The Black Cobra aka Cobra nero (1987)

Back in February when I did The Messenger, I said I was going to get more Fred Williamson on the site. It's now the end of August and the only other one of his I've done since then is One Down, Two to Go. Not good at all, especially considering the volume of Williamson out there for free to grab on streaming, including this one. I'm going to stop promising and hopefully starting today I'll just do a better job of it. In addition to us, our friends Ty and Brett at Comeuppance Reviews have looked at this one, so you should go there to check out what they had to say as well.

Black Cobra is essentially Cobra, with Williamson as Det. Robert Malone instead of Stallone as Marion Cobretti, and with the woman targeted by the murderous gang being the photographer and not the model. Just the same, they want to kill her, and Williamson won't let that happen. Normally that would be the end of it, but this gang of baddies is particularly persistent, and when they can't get through him, they kidnap his boss's daughter. Now Williamson has to get her back, protect the other woman, and take this gang down.

This is more of the Williamson you came for. He just can't not be good in any of the scenes he's in, and it's impossible not to root for him. He elevates the material beyond simply a Cobra ripoff, so it's more like a Fred Williamson cover, but one where you can say you like both versions, if that makes sense. The baddies in this are sufficiently bad enough, which makes Williamson that much badder when he takes them down. On top of all that, for a limited budget, like most Italian directed low-budget films, this makes the most of what budget they had to deliver some fantastic action scenes. This is one of those ones that doesn't just make me say "why don't I have more Williamson on the site?" but also "with all the great stuff from the 80s out there that I haven't covered yet, why am I bothering with so many new movies?" Why indeed.

What more can you say about Williamson? The reality is, if I hunkered down and stuck to doing more of his films, he could have the most of any Hall of Famer, even more than Dolph. The question then is, why doesn't he? First and foremost, he suffers from the fact that I came into this with Dolph as the impetus for me creating the site, so I focused more on Dolph flicks. Then, when I first started doing the site in the late 2000s, a lot of the great Williamson stuff wasn't as available. I didn't let that keep me from putting him in the Hall of Fame, but it made me negligent in doing more reviews, which was bad on my part. Finally, I took my hiatus, and felt I needed to catch up on newer things I missed while I was out. That was perhaps the biggest mistake, because I've missed out on a lot of this great stuff and Williamson has been left with fewer tags.

One of the striking things about this film is that you have a black cop in Williamson against a gang of lawless thugs that are all white--not a white diabolical baddie with all kinds of resources at his disposal and grand plans for world domination, we're talking about a white face representing the lawlessness that was the rest of the world's view of New York at that time. This was part of how Williamson tried to change the way black men were depicted in films, and was especially important for a film that took place in New York in 1987 at the height of the crack scourge that was plaguing the city and was shown in the media as being a predominantly black problem. That representation led to mandatory minimum and three strikes laws targeted toward young black males, and a militarization of the police force that led to more killings of black men and brought us to 2020 and the images we saw of Black Lives Matters protesters being rammed with SUVs and shot with tear gas and flash bangs. The shame really is that this movie and Williamson's other movies didn't reach more people as a counter to the narrative that was so prevalent at that time. Williamson's importance goes well beyond his contributions to the DTV and exploitation realm, often his films, like this one, stand for something beyond the great action, one-liners, and slick looks at the camera. Just the same, we still love them for the latter as well, so we can enjoy them and respect the message he's telling us.

This is directed by Stelvio Massi, and he's actually credited as Stelvio Massi. The name he often used instead was Max Steel, which I put right behind Bruno Mattei's Vincent Dawn as my favorite name used by an Italian director. I guess there was a fear that we wouldn't trust the movie enough if we didn't think it was directed by an English speaking person, specially if it ran in the theaters and people saw an Italian name attached to it. I wonder how they picked their names? Was it the way we did porn names in the US: middle name plus the name of the street you grew up on? That would make mine Rene Armour. I think for my Italian director English name I'd go to the Elvis movie character well, like Clint Reno, Vince Everett, or maybe part my hair on the dangerous side with something like Tulsa McLean.

They always say, never act with kids and animals, and while I've never really agreed with the kids part of that, I totally get it when it comes to animals. The only person to steal scenes from Williamson was his cat Purvis (Ty and Brett already beat me to the "did he spell it 'purr-vis'?" joke, another downside of me being late on reviewing these). How do you not love that guy? I'm always up for a good cat or dog in a movie, and as I've said before, I think movies should use them whenever they're considering casting a kid. Dogs and cats are better than kids, might be rule number 2 after the 90-minute rule.

And with that, we'll wrap this up. You can stream this on Tubi, which I think is a great deal. This is the great 80s Williamson you came for. Don't do like I did and procrastinate, just get it done, you won't regret it.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092765

Trancers III (1992)

Having done the first two of these, and being a huge Tim Thomerson fan, and seeing that this was free to stream on Tubi, I figured I'd give it a shot. Throw in that 75-minute runtime, and I was all in. This was also reviewed by our friend Mitch at the Video Vacuum, so you can head over there to see what he thought.

Trancers III follows Jack Deth (Thomerson) living a mundane life in 1990s LA as a private detective. All that changes when a big android/alien dude comes from the future and press-gangs him into going back with him to fight the trancers. Deth's new mission: go back to 2005 and stop the US government's Trancer program before it gets off the ground. There he meets back up with his ex-wife Helen Hunt, who's harboring a woman (Melanie Smith) who escaped the Trancer program. She could be the key to his stopping it. When he gets caught though all bets are off. He has nothing to fear though, right? Only squids can be tranced...

It's fascinating that Thomerson, Hunt, Megan Ward, and a big android alien looking dude in a 75-minute package could drag, but this did. I mean, 75 minutes of Thomerson scowling and burning heaters in a trench coat should be enough to do it, so what did this do wrong? The biggest culprit was Deth spent a good portion of the second half of the film strapped to a chair getting tranced. Come again? He wasn't stalking the hallways, cigarette in his mouth and gun in hand, taking out Trancers? And what happened to that big alien/android guy? How was this not those two in a buddy cop paradigm? One thing thing I'll give it though: the shorter runtime makes all of these issues much more tolerable. It's a lesson to all filmmakers out there, better to be at 75 minutes than 105.

This is Tim Thomerson's 16th film at the DTVC. That's really high for a non-Hall of Famer, which begs the question: could he ever get in? Perhaps he'd already be in if I hadn't gone on hiatus for 4 years or so. Just the same, when a film has a lead of his quality, he can really make up for its shortcomings; but if he's not used right, he can also exacerbate them, and I think that's what happened here. Tim Thomerson is not a man to be strapped down to a chair and tortured most of a film. That's not what we come to a Thomerson movie for, we want the Thomerson we know a love, this guy in the trench coat mean mugging it and burning heaters, and this unfortunately didn't have enough of that.

Helen Hunt is back for the third and last time. Mad About You started in 1992, the same year this one came out. By 1996 she was in Twister, and by 1997 she had an Oscar. I was trying to think how many Oscar winners we've had on here. De Niro, Pesci, and Pacino, plus Scorsese and Kathryn Bigelow as directors; also Ernest Borgnine, Jack Palance, and Angelina Jolie. Probably the one who's had the most tags is Cuba Gooding Jr. Stallone won one for Best Screenplay, as did Quentin Tarantino, who was in the crew of the Dolph workout film Maximum Potential. It's crazy to think our site has had that many Oscar winners, since we're mostly looking at movies like this, but it's always cool when you can see someone either like Helen Hunt, who is pre-Oscar and big network TV show; or if it's someone like Cuba Gooding Jr. or Ernest Borgnine who had the great career and came to DTV after.

