Magic Crystal (1986)

This is one I had wanted to do on the site for a long time, especially because it has two Hall of Famers, Cynthia Rothrock and Richard Norton, whom I once termed the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers of DTV action. When I saw it was on YouTube, I knew I had to make it happen. In addition to us, Ty and Brett at Comeuppance have covered this one, so you can go there to see what they thought of it.

Magic Crystal is Wong Jing's bouillabaisse mix of takes on ET and Raiders of the Lost Ark with some Hong Kong martial arts thrown in for good measure. Andy Lau is a cop whose old buddy is an archaeologist in Greece and he comes across something. That something is wanted by the KGB (including Norton) and Interpol (including Rothrock). And that something is a green crystal/goo thing that can do magic stuff, and Lau's nephew Pin-Pin ends up with it. Hilarity ensues, as do a bunch of fight scenes, all culminating in us going back to Greece so this alien green goo thing can find its way home. All in a day's work if you ask me.

This is a really fun one--as if that synopsis above would tell you any different. The goofiness in the plot is a fun goofiness, and then when we get fights, they are at the best quality. Rothrock, Norton, and Lau all bring it in exactly the way you'd expect from seeing their names on the tin. The mix of goofy and exceptional come together in a kind of alchemy that just works if you're someone who loves a good 80s actioner, doesn't take yourself too seriously, but still wants to have things to take seriously. (That sounded about as convoluted as this plot.)

Rothrock, firmly entrenched in the 30 Club with her 35th film on the site, is on her way to the 40 Club quick. Off the top of my head I can think of at least one more that we have in the can for her. On the other hand, we've exhausted a lot of her newer, US-based stuff, so most of what we have left are her Hong Kong flicks like these, and there aren't many of those left either--and then it's a matter of tracking them all down. I don't think she needs to be in the 40 Club to cement her legacy, she's already one of the best to ever do it--and I think of all the great things she has on her CV, DTVC 40 Club is probably least of her concerns; but someone as great as she is, it'll be nice for us to get her there. This was another great performance from her, and while it's a very early role, she's still showing us why she's one of the best to ever do it.

 

The other Hall of Famer here is Richard Norton, who we haven't since since 2014 with The Blood of Heroes. Like Rothrock, his martial arts here is stellar. Unlike Rothrock, whose filmography we've pretty much exhausted, Norton has a good amount of stuff out there that we haven't gotten to yet, and it seems like a good portion of the older stuff like this is available on YouTube. As if I needed a reminder of how great Norton is, with so many Dolph, Seagal, and Adkins films I have in the can that need reviews, greats like Norton sometimes get left out, so seeing him in something like this is a great way to get him back on my radar. One note though: Norton is redubbed by someone speaking in what is supposed to be (I think) a Russian accent. If you're looking for that trademark Australian accent, that aspect will either make this funnier for you, or annoy you.

The real star of this is Andy Lau. I think this is the first film of his we've done here, but it's hard to know considering he's done 177 according to IMDb. I think my favorite of his other films is As Tears Go By, a Wong Kar-Wai film he did with Maggie Cheung. This, of course, is something totally different from a Wong Kar-Wai film, though to be honest, it would have been interesting to see what Kar-Wai does with a story like this. That's what makes this so great, is this story is so all over the place, and Lau is like Neo in the Matrix weaving his way through it all, which, at 25 may have been more impressive than some of the more serious roles he did later in his career when he was more seasoned. Selling Magic Crystal to the audience is no small feat, but once he does it, Norton and Rothrock and the rest of the cast were able to play off that, which makes this work in a much more fun way.

 

Finally, we've covered a lot of Asylum mockbusters here at the DTVC, and it's interesting to consider a film like this in a similar light. If only the Asylum could do a bouillabaisse rip-off of Raiders of the Lost Ark and ET with some fantastic martial arts. That's where my calling a movie like this a "rip-off" does it a disservice. Yes, they're biting off established blockbusters, but there's something in the alchemy here that's not as cynical as the Asylum mockbuster, if you know what I mean. Also the martial arts scenes in this are so next-level that it doesn't really matter what kind of rip-off the story is when a film has that to hang its hat on. You can rip-off what ever you want if in the process you give us something new or inspired at the same time.

And with that, it's time to wrap this one up. The fact that you can stream this for free on YouTube is a great deal. Maybe someday it'll have a nice blu-ray release, but until that time, at least you can see it like this.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091532

Fearless Tiger (1991)

It's been almost ten years since we've had some Merhi on the site, back in 2011 when we did Expect to Die, and when Ty from Comeuppance mentioned that this was on YouTube, I figured I'd give it a look. In addition to us, Karl at Fist of the B-List has covered this as well, so you can go there to see what he thought.

Fearless Tiger features Jalal Merhi as a young guy in Canada whose father, Jamie Farr, has a very successful business that Merhi will be working in now that he's finished his MBA. That is until his younger brother ODs on some new drug, and all bets are off. He drops everything, goes to Hong Kong, and trains in martial arts so he can defeat the cartel that supplied the drugs that his brother took. Of course, he has to prove himself before he can train, so while that master at the school is waiting for Merhi to prove himself, we have some nice digressions on a mountain where Bolo Yeung trains with a woman. If that doesn't help with training, I don't know what will. Those drug cartel baddies won't know what hit them.

This isn't horrible, and it does have the added bonus of being Merhi's first film, which I thought was a cool novelty being the DTV action buff that I am. There is the issue that we have stretches without action, but this has enough late 80s/early 90s DTV plot cheese factor to see us through those. In particular, Merhi practicing Kung Fu with Bolo Yeung and the woman he has with him. I didn't know why it was happening, but I enjoyed it. Throw in Jamie Farr, and the fact that the baddie was that cross between Billy Drago and David Coverdale from Whitesnake we saw in Expect No Mercy, you have something where you can say "I could do a lot worse than this." Nowadays I think that's pretty good.

This is Merhi's 13th film on the site, and because he tends to invest in everything and set himself up as the hero, I've labeled some of his films vanity pieces. I think I may have been too hard on those, because the 2010s forced me to re-examine what the late 80s/early 90s gave us. Even if Merhi's films were vanity projects, there was an earnestness to them that the 2010s' cynical, bait-and-switch laden, jumpcut-fight scened action films couldn't touch. Considering my last Merhi post came in 2011, I couldn't have known then what that decade was going to do to us, or what kind of new perspective it gave me on films like Merhi's. Merhi made solid contributions to the DTV action world, and it's cool to see the movie where it all started.

