Hell Ride (2008)

When I came across this on imdb, I was excited. A throwback biker flick produced by Quentin Tarentino, directed by Larry Bishop, and co-starring Michael Madsen, Dennis Hopper, and David Carradine. Problem was: my copy from Netflix had a deep scratch near the outside, preventing me from watching the last 10 minutes. I had to wait for a replacement to be sent, which took two days. The last ten frickin' minutes... Also, this one was done by our buddy Mitch, at The Video Vacuum, over at LiveJournal.

Hell Ride is directed, written, and stars Larry Bishop as Pistolero, the president of a biker gang. When one of his gang is killed by a rival biker gang, old hatreds and grudges come to the fore, including a promise Pistolero made to the beautiful Cherokee Kisum to protect her son after she was murdered in 1976. Now it's time to round up the gang and make good on his word.



This one didn't quite work for me, which sucked, because I wanted it to really bad. It had some really great elements: a ramped up sexuality led by some really sexy actresses, some great performances by Bishop, Madsen, and Hopper, and a killer soundtrack. Where it missed for me was how much it lost itself in its script and its dialog, neither of which were that spectacular, and neither of which are things I expect a lot of in a biker flick-- when was the last time you watched a 60s biker movie and thought "boy, that was a little too talky for me"? Bishop said two things in the making of featurette that were really telling: first, "you'll know if you made a good biker film if your family won't speak to you after", and as far as I could tell, this was much safer than that; and second: "I didn't care if everyone hated this, as long as Quentin [Tarentino] liked it." It goes without saying that if you make a movie and don't care what your audience thinks, they probably won't enjoy it.

It's been a while since I've seen a good biker exploitation flick, so in doing my due diligence, I decided to take one in before I wrote this review, in order to compare it with Hell Ride. I went with The Savage Seven, which actually stars Larry Bishop, and was the one that Tarentino cited as a reason he went to Bishop to make a biker flick in 2008 (the character name Cherokee Kisum came from the lead character Kisum in Savage Seven, I'm assuming). The older flick was by far superior. First, the story had much more below the surface exposition that the movie didn't need to tell us, which allowed it to enhance the film without boring us with added overt plot exposition. We had the interplay between the Native Americans and the white capitalist exploiting them, then the added dynamic of whether or not bikers and Native Americans are kindred spirits, two sides of the same coin, or polar opposites. It was all tension bubbling to a boil without an ounce of back story. The other big thing The Savage Seven had that Hell Ride lacked was a lot of action. They never went anywhere near the stretches Hell Ride went with nothing happening. Further on that point, the end battle between the Native Americans and bikers was immense, and Hell Ride not only didn't have any of that, but the end confrontation with the rival gang was so neutered I wondered why it was even there. Madsen just shot them all without a fight. For me, Hell Ride was too wrapped up in its own substandard plot and abandoned a lot of the great elements that made biker films so much fun.



As I mentioned above, I liked that Bishop added a greater level of sexuality to his biker film. Most of the older ones had attractive women, but nothing we have here with buck naked women, women exuding seductiveness-- just a raw sexuality fueling some excellent scenes. One reason why I think the scenes came off so well is that Bishop didn't tell the women what he wanted them to do, he said in the featurette that he just gave them an idea, and then let them take it as far as they were comfortable. As a result, the women were comfortable, and that showed. I just wish Bishop would've fused that element with the other great elements of the biker film, in particular the action.

This movie had some big names. I mentioned Madsen, Hopper, and Carradine above. Of those three, the first two were great, but Carradine was just thrown in, and that was a disappointment, because he was the head baddie, and you'd like the head baddie to be an obstacle for the hero. He had one scene, tied to a chair, and Bishop killed him. Vinnie Jones was in it a little more, but equally wasted at the end as a baddie. What is this, Steven Seagal theater with these ineffective baddies? Finally, DTVC (not so) favorite Eric Balfour is in this as a biker named Comanche. Yes, you read right. Does he work? I don't know, it's hard to tell based on the material. Could he have worked? Maybe, but you'd have to get past your preconceived notions of Eric Balfour. For me, I'm okay with it, just because he's 34 years old now, and that's getting up there for getting parts as the high school bully in teen movies and TV shows. He needs to think about his next career move, right?



I had to finish this with a personal anecdote. The title, Hell Ride, evokes a memory in me of an interview the late Wesley Willis did with Howard Stern about ten years ago. In it, he says his life was a "Demon Hell Ride", said more like "Demon He'rite", but you get the picture. Every time I wrote the title in this blog post, in my head I was thinking "Demon He'rite". As an aside, what is everyone's favorite Wesley Willis song? I gotta go with "Birdman Whipped My Ass". Here's to you Wesley Willis, you were one of the good ones.

I'm going to go with a no on this one as far as the recommendation. Though it has some solid elements, overall it gets lost in its own story, which is too bad considering the cast, and where a movie like this could've gone and should've gone. But as Larry Bishop himself said, he doesn't care if any of us liked it, as long as Mr. Tarentino dug it. "Rock over London, rock on Chicago, Pontiac, we are building excitement."

[As an aside, this is the second film we've done that Quentin Tarentino was associated with, the other being Dolph Lundgren's workout video, Maximum Potential, on which Tarentino worked craft services.]

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0411475/

L.A.P.D.: "To Protect and Serve" (2001)

I was looking for a fourth DTV Dennis Hopper film to round out the Hopper Tribute Week, and thought this one had potential. It starred Michael Madsen and Marc Singer, plus Hopper was nominated for a best supporting actor at the DVD Exclusive Awards-- I guess the DTV version of the Oscars or something-- I'd never heard of them.

