Delta Delta Die! (2003)

In looking to get more Julie Strain on the site, I saw this on Tubi and figured it would do the trick. I also hadn't done horror in a while, and this looked like a fun one, especially considering it was produced by the great Charles Band. With all this going for it, let's see how it did.

Delta Delta Die! is about a sorority that is renown for their fantastic meat pies. Turns out, those meat pies have a secret ingredient: the flesh of meathead jocks. Led by their house mother, Julie Strain, the ladies need to lure as many men as possible to the sorority house so they have enough beefy man flesh to fill their buffet. The problem is, intrepid intern Tobias is onto these ladies, and he has a plan to stop them: call in former sister Brinke Stevens, who has a history with Strain. Stevens is up to the task, so she comes to town to help Tobias take these women down. But will Julie Strain go down that easily? 

This was fun, but kind of unremarkable. Except for Julie Strain. She comes in and really gets after it, killing poor jocks, throwing their parts into a blender, chewing on them and spitting them out, all while wearing a top that shows off her boobs. Then we have Brinke Stevens, another B-movie horror legend, who's on a collision course to wackiness with Strain, and we're treated to a Russ Meyer-style wrestling match between the two of them for an end fight. I think from the unremarkable standpoint though, there wasn't much going on in the scenes the two of them weren't in. Yes, if I take myself back to 2003, as a 24-year-old I would've easily been lured into the sorority house by the ladies, but fortunately in 2003 I was a bit heavy, and at 5' 7", definitely no chiseled jock, so I guess I could take solace in knowing I wouldn't have been a target of them. And to that point, I think turning the usual serial killer targeting women thing on its ear was a nice change of pace, and Strain is the woman you'd want to deliver that kind of evil. I don't know if this is a go out of your way for it movie, but if you want something that brings you back to a different time, this is a fun one.

We're now at 5 films for Julie Strain on the site, so we have a long way to go to get her tag count up to a respectable level. This is also our first film since her Hall of Fame induction back in October of 2021, so we've had ample opportunities since then to review more of her stuff. And watching her here reminds me of why I should be getting more of her stuff up, because she took what was a rather unremarkable low-budget horror film and made it something more. She just has such a fantastic presence, and she absolutely goes for it in every scene. It's a shame we lost her, and a shame I'm only now catching up to getting more of her films on the DTVC, because she's one of the true queens of DTV and low-budget films. I think one fear I sometimes have when I see one of her films listed, is that she might not be in it as much. Another concern is, like Battle Queen 2020, that the Tubi version is edited so we don't get the whole thing--and I'd love to cover that one, because it's her and the great Jeff Wincott! Either way, I need to get over those concerns and just review more of her stuff, and I'll start making that happen.

Remember when sending emails looked like that? I didn't, I was so used to how they looked now, I'd completely forgotten. Even the Arial font doesn't look like that Arial anymore. It's an interesting thing about time and this movie, because it also felt like a 90s movie that was made in the 2000s. Like the clothes and technology--like emails and cellphones--were definitely early 2000s, but the vibe of the movie was like something from 10 years before. So I was watching a film from 20 years ago that felt like it was made ten years too late. It was a difficult thing to wrap my brain around. And then in that mental miasma, Julie Strain showed up in a top where her boobs came through, and killed two jocks and ground their flesh up in a blender while chewing on and spitting out bits of their flesh, and it all made sense again, only to have the scene change and my brain warped again by the mix of something from 20 years ago that felt like it was made 10 years too late. Is there a term for that? "Deja vu all over again"? "I'm older than I'm younger than I was"? Maybe the Germans have something for it, like "Scheissezeitgehirn"?

