Ironheart (1992)

For our third DTVC Hall of Fame inductee, we have Imperial Entertainment. Another iconic opening logo that feels like comfort food when we see it now, and I picked this movie because it had said logo. It also had DTVC Hall of Famers Richard Norton and Bolo Yeung, so you gotta love that too. In addition to us, Chris the Brain at Bulletproof, and Ty and Brett at Comeuppance have covered this as well.

Ironheart isn't about a young college student who creates an Iron Man suit--though I would love if Disney+ made a series about this! It's about a highly decorated LAPD detective (Britton Lee) whose old partner takes a new gig in Portland, OR, and quickly finds himself dead after he tries to take down a criminal ring led by Milverstead (Norton) and his top henchman Ice (Bolo Yeung). Among the many criminal enterprises they're involved in, they kidnap young girls from a local nightclub, and it was while tracking one such kidnapping that Lee's partner was killed. So Lee hops in his Porsche and heads up to Portland to investigate. Will he be able to take them all down? And will he find love in the process?

I don't know if a movie has ever started with so much promise that it ultimately doesn't deliver on. The opening scene is at said club. We get this beautiful New Jack Swing song playing, performed by The U-Krew, complete with club goers doing all kinds of fantastic late 80s/early 90s dance moves in their late 80s/early 90s outfits. They follow that up with Bolo Yeung killing the cop while at the docks, but not before he takes off his coat to reveal his ripped tank top, showing off his too-sweet pecs, and not before affixing a bandana to his forehead. But then the thing grinds down. We get a training montage of Britton Lee showing his fellow officers how to throw people around and knee them in the back of the head. And then for whatever reason this LAPD detective is driving a Porsche around. Lee is a great martial artist, but his character isn't all that likeable, and when you compare that to Norton and Yeung chewing all kinds of scenery, we have ourselves a Destro Effect, and even if they were trafficking young women, I wanted to see both of them take Lee down. On the other hand, this has plenty of great moments that make it a fun time. Like when Lee's love interest (Karman Kruschke) shows up to help him, her car gets shot and stops running. Lee's like "you can't just leave it here," so he shoots it until it blows up. Later, a character named "Stevo" works as a pizza delivery driver for a company called "Hot Flash Pizza." Do they cater to menopausal women? So while it doesn't live up to the potential all-time promise of the opening scenes, it still does enough to be a fun, low-budget actioner from the early 90s.

Imperial gets into the Hall of Fame on their 34th film, so a bit of an Asylum Rule for them, but as I said in the first paragraph, that opening logo makes you feel like you're in for a fun time, which I think combined with that opening scene gave us a level of promise that maybe wasn't fair to the film overall. It should also be noted that that logo is one of many that was used for Imperial Entertainment, but it's the one that resonates most with me. As a distribution house, they were responsible for giving us a ton of classics, like Action USA and the China O'Brien films, among many others. This one doesn't reach those heights, but in 1992 it probably did sell well to video stores. Slap Bolo Yeung on the cover and any kids like me who loved him in Bloodsport and Double Impact would've been sold if we saw it on the shelves. Imperial was a big part of what made the Golden Age of DTV so great, and for that alone, they deserve entry into our Hall of Fame. We still have a lot of titles in their catalog to cover, so we'll be seeing them again soon!

Richard Norton is now on 29 movies, one away from the 30 Club, so that's something we'll try to make happen soon. His character doesn't do any martial arts, instead running in fear from our hero, which is too bad, because even if he ultimately was supposed to lose, I would've loved one good fight scene between the two. Like he always does, he gives the movie exactly what it needs, the only thing was Britton Lee isn't Cynthia Rothrock--or even Leo Fong--so while Norton is killing it as the baddie, he's going beyond propping up the film and moving into Destro Effect territory. Tack on the film's other Hall of Famer, Bolo Yeung, who is all pecs and tank tops, and Lee didn't stand a chance. But then that leaves us in a conundrum, because we want more Norton and Yeung, and instead we have Britton Lee driving around in his Porsche tracking down leads and finding love. (As an aside, I've realized that my concept of the Destro Effect isn't perfect, because Destro wasn't a full-on baddie on GI Joe. Many times though he was an antagonist to our heroes, and in that way he was so awesome that I always wanted him to beat them.)

I want to touch on the trafficking element in this. The victim is a young blond lady, played by Meagan Hughes (in her only role according to IMDb), and while I guess she wasn't held long enough for it to be a big story in the news, if there's one thing America is obsessed with, it's young, middle class white girls going missing or getting killed, especially blond ones. Any legitimate criminal enterprise, especially one as extensive as Milverstead's, would've known that and wouldn't have wanted that kind of heat. Within the first couple days it would've been a leading story on local Portland news, and by the end of the week it would've been picked up nationally. Forget Britton Lee driving around in his Porsche doing dogged detective work and finding love, the FBI would've been called in because the publicity would've been so huge. CNN probably would've been doing 24-hour news coverage too. Her boyfriend, poor Stevo (Rob Buckmaster), might have even been a suspect, until people started looking for the mysterious young man who took Cindy away from the club. You don't get to be where Milverstead is by attracting that kind of heat. I will say though that I liked the idea of the trafficking being a kind of nod to the practice of Shanghaiing that was huge in Portland in the 19th century; what I didn't like though was this idea that Cindy was partly to blame because she got into a car with someone she didn't know. Yes, we shouldn't be getting into cars with people we don't know, but that doesn't mean someone has the right to kidnap you and sell you into slavery. It's like the idea of someone leaving something in their car and it getting broken into. Yes, you maybe you shouldn't leave anything of value in your car, but that doesn't give people the right to break in and steal it.

Finally, look at that picture above. On his way to Portland Lee stopped at a bar, which also rented movies? Can you imagine? I've been to Portland one time, when I visited my sister in Seattle in 2009, we did a day trip down there. It was every bit the Portlandia depiction of it, which does make me wonder how MAGAs have been able to perpetuate this idea that it's this lawless wasteland that requires National Guard troops to bring it under control. Maybe Powell's Books is dangerous because it sells too many books at good prices, and Republicans don't like people to be learned? There's also the Eastern Oregon MAGA faction that wishes they could join Idaho, until they realize all the privilege's they get from Oregon's progressive government don't exist in Idaho's MAGA "utopia." Or maybe it's exactly as Fred Armisen said, "the dream of the 90s is alive in Portland," and for MAGA types the 90s was the worst time, because in their mind it was all playing the sax and dancing to Fleetwood Mac and hot chicks going to Lilith Fair that wouldn't give them the time of day--which is kind of crazy when you consider Clinton was just Reagan with a D after his name, he's the reason music sucks now, the reason why the Kimmel thing was able to happen, the reason the late 2000s economic crisis happened, the reason people in America who are struggling have a harder time getting assistance, and the reason marriage equality didn't happen sooner--plus he cheated on his wife with a much younger woman, and those MAGA-types love that kind of thing. But as much as Portland needs our support now, they're also attacking this situation as only they can, by protesting in inflatable animal suits, while "heroic" police officers spray mace into the ventilation holes--they don't give us that kind of Copaganda on Law and Order, do they? These are rough times here in America, but Portland staying Portland is just the kind of thing we need to maintain the fight. Here's to you Portland, keep being you!

