We Kill for Love (2023)

It's the weekend after Christmas, and continuing a tradition I've done since I've come back from hiatus in 2019, we're doing another documentary, this time one that Jon Cross from the PM Entertainment Podcast and the After Movie Diner recommended to us. He and I have been doing a series of Erotic Thrillers on the podcast for the past year or so too, so you can check those out as well over in our podcast archives.

We Kill for Love is a documentary that looks at the rise, reign, and fall of the Erotic Thriller during the 80s and 90s. It examines the mix of genres and inspirations that the films draw from, and the unique cultural environment that gave them birth. We also get some great interviews from people like Fred Olen Ray, Monique Parent, and Andrew Stevens. As time goes on though, the forces that gave us this unique cinematic moment serve to be its undoing, and as the 90s become the 2000s, the market starts to dry up. As our documentarians sift through the VHS detritus of what once was, they and their subjects try to make sense of it all. But is there a sense of it all to make? Does a femme fatale with a handgun in her stocking-top ever go out of style?

Overall I enjoyed this, but it does clock in at two hours and 45 minutes, so you're in for long ride. I'm okay with that though. Yes, it's long for a documentary, but too short for a mini-series, so probably from a streaming algorithm standpoint--and maybe a modern attention span standpoint too, it doesn't quite fit, but I almost feel like that makes it all the better, like the subject matter it's covering, it's not of this time either. The biggest thing is the director, Anthony Penta, pulls footage from so many of these movies, that you feel like you're in the 90s discovering them on cable all over again. And then the interviews are fantastic, with all the actors, directors, producers, and film scholars and film writers telling us how these were made, what they were about, and what kinds of messages were below the surface. As someone who was born in 1979, and grew up in the 90s, there wasn't a sense for me that there was a world before these films, they just always existed, but now 25-30 years later, to see the birth, growth, and unfortunately death and postmortem of something that had such a huge impact on my love of film, especially direct-to-video movies, was a lot of fun, and I think worth checking out--one of the few times I'll recommend something with such a long runtime!

When we started the site, I expected to do more Erotic Thrillers, and while the site moved more toward action movies because those films got the most engagement, that was in comparison to horror, comedy, and sci-fi. Erotic Thrillers on the other hand were the only genre that got the hits on the site that action did, the problem was, in the late 2000s, those movies were harder to find. A lot of them didn't make it to DVD, which was where I got most of the movies we reviewed in those early days; but many weren't even on home VHS release, they were only sold to video rental stores and cable movie outlets. Even on YouTube it was hard to get them, because the adult content would cause them to get taken down. It looks like some of them are making it to Tubi and other free streamers, but with those it's dicey because they can get taken down just as quick. So it's still an uphill battle, but there are ways to get these, so I'm going to do my best to get more of them up on the site, because as this film documents, they're a large part of the DTV legacy.

As I mentioned above, the interviews were great. One of my favorites was Monique Parent talking about how much she was working in the 90s, and how all the movies ran together for her. She gives us an unabashed slice of what that world was like in a way that puts you back there in it. From a Hall of Famer standpoint, we had Fred Olen Ray, who ran the gamut on movies he made in the 90s, but Erotic Thrillers were a big part of that. Between him and Jim Wynorski, they talked about why they needed to use aliases, because distributors were like "we already have enough of their movies!", and Wynorski joked that people on IMDb have found most of his films made under an alias, but there are still a few out there that people haven't found yet. Another big name that was interviewed was Andrew Stevens, and not only did he discuss the Night Eyes series, but also how he moved from actor to producer, and the part Night Eyes played in that. I've finally tagged him for all his producer credits on the site, and this makes film 33, so we'll be putting him in the Hall of Fame next October. Finally, speaking of tags, my rule for documentaries has been if someone was interviewed I'll tag them, but not if it's just footage of one of their films. I'm making an exception to that here for Julie Strain, who gets her own tribute segment in the middle of the movie, which was really nice to see. Here's to you Ms. Strain, you were one of the best to ever do it, you've truly been missed.

We've talked a lot both on the site and the podcast about Blockbuster's role in running the Mom and Pop video stores out of business, and then themselves dying off when Netflix came on the scene, because they had no brand loyalty. This movie gets into some other ways Blockbuster had a negative effect on the DTV industry as the 90s went into the 2000s, but also some other ways that their business model led to their own undoing. The first thing they mentioned was how in the early days of Blockbuster, DTV distributors loved them because they could negotiate big one-off deals of like 20,000 copies, as opposed to getting thousands of individual Mom and Pops to order the movie on their own out of a catalog. It meant in one purchase order from Blockbuster they could get their budget back and then some. The problem was, when the major studios got in on the home video market, both for DTV films and their major releases, the indie distributors got frozen out. This led to something though that I didn't consider. Part of the Mom and Pop business model was only having a couple copies of a new release, that way you'd rent something else if you came in and found the one you wanted wasn't there. With Blockbuster having dozens of a new release, it meant everyone got the movie they wanted, which meant they weren't renting as many movies overall as they did during the Mom and Pop era. The other thing was the cheap DVD market that comes in the early 2000s. Suddenly movies you could only get on VHS, or worse, by taping off cable, were now available for $5 in the bargain bin at Walmart; or those low-budget 10 movies for $10 sets, my friends and I would get one of those and watch three or four over a weekend, and got a better deal out of it than renting that many movies. All of these things led to the collapse of the video market, and took Erotic Thrillers down with them. They tried to pivot in the early 2000s to a more soft-core porn approach, but by the mid-2000s porn was so available for free on the internet that it no longer had any market either.

Finally, speaking of porn, this tackles the subject of exactly what is porn, what that means if an actor is working in porn, and do Erotic Thrillers count. I think the first thing is the double-standard between women working in front of the camera, versus directors working behind the camera. Fred Olen Ray can make two or three Erotic Thrillers a year in the 90s with all kinds of sex in them, and still be able to make Hallmark Christmas movies today, while an actor who took their top off in dozens of sexually charged thrillers may not be afforded that same luxury. And I think there's some of that under the surface when some of the actors who were interviewed insist "I never did porn" the way a guy in the 90s would've said "I'm not gay," as if there's anything wrong with either. I think for my age cohort though, which was 10-20 years younger than the actors in these films, we grew up with them, and as such, we might have been the first mini-generation to look at this stuff differently, and not immediately think someone working in the adult film industry should be shunned, let alone if someone got naked in an Erotic Thriller. From there you get younger Millennials and Gen Z who say you shouldn't judge a sex worker, full stop. In the 80s and 90s there was this Conservative brand of feminism that was anti sex work, which this movie labels as left wing politically, but younger Millennial or Gen Z feminism would say isn't feminism at all, and I think for them, hearing the actors in this trying to distance themselves from the porn industry would be off-putting. In that sense, I hope more of these movies become available on streamers so younger Millennials and Gen Z can consume them, because I think they're a missing part of the story of how we get to the sex positivity of the 2010s. Another thread in the film is this idea that you couldn't make these films today in the world of sex positivity, but I disagree. These movies have a lot of strong women with a lot of sexual agency, if anything they were ahead of their time, and could fit in nicely in the modern environment.

