Tekken 2: Kazuya's Revenge (2014)

I first saw this back in early 2015 when I did a solo podcast episode on it, and at that time I planned to give it a proper review as well. Unfortunately I went on an unplanned hiatus, and when I came back almost five years later, this wasn't on any of the streaming services. So I waited. And I waited. Until finally, in the summer of 2022, Tubi got it here in the US. In addition to us, our friend Mitch at the Video Vacuum has covered this as well.

Tekken 2: Kazuya's Revenge is supposed to be a prequel to the first movie? It has Kane Kosugi as Kazuya, who wakes up in a hotel room and has no idea who he is. A military SWAT team raids the hotel, and as he's escaping, he's captured by a commune led by Rade Serbedzija (and that will be the last time I type his full name in this review). Because Kazuya is blessed with a certain set of skills, Rade makes him work as a hit man for him, but when one of those hits is Bryan Fury (played again by DTVC Hall of Famer Gary Daniels), Kazuya realizes there is a way out. At the same time, who is this mysterious Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa playing Heihachi Mishima that's lurking around spying on things? That can't be good, right?

The enigmatic Wych Kaosayananda, aka Kaos, strikes again. What he was going for here, it's hard to say, and I tried in the IMDb trivia to see if I could find out, but nothing was said about it. We have some good fights and kills by Kane Kosugi, but the same way Patty Smyth and Don Henley said "sometimes love just ain't enough," sometimes some good fights and kills by Kosugi just ain't enough. This did have two writers, so I don't know if that explains the story we got here, and perhaps Kaos's attempt to save it and make it coherent. To be fair, beyond the nicely shot action sequences, Kaos as cinematographer also had some well-framed moments like this, that almost made it stylistically something that worked in spite of itself, but not quite. The whole being caught by Rade and his bad commune and being forced to work for them thing is a tough sell in a movie; not to mention the whole main character has amnesia but we all know who he is is hard to pull off. When we were kids and we played basketball, sometimes if we missed we'd ask for a "do over," and I kinda think a Kaos-Kosugi-Daniels-Tagawa do over could yield some nice results here, and maybe divorced from the Tekken franchise it wouldn't have any expectations to live up to, so it could exist better as its own thing.

With this film Kane Kosugi finally gets his tag here at the DTVC, clocking in at 7 movies, which isn't bad. We first saw him on the site with his dad Sho in Black Eagle, the Van Damme film from the 80s, so he's come a long way since then. He doesn't do a ton of stuff, but his skills are legit, and seeing him in this, he could definitely be an action lead in more movies if he were cast in them. He did Ninja II and (technically did) Zero Tolerance with Scott Adkins, but I'd love to see the two of them team up in a high-octane actioner, maybe directed by any one of Isaac Florentine, Jesse V. Johnston, or Kaos. Like just watching the two of them tear through Bangkok would be fantastic. Kosugi brings a lot to the table in this role, and I think if it didn't have the expectations of the Tekken franchise, it might have worked even better for him--but the fact that it didn't work as well as it could have wasn't Kosugi's fault either.

Gary Daniels is now at 55 films here at the DTVC, which is second all-time behind Dolph. While we have Art Camacho, Albert Pyun, and Cannon Films in the 40 Club, the next closest actor is Cynthia Rothrock with 39 movies, so he's comfortably in second place. He isn't in this one much, but the one fight scene he has with Kosugi is 100% official, and I think that's all we can ask for from him. I was looking at what we have left, and I have two that are watched that I plan to mix in soon, and after that, it's waiting for his newer films to be available free to stream, his Christian movies to be available to stream, and a movie called A Stranger in Paradise with Catalina Sandino Moreno and Byron Mann to be available to stream, and we'll have them all. He's definitely bound for the 60 Club with Dolph, it's just a matter of when.

This is the third film directed by Kaos that we've done on the site, the other two being One Night in Bangkok and Zero Tolerance; but, he was also cinematographer on the one Daniels Christian film we've done so far, The Mark, and did additional camera work on the Seagal flick The Asian Connection. He has a very unique style in his storytelling, but then also really likes to have his camerawork and editing showcased as well. In this film there were moments when it worked--Kane Kosugi doesn't look bad walking in slowmotion like a hero in an old Western; but there can be moments when it's obtrusive too. I thought that was more evident in One Night in Bangkok, where letting the scenes breathe more would've helped; but in this movie where it looks like more than one story idea was being put together, maybe he needed to dress it up as much as he could. Either way, he's growing on me, and I'm looking forward to what he has next.