 

We also have Bolo Yeung, who would go on to work on multiple projects with Merhi. Here he just has the scenes we talked about, but it was in another Merhi project, Tiger Claws II, where we saw Yeung working a food truck. According to Cynthia Rothrock on her YouTube channel, she said while they were doing the Tiger Claws movies, Yeung got upset that he hadn't been paid, and he walked off, to which Rothrock's mother, who was visiting the set, told Rothrock "Bozo just walked out," or something to that effect. That alone makes subscribing to Rothrock's YouTube channel worth it if you haven't subscribed already.

This is another 90s film that makes use of the 3-1/2 floppy disc as a MacGuffin. In 1991, that was new technology. Anyone remember trying to explain to their Boomer parents that, even though it wasn't literally floppy like a 5-1/4, we still called it a floppy disc? By the time we were able to sort that out with them, we'd moved over to CD-ROMs. By the time we explained that CD-ROMs were different from the CDs that played music, but that you could play music on the computer too, flashdrives came out, and before we could explain that that flashdrive held more than their entire case of out of date floppies, flashdrives were done and we uploaded and downloaded everything we needed from the Cloud. The thing is, you can't MacGuffin the Cloud. The Cloud can't be passed around and traded for hostages the way a 3-1/2 can. It seems like legacy technology still has its uses.

 

Finally, this is our first time seeing one of my all-time favorites, Jamie Farr, on the site. He was great here as Merhi's dad. One interesting fact about him: I have a Toledo Mud Hens M*A*S*H* edition baseball cap, which was designed to look like the one Farr wore on later seasons of the show. My wife Jen and I were watching an episode, and we saw him in it, and discovered, sure enough, the Mud Hens sell a version of the hat, so she got it for me for Christmas that year. Someday I guess I'll have to go out there to catch a game. I think they have a day for him every year, so that may be the game to try and see if I get the chance.

And since I'm talking more about minor league baseball than the movie, it must be time to wrap this one up. Merhi himself has uploaded this to YouTube through the Film One company he owns, so that's a great place to catch this. If you're in need of a good early 90s DTV action flick, this isn't a bad deal.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0141006

Battle of the Damned (2013)

This is one I've wanted to do since before I went on my unplanned hiatus, but it was not an easy find on streaming unless I wanted to pay to rent it, which, with all the Dolph I still had to do that I could get as part of my various subscription packages, it was hard to justify a rental. Then I found it on Hoopla and all bets were off. Let's see if it was worth the wait.

Battle of the Damned has Dolph as Max Gatling (very Lance Rockford of him), a mercenary who is hired with his team to go into a zombie zone and rescue the daughter of a major businessman. When Dolph gets there, his crew is killed, so he figures he's gotta get this mission done at the very least so the death of his team isn't in vain. But then when he finds the daughter (Melanie Zanetti), she shows him a group of survivors she lives with, led by a charismatic leader who probably isn't what he seems. When that leader tries to have him killed, Dolph is rescued by the daughter's boyfriend, and together they find a group of killer robots and come back to rescue the survivors. But will Dolph and the robots be enough?

I really enjoyed this one. It's a zombie film that plays it straight, but yet isn't afraid to have fun at the same time; and Dolph seems to be on the same page about that, which makes it all the better. The addition of the robots just adds to the fun factor and makes the whole thing work that much more. On top of that, I think the standard supporting cast in a zombie film with the standard tensions were all a bit above standard, which enhanced the film. This is just a fun Dolph flick.

We are now at 56 movies for Dolph on the site, and while this may not be a top ten or twenty, it's a pretty good one compared to his others. If you look at his IMDb bio, this is one of 5 films he had released in 2013, and it's really the only one I liked, the others being The Package, Legendary, Ambushed, and Blood of Redemption, all of which we've reviewed at some point. The thing is, while 2013 was a spate of movies I didn't care for except for this one, we were still in the glow of Dolph's great Expendables performance, and even though his part was diminished some in part 2, there was a sense that bigger things were coming for Dolph, that he was becoming a bigger force outside of just our DTV circles--the "Dolph-isance" that Mitch from the Video Vacuum talked about was starting. Watching this now in 2020, it's hard to go back and think of what this was back then, and who Dolph was back then, compared to now. I think though, out of all of his 2013 films, this one is the best representation of this modern Dolph that everyone is enjoying.

In 2013 the zombie flick was also a big deal, perhaps even bigger than sharks in terms of where the low-budget and DTV market was planting all of its money, and I remember seeing trailers for this back in 2013 and thinking "looks like Dolph is getting in on the zombie game too." I think it's easy to be cynical about zombie flicks, because often the filmmakers and/or distributors are cynical about their audiences when it comes to making them, especially at that time when they were trying to cash in on the Walking Dead craze. What I liked about this film--and perhaps why Dolph chose to be involved--is that it didn't have any of that cynical side to it. This respected its audience and wanted to deliver a fun time, and as a result it did what it set out to do. This is the 15th zombie film we've done on the site (one of which is another Dolph flick, Dead Trigger, which had Art Camacho as fight choreographer), and there was a point where I was kind of zombied out and left these alone, but if we can find more gems like these, I may come back to them.

The old adage is, never act with kids or animals, because they'll always upstage you. I tend to disagree on the kids part of that, because I'm generally not a fan of kids in adult movies; but I also think I may add a group to that, and that's robots. A great robot is tough to beat--just ask the cast of Lost in Space. These robots that Dolph befriends are another fantastic example. To some extent I cared more about them than some of the human characters in the film. What is it about robots that makes them so lovable? I'd love to see a sequel to this where Dolph and one of the robots opens their own private detective agency. How great would that be? (As an aside, I read on IMDb that director Christopher Hatton may have repurposed robots from a previous film he did, Robotropolis. I haven't seen that one yet, so I don't know if that's the case.)

I want to go back to Dolph for our last paragraph here. We're looking at 56 films for him, and considering I have a bunch in the can from when I did my Dolph list on Letterboxd, it's a matter of when not if we'll hit 60. At last count, I'm seeing 8 more we can review, plus two documentaries he's in that I want to cover here, so it's really a question of whether or not we hit 70 with him. We'll get into this more when he does hit 60, but it can't be understated just how much Dolph has meant to this site over the 1000+ posts we've done. At some point we're going to catch up with his output and we won't have any more of his films to post, and someone else, maybe Gary Daniels--maybe in the far future if we're still doing the DTVC Scott Adkins--will top his record, but even when that happens, and Dolph no longer has the title of most films on the site, his presence and what he's meant to the site will never be diminished.