The other B-movie legend in this is Brinke Stevens, someone who also hasn't been on the site much. In Droid Gunner she played a mutant with feline features; and then in 24 Hours to Midnight, she was the voice of the Rothrock ninja called in by Fong to add in scenes Rothrock wasn't there for after she quit the picture. The thing that makes Brinke Stevens great here, is she's the only person who could take Julie Strain down, anyone else we wouldn't believe it. Unlike Strain, who I know needs to be on here more and it's my bad that she isn't, Brinke Stevens, while someone I've always enjoyed seeing, does much more horror, and over time the DTVC has slanted more action. That wasn't our intention, but the action reviews always garnered more engagement from readers, which led to more requests and recommendations, which then led to more action films getting reviewed on the site at the expense of the other genres. Perhaps if I do get to more horror stuff down the road, we'll see more of her here, because Stevens is truly another one of the greats.

Getting back to the lack of horror on the site, in the 90s and 2000s, my friends and I watched as much, if not more, DTV horror, and something like this would've been a rental we'd have gotten for a get-together. As I've mentioned above though, as I was posting reviews, the action ones were getting more engagement. One area where you see why, is a DTV horror film might have 20 or 30 external reviews, whereas a PM flick might only have 5-7. The action review ecosystem was much smaller then, and people looking for that kind of thing had fewer options. The result is, we're at a place now where the last horror film I reviewed was Ash and Bone in February, which was a screener request, and then the last one I did on my own before this was Black Friday back in November. I don't know if that will ever change though, because we have become so action oriented--compare the now 146 horror tags versus 809 action tags--but I could stand to mix in horror more often I think, if only because it was such a huge part of my DTV origins, and I don't think we'd have a DTVC without it.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Here in the States you can get this on Tubi. Outside the US, I'm not sure, and I'm not sure you need to go too far out of your way for it. Strain is fantastic, and Stevens is a great foil to Strain, but beyond that, it doesn't have a lot going on. 

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0349343

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

Lady Bloodfight (2016)

This is one I've been meaning to get to for some time, evidenced by the fact that it's not only a complete the triangle film, with Brett and Ty at Comeuppance and Mitch from the Video Vacuum having already done it, but it's also what I've now dubbed a "superfecta," as this is one that Chris the Brain at Bulletproof Action has done as well--the superfecta bet being the one where you select the horses that come in 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and now me with 4th. We'll see if that term sticks.

Lady Bloodfight is a take on Bloodsport, only with female fighters. In this case, two rivals, Wai (Kathy Wu) and Shu (Muriel Hofman) fight to a draw in the previous tourney, so to claim victory, they need to train new fighters to win in their stead for the next one. Wai starts by training a Ling (Jenny Wu), thief who broke into her dojo, and then Shu follows by training Jane (Amy Johnston), an American from Pittsburgh who has come to Hong Kong to find out what happened to her father when he came to compete 18 years ago. Will one of these women prevail?

This is the real deal. The fights are great, it's well-shot, well-acted, it just all works the way you'd want it to. It's directed by Chris Nahon of Kiss of the Dragon fame, and written by Bey Logan of The Medallion and White Tiger fame. Yes, the plot is a bit derivative, but it has some unique elements that give it enough for me, especially when you pair it with the action and performances. I think Amy Johnston is set up to be the hero, and it does work from that perspective; but the rivalry between Wai and Shu is prominent as well; and I think the Ling character was compelling too, making it a shame we didn't get more of her, but I also understood to get us down to 100 minutes we needed to cut things somewhere. Another thing that could've been cut was the whole conflict between Jane and Shu, as it felt a bit contrived, like conflict for the sake of conflict, and for a fight movie I don't know that we really needed it--though it did give us a great scene between Ling and Jane in the aftermath that was really good. Even that complaint is a small one, because overall this worked, and I really enjoyed it.