L.A.P.D.: "To Protect and Serve" has Marc Singer as reckless cop, the son of a retired cop, working for the LAPD because he gets off on the action. After a big bank robbery gone wrong shootout where Singer and his partner are lauded as heroes, they're invited by Michael Madsen and some fellow officers to a party, and not long after they're initiated into these cops' dirty ways. Singer's partner isn't happy about doing this, and wants out. At the same time, a few mistakes by the cops are drawing attention, and the net is closing in. Before we know it, people are killed off left and right, and when the smoke clears, we're left with... actually, I don't know what we're left with.



This film felt like 90-100 minutes of purgatory. I was trapped in some liminal space, where nothing made sense, other than that it was boring. I don't know if you've ever gotten really drunk or really baked or something else, and got into that state where things don't quite make sense, and you're not sure if they'll ever make sense again, but that's what this movie was like. From the beginning, with the bank robbery, where I'm wondering why cops are just parking their cars and hopping out haphazardly, allowing themselves to be shot by the perps very easily to Hopper yelling at Singer for going in without back up, when there were like 10 other squad cars that did the same thing, I knew I was in trouble, and it only got worse. By the time we get to the end, where people are just getting killed off indiscriminately, and what may have existed for a plot has devolved into blah, I'm just trying to get out in one piece with my sanity intact-- no such luck, because we're given the ridiculous post script, telling us what happened to the characters after we left them, as if we cared. "...[N]o one was brought to justice for these crimes..." No shit Sherlock, because none of these people existed! They were fictional!

Hopper's not in this much, but when he is, he is pretty sweet. I couldn't figure out what the DVD Exclusive Awards were, because the link on imdb takes me to the Wilmington, Delaware Independant Film Awards (Wilmington being the birthplace of DTVC Hall of Famer Cynthia Rothrock), and after that I didn't have the energy to follow up. I'd say the award he should have gotten was for even making it through this thing. The only thing I can think is, his character's scenes make sense by themselves, they just dont't exactly make sense when combined with happened before them, in particular that scene at the beginning where he's reading Singer the riot act for something that didn't really happen the way Hopper was excoriating him for. Also, because he's front and center on the cover, yet he's barely in the film for five scenes or so, this clearly qualifies for a Hopper bait-and-switch, which I was totally taken in by, and that's kind of a low moment to end the week on.



Michael Madsen was very interesting here. I mean, he was very good, and he sold this mess of a plot as if it made complete sense. The thing that I think is very cool about Madsen is how authentic he seems. He's the guy who can rock a bowler shirt, shiny black shoes, and a cherry apple red '68 Corvette drop-top, and not come off as some kind of hipster doofus. I was looking at him on imdb, and he has 200+ acting credits, including like 20 or so that are in some form of development. I'm more familiar with his voice and feature film work, but I see his DTV films pop up all the time when I'm searching for new material to review. Maybe I'll start looking into those.

I've always loved Marc Singer from his Beastmaster days-- especially his guest spots on the syndicated TV show-- so I was excited to see him here, and for the most part he delivered. Except for his sex scene that is. You tell me (if you can make out that image below) does that look like a guy in a love scene? Looks more like a guy passing a kidney stone. There were points too where he's like attacking his partner, former Miss Canada Kiara Hunter. Maybe he was channeling his former Beastmaster self, and trying to have sex like cats do.



There were so many things I could look at for the seventh paragraph. You had Wayne Crawford (the hero from Snake Island-- I can't imagine anyone remembers me reviewing that one!), who looks more like a deli owner than a crooked cop. Then there's Kiara Hunter in the first scene we see her in, at the cop party, wearing a vinyl halter-top and a rubber skirt (it looked rubber, it might have been something else though)-- and the skirt is knee-length. Really, you're going for a little modesty in your outfit, and you decide it's your skirt length that's the issue? Even better was a scene where Singer and his partner go to a XXX theater to bust a drug dealer, and the theater is showing Flesh Gordon. I guess the message is "see, there are good movies like that, and then there's the one you're watching, which isn't."

This movie is available on DVD from Netflix, but I'm not so sure it matters-- in a way, it's kind of annoying, because there are so many great films that have gone out of print that we can't get so easily, but this is there for the taking. Total Hopper bait-and-switch, and while Madsen and Singer were good, they couldn't save this from it's senseless plot.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0250485/

Space Truckers (1996)

I'd heard a lot about this one for a long time, and I'd just never gotten around to it. With the Dennis Hopper Tribute Week, though, I had a reason, so I went for it. The idea of Stuart Gordon, director of both Re-Animator and Fortress, at the helm for this space adventure, intrigued me-- because the former was awesome, and the latter, well, the less said about the latter the better.

Space Truckers has Dennis Hopper as a blue-collar outer-space truck driver, similar to a truck driver on the roads in our present (and believe me, from the interviews in the making of featurette to the Netflix description, they want to remind you that he's a "blue-collar worker", not an astronaut). He gets into it with George Wendt, cantankerous and unethical manager of a space pig slaughtering and packaging plant, or something. Anyway, Wendt dies in a diner brawl, and Hopper needs a job quick so he can get off the space station, and that job comes in the form of shipping black market sex toys to Earth. Along with him he has Debi Mazar, a girl he knows who needs a ride back to Earth, and who said she'd marry him if he takes her; and Stephen Dorff, and young trucker who loses his Wendt load after the Hopper debacle. Turns out the load isn't sex toys, but 5,000 killer robots that are supposed to be unleashed on Earth for a hostile takeover by the businessman who owns them. After a detour with some pirates, they get to Earth, and have to figure out a way to destroy the things and save the planet.



