High Voltage (1997)

This is one that's been sitting in my Tubi queue for I don't know how long. It's an Isaac Florentine film, so I knew I needed to get to it at some point, but now that we only have this and two others of his left to cover, I figured it was time to make it happen. In addition to us, Chris the Brain at Bulletproof and Ty and Brett at Comeuppance have covered this as well.

High Voltage is about a group of young bank robbers, led by Antonio Sabato Jr., and including Lochlyn Munro and Amy Smart. They think they have the score of their life coming when they rob a bank in Chinatown, but Sabato Jr. discovers as they're raiding the vault that this is the bank where top Vietnamese gangster George Cheung launders his and other gangsters' money. He tries to abort the robbery, but it's too late, Cheung wants his pound of flesh, and will stop at nothing to get it. Initially running felt like the best option, but now Sabato Jr. and crew want to get all Cheung's cash and take him down, and Sabato Jr. knows just the person to help him do it: Shannon Lee, bank manager and unhappy romantic partner to Cheung, she's all too happy to help Sabato Jr. and company so she can get away from Cheung too. Will they succeed?

This is some good old fashioned Florentine here, maybe a tier below his best stuff, but at the top of that second tier for sure. Great action set pieces, with names we recognize, and this fun mix of Westerns, 90s heist flicks, and Hong Kong Gun Fu. We do get some lull points, and some of those work, like the scenes with Sabato Jr. and Lee, but mostly they're there to let us relax between action scenes, even if they have a real purpose of character development. Outside of Sabato Jr. and Lee's characters, do I care if anyone else bites it in this? Probably not, just throw me onto a set somewhere, fire a bunch of guns, blow some shit up, and have some people beat the crap out of each other. It's a time-honored tradition that just works, and this one does that.

By my count this is 17 directed films on the site for Isaac Florentine, plus a half for his work on Max Havoc: Curse of the Dragon, which puts him in a three-way tie with Joseph Merhi and Fred Olen Ray for second all-time, behind Albert Pyun (co-director on Max Havoc: Curse of the Dragon) and his 44. He has two other films for us to review on the site, Hounds of War, which Ty and I covered on episode 277 of the podcast; and Desert Kickboxer, his first ever directorial feature film. So that means Desert Kickboxer is the only film of his I haven't seen yet, which I think gives me a good idea of where High Voltage ranks among his movies. My favorites of his are the two Ninja movies, Cold Harvest, and Bridge of Dragons. Then we have Special Forces and US Seals II, and I think this slots in with those, fun 90-minute actioners that do what you want from them. What I think is interesting is I would put this above everything he's done since Ninja: Shadow of a Tear, which I think says less about Florentine, and more about the restrictions on DTV filmmaking in the age of streaming and industry consolidation. When I look at his run from this in 1997 to Special Forces in 2003, I don't know that any of those movies would've been given the money and resources to be made at that quality today, and it's not like any of those were breaking the bank! What's great about Tubi though is we can go back and revisit gems like these, or visit them for the first time like I did.

We last saw Antonio Sabato Jr. in 2011 when we covered The Base II, which was his second time on the site after Princess of Mars, so we don't see a lot of him on here, and I discovered that doesn't make sense when you look at his IMDb bio, as he has a lot of other DTV stuff, especially from around this time, but I had no idea and just thought he went more mainstream after this. He does a good enough job here, maybe not the Dolph, Adkins, Daniels, or even Marshall Teague you expect from a Florentine lead, but for what the movie wanted he fit the bill well. Equally great at fitting the bill was Shannon Lee, though it would've been nice to see her do some more martial arts. Unlike Sabato Jr., this is our first time seeing her on the site, and she doesn't have a lot of credits, but there are a few movies of hers out there that we could do, including Cage II, which we talked about last week on The Firing Line post. She did do an episode of the show Warrior in 2023, so maybe she'll do some DTV stuff in the near future as well. Some of these 90s nostalgia films like Last Kumite could use someone like her in them, which would be great to see.

