VFW (2019)

I say this a lot, but this is one I'd been meaning to get to for a while now. When my wife and I subscribed to AMC+ so she could watch Mad Men, I knew I had no excuse to not make it happen, but then she got all the Mad Men episodes on Amazon Prime, so every month I wasn't watching this was another $10. Instead of renting it for $4, I've spent like $40 or $50 with the subscription at this point. Anyway, in addition to us, Bulletproof and Mitch at the Video Vacuum have covered this too.

VFW is about some aging veterans whose relaxing VFW location is under siege after a young lady (Sierra McCormick) escapes to there with an evil drug dealer's drugs. Now he wants them back, so he sends a host of drug addicts over to violently retrieve them. Our vets, led by Stephen Lang, can't have that, so they go about fashioning weapons out of anything they can find, and ready themselves for wave after wave of attacks. Will our heroes survive the night? 

This is definitely a good deal. The prodigious cast is the biggest selling point, and director Joe Begos doesn't sell us short on that. There are no bait-and-switches here, the names on the tin are names you see throughout. The fact that everyone involved is able to balance all of these stars in one location for a large chunk of the film is no small feat either, but between Begos's direction, and the talent involved, they make it work. Beyond Lang, we had DTVC Hall of Famers Fred Williamson and Martin Kove, plus William Sadler, George Wendt, and David Patrick Kelly. They can as easily give you a monologue as they can smash a baddie's face in, and make both just as believable. If there's a qualm, it's the dark lighting, which made it hard to see everything that was happening. It also betrayed the 80s throwback vibe the rest of the film was going for, from the music to the practical effects. The one thing digital cameras can't do yet is look like they're 80s movies shot on film, so we don't get the full comfort food effect that we'd get watching an actual 80s film. That's one qualm though in a movie that overall hits its marks and is well worth the watch.

We're always saying we're going to get more Williamson on the site, but this is now four films since December--though to be fair, one was a one-shot cameo in The Outlaw Johnny Black--so we're actually keeping to it for once. Williamson is pretty solid here. He's playing a Korean War vet, which means he's actually playing someone older, because he would've been 15 when the Korean War ended. I don't know if they thought he was too old to be a Vietnam Vet like the rest of the guys, but he would've only been in his mid-20s for the Gulf of Tonkin. It was an interesting decision, because I don't think they realized how old they were making him. Still, he delivers the Hammer performance you want, and it was great to see him in this. We're now at 32 films for him on the site, and if we keep doing one every other month, we may get him to 36 by the end of the year. We'll see if I stick to it.

Another Hall of Famer in this is Martin Kove. We don't see him as often--the last time was in August of 2022 when we did Death Match, and every two years sounds about right. That doesn't mean we don't love him, he's a Hall of Famer for a reason, one of the best to ever do it, and it's been nice to see him get more shine recently through the Cobra Kai TV show. Here he's one of the heroes, but still behaves in a way that puts everyone in peril. Unlike Williamson, who is someone we want to get as much stuff up as possible, with Kove it's more about films like this, or some of his PM stuff like To Be the Best that will get him back on the site; but who knows, maybe at some point when the bigger names are closer to completed, Kove may get more frequent tags. Right now he's at 18, so it could be some time before we get to that point.

There were a lot of other names that we don't usually see here on the site. George Wendt we've seen one other time, in the Dennis Hopper flick Space Truckers. As someone who grew up an hour north of Boston, Cheers was on quite a bit, and we all loved Norm. At some point the Cheers bar at Logan Airport had a likeness of him, and he sued them over it, which makes sense--you don't want to be associated with overpriced airport fare. The main star was Stephen Lang, and we've seen him one other time as well, with the Seagal flick Gutshot Straight. He's great here as the lead, and really carried things. I thought for sure he'd been in something else we'd covered, but when I looked through his bio, I saw almost all big screen credits. We also had David Patrick Kelly, who I thought was too young to be in a movie like this, but it turned out he was born in 1951. For an ensemble with names like this, he was a bit further down the priority list, but still turned in his usual solid supporting performance. Finally, we had the great William Sadler. Another one that hasn't appeared on the site yet, but last year he did a great interview with Jon Cross on the After Movie Diner podcast that you should definitely check out. After listening to that I became a bigger fan of his, so it was fun to see him here and finally get him on the DTVC.

Finally, this is technically a horror film in addition to action, and as you've probably noticed, we don't do as much horror on the site here. In the past year it looks like we've done five horror films in addition to this one: three of which were directors we follow, Albert Pyun, J. Horton, and Harley Wallen; another was a documentary on W.A.V.E. productions; and the fifth was a Julie Strain movie in March of 2023. Part of it you see right away on the IMDb page, where this movie has 112 critic reviews. Adding my review to that ecosystem means it's probably only going to be seen by people who regularly follow the site, and while that's not a reason for me to not cover it, it's the reason why we do more action than horror, because action fans tend to find us more easily from IMDb when they're looking a film that maybe has 20 critic reviews--or in some cases even less. Horror is always going to be something I love though, and this film with its mix of horror and action elements reminded me how much I enjoy it, even if my pile of "to review" films is mostly action.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Currently this is available on AMC+. If you're already subscribed that's great, just don't end up like me and paying $10 a month for a service you don't really need just to make the film happen. Hopefully it'll make its way to the free streamers at some point.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9894470

And my newest novel, Don's House in the Mountains, is available now on Amazon! Click the image to buy.

Deadly Impact aka Impatto mortale (1984)

With this weekend being the Super Bowl here in the States, and with the Kansas City Chiefs one of the participants, I figured we'd do a Fred Williamson film, considering he played in the first Super Bowl for that same Chiefs team. Also, this is a good time for us to officially celebrate his entry into the 30 Club. In addition to us, the guys at Comeuppance and The Video Vacuum have covered this, so we're completing the triangle with our review.

Deadly Impact has Bo Svenson as a detective on the edge who likes to crash cars. He's investigating the murder of a young computer programmer along with his hustler/helicopter pilot buddy, Fred Williamson. They discover the murdered young man had software that allowed him to see when slot machines in Vegas would hit, and some baddies wanted all the money he'd won. Now it's a race against time, as the baddies are looking to kidnap the young man's girlfriend to find out where their money was, and our heroes need to stop them. Will they make it in time? And if they do, how many cars will Svenson crash in the process?

