Hunt Club (2022)

This was covered on episode 232 of the DTVC Podcast, back on October 14, when Ty and I did our Mickey Rourke double feature, "Rourke to Oblivion," and with Casper Van Dien, I figured it needed a review on here too. In addition to us, Chad Cruise at Bulletproof has covered this as well.

Hunt Club features Mena Suvari as Cassandra, a mother whose daughter disappeared. After a chance meeting with Tessa (Maya Stojan), a woman with a specific set of skills, they track the daughter's last known location to party a bunch of rich men throw on a remote island on a lake in the woods. Cassandra infiltrates the party while Tessa sneaks onto the island by raft, and soon both discover that this "party" is a bunch of Men's Rights douchebags who keep women captive, then hunt them in a sick game. Among the hunters we have old timer Carter (Casper Van Dien), who is trying to break in his son Jackson (Will Peltz), Virgil (Mickey Rourke), and brothers Preston and Teddy (Jeremy and Jason London). These men all think they're just going to have another fun hunt, but once Cassandra connects up with Tessa, they'll make this a hunt those guys won't forget--because they'll be dead. (See what I did there?)

There were some fun aspects to this, but I think it fell victim to the classic "only enough material for an episode of a syndicated TV show" issue. If we had a syndicated TV series where Suvari and Stojan went around the country taking down criminal operations like this, this would be a perfect 42-minute episode. Instead, because this needs to be 87 minutes, there's this delay where Stojan is taking her time getting to the island and putting away her raft, while some of these young women are getting killed. And this is a pretty rough way to go, be held captive for weeks on end in some barn, and then die a violent death in the woods after some guys hunt you down. That's not a simple horror movie kids having sex in a parked car getting hacked up by Jason kind of kill, that's pretty dark stuff, and to have people dying while our heroes are taking their time getting their shit together is kind of off-putting. When Stojan and Suvari's characters decided to kick it in high gear, it delivers a bit more on what its premise promises, and we get some nice kills, which I appreciated. I liked what they were going for here, and I think in a lot of ways they were successful, I just wish there would've been some more urgency among the main characters while the other women were getting killed off.

I thought we'd start with our two leads, Mena Suvari and Maya Stojan, because I thought they were both great. We'd seen Suvari on the podcast before, back when Jamie and I did Don't Blink on episode 27, but this is her first time on the site. I really liked her interplay with Will Peltz, where she's playing the more mature woman and wrapping him around her finger, and I think they could've leaned into that more and had her not get caught by the baddies herself, but rather find the girls on her own and break them out--and it was almost like they had her get caught by them both to pad out that portion of the film, and to have an excuse to, as the Brits would say, "get her kit off," which for me the whole thing betrayed the character they were building with her. For Stojan, we've actually seen her before, when we did the indie screener for Case 346. Unlike Suvari's character, who has this nuance of the grieving mother, Stojan's is pure badass, but again, the story construct betrayed that badassness, because we're like "when is Stojan going to save these other women?" while she's putting her raft away and they're getting shot by crossbows and stepping in bear traps. Also unlike Suvari, where this kind or role seems more like a one-off, I feel like we could have a lot more Stojan-led DTV actioners, which I would love to watch if they ever got made.

The other two big names familiar to the DTVC are Casper Van Dien and Mickey Rourke, and both were a lot of fun as baddies. For Van Dien, this is his 10th film on the site, which feels low for him, but I think that's because he's someone where I see a bunch of stuff of his I want to review, but don't get around to it. By all accounts, he should be in the 30 Club by now, and he's not even close, so maybe I can try to make a better effort to fix that. Like in Most Dangerous Game, he's a great baddie, he knows the assignment, and he delivers every bit of it. Every time we see him though it's a reminder that we need to get more of his stuff up, and hopefully I'll do that in the future. Rourke on the other hand is exactly the modern Rourke you expect. He's just a good actor giving the movie what it wants when they get him on board and give him a few pages of script to do--or in this case maybe he has a little more. This is only his seventh film on the site, but unlike Van Dien where that number is low, for Rourke it feels a bit higher, and a big part of that is he's in a lot of movies with bigger names on the site like Dolph and Michael Jai White, and I imagine because of that we'll see him a lot more in the future too.

Do you remember on the Cave Dwellers episode of MST3K? Especially the part where Ator and the female lead are about to be sacrificed to the snake god along with one other guy they had with him and a bunch of fair maidens the long-haired John Saxon guy brought. His friend Thong sneaks in to rescue them, but by the time he gets to Ator all the fair maidens and the guy have been sacrificed, and at one point I think it's Joel who says "geez, Gomez is taking his sweet time," and then there's a joke about padding. The movie's saying these fair maidens don't matter, it's only important for Thong to save Ator. Another example of this is in American Ninja 4, where everyone's about to be burned at the stake, when Dudikoff shows up to rescue them, but, again, is taking his sweet time, and in the process, one of the soldiers is burned alive. This movie has the same kind of issue with the women being hunted and killed while Stojan is taking her time stashing her raft on the island. It doesn't do anything to help the movie, and if anything hurts the perception of our heroes. I know filmmakers all know a lot more about movie making than I do, but as a fan of films and someone who likes to watch them, my piece of advice is, watch Cave Dwellers, and then don't do anything they do in that movie, and you should be in good shape.