And with that, let's wrap this up. Currently you can stream this free on Fawesome here in the States, plus MVD has a Blu-ray, if you can believe that. I don't know that you need to buy the Blu-ray, but it might be a fun addition to your physical media collection. And congratulations to Imperial Entertainment on their induction into the Hall of Fame! It is much deserved.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104530

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

Pushed to the Limit (1992)

I was looking to get some more Mimi Lesseos on the site, and Tubi kept suggesting this one to me, so I figured why not make it happen. In addition to us, Matt Spector at Bulletproof, Mitch at the Video Vacuum, and David Wain at The Schlock Pit have covered this too.

Pushed to the Limit stars Lesseos (who also wrote and produced) as Magnificent Mimi, a star wrestler whose brother (Greg Ostrin) is killed and husband (Michael M. Foley) is seriously wounded by gangster Harry Lee (Eidan Hanzei). To get revenge, she has her husband's sensei Vern (Verrel Reed) train her to fight in Lee's Kumite--that's right, we got a Kumite baby! Only this is more of an evergreen, nightly Kumite, as opposed to a yearly tournament, at least as far as I can tell. Anyway, Lee's champion fighter, Inga, after a successful career as a dancer in Russell Mulcahy-directed 80s music videos, is having trouble finding work in the 90s, so she's changed careers and is now breaking ladies' backs and necks in the ring--though she's kept her make-up from those old videos. Will Mimi defeat Inga and Lee, and bring down Lee's criminal empire?

This definitely borders on what the guys at Comeuppance would call a "That Movie," and by that they mean a Samurai Cop or a Miami Connection. A lot of bad dialog, scenes that don't seem to fit, and an opening credit sequence that looks like The Pod People on MST3K. The difference I think though is Lesseos is a great lead, which keeps the schlock, low-budget elements fun, but also elevates this slightly above those other "That Movies." Another element the guys at Comeuppance always talk about is the Punchfighter, and this Kumite has all of those elements, only in addition to people holding wads of cash, we also have these elderly extended reach claw-like devices that they used to give and take money from the upper levels of the fighting arena. How they kept track of who bet on who is beyond me, I just liked the idea of those devices for myself so I wouldn't need to get on a chair to reach the upper shelves of my cabinets. There are elements of the movie that don't work though. It takes us about a half-hour until we even get mention of a Kumite, and before that, we get introduced to a bunch of Mimi's family members who play no role in the film and only serve to confuse us. Some of the darker sequences are hard to follow, and some of the fights were kind of all over the place and hard to get a consistent look at, which could be headache inducing if you're watching this on a tablet like I was. When the fights were shot well though, they were a fun mix of traditional martial arts with professional wrestling moves, and Lesseos really carried off the fights she was in. Also, I loved the Kumite set, it was like something out of a Fred Olen Ray sci-fi exploitation flick, and the juxtaposition of that kind of T n' A with the fighters here in hot Lycra spandex, but kicking ass and taking names, turned that exploitation on its ear. I think for most of the people reading this, you're going to have a fun time, especially if you're streaming for free, or if you find it cheap in the wild on VHS.

"She's a woman on the 90s." She certainly is, and the movie does a great job of positioning Lesseo's character as a modern woman trying to carve out her own career, versus Inga, an 80s throwback with her hair and make-up, trying to fight the calendar. This is the first of four films Lesseos made between 1992 and 1995, the third of which, Streets of Rage, we've also covered on the site, and while I didn't like this one as much as that one, Lesseos has a great presence and is enjoyable to watch. It made me wonder why she only did these four, and in looking at The Schlock Pit review, David Wain mentioned that she tried to make her movies on her own, which might explain it. For funding on this one, it said she had a $600,000 outside investment, and then funded the rest herself, in part through extreme wrestling matches she did in Japan. She said when she tried to go the more traditional route, filmmakers just wanted her fighting in her bikini, which I get would be annoying for her--only now we see with her new cover for this film, she's in a bikini. It's a shame though, because Lesseos should've had like 20 movies from the early 90s to the early 2000s, just a bunch of films like this where she's beating the crap out of people with the occasional scene interspersed with her training or out at a fancy dinner. I get a shady producer wanting to see her in a bikini, and I also get why she would've said no to that, but we as an audience are the ones who missed out.

We've seen our share of Kumites here at the DTVC. There were the Bloodsport sequels, where we had "The Next Kumite" in part 2, what I'd call "the Reboot Kumite" run by John Rhys-Davies in part 3, and then our first look at a "Dark Kumite," run by Ben Franklin in a prison in part 4. We also had a "Lady Kumite" with Lady Bloodfight, starring Amy Johnston. And then recently, on episode 202 of the DTVC Podcast, Ty and I looked at The Last Kumite, which I took "last" to be not so much "final," but rather "the most recent," because I feel like as long as there are action movies, we'll always have Kumites. This independent Kumite run by the baddie is a mix of the "Lady Kumite"--even though there are men's fights too, so it's like there's a men's and women's division--and the "Dark Kumite," because it is pretty dark. It's also a "Nightly Kumite," which is something we haven't seen yet, usually Kumites are yearly affairs. In my Bloodsport 3 post I suggested a Bloodsport 5 be a Colombian Kumite, where the hero has to fight King from Tekken. I was trying to think of others. What about a "Christmas Kumite"? Like it's a mix between a Hallmark Christmas movie and a Kumite? We could even use Amy Johnston as a young woman who left her hometown, made it big in the city, then returned home for Christmas, only to get roped into the local Kumite, plus find out she really loves her old high school boyfriend, played by any number of lantern-jawed Canadian actors. We could have Wincott hosting it for the full Canadian effect. I think you're picking up what I'm putting down.

You may (or may not) have noticed a new tag, "Chinatown." I decided to start tagging them, after we saw the LA one again. We only have 7 tagged, and of those 7, LA has come up a few times. Other Chinatowns include New York, Tokyo, Melbourne, Australia, and Manila in the Philippines. Hopefully we'll see more--plus I may have more that I haven't reviews found, I only did a search for the term "Chinatown" on my blog. We also had another McDonald's, now 13. I believe we've seen this one before too, it's the one on the Vegas Strip, which Lesseos passes while getting a ride in a limo to a dance gig she has there. I recently had McDonald's while I was at Union Station in DC waiting for my train back to Philly. I told myself I wasn't going to do it, but I couldn't help myself as I passed by, and needed to get a couple double cheeseburgers. It is interesting to think, with 13 posts, that almost 1% of all the films I've reviewed on the site have had a McDonald's in them.

Finally, look at how our baddie is holding his glass of champagne. What are you doing? You're making it warm holding it like that! Do you like warm champagne? He should be holding it by the stem of the glass, instead of the bowl, because the warmth of our hands warms the champagne if we old it like that. What's the point of even keeping it on ice in that bucket, if he's just going to warm it in his hand? I'm getting sick at the thought of warm champagne just looking at that. If you've seen this film before, you might be reading this rant and thinking "Matt, you're upset at how the baddie is holding his champagne, but you're okay with the completely out of nowhere way he suggested he and Lesseos go out to dinner in the previous scene?" That is a great point, in the scene before this, Lesseos finds out her friend is fighting Inga in Lee's Kumite, so she pleads with Lee to cancel the bout, only to have Lee say "let's discuss this over dinner." Wait what? Why? But I guess we needed this scene to establish just how bad our baddie is--I mean, it doesn't get more villainous than enjoying warm champagne!