This is now three Amy Johnston films so far on the site, and in each one she's given a great performance. The numbers aren't quite there yet, but when you think about how a Mimi Lesseos only has five films where she was the lead, Johnston could be on her way to being one of the top female action stars, especially in the DTV realm. After Rothrock, there's a large drop down to names like Kathleen Kinmont, but Amy Johnston should have more films where she's the lead than Kinmont did. Zoe Bell is another one that I need to catch up on, and in looking at her CV, she has more stuff I could review on the site than Johnston does. Either way, the potential is there for Johnston to be among those names, especially with the roles she's had so far. She has those action lead qualities that make us want to see what she has coming next, so hopefully we keep getting stuff like this from here--and if we do, it's going to be exciting to follow her growth. One thing that could possibly derail her: getting cancelled like Gina Carano did. Please Amy, we implore you, don't tweet any dumb stuff!

With men as the action leads, the bonds that characters form are in more of a bro vein. "Thanks for havin' my six man." "Let's grab a beer and get into a bar fight." "They killed my bro, time for a dysfunctionally masculine cry, followed by a vengeance mission." With women though, emotions are considered okay, and if the characters form more of an emotional bond, like Johnston and Hofman form as Hofman is training her, we as the audience are more okay with it--which shouldn't be the case, we should be okay with dudes doing that too. Anyway, I liked how they used the bond Johnston and Hofman were forming to juxtapose with how Kathy Wu's character was training Jenny Wu, where Kathy was stricter and harsher. The problem was, with harsher one, we don't get enough development of Jenny Wu's character, in part because we couldn't, but it made the juxtaposition less complete; but even bigger, when Hofman's character gets upset with Johnston after she takes out a gang of guys who mugged her earlier in the film, it also doesn't fit with the emotional bond Hofman and Johnston have formed. To make it work, they needed to play more into why Hofman's character would've been hurt by what Johnston's did--maybe go back to what happened in the past between Hofman and Wu. It's that thing where action filmmakers are trying new things when they have women in the lead, but ultimately they need to fall back on old male-lead tropes. Hopefully as time goes on they'll be able to break away from them more. A great example getting out of those male-dominated cliches was Zoe Saldana's Colombiana.

Amy Johnston's lead was solid enough that we didn't have a Destro Effect, but I really liked Jenny Wu's Ling character, and I also liked how they used the harsh methods Kathy Wu's character employed to train her to create some ambiguity in Ling's motivation. In a different world, Ling would have been the hero of this movie, and maybe she has to fight her trainer, Wai, in the finale. That was another aspect of this that was different from other tournament fight films, there wasn't a Bolo Yeung or Michel Qissi looming at the end of it all. The closest we had was Mayling Ng's Svietta, who was great as the Tong Po-esque baddie, but with the construct of Wai and Shu needing to train fighters to win for them, Johnston had to fight Svietta earlier on. Maybe the better approach is if Ling and Johnston's Jane befriend each other, and Svietta is the evil looming in the finale. As an aside, I didn't realize this, but this is the third film for Ng on the site too, the other two being Acceleration and Debt Collectors. Hopefully we'll see her again, because she was also great here.

Finally, from a personal standpoint, this film features two cities I've always wanted to visit, Hong Kong and Pittsburgh. Obviously one is much further from me in Philadelphia than the other, but it's interesting how Philadelphia and Pittsburgh are connected--or not connected. My wife and I don't have a car or drive, so there is no driving option for us to get from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh for me, but that seems to be the best way to get there. There's really only one train a day that connects the two, and going west, that train gets to Pittsburgh in the evening and comes back to Philadelphia the next morning. So that means to do anything there, like catch a Pirates game, I'd need at least a two-night stay. You can also do the Megabus, which also only has one trip a day, so if I'm doing that the train's nicer than the bus; or Greyhound, which has more bus times, bit do I want to take a Greyhound just to say I've been to Pittsburgh? Compare that to Boston, which is roughly the same distance away, but has myriad train options, plus flights aren't as expensive either. You could make the point that the big difference between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh versus Philadelphia and Boston, is one of those two has one of the largest cities in the world between it. Fair enough, but I don't think you could find a similar situation in Europe where two large cities like Philadelphia and Pittsburgh are connected by only one train trip a day. The answer is always "Americans just love their cars," but the Germans love their cars even more, and they have no problem connecting major cities with trains, and trains that are faster than traveling by car too.

