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

Expect to Die (1997)

Because we currently have one more Jeff Wincott tag than we do David Bradley tags, we're doing this review of Expect to Die in order to even things up. It's directed and stars Jalal Merhi, and has DTVC favorite Evan Lurie, aka one of the coolest guys ever. Bradley and Lurie? Even Merhi can't screw this up, can he?

Expect to Die has Bradley as a genius computer programmer that has created the ultimate in virtual reality technology-- so ultimate it's deadly! It's a game called Expect to Die, and it can literally kill you! Merhi and Lurie are two NYPD by way of Toronto detectives that are investigating Bradley and his game after some 3 1/2 floppy game discs come up in an underground trade among gangsters and mobsters for some illegal weapons. Now Merhi and Lurie are in this twisted video game maker's sights. Can they make it out alive?



This movie could've been pretty good, and it did have it's moments, but I couldn't help feeling that Merhi was making this to stroke his own ego. Exhibit A, love scene with him in his tighty whities. Exhibit B, virtual reality boot camp where he does knuckle push-ups and climbs a rope. Exhibit C, Evan Lurie only has one fight-- which he's awesome in, of course-- and then he's killed off; Bradley displays absolutely no martial arts, including in his one scene at the end with Merhi. I guess what I'm saying with the last example is that Merhi didn't want anyone's superior martial arts skills upstaging him. The ending was so silly, between Merhi playing in a game where his girlfriend, whom he's saving, constantly calls him "warlord", to the poorly done shootout between Bradley and Merhi, to the even more poorly choreographed fight scene. What started off as a great deal with some great action, devolved into a Merhi self-aggrandizement fest.

I like Bradley as a baddie though. I wish he had more meat he could sink his teeth into though. His dialogue was especially silly. "Gameplayer, expect to die." I do like the idea of him tranqing people and waking them up in his virtual reality game, yet they can't get out of it by just pulling off all the gear. Then he cuts their head off with an ax that has a number pad on it. Not sure what the number pad was for, maybe so he can calculate the tip? yeah, this movie was that all over the place. The only consistency was how much Merhi wanted us to know how cool he is.



If you don't love Evan Lurie you don't love yourself, that's what I always say. Like Bradley who we never see as a bad guy, we often don't see Lurie as a good guy-- though he was a good guy in his best role ever, American Kickboxer 2. Here he's Merhi's partner, so assigned after Merhi's original partner is injured in a firefight. We get some hint though that Merhi and Lurie have a past too, because Lurie asks him multiple times if he's all right with them working together again. What this past is we can only guess. Anyway, Lurie gets one fight scene, and he absolutely kills it, before his character is killed himself. He needed to be here for the whole thing. He and Merhi needed to be fighting their way through Bradley's game together, not Merhi doing whatever silly crap he was doing at the end of that movie.

The mob boss in this is played by a guy that looks like a cross between Kelsey Grammer and a pork roast. He's just like a meatier beefier Frasier. He also has a meatier, beefier personality. According to imdb, he's had a bunch of small parts in other Merhi films, so this was his first look at the big time. And then that was it, his days as an actor playing the beefier Kelsey Grammer were over.



Check out the Mad magazine. It was on the table while Merhi was dialing the phone at the police station aka strip mall office park. When I was younger I used to get Mad all the time. I was probably too young to get most of the jokes, but the ones I did get were funny enough. Then there was Cracked, the poor man's version of Mad. Remember that? Though I didn't watch Mad TV much, I remember a few great sketches: Terminator 3, where Arnold goes back in time to protect Jesus, and the OJ Interviews outakes were two of my favorites.

You can get this on DVD or VHS from Amazon (for some reason, they top bill Catherine Archer, who imdb lists in the credits as "woman in the bar"), but I wouldn't do it unless you're a total completist and you've added a lot better flicks to your collection. I only did it for this review, so I guess if you have a review site that might be another reason. It's got some names, it has some solid action and some silly moments, but overall it's Merhi showing us how he beds a woman in his tighty whities and how well he can do knuckle push-ups.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0193924/

Crisis (1997)

Anyone who's been rocking with us for a little while knows that I try to keep the amount of tags for Jeff Wincott and David Bradley roughly the same, just because I do, and last week we did two Wincott flicks in the two Universal Soldier sequels, so now it's time to balance out the scale with a Bradley flick. Even though Wincott wasn't a star in either film, that's not how tags work, two supporting roles don't equal one starring role, a tag is a tag no matter how much someone is involved with a movie, so expect another Bradley one soon after this one.

Crisis has Bradley as a hitman who visits his environmental activist brother and finds out the guy is planning a home invasion of a famous scientist that is also a major polluter. Bradley tags along to try and keep his brother out of trouble, but when things go pear-shaped, instead of helping, he finds himself tied to a weight bench. Looks like some pesky German terrorists have infiltrated the environmental activist group with a plan to get their hands on some missiles the scientist was commissioned with disposing of, and then pin the blame on the activists. Can Bradley get himself free in time to save the day?



Wow, great beginning, great ending, horrible middle. Jalal Merhi let us down here as director-- though he didn't write it, so maybe we can't blame him too much. I get that Die Hard in a mansion can be difficult to pull off for 90 minutes due to the small space in which the action takes place-- skyscrapers and industrial plants work so much better-- but to mitigate that issue by having our hero spend a chunk of the film tied to a weight bench making Romantic Comedy banter with a love interest in a Jennifer Aniston haircut, that's a bad play. The whole idea is that Bradley is supposed to be a snake in the grass, but when he shows his hand so early in, we're stuck. And this is after an amazing beginning where he offs a bunch of dudes, rides a Harley, and rocks some too sweet shades; and an end confrontation with the head baddie that ends hilariously with the baddie looking to run Bradley down in a stolen car, and Bradley countering by throwing a fireman's ax at the windshield. Can I recommend a movie for roughly 15 minutes of quality footage? Of course I can't. (Though I guess I did for even less in Out for a Kill.)