Finally, this was directed by Elizabeth Blake-Thomas, and even though it was written by two men (one of whom, David Lipper, also played one of the hunt club guys), I think her direction de-male gaze-ified it, so to speak. Recently Jon and I discussed a movie called Private Obsession for an upcoming podcast episode, where Shannon Whirry is held captive by the 90s equivalent of a Men's Rights douchebag, and most of the movie is her being mentally tortured and starved and whatnot, but then in the last five minutes she turns the tables on him, and there's this sense on filmmaker Lee Frost's part of "hey, see, I don't agree with this stuff because I had the guy get his comeuppance." Blake-Thomas for the most part divorces the movie from that concept, there isn't a tone of a guy filmmaker getting off on seeing a woman mistreated like this, but then thinking he's distancing himself from it by turning the tables at the end. I think that's why the part in the early middle where women are getting killed while Stojan is stashing her raft was so off-putting, because it betrayed the rest of what the movie was doing, at least for me. I think as this Manosphere concept grows, and people try to make sense of it with endless op-eds about why modern men are so disaffected, having voices that cut through that bullshit will be that much more important, and what I appreciated here was when Stojan's character finally joins the party it became the movie I was hoping it would be. When I was in undergrad, I wrote a paper about how the Taliban's restrictions on women were used to keep the overall population in Kabul under their thumb, and my professor told me "you didn't discuss at all how the women involved feel about this," and I think that's often what happens when we have these "commentaries" on toxic attitudes, whether it's chauvinistic, racist, homophobic, transphobic, etc., people spend too much time on the people with the horrible attitudes, and less on how the people who are targets of that animosity feel; and this film, at least when it gets going, does a better job of that, and hopefully we'll see more of that in the future.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently stream this on Tubi here in the States. I think the runtime, the performances, and the way the story ultimately resolves itself is worth a watch, even if I think it would've worked better if we'd been able to see the heroes get after it sooner. And if you haven't yet, you can check out the Rourke to Oblivion podcast episode Ty and I did where we discuss this, number 232 in the archives.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt21220802

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

Mirror Images (1992)

On an upcoming episode of the DTVC Podcast, Jon and I look at two Shannon Whirry films, Mirror Images 2 and Private Obsession, and I figured I'd do the first Mirror Images in the process, and then figured it would be perfect for this month's Erotic Thriller review.

Mirror Images has Delia Sheppard as Kaitlin, the wife of political consultant Jeff Conaway; and her twin sister Shauna, who lives a less settled life with her on again off again boyfriend Joey Zoom (Nels Van Patten). When Shauna has to go on the run because a guy she's encountered may want to kill her, Kaitlin takes the opportunity to pretend to be her sister and live her life. It's exciting to start with, but when she encounters that same bad guy, and Conaway's new assistant Julie Strain ends up dead, she decides to find out what's going on. With the reluctant help of detective John O'Hurley (that's right, Peterman from Seinfeld), she goes in deeper to get to the truth. But will she like everything she finds? And will she make it out alive?

This is a great one. I think the second one is even better, but this one does the trick. Sheppard is great in both roles, you always gotta love Julie Strain, and Conaway works as the jerk husband--plus how can you not appreciate Peterman as the detective! It does have issues, like the idea that the baddie has burning heroin in a small, ornate jewel case that he uses to drug the women, when it's not exactly clear how that works at all, but when the rest of the film is enjoyable, I kind of just went with that part; but then when the only African American character has the character name "slave girl," that's a bit more problematic, and probably would be reworked if there were ever a modern remake. That aside, it is still the early 90s you want, with the sex you want, and the cast you want, so I think you get what you came for here.

We'll start with Delia Sheppard, who I thought did a great job in the lead. I was looking at her IMDb bio, and she doesn't have many leading roles like this, if she has any, which makes this one unique in the Erotic Thriller genre. The way the story works, she doesn't have to play duel roles as much as she has to play the "good" sister pretending to be the "bad" sister, which is still not easy, but she makes it work. Director Gregory Dark and cinematographer Paul Desatoff (not eventual Christopher Nolan cinematographer Wally Pfister, who would do a lot of Dark's stuff after this) do a great job creating this juxtaposition between Kaitlin's home being bright and open, and Shauna's being dark and more confined; and costumer designers Lothar and Ricardo Delgado do a great job giving her white outfits when she's playing herself, and darker outfits when she's playing Shauna; but ultimately it's up to Sheppard to pull all this off, and as I said above, I think she did great at that. This is the fourth time we've seen her here, as she plays the German woman who develops feelings for Whirry in Animal Instincts, and has two small roles in the Amir Shervan films Young Rebels and Killing American Style, so we'll tag her, as I have a feeling as we do more of these Erotic Thrillers we'll see more of her here as well.

