Expect to Die (1997)

Because we currently have one more Jeff Wincott tag than we do David Bradley tags, we're doing this review of Expect to Die in order to even things up. It's directed and stars Jalal Merhi, and has DTVC favorite Evan Lurie, aka one of the coolest guys ever. Bradley and Lurie? Even Merhi can't screw this up, can he?

Expect to Die has Bradley as a genius computer programmer that has created the ultimate in virtual reality technology-- so ultimate it's deadly! It's a game called Expect to Die, and it can literally kill you! Merhi and Lurie are two NYPD by way of Toronto detectives that are investigating Bradley and his game after some 3 1/2 floppy game discs come up in an underground trade among gangsters and mobsters for some illegal weapons. Now Merhi and Lurie are in this twisted video game maker's sights. Can they make it out alive?



This movie could've been pretty good, and it did have it's moments, but I couldn't help feeling that Merhi was making this to stroke his own ego. Exhibit A, love scene with him in his tighty whities. Exhibit B, virtual reality boot camp where he does knuckle push-ups and climbs a rope. Exhibit C, Evan Lurie only has one fight-- which he's awesome in, of course-- and then he's killed off; Bradley displays absolutely no martial arts, including in his one scene at the end with Merhi. I guess what I'm saying with the last example is that Merhi didn't want anyone's superior martial arts skills upstaging him. The ending was so silly, between Merhi playing in a game where his girlfriend, whom he's saving, constantly calls him "warlord", to the poorly done shootout between Bradley and Merhi, to the even more poorly choreographed fight scene. What started off as a great deal with some great action, devolved into a Merhi self-aggrandizement fest.

I like Bradley as a baddie though. I wish he had more meat he could sink his teeth into though. His dialogue was especially silly. "Gameplayer, expect to die." I do like the idea of him tranqing people and waking them up in his virtual reality game, yet they can't get out of it by just pulling off all the gear. Then he cuts their head off with an ax that has a number pad on it. Not sure what the number pad was for, maybe so he can calculate the tip? yeah, this movie was that all over the place. The only consistency was how much Merhi wanted us to know how cool he is.



If you don't love Evan Lurie you don't love yourself, that's what I always say. Like Bradley who we never see as a bad guy, we often don't see Lurie as a good guy-- though he was a good guy in his best role ever, American Kickboxer 2. Here he's Merhi's partner, so assigned after Merhi's original partner is injured in a firefight. We get some hint though that Merhi and Lurie have a past too, because Lurie asks him multiple times if he's all right with them working together again. What this past is we can only guess. Anyway, Lurie gets one fight scene, and he absolutely kills it, before his character is killed himself. He needed to be here for the whole thing. He and Merhi needed to be fighting their way through Bradley's game together, not Merhi doing whatever silly crap he was doing at the end of that movie.

The mob boss in this is played by a guy that looks like a cross between Kelsey Grammer and a pork roast. He's just like a meatier beefier Frasier. He also has a meatier, beefier personality. According to imdb, he's had a bunch of small parts in other Merhi films, so this was his first look at the big time. And then that was it, his days as an actor playing the beefier Kelsey Grammer were over.



Check out the Mad magazine. It was on the table while Merhi was dialing the phone at the police station aka strip mall office park. When I was younger I used to get Mad all the time. I was probably too young to get most of the jokes, but the ones I did get were funny enough. Then there was Cracked, the poor man's version of Mad. Remember that? Though I didn't watch Mad TV much, I remember a few great sketches: Terminator 3, where Arnold goes back in time to protect Jesus, and the OJ Interviews outakes were two of my favorites.

You can get this on DVD or VHS from Amazon (for some reason, they top bill Catherine Archer, who imdb lists in the credits as "woman in the bar"), but I wouldn't do it unless you're a total completist and you've added a lot better flicks to your collection. I only did it for this review, so I guess if you have a review site that might be another reason. It's got some names, it has some solid action and some silly moments, but overall it's Merhi showing us how he beds a woman in his tighty whities and how well he can do knuckle push-ups.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0193924/

Crisis (1997)

Anyone who's been rocking with us for a little while knows that I try to keep the amount of tags for Jeff Wincott and David Bradley roughly the same, just because I do, and last week we did two Wincott flicks in the two Universal Soldier sequels, so now it's time to balance out the scale with a Bradley flick. Even though Wincott wasn't a star in either film, that's not how tags work, two supporting roles don't equal one starring role, a tag is a tag no matter how much someone is involved with a movie, so expect another Bradley one soon after this one.

Crisis has Bradley as a hitman who visits his environmental activist brother and finds out the guy is planning a home invasion of a famous scientist that is also a major polluter. Bradley tags along to try and keep his brother out of trouble, but when things go pear-shaped, instead of helping, he finds himself tied to a weight bench. Looks like some pesky German terrorists have infiltrated the environmental activist group with a plan to get their hands on some missiles the scientist was commissioned with disposing of, and then pin the blame on the activists. Can Bradley get himself free in time to save the day?



Wow, great beginning, great ending, horrible middle. Jalal Merhi let us down here as director-- though he didn't write it, so maybe we can't blame him too much. I get that Die Hard in a mansion can be difficult to pull off for 90 minutes due to the small space in which the action takes place-- skyscrapers and industrial plants work so much better-- but to mitigate that issue by having our hero spend a chunk of the film tied to a weight bench making Romantic Comedy banter with a love interest in a Jennifer Aniston haircut, that's a bad play. The whole idea is that Bradley is supposed to be a snake in the grass, but when he shows his hand so early in, we're stuck. And this is after an amazing beginning where he offs a bunch of dudes, rides a Harley, and rocks some too sweet shades; and an end confrontation with the head baddie that ends hilariously with the baddie looking to run Bradley down in a stolen car, and Bradley countering by throwing a fireman's ax at the windshield. Can I recommend a movie for roughly 15 minutes of quality footage? Of course I can't. (Though I guess I did for even less in Out for a Kill.)