 

Finally, we have to get to my ultimate beef with this: it didn't correct the wrong committed in the first film, which was leaving the Kings out. If anyone could successfully mix in a Mexican wrestler with a jaguar mask, I'd think it'd be Kaos. He needed to come in and giantly swing Rade off the commune; or catch Kosugi in a frankensteiner. When I played Tekken Tag, I almost exclusively used King and Armor King, and won the majority of my matches; then in taking a look through a guide book on that game at a local bookstore, we discovered that they were unbalanced, and I wasn't as good as I thought, I was just using characters who were better. Is that why neither film has featured at least King? How would Kosugi beat him? I remember when people used Kazuya against me, with King I could grab his leg out of midair when he tried to spin kick me. I get it, what do you do with that? Even Kosugi would have trouble.

And with that, let's wrap this up. As of right now, you can stream Tekken 2 on Tubi here in the States. If you're looking for some sweet Kane Kosugi action, are a Daniels completist (me), or you're curious what Kaos has cooking here, this is worth it. Beyond that, it's a bit sauteed in wrong sauce, especially if you're looking for a Tekken tournament movie.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3462696

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

Total Force (1996)

Back in March I had Rich Hawes from the DTV Digest podcast on our pod to discuss this film and its sequel, Absolute Force. He and Mike and Steve had just covered it for their throwback segment on their pod, and when I asked him about coming on, he liked the idea of discussing this and its sequel in more detail than the segment on their podcast allowed; and I, having seen that these were on Tubi, was definitely intrigued. In addition to us, our friends at Comeuppance have covered this as well.

Total Force is about Richard Lynch, a defense contractor who developed a device called the Neurolator--not to be confused with the delightful candy Now and Later, which I used to mix in with my other penny candy when we went to the Goldenrod on York Beach in Maine when I was growing up. No, the Neurolator uses a laser from a satellite to turn opposing soldiers' brains into mush, but not before they become violent zombies who attack their own troops. The problem is, the turn to mush part doesn't kick in, and now Lynch needs to call in the Total Force team, led by Timothy Bottoms, to clean up the mess. Then, after he frames them for dealing drugs (?), Lynch is then taken off the project himself, which causes him to call in mercenary Frank Stallone to break into the facility it's being housed in. Sounds like we need to call our Total Force guys back in, huh?

This movie was awarded zero stars by the guys at Comeuppance. That's right, "we award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul;" and Rich's compatriots on DTV Digest couldn't believe how horrible this was--and if you listen to their show at all (which you should be if you're not), they are almost never this hard on a film. Is this really that bad? Quite possibly, but it's an intriguing bad, which is why I think Rich wanted to discuss it. Writer/director Steven Kaman, who has worked with "rah-rah military beats bad guys" schlock auteur J. Christian, Engvordsen, looks like he's trying to go less black and white with this effort, but he's also trying for this MTV 90s TV show thing that feels all over the place. One scene in a hotel room or something where Frank Stallone and his team are getting their marching orders is a great example, cameras are whipping around all over the place, with all kinds of odd angles, while Stallone is slouched on a couch laughing at this creeper fixer guy getting fresh with Calista Carradine and her twisting the creeper's arm back as a result. We get these random in-cuts of stock footage like we're watching M/A/R/R/S's "Pump Up the Volume," which makes sense in a music video, but why here? When the thing becomes more straight-ahead actioner toward the end though, it's kind of a fun dynamic, especially with Bottoms, Stallone, and Lynch, but that's near the end of the movie, and by then you've been through a lot of kookiness. This is a unique entry in the 90s DTV action catalog, and that alone may make this worth it, or totally not.