Our one Hall of Famer is the great Julie Strain, and while her role is small, it's always great to see her. This is her 12th film on the site, which puts her firmly as second-most all-time among women on the site, but still 35 behind the top spot, which is Cynthia Rothrock at 47. If I continue the site for another 20 years, it is possible she may catch Rothrock, but it'll be an uphill battle. Even if she doesn't she's one of the best, and we'll hopefully see her again soon. This is also our fourth Gregory Dark film on the site, and considering I have another three of his watched that I plan to review soon, I figured I might as well tag him now so I'll have fewer to have to go back and add tags for if we decide to do it later. This is also our third Jeff Conaway film, the other two being PM flicks. I feel like I can't be the only one who gets "Gimme Shelter" in their head when they see Jeff Conaway's name, can I? "It's just Jeff Conaway, it's just Jeff Conaway!" Finally, you heard right in the earlier paragraphs, the great John O'Hurley plays the detective investigating Strain's murder. J. Peterman in an Erotic Thriller is too fantastic for words. And he does have a love scene with Sheppard. One fun fact about him: he was born in my home town, Kittery, ME. Even I wasn't born there, I was born across the river in Portsmouth, NH, so it's rare to see that! Oh, and I can't finish this paragraph without mentioning George "Buck" Flower as the creepy landlord, another great touch.

We do have two Presidential Portraits in this, in Jeff Conaway's office he has one for Reagan and one for Bush 41. This is an interesting conundrum when it comes to these, which ones count and which ones don't. Like is just having a Presidential Portrait enough, or is the spirit of it that it represents the time that President was in office, and so having one in a film just to have it, even if that President wasn't in office at the time the film took place, kind of goes against that spirit. For example, when I was on the White House Down episode of the Exploding Helicopter Podcast, the White House is full of Presidential Portraits, do all of them count, or do none of them count? I'm kind of leaning toward the latter on that, but because both Reagan and Bush 41 have portraits here, and Bush 41 was in office during the time this took place, it still counts. The other thing is, if we only count this for Bush 41 and not Reagan, that leaves them both tied with four overall, so I guess then we'll use the fact that Reagan also appears here as a tie breaker.

Finally, we're going way off topic, but I wanted to give a quick shoutout to my Gunners, who won the Premier League this past week, their first time since 2004, meaning since I've been writing this site in 2007, they hadn't won a title at all. And in true European sports style, they won when the team behind them failed to earn all three points in their penultimate game, meaning there were no longer enough points available to catch my Gunners on the final matchday. It's an overall much better approach compared to how we do sports in America, where we have bloated leagues, unbalanced schedules, and regular seasons that don't matter because you don't win a title for that, you could go undefeated but if you lose in the playoffs, your season is a total waste. Even when one of my Boston teams were a favorite, a win for a championship wasn't guaranteed, so I don't get to enjoy a moment like I did today, where I could watch Arsenal knowing they were already champions. The reason US sports will never be that good? Billionaires, like everything else bad about America, Billionaires.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently get this free on Fawesome, fully uncut, which I think is a good way to go, but I think if you were able to track down a physical copy it would be worth having too. Either way, you should check this one out if you haven't seen it, or haven't seen it in a while.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102452/

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

Tin Soldier (2025)

This is one Ty and I covered on the DTVC podcast, episode 254 in the archives, and I knew I'd have to write a review on the site too, so here are. For a movie with the kinds of names this has, it only has 17 critic reviews on IMDb, none of which are any of the usual suspects, so I guess I'm pioneering on this one.

Tin Soldiers has Jamie Foxx as the head of a former veterans group that has turned into a cult. That's a bad combination when you consider most of the members are trained in combat. Among them is Scott Eastwood (or "Eastcrud" as he's been dubbed on the pod), who left the cult, and now is being recruited by Robert De Niro and John Leguizamo to infiltrate the cult and take them down. All is not what it seems though, and Eastcrud isn't sure who he can trust, but when he discovers his lover in the cult, Nora Arnezeder, whom he thought was dead, might be alive, he has a new purpose to get to the bottom of things--and throw De Niro in a bathtub--and take Foxx down.

If you've listened to our podcast episode, you know where I'm going with this. This thing is bonkers, it's an early 2000s MTV music video fever dream mixed with action sequences. In one moment we have Foxx singing a Disco-tinged 70s style soul song, another Eastwood is beating up De Niro, and De Niro's like "you don't have to humiliate me," reminding us that the guy who's supposed to be the hero in this film is beating up a man in his 80s. And as you start to anchor into something, like the action sequences, the fever dream aspect of the film kicks back in, and I'm waiting for Carson Daly to cut in and tell us what the next song on the countdown is. But then you have Foxx leaning into the bonkerness, giving us this performance that elevates the proceedings above the modern DTV dregs we're used to, which is supposed to be the whole idea behind casting stars like Foxx in these, but seldom happens. You're talking about an 86-minute runtime, and it is on Hulu, so I think it's worth seeing for Foxx's performance and the bonkerness, but I think I'm unique in that kind of mindset, so I wouldn't pick this for a movie night with people who may not see movies that way, because they may never let you pick the movie night movie again!