How is it that Bradley is the one who ends up in a Romantic Comedy scenario tied to a weight bench with another hostage tied up next to him whom he doesn't get along with, but eventually hooks up with? Do we see Wincott doing that? Dolph maybe, but for as long a segment of the movie as Bradley was here? It just seems like tied to a weight bench is part of a bigger pattern of fanny pack behavior. Maybe this is why Bradley got out of acting, because he was tired of crap like this. The thing to do with this would've been to keep Bradley's cover, maybe even have the baddie suspect something's up with him, so he sends him down to the weight room to guard the woman, and the challenge for Bradley then is to keep his cover, convince this girl he's just tied up that he's not really one of the hostage takers, and keep his ear to the door to keep himself abreast of the goings on upstairs. It would've been better than what we got.



What you're looking at right there is Word 97 (at least I think it is). You're probably thinking "great, why would you cap that?" Because that my friends is what passed for the company interface through which the sleazy scientist accessed his company in order to get the release for the missiles. Yep, no cute graphics, no animation that looks nothing like a computer program, but still looks like something. Nope, a Word file, and they just had the guy type into it. At one point he's contacting 911. Yep, just type it in anywhere in the Word document, that will be fine.

Speaking of the sleazy scientist, he was played by Cameron Mitchell's son. You may remember the son from Space Mutiny as the guard that tells Calgon that "the information is scanty" at the moment. Scanty. Most of his credits are under the name "Channing Mitchell", including this one, but now he goes by the name Cameron Mitchell Jr. He was good here as the sleazy scientist, but no where near what his dad brought to the table in all those AIP flicks.



We've started something of a trend here where I use the last paragraph to talk about some outdated cultural phenomena or nostalgia that comes to mind when watching the movie, and I couldn't pass up the Jennifer Aniston hairdo. Was it called the Aniston or the Rachel? It was big in the mid to late 90s, and while this one isn't a perfect example, is Aniston-y enough. I think they went with it here to give the impression that this woman was a modern spitfire of sorts, that she wouldn't take any crap. Like Bradley though, she spends a good chunk of the film tied to a weight bench, though she isn't as well secured, so she gets to hop around a lot. Very modern spitfire.

Though you can check this out on Watch Instantly, I don't recommend it unless you're a Bradley completist. I am by virtue of having this blog, which means I hurt so you don't have to-- and if you don't have to, I wouldn't. Also, it was shot in Saskatoon, so if that does anything for you, by all means.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0136774/

Blood Warriors (1993)

It was time to get a little David Bradley up on the DTVC again, and this one also starred Frank Zagarino, so I thought, what the hell. That, and I got this from a friend on VHS, had an open slot here, and figured I'd go for it. I can always go to David Bradley in a pinch.

Blood Warriors has native Texan David Bradley playing a Marine from Texas who finds himself in jail. His ol' Marine buddy Frank Zagarino bails him out, gets his sentence dropped, and covers the mortgage on his dad's farm. The catch: he needs to board a plane to Jakarta and help Zags out on some business there. En route, Zags is killed, so Bradley catches up with his hot sister. When Zags's business competitor finds out his casket is empty, things get crazy. Is Zags still alive? And if he is, can Bradley trust him? And isn't this action hero gig a pretty sweet deal when you get love scenes with the woman who played the model on Seinfeld?



This isn't horrible, but it's not exactly great either. The beginning goes a little long before we get any good action, and while the action is decent, it's nothing spectacular. I felt like there were more missed opportunities than great moments, which is never a good thing. For instance, Zags is showing off for Bradley how well his mercs can fight. Bradley just sits there, then is all like "I don't want to be in your gang, Zags." What we needed there was a Jeff Wincott in Mission of Justice scene, you know, the one where he's supposed to walk this gauntlet, acts like he's not going to do it, then quickly turns and flips into the middle of all these dudes, and totally houses them. Bradley needed to kick all their asses, then throw on his cowboy hat, pop his collar, and tell Zags he'll be in his room if he needs him. With an action movie that has guys like Bradley and Zagarino, you can't have them sitting on the sidelines, and unfortunately, that happened too often.

Gotta love the Bradley in a cowboy hat look. Maybe not quite the fanny pack, but it's close. I know Bradley is from Texas, but he's too much of a dandy for Texas good ol' boy to work. He's a thinking man's lead, smooth, cleancut, sharply tailored suits and sleek automobiles. He needs to cruise into town in an expensive convertible and take out gangs of toughs with nice looking roundhouses and jumpkicks, throw on his sunglasses and tell the guys to have a nice day. The fact that Bradley co-wrote the script tells me he wanted to get away from that image some. Come on man, be who you are, and be proud of it.



Zagarino isn't in this much. He's kind of like Orson Welles in The Third Man, only his name is "Stone" instead of "Lime". Keith Stone, actually, not to be confused with the guy from the Keystone beer commercials. As far as I can tell, beer commercials, and in particular light beer commercials, are so bad it's almost criminal, but the Keith Stone ones are one of the few I like. Really, I'm more of a man if I drink your light beer? Or maybe you're more of a moron.

