Pretty (2026)

This is another CriticBridge review. In looking at it beforehand, I saw that the director, Metecan Duren, is only 19, which is crazy that he's that young! I was intrigued to see how it would turn out for sure. Then I saw the runtime, two hours and three minutes. That took a little of the steam out of my excitement to see what it was all about. Let's see how it did.

Pretty is about our eponymous lead (Melisa Kihtir), who is lonely and looking for companionship. She and her sister Emma (Saran Duren) live in a nice house in an affluent neighborhood, but beyond that Pretty doesn't have anyone else in her life. That changes when she hears the voice of a ghost at a neighboring house, whom she goes to talk to; and a mysterious person starts messaging her on Instagram. At the same time though, there have been intruders in her house. What could this mean? Are they there to do her harm? Is she imagining it? As she starts to learn more about this mysterious ghost, and this mysterious person messaging her on Instagram, these mysterious attacks become more frequent too. One night, while her two cousins are visiting after their parents were killed, the mysterious Instagram friend asks to meet her. Her decision to go out to meet him may be the thing that puts the rest of her family in danger.

Let's start with the fact that it is amazing that this film was not only directed by a 19-year-old, but he was the writer and DP as well, and this looks pretty decent and was competently made. We've seen people who are a lot older make things that look a lot worse than this. Also Melisa Kihtir was great in her first role, and a lot of what makes this work hinges on her performance. It's not perfect by any means though. The lighting in the night scenes look a lot like those early seasons of Better Call Saul where Jimmy would go to his brother's place, and his brother thought he was allergic to electricity, so everything was lit by lamps. You'd think a big, fancy house like the one the sisters lived in would have some nice overhead lighting. There are elements of the story that don't exactly work, especially at the end, where our heroine doesn't discover the truth on her own, it's given to her in an info dump, so we get this "put on your eye protection as the loose ends start flying together." With a two-hour plus runtime, we shouldn't need an info dump at the end, the lead has plenty of time to figure it out. There are also moments where the dialog doesn't fit, like when Pretty learns from Emma what happened to their parents, and she's upset, but her sister says "don't make this about you." Make what about her? Did we miss a page of script. Doesn't she have a right to be upset? All that said though, while this isn't perfect, there were a lot of tense moments, and the performance of Kihtir and the way Durecan shot her gives this a lot to hang its hat on. It's currently free on YouTube, so if the runtime doesn't scare you, this is a great way to support an up-and-coming indie director.

I think a big part of the reason why Duren's age makes this so amazing is, while it may not be perfect, if this is what it looks like at 19, what could we be seeing at 29? Or 39? If he stays in the horror genre, he could be one of the best ever. If he moves out of horror and tries other things, there's still a real promising career there. What's interesting at 19 though is there isn't as much world experience, and that's where you see a lot of the story holes. It's something I found with my own writing, especially with what was my first novel, Twenty-Nine, which I'm hoping to finally get out this year, but I wrote it when I was in my early 20s, and there were a lot of things in it that now in my late 40s don't sound right; plus, having published six novels in the interim, there's a lot more I know about writing too. On the other hand, the bulk of that book has stayed the same, and I think despite the holes in this, most of it was written well and still holds up too. Again, as Duren gets older, the stories he's able to tell will only get better, and he'll also get more experience behind the camera, so the sky is the limit.

Melisa Kihtir was Duren's muse for this film, as a lot of the scenes focused on her. Her reactions, walking in slow motion, sleeping, getting ready to go out, etc. Duren's cinematography combined with her ability to live in the moment made this the best stuff in the movie for me. Like when she's sitting in front of the door of the house that the ghost is at, while we can hear ghost, the rest of that is on Kihtir to make any of it work, and then Duren making sure he gets the right shots and cuts them together well. Another moment where this all came together was when the killer was stalking Pretty, and she was hiding behind an SUV. There were a lot of wide shots so we could see the killer lurking around, which required Kihtir to sell us on how scared she was with more than just her facial expressions, and she made it all work. For me, this movie could've been a half-hour shorter with no twist ending, and just focused mostly on Kihtir, and it would've worked even better than the end product.

I was looking at it, and this might be the first Turkish film I've ever seen. They haven't had one nominated for a Best Foreign Film Oscar yet, and that's probably how I would've found one if I'd seen any. We have reviewed a film that was shot in Turkey though, American Samurai, so at least we've been there on the site before. The interesting thing was I got the sense that this was supposed to take place in the US, or maybe the UK, even though it definitely wasn't either of those, so hopefully I read that wrong and it did actually take place in Turkey. The other thing was the decision to have the film entirely in English, as opposed to Turkish with English subtitles. While I would've appreciated it in Turkish, in the States I'd be in the minority, so the fact that Durecan could write well enough in English, and the rest of the cast could speak it, often with very little accent, is an asset they could use to break this film into the US and UK markets, which greatly enhances its earning power. I'm more interested in Turkish cinema now though, so I'll have to add some of their films to my already overloaded watch list!

Finally, I don't mean for this to be a regular feature on the site now, but this is our second CriticBridge movie, and the second time we have cellphone content. In this scene Pretty was messaging with her mysterious stranger on Instagram, and you can see the predictive text is showing the actor's name, Melisa Kihtir, instead, meaning she was using her own phone for any of the scenes that required a phone--except hopefully not when she had to throw it against the wall! I think you have to love it as part of the independent spirit when it comes to these low-budget indie productions, but also I don't use predictive text like that, so I had no idea it will suggest your name when you type "my name is". You'll also notice a tell that the characters are speaking English as a second language, when the stranger says "my phone ran out of battery." The phone doesn't run out of battery, the battery runs out of life, or as we say, "it's dead." Any kind of grammar detector won't catch it though, because while your phone can't run out of battery, people can run out of batteries. As someone who taught English as a foreign language, I know that phrasal verbs and idioms are the hardest thing for people learning the language to get, because they often have no rhyme or reason. "My phone ran out of battery" sounds like it should be right, but it isn't, and there isn't exactly a rule for why that is, other than you just have to remember it; but at the same time native speakers know it without thinking about it.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently stream this on YouTube, just keep in mind that the link on the IMDb page takes you to the middle of the movie, so make sure you start it over. I think this is well worth supporting, and I'm excited to see what both Metecan Duren and Melisa Kihtir do next.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt43378732

18 Fingers of Death (2006)

For our third 2026 Hall of Fame inductee, it's unfortunately as somber one as well, as we're honoring the late James Lew, who probably should've been in before for all his stunt work. Here I picked a film that was his passion project, which was written and directed by him, also stars him, and he was fight and stunt coordinator on it. It feels like the perfect Lew induction film. In addition to us, Matt Spector at Bulletproof Action has covered this as well.