I wanted to start with Bob De Niro, because he's the most tagged of anyone in this, this being his seventh movie on the site. And while two of those were Wild Card posts back when I covered big screen films on Fridays (Machete and Righteous Kill)--two and a half depending on how you want to count The Irishman--he also has more movies like this than you'd expect, with this being the fourth DTV film after Freelancers, Killing Season, and Savage Salvation. When I started the site in 2007, I couldn't have imagined that I'd be reviewing any of his movies, but here we are, Travis Bickle, Jake La Motta, and James Conway is now playing a character who, even though it's a stunt double, is getting beaten up and dunked in a bathtub by Scott Eastwood. But he's interesting in that, unlike other names who once they go DTV, they don't go back, he seems to dabble in it, and is dabbling less now than he did in the 2010s. It would be like putting Meryl Streep in a Randall Scandal and having a scene where an actor like Kelly Greyson is beating her up and dunking her in a bathtub, but somehow we accept it with De Niro--and as you can imagine, I'm hoping for us to someday get some Streep Randall Scandals!

The standout, as I mentioned above, is Jamie Foxx. We often say "he got the assignment," but if there was an assignment, it was probably as vague and fever dream-ish as the rest of the film, so he just took what he got and ran with it on a level this movie didn't necessarily deserve. The monologues, the signing, the hair, it's all there, combined with this performance that's oozing menace and creepy cult leader all over the place. Unlike De Niro, this is our first time seeing Foxx here, and he generally doesn't drop down to this level, the closest being straight-to-Netflix movies that I may review, but like The Irishman, are made on big screen budgets that feel like they aren't in the spirit of what the site's about--if you remember, The Irishman was part of our 1000th post celebration. All this to say, if this ends up being the only time we see Foxx on the site, it was a memorable moment, as he's probably the main reason to see this.

That image below is what I mean about the fever dream combined with 2000s MTV music video aspect of the movie. It's not just Eastwood bathing in a freestanding bathtub (not the one he dunks De Niro in later in the film), but it's how it's set against this backdrop of corrugated iron and a wagon wheel leaning against a rustic rural house. I bet there were directors of Nickelback videos who saw this and were like "damn, why didn't we do this with Chad Kroeger!" The film was directed by Brad Furman, who not only has done his share of music videos, but also directed The Lincoln Lawyer, so he brings some credibility to the proceedings. It sounds like I'm making fun of the fever dream aspect, and maybe I am to some extent, but I also appreciate that he's doing something unique in the DTV movie space. Most of what we see now involves a scene at the beginning that's from the middle that gets us into the action, then we go back however many weeks and work back to that point, and the plot is designed to remind us every 10-15 minutes what's happening in case we've been looking at our phones. To do this fever dream thing, where even if you're paying attention you may not know what's going on, was audacious, and if I appreciate anything, it's audacious filmmaking.

Finally, this was shot in Greece, but didn't take place there. For example, one of the scenes was supposed to take place in San Diego. Greece and movies are in the news as I'm writing this, because Christopher Nolan's new Odyssey movie stars Lupita Nyong'o as Helen of Troy, which is upsetting a bunch of Conservative types--which doesn't make any sense on the face, because they're all about "no affirmative action, just hire the best person for the job," so why is it an issue if Nolan thinks she's the best for that role? Anyway, I guess the issue I have with the movie is, anyone can make a big epic version of The Odyssey with a bunch of big names and a big budget, to me what would be truly inspirational would be to shoot it in Greece, but have it take place in San Diego like the scene in this movie does. Like maybe Odie needs to get to San Diego from LA, and at one point he's lured into an In-N-Out by sirens through the promise of a Double-Double Animal Style? I guess this is why I find enjoyment out of a movie like this, when I'm telling Christopher Nolan I'm fine with him casting whoever he wants as Helen of Troy, but I think his film should be shot in Greece but take place in Southern California with In-N-Out Burger product placement.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can get this included with your Hulu subscription, and at 86 minutes I think it's worth it, if for Foxx's performance alone. That said, after reading the paragraph above and seeing what my idea was for an Odyssey adaptation, you might be questioning my tastes, and I think that's fair. Also make sure you check out the podcast episode Ty and I did on this, number 254 in the archives.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt20258920/

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

The Mark: Redemption (2013)

This weekend is Gary Daniels's birthday, and considering we haven't reviewed anything of his since we did The Gardiner in 2024, I figured I'd dip back into the religious film pool and do another of the three religious movies he did, which is a sequel to he first one we covered about 13 years ago. Will being a Daniels completist have me questioning my life choices?

The Mark: Redemption picks up where the first one left off, with Craig Sheffer and Sonia Couling awkwardly parachuting out of a plane in front of some poorly done greenscreen. The Rapture is still happening, as the priest from Ireland who fell off his horse in the 1800s predicted it would, complete with an antichrist who wants one world government called "The New World Order" and wants people implanted with tracking chips--the same chip Sheffer's got in him. So this antichrist sends Daniels out to get him, but to know where to find him, he needs to beat up a tied-to-a-chair Eric Roberts first. Oh by the way, there's trafficking too! We just need an ad telling us to buy gold, and some sea moss pills, and we'll have completed our Alex Jones bingo card.