And with that, it's time to wrap this up. As far as I know, Hoopla is the only way to stream this without paying to rent it here in the States. Hoopla is a really great deal, I discovered it when I was looking this film up on Letterboxd actually, and all you need to do is link your account to your local library card, and you can virtually "borrow" titles like these to stream on your devices for three days. I think with that in mind, that you can stream this for free in the States, that makes it a no-brainer.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2210463

An Hour to Kill (2018)

Our friend Joe Williamson gave me another screener for a Mel Novak film, and when I saw the trailer I was excited to check it out. This is the fourth screener we've received from him, and as I say, I always like being able to do these, so I was happy to get another opportunity. On IMDb, this has over 100 critic reviews, which seems crazy for a low-budget enterprise like this, but tells me more people than Joe were out there getting the word and screeners out to other reviewers. Man, I am in a massive ecosystem with this review game!

An Hour to Kill features a hitman (Aaron Guerrero) and his protege (Frankie Pozos), who have some time to kill before a job--the job is their boss, Mel Novak, wants Guerrero to kill Pozos, who has no idea. As they're killing time, Pozos tells stories, which become the horror anthology, starting with "Valkyrie's Bunker," which involves five girls going to get some pot on some farm near an old Nazi bunker; "Assacre," which has a dangerously hot chili pepper and some competitive eaters looking for revenge; and finally "Hog Hunters," which has a group of bowlers looking to have sex with some pigs who get more than they bargained for.

This felt like even more of the fun, 90s, low-budget horror I always loved than Tales of Frankenstein did. This is the kind of thing my buddies and I would have rented and worn out the tape watching and rewinding to rewatch the scenes we got the biggest kick out of. It had a bit of a Troma feel to it as well, and that's a kind of horror I've always enjoyed. The last one, "Hog Hunters," was a bit draggy before it got to the best parts, but I think that may have been due to the fact that footage from the first one, "Valkyrie's Bunker," was lost, so maybe they needed to make Hog Hunters longer to pad out the film. Padding is good when your delivering fragile products, but not when making movies. Regardless, that was a minor issue in an otherwise fun horror romp.

Joe has been doing a great job getting Mel Novak's tag count up. This is now three Novak films he's given us to screen, and when you combine that with two I've done on my own, Samurai Cop 2 and Nemesis 5, that's five Novak films in the year since I've returned from hiatus. That's actually the same number as Gary Daniels, and he's one behind other big names like Seagal, Adkins, and Rothrock, who all have 6--Dolph of course has the most with 9. This was a real fun turn for Novak here as a mob boss, and it seemed like he had fun with it, as small as it was. I'm not sure where we go next with Novak, but perhaps Joe will have another screener, and if so, that will mean another tag.

For me, my favorite story out of all of them was "Assacre"--though the point could be made that I would have preferred "Valkyrie's Bunker" more if all the footage was there, or "Hog Hunters" if it didn't have the padding, which is fair enough. "Assacre" was one of those Tromerific deals that, while I don't want to give away too much, had me both totally grossed out and in stitches. I guess "Hog Hunters" has a similar quality when it finally gets going, and "Assacre" had its slow moments too, but I think it paced out a bit better and had more fun to it overall, which made the payoff that much sweeter. I could see that as one of those classics from high school that my buddies and I would reminisce about today if we got together. Knowing us, we probably would have tried to show it in one of our classes under the pretext of a class project, and then pretended we didn't know how to use the VCR when the teacher was yelling for us to turn it off.

What was interesting about our two hitmen, was you had Guerrero as the guy with his shit together who doesn't want to kill Pozos but knows he has to do his job; while you had Pozos as this real obnoxious pain in the ass who had to play it in such a way that he was endearing enough that we wouldn't want him to get whacked. Like if Pozos plays it too obnoxious, we're looking to the hit as an applause scene; and if Guerrero plays his hitman as too much of a stone-cold killer, it makes no sense that this would be a struggle for him. For parts that were essentially bumpers around the anthology, for them to both play it so well, it enhanced the film in a way that those bumpers seldom do.

Finally, I saw a lot of comparisons to Pulp Fiction because we had two hitmen, which makes sense, but to some extent I think that's like saying any movie with a blindfold is trying for a 9 and 1/2 Weeks thing. The thing is, there were so many movies with hitmen in them that did try to bite on Pulp Fiction in the late 90s/early 2000s that a lot of us DTV fans still have PTSD from the 100-minute dialog fests where hitmen would have ironic conversations about such inane topics as cereal brands after committing a hit. It was insufferable. These characters had none of that, the writers weren't trying to remake their own foot massage or Royale with Cheese conversations; but I think Pulp Fiction was so influential for so many of us--including us who write the reviews--that we don't know how to talk about movies without using it as a pretext. It's a testament to how great that film was.

Since I'm no longer talking about the current film though, it's probably time to wrap this one up. This is a fun horror-comedy anthology that doesn't try to do too much beyond have a good time. It looks like you can find this on oldies.com, and possibly on Troma.com too. If you can track it down I say check it out. Thanks again to Joe for another screener. Can't wait to check out the next one from you!

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4730224

Ultimate Justice (2017)

In looking to get more Mark Dacascos on the site, I saw this one on Tubi, with a nice runtime around 90 minutes and also featuring Matthias Hues. Why wouldn't I review this? Also, I was preparing to have Ty and Brett from Comeuppance on the pod to talk about Mark Dacascos, and figured I'd get as many as I could in before that. In addition to us, Simon at Explosive Action has covered this one, so you can go to his site to see what he thought of it. Now, without any further ado...

Ultimate Justice has Dacascos as the head of a mercenary group who decides he's had enough after one of the team gets killed on a mission. So he sells the company at a big profit and has a big party to celebrate, where his business partner Wolfgang Riehm meets a beautiful woman. 8 years later Dacascos meets Riehm at his beautiful house to have dinner with him and his wife, and after he leaves, later that night, some baddies break in, rape and kill the wife, and beat up Riehm. Now Dacascos has to get the gang back together to exact Ultimate Justice!

 

For me, I was of split mind on this one. On the one hand, there was some great action, which I enjoyed; on the other the story was really contrived and to some extent not plausible, and I think it hampered things a bit. Yes, I always say good action outdoes bad story, but this one was a bit too convoluted for me. The other problem was the film's revenge construct meant we lost a lot of great characters just as we began to like them. No spoilers, but in some cases these characters were really put through the ringer, only to just be killed off. When you go down the list of rules for action movies, I think killing off characters with impunity is one we don't see often, but it still counts. Action is similar to horror, in that we in the audience won't always go with you if you kill off characters we like, and this movie didn't seem to care--and for me, the film suffered as a result.

We've seen Mark Dacascos as both the lead hero and the lead baddie, and he does both equally well. In this movie his character is more of a jerk than either of those two, and unfortunately that isn't a good look on him. That may come from the old adage that the best baddies in movies are played by people who are really nice in real life, and Dacascos seems like a genuinely nice person in real life. World domination is one thing, but stealing his buddy's woman didn't seem like good fit for him. On the other hand, the action scenes he has in this are fantastic, and that's really what we come for. I think from that respect, this movie really works, and why I think a lot of people weren't bothered enough by the plot and enjoyed this.

