Champagne and Bullets aka "Geteven" aka Road to Revenge (1993)

This is one that's been a long time coming on the site, a glaring omission that's needed to be rectified for a long time, and we're finally doing that now. This was also covered on podcast episode 264 with Mitch from the Video Vacuum, so you can check that out as well. In addition to us, Mitch as also covered this, along with Chris the Brain at Bulletproof and Ty and Brett at Comeuppance, so this is a Superfecta Film--and brings home the point that this review is long overdue.

Champagne and Bullets stars John De Hart (who also wrote, co-directed, and recorded original music for) as Bode, an LAPD police officer who, along with his partner Huck Finney (DTVC Hall of Famer Wings Hauser), are framed by their superior Normad (William Smith) and taken off the force. At the same time, Normad is up to some nefarious stuff, not the least of which is sacrificing babies in satanic rituals. Not content to leave Bode and Finney to live their lives in peace post LAPD, he sends his goons to the finished basement bar they like to hang out in, and then Normad dates Finney's ex-wife. Eventually Normad takes it too far, and it's up to Bode to take him down. Will he succeed?

Where do you start with this? Probably the "Shimmy Slide," De Hart's song that he performs in the finished basement bar he and Hauser hang out in. It's an absolute thing of beauty, and alone would be worth the price of admission (which I guess is Fawesome commercials in this case?), but then it's all kinds of bonkers from there. We have William Smith as a corrupt cop who becomes a corrupt judge, while moonlighting as a satanic cult leader and dealing drugs. How fantastic is that? Then we have Wings Hauser drinking bleach after he's been arrested, talking to a papier-mâché Native American head, and hanging out in a pool fully clothed. They weren't just a couple known actors De Hart got for a couple scenes so he could splash their names on the tin, they turn in memorable performances that were a ton of fun. And then we have De Hart himself. He cast former Playboy Playmate Pamela Jean Bryant as his love interest, and proceeded to have as many love scenes with her as possible, set to his music that he recorded. One of the scenes is in a bathtub in this nautical themed-bathroom, completed with a big net on the wall with plastic ocean life attached to it. I don't know what we're doing with any of it, but it all works in that way that something where nothing should work does, if you know what I mean. And considering you can do it free on streaming, it's worth checking out if you haven't already.

We're now at 26 movies for Wings Hauser, but it's been almost a year since his last film, Bedroom Eyes II, which was another film that was featured on a podcast episode (207 in the archives). The thing that was surprising about this one, was how much he was in it, and how much bonkersness he brought to the proceedings. This is the Wings you come for when you see his name on the tin, which makes the whole thing that much better, and maybe even puts it a notch above other That Movies like Samurai Cop or Miami Connection that don't have any memorable Wings to hang their hat on. 26 means we're close to the 30 Club for Hauser, the problem is, a lot of the remaining movies we need to do aren't on any streamers, so it won't be easy, but maybe we can scrounge four of them up and get him over the threshold. 

The guys at Comeuppance have talked about movies like these before, calling them a "That Movie," and the part they stress the most about them is how they're all happy accidents. If a filmmaker goes in ahead of time and tries to manufacture something like this, it doesn't work the way one where the filmmaker is thinking they're putting out a classic does. A great example of this concept is in Samurai Cop and the sequel Samurai Cop 2. The sequel was an attempt to recreate the magic of the original, and in the end it didn't work. The earnestness of the process adds to the charm and makes these classics in ways the filmmaker didn't anticipate. For the most part the Comeuppance rule that you can't purposefully create one of these has stayed true, but I have found one exception: Nathan Hill's films do a great job of keeping the humor subtle enough that they feel like one of these, and in the process that humor insulates his films from some of the limitations that come with making movies on a low budget. If you're curious about his films, we've reviewed seven of them, which you can find by clicking on his tag on the left-hand side of the site.

