Exterminator 2 (1984)

I watched this last spring for the Robert Ginty podcast episode I did with Ty and Brett from Comeuppance. Why it's taken me so long to review it, I can't say. For some reason it's been sitting near the top of my review queue, but something else has always crept in ahead of it. Anyway, this is a complete the triangle film, as, in addition to Comeuppance, Mitch at the Video Vacuum has covered this as well, so you can go to their sites to see what they thought.

Exterminator 2 is the Cannon sequel to the Ginty classic. In this one, our hero is still wielding his flame thrower, but when he roasts the brother of a local gang leader, (Mario Van Peebles (as the leader)), they come for him and everyone he cares for. After they paralyze his dancer girlfriend, Ginty does the only thing he can do: outfit a trash truck so it's a tank, and take them all down. You've done messed with the wrong Ginty.

This is a pretty fun time.  It's not the iconic film the first one is--also nowhere near as brutal either, which isn't to say this isn't brutal, just that that was a high bar to match. Ginty is the guy he was in that one, I think in tune with the character and just building off the work he did in part one to develop him. I also really enjoyed Van Peebles as the villain. He does it with a certain amount of aplomb without sacrificing any of the actual villainy, so we still sufficiently want to see him taken down. On the other hand, the film does drag in parts, and the fact that the girlfriend is first paralyzed, then murdered, felt a little too dark; but Ginty v. Van Peebles, with Frankie Faison as Ginty's buddy, delivered in a 90-minute 80s Cannon/Golan-Globus package, does the trick when you're looking to partake in some Ginty Moore Beef Stew.

I'm ashamed to admit that this is only the fourth Ginty film on the site. We last saw him a little over 10 years ago in November of 2011, when we covered the first Exterminator film. For such a DTV legend, one who was big enough to get his own podcast episode, to have so few tags, is a travesty that I freely admit I'm guilty of. The good news is, because I had to watch some other Ginties for that episode, we have more in the can that I can hopefully get to soon; the bad news is, I've had that Ginty in the can since May of 2021, and am just now reviewing one of them. The thing about Ginty is he played a huge part in making the DTV action world as we know it. I don't know if I can think of anyone in these early 80s days who had a bigger impact, other than maybe Fred Williamson. Hopefully we'll get more Ginty on the site, but because we say this often and seldom deliver, in the meantime you have the podcast episode to hear us chat about him.

 

Some of the complaints I had with the film were explained in the trivia section on the IMDb page. Apparently Cannon wasn't happy with Buntzman's final cut, so they did some extensive re-shoots, including using a stunt double to add in more scenes of Ginty firing his flamethrower, and forcing Cannon to have an NYC trash truck driven across the country to LA where the re-shoots were done. This explained the unevenness I noticed. Also in Buntzman's original cut, Ginty's girlfriend survived, which was a major qualm I had. According to the trivia, Ginty wasn't happy with the new edits, and that may explain why he doesn't do another Cannon film until 1987's Three Kinds of Heat. For as much as we love Cannon, this was something that seemed to happen a lot with them, they took films away from directors and made changes that they thought would make them more bankable. The best example is Cyborg. This movie still pulled in $3.7 million at the box office, so maybe it was worth it, but like Cyborg, it would be nice to see what the original cut looked like.

Mario Van Peebles is a great villain here, which, to some extent makes his villain in Seized look really pedestrian, but through no fault of Van Peebles. That's one major issue with modern DTV, the villains aren't as well developed as they were in the 80s. I think the reason for that is since that time, we've had baddies like Hans Gruber who gave baddies more nuance, and I think filmmakers have been trying to emulate that ever since. Throw in the verbose element of the Tarantino rip-offs, and now you have a philosophizing baddie with nuance written by writers who think they're smarter than they are, when a straight-ahead unhinged evil villain who brings death with him everywhere he goes often does the trick. One of the many reasons why these films were better in the 80s and pre-Tarantino 90s than they are now.

Finally, there's something about late 70s/early 80s New York City in a movie that really works. We think of NYC as the kind of city that is such a setting that it's its own character, but late 70s to early 80s NYC is the best version of that character for me. I think I like it even better than 1960s Paris. The sense of impending danger everywhere, juxtaposed with the sense that this city is one of the financial capitals of the world, it feels like a world of limitless possibilities. And what I love about this film, is the use of the garbage truck existing in that world. It feels like the bottom rung, yet is a real yeoman's job, something everyone takes for granted until all the sanitation workers go on strike. To turn that symbol into an engine of vengeance and destruction is the ultimate in cinematic allegory. 