Look at that crazy bastard below there. How could you not center the whole film around him and Thomerson? Was it that the make-up work was so arduous that they needed to lessen his role? The two of them along with Melanie Smith should have been going into the bunker where the Trancer project was, and kicking ass and taking names. Just line up the stuntment from LA, put them in military uniforms, and let the crew take them down. In a 75-minute movie, sometimes that's all you need. But if that make-up was too limiting and they needed to do it the way they did, I get that, I just could have gone for more of him.

Finally, it looks like this is only our 12th Full Moon film on the site. Initially I was only seeing 7, but I went back and tagged some that I had missed before; but just the same, 12 is a small number compared to Cannon's 41, PM's 35, and even The Asylum's 30. For one of the all-time great DTV/low budget film companies, that's way too low. At the very least I can finish off the Trancers to get more up here, but I think this also points to a trend in my reviews: I tend to lean more toward action than anything else, which wasn't my intention when I got into this. My early DTV viewing experience was always equal parts action, sci-fi, horror, and comedy--not mention the 90s DTV erotic thriller. This might be as big an indicator as any that I need to mix it up more on the site, which I hope to do more of going forward.

And with that, it's a good time to wrap this up. I wasn't as big a fan of this as I was the first two, but at 75 minutes, that nice runtime definitely mitigates the issues I had with it. Right now all 6 of them are on Tubi, so at least watch the first two and then see if you want to keep going.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105632

Tales of Frankenstein (2018)

This is another screener submission from Joe Williamson, who got us Eternal Code and Abstruse. Unlike those, this one isn't a Harley Wallen project. It's also a horror film, which we haven't done a lot of on here lately. Finally, it's got Mel Novak, which is always a good thing. On the other hand, like Abstruse, it has a runtime closing in on 2 hrs. Uh-oh!

Tales of Frankenstein celebrates the bicentennial of the publication of Frankenstein (wow, 200 years since that came out already? Time flies!) with four short films that all present a new take on the Frankenstein theme. In the first, a relative of Dr. Frankenstein is trying to make his own Frankenstein bride, but when he brings her to life, will she have a surprise for him? The second involves a plague ravaging the village Dr. Frankenstein lives in, and after he dies, a neighbor wants to exhume his body to steal a ruby ring from his dead finger. Can't see anything bad happening there. The third is a pulp detective story with Mel Novak as a mad scientist who puts human brains in gorillas; and the last has a man related to Frankenstein who tries to revive his work in Transylvania.

The runtime gets it again. The thing is, if you lop off the last story you have 90 minutes but I don't know if that would have saved this, as each of the four all went a little longer than they needed to. For 25-minute affairs, they tended to waste a lot of the openings and spin their wheels a bit before getting to the meat of the story, so perhaps the better solution would have been to make them all shorter. 4 20-minute stories plus the bumpers and your hovering around 85-90 minutes. Now you're looking good, and from there the elements of this that I enjoyed, like how it brought me back to some of the low-budget horror my friends and I would rent from the video store in the early 2000s, can really shine through. That 90-minute rule might be the one that holds up the most in almost every situation, and this was no exception.

All four of these had the feeling of a one-off Tales from the Crypt episode, which was a great show and a lot of fun. The thing is though, for an anthology, they're all directed by the same person, Donald F. Glut, best known for his novelization of Empire Strikes Back. I think had they been done by different directors and submitted to an editor, that editor would have trimmed them all down; but because this was all Glut's writing and direction, he didn't see it that way. This is one similarity with the other two films Joe has submitted to us, as those two were directed and written by one person too. I used to be a big fan of that, especially considering how two of my favorite movies were made that way, Citizen Kane and Bad Taste, but I think I'm seeing more how giving a script to a director and letting the director and actors give it a once over can be important. When the writer is the director, they may be more protective or less likely to see how the dialog is going a bit too long, or how an opening scene isn't moving as it should. If I read a novel based on these four stories it would've felt well-paced, but in a movie those extra minutes can feel like an eternity.

This is our ninth Mel Novak film on the site. To give you an idea of where that puts him, he's passing Casper Van Dien's 8, and 9 also ties him with people like Kim Coates and Klaus Kinski. In this film he plays Dr. Mortality, the evil doctor who, in the name of Dr. Frankenstein, wants to put a human brain inside a gorilla's head. It has more of a pulpy feel to it, which I liked, but it didn't finish it off, if you know what I mean. I think I would have liked to have seen a better outcome for our gumshoe in the spirit of those old pulp novel/film noir stories. Anyway, Mel Novak doesn't look like he's slowing down at all, so expect to see him back here soon.

One thing this film reminded me about was the fact that horror tends to be one of the main bastions of the indie/low-budget film world. Unlike action, which requires a lot of money to blow things up, shoot people, and choreograph nice fight scenes, with horror it can be done for less, so the wealth of indie horror is much greater. As such, I think I've been doing that market a disservice by not covering it more. One of the films I did when I came back was Clownado, a Todd Sheets indie horror flick, and the people involved, including Sheets, were very appreciative of me giving it the spotlight, and as a result, their spreading the word about my review got it even more views, making it one of the most viewed posts I've made since I came back. It's like the Beatles said: "The love you take is equal to the love you make."

Finally, I wanted to wrap up with one of my favorite takes on the Frankenstein story. In the Highlander TV series, there was an episode where we learn that Lord Byron was an immortal, and in the early 19th century, he kills another immortal out on a lawn after hanging out with Mary Shelley. When he beheads the other immortal and the quickening happens, she watches it, the image of Lord Byron engulfed in electric bolts inspiring her to write Frankenstein. That's one area where this movie disappointed me: outside of the Novak story that had more of an old detective pulpy feel, the other three were pretty standard for what you'd expect out of a Frankenstein theme. What if someone had done something like what the Highlander writers did, maybe show where Shelley got her inspiration. Another different take on the story was Data's character on Star Trek: The Next Generation. There were more places this could have gone that it didn't, which I think was a missed opportunity.

With that, it's time to wrap this up. Once again, the 90-minute rule rears it's ugly head, and again it's undefeated. I think a half-hour shorter we would have had a fun collection of horror stories in the tradition of Tales from the Crypt. For me though, close to two hours is too long, and ultimately that hurts the film. Thanks again to Joe for another opportunity to look at a screener like this, I always enjoy the chance to do this!

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7365740

The Bouncer (2018)

With Seagal joining the 30 Club in our last post, I couldn't let him get in and not have Van Damme in soon after. I had planned on doing Kill 'Em All for this one, but it got clipped on Tubi, and I can't find it anywhere for free or included in any of my current streaming subscriptions, so I went for this instead, because it's on Tubi. Let's see how it went.

