Dancin': It's On! (2015)

When I was going through Gary Daniels's filmography for the Letterboxd list I made, this mysterious gem stood out--along with The Wrong Child--but it seemed it was nowhere to be found. Alas, I kept looking, and lo and behold, Tubi picked it up. At the same time as I was watching it, Will from Exploding Helicopter was watching it too, and thought it would be best to take advantage of fate by having me guest on his podcast to discuss it. That episode was released last year, so you can check it out in the show archives.

Dancin': It's On! has Witney Carson of Dancing with the Stars as young lady who's been sent to live with her estranged father, Gary Daniels, who owns nice hotel resort in Panama Beach, FL. She's into dancing, which brings her into the orbit of a young man, Chehon Wespi-Tschopp of So You Think You Can Dance, who is also quite the dancer. This is an issue, because he's just a dishwasher, and Daniels does not want his daughter dating a dishwasher. At the same time, there's a big dance contest, and it would seem these two would be perfect for this. Will fate bring them together the way it brought Will and I for the podcast episode we did?

As you can imagine, this isn't our usual fare here at the DTVC, so with that in mind, I probably should approach this one differently as opposed to a Dolph actioner or Troma horror flick. It has its holes for sure, like how Wespi-Tschopp as a dishwasher seemed to be washing dishes off and on all day--which as a former dishwasher myself was particularly grating; or why Daniels didn't want her to date the dishwasher, but the guy he did want for her was the head bellhop, like that's that much more of a high-end career? But overall it's kind of fun, and I think David Winters's earnest attempt at making a last dance film for his legacy is something to appreciate. Then there's the exploding helicopter, which is what brought this into Will's orbit. Wespi-Tschopp, after getting into a fight with Carson, has one of those angry dance routines, a la Bacon in Footloose, and when the routine brings him to the resort's pool, he starts throwing patio furniture into it. At the same time, David Winters is dreaming about his son dying in a helicopter explosion while serving in Iraq, which causes him to wake up and see Wespi-Tschopp tossing lawn chairs into the deep end as part of his angry dance routine. He intervenes, explaining to the young man that he was once a dance star himself, and he'd be happy to help him train for a routine that doesn't involve throwing anything into a pool.

This is 54 films on the DTVC for 50 Club Member Gary Daniels, but the first of the new year. This, like The Wrong Child and his religious movies, is another quirk in his career. Unlike The Wrong Child though, where he was one of the stars, he's very much a supporting character here, which had us wondering why he did it at all. He doesn't have a dance number, and the closest thing to action is when he hits a punching bag while working out to try and intimidate Wespi-Tschopp. The thing is, if they'd removed the construct of Daniels wanting Carson to date the head bellhop (played by another dancer, Matt Marr), they could have given Daniels more to work with. Just the same, this is an interesting addition to his filmography, and the only reason we're reviewing it here is because he did it. We'll get back into more of his straight-ahead actioners from here, but we need to do them all eventually, so why not get this one in the can now.

This was one of the last films written by the great David Prior, who, with David Winters, put out a lot of DTV flicks through AIP. No, this doesn't feature a corrugated iron building shanty town, or appearances by his brother Ted or the great William Zipp, though those would have been some nice touches for us DTV action fans. We lost prior in August of 2015, only a couple months before his 60th birthday, and only a couple months before this film came out. When you think about it, you combine his passing with Albert Pyun's debilitating illness sidelining him around the same time, that's two heavy hitters in the DTV world no longer putting out work, and I think we felt that loss of work more than we've realized. With all the talk of how the overall quality of DTV films has dipped since the 2010s, this was one reason we haven't considered, but I think it is important.

Getting back to David Winters as director, for someone who was more into the musical/dance film genre, he has some solid DTV actioners to his credit, including some Ginty classics like Code Name Vengeance and Mission Kill--plus the Reb Brown MSTK great Space Mutiny. In addition to this, as mentioned above, he did a lot through AIP in producing many more gems. I've finally, with this movie, given him the tag he so greatly deserves, which puts this as his sixth film on the site. Out of all of them though, this is the one that feels like the passion project, which makes the DTV action that much more astounding. It's like if Gary Daniels didn't do just one dance film, but 15, plus produced another 20. He left us in 2019 at the age of 80, and while I think he'd want his legacy to be all the dance work he did, he also leaves behind an indelible contribution to the golden age of 80s and 90s DTV action, for which we'll always be appreciative.

Finally, I was trying to think if this is the first film with a mime in it that we've done on the site. When I saw it, I tweeted at Will to see if this was the first exploding helicopter film to feature a mime, but he thought A View to a Kill did as well; and it was through that tweet that he realized we were watching this at the same time, and decided to have me on the podcast episode. I feel like, 1100+ films in, we must have had a mime at some point, even if it was just a goofy Paris establishing shot, or even a guy as part of a heist disguised as one, but if there was, I can't think of it. Unfortunately, while the mime makes an appearance, spoiler alert, he doesn't have any scenes with Daniels, let alone any scenes where he has to fight Daniels. Tell me that wouldn't have made this film an instant classic? Maybe Daniels roundhousing the mime through a cheap plaster wall?

Alas, we get nothing of the sort here, but if you're a Gary Daniels--or an exploding helicopter--completist, this is a must, just for the quirk factor alone. As of my writing this, it's available free on Tubi here in the States, so you don't even have much of a financial commitment. And if you haven't yet, you need to check out the Exploding Helicopter podcast. I get it on iTunes, but I think it's available on most major podcatchers.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2598580

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