When I did the first one of these back in 2013, I said I wouldn't make fun of the religious aspects, because I was the one treading on their turf to review a Gary Daniels movie. That said, as you saw in my synopsis, this isn't just religious, it's that intersectionality of White Nationalism and Christian Fundamentalism that's much more insidious than simple religion. When I was on the Red Dawn episode of the Exploding Helicopter podcast, I said if someone were creating a White Nationalist group, Red Dawn would be the first movie night in the recruitment process. This movie is more like two weeks in, you got the heads shaved, the swastikas tattooed on the biceps, but maybe there's some doubt creeping in as the recruits are feeling isolated in your compound in Northern Idaho, you throw this on and start yelling "this is what we're fighting against right here!"--the one world government, nationalizing industries, tracking chips in people, and whatever else you have on your alt right bingo card--and by the end of the 90s minutes those brains are fully washed again. Does this have any value beyond that? Daniels is kind of fun, Wych Kaos is the cinematographer, and Thai film mainstay Sahajak Boonthanakit is great in his small part. But even as a Daniels completist like me, I found myself questioning my life choices while watching this.

We are officially at 61 movies for Gary Daniels though, so maybe it was worth it. And as I said above, he turns in a fun performance. I don't know if he's rubber stamping the ideas in this movie, or he just needed a paycheck--or even more, maybe the coded language of things like "New World Order" weren't familiar to him. It's one thing to be religious, but the Alex Jones conspiracy stuff is another level. We have one more of these overt religious films of his left to do, The Encounter: Paradise Lost, and then there's one more he made in Thailand at that time, A Stranger in Paradise, that I've been trying to track down as well. Maybe I'll wait until I've tracked down that second one before I dive back in and do that last religious movie after how this one went. From there, it looks like he has his first movie since 2022's Repeater coming out soon, Lion Fist, so I'll be excited to check that out. While he's no threat to catch Dolph for most ever tags as an actor (and most ever overall), the next closest actor to him is Cynthia Rothrock with 47, and with a lot of her films not seeing releases lately, I don't see her catching Daniels for second anytime soon either.

As you're reading my review of this, you might be asking, "is it really worth it to say you've reviewed all of Gary Daniels DTV films?" The same question comes up when I mention needing to review Fat Slags for Dolph, people have been warning me off that one, but I have to do it at some point. But is it worth it? At the time as I'm watching something like this, as Craig Sheffer is talking about "Age of Accountability," or tells Sonia Cooling "you look hot in my mom's clothes," there is a sense that I'm making questionable life choices, and perhaps there's an Italian-directed 80s 'Namsploitation film shot in the Philippines I could be watching instead, or hell, maybe I could just rewatch Recoil on Tubi. On the other hand, to be able to say "I've watched and reviewed 61 Gary Daniels movies," it feels like I did something. What that something was, I don't know, but I did it. Now there are some limits to this. For example, Dolph was slated to star in a Kevin Spacey movie, and if that gets released I won't be doing that. But Fat Slags, that we'll eventually have to make happen.

The guys at Comeuppance talk about the "Sit-down Role," which is when an actor spends the bulk of the film just sitting. The best example is Dick Van Patten in A Dangerous Place, where his character is called "Principal," he never leaves his office, and the only thing that keeps his role from being entirely sit-down is when decorum dictates that he needs to stand when Erin Gray enters his office to discuss her son, Ted Jan Roberts. In this film, Eric Roberts is back in what is also almost a complete Sit-down Role, as the only time he's not sitting is when Gary Daniels moves him from one chair he's tied to to another. And the tied-to-a-chair seems to be the new bastion of the Sit-down Role, as we saw it a lot in the Bruce Willis Randall Scandals. It's like the film is saying "the guy has to be sitting if he's tied to a chair, right?" I don't know if Roberts went all the way to Thailand to sit in a chair and get punched in the face and talk about God, it's possible he shot his scenes in LA, but there's no way of knowing from IMDb alone, considering by my count he did 38 movies in 2013! Of the almost 900 credits he has on IMDb, this is the 18th film we've covered here, which I imagine isn't something a lot of people would've guessed, that Gary Daniels has over three times the movies Eric Roberts has on the DTVC, but when you look at his films, a lot of them don't belong on here, and I generally don't seek him out specifically, he just happens to be in something I'm reviewing for someone else, like another Gary Daniels movie he did, A Hitman in London aka Skin Traffik, which would've been another complete Roberts Sit-down Role--this time behind a desk using the phone--if not for a scene at an airplane hanger at the end. I guess it was a matter of "you need to fly home anyway, want to shoot a scene while you're here?" Maybe someday we'll accrue enough Roberts Sit-down Roles for him to get into the Hall of Fame.