Since I've spent a paragraph ranting about the lack of train travel outside the Northeast Corridor in the US, it's probably better to wrap this up. Here in the States this is available to stream on Prime, Plex, Pluto, and my favorite, Tubi. If you haven't seen it yet, it's time to make it happen, as this is a lot of fun, with some fantastic martial arts action. It's the great irony of America: tons of great content to stream for free, but you have to drive everywhere so you can't watch any of it on a long trip. Maybe Tubi, Netflix, Amazon, etc. should team up with Amtrak to get us more train service... sorry, I said I was done ranting...

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4327752

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

WEAPONiZED (2016)

For our non-podcast post this week, I had planned to look at a different film, but with Tom Sizemore's passing, I felt we needed to pay him a fitting tribute. The question was what movie to choose, because Sizemore had a lot of films that he wasn't in a lot. I felt like this one would be a pretty good bet, because it not only had him, but Mickey Rourke, Johnny Messner, and Michael Pare. Let's see how it did.

WEAPONiZED takes place in the future, or not, but has Messner as a detective working on a case of a mass shooting that seems pretty open and shut. They have the guy on camera doing it, and they arrest him. Only the guy seems to have no idea he did anything. After proclaiming his innocence, suddenly he decides he's guilty, then jams a pen in his eye to kill himself. That seems fishy to Messner, so he investigates, and Mickey Rourke gives him some breadcrumbs. Turns out arms contractor Tom Sizemore, with Rourke's help, has developed the ability to move one person's consciousness into another's, essentially weaponizing them. Now Messner needs to expose this in order to save the day.

This is a bit of a tough sit, and I think the reason is the idea of someone controlling someone else's body has been used before. Once we see where it's going, it's more a matter of waiting for Messner to find out too, and for us to figure out the mechanism through which it happens--and the idea that one's consciousness could somehow just be magically transported into someone else's brain is a large bridge to cross. All that being said, we have fun performances by Rourke and Sizemore, with a little Pare in full Brooklyn accent sprinkled in. I think Messner really goes for it too, but in watching him here I feel like he deserved better. We get glimpses of his character being some kind of cop on the edge, plus detective savant, but it's never fully realized. We also had a couple interesting supporting roles with Taylor Cole and Jon Foo. Taylor Cole, who we've seen before in an April Fool's Day, is playing Messner's wife, and while that's mostly one-note, she has one interesting scene where her mind is being controlled and she attacks Messner. More of that would've been fun, because we've seen the supportive wife to the hero that she plays the rest of the time too much. And then Jon Foo, who plays Jin in Tekken, is a computer hacker guy helping Messner. He gets to use his martial arts when Sizemore sends some goons to take him down. It was another moment that the movie zigged where another film would have zagged, because usually the guy who helps the hero gets killed, but again, we didn't get enough of that kind of thing. Ultimately this doesn't give us enough of those inspired moments for this to fully work, which is unfortunate. 

For someone as big as Tom Sizemore, this is only his 6th tag on the site, and of those, one was for his screenwriting credit on Asian Connection. I think this film is a good indicator of why that is, because I don't know if I would have reviewed it if not for a Sizemore in memoriam post, because despite the names, there isn't a Hall of Famer or other big name, and you just never know with Sizemore on the tin how much you can expect to see him. But like the last film of his we reviewed, Abstruse, there's this effortless quality that he brings, like he's acting well without even trying. It's not mailing it in though, it's something more like an acting savant, and I've always been drawn to that when I see his performances. My favorite of his roles was in Point Break, where he pours the beer on his cereal, and then later lays into Busey and Reeves when they screw up his bust. His pairings with Kathryn Bigelow, Point Break, Strange Days, and Blue Steel, might be my favorite director/actor pairing, even above ones like Scorsese/De Niro or Kurosawa/Mifune. The legacy he leaves behind is a complicated one, but I think he goes down from a raw talent standpoint as one of the best, and while he has left us too soon, he also has so many great performances, even in small roles in DTV films, that are waiting to be discovered. Here's to you Mr. Sizemore, truly one of the all-time greats.

