Terminal Force has Harrison as a disgraced cop on suspension after he killed a kid who pulled a toy gun on him. At the same time, mafia boss Johnny Ventura (John Henry Richardson) kidnaps the daughter of a guy who's going to testify against him, so Harrison's boss gets the crazy-Grinchey idea of having Harrison do it. Harrison needs to rehab his image, because he's on suspension he can work outside the rules of the force, and also because he's on suspension, he's expendable! It sounds like a win-win! He hooks up with a dancer that used to work for Ventura (Dawn Wildsmith) to try and track the girl down, but can he trust her? What about his friends on the force? Who can he trust? Beyond a bottle of Stoli, no one.
This is fantastic. It's not going to make any top ten lists or blow anyone away, but it's a solid 84 minutes of late 80s low-budget action, complete with shootings, explosions, and boobs. The opening two scenes involve a car going over a cliff, and our hero in that shot above shooting a would-be liquor store robber in front of a backdrop of 80s-era bags of chips and cans of soda. If Harrison's not going to wear a ninja costume, that's what I need. From there, it might be pretty paint-by-numbers, but it's a good paint-by-numbers, like a McDonald's cheeseburger that you put down after a long week at work, or on your way home from vacation when you're looking for something familiar. Sure, I know too well here in Philly that that cheeseburger can have a stale bun, or way too much ketchup, or get screwed up any number of other ways, which if we're extending this metaphor we can say the same about this kind of movie, it can also get screwed up any number of ways, but Ray, Harrison, and company pull it off, and we're left with the comforting cinematic equivalent of junk food, which is always fun.
This is now 17 films for Fred Olen Ray on the site, so he's close to joining Albert Pyun as the only two people with 20 or more director credits. He has a ton of stuff on places like Tubi, but I think it's his work in this late 80s/early 90s period that's my favorite. I read that the movie was shot in five days, and it's in and out in 84 minutes, but delivers everything you want in that window. Even with the padding and the plot exposition dialog, it comes off in a way that's a lot of fun that it works in spite of the fact that it goes against the rules of filmmaking. For example, in that opening scene where the car goes flying off a cliff, before that we have an old mafia boss and his lawyer talking, and while their conversation is all plot exposition, they sound hilarious--plus the boat of a Caddy they're sitting in with the covered headlights doesn't hurt--and then we get the fantastic payoff of the car going over the cliff. After that, it's an extended scene of Harrison going into a liquor store and the clerk giving him a hard time about limes. It's all padding, but it's also fun to watch Richard Harrison disheveled and arguing about limes. And then we get the payoff of the robbery. The money now is in Christmas movies and Lifetime thrillers, so that's what he makes, but when the money was in stuff like this, Ray was great at it, and this film is another example of that.
This is our third Richard Harrison film on the site, but his first non-ninja movie. He's really funny here, which works in Ray's offbeat style in a way I wasn't expecting--I mean I guess I shouldn't have based my opinion on him off of two Godfrey Ho ninja movies where he's not only been dubbed, but dubbed with new lines. It would've been nice if Harrison got to speak to someone on a Garfield phone, but the film could be forgiven for not giving us that gem. While this is only his third film, as we near October and our Hall of Fame inductions, he has to be a consideration. Sure, over a dozen of his films are ninja movies Godfrey Ho made without his permission, but he also made a ton of stuff like this that had nothing to do with ninjas, and he's a low-budget star who started before the video store and cable age, and bridged us into that from the grindhouse low-budget theater age. Truly one of the greats, and we see that more here than in his Godfrey Ho ninja movies.
We've gone over all the ways that these late 80s/early 90s DTV actioners are superior to their modern counterparts. Some things the modern movie can't help, like the nostalgia for the 80s soda cans and bags of chips, or the Cadillac boat with covers on the headlights. Often too, when movies try to go back in time they screw it up, so I'd rather they don't try to recreate the aesthetic. Some though they do have control over, like making sure the two actors having a plot exposition conversation are fun to listen to--though again, there was something of an "of the period" quality they had that gave them a nostalgia edge in this that a Texas Battle and a son of Wayne Gretzky couldn't pull off. But the biggest one might be John Henry Richardson. He was fantastic chewing the scenery as baddie Johnny Ventura. How hard is it to get him to be your mob boss baddie? I get that there are certain realities that make creating modern DTV flicks tougher than it was 35 years ago, but casting John Henry Richardson isn't one of them.
Finally, I'd like to use this penultimate paragraph to spotlight the late 80s doughy mullet guy. You see him there above, squinting through full cheeks, the kind of cheeks aging women today pay a lot of money for, but at that time, especially for a guy, they were seen as a negative. You also have the light amount of mulletude in the back, not a lot of party, maybe enough for a few people over on a Sunday to watch the Rams game with some cheese and crackers and light beers. Now you're probably asking, "Matt, what's the difference between this kind of guy, and the Pork Roast?" The Pork Roast is meatier, you buy him at the store by the pound and roast him in the oven over low heat with some root vegetables. The late 80s doughy mullet guy is softer, a bread loaf that doesn't have a firm crust. Millennials made sourdough bread out of him during the pandemic and posted the results on social media. Guys like Fred Olen Ray and Jim Wynorski were great at using these guys, they found them all over LA, on their way back from In-N-Out Burger with their dinner in a bag. "Hey, you wanna be in a movie?" "What do I have to do?" "Nothing, just stand there with a gun, we'll take care of the rest." "Sure, I got nothing else going on today!" Here's to you late 80s doughy mullet guy, you were one of the great ones.
And with that, let's wrap this up. As of this writing you can find this on Tubi and a bunch of other free streamers here in the States. If you've got 90s minutes burning a hole in your pocket, you could do a lot worse than this one. Maybe they don't make 'em like this anymore, but we can still stream them.
For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100764
Looking for more action? Check out my short action novel, Bainbridge, and all my other novels, over at my author's page! Click on the image below, go to https://www.matthewpoirierauthor.com/
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