Active Stealth (1999)

Recently Will from Exploding Helicopter posted the exploding helicopter from this film on his Bluesky, and when I looked it up, I thought "how have I not covered this before?" It looks like something I should've done on the site 15 years ago, but somehow slipped through the cracks. In addition to us and Will, Ty and Brett at Comeuppance, Steve Q at Down Among the Z Movies, and Kenner at Movies in the Attic have covered this as well.

Active Stealth has Daniel Baldwin as a special forces kind of guy who thought his buddy was killed in a mission, only to find he's being held hostage by the drug cartel guy they tried to take down some time ago. Their commanding officer, Fred Williamson, sends Baldwin and his team (including Fred Olen Ray mainstays Tim Abell and Chick Vennera) down to get their friend out, and has them use a plane with the latest in active stealth technology as the means to get there. That's it, in and out, and the film is done in a cool 37 minutes--or is it? It's never that easy, and now it's a matter of who will make it with Baldwin back home to see their families, and who will have a dramatic death scene?

This is your classic IMDb 3.5 star rating complete with user reviews touting it as "the worst movie of all time," but for me who's been doing this for almost 1400 movies plus however many more on the podcast, I see something that's professionally made with a few fun moments. What does that mean for you though, because it may not be anywhere near the worst movie ever or as bad as 3.5 stars on IMDb, but is it worth the 100 minutes the movie's asking of you when you have so many options out there? Here are a few things that I would point to that may help you decide. First, Ray and company have a lot of fun touches that harken back to old post-WWII movies, the best of which might be Chick Vennera, who plays the Italian American stereotype so many of those movies had, and caps off his performance with a too sweet helicopter explosion. Or maybe it's the inclusion of another Fred, Fred Williamson, who doesn't do much beyond talk on the phone, but looks great doing it. Then there's Andrew Stevens, who's just there to wear a mustache and talk in military speak, but looks great doing it too. Or finally, Tim Abell, who's there to be the Southern stereotype to Chick Vennera's Italian American stereotype, and again, looks great doing it. The story meanders a bit, and has the holes in it you'd expect from something that was pumped out more because they had the sets available and could do it quick and on the cheap than anything, and I don't know that those touches above is enough to recommend it, but it had its moments for sure. Also, it'll up your percentage on Will's Films with Exploding Helicopters list on Letterboxd.

We're now at 17 directed movies for Fred Olen Ray, depending on whether or not you count Dinosaur Island as 1 or .5, and I count it as 1, but because of that I give the edge in ranking to Joseph Merhi, who's tied with him at 17 for second all-time after Albert Pyun's 44. This is classic Fred Olen Ray, the studio or whoever wanted a quick and dirty military movie that they could throw on video store shelves or cable channels could use for easy programming, he had the location and called a bunch of people he'd worked with before, and along with some bigger names to add to the tin, they made it happen. He's made a career of getting things done like this, across all genres, and here we have something that works more for our audience than Christmas in Palm Springs or Christmas in Vermont, but even with those his process is the same, he's good at pumping them out on the cheap. If we cut out the Christmas movies and the Lifetime movies, he still has enough actioners and Erotic Thrillers remaining to catch Pyun for most all time, it's more a matter of whether or not we'll be doing the site long enough. Next year we'll hit twenty years, so we'll know by 2047 if I kept things going and Ray finally caught him.

There were two other Hall of Famers in this, Fred Williamson and Cole S. McKay. For Williamson, this was a unique one, in that his character was captured at the beginning, and he's not the hero, or even portrayed as a badass who could be the hero. It really is his name and how cool he looks holding a phone, which I think works in a film like this. He's sitting at 33 films on the site, and looking at his bio, I'm not sure how many more we'll do in the near future. He has a couple he's directed that we still need to do, but it might be more things like this where there are other names involved, and he's more along for the ride, but it's possible that will be enough to get him into the 40 Club at some point. Speaking of DTVC clubs, Cole S. McKay is now at 69 (hey-oh!) films on the site. Our next PM film is going to be The Power Within, which will be the one that gets Art Camacho into the 60 Club, and which also has McKay on stunts, so that'll be his 70th film, but I think he needs something more prodigious for his 70 Club post, so one idea I had was Star Hunter, which he co-directed with Fred Olen Ray. It's possible in the meantime I'll review another movie he did stunts because he has so many of them!