18 Fingers of Death is a mockumentary-style film about a once famous action star, Buford Lee (Lew), who is trying to make him new film, 18 Fingers of Death, and fan and first time director Ronald Mack (Maurice Patton) is documenting it. Unfortunately the funding is pulled, so now Lee and Mack join forces to make the film on whatever limited resources they can get. As they're making the film, we get interviews with other action luminaries, like Steven Seefood, Chuck Snorris, Jackie Chong (Robin Shou), and Antonio Bandana (Lorenzo Lamas, who in the role performs "Guantanamera"!); plus behind the scenes footage of some of Lee's past films. As they're casting for the new film, local TV host Sushi Cue (Lisa Arturo) auditions for the leading lady role, but could she be Lee's real life leading lady?

This was a ton of fun, especially for us action fans. Lew lines up all the best clichés and standards, and pokes fun at them in a way that only someone who's spent decades in the industry can. The thing is though, while he's doing all these goofy send-ups, he manages to also have some great fight scenes, and gives us a main character in Buford Lee that we want to root for and see succeed. Then you have the massive guest roster, which includes Pat Morita as Lee's father; the aforementioned Lamas and Shou; Bokeem Woodbine as "Billy Buff," a Billy Blanks parody; Ho Sung Pak as a young Buford Lee; George Cheung as a doctor; June Kyoto Lu as Lee's mother (in a much smaller part than Morita as the father); and then cameo of all cameos, Don "the Dragon" Wilson plays himself, helping out at Buford Lee's acting class! Everyone got the assignment and added to the proceedings, which made it all that much more enjoyable. Some of the humor was a bit goofy and maybe a bit gross depending on your sensibilities, but it all worked for me. If you're an action fan, especially of the names I mentioned above, I think you'll enjoy this.

Maybe the biggest travesty is that this movie isn't more well-known. I'd heard of it, but wasn't sure what it was, and only seriously considered it for a review when I was looking for something for Lew's induction post, and saw this as one of his directing credits. Some of it could be the bad reviews, especially on IMDb, where in true IMDb user review style, someone gave this a 3 because the Seagal parody was named "Steven Seefood" instead of "Steven Seagull." As the kids would say, that's peak IMDb user review behavior. That may explain some of it, but I also think Lew was a little too on point with showing how the sausage is made, and that may have ruffled a few feathers. This is all a part of Lew that we never really got as he was often a henchman or bodyguard in an action movie, which didn't leave a lot of room for anything beyond beating people up or taking a beating, and while it would've been nice to have more of that off-beat side, the fact that this exists and we get to enjoy this side of him is something we're fortunate to have. 90s action wouldn't have been 90s action without him, he truly will be missed, and his Hall of Fame induction was long overdue, but at least he's in now.

Two big names were in this as smaller parts, 40 Club member Don "the Dragon" Wilson, who's now at 46 films, two behind Cynthia Rothrock for third all-time among actors on the site; and Lorenzo Lamas, who's now at 38, two away from becoming the fifth actor in the DTVC 40 Club. We'll start with Lamas because he has the bigger part as "Antonio Bandana." First he's interviewed about Buford Lee, while singing "Guantanamera," which is something I never thought I'd get, but now that we're getting it I feel so lucky. Later he's in a scene that I'll talk about in the seventh paragraph which is all about farting, and he carries that off too. I think it says a lot about Lamas and his relationship with Lew that he's in this playing one of the parody characters, because considering the size of the career he's had, Lew could've had someone play a parody version of him instead, and didn't, which I think is cool to see, and again highlights their relationship. Wilson's part is smaller, as he plays himself helping Buford Lee's acting class. While he's playing himself and not a parody character they way Lamas was, the fact that he's in this as himself, as opposed to someone playing a parody version of him, also highlights his relationship with Lew.

We also had two big names that were parodied, and parodied in a way that was a little ahead of what is now the popular perception of them. First there was Steven Seefood, where Buford Lee dons a ponytail and plays Seefood's stunt double, which is fitting, because Seagal's longtime stunt double, Dian Hristov, is also getting into the Hall of Fame in 2026; but also it was a crack about how little Seagal was actually acting in his films, something we were starting to notice at that time too. The other part of the Seagal parody was him eating Chinese food while being interviewed by the documentarian, and in that interview he tells these tall tales about fighting off groups of Asian or black attackers in New York City. These ridiculous stories were starting to get called out more, and overall he was looking like more of a clown in the action world, but this was still only 2004, even before Outlaw Vern's Seagalogy, so Seagal was still revered in a lot of circles, and would continue to pump out a ton of DTV films for the next fifteen years, but the cracks in the image were definitely starting. The other name I wanted to mention was Chuck Norris, who gets skewered as "Chuck Snorris," depicted as an old man trying to hawk his as seen on TV workout equipment. The cracks in Norris's reputation started to show more in the late 2000s/early 2010s when he came out as a Birther and actively worked against marriage equality, among other hateful things he championed. It was such that when he passed away earlier this year, I think there were more tributes to Lew than there were Norris, which I wouldn't have expected in the mid-2000s when this was made, but it made sense in 2026. Again, it's interesting seeing these things now when so much more is known, but trying to bring my brain back to 2006--or 2004 when this was actually made--and trying to understand these depictions at that time, I think they were ahead of their time then.

