Black Friday (2021)

This is one I've had on my radar for some time, especially to get more Michael Jai White up, but it was never available on a streaming service I was subscribed to, so I had to wait. Then Xfinity gave us a free week of Starz, and sure enough, this bad boy was on there. In addition to us, there are 69 critic reviews, none of which are any we're friends with.

Black Friday is about a toy store in Massachusetts that's gearing up for a big Black Friday sale. We have Devon Sawa, the single dad who needs to leave his kids for Thanksgiving, Michael Jai White as the maintenance guy, Bruce Campbell as the store manager, Stephen Peck as his second in command, Ivana Banquero as the young worker with a good head on her shoulders, and Ryan Lee as the poor schlub everyone craps on. Then, as if Black Friday couldn't get any worse, the customers become violent and attack the staff. Turns out they're infected with something, and they're infecting more people and gathering to some kind of big event. It'll take everything our staff has to get out of this alive and make it home to their families for Thanksgiving.

This is a fun time, especially at a good runtime, but it also felt a bit dated. Black Friday here in America was a lot crazier five to ten years ago, but in the 2020s when this was made, we'd already moved on from that craziness. Maybe we can't blame the film on that, because it looks like it was shot pre-pandemic, and the pandemic really crushed the remaining elements of crazed in-store shopping that lingered as the concept of Black Friday as we knew it was dying out, but I don't know if any of the jokes about crazy shoppers on Black Friday were new at all either. On the other hand, as a horror comedy, I had fun with it. The characters were fun, the gore was fun, and the aliens were well-crafted, plus I think the commentary on corporate America was as relevant now as it ever was, even if the idea of Black Friday that the film was espousing wasn't so much. I also liked the fact that they delved into a bit on how poorly retail staff are treated, both by the customers, and by their management. The idea was that 100 years ago when retail as we knew it was forming, stores gave the burgeoning middle class, who couldn't afford servants, the feeling of what it was like to have their own servant--the retail worker--for the couple hours they were shopping. There's a sense that these aliens are that concept run amok 100 years later, but we only get a sense, and I feel like that could've been explored more. The same thing with the idea of the store manager. Campbell gives us a taste of how he feels, but we only get the taste--like when he says "I get to order everyone around, from the coolest guy to the geekiest"--but I think like the other aspect we could've used more than a taste. Overall though, for people who enjoy a good horror comedy, I think this will work for you.

We'll start with our DTVC Hall of Famer, Mr. Michael Jai White. I had planned on doing a birthday post for him a couple weeks ago, but work was crazy, so I'm making up for it now. Spoiler alert, he gets killed off midway through, which was too bad, because I think after Ivana Baquero, he was the best performer here, as he brings a unique blend of action ability and comedic sensibility. The problem I think is that they wanted Sawa's character to be part alpha male part guy who's cool but not that cool, and having White there diminishes him on both accounts. That hurt the movie for me though, because White's mix of action and comedic ability made him one of the best characters and most fun to watch. This is a bit of a theme I found in this film, characters were often sprouted, but seldom fully formed, and while I appreciate that when the movie has a tight runtime, I think White was one whose character suffered as a result. This is now 21 films for White on the DTVC, and every time I think we're going to get more reviews for him, I don't make it happen--his last one was February, and his last one before that was June of 2021. For someone with the work he has out there, I should be doing at least 4 films a year like I do for other big names. 30 Club for 2023 I think is too bold, because we'd be talking about almost one review a month for him, but maybe we can do it. And a belated happy birthday! You're truly one of the greats.

This is our first Devon Sawa film at the DTVC, which I think will change because he's doing more DTV stuff now. In this film, he's essentially inhabiting a Poor Man's Jeremy Renner space, and you get the sense that if this had been a big screen theatrical release, Renner would've played this part. But then the film leans into the Poor Man's aspect of it by having him be cool, but not that cool. For example, he has a "thing" with Ivana Baquero's character, who's 16 years his junior, and the film lets us know that she's only fooling around with him to pass the time, but she doesn't take him seriously. You almost never see that in a character of Sawa's type in a film like this getting treated that way, and I don't know that Renner in a big screen production would get done like that. To his credit, Sawa seems to embrace that, but the film almost can't fully, as there's a sense at the end that he does ultimately "get the girl," though they never explicitly say that. Because of the current DTV work he's doing, it's inevitable that we'll see him on here more, and I think this is a good start for him with us.