How is it that Bradley is the one who ends up in a Romantic Comedy scenario tied to a weight bench with another hostage tied up next to him whom he doesn't get along with, but eventually hooks up with? Do we see Wincott doing that? Dolph maybe, but for as long a segment of the movie as Bradley was here? It just seems like tied to a weight bench is part of a bigger pattern of fanny pack behavior. Maybe this is why Bradley got out of acting, because he was tired of crap like this. The thing to do with this would've been to keep Bradley's cover, maybe even have the baddie suspect something's up with him, so he sends him down to the weight room to guard the woman, and the challenge for Bradley then is to keep his cover, convince this girl he's just tied up that he's not really one of the hostage takers, and keep his ear to the door to keep himself abreast of the goings on upstairs. It would've been better than what we got.



What you're looking at right there is Word 97 (at least I think it is). You're probably thinking "great, why would you cap that?" Because that my friends is what passed for the company interface through which the sleazy scientist accessed his company in order to get the release for the missiles. Yep, no cute graphics, no animation that looks nothing like a computer program, but still looks like something. Nope, a Word file, and they just had the guy type into it. At one point he's contacting 911. Yep, just type it in anywhere in the Word document, that will be fine.

Speaking of the sleazy scientist, he was played by Cameron Mitchell's son. You may remember the son from Space Mutiny as the guard that tells Calgon that "the information is scanty" at the moment. Scanty. Most of his credits are under the name "Channing Mitchell", including this one, but now he goes by the name Cameron Mitchell Jr. He was good here as the sleazy scientist, but no where near what his dad brought to the table in all those AIP flicks.



We've started something of a trend here where I use the last paragraph to talk about some outdated cultural phenomena or nostalgia that comes to mind when watching the movie, and I couldn't pass up the Jennifer Aniston hairdo. Was it called the Aniston or the Rachel? It was big in the mid to late 90s, and while this one isn't a perfect example, is Aniston-y enough. I think they went with it here to give the impression that this woman was a modern spitfire of sorts, that she wouldn't take any crap. Like Bradley though, she spends a good chunk of the film tied to a weight bench, though she isn't as well secured, so she gets to hop around a lot. Very modern spitfire.

Though you can check this out on Watch Instantly, I don't recommend it unless you're a Bradley completist. I am by virtue of having this blog, which means I hurt so you don't have to-- and if you don't have to, I wouldn't. Also, it was shot in Saskatoon, so if that does anything for you, by all means.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0136774/

Expect No Mercy (1995)

I didn't exactly what to expect with this movie, but I definitely knew what not to expect, and that was mercy. I think it's good that they let us know that going in though, that way if I do get some mercy, it was totally unexpected and refreshing. This was also reviewed over at Cool Target Action Reviews if you want to get a second opinion.

Expect No Mercy has Wolf Larson as an extremely Shaun Cassidy looking baddie that runs a virtual reality martial arts training facility/paid assassination business. Jalal Merhi is the man on the inside trying to get evidence against them, and DTVC favorite Billy Blanks is another cop sent in to help him after the previous dude in Blanks's spot was killed. Can they get the evidence they need and stop Shaun Cassidy in time before he assassinates a prosecution witness?



This wasn't too bad. Solid 90s action schlock. Blanks and Merhi had some great fights, Anthony De Longis was a solid head baddie's hatchetman, and the action was definitely there. At one point, things slowed to a crawl, and I was thinking this review would sound different than it is, but that slow to a crawl was only the calm before a too sweet shootout at a remote cabin. As far as the 90s schlock goes, great throwback virtual reality silliness, with the headgear, the special effects, a disembodied Jalal Merhi head-- everything you could want.

We love us some Billy Blanks here at the DTVC, and he's pretty sweet in Expect No Mercy. He and Merhi were a part of the fight choreography, and it showed. Some were a little "I hit you twice, you hit me twice"-- the kind of crap I get all over the modern punchfighting flick for-- but the majority were really nice, and were all shot really well. If you're going into a movie like this for some quality Billy Blanks, this isn't a bad deal.



Yes, that is the disembodied head of Jalal Merhi. Maybe he's not the best actor-- okay, he's definitely not the best actor!-- but at least in Expect No Mercy he gets a good chance to show off his martial arts skills. Though he and Blanks are essentially equals in the film, he gets the fight with Anthony De Longis, while Blanks fought Shaun Cassidy; but a bigger reason for that is that Merhi gets the girl, and she was being guarded by De Longis. While his martial arts skills are legit, it's his jewelry store money combined with a little Canadian tax credit money that allows him to produce and pick a nice leading lady to make out with-- in this case Laurie Holden. Unlike Talons of the Eagle though, we're fortunately spared a sex scene complete with Merhi in his tight black skivvies.

Wolf Larson looked so much like Shaun Cassidy, I was convinced he was Cassidy until I saw the credits. How awesome would it have been if the baddie was Shaun Cassidy? Or if Wolf Larson was playing Shaun Cassidy as a baddie? "After starring for years in The Hardy Boys, I decided to take the money and create this massive virtual reality martial arts training facility/assassination business." Maybe there could be shots of him looking at old Tiger Beat magazines with Anthony De Longis, reminiscing about the good ol' days, then he suddenly gets angry, rips it up, and shoots one of his grunts.