This is probably as good a place as any for a big cast round-up, as there are a lot of people in this. We have Amy Smart as a member of the gang, the same year Starship Troopers is released, and two years before Varsity Blues and Outside Providence, when she really takes off. She has made her way back to the DTV world recently with 2024's Held Hostage in My House, which sounds like a great Lifetime title, but was a direct to Netflix film. Also in the gang was Lochlyn Munro, who's no stranger to our site or the DTV world. Both he and Smart are good as members of the gang, even if his character had more to do than hers. William Zabka's back after we saw him in our SePMtember PM post. Here he's not a scenery chewing baddie, but is fun as an unhinged biker who first helps Sabato Jr. and co., only to double cross them because he wants the money to himself. The baddie is played by George Cheung, who we usually see in more supporting roles, but does a great job as the main baddie. We haven't tagged him yet, and when I looked up his IMDb bio, he doesn't have as much stuff that we've covered on here as I thought, so maybe sometime down the road he'll get that tag. Someone who does have it is the late James Lew, who plays Cheung's second-in-command. Always great to see Lew, he was one of those names that helped make these 90s DTV actioners that much better, and will be missed.

Finally, terms like Tarentino-esque or ripping off Tarentino come up a lot, especially in late 90s movies like this where it was hard to not see the shadow Pulp Fiction was casting over them. That said, it can be reductive if we're not thinking about all the movies that existed before Pulp Fiction that Tarentino was borrowing from too, which begs the question, are they sharing the same influence as opposed to one borrowing from the other? I think you can make the case in this with the scene in the bar where Amy Smart is playing a cover of "I Can't Help Falling in Love" on the jukebox and dancing around to it that that's kind of biting on Pulp Fiction, though it also kind of feels like the 60s movies that Tarentino was taking that kind of thing from too, and part of why I may give Florentine the benefit of the doubt is much of this film feels more like he was drawing from old Westerns and 60s crime movies, and then giving it a modern touch, as opposed to riding the Pulp Fiction wave; but at the very least, you could make the argument that Pulp Fiction and the need to cash in on that gave filmmakers like Florentine the greenlight to add more elements like that in their movies, or even the addition of them made for a better hook for investors and distributors. Probably the most obvious Tarentino rip-off elements we complain about are the quirky gangster conversations, or an overall talkiness that sounds too derivative to be anything but, which this movie doesn't have; but these touches Florentine add in this film that harken back to an earlier movie age are probably better understood as coming from a similar inspiration rather than an out-and-out rip-off, but as I said above, Pulp Fiction cast such a large shadow, that it's not always easy to unpack that when we see it.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently get this on a bunch of streamers here in the States, including Tubi, which I think is a great way to go. This is earlier Florentine with some great names and great action that you may have missed (like I did), or haven't seen in a while, but I think it's worth a watch (or rewatch if that's the case).

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0129992

For Life or Death (1996)

This past week we lost an absolute legend, one of the best to do it in the DTV action world, James Lew. As such, we needed to do a post in his honor, and I figured because this one had a lot of Lew in it, it would do the trick. As Nicolette Larson said, "it's gonna take a lotta Lew..." In addition to us, Ty and Brett at Comeuppance have covered this as well.

For Life of Death has Lew as Kaan Woo, formerly part of a mystical cult of martial arts warriors with magical powers, he left them, but, as cults are wont to do, they come and try to take him back by force. The leader of the cult, Ling Li (Nancy Kwan), was hoping to marry Kaan Woo, so when he left her and found a younger woman in Caren (Grace Una), Li sent her best monks after him, including Benny "The Jet" Urquidez, and Richard "no nickname needed" Norton. Recognizing he's outnumbered, Kaan Woo transfers his soul into the body of Earl (Mark Pellegrino), a man dealing with alcohol addiction and housing insecurity. Now Li wants Earl, but if Earl discovers whose soul is sharing his body in time, perhaps he and Woo together can take Li down.

Maybe I shouldn't have followed Nicolette Larson's advice and gone for the movie that had a lotta Lew, because I don't know if this is the best movie overall. Lew was fight choreographer, and between him and the fantastic names involved, which, in addition to the names I mentioned above, also included Karen Sheperd and Gerald Okamura, the talent was there, and it came through at times. Most of the time though those great fights were obscured by editing choices. Sped-up film, awkward cuts, attempts at Hong Kong cinema that looked more like someone parodying it than paying homage to it. The story had issues as well, probably foremost among them, it felt like we were just spinning our wheels until Lew came back, which meant from the time he leaves us early on, until he comes back near the end, it all feels like padding in a way. Why not just have it be Lew the whole time? Is there a law that says you can only have Lew for limited screen time? Still, in celebrating the life of someone as great as Lew, someone who did a lot more supporting work or even cameos, to have something like this where he has a more robust part, and that movie being available on Tubi, makes it a good choice if you're looking for something to celebrate him, and maybe that's what counts most.

