Left for Dead (2007)

This is one I've been meaning to cover for a long time, but I had trouble finding it. It was available to rent, and I considered doing that, but then Vudu--which is now "Fandango at Home"--had it, and after them, the Roku Channel, so between the two I was able to finally make it happen.

Left for Dead is DTVC Hall of Famer Albert Pyun's mix of the Western and Horror genres. In it we have a town that was overrun by their women of the night--or "whores" as the opening backstory so lovingly calls them--who kill everyone except for the local reverend, because he makes a deal with the devil so he can finally get revenge on them. He roams the town, waiting for them to come back, and 15 years later it happens when one of the ladies' daughter is chasing down the man who may or may not have raped her and made her pregnant. At the same time, Victoria Maurette also wants that man, so they're all on a collision course to wackiness--with a murderous ghost reverend waiting for them!

This could've been one of Pyun's better films, but he relied really heavily on a freeze-frame technique that bogged things down. Here and there I think it could've worked, but the volume of it made it hard to get as stuck in as I'd have liked to. This is also darker and gorier, which, for someone like me who's on the squeamish side, was something that could be harder to watch, but I could manage that better than the constant freeze frames. The thing about the freeze frames is it betrayed how well this was shot, and the great environment they were shooting in in Argentina. The other thing is I really liked Victoria Maurette as our heroine, and Andres Bagg as the baddie, the problem was, they were adversaries more out of situation than any kind of common past--the baddie had his bone to pick with the ladies of the night that laid waste to his town and killed everyone, while Maurette had her bone to pick with the other guy that was accused of rape. I think it would've been better if she was seeking out the baddie as a source of conflict. Overall, as a Pyun fan, I liked what he was going for, and I liked a lot of what this had in it, I just wish he'd gone lighter on the freeze frames.

Our last Pyun review was August of 2022, so this is the first time we've reviewed one of his films since he's passed, which makes this one a little sad. I probably should've reviewed it sooner as a tribute to him like I've done for other legends who have left us, but this wasn't as available, and I created a Letterboxd list where I ranked his films instead, which is something that I think is a little more fitting since we've covered almost all of his films at this point. Where I'd put this one on that list is tough to say. That freeze frame thing is not just me nitpicking, it was tough for me to take. When I reviewed Bulletface I mentioned it then as well, even though it wasn't as frequent as it was in this one. One point I made was, in the age of streaming, the freeze frames feel like buffering, which makes them all the more intrusive, and Pyun actually appreciated that point, as it wasn't something he considered, but it made sense to him. What I love here though is the genre mixing and the imagery. Victoria Maurette as a gunslinger in her dirty wedding dress shooting at a reverend who's been cursed by the devil but given supernatural powers. That was delivered exactly as he wanted it to. And I think the freeze frames were his way of throwing back to the old grindhouse films, especially the old Italian Westerns, so I got why he did it, I just could've done with less of them. As I said above though, it's sad that he's passed, because it looked like he really had some ideas that he was going to bring together for us with older properties like Cyborg and Nemesis, but he never got the chance. Maybe someone will be able to finish those ones off for us at some point, but either way, he's left us with a vast catalog that we can enjoy.

Maurette was great here as the lead, but the problem was the story didn't make her lead as much of a lead as we'd have liked. She had more to do in Bulletface, but this character seemed like it could've been more compelling. The imagery alone of the gunslinger wearing her wedding dress is fantastic, and Maurette plays it as well as you'd want, it's just, again, we have a lot of other things going on between the other women, the other guy, and the baddie, that we sometimes lose her. This is the kind of thing that should be as iconic as Django dragging his coffin, it's such a perfect idea, but I think if there's a criticism of Pyun's work, it's that he has so many perfect ideas, and sometimes when they're all put together, some of each is lost and we end up with the law of diminishing returns. But it's always those things that work that keep us coming back.

Here in the US on weekend afternoons and all day on Sunday, one of the retro channels shows TV Westerns, and considering how big they were in the 60s and 70s, they had to have been a part of Pyun's viewing experience growing up. What I love here though is he takes so much of their tropes and standards, and turns them on their head. One is the idealized version of the world they presented, as if things were somehow simpler, nicer, cleaner, and whiter back then. Pyun takes that and makes everything messy, with everyone covered in dirt throughout--which makes it closer to something like the Spaghetti Western, but this is even dirtier than those. Also those old Westerns had themes like "White Makes Right" and the "Noble Savage," none of which is present here. The other thing is, Pyun pulls Western themes in a lot of his futuristic films, like Omega Red and Nemesis, so it was cool to see him make an actual Western, and then Pyun it up so to speak to put his spin on it.

In the opening title cards that give us all the backstory, the ladies of the night are referred to as "whores," and the term is used a bunch, so much so that it hurts my 2024 sensibilities, and probably would've hurt my 2007 ones too. Also, as someone who grew up in New England, I can't help reading it with that accent, saying it like Mark Wahlberg in Fear. On top of that, the guys at "No Budget Nightmares" have ruined the term for me after they covered Las Vegas Bloodbath (which I reviewed after as well). In that movie, the killer refers to what he calls "daytime whores," which sets off his killing spree--"maybe he didn't like daytime whores!" Who even knows what that means, but maybe because it made no sense in that bonkers no-budget film, it stuck with me, and every mention of "whores" in this had me shaking my fist at the screen saying "daytime whores!"

