Killing American Style (1988)

It's October, and you know what time that is at the DTVC, right? Actually you may not, because I usually don't have my shit together, but this year I do. It's time for Hall of Fame inductions, and we start with the one and only Robert Z'Dar, so I figured this would be a good one for his induction post. In addition to us, RobotGEEK's Cult Cinema has covered this, plus our other three usual suspects, Comeuppance, The Video Vacuum, and Bulletproof Action, so I finally join those three in finally making this happen too.

Killing American Style is an Amir Shervan joint starring Robert Z'Dar as the leader of a gang who, after a robbery where people are killed, is arrested, but then en route to prison, his brother springs him and his pals. Problem is, said brother is injured in the execution, and they need to get him help quick. They find a nice house with a nice family inside and take them hostage, hoping to get a doctor to nurse the brother to good health, and also pick up the money from the robbery gone bad. The fly in the ointment though, Harold Diamond is the man of the house. Z'Dar an co won't know what hit them.

From a Shervan film standpoint, this one is good, but as opposed to Samurai Cop or Young Rebels, which are suitable for a mixed bad movie night audience, this is more for your hardcore crew. One, there's a rape scene. Two, we have some extended nudity. And three, overall it's a bit darker. Beyond that though, this is the fun Shervan you came for, between Z'Dar as the main baddie taking his baddie to another level, to Diamond as the family man who just happened to know martial arts and wear unzipped coats with no shirt underneath, it delivers the goods. The other issue is, because it's a home invasion movie, and clocks in at 101 minutes, it does spin its wheels a bit in the middle--another reason it's probably not a good bad movie night pick, but I think once you've done Samurai Cop and Young Rebels, this is your next Shervan go to.

Now for the man of the hour, Mr. Z'Dar. When I did a Z'Dar podcast episode with the guys from Comeuppance (episode called "A Z'Dar is Born" in their podcast archives), I had a realization that he probably belonged in the Hall of Fame, so from there it was a matter of what movie to choose. Sure, a Maniac Cop would be a good choice, but I thought because is face is all scarred that that might not be as fitting. His Shervan films on the other hand, though maybe not as iconic as the Maniac Cop films, were really the ones that let Z'Dar stretch his acting chops, and I think he really enjoyed making them for that reason. In that vein, this is a more fitting way to celebrate him. With that shot above, I don't know what's happening with his rib cage, but overall, I think he played an excellent baddie here, which, despite the fact that the film dragged in spots, helped get us through some of that dragging.

This is now three Harold Diamond films here at the DTVC, but I discovered in his IMDb bio that he was a fight consultant in Kickboxer: Vengeance, so I added that tag in for him as well. The problem for him here is, despite how cool he could be, the home invasion construct forces him to look weak for large portions of the film. That's an area where the Die Hard paradigm improved action films, because if his family were being held hostage, and he had to get them out of a building, he could just take guys out one-by-one. The other thing is, because Diamond has such a scant filmography, it's hard to see one of his outings waste him like the home invasion paradigm ultimately does with its heroes. Looking at his IMDb bio, he doesn't have much else for us to do, especially since some of his films are hard to find--including Gypsy by this director. It's a shame he didn't do more, because between this and his Sidaris films, he makes a fun action star.

This is our second Amir Shervan film we've covered on the site, but we also did a podcast episode on Young Rebels with Jacob Gustafson of the Awful Awesome book series as a guest, and we got into Shervan as a director in general there. In school I studied Iranian film, but what I studied was the post-Revolution New Wave stuff, and Shervan was before that. One thing Jacob and I talked about was the idea that maybe all the stuff we see as silliness, was Shervan trying to mimic what he saw as popular trends in American movies. In that sense, are we're getting something like Ross Hagen dressed like a cowboy in Action USA telling Hoke Howell "when in Rome...", or maybe a distorted mirror reflecting what Shervan thinks we value back at us, but we don't recognize it as such. The only thing missing was the Garfield phone, but seen through that lens, it gives the films a different vibe, which to me makes them more fun--and you need all the fun you can get when a movie has a rape scene in it.