The Bouncer is a Belgian film starring Van Damme as a man in his 50s who works as a bouncer and cares for his 8-year-old daughter that goes to an expensive private school. When he loses his job after a guy he's bouncing hits his head, his buddy gets him a new job at a strip club. When the guy that was bounced whose head was hit presses charges and it comes back to Van Damme, he's given a chance to have it all wiped away. An interpol agent or something or other wants him to go undercover at his new strip club joint to find out what his boss, a dude who's into some shady stuff, has planned. When that crime boss finds out about his daughter though, all bets are off.

This wasn't too bad. It's mostly in French with English subtitles, so if you don't like that, that's something to consider. From Van Damme's standpoint, this is more of that step above movie that he's been trying to make more of as he's gotten older, and I think this really works for him in that respect. It has action moments, and when they happen they're really well shot; but beyond that, Van Damme is someone in this character who we can invest in and want to see do well. I don't think this is a movie he would have wanted to make in 1995--and if it was presented to him, he'd probably have wanted to change it a lot--but in 2018, this Van Damme who's verging on 60 can do it, and he does it well.

Before I compare Van Damme to Seagal, I want to give Van Damme his own paragraph to celebrate his entry into the 30 Club. First off, you may be wondering why we're calling this his 30th review when he already has 30 tags. He, like Dolph, was tagged for the 400th post, which was the Van Damme film fest, so that doesn't count as a film for either of them. Anyway, when I started the site in 2007, he was put in the Hall of Fame because he had a lot of DTV flicks at that time, and while they were of varying degrees of quality, it seemed like, like Seagal, he was going exclusively DTV and putting out a lot of stuff. In 2008 that changed with JCVD. It was a transcendent performance that changed what we thought Van Damme was and who he could be on-screen. Follow that up with Expendables 2, which he essentially wins from Stallone; and Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning, which was another great performance, and now Van Damme isn't just another DTV guy pumping out three flicks a year and cashing the checks. That's both good and bad, because I think that leads to something like Pound of Flesh being too big and too long as he tries to do more with it; but it also allows us to have something like The Bouncer with the depth to it that you won't find in your usual DTV flick. Now with him joining the 30 Club, the question is, does the 40 Club beckon? Because he's being choosier in his role, as best as I can tell, there are only 7 more DTV films of his I need to do, give or take, so chances are he'll cap out at the 30 Club, but we'll see.

Now to Seagal and Van Damme. This film here, which is better than probably every Seagal flick in the 2010s outside of Attrition, could not have been made by Seagal because of the way Seagal insists on his movies being made. His character can't be vulnerable; he can't be in a position of weakness, even for a short spell; he can't be shot, he can't be hit by a punch. These are all things Van Damme's character endured, and came out stronger as a result of. It's as if Seagal, who's almost ten years older than Van Damme, has not matured at all in his work as an actor and the kinds of roles he takes on--and one could say he hasn't matured as a person either based on the way he needs to be depicted in his films. I'm not saying Van Damme is perfect--say what you want about Seagal's films, but they all hover around the 90-minute mark, whereas a lot of Van Damme's go over 100 minutes, which is too much for me--but he's willing to let his characters seem weak, even if it's for a short period and he ultimately wins out in the end. He doesn't need to be perfect or omnipotent like Seagal does, and his work is better for it.

This film was directed by Julien Leclercq with Robrecht Heyvaert as the cinematographer. Leclercq has done some other action-oriented films out of his native Beligium, and Heyvaert was also director of photography for the new Bad Boys movie, and the pedigree of both really shows in the way a lot of these action sequences were shot, especially a chase scene that takes place in a parking garage. Right now America is known for the big blockbusters, but beyond that, most of the great action is coming from other places. We think of the UK, especially with the Scott Adkins/Jesse V. Johnson films, and now Ross Boyask and Stu Bennett having two successes back to back; but a film like this shows me I need to go beyond the English-speaking film world and explore what other places are doing. It's one thing that's good about having someone like Van Damme on the tin who has a worldwide audience, it gets people like me in the door and opens my eyes to other work.

Finally, getting back to this idea about foreign films with subtitles, I know it's a sticking point for a lot of people. Beyond that, we just don't do a lot of action outside of the English-speaking world here in the States, so when people think subtitles, the first thing that comes to mind is indie-art house kinds of movies. I'd be curious to know how a movie like this does on Tubi in terms of customer retention: do people start it, realize it's mostly in French with subtitles, and turn it of; or do they do like I did and go with it? That might determine if a company like Tubi takes on more films like this, because as far as I know, Tubi isn't available in Europe.

And with that, it's time to wrap this up. This is a different kind of Van Damme film, more indicative of this more mature turn he's taken in a lot more of his recent movies. If you're not a fan of subtitles, be warned; but I think even if you aren't, you should give this one a try.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7816392

Absolution aka Mercenary: Absolution (2015)

With this review, Steven Seagal joins the 30 Club. I considered doing something like The Patriot, which we covered on a podcast with DTV Digest's Richard Hawes, but I've had this one in the can for a while now, so I figured it was as good as any to celebrate this milestone. In addition to us, our friends Ty and Brett at Comeuppance, Mitch at the Video Vacuum, and Blueprint Review have all covered this, so you can go to their sites to see what they thought.

Absolution is apparently a sequel to A Good Man (as of this review I haven't seen yet), which was also a sequel to Force of Execution, though none of them seem all that connected other than by the fact that Seagal plays people named "John". Anyway, John is a special ops guy who gets a job to take out a terrorist in hiding in Eastern Europe. He does this with his friend Chi (Byron Mann), who does all the heavy lifting. When they celebrate after, a young lady enters the lounge they're celebrating in, and asks for Seagal's help. She's escaping crime boss Vinnie Jones (known as "The Boss"), who had planned to torture her to death. This is John's chance at Absolution, played out in the same tired "white man saves white slave from white slavery, and she becomes his daughter/lover" trope. Will he pull it off?

You can see why maybe I wanted to do The Patriot for a post like this, because Absolution is kind of the same old same old with Seagal. No reverse shots, plenty of stunt doubles, someone else doing all the heavy lifting--in this case Byron Mann--, it all feels like it's becoming too much. It's almost like it's become a cynical take on the audience as well: we put Seagal on the tin, get him in enough scenes, make this paint-by-numbers script with a few action sequences and Eastern European women in skimpy outfits, and we'll make it available to stream. And the reality is, Seagal gets clicks on my site for the same reason his face on the tin gets streams and Redbox rentals, so it's hard for me not to review them, as I imagine it's hard for producers and studios not to make them. Maybe this is my cue that I need to take a break from Seagal and spotlight some other names--though I have like 4 or 5 more of his movies in the can ready to review, I just need to write them.

I think the big thing is, between Seagal's amazing big screen theatrical output in the late 80s/early 90s, and then the fact that a lot of his 2000s DTV stuff was a lot of fun, it's hard to not come back to these. That's why he's in the 30 Club now, and why at one point, before I went on hiatus, I had all of his DTV flicks reviewed on here. Now we have about 7 or 8 left, so he may not make the 40 Club with Dolph and Gary Daniels, but he's always going to stand out as this legend in the action world, both DTV and big screen, and I don't know if there will ever be enough films like this to make us forget that and make us stop coming back. At the very least, I'm going to be doing those 4 or 5 I have in the can, and depending on when the others are available to stream without paying extra for me, I'll probably make those happen too.