Sam Firstenberg directed this, and as I'm sure you know, he has a pretty solid track record. American Ninja, American Ninja 2, Avenging Force-- though he was also the man who put Bradley in a fanny pack in Cyborg Cop-- though to his credit, he made fun of it in the sequel, Cyborg Cop II. This was a definite step down from any of the others of his we've reviewed, and it makes me wonder if maybe something went wrong in post-production that hurt this thing-- or maybe it's his Jersey Girl.



Seinfeld fans will recognize Jennifer Campbell as the model Jerry meets flying home in first class, and then who sees him scratching his nose at a red light, and erroneously thinks he's picking it. I looked on her resume, and though she did do some action based TV shows, I didn't see another action movie after this, and I can kind of see why. She was pushed and pulled and dragged and carried and sent through the ringer in this bad boy. At one point, Bradley is carrying her over his shoulder, which made very little sense, since she seemed like she could run just fine-- and run faster than Bradley could run carrying her. It probably makes sense why we don't see as many repeat action movie female co-stars, it's a much easier paycheck looking disgusted when you think Jerry Seinfeld picked his nose.

This is not an easy find, out of print, only available on VHS. Maybe for completists, because it is Bradley and Zagarino directed by Firstenberg, but that's a big stretch. If you see it cheap in a bargain bin and don't have much else already in your basket, I guess you could go for it and add it to your bad action collection.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106432/

Total Reality (1997)

A buddy of mine had this in his collection, I saw that it starred David Bradley, and I went for it. Did I have the highest expectations? Maybe not, but I gotta say, Mr. Bradley is growing on me.

Total Reality takes place 200 years in the future, where a self-help/cult movement inspirational book written in the late 1990s has grown into an intergalactic dystopian nightmare. Bradley works for the side of the baddies, stamping out a rebellion, but when his CO blasts a ship full of innocent civilians, he blasts his CO and gets sent to military prison with a death sentence. Thing is though, a couple rebels have flown off in a time traveling ship, headed for Earth 1998, so they can take out the dude who wrote the book and the Senator whom he's in cahoots with. Bradley now has a battle of conscience, because if he doesn't complete his mission and kill these rebels, his head will explode, but if he does, the world he knows will continue to suck.



I liked the idea of this one. It was like one of those "if you could go back in time and kill Hitler, would you?" kind of deals. The execution was off though. First and foremost, there was only one good Bradley martial arts scene. Seriously? Why not just do none at all? By doing one, you show us that you understand the concept of Bradley's martial arts, and are purposefully not using it. Second, to follow that up, the gun fights were the classic, really bad, two guys at point blank range firing obscene amounts of ordinance, with neither one hitting. Lame. Finally, the ending was a little weird, but I don't want to give it away. All I'm saying is it was weird. What we end up with is a cool concept, poorly done.

Don't let that be an indictment of Bradley though, because he was great-- though could've been better had he been allowed to by the material. I don't know what it is, but he just seems like a really good guy. Like when he saves a couple kids in a movie, it feels genuine, like he's the kind of guy who'd be good with kids in real life. I just don't get why he was cast and not given more than one martial arts scene. This was for the most part a sci-fi actioner, he was rolling around firing guns and evading explosions, why not take dudes out with some sweet martial arts? A little hand-to-hand combat goes a long way.



I have always been a fan of Ely Pouget, and she was great here. I didn't know this, but the only other film of hers we've done is Death Machine, co-starring Brad Dourif. I could've sworn we'd done another, but I guess not. In Total Reality, she played the ex-husband of the self-help guy, which brings her into Bradley's orbit as the two try to track him down. They don't have a love scene or anything though-- the weird ending precluded that possibility.

The going back in time thing is always a weird one for me. It's very messy, the idea of what is changed and to what extent. You have to assume if time travel were possible, someone would've already come back and killed Hitler or something, right? The best was this YouTube video some guy made where he analyzed a film from the 20s or something on a DVD that was shot outside of Mann's Chinese Theater. An old lady walks by, touching her head, and this dude is absolutely certain that she's clutching a cell phone. Yes, out of all the explanations of this, it's that someone traveled back in time and gave her a cell phone. It wasn't that she was touching her head because she's a crazy bag lady, was it? Has anyone else seen this thing? It's pretty funny.



Ely Pouget was not the only great actress in this, Misa Koprova played Wingate, a member of Bradley's extraction team. Absolute hottie. It doesn't get any better than a hunting vest, tight black pants, and big boots, that's what I always say. Fastest way to my heart is for a woman to wear that on our first date. Bradley had his work cut out for him here between her and Pouget, but somehow he managed to get through the movie with no love scene. Man Brads, you need a better agent-- or you could just stop making movies, which it looks like you did.

This isn't on Netflix, but Amazon has it used and new on DVD and VHS, but I'm not sure you need it in any case. This just doesn't quite have enough of anything to merit a recommendation, especially for what it would cost to procure it on Amazon. Better off passing.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120356/

White Cargo (1996)

I don't know why I went in for this one. David Bradley is one factor. Shannon Tweed another. Tiny "Zeus" Lister a third. Is that enough to go out of my way to get my hands on something? I don't know if I'm qualified to answer that question...

White Cargo has Bradley as a jack of all trades independently wealthy police detective who works just for the fun of it, investigating a murder that leads him into a dangerous underground world of drugs, models, models as escorts, Asian and Italian mobs, and his ex-wife. Can he take the heat? He's David Bradley, if not, he can always pull one of those mini handheld fans out of his fanny pack and cool himself down, right?