Finally, earlier I mentioned the fact that this film has a rape scene in it. It reminded me of when I read about Sidehackers in the MST3K Episode Guide and how they committed themselves to that movie without watching it, and realized there was a rape and murder scene that they had to cut out. It's just not fun, and while I get that Shervan or the Sidehackers director weren't making movies so we could make fun of them, it does serve as a reminder that the movies we watch and celebrate on this site and others like it aren't always for everyone, and when we're introducing our movies to friends and family who aren't otherwise inclined, we have to make sure there isn't anything in there that might be uncomfortable. Animals being killed, women being raped, nudity, over the top torture of the hero, all things we need to screen in advance. That's why Bridge of Dragons is one that always works, but Showdown in Little Tokyo maybe not so much. With Samurai Cop, is the bacon grease too much, or not graphic enough to be an issue? You gotta know your audience, but if you pull it off right, you can have a great bad movie night that people bring up years later.

And with that, let's wrap this up. As of right now, Cinema Epoch has this on DVD, and available to stream on Tubi here in the States. I think if you're a Z'Dar fan, and you haven't seen this, it's definitely worth a go; and great to finally get him into the DTVC Hall of Fame with this post, as he's truly one of the DTV legends. In terms of a classic "that kind of movie," the way Samurai Cop is, this is a bit too brutal to be that, plus it drags in spots. That's okay, the way Jim Morrison told the Doors "we've already done Ed Sullivan" after a producer told them they'd never be able to go on again when Morrison sang the line "couldn't get much higher," we can say "we already have Samurai Cop, we don't need Killing American Style to be another."

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0293324

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

Picasso Trigger (1988)

In our continuing goal of getting all of the Sidaris LETHAL Ladies films on the site, we come to this film here, the fourth one we've covered so far. With 12 total in the series, I guess we can say we're a third of the way there, so we're not quite like Tommy and Gina living on a prayer. In addition to us, our friend Mitch at the Video Vacuum has covered this--and he was on our podcast episode about Dallas Connection where we discussed all the Sidaris films--and Bulletproof Action--though not Todd Gaines, who's renown for being big on all of these movies.

Picasso Trigger has John Aprea as a crime boss of the same code name who is killed by fellow crime boss Rodrigo Obregon. From there, Obregon tries to kill off all the agents that put his brother in jail, which means the Agency needs to call their best agents into action to take him and his cronies down. Leading the crew is a new Abilene, Travis (Steve Bond), who still can't shoot straight, but is doing well with the ladies, moving between Dona Speir, and the mysterious agent Pantera (Roberta Vasquez), whom he dated in college. Will Abilene and his crew be able to take all these baddies down?

This, like the others in the LETHAL Ladies series, is a lot of fun. I think this takes what was established in Hard Ticket to Hawaii and turns it up even more. We have all the guns, explosions, remote control toys, dirt bikes, jet skies, and Ferraris you'd want, plus all the boobs and buttocks. There are also a lot of names in this, from the classics we all know and love like Speir, Obregon, Hope Marie Carlton, Cynthia Brimhall and Harold Diamond, but we also get DTVC favorite Keith Cooke, Bruce Penhall in his first appearance in the series, and Dennis Alexio, one short year before he was killed in Kickboxer so Van Damme could go to Thailand and have a great drunk dancing scene. On the other hand, this might not be as much of a classic as some of the others--like Hard Ticket to Hawaii--so if you're introducing people to the series, or you're getting into them yourself, you might want to try one of those others first, and come to this one after. Still worth your viewing though.