Kaman also goes by the name "Sven Nuvo," and he got his start in the early 80s doing cinematography for X-rated movies. In 1987 he teams with the aforementioned Engvordsen for the latter's directorial debut, Hangmen, starring Sandra Bullock in her debut as well. From there he works with Engvordsen a lot, though it seems like as the 90s go on, and Engvordsen shifts into things like Airboss, which are more obvious rah-rah panderers, Kaman no longer works with him, and does this film instead, followed by two others of his own after--one of which is the sequel to this, Absolute Force. In that sense, this movie almost feels like a response to the films Engvordsen would do in the late 90s/early 2000s, like the Airboss series. The problem is, it's as if Kaman had too many things he wanted to say about foreign policy and the military-industrial complex--which he also demonstrates in this film that he may not fully understand, because it seems like he thinks there's an actual complex that exists. While the execution may not be there, I like that he tried to do something other than the rah-rah fest we see so often. Does that award him a star in a five star rating system? Good question, and I don't have an answer for you...

We last saw the great Richard Lynch here in 2013, and at that time we said it was a travesty he wasn't in the Hall of Fame. Now it's 2022, and he still isn't in there, so what does that make it? The thing about him is he's like a baddie in a can: you just open him up and throw him in a pot, and he's ready to eat. The problem is though, do you let him do his thing, or do you disrupt his flow with a bunch of other stuff? There's a scene where he's talking to Bottoms through a video phone, and it's all kinds of edits and different kinds of film all put together, which is meant to give us a sense of the technology. Again, I get what Kaman was going for, but the result was Lynch looked sillier than he looked sinister. Just the same, it's good to see Lynch back, and with all the credits he has out there that we haven't covered, I have no excuse to not get the next film of his up sooner than 9 years from now. (Scary to think about that isn't it, what the world will be like in 2031!)

Another issue with the film was that Frank Stallone and his crew--Calista Carradine, Oleg Taktarov, and Tom Bresnahan--were cooler than Bottoms's Total Force. Kaman at least mitigated this by having them kill innocent people, but then he further mitigated by having Stallone and Bottoms team up after Lynch turns a bunch of lab workers into zombies with the Neurolator and has them attack everyone while he tries to escape in a helicopter. From a Destro Effect standpoint, Kaman has committed a major error: he made is cooler baddies sufficiently bad, but then didn't give them their comeuppance. You can't use those two Destro Effect mitigating factors together, if you're using one you have to abandon the other. But as we saw with other decisions Kaman made, he just didn't care--or he was trying to make the point that one man's terrorist group is another man's government wet works clean-up crew team? Unfortunately if that was the case, I don't think it worked, and we were left with baddies who killed innocent people and got away with it at the end.

 

Finally, going back to Kaman potentially not understanding what the military-industrial complex is--or at least making it look like he didn't understand it--I guess it might be good to remember that in 1996 this kind of information wasn't as readily available. I myself didn't learn about it until a few years later, when I was in college and it came up in my Sociology 101 class. Nowadays you can look it and anything else up on Wikipedia, so not understanding a concept like this fully is less forgivable. Also, if you go on Twitter, you'll see a deeper understanding of how the military-industrial complex works, with people tweeting about how a fraction of our military budget would fund public college for everyone who wants it, or how PBS and infrastructure costs make up such a small percentage of the overall budget compared to military spending. We also talk about the trickle-down effects, like how the military-industrial complex begets the police-industrial complex and the prison-industrial complex. These were all concepts that were beyond the scope of what Kaman wanted to do with his movie, but it's interesting how he was trying them out in 1996, while his former directorial comrade Engvordsen was selling us on how great the military-industrial complex was in his late 90s and early 2000s films.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently stream this on Tubi in the States, but I think Rich said in the UK you had to settle for YouTube. Whichever it is, free-to-stream is the way to go if you want to check this out. For Ty and Brett at Comeuppance to give this zero stars, and for Mike and Steve on DTV Digest to dislike it so vehemently, it has to be a unique brand of bad, which I think it is. For more info on it before you jump in, you can listen to episode 95 of the podcast where Rich and I discuss it. It was a great conversation and worth checking out!

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0145534

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

When Darkness Falls (2022)

Recently Tom Jolliffe, screenwriter for this movie, reached out to see if I'd like to have him on the pod to discuss it. It was a great conversation where he gave us a lot of insights on how the process of making it went, what went into certain decisions, and what they were aiming for. In addition, Tom writes for Flickering Myth, and has some great articles, including many action-themed one. In addition to us, our friends at the DTV Digest have covered this as well.