According to the trivia on IMDb, when Sizemore did Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man with Mickey Rourke, he criticized Rourke, saying he didn't act, just smoked cigarettes. They do have a couple scenes together in this, and Rourke doesn't really make any sense, with his glasses, long hair (described by Ty from Comeuppance as a "Nic Cage wig"), and Breathe-Right (TM) strip on his nose. It's not like Sizemore and Madsen, Rourke is something else entirely, and Sizemore acts opposite him accordingly. It's a unique element of this movie that gives us something you don't usually get. The problem is, for all the unique elements we get, we also have not-so-unique constructs that don't always work--like Rourke with a Nic Cage wig and Breathe-Right strip on his nose. We as the viewer are like Sizemore, wondering what we're supposed to do with this, and when Rourke tells Sizemore "I want out," Sizemore's like "fine, you're out." The thing is though, when Messner or his partner act opposite Rourke, they're treating him like he looks perfectly normal. That's the key with Sizemore, he knows how ridiculous Rourke looks, and he wants us to know he knows, yet he's a professional and talented enough actor that he can show us without breaking character. And then like a true actor, he uses the disdain he has for Rourke to fuel the scene where he has to kill him.

Initially this was only the third Messner movie on the site, which didn't sound right, especially since Ring of Death wasn't one of those movies. So I checked, and this is actually his sixth. Still not a lot, right? We do have some others of his in the hopper, like the Dolph flick 4Got10, or a couple Willis flicks that we've covered on the pod, A Day to Die and American Siege, the latter of which where he plays Jon Hamm playing a White Separatist Militia leader. (Interesting enough, Messner is 11 months older than Hamm.) The complaint with Messner here is the one we usually make, that his personality and charisma take a back seat to a one-note, brooding hero, but this character did have a bit more personality, which was good. I'm still pushing for that buddy cop movie series with Michael Jai White. Maybe the first film could have Rourke looking like he does here as the main baddie. Absolute gold.

Finally, I watched this film from a hotel room in Boston while I was there for work, and the TV was higher-def than I'm used to. To watch the movie, I cast my Tubi app to the TV, which was cool that I could do that, but with the TV's resolution, the movie didn't look like a movie anymore, there was no film quality to it, it was too clear. I almost blamed the movie for that, but watching it on my computer to get images, it looks like a normal movie does. I think that added quality didn't do the movie any favors. It stood to benefit from a little low-def'ing. It's just another added issue that DTV films have to contend with, these fancy new TVs create a clarity of the picture that the original film hadn't planned on. Does that mean to keep doing the site, I can't get a fancy new TV? It's not anything I need to worry about now, but down the road I guess. What a thing to complain about, right? My company is good enough to pay for me to stay in a nice enough hotel that the TV makes my DTV movies on Tubi look too clear.

And with that, let's wrap this up. If you need a Sizemore to celebrate his life, this might do the trick--though better to do Point Break. Beyond that, this film has some unique elements that buttress an otherwise not unique film concept. Is that enough to get you over the hump? Probably not, but it did the trick for me here. We're going to miss Tom Sizemore, such a talent, someone who embraced quantity in his projects, but also maintained a high level of quality in his performances. It bears repeating: truly one of the greats.

For more into: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4776564

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

Millionaires' Express aka aka Shanghai Express aka Foo gwai lip che (1986)

I've been on MVD's promotional email list for sometime now, and when I saw this gem, the Arrow release of Millionaires' Express, I had to ask for a promotional copy of the two-disc Blu-ray. I figured we had a lot of readers who'd be curious about it, and they agreed and hooked me up in order to write this review. In addition to us, our friends at Comeuppance have reviewed this film as well.