By the time we get to this third film, you could sense that the Abilene who can't shoot straight may have lost its luster a bit. I think more than anything that's because Steve Bond, while good, isn't as remarkable as the original Darby Hinton, or Ronn Moss after, who was also a step down from Hinton. I realized when I wrote the Hard Ticket to Hawaii review that I'd jumped the gun on when Sidaris moved from lessening the role of the Abilene who can't shoot straight character and making Dona Speir the lead, as it wasn't this movie, but the next one, Savage Beach. I think I've mentioned this before, but that run by Speir in her seven Sidaris films has to put her up there as one of the greatest female action leads. When you look at some of the names people generally throw out there like Milla Jovovich and Angelina Jolie, she's right up there with the number of credits, and she was doing it before them. For me I might have her top five, after Pam Grier, Cynthia Rothrock, Michelle Yeoh, and Zoe Saldana. After Speir I'd have names like Michelle Rodriguez, Jovovich, Jolie, etc. Yes, these movies are a lot of fun, and have a lot of T n' A, but that shouldn't diminish from what Speir was doing here and her role as an all-time action lead.

Obregon's hatchet men were played by Keith Cooke and Bruce Penhall. For Cooke, this was his first role before he jumps into Rothrock's China O'Brien series as Dakota. He also used his birth surname here, Hirabayashi--Cooke is his mother's maiden name. He doesn't do any martial arts in this, which is kind of too bad, considering Harold Diamond is in this, I'd love to have seen them get after it. Penhall of course would come to be known for these films, but in this first of the 8 he did, he plays a baddie. It's like the Fast and Furious movies where the baddies join the good guys in later films, only instead of the mental gymnastics required to believe that after Jason Statham's character was trying to murder Vin Diesel that that would suddenly be water under the bridge; here Sidaris just has Penhall play different characters, first Bruce Christian in the Speir films, and then Chris Cannon when the series shifts to being led by Julie Strain.

This is our second Harold Diamond film on the site, the first being when we did Hard Ticket to Hawaii. He's a fascinating specimen of the late 80s/early 90s. The hair, the voice, the shirts and jumpsuits that absolutely must be worn open, it all works so much on that level; but at the same time, he's a great martial artist, which makes him a lot of fun to watch. Especially good here was his fight scene with Dennis Alexio, which Diamond choreographed. Looking at his IMDb bio, he hasn't done much. He has 10 credits, but as far as what we'd do here, he has these two Sidaris movies, two Amir Shervan films, a Zagarino actioner, and then in 2017 he was in an Asylum joint, King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, where he plays Merlin. Interestingly enough, that was going to be the film I was going to do for their DTVC Hall of Fame induction post, not knowing Diamond was in it, but I opted for Fast and Fierce: Death Race instead after I fell behind and didn't end up doing their post until the May after. Now knowing it has Diamond makes it more intriguing.

Finally, this movie has something in common with another film released the same year, The Secret of King Mahi's Island, they both have explosives attached to a boomerang used as a weapon. Unlike the Daniels flick that uses it to blow up a helicopter, in this it's used to blow up Penhall. Was this a case of polygenesis, or was there an explosive boomerang that predated these movies as the inspiration? I thought maybe a Bond movie I've never seen may have done it, but I couldn't find anything. Also there was the DC baddie Captain Boomerang, who employed explosive boomerangs. Could Sidaris and one of the writers of The Secret of King Mahi's Island have been into comics and liked the idea of that? One element of this movie that I'm pretty sure was sui generis, was the use of Chekhov's Pacemaker. In the opening of the film we find out that baddie John Aprea has a pacemaker, and as we know, you can't mention that a character has a pacemaker in the opening unless you plan to use it at the end, which Sidaris does. How he does is another stroke of brilliance: a homing missile launched from a modified crutch.