This thing looked nice, it had some really cool ideas, but in the end, I was bored by it. You can only string something like this out so long before it becomes tedious; and though the film looked nice, without any substance behind it, that's all it is, nice. Hopper was funny and charming, and I think he was excited to play a hero after being a baddie in Waterworld-- which this was better than, but is that saying much? I mean, it had it's moments, but by the time we hit the end, I'm like "can we wrap this up please?", and they're like that guest who won't leave, and stands in the doorway, and you've got to take a leak, and you know they're talking so loud that the neighbors will get pissed, so you try to drop hints, but it's not working, and... anyway, you see what I mean.

What can you say about Hopper, he was great. This might be a fun double feature with either Waterworld or Super Mario Bros., though I'd go with the former if I had to pick between those two. Hopper has an interesting sixth sense when he's in any film, this innate ability to play the part the way it was meant to be played, to get the tone and tenor of a movie, and hit all the right notes at all the right tempos. In some ways, it made him uniquely suited to the B-movie, because it's those kinds of pictures that lack Oscar nominated scripts, direction, etc., and need the actor to pick up more of the slack.



Speaking of the director, one Mr. Stuart Gordon. I loved Re-Animator, it's like one of my all-time faves. You can read what I thought of Fortress-- love isn't a word I'd used to describe it. This one fell somewhere in between, but it was definitely a much bigger production than either of those were. I think he did a great job, I just think the story-- which he co-wrote-- didn't have enough to sustain 90-100 minutes, which is what they were asking it to do. I guess it could've been worse, it could've been Waterworld.

DTVC favorite Vernon Wells has a small part as a space pirate. It just speaks to the genius that was Commando that they didn't give Wells a bit part, they made him Bennett, and Arnold told him to let off some steam. I realize I haven't tagged him yet, and it's time to change that. I think it was one of those things where I kept saying I was going to do it, and I kept forgetting. Well, I'll be forgetting no more. Also, Barbara Crampton, another Gordon mainstay, has a quick scene at the end of this, playing Debi Mazar's mother.



At the beginning of Space Truckers, a scene takes place on the Neptune moon of Triton. According to the Wikipedia article on it, the landscape was pretty accurate-- rocky and icy with big mountains. I've always been fascinated by things like that. For instance, Triton is the only moon that big with a retrograde orbit. The diner that Hopper gets into it with Wendt at is in a space station orbiting Jupiter. That looked kind of cool too, only they didn't quite have the scope of Jupiter's size down-- based on the scale they were using, the space station would have been bigger than the Earth, as would have Hopper's space truck. People who make sci-fi movies don't like to use planets that big for precisely that reason I assume.

I'm totally digressing here (and I digressed even worse on Wikipedia looking at the pages on the planets and their moons while writing this post). You can get this on Netflix, which makes it a pretty decent deal if you were going to have a Hopper double feature and wanted to spotlight two wild adventure films that really missed their marks, but in which Hopper was great as both the baddie and then the hero. Otherwise, I'd skip it.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120199/

Luck of the Draw (2000)

I actually came across this film when looking for more Sasha Mitchell films-- of which there aren't many that we haven't already done. I had it my queue for a while, while other films jumped it in priority; but now it's at the top, as the second film of our Dennis Hopper tribute week.

Luck of the Draw has the star of Gladiator (the underrated boxing movie with Cuba Gooding Jr., not the Ridley Scott blockbuster), as a dude looking for a job after spending a few years in the clink for breaking and entering. After being turned down at a bank, he's in the right place at the right time as a bunch of Dennis Hopper's men hit a limo carrying extremely high quality counterfeit plates. Government agent William Forsythe appears at the hit as well, and a three-way shootout ensues, with the dude carrying the plates falling in front of our hero. Now he sees an opportunity, and he tries to sell the plates through his old partner, Michael Madsen. The thing is, Dennis Hopper doesn't suffer losing his property lightly, and he'll do whatever it takes to get it back.



This wasn't too bad. It was a classic Tarentino-esque heist caper style deal where the violence is more out of fun than any seriousness. The problem is, they betray that lightheartedness when they kill the hero's love interest's dad, played by Frank Gorshin. In a way it's germane to the plot, but it was weird and took the whole thing in a direction it didn't need to go. Also, the whole love interest thing was quick and forced anyway, and I was surprised they didn't do like most heist films do and have her have ulterior motives, i.e. the fact that she even falls for him in the first place is because she sees him take the plates or something. Anyway, that this worked at all was due to the great performances of the large and deep supporting cast, from Hoppper as the main baddie, to Eric Roberts as his right hand man and Sasha Mitchell as his grunt; to Forsythe as the fed; to Frank Gorshin as the father; to Ice-T as the rival crime lord; to Madsen as the hero's friend; all the way to the Patrick Kilpatrick in one of his best roles ever as the Irish hitman. It was those performances among a pretty run-of-the-mill premise that sold it for me.