And with that, let's wrap this up. As you can see from my long post, this movie packs a lot in, and I've only scratched the surface of it. While it's free to stream on Tubi you should check it out. The Erotic Thriller was a moment in cinematic time, and if you lived it, the nostalgia factor alone is worth it; but if you're younger and curious about this, this is a great starting place.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10404002

And check out my newest novel, Mark in Sales, on Amazon in paperback and Kindle.

Special Forces (2003)

In my attempt to get a more respectable percentage on Will's Films that Have an Exploding Helicopter Letterboxd list, here is one from Isaac Florentine that we hadn't covered that also had an exploding helicopter, so we kill two bird with one stone--which sounds horrible, I'm not killing any birds. In addition to us, Chris the Brain at Bulletproof, Ty and Brett at Comeuppance, Simon at Explosive Action, and Mitch at The Video Vacuum have all covered this, so this is a Superfecta movie and then some.

Special Forces has Marshall Teague as the head of a special forces group that's called into a former Soviet Republic to pick up a young woman (Daniella Deutscher) who got in over her head there and is being held prisoner. So he gets his team (which includes DTVC favorite Tim Abell and Nitro from American Gladiators), they get in, go through some issues, then wait for the chopper to get them out. With 30 minutes left in the movie, it ain't so easy though. Said helicopter is blown up, most of Teague's team is killed, and he's captured. Will he and his remaining crew make it out alive?

This was a tale of two movies. The first hour was a cinematic version of that urban legend chain letter email your uncle sent you after 9/11, you know, the one about a Muslim convenience store owner laughing at the 9/11 news reports while watching CNN in his store, and the Pepsi/Coke distributor seeing it and pulling all his beverages out, something of course that never happened, but the first hour of this movie felt like it was made in the spirit of that jingoistic, racist urban legend chain email--and I'm probably not going too far to say that uncle that sent the email signed up for Facebook ten years later and made your life hell, only to be felled by the Delta Variant ten years after that because he wasn't vaccinated--RIP that uncle. Anyway, in that spirit, this movie hits all the tropes, yet does manage to eke out a few nice moments, like Teague and Abell's chemistry, or Scott Adkins popping in and having a few fun fights; but ultimately it is that movie, from the moment it starts, instead of American cowboys and Italian actors playing bad Native American stereotypes, we have American special forces and Lithuanians playing bad Arab stereotypes--which I guess they thought was too on the nose, so they moved the proceedings after that to a fictitious former Soviet Republic to soften the racism a bit while keeping all the jingoism. At that hour mark, when they get the girl and wait for the helicopter to bring them home, I'm thinking "what the hell are they going to do for another thirty minutes?" And that's when it gets ridiculous. We have Nitro from American Gladiators (Danny Lee Clark) running at enemy soldiers with a pair of grenades to take them out as some kind of valiant last stand, and if you asked me how I'd want Nitro to exit a film like this, you couldn't do it any better. Then we have a fantastic fight scene between Adkins and the baddie's second-in-command (Vladislav Jacukevic), which is the next level kind of stuff we want from Adkins and Florentine. And then the topper, the beautiful way Teague dispatches the baddie, the best baddie killing this side of Richard Lynch in Invasion USA. So where does that leave us? An hour of mediocre jingoistic retread material we've seen myriad times before with a few inspired moments, then a half-hour of fantastic ridiculousness. At least it's free on Prime, but I think if you're an action fan, you need to see those last 30 minutes.

That was a massive "what do I think" paragraph, so we'll tighten it up a bit as we discuss our two Hall of Famers, Scott Adkins and Isaac Florentine. This was early on in Adkins's career, but you can see where he was headed. It's as electric as you want from him, which, in that first hour, is just punching it up from the usual fare; but when the film turns for that last half-hour, he's there to deliver in this new over the top (Stallone style) world. For fans of his work, I don't know that it hits the heights of his best stuff, but it's still stuff you've gotta see. As far as Florentine, this is now 14 directed films for him on the site (15 depending on how you count Max Havoc: Curse of the Dragon), and while I don't know if I'd put this as a whole above any of those other ones I've seen (Assassin's Bullet has the great cast that I think edges this out), that last half-hour is as good as almost everything else he's done for my money. It looks like we have three more of his films, and then we'll have all of his DTV feature directed covered, so I imagine we'll get that done sometime next year, which'll be great to see.

We get the great Marshall Teague as a hero for a change, and as I mentioned above, I really liked the chemistry he and Tim Abell had, someone we're also used to playing more baddies. It was like buddy cop mixed with two career servicemen who have been through a lot together. I get too that as two former servicemen themselves, after 9/11 they'd have wanted to play characters like these as opposed to their usual baddies, but the thing I realized in watching them here, is it's their baddies that elevate the movies they're in to another level. Look at Teague in A Dangerous Place, something that should've just been PM Entertainment's Karate Kid, but Teague's baddie is so sinister it makes the movie more than that; and we've talked about Abell's killer in Instinct to Kill, one of the most chilling performances we've seen on the site. As much as I liked them here, they're showing us the old adage that anyone can be the hero, but to bring it as a baddie like they have is something else. The other thing is, when the movie turns at the hour mark, Abell's character is killed off, which was a shock, but when you get to Teague's end fight with the main baddie (Eli Danker), it couldn't be as ridiculous as it needed to be if Abell was there.

Fans of the site are probably used to seeing Malibu from American Gladiators on here, but this is our first time seeing Nitro, aka Danny Lee Clark. The role he's playing in this is almost like Ian Jacklin without the Ian Jacklin, if that makes sense. Like you like the idea of Ian Jacklin in this part, but you don't want all the Ian Jacklin that comes with casting him. For example, Nitro's beautiful death scene probably doesn't work as well if you have Ian Jacklin doing it, he would've given you too much Jacklin, and I don't think that scene needed more Jacklin, it needed to straddle that razor-thin line between full-on earnestness and parody of itself. I was looking up Clark's bio, and while he doesn't have much, he has this interesting vanity project called Looking for Bruce that co-starred Paige Rowland from PM's Christmas classic Riot, and the recently departed Gil Gerard. Unlike Nitro, who doesn't have a lot of credits, it looks like Gerard had more than a few DTV films, including one called Nuclear Hurricane that he did with his Buck Rogers co-star Erin Gray, and was directed by Fred Olen Ray. Here's to you Mr. Gerard, you were one of the great ones.

