Three Days to a Kill (1992)

We have a bad tendency of losing Fred Williamson for long stretches here at the DTVC, but with his last post coming back in October, I don't know if this stretch is that bad. For example, Seagal went from September to January between posts, so October to February is almost the same thing. Anyway, I saw this was on YouTube, it was directed by Williamson as well, and had some other great names, like Bo Svenson, Chuck Connors, and Henry Silva. In addition to us, our friends Ty and Brett at Comeuppance have covered this too--almost a year to the day that we're writing this one--so you can go there to see what they thought.

Three Days to a Kill is not a movie where Steven Seagal plays an ex-CIA or whatever in Eastern Europe, but instead is about a US ambassador getting kidnapped ahead of a big speech, and Navy big wig Chuck Connors calling in ex-CIA guy in Chicago Fred Williamson to get the ambassador back. Williamson needs a demolition expert if he's going to do this right--whatever this is--so he has bank robber Bo Svenson sprung from prison so he can help with the job. Turns out the guy holding the ambassador hostage is none other than drug cartel head Henry Silva. What is his connection to sexy dancer Yolanda (or as Williamson calls her, "Yo-LANN-da")? And can they trust her?

 

It's difficult to say how much we have here beyond Williamson and some of the other cast members, but the question is, how much does it matter? No one props ups scenes on his mere presence alone the way Williamson does, and we get enough of him here for that to really count. Yes, the plot is uneven with some dead spots in the middle, and the way they treat Yolanda's character at the end is pretty rough; but when you're coming for a late 80s/early 90s Williamson flick, this has enough of what you want to make it work. I feel like in this day and age, that counts for a lot.

Beyond the fact that this is 22 films for Williamson now at the DTVC, this is also the eighth film directed by him that we've covered here. While that still puts him behind a lot of directors here on the site, other than Albert Pyun, he's not behind many of them by a lot. That for me is one of the biggest things about him, it's not just that he makes the movie often by just being in it, often he's the one making the movie, which is a reason why he's one of the greatest DTV stars ever. If you check him out on Tubi, he has a ton of stuff on there, so not only do I not have any excuse to get him in more posts, but no one has any excuse--at least not here in the US--to not catch more of his films.

 

Initially I thought this was my first Chuck Connors film on here, and I had this whole thing lined up about how I watched The Rifleman with my dad growing up, but it turns out he was on here before in Last Flight to Hell with Reb Brown, and I covered all of those points then--including his short stint with the Boston Celtics. If you look at his bio, he has a lot of DTV films around this time, many of which haven't been covered by us, but have by our friends at Comeuppance and The Video Vacuum. Unfortunately not as many of them are available on Tubi or YouTube, so I need to find some way of tracking them down. I don't know if I'd say Connors is good in this, but what does good or bad look like when it's Chuck Connors in a Fred Williamson late 80s/early 90s DTV flick? Exactly, we're just happy he's there.

Two other big names in this, Bo Svenson and Henry Silva, have made a couple appearances here on the site before, but for some reason neither had been tagged like Chuck Connors had. I'm not really sure what prompts me to tag an actor or not when I'm writing a post. Often if it's just their first post, I won't tag them, even if they're really big--which doesn't explain Chuck Connors, but I didn't say it had to make sense. Both of these guys, like Connors, had a pretty prolific late 80s/early 90s DTV run that I haven't really scratched the surface on yet. I think, though, that the appearances in these movies by guys like this was another reason why we enjoyed them so much. They added an extra flavor to the proceedings that bolstered the films' charm. While many of the issues plaguing modern DTV are things we can blame the industry on, I think this is one they can't do anything about. In the late 80s/early 90s, we had a cadre of great actors from the past who came into these films and delivered professional performances. Svenson isn't as old as the others, so he's more in the Williamson category; but guys like Connors, Silva, Ernest Borgnine, Charles Bronson, and Klaus Kinski--among many others--could be counted on to show up, deliver on the scenes they're in, and remind us of who they were in the older stuff we remembered seeing them in as we were growing up. The equivalents today would be a Bruce Willis or a Robert De Niro, but it doesn't seem to work the same with them as it did with these guys back then. Is it really just that those older guys cared more?