In my Circle of Pain review, I made fun of the script, saying the writers' go to verb was "fucking". It just sounded ignorant, as swearing can sometimes do. But guys like Dennis Hopper throw rules like that out the window. He makes swearing awesome. In one scene where he's on the phone, he calls a French guy a "fucking French frog fuck!" He has a way of taking material like this, that is pretty basic, and making it something more. He's not the only one though, everyone else I mentioned above did the same thing. I mean, how easy would it be for Hopper to mail it in and just be the guy from Speed every time he's cast as a baddie in a DTV movie, but he doesn't do that, he brings it each time, and I think that's why we love seeing him in movies so much.



The love interest was a total hottie, Wendy Benson (since Wendy Benson-Landes). Her character was an unfortunate cross between the main character's redemption, and hottie window dressing, only having a moment of true assertiveness grafted on at the end. I was surprised, because had they used her character better, I think it might have made for a more intriguing movie. I mean, why would a woman as hot as her pick up a guy who looks like Corey Hart off the street and take him to meet her father (which is essentially what happened)? She wouldn't, that's why. What she would do is see our hero outside of the bank, see him pick up the briefcase with the plates in it, and find out where he lives from her boss's paperwork that had the guy's work application with his address on it. Maybe she falls in love with our hero in the process, maybe she tries to use him and leave him-- whatever, it just would have been that little bit that would have made this thing really work.

The hero's name in real life is James Marshall. You may remember him from A Few Good Men, but he's really great in Gladiator, as was Cuba Gooding Jr. (our good buddy whom we haven't seen in a while. I wonder what he's up to...). Here, with his poofy hair, he looked like a Corey Hart impersonator, which is cool, don't get me wrong, but in the context of this film looks kind of silly. I think his character was supposed to be a reformed bad boy trying to make a new life for himself, but he ended up just looking like a boy-- even if he was 33 at the time. If you haven't seen it, go out and rent Gladiator. That'll give you a new appreciation for how good both Marshall, and Gooding Jr. are.



DTVC favorite Sasha Mitchell is in this as a partner for Eric Roberts, the man doing Hopper's dirty work. The only martial arts he even remotely does comes when he beats up Frank Gorshin because he's into Hopper for some gambling debts. I was half-expecting big graphics with words like "Bam!" and "Pow!" to pop up on the screen each time Gorshin was hit, and I could tell as he fake took each punch, he was drawing from his old Batman days for inspiration. Anyway, Mitchell did look like he'd put on some pounds, so perhaps that's why we've seen so little of him over the past few years. That's too bad, though, because the guy is only in his early 40s, and he had the stuff back in the 90s to lead action films, so he'd make a great candidate to carry the torch as the current crop of DTV actions stars get even longer in the tooth.

This is fun for the actors, but not so much for everything else, so you need to ask yourself how much you like these guys. The film is available on Netflix, so that's a bonus. What you're looking at is a classic Tarentino-esque heist film, pretty pedestrian at best, but the performances from all the stars were anything but, and so that made it for me, but it might not for you.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0207036/

Sunset Heat (1992)

I saw Sunset Heat about five years ago on EncoreAction. It not only had DTVC Hall of Famer Dennis Hopper, but also Michael Paré, Adam Ant, Little Richard, and a musical score done by the legendary Jan Hammer (as an aside, Michael Talbott, Switek from Miami Vice, is also in this for two scenes as a bartender). The problem was, when I started the DTVC a couple years later, I couldn't find it. It took me a while before I finally tracked it down, but here it is, kicking off our Dennis Hopper tribute week.

Sunset Heat has Michael Paré as Eric Wright (not to be confused with Easy-E), a photographer with a past who returns home to LA from New York to see his buddy, Adam Ant. Turns out Ant's get rich quick scheme involves robbing some dudes involved in a drug transaction, and when the Candyman (the guy who played him I mean) recognizes his accent, and then his (Ant's) bumbling partner (Joe Lara in a tiny role) gives away that the Candyman is right, all hell breaks loose,a nd Ant runs off with the cash. Turns out the drugs were Hopper's, and he and Paré used to be partners in crime, before Paré went straight. Well, Hopper wants his cash back, and he has some leverage on Paré to get him to retrieve it.



I really enjoyed this movie. It isn't so much an action film as much as a sexy Film Noir thriller, with sex scenes that are more at home in a Skin-a-max flick. Paré and Hopper are at perfect in their Film Noir roles, definite throwbacks to their 1940s counterparts; but the film itself is definitely a product of its time, from the music to the clothes. The Jan Hammer music was great, but a little sparse, and that might be my only complaint. Throw in a bunch of great cameos, including Little Richard, and you have a winner.

It's great to be able to say this for the first time, but as always, we start with the film's Hall of Famer, which was Dennis Hopper. He always makes a great baddie, and Sunset Heat was no exception. You could tell that he understood the type of movie this was trying to be, and he really sold it. There's one great scene near the end, where he's in a limo with Paré's girlfriend-- who was Hopper's girlfriend, but before that, she was Paré's, it makes more sense when you watch the movie-- and I don't know if he forgot his lines, or the script called for him to improvise, but he seems to be looking for anything to say, and is going for anything he can find to prompt him. I think he said like five times "we're going to see your boyfriend!", and then he grabs her hands, which are bound in front of her, and he's like "and your hands are tied!" For me, that's part of what made Hopper great, that he could roll with punches like that in these lower-budget movies.