When Darkness Falls follows two American women traveling through the Scottish Highlands: Jess, who's more responsible, and Andrea who's a bit more of a free spirit. While on their way, there are two men in the area at the same time who are breaking into and robbing local houses, and in between jobs they're drugging and raping local women. The two pairs meet at a local pub, and when Jess is annoyed by Andrea hanging out with the guys, she leaves them, only to come back and find Andrea missing. Now it's up to Jess in this strange land to find her friend and make it out of the Highlands alive.

While this isn't my usual kind of film, I really enjoyed this. It's more of a slow burner than the high-octane shooter helicopter explosion-fest I'm used to, but in the slow burner vein it really works. I don't want to get into too many aspects of it so I don't give anything away, but with what I can tell you, the story itself unfolds in a very organic way, which is what we need if we're following the actions of someone like Jess as she moves along on her journey. From there we need a Jess who's very believable, and Michaela Longden in that role pulls it off. As director Nathan Shepka and Tom as the screenwriter weave in the actions of the other characters, they never get too far from Jess, which makes her the center of gravity around which everything else orbits. Just the same, the other actors turn in great performances as well, and included in that is the way they were able to make the Scottish Highlands a character in itself. It was at times vast and open, and at others claustrophobic, which furthered the dualities we find throughout the film: Jess's thoughtfulness and sense of responsibility versus Andrea (Emma O'Hara) and her carefree and reckless sense of adventure; the two women versus the two criminal men (Nathan Shepka and Craig McEwan) and the danger they bring; the vast open beauty of the Scottish Highlands during the day versus how sinister and claustrophobic they can seem at night. This had what you'd want from a taut, suspenseful, slow burning thriller.

One element that Tom told me about was how he an Nathan collaborated throughout the process. For example Nathan would find a location and have Tom write in a scene that included it. Tom was able to give us a sense that this isn't usually what happens, that more often he submits the script, and then everything from the film's name to the characters could be subject to change without his input. It still sounded fun to write those movies and see what the end product looks like, but here we see the fruits of a collaboration where director and screenwriter are working toward a common vision. If you look in the additional cast details, Tom also got a casting credit, and that's because he had a part in casting Michaela Longden as Jess, so even that was collaborative. The result was something that felt really authentic, which is something I always appreciate.

Here in the US we usually think of New York City as acting as a character when a move takes place there. A lot of times with independent films or lower-budget films, the geographical location doesn't matter as much, it's more about finding the cheapest place that works. Montreal is a great substitute for NYC, Bucharest works instead of London, etc. In When Darkness Falls though, the Scottish Highlands function the way NYC does, and we get its beauty and vastness on display, especially in these drone shots. The other decision Tom and Nathan made was to have Jess and Andrea be Americans, which not only enhances their sense of being in an entirely foreign land, but also enhances the Highlands as a character. They easily could've just set this in Any Remote Village, UK, and it would've worked to some extent, but by doing it this way it works that much better, and it's touches like this that can make all the difference in an independent film that's working on limited resources.

One thing I realized when I watched this is how much my brain is velocitized to the action films I'm used to seeing. Not only that, but even the bigger budget films like The Rise of Skywalker that I saw recently move quickly with a lot of split-second shots. It took me changing how my brain worked to slow it down and trust the process of what was happening here, and when I did, it paid off. The problem with my brain being velocitized is a slow burner can feel slower than it really is, like when my buddy and I were driving 100 MPH on 95 in Maine between Bangor and Millinocket, and then when we got off the highway in Millinocket and were only going 50, we felt like it was 20; when I see a story taking more time to unfold, I have to convince myself not to get antsy. If you're like me and you watch a lot of action films, it's good to recognize when the velocitization process is happening, and try to account for it--or do like I needed to do, and watch something other than action movies.

Finally, we had two English actresses playing Americans, with a script written by someone from England as well in Tom. The result was there were some moments where they gave themselves away. One big one was when they used Celsius to describe the temperature--10 degrees for us in Fahrenheit is much colder. My anthropology professor was from Nottingham, and he talked about the differences in UK and US English, including a story about how in a class before mine with him, he said the term for board eraser in the UK is "rubber," and if you go to someone's place to get them in the morning, you "knock them up," to which an American woman in his class said "if you come to my place tomorrow morning, make sure you bring your board eraser." All in all, I think Tom did a great job writing for his two American characters, and the decision to make them Americans had a greater effect in providing the mood and atmosphere they wanted; and besides, I don't know how well I'd do writing UK characters--I know "windshield" is "windscreen" in the UK from the Depeche Mode song "Fly on the Windscreen"--which was used in a Miami Vice episode--so that's a start.