Whoa, seriously movie? Really? A Poor Man's Billy Drago? Who does that? Who says "I'm not sure we can get Billy Drago, but this guy will work, right?" He looks like a cross between Billy Drago and David Coverdale of Whitesnake. I guess the idea behind the Poor Man's Billy Drago in this instance is he can play a small role, and people like me won't be complaining "oh man, it was a Billy Drago bait-and-switch". Still, I've always thought the Poor man's Billy Drago was Billy Drago, so this is a new revelation.

This isn't too bad, especially if you're a consumer of 80s/90s bad action. Solid fights, solid action, retro 90s computer effects, and a fair amount of fun. It's no longer in print, but you can get it used on DVD and VHS here in the States. If you see it for $5 or less, I'd say pull the trigger.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112998/

TC 2000 (1993)

It took me a little time to track this down, otherwise I'd have done it by now. Just look at that cast. It's huge, robust, dare I say prodigious. I don't remember when I first saw it, probably on TNT or a buddy rented it. It's definitely the kind of film that I made the DTVC for, so it's good to finally be getting after it.

TC 2000 takes place in the future, after the environment has deteriorated, and any humans with means have moved underground, leaving the topside an impoverished wasteland. Billy Blanks and Bobbie Phillips are police officers who keep surface dwellers from getting underground, but after they're ambushed by a gang of them, led by Jalal Merhi, and Phillips ends up dead, Blanks is wrongly accused of her death, and he flees to the surface, where Bolo Yeung teaches him the power of the Chi; while Phillips is turned into a cyborg, and she's sent to the surface to do something for her old boss, who it turns out is a bad guy, with a bad guy right-hand man played by Matthias Hues.



This is fantastic. This is the kind of movie the blog was made for, and the kind of movie you come here to check out. Great martial arts, great stars, and a futuristic plot set in the boiler room of a factory. Does it get any better than that? This is early 90s DTV action at its best, tons of fun, tons of action, and nothing to take too seriously: the perfect combination. Get the crew together and fire it up for your bad movie night.

How do you not love Billy Blanks? He's had better martial arts in some of his other films, but this one gives him more screen time than a lot of those. And he and Bolo Yeung had great chemistry (more on that later). The one drawback might be that he only wears the shades from the cover a couple times, but I'm not so sure that's a bad thing, because he has tons of close-ups with funny looks on his face, which for me is much better. Would I have liked some better martial scenes-- not that these ones were that bad, just that we've seen better, especially in The King of the Kickboxers-- probably, but overall, Blanks was so great, I didn't mind.



In this picture Bobbie Phillips looks pretty hot, right? And as the cyborg, from the forehead down she really does look hot, it was just her hairdo that didn't work. It was one of those middle of the head ponytails where the hair comes out and flows down over the head. It was the kind of hairdo that the girls with bad dye jobs who wore Adidas track suits to the mall and always got into fights used to have when I was growing up. I don't know, I was half expecting her to talk in wannabe Ebonics and come through the screen to try and steal my Da' Brat CD. "Sooo, sooo, Funktafiiiied..." (Was I the only one whose environment was Suburban Ghetto enough for these girls to exist?)

Matthias Hues is a beast. He even makes Bolo Yeung look small. I know how silly it sounds to do the whole "in real life he could take so and so", but other than Dolph Lundgren, who has similar size and speed, Matthias Hues is someone none of the guys who pretend kick his ass on screen would want anything to do with if he came looking for them with bad intentions. I guess that's why he makes such a great baddie, because he is so big and fast-- and because he has a German accent, let's not forget that.



This review marks a first here at the DTVC. In the past I've uploaded video clips from the movies I reviewed, but this is the first time I ever enhanced one. There are two training montages in TC 2000, and I thought they were both great, but when I cut them together, I noticed the transition was bad between the first and second, so I decided to cover the whole thing with different music. It's on the image page, so take a look at it and tell me what you think. The Bolo Yeung interpretive dance at the beginning was my personal favorite.

This is only available on VHS as far as I know. If you look it up on Amazon, one of the links they'll direct you to is another film, Expect No Mercy, which is on DVD, stars Jalal Merhi and Billy Blanks, but is not the same film. TC 2000 is totally worth picking up if you find it anywhere. Amazon is a little steep, but $5 or so after shipping is worth it, so if you can find it for that, pull the trigger.

For more info:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108277/

Talons of the Eagle (1992)

This is one I've been looking to do for a long time, and was planning to do it before I went on hiatus, but when I came back, it was lost in the shuffle. Then in relatively quick succession, both Ty at Comeuppance Reviews and Karl at Fist of the B-List reviewed it, and reminded me that I had neglected it for too long. It was time to make it happen.

Talons of the Eagle has DTVC favorite Billy Blanks as a New York DEA Agent who is sent to Toronto to nip the drug supply chain in the bud, along with Jalal Merhi. Both guys are what we in the biz call "mavericks" or "loose cannons", so they get along great. They have to learn some Eagle Talon style Kung Fu though, before they can infiltrate the evil James Hong's gang through his tournament. After a few montages they're set to go, and they impress Hong enough that he lets them in. There are two problems though: first, Hong's righthand man, Matthias Hues is suspicious of them, and second, the chick who took over for Suzanne Somers on Three's Company is an agent that was sent in prior to our heroes, and they don't know if she's "crossed over".



This definitely cooks. Billy Blanks is the standout, but Merhi is solid, and Hues and Hong make great baddies. Plus you have some other excellent performances rounding out the cast, including Priscilla Barnes, Eric Lee, and Qingfu Pan. There were some weak points, like in the tournament, our heroes take way too many hits from their opponents to make us believe they learned anything from all those montages. I mean, Merhi had a lot of trouble with the "Pepperidge Farms Remembers" guy, and Blanks was less than convincing against an Iron Sheik wannabe. There's also as many laughs as there are great fights and action, foremost among them, Merhi in his tighty blackies, or the fact that the only thing to drink in Toronto was Canada Dry. A great combination of silly and hot makes for a winner in my book.