In addition to the "That Movie" category, we also have the Vanity Project, which this falls into as well. They can be insufferable, like when Alexander Nevsky makes one and has all the other characters talk about how great his character is, but when they turn out like this movie does, the insufferability (for lack of a better term) ends up adding to the charm I discussed above. You can see De Hart hearing from his friends "hey, you're a pretty good singer, and you're a pretty affable guy, you should be in movies!" And so he does it, giving us all of that singing talent and affability, only it doesn't translate onscreen, and now we have a deer-in-headlights performance of a song that becomes known for all the wrong reasons, all of which now makes it such a thing of beauty. The thing is though, in these vanity projects we get a sense of the real person behind them, and I think that happens here as well. De Hart's character is staying with Hauser's character after they get bounced from the force, but when he reconnects with Pamela Jean Bryant, he moves out without notice, leaving Hauser stuck paying a mortgage he can't afford. What kind of friend does that? Also, when Smith's goons invade the finished basement bar De Hart's performing in, Hauser jumps in to help De Hart, and when the cops come, he ends up arrested and spending five hours in jail for his trouble. Maybe it's bad writing, but De Hart wrote it, and didn't see anything wrong with his character leaving his friend holding the bag on multiple occasions like that.

Finally, going back to the finished basement bar where the "Shimmy Slide" happens, De Hart also has a slew of arcade games and pinball machines in there. I don't know if he owned them or rented them for the film, but it got me thinking, if I ever had the money and the space, what arcade games would I get? In my novel Don's House in the Mountains I tease this a bit, where Don's theater room has Galaga and Mortal Kombat, and while Galaga would be a given, I think for Mortal Kombat I'd personally do Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 instead. From there, I'd need a Street Fighter game, and I think either Marvel v Capcom or X-Men: Children of the Atom would work for that, though maybe the original Street Fighter 2 might work too. Finally, I'd need the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game. I remember having one of my birthdays at our local arcade, The Dream Machine, and one of the perks of having your birthday there was you and your friends had unlimited tokens to play, so we pumped a bunch of them in and won it, which was a beautiful thing. I think that's a pretty good foursome, but then the question would be, how much would I play them? Probably a lot to start with, but knowing me, there'd be too many out of market baseball games I'd need to watch, and next thing I know it's been two years, I haven't touched any of them, and they're all covered in dust, along with the rest of my finished basement bar. 

And with that, let's wrap this up. This actually has a Vinegar Syndrome release, but what's great is you can try it on Fawesome of Flex before you buy it. One word of caution: there's a graphic rape scene where the bartender at the finished basement bar is assaulted by Smith's goons. That means this probably isn't a fun bad movie night movie depending on who's watching it with you. Otherwise though it is a fun time, and worth seeing. Also, you can check out the podcast episode Mitch and I did, number 264 in the archives.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0169183

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

Trouble Man (2025)

Even though Exit Protocol was Michael Jai White's 30th film on the site, because he's not in it much I wanted to do something more fitting for his 30 Club celebration, and I figured I'd take advantage of my current Starz subscription by reviewing this film, which he also directed. In addition to us, Chris the Brain at Bulletproof has covered this as well.

Trouble Man is not based on the Blaxploitation film of the same name, but rather has White as Jaxon, a former cop who runs security at Mike Epps's nightclub in Atlanta, while also doing jobs on the side, like beating up doctors who beat their wives. When singer La La Anthony goes missing, record mogul Orlando Jones enlists White's help, but there's stuff going on here that Jones isn't telling him. He gets a better sense of this when he goes to Anthony's boyfriend, Method Man, and the two of them start following up on leads. Levy Tran, a mysterious woman working with Jones, seems to be the key to all this, but when White and Method Man find where Anthony is being held, they discover how outgunned they are. It's going to take all their wits in addition to their brawn if they're going to prevail.