Finally, as I mentioned above, the second-in-command baddie looks like the lead singer of Incubus. We also had a member of Teague's team that looked like Bryan from the Backstreet Boys. I could spend this whole paragraph saying how crazy it is that all of that is 25 years ago now, and that it's like classic rock or something, and how old I think I am at 46--and to be fair, my back does a better job of telling me that than music from 2000 being 25 years old. I went back and watched some Incubus videos just to get a better sense of them before I wrote this paragraph, and found a video Rick Beato did from seven years ago breaking down why "Pardon Me" is a great song, and maybe he's right, but all I hear is the New Metal wall of sound guitar rifts, mixed with record scratching because adding a DJ to your band was a thing then. It's not that I don't like that song, but is it something that makes me want to fire up YouTube just to hear it? Or sing along when I hear "Drive" in the drug store. What we didn't realize we were seeing with the New Metal and the Boy Band stuff is the beginning of the end of music as we knew it. Throw in the I Have More Money Than You rap songs, which begat the auto-tuned I Have More Money Than You rap songs, and the death knell was there, like a toxic fungus destroying the banana crop, and the spread of this fungus was hastened by the consolidation of radio stations after the Telecommunications Act was passed under Clinton. Forget "Drive" being a drug store song, now we have bands who only make drug store songs. So while Adkins wins the battle against the figurative corporate music industry in this film, we ultimately lost the war.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently stream this free on Prime and a few other streamers in the US. While that first hour is a bunch of well-worn stuff you've seen myriad times before, that last half-hour is the stuff that dreams are made of, so as a free streamer it's worth checking out. 

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0324038

And check out my newest novel, Mark in Sales, on Amazon in paperback and Kindle.

 

American Dragons aka Double Edge (1998)

We lost another great one last week, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, one of the consummate movie villains, especially in these DTV films that we love. We'd covered most of the films he'd done in a starring role, so I had to go to one where he's more of a supporting character for his in memoriam post, and I figured this one would do the trick. In addition to us, Chris the Brain at Bulletproof, and Ty and Brett at Comeuppance have covered this as well.

American Dragons has Michael Biehn as a New York cop who gets demoted back to homicide after his undercover case goes bust on him. The murder he's now investigating involves some high-ranking Yakuza and an origami lotus flower left behind for evidence. That draws the attention of a Korean detective (Park Joong-hoon), who comes to New York to help Biehn--he also wants revenge on this lotus killer, because he killed Park's wife and son. As they investigate further, Biehn sees that this case dovetails with his previous one, and perhaps this lotus killer (Byron Mann) might be working with the mob enforcer he was trying to bring down (Don Stark).

Overall this was a fun one. Tight runtime, nice action sequences, especially the final one, and Biehn and Park were a fun combo. It does have its flaws though. Biehn was 42 when this came out, but his character dressed like 19-year-old me in 1998, with his oversized shirts, backwards scally cap, and Airwalk sneakers. What were they going for with that? Was he supposed to be the X Games Cop? From a tonal standpoint, a lot of it felt like this stylish cop thriller, drawing from similar movies from the late 80s that I loved, but then you'd get these goofy buddy cop moments that betrayed that tonality. Finally, for a tight runtime, the movie still had some instances of padding. We had opening credits padding, which I think took three minutes over a black background with nothing happening; buddy cops fighting padding, where our two heroes get on each other's nerves to the point that they have a drawn-out fight that was only there to add to the runtime; and then to cap it all off, we have gym training montage padding, out of nowhere near the end of the film. We also had these elements that I wasn't sure if they helped or hurt things, like Don Stark as an evil mafia enforcer. He's kind of a goofy caricature of the whole thing, which was maybe more intriguing than anything I guess. Again though, those flaws aside, this is a fun one overall, and getting it free on Tubi makes it worth a look.

One factor that tips it in the direction of working instead of not working is Cary Tagawa was the Yakuza head who's in Mann's crosshairs. It's a really small part, but he takes that small part and elevates it to something more. When we think about his legacy, I know for me, we wouldn't be here with this site if it wasn't for him. Yes, Dolph played a big part in that, but it was two films that Tagawa did with Dolph, Showdown in Little Tokyo and Bridge of Dragons, that were pivotal in my love of DTV movies, and neither of those movies work as well as they do without Tagawa. Other standout moments in his career, everyone knows his video game movie villains in Mortal Kombat and Tekken, which he was fantastic in; but a couple others for us DTV fans have to be Soldier Boyz, which is a ridiculous film, co-starring Michael Dudikoff, but something that Tagawa absolutely sells with his performance; and then his turn as the baddie in Kickboxer 2, anchoring that film as we were getting comfortable with Sasha Mitchell taking over in the lead role. With DTV films, where everyone involved is working on tight margins, to have someone like Tagawa that can some in and deliver something special, he's able to elevate things above the budgetary limitations, which is vital to making everything work at this level. That kind of professional approach, and everything else Tagawa brought to the table, will be truly missed. Here's to you Tagawa-san, you were one of the greatest.

This is the second time in the past couple months that we've seen Michael Biehn in a post celebrating someone else. Back in October we saw him in Billy Blanks's Hall of Fame induction post for Timebomb. The thing about him here is he's clearly in his late 30s/early 40s, and he presents that kind of maturity, so it doesn't make any sense that they dressed him like a 19-year-old. Maybe the part was originally meant for someone younger, but when you get Biehn, you've got an adult, not a twentysomething hosting an eXtreme sports show on ESPN2. In a way though, it kind of adds to the charm of the film, like I don't know what to do with this, and while I'm trying to figure it out, a car blows up or there's a shootout or something. And part of what makes me not know what to do with it, is I think Biehn doesn't know what to do with it either. Like when they gave him the leather scally cap to wear backwards, he had to be like "my kids wear stuff like this!" I'm not saying he needed to wear Dad Jeans, I'm just saying dressing him like a 19-year-old diminished what Biehn brings to the table, and he was kind of working up hill to deliver the goods--which he was still able to do.

We always talk about New York being a character in a movie, but what about when the film is shot in Vancouver with NYC establishing shots mixed in? It's like having Bruce Willis in a Randall Scandal and doubling him for three-quarters of the film. Now we're like "that tall bald guy isn't Bruce Willis!" the same way when a scene takes place in a bus station and I'm like "that's not Port Authority!" The thing is though, does it matter if 75% of the viewing audience haven't been to Port Authority either? And to be fair, in 1998, I would've been one of those 75%, my first trip there was about ten years ago when my wife and I got a bus there from Portsmouth, NH. I will say, when it comes to America bucket lists, going to Port Authority at least once should be on that list. It's right near Times Square and Broadway, so you could go after you take in your Broadway show, maybe get an NJ Transit bus to Hoboken late at night, really get a sense of what the city has to offer. The only thing is, NJ Transit is a mess when it comes to fares, you need an Excel pivot table to find out what your trip will cost, though that might be part of the experience, having to argue with an NJ Transit bus driver about your ticket when they won't accept it because it's not for the correct fare zone.

