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0221309

And check out my newest novel, Mark in Sales, on Amazon in paperback and Kindle.

Falcon Rising (2014)

This is one I covered on the podcast way back on episode 29 in January of 2015, and had been meaning to review it on here ever since, but Michael Jai White has had so much new stuff come out since then that it was lost in the shuffle. In addition to us, this is a Superfecta Movie, as Chris the Brain at Bulletproof, Ty and Brett at Comeuppance, and Mitch at the Video Vacuum have all covered this as well.

Falcon Rising has White as a special forces veteran dealing with PTSD whose sister (Laila Ali) is nearly beaten to death down in Brazil in the favela she's working with as part of an NGO or something. He gets on the first plane down from "New York" to investigate, where his old war buddy Neil McDonough is there working for the State Department, and happy to help. As he digs deeper, what was initially sold to him as her getting involved in a dispute between drug dealers in the favelas, doesn't quite wash, and that's when the classic 2010s boogie man of trafficking rears it's ugly head. Add in some Yakuza and crooked cops, and Mr. White has a lot to contend with. That's okay, he's a pretty big guy, he can manage.

This is a pretty sweet deal. It has that mix of action and character development we've seen from other Ernie Barbarash films like Pound of Flesh, as the film starts with White playing Russian Roulette while remembering fallen comrades, and then going to the classic liquor store armed robbery scene where he needs to beat the two robbers senseless. We then lose the action a bit, but once we get it back, it's some of the best stuff of the decade, with some great fight scenes anchored by White's immense skills. In one scene, he's fighting off five Yakuza and doing all kinds of holds with his legs, like locking a leg around their necks while shooting other guys. This also employs a bit of the Gun Fu that John Wick was popularizing at the time, though with this coming out in 2014 too, maybe it was more of a polygenesis. We also get a nice reverse over-the-shoulder neck break for people who are connoisseurs of neck breaks in movies. It is a little long at 100 minutes, but once the film picks up its momentum, it's a series of one great fight scene after the next.

We're now at 29 movies for Michael Jai White, so he's one away from the 30 Club, which is something we'll probably make happen for him sometime in April (the movie I have in the can for him, MR9: Do or Die doesn't have him in it much, so we won't do that one.) This is the electric stuff we want from MJW, and in looking over his IMDb bio, I was trying to see where this fit all-time for him. Definitely below Black Dynamite and Blood and Bone, but from there, he has some great movies where he's more of a supporting player, like Accident Man and Triple Threat, ones like The Hard Way that aren't horrible but not classics, and then some rough ones that he tries to make better, like Chain of Command or The Commando. So does that make this third all-time for him among the ones I've seen? Maybe Don't Mess with Grandma is above this too because of how much fun it is, but that might be it. If it is his fourth-best, it's worthy if only for his great fights. One of the knocks on him--and I've made it myself--is that he doesn't take any hits, but here we get a better sense of why that is. Recently Ty and I watched Shrapnel, a film where Jason Patric walks around with an assault rifle and shoots Mexican cartel members who can't hit him despite shooting hundreds of rounds of CGI bullets. In that sense, I get why White is like "why can't I be afforded that same luxury?" And to that extent, this movie fits that pattern, we could've swapped out White for any number of Jason Patric, Cam Gigandet, or Kellen Lutz, but what makes this work is that White is such a great martial arts practitioner. We have a ton of recent stuff of his I need to catch up on, and since a chunk of it is on Starz, maybe I can make it happen while I have the cheap subscription for it.

This is our fifth Ernie Barbarash film, which means it's probably time he gets tagged, the only thing is, I don't know how many more movies of his we'll do. Abduction with Scott Adkins might be the last one, because now he's doing Christmas movies and schlock "go back to the old family farm in a Southern red state and see what really matters most in life" kinds of films--which, I'm sure those movies don't get into the family farms that are struggling due to market consolidation or companies like John Deere that prevent them from fixing their own farm equipment, but that's neither here nor there. For the other four films of his we've covered, there's the three he did with Van Damme, Pound of Flesh, 6 Bullets, and Assassination Games, and then Hardwired with Cuba Gooding Jr. and Val Kilmer. The thing I noticed though is, other than the last of those four, they're all longer, at least 100 minutes, but some nearing two hours, which is not something I see with his Christmas movies, as those need to be 90-minute get in and get out affairs, so I do wonder if while he's doing these Christmas movies if he wishes he could do the more substantial actioners he used to do. I guess the market's not there for it anymore, so Christmas Under the Northern Lights with Jill Wagner of late 2000s Mercury commercials fame is his best bet to make a living now.

We often talk about what I call the "baddie in a can," bad guys that can appear out of anywhere and don't require any development for us to know they're bad. This film employs two, the armed liquor store robbers, and the dreaded traffickers. The armed liquor store robbers is your classic fare. I don't remember the last time an action lead went into a liquor store to grab a fifth of Jack Daniels, that the place wasn't robbed while he was in there. And kudos to the stuntmen who play the robbers in these scenes, your work taking a beating from the hero is commendable, because without you we wouldn't have the action amuse bouche that is the thwarted liquor store robbery. With the trafficking, the film decides to go in a more realistic direction. Instead of young, upper-middle-class white women, they went with young girls who live in the forgotten lower classes of society, humans that are considered expendable, but who are the real victims of trafficking. And the decision to go that route, while more realistic, is hard to watch. No, they don't anything graphic, but seeing 10-12-year-old girls sitting on the floor of a basement is rough enough. In that sense, maybe we want this fake, urban legend version of trafficking that most films today employ, because it's easier to stomach in the 90-minute escape from reality we want out of these DTV actioners. Maybe, but I can't fault this film for depicting it in a more realistic way like they did.

Finally, while this was filmed in Puerto Rico, it takes place in Rio de Janeiro and New York City, two of the five biggest metro areas in the Western Hemisphere. Other than some establishing shots, the New York was definitely not New York, and it always fascinates me when people try to have other places pass for New York, but I imagine it must be the same thing for Rio if someone's familiar with it too. I also get why they would've filmed in Puerto Rico instead of Rio. I don't think there are any direct flights from the US to Rio outside of Carnival season, and even if there were, that's like a ten-hour flight. You definite save money and ease logistics if you can find locations in Puerto Rico that are good enough. That doesn't explain the New York thing though. While Rio's favelas played a key role in the film's story, New York played no part. White's character could've lived anywhere in the US, and it would've worked for us--in fact, they didn't even need to say where he lived, and we would've been fine with it. I get the budgetary limitations of shooting in New York, but considering how New York is a character in itself, doubling it but not needing it would be like having Seagal's stunt double in the film, but just having him sit there and mumble something in the early scenes, and never appear in the film again.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can get this on many streamers here in the US, including Tubi. Despite the longer runtime, it has some great MJW moments, so for a free streamer it's worth checking out. And you can also check out the podcast episode in the archives, episode 29.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2295722

And check out my newest novel, Mark in Sales, on Amazon in paperback and Kindle.