Finally, like we do with other names who have had this kind of impact on the site, we're giving Pyun a second paragraph as we wrap this up--though this is actually an extra paragraph because I put my images in the wrong places, which caused me to miscount my paragraphs! This is Pyun's 43rd director credit on the DTVC (and 46th tag all-time, but we reviewed Mean Guns twice, and tagged him for his production work on Nemesis 5 and archived work in Dollman vs Demonic Toys), which is not only the most all time, but is 28 ahead of the second-most director tags, Fred Olen Ray. Ray definitely has a enough films to pass him, but will I do enough of them? I'd have to do 4 a year, which as a Hall of Famer he should get at least that, but even at 4 a year, he wouldn't catch Pyun until 2031! We do have a few other Pyun films on the table that we can review at some point. Cool Air is available to rent on some of the streamers; and then Interrogation of Cheryl Cooper looks like it's available to rent though Vimeo on his old streaming site. Then there's Interstellar Civil War that doesn't seem to be anywhere, but maybe it will be? Or Cyborg Nemsis: Dark Rift, that may have been fully shot and screened in a very rough version. Could it be finished by someone else and released? And finally we have listed as in production on IMDb, Cyborg: Overture aka Bad Ass Angels and Demons. It looks like some shooting has been done on that. Could it be finished? Maybe by Dustin Ferguson who did Nemesis 5--or for symmetry, Jim Wynorski, who finished Bad Bizness aka More Mercy when Pyun was let go from the project. If you consider he's at 45 overall films between directing and producing, those ones I listed get us to 50, which would put Pyun in the 50 Club.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Currently this is free to stream on The Roku Channel and Vudu aka Fandango at Home. Between the two, The Roku Channel is much better on commercials, so I'd watch it there--with Fandango at Home I was 6 minutes in--after getting a commercial before we even started!--when the film was interrupted again with another commercial, abruptly inserted in there while someone was talking. Anyway, I think this is more for Pyun completists, but in that respect it's worth it.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0918645

And my newest novel, Don's House in the Mountains, is available now on Amazon! Click the image to buy.

Phoenix (2023)

This is one Ty and I covered back in October on episode 136 of the podcast. We weren't sure what the film would be, but it wasn't anything that we ended up getting. I'll dive in on the review.

Phoenix is a Tubi Original directed by Daniel Zirilli that has Natalie Eva Marie (not "Saint") as Fiona, a soldier serving in Afghanistan who finds out from the general she's serving under (Neil McDonough) that her father (Randy Couture) has been murdered by a drug kingpin in Miami named Maxim (Oleg Prudius, not the magazine). She's granted leave and heads home to see if she can find out what happened. She dyes her hair pink so it matches her real hair color, and goes to work, leaving a path of destruction behind her, as she unlocks the mysteries of her father's death, and comes to terms with her complicated relationship with him. At the same time, Maxim won't go down without a fight, so he has a guy on his security team hire some former cops and other mercenaries to take her down. Will they succeed?

Ty and Brett always say cult classics can't be manufactured, they just happen. Samurai Cop, Miami Connection, The Room. And while I think we can say this wasn't meant to be on that level either, it also just happened, the thing is though, we have a catalog of competently created films by Daniel Zirilli that would make you think he'd be the last person to produce something that could belong in that pantheon. It was definitely produced on the quick, and that explains a lot of the line deliveries that seem off. One take and done, no matter how wooden or unnatural it sounds--though then you juxtapose it with someone like McDonough who can pull it off in one take, so his scenes with Natalie Eva Marie make her delivery seem even worse. On the other hand, as bonkers as this is, the underlying concept is a good one, a female-led John Wick, and in a production that had more time to shoot multiple takes on a bigger budget, Natalie Eva Marie would be great in that role. And in a weird way, that's what makes the whole thing work on a certain level, we have this bonkers dialog combined with a plot that's a bit all over the place, while we also have a lead that works and a basic premise that we'd want to see. Plus it's free to stream on Tubi, which always helps.

Daniel Zirilli is the only director who I've currently seen each of his last six films--when I finally see Dolph's Wanted Man he'll pass Zirilli on that, as I'll have seen his last 8--and none of the other five, plus two others of his I've seen from before then, Locked Down and Circle of Pain, are at this lower level of quality, so I have to give him the benefit of the doubt on this one that he had to rush it. It follows a common pattern that he's used in four of the five before this too: a lesser-experienced actor as the lead with a variety of other big names around them that he can put on the tin, and often he's taking a premise that was used in another film and putting a spin on it (Renegades is the one exception, but as a collaboration with Shogun Films it's unique in his filmography). I think with those other four, he had more time to shoot the scenes to get the dialog right, or make a call on removing dialog or a scene that didn't work; plus he had more people in those other films that could nail it on one take. But there were also story elements that were kind of wacky that didn't need to be there, like Maxim setting the mayor of Miami on fire. I guess the thing is, if you're going to have a rough outing, at least have it be interesting and a fun watch, and this one is definitely that.

