Guardian (2001)

I was browsing Tubi, and wanted to get some more of Hall of Famer Ice-T's stuff up. I saw that this also had Mario Van Peebles, who is also someone I wanted to get more stuff up from, and then saw it was directed by John Terlesky, of Chopping Mall and Deathstalker 2 fame, so I figured all that together made it a no-brainer. Except the fact that I had never heard of it before, that did give me pause...

Guardian has Van Peebles as a Marine in Iraq in 1991 who, on a mission, stumbles upon an archaeologist who releases an evil demon from 3000 years of imprisonment. The mission goes fubar, the demon inhabits his fellow soldier, who shoots him, and when Van Peebles wakes up, he finds himself in the hospital with a bunch of scars on him. 13 years later we find out why: this demon is coming to kill the archaeologist's son, David, who was born during a lunar eclipse that happened when the demon was released. How Van Peebles fits in all this, he's not sure, but he better figure it out soon, otherwise that demon''s going to kill him.

This had a very stylish feel to it, between Van Peebles in his sunglasses and turtlenecks and leather coats, to the sets and locations, to the way it was shot--it looked cool. The problem was, for the well-worn territory that this was, it wasn't cool enough. At least The Minion had Dolph and his spiked glove as a KGB-trained Knight's Templar working for it. There was no combination of Van Peebles being cool but the film being goofy to get us over, so in that sense it's almost like, "what is he doing here?" And then same with James Remar as his partner. The two of them as detectives really worked, but they were detectives in a demonic possession movie that we've seen myriad times before. How do you square that? Maybe with Ice-T, right? But he only has small part in the middle of the film, and while that part is as cool and stylish as the rest of the film, it's too scant. We needed them all in a hard-hitting crime drama, where the stylishness here would've worked with the story. Finally, this movie also some Matrix stuff that was popular at that time, giving us more well-worn territory. Just the same, this was nice to look at, and I think that's more than a lot of films that follow this story paradigm have going for them.

Normally we start with the film's Hall of Famer, but because Mario Van Peebles had the leading role and Ice-T's part was so scant, I figured we'd start with Van Peebles. We haven''t seen him since his turn as a baddie in Exterminator 2 back in January of 2022, so over a year. It seems like he does do more direct to video stuff, but this is only his 6th film on the site. What I like about him here, he's the coolest, baddest person in every scene he's in. It almost felt like this performance was wasted in this movie, because had it been the hard-hitting crime drama I mentioned, it might have been iconic in the DTV world. One area I wanted to get into more was his directorial work, and I was surprised to find out I hadn't covered one of his directorial efforts yet. Hard Luck with Wesley Snipes has been one on my radar for a long time, and it's also on Tubi, so I'll make sure to make that happen soon; and another is the Nicolas Cage WWII Naval film USS Indianapolis, which did gross $2 million in the box office, but was essentially DTV. Either way, this film was a reminder that we need more of his stuff on here.

Now for Mr. Ice-T. As the guy from Soulsonic Force said in the Car Shield commercial, he's always been official, and that's true here even in this small role. He plays a great gangster, and plays it better than most out there. He would've been the perfect baddie in the Van Peebles-Remar hard-hitting crime drama I described, but here he's in and out so quickly we barely get to enjoy him. This is now 17 films on the site for him, which isn't horrible, but it's our first film of his since his Hall of Fame induction post in October of 2021, so that is horrible. This era, late 90s to early 2000s, was peak Ice-T DTV where he was doing a few films a year, and with the small role he had here, you can see how he did it. Around this same time he's getting his role on Law and Order: SVU, which was smaller to start, but grew over time, and I think we can see how as that role grew, the volume of DTV work he needed to do diminished. But here we were in that peak DTV window for him, and he reminded us with this scant role of how great he could be in that period.