Mr. Kenner at Movies in the Attic has been wanting me to get more Paré up here for some time now, and I couldn't agree with him more, but every time I make an effort, something else always comes up and he gets pushed to the back. Watching him here, though, made me realize how bad that is of me, and that I need to make him a priority again. Yes, you get to see a lot of his bare buttocks, so depending on whom you're attracted to, that could be a plus or a minus. (There is plenty of hot chick nude action as well, so there's enough for everybody.) In Sunset Heat, he had a great combination of 1990s cool, with a throwback to 1940s Film Noir leading man aesthetic. His Brooklyn accent definitely helped, but just the way he carried himself, I can't think of any actor currently in the Hall of Fame that could've pulled his role off the way he did.

This film had a great supporting cast, as I alluded to above. You had Adam Ant, the Candyman, Little Richard, John Talbott, and Joe Lara. There was also Diagnosis Murder's Charlie Schlatter, and Daphne Ashbrook, who was in the Olivier Gruner film Automatic. This is one of the funnest things about watching DTV movies, seeing how many people I recognize in them. Sometimes it's like "oh, it's That Guy, who is that?", while others I'm like "holy shit, Little Richard! Yes, that's so awesome!" More DTV movies should recognize this and load up on as many recognizable names as possible, even if they're only in the film for a scene or two.



Speaking of which, do you recognize the woman above? If you do, you're better at this game than I am, because I didn't know who she was until I saw the name in the credits-- I didn't even think it was an actor worth knowing, I thought it was just an extra. Well, I was wrong, it's Julie Strain. What do you know, huh? This is it, her only scene. She plays a human statue, and hands this character actor in the picture with her a plate of strawberries or something. Can you imagine how much that catering company must cost? Hey, it was Hopper's party, he can afford it.

As far as I can tell, here in the States, this only available on VHS. Total shame, because it's really great, and worth checking out. I'd keep an eye out in bargain bins for it, or if you have digital cable, you may see it on one of the Encore channels sometime in the future.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103006/

Waterworld (1995)

When I was thinking of potential wild card posts, for some reason this one popped in my head. It has a reputation as being one of the great all time busts, but the data on imdb says the film did earn some money, just maybe not too much considering what it cost to make it. What's most fascinating is this was the Avatar of 1995 in terms of budget and hype, and it's kind of scary to think how much worse it would've been had everything been replaced with computer generated images.

Waterworld takes place well in the future, long after the polar ice caps have melted (I'm assuming the tea baggers won in that time line), and the Earth is almost completely covered in water. For Costner and the people he comes into contact with, it might as well be completely covered, because to them dry land is just a myth-- that is, until the girl from Napoleon Dynamite shows up with a tattoo on her back that may or may not be a map to dry land. Dennis Hopper and his men try to get her, and she and Jeanne Tripplehorn, who's taking care of her, rescue Costner from their townspeople so he can help them escape. I forgot to mention Costner is a mutant with gills and webbed feet, and the townspeople want to kill him for that. Anyway, a bunch of stuff happens, Hopper gets the girl, Costner saves her, and the group find dry land.



Most movies tell me how they're going to be from the very first scene, and Waterworld, was no exception. You can infer all you need to know from that opening shot of Costner urinating. I felt it wasn't necessary to ask why, if there's a Dr. Seuss-like contraption that can convert urine into drinkable water, there isn't one for salt water too. Anyway, I loved the jet skis and water skiers attacking the ocean city, Hopper was great, and the use of actual mechanical special effects in a world today when all of that stuff would be done with computers was a breath of fresh air. I also kind of liked the Dr. Seuss quality to it all-- I mean, it would've been a lot cooler if someone was narrating it with Dr. Seuss style rhymes too, but a fella can't have everything.

Still, there was something about this that never worked for me, and when I was younger I just chalked it up to me not liking it because I thought I was above all that. Now I know why I don't like it, and I can put it into words. It's essentially a Mad Max remake on the water, only with a completely unlikeable hero. I mean, am I supposed to root for Kevin Costner's character? The guy was a complete tool bag. Mad Max was awesome, hence what was a silly post-apocalyptic film came off as awesome too. That's not my only major issue with Waterworld, the length was a problem too. If you're going to make a movie like that over two hours long, you better make it exciting. I realized after I fell asleep watching it this time that I had never seen it before without falling asleep. Still, the length would've been manageable if Costner's hero had been likable.



I also realized that 90 percent of the movies people try to sell me as "fun" are completely stupid, including this one. "Oh Matt, it's a fun movie. Didn't you think it's a fun movie? Better than that Babylon AD movie you liked." Actually, no it isn't, it's just as dumb. When I try to sell people on Babylon AD, I don't try to make myself look good and call it "fun", I'll admit that it's dumb as all get out, and I still love it. I think we could come a long way in this country if everyone just stood up and admitted the "fun" movies they like are often dumb. "National Treasure is a dumb movie..." "Pirates of the Caribbean is a dumb movie..." "Star Wars Episode III is a dumb movie... and I'm not ashamed that I like it." There, don't you feel better?

Jeanne Tripplehorn turned in a great performance in this, despite acting opposite a dud like Costner. The film should've been rewritten to shift the focus on her struggle to get to dry land. Her character actually had some level of nuance and likability, while Costner's character was a cantankerous moron. I have to assume Tripplehorn only did this for the paycheck and exposure, because she was too good for material like that. The girl was played by the girl from Napoleon Dynamite, which was kind of weird, because she didn't really look like a child, but just a miniature version of the girl from Napoleon Dynamite. One of the interesting things about her character was this idea that she talked too much. Everyone kept telling us how she talked too much, but she really didn't. I think Costner's character, who was supposed to be the stoic silent type, had more lines than her, even in the scenes they did together. It was like having a blond and referring to her flaming red hair the whole time, when we can all see it's not red.



