Kill 'Em All 2 (2024)

This is one we covered on the podcast, along with the first movie, back in episode 199, with guest Sean Malloy of I Must Break This Podcast. The plan was to review it here soon after, but when my wife and I dialed down our Netflix subscription to the ad version, I discovered that many titles, including this one, were now gated and unavailable to subscribers at our tier. So that was it, if I couldn't stream it I couldn't get screens, until recently, when Netflix released all of these movies, giving me this opportunity. In addition to us, Chris the Brain at Bulletproof Action has covered this as well.

Kill 'Em All 2 picks up some years after part one left off. Phillip (Van Damme) and his daughter Vanessa (Jacqueline Fernandez) are living in Italy, having a relaxing time, when the brother of the guy he killed in the first one (Andrei Lenart) finds them and tries to exact revenge. Unable to take them on alone, Phillip and Vanessa go back to his extended family for help. It'll take everything they have to take this baddie down, and eventually, kill 'em all.

There are two places we should go with this. First, why do we have this film, especially 7 years later? No one was clamoring for a Kill 'Em All 2, and I don't remember leaving Kill 'Em All thinking this is setting up for a sequel. And it isn't like this was made as something else and repackaged as Kill 'Em All 2 to capitalize on the name--which, again, why is Kill 'Em All a name we're capitalizing on? This story was a continuation of the previous one, with characters returning to reprise their roles, including Peter Stomare and Maria Conchita Alonso (who, in her case, really only has a scene or two). So that's the first question, why do we even have this? But we do, and I'm writing a review on it, so the second place to go is, is it any good? For that I would say yeah, it's not bad, at least if we're grading it on the 2020s-level DTV action curve. And that's probably where it's found success on Netflix. Their algorithm is great at suggesting things to people, and the people the algorithm suggested it to liked it because it's not bad for a 2020s DTV actioner. So maybe we didn't need this and don't know why we have it, but we do, and while it's not a world-changer, it's not bad either, and worth a look if you're a Van Damme fan and curious about what he's been up to recently.

Speaking of Van Damme, I wonder what he thought when he was approached with the idea of a sequel to Kill 'Em All. I can't imagine that alone sold him, but maybe a week or two shooting on the Adriatic coast of Italy sealed the deal. (I mean, forget the Adriatic coast in Italy, I would take an all expenses paid trip to Des Moines or Boise or Wichita or something like that to write this blog and record the podcast--not to knock any of those places, I'm sure they're lovely, and if the chambers of commerce or tourism bureaus of those cities or any others in America want me to spend a week there and extoll their virtues, just send me an email, I'm just saying compared to the Adriatic coast of Italy, they'd be a bit wanting, which I think is fair.) In terms of recent Van Damme, it's a bit more action than drama, which is nice, but it's also more of the more mature Van Damme, where he's okay that his leading lady is his daughter and not his love interest. I appreciate that, and I think it makes the movie itself less unseemly, which makes any flaws it might have more forgivable. We're now at 36 movies for Van Damme (he has 37 tags because one is the Van Damme Film Fest for post 400), so if we do The Gardiner, with the three other DTV films of his we need to do, the 40 Club is in range. Maybe we make that happen this year?

As we mentioned above, Jacqueline Fernandez plays Van Damme's character's daughter. She's a Bollywood actor who, as far as I can tell, hasn't done anything else outside of that market other than this film. I wonder if that was the idea though, see if people who are fans of her Bollywood work might stream this the ways fans of Van Damme's career would, and with Netflix having a lot of Bollywood films, it would be easy for the algorithm to push this to people who are watching her other movies on there--and again, maybe for her the draw is shooting on the beautiful Adriatic coast of Italy, which, like Van Damme, I don't blame her. She was value-add here though, I thought she and Van Damme were good together as father and daughter, which is what you need if you're selling this to action fans as a fun 90-minute stream. With how successful this film was on Netflix, maybe they'll be looking to cast her in more movies like this, or other Bollywood stars to cash in on this crossover effect. I'm all for it, it gets someone like me digging through Bollywood films on IMDb bios, which puts them on my radar, and maybe it gets Bollywood fans doing the same thing with these DTV actioners.