Finally, we'll end with a second paragraph on Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa. In looking further at his legacy, I think he has to go down as one of the best at playing cinematic villains ever. Take Tekken for example. There had to be a thought that "we can't make this movie if we don't get Tagawa to play Heihachi." No one else they could've gotten would've worked as well as he did. And Tagawa wasn't a Hackman or Rickman scenery-chewing villain either, he made sure his baddies were sufficiently bad, there was never any fear of a Destro Effect with him. Even in this movie, where he's a baddie, but not the baddie, you get the sense right away that he's not someone you mess with. Contrast that with Don Stark's mafia enforcer, where we're not sure what to make of the dad from That 70s Show that isn't Kurtwood Smith mean-mugging and killing people. I was trying to think of other baddies in Tagawa's class, like Richard Lynch, but I think Tagawa has more memorable roles; or a Billy Drago, who I think was better at the greasy, dirty baddie, but also doesn't have the memorable roles Tagawa had. We may never see anyone as great as Tagawa again, but that's okay, we saw him, and we have his catalog of movies to celebrate him with.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently get this on Tubi here in the States, which I think is a great way to watch it. For your Tagawa movie in honor of him, you're probably better off with Showdown in Little Tokyo or Mortal Kombat, but if you're looking for a fun actioner that you may not have seen before, and get the added bonus of Tagawa, this will do the trick. Again, here's to you Tagawa-san, you were one of the greatest to do it, and you will truly be missed.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118601

And check out my newest novel, Mark in Sales, on Amazon in paperback and Kindle.

Ice (1994)

Recently Will from Exploding Helicopter mentioned his Lettrboxd list of films that have exploding helicopters in them (one of the best Letterboxd lists in my opinion) and I was sitting at a paltry 23% of them watched--of which 10% of those are Dolph and Daniels movies. In an effort to get some more of those films in, I'm doing one of the four PM flicks with exploding helicopters that I haven't watched yet. Also, this is a superfecta movie, because in addition to us, Chris the Brain at Bulletproof Action, Ty and Brett and Comeuppance, and Mitch at the Video Vacuum have covered this too.

Ice has Traci Lords as the wife in a husband and wife duo who rob ne'er-do-wells for insurance companies. They're hired to rob crime boss Vito Malta (Jorge Rivero), but then when her husband (Phillip Troy Linger) decides to keep the diamonds, all hell breaks loose. He gets the crazy grinchy idea of having Lords's estranged brother (Zach Galligan) fence them, but he's a mess and only gets them taken by a rival crime boss. When her husband is killed in a shootout, it looks like the only person Lords can trust is a local detective (Jaime Alba), who may or may not have a thing for her. Will she make it out alive?

This is a good ol' PM time. It starts with a robbery that was edited from the robbery in Ring of Fire II, which is why Evan Lurie is tagged--though not Ian Jacklin, even though I think he's in the scene too. Just tack on a little Michael Bailey Smith, and it's a totally different scene, right? From there, you have a great lead in Lords mixed with all the great PM moments you want, with exploding cars, that exploding helicopter I mentioned above, and a shootout at a semi-pro hockey game where multiple players are killed. Can you imagine, you grew up in the Northeast or Minnesota or Michigan or something like that, played some hockey in high school, move out to LA, and make it onto this semi-pro hockey team, only to be shot and killed by some mafiosos trying to get a bag of diamonds. Only in the world of PM, but it's such a sweet world, and we're happy to be living in it for 90 minutes.

We're now at 53 PM flicks on the site, which sounds like a lot, but I don't even think that's half-way through them all. It had been a while since we'd last done one, and in watching this I realized that was a mistake, I should be watching and reviewing at least one PM flick a month, because they're so good for the soul. We start with that opening robbery, which, as I mentioned above, was lifted from Ring of Fire II, but thinking about it from PM's standpoint, they'd think "how many people would've seen both of these movies, and then if they did, how would they be able to let everyone else know?" I mean, what was it in 1994, a BBS? Would there have even been a PM Entertainment BBS? I certainly wasn't looking for that kind of thing, I was asking my buddy to get all the moves to Mortal Kombat II--I remember how popular I was going to the arcade with the printout, complete with the sides of the paper that had the holes in it, showing everyone there the moves. So while I'm trying to do Mileena's Friendly, PM is laughing all the way to the bank after repurposing a robbery scene, and only thirty years later are we picking up on it, and we actually appreciate the ingenuity. It's all part of the PM charm, which is on full display in this one.

Art Camacho did fight choreography, making this his 57th film on the site, only three away from becoming the fourth member of the 60 Club. I think we have seven more of his PM collaborations left to do, but it's hard to know because he did so many different things for them, he might have other credits I didn't see when I scanned IMDb. And then for stunt coordinators, we had the team of Red Horton and "Broadway" Joe Murphy, one of the top PM teams along with Spiro Razatos and Cole S. McKay. I looked, and they should have 17 and 15 tags respectively, so I've taken care of that. That combination of Camacho with Horton and Murphy give us the action quotient we expect from PM, with some great shootouts, plus car flips and the helicopter explosion; and some great fight scenes, especially with Traci Lords. To complete the PM feel, we have Ken Blakey as DP/cinematographer. He makes sure the movie has the PM look we've come to know and love. We spoke above about how if you watch a lot of PM flicks, you notice things like them reusing scenes from previous movies, but also, this consistency with the look and the action creates this comfort food vibe, when you see that PM logo before the film starts, it's like smelling that burger on the grill at your favorite burger joint, and the first flipped car or person sent through a glass window is that first, juicy bite. Is that the best metaphor for PM? They're the Double-Double Animal Style of movie studios?

We're now at 5 movies for Traci Lords, three of which are PM flicks. Like the last one we talked about from her, A Time to Die, she's the star, and does a great job leading the film. Also like that film, it's kind of crazy to see her in her early 20s acting opposite these men who are ten and twenty years older than her, and not only holding her own, but in some cases making it look like these guys aren't in her league. There was a definite It Factor there that I guess never quite materialized, but in the early-to-mid 90s she had some great DTV stuff, much of which we still need to get to. Among the other names, I thought this was only our second Zach Galligan film, after Cyborg III: The Recycler, but I forgot he was also in Point Doom (directed by Art Camacho), and Storm Trooper (which if you haven't checked, has a great IMDb critics review page. Four reviews, ours, Chris the Brain at Bulletproof, Mitch at the Video Vacuum, and The Schlock Pit. Where are the guys from Comeuppance on that one?) He's great as the scam artist brother who's always getting into stuff. Michael Bailey Smith is here for his 8th time. Always great to see him, and it was also great that the new Fantastic Four movie gave him a cameo considering his great work as the Thing in the Corman version. Finally, Evan Lurie gets a 12th tag from his archive footage appearance in the Ring of Fire II robbery scene. It looks like we have one more movie for him, Death Game aka Mortal Challenge, and then we'll have his entire filmography covered.