Finally, this film sports the coolest product placement this side of Ski School's Miller Sharps boxes. Black Death cigarettes, which were what I smoked when I was a smoker back in the early oughts. I tried getting them recently, and couldn't find them, so now I keep a pack of Nat Sherman's for those sudden nicotine cravings. What was cool about living in Portsmouth, NH at that time was how cheap cigarettes were compared to Mass and Maine. They still are, but they've gone up. I could get Black Deaths for $5 a pack back in 2004, now I don't think you could get Camels for that much in NH. Definitely not in Maine or Mass.

Waterworld is currently available on Netflix's Watch Instantly, so if you're getting nostalgic, that's an easy way to check it out. One thing that is worth watching it for, if you haven't seen it in a while, is to see what films were like before computers took over. This was kind of a last gasp, and I have to feel if it was made today, Waterworld would've been shot primarily in front of a green screen, which would've removed even the little charm it had.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114898/

The Crow: Wicked Prayer (2005)

I guess I knew this existed a while ago, but I only checked it out after I looked up Tito Ortiz on IMDb. He was listed in the credits of Zombie Strippers, and I was curious to see what else he'd done. Not much, but this is one of them.

The Crow: Wicked Prayer has Eddie Furlong taking the reins as the hero. It has David Borea-whatever, the guy who played Angel, as the devil--or as a dude in a gang who invokes the devil so the devil takes over his body. In doing the ritual, David Borna-whatever kills Furlong and his girlfriend, the ridiculously hot Emmanuelle Chriqui. Furlong's resurrected as The Crow, and you can guess the rest. A host of other people guest star, including Ortiz, the D-Listed Tara Reid, Dennis Hopper, and DTVC favorite Danny Trejo.

Did I mention Eddie Furlong is The Crow? I'm not kidding. I know I do that from time to time here, but I'm not in this instance. And believe me, it's that funny. Almost as funny as David Borne-whatever (David Boreanaz?) playing a bad guy. He's tries to pull it off all Jack Nicholson doing the Joker, and he comes off as someone trying to do Jack Nicholson doing the Joker. The film's also pretty gross, with Emmanuelle Chriqui dying by Tara Reid cutting her eyes out (not shown, luckily), and there's a few massacres of innocent people. I prefer the massacres of myriad stuntmen in bad suits toting uzis. Maybe that's just me.

What's bad about this film, other than the cringe factor with the eyeball death, is also what's good about it. Endless enjoyment making fun of Furlong. He's put on some weight, so before he becomes The Crow, he looks like a chubby older kid who still lives with his folks and eats Doritos all day. As The Crow, he looks like that older kid going as the Crow for Halloween. I just couldn't believe how silly it was, and how no one jumped in and stopped it. James Van Der Beek and Joshua Jackson thought Furlong was a stretch.

Then you got David Boren-whatever as the bad guy. Really? I'm believing that? Why not have him play The Crow, Dennis Hopper play the bad guy, and Eddie Furlong play the Key Grip? I think that would've made for a much better film. The other movie of David Boren-whatever's we've done here was The Hard Easy, which sucked, but had Gary Busey and Peter Weller in it. This could've used both of them and Dolph Lundgren, and it still would've been bad.

Dennis Hopper was funny as this Satan worshiping brothel owner who spoke some fugazi Ebonics. Not as good as the last time we saw him, in The Target, when he told a goat he wanted to drink its urine for the psychedelic properties. Like I said above, he'd have made a better head bad guy. Dennis Hopper as the devil would have been his own original creation, not his bad impression Jack Nicholson doing the Joker.

Danny Trejo, our man, is holding it down as some kind of tribal leader. He has a great scene where he does a dance with his shirt off to bring The Crow's crow back to life. This might be the best Danny Trejo scene since he gave Van Damme a foot massage in Desert Heat. As any great character actor, he does all of these scenes very professionally without a hint of a wink-wink nudge-nudge. That's why we love him here.

Tara Reid has been D-Listed for a fair amount of time now, and I can't believe I never considered checking her out on IMDb to see what kind of DTV crap films she's been starring in. I should probably put her in the Future Hall of Famers section right above Kevin Sorbo. I can't lie, though, Crow: Wicked Prayer was silly, and it was much more fun than any of Sorbo's stuff has been, or Wesley Snipes for that matter. Some of her others look interesting, so we'll see what happens.

If this is on cable late at night, I'd give it a shot. If you're spending money on it, make sure you know what you're doing. You can have a fun bad movie night with it, but in order to really enjoy it, you'll need to be making fun of it the whole time. Have you got the energy?

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0353324/

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/

The Piano Player aka The Target (2002)

I can't remember where I first heard about this film. It may have been through a Netflix search, or looking over Christopher Lambert's bio on imdb, or a friend having seen it before. Anyway, I saw it with some friends recently. It made an interesting double feature paired with Wings Hauser and Brion James in Nightmare at Noon.

The Target takes place in South Africa and is about a money launderer played by Dennis Hopper who decides to testify against a bad ass killer crime boss, and needs protection. So he hires hit man Christopher Lambert. Not a bad choice. The two escape the city with Hopper's daughter, leading to a 45 minute interlude filled with Hopper doing tribal dances, fishing with Lambert, and telling goats he wants to drink their urine for its psychedelic properties. After the interlude Lambert has a showdown with the baddie, only to be hit in the head with a rock and find himself chained to a tree and about to be set on fire above a pyre of burning dolls and stuffed animals. Surprising no one, Hopper saves him, then confesses that as a young gangster he killed Lambert's parents.