One of the things I discovered when I was looking for a film to review for this post, is I hadn't tagged all of Lew's stunt work yet, and when I did that, he ended up with 31 tags overall. That means automatic Hall of Fame entry, but I think that was a given this fall anyway, and it was something that was long overdue. For anyone who watched action films from the late 80s to the mid-90s and onward, Lew was a mainstay, probably more of a That Guy, but for us who watched a lot of these movies, we knew who he was and appreciated what he brought to the table. We weren't the only ones though, he won a Primetime Emmy for his work as stunt coordinator on the Luke Cage TV show, one of my favorite things the MCU has produced, so it was great to see he was given the honor for that; and later this year, Avengers: Endgame will be back in theaters, which he won an Actors Award for along with the rest of the stunt crew. So here's to you Mr. Lew, you were one of the greatest to ever do it, and will truly be missed.

Also missed is Richard Norton, who with this film enters the 30 Club, but we'll do another post later on down the road to fully celebrate that milestone. There were a few scenes where he and Lew fought, and it was hard to watch knowing they're both no longer with us. It's the reality though, that even something like this is thirty years old now, and if these guys were in their 40s then, they'd be in the 70s now, some even older than that, but at least we know that they created a lasting legacy that for the most part we can enjoy on some form of physical media, and in many cases on a free streamer like Tubi. So they may be gone, but not forgotten, and their work endures for us to enjoy, and hopefully for new generations to discover and enjoy too. And maybe this movie isn't the best of his, but he turns in a fun performance that at least enhances the proceedings, which is always good to see.

Kato Kaelin is back, and it's crazy seeing him 30 years later, because when this was made he was only a couple years removed from the OJ trial. As a result, having Kato Kaelin in your movie at that time could provide a boost, though looking at his career prior to the OJ trial, this was the kind of role he had been getting, so maybe he would've been in this film regardless, or may have even committed to it before the trial began. We also had Karen Sheperd, who had a smaller part but a couple nice fight scenes, so that was nice to see. I think there are six or seven DTV movies of hers out there that we haven't covered yet, so hopefully we'll get to those eventually. For a little IMDb-style trivia, both she and Kaelin have been in Cyborg sequels, Sheperd in part 2, Kaelin in part 3. (As an aside, why do people put trivia like that on IMDb trivia pages? I want nuggets about the film that I wouldn't know otherwise, not connections I could make on my own by cherry picking actors' filmographies!) Finally, we had Gerald Okamura in his 20th film on that site. I had no idea he had that many! I'm not sure if 30 Club is possible for him though, because I don't know if he has 10 more films for us to review. He's great here as the ancient master that helps Pellegrino learn his true potential.

Finally, I want to go back to Lew again, because beyond his martial arts and fight choreography work, one of his best contributions to the films we watched was as a henchman to a main baddie. It's a thankless role, you don't get to chew scenery like the main baddie, instead you may have very few lines, and have to generally play a jerk, and then take a beating from the hero in an applause moment. I think that was the most fitting reason to choose this movie, even if it wasn't as good as some of his others, because he was the one beating up henchmen here; and while I say it's a thankless position, for us that have seen a lot of these, when someone like a Lew appears over and over, we do start to appreciate what he's bringing to the table, and that's why we in the action fandom, especially the DTV action fandom, we were so sad to hear the news of Lew's passing. Maybe he didn't have what the kids call "main character energy," but he carved out a great career doing what he loved to do, and I don't know that it gets more main character in life than that.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently stream this free on Tubi and Prime here in the States. Again, it's not exactly the best movie, but you get Lew in a leading role, which makes it a good option if you're watching something in his honor. One of the greatest to do it, he will be missed.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0144930

Private Wars (1993)

For our PM flick this month, we're looking at Steve Railsback's one film for them, because who doesn't want to see what Railsback's up to in a PM actioner? And to prove that point further, this has also been covered by Ty and Brett at Comeuppance, Matt Spector at Bulletproof, Karl Brezdin at Fist of the B-List, plus Jon Cross reviewed it on Letterboxd, so I'm a little late to the party.