And with that, let's wrap this up. As far as I can tell, this isn't available to stream. It does have a Blu-ray, so for the physical media collectors, that's a possible option. When I caught it, it was a part of a free preview of some sort on my cable package I think. I'm not sure it's worth going too far out of your way, but if it comes up on one of your streaming services, it's worth watching. Who doesn't love some nice Ginty Moore Beef Stew?

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087229

And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, A Girl and a Gun, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

 

 

 

Bad Bizness aka More Mercy (2003)

This is a film I'd been looking to do for a long time, as I'm trying to get as many Albert Pyun films reviewed on the site as I can. Finally it made its way to Tubi, under the alternate title More Mercy, so I was on it. In addition to us, our friend Mitch at the Video Vacuum has covered this, so you can go to his site to see what he thought as well.

Bad Bizness stars Traci Bingham as a hotel detective at a resort in Bali where women are being murdered. Call women, women of the night, moonlighting models, Bingham's not sure what the connection is, but there is a connection. Her boss, Norbert Weisser, would just as soon sweep this under the rug, as would his boss, Master P, so they give Bingham and her partner, Brent Huff, a shot at finding out who did it before they have to call in the Bali police and the whole thing goes sideways. In order to find out who this killer is, Bingham needs to delve into the seedy world of female surf magazines and the photographer/madam who runs them. All fingers point to a sleezy ponytailed rich guy with a soul patch as the killer, but something tells us the viewer that's just too easy...

When I first started the site, I called this The Direct to Video Connoisseur as this tongue-in-cheek concept evoking an image of an Alistair Cooke-type watching Dolph Lundgren action flicks while wearing a robe and ascot or something. After watching this film though, I began to feel like I was becoming a real connoisseur of sorts. Seeking out a movie simply because Albert Pyun started it and Jim Wynorski finished it, it's like discovering a movie Scorsese started and Spielberg finished; or Kurosawa started and Bergman finished. And ultimately that's the value this movie has now, almost 20 years later. The movie itself doesn't have a lot of mystery, but it seems like there's a lot of mystery surrounding the production: when did Pyun stop and Wynorski take over? Why did Pyun stop in the first place, was he fired or did he quit? A Fred Olen Ray film, Final Examination (which I haven't seen yet) was filmed in the same location around the same time, shares a lot of the same cast, and also has Pyun as a producer. Is there a connection? Was Pyun supposed to film that too? Information online is scant, so it would be interesting to learn more if we can.

Beyond all of that, this thing is pretty low budget, and doesn't always make a lot of sense beyond the love scenes. There's a strip club, but it's in a theater where you might see a play, so the woman dances on the stage, and the men sit in the audience. The changing room for said strip club is a restaurant bathroom. Master P literally phones in all of his scenes from a Las Vegas hotel room, in a role that would have made Eric Roberts and Bruce Willis proud. And speaking of hotels, the one that this one takes place in looks suspiciously like it's in Hawaii instead of Bali. But at the same time, there are elements that make this a bit more fun 20 years later. Julie K. Smith is a great addition as a lesbian woman whose partner is killed by the serial killer. Traci Bingham is exactly the kind of strong female lead, especially a woman of color, Pyun would center his movie around; but she's also the kind of strong female lead Wynorski would want in one of his soft core boob fests, and I like that he teases us with that side without ever fully giving it to us, as Bingham remains fully-clothed and doesn't have a full love scene--and why does she need to, when we've got Julie K. Smith to do the honors. Even the fact that a sleazy guy with a ponytail and a soul patch plays on our 90s sensibilities of what bad is so much that we have to think he's the killer helps to make this a fun ride. But I think you also have to be a certain kind of viewer to have fun with it like that, as this isn't for everyone.

While Albert Pyun is now listed as having 44 tags, he only has 43 films, because we did Mean Guns a second time (at his request). We don't have many left to do at this point. I was finally able to track down Raven Hawk online, and then Cool Air and Left for Dead are available to rent; plus we have the aforementioned Final Examination that he produced. There are two others that he released in the 2010s, The Interrogation of Cheryl Cooper and Interstellar Civil War. I can't find a way to watch the latter, but it looks like through Pyun's site I can rent the other one. That still would put him just shy of the 50 Club, but even without that, he's by far the most tagged director on the site. There are definitely directors like Wynorski and Ray who have the output available to catch him, but I'd have to be doing this site for years more for anyone to get near 40 movies like him--I think Ray has the second most of a director with 15, so that means he's almost 30 behind Pyun. That gives us a sense of just how big Pyun has been for the DTVC, a legacy that will never be surpassed.