What? Can someone tell me what's going on here? Even Netflix had no idea. Their synopsis read that Lambert and Hopper were adversaries. That definitely wasn't the case. Hopper was almost Lambert's surrogate dad. It started off all right, but the extended interlude was ridiculous. No action, just a series of things that, I can only assume, were dream situations the director wanted to put Dennis Hopper and Christopher Lambert in. How else do you explain Hopper telling a goat he wants to drink its urine for the psychedelic properties? Or the tribal dance? Or the paternal scene of Hopper showing Lambert how to fish? It was just randomly inserted into the film, and though funny, also dragged on and frustrated me.

Even though Lambert gets top billing, this is more of a Hopper vehicle. Lambert's felled right before the interlude with a serious bullet wound, and is out of action for a chunk of it. Some of the scenes of him dispatching goons and driving recklessly were cool. Probably the best was just watching him try to make sense of Hopper. They'd never worked together before, and haven't since. His reaction to Hopper asking the goat if he can drink its urine for the psychedelic properties seems genuine. Looking on imdb, Lambert hasn't done any big action roles since Day of Wrath. He's done a couple things in Europe and had a small role in the indie hit Southland Tales. Come on Lamby baby, give us another bad actioner!



Hopper was too sweet for words here. First off, he wears this obnoxious wig for a good portion of the film. He matches the wig by applying Grecian Formula to his beard. For some reason, when he loses the wig, the Grecian Formula wears off. If I were them, I'd sue the makers of this film for saying their product sucked. Anyway, beyond the look, he has another scene where he gets drunk and has Lambert drive him and two hookers out to his wife's grave. He's like stumbling over the headstone introducing them to her. Then he throws up in Lambert's car, finds out his daughter was kidnapped, and sobers up. Then you've got the tribal dancing, the fishing with Lambert, and, of course, the asking a goat if he could drink its urine for the psychedelic properties. That's gotta be one of the greatest things I've ever seen done in a movie. Who thinks of that? Whoever it is, I've got to shake their hand, because that's awesome.

Hopper's daughter is played by the chick from Troy and National Treasure. She's hot, German, and stars in bad movies so her English isn't an issue. She's barely listed on the imdb cast, and I almost forgot to mention her in the post. How she went from barely credited in this to a major role in Troy is anyone's guess. Or, it might just stem from the fact that she's extremely hot. Out of the four movies, Troy, this, and the two National Treasures, I'd say Troy is number one, then this, then the two Cage pain rides.



Out of all the weird things in this film, including the part where Hopper asks a goat if he can drink its urine for the psychedelic properties, one scene stood out in my mind. The daughter's girlfriend is captured by the baddies and beaten to death. The video is sent to Hopper to scare him. In the video, the captors force the guy to eat spaghetti with chop sticks. What? Then the video ends and Hopper's like "What, they make a guy eat some spaghetti then beat him to death. What's this go to do with me?" Then they tell him it's the boyfriend, and he looks distraught. Made no sense at all.

Is it worth it to rent this just to see Hopper ask a goat if he can drink its urine for the psychedelic properties? I don't know, you tell me. I got it on Netflix. You may see it as either The Piano Player or The Target, but on Netflix it's definitely listed as the latter. I can say this about it, though: other than Hopper asking a goat if he can drink its urine for the psychedelic properties, the bulk of this is a snooze fest.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0293509/

Ticker (2001)

This movie had Must Get written all over it: directed by Albert Pyun, starring Steven Seagal and Tom Sizemore, and Dennis Hopper listed as the bad guy. Considering Seagal and Pyun were both inducted into the DTVC Hall of Fame at the same time, I thought it would be sweet to review a film that had both of them. This is a dream bad movie lover pairing.

Ticker has Sizemore as a cop who, with his partner, rapper Nas, stumble upon Dennis Hopper, Jaime Pressley, and two Pyun mainstays, unloading some explosives. Nas bites it, and Sizemore's out for revenge. He calls on Seagal, who runs the bomb squad, to get help in tracking Hopper and his boys. At the same time, Pressley's in the can after the Nas killing, and Hopper wants her out, and he'll blow up a lot of stuff until the cops release her. Can Seagal and Sizemore track Hopper down before it's too late?

This movie was off the chain. The sheer volume of recognizable actors alone made it a hit for me. The action was mediocre, with Seagal barely flexing his martial arts muscles, and the explosions being a tad on the silly side. There's a scene where Hopper and Pressley are riding in a car, and out the window we can see a horribly obvious green screen effect. I think Pyun spent all his money on the cast, and I'm okay with that. The more great actors the better, as I always say.



The list of stars is pretty long. You got the obvious Seagal, Sizemore, and Hopper. Then Pressley, Nas, TLC's Chilli, and the guy who played Waingro in Heat. There's also the guy who played MC Hammer in his VH-1 bio-pic, the FBI guy from Navy NCIS, and the bad guy from The Mask, Peter Greene. That doesn't even count the Pyun mainstays like Norbert Weisser (the android who gets his head knocked around in Omega Doom), Michael Halsey (the hero, so-to-speak, in Mean Guns), and cameos by Ice-T and Vincent Klyn (the latter uncredited, though he was listed as an associate producer). I'm sure a more discerning viewer may be able to pick up on a few I missed.