While this is our first Sawa film, it's our second Ivana Baquero film, the other being the Kevin Costner flick The New Daughter. For me she was the best character in the film, but going back to that concern about characters not being fully fleshed out, hers might have been the worst, even worse than Michael Jai White being killed off early. We get this sense that she's the only one with a firm head on her shoulders, yet she seldom gets the chance to be the leader of the group. Again, it was an idea that wasn't fully fleshed out, like she could've been the Penny to the rest of the characters' Inspector Gadget, especially if we're going to kill White off, but it just never got there and instead we have Ryan Lee and Devon Sawa taking the lead in more instances. The fact that she proved how capable she was though should be a sign that she should get more leading roles in films, and I think with the horror genre, her standout performance in Pan's Labyrinth should always be a selling point on the tin to horror fans.

Finally, for people living outside the US, Black Friday is a holiday you may not be familiar with. It's not an official holiday, but because it's the day after Thanksgiving, which is an official holiday that always falls on a Thursday, many companies give people that Friday off too. Combine that with Christmas only being a month away, the major commerce holiday in a country where commerce is its one raison d'etre, and over time it evolved into the major shopping day of the year. The film gives some history behind the name, that police officers in Philadelphia used the term to describe the traffic congestion due to all the shoppers driving on that day--and Philadelphia has one of the great shopping meccas, King of Prussia Mall, which I have yet to visit. As the day evolved over the years, retailers tried to find ways to exploit it as much as possible to maximize profits, and that's when stores started opening earlier, to the point that they were opening during the evening on Thanksgiving day, which is the backdrop to this story. An interesting note about that though is in Massachusetts, the state that the holiday of Thanksgiving was started in, it's illegal for non-essential retail establishments, like the toy store in this film, to open at all during Thanksgiving, meaning this film as it was created couldn't have existed in Massachusetts, even though it takes place there. The other thing is, over time, people tired of the crush of Black Friday, and with the advent of online shopping--which has its day the Monday after, "Cyber Monday"--or the push to patronize small businesses instead of the large chains--which also have their day, the Saturday after, "Small Business Saturday"--Black Friday isn't the crazy ritualized homage to commerce it once was or the way it's depicted in this film. That being said, I still do my best to stay away from any retail businesses on Black Friday.

And with that, let's wrap this up. I think if you can stream this for free, it's worth checking out. I don't know for a rental it's quite worth it, but if you're a big horror comedy fan it might be. It's a fun watch either way, especially this time of year on a Saturday night.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11649338

And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, Holtman Arms, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Shadow Fury (2001)

Back in June I had Rich Hawes from DTV Digest on the pod to discuss this film. It's one's he's been a fan of for some time, and even asked me and Ty from Comeuppace if we'd ever consider doing it for our sites--which was a big reason why I suggested it to him as a topic for an episode he was guesting on. In addition to us, he's covered it on his old site, Have a Go Heroes, and Chris the Brain at Bulletproof has done this as well.

Shadow Fury has a group of scientists in the near future who have figured out how to clone a super soldier. One of them, Pat Morita, goes rogue, and creates a super samurai, Masakatsu Funaki. The others call in mercenary Sam Bottoms, an alcoholic in serious need of a new liver, which, it just so happens, Funaki is a perfect match, so if Bottoms takes him down his payment is Funaki's liver. As always though, things aren't as they seem, and when Bottoms discovers one of the other scientists, Allan Kolman, has created his own super soldier--first a young Taylor Lautner, later an adult Bas Rutten--he teams up with the last remaining other one, Alexandra Kamp, and Funaki, to take him down.