And with that, let's wrap this up. In the US you can currently rent this on Amazon Kindle VOD, or you can buy it on DVD if you're a fan of physical media. It's worth checking out and supporting this project, so however you get it it's good. And if you want more info about the film, you can check out the podcast episode we did, ep 103, on iTunes, Spotify, or if you're viewing the web version of the site as you're reading this, you can right-click to save it on the left-hand side.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13330168

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

Enemies Closer (2013)

As I often say, this is one I'd been meaning to get to for sometime. It's been available on Freevee--which is the new name for IMDb TV--but I'd gotten so lazy that if it wasn't on Tubi or YouTube I wasn't bothering. Luckily it was on Tubi for a small window, in which I was able to make it happen. In addition to us, Ty and Brett at Comeuppance, Chris the Brain at Bulletproof, and RobotGEEK's Cult Cinema have all covered this.

Enemies Closer has DTVC Hall of Famer Jean-Claude Van Damme as Xander, a drug runner whose drugs are lost in a lake on the border of the US and Canada when the plane transporting them crashes. His plan is to get the park ranger, Tom Everett Scott, off the island so he can have his own diver go down and collect them, but when Scott is accosted by Orlando Jones, all bets are off. The issue for Van Damme is Scott is a former Navy SEAL, and after Van Damme's diver is killed in a shootout, he now needs to get Scott to get his drugs. It's a deadly game of cat and mouse, forcing Jones to get over his beef with Scott so the two can team up and hopefully survive the night and escape, while Van Damme just wants to get his drugs and leave.

This might be the biggest Destro Effect movie we've seen here at the DTVC. Van Damme is by far the most likeable person in the film, but not only that, he doesn't really kill anyone who doesn't deserve it. The first thing we see him do is take out a bunch of guys in an ICE facility on the US side of the border. ICE is understood to be one of the most sinister government agencies in the US, known for separating immigrant families, carrying out raids of local immigrant workers in conjunction with their employers like meat-packing plants to keep the workers from unionizing, and, probably most famously, putting kids in cages during the Trump Administration. So seeing Van Damme take them all out is an applause moment, not a show of how sinister he is. We also find out that Van Damme's character is environmentally aware and vegan. That's not bad, that's a really good thing! From there, Tom Everett Scott, who's already working uphill versus Van Damme in the natural charisma department, is further diminished as a hero when he spends half of the film getting frog-marched around by Orlando Jones's character, who himself isn't adding much to the proceedings. What happens is we have a fun movie with Van Damme, but there's the inevitability that we know Van Damme has to lose to Scott, and we don't want to see it happen. 

What's interesting is Van Damme might have two of the strongest instances of the Destro Effect, as we also saw it with his performance in The Expendables 2. Part of it is he plays such a likeable baddie in a way that he can't always do with his heroes; but also this baddie is very different from the one he played in The Expendables 2. In that film there was a sense that he felt Stallone was giving him the baddie role thinking it would be a lesser part, and he takes it and steals the entire film; while here, this was more he'd worked with Peter Hyams before, must've liked the character, and just took it and had fun with it. But also in this film, the writing and casting dictated that Van Damme's character would be the most enjoyable one to watch. How would we believe that Tom Everett Scott's character can take out Van Damme if he's having this much trouble with Orlando Jones? And while Van Damme is taking out ICE agents and doughy rednecks who are littering the lake, Scott is getting frog-marched around in the woods by some guy who shouldn't be his equal. This isn't Van Damme creating a Destro Effect by delivering a performance that takes over the film, this is a film that's complicit in allowing Van Damme to create the Destro Effect.