Ty and I joked about Natalie Eva Marie's dialog delivery, but to be fair, she did well enough considering the circumstances. There's a scene that's a classic in the "You're tearing me apart, Lisa!" mold when Marie just starts screaming and breaking vases, and then the guy she's working with comes in and is like "is everything okay?" and she says "it's self-inflicted." If Zirilli wanted to make a movie with me in the lead I probably would've done that scene even worse, and I think if he'd had it to do over again he wouldn't have put her in that spot to do that scene, or didn't bother including it. On the other hand, she has this scene where she infiltrates Maxim's club in a long red dress, and starts taking out all of his men. It was the kind of thing that, in a better-produced project, would've been iconic, and at the very least tells us she can do this, and do it at a high level. Don "The Dragon" Wilson also had to work on the dramatic part of things when he was starting out, the key is I think as she's figuring it out, she needs parts where the film doesn't need her dramatic element as much. A great comparison we've seen recently is Most Dangerous Game, where CT from The Challenge had a similar level of experience to Marie. In that film, he was always paired with one of the experienced actors in the cast--Judd Nelson, Casper Van Dien, or Tom Berenger--plus Van Dien was such a fantastic scenery chewing baddie. One thing I didn't realize as well, is this isn't the first time we've seen her, she was also in Hard Kill, which I covered on my own "Mini Willis Fest" episode back in October of 2022, number 110 in the archives.

As we often see in a Zirilli film, there were a whole host of other names in this. Going off the Most Dangerous Game comp, Bai Ling was great as Scavenger, part of Maxim's inner circle, but she would've been better as the head baddie, and similar to how Van Dien offset CT's inexperience, if Ling was just told to crank the volume up to 11 and rip off the knob, it would've been a better counter to Marie's inexperience in delivering her lines. Ling's second in command was Phillip Tan, and he and Marie had a good fight that ends suddenly when she grabs a hammer and bashes his head in. We also had Randy Couture, who gets killed off at the beginning, and then we only see him in flashback sequences with another actress playing a younger version of Marie, so he and Marie never have any scenes together. His partner, who has even fewer scenes, is Chuck Zito, someone we see from time to time here at the DTVC. Finally, there's Neil McDonough, who we've only seen one other time on the site, in the Brian Bosworth flick One Tough Bastard aka One Man's Justice, which we covered all the way back on September 3, 2008. He seems to be in all kinds of DTV stuff now, so I imagine we'll see him again. Even in his scenes with Marie, I don't know how many they actually shot together, he just comes in, wears army fatigues, smokes a cigar, and talks about having intel on Maxim and his gang. Another thing we've seen in Zirilli films is teasing a sequel at the end, and in this case it gives us a sense that Marie becomes a part of McDonough's special forces team fighting human trafficking. What I'd like to see is this get combined with Invincible, and have Marie team up with Johnny Strong in a sequel to both films.

Finally, I've never been to Miami before--the closest I've gotten was Sunrise, which is north of it and technically part of the greater Miami metro area--but I used to listen to a sports radio show broadcast from there that's hosted by sportswriter Dan Le Batard, and on Fridays he does a segment titled "#BecauseMiami" with reporter Billy Corben that goes into all of the corruption and shady dealings that go on both behind the scenes and out in the open in Miami politics. With that in mind, the idea that this baddie Maxim needed to keep a customs inspector bound and gagged in his underwear in a shipping container to get him to play ball with all of Maxim's illicit shipments entering the Miami port, or even that he would need to burn the mayor alive to keep the mayor from taking him down, seemed unnecessary. I think both scenes could've been removed, and we would've just taken for granted "#BecauseMiami" instead of wondering how Maxim got away with everything. Miami is a fascinating city here in the States. It's a top 10 metro area, and with the climate it has and the amount of rich people living there, it should have the kind of status that a New York, Chicago, LA, or Bay Area has, but between the local corruption, and the fact that at the state level there's a fear of a metropolis like that controlling everything with its population and voting power, it has this artificial ceiling that it can't break through--and that state-level fear we see having a negative effect in other major cities' growth, like Dallas, Houston, here in Philly, and now with an emerging Atlanta. There are elements of that that could've played well in this. Instead of just burning the mayor alive, what if the mayor's looking to make Miami into something bigger, and he and Marie are uneasy allies with a common enemy in Maxim? And maybe there's a state-level actor like a gubernatorial candidate who's in cahoots with Maxim, because Maxim's criminal enterprise plays well with rural voters who fear crime in cities? In fact, outside of Marie's mention of stone crabs, there's nothing really uniquely Miami about this, which is something that I think could've been leaned into to prop the film up more.

And with that, I'll wrap this up. This is a Tubi Original, so Tubi is the way to go in the States. Unfortunately yes, it's something to include in a double-feature with a Samurai Cop or Miami Connection--the latter of which would be pretty apt since they both take place in Miami--but there were some positives to take from it as well beyond any so-bad-it's-good enjoyment.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt28362655

And my newest novel, Don's House in the Mountains, is available now on Amazon! Click the image to buy.

Camerawoman (2022)

Director Glen Pearson came to me to see if I'd review his film, and it worked out that I had an open slot for an indie flick this month. He has it available on YouTube, which made it a lot easier for me to watch it, but you can also get it on Amazon to rent. Let's see how it went.

Camerawoman stars Meg Rennie as Mandy, a camerawoman who loves photography and has a job for a web magazine that allows her to do what she loves and pay her bills. Things start to unravel though when her current boss goes on leave, and the new boss puts her on an assignment with Cindy (Polly Tregear), a reporter with a toxic personality, to interview Stefan (Naji Basma), a local parkour legend. Things get heated during the interview, and when they get back to the office Cindy attacks Mandy. As this is happening, someone is sending Mandy threatening texts, claiming to know about her past. Are there reasons below the surface why Mandy lives alone and doesn't see any friends or family? As the story goes on, and the threats get worse, Mandy starts to unravel. Will she find out who is doing this to her before she loses control?