This movie was a lot of fun. It borrows from a lot of traditions, the two biggest being the lone gunman in the Western with Bottoms, and the ronin, or masterless samurai with Funaki. The director is Makoto Yokoyama, who was part of the Alpha Stunt team responsible for the Power Rangers movies that Isaac Florentine was also a part of, and more notably, the late 90s Mark Dacascos classic Drive. While this isn't quite at the Drive or Florentine actioner level, it still delivers enough in its fight scenes to elevate it beyond the limitations of its budget. Beyond that, we have really fun performances from Bottoms, Funaki, Fred Williamson, Morita, and Kamp. Also, as Chris the Brain at Bulletproof said, how many movies can you see where Taylor Lautner grows up to be Bas Rutten?

Usually we start with the film's one Hall of Famer, but because Williamson's part was smaller, I figured I'd go with Sam Bottoms first. What's interesting about him in this is when we last had Rich on the podcast, we discussed Total Force and Absolute Force, which starred his brother and Bush 43 lookalike Timothy. What Sam does here with this part is he plays up the lone gun for hire part really well, making him both dark and brooding, and a hero with a sense of humor at the same time. You can see your classic Clint Eastwood hero in him, but also someone like a Richard Boone in Have Gun Will Travel. You wouldn't expect Sam Bottoms in the lead to work in an action film, but because he got what Yokoyama was going for with the character, he was able to draw on that tradition in a way that made this work even better than I think Yokoyama was hoping for. When we're watching low budget movies like this, often it's that kind of thing that's needed to elevate the material beyond its limitations, and Bottoms does that for us with his performance.

From there we have Masakatsu Funaki as the ronin figure, who loses his master, Pat Morita, early on, and from there is on his journey to find his purpose. He gets that in a lady of the night that he saves from her pimp, Cassandra Grae--who didn't do much beyond this film. Usually that construct of the hero saving the lady of the night is a worn trope--especially in those Seagal-type films where it's saving a pretty Eastern European lady from human trafficking and she falls in love with the hero--but here it works to not only underscore this drive for purpose Funaki's character has, but also the drive to discover his humanity. He's part masterless ronin and part Frankenstein, and with Grae's character, we as the audience can join Funaki as he leans into both aspects of himself. On top of that, as an MMA fighter, he does great in the action sequences, but I don't know how well it would've worked if he hadn't leaned into those other aspects of the character the way he did. Like Bottoms, his approach added elements to the film that further elevated it beyond its budgetary constraints.

Because his part was so limited, we're waiting for this moment to finally discuss our film's one Hall of Famer, the great Fred Williamson. He plays the Machine Gun Joe type who provides Bottoms with the weapons he needs in a back room of the bar he runs--which works out for the alcoholic Bottoms, he can get his drinks and his tools of the trade. This is now 26 for Williamson, which puts us that much closer to the 30 Club for him, probably something we'll hit next year. While I prefer him as a lead, seeing him in a small part like this is also fun too, and for a lot of the names that have the bigger numbers here, parts like this help get that tag number up to get him into those more exclusive clubs--though when you look at Dolph and Daniels, our two with the most tags, they don't have many supporting role films. The other thing I've noticed is, when I look at his IMDb bio, there aren't a lot of films from this period of his that I'm missing, it's a lot more of the hit or miss variety in the 2010s, or his 80s stuff that I can't always find. That's one difference between him and Dolph or Daniels, is there is a lot of Williamson stuff out there that's either hard to get, or maybe even impossible to get. I think that's another reason why he's fallen behind some of the other bigger names, but hopefully we'll rectify that over the next year and get that tag count up higher.

Finally, in trying to think of what the last paragraph should be here, one thing that stood out was how much Bottoms was drinking, despite being on the liver transplant list. In real life, there's a zero tolerance policy when it comes to that. It might not be common knowledge--I only found out when a close family friend was in that situation in the late 90s, and then it came up again recently when I was watching Scrubs with my wife. It makes sense, right? There are only so many livers to go around, why give it to someone who may just destroy that one through drinking too. Just the same, it would've made for a better plot device here, the idea that Bottoms's character can't get a transplant because he won't stop drinking, but these scientists offer to do it for him anyway with Funaki's. 