Rounding out the rest of the cast and crew, we have a lot of names to get through. I guess we should start with the film's star, Daniel Baldwin, who felt a bit out of place with all of the Ray mainstays around him, but he's a Baldwin, so the name on the tin means more than whether he fits or not. DTVC favorite Tim Abell is back with his 16th film on the site. Is it possible he's putting together a Hall of Fame resume? Speaking of which, Andrew Stevens will be getting inducted this fall, as this is his 36th film overall between acting, directing, and producing, and I believe his 11th as an actor. Speaking of Erotic Thrillers, Shannon Whirry plays Baldwin's wife. I had never really looked at it before, but a few years before this it looks like she'd stopped doing Erotic Thrillers and was doing more stuff like this, or mainstream TV roles, which I think is okay, considering how many great Erotic Thrillers she made before this. Jim Wynorski was a producer on this, under the name "Noble Henry." When talking about great DTV directors, he's one that probably should have more on the site, but at least he gets another tag here. Finally, wrestling fans will appreciate Terry Funk, who was great as the baddie's righthand man. We've actually seen him two other times on the site, with Road House and Timestalkers. 

Finally, as we're talking about Fred Olen Ray and the DTVC director's tag list, I thought about a picture someone posted on Bluesky of Brian De Palma, George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, and Steven Spielberg. In the comments another person asked has anyone had worked with all five of them, and the best me or anyone else could come up with was Tom Cruise, who's worked with all of them but George Lucas. That got me thinking about who a similar five would be for DTV directors. Definitely Albert Pyun, Fred Olen Ray, and Joseph Merhi, who I mentioned above. From there I think Sam Firstenberg has to be included too, so then it's a matter of who the fifth one is. I was between Jim Wynorski and Charles Band, but maybe we add both, and it could be like adding Jonathan Demme or Oliver Stone to that other five (and if we do Stone, that five out of six for Cruise). If that's our six, do we have a DTV Tom Cruise who's worked with four or five of them? I was having trouble finding someone who had worked with five, but Tim Thomerson has worked with all but Merhi and Firstenberg, and Dudikoff and Ice-T have worked with all but Merhi and Band--though Merhi produced an episode of LA Heat Ice-T did. I would not have thought Merhi would be the sticking point in a lot of these, because so many people did PM films, but it looks like the case. 

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently stream this on Tubi here in the States. I don't know that it's something to seek out, but if you like the names involved, it might do in a pinch. Also, if you're like me and need to get your percentage up on Will's Films with an Exploding Helicopter list on Letterboxd, this will help there too.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0211901

Bring Him Back Dead (2022)

I popped open Tubi last weekend to watch a couple movies for upcoming podcast appearances, and what do you know, this bad boy was there! I figured it would be VOD for a period before a free streamer like Tubi got it, but here we are, so I bumped my other planned posts down the list to make this one happen. In addition to us, Chris the Brain at Bulletproof has covered this as well.

Bring Him Back Dead is about a jewelry heist gone wrong after a member of the gang who looks like a cross between Carrot Top and Jesse Eisenberg (Ryan M. Shaw) kills a guard. Driver Gary Daniels is none too pleased, as is the guy who organized everything, Louis Mandylor. Things get crazier when Daniels drugs everyone except for Mandylor's daughter (Katie Keene), and the two take off with the satchel of diamonds from the heist. When the rest of the gang wakes up, they're understandably upset, and Mandylor sends them out to get the diamonds, his daughter, and Daniels--about whom Mandylor says "bring him back dead!" Now it's a forest slog aka game of cat and mouse, as Daniels and Keene need to fend off the rest of his gang and make it out alive so he can bring the diamonds to his new fence, Daniel Baldwin. 

This isn't horrible, especially at 89 minutes long, but I don't know that it's worth a watch beyond being a Gary Daniels completist. We've seen the heist gone wrong film before, and we've seen it done better. We've seen the forest cat-and-mouse game done before, and we've seen it done better. Director Mark Savage does a great job of shooting the dramatic scenes, but the fights didn't look as great, especially Daniels as the one key experienced fighter. Even some of characters' motivations, like Daniels needing money for his son's kidney transplant, we've seen before, and seen done better--think Dolph in Castle Falls for example--I mean, the sheer volume of diamonds they stole would've meant Daniels's cut if they'd just cut out Mandylor would've covered what he needed, he didn't need to screw over his whole crew I don't think. All that said, again, at 89 minutes on a free streamer like Tubi, especially for a Daniels completist like me, you could do a lot worse.