Jim Wynorski is one, on the other hand, who we haven't seen as much on the DTVC, but hopefully that'll change soon. He's credited in this film under the name Bob E. Brown, which could be a reference to the R & B singer and member of New Edition; the hair metal video vixen (my favorite of which is Hurricane's "I'm Onto You"); or even the former American League baseball president. I think part of the reason why Pyun has so many tags, and someone like Wynorski so few, is Pyun worked with a lot of big names, and the names tend to make movies move up in my review queue, so he got a bit of a head start because his films overlapped more with how the site evolved in the late 2000s-early 2010s. Now that we've exhausted most of Pyun's filmography, where Wynorski may have room to get more films in, we have directors like Jesse V. Johnson and Isaac Florentine eating up some of that space. When I look at Wynorski's filmography, it's really just the names that make the difference, because otherwise he has a lot of movies that belong here--and one feather he has in his cap that Pyun doesn't: he's worked with Dolph.

As far as I can tell, we haven't played the Pyun Mainstay game since 2013, so I figured we'd bring it back and give some shine to one of the most mainstay-iest of mainstays, Norbert Weisser. This is his 18th film on the DTVC, only one of which, Android, wasn't a Pyun film. That's the most of any Pyun mainstay, and while we have someone like a Thom Mathews who's had 10 films on the site and all of them were Pyun flicks (remember, Mean Guns was reviewed twice, so that's why he has 10 instead of 11), 17 out of 18 is pretty prodigious. I wonder what he thought when Pyun was no longer directing. Maybe it didn't matter, since most of his scenes were shot in this chair right here. 

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently find this in the States on Tubi under the name More Mercy. It really is for Pyun and/or Wynorski completists, and late-night cable cinema from the late 90s/early 2000s connoisseurs. If you start it and you're like "what am I watching?", you're probably safe to turn it off. But if you start it and you're like "why do I watch stuff like this?", you're probably best to stop questioning it and settle in for the next 90s minutes or so.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0373163

And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, A Girl and a Gun, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

 

 

 

A Good Man (2014)

As we're working our way through the rest of Seagal's DTV oeuvre, this was one that for a period of time was only available to rent, and then popped up on Amazon Prime. Now it seems like it's Tubi, but who knows how long that'll last for, so I figured I'd review it and get it over with. This is also a complete the triangle movie, as our friends at Comeuppance and The Video Vacuum have also done this one, so I'm finally joining them.

A Good Man has Seagal as kind of the guy he was in Force of Execution. After a special forces thing goes south and innocent women and children are killed, Seagal goes off the grid, fortunately to a country in Eastern Europe where the production costs are low and the oligarchs love him. While there he meets a woman who looks like she might be a single mother--but lest ye think m'lady is more of the promiscuous sort, lo and behold the child is her sister! Whew. When said sister is kidnapped by a Chinese gangster that wants to sell her or something, our off-the-grid be-chia-pet-chinned hero swings into action with the help of sometime Scorpion King Victor Webster. Will they prevail?

Since Seagal is contractually obligated to prevail, we know what the answer is. The thing is, despite being made in 2014, this kind of feels more like an early 2000s Seagal DTV effort, if you know what I mean? Maybe not as good as The Foreigner or as fun as Out for a Kill, but it does what you need it to do when you're looking for a Saturday night staying in movie. For someone of Seagal's level, I think that's really all we're looking for, and if we get more, all the better. Seagal felt more engaged here, but he also had Victor Webster doing more of the heavy lifting. There was kind of the gross thing with him getting the beautiful girl half his age, but if the rest of the movie's okay like this one is, I can forgive that stuff. There is some weirdness with the girl being kidnapped and the whole pedophile angle that makes this a little on the darker side; plus that 100-minute runtime would've worked better trimmed down to 88 minutes; but overall I'm okay with this one.

This is film 35 for Mr. Seagal, and by my count I think we have 5 more: Code of Honor, Gutshot Straight, Cartels, End of a Gun, and Clementine. (I guess we could also fit in The Onion Movie.) That means when we do finally finish, he'll be in the 40 Club--plus he has a couple on IMDb in pre-production. He's a DTVC Hall of Famer, and one based primarily on his 2000s DTV output, but also because his reviews tend to move the needle here more than anyone other than Dolph. That's the thing though, when I'm covering his 2010s films that are usually him sleepwalking through sit-down roles, yes, the reviews are moving the needle, but to some extent I feel like I'm cosigning that bullshit, the way I said I'm not going to cosign the Willis Fake Shemp sleepwalk movie bullshit. On the other hand, with only 5 films left, I'm committed to finishing this off, sleepwalk or no sleepwalk.