And with that, let's wrap this up. As of right now, this is available to stream free here in the US on Tubi. Take advantage of it while you can, because last year these were all taken down. At that time, when they were all available, I watched all 12 in preparation of my podcast episode with Mitch, so when Letterboxd told me who my most watched director and actor of the year were, I got Sidaris and Obregon. So far this year Sidaris is behind Scorsese for me, 4 to 2; but Obregon is way behind guys like Adkins, Dolph, Zagarino, and Hues, especially after I did a bunch of their movies in anticipation of podcast episodes on them. It looks like I need to binge another complete series to get them both back up there.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095867

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

Hard Ticket to Hawaii (1987)

In March of 2021 I did a podcast episode with Mitch from the Video Vacuum on Dallas Connection, but really it was on all the Sidaris LETHAL Ladies movies. Since then I've been trying to get all of those films reviewed here on the site, which brings us now to this gem. In addition to us and Mitch, our friends Todd Gaines at Bulletproof action and RobotGEEK's Cult Cinema, have covered this.

Hard Ticket to Hawaii is kind of a sequel to Malibu Express, only now we have Cody's cousin Rowdy (Ronn Moss), and he works for the DEA with Donna (Donna Speir) and Jade (Harold Diamond). When Speir and her close friend, Taryn (Hope Marie Carlton), come across some stolen diamonds, they open up a world of hurt for local drug kingpin Seth Romero (Rodrigo Obregon), and he wants revenge. He takes their friend and fellow DEA agent, Edy (Cynthia Brimhall) hostage, and now it's up to Rowdy and crew to go in and get her out. At the same time, Donna and Taryn were transporting a large snake that got loose, and said snake has been contaminated with cancer. With all this happening, when will our heroes find time for topless hot tub moments and love scenes?

This film is simply fantastic. What else is there to say? Like I don't even know if that description does the movie justice, but by the same token, if you haven't seen this, I don't know how much I want to tell you and risk ruining you experiencing it all organically. It has a mix of serious and tongue-in-cheek that few films are able to pull off well, but Sidaris just gets it, and his cast does too. The one nit you may pick is that a lot of the backstory is delivered in dialog. "You're did this, this, and this some time in the past." "But do you remember when you did this, this, and this?" The thing is though, we always say, don't let the plot get in the way of the action, and I'd rather a line of dialog do what a five (or, gasp, ten!) minute scene would do so we get more people getting blown up with rocket launchers, more topless hot tub scenes, and more dirt bikes driving through walls of houses. This is the pure 80s Sidaris gem you came for.

While this is technically the sequel to Malibu Express, this is really the one that sets the stage for what the next ten of Sidaris's LETHAL Ladies movies will be; only after this one, the Abilene who can't shoot character gets diminished, and Donna Speir's character becomes the lead, up until she leaves the series and Julie Strain comes in. We also get our first Rodrigo Obregon as the baddie in this one, and he sticks around for all of the next ten films--meaning he probably should get a tag on here soon too. This establishes what I understood late-night cable viewing to be growing up, and while before I revisited all of them for the podcast episode I did with Mitch I couldn't tell you one movie from another, they still had that indelible impact that played a large role in getting me here to creating this site, and I think that can't be understated. In the trivia Sidaris said he funded this with the money he made from Malibu Express so he wouldn't be beholden to a studio. We here at the DTVC always want to support indie filmmakers, but also, it means we wouldn't have had the classics we ended up with had Sidaris been forced to compromise, and for that I'm grateful.

Also according to the IMDb trivia, Donna Speir said she was intoxicated for much of the production, but that Andy and Arlene Sidaris liked what she did and offered her a chance to come back in the sequel, which led to her getting sober. That decision to bring her back also changes the tenor of these movies from standard actioners led by fun, philandering playboys, to more female-driven films which weren't the standard at that time. We talk about how so few movies we do here on the DTVC pass the Bechdel Test, but this one does--even if Hope Marie Carlton is topless in one of the scenes. There's another scene where Sidaris plays a seedy filmmaker meeting with an actress he wants to cast. She says to him "you practically raped me last night!" and he tries to gaslight her and tell her how much he likes her as a person and wants to see her succeed. Not only does it give us a glimpse of what Hollywood was almost 30 years before Me Too--I mean Sidaris sounds exactly how Weinstein sounded when he was caught on tape trying to explain away an assault on an actress when he was talking to her the next day--but it also puts these LETHAL Ladies movies into a different kind of exploitation category. Because of how ahead of their time they were as far as female action leads, maybe we should be putting Speir up there as one of the best female action leads of all time.