This was pretty good. I think the strongest element was Rennie's performance, combined with how her character was written and shot--and the cinematography overall. Mandy is a character we can root for and want to see good things happen to, so as things get worse, there's a hope for some kind of resolution in her favor that kept me interested. There were two elements that I had trouble with though. The first was how the dialog would sometimes play out between the characters when a plot point was about to be revealed. You'd have one character say something like "I need to tell you something," and the other say "okay, what is it?" And then from there it would go like "well, it's just, I..." "C'mon, out with it, what do you want to tell me?" "Well, I... I just..." "Come on, spit it out, what's the matter?" I think you can get away with this once or twice, but it happened a lot, especially as we got near the end. The other thing was the non-linear story telling, it wasn't always clear when different events were happening. As the film goes on, it felt like it was more by design, but the problem was early on the sense was things were happening linearly, only to find out they weren't. I don't know how you fix that though, because I think a non-linear approach worked, it's just how do you tip off the viewer that that's where you're going? Overall though this worked for me, and I enjoyed it.

Meg Rennie doesn't have anything else listed on IMDb, but for only having this one credit she did really well. I think part of that too was how the part was written. There were no over-the-top losing it scenes, it was more a gradual breakdown, but even then, Rennie needs to sell it in a way that keeps us wanting to know her story, and she did that. I liked the other performances as well, but without Rennie's the whole thing wouldn't work, because the story was leaning so much on her to get it right. Like the Cindy character, who's really not nice, while she may help us like Mandy more because we're sympathetic to her--who hasn't had a toxic work colleague?--by the same token, we already have to identify with Mandy in that situation to make that work. Another example is Mandy's old friend from school, who seems really obnoxious, without understanding that Mandy's lonely, and without Rennie selling that to us in a way that makes us sympathetic, we'd be like "why are you giving that woman your number? Run away!" It all works though to give us a complete story that I wanted to stick with throughout.

Making a movie on a small budget isn't easy, but I really liked how Pearson worked within the limited means he had to give us a film that felt complete and entertaining. Yes, part of that is making sure the lead turns in a solid performance, but it never felt like he was asking too much of her either. The scene above was a good example, where Mandy gets more threatening texts, and she decides to call her mother. It's a tense call, because they're estranged from each-other, but then we also get Mandy's longing for someone to be in her life to support her through things like this. There were some special effects in the animations of the phone screen being projected on next to her as she answered the texts or looked for her mother's number, but beyond that, it's a woman sitting on a bench going through a crisis and reaching out to someone for support, and not getting it. It doesn't cost a lot, but when it's done right, it still has the same punch as an expensive scene with a lot of effects.

One of the elements of the story is that Mandy doesn't like social media, and the sense is that she's such a great photographer that her boss is okay with it, despite the fact that she works for a web magazine and doesn't promote any of their articles as a result. From a promotional standpoint, social media is a necessary evil, but then there are parts of it I really like, like interacting with fun posts by fellow creatives. The problem is, while I'm looking at those, I find myself drafting a big comment on how I think building a sports arena in downtown Philadelphia is a bad idea, and while I don't end up posting it because I ultimately decide I don't want to bother with getting involved with something like that, plus I don't think a post like that will help me promote my work, the whole thing ends up being a time suck that only results in my blood pressure going up. In that sense I think maybe Mandy has the right idea, but then I remember all the great parts, like liking and retweeting someone's funny post or new creative endeavor. We find out later that Mandy's prohibition on social media goes deeper, which I think is a cool idea, because it gets away from the idea that social media is either all good or all bad.

Finally, this was shot in Bristol in the UK, which I've never been to before--our school trip to England and Scotland didn't take us out that far west--but here in the Philadelphia area we have our own Bristol--which I've also never been too, I've only ever seen it from the train when it stops there between here and Trenton, NJ, from which I get another train to New York City. Our Bristol's claim to fame is a 1961 song by Philadelphia doo-wop group The Dovells called "The Bristol Stomp." It also has America's longest continuously operating inn, The King George II Inn, which opened in the late 17th century. Anyway, the UK Bristol seems a lot nicer, and as an American, we don't usually get to see a Bristol when we get a UK movie here, it's either London, or a quaint seaside town. I don't know if there's a market here in the States for more of the UK than we usually get, but I appreciated it.

And with that, I'll wrap this up. You can currently stream this for free on Tubi, or rent it on Amazon for $.99. However you do it, this is an indie project worth checking out and supporting. Pearson, Rennie, and everyone else did a really good job here.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt17394602

And my newest novel, Don's House in the Mountains, is available now on Amazon! Click the image to buy.

Code Name Vengeance (1987)

This is one I watched back in May of '21 for the "Ginty Moore Beef Stew" episode of the DTVC podcast, where the guys from Comeuppance and I looked at our top Robert Ginty films. I planned on reviewing it soon after, but it was removed from streaming before I could get any screengrabs, so I had to wait. Now we're finally able to make it happen. In addition to us and the guys at Comeuppance, Mitch at the Video Vacuum has done this too.

Code Name Vengeance is about a terrorist (James Ryan) in an African nation who kidnaps the son and wife of the president there. The CIA knows one guy who can save the day: Monroe Bieler (Ginty). He's reluctant, but since he's spent the last 12 years in an African prison, he's amenable to it. Things aren't what they seem though, when his CIA contact first has Shannon Tweed hook up with him, and then has one of his men join Ginty on his mission. After Ginty picks up old friend Cameron Mitchell, they proceed to rescue the wife and son--but will they make it out alive? And who will kill them if they don't?