This is yet another Seagal/Keoni Waxman collaboration. We have two more of their collaborations left to review, so that's at least two more Waxman movies we'll cover, but it may be worth looking at his non-Seagal films as well. He now has 10 films covered on the site, but only 3 are non-Seagals: Sweepers (which he isn't credited under his own name), The Hard Way, and Hunt to Kill. I see a few in there that may fit the site, so those few plus the remaining Seagals would put him around 15, which is high for a director, and may get him Hall of Fame consideration. I think what's interesting about these Seagal films is, they make up pretty much his entire work between 2009 and 2017, and it feels like he's created some kind of approach that works for Seagal. It doesn't always work for us, because in many of them it's a mix of sit-down scenes and Fake Shemps, but the fact that Waxman has made it work on some level with Seagal should be commended. 

Victor Alexander plays the male lead who does the heavy lifting for Seagal, joining guys like Byron Mann, Johnny Messner, and Bren Foster who have had that distinction. We know Alexander from the Scorpion King sequels, which tend to leave a bit to be desired; but here in this role, I really liked him as the guy propping things up when Seagal would rather sit down. Looking at his IMDb bio, he's been doing more TV roles and Christmas movies lately, and I kind of get that, because being the guy propping up the Seagal film is a thankless job--other than Messner, you're not on the cover, you don't get to get the girl, and you may even need to get rescued by Seagal. Better to be the hunky lead in a Christmas romance, I agree.

Finally, we've mentioned before that Seagal sometimes affects a Cajun accent, but here it was another level, at least in the beginning. Mitch at the Video Vacuum described it as an "elderly blues singer in a rest home," and I don't know that I can say it any better than that. There's also an awkward love scene at the end of the film that Seagal has with the beautiful woman who's half his age. The thing is though, while this might torpedo another movie, it adds to the charm of these Seagal flicks, the same way the Chia Pet goatee, the Fake Shemps, the sit down roles, and the not doing his ADR does. I was trying to think of anyone else who has this effect, and the only name that comes to mind is Gary Busey.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can check this out on Tubi here in the States. I think free stream is the way to go, I don't know if it's worth a $4 rental. Beyond Seagal completists, this does have a fun factor that makes it worth checking out.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3480556

And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, A Girl and a Gun, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

 

 

 

Precious Cargo (2016)

I recently had Sean Malloy from I Must Break This Podcast on our pod to chat about this film. The idea started when he showed me a Vulture article about the low-budget film world that Bruce Willis has been inhabiting, and how he's making these DTV flicks for a quick payday with barely any screen time. It was a great conversation, where we discussed Willis's career in more detail, and how it ended up here with films like this one. As always, if I haven't reviewed the movie we're discussing yet, I do it at some point down the road, so here we are.

Precious Cargo has Zack Morris sans large cellphone as a professional thief who's run afoul of crime boss Bruce Willis after his ex-girlfriend Claire Forlani stiffs Willis on a big score. To make it up to Willis and get Forlani out of the trouble she's in, Gosselaar agrees to gather a crew and carry out an armored car heist to pay Willis back. Problem is, as in all heists, things aren't what they seem, and it's up to Gosselaar to out not-what-they-seem Willis in order to get out of this situation with everyone safe and a lot richer.

And that's about it. This film is about as much painting by numbers as you can imagine. Our hero always has it figured out, except when he doesn't and the baddies get the drop on him. Our baddies always seem to have it all figured out, until they don't and Gosselaar and his crew get the drop on them. We know how this game is going to end too, with Willis holding the bag and Gosselaar and his friends escaping, millions of dollars richer. Then why are we watching it? Because it has Willis and Gosselaar on the tin. That's why they pay Willis as much as they pay him for one day of work in one location, and some scenes that are more his Fake Shemps (credit to Ty and Brett from Comeuppance for that one) standing in for him than actually him onscreen. The reason why Sean and I watched it is because we wanted to cover this current state of Willis's career, Precious Cargo was available for free on Tubi, and I liked the conversation starters of having Zack Morris in it as well; and now I'm reviewing it because, as I mentioned above, I always review the film we discussed on the pod to have it archived here on the site.