And with that, let's wrap this up. As you can see from the quality of my screens, this is only available on YouTube, and it's not the best transfer--even if it does say it's high-def. I think a movie like this could use a nice Blu-ray, so hopefully that'll happen soon, or at the very least a better quality version on a major streaming site. Until then, YouTube is your best bet, and I think this is a fun enough actioner from the early 2000s, which overall wasn't as great a time for this kind of thing. And if you want to hear more about Shadow Fury, check out the DTVC Podcast, episode 102 from back in June that I did with Rich from DTV Digest.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0288215

And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, Holtman Arms, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Catman in Lethal Track (1990)

This is one I looked at a while back. I believe when I had Mitch from the Video Vacuum on to discuss Godfrey Ho, I asked out loud if he ripped off Batman considering the phenomenon that was here in the States in the late 80s, and sure enough, here was "Catman" from 1990, and it was on YouTube! Does life get any better?

Catman in Lethal Track is about a guy who is scratched by a radioactive cat, and imbued with special catlike powers--or rather just special powers. He then uses these powers to take on an evil Satanic priest who's doing evil things. At the same time, out in the countryside, an evil gang led by a man with an eye patch is kidnapping women and holding them hostage, among other evil things. A young woman disguised as a man rides into town on her dirt bike with plans to take him down. It's not going to be easy, so she needs to recruit as many locals as she can to help her. What this story has to do with the Catman story is anyone's guess, but the question is, will Catman and this girl disguised as a man be able to prevail in their individual struggles?

I think this is about how you'd expect a Godfrey Ho superhero movie to go, and that can either be a good thing for you or a bad thing. For me, I enjoy these kinds of movies, so it was a good thing. I mean, look at that superhero costume? Forget spandex, this is some kind of maintenance worker's jumpsuit with a jumping black cat logo, combined with some kind of as-seen-on-TV sunglasses that diminish glare while you're driving. You could just as easily see this guy in the mall in the commercial for the glasses getting people to try them on and them being wowed by how great they look. On top of that you have that secondary story that every Godfrey Ho film has, kind of like how Seinfeld always had a couple threads going in one episode, and this one made about as much sense as the Catman story--like why did everyone think this girl was a guy? Because she could fight and rode a dirt bike? Beyond the splicing of the two unconnected stories, we also had the Ho American pop culture alchemy, especially in the baddie's gang that looked like extras from Class of Nuke 'Em High. I think this should be a staple of any Godfrey Ho movie night.

This is our sixth Ho film on the site, but only the third of this kind where he's splicing two movies together, the other three were new action films he made with Cynthia Rothrock. When I look at my first review of one of these, Ninja: Silent Assassin in 2011, it was like I got it, but didn't get it. By the time I had Jon Cross on to discuss these films in 2020, I had a completely different perspective, and it was with that perspective that I continued with the podcast episode this past year with Mitch from the Video Vacuum, and went into watching this film. When I had Jon on in 2020, he quoted a Den of Geek article that referred to these films as "cinematic anarchy," and I think that best describes them. There's something about what Ho does with the medium of cinema that is so far outside what anyone who invented it could have conceived of, that that in of itself is fascinating, and for me, entertaining. It'll be interesting as we go through more of Ho's catalog, especially with how many are available on Tubi and YouTube, but I think it'll be a fun ride.

The superhero movie in modern cinema is seen as this juggernaut moneymaker, which is nice, but I think there are people who want to delve outside of that a bit. When I was younger, all I wanted was to see my heroes together the way they were in the comics, but when I got my wish, I discovered they made them all so interconnected, meaning if I watch one I may not get what's happening if I didn't watch another, which in turn I wouldn't get if I didn't watch these other two, and so on. Also the massive budgets and long runtimes have turned me off some, which is a shame. That's where something like this can fill a void that I didn't even know existed. On the other hand, while this has some notes we expect from a superhero movie, it is also so different from what we expect from a movie in this genre. It's not like Toxic Avenger or Sgt. Kabukiman NYPD, which mimic the style of superhero movies but do a great job mocking it; this only has part of that mimicry, but then the Ho construct of splicing in the second film, plus his attempts to pander to American pop culture trends, as opposed to making fun of them like you'd see in a Troma movie, which makes it all something unique to Ho. I don't even know if it would fit with a Santo movie, but that's another type of non-mainstream superhero franchise that comes to mind. Like everything Ho, it's sui generis.