As I mentioned above, Byron Mann is in this as Seagal's partner, but he's the one doing all the heavy lifting. In a way, this is like Sniper Special Ops with Tim Abell, where, like Abell, his name isn't even on the cover--Vinnie Jones gets second billing--but he's really the standout. I would say though, unlike the Abell flick, Seagal is in this one enough to be the lead over Mann, while Abell was the true lead of his film. The thing is, I can't get enough Byron Mann. He was great in Wu Assassins, and was great on Arrow. Yet in all these things, he's never the lead. He's always propping up the lead and making all the scenes better because he's in them, but never the star. I'd love to see something where he is the lead, maybe something like this where he gets to wear tailored suits with no ties, burns a lot of heaters, and then kicks a bunch of guys asses. 90 minutes of that would be amazing.

There's a great podcast I listen to, "I Must Break this Podcast," done by Sean Malloy, who was a guest on our show one time (the link to his podcast page is in the "Other Great Sites" section, or you can do like me and subscribe on iTunes). In a recent episode, he had this film's producer on, Benjamin Sacks, and Sacks talked about doing these movies with Seagal. Essentially it's Seagal coming to them saying "I need another movie," and then they put it together. The thing is though, he was doing so many that he was saturating the market and diminishing his value. If you look at it, right after this in 2015, he has 6 films released in 2016--and even before and after, he's doing at least 2 or 3 a year. And when the movies are all pretty much the same, it does hit that wall of diminishing returns. To his credit, Sacks also said that when Seagal goes for it in a scene, it looks spectacular. Maybe that's what we're all hoping for when we go back to the well ourselves on these, and too many times the bucket comes up dry. (And check out that podcast episode for more great stories from Sacks, Sean does a great job on that interview!)

Keoni Waxman is back as well. We joke that he's the Seagal Whisperer, but I think for a producer like Benjamin Sacks, there's probably an understanding that when Seagal comes asking for another project, Waxman's the guy to get it done with all of Seagal's demands, and done under budget and on time. The other thing he does is lean on the Seagal partner role, in this case Mann. Look at that shot there, total movie star stuff, Rebel Without a Cause. In other films it might be Bren Foster. That's why The Hard Way was a nice change of pace, because he had Michael Jai White as the lead, and could accentuate his part as the star the way he had to do here with a supporting part. Just going idea man here, but what about a buddy cop movie with Mann and White, directed by Waxman? If you're into it, let me know and I'll bang out an 85-page script by next week.

Before this gets to be too ridiculous with me pitching script ideas, I'll reel myself in and wrap it up. As of writing I believe this is on Tubi. I think it is worth it for Byron Mann's performance; but for people who are tired of the standard DTV Seagal flick we've been used to for the past five years or so, this is that same movie. With that in mind, I'd say proceed at your own risk.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3503840

Shark Lake (2015)

With the third and final review of our own Shark Week celebration, what better one to do than a Dolph shark attack flick? Technically he's done two shark films, as he had a small role in Sharknado 5, but I figured it was better to do a Dolph featured flick instead. Let's see how Dolph's foray into the shark attack film went.

Shark Lake has Dolph as an illegal animal smuggler who gets busted and sent to prison. At the same time, Sara Malakul Lane, the cop who brings him in, is caring for his daughter--essentially taking his daughter from him?--and when he gets out she's not happy--because she's afraid she's going to lose a child that's not hers? Anyway, at the same time, we have some animal attacks near the lake, and they seem too aquatic to be a bear. Could it be a shark? When Dolph film mainstay James Chalke (I wonder if we should start tagging him?) shows up looking for the shark Dolph was supposed to deliver to him, we're able to put two-and-two together. Now the question is, can Lane figure out that Dolph's here to help him, and that his daughter isn't her daughter, in time to save the town from the shark in the lake?

I don't know exactly where to go with this one. The Dolph in a shark film novelty is mitigated some by the fact that he's not in it as much as Lane is--Lane is more the protagonist driving this, even if she has this unhealthy mom obsession with Dolph's daughter--more on that later. The problem we're seeing in a lot of these movies is, if Dolph's not in it much, when he's there he steals the show, and it's not always easy to keep the material compelling when he's not. Some films make it work, others suffer for it, and I think this was more of the latter. The other thing was that Lane's character, because she's playing mama bear to a cub that isn't hers, and is also keeping said cub away from its real papa bear, it makes her character less worthy of our buy-in, which is something we need to get us over the hump when Dolph's not there.

This is now 55 for Dolph. The 60 Club is within sight, and considering we have so many from the 2010s that I haven't done on the site yet, we know it's just a matter of time. It's fitting that he got a shark film like this under his belt, and was able to check off that "wrestled foam shark" box off his acting bucket list. Dolph actually ticks a lot of boxes, doesn't he? Marvel character? Check. Kids toy/cartoon character? Check. DC Universe? Check. Zombie flick? Check. Bond movie? Check. I could keep going, but I think the only box he hasn't checked is Lifetime movie, so when we get Gary Daniels into the 50 Club with him, that will be one area where Daniels has him. Come on David DeCoteau and Vivica A. Fox, get Dolph in one of your "Wrong" movies!

We last saw Sara Malakul Lane in the two Kickboxer reboots/sequels, where she also played a cop, but was more cop in the first one and more damsel in distress in the second. She's all cop here, but I think, as I mentioned above, the "keeping Dolph's daughter away from him when I'm not even her mother and just grabbed this kid because her dad was going to prison" element didn't come off well. If instead she was taking care of the child out of the kindness of her heart, and then it was more voluntary about the child staying or Dolph wanting her to stay, it would have played better. What that did was made it play out more like a Lifetime movie where a woman who can't have kids obsesses over someone else's and tries to take over as the mom, and the real mom has to kill her in the end--maybe "The Wrong Mom" for a title. We needed her to be someone we could fully buy in on to make up for any lack of Dolph, and by the time the story allows her character to win us over, it's pretty late in the game for it to fully work. As an aside, this isn't her first foray into the shark film world, as she was in the first Sharktopus as well.

I will say one thing about this film I liked was that it feels more like it's 90s predecessors than it does the modern shark attack film. None of this movie is being played for laughs, even if it has some laughable moments, and there's definitely not a sense that anyone is in on the joke. If you look at Sharktopus for example, that came out in 2010, and was almost the logical conclusion of the shark-centric "Mega This" vs. "Colossal That" tract that the genre was following, led by The Asylum when they weren't doing Mockbusters; but it didn't end with Sharktopus, as we know Sharknado came in, and I don't know that, despite Sharknado's popularity waning, the trend overall has waned. Maybe it's possible modern audiences prefer their shark film that way, as over-the-top (Stallone-style) as possible, and filmmakers letting us know at every corner how much they're in on the joke; as opposed what we saw a lot of in the 90s, where we had DTV Jaws ripoffs that had more unintentional cheese, and what intentional cheese it did affect, it played it as straight as possible. For me, I prefer the 90s style, but to each their own.