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently stream this on Tubi and Plex here in the States. Lesseos delivers another fun 90s actions. It's rough in spots, and very low-budget, but it'll get you where you need to go, which I think is worth the stream.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110918 

And if you haven't yet, check out my newest book, Nadia and Aidan, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Showdown (1993)

This has been sitting my Tubi queue for a while now, and I knew I needed to get more Billy Blanks on the site, so it seemed like a no-brainer. What I didn't expect was a backdoor 30 Club induction as well--more on that later in the post. In addition to us, Chris the Brain at Bulletproof, Ty and Brett at Comeuppance, Karl Brezdin at Fist of the B-List, and RobotGEEK's Cult Cinema have all covered this as well.

Showdown has Billy Blanks as a police officer who's called to break up a teenage house party, only to find Patrick Kilpatrick and his brother terrorizing people there. When they attack Blanks, he accidentally kills the brother, causing him to quit the force, and Kilpatrick to swear revenge. Cut to seven years later, and Blanks is working as a janitor at a worst of the worst high school--the kind where they clean the eyeballs up at the end of the night--where young newcomer Ken (Kenn Scott) is terrorized by a gang of martial arts kids led by Tom (Ken McLeod) because Ken talked to Tom's girlfriend, Christine Taylor. Turns out Kilpatrick and Linda Dona are also running an illegal fight ring with these teenage boys. That's enough for Billy Blanks to train Ken and take down Kilpatrick and company.

This is as fun as a 1993 Karate Kid rip-off should be. Blanks is fantastic as the sensei, and the situation that causes him to leave the force is believable enough. Patrick Kilpatrick is great in the Martin Kove role, though more evil and over the top (Stallone style) as a DTV Karate Kid rip-off requires. Then we have our hero, Kenn Marx, who was 25 playing 16 but looks even older than 25, which is sounds great enough, until you factor in that he's opposite Ken McLeod who is 31 playing 16, so they use all manner of Chess King outfits to try to make him look younger--also good to note that he played a college student in College Kickboxers two years earlier, so I guess if that trend of him playing younger roles continued, there's a 1995 film out there where he plays a 13-year-old? From there though we round out the cast with more familiar names, like Brion James as the assistant principal, John Asher (aka Wyatt from the Weird Science TV show on the USA Network) as the high school friend, DTVC favorite James Lew as one of Billy Blanks's attackers, and then the aforementioned Christine Taylor as Tom's girlfriend, fresh off her stint on Hey, Dude, and two years removed from her breakout role--Marilyn Munster on the TV movie Here Comes the Munsters--which I just found out was directed by Robert Ginty--yes, that Robert Ginty! With all this, I think what works best about this movie is it doesn't try to be more than it is, and I think part of the reason for that is it's directed by Robert Radler, who also directed the first two Best of the Best films and the third and fourth Substitute films. This is the fun 90s Karate Kid DTV rip-off you came for. 

We're now at 11 films for Billy Blanks on the site, which doesn't sound like a lot, but we also don't have many more left to review for him either. If you look at the date, 1993, Tae-Bo took off only three years later, which would make sense that he'd focus on that, but I don't think he picked Tae-Bo over DTV movies, I think he picked it because he wasn't getting the roles he wanted in DTV films. Michael Jai White said in a Vlad TV interview that a producer once told him "I wish there was a white you," meaning "I love your skills, but I can't cast you in leads because of the color of your skin." You'd have to imagine Blanks was dealing with the same thing, and once he did make it big with Tae-Bo, when those same people who wouldn't cast him before came calling, he probably didn't return their calls. Another thing I hadn't considered was if something happened between him and Jalal Merhi, because he doesn't make another film with him after 1995's Expect No Mercy until they reunited for The Circuit TV series in 2020. We know from Cynthia Rothrock's YouTube channel that Merhi wasn't always great about paying on time, so maybe Blanks got tired of it? Those are just my guesses, and maybe it was a combination of factors, but I think it explains why someone as talented as he is drops off not long after this. It's a shame, because we as the audience lose out when this kind of thing happens, but at least we have the films of his we do, including this one. A Hall of Fame induction is probably long overdue for him, so expect that this October--and this would've been a great induction post, so now I need to find something else for him!

Speaking of the Hall of Fame, you may be familiar with The Asylum Rule for inductions, which states that anyone who's in the 30 Club is automatically inducted. We've only invoked it that one time, for The Asylum, because we try to preemptively get people in before that--for example, Danny Trejo's induction post was also his 30 Club entry. That brings us here, to this review, where I discovered that Imperial Entertainment didn't have a tag. When I went back and retroactively added it, I saw that they had 29 films--Mean Guns was posted twice, so they had 30 tags. That makes this their 30th film, and as such gains them entry into the 30 Club. So I guess we now have two of our October Hall of Fame inductions set, and it's only February. I was surprised that I hadn't tagged them already, because that opening animation is a thing of beauty, almost as nice as Cannon or PM's. Like those others, it was a sign that you were in for a good time, evoking a comfort food kind of feeling, like smelling McDonald's fries from one of their establishments five miles away. And like that McDonald's, sometimes the person working the fryer was having a bad day, or maybe you got the last order from that batch before they started a new one, but at least it did the job, like Imperial's films, whether they were the cinematic equivalent of a piping hot order of fries or a limp, lukewarm last-of-the-batch order, they got you to the church on time. In this modern age of 8 animations before we get to our movie, each as unrecognizable as the one before it, it's nice that we have access to Imperial's films on places like Tubi.

Out of everyone else, James Lew, who only has one scene when he's part of the gang that attacks Billy Blanks, has the most films on the site, now with 18. It was kinda too bad that it was only that scene, because he and Blanks are good. Once they realized they had Lew, they should've worked in some random fights between him and Blanks throughout the rest of the film, like maybe he holds up a convenience store Blanks is in. If that scene would be too expensive to shot, what if Lew holds up a kid's lemonade stand? After Lew, we have Brion James with his 15th film. In this role, he's a goofy assistant principal who's trying to maintain some sense of control over the school, like Kevin Tighe in Road House before he decides to call in Dalton. In one scene we see that he's been collecting cigarettes he's confiscated from students so he can smoke them himself. Beyond how great a racket that is, is there another actor who could pull that kind of thing off better than him? Finally, Mr. Kilpatrick as our Martin Kove character now has 11 films on the site. I saw that before this he only had one tag, because I'd only tagged him for Best of the Best II and nothing else. I've corrected that, but even 11 seems low. I think that's because a lot of DTV films employ a Patrick Kilpatrick-esque baddie in their films, so it feels like he was in things that he wasn't. I don't think it's because they couldn't afford him, I think it's because he does so much, he's probably not always easy to find available.