When Ty and Brett came on to discuss Dacascos, I think the main theme was that Dacascos is one of the best out there doing this, and while he should have gotten better big screen roles, his career has by no means not been successful. When we see his name on the tin, we know what kind of electric martial arts he's going to bring, and for us fans of the genre, that's all we ask. This film marks his 20th on the site, so he has some time to go before he hits the 30 Club and beyond, but the DTVC Hall of Fame? I think that could be in his future this fall.

Speaking of tags, this is 15 for Matthias Hues, but I believe this is his first as a good guy. I have to say, I often enjoyed rooting for him as a baddie, so it was nice to be able to root for him guilt free in this one. He has a good amount of stuff out there, especially in those late 80s/early 90s Golden Years of DTV, that I haven't touched yet, so we should be seeing him here a lot in the future. When we look back on the 1000+ posts we've done on the site, Hues is one that, while we don't put him up there with a Dacascos, without him, the 80s and 90s for DTV wouldn't be what we know it as. Oh, and look at the screen I took of him. Best scene since Bolo Yeung was working a food truck in Tiger Claws II.

Finally, we're always talking about who could be in the next wave of great action stars, and one to keep an eye on here was Mike Möller. His martial arts prowess was fantastic, and the scenes he was in were the kind of high octane stuff we want out of a movie like this. I looked online, and he has three more movies on Tubi, one in particular that features Hall of Famers Fred Williamson and Lorenzo Lamas. We'll definitely bump that one up in the queue, and I'll tag Möller now with the idea being that we plan to see more of him in the future.

And on a good note like that, let's wrap this one up. This movie clocks in at a good 90 minutes, and has a pretty nice action quotient; but the story is a bit of a drag, and the film tends to kill people off after having us invest a lot in them, which is a bit of a dirty trick that I don't enjoy. The fact that this is on Tubi and Prime is a definite selling point too. 

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4041476

Omega Cop (1990)

A little while back Ty and Brett at Comeuppance asked if I wanted to guest on their pod to discuss Ron Marchini's films. I'd never actually seen one before, so this was a great opportunity to dive into his oeuvre, and with this one also having the great Adam West, why not get after it? In addition to me, they've also reviewed this one, so you can go to their site to see what they thought.

Omega Cop takes place 11 years ago in 1999, after global warming has destroyed the ozone layer to the point that we're hip-deep in the apocalypse. Post-apocalypse, Marchini works for a police force run by West from a bunker--which works well if you want him to have scenes by himself in one location. Anyway, on a mission to stop an unruly bunch who are holding a white slavery auction, all of Marchini's men are killed, leaving him alone with one of the women from the auction. West says they can't come back to the compound, so Marchini collects two more women along the way, and they have a final showdown with the head baddie who ran the auction. If we're only going to have one cop left, it might as well be Marchini.

This movie is a lot of fun. I mean, look at that gang there! After I captured this image, I read Ty and Brett's review, and they had the same one, and I considered getting something different, but it just captures the fun of this movie so well. Marchini is great in the lead, West is great in a role that allows him to stay in one room for all his scenes, and you've got baddies who look like this. What more do you want in a movie? Exactly.

This was the first of seven Marchini movies I watched for their podcast episode, and as we'll see as I eventually review all seven, they're all fun like this. Seven movies in a row without a dud is a feat no one in the DTV world has pulled off before as far as I know, which makes it that much more egregious that it took me over a thousand posts to finally get one of his movies up here. His martial arts are fantastic, and it looks like he produces all of his own movies--other than one AIP flick, he didn't work with any of the big names like Cannon and PM--which on the one hand makes me say "I wish he had done that," but on the other I think "seven good ones in a row, why mess with that." It's going to be a lot of fun as we go through the rest of Marchini's films.

This came out in 1990, which is only 9 years before the period when this takes place, meaning the world went down the toilet quick. It's always fun to see a movie set in the future that's now the past, but man, 1999 over 20 years ago, it's almost the Retro Channel past, that was once the future. I never really understood why things were set so close in the future. If this was 2040 and made in 1990, would it have made any difference? I mean there are parts where he's talking about things he remembered from when the world wasn't like it is now, and he's telling women who are at least in their 20s, which means they would have been at least 10, if not older at that time--if the world went to shit in 1990, if it went later, they would have been older. I just did a paragraph trying to hold the film accountable for it's timeline, when they had guys like the two in the first screen. I'm sorry, I'll move on.

Look at West there, he's slouching. How amazing is that? He can't even be bothered to sit up to do his lines. As I write this, there's another film incarnation of Batman on the horizon, this one starring Twilight's Robert Pattinson. We can add him to Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer, George Clooney, Christian Bale, and Ben Affleck. And West was the best of all of them for me. As a result, whenever I see him in anything, I love it. Funny, other than when I did the original Batman, I haven't done another West film as far as I know. We'll have to fix that.

Soapbox time. As far as I can tell, this is only available as a used DVD or VHS, or you can stream the Rifftrax version, and that's it. How do Marchini's films not have blu-ray releases? Crazy Six has a blu-ray, and no offense to Albert Pyun, but if Crazy Six has a blu-ray, so should this. We need a company like Arrow to release a box set of all seven Marchini films from the mid-80s to the mid-90s. I mean, Mankillers has a blu-ray, but this doesn't? And if Arrow or MVD wants to make these blu-rays, call me or the guys from Comeuppance, we'd love to record some commentary tracks.

Off the soapbox, and time to wrap this up. This, like most Marchini films, is available on YouTube. Until someone takes the initiative to make the blu-ray box set, that's the best that you can do--actually according to Christopher Cross, the best that you can do is fall in love--but at least the movies are available for everyone to see. And if you haven't been checking out Brett and Ty's Comeuppance Review Podcast, what are you doing? Subscribe and check out the episode I joined them with on Marchini, plus all their other great episodes.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100291

Coven of Evil (2020)

This was a screener submission from writer/directer Matthew J. Lawrence--and for a first time in a long time, the film's distributor actually mailed me a physical DVD screener, along with some other films they had coming out. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the ease, speed, and lower cost of the Vimeo screener with a password, but this was a fond step back in time for me which gave the process an added touch that I enjoyed. Now, without any further ado...

Coven of Evil follows Joe (John Thacker), a budding journalist just out of school, still living with his folks, who writes an article about a strange cult of witches. When the head of the cult (Samantha Moorhouse) confronts him at his home, she invites him to their remote island location to see just how innocuous they really are. As ominous as this invitation sounds, the lure of escaping the more ominous fate of living with his folks any longer causes him to take her up on that offer; but when he finds a beautiful girl (Laura Peterson) possibly being held against her will, will he be able to save her and him?