I had no idea that John Terlesky, Mike from Chopping Mall, was also a director. Like Van Peebles, a lot of his modern credits are TV series episodes, but he does have another 11 movies he's directed too, and some of them belong on the site for sure. As a director here, I think he and his DP, Maximo Munzi, do a lot to make this look as nice as possible. The framing of the stars like Van Peebles and Remar both elevates this to something more, but also makes me want something more. It would've been interesting to see what Terlesky could have done with the hard-hitting crime drama I described. The thing is, I'm talking about it like it's the past, but they all could come together and still make this. Guys, if you're listening, make this happen!

Finally, I want to go a bit Grammar Hammer on you, but not in the way you'd expect. There's a scene where Van Peebles's character is being interrogated by the FBI, and his interrogator says "by who," and Van Peebles corrects him and say "by whom." While the latter is technically correct, "whom" has been relegated to really only being used in the construction "to whom it may concern." It's now outdated as opposed to being correct. That in mind, I still enjoy using "whom" myself from time to time, but its not something anyone can correct someone on anymore, so from a writing standpoint, if you want to make your character a Grammar Hammer, you'll have to choose something else to correct people on. Maybe if someone uses the wrong verb tense? People use the Present Perfect when they want the Simple Past a lot. Van Peeble's character could've given a quick lesson on verb tenses in response. "Could've" is even a good one, because people write "could of" a lot, the problem is, the character would have to have seen it written to correct it.

If I'm going Grammar Hammer for a paragraph, it's time to wrap this up. This is currently available on Tubi here in the States. Yes, it is stylish, and I liked the stars, but this is well-worn territory with some Matrix stuff thrown in that probably won't do it for you.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0289213

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

L.A. Heat (1989)

In my desire to get more Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs on the site, we ended up hitting a milestone as well. PM Entertainment becomes the seventh member of the 40 Club with this post. With the kind of contributions they've made to the world of DTV action, it's much deserved. This is also a complete the triangle review, as Ty and Brett at Comeuppance, and Mitch at the Video Vacuum have covered this as well.

L.A. Heat has LHJ as a cop who's kind of on the edge, but has never fired his weapon on the job--which for most cops is common, but for a cop in a PM film it's absurd. So as his partners get killed off by Clarence, a cop-killing drug dealer, LHJ needs to pull out all the stops. That includes working with a drug dealer named Spyder, who also has a bone to pick with Clarence, but then when a mob boss named Sylvio also gets involved, all bets are off for LHJ, and the lack of results gets him kicked off the force. Will he be able to pull himself out of his doldrums and get his cat to stop eating his food in time to get up off the mat and take these guys down?

For a PM flick, this isn't the best, but it's not the worst. As an early PM flick though, it's fun to see how they're not quite there yet as a studio, but they're getting there. We get shootouts that are good, but not PM good. The car chases are scant, and lack the volume of car flippage later PM will have, but we can see how they'll build off of these. LHJ does what you need him to as a cop on the edge, plus I liked that they dealt with issues in how the police treat people of color in LA prior to Rodney King in a way that wasn't afraid to tell it like it is. This also had a heavy Beverly Hills Cop vibe, with a lot of the action scenes accompanied by a strong "Axel F"-esque synth score, which was fun for me to listen to. The action isn't at the volume or as inspired as what we'd see later on in the 90s from PM, and I think if we're comparing this to that standard, few DTV actioners meet that; but as studio that was still hitting its stride, and as someone who fancies himself a DTV Connoisseur, watching this knowing what PM would eventually become, I enjoyed what we had here.

Our first PM review was back in May of 2007, very early in our history, when I reviewed the Van Damme film Inferno aka Desert Heat, which I didn't know at the time was a PM flick, and which also featured Danny Trejo giving Van Damme a foot massage. We've come a long way with PM since then, as we've added reviews of some of the films they've made that bolstered up the tail end of golden age of DTV action. When we think of that '85 to '95 window where DTV action was so fantastic, '90 to '95 was almost all PM when it comes to the best of that period, and the stuff they did in the late 90s did a lot to extend that golden age a bit further. The things that we came to know PM for, the car chases with cars flipping and exploding all over the place, the inspired fight scenes with accomplished martial artists, and the stunt work that was next level, all came after this film, but you could see the seeds of it planted in this movie. Truly one of the greats, PM not only deserves to finally join the 40 Club, but with so many more PM films left to review, the 40 Club is just the start.