Private Wars has Railsback as a cop who's sufficiently on the edge, which leads to corrupt chief Michael Champion getting him booted off the force, which leads him to get a job as a PI and crawl into a bottle of liquor. But he's called back into action when an old friend's neighborhood is being terrorized by a gang of toughs. Something about this seems off though, why are these toughs so well organized? Enter The Ben Gazzara in Road House-ish Stuart Whitman, a land developer who wants to scare everyone out and develop the neighborhood on his own. Not only does he have Champion in his pocket, but his hatchet man is none other than James Lew. Is Railsback going to dry up enough to take all these baddies down?

This was a lot of fun. It was like PM's take on the off-beat action comedy, which ended up being perfect for Railsback, but also perfect for the too sweet van flip in the opening chase scene. I mean, that thing jumped higher than Lorenzo Lamas in Viper aka Bad Blood jumping over a car. I don't know what I'd expect a PM version of the off-beat action comedy to be, but this felt like it, and while we didn't get anything as fantastic as "Sweet Freedom," this also had a pretty nice soundtrack too. It did have some jokes that fell flat a bit though, like when Railsback initially turns down the request to help, the community auditions people to help, and the bit that follows is cringe-y at best, and doesn't age well at worst. Still, the action is exactly what we want from PM, especially the three-headed end fight scene, and with Railsback's fun lead, this has a lot to hang its hat on. That begs the question though, what do we do with the PM version of the off-beat action comedy? In terms of ranking, maybe top 30? Which, when you're talking about a studio with the output of PM, top 30 means you're going to enjoy your 90 minutes, you just may not have a classic on your hands. I think that's okay, not everything needs to be a classic, sometimes a fun 90 minutes does the trick. (Oh, and speaking of Lamas, scenes of him from CIA: Code Name Alexa appear on a TV, so he gets another tag, putting him three away from the coveted 40 Club!)

We're now at six Steve Railsback movies, but this is the first one where he was the lead, and I think a lot of it worked. I don't know if I see Railsback in a Recoil or Art of Dying, but for this role he nailed it--and nailed it better than some of the bits we get. I mean I guess who else plays a good drunk, but somehow can also beat up a bunch of bikers, then take on Vince Murdocco and John Salvitti in a fight in a holding cell? When his character's making love to Holly Floria, who is 20 years his junior, while his best friend is getting beaten to death, the demerits that we would give another hero don't stick to Railsback, it's like he can't help himself, but when the chips are down, he's ready with a pump action shotgun. In PM world, that's often all you need, and all the James Lews and Stuart Whitmans need to watch out when he does. He's got a decent amount of stuff out there that we still need to do, and some of it looks pretty good, so hopefully we'll see more Railsback on here soon, because he was a lot of fun in this one.

The late Michael Champion feels like he was created in a lab in Canada to be the perfect baddie in a syndicated TV show or Canadian city passing for an American city movie production, so imagine my surprise when I discovered that he was a Yank from Indiana, and had a long history before the 90s in American TV shows. I mean you look at him here, and it feels like he was plucked right off a Da Vinci Inquest set, even though he never did that show, or any show like it! Wonders never cease, huh? I mean, yes, his pre-90s stuff like Beverly Hills Cop he makes more sense as an American, and in Total Recall he was the recipient of the infamous "look who's talkin' " line, so I'd be forgiven for not recognizing him there, but I think post-The Swordsman he pivots into a full-on syndicated TV/DTV actioner look that feels like it was created in a lab in Alberta or Saskatchewan. We unfortunately lost him in 2021, but in the 90s he was a force that made movies like this just a bit better. Here's to you Michael Champion, you were one of the great ones.

As you can see, there are a lot of other names in this. First off, Art Camacho is now at 59 movies, as he plays the guy in the holding cell that Vince Murdocco beats up. Maybe for next month's PM flick we can do one he directed to celebrate him entering the 60 Club. And then we had stunt team Red Horton and "Broadway" Joe Murphy, with Horton listed as stunt coordinator and action director, but Murphy listed as a second unit director as well. They had some fantastic stuff in this, so kudos to them. Then we had James Lew and his too sweet mullet coming in with his 21st film on the site, which means he could be getting some Hall of Fame consideration; and Vince Murdocco with his 12th movie on the site, which I think when you're talking Vince Murdocco, that's not bad at all. Murdocco and John Salvitti team up with Railsback at the end to create the three-headed end fight scene I mentioned above. What happens is, Whitman calls in two out of town specialists who do a great job showing off how well they can use martial arts weapons, and each of them fight Murdocco and Salvitti, while Railsback fights Lew. What a beautiful way to make the most of the martial artists you have at your disposal, another win in the PM column.

