The Big Fall (1997)

For this month's PM post, I figured I'd do the third of three films C. Thomas Howell did with them, having already done the first two. When you look at all the names included too, you can see why a review was needed. In addition to us, Matt Spector at Bulletproof, Ty and Brett at Comeuppance, and David Wain at The Schlock Pit have covered this as well.

The Big Fall has Howell as Blaise Rybeck, a private investigator with a big heart who's having trouble making ends meet, despite having a nice big office, an office assistant (Kathy Griffin), and an intern (Sam Seder). All that changes when beautiful possible femme fatale Emma (Sophie Ward) comes to Rybeck asking her to find her brother, who disappeared while flying a light plane. Turns out he was involved with some rough characters, including Jeff Kober and Titus Welliver, but as Howell gets in deeper, he starts to realize maybe Emma isn't who she said she is, and maybe she's more involved with them than he thought. Then, as if we didn't have enough players, a young FBI agent who has a past with Howell is now assigned to take them down too. Will Howell solve the crime and get out alive?

This is an interesting one compared to the other two Howell did for PM. It flows back and forth between what we expect to be a PM Entertainment film, with explosions and people crashing through glass windows, but they feel shoehorned into Howell's attempt at a neo-Noir that leans heavily on more classic Film Noir themes. Like in the first ten minutes, we get these well-shot, stylized scenes of Howell smoking a cigar at an exclusive club while flirting with Kelly Rutherford, which then bleeds into a fight scene, car crashes, and Howell falling off a roof and crashing through a window. But then we don't see as much action for longer stretches than we're used to in a PM flick, and in the struggle between PM elements and neo-Noir, the latter wins out mostly. Also some of the PM elements don't feel as great, like the car chase later in the film where the cinematography wasn't what we usually get on PM action scenes, and was shot to make the thing feel a bit claustrophobic. There are some things for this to hang its hat on though. Howell actually bungee jumps. He also has a fight scene with Titus Welliver, which is something I feel like I'd want if I see their two names on the tin. And then we get these other names, like Kathy Griffin, Sam Seder, and Jeff Kober, who, along with Welliver, add a little more flavor, as did the one-off scene with Rutherford, and Sophie Ward as our Film Noir femme fatale. This is probably more for PM completists, but because I consider myself one, I think this is worth checking out on a free streamer.

We're now at 17 films for C. Thomas Howell, which feels like a good number, plus we have a couple we discussed on the pod that I could review soon, so that number could go higher. A lot of his tags came in the first few years of the site, when he had teamed up with The Asylum and was making War of the Worlds movies with them. It wasn't until later when Kenner from Movies in the Attic told me to watch The Sweeper that I discovered his PM Entertainment oeuvre, and while I didn't like this one as much as that or Pure Danger, I think these three work better than his Asylum output. Even this one is trying things that I don't know if The Asylum would've let him try, and while it may not always fit for PM, I appreciated that he had the room to do it, because when it did work, like the scene with Kelly Rutherford, I thought it worked really well. In my review of Mutant Vampire Zombies from the 'Hood! I said that Howell just didn't click for me, but I think seeing his PM films I have a new perspective, so it'll be interesting to see how he goes from here. Also this is his fifth directed film on the site, which isn't a bad number either. 

Denney Pierce is the action director for this movie. If you're not familiar with him, he does a lot of work with Spiro Razatos, especially stunt driving, and so like Razatos, he's a big part of why a lot of the PM films we love so much are great, but also why so many 2010s big budget action movies were great. I thought he did well as action director here, despite the fact that the film didn't have a lot of scenes for him to work with. Also, Igor Meglic, who is Razatos's action DP, wasn't on this either, instead we had Clive Sacke as second unit DP, and Jürgen Baum, who himself had done a lot of second unit DP work, as cinematographer. I'm not saying they did a bad job, but I think it may have explained why the chase scene near the middle didn't look the way we expect a PM action scene to look. And I think you can also say that about Jürgen Baum as cinematographer, he did a good job, but because he's not Richard Pepin or Ken Blakey, the film didn't have as much of the PM feel we've come to expect, and in that sense this movie feels more like one of the PM films Pepin and Merhi distributed, as opposed to one they produced in house. Probably not a selling point as a film on its own, but almost 60 PM flicks in, seeing some of these unique elements becomes more interesting the more of these we watch.

In the second screenshot you may recognize that young man as Sam Seder, host of The Majority Report YouTube channel, which was originally on Air America (or still is on that too, if that still exists, I'm not sure anymore). While I don't watch The Majority Report, it gets pushed to me a lot, and I do remember its early days when he co-hosted with Janeane Garofalo. The fact that the show has lasted this long, and has navigated all of the changes in the media landscape in that time, is quite a feat, and now it looks like it's thriving on YouTube. It's strange though, when you look at his four box on IMDb, The Big Fall isn't listed among them. To quote Jillian Michaels when he was debating her, "Come on Sam!"--or rather, instead of debating, she was looking things up on ChatGPT and reading off the answers to him as a form of rebuttal. As great as anything is you've done, or are going to do, getting shot by Jeff Kober in a drive-by and crashing through the plate glass window of a café will always be the tops. Even if a stunt man did it, it was your character, and you developed him to the point that we really felt it when you were lying there close to death, and Howell put a hand on your character's mother's shoulder and told her you were going to pull through. Even if you don't appreciate it, The Big Fall will always be part of your four box in my heart.

Finally, Sophie Ward didn't look all that comfortable smoking cigarettes in this movie. It reminded me of when we see younger actors do it today, because they didn't grow up around smoking, so it's not a natural thing for them. It'll be interesting to watch as we get further away from the generations that were comfortable smoking, how we'll be able to make period pictures. It's like the young Millennial women speaking in vocal fry while on dates with Don Draper on Mad Men. At some point though, us who grew up with smoking, during a time when parents smoked while tying their two-year-old's shoes as they sat in their stroller, while their friends came over to chat with them and smoked too, will die off, and the only people left will be people who are unfamiliar with it, kids who grew up with hipster parents that act like they're older than they are, and kind of don't remember a time when smoking was prevalent either, despite saying they do. In 2035 when the newly Netflix-owned HBO Max (after they bought it off Paramount+ when Oracle had to sell it off when ChatGPT couldn't pay to lease the data centers they built for them, losing hundreds of billions of dollars in the process) decides to reboot The Wire, are kids who were born in 2002 going to be able to look like Dominic West when they smoke? (And yes, I'm assuming they'll make it a period piece because Y2K will be so in then.)

This is going off the rails, so I better wrap it now. You can get this free on Amazon, I think even if you don't have Prime. There's also a version on YouTube that's not as great quality, but it'll do in a pinch, and you can find that in my PM playlist on my YouTube channel. 