Finally, I wanted to use this last paragraph to shout out a podcast I love that closed-up shop recently, Knowledge Fight. If you're not familiar with them, the show would make fun of and breakdown the lies and inconsistencies in Alex Jones's Info Wars show--"Knowledge Fight" being a play on the name "Info Wars." What I loved about it, was its hosts Dan and Jordan went beyond the click-baity aggregated clips and got into the heart of how the Alex Jones grift really worked, and I think because they were so good at pulling back the curtain, Jones never mentioned them, and it was understood that none of his other hosts could mention them either. When the news came that the Onion had found a new way to get Info Wars from Alex, at first I was excited, until I realized that they still needed a judge's approval--which they didn't get--and then found out they didn't include the Knowledge Fight guys at all. It led to Jordan doing a Twitch rant where he went scorched earth on the Onion, the aftermath of which ultimately led to Dan and Jordan ending the show; but I think it was a missed opportunity for the Onion to leave them out. To be able to air the show that debunked Alex Jones's grift on the Info Wars platform would've done more to hurt Jones's brand than Tim Heidecker doing an impression of him. Jones can do a shirtless rant about Heidecker being a Satanist or whatever, but he can't come at the Knowledge Fight guys for pointing out how Jones never really read an article he was saying proved his point about some conspiracy bullshit he's going on about, because if his listeners saw that they'd start to question things and stop buying supplements. Anyway, my Monday and Friday mornings aren't going to be the same without the Knowledge Fight guys there making fun of Right Wing grifters. Here's to you Dan and Jordan, you're two of the great ones.

And with that let's wrap this up. You can get this free on Tubi, but the question is, do you want to? How big of a Gary Daniels completist are you? I'm not asking this rhetorically, I'm saying if you're considering it, take a walk, clear your mind, and really think about how much of a Gary Daniels completist you are. I probably should've taken my own advice.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2563562/

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

The Last Riders (1991)

For our PM review this month, we have this biker film starring Erik Estrada, along with William Smith, and a small early appearance by Mimi Lesseos. Those are the things I know about the film going in, it's what we get that we weren't expecting that make PM films so much fun! In addition to us, Chris the Brain at Bulletproof and the guys at Comeuppance have covered this as well.

The Last Riders has Erik Estrada as the co-head of a biker gang (along with Angelo Tiffe), who, in trying to retrieve some stole drug money, kills the thieves, only to discover one of them is a dirty cop. Dirty or no, the full weight of the LAPD is coming for him, so he needs to give up his gang colors and go on the run. The first place he runs to is old buddy William Smith, who owns a garage in a small town in southern Nevada. He's happy to have Estrada work there and live in a trailer outside of town, and Estrada's happy to settle down, especially when a single mother (Kathrin Middleton) and her daughter (Minnie Madden) show up and need car repairs. But as he starts his new life, it wouldn't be a PM flick if his old life didn't come back to haunt him.

And boy does it come back to haunt him, which makes for an interesting movie story-wise. In most PM "hero's family is killed and now he's out for action-packed deadly revenge" movies, the family gets bumped off in the first act, and we don't get to know them too well, we just take it for granted that bumping off someone's family's bad, and then from there the hero starts the revenge process in the second act, and gives the baddie their ultimate comeuppance in the third act. Here, the first act is retrieving the drug money, and the second act is him falling in love with Middleton's character and starting a life with her, before she and her daughter are gunned down in the trailer. It's almost like the filmmakers were enjoying watching Estrada and Middleton's characters fall in love, and someone was like "hey guys, we need to get to the revenge part of this, the movie's almost over!" It creates that tonality issue we'd see a lot in early PM, where if you're watching this as a one-off in the early 90s because you found it on cable or at your local video store, you're probably not impressed, but in the context of a bunch of these you're excited to go along for the bonkers PM Entertainment ride. We also get some of the names we've come to know and love, like Cole S. McKay on stunts, Joseph Merhi directing, and Rick Pepin's cinematography. In that sense, you probably need to watch some of the better of these PM films before you get stuck in on this one, and even then, it's low on the list for me; but lower on the list PM is still not a bad way to kill 90 minutes if you're a PM Entertainment fan.

We're now at 58 PM flicks on the site, and what's interesting about this one, is it's their 22nd movie and came out in 1991, but feels like an earlier spine number joint from 1989 when they were still getting the hang of what PM would eventually be--which I guess isn't so crazy an idea when you consider 1989 and 1991 are only a couple years apart, there could be that overlap as they were still figuring out what worked best. And I'm not sure what the best PM moment in this was for me. Maybe when Estrada blows up the trailer with his deceased wife and step-daughter's bodies inside, while he and a tearful William Smith look on. No calling the cops, I imagine the Middleton's ex-husband would like to know what happened to his daughter, even if he was the jerkoff Middleton said he was, but nope, in the world of PM, the fiery funeral is all you need. From there, as he's getting his revenge, the bartender at their biker bar tells him she has feelings for him, and hey, he's back on the market now, even if the remaining embers of his dead wife and step-daughter's bodies are still smoldering near Lake Mead, why not go for it? And I guess that's what I think when I see another PM flick on Tubi, "come on, Matt, why not go for it?", because these things only work in the world of PM--and I don't even know if they work there either, or it's more the fact that they don't work that's so much fun.