Billy Blanks is a star, but unlike the two he did with Roddy Piper, Tough and Deadly and Back in Action, in this he plays second fiddle to Merhi, which is a little off-putting. He does get the end fight with Hues, though, so in that sense he was used well. There's just so much electricity in his performances, it's really too bad he didn't do more work. I'm not sure if that's because the early 90s weren't ready for an African American DTV action lead, or if he didn't want as much work, or maybe a combination of both, but seeing him here just makes me want more. I should also point out that this was a rare pre-Rush Hour pairing of two heroes that weren't Caucasian. This film was very much ahead of its time.



This will be the eighth of fifteen acting credits for Jalal Merhi here at the DTVC. It feels like he had a bigger impact on the DTV industry, but when you factor in the large amount of overlap between his acting credits and his director, producer, and writer credits, 15 is about it. He's kind of in that David Bradley territory, only he does more than just act. Maybe he's a Lebanese cross between Orson Welles and David Bradley, only instead of the fanny pack, he has the tighty blackies. Don't know what he was going for there, but I spared you a pic of it on the image page. Mr. Merhi, if you ever decide to make any more movies and cast yourself in them, I'd go boxers over briefs.

Does anyone remember how the whole replacing Suzanne Somers on Three's Company went down? She had some contract dispute, and so for a season, instead of being with the rest of the cast, she would go into a box and shoot scenes to make it look like she was communicating with them over the phone from some far-off place. I was too young to remember the whole thing when it originally aired, but do remember when it was on Nick-at-Nite, and thought how odd it was. Almost as weird as when Gabe Kaplan had issues with Welcome Back Kotter, and they had his wife teach the Sweathogs. Anyway, Priscilla Barnes, Somers's eventual replacement, plays Merhi's love interest/undercover agent, so that's why I brought all that up.



Had to snag another McDonald's shot. This comes in some New York file footage at the beginning of the film. I wonder if that McDonald's is still open. I've realized that perhaps with all my McDonald's talk I'm giving the wrong impression of my eating habits. Don't get me wrong, I love McDonald's, but I also love Doritos and chocolate (not together, of course), but I don't eat them all the time. I wonder if I lived on the West Coast if that would be a different story though, with In-N-Out burger and Del Taco. Or Chic-Fil-A, which we don't have up here either, but I get when I go down south. Temperance would be much more difficult to practice then.

Talons of the Eagle is available on Netflix, making it an easy get for anyone looking to make it happen. This is a well-rounded film that offers solid fights and low-budget silliness in a great package that's hard to not like. Definitely worth it.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105530/

Tiger Claws III (1999)

This is the third and final installment in the Tiger Claws saga--and I use the term saga with all intended irony. We did Tiger Claws just to get part one out of the way so I could review Tiger Claws II, which featured blog favorite Evan Lurie. Now it was time to finish and do part three, and though I was in part reluctant because parts one and two weren't exactly awesome, the addition of Loren Avedon, who was great in King of the Kickboxers, made me more optimistic.

Tiger Claws III takes place some time after part 2. In it, Jalal Merhi and Cynthia Rothrock are police partners--and perhaps lovers as well--and they're on the case of someone who broke into a warehouse storing priceless Chinese artifacts. Turns out Avedon was the potential thief, and he wanted to steal three ancient assassin's suits, which he really didn't need to steal anyway, because he was able to do with them what he wanted at a party for their unveiling: cast an ancient spell and bring ancient assassins who filled the outfits back to life in the present. These supernatural Chinese assassins are wreaking havoc all over New York, they've killed Rothrock, and Merhi has no idea what to do, so he seeks help in Avedon's former master (the great Carter Wong in his final role to date), a teacher in the art of Black Tiger. Merhi, having already taken the prerequisites in regular Tiger, was able to jump right in and take the advanced Black Tiger classes, and he used that power to combat the baddies.

I guess, if you're going to go out, you might as well do it with a bang. Or rather, do it as ridiculously as possible. Supernatural ancient assassins brought back to life? Why not, just go for it. The thing is, that ridiculousness needs to pay off with solid action, and we didn't exactly get that. We had some great martial artists, and instead of them duking it out, we were treated to bad Street Fighter II rip-off effects with guys throwing blue balls of energy that looked like Ryu's Hadoken. That might not have been so bad, if we weren't tantalized by some great pockets of good fight scenes here and there. I guess the question is: does the silliness detract enough to make the film stupid, or make it fun?

This delivers a pretty solid Cynthia Rothrock bait-and-switch, as she dies early on. Considering she's the one Hall of Famer in the film, it was quite the disappointment. I'm debating which will be her next film we cover, either No Retreat, No Surrender 2 or Martial Law (with the idea being that immediately after we'd review Martial Law 2, which I think is the better of the two). I'm getting better at getting my hands on her older catalog, and that will allow us to look at more of the movies she's known for. I'm pretty excited about that. Also, according to IMDb, as of 2009 she and Richard Norton are shopping a new project around. Let's cross our fingers.

When last we saw Loren Avedon, he was tearing it up as the hero in King of the Kickboxers. Now he's playing a baddie in Tiger Claws III, and he did an even better job, in my opinion. It was almost like, with his goatee, he was Bizarro Avedon. What's great is, if you compare his bad guy to the one of Billy Blanks in King of the Kickboxers, you'll notice that he's much more like Jack Nicholson as the Joker in Batman, and he played it well. In fact, thinking about the late Dennis Hopper, you could almost say Avedon channeled that great actor as well. He hasn't made a film since the unreleased in this country Circuit III, which was produced in 2006. I'm not as familiar with his career as our friend Kenner at Movies in the Attic is, so maybe he can shed some light on why Avedon stopped working, and why he doesn't have that many credits in general.