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115677

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

Pure Danger (1996)

This is one that I probably should've seen a long time ago, let alone covered by now, but I hadn't, until Jon from The After Movie Diner had me on his show to discuss it--which, as of my writing hasn't been released yet, but it was a fun conversation, so keep an eye on our socials for when it is live, possibly on his new PM Entertainment Podcast instead. In addition to us, Chris the Brain at Bulletproof Action has covered this as well.

Pure Danger has Howell (who also directed) as Johnie Dean (yes the name on the cover--"Between the two stars' names there is THE MAIN CHARACTER'S NAME"), a short-order cook on parole, who, with Becky (Teri Ann Linn), the server at the diner he works at, come into possession of a sack of diamonds. They're on the run from competing gangs of criminals that want to get their hands on them, and when Howell goes to his old friend (Rick Shapiro) to try and fence the ice, they end up back in the orbit of the gangsters that want to kill them. It's a wild, Spiro Razatos-action-directed ride as Johnie and Becky try to survive and get a better life for themselves. Oh, and Carrot Top appears in the final chase.

This is the fun PM ride you came for, but also it has other elements that make it even better. The C. Thomas Howell direction is fascinating. It's not like the ones Wings Hauser did, this is like wacky Tarantino, with his main character Johnie yucking it up with his mustache. Then there's the Italian gangster stereotypes, which PM was always kind of fond of anyway, but Howell has them ramped up to eleven--and perhaps 9 or 10 would've been better, because part of that ramping up to 11 is them using the N word a lot, especially directed at Leon, who's the leader of the other gang. While it feels like it's biting on Tarantino's use of the word in Pulp Fiction, in a way it also reveals how bad that was too, if that makes sense. Speaking of "if that makes sense," Carrot Top is driving a delivery truck in the big finale chase sequence. Yes, you read that right, and it's not someone who looks like Carrot Top that I'm calling Carrot Top for laughs. And the thing is, this is Carrot Top in a Spiro Razatos-action-directed chase, so it's next-level on its own, but then you add in Carrot Top and you have the kind of bonkers beauty you only find in the world of DTV. I don't put it above The Sweeper, but once you've seen that, you have to see this.

We're now at 48 PM flicks on the site. That's right, the 50 Club is in sight, and I have Steel Frontier already in the can from my guest spot on Jon Cross's PM Entertainment Podcast (episode number 3 in his archives), so we already have 49 slotted in. I recently updated my PM Letterboxd list to go from 10 to 15 movies, and this one slots in at 14 all-time. In the post-Pulp Fiction era, where the world of DTV was under constant attack by indulgent filmmakers trying to make talky, ironic gangster flicks, PM told Howell he could make his own, as long as it fit PM's rule of having action sequences every 15 minutes or so. Then they gave the action sequences to Spiro Razatos to direct, so that alone meant this was going to be great. From there though, because Howell was given the freedom to do what he wanted outside of the action, he could really go for it, with these crazy caricatures that both mock and pay homage to the genre he's working in. I think if this were made today, they'd tone down the use of the N word by the Italian gangsters--and maybe make them less stereotypical too--but outside of that, I don't know that something this fantastic would be made in the modern DTV world, which is too bad, but at least PM made it in 1996.

Spiro Razatos is closing in on the 30 Club, now with 27 films on the site, and according to IMDb we still have a lot of stuff of his from the 90s to cover, so the 30 Club shouldn't be a problem, maybe even this year. He brings it again in this one, with action sequences that lead to action sequences, shootouts that turn into foot chases, then car chases, which culminate in massive explosions. One thing he did a lot of in the final car chase was have two cars come together to smash into a third car in between them. It looked a lot like what he did in the Venom car chase, where Venom used his tentacles to smash cars together. I think that's part of what's so fun about his PM work, beyond how bonkers and beautiful it was, is you can see how he took some of these things in 90s DTV flicks, and used them in major productions that were earning $750 million to $1 billion at the box office in the 2010s. As a fan of the action genre, Razatos is just at another level, it's the kind of stuff where I'm like hook me up to an IV and mainline it right into my veins, and that's the action he gives us here.

It is kind of crazy that we're not getting to Howell until the sixth paragraph, but it just kinda worked out that way with PM and Razatos as our two Hall of Famers. That begs the question: should Howell get in? And it's a fair question, because he has some classics, to which I think we can add this one. We've inducted people with fewer films than him, and he now has two signature films in this and The Sweeper, so it's worthy of consideration, but we also have a stacked line-up of inductees for 2025 already, like Cole S. McKay--who we discovered upon finally tagging him belongs in the 50 Club!--Imperial Films, Daniel Bernhardt, and Kathleen Kinmont. That kind of locks things up for 2025, but there's always 2026, right? And if you're looking for Hall of Fame caliber Howell, after The Sweeper this is it. He's yucking it up with his mustache, but at the same time he's giving us a unique perspective, taking full advantage of the leeway PM gave him. This is the fourth Howell-directed film we've seen on the site, after The Day the Earth Stopped, War of the Worlds 2: The Next Wave, and The Land That Time Forgot, all of those being Asylum films, and so it's probably no surprise that the first of his two PM films he directed that we're covering here shoots to the top of the list.

Finally, when we see Donny "Don" Most as Howell's parole officer early in the film, I figured he'd have this seventh paragraph locked up, and I'd spend it talking about Happy Days, maybe getting into how the "Jump the Shark" episode didn't kill the show, that they actually went on for another 5 seasons, many of which as the top-rated comedy in America. I was mentally drafting the paragraph as the film went on, only to discover Carrot Top--yes, the Carrot Top, Scott "Carrot Top" Thompson--driving the delivery truck in the final chase scene. What do you do with that? You just sit back and love it, that's all you can do. Looking at his IMDb, he was also in the Howell-directed Hourglass, so they must have been, or maybe even still are, friends, which may explain something else. Courtney Thorne-Smith appeared with Howell in the volleyball classic Side Out (another plus for Howell's Hall of Fame case). When Carrot Top was making Chairman of the Board, did Howell suggest Thorne-Smith for his leading lady in that film? Which would mean Side Out set in motion a series of events that led us to Thorne-Smith going on Conan O'Brien to do publicity for the season finale of Melrose Place, where Chairman of the Board was mentioned, and Norm MacDonald famously took it down. Also mentioned in that appearance, Donny "Don" Most, so it all comes full circle.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Currently this is on YouTube, Fawesome, Plex, and the Roku Channel here in the States. I mention all of these, because some have edited-for-TV versions, so you want to be careful of that. The YouTube one is uncut, so that one's safe. This is another fun PM ride, well-worth checking out.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117406

And if you haven't yet, check out my newest book, Nadia and Aidan, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Cross (2011)

I came across this while doing a search for C. Thomas Howell on imdb recently. It had a pretty stellar cast, so I figured I'd give it a go, and Netflix sent it to me from their shipping center in White River Junction, VT, because apparently my local shipping centers in Portsmouth, NH, Manchester, NH, and Portland, ME didn't have it. Looks like there's plenty of pain to go around.