We last saw Daniels back in July, and this is only his fourth film review for 2022. I was trying to figure out why that happened, and I think a big part of it is I only have two other films of his left to review, Astro and City Hunter, and Astro was scheduled to be this post until I saw this was available. Beyond those other two, there's The Gardener, which after a year out still isn't on a free streamer yet, then he has three Christian films, and a movie I have yet to be able to track down, A Stranger in Paradise. If you add those numbers up, he's at 56 films now, so that means he could pass the 60 Club mark with Dolph next year. There was a time, when his output was higher, and Dolph wasn't doing as much, that we thought Daniels could actually pass Dolph for the all-time top number, but that's flipped now, with Dolph doing, if not more DTV films per year, at least as many as Daniels. On the other hand, Daniels is pretty secure in his second spot, as the next closest to him is Art Camacho, who will probably join Daniels and Dolph in the 50 Club next year, but is still far enough away.

Getting back to this movie and how he did, I think this is his first starring role since 2018's Astro, and only the fourth total since 2015, the other two being Rumble and Skin Traffik. To see him back as the star of a picture, with a lot of screentime, was refreshing, and good to see a film feature him that way. Also good to see him up to the task, which he was here. I think for us who have been fans of his for a long time, it's a no-brainer that he'd be leading DTV pictures like this, but I think for the rest of the film industry, he's still being forced to prove himself worthy of roles like this--at least that's how it feels--and he keeps proving why they should have faith in him. I don't know too if from a name standpoint he's not considered big enough be cast as the lead as often. Maybe that's the case, but one hope I have is, with the trend of more DTV action coming out of England, he'll be a natural choice to get cast in some of them, and his profile will grow with it.

Starring with Daniels are two actors who are no strangers to DTV supporting roles, Daniel Baldwin and Louis Mandylor. Baldwin looks like he's slowed down a bit, but in the 2010s he was on a shortlist of actors looking to become the next Eric Roberts; and Mandylor hasn't slowed down and looks like he's still looking to gain that title. The thing about Mandylor though is, despite being in so much, most of his parts aren't the one-scene appearances Roberts does--or Baldwin does here. At the very least, what Mandylor is doing is setting himself up to be a 21st Century Charles Napier, which I think would be fantastic, and I hope he continues on that track--he's at 9 films now on the site, which puts him near Napes's 11. Between the two here though, I preferred Baldwin's one-off character, and it would've been nice if he'd had a bigger part--though not enough to warrant a longer runtime. According to the tags, this was only Baldwin's second film, the other being Crossbreed, which I thought sounded low, but after I went through his bio, I only found one other, Knight Moves. It looks like Baldwin has a lot of DTV films I've been meaning to watch, but haven't yet, so we may see more of him soon.

Finally, according to IMDb this was released on DVD here in the States on August 2nd of this year, meaning within four months we had it available streaming free on Tubi. On the other hand, you have The Gardiner, which has been out for almost a year now, and still is only available to pay to rent on demand for $5.99. I get that there's a large, complicated calculus that goes into whether or not a film should be on something like Tubi, or if it makes more money with $3.99 or even $5.99 rentals, but in terms of generating buzz, it feels like including it on some streamer, whether that's Tubi like this film, or one people pay for like Hulu, would do a better job of that. Would I have bumped this up in my review queue if it was still a rental? Of course not, I have too many other films to cover--including two other Daniels films that are on Tubi. I'm not saying we should never pay, or there isn't a case for initially having a pay-to-stream period when the film first comes out, but it also feels like putting it on something like Tubi sometime after can maybe generate more interest than keeping it at rent only--and for a higher number like $5.99.

And with that, let's wrap this up. As of this writing you can get this on Tubi. I think that's your best bet, especially if you're looking for more Daniels. He's good in this, and it's good to see him as the lead in something. If you're not a big Daniels fan (and why wouldn't you be?), I don't know if this has enough for you, but as a 90-minute free-streamer, you could do a lot worse.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14385300

And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, Holtman Arms, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Crossbreed (2019)

While I was on hiatus, I was still receiving emails about screeners to the DTVC yahoo email, so when I came back I dug through them to see which ones would be good ones for the blog, and Crossbreed, which came courtesy of Alicia at Uncork'd Entertainment about a year ago, was one that stood out.  Between the desire to get the word out on a lower-budget independent film, the fact that it had Vivica A. Fox and Daniel Baldwin, and the type of film it was, it all looked like something I could do for the blog--even if I was a year late on it.