Finally, this was the best shot I could get of Dolph wrestling the shark. Man that's a thing of beauty, isn't it? It took us 55 movies to get that shot, but we finally made it. And he's really selling it too, which is fantastic. When I saw Dolph on the tin of a shark movie, this was what I wanted, and while it's only for a moment, what a moment it was.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can stream this on Prime and Tubi, among others. For me, it's only for the Dolph in a shark film novelty factor, so if you're neither a Dolph completist or a shark film completist, I don't think this is worth it beyond that.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4416518

Shark Attack 2 (2000)

For the second in our DTVC Shark Week celebration, we have the second in the Shark Attack series. I thought I had already done this one, since I'd done 1 and 3, but when I looked I found it wasn't there, so when I decided I wanted an older shark movie to go with the two newer ones I was doing, I thought this would be a good deal--can you believe 2000 is now "an older movie" now?

Shark Attack 2 takes place in Cape Town, where a jerk is trying to open a massive aquarium/water park, and decides he wants his marine biologist (Thorsten Kaye) to catch a great white that was seen off the coast to have on display for publicity when they open. He does, but what he doesn't know is this is one of Dr. Craven's altered sharks, and soon enough it escapes. The jerk who was opening the park doubles-down on his jerkiness by bringing in an Australian TV show host to find the shark instead of Kaye. Now it's a race to see if they can stop these sharks before they terrorize the beaches and more people die--but will the jerk's jerkiness get in their way?

I think 2000 still feels 90s enough to be the kind of DTV you came for, if that makes sense. It's not amazing by any stretch, and doesn't have the Van Dien factor that part 1 had, or the Barrowman/famous line factor that part 3 had, and so it's easy to overlook this installment for the others; but that doesn't change the fact that this is a nice 90s DTV flick that has just enough of the late 90s in it to give you what you want. The hero is sufficiently lantern-jawed and hunky; the female lead is sufficiently blond and beautiful; and the Australian TV host is sufficiently Australian--wait for him to say "Absa-fuckin-lutely" ("Apes-a-fuckin-lut-ly"). I say it a lot, but this is the kind of film I made the site for, but also, when I started the site in 2007, this wasn't so old. Now it has the added nostalgia factor to make it that much more enjoyable. Also, in the modern movie world where shark movies are more about being as goofy as possible and letting us know how much they're in on the joke, it's nice to go back to 2000 where they played it straight but still knew hot to have fun.

The director is David Worth. Yes, Kickboxer, Warrior of the Lost World, Lady Dragon 1 and 2, that David Worth, not to mention DP on Bloodsport. I think it shows in how this is made, we get both competent shots, but also I think he makes it look better on a budget. In the 90s it was common for directors like this to come in and get it done, and we're seeing a move back in that direction rather than having someone who doesn't direct get the title and rely on their DP and have it cleaned up in post, which is what came later in the first decade of the 2000s into the 2010s. I think that's part of the reason why more of these movies from this time work than their counterparts do today.

Dan Metcalfe plays the Australian in this, and when I looked him up on IMDb, I found a link to his soccer academy for young players. I wonder if he shows this movie to his players, like as a fun end of camp breather. I also couldn't tell if the accent was his native one, or if he was affecting it, from his bio. He says he played professional soccer in England, but doesn't list the teams, and he doesn't say where he's from originally. Either way, he plays the Aussie well, I think a mix of Steve Irwin's Crocodile Hunter, which was big at that time, and your classic brash TV personality caricature. Again, it's touches like these that make a movie like this more fun.

As I mentioned above, this movie suffers from the fact that the first in the series had a big name like Casper Van Dien, and the third had John Barrowman and what was perhaps the greatest line in cinematic history, so this entry feels less remarkable. I was even thinking how you would place this if you were binging all 3 in a movie night. What would be there for your group of friends to latch onto? They'd be thinking "let's get to part 3!" And that probably explains why I had never done this one before. I usually go for movies that have names in it, because names get clicks and page views, the same way names on the tin get streams and rents. It's the kind of system that creates the impetus to get Bruce Willis or Steven Seagal to show up, film for a day, and not do their reverse shots or overdubbing, just so they can be featured on the cover and listed among the stars, causing us to give it a look over something else we're browsing by. I think it's too bad that that's where we are in our film watching ecosystem, but it's a reality we as reviewers have to face. Do we take the hit though to get more films like this recognition? Every time I say yes, I find myself doing another Seagal movie.

Finally, check out that Dolphins hat there. Not sure if officially licensed NFL gear was in their budget, but there it is, and it's interesting to see in 2000. As a Patriots fan, we were still a year removed from their first championship, and at that time the Dolphins were a heritage franchise, one of the most well-known, with two Super Bowls, one of which was an undefeated season, and they were just coming off of Dan Marino's reign under which they had around a decade and a half of relevance; while the Patriots, despite losing the Super Bowl in the '96 season, were one of the lowest rung of the league, forget an after thought, they were a "neverthought". And then the Pats won in 2001, and that was it, for two decades they won the division over the Dolphins, Jets, and Bills almost every year, while the Dolphins lost all relevance in the league in that same span. With the Brady Era officially done, perhaps it's time for the Dolphins to get back to what they once were.

And with that, it's time to wrap this up. You can get this for free on FawesomeTV or IMDb TV, which isn't a bad deal. It's a fun reminder of the late 90s, a nice time killer. As I mentioned above, it's nice to go back to a time when shark movies played it straight, and were just trying to bite (pun intended) on Jaws, as opposed to now where they're trying to be as big and as intentionally goofy as possible.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0222355

Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No! (2015)

We kick off our first annual Shark Week celebration with the third installment in The Asylum's Sharknado series. Though these are technically TV movies due to the deal The Asylum has with SyFy to release them, to me they've always been DTV in spirit, and the kind of film the site was made for, so worth us checking them out. In addition to us, our friend Fred the Wolf at Full Moon Reviews has covered this, so you can go to his site to see what he thought of it.

Sharknado 3 picks up where part 2 left off. In the aftermath of the last Sharknado, Ian Ziering is hailed as a hero and is honored in a ceremony at the White House with the Golden Chainsaw. As luck would have it, another Sharknado is building off the East Coast just in time to attack the White House and ruin the ceremony. This storm is headed to Florida, where his family is vacationing, so he needs to shoot down there and save them. In the process, he and his team discover that this is bigger than the other ones, perhaps becoming a Sharkicane! The only person who can help now is Ziering's estranged father, played by the Hoff.

The natural go to here is to say the franchise is jumping the shark, but I have a feeling that's exactly what The Asylum and everyone involved with making this want us to say when we see this, so I'm not taking the bait. (Though I guess I already did just by writing what I wrote...) When I looked it up, this one didn't do as well as part 2 did when it aired, so we could already see the wave cresting and the enthusiasm waning, yet they still did three more. It makes sense, because, with a $2.4 million budget, if over 2 million people watched it, those are a lot of eyes seeing advertisements, which necessitates at least a 4th to see how much further they can take it. And the next thing you know we've got six. For The Asylum as newly inducted members into the 30 Club--and the only non-Hall of Famer to be in--these Sharknadoes represent their biggest successes, and while there are others, like Android Cop, that I prefer, it's still nice to see The Asylum reach these heights, coming from where they did when we started this blog, covering films like Snakes on a Train and Transmorphers. In that sense, I feel like it's worth celebrating their success overall, no matter how one feels about whether or not by part 3 they've jumped the shark--but I get it too if you don't have that soft spot in your heart and you're thinking "enough already" by part 3.