Cross is about some special amulet made by God or something at the beginning of time to give some lucky holder the power to protect the innocent, and as luck would have it, David Silver, aka Brian Austen Green has it in 2011. Anyway, he has a gang of mercs and whatnot, and then there's a baddie played by Michael Clark Duncan who runs a good chunk of LA, and he's commissioned by a bad immortal viking played by Vinnie Jones to collect blood samples from ladies in town who might be descended from Gods so he can make a special staff that will finally kill him-- and everyone else on the planet. Now it's up to Green and his gang to stop them.



This was a solid buck-45 of torture. Just bad all around. Not funny in parts that were supposed to be funny. Not enough action. Bad manufactured tension. Scenes that overstayed their welcomes by a good five minutes-- which adds up over the course of 105 minutes. It was just poorly written which made for a lot of tediousness and redundancies. They slapped titles on the screen for almost everything that happened, as if they were afraid we weren't smart enough to figure it out on our own. "Okay, so the informant just told Green to go to such and such warehouse. Oh shit, it's the next scene, where are they now? Oh, the title says such and such warehouse, of course. Silly me!" They'd do something like show us a girl being kidnapped from her apartment, then make us sit through some of Green's gang searching that girl's apartment for her for, only to come to the conclusion we already knew! By the end of it, I was almost numb to the pain, but when Green sees his girl tied to a post, and he spends like five separate scenes not being able to get her undone and her yelling "C'mon hurry!", I was on the verge of tears. The things I put myself through to do this blog. I should've just watched Point Break again and re-reviewed it.

The major chasm this movie had to bridge was the idea of David Silver from 90210 as an action hero. Aaaaaaaannnnnt!!! Wrong! Not even close. David Bradley in a fanny pack thinks that's a stretch too far. And especially not the dark, brooding type of hero. What's next, signing him up for the new Crow feature? Maybe if the material had been written better, he might have had something to lean on, but the average 90210 episode had more drama and tension than this did by miles. To quote his character from the show: "I might be white, but I ain't Vanilla!" Well, I beg to differ. Maybe Megan Fox can get him some better work in her flicks.



You're probably wondering why, out of all the people in this-- and there were a ton-- I chose a pic of Suzie Abromeit, who played Green's love interest. I did it because I remembered how good she was in Beatdown, and then I realized, Beatdown was an all around better movie than this by quite a bit. Her character especially was a let down, because it looked like she might get to be the same tough no nonsense well-rounded woman she was when we saw her before, but the role was lopped off without being finished and she was relegated to one-dimensional damsel in distress status. It was indicative of a lot of the movie, ideas started but not seen through; things that look great on paper but not so much on screen. It was just a big mess.

Here's a list of notable people in the film: Tom Sizemore, Michael Clarke Duncan, Jake Busey, William Zabka, Vinnie Jones, C. Thomas Howell, Robert Carradine, and Tim Abell, plus Danny Trejo has a two second cameo in the opening credits. None of them have very big parts, but C. Thomas Howell's is barely one scene where he's a bartender serving Green-- and in this film's style, we're inundated with too many jokes about Green ordering a water. I see now, though, how in this imdb age, getting cameos like this is a great form of bait-and-switch. The more actors we've heard of that people might be looking at through more prominent films, the more likely someone like me is to come across the DTV flick they just starred in and write a review for it-- or at the very least have the name in my head when I'm perusing a Red Box; and even though I'm crushing this movie, publicity is publicity. Hell, they list former Irish pop singer Samantha Mumba, who isn't even in the film! Nice work if you can get it.



Vinnie Jones. What comes to mind when you think of him? Brutal, kickass, British, right? If someone looks at him the wrong way, it's that person's funeral, but for us the viewer, it's ten kinds of awesome to watch him put the hurt on the guy. I thought that's what we had going on here when he shows up and some doughy toolbag of a Clarke Duncan henchman with beady eyes starts crackin' foxy on him. Nope. First, he tells Duncan to kill the guy or they can't work together, but Duncan instead kills another of his henchmen who cheated at Go Fish, then he tells Jones that he's loyal to his men yadda yadda yadda he won't kill the doughy toolbag that was asking for it yadda yadda yadda, and Jones, instead of taking care of business himself, says, "good, that was a test to see yadda yadda yadda whatever", and that's it, end scenes. Are you serious! You understand that we're watching this to see Vinne Jones slam a douche like that's head in the car door several times. Or something. Just do something instead of bore us with useless mindless chatter! Please!

But unfortunately that was too much to ask of the people making this movie. Are you looking for some pain? Like I mean having Vinnie Jones slam your head in a car door kind of pain? Probably not, so I'd steer clear of Cross. Luckily I reviewed this one on a Friday, because now I have a few days to recoup before I review something else.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1046245/

Mutant Vampire Zombies from the 'Hood (2008)

A recent search of C. Thomas Howell on imdb and Netflix Watch Instantly turned up this potential gem. It just sounded too good to be bad, but we've seen these things go pear-shaped quickly on us, so I knew not to get my hopes up. Let's see how it went.

Mutant Vampire Zombies from the 'Hood! takes place in Los Angeles, where C. Thomas Howell is a cop looking to bust a big drug deal between rival gangs. They decide to do the deal in a nuclear medical storage facility, which protects them from a massive solar flare which turns most of the rest of the human population into flesh eating zombies. Now all of these sworn enemies must come together in order to survive and make it to a safe house in Santa Monica run by astrophysicist Greg Alan Hill and his daughter.



This wasn't bad, but it wasn't exactly the schlock-fest the name suggests. It had it's moments, especially at the beginning with the mock Superman opening credits. I thought for sure when I saw that that I was going to get an amazing comedic horror romp, but this tended to lose itself, like when it tried to come up with odd scientific explanations for zombies that were this kind or that kind of undead. It also didn't know when to just tell us or the characters something, which became tedious. Sometimes these movies just need to get after it and take the plunge into all out silliness, and while this pulled the trigger in some instances, it tried in others to stick to traditional movie elements that betrayed what could've been a really fun time. Overall, it was monotony broken up by a moment here or there of fun.

I still don't know what to make of C. Thomas Howell. Sometimes I wonder if he knows what to make of himself. I do like him in the camp zombie flick though, because he's great at playing it straight, and his playing it straight adds a level of fun to the camp that you might not get with someone else. I don't know, overall there's just something about C. Thomas Howell that doesn't click for me, and I guess this is a rare occasion where that works.



One guy I've always liked is Gregory Alan Hill, or Gregalan Hill as he was known on Baywatch. If you don't remember, he was the beach cop who rolled in on his ATV and cleaned up the mess for The Hoff and whoever else after the criminals were dealt with. I actually really liked him on the ill-fated spin-off series Baywatch Nights. He was great here as an astrophysicist with a white daughter, and I was glad to see him. Here's to you Gregalan Hill, you're one of the good ones.