Finally, while I am 47 years old, and by all accounts in our society am considered an adult, a good portion of me is still a ten-year-old, as evidenced by how much I was laughing at the farting action sequence. The idea is, Buford Lee is making a film that takes place in Mexico, and the film's caterer, Sammy Delassandro (Joey Diaz), decided to make a Mexican-themed spread for the cast and crew. The result was everyone had a lot of gas while shooting one of the big action sequences, and so we're treated to constant fart noises. It reminded me of when my friends and I would make fart noises while watching movies, and by the end of it I was laughing like a ten-year-old. It was a thing of beauty, and just another area where this movie works, at least for a man child like me. As an aside, one of the best places to get a cheesesteak here in Philly is Dalessandro's, and I don't know if Joey Diaz's character name is an homage to that. People often think about Cheesesteak Corner, where Pat's and Geno's are, but in Roxoborough you have Dalessandro's, which is better than either of them, and then across the street there's Chubby's, which is like a diner where they play hair metal, which is a nice deal too.

Anyway, I could go on about cheesesteaks all day, so why don't we wrap this up. You can rent this on Amazon for $1.99, or buy it for $3.99--which as we know isn't actually buying, but rather having a license to watch it until Amazon decides you can't anymore. If you haven't seen it before, it is worth a rental, especially if you're a fan of action movies, and in particular 90s low-budget actioners. This was the perfect James Lew Hall of Fame induction post, so I'm glad we did it. One of the greatest to do it, he will truly be missed.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0397853/

Live and Die in East LA (2023)

Looking to find ways to monetize the site, I've started reviewing films through CriticBridge, which is a service where film critics like myself can be paid to write reviews. I want to stress that I'm only paid for my labor in writing, not my opinion, so this isn't a paid promotion. I'll tag the movies "CriticBridge" so you'll know which ones are part of this.

Live and Die in LA was directed, produced, written by, and stars Attila Korosi as an ER doctor from Eastern Europe whose sister (Anita Korosi) comes to America and is promptly arrested for selling pirated video games. His teacher buddy (Ishaan Bahri) suggests they make some extra cash to pay her fine so she can get out of jail (?) by doing a job for crime boss Robert LaSardo. On the other side, rival crime boss Carlos (Michael Flores) has a son, Daniel (Daniel Hovey), who wants to be an astronaut when he grows up, and he's encouraged by his teacher (the same Ishaan Bahri) to follow his dreams. But what happens when Bahri's job for LaSardo puts him in direct opposition to Daniel's Father?

After the credits there's a seven-minute featurette where we get Attila Korosi's backstory, plus some insight into the people who starred in the film, and that featurette was much more compelling than this film was. And I get it, you're making a movie, you want to tell the story you want to tell, but we've seen crime dramas like this before, and the Sliding Doors/Choose Your Own Adventure/Butterfly Effect element isn't enough of a twist for me to make it special. On the other hand, how Attila Korosi grew up in the war torn former Yugoslavia with dreams of being a movie director, and earned an athletic scholarship to come to the US so he could make it happen, that I wanted to know more about; or when he talked to actors in the film behind the scenes and they talked about their real lives, one of them saying he had to join a gang when he was 13, give me more of that. We don't get a lot of character development in this, especially with the Sliding Doors element, but it felt like that was something Korosi was really in touch with after watching that featurette, so for me it felt like a missed opportunity. For example, we get this seed of something with Daniel wanting to be an astronaut, but beyond that, we don't know how he feels about what his father does for work outside of a comment here or there; but perhaps even more importantly, we don't know how Carlos feels about what he does for work and what he wants for his kids. Carlos didn't just appear as a fully formed gangster in East LA, at one time he was Daniel too. How did he get there? And what does he want for his sons? The other thing is, I think this wants to be a more character-driven drama with some action elements, but then we have scene where a guy is chopping another guy's hand off, from which there's kind of a sense of what am I watching? There was also a lot of animal brutality, between some actual scenes and these animation interludes, and as someone who loves animals, because I was on the fence about this film, that makes it a pass for me, but reading some other reviews, they didn't seem to mind that part of it, so you may be okay with it. In that sense it works as a crime drama 80-minute time killer that you can stream on Tubi.

I want to be clear though, whether I liked this movie or not, the story of Attila Korosi coming to the US and successfully making movies is fantastic, and should be applauded. Where does that leave you, the viewer, though? In the post-credits featurette, Korosi said he wanted to make something that rivals the big studios, but this has a vanity project feel that hurts it in that endeavor. I'm not sure why Korosi's character is in the film, he's almost getting in the way, like a character that one of the producers or money people insisted on being written into the film and played by their son or daughter who wants to get into the business. This isn't to say that just by starring in a movie that you wrote and directed makes it a vanity project, but when I think of the movies that do this right, the character played by the writer and producer is either a secondary character, or if they are a lead character, they generally don't have it all together; whereas the vanity projects, that character always has the right answers and always knows what they're doing. This might not be full-on Alexander Nevsky or Neil Breen vanity project, but it's not Nate Hill or Nate Shepka, who are able to do this right, either. There's still enough here that I want to see Korosi's other films, and again, just the fact that this was not only made, but competently made, is an accomplishment unto itself.

The big name in this is Robert LaSardo, who has a small role as the big gangster. It's what you want from him when you're making a movie like this and you're putting a lot of budget behind getting him cast so you can use his name and face on the tin. The thing is though, because Korosi used a lot of inexperienced actors, LaSardo stands out as this natural in every scene he's in. I wonder about that, is that a LaSardo problem, or a Korosi problem, or maybe a me problem because I'd always taken LaSardo for granted and never really considered how great an actor he really is. I also hadn't ever really seen him in a situation like this, I usually catch him in something that has other big names, but even then I should've recognized that he was value-add in those circumstances. I will not make that mistake again, here's to you Mr. LaSardo, you're one of the great ones. The other two names you may recognize are Richard Cabral and Cesar Garcia, who both have a lot of acting credits in high-profile productions, and who were both in the post-credits featurette and talked about how the subject matter in this film really hit close to home, but, again, their personal stories were more compelling than the film itself for me. 

The animal brutality thing is worth mentioning here, because it is a recurring theme throughout the film. It starts with these animated sequences where a caterpillar was making her way through the forest so she could become a butterfly or a moth. In one of these, she moves a branch out of her way, which causes a kitten to inspect what happened to the branch, and a snake eats the kitten while she's away from her mother. I'm sorry, what? I know that's what I'm looking for in my entertainment, snakes eating kittens! And the thing is, I didn't see this mentioned in any of the other reviews I checked out, so maybe animations about snakes eating kittens aren't the turn-offs for them that it is for me--or maybe Korosi was able to find a group of likeminded reviewers that enjoy the idea of cartoons where snakes eat kittens. Beyond that, we have a real life cat menacing, and probably eating two mice in a cage, and then LaSardo messing with a rat before he feeds it to a snake. As you can imagine, there was no "no animals were harmed in the making of this film" disclaimer at the end, but I think, put simply, if you can't properly simulate animal violence in your films and have to do it for real, then you shouldn't be making them, so hopefully those scenes weren't as real as they looked.

