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/

Mirror Images II (1994)

This is one Jon Cross and I covered on one of our "Erotic Thrilleur" double feature episodes of the podcast, this one part of a Shannon Whirry double bill that also featured Private Obsession. In addition to us, Joe Bob Briggs reviewed this for the Orlando Sentinel back in 1994, which is a great read that you can find in the critic reviews section of the movie's IMDb page.

Mirror Images II doesn't pick up where part 1 left off, instead going with a new set of twins embarking on their own Erotic Thriller romp, with Whirry playing both roles this time. Carrie's the nice one, Terrie the devious one, and we know this because the nice one wears white, and the devious one wears black... or do they? Terrie gets involved with Carrie's reptilian husband Luca Bercovici, an LAPD detective who makes money on the side shaking down sex workers, of which Terrie is one. Their plan, bump off Carrie and have Terrie pretend to be her, because everyone thinks Terrie is dead. Carrie is suspicious, so she hires a PI (Tom Reilly), who has a bone to pick with Bercovici anyway. But can he be trusted too when this much money is involved?

Joe Bob Briggs gave this 3 stars back in 1994, and I'd say on a five-star scale that's about right, with maybe another star or half-star added on 30 years later for the nostalgia factor. It has the twists and turns you want from a story standpoint, it plays on the twin factor well to keep you guessing, and it's not light on the erotic element either. Gregory Dark is great at directing these, and eventual Christopher Nolan cinematographer and Oscar winner Wally Pfister knows how to frame the scenes to give us that mix of old Film Noir and late night 90s cable guilty pleasure that we're looking for. I think Whirry does a great job taking a plot device that was used in the previous film, and making it her own, and Luca Bercovici's reptilian performance made my skin crawl, which may have been the idea. Also, despite not being a continuation of the first film, it does make little callbacks here and there, like when Whirry convinces the landlord to get the key to her sister's apartment, only here instead of George "Buck" Flower it's Frank Pesce, but the rest of it plays out the same. For a fun movie night pick, especially now while it's on Fawesome, it does the trick.

This is only our second Whirry Erotic Thriller we've covered, after Animal Instincts, and while I think that movie was better than this one, I think she still does a great job here. It's interesting, because she really sells us that she's playing two different people, but she can't sell on us why Carrie would marry Luca Bercovici's character. He doesn't have any redeeming qualities, and seems like a total jerkoff, plus they don't have anything in common. I can't even imagine that he was able to hide his reptilian nature on their first date, he would've had to have done something that showed what a creep he was. As good an actor as Whirry is, there are some things even she can't pull off. In terms of other stuff of hers we can review, we have two other films that Jon and I covered on the podcast, Body of Influence and Private Obsession. I'll definitely be doing the first of those two, but not sure about the second (Jon and I covered it on the same episode we did this movie, and didn't like it). Beyond that she has a ton of other stuff, it's just a matter of how available it is. Some of her DTV Erotic Thrillers are out of print, or didn't even get an actual physical release. We'll try to cover as many as we can get though, and hopefully if movies like this do well on streamers like Fawesome, more of her catalog will become available too.

Onto Luca Bercovici's character, which I keep describing by using the word "reptilian," though I think that may be doing a disservice to reptiles--I mean, what did a turtle, lizard, or even snake do to deserve being used to negatively characterize Bercovici's character? It's just, from the moment you see him, it's sliminess right from the jump, and it only gets worse. And this isn't a knock on Bercovici, the character was written like this, he was just delivering the role he saw on the page. But maybe that's it, he was written as a jerkoff, but Bercovici played it too well for the character to work, because there's no sense of why Carrie would've ever gotten involved with him; like none of the "he was a totally different guy when I met him" kind of thing, there's no way Carrie wouldn't have seen the slime residue on his chair after he got up to use the restroom on their first dinner date. Take Jack Scalia in Illicit Behavior, there's still some hot guy/could be charming at times in there that explains why Joan Severance would've thrown in her lot with him, and we need a little of that to make the proceedings at least a little believable.