This is a pretty fun deal. Ginty with his beard, hair, suits, and occasional sunglasses looked like a 70s soft rocker, which alone could get you there, but then we have a solid action quotient, including a hilarious scene that involves grenades attached to a forklift. The plot meanders a bit, and there are some elements where Ginty's naivete hurts others around him instead of himself, which is a device I'm not a fan of, but with these 80s low budget actioners, sometimes you take the good and the bad, and sometimes the bad even enhances the good. In addition to Ginty, James Ryan was a great baddie, less over the top (Stallone-style) than he was in Kickboxer V, which made him more sinister, and he and Ginty have a solid end battle; Cameron Mitchell was a fun addition as an old soldier going out for one last mission, but I think his character should've gotten a better deal at the end; and then Shannon Tweed isn't in this as much as you'd like, which was too bad--she could've been combined with the CIA guy who was tagging along with Ginty and Mitchell. As a Ginty film, this will get you to the church on time though, especially as a free streamer. Oh, and we finally got a Ronald Reagan presidential portrait! More on that later.

Speaking of Ginty, he's only at 7 films on the site, which is bad enough, but also the last time we saw him was December of '22's Cop Target. Part of the reason for the delay was this film, and another I watched for the "Ginty Moore Beef Stew" episode, The Kinds of Heat, disappeared from streaming, and while I was waiting or them to come back, I kind of unofficially put the Gintinator on hold, which I shouldn't have done. He's all the Ginty you want here, between the 70s soft rocker look, to how well he does the "I'm getting beaten up in prison" routine with all the faces and sounds he makes--no one sells a punch to the gut better than him--and then at the end when he gets his revenge on James Ryan and the CIA agent who set him up, Applegate (played by Don Gordon). If anything, this film is a reminder that we need more Ginty, and I've added Three Kinds of Heat to the Letterboxd list Upcoming Review (watched), which gives you a sense of what's coming for future posts.

Our film's other Hall of Famer was the great Shannon Tweed, who unlike Ginty we last saw back in October when she was inducted into the Hall of Fame. This is now 8 films for her, which breaks a 7-way tie she had with, among others, Julie Strain and Dona Speir, for third-most tags as a woman on the site all-time, and now puts in a tie with Kathleen Kinmont for second-most tags--and in so doing, pushes Strain, Speir, et al down to a six-way tie for fourth-most all-time. (Of course, most all time is Cynthia Rothrock with 43--don't see anyone catching her anytime soon.) As I mentioned above, this could've used more Tweed, but it's possible they didn't have her for as much of the shooting. Also interesting here, almost 10 years before Skyscraper, Tweed plays a helicopter pilot. It's too bad there wasn't a sequel to this where she trained Carrie Wink, linking this with Skyscraper, and linking the world of AIP with PM Entertainment. Forget Marvel-DC crossovers, AIP and PM was the one we needed and never got.

We got a Reagan! If you saw my Facebook post on President's Day, I mentioned the phenomenon of the Presidential Portrait, where a character of some official US government status is shown in their office abroad, and to make that office more official looking, the filmmakers add a cheap American flag that's almost see through, and a portrait of the president serving during the time the film takes place. So far (that I know of) we have Bush 41 in another Ginty film, Cop Target, Clinton in the Wilson/Piper actioner Terminal Rush, and Bush 43 in the film with one of the greatest lines in movie history, Shark Attack 3. We need an Obama, Trump, and a Biden, plus if it's possible that 80s Vietnam War films that were shot in the Philippines have maybe a Nixon or a Ford, or if another stray film has a Carter floating around in a flashback sequence--hell, I'll take a Western with a Rutherford B. Hayes if there's one out there. Now I should point out that despite seeing these in so many films, I've only recently decided to start documenting, meaning there were some, like Shark Attack 3, that I didn't initially get a screengrab of, and had to go back and add it to the image page for that review after the fact, so I may have seen others that aren't listed here. In honor of this great find, I've added the Presidential Portrait tag, and hopefully we'll be adding more to it soon!

Finally, Ginty's look in this film inspired me to pay tribute to one of the greatest music phenomenons ever, the 70s/early 80s soft rocker. Now full disclosure, this is not going to be some kind of ironic "yacht rock rules" kind of thing--there is no concept of "yacht rock" to me, as a young child in the early 80s, soft rock was ubiquitous, it was the soundtrack to my growing understanding of the world. Dentists and doctors' offices, department stores, government buildings, etc. all had the smooth sounds of soft rock playing from the PA overhead. As I learned that life is a series of waking up early for school--which then leads to work--standing in queues, and riding in cars--or later as an adult, public transportation--soft rock was there to anesthetize my experience, and ease any possible rebellion I might have considered--how can you throw a temper tantrum about having to go to school while Toto sang (what I thought then was) "I guess it rains down in Africa," or Michael McDonald told Patti LaBelle "we were even talking divorce, when we weren't even married," which made much more sense as a 5-year-old than it does now. We live near an elementary school here in Philadelphia, and every morning I hear at least one or two kids having a temper tantrum, rebelling against the life of work, queues, and commuting that the world is cramming them into at a young age. If only they had the smooth sounds of the Fender Rhodes keyboard accompanying a bearded man singing about his feelings to make the transition more palatable like we did. Just learn to accept it kid, sit back in your car seat, and let Air Supply tell you that "even the nights are better" or Christopher Cross say "when you get caught between the moon and New York City"--it doesn't matter what it means, kid, just let the sound ease the fight out of you, you'll be better for it.