Still the most fascinating aspect of this for me is Ian Ziering. Loved Steve Sanders on 90210, despite the fact that I think I was supposed to like Dylan or Brandon more. There are still shades of Steve Sanders in Ziering's Fin here, which makes it that much more fun to watch--not to mention the added touch of the car he's driving in this having the same license plates that his Corvette on the show had. Seeing him do well in this franchise post-90210 is as good a reason as any for me to root for this series to succeed, it's just hard with the rinse-repeat nature of it to keep the novelty going. But, as you can imagine, I'll still be back here at some point for number 4, and will still be reminiscing about 90210.

We did have a Hall of Famer in our midst, 30 Club member Lorenzo Lamas has a short cameo--so short, he didn't even have a still frame of just his head in the shot for me to get a good screen. True to our rule though, except for the time we couldn't find Don "The Dragon" Wilson in Siege of Firebase Gloria, we always get the Hall of Famer's shot in the review, so here was the best I could do. If you follow Lamas on Instagram, you'll see that he's looking to become a pilot, so this cameo role was made for him. I also like that he played a character named Sergeant Rock, both in reference to the great comic book of the past, but also to Lamas's role as Chilly D (short for "Chilliam Davis" I believe) in the film Body Rock. For a short cameo, this was a fun one.

We can now add Mark Cuban to the list of names who have played the President of the United States in a film we've reviewed here on the site, joining Roy Scheider, Rutger Hauer, Vivica A. Fox, Mel Novak, Charlie Sheen, and Jerry Springer. I know of him mostly as the owner of the Mavericks, but recently he's receded a bit from being the more outspoken and controversial owner he was when he first bought the team. In 2011 his Mavericks won the NBA Championship, the biggest irony of that being, before 2011 he was the guy fans most loved to see fail; but in 2011 LeBron went to the Miami Heat to form a super team, which made them the schadenfreude darlings of the league, so by the time the Mavericks made the Finals against the Heat, sentiment had done a 180 and everyone was rooting for Cuban and his Mavs, and I don't think he ever lost that luster fully after. All of that made his appearance as the President here much more fun.

That was probably more basketball talk than anyone would have wanted, but when a film intentionally jumps the shark like this one did, sometimes you run out of things to discuss. The thing is, when I compare this to some other DTV franchises we've looked at on the site, is it really any worse? By Bloodfist VIII they had devolved into just actioners featuring Don "The Dragon" as a guy taking on the world--and not even the same guy in each film either! The Kickboxers featured Sasha Mitchell in 2-4, with two and four directed by Albert Pyun, and then 5 had Marc Dacascos. By the time you hit that fifth one, we have a baddie from Space Mutiny forming his own kickboxing league, and killing anyone who doesn't join. And with the Bloodsports, by Bloodsport 4 we had Daniel Bernhardt fighting in a Dark Kumite run by Benjamin Franklin. I think the big difference between those and the Sharknado franchise, is those other ones played it straight, where as these ones they're in on the joke. I get it, how can you play a tornado of sharks straight? It just means the shelf life may not be as long.

And with that, I think this is a good time to wrap this one up. Right now you can stream it, and the rest of the Sharknado films on Prime. I don't know if they're binge-worthy, but consumed as one-offs, they can be a fun time. As you can imagine, we'll be back here at some point in the future to cover part 4.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3899796

Savage Dog (2017)

When I had Simon from Explosive Action on the pod to discuss Avengement, he had this right up there as another favorite Adkins flick of his. Hearing that I knew I had to make this happen. In addition to us, our friends Ty and Brett at Comeuppance Reviews, and Mitch at the Video Vacuum have looked at this, so you can go to their sites to see what they thought.

Savage Dog takes place in 1950s French Indochina (which might make the title Chien Savage?), where Scott Adkins is a prisoner forced to fight other prisoners by an evil Nazi warden (Vladimir Kulich, who played Tommy in the Debt Collector films--though not taking any cream off the vig in this one). When he gets his release, he goes to work at Keith David's bar, where he meets JuJu Chen and falls in love with her. To make extra cash, he fights in the Nazi warden's underground fight club, which, as you can imagine, doesn't end well. This is all in the first half of the movie. In the second half, Adkins is unleashed on a revenge quest against the Nazi warden and his crew.

As we were discussing Avengement more, Simon decided he preferred it to Savage Dog, but he was torn. For me, I wasn't torn, I liked Avengement more than this, but that doesn't mean this wasn't fantastic either. I think the beginning of this is a bit more of a slow burner--not without its moments though--but then it goes ape shit. Avengement is ape shit from the beginning, and just gives us breathers from time to time to collect ourselves. But man, when this get kicks it into that next gear, it really gets there. When it is slower at the beginning though, we have performances by Adkins, Chen, David, and Kulich; plus, among Kulich's gang are Cung Le and Marko Zaror, so the slower opening is really just preparing us for Adkins's eventual fights with both, which don't disappoint. In their review on Comeuppance, Ty and Brett were saying that this is one of those few modern DTV flicks that meets the standard set by those great DTV flicks of the 80s and 90s, and I agree with them on that. Adkins and Jesse V. Johnson have done it again.

Recently Adkins was on our friend Jon Cross's Booth Talk podcast (which if you aren't subscribed you really should be!) to discuss his latest film, Legacy of Lies, and on that one he mentions that people doubt his acting ability. First off, if that were true then neither Debt Collector would have worked, because part of the charm of that is his interplay with Louis Mandylor; but also, here he has many scenes with Keith David, who's an excellent actor, and he holds his own in all of them. While we don't come to an Adkins action film for his acting, we're coming for his explosive, high-octane martial arts, if he couldn't act these films wouldn't quite be what they are, so he does deserve credit for that. I don't know that anyone is killing it the way Adkins is right now, and it's exciting to see him get after it in film after film. This is just another we can add to that great list.

I recently watched Wu Assassins on Netflix, and while the show itself fell into the classic Netflix show trap where I feel like I'm watching a 10-hour movie and I get burned out, JuJu Chen was amazing in it as the Triad enforcer for Byron Mann's character. We talk about Adkins getting after it, but Chen really got after it in that show, and it's a shame we didn't see any of that here. Just the same, she turns in a great performance alongside Adkins, and it works for what it was; but one fight scene would have been great too. She did a film recently with Luke Goss called Hollow Point, where not only does she get to fight, but Luke Goss doesn't affect an American accent, so that's definitely on the list to check out once it's available.

This is our seventh Keith David film on the site, and like those others, he doesn't disappoint. I think the thing with him is, he's usually not the lead, and I usually don't seek out films for him specifically, but if I'm torn between a couple films, and he's in the cast of one, it's definitely a selling point that will lean me in that film's direction. One aspect I thought they did really well with here too is they leaned on his great voice work by having him be the narrator as well as part of the cast. Another film we did with him in it, Dirty, didn't make the same choice, instead opting for another cast member to do it, and the film suffered. Here's to you Keith David, you're one of the great ones.

Finally, this film features Cung Le and Marko Zaror, two excellent fighters that we can't wait to see Adkins get after it with. For me, this is part of what makes Jesse V. Johnson so great in the action realm right now, because the temptation is probably to have Adkins fight either or both of them sooner in the film, and he ignored that and left it until the end. It's a lot of trust in the audience, because that first half isn't as action-packed as the second, and with all the options at our fingertips on streaming sites, if we're bored we'll find something else. There was just enough there in that first half for me to keep me watching, and I was rewarded with the payoff of two great scenes, one each with Le and Zaror--plus so many other great scenes as Adkins was unleashed on his road to revenge.

