A Dangerous Place is a take on the Karate Kid paradigm, and the twist is murder--and flipping cop cars, since it is PM after all. Ted Jan Roberts is a high school freshman, and when his older brother turns up dead, hanging from his school basketball hoop, Ted Jan doesn't buy the initial verdict that it's suicide, he thinks the bad karate crew his brother ran with, the Scorpions, had something to do with it. So he goes undercover to try and root out the truth. But will he find out before they discover his true motives?
This is definitely up there with some of the most fun PM. I have it tenth on my PM top ten list. First, Ted Jan Roberts is a great protagonist, he takes Macchio and gives him a SoCal feel that really works. Then you have Marshall Teague as the evil sensei of the Scorpions. No, he doesn't tell anyone that he fucked guys like them in prison, nor does he do a dance with a pool cue in a bar, but it's still Teague baddie all the way (spoiler alert: his throat stays intact in the film). Feldman as the head of the Scorpions is total Feldman crossed with Dylan McKay--his character's even named Dylan! In addition to them we have Mako as Roberts's sensei, Erin Gray as his mother, and Dick Van Patten as his principal (more on that later). It's like a PM ensemble cast! On top of all that, DTVC Hall of Famer Art Camacho's fight choreography and the classic PM car chase action sequences set this apart from your standard run of the mill Karate Kid knock-off. A PM Entertainment take on The Karate Kid could go one of two ways, and this one went the right way.
Ted Jan Roberts is only about five months younger than me, and may have even made the cut-off to be in the same class as me if we went to the same high school. It's a reminder I guess of how young I was when I was consuming films from this era. What I think made Roberts's character work here is that he's not bullied at all, he had been taking lessons for a long time before the film starts, and I think that makes a lot of difference in the paradigm--and Roberts had the skills in this to pull this kind of hero who isn't bullied off. This wasn't about Crane Kicks and "wax on, wax off," Roberts is like "I'm a practitioner, this is what I do," and when you combine that with what Art Camacho can do in choreographing fights, we don't care if Roberts is only 14, we're happy to see him get after it.
We last saw Corey Feldman here a little over 8 years ago, in 2012, when I did South Beach Academy as part of the Lost Video Archive's multi-blog James Hong dedication. As someone who's a self-professed Feldman fan, that feels like way too long. In this you can see he was definitely going more Luke Perry than William Zabka, but I don't think he was quite as old as Perry was when he did 90210. It's not a matter of whether or not I buy Feldman as a karate expert high school senior in 1994, it's a matter of whether or not if I buy him as a baddie, and he pulls that off for sure. No one ever questioned Feldman as an actor, and he reminds us of that here.
In the Comeuppance Reviews post on this, they describe Dick Van Patten's part as a "sit-down" role--and if he didn't stand up from his desk as the gentleman he is when Erin Gray walks in, it literally would have been a sit-down role. His character name is simply "Principal," which was either very precipitous that he would then have that occupation, or very lazy writing. Either way, when Van Patten doesn't know how to respond as Ted Jan Roberts, having just seen his dead brother hanging from the basketball hoop in the school gym, is crying in front of him, so he just makes awkward faces, you have to wonder how the Academy gave Martin Landau the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for 1994. I guess PM didn't screen this one for the voters.
Speaking of PM, part of what makes this so good is the PM Factor. In the opening sequence, Feldman and his Scorpions steal some dirt bikes out of a Buick dealership, and are chased by the cops. Just as I was thinking the chase was becoming excitement by repetition, the two cop cars are flipped over a water barrier. "You're welcome" PM says as I beg their forgiveness for ever doubting them. It's like the PM alchemy of great stunts, great fight choreography by the man, Art Camacho, and then this ensemble cast that they throw at us in waves so we never get bored; when you mix it all together in post you have more PM gold.
And I can't think of a better note to leave this on. As of my writing this, it's available on Prime and Tubi. If you're like I was and haven't seen this yet, do it. It's the fun PM flick you came for.
For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107696
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