This is a fun one for sure. As Ty and Brett said in their review, this is an Italian production rip-off/cover movie of 48 Hours, and with that in mind we'd rather have Bo Svenson and Fred Williamson than Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy. The two of them are a fantastic pair and have great chemistry, which makes them enjoyable to watch. It is a bit on the dark side (John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band?)--I mean, our baddies are leaving a trail of bodies all over Phoenix that would make most mass killers in history blush. That said, when people aren't being murdered, the car chases are fantastic. Just when you think they could be going on too long, one of the cars suddenly flips over somethings and lands on it's roof. How do you not love that? And Svenson's character in particular seems to love crashing into things--the moment he borrows someone's car you know that's it for it. The helicopter chase we get near the end was fun too, culminating in a sweet helicopter explosion. The other thing is, for the juvenile minded of us out there, of which I count myself among them, the word "hacker" hadn't been coined yet, at least not officially, so the term used in this was "computer penetration," and what we know of as "cyber security" was "penetration prevention." I'm giggling about it as I'm writing it. Finally, speaking of Phoenix, we get some nice shots of the city in the 1980s, plus even better, shots of 1980s Vegas, which looks fantastic. If you can find a copy of this, it's worth checking out.

For years we've been talking about getting Fred Williamson into the 30 Club, and when we finally do it, it ends up being a tiny cameo at the end of The Outlaw Johnny Black, so while this is technically his 31st film on the site, I figured we'd use this one to truly celebrate his entry--though even this one is more of a Bo Svenson film, with Williamson playing his sidekick. In less than a month from my writing this, he'll be 86 years old, and he still has in production credits on IMDb. Even without those, I count around 25 films of his that we could do on this site that we haven't yet, so the 40 and 50 Club are definitely possibilities, I just need to review his films at a more consistent clip--which has been the thing that's kept him out of the 30 Club for so long. There's also the element of him being a director, with him being the only member of the 20-10 Club--20+ films as an actor, 10+ films as a director. We do have a couple more of the films he's directed that we can do here as well, I just need to track them down. One thing I liked about this one, was it was an Italian production, but it didn't take place in the future or after the apocalypse. Not that I don't enjoy seeing Williamson in those films too, but this one was a nice change of pace. One of the greatest to ever do it, finally joining the 30 Club here at the DTVC. It's an honor that's long overdue and well-deserved.

As I mentioned above, this also has Bo Svenson. In looking over his bio, I didn't realize how similar to Dolph he is. Both from Sweden, both came here to study--Dolph mechanical engineering, Svenson metaphysics--both fell into acting, and both are 6'5" and athletic. The big difference I think is the size of the big break each got, where Svenson's came in replacing Paul Newman as Robert Redford's co-star in The Great Waldo Pepper, and Dolph's was as Ivan Drago in the hit blockbuster Rocky IV, which led to the lead in another blockbuster, Masters of the Universe. The two did team up in The Killing Machine, which was directed by Dolph, so we at least have that. As far as team-ups go though, it's his work with Williamson that's the best, and this film is another example of that. In Williamson's later films, Svenson would often play a baddie, so it was cool to see the two of them working together and bantering with each other, as Svenson crashed Williamson's car that only had two notes left on it.

We get to use the McDonald's tag for the twelfth time, as this film has not one but two locations, one in Vegas, and then the one above in Phoenix. While I have had McDonald's in Vegas before, I've never been out of the Phoenix airport to have been able to get it there--I did get it near the Grand Canyon though, so I have had it in the state of Arizona. What's great here is the baddies are using the payphone at McDonald's, which I don't know if we've ever seen before. Before the advent of the mass availability cellphones, I remember using payphones at McDonald's, smelling the fries cooking, the scent almost like an anthropomorphized hand pulling me in like you might see with a pie cooling on a windowsill in an old cartoon, I couldn't wait to get my call done so I could get inside and order, despite having had no plan to get anything prior to making that phone call. It was a business model for them that went away when payphones were no longer necessary, but back in 1984 it was in full effect as we watched the two baddies go inside after their call, seemingly unable to resist the siren song of McDonald's. Here in Philly many of the McDonald's near us have closed, so instead of that great French fry smell, it's the Popeye's fried chicken, which can be just as alluring.

Finally, I caught this billboard advertising Arizona State football games on the radio as this car flew past it. It reminded me that in 1984 the Phoenix area didn't have an NFL team yet. I looked it up, the St. Louis Cardinals moved there for the 1988 season--in fact St. Louis has lost two NFL teams in my life, first the Cardinals, and then they got the LA Rams in 1995, where they stayed until they moved back to LA in 2015. It's a strange concept to the rest of the world I think, that in US pro sports--and Canadian when those teams play in the US pro leagues--teams can move around like that. In fact, two of Phoenix's four professional teams are from other cities, as they got their hockey team, the Coyotes, from Winnipeg--don't worry, Winnipeg eventually got Atlanta's NHL team, so they have NHL hockey again. This also shows how much Phoenix has grown in the 40 years since this film was made. They went from having only one top tier professional team, the Phoenix Suns of the NBA, to now one in each of the four sports; and is also now the fifth largest city in the US by population if you just go by city limits, more than doubling their population between the 1980 census where they had just shy of 800,000 people, to the 2020 census, where they had over 1.6 million people. You'd like to think this film helped that trend of growth, but actually there was a 10% dip in population growth between 1970 and 1980, where they had 35% growth, and 1980 and 1990, where they only had 25% growth. My hunch is seeing Svenson driving around like a maniac scared some people off.

And with that, let's wrap this up. I caught this on Plex here in the States, but you can see that that version they have available isn't much better than a VHS rip on YouTube--in fact, you even get the same tracking issues at some points--and Plex is one of the worst for commercials, every 15 minutes you get about 150 seconds-worth, which is a pain, but it's better than nothing, and this is worth checking out however you can.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087461

And my newest novel, Don's House in the Mountains, is available now on Amazon! Click the image to buy.

Outlaw Johnny Black (2023)

This is one I'd been waiting for for some time, once I saw it listed on Michael Jai White's IMDb bio. After how great Black Dynamite was, 14 years was plenty of time in between to get his next effort, and I was excited by the fact that he was going to take a stab at Blaxploitation Westerns. When my cable company offered their $1 weekend rental deal again, I figured that was the perfect time to make this happen.

Outlaw Johnny Black has White as the eponymous hero. He's searching for a guy named Clayton (Chris Browning) who killed his father, but in the process gets mixed up with the law, and finds himself pretending to be a preacher in the small town of Hope Springs. Beyond his own subterfuge, an evil land baron (Barry Bostwick) is trying to take the old preacher's property through violent and corrupt means, meaning someone with Black's skills are needed. A woman named Jessie Lee (Anika Noni Rose) has been mobilizing the townspeople against Bostwick, and while she and Black don't get along initially, she realizes he's the man to help them. But will his past catch up with him before he has the chance?