Finally, we have a classic Taco Bell logo sighting. It was across the street from the hockey rink Zach Galligan kept the missing diamonds in. Here in Philly it's one of the few fast food places still in Center City, so I enjoy grabbing something there while I'm running errands. When this movie came out though, we had a location in the Fox Run Mall in Newington, NH, and back then you could get hard shell tacos for $.49 a piece. With a $10 allowance, I could do 4 tacos, and still had over $7 left to play Mortal Kombat until my parents or my friends' parents came to pick me up. It still is a pretty good deal, for $6 I can get three hard shell tacos, and while I was comparing PM to In-N-Out Burger, I like that I can swap the ground beef for black beans and remove the cheese for one of the few vegan fast food options. Add in some fire sauce and it's a nice slice of all right. As far as the Fox Run Mall, it's slated for demolition early next year, but I was able to go in one last time and get some pictures.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently get this on Plex or the Roku Channel here in the States, which I think is a good way to go. A fun PM flick, plus you can check another film with an exploding helicopter off your list. What's not to love?

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107182

And check out my newest novel, Mark in Sales, on Amazon in paperback and Kindle.

Flesh of the Unforgiven (2024)

This is one that producer Joe Williamson sent me a screener for a few months back, and I'm finally making it happen now--it was another one of those where, by the time I got to it, it was already available on Tubi, but better late than never, right? And at least that means now you can screen this on Tubi too.

Flesh of the Unforgiven stars Debbie Rochon and Joe Hollow (who also wrote and directed) as Sienna and Jack, an estranged couple trying to make it work after Sienna's indiscretions. Jack's also a writer dealing with writer's block, while Sienna is dealing with scary nightmares. When Jack gets a VHS in the mail with a piece of paper with the word "inspiration" written on it, he thinks it's from his publisher, who's on him for a new treatment. Luckily he's got a VHS player, and once he gets it all hooked up, he finds the video is about all kinds of creepy, gory stuff, including a guy with a disco ball mask keeping his own estranged girlfriend chained to her bed, where he's abusing her. At the same time, we have a woman named Vivienne (August Kyss) who's dealing with her own stuff and decides to end her own life. When she meets Jack for a fling at a local bar, Jack has a dream about her and his wife and the disco ball guy. What could it all mean?

This is probably not my kind of movie, but I think if it were, where it would lose me is that I wasn't sure whose story this was supposed to be focused on, Sienna's or Jack's, and then if it is one of theirs, what do I do with Vivienne's? Was it a situation maybe where this was always supposed to be Jack's story, but then Hollow was able to get Rochon attached and made her role bigger? In that case, I think that's a good move, because she's a stronger screen presence, and anytime a filmmaker is working with a budget, to have someone like Rochon onboard always helps, this film included. There were some other interesting elements that worked in some respects, like Adriana Uchishiba's Livinia character, who brought a twisted Harley Quinn vibe on the one hand that really worked, but her wicked laugh sounded like the laugh that opens The Surfaris' "Wipe Out," so every time I heard it, I was waiting for that iconic surf guitar to come in after it. The other big area I had trouble with was Debbie's nightmares, because she seemed like she didn't know where they were coming from, but she should've known the whole time, unless I missed something on that. But, again, with those nightmares, they were tense and powerful. In one of them her character is getting strangled, and the way she wakes up struggling to breathe was so realistic I found myself having trouble breathing too. And I think that's where I ultimately fall, between Rochon's performance, plus some of the other performances, combined with the other tense, scary moments in the film, if this is your kind of movie, you should definitely check it out, especially now while it's on Tubi.

I figured we'd had to have run across one or two Debbie Rochon films at some point on the site, and I was right, she was in Tromeo and Juliet, Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger IV, and Battledogs. Going through her CV, she shouldn't just have more films on the site, she should be a Hall of Famer, but she's another name who lost out when my site shifted to covering more low-budget action as those posts got more engagement than the horror ones. I do have the power to change that, especially considering she has over 40 movies on Tubi, and a good chunk of those look ripe for reviews. The thing I loved about her here, was she sold this premise completely, and not as much in a physical sense as a dramatic sense. It's like when you watch Loki and Jonathan Majors is sitting across from Tom Hiddleston saying "I'm a scientist from the 31st Century," you need to sell that, because the line by itself is ridiculous, right? And I don't know that this movie has anything quite so ridiculous as that, but especially at the end where Rochon is tying up loose ends and telling us who everyone we barely got to meet in the film was, normally you need to put on your eye goggles to protect yourself from those loose ends flying together like that, but Rochon is selling it, so it mitigates that need for eye protection. Hopefully we'll see her again on the site soon, but for fans of her work, this is one to watch her in.

In the scene where the Vivienne is about to kill herself, in the background the song "Dancing with Tears in My Eyes" from the film Dancing Sweeties is playing, and as you can imagine, 80s music fan that I am, I had to listen to the Ultravox song of the same name--which isn't related to the 30s song from this film. For this scene in the film, the 30s song created the haunting quality the scene required to make it work, and I think of all the music in this film, and there were a lot of original pieces, that one worked the best. The interesting thing is none of those songs are listed in the IMDb credits. That soundtrack section is a Godsend to reviewers like us, it means we don't need to go back to the end credits to find out what that hip hop song that was playing during the flashback montage was. Anyway, it's that time of year when "Do They Know It's Christmas?" gets played, which Ure co-wrote and produced, so it was fitting that the film got me to queue up Ultravox's "Dancing with Tears in My Eyes," which is one of my favorite 80s songs.

I usually don't do screens with captions, but I had to get that interchange below. "You look like a wet fart"? What does that mean? And I guess I know what "I feel like a wet fart" means, but how does that feeling equate to the feeling of having a hangover? When I was in college, a large group of us were going out, and we broke off into two groups, then as we reformed into one, we noticed one of our number was missing. Someone in that second group informed us that that missing individual told them "oh no, guys, I gambled and lost," and had to run home to change, and even though I don't think the "wet fart" interchange in this was that deep, it could be a metaphor for someone who gambled and lost themselves, which technically the Jack character did. During the final credits, Joe Hollow was singing a song called something like "Diary of Pain," and it sounded like "Diarrhea of Pain," which may be another "wet fart" reference. You may or may not be asking "now that we're going lowest common denominator, Matt, you've done the 'fart' half of 'dick and fart' jokes, when do we get the 'dick' half?" No worries, I'm getting there. We have ourselves another prosthetic penis mutilation, in this case it's a double prosthetic penis amputation--could we say "disarticulation" if an erect penis is technically referred to as a "boner?" And what is the deal with indie horror doing prosthetic penis mutilations, after we had one in Brute 1976 too? I think the only other prosthetic penis mutilation we've ever had on the site was when we covered Street Trash in 2007, so one in 18 years, and now we have two in a matter of months. I may have to put up a "no prosthetic penis mutilation" policy for screeners.