This movie tries to amp up the zombie paradigm by making them not only starved for human flesh, but also sex starved for human flesh. It leads to a hilarious result with one of the gang members getting his member eaten off by a zombie chick, but was a little more disturbing when a woman trying to get into her car is attacked by two zombies that try to rape her, and after Howell and co. rescue her, she walks around in stunned shock, only to be raped and disemboweled later by zombies at the same time the gang-banger has his dick eaten off. I don't know, maybe they should've stuck with the zombies just want to eat people's brains, and left it more fun for the rest of us.



The first ten minutes of this film is opening credits featuring file shots of LA, including this McDonald's sighting. Always have to get the McDonald's sighting in. I've been to Hollywood before, which I think is where that shot is taken from, but I don't remember that McDonald's being there (I was there in August in 2001). I did have McDonald's in LA though, when I was there in 2009. It was in an underground mall downtown, I had an Angus Third-Pound burger before they were available nationally, and I remember being disappointed when they came out in New England, because I thought I was eating some kind of regional variant-- like the spicy McChicken in Colorado.

80 minutes, goofy zombie flick, Watch Instantly, but obviously if I'm struggling so much for a seventh paragraph that I'm recalling a trip to McDonald's in LA, it's not the greatest. It has its flaws, but for a bad movie night, it's not bad. I wouldn't do this one outside of Watch Instantly though-- or for free in another way for people outside the States who can't get Watch Instantly. You've seen plenty of these before, and you've seen them done worse, but you've also seen them done much better.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0970520/

Hitman's Run (1999)

I saw this one on Netflix Watch Instantly, and with the cast it had, figured it would be a good one for the week of Eric Roberts's birthday. This is also a great time to bring up the blog Eric Roberts - His Movies, which is a site dedicated to looking at Eric Roberts flicks, from the popular to the rare. Check it out.

Hitman's Run has Roberts as a mob hitman who lets an old friend go that he was supposed to kill, which gets him into hot water with the mob, so he goes into witness protection. Two years later though, some kid hacks into the FBI database and gets the names of everyone in witness protection, and wants to exchange the disc for info on his dad. The mob takes it, and targets Roberts's family. Now he has to get the disc himself, and take out the mobsters.



This had some flaws, major and minor, which proved to be its ultimate downfall. It started with a chase scene that went on way too long, especially with nothing happening in it. There's only so many shots of cars skidding through sharp turns and close-ups of guys gritting their teeth while doing the wax-on wax-off steering technique that I need to see. Of course, the only thing worse than one bad chase is two, which is what we got here. Then they introduced the annoying quirky sidekick, complete with bad jokes and obnoxious behavior. I've never gotten that move, but it happens so often, and has felled many a mightier flick. Finally, and this was the biggest one, when you've got someone like Eric Roberts in the heroic lead, someone who is usually a great baddie, he has to be a really likable character. A mob hitman who rats on his employers instead of facing them? I mean, really, who should we be rooting for, Roberts, or Robert Miano? All of this could've been saved by some solid action, but that didn't exactly happen either-- a lot of shootouts that seemed mailed in. It's kind of disappointing when you consider this was directed by Mark L. Lester, the man who helmed Commando and Showdown in Little Tokyo. I guess you can't be good all the time.

This should in no way be looked at as an indictment of Eric Roberts, because he was still as good as could be expected with what he was given. I think we said the same thing about him in Border Blues. It wasn't his fault that the basic premise of his character was so blah. What he should've been was an undercover cop who makes a huge bust and goes into witness protection. Make him genuinely likable. I get that they wanted some kind of redemptive aspect, but it didn't work, and as a result, took the film down with it.



Yep, that's C. Thomas Howell. He plays an FBI agent, and though I think his character was supposed to have survived an attack by the mob through the use of a bulletproof vest, after the attack, we never see him again, so I guess he dies. I really liked his FBI agent character though, so the lack of him in the movie was another missed opportunity. He had this like ADD quality that made the character very dynamic-- literally.

And there's Brent Huff. He's in the film even less than Howell. I figured I'd give him a mention, because I know there are some readers who are familiar with his work, especially in Filipino low-budget imports. He's actually still doing a lot of work, including an appearance on Mad Men. Good for you Brent Huff, get after it. I know this won't be the last we see of you on here.



Finally, I wanted to discuss the casting decision for the part of Robert Miano's son, because it was totally sautéed in wrong sauce. Seriously, was David Charvet unavailable? No Bryan Austin Green? The guy looked so ridiculous when he tried the whole mean mugging routine and the whole tough gangster face. That's a part that needs someone who works in it, otherwise we can't take his ability to threaten anyone seriously-- and it's his ability to threaten upon which the film hinges. I mean what, Ed Cavanaugh was busy?

This is available on Hulu and Netflix Watch Instantly as of this posting. I'm not so sure it matters. Look at the cover (which is what I should've done!). If that sells you, maybe you'll like this; but if you're like "wow, Roberts looks kinda like a tool there, I bet this movie sucks", then you should trust your gut and stay away.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0174741/

The Day the Earth Stopped (2008)

I'm sure we all know what movie this Asylum film was supposed to sound like. I had planned on boycotting the 2008 The Day the Earth Stood Still based on principle, but I was forced to endure it on a flight from Boston to Seattle. It's amazing that, as horrible as some of these Asylum films can be, these Hollywood blockbuster remakes of old classics can sometimes be even worse.

The Day the Earth Stopped is another C. Thomas Howell directed/acted Asylum movie. This time Howell plays an Army dude sent in with a team to investigate something that landed in the woods nearby. A naked dude is found running in the area, and he's tranquilized. Howell and his buddy are late to the scene, and find a naked woman walking in the road that they pick up. Turns out they're both aliens, and the woman is there to find out if there's anything redeemable in human kind, otherwise they'll wipe us out so we can't kill them in the future. To do this, they have a whole bunch of huge robots around the world. Anyway, this hottie has taken a shine to Howell, and they escape the Army complex she's being held in. She wants Howell to show her the value of human life, why it's important, and for some reason he has no idea what to say. So they run around, while the US government nukes Pacific Islands and tries to kill them. They have until sundown their time to make their case, otherwise we're done.



Though this wasn't as bad as the Keanu Reeves film, it was still pretty bad. First off, who can't tell an alien what makes humans worth while? Howell's character's stupidity was astounding. And then he suddenly has a moment of perspicacity at the end that was well outside his pay grade. Second, the Pacific Island of Nairu is eradicated by a nuclear bomb in an attempt to take out one of the aliens' robots. That should've been it right there, no? The aliens should've wiped us out for that move alone. Then you have the alien hanging out with Howell. In one scene she makes a car start with her alien powers, then later, when they need a car to start so they can escape, she won't do it because "she can't interfere." Didn't someone forget to check the dailies? I expect bad special effects or bad acting, but nuking islands of 14,000 people (the film erroneously said 9,000, but that's still a lot!) and featuring a hero that doesn't understand why humans should be allowed to live, that's just stupid.