This is really good. It's 2 hours and 10 minutes long, which is longer than my usual 90 minutes, but I could tell that White, Byron Minns, and company really wanted to go bigger with this, which is something I could appreciate, and most importantly, I think they pulled it off. This is bigger than just a DTV actioner, and bigger than just White and co. dipping their feet into making Westerns, and I think it worked. Like Black Dynamite, the comedy is there, as is the send up to Westerns, but then also the proper tribute to the Blaxploitation Western, a sub-genre that I wasn't as familiar with myself until I started digging more into Fred Williamson's career--Johnny Black's outfit is a tribute to Williamson's in Joshua. White delivers as the hero the way he does in Black Dynamite as well, giving us a larger than life presence but also excels in his comedic timing; and then the rest of the cast does their thing as well, from Minns as the preacher whose name White steals, Rose as the leading lady, our baddies in Bostwick and Browning, and then like Black Dynamite, a whole host of supporting names like Kym Whitley, Tommy Davidson, Jill Scott, and Randy Couture, among many others. This is the movie I was looking for from White as a next film after Black Dynamite.

This is only Michael Jai White's third film of the year, which isn't great considering the number of stuff he has out there, and that was a big reason why I wanted to get this one as soon as I could. When I had Jon Cross of After Movie Diner on the DTVC Extra podcast to talk about Bloodfist III and IV, we talked about my top 5 DTV actions stars of all time, which are 1. Dolph, 2. Williamson, tied for 3. Wilson and Rothrock, and 5. Gary Daniels. He asked me if Wilson could ever move up that list, and I didn't think so, that if any change could happen in the top 5, it might be as we go on with Williamson that he may pass Dolph. With that in mind, in looking at Michael Jai White, he's someone who could crack the top 5 and maybe go higher, based on stuff like this. I mean no one other than Williamson has ever made anything like this before, let alone Black Dynamite as well, and that has to weigh heavily into a ranking like that. If you go 6-10, I have 6. Lamas, 7. Seagal, 8. Dudikoff, and 9. Van Damme. I used to have Adkins at 10, but I think at the very least White is tied with him now, if not passing him into the 10th spot with a film like this. White is not only a dynamic martial artist, but he's a dynamic overall talent, and he shows us that again in this film.

With a Western featuring black and white characters, the issue of the N word is inevitably going to come into play. If you look at Williamson's Westerns in the 70s, white characters threw the word around constantly, to the point one of his movies even had it in the title. Then you had Tarantino's Hateful Eight, where Samuel L. Jackson's character gets called it a lot. White and Minns in writing the script went a different route here by using a word that's similar but not the same. It's still close enough that I feel awkward using it in this review, but I liked that they did that. There's a debate around using that word in an artistic sense. Who should be able to say it or write it, especially in Tarantino's case as a white person writing dialog for white characters that are saying it. White and Minns don't even mess with it, but they do joke about it, like when a baddie goes to call Johnny Black a "Ni--" and gets kicked in the face, and while he's on the ground says "I was going to say nincompoop!" I think it just gets back to the fact that White and Minns and the rest of the people making this and Black Dynamite are working on a different level.

People have sometimes complained that I'm too hung up on runtimes, which is fair, even though it's pretty consistent among the DTV/low-budget movie blogging/podcasting community that anything over 90 minutes is borrowed time, which means as a filmmaker you need to make more out of that time to make it worth it for us. More often than not, those 100-minute plus films don't manage to make that extra time worth it, and for Michael Jai White, Byron Minns, and co. to go in planning to make something over two hours, it was a gamble, but one that paid off. I'd say around the 45-minute mark the film loses steam a bit, but for the most part it manages to stay entertaining throughout. Part of it is the writing, and Jon Cross made a point about this when he was on the DTVC Extra podcast I mentioned above: humans can only laugh or be scared so much before it comes too much. What White and Minns do to mitigate that is they give us enough that's entertaining without while giving us a break from laughing or feeling tense, which, combined with a story that progresses along pretty well except for that one slower patch I mentioned. The thing is though, it is a gamble, and it requires great material. This movie is the exception that proves our 90-minute rule, but it is the rare film that's worth that extra time.

Finally, Fred Williamson has a cameo at the end along with Jim Brown and Michael Madsen. The issue then is that make this Williamson's 30th film on the site! I considered holding off on this one so we could get a better film for his 30th post, one that has him in it more, but I thought that would be too ridiculous, especially when I had this film watched and was planning to review it in this slot, to make it sit for a month or more while I try to get another Williamson post in? The other thing though is, while he only has this one cameo, he has it because the film is paying tribute to his influence and contributions to the world of cinema, so I think that combined with the fact that I can just make his 31st movie be the one where he gets the full accolades, made the decision to just go ahead with this review an easy one. It's a really great scene, where he and Jim Brown are watching everyone from a balcony at the end, and they recognize the job every did making the movie and upholding the traditions they started in the 70s.

And with that, let's wrap this up. As of this writing, you can rent this on Amazon Prime or your cable company here in the States. From a money standpoint, you have to decide what your budget is, but I think renting something like this has the added benefit of showing the studios that a movie like this can sell, it doesn't need to be all comic book heroes or Bruce Willis to draw us in.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8667828

And my newest novel, Don's House in the Mountains, is available now on Amazon! Click the image to buy.

Warriors of the Wasteland aka New Barbarians aka I nuovi barbari (1983)

In the interests of getting more Fred Williamson on the site, this is one that had been in my Tubi queue for a while, so I figured why not finally make it happen. Of course, when I went to watch it, Tubi had taken it down, so I went to Plex--which it turned out was a bad idea, because Amazon had it on Prime, which I'm already paying for. Anyway, in addition to us, Ty and Brett from Comeuppance have covered this as well.

New Barbarians takes place in 2019, after the nuclear holocaust, as civilization is picking up the pieces. A gang of ruthless gay men called the Templars (led by George Eastman and Ennio Giralami as Thomas Moore) is roaming the countryside, wiping out any last vestiges of humanity. When they try to kill Alma (Anna Kanakis), fortunately our hero Scorpion (Giancarlo Prete as Timothy Brent) is there to save the day. But now they want to kill him too, so they track him and his new ladyfriend down, only to have Nadir (Williamson), an archer with exploding arrows, save the day again. After finding a large group of extras from the "Life in a Northern Town" video living nearby, they know it'll only be a matter of time before the Templars come to wipe them out too. Will our heroes be enough to stop them?