I love Street Fighter II and all its sequels and whatnot. We used to play it for hours in high school. I went online to find out exactly how to spell Hadoken, and saw all kinds of screen shots and drawings people did. It brought it all back for me. I just want to go to the mall, buy a collection of all the games used for my PS2, and spend the next fives days living off Doritos and Mountain Dew while I play them all. Man, those were the days.

At UMaine I majored in anthropology, and as you can imagine, at a certain level, the class sizes got pretty small, as very few people wanted to take a class on Peoples of the South Pacific Islands or Systems of Family and Kinship. The way the department managed to subsidize these upper level classes was through the enormous 101/102 introductory classes, which a large percentage of students took at one time or other as a Gen Ed requirement. I was a TA for that class, and we had like 500 students in it. Anyway, in Tiger Claws III, Merhi takes a course in Black Tiger, and he's professor Carter Wong's only pupil. I have to assume the introductory Tiger courses must have many more students to allow for such personalized instruction. I think it was good, though, that Merhi, having the prerequisites from his early Tiger courses, decided to continue his studies. Maybe he'll apply for a minor in Tiger.

Somewhere this post took a left turn into Goofy-dom, so let's get it back on the main road and wrap it up. This had its moments, but overall was just too silly for words. You can get it on either DVD or VHS, but Netflix no longer carries it, so you'll have to dig if you want it. I'm not so sure you do. (Oh, and I tagged Bolo Yeung, but he's only in the film in a few flashback sequences from the first movie. Just wanted to let you know.)

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0197951/

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/

Tiger Claws II (1996)

Considering I got my hands on the three Tiger Claws movies, and I already reviewed part 1, it was only a matter of time before part 2 made it's way up here as well. The cast for this effort just looks so promising: Merhi, Rothrock, and Bolo return from the first one, plus you throw in Ong Soo Han and DTVC favorite Evan Lurie. This had to be good, right?

Tiger Claws II takes place however long after part one. Cynthia Rothrock is living in San Francisco, Jalal Merhi got a haircut, and Bolo Yeung is in a holding cell meditating. That's when Even Lurie tries to sell guns to Ong Soo Han's gang, the deal goes sour when Merhi interrupts it, and Han busts Bolo out of jail. Then Lurie, Bolo, and Han's two hatchet men take a cross country trip to San Fran in a French fry mobile, and Merhi follows them out there and teams up with Rothrock again. But just what is Han up to? And why is Bolo seeming like such a good guy? And why is Evan Lurie so awesome?



Somehow this devolved into a bad underground tournament flick with a mystical temporal gate that could send Tiger students back to their ancient homeland. The thing was, that devolution was preceded by very little action. It was like a bad detective film, with Lurie popping up from time to time being awesome, and Bolo somehow redeeming himself from his former life as a serial killer. At the end, the fighting tournament, though totally random, had some of the best fighting in the film. I have no idea why Ong Soo Han was cast, because his fighting was barely used, and as an actor he was pretty silly. This was no Demon from Bloodsport II, I'll tell you that. I don't know, with a cast like the one this film boasted, there should be a martial arts fight scene every ten to fifteen minutes, and instead we just got some decently choreographed fights in the last 25 minutes or so.

This might be the best looking Rothrock has been in any of her movies, but we don't watch Rothrock strictly for how pretty she is, we want to see her fight, and she did almost none until the very end. If you remember, she didn't fight much in the first Tiger Claws either. I guess we'll just have to wait and see what happens in the third and last one, but I'm not holding out much hope. What I need to do is get my hands on a copy of Martial Outlaw 2, so I'll keep my eye out.



Boy do we love Evan Lurie here at the DTVC. Though imdb lists a film he did in 1980 called The Offenders, his career really doesn't start until 1991, when he has a bit part as a bouncer in Double Impact. For the next 6 years, he would go on to do 12 more movies, the last being Operation Cobra with Don "The Dragon" Wilson, and then that was it. His best film out of the ones I've seen him in is American Kickboxer 2, but Tiger Claws II is a decent second. He only fights at the very end, and he plays a baddie throughout, but every scene he was in he was awesome. Where did you go Evan Lurie, the world of DTV needs you!

Redemption in a bad movie is often a very loose concept. I understand that Tiger Claws came out about 4 years before its sequel, but with all the flashbacks they gave us, it was hard to forget that Bolo Yeung was a VICIOUS SERIAL KILLER!!!! Now you're going to tell me he's a good guy? Or as Merhi suggests: "He's a man of honor." Yes, Merhi, a man of honor who KILLED YOUR BEST FRIEND IN THE LAST FILM!!!! I've never been a fan of long stretches of capital letters and multiple exclamation points, but I'm not sure how else to show how I want to say this. Forgive me for this one lapse in discretion.



You may have noticed that all the pics I chose for the post are of Mr. Yeung. He was just hilarious in this movie. In one scene he's making French fries for cops out of the French fry truck Lurie stole. The cops wake him up, and he just gets his apron on and has at it. Of course, the gig is up when he puts mustard on their fries-- ewww. You know what I like? McDonald's french fries with their sweet n' sour sauce. Another one is the thicker fries that come with a seafood platter, dipped in some of the seafood joint's tartar sauce. Of course, there's always the classic ketchup as well. That's what I do at Burger King or Wendy's, because I don't care for their sweet n' sour sauce. I know people who do barbecue sauce too, but it's never been my bag.