I saw on IMDb and Letterboxd that reviewers killed this, and I don't know that it deserved that fate, but I believe it ultimately had a fatal flaw. The beginning of the film shows a satanic ritual from the late 18th century, effectively Chekhov's Gunning Lawrence's story. If we see the ritual at the beginning, we know in the present day that that's where we're headed. So with that in mind, the film's 100-minute runtime feels even longer; not to mention, around the hour-twenty mark, there's some plot exposition where loose ends start flying together, and to some extent I don't know if we even needed all of those nuances that were added to the story. Just the same, I thought this was well-shot, well-acted, and the score added a depth to it that I really appreciated. Again, this is not a 1- or 2-star IMDb hatchet-job review kind of movie, it deserves much better treatment than that; but also again, the 90-minute rule wins, and I think it wins that much more convincingly because we know where we're headed.

Director/writer Matthew J. Lawrence did give me some background on the process. In particular, he talked about the budgetary constraints, which, on the one hand is something that needs to be taken into consideration; but on the other, if my main concern is the film's length, usually low-budget films clock in lower than 90 minutes, not higher. Often where a low-budget film runs into issues is in the performances, especially if the cast is inexperienced, and that didn't happen here; or in the way it was shot, with bad takes needing to be left in to save costs, I didn't see any bad takes here. With that in mind, while I feel like it's important to grade a low-budget film on a curve and in so doing respect the effort and earnestness that the cast and crew bring to a project like this, this is an overall entertaining film, and even if I weren't grading on a curve, I'd be giving it high marks for all of the things it did well. It's just I never quite understood the idea of going onto IMDb or Letterboxd and killing a movie like this. Yes, a Marvel movie that has a budget so high a rounding error could cover my outstanding student loan debt deserves to be killed if it misses the mark, but not something like this that's doing the best it can to turn out a quality film despite the roadblocks in its way. (I'll step off my soapbox now.)

Another interesting thing that I had a hunch people would be upset about, is the fact that the coven pretends to be a harmless Wiccan group as a cover for their deadly Satanic exercises. In a 100-minute film, the plot exposition where we hear someone in the group mention that they were pretending to be Wiccan to throw Joe the intrepid reporter off the scent, is something that could easily be missed, especially considering how witchcraft-y the coven seem to be. I think that was another source of bad reviews for this film, but I want anyone to know that may be considering watching this that it's in no way meant to slander the Wicca faith. If anything, it's another mark in the "bad" column for our baddies, the fact that they would try to give the Wicca faith a bad name, giving us more reason to root against them.

One other thing Lawrence talked about is the moorland in Yorkshire where he grew up, and how it was both beautiful and eerie. That paralleled my own experience, growing up in a York of my own, York County, Maine, because Maine has similar qualities, which Stephen King has made millions of dollars off depicting so well. This film could have used more of that element, like when Joe sees a villager staring at him when he first arrives, but we never hear from him again. Throwing in a creepy elderly person here or there, a cat hissing, little touches to set the atmosphere a bit more, I think could have enhanced what Lawrence was going for even more.

Finally, a friend of mine a few years back told me about a linguistic study he read that said the Yorkshire accent in the 18th century would have sounded more like a Massachusetts accent does today. I understand that with the budgetary constraints they couldn't have flown in any actors from Boston, MA to do that opening scene, but how amazing would that have have been? One actor who we've seen in another screener we had here, Slip and Fall, comes to mind, and that's William DeCoff, who played the lawyer in that one. Imagining him with his Mass accent as the satanic priest is fantastic.

Since I'm recasting the opening sequence with Boston character actors, it's probably time to wrap this up. I think this has some real solid performances, great sets, a haunting score, plus the way it was shot really worked; ultimately though, the runtime coupled with the fact that the opening scene has to foreshadow what the end will be, otherwise it wouldn't be there, betrays it a bit and can make that 100-minute runtime a tougher sit. Just the same, I think this is worth giving a look, especially since right now you can get it on Amazon Prime. Thank you again to Matthew J. Lawrence for sending this over, I really appreciated it!

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6714558

Debt Collectors (2020)

When I watched this, this was the most recent Scott Adkins film out, but between then and now, he's had a new film released, Legacy of Lies, which shows you just how much Adkins is living up to his title of hardest working person in action right now. Considering I have a bunch of Adkins from when I was on hiatus that I need to catch up on, being one movie behind on this isn't such a big deal.

Debt Collectors picks up where Debt Collector left off, sometime in the future Louis Mandylor visits Scott Adkins at the dive bar he's working in, and offers him a chance to get back into the debt collecting game--one round of collecting, big bonus, and he's done. Adkins agrees, but as they're collecting debts, something isn't adding up, and as the film goes on we realize that someone from the past wants revenge on them and their boss Tommy, and it's this revenge character that's driving all the debt collecting action. Will the guys figure out the situation and find a way out in time to save Tommy and the whole operation?

When I did Debt Collector, the message I got was "Debt Collectors is nice, but you really should be reviewing Avengement." It felt like though when Debt Collector got a sequel, more people were saying what a great movie it was, and how they couldn't wait for this one. For me, the main issue I had with the first one was that it kind of spun its wheels based on the construct of them going from place to place to collect debts and get into fights, and that isn't really mitigated here with the inclusion of the baddie; but by the same token, I think the individual confrontations were more exciting in this one than that one. The reality is, this concept works better as a TV show, where the main characters can run into 43-minute five-act problems each week, and that keeps the story from needing any padding to keep us from the end. I still enjoyed myself though.

I was looking at Adkins IMDb bio, and from 2016 to 2020, he's had 21 movies come out (plus it looks like he has number 22 in Seized coming out in October). Of those 21 (almost 22), I've only seen 8, so I can't say how big his part is in all of them, but of the ones I have seen he's usually the lead, and he's the lead while doing a lot of high-octane fight scenes. This is his 16th film on the site, plus I believe I have five that I've watched that I'm waiting to review, so we should have a lot more from him coming in the near future, especially once we get caught up on the massive Dolph, Daniels, and Seagal backlog I still have.

Louis Mandylor is back as well. Like the previous one, he does a great job in making his character Sue a guy you want to root for. I can tell he enjoys playing this part, which helps us manage the scenes where there isn't as much action. He's become something of a Jesse V. Johnson mainstay, as he's not just in this but also The Mercenary and Avengement. In looking at his bio, he's doing a lot of smaller parts in things, so it's good to see him in something like this where he has one of the lead roles and he's able to take a character he really likes and run with it.