This is a ton of fun in every way you'd want a movie like this to be a ton of fun. Fun Williamson. Fun cars. Fun outfits. Fun characters. The fact that the baddies are gay puts an interesting spin on it. When our hero gets his prerequisite torture scene, it includes the main baddie Eastman... well, violating him. I wasn't a fan of it happening to Rothrock in Lady Dragon, and I'm not a fan of it here, but they did it, and our hero gets his revenge by jamming a large drill that was built into his car through the back of Eastman's car and into is... well, you know. All of it adds to the overall manic nature of the film though, where shit just seems to be thrown together in this bouillabaisse that in the end all works for a fun time. Why is there an Italian version of Dennis the Menace who lives alone and works on cars for people like Scorpion? Who knows, but it's great, and when he joins Scorpion and Williamson in the final battle against the Templars, it's just as great. The other thing is the Italian touch to this. Enzo Castellari directing, Fausto Zuccoli as DP, and Claudio Simonetti's score give this a feel you don't get in your usual exploitation flick; plus all the great Italian names, like Giancarlo Prete aka Timothy Brent, Ennio Giralami aka Thomas Moore, Anna Kanakis, and Venantino Venantini as the leader of the "Life in a Northern Town" extras. This is the fun Italian post-apocalyptic flick you came for. 

The Hammer is one movie away from the 30 Club, a club he should've been in a long time ago. We've said I don't know how many times that we're going to make an effort to get more of his films on the site, and here we are in December with his last post having been in May. Ugh, what happened? What usually ends up happening, I lose track of him and he goes months without a review. Anyway, we're here now, and this is some great Williamson. He's the cool, slick Williamson you want, even in that ridiculous post-apocalyptic Italian movie get-up. All of it is too fantastic for words. I'm trying to think what a good 30th post would be for him. VFW is one I can get with AMC+--and we're looking to get rid of that streaming service, so probably sooner rather than later for that. He has some great ones I'd like to do from the 80s and 90s, but the availability is limited. There's also Vegas Vampires, which is one he's directed that I'm having trouble finding, but has a great cast. Whatever I decide, I should make sure I just do it and not go another six months before I do a Williamson post again.

The 80s Italian low-budget post-apocalyptic film is a unique piece of cinematic history. The outfits, the props, the actors and the extras, combined with Italian cinematic tradition, gives us something that the people who invented moving pictures couldn't have fathomed, but that we as film watchers are lucky to have. In terms of where this film sits in that tradition, for the most part it not only works, but might be one of the finest of the craft. Where I find fault is with Anna Kanakis's heroine character. They went through all this trouble to give her a sexy, futuristic outfit, but they never really show her full body. Most of the time we only see her from the waist up, and more frequently only the neck up. I'm wondering if there was something wrong with the outfit, because it almost seemed on purpose. Maybe there was a wardrobe malfunction. They definitely didn't do that with Giancarlo Prete's see-through plastic top during the end fight with the baddies, we got that in all its glory.

You can see I got something of an action shot down below there. This is made possible by Prime's desktop browser streaming interface. As far as I can tell, only they and Netflix use one where you can get a clean screen after pausing. For example with Tubi, the time bar and film's title stay on the screen after you pause. Most are like Tubi's unfortunately, which means I need to hit "PrntScrn" while the video is playing, and hope I got it, something that can really limit my options for screenshots. I originally caught this on Plex, and when I went to grab images from that it was a mess. First off, their slider box doesn't give a small box preview of what the later part you're hovering over will be, so I need to remember the times I want for my screens and hope I'm accurate; but then with how their advertisements load, the desktop player constantly crashes. Fortunately I had Prime as an option for this, making my life easier. 

Finally, let's go back to the above image. Is that a fanny pack Scorpion is wearing? I mean there's definitely a cod piece there, but does it also function as a fanny pack? A lot of these futuristic things have multiple functions, so you never know. I was thinking the fanny pack didn't exist back then, but I looked it up on Wikipedia, and it said as early as 1954 a leather version was marketed to skiers. Considering that looks like leather, could the filmmakers have found one for sale at an Italian ski resort in the Alps and just threw it in as part of the costume? Or maybe one of them was a skier and already had it? And again, I wouldn't call it a fanny pack, but rather a "cod piece pack," as it's part of the whole package... like what I did there? Also am I burying the lead on the futuristic golf carts in this shot? I can't say what I would do if I survived the nuclear holocaust, but getting around via golf cart doesn't seem like the worst idea. Something to keep in mind at least, God forbid I ever find myself in that situation.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Prime is probably the way to go. You'll see this listed both as Warriors of the Wasteland and New Barbarians--sometimes within the same streaming service! This is a fun time, and worth checking out, though the main character's prerequisite torture scene involving rape may make it tough for some audiences.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084424

And my newest novel, Don's House in the Mountains, is available now on Amazon! Click the image to buy.

Foxtrap (1986)

In our continuing mission to get more Fred Williamson on the site, and into the 30 Club and beyond, this had been in my watch queue for some time, but when I discovered it was on Tubi I knew I had no excuse to not make it happen. In addition to us, there are only two other critic reviews, and one of them is from our friends Ty and Brett at Comeuppance.

Foxtrap has Williamson as Thomas Fox, a bodyguard for hire who's hired by Christopher Connelly to retrieve his niece Susan, who's gone missing in Cannes. Seems simple enough, until Fox gets out there, and discovers Susan is in bed with a local crime boss Marco. After some tangles with Marco's goons, Fox is able to rescue Susan and bring her back to LA. The thing is though, Williamson has been in enough films with Christopher Connelly to know that he doesn't seem like the concerned, benevolent uncle type, and with 20 minutes of movie left, there's plenty of time for Williamson to figure out whats going on. Marco and his goons, and then Connelly and his goons, won't know what it them.

This isn't the best of Williamson's directed films. The plot meanders a bit, we get real time scenes of things like him getting his bags out of his car, there's some brutality of women that's a bit much, a music score that sounds a bit silly at times, and editing snafus like a typo in the credits and a visible boom mic. All of that is mitigated by the Williamson factor though, to ultimately deliver us a fun film. As our hero, he's not a hard-nosed detective on the edge, he's a jet-setting man of the world who's completely at home in Cannes or Rome, but can take out a gang of toughs when he has to too. So with any clunkiness we may have in the film's execution, we have plenty of fantastic Williamson to make up for it, and really, when you come to a Williamson film, what else do you want?