Crossbreed takes place about 40 years in the future.  Our president, Vivica A. Fox, along with her Secretary of Defense, Daniel Baldwin, send a team of mercenaries led by Cherry Hill, NJ's own Stink Fisher to find a possible alien bio weapon that is being kept on a space station orbiting the earth by a nefarious corporation.  As always in situations like these, things aren't exactly what they seem, and now Fisher's team needs to find a way to get out alive and back to the President to tell her what happened.

Mitch at The Video Vacuum has talked about grading DTV films on a curve, and I think that's especially true of an indie film that's as earnest as this one was.  I think overall I enjoyed myself, and that's the best you can ask for.  It has a runtime of about 86 minutes, but with credits it's more like 77 minutes, and even then we had moments where the dialog felt repetitive, or conversations went on a bit too long, meaning we maybe had enough material for a pilot to a syndicated TV series--but again, one that I would have wanted to watch.  Vivica A. Fox was great as the president, Daniel Baldwin great as her Secretary of Defense, and I thought Stink Fisher was that leading man/hero-type that we instantly want to root for, which is what something like this hinges on for me.  I also liked way the alien was done, and thought the CGI special effects were really good as well.  Sci-Fi is not easy to do on a limited budget, but I think this one gets it right much more than it gets it wrong.

The email to the screener I got only mentioned that Vivica A. Fox was the president, not that she became the first ever African American woman to play the President in a live action feature film with this role.  We've had African American women as the President on TV, and Penny Johnson Jerald played the president in a Justice League animated movie, Gods and Monsters, but here we have the first African American woman playing the President in a live action feature film, and it's a low-budget DTV film.  The thing is, there was nothing gimmicky about this, out of the cast, Vivica A. Fox was best suited to be the President, and until I found out that she was the first African American woman ever to do this, I saw the trailer and just looked at it as "of course she's the President, she fits in this role."  On top of that, if you look at her imdb bio, she's been grinding out a lot of movies--many of them with someone else renown for how many movies he grinds out, director David DeCoteau--which is something we at the DTVC always respect, and I think further highlights that she earned this additional feather in her cap in having this role and this distinction to her name.

It looks like in the history of the DTVC, this is only the second Daniel Baldwin movie we've covered, the other being Knight Moves with DTVC Hall of Famer Christopher Lambert, which we reviewed all the way back in 2007.  I think in terms of Baldwin brothers, that ties him with Stephen, who also has two, and then Alec and William both have none.  If you're getting a Baldwin brother for your movie, you can't go wrong with Daniel, and he shows that here.  Like Fox, he's not in a lot of scenes, and almost all of them are with her, but other than the action, their scenes were some of the most fun to watch, which is what you want if you pony up the cash to cast them in a lower-budget film like this.  In addition to these two, Vernon Wells is in the film at the very beginning, and then he's done.

A lot of the way I see this film packaged is as a throwback to the 80s and 90s sci-fi alien thrillers, but I think the problem with this compared to those, is that the alien action here is quick and doesn't comprise a lot of the film.  When I think of Alien and its sequels, I think of movies in the 2-hour range that not only have the great effects and performances, but they also have a Hitchcockian quality where tension is built up, then either deflated or something big happens, then we relax and wind ourselves up for it to happen again.  Even a movie like Creature with Klaus Kinski that we looked at on here went over 90 minutes and had more of that element.  This was more like I had some fun moments, and then that was it, it didn't have that extra depth that those other movies had, so I don't think just because there's an alien on ship picking people off for the last 20 minutes that we can say it's in the tradition of that kind of film.  Again, this felt more like it sets up for the start of a syndicated TV series--one that I would watch if it were that--than it does an Alien.  I know Alien is a classic that was made on a major Hollywood budget, that's why I threw Creature in as a further comparison, because I think even that one had more of the depth and actual alien-person tension that I want in something made in that tradition.