Finally, the word "inspiration" comes up a lot in this, and it reminded me of when Adam Richman got into hot water on social media when he used the term "thinspiration," and people got on him because that term can be triggering for people dealing with eating disorders. Instead of saying "I'm sorry, I was trying to be the quirky, husky, Gen Xer that people love, but I can do that in other ways," he chose violence, in one instance telling a commenter to get a razor blade and draw a bath. Richman apologized after, and I think as a result wasn't cancelled for it, because he's still doing shows now, but I think there was a sense that by the mid-2010s that that trend from five-to-ten years before of these husky, coastal Gen Xers in their open coats layered with quirky T-shirts underneath them, complete with charming puns-a-plenty, had run its course, but man, was that a thing in the mid-to-late 2000s. For some reason Richman's show, Man v. Food, doesn't have his episodes on HBOMax, but they are on Tubi, so I watched one where he went to the Research Triangle in North Carolina to eat a bunch of chili dogs. I realized that for me, it was more about the traveling and seeing parts of the US I haven't seen before, the same way I liked Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives for the travel more than for Guy Fieri, who was bringing a different kind of West Coast energy compared to Richman's East Coast vibe (instead of open coats over quirky T-shirts, it was quirky bowler shirts and sunglasses on the back of the head). And while I do think that's why I connected better with Richman, because he made more sense to me as an East Coaster myself, I also kind of see how the market was saturated with those guys--I think Top Chef had one in every season, and when Bourdain was a guest judge that guy was always his favorite. Anyway, because they're on Tubi, it's fun to go back and watch some of those Man v. Food episodes. Maybe I don't need a market saturated with husky, quirky, coastal Gen Xers, but sometimes in smaller doses they're a nice slice of all right.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Speaking of Tubi, you can now get this on their too, or you can rent it for $1.99, which isn't a bad deal either. Between Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday, supporting indie creatives is always a great move, and this is some indie horror you can get behind. Thanks again to Joe Williamson for sending this one our way!

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt32421430

And check out my newest novel, Mark in Sales, on Amazon in paperback and Kindle.

The Shepherd Code: The Road Back (2025)

This is one that I got a screener for from the publicity company hired to get the word out, and having spoken with the star, director, and writer Alan Delabie after the first film, I was excited to make this one happen, especially when he told me this had more Don "The Dragon" Wilson, plus he got Shaina West. In addition to our review, Ty and I discussed this on the pod in episode 237.

Shepherd Code: Road Back picks up where the first one left off. Alex Lapierre (Delabie) is trying to move on and retire in Portugal. But as much as he's trying to get out, his old life keeps pulling him back in. First his mentor Lewis (Wilson) is kidnapped by evil, once thought dead former rival Dumont (Michael McKell). As Lapierre and his buddy Matt (Michael Morris, who also co-wrote and co-directed), try to track down Dumont, Dumont's hatchetman Sanders (Mark Strange) is out there killing anyone connected with Lapierre, making the situation that much direr. Fortunately he's not alone, as Matt has hooked him up with old pal Jessica (West), and with her skills, she can help Lapierre in his final showdown with Dumont and Sanders. Will he be victorious?

This one improved on the first one, and gave us a more polished film overall. Also the strength of the previous one, the fights, is even better here, especially with the talented names Delabie was able to add. Where we run into a problem is we don't get as many fight scenes as we'd want, and Delabie said that had to do with budgetary restraints, which I understand. On the other hand, what does that mean if you're going in expecting a lot of fight scenes and action scenes, and you have more dramatic scenes, how are you going to feel about that? For me, I think the decider is the fact that this is an indie film, and the people involved, Delabie and company, aren't just putting something out with some names on the tin that they hope will get some streams, they're really trying to make the best movie they can, and I not only respect that, that's filmmaking I want to support. And in the process of that support, we get some really inspired fight scenes, which is great to see as well.

As always, we need to start with our 40 Club member, Don "The Dragon" Wilson. This is 43 on the site for him, and he's in this more than the first film, which was good, including a boxing sparring scene that was a fun moment as a fan of his work. I was looking at his bio, and of the films that have actually been released, we've reviewed each of the last six, and then in between the earliest of those, Fury of the Fist and the Golden Fleece and Diamond Cartel and Scorpion King IV, the two he made in 2015, the year he came back from hiatus, there are about six movies that look like they were actually released that could potentially be reviewed, plus a couple before Bloodfist, which all total will get us to 50 for him. Whether we get to them all or not, no matter what, Wilson is one of the greatest to do it, and it was great to see him here in the role he had. He's slated to be in the next film in this series, which will be a prequel, and looks like a lot of fun, so I can't wait to see him there too.

Going from the old school to the new school, we have one of the top rising stars in the action/martial arts world, Shaina West. I'd seen her before this in Jade, which Ty and I covered on episode 232 of the pod, and even though I wasn't a fan of the editorial choices that were taken in the end product, with all the long takes and faux grindhouse-y things, I thought she was great in it, and couldn't wait to see what she did next. Here she comes in toward the end, and has one really great fight scene, which just furthers that desire to see her in more stuff. She has two other films out, one is The Last Gunfight, which is on Paramount+, and the other is The Killer's Game, which is currently in Starz Purgatory, so I may not be able to see it for a while. What her part in this film showed me is she needs a big moment with an Isaac Florentine, Jesse V. Johnson, or James Nunn. And I don't mean co-starring with a Scott Adkins either, center the thing around her. 90 minutes of her taking down a bunch of stunt performers. Former special forces or whatever, I don't care, just put her on a revenge trail and set the whole thing on fire. No more "who's the next big action star," we found her, it's time to start making the movies.

The star of this film, Alan Delabie, is no slouch when it comes to martial arts either, and while he gives the spotlight to his co-stars, in particular West and Mark Strange, he was able to show his stuff plenty as well. I'm excited to see what he has in store for us with the next installment of this franchise. He said it'll be more drama, but if we get a few nice fights here and there I'll be happy. You may have noticed that we tagged Mark Strange as well. We've seen him before, in Avengement, one of the best DTV films of the last 20 years or so. Here he only gets a fight scene or two more than West, but like West, they were fantastic. In particular, his one against Wayne Gordon where he whips his long coat around before he fights, was next level. Add him to the list of names we want to see more of. A couple other names to round things out, we had Lee Arenberg, who played Mike Moffitt in a couple Seinfeld episodes--among other things, but that's what I'll always remember him from; and Louis DeStefano, who shows up in a lot of Cinema Epoch/CineRidge Entertainment films, some of which we've covered here on the site, so it was cool to see him here too. Also, I didn't forget Natasha Killip, Rachel the Waitress from the previous film, and one of my favorite characters in that one. It was great to see her get a cameo in the sequel.