Boom mic, big time. And it just hovers there too, like someone's dog or cat moseying into the frame when they're on a zoom call for work. On the one hand, I want to forgive this and say maybe they didn't plan on releasing a widescreen cut, so they figured the stuff on the left wouldn't be in the final version of the film. I'd buy that, except IMDb only lists the 1:85:1 aspect ratio, and the mic is right above Ken McLeod's head, and I feel like they intended to have him in the shot. Speaking of IMDb, in the goofs section people mention that a stack of books that gets knocked over in one shot is magically restacked in the next, that a folder that was on a table in one shot is magically being held in someone's arm in the next, and that "Selina, KS" was mispronounced, but they all missed the boom mic? Imagine being that pedantic that you're concerned about a stack of books, but you miss a boom mic that was in the shot for the entire scene! I guess when you crowdsource information the way IMDb does, that's the crowd you're sourcing it from.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently stream this on Tubi, Freevee, Plex, and myriad other free streamers here in the States. If you haven't seen this before, it's a fun time. It knows it's a 90s DTV Karate Kid rip-off, it doesn't try to be anything more, and in the process is exactly what you want. 

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111174

And if you haven't yet, check out my newest book, Nadia and Aidan, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

 

Action U.S.A. (1989)

Back in January we had Jon Cross from The After Movie Diner and Miscellaneous Plumbing Fixtures on the podcast to discuss this gem. It was a great conversation and well worth checking out. I had been meaning to cover this for a long time, so it was good to finally make it happen, and now we're making it happen on the site too. In addition to us, Ty and Brett at Comeuppance, Fred the Wolf at Full Moon Movies, and Chris the Brain at Bulletproof action have covered this.

Action U.S.A. follows a woman named Carmen (Barri Murphy) whose boyfriend is killed by some baddies looking for the diamonds he stole. That's when two FBI agents, Osborn and McKinnon (Gregory Scott Cummins and William Hubbard Knight), come to her rescue, as they've been tasked with finding the diamonds too. In response head baddie Cameron Mitchell hires famed assassin Ross Hagen to take the girl out and get the diamonds back. Really, none of this plot matters, it's just about how many awesome stunts we can cram into the film.

And do they ever cram the stunts in. This is 90 minutes of pure late 80s action. It starts with a car chasing a helicopter with a man hanging out of it through the city streets of Waco, TX. That chase takes us through various stunts before the helicopter gets ditched, we resume with two cars, and it ends with the boyfriend and our heroine flying over a school bus, and the guys chasing them flying through a camper. And that's just the beginning! The thing is, this film doesn't need a plot, but the fact that it has one and it makes any sense at all is amazing unto itself. On the podcast, Jon said every five years or so we should just give some stuntfolk a bunch of money and set them down in Texas with some equipment and let them have at it, and after seeing the result in this film, I couldn't agree more. 

One of the funnier aspects of this is how the heroes, especially Gregory Scott Cummins's character, aren't that good at what they do. Usually the hero is an expert, like a weapon who is unleashed on the baddies. Here though, Cummins and Knight are constantly getting beaten up, losing shootouts, losing the baddies. Cummins at one point gets caught by Ross Hagen and his men--which included the great Hoke Howell--and is just beaten up continuously; or there's a scene where the guys go into a good ol' boys bar, and the film makes light of the fact that Knight, being black, isn't exactly welcome there, so he gets tossed through some cedar lattice by the patrons. The thing is though, this isn't played overtly like a Frank Drebin or something, it's more something you start to realize gradually as you're watching the film, which makes it all the better.

The number of great B-movie names in this is fantastic too. Gregory Scott Cummins, who usually is a baddie or heavy, is fun as the hero. He seems to get exactly what the filmmakers are going for with his part, and he delivers. As a MSTie I'm always a fan of seeing Ross Hagen in anything, but here he cuts a particularly interesting figure. When Hoke Howell and his partner pick him up at the airport, he arrives in a personal aircraft that's so small he can literally lift up the back and tow it where he wants to park it. He's also in this ridiculous cowboy get up, which he says he's wearing to blend in with the locals. Then we have William Smith as Cummins and Knight's boss. As Jon said in the pod, if you have a B-movie actor you're a fan of, chances are he's been chewed out by William Smith from behind a desk, and that's exactly the part he's playing here, the admonitions to the guys under him sufficiently gravelly. Finally there's Cameron Mitchell, he who never met a sit-down role he didn't love, here he sits in a hot tub or a couch, mostly complaining to people on the phone. It's all the accoutrements that make an 80s movie great, you just feel like you're where you should be when you're watching it.

Then there's the stunts, which are next level. When we see the guys at a gas station, and there's a big storage tank in the background, we know it's only a matter of time before that goes up, but yet they still manage to do it in a way that isn't perfunctory or pedestrian. The plot is a vehicle to get us from one stunt scene to the next: how can we put the characters in a circumstance that allows us to blow something up, set someone on fire, or throw someone out of a building? This is how action is supposed to be. When we see "action" listed as the genre on the tin, this is what we hope for, and seldom get, at least to this level. That's okay though, they can't all be this awesome, but they could all be closer, right? It feels like the filmmakers had a clock in their head as they wrote the script, "oh, we've had too many consecutive pages of dialog, we need to insert an action sequence here." But even then, a chase scene isn't just a chase scene, it's a pace car running off the road and through a house, which causes the house to explode. Why not, right? Just set up the IV and pump this directly into my veins.

 

Finally, as a certified English as a second language teacher, it's interesting to note that when this came out in the late 80s, we still needed to put periods between the letters in an acronym. Now it's standard to write acronyms without them, but I guess because this film was made when we did, we couldn't go back and Lucas the title to make it fit the modern standard, so we still have the periods. I was trying to think of other standards in English that have changed like that, and one that comes to mind is double-spacing before a new sentence. That one's even more recent, because if you look at my older posts, they all have the double-space after the period, etc. I think I may have held onto that standard longer than it was considered standard, and with my first novel, I had to go back and delete the second space before self-publishing it. It was an arduous process, and now I just single-space all the time.

And with that, let's wrap this up. In the States this is available for free on Tubi. That's a great way to see it, but this is also one of those greats that's worth adding to your collection as well, and Vinegar Syndrome has a great version. This is the 80s action you came for. Also the podcast episode is in the archives, episode 91, so definitely check that out when you get a chance, Jon and I have a great conversation.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096757

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

Angel of Fury aka Triple Cross (1990)

With Cynthia Rothrock's birthday coming up on March 8th, I figured we'd review a movie in celebration, and this is one that's been on my to watch list for some time. How long you ask? When Ty and Brett at Comeuppance reviewed it in 2010, I said then that it was on my to watch list, so I guess almost 12 years. (I think as a Gen Xer, I'm supposed to make an obligatory "can you believe 2010 is 12 years ago!" comment, and now by saying I'm not going to make it, I've effectively made it... better to get on with the review...)