I better wrap this up before I go on too much of a tangent about French fries. Not the best Rothrock in terms of fighting, but probably her at her hottest looking. Lurie was great as always, but he doesn't fight until the end, so that's kind of a waste too. Then there's Bolo Yeung, inexplicably as a good guy serial killer who runs a fryolator. If you find it used cheap on VHS, go for it, because it would make for a great bad movie night. Otherwise, if you're looking for seriously good action, you'll be disappointed.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0126698/

Tiger Claws (1992)

Tiger Claws is one I've been looking to get after for a while now, it's just been a matter of getting my hands on it, which I finally did, along with the other two in the series. Obviously the number one reason I wanted it was for DTVC Hall of Famer Cynthia Rothrock, as after China O'Brien and Rage and Honor, it's the Tiger Claws movies she's probably best known for (maybe Lady Dragon or Martial Law too). There's also Bolo Yeung, and the need to review more Jalal Merhi films. All reasons why this was a must do.

Tiger Claws has Rothrock as a rookie cop trying to make her way out of the low-level vice circuit and into bigger deals, and she sees her chance when a serial killer in town is targeting martial arts experts. The chief likes her approach, and has her team up with upper level vice cop Jalal Merhi, who was just suspended for a drug bust gone bad. As they dig, they find the killer practices a dangerous form of martial arts called Tiger, which causes the practitioner to straddle that scary line between crazy and controlled. Merhi once studied Tiger, but stopped when it became too much. Now their only choice is for him to study it again. Will he be able to handle it this time, and if so, will it be enough to take out the serial killer?

This was pretty good. Not the greatest thing ever, but pretty solid. There were moments where the martial arts were great, which is what we want out of the cast involved. Then there were moments where the fighting was lame, and I wondered how that happened with the cast involved. The dialog was atrocious, even for a 90s bad action film. Merhi often stumbled over his lines and ran them all together, making it hard to understand him. Pretty much everyone else that wasn't Bolo Yeung or Cynthia Rothrock sounded like high school kids doing a class project where they made up a mystery movie. It was thick overacting that could be cut with a knife. That kind of thing works if the action's on point, but here it left a little to be desired. Bottom line, a great bad movie for making fun of.

Rothrock wasn't bad, but she wasn't the lead, Merhi was. The problem with that was, Rothrock had all the experience and was better equipped to lead a movie, while Merhi would've been better in the supporting role, a la Richard Norton in China O'Brien. It just didn't work that she was supposed to be some kind of a rookie, especially when Merhi was flubbing his lines. I think the next two films for Ms. Rothrock will be the last two films in this series, considering I have them at my disposal right now. From the start, her catalog has been the hardest to get my hands on, with her films having been purged by Netflix long before a lot of the others. I was hoping with the release of Undefeatable, a lot of those other out of print films would make their way back onto the shelves, but so far not so good.

I imagine it's time I finally tagged Bolo Yeung. I'm not sure what took me so long, maybe it's because he has so few films up; but still, he's Bolo Yeung. (As of right now, we've reviewed Breathing Fire, where he dresses like a woman, and then his two Van Damme films came up in our Van Damme movie night post.) That might change, because I'm looking to get my hands on the Shootfighter movies, and obviously Tiger Claws II is on the docket. As far as this one goes, he spent a good chunk of the film painting a wall in the abandoned theater his fellow Tiger students were training in. As Merhi would demonstrate his martial arts skills, Yeung would periodically turn around from his work and laugh. I'd like to sample that and splice it into various other movies, just Bolo Yeung turning around and laughing at something.

This will be the fifth Jalal Merhi film we've reviewed at the DTVC, though only the second, after Guaranteed Overnight Delivery, that he's had a major acting part in. He wasn't bad as far as martial arts goes here, but acting wise he was no where near as proficient as he was in that other flick. The other thing was he had a ponytail, which was bad enough, but when he went out on the town with Yeung and a fellow Tiger student and had his hair down, he looked like a horrible hair band reject. Cut your hair damn it.

If you remember, just last week when reviewing The King of the Kickboxers, I discussed the art of the police chief in the bad action film, and how well it was done there. Here is where it was done as stereotypically badly as humanly possible. This guy overacted everything, yelled when it seemed unnecessary--pretty much everything you'd expect someone with no acting skills whatsoever to do as that kind of police captain, or everything you'd expect someone who was a decent actor but was overdoing it to do. It was ridiculous, but plenty fun to make fun of.

Based on what one has to go through to get it, it's not exactly worth it. If you can find it used on the cheap, go for it; and if Netflix or something like that ever gets it again, go for it too; and if it's ever on TV, DVR it; but if you have to spend a lot of money, i.e. more than $5, I'd pass. It seems like it should be a lot better than it is, and it's still okay, but still okay doesn't cut it when it could've been awesome.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105592/

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/

Circuit 3: The Street Monk (2006)

I was trying to think back to the archives to see if there was another film like Circuit 3: Street Monk, where I reviewed it despite the fact it wasn't available on the retail market here in the States. Dolph's Retrograde comes to mind, but that was rectified last year, and now you can even get that on Watch Instantly on Netflix.

Circuit 3: Street Monk picks up where Dirk Longstreet (DTVC Hall of Famer Olivier Gruner if you didn't know) left off in part 2. It seems like his girlfriend didn't survive that coma she was put in by that film's baddie, and Dirk has given up, living a nomadic lifestyle completely off the grid out of his van, searching for the next great wave to ride. He supplements this lifestyle through illegal underground fighting, which we see at the beginning. Anyway, while surfing, a young girl who was sold by her step-dad to white slavers escapes to the beach, Gruner saves her, and a bond forms. When she's captured, Gruner must fight again to save her. Of course, what he doesn't know is his wife is actually alive, but his off-the-grid life means no one can tell him.