Anytime I'm watching a movie from the 80s, it's fun to immerse myself in the trends and fashions that were cool at that time, but it was interesting here to see a couple trends that are popular now. One, on a few occasions the women wear leggings and boots, which is pretty much standard attire nowadays. When Speir and Carlton join Moss and Diamond in storming the baddie's lair to rescue their friend, they could've been wearing the same thing today and no one would've noticed--Moss on the other hand in his Speedo would've been a bit much. Also in storming the baddie's lair, Diamond opted for a man bun to keep his hair out of his face. It's not like the modern man bun though, it was more like what an older female guest star on All in the Family would've sported. Beyond that, there was one old term that I loved hearing. When one of the baddies passes Moss and Diamond by riding a skateboard upside down on his hands, Moss says "he must be smoking some heavy doobies." I don't remember the last time I referred to a joint as a "dooby." And not only that, but "heavy doobies," Just more of why this movie is so amazing.

Finally, people may think the snake in this looks ridiculous, but to me, what looks ridiculous is when people use real snakes in movies instead of just leaving the snakes alone to be snakes in the wild; or when people in Florida need pythons as pets, then let the snakes escape, so now they're in the ecosystem trying to swallow deer and alligators. Give me all the rubber snake puppets you have as the alternative. Just like, I want CGI lions, tigers, and bears, no matter how fake they look, instead of needing the real animals on movie sets. You want to have a real cat sitting on crate like we had during the end credits of this? That works for me. You need to have a chimp playing basketball? No, leave the damn chimp alone. If Lucas can use computers to insert Hayden Christensen into the end of Return of the Jedi, we can use computers to replace animals in our movies--with Hayden Christensen? And if it's not a computer, I'm happy with the puppet snake they used here.

And with that, let's wrap this up. As of my writing this, you can get this on Tubi here in the States. It's an absolute must watch, but also with it on Tubi, it's good for a rewatch as well if you haven't seen it in a while. Finally, you can find the podcast episode Mitch and I did on Sidaris movies in the archives under the title "Dallas Connection."

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093146

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

Kickboxer: Vengeance (2016)

This is one of those ones that came out while I was on hiatus, but knew I needed to look at. I remembered it being advertised as a theatrical release, but never made it out to see it, and when I looked it up on IMDb, discovered it barely crossed a quarter of a million dollars worldwide. With all that star power, plus Van Damme being attached to it, what happened? Well, let's see if we can dive in and find out?

Kickboxer: Vengeance is a reboot of the Van Damme original, this time with Alain Moussi playing the Kurt Sloan character. After his brother, played by the late Darren Shahlavi, is killed in the ring by Tong Po when shady fight promoter Gina Carano sets up the match, Moussi vows revenge. So he goes to Thailand, gets beaten up by Tong Po, gets arrested, and then gets trained by Van Damme so he can win. Also, he meets a love interest in local police office Sara Malaku Lane, who is investigating Tong Po for a criminal operation he might be running. The question is, can Van Damme train Moussi well enough to beat the seemingly unbeatable Tong Po?

What do you think happened? Paint-by-numbers doesn't begin to describe this, and I guess for what it was, it wasn't bad. I really liked Van Damme as the trainer, that was probably the major standout. Beyond that, I was left wondering why this was made at all, because it didn't attempt to cover any new territory from the original. On the other hand, at a compact 90 minutes, it is good for a standard DTV fight film--the thing is, you could have called it any number of titles and it would've stood out as a solid Van Damme flick. I think that may be why this didn't do so hot in the theater, people probably looked at it and thought "I don't know who this Moussi guy is, and I don't get why Bautista is Tong Po, and I have the original Kickboxer on DVD, why don't I just watch that and not pay the exorbitant theater prices?" Beyond the fact that it has names in it, there isn't much to distinguish it from the Sasha Mitchell/Albert Pyun sequels, which I don't think Van Damme was going for when he signed on for this.