Okay, no fanny packs here, just a lot of double-breasted suits. I don't know if I can recommend this, but I liked it. No real action other than the end. Not exactly stylish enough to be good Film Noir though, or sexy enough to be a sexy suspense thriller. It was just Bradley, betting on horses, investigating murders, trading proverbs with wise old Chinese men, eating pasta with Italians, playing blues on his guitar when his ex stands him up, and doing karate when people give him a hard time. Then there's Shannon Tweed, who is hot as a modeling executive, but she doesn't have a huge part; and Tiny "Zeus" Lister (Tommy "Tiny" Lister before I get a comment from someone trying to correct me) plays a bartender at the bar Bradley owns and lives above who helps him raid a drug warehouse. I don't know, it's a funny combination of stuff that just works as funny for me, but it may not for everyone else.

This might be one of Bradley's better roles, outside of the amazing Hard Justice. There's something about it that allows him to do what he does, without forcing him to overreach. It's as if it's so silly and over the top (Stallone style) that Bradley can't go wrong with how he plays it. Also, his martial arts, though not a large part of the film, when it's there, it's solid. All around, he enhanced the fun factor, which is a good thing.

What is that, Karl Kani Tiny "Zeus" Lister is wearing? Remember Karl Kani? It was like before Rocawear and Phat Farm, right? An urban Chessking, so to speak. If Color Me Badd wore Chessking, then Bel Biv Devoe rocked Karl Kani. I don't really know what Lister was doing here, like 90% of the film he's just a bartender, laughing at Bradley's jokes, holding onto money for him, and shaking his head when Bradley scores with a new chick. Then, apropos of nothing, he's sneaking into the drug warehouse to back up Bradley, and later wields a machine gun. Was that on his resume when he applied for the bartending job at Bradley's? "Ooh, you're handy with a piece, huh? And able to covertly enter heavily fortified buildings? Hmm, those are qualities I may need someday... I'll tell you what, I think you're our best applicant so far..."

This is like our fourth Shannon Tweed flick on here. You'd think it'd be more, but she does more erotic thrillers and sexy suspense yarns that aren't exactly what we do here at the DTVC. Her role in this was kind of odd, because at first it made sense, where she's the modeling agency exec who's getting her clients to have sex with rich people for big money (no whammies); but then she's kidnapped at the end of the film--why, I must've missed--and then is rescued by Bradley, which is when she decides that she too can handle a piece and knows the layout of the drug warehouse. There also wasn't a lot of her in this movie, which was a bit of a disappointment, just because she was one of the more talented members of the cast.

This guy here was like a combination of Brent Huff and Torgo from Manos: The Hands of Fate (and before more correction comments, yes, I know the Spanish word for hands is "manos"). It was just a cool novelty to have a character that was that combination of those two people. He takes the business end of a shotgun to the torso, which sends him five feet in the air and ten feet back into a bookshelf. Great way to go.

Amazon does have this on VHS, but you have to navigate some interesting titles to get there if you follow the link from the IMDb page. This is really for the big time DTV fan, and even then I'm not sure if it'll work for you. I don't know, it just has so many quirky attributes that as a whole, it all worked in a funny way.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114925/

Looking for more action? Check out my short action novel, Bainbridge, and all my other novels, over at my author's page! Click on the image below, go to https://www.matthewpoirierauthor.com/

Cyborg Cop II aka Cyborg Soldier (1994)

I imagine, if you read my review of Cyborg Cop, that you know where I'm about to go with this one, so let's not delay and cut right to the chase.

In Cyborg Cop II, our man in the black fanny pack is back. That's right, David Bradley, not even on vacation now, is rocking a fanny pack while on the job as a DEA agent. After a dude that killed his partner and was sentenced to death is broken out of prison, Bradley is suspicious. So he loads up his fanny pack with snacks and ammunition, and seeks out the truth. What he finds is his boy is now a cyborg, aptly named Spartacus, because he leads his fellow enslaved cyborgs in a revolt. Does Bradley have enough tricks in his fanny pack to defeat them?



The fanny pack thing had to be a joke, right? I mean, before he gets off his motorcycle in his first scene, I made a crack about it, only to see that he was actually wearing it! And it's not just there for show. Uh-uh, no way, he's packing heat underneath there-- whoa, hold your horses ladies (and some fellas), I'm not talking about that, I mean he's hiding a gun... well, you know what I mean... anyway, this thing is in every scene. When he's saving a kid in slow motion, there's the fanny pack. When he's having a conversation with the chief, there's the fanny pack. I imagine even his stunt doubles wore it for continuity. Overall, the action was pretty solid, so, in addition to the hilarity of the fanny pack, this is a lot of fun.

There's something about Bradley throughout this that's kind of dandy-ish, like he's Gene Kelly or something. The way he leaps around, does his roundhouse kicks, the faces he makes when he's waiting for someone to attack. On top of that, you have the fanny pack. Luckily, the film makers countered all of this by making his character kick lots of ass. I mean, in the build-up, we're told these cyborgs are pretty much indestructible, but they're no match for our be-fanny-packed hero.



This how ridiculous the whole fanny pack thing got, other people were rocking them! Here is Bradley's dead partner's widow. Inside her fanny pack is her dead husband's Zippo, which she gives Bradley, and he promptly puts it in his fanny pack, until he needs it at the end of the film. It's like his fanny pack is his utility belt or something. They should've outfitted Bradley with a cape and cowl. "Brad-Man!" "Robin, get me the Shark Repellent Brad-Spray!" "But Brad-Man, you already have it in your fanny pack!"

It looks like even Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson is getting in on the act here with Bradley. I can't write a great Scottish accent, but you have to imagine this is hurting his sensibilities. "Noe David, tha' fanny pack doosen't soot ya. If yew were my player, I'd suspend ya er poot in a transfer request." (Speaking of Man U, as I write this, it's one day after Blackpool coughed up a two goal lead to them, extending their undefeated season. I'm hoping beyond hope they don't finish that thing off, because I'm a huge Arsenal fan.)



