Death Match (1994)

Back in April I had the guys from Comeuppance on the podcast to discuss Matthias Hues, and I figured this was one I needed to make happen in order to give my list integrity. As luck would have it, the film's star (not listed on the tin) Ian Jacklin posted a nice copy on his YouTube page. In addition to us and Comeuppance, this has been covered by our friends at Bulletproof, Cool Target, Fist of the B-list, Action Elite, and DTV Digest's Rich Hawes's old site Have a Go Heroes.

Death Match has Ian Jacklin and his buddy as two guys working the docks to make some extra cash. When they split up and Jacklin moves north to take an office job, his buddy joins an underground fighting ring run by Martin Kove and Matthias Hues. When said buddy won't kill his opponent, they put him on ice, and Jacklin needs to abandon his office job dreams and come back to LA to find out what happened to him. It won't be easy, as Kove and Hues are big time players in the underground crime world, so he enlists the help of a local reporter investigating the duo, Renee Allman. Together, can the two find out what happened to his friend?

This is pretty solid DTV 90s action fare, and I think that's what you're coming to this for, so that's a good thing. While this is meant to be an Ian Jacklin vehicle, Hues's larger-than-life presence and larger-than-life hair steal the show. In one scene that's particularly 90s, he goes to beat up Jacklin's friend for not killing his opponent, but the problem is he can't get his bolo tie undone, so he has to rip it off. On top of that, we have two legends in Art Camacho and Benny "The Jet" Urquidez as fight choreographers, and that kind of quality shows in all fight scenes. And then if all that wasn't enough, there are a bunch of cameos from guys like Richard Lynch, Jorge Rivero, Urquidez, and even someone like a Marcus Aurelius. This is the fun 90s DTV action you came for.

While we usually start with the film's DTVC Hall of Famers--and in this we have two, Camacho and Kove--we'll start with Hues instead, because he's why I came to this, and I really like him here. He was one of those guys who just made a 90s movie better, and this typifies that. How is Jacklin supposed to beat this guy, right? He's huge, a superior athlete, and the hair is formidable enough to send someone running. With Kove, he's a standard evil crime boss baddie, but as the film goes on, there's a sense of "why is Hues working for him? He should be working for Hues!", and the movie even gets that and has that conversation. This is now 17 films on the DTVC, and with many more to review, I think 30 Club and beyond is in his future, we just need to get the films in the can. And then before that, maybe this fall he'll have a Hall of Fame induction?...

 

It would be wrong to go much further in this post and not mention Ian Jacklin, the main protagonist and the one who was supposed to be the star. He's good here for sure, and I think as a good guy it would've been interesting to see him acting with guys like Gary Daniels and Frank Zagarino in buddy pictures, because those would've been some nice fight scenes. Most of the work he did was as a baddie, and often not the main baddie, but ones who showed up here or there to bother the hero. I think beyond this he has one other as the main hero, Expert Weapon, which he also has uploaded on his YouTube page. As an aside, that YouTube page is interesting: one of his uploads is him telling a school board at one of their public meetings that masks don't work, which I didn't watch, but I guess that makes him the male equivalent of a Karen--is that a "Chad'? Perhaps a "Darren"? I know what you're thinking, "Matt, why do we have to gender everything?" You're right, we'll just say he's now a Karen, and leave it at that. At least he was good in this movie, and despite his newfound Karen-ness we did give him his tag, which, with the retroactive tagging gives him 13 movies on the site. Not a bad number.

Our two DTVC Hall of Famers are Martin Kove and Art Camacho. For Kove this is only 17, and among Hall of Famers he has one of the lower tag counts, which was never intentional, but I think because a lot of his stuff is in this 90s DTV action category, and where there's so much to cover, it's easy for a lot of them to get lost in the shuffle. Just looking at Death Match in that mix, would it be top 30 for a 1990 to 1994 list? Top 50? Definitely top 50, but that just reaffirms the point, that the early 90s were chock full of DTV action-y goodness, that we're only getting to a gem like this one 1100+ posts in. I think as we delve into more at the second and third tiers, we'll start getting more Kove reviewed--plus I'm hoping his role in the new Cobra Kai series will get more movies like this bigger releases so we don't have to scrounge around former DTV martial artists-turned Karen's YouTube pages to find them. Anyway, for Art Camacho, this 48 movies on the site. A stalwart of 90s DTV action, what we know of as the genre's golden age wouldn't have been as golden without him, and it'll be great when we eventually get him in as the third person in the 50 Club, joining Dolph and Gary Daniels. If you aren't already doing it, you should follow his Instagram account. He posts great behind the scenes pics and reels of all the things he's working on.

Finally, this film employs a DTV action cliche that's never really made a lot of sense to me: killing off the opponent in an underground fight. Maybe it makes sense as a way to gin up excitement if you have some fighters who are at the end that can't compete with the newer talent, two of them fight to the death, and if you lose one, easy come easy go, right? It's like a macabre version of the glue factory for old horses. But making your best fighters fight to the death seems absurd. It's be like in baseball if the Mets and Phillies played, and the winner had to kill the loser, look at all the revenue you're losing by not having the loser around to keep playing; or if I owned a shop that sold Coke (TM) and Pepsi (TM), and after a customer chose to buy a Coke, I took all the Pepsi cans out back and emptied them in the sewer drain. Yes, I understand it adds a level of drama in the movie if the fight is to the death, and also if these gangsters were really good at business they'd be plying their crime trade legally on Wall Street, but still, what good did it serve Kove and Hues to be killing off their moneymakers? 

And considering I'm critiquing the business acumen of two baddies in a 90s DTV actioner that can currently only be found on the now-Karen star's YouTube page mixed in among his anti-masker uploads, it's probably time to wrap this up. Beyond going to Jacklin's YouTube account, there is a UK DVD version, or you can find it on VHS for a heavy price. I think the Jacklin's YouTube upload is the way to go, but hopefully Kove's recent popularity will get this thing a Blu-ray release, as it deserves it. Do it for the kids.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109576

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