Finally, this was a shot of Ishaan's phone while he was waiting for Korosi to complete his transaction with Carlos on behalf of LaSardo's character. The deal was, if Korosi was in for more than ten minutes, then Ishaan was going to come in after him. Let's breakdown what we're seeing here. First, he was looking at Instagram before this. Did he get a Stopwatch notification while he was scrolling? Does that even exist? How else would that button to go back to Instagram appear in the upper right like that though? Also, he has his alarm set. Was he worried about falling asleep during the deal? When was the alarm set for? 11 minutes into the future? The other thing that's interesting is the dots instead of bars to show signal strength. I believe the switch from bars to dots was an iOS that I couldn't get because I was holding onto my i4 at that time, and by then I'd stopped getting new iOS updates, and by the time I got a new iPhone, they'd switched back to bars. Does that mean this scene was shot five or six years before the film came out, or was this an old phone like mine that used an older iOS? Finally, he only has 30% battery left. If it were me, and I were pulling off some job like this and I'd never done it before, you know I'd have had my phone charged because I'd be afraid to leave anything to chance. Ishaan wasn't as concerned I guess.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently get this on Tubi, which is actually what I did too because I had trouble hearing the dialog, and the screener didn't have captions. If you're looking for a crime drama and want to support indie creatives, I think streaming this on Tubi would be a good way to go. Be sure to stick around for the post-credits featurette though, because that was some really great stuff, the best stuff in the movie for me.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8878716/

Operation Delta Force (1997)

For our second DTVC Hall of Fame induction of 2026, we have Millennium Films, which was Nu Image when this movie came out. I'd been considering them for a while, and decided the volume of stuff from the 90s and 2000s was too much to pass up. In addition to us, Chris the Brain at Bulletproof Action, Ty and Brett at Comeuppance, and Mitch at the Video Vacuum have covered this too, so it's a Superfecta Movie.

Operation Delta Force is not connected to the Delta Force films of Cannon, other than the name. In this iteration, directed by DTVC Hall of Famer Sam Firstenberg, Jeff Fahey runs the team with a group of names you'd be familiar with, including another DTVC Hall of Famer in Frank Zagarino, Rob Stewart from Sweating Bullets, Todd Jensen, and Natasha Sutherland, who appeared in a couple Tarzan episodes, which is important, because Joe Lara is our baddie. He's part of an Afrikaans Neo-Nazi separatist group that steals a virus and the serum from a US base that Ernie Hudson is visiting, and when Fahey's Delta Force team find Hudson, he teams up with them to take Lara down. Will they succeed?

There's a lot going on in this film for a movie that's your standard "rah rah special forces save the day!" kind of movie. First off, we have a near Destro Effect with Neo-Nazi baddies, which I didn't think I'd ever see, but between Joe Lara turning in his best performance after Steel Frontier, and our heroes being jerks and dead fish, it was moving in that direction; but luckily Ernie Hudson was a likeable hero. I'm not sure what Fahey was supposed to be giving us, but it wasn't anything I wanted to root for; and then Zagarino's character was a chauvinist, which, again, why am I rooting for that. It's like when two sports teams I don't like are competing for a championship, I'm rooting for the asteroid, and had it not been for Ernie Hudson, the asteroid might have been a good way to wrap this up. There's other weird stuff going on that we'll address in the following paragraphs, like how we had pro-apartheid baddies, which felt like the Millennium/Nu Image guys trying to account for the fact that they made a lot of money during apartheid in South Africa; or how we had a quick Clinton Presidential Portrait, plus a couple obscured Al Gore portraits, and a mention that "the President" called for an infected zone, which included our heroes, to be bombed, which meant Clinton, who we don't see beyond the portrait, was the "government jerk guy" who considered our heroes to be expendable losses that they needed to overcome. But it's also directed by Firstenberg, has a bunch of other names, and some decent action, so it's not a total waste, just more weird than anything, which may make it more or less worthy of your viewing, especially if it's on a free streamer.

Usually for a Hall of Fame induction post we try to have a more solid winner, and I think this is probably more winner than loser, but it is one of the pitfalls of picking movies I haven't seen before, you never know what you're going to get, and I figured between Firstenberg directing and the other names involved that we should be okay. And I guess that's the thing, we were okay, just in the nothing remarkable versus the safe connotation. Looking at their filmography on IMDb, they really hit their stride in the mid-90s with films like the Cyborg Cop series, and then give us an all-time classic in Hard Justice, and from there I think they just coasted through the 90s and into the 2000s, coming in as Cannon is going bankrupt, and then overlapping with PM's run, but outlasting them into the 2000s where they transitioned into the DVD era of DTV, making films with guys like Dudikoff, Dolph, Van Damme, and Segal; but they've also moved beyond that and are still managing to thrive in the streaming world, putting out both theatrical releases and straight-to-streaming films. The other thing that this film did almost ten years before The Asylum's War of the Worlds was utilize the Mockbuster concept, as they knew Cannon had hits with the Delta Force films, so why not trade on that name? It's a legacy rooted in the DTV world, but unlike Cannon before them, their forays into the theatrical release world haven't been Icarus flying too close to the sun kinds of things, they've managed to enhance their business. This has probably been long overdue, but it's good they're in now.