Millionaires' Express has Sammo Hung as a bit of a rogue who returns to his hometown, and when he discovers a new train full of rich people will be coming through, he hatches a plan to make up for his past misdeeds. The idea: blow up the train tracks so the train has to stop in his hometown, forcing the passengers to spend money there. As always though, when there's rich people, there are other opportunists, including a group of bandits who take over the town. Now Hung needs to work with local police captain Yuen Biao, and the federal agent who's been trying to bring him down, Kenny Bee, to liberate his hometown from these baddies.

This film is a classic of Hong Kong cinema, and this Arrow Blu-ray release definitely does it justice. The transfer is fantastic, and as someone who grew up watching Golden Harvest films on cheaper VHS versions, it was like having the windshield cleaned during a long road trip. The extras are great too, especially the Cynthia Rothrock interviews, but also some great ones with Sammo Hung, Yuen Biao, and Yukari Oshima. Another thing that's really cool, is there are four versions of the movie: the Hong Kong theatrical cut, the extended international cut, the English export cut, and then a hybrid cut that combines everything to give us the longest possible version. What I really like about that is we get a sense of how a film is marketed for different markets, something in the past that required finding copies in Chinatown that may or may not have subtitles--and again, the quality of those copies won't compare to what you're seeing here. If I have any issues, it's the sound on Frank Djeng's commentary. For $40 MSRP, I'd expect the sound to be louder and clearer, especially when there's no CC option for it, but that's really my only issue. For the physical media collectors among us, this is a must add to your library.

Because I don't have a way to grab images from a Blu-ray, I needed to go to the trailer Arrow has on their site and get images from that. With that in mind, it was easier to get shots of Cynthia Rothrock and Richard Norton, but I don't want to give the impression that I'm spotlighting them at the expense of other great names who had bigger parts, like Yuen Biao. The thing is though, we get a lot of Rothrock in the special features, and I think her fight with Sammo Hung is such a big moment in the movie, that I feel okay spotlighting her in the second paragraph, especially since she's also the biggest name from our site in this. She has three interview extras, plus she does some select scene commentary--again with Djeng, so I had trouble hearing his questions, but could hear her responses. This was only her second film after Yes, Madam!, so in the interviews we really get a sense of how these early roles she had shaped her as an action star. In the original Hong Kong cut she only has the one fight with Hung, but in the extended cuts she has an additional scene where she and Norton have a scuffle with the rest of their fellow bandits. With all the names in this, seeing her hold her own with them at such a young stage in her career really gives us a sense of where she was headed as an action star, and the extras in this Blu-ray set enhance that perspective.

We haven't seen Sammo Hung on the site before, so this is a great first appearance. Here in the States he had a good run on Martial Law, but in Hong Kong he's one of the all-time greats, and he shows us that here, both with his performance, and his directing. He also has two great interviews in the Arrow collection, and they give us a lot of background for what he was going for. The East meets Western is the obvious one, as this has a great Western feel; but he also talked about the comedic scenes, the challenge of getting all of these names together and giving them enough screen time, and even things like how his legs went numb after he filmed too long in the snow in only his boxers. That's the thing though, Sammo could ask a lot of his actors, because he was putting himself out there too. For so long, we enjoyed these movies on lower-quality VHS, so to have a transfer worthy of the classic he directed I think can't be understated.

Just the same, while Sammo put himself out there, there were times that he asked a bit too much of his stars, especially the great Yuen Biao. In one of the most amazing stunts I've seen in a film, Biao jumps off a 4 story building and lands on some padding Sammo buried in the ground. He then jumps up and walks over to a woman before the scene cuts away. In one of the extras, Biao gives an interview where he describes what it was like doing that scene. In that same interview, he talks about his long relationship with Sammo, and how Sammo would rib him a lot like he was a younger brother. I get that, but he also obviously kidded because he loved and respected Biao, because he gives Biao a lot of great fight scenes, and Biao hits them out of the park. Unlike Sammo, we have seen Yuen Biao here at the DTVC before, when we reviewed Righting Wrongs, which he was fantastic in as well. This is the classic it is because of Biao's work, it's really electric; but it's great as well that we have that interview among the extras, because he gives us more background on his career, and that makes his scenes in the film an even better watch--which is saying a lot considering they're amazing already!