This is now our 4th LHJ flick on the site, but this is only the second one starring him, after Quiet Fire, another PM joint. What I liked about him here, is he was the cop on the edge, but when he was with his love interest, he was able to show the humor and charisma he had when he was on Welcome Back Kotter. I don't think we got enough of that in Quiet Fire, but it was fun to see here. In looking at his IMDb bio, he has some more PM flicks from around this early period of theirs, but other than some voice work in '93's Firepower, after Quiet Fire in '91 he really doesn't do anything more, but that is 4 more PM flicks of his between this and Quiet Fire that I need to cover, so we'll see more of him on here. Future Hall of Famer? I don't know if he'll have the numbers to get there, but I think his work in this early PM period is important enough to maybe consider it if we do get the numbers, because he does have other work beyond PM that we could do too.

You may have noticed that Joseph Merhi has been tagged for this post, but not Richard Pepin. Currently I'm only tagging one or the other of them for the films they've directed. The thinking behind that is that the PM Entertainment tag covers their work as producers, and PM Entertainment's Hall of Fame induction and now 40 Club entry covers their contributions to the world of DTV action. The thing is though, Richard Pepin was director of photography on this, and for anyone else, like say an Art Camacho or Isaac Florentine, that would be enough to get them another tag. With that in mind, it's possible that both could get a bunch more tags for any work they did on a film beyond producer--or if they were a producer on a non-PM film. This is an issue we've also run into with another producing team, Golan and Globus, and in their case they actually have their own tag separate from Cannon films, but they also don't have the 100% overlap with Cannon that Merhi and Pepin have with PM films--currently Cannon has more than Golan-Globus. Anyway, with his 10th director tag on here, Merhi joins an exclusive club of directors with 10 or more tags, which starts with Albert Pyun and his (I believe) 43, then Fred Olen Ray with 15, Isaac Florentine (I believe) and Sam Firstenberg with 13, Keoni Waxmen, Fred Williamson, and Art Camacho with 11, and then Cirio H. Santiago who also has 10. That makes Merhi the 9th to join the ten director tags club, which is almost as exclusive as the 40 Club, but also almost as exclusive as the 30 Club for just acting tags, which I believe is 8 right now. If you're wondering, Pepin is at 7 directing credits, so he's knocking on the door as well.

Finally, I want to go back to PM's enduring legacy as we celebrate this milestone of theirs. As Cannon starts to fade out in the early 90s, PM comes in and picks up the ball at that same time, filling our video store shelves and cable TV line-ups with fun actioners loaded with high-octane stunts and action effects that we don't really see on the same level with DTV actioners today. The 90s wouldn't be the 90s without their contributions, and I don't know that a site like mine would exist at the level it does without their films. While some of their movies are available to stream, ones like this are only available on low-quality YouTube uploads, which, don't get me wrong, are better than nothing, but for what PM brought, it all should be available for everyone to consume either on Tubi, or later with nice Blu-rays from companies like Vinegar Syndrome. Maybe with an LA Heat it's a boxed set of this and the sequels--and yes, this film isn't the great PM stuff that they would later be known for, but it is also nice to watch it and see where that whole thing was headed. When we compare the 90s with the 2000s, and later the 2010s, PM is a big part of why those later two decades don't come close in the sheer volume of fun DTV action classics, and it would be good if more of those classics were available in a better physical medium. 

And with that, let's wrap this up. As far as I can tell, YouTube is the best way to go to catch this as of this writing. Used VHS or DVD might also be a possibility if you stumble upon it, but Amazon won't be much help, as it confuses this title with the PM TV series of the same name. There are a lot more PM flicks out there that are better than this, but as an early PM entry that gives you a sense of where this is all headed, it can be a fun sit.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097699

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

Ash and Bone (2022)

For February's indie review, producer Joe Williamson came to me to see if I'd review this film for the site, and though it didn't look like the kind of film I usually do for the DTVC, I figured I'd give it a shot to help get the word out on another independent film. It was directed by Harley Wallen, whose work we last looked at when we did Abstruse with Tom Sizemore back in 2020, so we were probably overdue to review another one of his too.