The Bruce Willis Paradox, as I titled the podcast episode, is that we have this fantastic 80s and 90s output from him, including some of the most iconic and game-changing films from that era; and now we have a different kind of game-changing taking place in the 2010s and 2020s with how he's helping form a new DTV paradigm. Sean made the point that he's shitting on his legacy, but as we think about it, is he though? In 2021 he had 9 Precious Cargoes come out, yet the talk all around the holidays was "is Die Hard a Christmas movie?" and "check out my John McClane Christmas ornament!" And the thing is, the movies are getting exactly what they want by putting Willis on the tin. Precious Cargo has 41 critic reviews on IMDb, and every time a new one of his Precious Cargoes comes out, tons of sites are excited to be one of the first to review them and let us know they did so on Twitter. The question I guess is, at what point do we reach a saturation point? At what point is it really shitting on his legacy? Right now it seems like that legacy still carries a lot of weight, a weight that a lot of people want to be attached to, so I guess we get 9 Precious Cargoes every year until the wave crests.

When Willis makes these quick and dirty DTV flicks, he's usually in as few scenes as possible in even fewer locations, while a younger actor does all the heavy lifting, and in this case that younger actor is Mark-Paul Gosselaar. It's a match made in heaven when you think about it. Willis and Gosselaar on the tin, someone browsing Tubi or another streaming service may see that and think "what has Mark-Paul Gosselaar been up to since Saved by the Bell? And then Bruce Willis is in this too? Yes, sign me up!" And then they watch it, wish they hadn't, and by that time, they've already seen myriad Tubi ads for whatever products are hawked on Tubi, and there's no way Tubi's giving anyone a temporal refund of their 90 minutes back--at least I can make lemonade out of lemons and get a podcast episode and a review post out of it. And the thing is, I don't think Mark-Paul Gosselaar is bad here, I just don't know what Mark-Paul Gosselaar being good here gets us. "Man, he really did a great job selling us on that third plot twist/double-cross we knew was coming!" Still, I'll always have a soft spot in my heart for Gosselaar because of Zack Morris, and I hope despite Mixed-ish getting cancelled that he'll get something else soon.

The man behind all of this is a producer named Randall Emmett, who has been pumping these bad boys out since the early 2000s. The formula is pretty simple, and if it's not Willis, it's Steven Seagal, or Robert DeNiro, etc. If we tagged Emmett, by my rough count, he's produced 22 movies that we've covered here. And it's not just cynical assembly line-style DTV fare either, he's produced big screen films like 2 Guns, and major Netflix originals like The Irishman. There's the article in Vulture on him that Sean sent me that was the impetus for reviewing this film for the podcast (which later our friend Will from Exploding Helicopter fortuitously sent me it again, because I'd lost track of it). It's an interesting read, especially for those curious about how the modern DTV sausage is made. The reality is, Emmett has found something that really works for him and the big screen stars of yesterday that star in his films, but is this a formula that works for us? I guess it does until it doesn't.

We couldn't finish this review without giving some shine to DTVC favorite Daniel Bernhardt. The one hope with more of these movies getting made assembly-line style by Randall Emmett's machine is that guys like Bernhardt get more work. Looking at his IMDb bio, he's getting a lot of smaller things in big budget productions, which is great too. Personally, what I'd like to see is some new Bloodsport sequels. Maybe another Dark Kumite run by Benjamin Franklin inside a prison. Bloodsport V: The Darker Kumite. Actually, Bruce Willis could play Ben Franklin. He's from the Philly area, it'd almost be like going back to his roots. Randall, baby, you gotta like what I'm bringin' here. Just give me the green light, and I can bang out 88 pages in no time. 

And with that, let's wrap this up. This is Bruce Willis's tenth film on the site, and while I don't think it'll be his last, I do think I won't be doing many more of these Willis-Emmett collaborations, so that number may stay at 10 for some time. If you're so inclined to check this out, it is available on Tubi. And the DTVC podcast episode on this that I did with Sean Malloy is available in the podcast archives, episode 88. Thanks again to Sean for coming on, it was a great time!; and if you haven't yet, you should check out his Dolph-themed podcast, I Must Break This Podcast.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4651410

And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, A Girl and a Gun, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

 

 

 

Low Blow (1986)

This is one I did because I needed to get some more Leo Fong on the site. I don't know that anyone who does a site like we do couldn't need more Leo Fong on their site. In addition to us, our friend from Down Under Simon at Explosive Action has covered this, along with Karl from Fist of the B-List; and this is a Complete the Triangle post for us, as we join our friends at Comeuppance and The Video Vacuum in also reviewing this one.