With so many names in this I'm bound to miss some, but I'll try in this paragraph to grab as many as I can. First, we had two other Hall of Famers: Richard Norton, who teamed up with Rothrock for the first time here, and not only had a great fight scene, but also met an untimely end by a samurai sword; and then Bolo Yeung had a one-scene cameo. Yukari Oshima played one of three samurais, and also had one of the interviews in the extras, in her case a 30-minute one where she gets into how she ended up in this film, and how she got her start. We've seen her before in The Story of Ricky, plus she's done some films in the Philippines, including some with the late Darren Shahlavi that I need to check out. Her scenes are next level as well, and in the interview she talked about how Hong Kong directors like Sammo just let her get after it, as opposed to Japanese directors that wanted her to hold back and not deviate from the script. Finally, two of my favorite performances were Kenny Bee as the federal agent tracking Sammo, and then the great Richard Ng, who plays Han, a philandering millionaire who's dressed like Sherlock Holmes. We've also seen Ng here before, in Yes, Madam! 

And with that we'll wrap this up. Thank you again to MVD Entertainment for sending me this screener copy of the new Arrow Blu-ray release of Millionaires' Express. If you're a physical media collector, or a Hong Kong cinema collector, or someone who just likes this kind of thing, this is worth picking up and adding to your collection. 

For more into: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091091

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

Guns (1990)

As I'm continuing my work to get all of the Andy Sidaris LETHAL Ladies films here on the site, it was time for this gem from 1990. Beyond the usual suspects, the film also featured Erik Estrada as the baddie, and Danny Trejo as his main henchman. How does it get better than that? In addition to us, our friend Mitch at the Video Vacuum has covered this as well, so you can go to his site to see what he thought.

Guns has our crew at it again, this time we start in Hawai'i, where baddie Erik Estrada hires two assassins to kill Dona Speir's DEA partner, this time played by Roberta Vasquez. A case of mistaken identity leads them to kill the wrong person, but now Speir and Vasquez are on the case, along with Bruce Penhall and Michael Shane (back again as our Abilene who can't shoot straight). They track the killers to Las Vegas, where they suspect Estrada may be in on it. Not a job they can handle alone, so they team up with other old friends, including Edy (Cynthia Brimhall), who sold her restaurant in Hawai'i and now sings while working undercover there. The thing is though, could this be exactly what Estrada wants? Turns out, if they all aren't in Hawai'i, they can't stop his arms shipment coming through there.

This is an interesting entry in the series for sure. It has a fantastic cast, but in some ways that spreads us thin because we have a lot of moving parts. In later entries Sidaris does a better job of using a bigger cast like this so we feel like we don't lose anyone along the way. This one also has less nudity, which is interesting, because a big reason why Hope Marie Carlton was removed from the series after Savage Beach was she refused to do nude scenes, so had she stuck it out she may have only had to do one or two. The action was pretty solid though, as we had ninjas (one of whom was played by James Lew), exploding planes, and exploding Estradas. There were some bittersweet moments as well, as we lost Lisa London's Rocky early on, killed in the line of duty; and this is also bodybuilder John Brown's last entry in the series. The other thing was, with Estrada as the main baddie, our great Sidaris mainstay Rodrigo Obregon only has one scene, which is enough to get him a tag here, but not enough of him in a Sidaris film for my liking. Overall though, this gives you what you came for, and like all of Sidaris's LETHAL Ladies films, it's a fun watch.