Williamson is now at 28 films on the site. The 30 Club is just around the corner, but I have been slacking a bit in my Williamson posts, with the last one coming back in February. The other interesting thing is he's at 12 directed films with this one, which puts him tied with Keoni Waxman in a tie for fifth-most director credits, and one behind Isaac Florentine and Sam Firstenberg for a tie for third. There are a couple things going on in this film that I think show what makes Williamson great. First off, the film is flawed, but his presence alone makes it work. I thought back to Dolph and some of his clunkers, and I don't really know that he made those work just by his presence alone--granted, those clunkers weren't his directed films, but even the ones he's directed that didn't work as well, like Diamond Dogs, he alone couldn't make them fun the way Williamson does here. The other thing is how he makes his character cosmopolitan and at home in places like Cannes and Rome. A common trope is to have the African American hero be straight out of the inner city and plopped into a European city, and the film will play up the clash of cultures for laughs. Williamson leaves that trope entirely, and I think this movie is much better for it. I don't know if I can put Williamson above Dolph for the number one slot all time for DTV stars, but they're closer between 1 and 2 than they have been.

The music in this deserves its own paragraph, because it is such a huge part of the film. It starts off in the opening sequence of Williamson driving--and as someone who's never had his license and probably can't critique anyone else's driving, I have to say he looks like he's all over the road, often crossing over to the wrong side--and it sounds like what you might hear in a long-form corporate ad video, or maybe an 80s fishing show montage segue between segments. From there we have this synthesizer generated woodwind instrument, which at one point sounds like a big number or letter reveal in a Sesame Street cartoon, as we watch a little French man in a knit cap following Williamson in Cannes. We also get some Smooth Jazz that turns into a Bobby Caldwell-esque late 70s soul song when Williamson has his love scene. We then get this groovy organ sound during a shootout, which makes it hard to feel the intensity of Williamson diving over a car to avoid the uzi fire coming at him, it was probably better used accompanying shots of a grimacing Karl Malden somewhat aggressively driving to a crime scene in an episode of Streets of San Francisco. In some respects, the music adds to the film's charm; but other times, like when the synthesizer-generated woodwind instrument comes on a little more strongly as the chase between Williamson and the French man in the knit cap heats up, I find myself cracking up as I'm mimicking the "doo-dah-lee-dee-doo-doo" sound out loud as I'm watching the movie--which, I guess if I'm honest with myself, also adds to the film's charm.

At the end of the credits, the film teases that we should "watch next summer for the FOX and the COBRA." My guess is "the COBRA" was Black Cobra, which came out in 1987, but unfortunately we didn't get more FOX. This is something with the site and podcast, and even my novels, that I always try to make sure I don't do, and that's get too far ahead of myself by promising things that I don't have in the can yet. Take this review for example. If I didn't get a chance to watch this movie, I'd have reviewed the Zagarino film Project Eliminator instead, because I'd already seen that. Same with the podcast, I don't want to tell people what the upcoming episodes will be, because even if I have guests and subjects lined up for them, you never know when someone's schedule, mine or theirs, will jumble everything up. I did hear that at the time Williamson was able to sell films at Cannes to producers just based on the ideas alone, so he probably thought he could do the same with the FOX, until life got in the way, and we're left to wonder what might have been after we see the credits to Foxtrap.

Finally, typos are such a pain in the ass, right? And in a movie in the 80s they have to be the worst. At least when I have a typo in my reviews--and I have tons because I usually can only do one proofread before I post--if I see them I can go back and edit them if I want. Here Williamson has no such luck, "Produced an story by" will forever be immortalized in his film. It begs the question though, at what point is it better to just get the work out there? I mean yes, it doesn't make a great early impression, but this isn't a job interview, I'm not going through hundreds of CVs for a job I posted online, so a couple typos make it easier for me to reject someone; it's a Fred Williamson movie, he already has the position, I'm just ready to see him get after it. If anything, I feel like I should get on him for that parking job. Look at all that space on the right. Between this and when he left his girlfriend behind to be caught by Marco and his goons, he kinda made himself a tough guy to root for, but then he's beating up baddies and smoking cigars while wearing double-breasted suits and dress shirts with the top buttons undone, and I think, "how can I stay mad at you, Fred?"

Or rather, Mr. Williamson, sir. Anyway, let's wrap this up. Right now this is on Tubi here in the States, which I think is a great way to go. Hopefully someone like Vinegar Syndrome will release all of his directed movies on Blu-ray, but until then, I think Tubi is your best bet, and it's worth it to get your Williamson fix.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091072

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

Original Gangsters (1996)

This is one I originally saw in the theater when it came out, but based on the box office numbers, and the fact that it was starring and put together by DTVC Hall of Famer Fred Williamson, and it featured another, Wings Hauser, plus it made under the threshold in box office gate, I figured we'd give it a look. In addition to us, Chris at Bulletproof, Ty and Brett at Comeuppance, and Cool Target have covered this.

Original Gangsters has Fred Williamson as John Bookman, who, when a gang shoots his father, comes to his hometown and rounds up his old crew to take the gang down. Who is said old crew? Everyone you can imagine, like Pam Grier, Richard Roundtree, and Ron O'Neal. He tries to get help from the mayor, Charles "Napes" Napier, but the guy working under him, Wings Hauser, gives them the run around. He tries to work with the police, but detectives Robert Forster and Frank Pesce are no help. Now it's time to take back their town from these gangsters, and they need to do it on their own. Those poor kids won't know what hit them when these Original Gangsters come for them.

This was a ton of fun, even coming back to it over 25 years later. First and foremost, the cast is fantastic, led by the great Fred Williamson. He calls in everyone he uses except for David Carradine and Bubba Smith--hell, we even get Frank Pesce! This cast then delivers in all the ways you'd want them to. If you heard that Larry Cohen was directing a Fred Williamson movie with all your greats from the 70s, this is the movie you'd want it to be. Not only was it a lot of fun, but also very powerful and sobering in its depiction of the crime and violence in parts of the US that have been abandoned by the rest of the world and left to the gangs to run. According to IMDb, Cohen said this was released the same week as Twister, which was your typical TNT New Classic that dominated the box office at the time, so that explains why this didn't do so well. That's a shame, because  this was every bit the new classic too. At least you can come back to it now and stream it.

27 movies now for Fred Williamson, but also because he directed some of the scenes in this, he gets a director credit, making that 11 for him, furthering his entry into the 20-10 Club--20+ acting credits and 10+ directing credits--a club that has only one member, him. We're also close to finally getting him into the 30 Club, an honor that is long overdue. What makes this film so great, is that it shows how beyond being an actor and director, Williamson is someone who puts films together. And had it not been for Twister, maybe this leads to other big projects for him; but unfortunately it was released the same weekend as Twister, which made this his last gasp at a big screen project. It's a shame he never did get bigger backing for any of his films, because it would've been cool to see what he could've done; on the other hand, he still gave us some classics despite that lack of backing, and I think this one can be placed among those.