But the Ho approach opens the door to more ideas, right? What if someone created a rip off of Batman, and spliced it with an early 90s short-lived TV show? Or low-budget movie? Like One West Waikiki, which was around for like 20 episodes; or maybe The Lost World, with it's three seasons, just splice in an episode, so you have a fake superhero that's Batman-esque doing stuff, while in another story you have Jennifer O'Dell running around in the jungle. The problem with that, of course, is all those shows have rights holders, plus the SAG implications would make the film more expensive--but as expensive as a standard Marvel movie production. On the other hand, what a fun way for, say, Paramount/CBS to get into the superhero game, by taking old CBS properties like One West Waikiki and combing them with stories about men or women with superpowers in maintenance jumpsuits and As-seen-on-TV sunglasses. Modern mainstream audiences wouldn't know what to do with them. Can you imagine critics trying to review something like that? Or current comic book movie fans who live by their precious canons. There is no "canon" in a Godfrey Ho movie, even if you used Cheryl Ladd and Richard Burgi in multiple films, there's no rule that says they have to even be the same people, which would blow the minds of toxic canon extremists. They'd be flooding Paramount studios with death threats because their sensibilities would be so hurt. The level of anarchy in something like that is too fun to fathom--sans the death threats, of course. If you need to send death threats to studios you're a loser who should be in jail.

Finally, as I mentioned above, this is available on YouTube. In the IMDb user reviews, people mentioned finding cheap DVDs. As far as I can tell now, YouTube is the way to go, but what a way to go it is. The advent of YouTube, and the number of films like this that you can find on there, is immense. There's always the risk of a copyright claim taking down the YouTube account that uploads them though, and to be honest you never know where that'll come from--when I first started the DTVC, I had a YouTube account with the username Deepcheeks that I used to post MSTK episodes I had, and advertised the site in the episode descriptions. What got me clipped wasn't the people with MST3K putting in a claim, but the rights holder to one of the movies in the episode, and if you get clipped, that causes all your uploads to go away, not just the one that the claim was on. I guess what I'm saying is, while YouTube is great, it's also tenuous. One big account, JCT, looks like they're gone, and with them The Secret of King Mahi's Island, a rare early Gary Daniels flick. I found another version up there, but for us low-budget cinephiles, it's a tough way to live. A film like Catman in Lethal Track deserves a better transfer and physical release, or at least an official release on major streaming service, because God forbid the accounts that uploaded it get clipped, this treasure is gone. I feel like there is enough of a market for it, but maybe I'm wrong.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can find this on used DVD, but YouTube is probably your best bet for now. It's a fun Godfrey Ho take on the superhero movie, a nice counter to the current superhero ecosystem that you may not even know you needed.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0319153

And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, Holtman Arms, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Kindergarten Cop 2 (2016)

The big fella turned 65 this week, and as such, we had to review a movie in honor of that, and this is a film of his we've had in the can for some time--in fact, I watched this during the unplanned 4-year hiatus I had between 2015 and 2019, and was going to review it in that period, but it got clipped from Netflix, so I had to wait for it to return to streaming, and the hiatus continued. In addition to us, our friends Mitch at the Video Vacuum and Tom Jolliffe at Flickering Myth have covered this as well.

Kindergarten Cop 2 has Dolph as an FBI detective who, along with partner Bill Bellamy, need to find a flash drive that has the info to bring down a big time crime boss. The problem is, the guy who had it gave it to his brother, who was murdered by said baddie. As luck would have it, he hid it in his kindergarten classroom, but how could they it there? Have Dolph go undercover as a kindergarten teacher, of course! Can this line dancing, steak eating, jeans wearing down-home guy handle modern rich kid education? A young lady 30 years his junior who teaches across the hall and has a thing for him may help, right?

This worked and it didn't, if that makes sense. Some of the jokes were good, some were of the "oh kids have peanut allergies today, that's so crazy!" variety. The thing is though, the Dolph is good, and he and Bellamy work well together, so it's like, if you're going to have a mid-2010s DTV sequel of a big screen hit from the past cash grab, you could do a lot worse. The "you could do a lot better" is the whole "why did this need to be made in the first place?" which I think is a fair question, and when I finish a movie, I shouldn't have to feel like I watched something that maybe didn't even need to exist. Ultimately though, as someone who has to watch all of Dolph's movies, this was 100 minutes that wasn't as bad as I've experienced on this journey, and maybe that's the bottom line, it's not as horrible as it can get for Dolph completists.