Ash and Bone stars Angelina Danielle Cama as Cassie, a troubled teen whose father (Wallen) and his girlfriend (Kaiti Wallen) take her to a cabin his family has in rural Michigan to get her away from the trouble she's in. The problem is, Cassie has a way of finding trouble wherever she goes, and this time she meets a young couple at a local bar and convinces them to break into a scary farm house owned by a scary brother and sister who may or may not be kidnapping and torturing young women at their place. Spoiler alert: they are, and when they get home they find Cassie and her new friends there. They escape, but the brother and sister won't let this go so easily. Like Q bringing the Enterprise in contact with the Borg, Cassie has set in motion a season finale cliff hanger of epic proportions.

Out of the three films of Wallen's we've covered here now, this one works the best for me. Yes, the end meandered a bit, but considering his films usually clock in at 100+ minutes at a minimum, and sometimes close in on two hours, this one at 97 minutes had a leaner feel that really worked in its favor. From there, Wallen with his cinematographer Alex Gasparetto do a great job framing scenes and individual shots--something that I thought he could've leaned on more in Abstruse he really does a great job of here. We also get great performances, a few standouts for me included Cama as Cassie, Wallen as the naive, affluent city-dweller dad, Erika Hoveland as the sister of the serial killer siblings, and then Jamie Bernadette as the local cigarette smoking young woman who seems like she's already been beaten down by this isolated small town. Finally, I'll need to get into some spoilers, so be warned if you read further that I'll be giving away the film, but getting into Bret Miller's story, I liked the way we're given Cassie as a sympathetic figure to start, but as it goes on, we see that she's the cause of a lot of destruction in the lives of the people she comes into contact with. Without that, this feels like a two-part episode of a CBS procedural like Criminal Minds, which wouldn't have been horrible, but I liked the ambiguity Cassie's role gave us. Also, the fact that most of the victims are in some way complicit in their own demise: Cassie's friend Tina (Calhoun Koenig) doesn't need to jump in the stolen police car with Cassie, but she does; her dad didn't want to believe his daughter was the bad influence, but if he had, they wouldn't have gone to that remote Michigan town; and the young couple could have told Cassie no when she said she wanted to break into the scary farm house. They all let Cassie manipulate them, with disastrous results. It took what I thought was going to be a scary slasher film and made it something more.

Harley Wallen definitely embodies the independent spirit of movie making, which I really appreciate, and which really comes through in this. I think the big difference between his films and some of the other indie films we look at is length. Motern Media's films usually clock in around 88 minutes. Shogun's around 90. Cinema Epoch/Cineridge's even shorter, with ones in the 75-minute range. When I see a Wallen film on Tubi and it's 105-minutes to potentially closing in on 120, it's a bigger investment--like Abstruse, which was 117 minutes. Part of the reason why I think his films tend to go longer though, is he has a message in them he wants to deliver, and he doesn't want to lose any part of that message. I get that, and I respect it, but where I think this movie worked better for me, was the messages here were more under the surface for me to take with me after I've thought about it more. One big one that he used in both Abstruse and Eternal Code, is the idea that in our society some lives are worth more than others, but in those films it was more the main driver of those stories, while here it was underneath the surface of a tense horror thriller. It's like you get this relief that Wallen's character and his family survive, but what about all the poor girls that didn't? Or that the thing that caused the serial killing siblings' downfall was that they attacked some rich people from the city, but then you as the viewer have to juxtapose that on your own with the idea that they were okay killing girls who were runaways, those girls probably escaping something horrible at home only to end up dying a horrible death. You don't get that in your usual slasher, so it was a welcome surprise to have that kind of depth.