In my recent Savage Beach post I talked about Dona Speir being among the greatest female action stars of all time. In this film we had Pam Grier, who I think is the greatest. She was fantastic here, in exactly the way she's always fantastic, as someone who's extremely strong, but not trying to be one of the guys strong, she's strong on her own terms. A year after this she was reunited with Robert Forster in Jackie Brown, where she does what I think is my favorite work of hers, and while Jackie Brown as a whole isn't my favorite Tarantino film, her work in it, especially the scenes with Forster, were my favorite scenes of his movies. One thing people wonder is why she isn't in the DTVC Hall of Fame, and the main reason has always been that she hasn't done that much DTV stuff. I think maybe with her there could be an exception just because of the impact she's had on DTV and low-budget film making--and really film making as a whole. I think after Williamson, out of all the other big names in this, Pam Grier is the one where I say "they couldn't have made this without her," and every scene she's in she reminds us why. This is now four films for her on the site, and the first since 2009's Wilder review. I don't know how many more times we'll see her, but every chance we get I'll try to grab it.

Usually we prioritize the film's Hall of Famers in our paragraphs, but we made an exception for the great Pam Grier, and I think if anyone would understand it would be Wings Hauser. We last saw him in 2021 with Wilding, and at that time I said we were creeping our way up to the 30 Club for him with 21 tags, so now 18 months later to only be at 22 means we're not really putting in much work toward that. In looking at his bio, we should be able to scrounge up another 8 films for him, it's just a matter of when we're able to do it. 90s Wings Hauser was prime Hauser, and he gives us that here in the short scenes he has. And acting opposite Napes makes it even better, Williamson just knew what he was doing with these guys, even if he only had them for a short time, and those guys take a film like this and make it that much better. How I lost Wings in the shuffle I don't know, but I'll do my best to get him back sooner next time.

Finally, in deciding whether or not a movie should be included on the site, for "DTV" one qualifier I use is if the film grossed under $10 million at the box office. I have made exceptions, like Rocky IV and the Expendables films, but what's interesting here is I'm making an exception for a film that I actually saw in the theater. My buddy that I saw it with and I were fans of Fred Williamson, Richard Roundtree, and Pam Grier's 70s Blaxploitation stuff, and the idea of this film felt perfect to us, the way The Expendables felt perfect to me and the people who enjoy this blog back in 2010. It wasn't until I was older that I understood how Hollywood in the 80s didn't give these great stars the big screen roles they should've gotten. I think the biggest legacy of that is when those click bait-y "movie" sites make their top female action stars lists, and leave off Pam Grier but have names like Angelina Jolie, Linda Hamilton, and Scarlett Johansson near the top. It's like an attempt to diminish this whole contribution to the world of cinema, which not only smacks as ignorant, but I also think is a travesty. Shaft, Mean Johnny Barrows, Boss [N-word], Foxy Brown, etc., to me at least, are extremely important in getting us to where we are today in the art of film making, but also played a key role in making me the kind of fan of film that I am. As much as this movie had a getting the bang back together feel, it also was a celebration of that legacy of these stars, and 25+ years later, the fact that I was able to experience it on the big screen I think is pretty cool.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently stream this on Tubi, Prime, or Pluto. Streaming it free is a great way to go. Queue this up for a Saturday night movie. You won't be disappointed.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117260

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

Shadow Fury (2001)

Back in June I had Rich Hawes from DTV Digest on the pod to discuss this film. It's one's he's been a fan of for some time, and even asked me and Ty from Comeuppace if we'd ever consider doing it for our sites--which was a big reason why I suggested it to him as a topic for an episode he was guesting on. In addition to us, he's covered it on his old site, Have a Go Heroes, and Chris the Brain at Bulletproof has done this as well.

Shadow Fury has a group of scientists in the near future who have figured out how to clone a super soldier. One of them, Pat Morita, goes rogue, and creates a super samurai, Masakatsu Funaki. The others call in mercenary Sam Bottoms, an alcoholic in serious need of a new liver, which, it just so happens, Funaki is a perfect match, so if Bottoms takes him down his payment is Funaki's liver. As always though, things aren't as they seem, and when Bottoms discovers one of the other scientists, Allan Kolman, has created his own super soldier--first a young Taylor Lautner, later an adult Bas Rutten--he teams up with the last remaining other one, Alexandra Kamp, and Funaki, to take him down.

This movie was a lot of fun. It borrows from a lot of traditions, the two biggest being the lone gunman in the Western with Bottoms, and the ronin, or masterless samurai with Funaki. The director is Makoto Yokoyama, who was part of the Alpha Stunt team responsible for the Power Rangers movies that Isaac Florentine was also a part of, and more notably, the late 90s Mark Dacascos classic Drive. While this isn't quite at the Drive or Florentine actioner level, it still delivers enough in its fight scenes to elevate it beyond the limitations of its budget. Beyond that, we have really fun performances from Bottoms, Funaki, Fred Williamson, Morita, and Kamp. Also, as Chris the Brain at Bulletproof said, how many movies can you see where Taylor Lautner grows up to be Bas Rutten?

Usually we start with the film's one Hall of Famer, but because Williamson's part was smaller, I figured I'd go with Sam Bottoms first. What's interesting about him in this is when we last had Rich on the podcast, we discussed Total Force and Absolute Force, which starred his brother and Bush 43 lookalike Timothy. What Sam does here with this part is he plays up the lone gun for hire part really well, making him both dark and brooding, and a hero with a sense of humor at the same time. You can see your classic Clint Eastwood hero in him, but also someone like a Richard Boone in Have Gun Will Travel. You wouldn't expect Sam Bottoms in the lead to work in an action film, but because he got what Yokoyama was going for with the character, he was able to draw on that tradition in a way that made this work even better than I think Yokoyama was hoping for. When we're watching low budget movies like this, often it's that kind of thing that's needed to elevate the material beyond its limitations, and Bottoms does that for us with his performance.

From there we have Masakatsu Funaki as the ronin figure, who loses his master, Pat Morita, early on, and from there is on his journey to find his purpose. He gets that in a lady of the night that he saves from her pimp, Cassandra Grae--who didn't do much beyond this film. Usually that construct of the hero saving the lady of the night is a worn trope--especially in those Seagal-type films where it's saving a pretty Eastern European lady from human trafficking and she falls in love with the hero--but here it works to not only underscore this drive for purpose Funaki's character has, but also the drive to discover his humanity. He's part masterless ronin and part Frankenstein, and with Grae's character, we as the audience can join Funaki as he leans into both aspects of himself. On top of that, as an MMA fighter, he does great in the action sequences, but I don't know how well it would've worked if he hadn't leaned into those other aspects of the character the way he did. Like Bottoms, his approach added elements to the film that further elevated it beyond its budgetary constraints.