If you go to imdb now, Stink Fisher's bio has his picture, but when I first saw this it didn't, and I didn't know who he was.  I did also see that he's from Cherry Hill, NJ, near where I live in South Philadelphia, and when I heard him talk and heard the accent I'm so used to hearing down here, I knew it had to be him.  As I mentioned above, his leading man character was exactly what I'd want from a film like this, and to some extent I think was underutilized.  There were times where I think we focused more on supporting characters who weren't as compelling, and the result was that a 77-minute movie had moments that dragged.  This is where if we had more alien-person tension, Fisher is someone we could have leaned on to make us buy in and care if this alien picks someone else off; or care if they were successful if the writers added a new attempt to thwart the alien.  To make a movie like this work, you need the big names that are only in it for a short time like Fox and Baldwin to make the most of their short time, which we got; but you also need performances like Fisher's keep us invested when those bigger names aren't on-screen, which we also got.

And which is why, ultimately, I can say I liked this movie and would recommend it.  It's an independent movie done on a smaller scale, but still big, earnest aspirations, wanting to get it right, and I think more often than not it does.  Not only that, but it makes cinematic history.  This is currently on Prime and Tubi, so you can check it out on one of those and support independent film making.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5258074

Knight Moves (1992)

I wasn't sure if I wanted to write a post about this film, strictly for selfish reasons: the title always gets the Bob Seger classic "Night Moves" in my head. But considering the film had DVTC Hall of Famer Christopher Lambert in it, I felt I needed to suck it up. Talkin' 'bout the night moves...

Knight Moves is about a chess pro/diva played by Christopher Lambert. Someone is framing him/playing a twisted game with him which involves murdering people. Tom Skerritt is cop investigating the crimes with his dimwitted meathead of a partner, played by an expertly cast Daniel Baldwin. Throw in a sexy psychoanalyst played by Diane Lane, and you've got a thriller. Who could the killer be? I'll give you a hint: you'll never guess who it is, and for once, I'm not being sarcastic.

This is the kind of bad film I'd expect on Lifetime or Hallmark starring people like John Laroquette and Meredith Baxter Burney. The difference, of course, is that the run-of-the-mill Lifetime thriller isn't as much fun to mock as one with Christopher Lambert and Daniel Baldwin. It'd be like having a movie where a woman is stalked by her old high school sweetheart 35 years later, and the stalker is Dolph Lundgren. I guess it's fun for us, but it was a huge box office failure, which is why self respecting movie makers pitch these sacks of asscrack to cable networks. (Lambert was one of the producers... oops.)



One of the things that interested me while viewing this with some friends was the way we mimicked Lambert's voice. It sounds kind of raspy with a tinge of old man in it. I wondered out loud what Lambert would think of us if he were there listening to our impersonations. "Well, that's how he talks" a friend said. Sure enough, right after I said that, Lambert got into an argument with Daniel Baldwin, and he was impersonating our impersonations of him, so to speak. His chess grandmaster was really a diva who strangely got laid a lot. It sounded more like something Van Damme would think up, then Lambert.

When Diane Lane did this film with Lambert, the two were married. I'm not sure how it went down exactly, but Lambert must've had some say in her showing her boobs in their love scene. Now that the two are divorced, and she's doing bigger budget bad movies, I wonder if she regrets doing that scene. I can't remember if she did a nude scene with Keanu Reeves in Hard Ball. (I saw it on a bus ride... honest!)

Diane Lane's marriage to Lambert brings up another issue with this film: nepotism. And who is one of the biggest nepotists in Hollywood? Big Danny Baldwin. In this, like other films, he chews up scenery as this big meathead who says and does obnoxious things. Not much of a stretch, I guess, after seeing him as himself on Celebrity Fit Club. In fact, I'd say he toned his natural meatheadedness down a few notches for this role. All I can say is, this film would've been a lot better with Frank Stallone.



The ending of the film was pretty stupid. After Lambert saves Lane and his daughter and kills the baddie, this flash of light goes off, which is the same flash of light that would go off to signal he was killing a woman. This time, though, the flash of light just leads to credits. I've always been annoyed when writers leave open-ended endings. Maybe what's worse is that a critically acclaimed show glorifying a nasty crime organization on HBO went to the Knight Moves well in finding their own series ending.

I can't think of anything particularly memorable about this one. There wasn't that great horseback slapping scene like in Day of Wrath, or a scene like every scene in Fortresses 1 and 2. That doesn't necessarily make this useless, just not as big a deal. With that being said, this is probably worth the $5 my buddy just paid for it on DVD, but that's still up for debate. If anything, you should rent it or catch it on TV first. My buddies and I are bad movie veterans, so we could tackle this and keep ourselves entertained. If you're a rookie, and you haven't seen the Fotresses start there, and work your way up to this one.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104627/