I've noticed a hallmark in Asylum films, and these C. Thomas Howell directed ones in particular, is the monologue at the end letting us know what happened after. It's like their bad movies aren't enough, now they have to tell us there's some profound message attached as well, which ends up sounding sillier than the movie. C. Thomas Howell's voice doesn't help either. I don't know if he does this gruff, overly serious thing on purpose, but he must know how ridiculous he sounds, right? It's that kind of thing that overshadows any of his good work, and keeps him out of the Hall of Fame.



I think we have our first ever Asylum bait and switch. Judd Nelson, all over the cover, has like ten minutes of screen time, and that's near the end. I feel bad, because I know Mr. Kenner at Movies in the Attic has been wanting me to get more Nelson up here, and I figured I could kill two birds with one stone, getting another Howell directed Asylum flick up, and a Nelson one too. Though this will be tagged for Judd Nelson, it's only so people know this is a full on Judd Nelson bait and switch. Sorry Kenner.

The woman who played the alien was very hot, which I imagine was intended. She opens the film naked, for instance. When Nauru gets nuked, it really stresses her out, so she needs to close her eyes tight, groan, and massage herself to let us know how distressing it all is. Also, her character name is Sky, not Klaatu. What is Klaatu anyway, Finnish? It looks Finnish.



The message in the 1951 movie was we humans need to reconsider our weapons and what they'll do to ourselves. We have the power to wipe out everyone's future. I don't know what the message in this film was. Pacific Islands with populations the size of American towns big enough to have their own McDonald's are collateral damage, and acceptable losses if we can convince some aliens not to kill us? Or how about no matter how many times we prove to the alien that we are too dangerous to be allowed to live, as long as she's with C. Thomas Howell, we'll get another chance to prove ourselves? That's what made the original so good, that we'd just had two very destructive wars, and now had extremely powerful weapons at our disposal to make the next war even worse. To blow up an island with a nuke defeats the point of remaking the film.

Unlike The Land That Time Forgot, The Day the Earth Stopped doesn't do it for me. It's funny and has it's moments, and again, I liked it more than the 2008 version, but that's not saying much. It's currently available on Watch Instantly, so if you decide to take a stab at it, just know I warned you. It could hurt.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1290471/

The Land That Time Forgot (2009)

We often give The Asylum a hard time for their crass approach to film making. Just stick a 90-minute sack of asscrack on the shelves with a name similar to another bigger film already in the theater, and hope as many people as possible rent it based on name-unrecognition. Here I have to give them some credit for creativity in The Land That Time Forgot, because the 1975 original was released to grab people who watched Land of the Lost, which was on TV at the time. A really cool way to make money off the Will Ferrell movie that was in theaters at the time, and pay homage to a classic fantasy film that was released to make money off the TV show the Will Ferrell movie was based on too.

The Land That Time Forgot is another C. Thomas Howell directed/acted Asylum effort. Here, instead of U-Boats and WWI, we have two modern newlyweds on a cruise (Howell and his wife, and the girl from the Miller Lite commercial and her hubby), captained by Timothy Bottoms, that's blown off course in the Bermuda Triangle, and ends up on an island with dinosaurs and whatnot. Howell's wife is separated from them, feared dead, while the other four meet up with a couple other cast-aways. These cast-aways take them to another part of the island, run by Nazi soldiers, also shipwrecked, and holding Howell's wife hostage. Anyway, they plan to get her out, while the two cast-aways they met steal Bottoms' boat, stranding them there. Now our heroes and the Germans team up and refine some petrol they've found, so they can power their submarine and sail home.



This was pretty good. If you like low-budget movies from the 1950s with silly looking dinosaurs and notsogood acting, this is the movie for you. It did have some lulls, and there were some scenes that could've been less drawn out, but overall, it wasn't as bad as we've seen from The Asylum. I guess my question is, why do these films have to be 90 minutes long? All of their 1950s counterparts were about 75 minutes. Chop 'em down a bit and just throw as many CGI dinosaurs and people running and screaming away from them as you can.

This is Howell's sixth directorial effort, and his third with The Asylum. I don't really know what there is to say about that, other than that seems to be how The Asylum has kept him around. He just gets to remake old Sci-Fi classics. There have been calls to get Howell into the DTVC Hall of Fame, but there have been just as many calls against it. I had originally slated him for the inaugural class when I started the DTVC in 2007, but I couldn't get him past the board, and as time's gone on, I think I can agree with that, as his resume isn't quite there. One thing I can say in his defense: this will be his 11th film on here, and of those 11, four are Asylum pics, and another is Red Dawn, not a DTV movie. Still, that Asylum argument is flawed, because The Da Vinci Treasure made my top ten DTV films of the 2000s.



A really interesting Timothy Bottoms. No George W. Bush for him. Hello Captain Ron! I almost didn't recognize him. According to the Wikipedia article on The Land That Time Forgot, Bottoms was in the 1991 remake of Land of the Lost, so his inclusion in this film is fitting. He has a vast bio that spans everything, and I'd like to get more of his DTV gems up here, but there's just so many other actors out there with priority right now, that we'll have to settle with reviews here and there for right now.

One of the elements I've never liked about The Land of the Lost was how someone always had to be stranded, in this case Howell and his wife. I can't fault this film for keeping that, because if they didn't, they would've been killed for it, as it was a part of the book and 1975 movie. It feels weird though, and maybe weirdest in this version, because everyone was working so well together, and for anyone to be left behind made a bad ending out of a really fun movie. Again, they really couldn't change it, so I'm not faulting them, just pointing out my opinion on it.



Do you recognize this girl? Her name's Lindsey McKeon, which probably doesn't ring a bell. Currently she has a part in one of the dumbest light beer ad campaigns ever, which is saying a lot, because light beer commercials are often as dumb as they get. It's those Miller Lite commercials where they say "man up and drink lite beer." Say it out loud so the sheer stupidity of the statement will sink in for you. "Man up and drink lite beer." Try some others while you're at it. "Man up and get a manicure." "Man up and watch a Matthew McConaughey Romantic Comedy." "Man up and ask your wife to get rid of the mouse you just saw run across the floor." And the best part, the women in these commercials are implying their gender is the inferior and weaker one. Notsomuch in Lindsey's, where all she does is bring back the old Seinfeld joke about the man purse; but in the second one, a woman tells a man to "take off [his] skirt", again indicating being a woman is a sign of weakness. Odd message from a woman, huh? Anyway, seeing McKeon in the commercial I was like "where have I seen her from?", and then seeing her in this I was able to look her up, and found that I could've recognized in any number of roles, though not her most recent one, the CW drama One Tree Hill (not a show I watch). If she's in that, what is she doing in light beer commercials? Better yet, what is she doing in Asylum pictures? Oh, and by the way, I drink PBR because they have no commercials.