Angel of Fury is a recut and redubbed version of an Indonesian action film called Triple Cross, which has DTVC Hall of Famer and all-time great Cynthia Rothrock as Nancy Bolan, head of security for a technology company that is sending a super secret computer to Indonesia, and it's up to her to make sure it gets there safely. Bolt, a terrorist who's a cross between a poor man's Sly Stallone and a poor man's Miles O'Keeffe ("Feet O'Keeffe" then?), also wants it, and will stop at nothing to get it, including killing children. Then we have Bolan's ex, played by a poor man's Gary Daniels, who seems to be helping Rothrock, but considering the original title was "triple cross," can we trust him?

This is a rip-roarin' good time. Yes, it has its share of goofy moments, but they only add to the charm. There is no shortage of great fight scenes, and great Rothrock fight scenes at that. In one scene where Rothrock is taking a woman and her daughter to the mall, we get this meandering, almost real-time wandering the store thing where we wonder why we're having to sit through this, only to have the baddies show up, toss a sack on Rothrock, and throw her down the escalator straight into a fight and foot chase sequence, which culminates in the daughter being kidnapped and tossed in an SUV, and Rothrock, giving chase on a dirt bike, eventually jumping off the bike and supposedly kicking the driver through the windshield ("windscreen" for my UK readers). I say supposedly ("supposably" for my American readers), because all we see is her jump kicking, and then a man with a bloody face, then the SUV flipping over. However it comes, we'll take it, and this film is ready to give it.

We're now at 38 films for Rothrock, two shy of the 40 Club. It's only a matter of time, but when I see that the last Rothrock film I did was Santa's Summer House 8 months ago, I realize it's more on me to make sure that happens by reviewing more of her movies more often. This Asian productions pre-China O'Brien part of her career we haven't delved into as much, in part because movies like this were tougher to come by, but through the advent of YouTube, we're seeing more of them. It would be nice though if companies like Vinegar Syndrome got a hold of these gems. Considering the Tiger Claws and Martial Law films have been released by them, hopefully her Asian productions won't be far behind. Rothrock is a national treasure, and while we often use that term in a tongue and cheek way, here I'm serious. She's one of the best to ever do it, and this film is another one that shows us why.

In order to mitigate the shirtless male bondage plus torture trope that was popular for male action stars of this period, this film goes for the wet-T-shirt female bondage approach instead, that way Rothrock didn't need to be shirtless. It's funny how instead of just not doing it at all, they had to do it by tweaking it. It's a great scene though, as the Indonesian Mr. T makes an appearance, which adds to the scene's overall ludicrosity. I also loved how they got her there: the classic blow dart tranquilizer. The thing I don't understand is, if this is so effective--and it seems to have 100% success rate--, why don't the baddies use it more often? Like in the final battle scene, where is this blow dart guy? He should be tranqing folks left and right. Was he using his PTO? I get it, you want your employees to take time off when they need it, but during a big hostage trade-off where you're swapping Rothrock for the computer you've been after all movie, maybe this isn't a good day for him to be out. I also get that, maybe the blow dart guy put in for it well in advance, and then this swap thing came up suddenly, how can you tell him that needs to come into work now? Well, it couldn't have worked out any better for Rothrock, because without the blow dart guy, the baddies didn't stand a chance.

This is not the first time we've seen Rothrock in Indonesia, the Lady Dragon films and Rage and Honor II were also shot in Indonesia. Now with Iko Uwais as one of the biggest current martial arts stars, Indonesian action is an area I've barely scratched the surface on, but one I need to get into more. I know Jacob Gustafson in his Awful Awesome Action Vol. 1 mentioned Indonesian action films, and he said they can be a bit brutal, which may explain why I haven't seen as many. This movie didn't really have a lot of that in it, it was more just a fun actioner, which I'm always a fan of. In the trivia on the IMDb page, we find out that Rothrock got food poisoning after she swallowed water during the wet T-shirt bondage torture scene, which not only sounds like a uniquely Indonesian work hazard, but shows again how trying to conform to these action movie conventions can do more harm than good. Hopefully no one was hurt during the car into helicopter explosion--which was too sweet and so necessary.

Finally, in our latest installment of "why movies from this era are better than their modern counterparts," we have this guy. Here he's fantastic, with his blond hair, suit, and sunglasses. Today, he'd probably be bearded, tatted, with hair shaved on the sides and long on top, maybe back in a man bun or ponytail, and oozing with modern American jack ass-ery. Maybe he has a T-shirt with a busy pattern on it, TJ Maxx-style designer jeans, and says things like "bro" and "man" a lot. He'd be presented to us as some who's as cool as the rest of the movie, when the rest of the movie isn't that cool either, we'd just be waiting for the Danny Trejo or Vinnie Jones appearance and wonder why we even watched it, as that "Wildfire in the Streets" song is playing over the credits. Anyway here's to you that guy above, you're one of the good ones.

And with that, let's wrap this up. I had to go the YouTube route for this one. You might be able to find a used VHS as well, and I think this is the rare movie where I'd say that's worth it. Great Rothrock action, and she's the kind of star whose films are worth collecting.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106279

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

 

 

 

 

  

Karate Cop (1991)

Back when I did the Marchini episode of the Comeuppance Reviews podcast with Ty and Brett, I ended up with a bunch of Marchini in the can that I needed to review, I think seven movies total. That was like a year or so ago, and to this point I'd only done two of them. This one was next to go, and for some reason I kept pushing it back for other movies. I guess it was time to finally make it happen. In addition to us, our friends at Comeuppance and Fist of the B-List have reviewed it, so you can go there to see what they thought.

Karate Cop is a sequel to Omega Cop, where our hero is the last of his breed of good guys in a post-apocalyptic wasteland run amok with mutants and baddies all looking to do harm to any nice folks in their paths. In doing his good deeds, he happens upon a woman with a group of kids that she's trying to get to Oregon, which I guess escaped the apocalypse unscathed. How do they plan to get there? A teleportation device, of course, the only issue is the crystal needed to power it is busted. That means our hero is the only one who can get to another teleportation device and take its crystal, then bring it back to make the first one work, so this lady and all the kids can escape the post-apocalypse wasteland and live happily ever after in Oregon.

 

This is just a bouillabaisse of nuttiness that somehow works in a way that's just fun for me, if that makes sense. Like where did the teleportation device come from? Who cares, right? Why is it Oregon of all places that avoided the apocalypse? I don't know, but if I just go with it, it'll be all right. And Marchini's martial arts are still solid, so whoever he's beating up, whether they're extras from the Alien from LA set, or those same guys only now with masks over their faces so we don't know they're the same guys, it's all great for me. Sometimes you just need a fun time waster that isn't dripping in the assembly line cynicism of today's current DTV model, and that's when the late 80s/early 90s come in to save you with a gem like this.

This is now the third film of the Marchin-inator we've done here, which leaves us with four to go of the seven I watched when I did the podcast with Ty and Brett. I actually don't remember where in my list I placed this one, but I don't think I had a huge distinction between 1 and 7. The thing with Marchini is he decided to go it alone, as opposed to work with one studio or another, so we get these things that are a bit more earnest in their construction, but are often so all over the place that they're fun in spite of themselves, which is what we have here. There is that part of me that wonders what a 90s Marchini could have done with PM, or an 80s Marchini with Cannon, but that never happened, so we're left with stuff like this, a pile of schlock fun.