Low Blow has Fong as a PI who's hired by a rich guy after the rich guy's daughter joins a cult. As is usually the case, things aren't exactly what they seem, as the cult's leader, Cameron Mitchell, is blind, and right under his nose his right-hand woman Karma is taking over power and turning the cult into a prison camp, along with the help of her henchmen, including the great Billy Blanks. Though this nefarious crew gets the drop on Fong initially, that only lasts so long before he escapes, recruits a crew of toughs of his own, Stack Pierce among them, and goes back to the compound to take care of business. These evil cultists won't know what hit them... actually they will, it'll be Leo Fong and his gang.

This is another one of those fun low-budget action bangers you came for. In looking at the other four reviews from colleagues I mentioned above, I think the one thing we were all in agreement on was this was just a fun time. The movie starts with him taking down robbers in a diner, saying "hey, is my ham sandwich ready?" when he enters, and then just shooting the bad guys, knocking one into a classic menu board with moveable letters that we don't see as much anymore. A lot of it after that is Fong in a Member's Only jacket, beating the crap out of people. How much more do you really want in a movie? Okay, then Cameron Mitchell as a cult leader, Billy Blanks as a cult tough, and Stack Pierce as an aging boxer/buddy of Fong's. Yes, by any objective measure, this has some obvious flaws, but in a way the flaws in and of themselves make the film that much more endearing. This is pure Fong trying to make the movie he wants to make on a shoestring budget, and I think for the most part he does what you need him to.

It's crazy to think that not only is this only the third Fong film on our site, but we also didn't even have a tag for him. I think the issue with Fong is a lot of his stuff isn't as available as some of the others, so I've left him, and now we're over 1100 reviews in and he's barely been covered. The good thing is, with the advent of YouTube, more of his stuff is available than it was--including this gem--so I have more of an opportunity to get more of his stuff reviewed. (The bad thing is, we just upgraded our Hulu to include Disney+ and ESPN+, and the volume of out-of-market NHL on ESPN+ is fantastic. It's like, I want to watch Blood Street on YouTube, but there's a Devils-Sabres game streaming followed by a Kings-Canucks game, what am I supposed to do?)

We last did a Billy Blanks movie on December 28th, 2011, so just over ten years ago. I think part of the reason for that is we had done just about every DTV film he'd done to that point, and since then he hasn't really done too much else. Here he doesn't really have a big role, and while he had a good fight with Fong, this is not a "Billy Blanks film" per se, it's more a Leo Fong movie that has Blanks in it; but when it comes to Blanks, we'll take 'em where we can get 'em--which is now 10 films on the site. In terms of a DTV Hall of Famer, it's hard to say, because the quantity isn't there; but could he be in the running for quality? Some of his leading parts in the 90s were some of the best of that era, which says a lot.

There's always this idea when it comes to cults that I'd never be susceptible to something like that, but yet, here I am obsessively cuing up multiple NHL games on ESPN+. I mean, what if former Bruins great Cam Neely DM'd me and started telling me about his new religion he's started? I'd definitely listen. Hell, if PJ Stock, or even Blaine Lacher reached out to me, I'd definitely listen. No, I'd be putty in their hands, it would only be a matter of time before I'm subjected to hard labor in a camp far from home and my wife is calling in Leo Fong to get me out. We don't really have the money for that kind of thing, so it's probably better I keep my mind sharp and aware and not think I'm so above this whole cult thing.

With this last paragraph I wanted was go over the great scene--or series of scenes--where three guys attack Fong, and not only does he dispatch them, but when they try to escape in their car, he disables it, smashes the windows, then dons some eye protection and uses a high-powered saw to cut off the roof of it and turn it into a convertible. This is why we come to movies like this, moments like these are what make it for us. I also think this is why modern DTV doesn't work when the quality is lower the way 80s ones did. There's an earnestness, even when it comes off silly, that just hits in a way that's entertaining. What's nice now is a lot of these are available on YouTube, so you don't need to scramble on the secondary VHS market to find them.

And with that, let's wrap this up. As of this writing, this is now available on Tubi. Before that, and probably after that when Tubi eventually takes it down, it's also available on YouTube. However you see it, it's a fun time.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091442

And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, A Girl and a Gun, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!