Part of why it's been overdue is addressed to some extent by the plot of this film, which is something I mentioned above. Millennium's history was as a production company that Cannon worked with to make films on the cheap in apartheid South Africa, including one of their best, American Ninja 2, and not long after that in 1988 Cannon ended their partnership due to the brutal apartheid policies in South Africa, which is what led to the formation of Nu Image/Millennium Films in 1992. I think their history must've been a sticking point though, perhaps in getting people to work with them--though they'd gotten some big names before this--and in that sense this film feels like their way of distancing themselves from their apartheid-based past. Does it work though? On the one hand it feels like the guilty doth protest loudly, but also I think they had to do something like this, whether it was sincere or not. But that means our baddies are an Afrikaans Neo-Nazi paramilitary separatist group that the US Delta Force has take down, which also felt odd, even with the construct of the baddies getting their hands on this bad virus. Then you make one of those baddies a scenery-chewing Joe Lara who has more charisma than the whole of the Delta Force combined, and the whole thing feels like a jumbled mess. It's like, I can't root for Lara, he's a Neo-Nazi; but I can't root for Fahey and his team because they're a bunch of jerks; and why am I rooting for anyone anyway, why am I even here in South Africa? And then someone throws a grenade, a couple stuntmen go flying forward with an explosion behind them, and I forget all about the other stuff.

We have two other Hall of Famers in this, so we need to give them a paragraph now too. For Sam Firstenberg, this is his 14th film as a director, which puts him in a tie with Jesse V. Johnson for fifth all-time, after being in a three-way tie for sixth all-time with Art Camacho and Keoni Waxman. Looking at his IMDb bio, I see a few more films of his we could do, but that would only get him to 17, which is what Isaac Florentine's at with two more films to review, and Fred Olen Ray, with dozens left to do. Still, he's a Hall of Famer due to his quality, not his quantity, and while this isn't his highest quality film, it's still pretty decent. And then we have Zags. Not a lot for him to do beyond some well-placed wooden lines and a fair amount of chauvinism. And then to redeem himself, he has the classic "baddie gets the drop on him, but before he gets shot, the lady he's been giving a hard time the whole film saves him, and now he has a new respect for her." You know what I like in my heroes? No chauvinism period. Like why do you need to be saved by a woman to respect them? How hard is it to just be a good person? But good or bad, it is another tag for Zags, which gets him to 17. He has enough left to do that he could make the 30 Club when all is said and done, I just need to review more of his stuff. Finally, while not a Hall of Famer, we're at 8 films for the late Joe Lara. I see about 7 more of his we could do, so probably not enough to get him into the DTV Hall of Fame, but if there were a syndicated TV show Hall of Fame, he'd definitely be in that. Maybe something for me to consider if I ever get more time.

Finally, I mentioned the Clinton Presidential Portrait in this. You can barely see it, I almost wondered if it was even meant to be in the shot. I wondered this, because later the order to blow up the village that's had the virus outbreak comes from "the President," which this shot establishes is Bill Clinton. I don't know if I've ever seen that in a film. Yes, parodies of the President, but an actual sitting president alluded to giving the order to take out a village, and with it our heroes as collateral damage. On top of that, we get two Al Gore portraits early in the film, completely by themselves. Why? What government offices would just have Gore's portrait on them? This wasn't like Shark Attack 3, where the Dick Cheney portrait was on the wall next to the Bush 43 one. None of it makes any sense, unless people involved with making this film had an ax to grind with Clinton, which isn't inconceivable either. But even then, how could you have an ax to grind with Clinton and instead put Gore's portrait on the wall? Unless maybe the people who had an ax to grind with Clinton were friends of Gore's and they thought he wasn't treating him well. Again, none of it makes any sense, and adds to the nonsensical nature of this film.

But maybe the nonsensical nature is what makes it just interesting enough to be worth checking out. Multiple free streamers have it, though Tubi isn't one, despite what Tubi says. I think it's because the Spanish language version is on there. And congratulations to Millennium Films for finally making it into the DTVC Hall of Fame. It's overdue, and definitely warranted.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119839

The Perfect Weapon (1991)

It's our 1400th post! And for a milestone like this that's not quite 1500, but still a hundred that's over a thousand, I thought we'd do something special and go outside the usual DTV flicks to a classic that's not DTV, but is a ton of fun and was a must watch for any of us growing up in the early 90s. In addition to us, Ty and Brett at Comeuppance Reviews, Simon at Explosive Action, Kenner at Movies in the Attic, and Mitch at the Video Vacuum have all covered this as well.

The Perfect Weapon has Jeff Speakman as a martial arts prodigy who gets kicked out of his house while he's in high school, then comes back to LA when he's grown up after family friend Mako runs afoul of the local Korean mob. When they actually kill Mako, all bets are off, and Speakman goes on a one-man revenge tour of Koreatown looking for who's responsible. Maybe this James Hong character who seems eager to help is a possible resource--or does he have ulterior motives? Could he or someone else just be using Speakman to take down his enemies, making him... the perfect weapon?

This is that good, it's that much of a classic. I hadn't seen it in like 30 years, mostly due to how difficult it was to find, but now it's on Pluto, plus has a Blu-ray, so it's out there. It makes a great double-feature with another 1991 classic, Showdown in Little Tokyo, which also features a white guy beating up Asian gangsters--I guess it's like how Hollywood puts out two volcano movies in the same year. Anyway, the Speakman is masterful, from the moment he's practicing his technique to the tune of Snap's "I Got the Power," all the way through to his end fight with Tanaka (in a stunning twist, played by Professor Toru Tanaka), Speakman delivers, and a ton of great stunt guys deliver around him. It did have a rocky production, which is why we barely see Mariska Hargitay (I saw more of her at the Knicks game when she was featured on the big screen while sitting in the crowd), but rocky or no, it's the kind of action we want, and it's a shame we didn't get more of this kind of thing with Speakman.

It's a DTV story as old as time, right? Speakman's picked by Paramount to be their Seagal or Van Damme, he gets a three-movie deal, things are looking up. Then there's a regime change at Paramount, his deal's cancelled, so he tries Cannon, but they're almost bankrupt and can't do any publicity for that film, Street Knight, so it does even worse than this one did. The next movie, The Expert, is also beset with production issues, and doesn't even get a theatrical release, and that's it, it's DTV from here on. He's not a Hall of Famer, in part because I haven't reviewed as many of his films as I should have, but also in part because he hasn't done as many. Still, an argument could be made in his case that it's quality over quantity, with this film being the bulk of the quantity, but what sweet quantity it is, isn't it? On the one hand, there's the sense that we wished we had more of these movies, but on the other hand, we got this one, and we're lucky enough to have it.