And with that, let's wrap this up. As of my writing, you can get this on Tubi. As great a Ginty this is, I think free streamer is the way to go. And then for the "Ginty Moore Beef Stew" podcast episode, it's number 85 in the archives, from May 17, 2021, so you can check that out as well to see where it placed on our lists.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097073

And my newest novel, Don's House in the Mountains, is available now on Amazon! Click the image to buy.

Miao tan shuang long aka City Cops (1989)

With DTVC Hall of Famer and 40-Club member Cynthia Rothrock celebrating her birthday yesterday, I wanted to get a review up for her, and saw that this was available on Tubi. It's one of two Hong Kong films of hers we haven't done yet, the other being Lady Reporter, so I figured it would be perfect. In addition to us, our friends Ty and Brett at Comeuppance have covered this as well.

City Cops has Ken Tong as a jewel thief on the run from some baddies in America, so he goes to Hong Kong hoping to fence the stolen merchandise. On his trail is FBI agent Cindy (Rothrock), but to get her man, she has to team up with two local HK detectives, Kiu-Wai Miu and Fui-On Shing, who are also on Tong's trail. Wackiness ensues, as Miu has a thing for Tong's sister May (Suki Kwan), and a romance may or may not be budding between Shing and Rothrock. In the meantime, they need to find Tong, as the baddies have taken May. This leads us to a final showdown at a factory. Will our heroes prevail? And how much damage will they do to the factory in the process.

This is a pretty good deal. Not the best of Rothrock's HK films, but she has some great martial arts scenes, in particular a fight at the end with Michiko Mishiwaki. On the other hand we have this comedic element which works sometimes, others it drags the film down a bit, and then others it either makes you cringe with the kind of jokes they make--or makes you laugh in spite of yourself. Tong is playing a gay man, who is originally busted by Miu and Shing in Hong Kong while dressed as a woman. There's a whole joke while the three of them are getting a meal at a hotel restaurant, where Tong and Miu tell Shing that Tong has AIDS after Shing accidentally drinks from Tong's water glass. On the one hand it's like "can you be making AIDS jokes?" so there's that cringe element; but then there's the gallows humor element, where they're not making fun of AIDS and the suffering it causes so much as making fun of Shing's ignorance of the disease, thinking he could catch it by drinking Tong's water--plus the fact that Tong doesn't have AIDS anyway, Tong's just making them think that because he's gay and wants to mess with them. So I'm watching this bit play out, where I'm like "I can't believe they're making a joke about AIDS," but also laughing as Tong and Miu are playing off each other, convincing Shing he'll be dead in seven years. Anyway, I think this film has enough action, especially with Rothrock in some sweet fight scenes, to make this worth a watch, especially while it's on Tubi.

We're now at 43 for Rothrock on the site, which puts her in a three-way tie with Cannon and PM Entertainment for fifth-most all-time, and third all-time for actors after Dolph and Gary Daniels. Looking at where she is on the actors list, she's probably not going to move up or down anytime soon, because she's 16 behind Daniels, who has 59 films, and the closest behind her are Seagal with 39, but he hasn't made a film since 2019, and Wilson at 37, who does have some stuff we can cover to at least get him into the 40 Club, but I don't know if we have six for him to catch Rothrock. The other issue is the quality of her newer stuff. I was trying to think how many are near this film, and other than New York Ninja, which is her voice work, the best I could come up with was Outside the Law, which came out in 2002. Death Fighter was decent too, but not as good as this, and the rest of it, over the last 20+ years, has been her in tiny parts, not a lot of action--if any at all--and even worse, a lot of them haven't even been released--and I don't mean not released in the US, I mean not released period. That's what makes it so great that we have movies like this on free streamers, and if you search her on Tubi, you'll see some other greats she did. This is the Rothrock you want when you see her name on the tin, and while she doesn't have as many fight scenes, what she has are fantastic.

In addition to Rothrock, we had some Hong Kong film greats. Ken Tong (playing a character named Kent Tong) was our thief, and while he's in the film even less than Rothrock, he's cool as he's outsmarting Miu and Shing while trying to stay one step ahead of the baddies on his trail. It looks like we've seen him here one other time, when we did Police Story. Then we had Kiu-Wai Miu, who's our womanizing detective. It's always interesting how that character is played in Hong Kong versus the US, they're much more handsy and sexual assault-y, but then they can redeem themselves by looking cool smoking a cigarette, which Miu does here. It's like all the HK action stars were expected to be Bruce Willis: equal parts comedic and serious action lead, and Miu hits all those notes. And then we have Fui-On Shing, who we've seen on here before as well, in John Woo's The Killer, which also came out in 1989--in fact, he had 34 films come out in 1989, Eric Roberts eat your heart out! He's more the comedic foil to Miu's leading man, but he does get to be with Rothrock at the end, so it wasn't all bad for him. Unfortunately he passed away in 2009. Finally, a few other names, Fung Woo plays their police captain. He also was in Police Story, plus Millionaire's Express, so we've seen him a couple times here. He also did the Rothrock film Prince of the Sun, which we haven't covered yet, but we will eventually, so this won't be the last time we see him on the site; Suki Kwan, who played Tong's sister May. We haven't seen her here before, but I recognized her from a couple other Hong King films; and Michiko Nishiwaki, who was great in her one fight with Rothrock. It would've been nice to see her do more, maybe another fight scene so it builds better to her fight with Rothrock, but at least we had the one scene.