The thing that gets me most about the fanny packs in this film, is that they're all made of leather. Now, I'm no vegetarian, and I have some leather hiking boots and sneakers, so I'm not about to preach to you. All I'm saying is, a cow or bull's life is worth more than that, isn't it? I get that leather is a by-product of slaughtering the animal for meat, so technically it wasn't killed to make a fanny pack, but just the same, to use the leather to make a fanny pack, is like buying a steak just to let it rot on your shelf-- or to make a meat helmet out of it. What a waste of that animal's life on something so gaudy.

I got this from Netflix in a one disc two-pack that included part III, Terminal Impact. For this one alone it's worth it. Great action, great fanny pack...age, I guess... I should probably end this now before we get anymore phallic.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109518/

American Samurai (1992)

The idea of this film intrigued me. David Bradley paired with Mark Dacascos in a samurai film. Of course, only ten minutes in and I realize that Dacascos is the bad guy. Suddenly I was having misgivings...

American Samurai has Bradley as a kid whose family crashes a plane over some remote areas of Japan with an infant him in it. He alone survives, and a dude who runs a samurai training place takes him and trains him, much to the chagrin of the guy's real son, Mr. Dacascos. Dacascos swears revenge for the favor his dad has shown Bradley, and fast forward so many years and Dacascos hires some thugs to steal a sacred family samurai sword from Bradley's home in LA. That means Bradley, a journalist, traces the sword to Turkey, where he goes after it pretending to be after a story. A Romantic Comedy ensues, and then a rip-off of Enter the Dragon with weapons.



I don't know what to say. I imagine the idea sounded great on paper, but it only translated so well on screen. Fighting with weapons is only so entertaining, and when some of the people involved look ridiculous-- see Conan wannabe and Anachronism the Great, a viking-- it only looks worse. This is especially disconcerting when you have two quality martial artists and instead of them doing what they do best: hand-to-hand combat; you have them in a couple of fairly clunky sword fights. I understand that they're samurai, and samurai fight with swords, but if these guys aren't great at them, mix it up and have some martial arts stuff with no weapons first, just to let us know what we have.

Let's start with Bradley. Why doesn't he often work in these situations? I think here it was the material. He only had a few instances where he was the man, and just as often he was getting tasered and being ordered around by the baddies. That kind of thing just doesn't work in an action film. Why they needed to cram this story into an Enter the Dragon rip-off is beyond me as well. Make it a detective film, have him track down leads, get caught in traps of baddies, and have to fight his way out. Then at the end, Dacascos kidnaps his Romantic Comedy lead, and they have their final showdown.



More than Bradley, they really wasted Dacascos. Let this guy cut it loose and show the world what he can do. After seeing him in Drive, I have very little respect for any film maker that doesn't give us that level of action when he or she has Dacascos at his or her disposal. Not only that, but his long hair made him look feminine. At the beginning he was revealed as a Yakuza. Why not have him in Turkey on some kind of drug deal, and Bradley has to take him down. Throw in a couple scenes where a larger group of cops try to take him in, and he takes them all out with his bare hands.

There was one interesting scene at the beginning when Bradley first loses the sword and dreams about it. There's an Onibaba style demon samurai that Bradley faces in his dream. At first I thought this was telling us how this would be a samurai film in the style of x, y, and z; instead it was telling us that there are good films out there, and this is not one of them.



Maybe it's not the fanny pack moment from Cyborg Cop, but it's close. After another bad dream, Bradley wakes up in his tighty... err... orangies? Anyway, it wasn't a good look. Maybe not as bad as the fanny pack, but close. As we make our way through the rest of Bradley's brief period in the movie industry, I'm left to wonder how many more moments like this we have to look forward/fear coming. And we're still left with the mystery of why Bradley stopped making movies in the first place.

This could be good with a group of people making fun of movies, but there's just so much more out there with funnier scenes to choose from, so I'm not sure I can even recommend it on those merits. If it ever ends up on something like EncoreAction, I'd say DVR it and give it a look see. Otherwise, don't go too far out of your way.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106258/

American Ninja V (1993)

This was recently placed on Netflix's Watch Instantly. I'd been meaning to get to it for a while, since I have all the others reviewed here, but other things keep popping up. Also, with David Bradley's performances in some of the other films we've done of him recently, I wasn't too excited about the prospect. Still, if this is the Direct to Video Connoisseur, then it needs to have all five American Ninjas on it, whether I like it or not.

American Ninja V has Bradley as a dude teaching martial arts in Key West, when his master, Pat Morita, makes him watch his 12-year-old nephew Hiro while he's away. Bradley also has a date, so he brings the boy along. As luck would have it, the date is the daughter of a scientist, and the bad guys decide to kidnap her so the scientist will do what they want. They kidnap her on the date, and Bradley chases after, the nephew not far behind. They stow away on a plane, track the girl down, Bradley teaches the boy the ways of the ninja, and they fight a James Lew whose dressed like M. Bison in drag, and save the day.



This had to be a comedy. Like more than American Ninja 2 was a comedy. I mean, as a comedy, it was pretty funny, if their goal was to spoof the previous American Ninja films. I don't even know where to begin, though. Maybe the bad guy guards. They were dressed in plain white T-shirts, billowy khaki shorts, and high tube socks. If it wasn't for the machine guns they were toting, I'd think they were taking a break from a nearby tech convention. Then you got James Lew in his outfit. Had it been purple with a purple mask, he'd be the Phantom Fireworks guy. The nephew was played by a somewhat annoying kid (Lee Reyes, who may or may not be related to Ernies Reyes jr.), but he would do all these things like drive a car or fly a plane, and the reactions were always like "Oh you," or "what're we gonna do with you, Hiro?" I'm not kidding either, he really would just drive cars and fly planes. Throw in all your average funny ninja stuff with none of the gore, and you've got a hilarious family ninja movie.