While this is 65 tags for Dolph on the site, it's only 64 films, so he doesn't quite yet have as many films as his age, a distinction that he alone will have when he gets there on our next Dolph film review. He definitely elevates material that is more contrived than even my synopsis above will lead you to believe, material that looks like it was passed from screenwriter to screenwriter in a desperate attempt to save it. The one piece that was probably least believable was the idea that the kids would be unruly for him. I don't have many memories from kindergarten, but trying to imagine myself as a five-year-old, if Dolph walked into our classroom the last thing I'd do is act up. Interestingly enough, this is the 4th of the four films he released in 2016 that we've reviewed, and I would say this is the most paint-by-numbers cynical DTV cash grabbiest of the bunch. Welcome to Willits was a unique horror comedy where Dolph had a small part as a TV police officer; Female Fight Squad was a woman-driven actioner with Dolph taking a back seat to Amy Johnston; and Don't Kill It was another horror comedy, in this case with Dolph in the lead, but also was unique and off-beat. In that sense, I don't think we can look at this movie as a trend in his career, I think it was more a one-off, and hopefully he made enough money from it.

Anyone who grew up watching MTV in the 80s and 90s knows Bill Bellamy. I remember him at the MTV Beach House telling Montel Jordan how "This is How We Do It" was the song of that summer, and now we're closing in on 30 years since that song came out. In 1997 he tried to move into the film world with Def Jam's How to Be a Player, and while it didn't take, he's worked consistently since then, with perhaps my favorite being the modern Miami Vice remake Fastlane. He and Peter Facinelli were a great early 2000s version of Crockett and Tubbs, but I think as much as Miami Vice was ahead of its time, Fastlane as a newer version was even further ahead, and only lasted the one season. Because of that though, seeing him here was fun, and he and Dolph had great chemistry, which elevated it beyond the usual DTV cash grab sequel.

As Dolph turns 65, we're confronted with all of our 80s action stars growing older, and what that means for them as action leads. The biggest trope is the cute leading lady that they get to woo over, and like Matthew McConaughey said in Dazed and Confused, these action stars get older, and their leading ladies stay the same age. The love interest here was played by Darla Taylor, and according to IMDb she hasn't done anything since. The question is, would we as viewers be okay with it if Dolph's love interest was someone closer in age to him? Gary Daniels is only a year older than Vivica A. Fox, and that worked with them in The Wrong Child together, so it can be done. But as part of the DTV cash grab, it's about the hottest young woman they can get, give her outfits that are professional yet sexy as a teacher, and pair her with Dolph. When it's this paint-by-numbers, there's no room to paint outside the lines.

Finally, we're at a point here in our Dolph journey that each review not only requires a second paragraph, but some kind of understanding of the scope of what his numbers mean, and where we might go from here. This is the 1163rd post, and if we're counting the raw post number we can count his 65th one, which was the Van Damme Film Fest for our 400th. That means he's responsible for almost 6% of all posts. With 64 movies, he has 9 more than the next most, Gary Daniels with 55. 70 looks very likely, as we still need to do 4Got10 from his back catalog, plus Pups Alone, Section 8, and Operation Seawolf as newer movies, so we're already at 68 there. With the rate at which I review movies, and how I try to space out the stars so everyone gets reviews, the odds of anyone else, outside of Gary Daniels, getting to that number is slim. Someone like a Fred Williamson has the movies, but will I review enough of them? I'm on pace to do five of his movies this year, and he's at 25 now, so in roughly 9 years I'll get him there. I guess that means we'll see where we're at in 2031.

And with that, let's wrap this up. For me, this is a free stream for a Dolph completist only, but when you put those two elements together, it works enough to get you there. And a big happy birthday to the Babe Ruth of DTV action, Dolph Lundgren! You truly are the greatest.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4763168

And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, Holtman Arms, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!