Overall I enjoyed this one. It took about 30 minutes or so to fully get what I think White was going for, which for me was a modern version of Fred Williamson's Dakota Smith films, but once we got there, especially when Method Man's character first appeared, it hits its stride. The question is, what do you do with that first 30 minutes? We get a lot of plot exposition and backstory dialog, a couple of comedic moments that could've been tighter, and a couple scenes of White beating the crap out of people, and that might be enough to get you to the last hour. The other thing is, when we finally get the big finale fight between White and Tran's two body guards (Noah Felder and Theodore Park), it's done with this janky-looking greenscreen in the background that detracts from it. I wonder if there was a way they could've mitigated that some, perhaps by shooting it in a different location if that was the issue. On that note though, I could feel more of the independent spirit in this production, as opposed to the assembly line feel we get with a lot of modern DTV, and to me that also has to count for something, especially when they're trying to overcome budgetary issues. If you have Starz and you're looking for some new DTV action to watch, this isn't a bad option.

Michael Jai White becomes the 12th actor in the 30 Club, which is a big deal and something that should've come sooner, considering how many DTV films has out there--by my count there are another 15 or 16 of his we could do, including MR 9: Do or Die, which Ty and I covered on the podcast. On the Vlad TV interview he did, talked about all of the challenges he's faced in the industry, which is something Fred Williamson has talked about as well, and I think you can see the parallels here with what Williamson did in the 80s and 90s, and with White producing and directing his own movies instead of waiting for the industry to give him the roles he should have. On that score, that's where that independent spirit really comes through in this film. Compared to Black Dynamite and Outlaw Johnny Black, this doesn't reach that level, but it does the trick for a solid direct to video action effort done on a budget, and I'd like to see more of these, especially with his character Jaxon.

Surprisingly this is our first Method Man film on the site, which, when I looked at his IMDb bio, isn't as surprising as I thought. Back in 2010 he did Sinners and Saints, and the trailer to that was on every third DTV film I got from Netflix to review for the site. In my head I assumed that was one of many, or would be one of many DTV films Method Man did, but not so it turned out. Either way, the moment he enters this movie, he breathes a life into it that it needed, and not the way I was expecting. I thought he'd be a run of the mill gangster character, but it was a well-rounded three-dimensional role that was a ton of fun, and he and White worked well off each other. It felt like White was trying to inject some humor into the film to cut a bit of the seriousness and mitigate some of the clichés this movie was working in, and Method Man fit perfectly with that, taking that edge off and allowing us to have fun with it all. I'm not sure how many more times we'll see him here, but based on this performance, hopefully this won't be the last.

Going back to that use of humor to cut some of the seriousness, it's easy with a detective film like this to make it all about how great the hero is, and if you make your baddies bad enough, it'll work, but I wonder too if White noticed it was becoming too much about his character being the man, which can make the whole thing seem like a silly vanity project if you're producing and directing too. To that end, the movie started off in that vein, when White beat up the abusive doctor. He makes this big show of "oh man, Ree Ree (Mike Epps), you didn't tell me how big this guy was!", only to have him take the guy down without the guy even landing a punch. Had that been Scott Adkins, the guy wouldn've been throwing him through plaster walls and Adkins would've barely prevailed by smashing a vase over his head or something, but that's not how White gets down, so the whole thing starts the movie on a bad foot, and I think had it continued that way, this might not have worked. I don't know if maybe he saw that happening too, and by injecting the humor in, we could laugh with the movie at both the jokes, and the clichés, as opposed to at them. I think that also allows us to take the effort of making the film itself more seriously, which I think is important when you're making movies on the margins like this.

Finally, look at that, it's Keith Sweat! He played himself producing La La Anthony's album, and he has songs in the movie! He's only in the one scene, which is too bad, it would've been nice if he helped raid the baddies' lair while toting a machine gun, or even just singing a few bars for us, but we'll take what we can get when it's Keith Sweat. I was trying to think what my favorite song of his is, and it probably has to be "Twisted," just because I remember that one on MTV a lot in the late 90s, but you look at "I Want Her," which is considered to be the first big New Jack Swing hit, and from there it's a string of hits and platinum records, so there are a lot of possible favorites. I watched the "Twisted" video as I was writing this review, and I'd forgotten about this trend from the late 90s to early 2000s where videos stopped the song at some point near the end, and either did a choreographed dance move, or in this case I'm not sure what it was. When I watch 80s and early 90s videos, we almost always just get the song, and when we don't, like in 'Til Tuesday's "Voices Carry," it's only a quick break that enhances the experience. Even the music itself, while "Twisted" is a favorite, it's more of that "heavy R&B" sound that had replaced New Jack Swing at that time, which guys as talented as Sweat could pull off, but there's something about it that wasn't as much fun as that New Jack Swing sound. Anyway, this was supposed to be a Keith Sweat appreciation paragraph, and it turned into a "get off my lawn" rant about music, so getting back to appreciating Mr. Sweat, here's to you, sir, you're one of the greatest.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Unfortunately this has been relegated to Starz purgatory, but if you have Starz it's worth checking out. The independent spirit of the film comes through, and the supporting performances of Method Man and others made this a fun time.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt30459064/