David Bradley's taken some heat here at the DTVC. There's the poor performance in American Ninja 3 that I gave him a mulligan on because it was his first starring role; and then the fanny pack in Cyborg Cop, which I definitely didn't give a mulligan on-- that was unforgivable. Just the same, I also gave him props for the amazing Hard Justice, one of the best DTV films of the 1990s. Here we get something in between, which I was okay with. His martial arts skills were solid, and his ability to do tongue and cheek was much improved from AN3 four years before. He was just a much more believable lead. I'm not sure what happened to him in 1997, which is the date imdb gives for his last movie, but that's it, 15 pictures in 8 short years, and he's gone.



This is the second film I've reviewed in a week which featured That Guy James Lew in a bigger role than just a hatchet man in a baddie's gang, the other being Circuit 3. He was definitely used better here than he was in that one. First, the mullet was in full effect, though often pulled back in the classic ape drape ponytail, you know, the kind that's really business in the front, and then, instead of party in the back, it's 80s hipster doofus. Gotta love that, but hold on cowboy, we're not done. Red gloves, red ninja outfit, and red cape. Yep, you guessed it, M. Bison's drag outfit. Again, this had to be a joke, because it was hilarious.

Most of these movies I review from the 80s and 90s have a nostalgia aspect, whether it's the clothes, hairdos, or Zack Morris cell phones. Usually it stops there, though, but not in American Ninja V. First, you got the nephew rocking the Miami Dolphins Starter jacket and hat. Classic. Then, he's playing the Game Gear. I forgot that existed! Now I want one really bad. The McDonald's they passed in the car chase looked modern, but the Doritos bag Bradley and the kid found was totally old school-- we're talking like Jay Leno commercials era... whoops, sorry, that's a bad name around here.... (The Game Gear image is above, and if you click on it or any other image in the post, it will take you to the image page, which has pics of the other things I mentioned above.)



One thing that was great about this was how Bradley fought different waves of ninjas through out, but each wave was a different color. The color didn't mean anything though, they didn't fight differently or better than any others, that just seemed to be how it was. Again, I think this was all done for the silliness of it more than anything, but coming from the Mortal Kombat school of ninjas, it was a little disappointing. Ninjas in different colors should all do different things. I found a website (http://www.mortalkombatonline/) that talks about the games, and I guess in some of the newer ones, the ninjas aren't all color swaps, they're actually given individual looks, which was a disappointment. Hopefully they'll make a new one that's all 2-D, with some of the classic characters, and myriad unlockable color-swapped ninjas. Maybe something downloadable for Wii Ware.

This movie isn't a bad deal, especially if you get it on Watch Instantly. It's funny-- whether intentional or not-- the martial arts is decent, and the action isn't bad. David Bradley turns in a redeemable performance, though not one that will allow us to forgive him for the fanny pack faux pas. It'll be interesting to see what we have next for him, but for right now, you could do a lot worse than see this one.

For more info:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106257/

American Ninja 3: Blood Hunt (1989)

I probably would've reviewed this sooner, but David Bradley's been in my dog house since the fanny pack incident in Cyborg Cop. It still just boggles my mind that a so-called action hero would allow himself to be made to wear a fanny pack. If it hadn't been for Hard Justice, he night have been banned from the DTVC for life.

American Ninja 3 takes place after the first two, but DTVC Hall of Famer Michael Dudikoff is conspicuously absent. Very conspicuously. Anyway, Bradley, Steve James as Curtis Jackson, and some other dudes come to this island for a martial arts tournament, unbeknownst to them so a pharmaceutical mogul can find the strongest one so he can carry a biological weapon in his system. For whatever reason, they ignore the obviously stronger Jackson, and go for Bradley instead, and Jackson and another competitor, whom Jackson affectionately refers to as "Junior", must go in and rescue him. Oh yeah, and an Asian chick who was working for the mogul is actually a ninja too, and she wants to help save Bradley too.



The first, and most important question here is: why? Why was this made? Cash grab, maybe. This was too much to put on Bradley right away. For his first major role, he had no chance of filling Dudikoff's impressive shoes. I know I shouldn't throw terms like racism around lightly, but what other explanation was there to cast Bradley as the main hero over James, who obviously fit the part better. And you could tell James didn't like playing second fiddle to Bradley, and it only made the film that much worse.

One thing you notice about the first, second, and fourth films, is there's a sense of tongue in cheekness that adds to the entertainment value. This film tried that too, but fell on its face. It really was an MST3K quality film, and on that score, it was plenty worthy of making fun of. It was like a YouTube high school project video, where you almost expected the actors to look at their friend behind the camera for the signal that he pushed the stop button to end the scene.



I was asked a couple weeks ago what my top ten films of the 1990s are, and it made me think what a DTV top 10 of the 1990s would be, and somewhere around 7 or 8, I would have to have Hard Justice. Now, to be fair, Bradley had nine films between that one and American Ninja 3, which was his first, so I can't be too hard on him here. The fanny pack is still more unforgivable. In that case, he had four films under his belt (no pun intended), though three of those were American Ninja films, so maybe he didn't know what he was doing by rocking the fanny pack, but I don't know. I haven't made any movies, and I know I wouldn't rock a fanny pack unless I wanted to look ridiculous.