 

Finally, one thing I love about a Williamson-directed film, is when he includes shots like these of the local area he's shooting in. How do you not love the idea of 2 all beef hot dogs with trimmings, hot tamale, and a 12 oz. soda for $2.79? I mean, even if you're a vegetarian, the concept still has to be great, right? The thing is though, this is just a special, you can't just get this every day--though the permanence of the sign leads us to believe differently--which makes me wonder what this normally would set us back? $3.79? $4.79? It has to be a ".79" so the left digit bias kicks in. "What, you want $3 for 2 all beef hot dogs, with trimmings, hot tamale, and a 12 oz. soda? Sorry, that's a little too rich for my blood." But set it at $2.79, and I think, not only is that not $3, but significantly cheaper than $3, so when I pass that sign, say while I'm hip-deep in a chase scene, I'm sufficiently swayed to stop in and try them out for lunch.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Currently this is only on YouTube, which means you can watch it, but it really needs to be on one of the major streaming sites with a higher-quality version. This isn't anything that would make a Williamson top five list, but it's a fun time between him and the rest of the cast involved.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101253

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

 

 

 

 

South Beach (1993)

This was another I picked up from my local record store, along with Undercurrent, and like Undercurrent, it was only $.49. How do you not love that, especially for a flick with DTVC Hall of Famers Gary Busey and Fred Williamson? It's because it stars the latter that I decided to post on it this week, because this is our Super Bowl XLVI week, and Mr. Williamson was in the very first Super Bowl, where his Chiefs lost to the Packers.

South Beach has Williamson as former NFL great and former cop Mack Derringer. He and his former NFL buddies Gary Busey and Peter Fonda run a private detective agency-- or maybe just Williamson is the PI, and Fonda runs a bar, and Busey does whatever, I'm not sure. Anyway, someone is out to get his ex-wife (Vanity), and someone else has set him up for murder, which gets him in hot water with the law, including old college buddy and Miami police detective Robert Forster, and with mob boss Henry Silva. Will Williamson put the pieces of this deadly puzzle together before his time's up?



For the most part this is a yawner that's saved by the great cast, which includes all the people I mentioned above, plus Frank Pesce and Isabel Sanford (Louise Jefferson). The end though is a bit much, all over the place and not sure where it wants to wrap up. We're talking about a classic Kafka-esque Noir-ish actioner, where Williamson is getting all kinds of screwed over, and has no idea who is doing it or why. Plus, a lot of it is Williamson loving him some Williamson, which is kind of fun in spots, but also gets a bit much in others. Overall, it's a matter of how much you like these guys and how much you want to see them-- and how cheap you can find this, because fifty cents makes a movie much more palatable.

We might as well start with The Hammer, since this is Super Bowl week, and he did play in the first one. If you don't know the story surrounding that, he bragged about how he'd crush the Packers wide-outs with his patented Hammer, only to be knocked out himself in the fourth quarter of the game by a knee from the Packers running back. In this movie, he makes himself younger, and a better player than he was-- at least that's what it seems like. The one thing we do know is, he's had a much longer and more prolific career as an actor, and for that we're thankful, because he's given us a lot of great performances.



After I did Peacemaker, I found out just how many readers loved them some Robert Forster, so I figured I'd devote an entire paragraph to him. He unfortunately doesn't have a big role in this, appearing more at the beginning, then a little bit at the end. I think for Forster fans that'll be disappointing, because he's in it enough early to make you think he has a bigger part. Anyway, hopefully this'll just whet your appetite, because I plan to have more Forster up this year. I'm a big fan too.

Busey is pretty solid here, but as you can imagine, with him not mentioned until the sixth paragraph, that this isn't totally Abusive. Though he's on the cover, and this starts off like it's going to be a Williamson/Busey buddy picture, he disappears for a chunk of the middle. In a way, Peter Fonda steps in as Busey's surrogate, because the two seldom appear together on-screen. What I love most about Peter Fonda's part: the mustache and ponytail. Then we have the always hot Vanity as Williamson's ex. She plays a phone sex operator who is harassed by killer. Finally, how do you not love Louis Jefferson? She plays Williamson's mother. What a coup it was for him to pull that off.



Wanna know the one thing I dislike most about the Super Bowl? The commercials. I dislike commercials in general, but this time of year, when something so uncelebrate-able is celebrated, it makes me nauseous. The worst of the bunch are definitely the beer commercials. Other than a few exceptions-- Dos Equis, Keystone Light, Sam Adams-- most national chains have the most disturbing abominations ever created. That's why I drink PBR. Have you ever seen a PBR ad talking about your "man card"? Ever seen a can of PBR that changes color when it's cold? Ever heard PBR tell you that you aren't a real football fan unless you drink their beer? Not a chance. PBR doesn't have any commercials, and for that reason alone, I'll be drinking them while watching my Pats this Sunday.