We've got a veritable who's who of 90s stuntmen and supporting actors in this, many of which did double-duty here and in Showdown in Little Tokyo, reinforcing the idea of that being a fun double-feature. (Also, the two movies combined are less than three hours, how can you beat that?) Some of those names in both films include Cary Tagawa, James Lew, Al Leong, Phillip Tan, Roger Yuan, and Leo Lee. Then we have Brandscombe Richmond doing one scene as a bartender who gets his face smashed into the bar. That's what we love, Brandscombe Richmond taking one for the team. Then James Hong and Mako, who have been in six movies together, but nothing after this, and nothing before this since 1979's TV movie When Hell Was in Session, so it was a bit of a rarity at that time that we'd have them both in a movie together. Finally, Cole S. McKay plays a man in the alley with fellow stuntman Carl Ciarfalio, and they try to rob Speakman. That puts us at 73 movies for McKay, and we may get even more before we're able to do is 70 Club post in November. With the volume of stuff we see him in, he'll probably pass Dolph soon for the most period, which will be quite a moment here at the DTVC, as Dolph has held that title for a long time.

The big baddie in this is Professor Toru Tanaka, who, coincidence of all coincidences, plays a character named Tanaka! I remember as a kid watching him and Mr. Fuji tearing up the WWF tag team circuit, throwing salt in people's eyes while the bumbling ref was distracted. It would've been nice if this film paid homage to that by having him throw salt in Speakman's eyes, but I guess the fact that he was so big was considered an advantage enough--though had he even stored an Alka-Seltzer tab in the waist of his pants a la Bolo Yeung in Bloodsport and crushed it and threw it in Speakman's eyes as a last resort I would've been for it. The end fight is a great deal too, where Tanaka arrives on a speedboat. So while Bloodsport was better for the use of the Alka-Seltzer tablet, had Bolo Yeung arrived at the end fight with Van Damme via speedboat it would've been even better. It was a great move on the part of this film to cast Tanaka, because they spend the bulk of the 83-minute runtime establishing how unstoppable Speakman is, so to just have a regular baddie would've seemed pedestrian, while with Tanaka we're like "how is he going to beat him?" Spoiler: he does figure it out.

Finally, above I mentioned that at the Knicks game I went to, Mariska Hargitay was on the big screen at Madison Square Garden longer than she's in this movie, and I don't think that's an exaggeration. She was supposed to have a bigger part, and in the TBS versions she does, but in the video and theatrical versions, the only pieces that remain are her seeing him after he attends Mako's funeral, and at the very end when they're in the dojo together. Because Hargitay became so huge with the copaganda extravaganza that is Law and Order: SVU, it makes for this odd viewing experience, where the biggest actor in the film now has what amounts to the role of "woman at dojo." As far as the Knicks game, I got an $80 ticket to a game against the Jazz in early January of 2024, and I bought it a month or so before Jalen Brunson went on a tear and became one of the best players in the sport, so I imagine that ticket cost a lot more by the time the game happened. I checked now, and the cheapest tickets to most Knicks games is over $200, with a few games against lesser teams at like $185, so my $80 was a great deal, and I'll always be able to say I've been to a game at Madison Square Garden, where I saw Mariska Hargitay on the big screen for longer than she was in The Perfect Weapon.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Currently you can stream this on Pluto, which is a great way to go. If I was more on having a physical media collection though, I think this would be a must have on the Blu-ray. One of the absolute classics for a reason, and a great one I think for this 1400th post. Speaking of which, thank you to everyone who has supported us in the myriad ways that support is given, whether you were with us from review number one, or you started more recently, I've always appreciated it. Here's to 1400 more!

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102655

Night Eyes (1990)

We're starting our Hall of Fame inductions this month with someone who is perhaps the King of the Erotic Thriller, Andrew Stevens, but also someone who has over thirty credits on our site for a variety of genres, both in front of the camera and behind it. For his induction post I figured I'd do the one he was most famous for, and Jon and I had just covered it on a podcast episode (episode 280), so it was still fresh in my mind. A classic that should've been reviewed on here back in 2007 when we started the site, and almost 20 years later we're finally getting to it now. Better late than never I guess.

Night Eyes has Stevens as Will Griffith, who, with his brother (Cooper Huckabee) runs a private security firm. They're hired by an aging rocker (Warwich Sims) to keep an eye on his estranged wife (Tanya Roberts), but give him the ulterior motive of trying to get dirt on her (which doesn't make sense if they're estranged, but we won't think about it too much). As Stevens watches her though, he falls for her, and now he's in too deep. But that won't cause any issues, will it? Roberts wouldn't have any ulterior motives herself, would she?

Sorry if I got the Genesis song "In Too Deep" in your head in that previous paragraph--speaking of which, between Genesis, Phil Collins's solo stuff, and Mike Rutherford's Mike and the Mechanics, they had quite a run in the 80s, didn't they? "In Too Deep" might not even be top ten amongst all their stuff--but anyway, this absolutely is a classic like I described above, one of the first of the great DTV and made-for-cable Erotic Thriller boom of the 90s--perhaps the first when you look at it like that, as you see a lot of the hallmarks that makes these movies so much fun. Aspirational wealth; modern, hip, LA culture; Noirish, Hitchcockian elements; a seductive, in control female lead; and a hero who's a dupe, and perhaps figures it out and survives by the skin of his teeth, or doesn't and ends up at the bottom of a ravine or framed and stuck in a jail cell. Oh yeah, and I forgot to mention, tons of plot holes, the kind of stuff you see when the story is secondary to all those other elements, and for us fans of the genre, we like to joke about those plot holes, but ultimately we're okay with it because we enjoy everything else. Then there's this added DTV Connoisseur factor, where almost 20 years in, I'm recognizing people I wouldn't have as a kid in the early 90s, like Chick Vennera as an attorney, Larry Poindexter as a trendy (possibly gay) member of Roberts's art set, and Cole S. McKay in an uncredited role as a guy assaulting a woman in the opening credits that Stevens and his brother are supposed to be protecting. It may not be the best of these, but as one of the ones that kicked off this cinematic movement we love so much, it's a great watch and worth checking out if you can track it down.