Because his part was so limited, we're waiting for this moment to finally discuss our film's one Hall of Famer, the great Fred Williamson. He plays the Machine Gun Joe type who provides Bottoms with the weapons he needs in a back room of the bar he runs--which works out for the alcoholic Bottoms, he can get his drinks and his tools of the trade. This is now 26 for Williamson, which puts us that much closer to the 30 Club for him, probably something we'll hit next year. While I prefer him as a lead, seeing him in a small part like this is also fun too, and for a lot of the names that have the bigger numbers here, parts like this help get that tag number up to get him into those more exclusive clubs--though when you look at Dolph and Daniels, our two with the most tags, they don't have many supporting role films. The other thing I've noticed is, when I look at his IMDb bio, there aren't a lot of films from this period of his that I'm missing, it's a lot more of the hit or miss variety in the 2010s, or his 80s stuff that I can't always find. That's one difference between him and Dolph or Daniels, is there is a lot of Williamson stuff out there that's either hard to get, or maybe even impossible to get. I think that's another reason why he's fallen behind some of the other bigger names, but hopefully we'll rectify that over the next year and get that tag count up higher.

Finally, in trying to think of what the last paragraph should be here, one thing that stood out was how much Bottoms was drinking, despite being on the liver transplant list. In real life, there's a zero tolerance policy when it comes to that. It might not be common knowledge--I only found out when a close family friend was in that situation in the late 90s, and then it came up again recently when I was watching Scrubs with my wife. It makes sense, right? There are only so many livers to go around, why give it to someone who may just destroy that one through drinking too. Just the same, it would've made for a better plot device here, the idea that Bottoms's character can't get a transplant because he won't stop drinking, but these scientists offer to do it for him anyway with Funaki's. 

And with that, let's wrap this up. As you can see from the quality of my screens, this is only available on YouTube, and it's not the best transfer--even if it does say it's high-def. I think a movie like this could use a nice Blu-ray, so hopefully that'll happen soon, or at the very least a better quality version on a major streaming site. Until then, YouTube is your best bet, and I think this is a fun enough actioner from the early 2000s, which overall wasn't as great a time for this kind of thing. And if you want to hear more about Shadow Fury, check out the DTVC Podcast, episode 102 from back in June that I did with Rich from DTV Digest.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0288215

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

The Big Score (1983)

This movie was further down on my to review list, but when I did Blood Street with Stack Pierce, who's also in this, I realized it had been a while since I'd done a Fred Williamson flick, and I'm always saying I need to do more Williamson, so why not bump it up the list and make it happen? In addition to us, our friend Mitch at the Video Vacuum has covered this, as has the great Roger Ebert, so you can go to their sites to see what they thought.

The Big Score is a Williamson Po' Boy Production where Williamson plays, you guessed it, a hard-nosed Chicago cop. In trying to take down a coke kingpin with fellow detectives John Saxon and Richard Roundtree, the baddie gets let loose through the work of his slick lawyer, and Williamson is under fire when the drug dealer's money goes missing. Now the baddies want their money back, and while the cops sort out what happen to it, boss Ed Lauter takes Williamson off the force, but for a cop like him, getting taken off the force is only a minor impediment. He's going to use all his resources, and stop at nothing to take down this baddie and get those drugs off the Chicago streets.

 

As you can tell from the synopsis, this is a pretty paint-by-numbers Williamson cop action thriller, but between the cast, and the story and direction, this worked for me. Williamson is a bit grittier here, I think he's going for more of a Chicago gritty cop story, and while I love cool as the other side of the pillow Williamson, this gritty Williamson works as a change of pace. John Saxon and Richard Roundtree are no strangers to this kind of movie either, and help fill out the vibe Williamson was going for, which makes it more authentic. At the same time, this is still fun Williamson, maybe not to the level of fun of his Dakota "Dak" Smith or Black Cobra movies, but I also think this might be a better quality of movie than those are. Either way, this is worth it for a nice Williamson night.

With this film, Williamson is now in a very exclusive club here at the DTVC, the 20-10 Club for people who have starred in 20+ films and directed 10+ films. How exclusive? Williamson is the only member. (If you're wondering, I think Dolph is the next closest, with his 60+ acting credits on the site, and 7 so far directed.) According to IMDb, Williamson has 20 films he's directed (plus one more that's been announced), and I think I've seen 13 or 14 of them--it would be more, but the version of Adios Amigos on Tubi is horrible, Vinegar Syndrome or a similar outlet needs to do a boxed set of his Westerns to correct that--but I'm digressing here, the point is, I think after Mean Johnny Barrows, which was his directorial debut, this might be my second favorite of his directed films that I've seen, which makes it a fitting one to make him the inaugural member of the 20-10 Club. The other big milestone for him is the 30 Club, and with this review he's now 5 away from that. I think for someone of his stature in the DTV world, that's a milestone that's long overdue, so hopefully we'll get there soon for him.

One of the biggest selling points in a Williamson film is the names he's managed to corral for it, and this one is no exception. Of those names, Richard Roundtree is one I always enjoy seeing. In the 80s he was pigeonholed by Hollywood into a "blaxploitation star," which gave Hollywood an excuse to not cast him as a leading man, despite the fact that he had the screen presence to rival any of the white leading men who were popular at that time. I think there's a sense when Williamson casts him in one of his lower-budget films that he also thinks "I shouldn't be able to get this guy in my movies, he should be too big for them." In 1983, we were a good ten to fifteen years out from names like Denzel Washington and Will Smith finally getting the kinds of roles Roundtree should've gotten. While we had him here though, one scene I really liked was where he acted opposite Stack Pierce. It was great to see those two in a scene together.

Among the other names, there were a bunch. I mentioned John Saxon, Stack Pierce, and Ed Lauter above. We also had Nancy Wilson, D'Urville Martin, Frank Pesce, Michael Dante, and Joe Spinell. Those kinds of names get us by when the Williamson film is lacking due to budgetary constraints, etc., so when the film is more solid like this one is, it just enhances it that much more. John Saxon in particular was great here, as he was made for grittier police films, usually as a baddie, but in this case a good guy as one of Williamson's fellow detectives. This is only his fifth film on the site, which sounds low, but as I was looking over his IMDb bio, that's actually about right based on the movies he's done. I don't know that I'll specifically look to get more of his films on here, but seeing his name on the tin always helps in picking out a movie to watch.