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

Deadly Breed (1989)

As we in the States celebrate 250 years of not wanting to be the middlemen when it came to colonial oppression and keeping all the profits to ourselves, I figured I'd celebrate in true DTVC style with PM Entertainment's 60th film on the site! And what a doozey, right? In addition to us, out of the five critic reviews on IMDb, three of them are Chris the Brain at Bulletproof, Ty and Brett and Comeuppance, and Mitch at the Video Vacuum, so this is a Superfecta film.

Deadly Breed has William Smith as a police chief in full sit-down mode giving detective Kilpatrick (Addison Randall) the job of creating a neo-Nazi murder squad to kill black, Latino, and Asian parolees after they get out of prison, but making it look like the murders happened due to criminal activities so no one will be suspicious. After about 23 of his parolees have been killed though, PO Jake (Blake Bahner) does in fact get suspicious, so he starts digging--and digging, nights spent caressing his braided rat tail over Miller Genuine Drafts while his wife Lana (Michelle Berger) has to pleasure herself alone. Anyway, it's PM, somehow this resolves itself with a lot of explosions and death.

And as a PM movie, this is a rougher sit than we're used to. It would be number 4 on the spine if all the PM films were released as a collection, and while they were still getting a sense of what worked--like shootouts and explosions--they were also getting a sense of what didn't work--like the main character's significant other needing to die in some violent fashion. It also drags in parts, there isn't the PM 15-minute rule yet, the action is almost confined entirely to the end, with smatterings here and there before that. On the other hand, the PM over-the-top-ness (Stallone style) is pretty prevalent, with our neo-Nazi LAPD-led death squad not just harassing or beating people up, but straight-up massacring them. In a way that over-the-top-ness takes some of the sting out of it and makes it less sinister, as opposed to a bunch of masked Proud Boys on a DC subway surrounding a black woman, because there's a sense that the massacre couldn't really happen--but then we live in a 2026 where hate like this is so normalized that it's hard to know what could or couldn't happen. The other thing of course was the rampant racism in the LAPD, and while maybe a Mark Fuhrman wasn't massacring innocent victims, he did have Nazi paraphernalia at his police desk, and did a great job through his racism in creating reasonable doubt in the biggest trial in the last 50 years or so. I can imagine when PM made this in 1989, they couldn't have imagined a significant enough portion of the population today would see Kilpatrick as the hero, not the baddie. And for that, maybe this is the best PM film for the 4th of July in the US in 2026, it was over-the-top then, but notsomuch now. The fact that it's on Fawesome and loaded with commercials is probably fitting as well.

This is the big 6-0 for PM, and while we have better movies still to review that might have worked for a 60 Club celebration, for the 4th of July on America's 250th, I don't think anything was better than this, and in that sense perhaps this is the most fitting 60th post, because one thing PM was good at was reflecting America back at us with this distorted, over-the-top PM lens filled with cartoonish violence, but also baddies getting their comeuppance at the end of the 90 minutes. When a Trump-like figure played by William Shatner tried to gain office in Land of the Free, he didn't succeed and turn America into a White Christian Nationalist haven, he was vanquished by Jeff Speakman after the two duked it out. And here, despite Kilpatrick killing dozens of people, he does shimmy to death from Jake's assault rifle hose job instead of escaping and spreading his murderous hate further. In the real world, baddies not only don't get their comeuppance, they usually make a lot of money off of other people's suffering in the process. PM provided us with an escape that, in the 90s we needed, but in the 2020s, we need even more, so it's great that so many of their films are available in so many places for us to get that 90-minute reprieve. Here's to you Pepin, Merhi, and everyone else at PM who made these films happen, you were truly one of the greatest to ever do it.