The DTV sequel is a multifaceted phenomenon that we've seen in its many iterations myriad times on the site since we started in 2007. The one people most think of is the DTV sequel to the theatrical film, which can turn a one-off into a franchise. Van Damme's had two films in particular do this, Kickboxer and Bloodsport, which both had a series of DTV sequels that didn't have him in them at all; he's also done DTV sequels of his own theatrical movies too, like the Universal Soldier films. There's also the sequel-in-name-only sequel, the best example of which is the Bloodfist films, where Corman got the crazy Grinchy idea while shooting a prison film with Don "The Dragon" Wilson to just rename it Bloodfist III, even if the only connection to the first two Bloodfist films was Wilson, and led to five more "sequels" after that. Another one is the Superman/Superman II approach, where, like those two films, you get the actors in one location, and shoot two or three films all at once. A great example of this is the two Randall Scandal Fortress movies. Adjacent to that is what I call the Godfrey Ho sequel, where footage of the first film is spliced with newly shot footage, or other archival footage. Two great examples of that are Detective Malone, the fourth Black Cobra film, which is just footage of the first two cobbled together; and Gladiator Cop aka The Swordsman II, where new footage with James Hong was spliced with old footage of Lorenzo Lamas from The Swordsman. And then we have where this one falls, the who-was-asking-for-this? sequel. Speaking of Lamas, you could make a case that the Snake Eater films fall into this category. Another would be the Relentless films. I mean, I love Leo Rossi, but who was clamoring for two Relentless films, let alone four? Now some of this might dovetail with the sequel-in-name-only sequel, where a studio gets a script and thinks "what if we rework this into a sequel for another movie we already have out there?", because the name recognition, however scant it may be, does exist on some level; on the other hand, it can be a double-edged sword, because people may think they need to find the first one to understand what's happening in the new one. It's always a gamble in the DTV world, and whether to make a film a sequel or not is part of that. I'll finish this long paragraph by mentioning the late Daniel Zirilli, who seemed to always leave the door open for a sequel at the ends of his movies. There weren't many who understood the DTV market better than him, and I think this was another example.

Finally, I thought I'd dedicate a second paragraph to Van Damme, even if this might be stealing the thunder of a potential 40 Club post later this year. The fact that he's closing in on that milestone, on top of the great career he had as a big screen action star, is something unique that I think is worth drawing attention to. I can only think of two other people who would be in this category, Seagal and Spiro Razatos. With Seagal, his big screen career, at least for me, is weighted heavily on his first four films, and I don't know that anything after Under Siege I'd put in an all-time classics category--and for me Under Siege wouldn't go in that category either. Compare that to Van Damme, whose 90s stuff includes Hard Target, Timecop, and Sudden Death. And then compare their DTV/post-big screen careers, where Seagal became more and more of a punchline, while Van Damme has stuff like JCVD and The Bouncer. Razatos is a different one, because he was DTV first, then became the foremost stunt coordinator/second unit director of the 2010s. Also, we're only at 27 movies for Razatos, so we have a ways to go to get him to the 40 Club. It just goes to highlight the great career Van Damme has had, and while it hasn't been without its ups and downs, this DTV second act in particular has been much better than it needed to be, and he deserves a lot of credit for making it that great.

And with that we'll wrap this up. This is currently on Netflix, though it may or may not be gated based on your plan. I think if you can get it as part of your Netflix subscription, it's worth checking out, especially if you're a Van Damme fan. And don't forget to check out the podcast episode Sean and I did on this and the first film, number 199 in the archives.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6549510

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

Cop Game (1988)

This is one I'd been meaning to do for a long time, and seeing it recommended to me countless times on Tubi, plus considering I needed to get more Bruno Mattei on the site, I decided to finally take the plunge. In addition to us, Ty and Brett and Comeuppance (whose review was quoted on the Severin Blu-ray) and Simon at Explosive Action have covered this as well.

Cop Game is about a special forces unit in 'Nam that's gone rogue and is killing officers during the last days of the war. Military Police detectives Brent Huff and Max Laurel are called in to find out what's happening, and end up getting a lot more than they bargained for. This either goes all the way to the top, or is somewhere in the middle but is causing issues for the top, but either way, it's not good for anyone. As Huff and Laurel go in deeper they don't know who they can trust, and it doesn't help that the Vietnam War they're living in looks like late '80s Manila. Will they get out alive?