We're always on the lookout for Star Trek alums, so it was great to see Marina Sirtis here as another organized crime boss that the guys are collecting money from. I was trying to think how many other cast members from TNG we've seen on the site. I know Michael Dorn has made a couple of appearances; then Gates McFadden was in one of my favorite Christmas movies ever, Make the Yuletide Gay; and one of our earliest movies was Mortuary with Denise Crosby. I was surprised we didn't have any Brent Spiner, but I never tagged him if we did, and I can't think of anything we've reviewed that had him in it.

This is Jesse V. Johnson's 8th tag as director here at the DTVC, which moves him past the great Jim Wynorski. Where does this put him overall as a director on the site? Albert Pyun has the most with 41 (he has 43 tags listed, but one tag is from the second Mean Guns review, and one is for being producer on Nemesis 5). Second we have a big drop down to Fred Olen Ray, who has 14 movies tagged, and then Sam Firstenberg comes in third with 12. Of Art Camacho's 46 tags, I think 11 are as director, and that ties him with Isaac Florentine, who also has 11. And then DTVC Hall of Famer Cirio H. Santiago has 9. After that it's Jesse V. Johnson at 8. That's quite elite company when you think about it, but Johnson has been putting out some pretty exciting stuff recently that's hard to ignore, so he gives me no choice but to review it and keep his tagged number growing.

And with that we wrap this up. Most people will get this to rent or buy on VOD, but in the US it's no available on Netflix, and it's also available on Hoopla as of my writing this post. If you're not familiar with it, Hoopla allows you to use you local library card to stream movies in their library for a few days, as if you're borrowing them. Some of the other titles on there that I had trouble finding other places: Battle of the Damned, VFW, and Beyond the Law. Hopefully they'll add more in the future, as there are a lot of titles out there that are only available to rent.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10933680/

New York Chinatown (1982)

I found out that from Ty at Comeuppance that today is Don "The Dragon" Wilson's birthday, and I had this in the can, so I figured why not pull the trigger rather than wait on it. I found it available to stream among JCT's YouTube videos, and had been meaning to do it for a long time, as it is the Dragon's first feature film, so what better one to cover on his birthday. So without any further ado...

New York Chinatown (spelled "China Town" in the subtitles) is a Hong Kong production shot in New York City about rival triads vying for control. One group is led by our hero, played by Alan Tang, and the group they are battling against just happen to have a young NYPD detective in their pocket, DTVC Hall of Famer Don "The Dragon" Wilson. When Tang is framed for beating up a guy under the boardwalk on Coney Island, he goes to jail, while the syndicate working with Wilson starts to take over. That's when some others in the NYPD decide the best bet to stop all of this is to let Tang out of jail and have him and the remainder of his gang fight the other gang off. It'll be a bloodbath.

This movie's not the best, but it does stand out 30 years later as Wilson's first role, which I really enjoyed. I think that elevates it beyond your standard Hong Kong flick from this period. Beyond that, the action is good, it's a nice compact 90 minutes, there are some fun characters, plus you have the cool scenery of early 80s New York City as your backdrop. I don't know how I would have felt about this film if I had seen it in 1982 (when I was 3?), but it definitely is one that feels more fun today than it might have then. The subtitles are a bit all over the place, and the JCT version is a lower-quality VHS rip, but overall this was fun for me.

The standard knock on Wilson is his wooden acting, and I don't know that I haven't been above making a crack about that myself, but what was fascinating here, especially for Wilson's first film, is how good I thought he was. He plays a great baddie! I was trying to remember if I'd seen him play a baddie in the 33 movies of his we'd done before this, and I couldn't think of any. He has one fight scene in this, fighting against a local martial arts master, and you can see where that electric stuff we recognized from all the films he did 10 or so years later came from, and in that sense I wanted more. Now that we've done almost all of his recent starring films--I think we have a couple left to cover--I'm going to try to go back and get a lot of these 80s ones he did, especially since a lot are on YouTube.

The real star of this was Alan Tang, and he definitely has that movie star presence that you'd want in a lead like this. He's cooler than the other side of the pillow, burns his share of heaters, and he gets stuff done. In some of the scenes he did with Wilson, Wilson was great at being the heel to Tang's hero. I was trying to see if I'd seen Lang in other stuff before, but on his IMDb bio a lot of the titles are in Chinese, so it's hard to know. He passed away in 2011 at only 65, but he hadn't done a film since 1993 anyway. I imagine that Hong Kong meat grinder takes it out of you, though this film didn't look as bad as a lot of them are--there weren't a lot of stunts here or dangerous scenes.

I should point out that I've never been to Chinatown in New York City before. I've been to the ones in London, Boston, San Francisco, Seattle, Las Vegas, and Philadelphia. I've heard that it's shrinking and the one in Queens is growing. Either way, I'd love to get up there and see it, especially after seeing it used in this film. Beyond that, as I mentioned above, the 1982 NYC backdrop really enhanced the film, and they didn't just shoot in Chinatown. We don't get many films here at the DTVC that are actually shot in New York, most are shot in a Canadian city and passed off to us as New York, so when we do, I always make a point of taking it in. It's a city, more than any in the US I think, that is itself a character in the story, and that was definitely true here.

I talked above about Wilson's early career, and I feel like when I first started the blog, a lot of these early movies weren't even listed on his IMDb bio. Then I come back from hiatus and suddenly they all were added. It might be because he was "Don Wilson" in those. I know Letteboxd had trouble distinguishing between "Don Wilson" and "The Dragon". Think of it like his pre-Bloodfist days, it's an interesting way to keep adding to his tags and reviews on the site. I count 13 of these we could do after this--and that doesn't count new ones like The Hitman Agency that I also need to see. Considering this is movie number 34 for him, does that mean the 50 Club is in sight down the road?

Before we get too carried away, let's wrap this up. The fact that you can get this free on YouTube through JCT, and it's Wilson's first feature, it's worth checking out. I enjoyed myself on those elements alone, but then you have Alan Tang, some other great supporting characters, and the 1982 NYC backdrop. Again, it's not the best movie, but it's an enjoyable one.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1385947

Choke (2020)

I recently received an email with some screener links from Mad Sin Cinema, which represents the films of Shane Ryan. It was also released by Cinema Epoch, and I've done some screeners for them in the past, including a film I really loved, Nipples and Palm Trees. In the email, it said this one and Heartbeat, which I'll be reviewing in he future as well, were shot at the same time with the same cast, which was intriguing. Also loved the 72-minute runtime. Let's see how it went.

Choke has Shane Ryan as a serial killer who strangles his victims with his bare hands. When he meets Jeanie (Sarah Brine), a 17-year-old, on a train, he's instantly smitten, and she's drawn to him too. At the same time, a police detective investigating one of his murders (Scott Butler), and who also has a thing for erotic asphyxia, meets Jeanie and he falls for her too. Will the love they have for her keep them from going over the deep end, or is their going over the deep end just what she wants.