And that's as good a note to end this on as any. I put this right behind Avengement on my list of Adkins/Johnson collaborations, right above Accident Man. To go back to my mention of the Comeuppance review, this is the action that will keep you from saying "man, they just don't make them like they did in the 80s and 90s"--at least for 90 minutes.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5851014

Hellbound (1994)

Recently I made a post for Street Knight, and realized that that was the 40th post of a Cannon film. It was kind of an after the fact thing, so I felt like I should give them a fuller post to commemorate their entrance into the 40 Club. They join Dolph, Gary Daniels, Art Camacho, and Albert Pyun in that exclusive group. In trying to think of the right thing to watch, Osvaldo Neto of Toca Terror mentioned this, because it was the last film from the Cannon Group--plus he got me a YouTube link for it so I could check it out! A lot of people have covered this, including, Mitch at the Video Vacuum and robotGEEK's Cult Cinema, so you can go there to see what they thought.

Hellbound is about an ancient demon that was locked in a coffin a thousand years or so ago, and then in the 1990s it was unleashed. When it's unleashed, it ends up in Chicago, where it runs afoul of Chuck Norris. He's the wrong guy to run afoul of. Chuck and his partner (Calvin Jackson), chase the demon all the way to Israel to try and take him down and send him back to hell. The demon won't know what hit it.

And neither will we with all the padding to get us there. I think that's the problem with this movie, it doesn't know if it wants to be a cop actioner, a martial arts flick, a supernatural/religious thriller, or a mix of all of the above, but it ends up struggling on all fronts, which is too bad. This is not the Cannon/Norris classics we're used to, but in a way is a fitting end to the Cannon run, to go out with one of their biggest stars in something that, to a large extent was sauteed in wrong sauce. I think on the other hand, as the Cannon Group's last film (Street Knight was the film produced by Cannon), it's an interesting artifact in and of itself. Like a piece of pottery found at the baddie's archaeological site in this film, we can look at this as a piece of something bigger, a wave that crested in the history of the action movie world, and to that extent I think it's worth checking out.

This marks 41 Cannon films here at the DTVC, and so not only getting them into the 40 Club, but also giving them a post to fully honor them, is very necessary. That feeling we get when we see that Cannon logo flash onto the screen is something that all of us who like the kinds of movies we like know and understand. It's like the smell of comfort food cooking in the kitchen, or the opening chords to a song we love. Even when it's a film like this, which I didn't enjoy as much as some of their others, the mere sight of the logo gets me in a mindset to at least think I'm going to like it. And what's fascinating is, as this wave was cresting, in the late 80s/early 90s, a new wave was forming behind it, PM Entertainment, and by 1994 we could see that one building further out to sea. When you think about it, between Cannon in the 80s to early 90s, and then PM from the early 90s through to 2000, we in the DTV action world had it pretty good.

Chuck Norris turned 80 this year. That means he was already in his 50s when he made this. That might explain the lack of fight scenes, but it's also crazy to think that he's 80 now! It was also fitting that it was his film that was the last from The Cannon Group, because he was such a staple of their films in the 80s. I think my personal favorite of his Cannon flicks is Invasion USA, which I did review here. Whatever your thoughts on Norris's extreme right wing views, he was one of the most influential action stars ever, and his 80s Cannon stuff was some of the best ever.

So why didn't this work then, if Cannon and Norris were such a great team? The thing is, it does have its moments, but it tries to do too much, and when that happens, often it ends up doing too little. The going to Israel part is filled with things like a crazy driver driving them through the city, a kid pickpocketing the partner--because Norris would never let a kid pick his pocket. In Invasion USA we had pitched battles everywhere, a suburban family trimming the tree getting their house blown up by an RPG, just tons of amazing stuff. This may have been trying to be something different, which I respect, but sometimes different isn't always better.

As we move Cannon into the 40 Club, I feel like it's best to wrap this up by talking about their influence on me and ultimately creating this site. The 80s were my formative years on the planet. It was a time of big hair, big music, and big movies, but there was something about the Cannon action flick that stood out for me, whether it was the American Ninja series, the Stallone and Norris actioners, or even the Pyun flicks that I didn't know at the time were Pyun flicks. It's fitting then that they're the first studio/production company to get into the 40 Club.

It's time to wrap this one up. I think for me, it really is the novelty that this is the last Cannon Group film. It feels like you're moving, and you're cleaning up the house and taking one last look around, going through some of those last memories. For me as a movie it has its flaws, kind of like when you have that one last meal at that place before you move, and they get the order wrong, but you're enjoying the company and the people you're with before you leave the next day.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107101

The Wrong Child (2016)

While I was doing my Gary Daniels list for Letterboxd, I saw this come up on the Lifetime Movie Network in a search for him on cable, so I figured I'd DVR it and give it a shot. It kind of brought me back to the old days when I first started the blog when streaming services weren't quite a thing yet, when DVR was a major tool in my arsenal to get movies for the site. Now I never do it beyond a situation like this where the film isn't available anywhere else. Let's see how it did.

The Wrong Child is one in a series of stand-alone "wrong" movies often directed by David DeCoteau and starring Vivica A. Fox. This one features Fox as a bookstore owner married to architect Gary Daniels, living in a posh lifestyle in LA with her daughter Amy. When a young man shows up seemingly out of nowhere claiming Daniels is his father, Daniels is dubious, but Fox wants to take this possible son into her home and welcome him into the family. If there were nothing wrong though, we'd have no movie, and eventually the cracks in the young man's story start to show, and he's having trouble killing people in time to keep it from unraveling. Will Fox figure it out in time to save her family?

This movie was fun in that William R. Moses-Joanna Kerns kind of way. And to have DTVC Hall of Famer Gary Daniels in that William R. Moses part is even better. You can tell that DeCoteau and Fox are more at home in this environment, which gives it almost like a comic book crossover or Laff-A-Lympics quality to it, like William R. Moses is off in another film in wearing all black, carrying a gun, and sneaking into an abandoned factory to take out a bunch of baddies, while Daniels is here making this. Beyond that, I love a good Lifetime movie, and DeCoteau and Fox seem to get what makes those fun for people, which makes this even better. For Daniels fans, this is an enjoyable change of pace.

49 movies at the DTVC for Gary Daniels. 50 is so close now. It's like watching ESPN and them cutting into a regular program to show a player's at-bat when he's sitting on a milestone home run--and being only the second person in the 50 Club along with Dolph Lundgren is like Hank Aaron hitting his 700th home run to join Babe Ruth (and of course, we call Dolph the Babe Ruth of DTV), so this is a big deal. Before I say this is the most unique film we've seen Daniels do, he also did a Lifetime-esque movie, Dark Secrets aka Cold Earth. That one was nowhere near as fun as this one was though. If you look at my Gary Daniels list on Letterboxd, I actually have this one one ahead of I Am Vengeanace. I think the latter may have been better overall, but from a Daniels standpoint, I liked what he did here slightly more. We've seen him play a kickass baddie before, but to do William R. Moses as well as he did here was a different story, but cool to see happen.