Someone who never looked ridiculous was the late Steve James. Though imdb didn't say it explicitly, I have to believe he was the inspiration for Jax in Mortal Kombat. He did kind of mail it in here, which may have been as much lack of interest as it was his illness. Like Swayze and Ron O'neal, James was killed by pancreatic cancer four years later. I don't want to get too somber here, though. He wasn't as good as he was in American Ninja 2, but he was still good enough to be one of the film's few bright spots. Just check out the too sweet "Shalom, y'all" T-shirt.



There was a dude in here who looked a lot like Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo, which was pretty cool. My three-year-old nephew watches a show called Yo Gabba Gabba!, and Mark Mothersbaugh has a segment on there where he draws a picture on the board and it comes to life, a la Bill Cosby's Picture Pages. I wonder if they really wanted Mark Mothersbaugh, and he was like "What, no Dudikoff? Then no Mothersbaugh either."

There are two reasons to see this: if you're an American Ninja completist, or if you need a really bad movie to make fun of. You probably should see it for the latter instead of the former. What's great is it usually comes packaged with part 2, so it's like you're buying part 2, and you get part 3 for free, so you don't have to feel like you're ripped off when it sucks.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096804/

Cyborg Cop (1993)

I first saw this way back when it first came out in the early 90s. I didn't really remember it, but since Hard Justice was so good, I knew it needed revisiting. (Am I the only one who's noticed I've been doing a lot of 90s cyborg films lately?)

Cyborg Cop is a romantic comedy starring David Bradley as a disgraced DEA agent on a Caribbean island looking for his brother. He finds much more in the precocious little spitfire of a reporter who's down there looking for a story. First they can't stand each other, then they can't stand being without each other. John Rhys-Davies is a delight as the fat, jolly, bad guy.



This movie is hilarious. Absolutely. I usually don't like romantic comedies, but this one worked. I think, for me, the worst part about romantic comedies is when the girl dumps the guy, and he becomes a stalker to win her back, and succeeds. It just sends a bad message in our society. This movie stayed away from that, and that's why it was good.

Maybe the funniest part was David Bradley, the hero, sporting a fanny pack. Are you kidding? It's not like fanny packs were so yesterday-- they were never in! Let me get this straight, I'm supposed to take this guy seriously as an action star while he's rocking a fanny pack? When combined with his tight black jeans, it looked like a cod piece and he looked like a ballet dancer. Wow.



Um, did I mention that David Bradley is rocking a fanny pack? I'm not saying he did it in one scene to pretend he was a tourist, he was using a fanny pack to carry his wallet and passport! I'm sorry, but if your jeans are so tight you need a fanny pack to carry you wallet, you need to move up a waist size. There's been a lot of debate lately on whether a guy should use an umbrella, but I think we're all in agreement that he should never use a fanny pack.



John Rhys-Davies was-- I'm sorry, I just can't get past the fanny pack. Who let him do that? Where was his agent? Bradley himself should've spoken up. There's plenty of blame to go around. Just look at Nicolas Cage. I mean, he's never actually worn a fanny pack in any of the movies he's been in, but it seems like he has, which is bad enough. If Cage is a tool just because we wouldn't put the fanny pack past him, what does that make Bradley, who actually wore it?

This movie is so funny, you can't go wrong. Either in a large group, or by yourself in your sweats on a lazy Sunday, you'll be entertained. You can rent it or watch it instantly on Netflix, which works; and if you see it for sale cheap on VHS I'd go for it too. You won't be disappointed.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109517/



So my buddy's wife had us watching this movie, and I must say, I was skeptical at first. It looked like a bad Bring it On rip-off. I couldn't have been more wrong. This is like Ski School at cheerleading camp. It was hilarious from beginning to end, probably one of the best comedies I've seen in a while. Because it made over $15 mill at the box office, it's not eligible for it's own post, so I'm recommending it here. Great flick. Also, the two male leads are playing high school seniors, and one was born in '80, and the other '77. Wow. I was born in '79, and I'm finding I get carded less and less. Maybe if I shaved I'd look like 17.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1083456/

Hard Justice (1995)

With my recent push to get more of the gems from the late 80s and early 90s, it was probably only a matter of time before I made this one happen. This was another of those films that I saw when I was in high school, forgot about, and was reminded of by some of my readers. Then I rent it, see it again, and think "how did I forget this?"

Hard Justice has David Bradley as an ATF agent that goes undercover in a jail to find out what happened to his friend, who was murdered. This of course comes after an explosion laden gunfight in a waterfront warehouse. As the film deteriorates into the usual action prison film where everyone's in on it and shanks come from all sides, Bradley discovers who he can trust, who sucks, and how many times he can go from beating someone down to getting beaten down himself in solitary.



Death Warrant is perhaps the best prison film ever. Then Live by the Fist. That being said, this is no slouch. The opening scene is just amazing-- I don't even know if words can properly describe how awesome it is-- and from there it doesn't stop, leading up to a sweet prison riot to end the film. When you think 1990s DTV action, this is what comes to your mind. The only demerit I can give is the use of a helicopter at the end of the movie that wasn't blown up. Come on guys, don't get lazy on me, blow that fucking helicopter up.

I've never been a big David Bradley fan. Maybe it was how he spent most of American Ninja 4 as a prisoner as opposed to out there kicking ass. Outside the Law wasn't so hot either. But here he really makes his money. This movie came packaged with Outside the Law on Netflix, but if you go the Watch Instantly route, only Outside is available. Total ripoff. I am going to revisit some of the other films in his catalog based on the strength of this last movie. He hasn't done many, and he hasn't made a film since 1997. One of the most fitting things about his bio is he's listed on imdb as "David Bradley (V)", which means he's the fifth David Bradley, but (V) is also the term imdb uses for Direct to Video.