Maybe there's a reason why certain films aren't released here. This was made on what looked like a shoestring budget, and I can't imagine after that that there was much left to pay for distribution. Beyond Gruner, all you had was Jalal Mehri, who also wrote, directed, and produced, so I imagine he was cheap, and then the main baddie was Jason Carter, who's a Brit you might remember from Babylon 5 or 90210. The best they could do for a fighter for Gruner at the end was James Lew, a major That Guy who is seldom in any film for more than a few scenes and seldom for anything more than a member of Cary Tagawa's. I had trouble accepting this was made in 2006, because the film quality, dialog, and clothing, looked more like 1999.

And with that lack of talent, the action suffered. Gruner had a few moments, but he could only work with the scraps he was given. The first two were just more complete films. I have to feel like maybe Gruner and Mehri would prefer I didn't get my hands on this, because I'm sure they'd rather no one knew about it. If you go to imdb, Gruner's not even top billed. That being said, this could've been a little better. A lot of the ideas were just dipped in wrong sauce. Gruner fighting with a surf board may sound cool in the meeting room, but on screen it looks silly, and someone needed to fix that, ie cut it out. In another scene, Gruner is stomped by some surfers after the baddie's goons pay them. In response, Gruner runs out to the water where they're surfing, swims underneath them, and grabs them one at a time and brings them below the surface. Who knows what it accomplished, and who knows why the baddies paid the surfers to stomp him, because they didn't do anything after either. The movie was more moments like that than good ones.



Gruner's current imdb photo is for this film One Night, which is in post-production, and which marks Gruner's directorial debut. Of the five films between that and 2006's Crooked, only one, Brother's War, was available over here, including Circuit 3. That's not a good ratio. We know the Albert Pyun directed Tales of an Ancient Empire will be released here, but still... I guess in one case, Blizhniy Boy: The Ultimate Fighter, a promising film with a solid cast, the film went bankrupt and is now in limbo, probably never to see the light of day. How does that happen? The film lists, in addition to Gruner, Tagawa, Gary Busey, Eric Roberts, Martin Kove, and Bolo Yeung. You'd think a distributor like MGM would scoop that and make money on those names alone. Anyway, in Circuit 3, Gruner was pretty hilarious. He looked like teen poser rocking his Quicksilver beach visor. Again, someone should've stepped in and stopped that.

One reason why Circuit 3 wasn't released might have to do with the casting of James Lew in a major part. I don't know this for a fact, but it seems that using a That Guy like that might interfere with the time/space continuum. If too many people knew that James Lew was more than just That Guy from that movie where he played a guy in a gang, the consequences could be catastrophic, and perhaps... nah, that's crazy... okay, I was just thinking, it might mean Massachusetts might elect a tea bagger backed Republican into Ted Kennedy's senate seat, but that would never happen, would it...?



In one scene, Gruner and the girl break into a hotel to hide out from the baddies. To make up for a lack of blankets, Gruner uses a bathrobe. I only bring this up, because back when I was like 19 or 20, me and some buddies were drinking at one of their places while his folks were out of town. I was pretty plastered, and curled up on a recliner to call it a night. Draped over the top of it was what I thought was a throw blanket, which I covered myself in. Anyway, my buddy's sister comes home and says "um... do you need a blanket?" and I was like "Oh, no, this is fine." I had no idea why she gave me a funny look, until the next morning, when I found out I was sleeping in what looked to be their mom's bathrobe. I'd forgotten all about that until that scene.

So you can't get this over here, and that might be a good thing, I don't know. The cover picture I have up there is from an Australian set of all three movies on DVD. I don't know if that will make it's way over here, and I don't really care. Unlike Retrograde, where I'm glad it was finally released, I could do without seeing this one again.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0498335/

Guaranteed Overnight Delivery aka GOD (2001)

This is one I've been wanting to do for a long time. In part because it's a Gruner flick, and in part because it's got Jalal Mehri in an actual action role. Sure, he was in the two Circuit films, but he just sat behind a desk. Now we got him on his feet and kicking ass.

Guaranteed Overnight Delivery is about a bank security guard, Jalal Mehri, who is unhappy about his job because he used to be a police sergeant in his native India. Anyway, there's a bank heist, and he loses his job for it-- not for the shootout he set off by trying to be the hero, but because he didn't guard the bank (how can you not love the twisted logic of action movies?) Anyway, his wife died in the shootout while bringing him his lunch, so now Mehri is down and out and living out of his franchised delivery truck. Things change, though, when some white slavers decide it would be a great idea to have him deliver a woman in a trunk to a buyer. Sure, I can't imagine she'd make any noise and Mehri would find out. He did, but he can't go to the cops because he needs the money, so they have to confront her kidnappers.



This could've been a little better. Gruner could've fought more. I would've liked more Darren Shahlavi, considering how great he was in Bloodmoon. They would've elevated the level of the fight scenes. The plot was beyond ridiculous, but that may have been to its benefit. Why wouldn't a trained police officer initiate a shootout with crooks on a crowded street? Though if Mehri's character was supposed to be from India, that would make more sense. The cops are probably trained to "accidentally" shoot the untouchables. Then the premise of sending a kidnapped woman to her white slaver in a trunk via a delivery service just seems like a perfect idea. I mean, I'm not in the business of kidnapping, but I have to figure as few people involved the better, right?