This is one of the few Asylum films that gets it right. It is that modern 1950s style sci-fi flick with the bad special effects and bad acting. It might have been a little long and a little weird, but for what it is, it isn't so bad. We've seen The Asylum get much worse, so I guess we should be happy we made it out this time unscathed.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1410205/

Red Dawn (1984)

This is probably, of the Swayze threesome, the hardest for me to stomach. Even when I was ten, and I first saw it on VHS, I was like "this is ridiculously stupid." Ten-year-olds shouldn't have a better a understanding of international relations theory, script and story writing, and the realities of surviving a brutal winter in the American Rockies than adults who have union cards to the screenwriters' and directors' guilds.

Red Dawn takes place in the early 80s. The USSR is strapped for resources, so they invade the United States with the help of Cuba and Nicaragua. Europe is run by liberal governments, so they want no part of coming to the US's aid, and for whatever reason NATO no longer exists. The Soviets, perhaps because they got an erroneously marked map, invaded a small town in the northern Rockies and take it over. Some high school kids escape and hide out in the woods. They stockpile arms and form an insurgent group that they name the Wolverines. They give the Soviet occupiers a hard time, much the way Hezbollah did to the Israelis. Eventually, the Soviets prevail, but the Wolverines' fight inspires all Americans to stand up to the Godless commies.



Let's forget about the Right Wing propaganda and the silliness of some of the leaps of faith in IR theory and US military defense they want us to make. Someone on imdb tried to make the case that this was well made, and that we focus too much on the other two factors, and miss the quality of the cinema. The dude even had the audacity to evoke Arthur Koestler's amazing novel Darkness at Noon. Okay, give me a second to regain my bearings. This guy watched the Jennifer Grey death scene-- "I'm so cold... just give me a grenade... pull the pin... I'm so cold...", to which a sobbing Swayze hands her the grenade-- and he thought that was quality cinema? He brought up the imagery in the occupied small town. What, a paltry copy of Doctor Zhivago? What about all the dialog that sounded like a series of non sequiturs? Chronicles of Riddick had a better script. And how do you explain the month of October that was 230 days long? That's the only way to explain how these high school kids have the ability to dig four deep holes in the ground, four hatches to cover them seamlessly, and then plan an ambush on a Soviet convoy stopping at a roadside gas station. This was not well made or artistically done.

The fact that this was poorly made made it funny, though. It's funny to watch it with friends, and when someone says something that makes no sense given the context, to say "Um... I think you missed a line." Also funny were the leaps of faith in what is possible as far as an invasion of the US. No National Guard, no NATO, no nuclear capability ("we wouldn't use them on ourselves" Powers Boothe explains. No shit, Sherlock! We'd use them on the Soviets. Moscow would be a parking lot if they invaded us!). That's what it would take for us to have a small town in the northwest Rockies invaded and occupied, and they gave paltry explanations for why there's no NATO or nukes, and no explanation for why there's no National Guard. There's a reason why we aren't invaded: countries like the USSR are afraid of us. And the logistics based on out terrain and location are absurd. Our military is huge, are nukes are nasty, and our resources and terrain work in our favor. The fact that none of that was considered is insane.



I promised some of my friends I wouldn't make this about the Right Wing Propaganda aspect, so I'm only devoting one paragraph to it. This movie is pretty much made for the people who go to Obama public appearances packing heat. There's a reason why we're invaded by Commies and Latinos. Fear of Godless Socialists and illegal immigrants. There's a reason why the people in town with guns are rounded up. Just look at the scene when Charlie Sheen asks Swayze what makes the Wolverines different from the Soviets, to which Swayze replies "Because we live here!" It sums up the sentiment of the film. Everything is being taken away by outsiders. Probably most indicative of the conservative sentiment is the idea that October is 230 days long. They would probably think if they extended the month, the weather they like at that time of year would be extended too. In the spirit of fairness, if liberals had control of the calendar, they'd make October 30 days instead of 31 so it wouldn't have more than any other month. I want to make clear that if this was a liberal propaganda fest, I'd feel the same way about it.

Swayze isn't able to save this film. It lacks the fun factor of Road House and Point Break. He's swept under the current of ridiculosity (I know it's not a word, but what better way to describe the movie). What's ironic is if the makers of this film had the America they wanted, you'd get the small Missouri town run by Garrett that Swayze has to save. I don't know how to explain it, but in Road House and Point Break he transcends the silliness, while here, he's enveloped by it. Just the same, I included this because people in the bad action community (including myself) see it as a classically bad movie. When you think Swayze, you think Road House, Point Break, and Red Dawn. Despite the annoying Right Wing propaganda, I still have a fun time with my buddies watching this and making fun of it.



Ron O'Neal turns in one of the few bright performances. It's a sad fact that this film boasts now two victims of pancreatic cancer, with O'Neal passing away from the horrible disease five years ago. I looked him up on imdb, because I've always wondered why he was associated with this sack of asscrack. Turns out he was never offered that many roles after Super Fly. That's too bad, because as an actor he had a solid pedigree, and he deserved better roles than a Nicaraguan officer in the ludicrously conceived invasion of the US.

This is a movie that, when I watch alone, I find myself at times laughing out loud, at others shaking my head, and at others being so bored I'm doing something else. With friends, it's transformed into a hilarious jokefest. There are moments when there's too much material, and my brain's overloaded with what to make fun of next. It's a little too pretentious and self-righteous to be as much fun as Road House and Point Break, but it's so silly that it's worth watching and mocking.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087985/

War of the Worlds 2: The Next Wave (2008)

I knew this would be a bad idea. I knew an Asylum War of the Worlds sequel, directed by C. Thomas Howell, would hurt me. But I had reviewed the first one, and needed to do my job as a DTV film reviewer to sit through this one and tell my readers what it was like.

War of the Worlds 2: The Next Wave picks up two years after the first one. Humans are rebuilding their lives after the first invasion, and they haven't done a great job of it. There's very little infrastructure and people are living in near post-apocalyptic conditions. Howell's wife has died, but his son's still alive-- that is until the aliens come back and one of their walkers zaps him. Now Howell doesn't want to live either and wants the aliens to zap him too. At the same, some scientists have a base where they're working on a way to combat the aliens. In two years, despite having lost all of our infrastructure, these scientists have managed to create new airplane and weapons technology. Things resolve themselves pretty much as you'd expect.



All right. Deep breath. And.... This was utter crap. Ridiculously bad. What was Howell thinking? And this wasn't just bad, it was weird. Like waiting on the platform for the subway and a random guy who smells like urine is talking to you weird. The whole time I was just waiting for the train to come so I could run away from it. On the ships, people were put in these rooms where they had gross nets on them and hoses stuck in their mouths. A girl who had a nasty virus and cuts on her face would save them. Howell and Kid from Kid N' Play escape a ship, only to appear in some holographic world where they meet the virus girl and her virus guy friend. What kind of mind conceives weirdness like that? Then, for no good reason, Howell injects himself with their virus. I mean no good reason, because he then draws some of his infected blood and sticks it in the alien, thus recreating the end of the last movie. Why didn't he just inject the virus into them directly, i.e., not infect himself with it first? Why, I ask? Because that would mean doing something that made sense, and that was far beyond this film's ken.