All right, done with that rant. At fifty cents, this isn't a bad deal, but even then it's a stretch. Cool cast, which makes this a better time than it otherwise would've been, but not quite good enough in my book. Save this for your thrift store/bargain bin find.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104997/

Bulletproof (1988)

"Matt, say it ain't so! An Adam Sandler buddy pic on the DTVC? It's not April 1st, is it? Did someone hack your Blogger account?" Nope, it's me here, you just have the wrong Bulletproof. This is one that features DTVC Hall of Famer Gary Busey and DTVC fave baddie William Smith. We're gonna be okay, I have no plan to sell you out for the short end cash reviewing bad Adam Sandler and Rob Schneider comedies. Also, our buddy Ty at Comeuppance Reviews has covered this one-- not the Sandler one either.

Bulletproof stars Busey as McBain, a crazy, fly-by-the-seat-of-his-pants police officer that makes his partner guzzle Pepto and his chief swear up a storm. Anyway, for some convoluted reason, the US military has purposefully sent a high-tech tank to Mexico to be captured by insurgents, along with the troops guarding it, one of whom is Busey's old flame-- Darlanne Fluegel, not LQ Jones, though the latter would've been awesome--, and it's with her capture that Army intelligence recruits Busey back out of non-active duty to be a "one-man suicide squad" (his words, not mine) to get them and the tank out, and destroy the insurgents.



This started off like it might be the best Busey film this side of Point Break, and then it did something unfathomable: it went away from Busey and stuck us with some boring developing story surrounding the prisoners. What? But I thought this was a too sweet Busey flick, how could you do that to me? On top of that, as the action got rolling again in the last 20 minutes or so, a good chunk of that was wasted by some crummy rigmarole about how Busey and his woman don't know how to use the tank. Come on guys, cut that shit out. It's Busey, he should just be able to drive it. Get on with things. It felt like watching a soccer game between Barcelona and Real Madrid, where I'm like "stop diving and pretending you're dead and play the damn game, you're annoying me!" This was annoying me too.

And that's a damn shame, because this had some too sweet Busey moments. First you have the opening scene. Busey up on a scaffolding telling Danny Trejo "I'm your worst nightmare butthorn!", and everything immediately after lives up to that line! The shootout, the chase, Danny Trejo throwing grenades out the back of an ice cream truck, then the explosion, and the angry police chief lecturing Busey. I was hooked. I wasn't expecting to get more LQ Jones and Darlanne Fluegel shackled in a dirty bombed out church plotting escapes and being defiant to baddie Henry Silva than I was more Gary Busey kicking ass. Then I thought we might be back in business around the hour mark, when Busey is roped to an enormous wooden cable spool, which Fluegel detonates a grenade next to, sending him rolling off into the sunset. Amazing! But then we're back to more silliness with the captured troops, followed by the annoying "we don't know how to run this thing!" when we know full well you're going to know how to run that thing. I'm sorry, but you can't give me that first scene and then mail it in for the rest. Come on Butthorn, let's get real here.



They kind of snuck William Smith in here on us. He's listed in the opening credits as "Bill Smith". Sneaky bastards. Not only that, but in his first scene he plays a Mannix villain whose partner is none other than Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa. It was so fantastic. Then, to make it more fantastic, he shows up in the end as a Russian military officer. Yes! How does someone make a movie with this level of awesome combined with such an enormous level of suck? I blame you, story writer Fred Olen Ray, I blame you.

I liked Henry Silva as the baddie, but they went too far and made his character too dark and realistic. I didn't get it. Load him up as a big time DTV baddie and let 'er rip. He was too obsessed with Darlanne Fluegel. He needed to be obsessed winning, like Charlie Sheen. I don't know what his ethnicity was supposed to be either. Arab? Italian? Korean? That part was good. Him raping Darlanne Fluegel, not so much.



I had to wrap up with "I'm your worst nightmare Butthorn!" Utterly fantastic, but when a film maker tosses something like that in, that's a lot to live up to, especially when it's at the very beginning. They spent that nickel too soon, but because they spent it so freely, we thought they had all kinds of cash, only to find that that was it, and we were stuck paying the bill. But that should in no way diminish how great a scene that was-- if only they could've built on it, as opposed to forgotten about it completely.

If you can get this cheap-- and that's very cheap, like almost free--, I'd do it for the great opening scene, and a few other great Busey moments. Overall though, it's more blah than butthorn, which is a shame, because it could've been fantastic. You decide how much it's worth it.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094813/