One of the more fun aspects of the film was the band at the biker bar that performed over a couple of the montages. They were called The Sheilas, and their sound was in the mold of Pat Benatar's stuff, which is plenty fine for me. Even more fun, the first song featured a flautist. We're not strangers to the flute here at the DTVC, plenty of 80s exploitation films shot in the Philippines made ample use of the flute, perhaps because Italian directors thought jungles and flutes went together like peanut butter and chocolate, but we never actually saw the flautist getting after it like we do here. I never thought of it before, but yeah, a flute solo is exactly the music I need when I'm watching a shot of a biker gang back-angle parking their hogs against the curb. Now, if you're thinking flute music, Jethro Tull probably comes to mind, but can I throw out another name for you? Jazz flautist Ragan Whiteside is one of the best out there, in particular check out her cover of Little River Band's "Reminiscing," great stuff.

Corey Doctorow came up with the term "Enshittification" to describe how tech companies lock users in and then make their products as shitty as possible while extracting as much money out of them as they can. He's said on multiple appearances that he's okay with the term being used beyond the tech space, so I'm going to point out how this movie shows us the ways that so many things we took for granted in the early 90s have been enshittified now. Start with Las Vegas. In the early 90s it was a place where people with not a lot of money could go and have a fun time. Remember the Roseanne episode where she and Dan went with Tom Arnold and Sandra Bernhardt, and Roseanne got drunk and heckled Wayne Newton because she thought he was an impersonator? They ain't goin' to Vegas now, and even when I went in 2013 I could see it changing, nothing was cheap like it was in the early 90s, and in the 10+ years since, it's only gotten worse, as they'd rather cater to whales like Dana White compensating for inadequacies with six-figure blackjack hands than working-class stiffs looking to escape their troubles for a few days. From there, look at Estrada's job as a mechanic. The first thing William Smith would ask him today is, "how good are you with a computer?" And is Smith going to be able to pay him enough to support his new wife and step-daughter, even if they're living in a trailer by Lake Mead? Even Estrada going to the grocery store, it was like "oh man, the grocery store experience was so much nicer back then!" No memberships, no fugazi sales, Pepsi and ConAgra didn't own everything, Estrada paid a living wage so he can buy food, the grocery store workers paid a living wage too. Things aren't only worse now than they were in 1991, they're worse now by design, and have been for a while.

Finally, what the hell are we doing in that picture above? The cap, the mustache, the T-shirt, even the little cigar, and this guy is hanging out at a biker bar no less! You can't recreate this guy today, he'd either be dripping in irony, or imitated by a younger person who's still not generating the look organically. These weren't just decisions that were made in the morning as this man was leaving the house, these were completely legitimate decisions that no one he encountered that day would've looked askance at. And could there have been another beer that he'd be drinking other than Miller Lite? He's not quite what I would call a Cocaine Dad, which is a term I used for guys my dad's age who were born in the late 40s/early 50s, but when the late 80s/early 90s came, couldn't come to terms with the fact that they were getting older, so they pushed beyond their relevance and tried to look the part of someone ten years younger than them--and while they may not have all partaken in some nose candy, you wouldn't have put it past them either. This guy above has no use for terms like "relevance," he's completely authentic--I mean look at him, he's genuinely into the flautist performing her solo, even if he won't remember it tomorrow. Here's to you that guy in the picture above, you're one of the greats.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently stream this on Tubi. As I said above, I think you'll get more enjoyment out of this after you've seen a lot of the better PM films first, but as a free streamer it does the trick.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102275

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

Intimate Stranger (1991)

This was one I watched on cable when it first came out, because my friend's parents had a descrambler box, so we could watch anything on Showtime, HBO, or even the pay-per-view channel. I'd always wanted to review it for the site, but when it first appeared on Tubi, I missed my chance. When it came back recently, I made sure I didn't miss it again.

Intimate Stranger has Debbie Harry (yes, that Debbie Harry, only under the name "Deborah") as an aspiring singer who makes money as a phone sex operator. When a man calls (Tim Thomerson) and claims to be killing a woman while he's on the phone with her, she goes to the police, only to have the detectives laugh at her. Luckily James Russo was listening, and as he's trying to make detective, he sees this situation as his opportunity. So he borrows a bunch of call tracing equipment and had his buddy in the department run some credit checks on the caller's credit card. As they get closer, will they be able to stop someone when they don't even know what he looks like? But can he kill her when he doesn't know what she looks like either? 

Beyond the fact that this was a fun Erotic Thriller, my biggest takeaway was that 12-year-old me shouldn't have been watching this. It's explicitly sexual and really dark. It's possible too that I didn't see the beginning where Thomerson kills a woman he has tied down to a bed, while telling Debbie Harry over the phone that "my inside stuff comes out, and her inside stuff comes out. My inside stuff is white, her inside stuff is red." The thing that did make more sense to me at the time than it did now, was Debbie Harry in the lead. I knew her from Blondie, so why wouldn't she be in a cable Erotic Thriller? But now I'm like, I know her from Blondie, why is she in this cable Erotic Thriller? It's a novelty that makes it stand out, and we even get a couple of original songs from her that are only in this film, like her cover of "Piece of My Heart." In addition to that, Thomerson is fantastic as the killer, always love seeing young James Russo in these early 90s films, Paige French was great as Harry's younger sister, and we have nice one-off scene with Tia Carrere. While this is available on Tubi, you should go check it out.