The term Destro Effect comes from me watching G.I. Joe growing up, and thinking Destro was the coolest, and being disappointed every time he lost to the heroes. It wasn't me wishing I was a bad guy or thinking doing bad things was better, it was the show creating a baddie who was so cool, his coolness wasn't mitigated by his bad deeds enough to make me root against him. You think of movies that played this right, Die Hard comes to mind, where Rickman is fantastic, but Willis is equally fantastic, and Rickman is killing innocent people to make us hope he loses. Christopher Plummer v. Thomas Ian Griffith in Crackerjack is another great example where we had a great baddie performance, but he was bad enough for it to work. Commando is one where the baddie was cool, but not anywhere near as cool as the hero. I went through the history of the site to find some other examples of the Destro Effect, and often it was a cool star as the baddie, like Dolph in The Package, or Lamas in Lethal. Most films take the easy way out now and just have the baddie be a human trafficker. No matter how cool a baddie is, we can't root for them if they're a human trafficker. Also killing innocent people is a great control on the Destro Effect. Ultimately the issue with the Destro Effect is we end up with an ending that's not fulfilling when we see the baddie we're rooting for lose, which is what we got here.

This was directed by Peter Hyams, who directed one of my favorite sports movies ever, Sudden Death, which also had Van Damme. According to the IMDb trivia, it was Hyams's idea to cast Van Damme in this and have him be the maniacal baddie. It would've been nice if, once that decision was made, they shot an alternate ending where Van Damme's baddie wins. I don't even know that we need him to kill off Scott either. I wonder if he caught what was happening with the Destro Effect as they were shooting. Going back to Sudden Death, Powers Booth is one of the best plural first-named baddies of all time, no Destro Effect there, we want to see Van Damme take him down and send that helicopter plunging through the roof of the arena. According to IMDb he hasn't directed anything since this, which, if I were him I wouldn't have directed anything after Sudden Death. That's a don that sombrero, hop on that donkey, and ride off into the sunset kind of movie. Considering what we know about Mel Gibson and Kevin Spacey now, we should go back and give Sudden Death the Oscar for best picture, best director for Hyams, and best supporting actor to Booth--sorry, I can't do Van Damme over Cage in Leaving Las Vegas though.

Finally, this is Van Damme's 32nd film here at the DTVC (he has 33 tags, but one was for the Van Damme Film Fest post), and by my count he has five more that would qualify for inclusion on the site, so unless he makes more movies, he'll cap out at 37, just shy of the 40 Club. Maybe that's okay for him though. When you look at his bio, unlike Seagal, Dolph, Adkins or some others who have these years where they do five or six films, Van Damme really doesn't have that--2012 is the only one, he had six that year--so the result is he can't rack up tags the way the others do. Reconnecting with Hyams here though reminds me of what Van Damme has meant to the world of action, that his 80s and 90s big screen career delivered some of the best and enduring classics. And in that way, despite this movie's shortcomings, it's good to see him still delivering fun performances like this.

With that let's wrap this up. As far as I know, Freevee is still the way to go to check this out. This is fun from the Van Damme standpoint, and while beyond that it misses in a lot of other ways, it's possible free to stream plus the fun Van Damme factor might be enough--still would've liked to have seen him win in the end though.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2395199

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

White Fire (1984)

This is one I've been meaning to do for some time, especially after it came up on the Ginty Moore Beef Stew episode of the podcast I did with Ty and Brett, so when I saw it was available on Tubi, I had to make it happen. In addition to us, this is a complete the triangle film, because Ty and Brett at Comeuppance and Mitch at the Video Vacuum have done this too; plus our friend Jon at the After Movie Diner did a great review of on it on Letterboxd.

White Fire has Ginty as the brother of a sister and brother diamond smuggling duo. After they rob the wrong people, the sister ends up dead, the problem is, they were looking to do a big score for the huge White Fire diamond, and the sister was a big part of that. That's when Ginty, drowning his sorrows in booze at a local bar, meets a nice woman who, it just so happens, looks enough like his sister that, with a little plastic surgery, could pass for her. As luck would have it, there's a woman who does that kind of thing, and before you know it the sister is back. At the same time, the baddies have hired Williamson to figure out what's going on. Will Ginty and crew prevail and get the famed White Fire diamond?