Finally, I wanted to get back to what Alan told me about how he needed to be heavier on the drama aspect than the action because the budget required it. In other cases, it's not a question of the budget, instead the filmmaker relies on more drama because that's the film they want to make. In either case, it gets back to a question that I've always been interested in: do you make art for your audience, or make it for yourself, or even for no audience at all, including yourself? There was an author who said in an interview that you should never write for an audience--even yourself--because that's not the point of creative writing. He said the electric company writes for an audience--if they send you a letter warning you about possible scams, their customer is the audience, and they have a specific purpose in their communication. Creative writing, he said, shouldn't have that same purpose. I can't find the article or remember the name of the author, but it is how I approach writing. For example, the trend now is for short chapters, that that's what audiences want, while my novel Don't House in the Mountains is over 150,000 words and has five chapters. Can the same thing be applied to movies? The audience is expecting a lot of action, and whether it's not there due to budgetary reasons, or the filmmakers wanted to focus on the story, is that okay? I don't have the answer, but for me, if you're earnest enough in what you're doing, and you're putting out good work, the audience should come to you.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently get this on Tubi here in the States, or rent it on Amazon for $2.99. Either way, I think supporting indie creatives is a positive, and something worth doing, and in the process you get to see some really inspired fight scenes. Also, if you haven't yet, check out the podcast episode Ty and I did on this one, 237 in the archives.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt32915549

And check out my newest novel, Mark in Sales, on Amazon in paperback and Kindle.

Bitter Desire (2025)

Nathan Hill is back! And he's going back to the Erotic Thriller well after Lady Terror. I couldn't wait to check this out, and once Nate sent me the screener I tried to make it happen as soon as I could.

Bitter Desire has Nate as police officer Steve, who has his ankle broken by criminal Andy (Tass Tokatlidis). While he's at home recovering, the department is paying for physical therapist Harmony (Hao Dao) to help with the healing process--not to mention with this being an Erotic Thriller, Steve's wife Lexi (Shar Dee) is also committed to helping Steve's recovery, if you know what I mean. Anyway, Andy's in prison, and his girlfriend Sasha (Diana Benjamin) visits him, and he tells her she's gotta get revenge on the guy who put him in the clink, Steve. While she's staking out Steve and Lexi's house, she gets the crazy Grinchy idea to replace Harmony as Steve's physical therapist. The problem is, once she gets inside their house, she starts to develop feelings for Steve. Will she be successful in her diabolical machinations?

This is another great time from Nate and company. He gets what makes Erotic Thrillers fun, and while in the process of making the movie fun, everyone is in on the bit, but it's never too over the top (Stallone style) in its attempts to have that fun. The two keys for me are Shar Dee and Diana Benjamin, in this kind of Fatal Attraction paradigm both of the actors playing those parts have to be all in for it to work. The interesting thing about the Fatal Attraction set-up here though is Nate's character more emotionally cheats on his wife than actually doing it physically, and that takes the out the element we had in Fatal Attraction where it was like "Michael Douglas is the real bad guy here, isn't he?" Also, positive spoiler, no pets get the wrong end of our femme fatal character. As we're closing in on the holiday season and all the stress that can come with that, this movie is a fun 70-minute reprieve, and if you rent it on Amazon for $1.99, you also get to support indie creatives.

We're now at seven Nate Hill films here on the site, and there hasn't been a single one of these that I haven't had a great time with. This one, like Lady Terror, is not as overtly funny as ones like Revenge of the Gweilo or Jasper, and I think for us Americans where we often need to be hit over the head with humor to get it, it might not all translate, but it helps that I know going in that the goal of Nate's movies is for us to have a good time with them. I was thinking of some of his others, like I, Portrait, where I felt like the ending in that one didn't work for me, but in this film he nails the ending, and I won't say any more than that, because I don't want to spoil any of it for you, but that ending I think encapsulates a movie that's made with giving the audience a good time at the forefront, and that's the one thread through all of Nate's films that I've seen so far, and why I've found them all enjoyable.

Often in this Fatal Attraction paradigm, the male lead in the triangle is the one where the focus is, and while Nathan's character does play an important part, Shar Dee's Lexi and Diana Benjamin's Sasha were developed more. For example, they're the ones we see talking with their friends or co-workers, while Nate is only either alone or with one or both of them. In that sense, even though this has the structure of Fatal Attraction, what we get is more like a Joan Severance or Shannon Tweed-style woman-centered Erotic Thriller. And that's where your leads have to be all-in, even if the movie is all in fun like this one is, if they're not committed to it, it loses some of the magic that makes it all work. We have to believe that Steve loves his wife and is attracted to her, but also why he may be drawn to the new woman as well. Again, it may ultimately be all in fun, but the foundation needs to be solid for that work, and I loved how Shar Dee and Diana Benjamin were able to provide that foundation.

There are two main kinds of Erotic Thrillers, one is more about rich people, and maybe someone with lesser means is drawn into the world of the affluent; the other is the every day suburbanite caught up in extraordinary circumstances, and this film fits into that second category. How do we know which of the two we're watching? It's almost always establishing shots. The fancy mansion with its big driveway and pool out back, versus the sleepy suburban town with people walking their dogs and the paper boy delivering the morning news to everyone. I loved how this movie leaned into those establishing shots. Between scenes it was shot after shot giving us the banality of suburban existence: kitchen sinks, potted plants, toasters, etc. As I mentioned above, Nate's comedy is less hit you over the head with it, but he finds his moments, whether it's with those establishing shots here, or the constant getting in and out of his car in Lady Terror, and when it works, it adds another note of enjoyment to the proceedings. 