If my friend and I did start this in the middle, the thing that got us to keep watching was Debbie Harry. At the time though I didn't know that this was a novelty, that she really didn't have any other lead roles like this; but because she was in it, it made it much easier to track down 35 years later, I just had to search her name on IMDb. Watching it now, when I'm roughly the same age Harry was when she made this, I see that she was supposed to be playing a younger character, but the maturity of her personality makes that impossible. Like when she's in the police precinct reporting the murder she heard, and the detectives are laughing at her, it doesn't work, because there's no way to not make Harry come off like she's in complete control of that room. In a way though that makes it all the more interesting, because she's such an immense artistic talent that it's there in every thing she does, every scene, like when she's reading Leather Nun, or sitting in a dimly lit bar drinking Wild Turkey, or sticking her cigarette between her toes while she's lying on her couch taking a phone sex call. I can see why she didn't do more of these, because even though it's stylish and fun to watch, the story is a bit all over the place, and it ended up direct-to-Showtime, so I imagine if you're Debbie Harry the juice of these films isn't worth the squeeze. But at least we have this one.

As a 12-year-old I wouldn't have been dissecting why I was drawn to these movies beyond the sex and the hot women, but looking at it now, I can see how it informed some of my tastes later on as I grew up. In addition to Erotic Thrillers, I was watching other Film Noir at that time, like Humphrey Bogart films on The Movie Loft on TV38, and episodes of Miami Vice, which had a lot of Film Noir elements, so my brain was tuned to enjoy stuff like that. Ten years later, as the DVD market exploded in the early 2000s, Erotic Thrillers became more straight-up soft core porn and less stylized Film Noir with a lot of sex in them, but now I could get all five seasons of Miami Vice on DVD, and I could pick up both the more famous Bogart Film Noir films, and get some of the lesser-known ones in DVD bargain bins. I think as a result, I forgot how great the Noirish elements were in these 90s Erotic Thrillers, but coming back to them like I have, especially now that many more of them are available on streaming, I can see the aesthetic that I more subconsciously appreciated back then. I mean, look at that first screen I posted of Harry sitting at the bar, between the light, the composition, the colors, all of it is fantastic, and it's part of why I love these movies so much.

Another reason is all the names we get in addition to the lead. James Russo is someone we see in a lot of modern DTV playing a mob boss or a crooked cop, but there was an earnestness in a young James Russo that I always love, going back to his part in Beverly Hills Cop. I decided to finally tag him, and see that this is only his 4th film on the site, which feels low, but I think part of that is he also did a couple that we covered on the pod which I haven't reviewed yet. That's one less than Tia Carrere, who now only has five films on the site, which also feels low. She's only in this for one scene, but this is the same year Showdown in Little Tokyo and Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man were released, so I think she did okay all things considered. Then we have the great Tim Thomerson, who's making his 17th appearance on the site, and is absolutely scary as the killer in this. There's one scene in particular where he's cutting the crust off a sandwich and eating it while Grace Zabriskie lies dead on the floor next to him, which was chilling. Rounding out the cast, Paige French plays Harry's younger sister. You probably don't remember, but way back in December of 2007 we saw her in Meatballs 4, so it's been almost 19 years; and then we had Mel Johnson Jr., who we all know from Total Recall, playing Harry's neighbor across the hall in her apartment. So while Debbie Harry was the biggest name, we had a lot of other great names in this too.

Finally, look at that double bill on that marquee. First off, I would love to have seen Marked for Death in the theater. As it was, my friends and I rented it as soon as it came out on VHS. It's crazy to think that Seagal's first four or five movies were so big, he was able to live off of that reputation to the tune of another six big screen movies, and roughly 40 DTV films. Here in 1990 when this was shot though, we didn't know we weren't going to get much more great Seagal after this, we thought that ride was going to go on forever. And then with The Krays, I bought that on VHS back in the late 2000s because it has the Kemp brothers from Spandau Ballet in it, but I never got around to watching it, and I have no idea what happened to that copy. The interesting thing is, in 1991, PM Dawn released "Set Adrift Off Memory Bliss," which sampled Spandau Ballet's "True." It was kind of mind-blowing at the time, "True" hadn't been released that long ago, and now it's being sampled in a hip hop song? And the video had Tony Hadley in it, giving it his stamp of approval. 35 years later, it was probably the smart move by Hadley and Spandau Ballet, because "True" has like 300 million more views on YouTube than "Set Adrift Off Memory Bliss."

So, with a thrill in my head and a pill on my tongue, I'd say it's time to wrap this up. You can currently stream this on Tubi here in the States. It's definitely worth it. They may not make movies like this anymore, but they made 'em then, and we're lucky we can have them at our fingertips--until Tubi or whatever streaming service decides to take them down, of course.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104519

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

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.