I wanted to spotlight a couple things that stood out in this film that you probably wouldn't see in an American film like this--or at least done as well. First, look at that cat painting below. This is in May's place, and that cat watched over the proceedings that took place there, from knock-down-drag-'em-out fights, to Miu's bungled attempts at romance leading to all manner of John Ritter-style physical humor, with a sphinx-like stoicism, expressionless, possibly judging, but never letting on either way. Can you imagine a modern USA action flick doing that? Or if they did, the cat painting would come up constantly in ironic tongue-in-cheek conversations. This was the perfect use of a large cat painting, and I loved it. The other one was the use of Pee Shyness as a plot device. Pee Shyness is when someone can't pee with someone else near them. At the end of the film, Rothrock is handcuffed to Tong, ready to take him back to the States, but he has to go to the bathroom, and he says he can't go with her standing there, so he goes in the stall, still handcuffed to her, while she stands outside, and then he makes good his escape. While she's waiting, another guy comes in and tries to go while Rothrock is standing there, but can't either. I personally experienced it more when I was younger, especially if there weren't barriers between the urinals, and once there was a delay, I'd almost feel like the guys standing on either side recognized I wasn't going, which made it worse. Now that I'm older, for whatever reason, that Pee Shyness is gone, which makes it all the weirder that it existed as an issue at all. Anyway, this is another thing that a Hong Kong film uses as a plot device that an American film either won't think to try, or if they did, it would also be filled with not-so-witty but so-dripping-with-irony banter. In the Hong Kong film, it's a goofy buttoner on an overall fun actioner, and they leave it at that.

Finally (I know, usually the paragraph above would be the "finally"), I wanted to do a second Rothrock paragraph. In discussing how she hasn't had much to hang her hat on film-wise in the last 20 years or so, one thing she does have coming is her own film, Black Creek, which is listed in post-production on IMDb, and has an Indiegogo that's still live. According to that, the red carpet premier is set for July of 2024--one of the support packages is two tickets for $450 bucks. On the one hand, I think it's definitely cool, and even if the tiers can be expensive, donating $10 isn't the worst thing to help push it over the goal line. On the other hand, if this film is successful, you'd hope that this is the last time she needs to bother with Indiegogo and she can get future films funded through more traditional means, and I think that's more of where we come in as fans. Yes, she can definitely use the Indiegogo donations, like all indie creatives, but if Black Creek ends up on Tubi and we all watch it--and people with sites like mine review it--I think she can go to backers and say "this is the kind of following I have, and these are the kinds of numbers I can generate if you give me a chance." At least one can hope.

And with that, let's wrap this up. This is available on Tubi here in the States. Maybe not Rothrock's best Hong Kong film, but she's great in it, and has enough action to get you to the church on time, especially as a free streamer. 

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099614/

And my newest novel, Don's House in the Mountains, is available now on Amazon! Click the image to buy.

Fit to Kill (1993)

As we continue to work our way through all of Andy Sidaris's LETHAL Ladies films, we're onto this one from 1993. Maybe not as well known as some of the others, it does introduce DTVC Hall of Famer Julie Strain, so it has to at least be notable for that. In addition to us, Mitch from The Video Vacuum has covered this as part of his Sirens of Skinamax series, and SteveQ at Down in the Z Movies.

Fit to Kill takes place after the previous film, Hard Hunted, where our baddie Kane is still after our LETHAL Ladies, and has employed a new weapon: assassin Blu Steele (Julie Strain). Everyone is trying to get their hands on a huge diamond that Aki Aleong wants to give back to the Russian people through their emissary Rodrigo Obregon, and as more players get involved, Dona Speir realizes she may need to work with her hated rival Kane in order to bring everyone to justice--despite the fact that he's tried to have her killed multiple times. Will they succeed, or will this be the one mission where the baddies prevail?

You know the answer to that, and when our heroes take out the baddies, it's in spectacular fashion involving things like missiles attached to toy helicopters. This was also intended to be the final LETHAL Ladies film, and it has that feel that we're ending something big here, especially when Donna blows up Kane's yacht with all the baddies on it and says "my work is done here." What we get after this is almost a reboot with two films directed by Sidaris's son Christian, Enemy Gold and Dallas Connection, before Andy himself comes back in to finish the series with Day of the Warrior and LETHAL Ladies Return to Savage Beach, so in a way this almost is an end--maybe like Marvel Cinematic Universe phases, this is the end of Phase 1, where we know many stars like Dona Speir, Roberta Vasquez, Cynthia Brimhall, and the Abilene Who Can't Shoot Straight are bowing out, while others like Bruce Penhall, Gerald Okamura, and Rodrigo Obregon are staying on in a different capacity, and then we're also introducing our new lead, with Julie Strain taking over for Dona Speir in Phase 2 of the series. We also see a legitimate heel-turn in Kane (Geoofrey Moore), which was a first in the series--to this point actors who played villains came back as new characters to be heroes. Was Vin Diesel using this as his template for his Fast and Furious heel-turns? It might not be the best of the films, but it's everything you want in a LETHAL Ladies movie, and for that reason I enjoy it like I enjoy all the others.