Seagal was pretty good as a co-main character with Sizemore. They never explain why he knows martial arts as a bomb specialist, we just see him at the end of the film dispatching baddies. I think that's better than making up some ludicrous explanation and wasting our time like some movies do, when I'm sure most viewers are cool with Seagal using martial arts, even if it may not fit his character. In one scene, when he's defusing a bomb, he wears these sweet grandfather glasses. It was like he got them off the rack at a drug store. He looked like my dad trying to read a phone book more than an action hero racing against the clock to prevent a deadly catastrophe. At the end of the movie, Sizemore needs him to talk him through another bomb defusal, and Seagal spends about 75% of the countdown giving Sizemore a life lesson on dealing with stress. We were all like: "Jesus, just tell him how to stop the bomb!"



I didn't know what to make of Sizemore in this. His acting skills are head and shoulders above everyone else, including Hopper. It was like watching David Beckham play soccer on the same pitch as MLS players: the difference in talent was that palpable. I liked seeing him on the screen at the same time as Seagal, because Seagal seemed to understand just how good Sizemore is, and as opposed to the other actors, he didn't try to act at his level, andlook dumb in the process. Together they made the kind of buddy picture Rush Hour thinks it has, and it'd be cool if Pyun could maybe bring them together for another go 'round.

Dennis Hopper is ridiculous in this. For a chunk of the film he sports a bad Irish accent. I'm not sure if his character was faking it, or was supposed to have it, but it was silly all the same. There were times when he lost it, which left us even more perplexed. It was never clear if his dropping the accent was his character affecting an American one, or his character speaking in his real voice, or Hopper just being lazy. It may have been all of the above. Just the same, we got what we'd expect from Hopper playing a baddie: he definitely didn't mail it in. Like Sizemore, his struggles off the set have hurt his career, but been a bonus for us bad movie honks, because we get to see him in films like this.



There was one lapse in continuity in this movie that made zero sense to me. It took place in San Francisco, and Pyun made that very clear, yet all the cars had Illinois plates. I'm not sure I got why they did that. There was nothing San Fran specific that couldn't have been shifted to make the film take place in Chicago. I just can't figure out why the film went on with that glaring mistake in it.

One final note about Ticker. In the beginning, Pyun splices in some scenes from Dolph Lundgren's Sweepers. It was very Agent Red of them. I noticed that the hostage scene looked very similar to the one in Sweepers where they first find the stealth mine. My suspicions were confirmed after a quick check of the film on imdb. These are the kind of film making techniques that make me a proud fan of bad movies. Do they teach taking entire scenes from other movies in film school? Is there a class called FILM 405: The Art of Using Other People's Movies?

If the preceding wasn't enough of a give away, I think this film's fantastic. It's well worth the money spent on a rental. I would totally center a bad movie night around it, it'll definitely deliver. This may be Seagal's best DTV work, and I think that's saying a lot considering some of the gems out there.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0196158/

Top of the World (1997)

I don't remember how I first got wind of this gem. It could've been in an IMDb search of Peter Weller. A buddy may have told me. It could've been the Tia Carrere factor. I'm just not sure. What I am sure of is I'm glad I went onto Amazon and snatched this classic up.

Top of the World is a Die Hard ripoff that takes place in a casino and has Peter Weller as the hero. Dennis Hopper owns the casino, with Joe Pantoliano as his right hand man, and Peter Coyote as the mob boss who funds him. Then there's Tia Carrere who plays Weller's ex-wife (Weller was framed and put in jail when he ratted out crooked cops), yet she's dating Hopper. Then Martin Kove and some bad guys come in and take the place over to rob it. That means Cary Tagawa and his swat team storm in to take them. But Hopper won't let them, because he's in on the cash grab. Oh yeah, and David Allen Grier is already at the casino as a cop investigating a suicide, and he's the only one who believes Weller's innocent. Oh, I forgot to mention everyone thinks Weller's in on the robbery.

The star power alone makes this film so memorable. I couldn't believe it when I saw it. How can you go wrong? Who cares if it's Die Hard in a casino? Weller as the top star was perfect. In one scene he's driving around the casino with Carrere in his car. In another, he's riding on the top of an armored van or something. It's vintage Weller.

Hopper is sweet as the casino owner. He and Joey Pants play off each other well. I can't think of a better baddie for a movie like this. He's much better here than in that Costner sack of asscrack Waterworld. I can't for the life of me understand how a Waterworld is greenlighted as a full run picture put in thousands of theaters, and a gem like this can't get a sniff of that kind of run. It's just ridiculous.

It was weird having a Cary Tagawa that wasn't exactly an antagonist. He played this kind of dumb-as-a-fox SWAT team leader that everyone thought they were better than, but who had a firm grasp of the situation. I'd like to see him and Weller work more together, maybe with Dolph thrown in. He also got to work with Tia Carrere again (Showdown in Little Tokyo), only this time he didn't chop any of her friends' heads off.

This film is just pure good old fashion bad action, and it's unabashed in the way it's carried out. As a fan of bad action, I hold a picture like this in the utmost regard. They just don't make 'em like this anymore. 

You should be able to find this in the $5 bin at a place like BestBuy. It's so worth it, you don't even know. I'd skip renting it, in fact, and go straight to owning it, because you'll want to rent it again anyway, and you'll just end up wasting the rental money.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120353/

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/