On imdb, someone tried to defend this by saying we needed to suspend belief and allow ourselves to be taken into Howell's HG Wells world. Are you kidding? Why don't I just go hitchhiking in the Midwest at 3AM and hope some crazy dude talking about the time machine he invented gives me a ride (actually happened to a friend). This person then went into all the things that were wrong with it, from the story to the special effects, etc. I'm actually good with the bad special effects and silly story. It's the weirdness of this world that I don't like. It made me uncomfortable, like I was sitting in a car next to some random dude that picked me up.



C. Thomas Howell. Anyone who watches soccer understands the metaphor I'm about to draw here. A player has just made a nasty slide tackle. The whistle blows. He slinks off, but the ref calls him over. He sulks, shakes his head, and the ref just smirks and holds up the yellow card. Well, Mr. Howell, you don't just get a yellow card, I'm forced to give you a red. That's right, and a five match ban. Forget your feeble attempts at artistic wide shots of people walking in front of buildings-- that stuff was actually kind of funny. As were the ships that could communicate with Earth from Mars via radio without delay, or the fact that you're still going with aliens as Martians when we know no life has ever been on that planet. It was the weirdness that hurts me. It makes me question everything I've ever seen you do. I loved the overacting after your son was zapped. That was hilarious. I was weirded out by the people with nets on drinking fluid out of hoses. I was weirded out by the virus girl trying to save the day. The fact that stuff didn't weird you out makes me wonder.

The best film trilogy of all time is the House Party series. From the dance scene in part one, to the pajama jammy jam of part two, to David from the second Real World in part three, these movies truly did have it all. That makes Kid's role in this movie all the more troubling. Did he need the work? Was Howell calling in a favor? And what was up with his hair? I'm not saying it all needs to be standing up in the air like like it used to, but at least make it cool. He looked like he just got off work as a pharmacist at Wal-Mart. No offense to pharmacists at Wal-Mart, I'm actually friends with a couple, but you could just see his picture on the wall under the title "Pharmacist on duty".



The first film had Jake Busey. He would've made a huge contribution to this one. Sure, he was killed off in the last one, but what does that matter. First off, continuity was a loose concept on this production to begin with. Second, the scientist woman was cast in the first film in another role. Busey could've played someone else too. This movie just needed something, anything, and Busey could've provided that. Of course, maybe Howell called Busey, and he looked at the script, and then promptly went to the court house to get a restraining order telling Howell he couldn't go within 200 feet of him.

If this wasn't so weird, I'd say rent it for the silly factor, but the truth is, it is weird. I'm not sure if I blame The Asylum or Howell or both-- there's plenty of blame to go around. I read on Netflix or imdb that someone actually rented this thinking it a sequel to the Spielberg film. I guess that means, from the Howell and Asylum perspective, this was a success. Godspeed guys.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1183733/

The Sweeper (1996)

My friend at Movies in the Attic suggested this bad boy to me. I hadn't done a C. Thomas Howell film since the surprisingly good Da Vinci Treasure. With another look at the DTVC Hall of Fame on the line, Howell still has some work to do if he's not going to have wait another year.

The Sweeper has Howell as a kid who sees his dad killed by mobsters or something, and he grows up with a chip on his shoulder. He becomes a cop and has a penchant for killing suspects in the act of arresting them. After the ninth kill, a group calling themselves Justice Incorporated (I'm not sure if they're publicly traded or not) invites Howell to join them. They take the law into their own hands and kill criminals instead of allowing them to be arrested and tried and sent to jail. Howell likes things at first, but he realizes things aren't what they appear. Now the question is, will they let him walk, or is he going to have to kill them all.



This is pretty sweet. Massive explosions, nice chase scenes, and some good gun fights. It has a high ridiculous action quotient, in that things happen that are completely unrealistic simply for the purpose of blowing shit up. My favorite was a chase scene where the guy Howell was after cut the supports on the back of this truck carrying oxygen tanks. So the tanks are rolling down the road, and the bad guy is shooting them so they explode in front of Howell's car. Forget the sheer ludicrousness of it, or how hilarious it is, it's so awesome too.

The thing is, as far as Howell goes, though I like him, I can see how some people I know don't. The goatee, the long hair-- it looked silly, and worse, it looked gross when he was making out with his female co-stars. Towards the end, there's a sweet scene where he drives his car under an oil truck, and it cuts the top off of his car. He then kills that sweet scene by going "Heh, now it's a convertible" in this really annoying voice. This was a good movie, but perhaps it was good in spite of Howell, and as such, it's not a Hall of Fame worthy entry.



I looked up the exact definition of "incorporated" online. Sure, the literal definition is unity, or a collection of beings united into a single entity; but the context here suggests a legal entity formed into a corporation. So, the question is, is this group traded publicly? Can I buy stocks in Justice Incorporated? What kind of dividends do they pay out? On the other hand, as I'm mocking them for this, is it not all the more awesome that they misused that word? It's essentially the same thing as the oxygen tanks in the chase scene.



Jeff Fahey plays the dad in this. I've never had a good feeling about him. He seems like a good idea at the time, kind of like a Chinese food buffet, but afterwards I don't feel so good. He's the kind of cat that appears here and there in DTV movies, along with other similar genres like Lifetime movies and Sci-Fi pictures originals. The last film we did with him in it was the Gary Daniels Gary Busey pic No Tomorrow. I don't know. He's got quite a bio on imdb, so if anyone's seen him in something awesome, let me know.

This is a good bad action movie. I must warn you, if you're not a Howell guy, you won't like it. There's a lot of Howell to contend with, and it hurts at times, even for me, and I'm a self-styled Howell guy. The goatee doesn't help. It just looked like this hairy rodent enveloping the women's faces he was kissing. But the action is there, and it's fun, so if you like Howell, you need to see this.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114590/



I know I'm a couple years late on this, but I finally saw the fourth installment in the Die Hard series last week. The first Die Hard movie was to my mind one of the most influential action films ever. The paradigm of the lone hero picking off one baddie after another in a building that's been taken over by a major terrorist organization has been used in myriad DTV action films. Part two was a solid sequel, but I felt like things were getting tired by part three. Of course, now, all the old actors are coming back to reprise roles that we liked in the past: Harrison Ford, Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis; and word on the street is Eddie Murphy is looking at a fourth Beverly Hills Cop. The truth is, this film was just a big bunch of special effects and ridiculous action with a plot that seems nuanced, but is pretty paint-by-numbers. I included a review of it here with The Sweeper because I wanted to make a point: The Sweeper was a better movie. Just because one had a bigger budget, the smug bastard that plays Apple in those Apple commercials, and Bruce Willis reprising a role that we liked in the late 80s early 90s, doesn't make it better than the 1996 C. Thomas Howell bad actioner. One just has a flashier cover.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0337978/

Hot Boyz (1999)

This film has some first grade talent: Busey, C. Thomas Howell, Snoop, Jeff Speakman, Master P, and Clifton Powell. I figured it couldn't go wrong. The only thing that could derail it would be if it ignored that great talent and focused on someone else, like Silkk The Shocker. They wouldn't do that, would they?