Now for the man of the hour, Andrew Stevens. Initially I had only credited his actor roles, but once I added in his work as a producer, he had over 30 tags, so we had to get him in for that alone, but beyond that, I think he really embodies the spirit of DTV and made-for-cable filmmaking. For the uninitiated it may seem crass, but similar to the PM Entertainment guys, he found a way to make money in the movie industry, an industry he loves, and to be able to do what you love for a living is something I'll always applaud. And while I think we can call him the King of the Erotic Thrillers, because of his work in these films, plus his production, writing, and directing work in the genre, if you click on his tag, you'll see a lot of action films, working with DTVC Hall of Famers like Steven Seagal, Michael Dudikoff, and the greatest of them all, Dolph Lundgren. And that's a big part of why he's in the Hall of Fame now, in the mid-90s when he saw where the DTV and made-for-cable Erotic Thriller was going, he pivoted to action right as big names like Seagal were dropping down, but also Michael Dudikoff was looking for work after the end of Cannon, and Dolph was coming to terms with the fact that those big screen roles weren't coming--at least for the time being--which gave Stevens another decade's worth of success, and now in the world of streaming he's pivoted further to adapt to this new ecosystem, whether it's "geezer teasers," Christmas movies, or Lifetime-style thrillers, he's still making it happen. For our purposes though, it's that 90s and 2000s stuff that got him here today, and it's an honor that's long overdue. Here's to you Mr. Stevens, you're one of the great ones.

The other name in this is Tanya Roberts, who I remembered as a kid on Charlie's Angels, but who was also a Bond Lady in my favorite Bond film, A View to a Kill, and played Kiri in Beastmaster. If you look at her career between A View to a Kill and this, she does three films: Body Slam, which would've probably been a big hit cashing in on the rise of the WWF, but a lawsuit prevented it from being shown theatrically; Purgatory, a women-in-prison film; and Twisted Justice, a David Heavener film where she played "Secretary," so she didn't even get a great part in it! The trivia on this is that she took this role because she wasn't getting he parts she wanted, which I can totally understand, but she may have also been the first to learn the Erotic Thriller double standard: if a big star does an Erotic Thriller, especially a big screen one, it can make her career; but when someone who's trying to make it or whose career is on the skids does a DTV one, it has the opposite effect. The thing is, I think she knew it, because, despite the trivia calling her "the Queen of the Erotic Thrillers," she only does a few more of these over the next four years; but I think she'll always have a vaunted position in the world of Erotic Thrillers because she starred in this one. I mean, Jon and I have talked about this (and we do on the episode for this film too), the three Queens of Erotic Thrillers are Shannon Tweed, Shannon Whirry, and Joan Severance, you can't put Roberts in that group, but the fact that she did this is worthy of consideration.

Had our site not gone in the direction of doing mostly DTV action early on in our history, Jag Mundhra may already be in the Hall of Fame, but that's not how things worked out, and here we are almost 20 years in with almost 1400 posts, and this is the first time we're seeing him as a director, and only his second credit overall, after we covered Illicit Behavior, which he wrote. When you look at his bio, he has a good amount of stuff, including a lot of Erotic Thrillers, that were the kinds of movies I expected to cover more of when I first conceived of the site. What's interesting about Mundhra is, in the mid-90s when Stevens saw the writing on the wall with regard to Erotic Thrillers and started his pivot to action, Mundhra saw that too, but left Hollywood to make more Erotic Thrillers in the UK and India. Compare that to a Fred Olen Ray who can direct anything, he's not wedded to one genre, so when Stevens pivoted to action, Ray pivoted with him--and now has pivoted further and directs Christmas movies. That means there are a lot of ways we can run into a Fred Olen Ray film to review, as opposed to Mundhra, which will almost exclusively be Erotic Thrillers, and unfortunately a good portion of the ones he did aren't on any streamers, so we'll have to work to track them down--but I think the work will be worth it, so plan to see him more on here in the future.

Finally, we get a nice Prism Entertainment logo to start this film, which is a logo a lot of us are familiar with, as they were one of the early home video distributors, seeing the value in buying up B-movies and genre films in the mid-80s as the home video market was exploding. But that's only part of the reason I'm writing this paragraph. The other reason is, this was the only distributor or production company graphic we got, which is such a stark contrast to today where seven of these things isn't unheard of, and if you get to the opening credits with less than four you're coming out ahead. It's almost become a parody of itself, so much so that Family Guy even mocked the phenomenon. There was something about the 80s and 90s when you fired up one of these bad boys, and saw the Prism logo, or Vestron Video, or PM Entertainment, or probably our favorite, Cannon Films. That's all I needed, I didn't need to know who the money people were, or the co-producers, or the directors' production company--and even worse, when the opening credits start, we see all those names again, so why not just do that then! So many aspects of modern society have been enshittified, but what's interesting about movies being enshittified is we have access to the old ones instead of their modern enshittified counterparts. But maybe that's the idea, increasingly squeeze out modern DTV films by forcing them to be made on increasingly tighter margins, while movies from the past that had more leeway and now also have a nostalgia factor outcompete them for streams, which pay out less as it is, while the industry further consolidates and we're stuck with fewer new movies, at which point the industry shifts to gatekeeping the older films, and we're screwed either way. I hope it doesn't happen, and I'm sure a lot of people reading this would say physical media is the solution, but that ignores the fact that housing is more expensive now and most people don't have the space to buy every movie. The best we can do is support as much indie as we can, however we can.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Unfortunately this doesn't look like it's available unless you can find a used VHS--which can be tough now with resellers jacking up prices, don't get me started on them! If you can find it, it's worth checking out for sure. Speaking of worth checking out, check out podcast episode 280, where Jon and I discuss this and Night Eyes II. And finally, congratulations to Andrew Stevens, as I said above, this was an honor that was long overdue.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100251

L.A. Vice (1989)

For our October PM Entertainment post, I thought I'd look at another Joseph Merhi-directed effort, and at the same time go back to an earlier film in their catalog, so this looked like the best bet. In addition to us, Chris the Brain at Bulletproof Action and Ty and Brett from Comeuppance have covered this as well.