 

The film's one Hall of Famer, David Carradine, had a one-scene cameo, where he ran a diner that sold jackrabbit stew. That jackrabbit stew looked as unappetizing as you could imagine it would be coming from the guy in that screengrab I took of Carradine above. We last saw him in another short cameo in the Williamson film Down 'n Dirty, so we have to go back to 2012 to find the last bigger role he had, which was the lackluster Road of No Return, in no way made lackluster by Carradine's performance. I mean this role here is simply so Marchini can slap his name on the tin, meaning we need to get in and do some real Carradine considering his Hall of Fame status, and the number of films of his out there we still haven't done. Also of note, his diner had a small napkin holder full of paper napkins that are common in diners pre-apocalypse, but how does a diner post-apocalypse keep the napkin holder stocked? Is it possible Sysco survives the apocalypse?

This movie came out in 1991, which means this year was its 30th anniversary. Beyond our usual pleas for Vinegar Syndrome or MVD to put out all of Marchini's films on Blu-ray, or the perfunctory "oh geez, I can't believe how old I am!" trope, I believe this is another movie where the future is now the past. As a 12-year-old in 1991, I guess I didn't do the math when I watched movies like these, to realize how close they thought the apocalypse was, and how unlikely we were to see it come that soon. At least in America, we can see now how the apocalypse really works, it's not a sudden event, but rather more like the fall of Rome, where it all slowly crumbles around us while we enjoy our Starbucks and Netflix--what could be a more fitting slogan for the apocalypse than "Netflix and chill"? Marchini never could have guessed in 1991 that the apocalypse would be crazy Boomer and Gen X parents at school committee meetings making crazy rants about masks and vaccines, or Q-Anon folks camped out in Dallas hoping for the second coming of JFK Jr., or a sitting congressperson unironically theorizing about the existence of Jewish space lasers. And I guess if this is it, the apocalypse is a-comin', it's time for me to put down my latte and turn off the Netflix, and go take those Muay Thai lessons I saw advertised five blocks from my apartment, because if Marchini's vision of the future is any indication, I'm going to need them.  

I've only been to Oregon one time, when I visited my sister while she was living out in Seattle, and we did a day trip to Portland. I got to have some Voodoo Donuts, check out the Black Velvet Painting Museum (which I found out is no longer open), and buy some used books at Powell's. We also went to a pizza place, where I ordered two slices, and the hipster jerk-off taking my order snarked "do you want me to box the second one?", like I couldn't eat two slices because they were so big. To prove a point, I not only ate those two, but went up for a third and ate that as well. Take that you fucker. That the apocalypse could have missed Oregon might seem unfathomable, but after my own experience and watching Portlandia, I get now how it happened. Any apocalypse wouldn't last five minutes in that den of insufferability, and while it was mined for comedic gold on Portlandia, I can see how the apocalypse would have politely hopped on the next Amtrak to San Francisco and continued its destruction there. Of course, Portland, I kid because I love... I mean, any real hipster would think Portland, OR is passe by now anyway, and be onto Portland, ME instead.

It's probably better I wrap things up before I insult more of the people reading this. Until Vinegar Syndrome or MVD or another company make Blu-rays of Marchini's movies, YouTube is the only avenue you have, but I think this is worth it. It's 90s minutes of pure 90s schlock fun. What more can you ask for?

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102187

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

 

 

 

Fearless Tiger (1991)

It's been almost ten years since we've had some Merhi on the site, back in 2011 when we did Expect to Die, and when Ty from Comeuppance mentioned that this was on YouTube, I figured I'd give it a look. In addition to us, Karl at Fist of the B-List has covered this as well, so you can go there to see what he thought.

Fearless Tiger features Jalal Merhi as a young guy in Canada whose father, Jamie Farr, has a very successful business that Merhi will be working in now that he's finished his MBA. That is until his younger brother ODs on some new drug, and all bets are off. He drops everything, goes to Hong Kong, and trains in martial arts so he can defeat the cartel that supplied the drugs that his brother took. Of course, he has to prove himself before he can train, so while that master at the school is waiting for Merhi to prove himself, we have some nice digressions on a mountain where Bolo Yeung trains with a woman. If that doesn't help with training, I don't know what will. Those drug cartel baddies won't know what hit them.

This isn't horrible, and it does have the added bonus of being Merhi's first film, which I thought was a cool novelty being the DTV action buff that I am. There is the issue that we have stretches without action, but this has enough late 80s/early 90s DTV plot cheese factor to see us through those. In particular, Merhi practicing Kung Fu with Bolo Yeung and the woman he has with him. I didn't know why it was happening, but I enjoyed it. Throw in Jamie Farr, and the fact that the baddie was that cross between Billy Drago and David Coverdale from Whitesnake we saw in Expect No Mercy, you have something where you can say "I could do a lot worse than this." Nowadays I think that's pretty good.

This is Merhi's 13th film on the site, and because he tends to invest in everything and set himself up as the hero, I've labeled some of his films vanity pieces. I think I may have been too hard on those, because the 2010s forced me to re-examine what the late 80s/early 90s gave us. Even if Merhi's films were vanity projects, there was an earnestness to them that the 2010s' cynical, bait-and-switch laden, jumpcut-fight scened action films couldn't touch. Considering my last Merhi post came in 2011, I couldn't have known then what that decade was going to do to us, or what kind of new perspective it gave me on films like Merhi's. Merhi made solid contributions to the DTV action world, and it's cool to see the movie where it all started.

 

We also have Bolo Yeung, who would go on to work on multiple projects with Merhi. Here he just has the scenes we talked about, but it was in another Merhi project, Tiger Claws II, where we saw Yeung working a food truck. According to Cynthia Rothrock on her YouTube channel, she said while they were doing the Tiger Claws movies, Yeung got upset that he hadn't been paid, and he walked off, to which Rothrock's mother, who was visiting the set, told Rothrock "Bozo just walked out," or something to that effect. That alone makes subscribing to Rothrock's YouTube channel worth it if you haven't subscribed already.

This is another 90s film that makes use of the 3-1/2 floppy disc as a MacGuffin. In 1991, that was new technology. Anyone remember trying to explain to their Boomer parents that, even though it wasn't literally floppy like a 5-1/4, we still called it a floppy disc? By the time we were able to sort that out with them, we'd moved over to CD-ROMs. By the time we explained that CD-ROMs were different from the CDs that played music, but that you could play music on the computer too, flashdrives came out, and before we could explain that that flashdrive held more than their entire case of out of date floppies, flashdrives were done and we uploaded and downloaded everything we needed from the Cloud. The thing is, you can't MacGuffin the Cloud. The Cloud can't be passed around and traded for hostages the way a 3-1/2 can. It seems like legacy technology still has its uses.

 

Finally, this is our first time seeing one of my all-time favorites, Jamie Farr, on the site. He was great here as Merhi's dad. One interesting fact about him: I have a Toledo Mud Hens M*A*S*H* edition baseball cap, which was designed to look like the one Farr wore on later seasons of the show. My wife Jen and I were watching an episode, and we saw him in it, and discovered, sure enough, the Mud Hens sell a version of the hat, so she got it for me for Christmas that year. Someday I guess I'll have to go out there to catch a game. I think they have a day for him every year, so that may be the game to try and see if I get the chance.