 

As I mentioned above, Roger Ebert also reviewed this, and while he only gave it 2 and a 1/2 stars, he actually enjoyed it. One mistake he made in his write-up is he confused Three the Hard Way with its sequel, One Down, Two to Go, but I got what he was saying when he compared this with that movie. I think we have this idea that the more mainstream critics don't get the stuff we watch, and for some that may be true, but Ebert showed in his review of this one that, at least for him, he can enjoy anything that's good and give it a fair shake. For me personally, I don't consider myself to be a film critic, but rather a movie blogger, whose only training was the writing courses I took in college--which themselves don't always show through when I'm pumping out a review with only one read through before I publish it--so I don't see myself as trying to swim in the same pond as an Ebert; but it is interesting how blogging, and now social media and podcasting, have democratized the film critique and discussion space to such an extent that I'm on IMDb and I'm seeing Roger Ebert's reviews mixed in with mine and fellow bloggers/reviewers that I've become friends with through this process. When I was a kid watching him with Gene Siskel, I never could've imagined that there would be things like blogs or an IMDb that could have allowed for that possibility.

And with that, let's wrap this up. As of right now, this is only available on YouTube and DVD, which is good enough, but hopefully it'll get the higher quality release it deserves. This is a solid Williamson outing, and worth checking out, especially if you're looking for more Williamson to watch.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085245

And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, A Girl and a Gun, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

White Fire (1984)

This is one I've been meaning to do for some time, especially after it came up on the Ginty Moore Beef Stew episode of the podcast I did with Ty and Brett, so when I saw it was available on Tubi, I had to make it happen. In addition to us, this is a complete the triangle film, because Ty and Brett at Comeuppance and Mitch at the Video Vacuum have done this too; plus our friend Jon at the After Movie Diner did a great review of on it on Letterboxd.

White Fire has Ginty as the brother of a sister and brother diamond smuggling duo. After they rob the wrong people, the sister ends up dead, the problem is, they were looking to do a big score for the huge White Fire diamond, and the sister was a big part of that. That's when Ginty, drowning his sorrows in booze at a local bar, meets a nice woman who, it just so happens, looks enough like his sister that, with a little plastic surgery, could pass for her. As luck would have it, there's a woman who does that kind of thing, and before you know it the sister is back. At the same time, the baddies have hired Williamson to figure out what's going on. Will Ginty and crew prevail and get the famed White Fire diamond?

That synopsis doesn't sound too crazy, does it? The movie's actually crazier, which makes it fantastic. Ty and Brett said on the pod it was so crazy that that made it a 4-star movie. The whole sister and brother thing is beyond a trip. Before the sister dies, she's skinny dipping in their pool, and when she gets out, Ginty is there checking her out, and he keeps her towel away from her as the two of them kid around. What? And then, he's falling for the new woman before they turn her into the sister, so after the fact he starts hooking up with her. Really? Sure, why not, right? Beyond that, we have a big white diamond that burns people's hands, Fred Williamson as a fantastic baddie, and a woman who lives in this beautiful commune with myriad beautiful women that performs plastic surgery for rich criminals. It's the cinematic equivalent of just grabbing everything out of the fridge and throwing it in a blender--but then finding out the mixture is actually kind of good. Maybe you don't drink that concoction all the time, but as a one-off in 1984, it works.

We're still catching up on our Gintage, as this is only our fifth film of his on the site, but boy, what a doozy for a fifth one. What did he think when he was told his character was hooking up with his sister? My hunch is, because the actress was very attractive, it wasn't a problem for him--in fact he may have even had them write that in! There's also the sense of him as the great DTV leading man he was, as, throughout all the silliness in this, he's always playing it straight and navigating it all to give us a solid action hero. What's interesting is, out of the five films of his we've done, this is the third that was released in 1984, after The Exterminator 2 and Warrior of the Lost World. He also had a TV series come out at that same year, Hawaiian Heat, and he probably thought this was it, he was out of the low-budget movie world and into big-time network TV. Alas, the show only lasted one season, and he went on to be one of the first true DTV stars, perhaps a pioneering role he would've preferred not to have, but one we definitely appreciate.

Our other DTVC Hall of Famer is the great Fred Williamson, who plays the guy the baddies call on to take Ginty and crew down. It's a fantastic part for him, he's just chewing up scenery in various Mediterranean location, fully armed and mustachioed, exactly the part you'd want if he's not the hero. This is also the second time we've seen him with Ginty in a European production, the other being Warrior of the Lost World. We know Williamson has his rule that he can't be killed and he needs to get the girl at the end, so this tries to split the difference with him not being the hero, and I think they do a good job with it. We'll probably be seeing more Williamson soon with another one of his directed films, but it's nice to see him here as just a costar in among this cinematic craziness.

As wacky as this movie is, it has a charm and fun quality to it that makes it work, and I wonder why that is compared to the modern DTV flick that seldom works on this level. The 80s element is one part for sure; and Ginty and Williamson are always great; but it's also like the thrown-together nature of it works in a way that makes modern thrown-together movies feel more crass, if that makes sense. I mean, couldn't Adkins and Dolph work for this, with Adkins in the Ginty role and Dolph in the Williamson role? And then we add in a beautiful woman to be the sister, and have Adkins hook up with her? Just typing this out, I see myself here writing the review killing it for being so ridiculous. This film is some kind of alchemy that can't be recreated, but somehow just works, and I can't explain it.

 

Finally, this movie has an Arrow Blu-ray release, and while I usually discuss how you can find the movie in the next paragraph, I wanted to bring it up here, because I think it's a big deal that a movie like this is getting that kind of treatment. If this can get a Blu-ray, it opens the door to so many others out there that are classics to a small group of us B-cinemaphiles, including tons of Ginty and Williamson flicks. It's an exciting world we live in where an 80s movie where Ginty wields a chainsaw and hooks up with his sister and tries to steal a diamond that burns people's hands isn't just on hard-to-find out-of-print VHS copies, but for $30 can be found on 1080p with all the fixin's.

And with that, let's wrap this up. If you don't want to pony up for the Blu-ray--which I haven't done yet either--you can watch this for free as of this writing on Tubi, or on Prime if you're subscribed. This is beyond worth checking out, so make it happen however you can. And for more Ginty, you can go into our archives for the Ginty Moore Beef Stew episode, ep 85 from May of 2021.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088359

And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, A Girl and a Gun, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!