Finally, one of my favorite YouTubers is CityNerd. If you're not familiar, he's a former city planner that now makes urbanist YouTube videos about things like how bad train travel is in the US and how great it is in Spain, or how some Major League ballparks fit right into the fabric of their cities, while others sit in the middle of a massive parking moat. Anyway, he did a great 40-minute video on his trip to Melbourne, Australia, which I really enjoyed, but he was experiencing it as a visitor and trying to show us in America how we could learn things from Melbourne's urban fabric to improve our own cities. Anyway, the thing I like about Nate's movies is they also take place in Melbourne, and you know you're in Australia, but the lives he depicts and they way his characters live them, especially in these Erotic Thrillers, could be anywhere. I love a good shot of a koala as much as the next guy--and I wouldn't complain if Nate included some in his movies--but the point is, the Australia of his movies isn't a novelty, and we're not seeing it as a visitor, we're seeing it from the point of view of people who live there, which is something I really appreciate, because no American production would make a movie set in Australia and not have it be a novelty. This is a big reason why we need to support indie filmmakers more, because they give us stories we wouldn't otherwise get.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can rent this on Prime here in the States for $1.99. If you're looking to support indie creatives, this is a great, low-cost way to do it. Maybe on Small Business Saturday, after a day of shopping, you can fire this one up. You're only tacking on a couple extra bucks to the pizza and beer you'll be having with it--and maybe you can even defray the cost by skipping a topping or something. Either way, this is a great time, and with how the world is right now, we all could use a escape.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt29458517

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/

 

Mafia Wars (2024)

This is one Ty and I covered on episode 224 of the podcast, "Phillippe Phactory II: All Gigandet." As we were waiting for Desert Dawn to come out, which has both Phillippe Phactory-ers, Kellen Lutz and Cam Gigandet, we figured we'd do an episode spotlighting a couple of Gigandet's films in the meantime. In addition to us, out of the three critic reviews, one of them is our friend Chris the Brain at Bulletproof Action.

Mafia Wars has Gigandet as Italian mafia enforcer Griff, who's known for being brutal, and also has designs on moving up. His brother's (Sterling Griffin) in prison, and his prison mate is Terry (Tom Welling), who just happens to save Griff's brother's life. Now with Welling out, the brother tells him to look Griff up if he wants a job. Not so fast cowboy, turns out Terry getting out of the clink was a plan by local detective Lombardi (Chris Mullinax), and he wants Terry to use his in with Griff to get close so they can get evidence against him and bring him down. Terry doesn't have much choice, so he does as he's told, and lucky enough a local sex worker (Cher Cosenza) happens to also be a CIA agent, so at least he has some help when things go sideways.

This wasn't half-bad. Welling was good in the lead, Gigandet was bad enough as the baddie, and Cosenza was good as a supporting character with a twist. I don't know where that gets you though. Do I have to know? I guess if I'm writing the review I do. In his review on Bulletproof, Chris mentioned how in the 90s PM would've made this, and I think that's a great jumping off point. Mid-90s, directed by Joseph Merhi, action-directed by Spiro Razatos or Cole S. McKay, starring Gary Daniels or Don "The Dragon" Wilson, with a baddie played by someone like Evan Lurie, it could've been an instant classic--or it could've been written and directed by Joey Travolta and starring John Aprea and Michael Nouri and ultimately been kind of a dud, but the point is, that high ceiling was there. Outside of a few big names in the DTV action world doing next-level stuff, this might be as good as it gets, so maybe we just need to take stuff like this that ain't half-bad and run when we do get it, because the DTV floor now is much lower too.

This is our first time seeing Cam Gigandet on the site, despite this being his third (and later this month fourth) film we've covered on the podcast, all of those being in the two-movie new DTV episodes we do each month with Ty. I don't know how the idea of the "Phillippe Phactory" came to be, I think Ty and I were talking about how Gigandet, Kellen Lutz, and maybe a Chad Michael Murray all filled niches usually filled by Ryan Phillippe. It's interesting though with this movie, because I don't know you could've just plugged Phillippe into Gigandet's part and have it work better, I think Gigandet is a fully flesh-out Gigandet here, doing the best he can to elevate this part. His IMDb bio has a bunch of stuff in various stages of development that could be interesting, so I imagine this won't be the last time we see him on the site, but at the very least, we'll see him more on the podcast.

This is also our first Tom Welling film, which I'm a little less surprised about, because he's only beginning his DTV journey, while Gigandet's been swimming in that pond for the last ten years or so. And with Dean Cain turning out to be a jerk off, I guess we needed a new former TV Superman to have a go in DTV films--the movie even leans into it a bit with a joke about the "fortress of solitude." The thing is, Tom Welling is no longer the Tom Welling we know from Smallville, he's become former NFL offensive lineman and current NFL TV analyst Mark Schlereth. I think that may suck more for Schlereth than it does for Welling, because Schlereth wanted to start an acting career, and now Welling will take any parts Schlereth could've gotten. The thing that hasn't changed for Welling though is he's still a likeable lead, which really helps in a movie like this that doesn't have a lot going for it, if you can at least root for the hero, that's half the battle. I don't know how many DTV duds we've gotten lately with bearded actors playing former special forces guys in flannel shirts and worn baseball caps that do nothing for us, to have Welling show up and not be that is a breath of fresh air--even if he's rocking an early-2000s goatee. 

The main impetus behind Welling's character getting arrested is he goes abroad to sell drugs to make money for his niece's operation back in the States. This device has been used in so many DTV movies, it makes me wonder if a bunch of DTV production companies and distributors have joined the private health insurance lobby to keep America from having single payer health care. For some reason as a society many Americans don't look at that and say "that's pretty shitty that a country this prosperous would rather health insurance execs and shareholders get money from people being sick or dying, instead of keeping its citizens well," or even dumber, "it's pretty stupid a lot of Americans would rather pay out the nose for health care than be called a communist." In my case I'm lucky enough to have health insurance from my job, but even then if, God forbid, I was diagnosed with something serious, or got hit by a car, the things that my private health insurance wouldn't cover would bankrupt me, and unfortunately I don't have a relative who can go abroad to sell drugs or maybe get involved in one last heist to pay off those medical debts. But hey, at least DTV movie screenwriters can use it as a plot device, so there's that.

Finally, speaking of Chris the Brain, I had him on the pod recently for an upcoming episode, and he mentioned the pronunciation of Cam Gigandet's last name. I thought Gigandet was more committed to the French pronunciation of his name than I was mine because his family had more recently come here from France than mine had from Quebec, but that doesn't appear to be the case. With that in mind, I don't know why my family decided to anglicize "Poirier" so it sounds like "poor-EE-er" instead of "poir-EE-ay"--and it may not have even been their decision, because another common pronunciation is "poor-EE-ay," splitting the difference between the French and the English. For example my UMaine Black Bears hockey team has a freshman scoring sensation named Justin Poirier, and announcer Jeff Mannix always pronounces it "poor-EE-ay." Maybe I'm just not as a big a stickler on it as Gigandet is his. "Poir-EE-ay," "poor-EE-er," or "poor-EE-ay" is all fine for me, hell if you just get close I'm happy enough, but if someone ever asks me, I always default to "poor-EE-er."

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently get this on Tubi. It's not a horrible deal, and if you're a big Welling fan from Smallville, or a Gigandet fan from Twilight, it's worth giving it a shot. And if you haven't yet, you can also check out the podcast episode where Ty and I discussed it, number 224 in the archives.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10450852

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/