And since I'm talking more about minor league baseball than the movie, it must be time to wrap this one up. Merhi himself has uploaded this to YouTube through the Film One company he owns, so that's a great place to catch this. If you're in need of a good early 90s DTV action flick, this isn't a bad deal.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0141006

Double Dragon (1994)

As we continue our five-movie celebration of our 1000th post, we come in with Jeff LoPresto's suggestion with number 1001. Jeff has been a longtime friend and supporter of the site, even sending us screeners and copies of films he had for us review. The thing I couldn't believe when he suggested this was that I'd overlooked it for so long. I think I just assumed it was above the $10 million threshold for a theatrical picture, which wasn't even close to the case. Between that and the Patrick and Dacascos factors, this should have been a post years ago, but in a way perhaps it's fitting to have it here in this celebration. In addition to us, Cool Target Action Reviews has looked at this, so you can go there to see what he thought.

Double Dragon takes place in the near future/now recent past, after an earthquake has decimated LA. Robert Patrick is an evil businessman who got his hands on half of a sacred medallion, which on its own is pretty great, but with the other half makes him omnipotent. The other half is now in the hands of two brothers, and they'll do anything they can to make sure he doesn't get it.

This is one of those ones that, in 1994, wasn't anywhere near as fun as it is now in 2020. For one thing, 1994 was a bit past Double Dragon's prime as a Nintendo game, and as I remember, the franchise itself was trying to find ways to reinvent itself, like pairing with the Battletoads in one effort, so it wasn't the hot property other franchises were then. On top of that, this suffered from what a lot of other video game adaptations suffered from, like the Super Mario Bros. adaptation. It plays fast and loose with the canon, tries to make it on the cheap, and just piles up as many cliches and overused film devices as it can. They also have to be these origin story bildungsroman-type deals where our heroes have to be non-heroes to start and then find their heroism by the end of the film. In 1994 it all adds up to a bile of blah; but in 2020, it's a fun 90s nostalgia romp. Yes, there are still elements that are sauteed in wrong sauce, like Abobo's transformation, and later torture by being fed spinach by Alyssa Milano, but for the most part, even the bad works in that fun 90s nostalgia mode.

According to imdb, the original idea was more along the lines of the game, with Marian, who in the actual version was played by Milano, kidnapped by the Big Boss's gang, and the guys have to fight their way through the gang to get her back. It sounds like one reason why they didn't do that was to keep it PG for kids to watch. The problem is, for a 15-year-old kid like me, the one we got was such a turn-off, and I could go to my video store or fire up cable TV and see plenty of PM Entertainment flicks doing Double Dragon right and awesome. If it had been made more like the actual game, maybe this becomes a minor franchise. Maybe Mark Dacascos, who was 30 at the time, by playing someone who isn't a teenager, is seen as a more serious action lead and gets bigger parts in Hollywood films. On the other hand, if Alyssa Milano is essentially reprising her role from Commando, only now as an adult, maybe she isn't as interested and they need to get someone else. Maybe we don't watch this today with goofy 90s nostalgia, but with a "this is so awesome I used to watch it all the time when it came out" nostalgia.

And that gets to a different point when we look at movies like these, that are, for lack of a better term, flops. The people involved have high expectations for it. For Dacascos, maybe it's to get into that Van Damme/Seagal territory on the big screen. Maybe Scott Wolf is looking combine success here with his new role on Party of Five to be the next Andrew McCarthy. Maybe Alyssa Milano is hoping to move on from her Samantha on Who's the Boss stigma; or Kristina Wagner move past the world of daytime soap operas. Robert Patrick was probably hoping to build off his great turn as the villain in Terminator 2, which was one of the biggest films of the first half of the decade. When a movie like this ends up only grossing $2.3 million worldwide, even in 1994 numbers, it's not just a disappointment for the studio, it can seriously damage careers, or be the thing that keeps the people involved from making that move to the next tier of movie. If this becomes the blockbuster they were hoping for all of those careers are different. When we think of a movie like Pulp Fiction, we think about what it did for people like John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson, but look at Ving Rhames or Eric Stoltz--or Tarantino, who is still able to make whatever movie he wants in Hollywood 26 years later.

The two names in this that we know the most on the site are Dacascos and Patrick. For Dacascos, again, the fact that he's playing a teenager at 30 should be considered a stretch; but according to IMDb he sprained his ankle on the set and hid it so he could continue on, meaning he thought this was going to be an important opportunity for him and his career. I saw him recently in Wu Assassin on Netflix, and for me, he was right there with Iko Uwais and Byron Mann as the show's standouts. So on the one hand, we watch this now and joke about how sauteed in wrong sauce it is, but on the other, I can't help but think what this would have meant for his career had it been successful. Same with Robert Patrick. This was a more scenery-chewing villain than the relentless killing machine he played in Terminator 2, but he added a level of fun to it that showed he could have done this villain in any number of great big screen actioners opposite Arnold or Van Damme. I wouldn't say that either career has been a failure after this by any means, but I think seeing them here in '94, you can't help but wonder if this had worked, if we wouldn't have seen them in as many films here on the site.

Finally, back off Warchild, seriously. Would you look at that: Albert Pyun mainstay and DTVC favorite Vincent Klyn is here in a one-scene cameo. How amazing would he have been as a boss-style baddie for Dacascos to have to take out as he fought his way to rescue Marian? Nils Allen Stewart played Abobo before his transformation. Again, another great boss if this were set up more like the video game. Either way, what's great is to see Klyn here during our 1000th post celebration. This is now his 18th tag on the site, which is amazing--and more than many Hall of Famers. Here's to you Mr. Klyn, you're one of the great ones.

And with that, we wrap up another post. Right now you can stream this on Prime and Tubi, so it's there for free to check out. There is also a blu-ray out there if you're looking for something more substantial for your collection. Thank you again to Jeff for suggesting this gem as part of our celebration, and also thank you for all the support you've shown the site over the years--you were one of the earliest. It has always been much appreciated.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106761

The Wrecking Crew (2000)

Like Corrupt in the post before this, I figured with Albert Pyun's Urban Trilogy getting the axe from Watch Instantly, I might as well review the two I hadn't done yet. I was hesitant though, because, as I mentioned in the Corrupt post, half of each of these films was lost en route from Eastern Europe to LA, meaning what we got was the best Pyun could do to make lemonade out of lemons, and not films that are indicative of what Pyun usually gives us. But I think it's good to get the word out as to why these didn't come out so good, especially with so many people checking them out and vituperating against them on their own sites or imdb message boards, so that's why we're here now looking at these.

The Wrecking Crew is about a street gang led by Ice-T that's been hired by some high-level governmental authority whose job it is to take out other gangs in other cities. In this case they're in Detroit, and, after conning the three major gangs into meeting in a warehouse for a truce, Ice-T and his boys go in there to clean them out. Can the three leaders of the gangs squash their feuds and come together to defeat Ice-T?