This one was a fun time, but I think it may only qualify as a fun time for people who like these kinds of movies. Like do you get a little thrill if you see Mike Monty or Jim Gaines? Then it's for you. Do you like seeing what name Bruno Mattei will be using instead of his own? Then it's for you. ("Bob Hunter" if you're wondering.) Do you like Brent Huff yelling at people and dressing like he just rolled out of bed? Then it's for you. Once you get past those things, I think the most it has to offer is Mattei not caring how much his movie that's supposed to take place in the closing days of the Vietnam War looks like it took place in 1980s Manila, which adds to the charm when you're watching it in 2026. Also, Tubi has the Severin version, which looks really nice, and while I think there's additional charm in finding an old Japanese VHS with hardcoded subs, my eyesight is getting worse as I get older, so a cleaned up version helps. Maybe not the classic for me that Strike Commando or Robowar is, but how many things are? If you're looking for some Mattei fun to help you forget your troubles for 90 minutes, this will do the trick.

We're now at six movies for Mattei, which is low, but in looking at his IMDb bio, I don't know that we'll get him that much higher, I see maybe four or five other movies of his that we could review. That's okay though, in this case it's quality over quantity, so to speak, because he's made some classics, and while this one isn't quite that for me, it's plenty fun enough. Nines are wild for the three other names people would recognize here, as this is the ninth film for Brent Huff, Mike Monty, and Jim Gaines--who is finally getting tagged on here, not sure why it took so long. Obviously Huff is the star, and while on the surface he looks like he cares as much about his role as Mattei does about anachronisms, as you watch the film you can see him bring it, which is what gets this thing over the goal line and makes it enjoyable. Monty I believe has one blink and you'll miss it scene that's been taken from another movie where he's piloting a helicopter, which isn't much, but enough to get him another tag. And then Gaines is one of a character named Ludge's henchmen (that's his character name, "Ludge's Henchman), who we're going to get into in the next paragraph. It's definitely more than Monty--and was actually newly shot footage!--but still a small part. Either way, we'll take any Gaines we can get.

Back to Ludge, he's in the shot above, holding Huff at gunpoint. He's getting his own paragraph here because his name is Donald Wilson, credited as "Don Wilson." That's right, the same name as DTVC Hall of Famer and one of the greatest to ever do it, Don "The Dragon" Wilson. You may remember a controversy that came up a few years ago where we didn't know how many movies Don "The Dragon" Wilson had been in based on his IMDb bio, and we here had reviewed two films, Siege of Firebase Gloria and Saigon Commandos, that we gave tags to "The Dragon" for, only to discover IMDb took those movies off his bio. That led to a delay in getting that Don Wilson into the 40 Club. I believe Will at Exploding Helicopter had a similar issue, because removing these movies lowered Don "The Dragon's" films with exploding helicopters count. Now we have a face to put with the other Don Wilson, who's now listed on IDMb as "Donald Wilson" to avoid confusion. He's a bit of a Philippines movie mainstay, maybe not at the level of Monty or Gaines, but he's done a good number of films with greats like Mattei and Cirio H. Santiago, so we'll definitely see him again. As far as the confusion goes, this is what happens when we wade in the murky waters of 80s DTV films, combined with relying on the murky waters of a crowdsourced site like IMDb, but we wouldn't have it any other way--actually we would, we'd like to have a reliable way to know exactly how many movies each actor has done! 

As much as I've been extolling the virtues of this film, it had its flaws, and not all of them were endearing like Mattei not caring about making the film look more early 70s or more Saigon. First, in our quest to find more Presidential Portraits, Mattei teases us with all these shots of governmental offices, yet sans Presidential Portraits! How am I supposed to take these governmental offices seriously as governmental offices without a Nixon hanging on the wall? And we need a Nixon, we've never gotten one before! One theory is these movies didn't want to platform Nixon based on how bad he was, which is an interesting one. Like in 15 years will movies have Trump portraits? I mean I guess if we go full fascist like it looks like we're going, it might be required to have his portraits in everything by then. Either way, the search for a Nixon continues, with no help from Mattei. He also didn't help our friend Will with any exploding helicopters, but the same way he teased us with multiple governmental offices, he teased us as well with not only multiple helicopters, but helicopters engaged in firefights! Come on Mattei, you didn't have a stock helicopter explosion you could mix in? (And I selfishly wanted that exploding helicopter so I could get my number on his Letterboxd list up.) The only thing we had was the Manila Chinatown, which we'd seen before in Bloodfist, but here we also had the Friendship Arch, plus the novelty that it was supposed to be in Saigon, so I guess you take your wins when you can get them.