That synopsis doesn't sound too crazy, does it? The movie's actually crazier, which makes it fantastic. Ty and Brett said on the pod it was so crazy that that made it a 4-star movie. The whole sister and brother thing is beyond a trip. Before the sister dies, she's skinny dipping in their pool, and when she gets out, Ginty is there checking her out, and he keeps her towel away from her as the two of them kid around. What? And then, he's falling for the new woman before they turn her into the sister, so after the fact he starts hooking up with her. Really? Sure, why not, right? Beyond that, we have a big white diamond that burns people's hands, Fred Williamson as a fantastic baddie, and a woman who lives in this beautiful commune with myriad beautiful women that performs plastic surgery for rich criminals. It's the cinematic equivalent of just grabbing everything out of the fridge and throwing it in a blender--but then finding out the mixture is actually kind of good. Maybe you don't drink that concoction all the time, but as a one-off in 1984, it works.

We're still catching up on our Gintage, as this is only our fifth film of his on the site, but boy, what a doozy for a fifth one. What did he think when he was told his character was hooking up with his sister? My hunch is, because the actress was very attractive, it wasn't a problem for him--in fact he may have even had them write that in! There's also the sense of him as the great DTV leading man he was, as, throughout all the silliness in this, he's always playing it straight and navigating it all to give us a solid action hero. What's interesting is, out of the five films of his we've done, this is the third that was released in 1984, after The Exterminator 2 and Warrior of the Lost World. He also had a TV series come out at that same year, Hawaiian Heat, and he probably thought this was it, he was out of the low-budget movie world and into big-time network TV. Alas, the show only lasted one season, and he went on to be one of the first true DTV stars, perhaps a pioneering role he would've preferred not to have, but one we definitely appreciate.

Our other DTVC Hall of Famer is the great Fred Williamson, who plays the guy the baddies call on to take Ginty and crew down. It's a fantastic part for him, he's just chewing up scenery in various Mediterranean location, fully armed and mustachioed, exactly the part you'd want if he's not the hero. This is also the second time we've seen him with Ginty in a European production, the other being Warrior of the Lost World. We know Williamson has his rule that he can't be killed and he needs to get the girl at the end, so this tries to split the difference with him not being the hero, and I think they do a good job with it. We'll probably be seeing more Williamson soon with another one of his directed films, but it's nice to see him here as just a costar in among this cinematic craziness.

As wacky as this movie is, it has a charm and fun quality to it that makes it work, and I wonder why that is compared to the modern DTV flick that seldom works on this level. The 80s element is one part for sure; and Ginty and Williamson are always great; but it's also like the thrown-together nature of it works in a way that makes modern thrown-together movies feel more crass, if that makes sense. I mean, couldn't Adkins and Dolph work for this, with Adkins in the Ginty role and Dolph in the Williamson role? And then we add in a beautiful woman to be the sister, and have Adkins hook up with her? Just typing this out, I see myself here writing the review killing it for being so ridiculous. This film is some kind of alchemy that can't be recreated, but somehow just works, and I can't explain it.

 

Finally, this movie has an Arrow Blu-ray release, and while I usually discuss how you can find the movie in the next paragraph, I wanted to bring it up here, because I think it's a big deal that a movie like this is getting that kind of treatment. If this can get a Blu-ray, it opens the door to so many others out there that are classics to a small group of us B-cinemaphiles, including tons of Ginty and Williamson flicks. It's an exciting world we live in where an 80s movie where Ginty wields a chainsaw and hooks up with his sister and tries to steal a diamond that burns people's hands isn't just on hard-to-find out-of-print VHS copies, but for $30 can be found on 1080p with all the fixin's.

And with that, let's wrap this up. If you don't want to pony up for the Blu-ray--which I haven't done yet either--you can watch this for free as of this writing on Tubi, or on Prime if you're subscribed. This is beyond worth checking out, so make it happen however you can. And for more Ginty, you can go into our archives for the Ginty Moore Beef Stew episode, ep 85 from May of 2021.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088359

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

Frogtown II (1992)

Back in April (my birthday, April 1st to be exact), I was on the Comeuppance Reviews podcast to talk about our top five Robert Z'Dar movies. I felt like I needed to see this to have as complete a list as possible, so I found it on Daily Motion--only it was reversed! That's right, the video image was reversed, so I had to find a plug-in for my browser that put it back the way it was supposed to be. Until we get a nice Blu-ray version of this, I guess this is the kind of thing we need to do to watch it.