We're now at 11 Mel Novak films on the site. Here he plays the owner of a local bar, and while the role is scant, it has that vibe of the impartial observer who doesn't get involved in the town's business, but he has a sense of what's going on. I think for what this role was, it enhanced the film enough, gave it that little extra that an indie flick like this would want by having him in this part. We actually haven't seen him since 2020's review of An Hour to Kill, another one that producer Joe Williamson asked us to cover. In looking at Novak's IMDb bio, while probably more of his newer stuff will probably only come to us through further review requests, he also has some stuff from the 90s and early 2000s that we haven't hit yet either, so this isn't the last we've seen of him here. He kind of fits that Charles Napier/Richard Lynch category, where we don't necessarily seek his films out, but he stars with enough people that we do seek out, that we end up seeing him enough on here--and to further the comp, Lynch has 13 tags, and Napes 12, so Novak's 11 is right in line with them.

Another twist for me was how, what starts out as your usual "who wants to see some pretty women get killed in horrible ways" kind of film, turns into almost a female empowerment movie. The male characters reveal themselves to be the weaker ones, whether it's Tucker (Mason Heidger), the boy in the young couple Cassie befriends, who gives up his girlfriend's (Bernadette) location, and then gives up Cassie's location to our baddies; or Wallen, who both can't decide whether he wants to let his daughter tell him what to do, or his new girlfriend, but even when he has a gun, it's his daughter Cassie who uses it to save them; or the brother (Jimmy Doom) in the brother-sister serial killer duo, who at first seems to be telling his sister, Hoveland, what to do, but really it's her that's pulling the strings; and then finally it's Cassie who saves her family. This isn't just some kind of Final Girl construct Wallen's leaning on, even though this film easily could've gone in that direction, the male characters are consistently weaker than their female counterparts. Even in the opening scene, where we see the young lady trying to escape the serial killers, I didn't think anything of it at the time, but it's the sister who catches her by shooting the victim first, so the brother can finish her off. The thing that keeps it from fully being a female empowerment movie is the same thing that keeps the thread of "some lives are worth more than others:" the fact that so many unfortunate girls are killed by these baddies.

Finally, while the other two Wallen films we've looked at on here took place in Michigan too, they could've taken place anywhere. This one, on the other hand, uses Michigan in a way that really works. I've only ever been to Michigan the one time I had to switch plans at the Detroit airport, which doesn't really count, so it's not like I'm intimately familiar with it, but there's enough ground laid by the story and scenery in this movie that I didn't need to be for it to work for me. We see so many films made in Michigan now, but so few of them use Michigan as part of the story, which to me feels like a wasted opportunity, especially with the state's tragedies and triumphs being so well documented. The abandoned buildings in Detroit that provide the playground for a trouble-making teen like Cassie, the remnants of a city that was once the engine that drove the nation; but at the same time, Cassie is the child of an upper class that also has remnants, and those remnants still exist in a way that the rest of the state, especially the rural areas, both respect and resent it. It's another area where this movie gives us a little more. This easily could've existed in a fictitious setting, and probably would've worked out fine; but by using Michigan this way, it becomes another character, one that plays an important role in how the film unfolds.

And with that, I'll wrap this up. If, looking at the cover, you're coming to this for another film about pretty young women getting killed in gruesome ways, you'll be disappointed; but if you're coming for a suspense thriller that gives you more than that in the story and performances, I think you'll be happy with this. As of right now it's available on Prime and Tubi, so I'd give it a shot on one of those.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10015244

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

Dead Zone (2022)

I was thinking it's been a long time since our last Michael Jai White film, but I forgot we did Black Friday in November. Anyway, this Tubi original had been sitting in my Tubi queue for a bit, so I figured I'd finally make it happen and get some more White on the site. In addition to us, Bulletproof Action has covered this as well.

Dead Zone takes place sometime in the future when a deadly virus has infected people and turned them into zombies. To deal with the issue, the government has bombed areas with infected people with radiation, turning the areas into "dead zones." Turns out, in one of those dead zones, a CDC prototype of a cure is waiting in a lab for someone to grab so they can mass-produce it and save the planet. As always, these kinds of missions fall to a special forces team, this time Master Chief Jeff Fahey assigns this mission to a team led by White. When they get to the dead zone, finding the prototype cure is easy, but getting out proves tough, especially when some mysterious being starts picking off White's team. What is this thing? And how can it be stopped?