They did. Hot Boyz is about Silkk as a dude in LA whose girlfriend is wrongly accused of killing a cop. Gary Busey and C. Thomas Howell are corrupt cops that want to catch the other corrupt cop that really killed the cop, not Silkk's girl. Anyway, they want him to go undercover and get evidence, but as he does, his girl is killed in jail by that bad cop. Silkk goes over the deep end, and he and the boys he grew up with start their own gang and kill hundreds of people. Then the net finally drops, but for some reason Silkk, after killing hundreds of people, is let out of jail on a technicality.



What? Where do I start? First, I understand Master P wanted to use this film to showcase Silkk the Shocker so he could make more money off him, but when he surrounded him with the talent he did, it left us wondering why they were all playing second fiddle. Snoop Dogg as an underling in Silkk the Shocker's gang? Not a chance. And Master P himself has a great scene where he's being interrogated-- but it's his only scene, and it just left me wanting more. Why weren't Master P and Snoop Dogg just kicking ass and taking names in some kind of new age Fred Williamson-type flick?

The plot was ridiculous. First, killing off the girl was a bad move. Then having him start a gang when he was unbelievable in that role was dumb. Finally, having an epilogue where Silkk gets out of jail leaves the story with a "huh?" kind of bad after taste. Baller Blockin' this definitely wasn't. They knew better than to kill off the girl, they made the cops sufficiently corrupt, and the overall level of charm was higher.



This was all right as far as Busey went. He's first billed, which is slightly misleading. Silkk was supposed to be the star. Obviously I think Busey should be in any movie as much as possible, no matter what it is. I absolutely loved Slumdog Millionaire and The Wrestler, but each would've been that much better with Gary Busey in them. Speaking of which, why doesn't Busey have an Oscar? He should've gotten best supporting actor in 1991 for Point Break over Jack Palance, but that's neither here nor there...

There isn't much C. Thomas Howell. He plays a detective that works under Busey. With the momentum from The Da Vinci Treasure, I was hoping to build on it with another great performance-- and he was good-- but there just wasn't enough here to work with. Like Master P and Snoop Dogg, they all did well, I just wished they could've been in it more. Silkk the Shocker should've been the one with the limited role.



Because this and Baller Blockin' were both made by competing New Orleans rap outfits, I thought it necessary to compare the two in an earlier paragraph. One thing the two have in common is Anthony Johnson, the guy who plays the crackhead in Friday. The only thing is on imdb he's not listed in the credits of Baller Blockin', so you won't find it on his bio. As with everything else in Baller Blockin' they use this comedic actor much better than Hot Boyz did. The crazy cop was funny, while the stuttering, jealous member of the gang didn't work for me. One of his best attributes is his fast speech, so making him a stutterer ruins that.

This movie was sauteed in wrong sauce right from the start, from conception to production. Every good move they made was coupled and trebled by myriad bad moves. I just don't get people who make movies sometimes. Avoid this, and watch Baller Blockin' and then Point Break again instead.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0191191/

The Da Vinci Treasure (2006)

The Asylum production company has a reputation of putting out DTV films with names similar to more popular mainstream movies-- Snakes on a Train and Transmorphers are two examples. We here at the DTVC have reviewed three of these so far: the two listed above, and When a Killer Calls. Of the three, only Transmorphers was even passable, and The Asylum was on it's last legs on our site before we were going to pull the plug and stop reviewing their stuff all together. Let's see how they did with their last chance.

The Da Vinci Treasure is more a knock off of National Treasure than The Da Vinci Code. It has C. Thomas Howell as an anthropologist that's an accomplished cat burglar and martial artist. He's in search of a treasure hidden by Leonardo da Vinci. Also in pursuit is the evil archaeologist played by Lance Henrikson, and he'll stop at nothing to get it. Twists and turns abound as Howell and his sexy partner travel the green-screened globe.



The verdict: I actually liked this. When people watch crap like Pirates of the Caribbean 18: Why Johnny Depp Will Never Win an Oscar Making Shite Like This or National Treasure 14: Nicolas Cage is Just in it for the Paycheck Now, and they tell me these are "fun movies", I know they're just too stupid to realize how wrong they are. The Da Vinci Treasure is the "fun movie". It wasn't pretentious, it wasn't too long, and it was plenty silly. Archaeologists with henchmen that shoot priests in cold blood and steal The Shroud of Turin is just amazing. Nicolas Cage isn't. You and your buddies will have a great time making fun of this, and at 85 minutes, you won't have time to get bored.

The Asylum came through on this one. When I tell my friends I'm watching one of their movies, the silly titles evoke images of films like this. Unfortunately we instead have gotten sacks-of-asscrack like When a Killer Calls and Snakes on a Train. This movie played out almost like a spoof of National Treasure, as opposed to a misguided tribute. It just worked, and now The Asylum is back at .500. We'll see how their next offering does.



C. Thomas Howell is great in this too. A lot of people don't like him, and he's probably a ways, if he ever gets there, to an induction in the DTVC Hall of Fame. He seemed to get a kick out of playing in this, yet he didn't act like it was all a big joke, which is better for us as viewers to make fun of it. This is what we want out of Howell, and if we get it more, I may be able to make some more converts. He's done a lot of work recently, so I have a huge selection to choose from.

You may have noticed in my brief bio at the bottom of the page that I have a degree in anthropology. Contrary to what the film industry will tell you, a BA in anth is not a ticket to the good life. Neither is a PhD. Most anthropology professors aren't trendy dressers, good in a fight, or affluent. If they are, they do a great Clark Kent routine on campus. I wouldn't bring it up, except I know some people out there actually think on some levels some of this is true. When I was going for my BA, I had many assume a professor makes a solid six-figure salary, in the range of $300,000 a year. Let's put that to bed right now: no anth professor is worried about Obama's tax policies.



Another thing we have to get straight in these treasure hunting movies is the cost of clothing. In National Treasure, Nicolas Cage and his two buddies were able to score three complete outfits at Urban Outfitters for two hundred dollars. Impossible. Cage's coat he bought would've been over 200 alone. In this film, Henrikson's female crony is wearing what looks to be a $50 TJ Maxx deal, and Henrikson warns her not to get anything on what he termed "$2000 Versace" threads. Really? First off, we already established no anthropologist is wearing Versace; and second, just because you say it's Versace, doesn't mean it is.

This is what you want if you're a bad movie honk. You can make fun of it very easily, and you'll enjoy yourself as you do it. When we think of The Asylum's movie titles, this is what we want, and at least in this case, this is what we got. Keep it up Asylum.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0810817/