Among Erotic Thriller directors, Gregory Dark, especially with the eight films he did with Wally Pfister, has to be up there as one of the best to do it. Jag Mundhra has more movies to his credit, and he did them over a longer period of time, so he's one that would be there, along with Fred Olen Ray and Jim Wynorski. I need to see more of Mundhra's films to say for sure, but Dark is definitely in the conversation, and I think this one is a great example of what he and Pfister did with these movies. I think too, because Dark was coming from the porn world, he understood where the line was between Erotic Thrillers and out and out porn, and not only knew how to avoid crossing it, but also knew how to blur the line, and I think that's part of what made Erotic Thrillers so much fun, that we were indulging in something explicit, but not fully explicit, and something that still had the hallmarks of film traditions we recognized like classic Film Noir. Jon and I covered two other Gregory Dark films on episode 261, Body of Influence and Stranger By Night, so plan to see those on the site sometime soon, though interestingly enough, Body of Influence is one of my favorite Gregory Dark films, but it's not one where Wally Pfister was DP.

Finally, look at the amenities at the Motel Tangiers. First off, the phone works 24 hours, they don't shut it off after a certain time, which I appreciate. Also, in addition to the color TV, they also have a radio that covers both AM and FM bands, so in 1994 I could listen to my top 40 radio during the day, then switch over to Art Bell on AM after midnight. They also have family units, that way you and your kids don't end up in separate rooms, which was important when traveling through LA in the 90s. But as you've noticed, I'm kind of burying the lead here: WATERBEDS. Talk about your classy joint. While I'm listening to either AM or FM radio, or watching TV in color, and my kids are prank calling people in the middle of the night because the phone works 24 hours a day, I get the added comfort of a waterbed. How is there vacancy in this place? Welcome to Tangiers, and how!

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently stream this on Fawesome here in the States, along with part one. You don't need to see part one to understand what's happening in this, but since they're both on a free streamer, why not do a double feature? Or don't and just do this one, that works too. And for the podcast episode Jon and I did on this, it's 265 in the archives.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110529

Mary Magnum: Jiu-Jitsu Nun (2026)

This was a screener request from Robert Dill, who was one of the producers on the film, and plays the main baddie. The title alone makes it hard to resist, so it didn't take a lot of convincing, and we had a slot open for a review this week, so here we are. Let's see how it did!

Mary Magnum: Jiu-Jitsu Nun stars Paula Rae Taylor as the eponymous hero, who becomes a nun in part to atone for her past as a special forces soldier, and in part out of heartbreak after Vicky, the woman she loves (Laura Lopez), leaves her to marry rich guy and political candidate Vlad Russo (Dill). After some time doing her nun stuff, she gets a letter from Vicky, and it sounds like this Russo character isn't a straight shooter--in fact, he may be downright devious. At the same time, Mary has a disagreement with her boss, Father Miller (Ryan Patrick Shanahan), over whether or not he should be able to have inappropriate relations with the altar boys, which leads to her violently tendering her resignation. Now she has all the free time she needs to find Vicky and free her from Russo, but will Russo be so amenable to letting her go?

This was a ton of fun. Both a love letter to and a send up of low-budget action movies, and a good mix of both that will make fans of the action genre happy. Paula Rae Taylor is great as the lead, she's someone you want to root for, and someone you want to see go into a room and beat up a bunch of stunt guys; and then Robert Dill fully understands the assignment as the lead baddie, plenty amounts of scenery chewing and despicableness. I also liked Laura Lopez as Vicky, and Thomas Patrick Ryan Watson as Johnny Stryder, friend of Mary and Vicky, and son of former action legend Jake Stryder. The action was great too, a nice mix of martial arts and gun fu, and there were a lot of talented people carrying those scenes off. My one critique is some of the dialog scenes felt a little long, but I understand too at 83 minutes, perhaps if they cut those scenes down and it's too short that may scare distributors, though as action fans, Showdown in Little Tokyo is one of the best movies ever, and it's like 76 minutes, so those distributors shouldn't be too concerned with that. Also, I read the Comeuppance review of Prepare to Die, another film from writer and director of this film, Jose Montesinos, and they had the same issue with that one. Again though, that's a small critique on what was overall a great time here. Currently you can rent this on Prime, and if you're looking to support more indie films and want a fun action film, this is worth checking out.

