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.

Cop Game (1988)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Midnight Warrior (1989)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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