Seriously, I don't even know if I got that synopsis right. I don't even know if it matters. I don't even know if it's a bad thing that it matters. Seriously. Scenes flow from one into the other as if the film was tossed in a blender and glued back together. Is Ryan strangling someone, or dreaming of strangling them, or is he strangling them now, or is he strangling them in the past? Does any of it matter? To some extent I think it does, because while I like the chances this film took in terms of the narrative, cinematography, and performances, when you boil this down and get past everything else, this is still your classic older guy has thing for a teenage girl trope, and like every other time we see that trope, they try to repackage it, but no matter how you package it, the trope is the trope, and I think that's important to consider here despite everything else I liked about it.

Shane Ryan is the star, and also executive producer, and he turns in the kind of manic performance that I think at least elevates his serial killer character beyond the usual serial killer in a movie. In some respects, he's playing his serial killer like the Joker, and a Joker that bigger name actors who try to play that part think they're giving us, but missing altogether, while Ryan is here nailing it. And I think to some extent too, his performance lifts the older guy/teenage girl trope out of the usual baseness to make it something more than that, but I think that thing is too James Woods-y or Woody Allen-y in our society for even the most manic and intense performance to get it beyond that. That shouldn't take away from how much I liked his performance in this though.

The teen girl was played by Sarah Brine, and I think like Ryan, she tries to elevate things beyond the old guy/teen girl trope. She plays her character with a mix of agency and nihilism that, if it weren't so tied to this tired old guy/teen girl construct, would have really worked. That's the toughest part for me about this, Ryan and Brine turn in great performances, I wouldn't want to not have either in the film, but when you put them together, there's still that sense of "oh we're doing this again?" I don't know how you fix that either. I mean I think even if they didn't have any scenes together, the trope is so common and so tired that that wouldn't be enough. It's a Catch-22.

This was directed by Gregory Hatanaka, who also did Samurai Cop 2, and I think had they played Samurai Cop 2 straight the way they played this straight, it would have worked much better. I mean overall this movie allowed me to appreciate it better as a movie than Samurai Cop 2 did, and maybe that's because Hatanaka was trying to live up to something in the former, while here he was able to make his own thing. Also he and Ryan have worked on a lot of stuff together, and they seem to get what each wants out of a scene. Looking at it like that, imagining a 72-minute Batman movie with Ryan as the Joker and Hatanaka directing sounds too amazing for words. It's a shame the studio system is so litigious, because these characters like Batman are really part of the zeitgeist, and if something like this were to come to fruition, I feel like a Ryan/Hatanaka Batman movie would only enhance the franchise and get people to invest in the big screen ones that much more. I'm trying to think who my Batman would be confronting Ryan's Joker. Maybe you don't even need Batman with their movie.

As I mentioned above, this was a Cinema Epoch film, which is actually Gregory Hatanaka's releasing company. When I looked them up on IMDb, they had a ton of titles with "(Video)" after the names, which is right up our alley. I remember when I did Nipples and Palm Trees for them, someone on that production had talked about me maybe covering the Boston screening of Samurai Cop, but because it was a midnight showing, I needed to take the train, and couldn't afford a hotel since the trains didn't run that late. It's too bad, because I think that would have been a really fun experience!

And with that, let's wrap this up. Choke is available on Prime and Tubi. I wish I knew what to tell you on whether or not you should check it out. It's totally unique in terms of style and pacing, but it also runs the tired theme of old guy/teen girl, and for me that takes the uniqueness and makes it baser than I'd want; but this is also worth checking out as an indie film that does take chances, and I think that can't be understated. Thank you again to Mad Sin Cinema for sending along this screener, I appreciate it!

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11127256

Land of the Free (1998)

This is one I had in my queue in the old Netflix disc days, and it went unavailable. It just seemed too good to be true, Speaks and Shats, plus an exploding helicopter and PM Entertainment. Then I read Kenner's review on Movies in the Attic, and he killed it. Say it ain't so! I wasn't the only one drawn by that siren song, as Ty from Comeuppance also commented on Kenner's post saying how great the mere idea of this was. Then I had Jon Cross from After Movie Diner on our pod to discuss The Expert, and he said this wasn't bad, but the score was ridiculous--we'll get more into that later. At that point I needed to cover this as well, so here we are. In addition to Movies in the Attic and Comeuppance, Exploding Helicopter has covered this too--for obvious reasons.

Land of the Free has Speaks working a campaign for Shats, a presidential candidate named "Carvell" with dubious ties to a right wing separatist group. Speaks tries to expose him, Shats and his guys try to kill him, so Speaks is on the run, until he isn't, at which time Shats is in trouble.

Pretty paint-by-numbers right? Except it's a PM flick with Speaks and Shats. Why not, right? It makes the whole thing a fun movie from the late 90s. I wouldn't put this in any PM top 20 list, but it does what you want in a PM actioner: good quotient of action scenes, including a great chase scene with a bus that they do their darnedest to flip over; and they lean on their stars, especially Speaks and Shats, but also Charlie Robinson, aka Mac from Night Court, and it's always great to see a Night Court alum get after it. On top of all that, in true PM style, they build upon each action scene, which brings you to Shats and Speaks hanging off a helicopter, and you're thinking "they won't have Speaks and Shats get after it with a final fight scene, will they?"

We're now at 7 Speakman flicks here at the DTVC. As far as I can tell that leaves us with another 7, plus The Perfect Weapon, so we have some films to go before we've exhausted his filmography. We get a good amount of his Kenpo Patty-Cake style, slapping guys around them knocking them off buildings or defenestrating them. By the time the end comes, we're all in with him invading Shats's compound and giving the baddies their comeuppance. I guess the thing I would say about this though, is it's just a fun actioner, and I think I can see why Kenner gave it such low marks. He's judging Speaks against his best stuff, and in that sense it does come up wanting; also, if you're comparing it against PM's best, same thing, this doesn't feel as inspired as their other stuff. I didn't hold it against either as much, but I can see how someone might.

As I mentioned above, when I had Jon on the pod to discuss The Expert, he described the score in this. Something like a guy at RadioShack playing around with his Casio, that's probably the best way to think of it. Couldn't they mix in a little electric guitar? Even some smooth jazz? And at one point there's this too sweet car chase with buses rolling over and cars flipping over things, and there's this Casio score playing in the background. It was almost as unreal as Shats and Speaks having an end fight scene.