Finally, we get a great theme song in this, one of the best parts of the movie actually, but despite that, I had "Head Games" by Foreigner replaced with "Cop Game" in my head. Growing up in the 80s, I know Foreigner is a big deal, but they haven't had a hit in a long time, and I worry that they'll be a victim, if they haven't been already, of this growing trend of kids saying a huge band or artist from the past is "underrated," just because they've never really heard of them. Again, maybe I'm creating a strawman here because I haven't seen anywhere that anyone has said Foreigner is underrated, but they're the kind of act that would be labeled as such by the kids. The worst offender was one my wife told about where a kid said George Michael was underrated. No, he was rated, and a quick check on Wikipedia would tell you that. "Regarded as a pop culture icon, he is one of the best-selling recording artists of all time... [h]e was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2023. The Radio Academy named him the most played artist on British radio during the period 1984–2004." That's literally in the first paragraph about him, he was never "underrated." For any of you kids reading this, if you have a notion to say "Foreigner is underrated," I also suggest looking them up on Wikipedia, where, again, in the first paragraph, it says: "Foreigner is one of the best-selling bands of all time, with worldwide sales exceeding 80 million records, including 38 million in the US."

And with that, it's probably best that we wrapped this up. If you're into physical media, Severin has a Blu-ray that's on sale as of this writing--and again quotes Ty and Brett's review on the cover. If you want to give it a test run first, the Severin transfer is on Tubi, which maybe doesn't have the charm of hard-coded Japanese subs, but it looks nice. Either way, this is a fun time and worth checking out.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094909

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

Midnight Warrior (1989)

For our PM review for April, I wanted to get this one in, because I had discussed it recently on an episode of the PM Entertainment Podcast, where I was part of a three-person weave along with host Jon Cross and Chris the Brain from Bulletproof Action. In addition to us, Ty and Brett at Comeuppance have covered this as well.

Midnight Warrior, aka "Mid-night Warr-ee-orr," stars Kevin Bernhardt as Nick Branca, a young Italian-American man who doesn't know how to eat spaghetti properly, but is great at finding provocative footage of news stories that he can sell to local TV stations for good money. One night as he's out chasing one of these stories, he saves a woman from a burning car after a PM-style crash. That makes him a hero, and everyone wants him to cover their stories now. The problem? Branca has found a nice girl from up the street named Angelina Mantucci (Lilly Melgar), and after a date or two he decides he wants to leave the Mid-night Warr-ee-orr life and settle down. His slimy boss Buddy (Bernie Angel) doesn't like the idea of his cash cow calling it quits, so he makes a decision on his own to do something to bring Branca back. But will this decision be his undoing?

We're do you go with this one? Great soundtrack? Check, as I'm writing this, I have the theme song in my head, which was just "Mid-night Warr-ee-orr" repeated as B-roll of LA at night flashed before us. Well-shot? For sure, Joseph Mehri's direction with Rick Pepin's cinematography was great. What about the acting? For the most part it worked--though poor Nonna in the extended family scene having to follow Bernhardt's all over the place card tricks and riffing for Rick Pepin's daughters was a tough spot to put her in. It's the story where we lose it I think. The premise was great, but early on we kind of don't know where it's going, then when we think we do, the rug is pulled out from under us in the kind of bonkers twist only PM could give us. We also get our PM car explosions and pizza joint owners getting shot through plate glass windows that mitigate any of the missteps. The fact that this would be number 2 on the spine if all the PM films were rereleased in original release order is a mark in its favor as well. If you've seen a lot of PM films, and you're looking for one to kill 90 minutes, I think this is a great choice.

This is our 57th PM film on the site, and I'd say if I were ranking them all, I'd put this in the bottom half. It's not horrible, but it's not one of those all-time PM classics either. As Jon, Chris, and I discussed on the PM pod, it seemed like the PM crew were still figuring things out, so this was the film where they learned to walk so later in the 90s they'd be able to drag Jack Scalia on a satellite dish from the back of a bread truck that's speeding down the highway. An interesting note on this, it's Joseph Mehri's 16th directing credit, which puts him one behind Fred Olen Ray for second all-time on the site, after Albert Pyun's 44ish (depending on how we count some of his films that were finished by someone else). That begs an interesting question: could he go into the Hall of Fame again? He and Richard Pepin are both in together as the P and M of PM Entertainment, and I only tag them separately for their directing work--which may not be fair to Pepin, because he did a lot of great cinematography work that he's not tagged for. Because my Hall of Fame is based off of sports halls of fame, I did some digging. The Baseball Hall of Fame says no, you only get inducted once, and that covers everything. The Basketball one on the other hand, does allow for multiple inductions, like in the case where a team was inducted, then allowing for an individual to be inducted as well. An example of this would be Michael Jordan, who was inducted as part of the Dream Team, and as an NBA player. So maybe not only Merhi, but Pepin as well should have their own individual inductions. It's worth considering.