This film is a definite case for why shorter is better, because overall it wasn't the best deal, but only asking for 82 minutes of my time made it much more palatable. The biggest issue for me was this construct where the radiation poisoning in the dead zone meant everyone had to wear masks and suits that made them indistinguishable from one another, which made it hard for me to figure out who was doing what. Not only that, but to show our characters' faces, they used this Iron Man style view of them from inside the mask. So it was like "who did that last action?" Then cut to character grimacing inside Iron Man-like mask to tell us. I did like the unique element they added to the standard virus makes everyone zombies paradigm with the super-human monster. Not only did it give us something more, but with White being so imposing, a super-human baddie makes it more believable that he would struggle defeating it. Beyond all that, it is fairly low-budget, doesn't give us much new for the genre, and as I mentioned was hard to follow at times; but that shorter runtime with White in the lead was enough to make this not a difficult sit. Is "not a difficult sit" a recommendation?

We're now at 22 films for Michael Jai White, our film's one Hall of Famer. Definitely 30 Club is a goal for him, and Tubi has some others beyond this that we could do, so we don't have any excuse to not get him close this year. He's someone who should probably get at least 4 films a year reviewed on our site, but this is only his third since last year at this time, so that's a problem. The issue with him here is that the construct of him being in the mask the whole time limits a bit how much we get him, as we have to take it on faith that that guy in a suit and mask that just kicked someone was him because we saw his face in the Iron Man-style screen a second later; by the same token, his character is in the film throughout, which is good. I think that's unfortunately part of the reason why he doesn't get as many reviews, he's not quite at the Dolph level where it doesn't matter what the movie is, we'll review it, so if I see something like this that doesn't look promising, and I know I'm only watching it to get more of White's movies on the site, I tend to push it down the queue. That or I miss out on it when it's available to stream, like his Never Back Down sequel that seems to pop in and out of free streamers. The reality as I'm watching this is that he should be getting better roles, like more Blood and Bone kinds of things that really show everyone what he can do, and are so exciting I can't push them down in my queue. He is in a new Dolph movie coming out in a couple months, so at least that's one we know we'll be reviewing.

We also get a scant amount of Jeff Fahey, a Fahey amuse-bouche if you will. He does concerned with a goatee really well, as evidenced by the screen grab. He also does slick military jargon while explaining a mission well too. He's had his moment of fame on the hood of a speeding car in a 90s PM flick, so I guess we can't blame him for the Trader Joe's free sample of a role he had here: "do you want to try some of these dried apples?" "No, I just need to find the cheese, but thank you." To be honest, with the 82-minute runtime, I don't know that I needed more Fahey than that. And perhaps the line at Trader Joe's is the best comp for a movie like this with that runtime. You get there and see the line is extending all the way to the produce section, and it's like "okay Matt, hunker down, you'll be here a while," but before you know it, with all the staff they have running the checkout, and the system they use where they funnel everyone in then disperse them, you're playing on your phone while someone is yelling "sir? Sir!" and you realize it's your turn to check out. Here I was like "hunker down for this standard zombie movie," and the next thing I knew I was at the hour mark and only had 20 minutes left. With a short runtime you can get away with a lot more, even some scant Jeff Fahey amuse-bouche-ery.

I completely forgot that I had a "zombies" tag, so I used it here, but when I clicked on it, the last time it was used was for Dolph's Battle of the Damned. That was in 2020, and I feel like due to the proliferation of zombie films that I must've reviewed something else that was zombie since then, but how would I know? The zombie movie feels like a lazy construct when it's not Romero or something new being done with it, and to be honest, I don't know if this movie does anything that different with it. It's low-hanging low-budget film fruit: find a small, deserted location--in this case Grand Junction, Colorado, which I've been to and can attest to it's remoteness--put some people in that zombie situation, and then load up on the extras--or if you need to save money, use the crew. Slap a couple names on the tin, and you're good to go. Beyond the runtime though, what does set this one apart is how much Michael Jai White we get. Granted, a lot of it is the Iron Man screen, but his character is in it throughout. That with the runtime mitigates the usual "oh geez, another zombie movie," eye roll a film like this may evoke, but you can also understand why people would avoid it for that--or put it off like I did. We want to say "studios should come up with more ideas," but is the zombie construct in the low-budget movie any worse than the one-name title origin movie construct from the major studios? They're both bad and they both hurt, but at least here we had a few elements mitigating the damage.