The real star of the film of course is Vivica A. Fox. When we last saw her here at the DTVC she was making history as the first black woman playing the President in a live-action feature film. While she was making history in that one, this movie required more work on her part, and she delivers. You get the sense that DeCoteau leans on her because she knows what he wants almost intuitively, which I imagine would be enormous when making a film like this on short time and a short budget. As the film is wrapping up, and loose ends are flying at us from all over the place, Fox is acting her way through it effortlessly, like Neo in the Matrix. It's a thing to behold as a fan of low-budget films or films made on a shortened schedule like I am. For them to really work, we need a cast and crew who don't betray that it's done quickly and maybe without a lot of resources, and Fox is a master at it. A lot of accolades are given to Eric Roberts for his work in the "Stalked by My Doctor" films, but I think Fox deserves that same praise, if not more, because it's just as impressive what she's done with these "The Wrong" movies.

I'm not entirely sure, but I think this is our first David DeCoteau film at the DTVC. I don't know how that happened though, considering he's done over 160, you'd think we'd have walked into at least one other out of the 1000+ we've done. That's the hard part though, with over 160 movies to page through, it's not easy to find one to see if I've reviewed it. I think the same way I'm giving Fox praise for her performance, I have to do the same with DeCoteau's ability to land this plane in the allotted time, again while these loose ends of the plot are flying together in the last ten minutes or so; and know too that he has someone in Fox who can help him land it. Look at that picture below. That's the daughter, apparently bound and gagged under that sack, we don't really know, and Fox has to act like that's not the most ridiculous thing ever, and DeCoteau has to create the atmosphere that isn't saying "that's gotta be the most ridiculous thing ever," which then enhances our fun with it when they're playing it straight like that. And then they're each going to do another 6 or 7 movies that year too. It's amazing.

One thing that has changed between when I started the blog and now, is I can access my DVR on my computer. When I first started, I had no way of getting images off the DVR, so I either took them from the trailer, or hotlinked them from other sites (which I learned early on was a no-no). From there, I got software that allowed me to run either my VCR or my cable box through my computer, so I got images that way. Now, Xfinity allows me to access both my DVR and their OnDemand library through my browser, so I don't need any of that. It's a pretty sweet deal. On the other hand, because LMN had that watermark up the whole time, my screens from this one all have that, which I don't like. I've come a long way from the old hotlinking days.

And after that walk down memory lane, it's time to wrap this one up. As far as I can tell, this is only available on the Lifetime Movie Network whenever they decide to show it. I'd keep an eye out for it and record it, because it is a real fun one, even if you're not a Lifetime movie fan, just for the Daniels factor. Next time we see him here, he'll be in the 50 Club.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5538912

Don't Kill It (2016)

Since I've gotten the site back up after my hiatus, among all the Dolph flicks that came out in between, this is one that I've been hearing a lot about. When I had Sean Malloy of the Dolph podcast "I Must Break This Podcast" on a little while back, I figured this would be the perfect one for us to cover. In addition to us, our friend Mitch at the Video Vacuum has covered this as well, so you can go to his site to see what he thinks about it.

Don't Kill It is a Minion-esque thriller that follows Dolph as a demon hunter on the search for a demon that inhabits people's bodies and goes on a killing spree. The catch: if you kill the person whom the demon is inhabiting, it will then inhabit you. There's actually another catch: getting people to believe him when he tells them why there's been a string of recent murders. But when one of the survivors of the killing spree describes to the FBI agent assigned to the case, Kristina Klebe, exactly what Dolph was telling her, she starts to believe. Belief isn't enough though, the next part is how do you stop it?

I really enjoyed this one. This is up there as one of my favorite Dolph DTV flicks from the decade, which is saying a lot considering how many he's had! (I think I counted 28 DTV flicks alone, so that's not counting the big screen ones or made for TV ones.) It had the feel of a Marx Brothers movie where there was a secret package or briefcase that was being passed around while the guys tried to get it. In one scene in the town hall, that element really came through in a way that I hadn't seen done before. By the same token, that element of keeping the package away from Dolph did get repetitive after a bit, especially when it seemed like one annoying character after another standing in his way, but just when it felt like too much, the movie would do something fun to bring us back. To almost quote a Beatles song, sometimes fun is all you need.

The obvious comparison here is with 1998's The Minion--which has the distinction of being the only movie that I know of that has had my review of it quoted on the box. The big difference between the two: this one is played up more intentionally to be fun, whereas The Minion wasn't so much on purpose; and the other is The Minion has more sentimental value as one my friends and I have enjoyed on multiple viewings. The late 90s was not as good as the first half of the decade for DTV flicks, but The Minion was one of the fun stand-outs, and overall it's hard for movies of the 2010s to stand-up to the standard of the 90s, but I think Don't Kill It is one that works even by that lofty bar--but because the 2010s overall wasn't as good, when we see something like Don't Kill It the tendency is to think it's even better than it is as a result.

When Sean and I were discussing Dolph's career, one thing that came up was how the late 90s/early 2000s was not a great time for his movies. If you go from '95's Hidden Assassin to '04's Retrograde, there are a lot of ones like The Minion and Bridge of Dragons that my friends and I had fun with, but not a lot of quality. I feel like you could make an even stronger point about his 2010s post-Expendables DTV output, only the bad ones weren't as fun either. Films like Ambushed, Stash House, The Package, and Legendary didn't even have the kind of fun rewatchability of The Minion or Bridge of Dragons. I think that's another area where something like this, or Altitude or Battle of the Damned, stands out even more, because we've wanted something fun from him akin to those 90s and 2000s ones we loved so much. By the same token, what made the 2010s unique from the '95-'04 period was Dolph's big screen successes. He stole The Expendables at the beginning of the decade, gave a great performance is Creed II, and had a fun turn in a supporting role in Aquaman. He also had some TV appearances--including a role in Arrow which I haven't gotten to yet--I'm only on season 3 as I'm writing this--so we can't judge his decade on solely his DTV output like we can the 90s and 2000s.

Dolph's costar in this is Kristina Klebe, and like Altitude and Acceleration, it felt like another good instance where Dolph's female lead wasn't simply there to be a love interest and/or damsel in distress, but rather a real character with agency who wasn't just waiting for Dolph to swoop in and save the day. This one's a little different from those two, in that in those two Denise Richards and Natalie Burn were the films' main protagonists; but it was still good to see that, even with Dolph being the main hero, that they could cast Klebe and write the part to have her be Dolph's partner, and not simply be there for a couple love scenes and a rescue at the end.

Speaking of costars, this one features Dolph film mainstay James Chalke, for the second time as a man of the cloth--the other being Dead Trigger. If you go on his IMDb, he has 24 credits, of which 10 are Dolph flicks--and of those 10, we've reviewed all of them here at the DTVC except for Larceny and Shark Lake--we've also done one of his non-Dolphs, 1993's Gunmen. I wonder if we're going to have to start tagging him...

On that note, let's wrap this one up. As of writing this, you can stream it on Prime, which I think is a good deal. It's definitely one of the most fun recent Dolph flicks. Also, check out the podcast episode Sean Malloy and I did on this one, and check out his podcast on all things Dolph at https://imustbreakthispodcast.wordpress.com/

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3113696