Speaking of the people who made PM films happen, we have a lot of them here. Cole S. McKay is now at 68 films on the site, as he does stunts here, with Michael J. Sarna as stunt coordinator, who is now in the 30 Club himself! We also had Paul Volk doing the editing, who just celebrated a birthday, so happy birthday to him! Interestingly Rick Lamb does the cinematography, and while this is his only PM film as cinematographer, he did camera work on several others, plus some Albert Pyun and AIP films, so he's been on the DTVC numerous times. You could see his stamp in the early foot chase scene with the POV shots. This was directed by Charles T. Kanganis, one of six he did for PM, plus he wrote multiple other films for them, so someone we probably should tag at some point, but he was a real PM mainstay, especially in these earlier films of theirs. The same can be said about the film's baddie, Kilpatrick, played by Addison Randall. He's acted in, written, and directed multiple other PM flicks as well, plus City Lights movies. Finally, William Smith is back for his 12th film on the site, a true sit-down role  where he couldn't be bothered to tie his tie tightly or fix his hair. I think he stands maybe one time in the whole film, after police detective Alex (Rhonda Gray) comes in to ask if she can be part of the investigation into her brother's murder, and decorum insists that he has to at least stand to recognize her presence and what she's been through. It's a true thing of beauty.

The other PM mainstays, especially in early PM films like this, are McDonald's and Chinatown sightings. If only Smith had had a Bush 41 portrait in his office, we'd have hit the trifecta, which I don't think has ever happened in any movie on the DTVC before. The McDonald's is a shot of the Golden Arches while a guy is being followed, so we get it both through the windshield (or "windscreen" for my UK readers) and the rear-view mirror as he's looking behind him (sorry, not sure how to say "rear-view mirror" in UK English, "backward-facing looking glass"?). The Chinatown is the LA one we've seen in multiple PM films, and it's one I've never been to before, so maybe I need to make a pilgrimage. I saw that you could even walk to Dodger Stadium from there, and while I'm not sure what kind of walk that would be, I could check two items off of two lists with that, something I've actually done a few other times before, between the White Sox and Chicago's Chinatown, a Yankees game and Manhattan's Chinatown, and a Mets game and Queen's Chinatown. Too bad Pittsburgh doesn't have a Chinatown for when I go to that game later this summer.

Finally--I know that last paragraph felt like the finally--our hero in this movie had a tiny braided rat tail. When I first saw it, he was confronting his wife for using her vibrator because he was ignoring her with all his PO investigations, but I thought maybe it was a wire to an earpiece or a thread coming off his shirt. I should know better when I'm watching a movie from 1989, rat tails can appear out of anywhere, but my brain had moved so far beyond the concept of the rat tail over the last near-40 years that the idea of it is foreign again. After a few other shots of him though I was able to confirm that he did in fact have a small braided rat tail. If you're wondering, I did have a bit of one. I remember going to the Sears or JC Penny hair salon where my mom took me to get my hair done, and them showing me with a mirror in the back how it was coming along. The thing was, I got maybe 2-3 haircuts a year, most of the time I let my hair grow out, so there wasn't a lot of opportunity to make the contrast between the rat tail length and the actual length, and soon enough the rat tail was out and it didn't matter anyway. Normally I would do a "here's to you" thing about something like this, but there's no "here's to you" to the rat tail, just a good riddance.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can get this free on Fawesome, and on YouTube, which I've added to my PM Playlist on our YouTube channel. For a 4th of July 2026 PM film, it might not be the most fun, but it's the most apt. Also, warning if you're watching this in a group, there is a scene where Kilpatrick rapes and kills Lana, and while it's not entirely graphic, it is plenty disturbing. You could even click the 30 seconds ahead button a couple times and skip it.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0167873

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