Of course the other big draw in this film is the great Vernon Wells. I don't dig the face tattoo, and he seems to take a little off the amazing Australian accent, but overall he's pretty good. He plays a rival supplier of all things contraband in the prison to the people Bradley's investigating so, despite the fact Bradley's a cop, Wells is his ally. According to imdb, his crowning achievement, Bennett in Commando, will be shown on AMC this 4th of July. This is the kind of gem that is done a disservice by commercials and censoring. How does one guess when the seminal line, "Let off some steam, Bennett" occurs when there's commercials? How graphic will that scene even be? AMC shouldn't even show movies like that.

Japanese That Guy Yuji Okomoto plays the bad guy in this. You may think you don't know who he is, but trust me, you do. I looked him up on imdb, and he's been in six other DTVC movies: Ticker, The Crow: Wicked Prayer, Fortress 2, Mean Guns, Bloodfist V: Human Target, and Nemesis. I guess I should probably tag him, and maybe get rid of some of my tags for other, more superfluous actors. In case you're wondering, he was also in Pearl Harbor, perhaps the most soul crushing film ever made. Another major That Guy in here is Charles Napier. I'm not sure anyone embodies the That Guy concept more than him. When you see him, you just go, "Hey, it's That Guy." Looking him up on imdb for this review was the first time I even learned his name.



One thing about this and a a lot of other prison films was the lack of prison jumpsuit. As far as I can tell, nothing means prison more than the jumpsuit, yet so few prison action films ever employ it. One of the advantages to the jumpsuit, obviously, is that it's harder to hide things in it than say a pair of jeans-- no matter how painted on they might be. I've never actually worn a jumpsuit in my life, prison or otherwise. I don't know, I guess the idea of unzipping my shirt every time I had to take a leak never really did anything for me.

You need Hard Justice. It's one of those things you could live your whole life without, fine in the knowledge that you have everything you want, then, after you've seen it, you can't imagine your life without it, and the idea that your life wouldn't have been quite as bright and you'd have never known, makes you pause a little bit.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113261/

American Ninja 4: The Annihilation (1990)

Dudikoff is the man. There are no two ways about it. And one of the major components to his coolness is his role as Joe Armstrong in the American Ninja movies. When American Ninja 3 was sans Duds, we were all understandably disappointed. As such, we awaited this film with bated breath.

American Ninja 4 pairs Dudikoff with the dude who played the American Ninja in the third one. That American Ninja is captured by some baddie after he tries to rescue some captured American special forces dudes. This baddie isn't fooling around: he's got his own army of ninjas. It takes a lot of prodding from the US government to convince Dudikoff to leave his job as a school teacher in Africa and go in and save the day, but he finally relents. With a group of Mad Max-ish rebels from outside the bad guy's compound, Dudikoff invades it, kicks some ass, saves the day, then walks off into the sunset.

This movie is ten kinds of awesome. Unlike its predecessors, I think this one is played up for laughs. In one scene, a bad ninja jumps on the hood of Dudikoff's car. Without a second thought, Dudikoff punches him through the windshield. In another scene, two ninjas have Dudikoff by both arms, while a third shoots an arrow from some ways off. Dudikoff catches the arrow in his teeth, then stabs one of the ninjas in the neck with it, while still in his teeth. How can you not love that?

Dudikoff lives up to his DTVC Hall of Fame billing here. He totally overdoes the stoicism and hard edge. This is a departure from his quirky everyday kind of guy in films like Bounty Hunter. There's a sense as he's acting here that he's giving us a wink-wink and a nudge-nudge. My favorite scene came at the end when he took off his ninja garb and gave it to a kid in some kind of poignant heartfelt moment. Then he says to the other American Ninja: "If you want to find me, I'll be at the school," in reference to the school in Africa he was teaching at. He had to be laughing all the way to the bank.

The other American Ninja was kind of a waste. He was cool at the beginning, when he was kicking ass. But the he spent almost the rest of the film waiting for Dudikoff to save him. I was hoping for more of a team-up kind of thing, where they both kick a lot of ass. If I was the other American Ninja, I'd have looked for a better agent, because he got the shaft here. On the other hand, he's nowhere as cool as Dudikoff, so maybe he was dealt with accordingly by the film makers.

One of the hallmarks of the American Ninja series is the sheer omnipotence of the Ninja against everyone but Dudikoff, and this one was no exception. I saw Ninjas hold their breath for inordinate amounts of time under water, dodge bullets, climb down rocky cliff-faces in mere seconds, and in Dudikoff's case, catch arrows with their teeth. Had the Ninja been this powerful in real life, I believe the Japanese would have forgone the bombers and invaded Pearl Harbor with them instead. According to the movie, our armed military men are no match for the sheer force of the Ninja. It would've been way cheaper in the long run for Japan in my estimation.

Though the first two American Ninjas will always have a special place in my heart, I believe whole heartedly that this is the best of the series. You'd have to look long and hard to find a more fun movie than this one to watch with your buddies. Not only that, but it seems to be more and more fun on repeated viewings. I recommend buying this if you consider yourself a bad movie aficionado, because it's as necessary to a bad film collection as say a Seventh Seal is to a good movie collection. If you don't want to make that commitment, at least rent it or bump it to the top of your Netflix queue. You won't regret it.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101326/

Looking for more action? Check out my short action novel, Bainbridge, and all my other novels, over at my author's page! Click on the image below, go to https://www.matthewpoirierauthor.com/