Frogtown II has Z'Dar taking over for Rowdy Roddy Piper in the lead role. In this sequel, a mutant frog leader has taken a scientist (Brion James) hostage, and is forcing him to make a serum that turns humans into frog people too. When fellow Ranger Lou Ferrigno is captured behind enemy lines, they start using the serum on him. Now their captain, Charles Napier (Napes), has no choice but to send their best, Sam Hell, in to save the day. With him he's taking scientist Dr. Spangle (Denice Duff). But when they get into Frogtown, things go sideways, and now it's going to take Hell everything he's got to get out alive.

This one was fun enough for what we had here. It was a fun cast, a fun concept, fun execution. I don't know that it touches the classic status of the original, this was more the 3am block on Up All Night level as opposed to the 11pm block, but if you were up that late on a Saturday this would've been a good watch. Speaking of Up All Night, we had Rhonda Shear playing Fuzzy, their communicator. Z'Dar was great as Sam Hell, playing the hero with equal parts serious guy who saves the day and tongue-in-cheek in on the joke comedic lead, and it felt like the rest of the cast fell in and played it all the same way. It is very low budget though, and, again, isn't quite what the first one is, but for the film it was, it worked for me.

Z'Dar finally hits double digits here at the DTVC, with this being his tenth film. Out of those 10, I think this is the first one where he plays a good guy, and may be the only one of his films I've ever seen where he plays a good guy. I think his size and face got him more typecast as a baddie, but seeing how well he did here, that's too bad. He has 122 credits in IMDb, of which a brief scan says maybe 75% would qualify to be here on the site, so he could potentially get up there into some of the more prestigious clubs. On the other hand, a lot of his films are in the lower tiers, which means we may not get to them as much. I'd say Hall of Fame this year might be a great place to start for him.

We last saw the great Brion James when we did the PM flick The Underground back in March of 2021. Here you can see he's playing the part of Carrot Top playing the scientist. It's a shame Brion is longer with us, because he'd have been great as Carrot Top in a Carrot Top biopic. The other DTVC mainstay we had in this was Napes, Charles Napier. Talk about your professional actor, he's the same here as he is in a big Hollywood film--the year after this came out Philadelphia, an Oscar winner, was released, and I think he was just as good in both. Guys like these add just enough to a film to make it work on a slightly higher level, and while it's too bad they're no longer with us, they gave us plenty of great moments. Here's to you guys, you're two of the great ones.

This was directed by schlock auteur Donald G. Jackson, who also did the first film, which is the only other film of his we've reviewed on here. Going back to the Up All Night connection, he also directed a film called Twisted Fate aka Kill Kill Overkill, which came out the year after this, that I remember seeing on the 3am block on Up All Night. The problem is, a lot of his movies are like this one: really tough to track down, and when you do find them, it involves things like plug-ins that reverse the image. It's too bad, because a lot of these look like a lot of fun and would be worth checking out for the site. Maybe a company will put the best ones out on Blu-ray?...

Finally, to finish the Up All Night tenor of this review, seeing Rhonda Shear was a welcomed piece of nostalgia. Early 90s sleepovers on Fridays and Saturdays usually involved Saturday Night Live, Headbangers Ball, and USA's Up All Night, especially if we didn't get a chance to go to the video store to rent a movie. I decided to look at what MTV and USA were airing the weekend I'm writing this. On Friday USA has a Fast and Furious marathon until 1:30a, when they move to a reality show about a NASCAR driver, a reality show about a wrestling star, a reality show about someone who's famous for reasons I don't even know, and then Dateline reruns; and on Saturday it's pretty much the same thing, only the Dateline reruns are replaced with reruns of Chicago PD. MTV you can probably already guess: all Ridiculousness reruns both nights. As far as SNL, it's an old trope that the older guy complains that the era he watched was the best cast, but you're talking about Phil Hartman, Jan Hooks, Dana Carvey, etc., with Sandler, Rock, Spade, and Farley all coming up. We really had it good back then, and while it's a shame that era is gone, at least we had it once.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You may still be able to catch this with the video in reverse on Daily Motion. Hopefully it'll get a proper release soon. And you can find the podcast episode I did with the guys from Comeuppance in their archives under the title "A Z'Dar is Born."

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106970

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