Van Damme as our film's one Hall of Famer does show up in a big way as the trainer. This is the problem though that you have when introducing us to someone new: the established name tends to overshadow them. It seems like a great idea at the time--make Van Damme the trainer--but when he's killing it in every scene while Moussi's trying to establish himself, it's hard for the audience to not just say "why isn't Van Damme training to fight Bautista?" I guess too there's the issue that Van Damme's character was killed off in the Pyun part two, so maybe they were afraid we'd cry foul if they brought him back when he was supposed to be dead and make a Universal Soldier style sequel. The thing is though, the two John Hyams sequels after that one did cover new territory, especially the second one; and Scott Adkins was established enough to be able to carry it and not be overshadowed by another great Van Damme performance. I read in the IMDb trivia that Van Damme wasn't even the original choice, it was supposed to be Tony Jaa, which is even crazier. At least with Van Damme we can say "you've done so many martial arts movies, we're okay with you being the trainer," but with Jaa all we would've thought is "why aren't you fighting Tong Po?"

I think the thing that would have made this something better and different would have been casting Gina Carano in the lead instead. That's doing something new with it. Carano is trained in Muay Thai, so she'd fit, and casting a female in the lead, especially one with the established star power of Carano, would take this franchise into the 21st century. Not only that, but her name would've gotten people into the theaters to see this. I'm not saying I don't like Moussi, on the contrary I think he's great, but he's also safe, and this is what safe got you, a standard solid Van Damme DTV flick that made a quart-million worldwide. I don't know if you'd have Carano fight Bautista, but why did we need Bautista as Tong Po anyway? Michel Qissi was only 6'2", that's plenty tall enough--actually what if Moussi had played the baddie, he's also 6'2". Now you can introduce Moussi, he takes his lumps by losing to Carano, and everyone's happy. Van Damme really took a chance with JCVD, it's a shame the people making this didn't here.

That's the problem with the binary zero-sum way we have of looking at things, if I say Carano would have been a better choice for the lead because it would have done something to push the franchise forward, it sounds like I'm saying I don't like Moussi, and that's not true. I thought he was great, and think he could be a great up-and-comer in the DTV action realm. Add him to the list after Adkins, Tony Jaa, Iko Uwais, Matt Mullins, Natalie Burn, Stu Bennett--and now it looks like Carano is doing more DTV stuff too. It's a big break for him to get this franchise, and I think it'll be interesting to see what he does from here.

Finally, it looks like this was the last feature film that Darren Shahlavi did before he passed in 2015. I said in the Pound of Flesh post that it was a shame, because he was starting to really break through. He has only a small part here, being the brother who's killed by Tong Po to spark Moussi's revenge quest. According to IMDb, Scott Adkins was originally offered this part, and he said no. The reality is, with what this turned out to be, Adkins was too big for a part like that, so it was good he turned it down; but for Shahlavi, someone still trying to get to where Adkins was, this was a step in the right direction, and it's a shame that we'll never see where the rest of the steps were going to take him. He may not have had the films or influence to merit entry into the DTVC Hall of Fame, but he is included in our Legends Who Have Left US page, so at least we've been able to honor him there.

On that note, let's wrap this up. This isn't horrible, it's good for a standard DTV fight film. It would have been nice if they did something new with it, especially since they're rebooting a franchise as iconic as Kickboxer, and the fact that they didn't has me wondering why they decided to reboot it at all; but take the name away and forget it's a reboot of something, and it works. Also, getting it on Netflix where I'm paying less per month to stream all their films as opposed to paying more than that for one movie ticket to see it in theater makes me a bit more forgiving.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3082898