Olivier Gruner has about 12 movies between when this came out and now, and only about half of them are available to Americans right now. One of them, Blizhiny Boy: The Ultimate Fighter, has Busey, Bolo Yeung, Eric Roberts, David Carradine, and Cary Tagawa. How do we not get a film like that? Who is in charge of releasing films in the US? According to someone posting on imdb, the production ran out of money and couldn't afford to pay the extras, and that's that. Awesome. As far as GOD goes, Gruner doesn't fight much at all, which is a waste of him. Even his final fight with Mehri was kind of lackluster. He should've been paired up with Darren Shahlavi-- that would've been a sweet fight scene. Perhaps this wasn't the best film to cover for Gruner's induction week. My bad.



I haven't done much with Jalal Mehri, which I know is an oversight on my part. Unfortunately, a lot of what he's done isn't on DVD. He's more of a director and producer than actor, with a lot of his credits coming in small roles, so a film like this where he's the hero is a rarity. I really want to get into his collaborations with Billy Blanks, someone else I should be including on here more, huh?

Anyone who's seen Bloodmoon knows how good Darren Shahlavi is, and for the one scene he had here with Mehri he was good too. Why then does he have all these bit parts, like he did in GOD, instead of more starring roles, like Bloodmoon. I have a film he did with Mark Dacascos in it called Alien Agent in my queue. Might be a good next place to go to see if there's more Shahlavi out there.



While on the run from Gruner's men, Mehri goes to a B&B owned by an old friend, and that old friend is the awesomest guy ever. I've never seen anything like it. This fat, obnoxious bad guy shoots him in the stomach, obviously because he couldn't handle the guy's amazing awesomeness. I just wish there were more guys like this in movies. I mean, look at that picture above. Is that not awesome personified. By the way, I don't know how many of my readers saw the Patriots/Dolphins game last Sunday, but Dan Dierdorf called every player [insert character trait here] personified. "He is [toughness] personified." "When you see [resilience] in the dictionary, his picture's there." "The quintessential [football] player." I know you got three hours (an hour and a half minus commercials) to fill, but there's a point when the hyperbole becomes stale. Sorry Dan, but you're bad announcer personified... Oh Snap!

Check this one out, it's pretty funny. The action could've been better, especially with the talent involved, but it was good enough. Throw in a ludicrous plot concept, and you're well on your way to a laugh fest. Oh yeah, and there's also the awesomest man of all time.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0225828/

The Circuit 2: The Final Punch (2002)

I had planned on posting this later and putting up a different Gruner film, Automatic, in this spot. The issue wasn't with Gruner, but Lorenzo Lamas, who's also in the film. I didn't want to have too much Lamas in too short a span, and I was excited about the prospect of Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus. But that's stuck with the label "Very Long Wait" in my Netflix queue, and who knows when I'll get it up now.

The Circuit 2 takes place sometime after part one. Gruner is engaged to the hottie Australian reporter he had been hooking up with, and life looks good. But reporters in action movies always end up where they shouldn't, and Gruner's woman is caught investigating a prison fight ring. The guards and a beast of a prisoner work her over and leave her to die. Lamas, Gruner's woman's colleague at the paper, gets Gruner in at the prison, and he makes his way through the ranks to get the proof he needs against the warden.



If the first one was silly, with Gruner punching bottles into the ground and whatnot, this one did it one better. The jail made no sense. If I'm a Californian, I'm less than stoked that my tax dollars are going to that place. Gruner came in as angry as he was in part one, but he replaced the punching bottles with a knit cap and cigarettes. The addition of Lamas was good, but I think I would've liked more. He's just above the cameo level. Gary Hudson was a solid addition as a prison guard, but nothing was done with him either.

This is good Gruner. It was nice watching him beat the crap out of person after person in that jail, but that's really all it was. There was nothing in the jail for him to overcome. All he had to do was show up and fight. His final fight with the baddie was poorly choreographed and went on forever. The problem was they had a dude who was just too big to make the fight look exciting on screen. Best of the Best 2 had the same problem, but they rectified it using sticks. A movie fight needs speed.



Lamas is the resident Hall of Famer here, but it's certainly not his movie. He plays a newspaper editor trying to quit smoking, who occasionally ends up in situations where we see him fight. In one some thugs meet him at his car with a beef over an article he wrote, and he and Gruner beat the crap out of them. It sucks right now that Mega Shark is stuck in Netflix limbo. They need to get their shit together toot-sweet (tout de suite).

We've reviewed quite a few prison films here at the DTVC. The two best, as far as I'm concerned, are Live by the Fist and Bloodsport 4: The Dark Kumite. The first one was amazing because it had Jerry Trimble and George Takei. The second one was great because the premise was Ben Franklin running a fight ring in a New York that resembled Romania. This film was nowhere near as good as that. I'd put it right behind Bloodfist III. It wasn't as bad as In Hell, but how much of a compliment is that. This was essentially Bloodsport 4 without Ben Franklin, and had it featured him or another Founding Father (Framer), this paragraph would've been different.



I think this film might have been afraid to use Gary Hudson. He started out so promising. Why he wasn't running the show as the head baddie is beyond me. I considered actually doing this entire post about Hudson, but I wasn't sure if I could write 8 paragraphs on him, or even five if you take out the opening, synopsis, and closing paragraphs. But I can do one, and that's what I'm going to do. He can't carry a film on his own like a Lamas or Gruner, but when you give him that secondary role as baddie or hero's partner, he's got it. We'll explore a film where he used better later on with Martial Law.

So this is a good deal. It's not Gruner's best, and it's scant on the Lamas, but it's serviceable. I wouldn't plan your night around it, but if it's on late at night or something, you could do a lot worse. If you've seen everything else by Gruner, give this one a try.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0321704/