Finally, any current movie with a virus cure or vaccine construct will inevitably draw parallels to COVID. While I don't think they were using it as a metaphor, I do think we can look at the ways this movie uses the cure/vaccine that may explain why people don't get how vaccines work. Like most films, here the cure/vaccine is a MacGuffin and a Magic Shot that almost immediately makes someone who was bitten by one of our zombies better. We know when we take amoxicillin when we have an infection that one dose doesn't immediately make us better, but in the movies you don't have the luxury of multiple days to take a prescription, so whatever the miracle prototype is, it needs to work immediately. Also, this doesn't know if it wants to be a vaccine or a cure, because someone can take it after they've been bitten. If I didn't get the flu vaccine and then I catch the flu, I can't go to Rite Aid and ask for the vaccine and expect to be better immediately. The vaccine is taken before I get the flu to either prevent me from catching it altogether, or at least prevent serious illness. I think most people understand that movies aren't real, but considering how some of the misunderstanding around how vaccines work squares with the way movies use them, not to mention a large enough portion of our population thinks JFK, Jr. isn't really dead, and that a football player who had a cardiac event after he was hit in the chest is actually dead and the person we're seeing now is a body double, you never know. Either way, while I think any film coming out now that has a virus/vaccine element will feel metaphorical, I don't think that's what was going on here, I think they just wanted a MacGuffin and a Magic Bullet, and with a virus turning people into zombies, the vaccine/cure is the natural go to--and if it was meant to be a metaphor, it came off kind of clunky. Something that used to be such a simple plot device is now much more complicated in our modern world.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Currently you can get this on Tubi here in the US, as it is a Tubi original. I know that "it's not a difficult sit" isn't the most glowing review, but for what is pretty well-worn territory, giving us some solid enough Michael Jai White, and getting us in and out in 82 minutes, it's not a bad sit.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt18396866

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

Original Gangsters (1996)

This is one I originally saw in the theater when it came out, but based on the box office numbers, and the fact that it was starring and put together by DTVC Hall of Famer Fred Williamson, and it featured another, Wings Hauser, plus it made under the threshold in box office gate, I figured we'd give it a look. In addition to us, Chris at Bulletproof, Ty and Brett at Comeuppance, and Cool Target have covered this.

Original Gangsters has Fred Williamson as John Bookman, who, when a gang shoots his father, comes to his hometown and rounds up his old crew to take the gang down. Who is said old crew? Everyone you can imagine, like Pam Grier, Richard Roundtree, and Ron O'Neal. He tries to get help from the mayor, Charles "Napes" Napier, but the guy working under him, Wings Hauser, gives them the run around. He tries to work with the police, but detectives Robert Forster and Frank Pesce are no help. Now it's time to take back their town from these gangsters, and they need to do it on their own. Those poor kids won't know what hit them when these Original Gangsters come for them.

This was a ton of fun, even coming back to it over 25 years later. First and foremost, the cast is fantastic, led by the great Fred Williamson. He calls in everyone he uses except for David Carradine and Bubba Smith--hell, we even get Frank Pesce! This cast then delivers in all the ways you'd want them to. If you heard that Larry Cohen was directing a Fred Williamson movie with all your greats from the 70s, this is the movie you'd want it to be. Not only was it a lot of fun, but also very powerful and sobering in its depiction of the crime and violence in parts of the US that have been abandoned by the rest of the world and left to the gangs to run. According to IMDb, Cohen said this was released the same week as Twister, which was your typical TNT New Classic that dominated the box office at the time, so that explains why this didn't do so well. That's a shame, because  this was every bit the new classic too. At least you can come back to it now and stream it.