The premise that this film was based on, "if it bleeds, it leads," was something that has only gotten worse in the intervening 30-plus years, not better. If you watch the news here in Philly, you'd think we were all living in RoboCop's Detroit or something; and the cable news phenomenon just exacerbated things even more. In 2016 Trump became the perfect "if it bleeds, it leads" president, where everything he did warranted a "breaking news" chyron at the bottom of the screen. None of the media outlets could handle it in 2020 when Biden was elected, the chyron looked silly when it was "Biden's dog bit one of his secret service detail." I guess that's the same as starting a coup to prevent a lawful transfer of power, tomato-tomahto, right? But this is what's fascinating about DTV films from this time, they may have missed the mark on a lot of Sci-Fi stuff, but they were spot on about a lot of socio-cultural stuff like this. The thing they couldn't have predicted though was OJ, he took what was happening in the late 80s/early 90s, and supercharged it. Bernie Angel would've had Bernhardt coming out of retirement to follow OJ during the Bronco Chase. And had it been PM, the Bronco would've flipped through a police car barricade, only for Bernhardt to save OJ before it exploded.

Usually this paragraph would be a round-up of all the other cast and crew, but because there weren't many other people to discuss, I thought I'd use it as a round-up of all the other bonkers moments I missed. First, near the beginning, we find out that Bernie Angel's character's base of operations is a diner. He has his own circular booth, with TVs plugged in via extension cords, and all manner of papers and documents strewn about. Even in 1989, who did that? Even in a café today, they'd see that and say "um, no... no, you can't do that here." Later, our hero visits his mom, who makes him some pasta. When he meets the neighbor lady, his face is covered in red sauce, like he'd never eaten pasta in his life, or forgot how to use a fork to put food in his mouth. After he saves the woman from the burning car, a local TV reporter goes to his house so they can hook up. When he gets home though, he doesn't know who's there, he just sees clothes lying around and hears the shower get turned on. His first thought is it's his mother visiting. What? Does his mother use his shower a lot? And does she leave her clothes lying around too? I mentioned above about poor Nonna. I have no idea what that was, it was some extended family thing that Bernhardt's character and Melgar's character were attending, but whose family was it, his or hers? And why was he doing a magic trick for Rick Pepin's kids? Then he finishes by having Nonna do some, while he hits on Melgar's character, and the best Nonna can think to do is sing a song from the Old World. Your guess was as good as mine. Finally, when our hero and the neighbor lady are back at his place, she mentions wanting a dog, and his response is to go on this soliloquy about why he prefers birds. It was so fantastic, Jon created a shirt for it that you can buy on the PM Entertainment Podcast Threadless page. I've been meaning to get one myself!

Finally, look at that image above. Do you see the "Bo Knows" ad in the upper right corner? As a kid in the late 80s, it didn't get any better than Bo Jackson. I'd watch This Week in Baseball and couldn't wait to see what Bo Jackson highlights they had for us, like when he tried to call time out then hit a home run anyway when the ump wouldn't grant it; or when he threw Harold Reynolds out at home on a play he had no business making. His time with the Raiders I didn't see as much, because the late afternoon AFC game was usually blacked out after the Patriots were on in the early window, so we always had the CBS NFC game in that window, but I remember the highlights of him trucking Brian Bosworth to get a touchdown. As a running back, he threw his body into defenders like he had a spare at home in the closet, so it probably wasn't so much that he got injured and it cut his career short as much as he managed to not get injured for so long despite playing like that. Either way, he was a force, and we may never see anyone like him again. 

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can stream this on Fawesome here in the States, plus there's a decent version on YouTube which is included in my PM Entertainment playlist, which you can find on our DTVC YouTube channel. And also don't forget to check out the episode we did on the PM Entertainment Podcast!

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0145082

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

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.