Speaking of Shatner, this is only the second time we've seen him on the site. The last time: May 21st 2007, two weeks after the site started. How did we go that long between Shatner appearances? You'd think in the 1000 films or so between those posts, I'd run into at least one more Shatner flick, but it never happened. This was one I had planned on doing for many of those posts, and when it became unavailable on Netflix that was it until I found it on Prime. I don't know that I'll make an effort to get more Shatner on the site, but he's so much fun, especially in this, that I don't see why I wouldn't. The other thing is, his character's name is Carvell, which reminds me of the old Carvel ice cream shop. We had one in a strip mall near where I grew up, which I think after many changes is now a Panera Bread. I looked online, and while we don't have one here in Philly, there are still a bunch of them open, especially in the New Jersey area, plus the one in South Station in Boston, which I was happy to see was still open. I went online, and saw that the whale and Cookie Puss were also still available. Life is good.

Finally, in that fantastic chase where Speaks and his family are trying to elude their pursuers in a bus, we see a station wagon with wood paneling and a canoe strapped to its roof that gets caught in the melee of cars, and ends up flipping over. Can you imagine, you're working an office job in LA in the late 90s, you're excited to get out of dodge for the weekend, take the canoe out on the lake, you're cruising down the highway, and the next thing you know you're hip-deep in a PM Entertainment car chase, and all these cars and a bus are racing by you going the wrong way, you try to take evasive action, and you end up flipping your car. How much does that suck for you? Sure, insurance covers the car--maybe the canoe if it's included in your housing insurance--but how does that make you whole when you're sitting on the side of the highway waiting for a tow, and you need to drive a rental back to your house and spend the weekend at home? Not cool.

And with that, let's wrap this one up. It's not the best PM or Speaks, but throw in Shats and a nice chase and some good action, and I think this one works as a fun 90s actioner. If you have Prime you can stream it, and I think that's the best way to make this happen--and if you're lucky enough to live near a Carvel, why not grab an ice cream cake to have while you watch it? Also for the Speakman podcast that Jon and I did, you can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, or other major podcatchers.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0127637

Looking for more action? Check out my short action novel, Bainbridge, and all my other novels, over at my author's page! Click on the image below, go to https://www.matthewpoirierauthor.com/

Mercenaries (2014)

Back when I did the podcast with Jamie, we covered this in an episode, and neither of us were big fans. Just the same, it's a Rothrock movie, and eventually I'm going to get all of them reviewed, so I figured why not give this one another try and see what happens. In addition to us, our friends at Comeuppance Reviews and The Video Vacuum have covered this as well, so you can see what they had to say.

Mercenaries looks like a female cast version of The Expendables, but is rather a remake of Mankillers, an AIP flick that was a female cast version of The Dirty Dozen. When Brigitte Nielsen kidnaps the president's daughter while she's on a philanthropic mission in an old Soviet Republic, Cynthia Rothrock needs to get a team to rescue her. The problem is, Nielsen doesn't trust any men (except her right-hand man Tim Abell? And most of her crew?), so it needs to be a team of women, but there aren't any women who are trained enough in the service, so they need to get them out of prison. The team, led by Zoe Bell, goes in to get her out. But will they be able to make it out alive?

I think the issue we had with this was it was a bit all over the place. Like why did it need to be a Dirty Dozen paradigm? Why wasn't Rothrock in it more? You have Abell as a great henchman to Nielsen's head baddie, but the movie couldn't tell if he was a comic baddie, or a vicious baddie, so one moment he's chewing scenery like the best Die Hard villain, and the next he's slitting a girl's throat--and the thing with Abell is he can do both equally well, which made the unevenness even more pronounced. The general idea of this is a great one, and I applaud them for that. I also really liked the cast they had. I think the overall execution though in how it was written and carried out did it all a disservice, which was unfortunate.

As always, we start with our Hall of Famer, and that's Rothrock. It's funny, because I think she plays the part she does in a sense to, not pass the torch, but almost more like opening the gates to let the stars in, in particular Zoe Bell, Kristanna Loken (still tagged as "Painkiller Jane" here on the site) and Mei-Lin Fong. What we see here though with Rothrock, is one, how the right project really matters. She needed the China O'Brien and Rage and Honor films, plus the great Godfrey Ho flicks she did, that really showcased her talents; but two, I think her time in Hong Kong sharpened her skills to be able to kill it on screen in a way few stars, man or woman, have ever done. I think the idea that there's ever going to be a "next Rothrock" is a fallacy, because Rothrock was a unique singular talent who brought it on a level we've seldom seen in the action world, and with that in mind, I can't say she's passing the torch in this film, because no one can fully take over that legacy.

All that being said, I liked Zoe Bell in this, and I feel like she's someone we could latch onto when we think of who out there will be part of the next wave of action stars. We should be able to put her with a Scott Adkins, and while she may not do the martial arts the way he does, her stunt work and overall badass action qualities give us that "it" factor we want in someone to lead an action film. Just the same, while I'm championing her here in this paragraph, she's been in two previous films we reviewed here on the site, Bitch Slap and Game of Death, and I gave her zero mentions in those write-ups. That's something I need to change going forward for sure; but can you imagine a Debt Collectors type film with her and Gina Carano in the leads instead of Adkins and Mandylor? How amazing would that be?

If you see this on Tubi right now, the cover features Vivica A. Fox. On Letterboxd, the cover features Kristanna Loken--which is what it looked like when I watched it for the podcast five years ago. When we did the pod, Jamie and I wondered what the story was with Fox's character. She didn't seem to fit, the part wasn't working for her, and we wondered where Fox's career was headed from there. If you look at the five years since, she's really made a name for herself in the David DeCoteau "Wrong" movies, not to mention she became the first black woman to play the president in a live action movie. I still think having her front and center on the cover does Bell a disservice, but it shows how far she's come in those five years that anyone selling the movie will think she's the one to sell it on.

Finally, Brigitte Nielsen plays the baddie in this, and I really enjoyed it. I think, like Abell, the character was written a little unevenly, but when she was supposed to be a fun, over the top (Stallone pun intended) baddie she played it as well as you'd want in a film like this. This isn't the first time she's played a great baddie either, she was great in Martial Law III too. In a way, I think Nielsen more than anyone shows us what this could have been if it were on a bigger budget and a bigger time scale than if it were an Asylum rush job. This is a good point here to mention as well that this was directed by Christopher Ray, Fred Olen Ray's son, and like his dad, he can get a movie in on time and under budget and make it look good despite the constraints involved, which makes me wonder what he could have done with this if he had more time and more money, and with this cast. Maybe we get something that rivals The Expendables.

And with that, it's time to wrap this up. I think similar to when I watched this for the pod with Jamie, I was rooting for this to be great, but ultimately you end up with Mankillers with a better cast but not as much fun. As the French say, c'est dommage.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3598222