Maybe not as bad as Urban Menace, but definitely was hit pretty hard by that missing footage too. We start with these distorted archive shots of Snoop from when he was Snoop Doggy Dogg. We assume he's some kind of important figure, but that's all we see of him. Then we get Ice-T cleaning up another gang in Chicago, while our Detroit gangs are having big rallies. From there, it devolves into Die Hard with gangs, based around three characters that aren't all that remarkable. I'd really be curious to know what this movie was supposed to be. How did Snoop Dogg figure in? Was there more Ice-T? Was it really only Die Hard with gangs? The thing is, if you see this on the shelf and think "Oh, Snoop and Ice-T, this should be good", and then you watch it and are totally disappointed, just know, what you got wasn't what you were supposed to get.

I know some of my readers are not big Albert Pyun fans-- and many of them don't miss an opportunity in a comment box to tell me so-- so hearing me in these two posts trying to explain away some real duds probably has them thinking "Sure, I bet, and why were all the rest of his films crap?" I guess the first thing I would say is "what are you doing at the Direct to Video Connoisseur if you don't like Albert Pyun?", because Albert Pyun's approach to film making is the kind of thing we celebrate here. But the other thing is, you can't be all like "I can't stand big Hollywood", but then not be cognizant of the difficulties film makers face when they try to work outside of the major studios. For me, I like hearing these stories, and I think it's really cool that Pyun took the time to comment here and tell us what happened with these urban films. Unfortunately, part of that charm that we like in low-budget independent films, that they have to be innovative and make do with less, means that when shit happens and half the film is lost by Air France and they have to try and salvage something, you end up with this.



The Ice-T here is more of your run-of-the-mill Ice-T, the vintage mean-mugging over-enunciating Ice-T. Not the chilling baddie we got in Corrupt. I don't know why we get the guy from this more than we get the guy in Corrupt, but we do. Maybe it's him wanting to get out there and try new things. I don't know, he played a kangaroo man in Tank Girl, what more does he want? He also produced this movie, so I imagine he was as disappointed as Pyun was when half the film turned up missing-- I imagine everyone involved with the project was.

It doesn't escape me that, while this was filmed in Eastern Europe, it took place in Detroit, which is probably where this would've been shot had it been made today-- which also would've meant that there would've been no need to ship it with Air France to LA. The majority of the action in this takes place in an abandoned warehouse. Well, they'd have their pick of abandoned warehouses in Detroit.



I'm skipping the Pyun Mainstay game for this post, because, like Corrupt, all we had outside of Ice-T was Vincent Klyn. Instead, I wanted to bring up something that caught my eye as a former wrestling fan. You can barely see it in that pic there, but that dude is giving the other guy the Camel Clutch. Remember that? When Sgt. Slaughter became an Iraqi in the early 90s? He'd get Hulk Hogan in the Camel Clutch, trying to make him tap out. Man, those were the days.

Other than the Camel Clutch, there isn't much going on here. If you haven't seen this before, and see it on the shelves, just know what you're getting yourself into-- an attempt to make lemonade out of lemons--; and if you have seen it and wanted to know why it was so bad, well, now you know. It's hard to make a movie come out the way you want if you've lost half of your footage.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0196219/

Corrupt (1999)

A little over two years ago I reviewed a film of Albert Pyun's called Urban Menace, starring a number of Hip Hop luminaries like Big Pun, Fat Joe, Snoop, and Ice-T. It was pretty bad, but not in a way that didn't work; rather, it was amateurishly made, which isn't indicative of Pyun's work. Later, in my Radioactive Dreams post, Pyun commented, telling us the story behind why Urban Menace, and his other two urban films, Corrupt and Wrecking Crew, were of such poor quality. In transport from Eastern Europe to LA, Air France lost a crate containing half of each film, forcing him to scramble to make something resembling three feature films, and the result is what we have. Because of this, I had put off reviewing the other two films, but since Netflix was dumping them from Watch Instantly, I figured I'd give them a look and maybe help get the word out for people who might see them or have seen them, and were ready to rip them on their own sites or on imdb.

Corrupt has Ice-T as the eponymous villain, a local thug making moves to consolidate his power and take a stranglehold on the neighborhood. He has a thing for a Jodi (Karen Dyer), but she's dating Miles (Ernie Hudson Jr.) and wants nothing to do with Ice-T. Things change though when her punk younger brother (Silkk tha' Shocker) re-appropriates some of Ice-T's drugs, and now, if she wants her brother to live, she needs to agree to be Ice-T's lover while Miles is out of town. Problem is, things go nuts when Silkk tha' Shocker's girlfriend tells Miles on her.



This one was remarkably better than Urban Menace. The big thing is we had a very strong performance by Ice-T, perhaps his best this side of New Jack City. It makes me wonder what this could've been if we'd had the rest of the film. At 66 minutes though, we get a complete-enough story, I think what the added footage would've done was give us a more polished product. I also liked this story better than the one in Urban Menace, this was much more down to Earth, looking at characters struggling to get out of the 'Hood, some going legit, and some going dirty. Hopefully someday the rest of the footage will turn up and we'll get a director's cut showing us what this should've looked like.

I don't blame Pyun if he doesn't like the idea of these films being out there with his name on them after what happened. Especially with the big name rappers associated with them, they tend to be some of his more heavily marketed films, which has gotta be even more frustrating. What this has done for me as a reviewer, though, is it's shown me that there's all kinds of crap that can happen to affect film's outcome, things that have nothing to do with how talented the cast and crew are. And it's usually the kinds of films we review here at the DTVC that are most likely to have suffered some of these calamities. It makes me wonder how many other films I've reviewed that have had half their footage lost by Air France.



I wasn't kidding about the Ice-T performance, he was great. Extremely menacing, but not in that affected way we often see from him as a baddie. This was a legit, cold-blooded gangster, think like Jim Brown in Crackhouse. Who knows if we lose some of this in the full version that we never got to see, or if he's even better, but what we got here was good. He anchored those 66 minutes, and made this work for me much more than it should have.

We've seen Silkk tha' Shocker before in Hot Boyz, where he was horribly miscast as the film's lead. Here he's a supporting character, a kid trying to make moves that ultimately get him in over his head and forces his sister to make tough decisions to save his life. Hot Boyz tried to have us believe that Snoop would be an underling in Silkk tha' Shocker's gang, while this film knew we'd easily believe that he'd look well above his pay grade trying to rub shoulders with Ice-T, and it worked that much better.



There isn't much of a Pyun Mainstay Game to play here, the big one other than Ice-T being DTVC favorite Vincent Klyn, who has one scene as a bum hitting on Dyer. Klyn still hasn't made a movie since 2004's Max Havoc: Curse of the Dragon, which is very disappointing. With Pyun getting a lot of the old gang out of retirement, including Sasha Mitchell, maybe we'll see Klyn again in one. Man I hope so. "Back off, Warchild. Seriously."

This is no longer on Watch Instantly. I think if you're a big Ice-T fan, this might be worth checking it out. Otherwise, I'm not so sure. I wanted to do these reviews more to get the word out regarding what happened to them, though maybe after hearing that you might be more intrigued to check them out. You can always page through the Albert Pyun tag to see some films of his that I've reviewed that are of a much higher quality.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0194773/