With that larger cast, we don't see as much of Speir as the action lead, but the film makes no mistake that she's it. William Bumiller plays a DEA higher-up on the case with them, and there's some sense that he kind of calls the shots, but ultimately when things need doin', it's Speir that gets 'em done. She has three great scenes in particular, first being that one I took the screen of above, where she downs an airplane with her rocket launcher. Later, when ninjas invade her workout session with Shane and John Brown, she comes in and saves the day, shooting Lew with a large gun. And then finally, her end showdown with Estrada, where she brings her rocket launcher back and makes sure to use all four rockets on him. Even with her role being smaller in screen time due to the size of the cast, she reminds us why she's one of the all-time queens of action with each scene she's in. Beyond her, we have Cynthia Brimhall returning to play Edy, and Roberta Vasquez returning too, but to play a new character as Speir's partner. Same thing with both women in this, characters with a lot of agency who can take care of business and don't need their men to bail them out. The three of them should've been the real Charlie's Angels, I would've loved to have seen what they and Sidaris could've done with that movie adaptation. I've been on the fence about Speir's addition to the Hall of Fame, but I think, despite the low number of tags she'll have when all is said and done, the place she has as one of the all-time action queens is too hard to pass up.

Speaking of tags to get into the Hall of Fame, Danny Trejo is now at 29, and as we discovered with the Asylum, 30 Club is automatic entry. Whether we do another Trejo film before the fall '23 inductions, I think we should get him in anyway, because with that many tags and his volume of DTV work, he deserves it--but I think he will get at least one more tag before then, because he was in 4Got10, one of the last Dolph DTV films we have to review on the site. To get to this film on his IMDb bio, you need to page down a lot, but even in 1990 he was working a lot, as that same year he also had Marked for Death and Maniac Cop 2 come out. Here he plays Estrada's main henchman, so he's in the film a fair amount. This is unfortunately his only Sidaris film, but the fact that he was in it among his many other acting credits is really fun, and he does a great job with it. Truly one of the greats who will finally be getting his due with the DTVC this fall.

On the other end of the tag spectrum, this is only Erik Estrada's fourth, and first since we did Caged Fury in 2012. There are a couple of his I should've done by now, including the 80s classic Light Blast, and the PM flick Night of the Wilding. His performance here was a reminder of why I shouldn't have taken so long to get more of his stuff on here. It's not like he has a ton of DTV work, with more TV appearances and TV movies to his credit, but there's enough that he shouldn't have gone 11 years between posts. At the very least, we'll see him again soon when we do Do or Die, the next film we have to cover in Sidaris's LETHAL Ladies series.

Finally, a chunk of this film took place at The Rio hotel and resort in Vegas, which is a place I've actually been to. When I visited my friends in Vegas in 2013, they had a suite comped due to their poker play that we stayed in. I feel like this entrance was exactly as it looked then, over 20 years later. Last fall I had to go to San Francisco for work, and my initial flight to Oakland was cancelled, so I had to get another that involved an 8-hour layover in Vegas, but other than that, I haven't been back to Vegas since then. Seeing the Rio though brings back memories to that trip ten years ago. I was there for a week, but after about three days I'd exhausted everything I could do, and everything else cost money, and consistent streams of money. One thing that's interesting about the way Sidaris uses Vegas, is he doesn't focus on gambling. No one is playing the slots, or betting on NFL games, or belly-up to the blackjack table. We see the Rio because that advertising is helping to keep down costs and allows Sidaris to make his movie the way he wants to make it, but the Rio we're sold is less about gambling and more about luxury suites with maybe a Chuck McGann magic show or a Cynthia Brimhall musical performance thrown in. For people who have never been before, I think Vegas is worth it once, but a week is probably too long. Mix in a trip to see the Grand Canyon too.

And with that, let's wrap this up. As of this writing, all of Sidaris's LETHAL Ladies films are free to stream on Tubi and Plex here in the States. There's also a Mill Creek Blu-ray set. While this isn't my favorite of them, I don't know that there's a bad one of this series, and with that in mind Guns is definitely a great time.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099720

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