L.A. Vice is the second of three Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs/Jon Chance films, and in this one our hero is maybe working vice, but really just killing a lot of people--his boss even says "have you ever considered arresting people instead of killing them?" Anyway, a rich girl is kidnapped by some mob guys, and the FBI brings in Jon Chance to help them get her back, which causes him to get his old boss William Smith out of retirement, and promptly get him killed in the process. As if that weren't bad enough, Chance finds out in the debrief after that the FBI set him up (what?), so he quits, which makes him a free agent, and considering the FBI has been ineffective to this point, the kidnapped girl's father hires Chance to get her back. It's going to take a lot of dynamite if he's going to pull this off.

This is one that really works if you're a big PM fan, but if you're not, you may not be as enamored with it. And even as a big PM fan, it's still not a classic, but you see some of the DNA in this early effort that would evolve into the classic elements we love in PM. Like stuntmen getting set on fire, shootouts coming out of nowhere, and some nice explosions. The car chases were a bit lacking, though we did get to see William Smith get hit by a car, so there's that. What's interesting about this one is how, as they're trying to figure out what their thing as a studio is, we get this unevenness that actually makes the film more entertaining. Like there's a lot of killing and brutality, but then you get these goofy moments like when Jastereo Coviare's Bear character, who's Native American and has never been to the city before, is totally enamored with the concept of strip clubs, and LHJ has to pull him away from them in a way that can only be played for laughs. Meanwhile, a guy's just going to get set on fire and burn to death, and the guy who perpetrated that gets killed by Chance when Chance straps some dynamite to his chest, then detonates it by throwing a tennis ball at it, blowing the man to bits--but is that also even meant to be played for laughs? I just buckled myself in and went with it for 82 minutes, and before I knew it the credits were rolling and I'd had a pretty good time.

We're now at 18 directed films for Joseph Merhi, which puts him alone in second place all-time among directors after Albert Pyun's 44, and one ahead of Fred Olen Ray's 17. This is also the last of his PM films we had to do where he's listed as the only director--we still have Direct Hit, which he's listed as co-director on with PM mainstay Paul Volk. From there it'll be his 10 City Lights movies, which we haven't gotten to yet on the site, but hopefully we will soon. When we think of prolific DTV auteurs, names like Pyun, Ray, and Wynorski come to mind, but Merhi, who is already in the Hall of Fame as the M in PM Entertainment, is making the case to go in a second time, if that's even possible. I guess since I make the rules it is, right? The thing is though, we don't often talk about Merhi the way we talk about some of these other big DTV names, but his CV is right there with a lot of them. As far as where this sits among the 18 of his we've covered so far, it's probably toward the bottom, but it's still a fun one, especially when you consider some of the classics he's directed, towards the bottom doesn't necessarily mean bad.

When did we as a society stop creating this guy? Because he doesn't exist anymore, and hasn't since around this time, when he was probably on the endangered species list. Homo sapiens capilli galeati (I looked up "helmet hair" in Latin on Google Translate) was prolific in the 70s, and somehow this one lasted almost into the 90s. Was it as simple as natural selection? They were no longer selected for breeding by human society at that time? Or perhaps hairstylists en masse refused to give patrons "the Leo Sayer" when it was requested. Speaking of "breeding," at one point Chance wants to see if Smith still has it as a shooter, so Smith tells him you never lose it, he then says "it's like breeding a woman." What the hell is he talking about, "breeding a woman"? Is she a horse? Who talks like that? Helmet Hair guy certainly wouldn't. If only California had put as much effort into protecting Homo sapiens capilli galeati as they did the condor, we'd still have guys like this living and thriving among us. Perhaps we could breed some in captivity, but I think they're entirely extinct, it's too late. Here's to you Helmet Hair guy, sorry we didn't protect you, it will go down as one of human kind's greatest travesties. 

As part of demonstrating how bad of a cop Jon Chance is, this film uses the worst instance of the "friend who helps the hero ends up dying" trope I've ever seen. You know the trope, usually our hero is in dire straits, he goes to an old buddy for a place to stay or to look up some information for him, and once our hero has what he needs, within two scenes the baddies show up and the friend is gonzo. One of the worst in this is Don "The Dragon" Wilson. If you're his friend in a movie and he comes to you with a favor, run. Going back to William Smith saying shooting a gun is like "breeding a woman," his character is living peacefully in retirement, and Chance just shows up and is like "hey, you want to work as my back-up on this dangerous operation?" And the moment he shows up, you know he's getting Smith killed, which, however inappropriate he is in using expressions like "breeding a woman," he didn't deserve to go the way he did. The thing is, how easy would it have been to have Chance be invited to dinner at Smith's house, Chance brings up the mission when Smith asks what he's been up to, and Smith insists on joining despite Chance telling him he couldn't let him do that. Then it's entirely on Smith if he gets hurt. But, as I said above, I believe the movie wanted us to know how bad of a cop Chance was.

Finally, a somber note, I wanted to dedicate a paragraph to someone who has been my silent podcast cohost and my coworker for the last 12 years. I'm talking about our friend and family member JD, who passed away Tuesday morning at 17. Jen first got him as a kitten in 2009, meaning he's been a part of my life since I moved down here to be with her in 2014--in fact Tuesday night was the first night I've ever spent here in Philadelphia without him. From the beginning, when we lived in our small apartment in Drexel Hill, JD would lie at my feet or in the window sill as I taught my English as a second language classes or recorded my early podcast episodes, and that continued when we moved to Philadelphia, where he had his own couch to lie on in my office while I worked. It became such that I always looked for him to be there, and Jen even got me a T-shirt with a drawing of an orange cat lying on a keyboard with the title "Employee of the Month." As a listener of the show you probably didn't even know he was there, because I usually edited out when he meowed or scratched at the door to let me know it was time for him to eat, but our podcast guests knew, as that would be the time we took our breaks. This isn't the first time I've lost an animal companion, but JD is the first one I've formed such a strong and lasting bond with, and while his health had been declining for the past year or so, his death was still sudden and not expected. There's a large void left now that he's no longer with us, not just because he was about one and a half times the size of an average cat, or because he had a larger-than-life personality, but because I was so used to turning from my computer and seeing him there, and it's hard to imagine that I'll never see him there again. JD, our big kitty, you were such a great boy, and I'll always miss you.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can get this on Fawesome here in the States, and there's also a version on YouTube, which you can find on our PM Entertainment playlist on our YouTube channel, and is roughly the same quality as the FilmRise version on Fawesome. It's probably more for PM completists, but in that vein it's fun.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0145038/