Unlike Marvel, which has had trouble replacing Iron Man the main star of their franchise, this series does a great job of bringing us Julie Strain. Right off the bat, in her first scene, she's in this Catwoman-esque spandex bodysuit with over-the-knee boots slinking around a Vegas hotel, ready to assassinate Kane. Even though she doesn't succeed, we know we have someone important here, someone who could really challenge Donna Hamilton and make life difficult for the LETHAL Ladies. You could totally see why when this film is done Sidaris's son would've looked at her and thought "let me do some of these movies with her as my lead." Granted, she plays a baddie for those two films before she transitions to hero Willow Black for the final two films, but either way, she was a perfect choice to center the films around after Dona Speir left. With her being in the Hall of Fame now, our goal is to get more of her films on the site, and while we haven't been doing as well as we could with that, she's at 7 now, and we at least have two more of these films to cover, so we'll be seeing her again soon.

This is the final LETHAL Ladies film for Dona Speir, and part of me didn't want to do this film now so I could save it for her eventual Hall of Fame induction post, but she does have a couple other DTV films we could do for that, and I didn't want to hold off too long on finishing off this series of films. When she blows up that yacht near the end of the film and says "my work is done here," it's the capper on one of the greatest DTV action franchise runs. She starts in Hard Ticket to Hawaii, where, as a de facto sequel to Malibu Express, Ronn Moss was the lead as the next Abilene in line, but she still turns in a great performance. From there, when Moss is out in the next film, Picasso Trigger, we see the shift Sidaris makes, where we have Steve Bond playing another Abilene who can't shoot straight, but I think Sidaris realizes Speir is the one who can carry these, and with Savage Beach he turns the thing over to her, and the Abilene who can't shoot straight becomes a secondary character. So when she says "my work is done here," we can look at what her work was: some of the most iconic DTV actioners of all time, featuring names like Erik Estrada and Pat Morita, but she truly was the lead in them. Normally we would think of the Bloodfist series as the number one DTV action franchise, but watching these again, they have to be above those because we don't have the duds we get in the Bloodfist series, like VI or VIII. So yes, Dona's work is done here, but what great work it was.

As is often the case with the LETHAL Ladies series, we had a bunch of other names in this. In addition to Dona Speir, mainstays Cynthia Brimhall and Roberta Vasquez turn in their final performances in the series. Then we had mainstays Bruce Penhall, Rodirigo Obregon, and Gerald Okumura who we see here and then come back in different iterations in the second phase of the series. You could also say that about Ava Cadell, only in her case she comes back for the final film; same with Carolyn Liu's Silk, though she does come back as a different character in Day of the Warrior too. Our bumbling assassins Chu Chu Malave and Richard Cansino were back as well. This was the last go around for them, though Cansino had a part in Day of the Warrior. Finally, a name we were seeing for the first time was veteran character actor Aki Aleong, who I didn't realize hadn't had a tag yet! I went back through his IMDb bio, and discovered he had six films on here before that, so this marks 7 on the site now. And speaking of an "Aleong," I also tagged Al Leong because this has archived footage of him from the previous film.

Finally, with this being Speir's final film in the series, I thought I'd look at where she sits all time among female action stars. Number one has to be Pam Grier. Her 70s stuff is some of the best ever, and she should've been given the kinds of parts guys like Stallone and Schwarzenegger got in the 80s. Michelle Yeoh has to be next, and while she's getting more love after her performance in Everything Everywhere All at Once, if you go through that bio, it's a string of great action films. Third for me is Cynthia Rothrock, she has some of the best stuff in that late 80s/early 90s Golden Age of action, plus some fantastic Hong Kong stuff. It's here where I start to look at how Dona Speir slots in. Most lists will have names like Angelina Jolie, Linda Hamilton, and Scarlett Johansson, but they're all dramatic actors who have done some iconic action roles--and they're more for people who only understand action as TNT New Classics and other big budget films from the last 30 years. Speir helming a franchise for five films, and costarring in the two films of the franchise before those, put her above all of them. Milla Jovovich has to be above Speir for me, because she also helmed a franchise for 5+ films, and her franchise, Resident Evil, pulled in over $1 billion all time--and the total budgets of those films put together was less than The Marvels. Some other names I was looking at: Zoe Saldana, who was great in Colombiana, and stars in three major franchises, four of the top six highest grossing films of all time, and two of the top five when adjusted for inflation; another big budget star, Michelle Rodriguez, who also has the distinction of being the top women on Exploding Helicopter's top ten actors list; Ziyi Zhang, who had some of the biggest hits of the early 2000s; Olga Kurylenko, who on some levels is just getting started, but she's put out some great stuff, and currently is one of the top DTV action stars, man or woman; and finally Kate Beckinsale, whose Underworld films didn't have the run Jovovich's Resident Evil ones did, but still important as a female-led action franchise. I think looking at all that, I'd put Speir behind them as well, but only because this was her one franchise, and then she was done. That makes this my ranking: Grier, Yeoh, Rothrock, Jovovich, Rodriguez, Saldana, Beckinsale, Zhang, Kurylenko, Speir. So maybe Speir isn't as high as I'd have expected, but she's still in my top ten.

That was a bit of a long paragraph, so let's wrap this up. Currently in the States the LETHAL Ladies films are all available on Tubi. I don't think you need me to tell you how great these are, but I will say if you've already seen them but it's been a while, you could use a rewatch. They only get better with time, and they never get old.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106922

And my newest novel, Don's House in the Mountains, is available now on Amazon! Click the image to buy.