27 movies now for Fred Williamson, but also because he directed some of the scenes in this, he gets a director credit, making that 11 for him, furthering his entry into the 20-10 Club--20+ acting credits and 10+ directing credits--a club that has only one member, him. We're also close to finally getting him into the 30 Club, an honor that is long overdue. What makes this film so great, is that it shows how beyond being an actor and director, Williamson is someone who puts films together. And had it not been for Twister, maybe this leads to other big projects for him; but unfortunately it was released the same weekend as Twister, which made this his last gasp at a big screen project. It's a shame he never did get bigger backing for any of his films, because it would've been cool to see what he could've done; on the other hand, he still gave us some classics despite that lack of backing, and I think this one can be placed among those.

In my recent Savage Beach post I talked about Dona Speir being among the greatest female action stars of all time. In this film we had Pam Grier, who I think is the greatest. She was fantastic here, in exactly the way she's always fantastic, as someone who's extremely strong, but not trying to be one of the guys strong, she's strong on her own terms. A year after this she was reunited with Robert Forster in Jackie Brown, where she does what I think is my favorite work of hers, and while Jackie Brown as a whole isn't my favorite Tarantino film, her work in it, especially the scenes with Forster, were my favorite scenes of his movies. One thing people wonder is why she isn't in the DTVC Hall of Fame, and the main reason has always been that she hasn't done that much DTV stuff. I think maybe with her there could be an exception just because of the impact she's had on DTV and low-budget film making--and really film making as a whole. I think after Williamson, out of all the other big names in this, Pam Grier is the one where I say "they couldn't have made this without her," and every scene she's in she reminds us why. This is now four films for her on the site, and the first since 2009's Wilder review. I don't know how many more times we'll see her, but every chance we get I'll try to grab it.

Usually we prioritize the film's Hall of Famers in our paragraphs, but we made an exception for the great Pam Grier, and I think if anyone would understand it would be Wings Hauser. We last saw him in 2021 with Wilding, and at that time I said we were creeping our way up to the 30 Club for him with 21 tags, so now 18 months later to only be at 22 means we're not really putting in much work toward that. In looking at his bio, we should be able to scrounge up another 8 films for him, it's just a matter of when we're able to do it. 90s Wings Hauser was prime Hauser, and he gives us that here in the short scenes he has. And acting opposite Napes makes it even better, Williamson just knew what he was doing with these guys, even if he only had them for a short time, and those guys take a film like this and make it that much better. How I lost Wings in the shuffle I don't know, but I'll do my best to get him back sooner next time.

Finally, in deciding whether or not a movie should be included on the site, for "DTV" one qualifier I use is if the film grossed under $10 million at the box office. I have made exceptions, like Rocky IV and the Expendables films, but what's interesting here is I'm making an exception for a film that I actually saw in the theater. My buddy that I saw it with and I were fans of Fred Williamson, Richard Roundtree, and Pam Grier's 70s Blaxploitation stuff, and the idea of this film felt perfect to us, the way The Expendables felt perfect to me and the people who enjoy this blog back in 2010. It wasn't until I was older that I understood how Hollywood in the 80s didn't give these great stars the big screen roles they should've gotten. I think the biggest legacy of that is when those click bait-y "movie" sites make their top female action stars lists, and leave off Pam Grier but have names like Angelina Jolie, Linda Hamilton, and Scarlett Johansson near the top. It's like an attempt to diminish this whole contribution to the world of cinema, which not only smacks as ignorant, but I also think is a travesty. Shaft, Mean Johnny Barrows, Boss [N-word], Foxy Brown, etc., to me at least, are extremely important in getting us to where we are today in the art of film making, but also played a key role in making me the kind of fan of film that I am. As much as this movie had a getting the bang back together feel, it also was a celebration of that legacy of these stars, and 25+ years later, the fact that I was able to experience it on the big screen I think is pretty cool.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently stream this on Tubi, Prime, or Pluto. Streaming it free is a great way to go. Queue this up for a Saturday night movie. You won't be disappointed.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117260

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