Paula Rae Taylor joins Tatiana Neva and Shaina West as up and coming women action stars, and someone else that I want to see in more stuff. From the beginning when she walks into the dive bar in her nun's habit, where a bunch of scary guys are looking to do her harm, it's go time, just a series of cracked limbs, bullets in domes, and cold one-liners. As I said above, she plays a hero you want to root for, which is essential, but you gotta believe it when the punches start flying, and she delivers there too. I'm behind on Cobra Kai, but fans of that would recognize her Draga from the last season of that series; and she was in Prepare to Die, so I'll have to make that one happen soon--the Comeuppance guys gave that one a good review too. Obviously this films lends itself to sequels, and I'd be up for more of these films, but whatever it is, we need some more action movies with her in the lead.

Every action movie needs a great baddie as well, and that's where Robert Dill comes in. With these more tongue-in-cheek sendups we often run into a situation where the baddie may go too goofy or chew too much scenery, but Dill plays it straight for the most part, which makes it work even more. Unlike Taylor, who we haven't seen before on the site, Dill has worked with Isaac Florentine and Jesse V. Johnson as both actor and stunt performer, including some classics like The Mercenary and Accident Man, so he's well-versed in what makes for a good action movie; but the comedic aspects of this asked for more, and he delivered there too. I think my favorite part was when he was telling his henchmen how he developed his famous punch. It was straight out of a Seagal movie where he's beating up his students, but while Seagal is totally serious when he does that, we know Dill isn't, but he's gotta play it like he's serious too to make the whole thing work. Just a fantastic job all round, and I look forward to seeing more of his work as well.

In the DTV action world, beyond the high-octane action and fight choreography, there's often what Bravo TV calls "the jiggle factor," which they use to describe when they encourage their Real Housewives cast members to wear skimpy outfits so the husbands of the women watching their shows are less likely to ask their wives to change the channel. In the action movie "the jiggle factor" is often the seedy strip club, the modern version of the Western saloon; or maybe a brothel or another form of sex work, and there's a sense that the women who engage in sex work are somehow a lower tier than the damsel in distress who may be captured and pressganged into wearing a sexy outfit, but is saved by the hero before any actual forced sex work happens. This movie does a great job of handling that whole trope, when we find out that Vlad Russo is forcing Vicky to make him money through Onlyfans. She's in her sexy lingerie with stockings, she's uncomfortable, but she opens her computer and sucks it up, and most action movies would keep the exploitation up, maybe having her undress more, do sexy poses or whatever. Instead, the first guy watching her asks her to poop in a cup and mail it to her in a box. Hard stop, we're done here, and it was the perfect way to upend that trope. Then later, they cover their bases by having a conversation between Russo and Vicky where it's discussed that there's nothing wrong with making money on Onlyfans, as long as you're the one deciding whether you want to do it or not. I thought the whole thing worked really well, it was taking a trope that we see in a lot of movies like this, and altering it to fit the overall ethos of the film.

Finally, I live in South Philadelphia, which has a lot of Catholic people, and a lot of dive bars that you may not be welcome in if you're not a local or with a local. I say this because it really informed my understanding of the opening scene where Mary Magnum takes out a bunch of guys in the dive bar. When she first enters, the guys are giving her a hard time, to the point that it looks like they're going to assault her before she whips off her robe and starts shooting. I don't think you'd see that in a South Philly bar, they'd welcome her, have her pull up a chair, and start asking her for spiritual advice on things. I imagine the nun wouldn't be able to relax. I don't think there'd be a sense of "we need to be on our best behavior," but I don't think they'd be fresh with her either. I also think they'd help her find whoever she was looking for if she needed to find someone. Now, this is all supposition, I haven't actually been in a dive bar down here when a nun walked in, but I think my understanding of what would happen is pretty accurate.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Currently you can rent this on VOD on Prime for $5. If you want to put your money behind an indie project, and want to be thoroughly entertained at the same time, this is worth checking out. Thank you to Robert for having me look at this one, I had a great time!

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt43700107