Finally, is that a McDonald's in the background there? It looks like the Golden Arches, doesn't it? This is in the opening chase, and it's looped multiple times, so I got a lot of looks at it, but couldn't tell for sure. If it's not a McDonald's, it looks so similar that a McDonald's representative may have contacted them about it. Could it be a McDowell's kind of thing, but maybe like a gentleman's club? I love the idea of that, opening up a gentleman's club called McDowell's or whatever, using a sign that looks Golden Arches-esque, but people thinking they're getting fast food are getting exotic dancers and two drink minimums instead. "God, I don't want a private dance, I just wanted a couple double cheeseburgers!" Anyway, until we know for sure, I'm erring on the side of yes, which means this is the 22nd time McDonald's has appeared on the site. Are we going to have to induct McDonald's into the DTVC Hall of Fame? I don't even know how we do that, but I guess we'll see when we get there. (And yes, that is a man hanging off the front of that van. And I know, that means I've seen so many of these PM films that a man hanging off the front of a van is so commonplace that I'm more concerned about whether or not that's a McDonald's in the background.)

All right, with that, let's wrap this up. As far as I know, YouTube is the best way to watch this, and the version on there isn't bad. You can find it on my PM Entertainment YouTube playlist, and while you're there, why not subscribe to our channel? It's been a while since I've posted a new original video, but every podcast episode is on there.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107879/

And check out my newest novel, Mark in Sales, on Amazon in paperback and Kindle.

3 Musketeers (2011)

It's that time again, DTVC Hall of Fame inductions! And our first one is one we knew was going to be in as far back as March when we first decided to tag him, and discovered he had over 50 movies on the site! That's right, the one and only Cole S. McKay. This film is one of two he directed for The Asylum, the other being 200 M.P.H., and after hearing Will from Exploding Helicopter say good things about it, I figured it's be a great one for McKay's induction post.

3 Musketeers is about an elite US military special ops team of the same name (Xin Sarith Wuku, Keith Allen, and Michele Boyd) who get framed for blowing up a South Korean airliner while doing some special ops stuff in North Korea. Meanwhile back at the Pentagon, agent D'Artagnan (Heather Hemmens) is sent to talk to a crackpot named Planchet (the great Steven Williams), but when he's assassinated, she knows this goes way deeper, so she tracks down the Musketeers for help. Turns out their former boss, Treville the Cardinal (Alan Rachins) is planning to assassinate the President of the United States! Will our heroes be able to stop him?

This was a pretty fun time. It does have some lulls in it, and it has the cheap CGI we've come to expect from The Asylum, but beyond that this does what you need it to do. I think the best part is Heather Hemmens as the lead. She underpins the whole approach The Asylum is going for here where they're doing something different with the Three Musketeers story, and that's furthered with the Musketeers themselves, Xin Sarith Wuku, Keith Allen, and Michele Boyd. This is a fun team that I want to see succeed, which is the key to making something like this work. On the opposite end, Alan Rachins is a great baddie, with David Chokachi working well as his second-in-command. Unlike a lot of the PM films McKay worked on though, CGI replaces a lot of the stunts, shootouts, and explosions, and that keeps this from being an all-time classic that some of those are; but I think the fun cast and the work McKay and the stunt team does in the moments that aren't CGI elevates this beyond the usual Asylum fair, making it worth a watch.

63 tags before a Hall of Fame induction may be a record, unless we decide to put Millennium Films in, but at least it'll be a record for a person. As I've mentioned before, Cole S. McKay was first put on my radar when I had Chris the Brain Kacvinsky from Bulletproof Action on the pod to talk The Sweeper (episode 165 in the archives). We were talking about Spiro Razatos, and he mentioned McKay then as another great stunt guy. From there, doing the PM Entertainment Podcast with Jon Cross, McKay kept coming up, so after reviewing Victim of Desire back in March I decided to tag him, and he had over fifty movies that we'd reviewed on the site! Since then, we've now done an additional 7 movies (this one included), meaning at that rate he could pass Dolph to be the most tagged all time! What's interesting with this movie, is you see the moments where The Asylum skimps with CGI that PM allowed their stunt teams, led by talents like McKay, to get after it. For example, we get a moment where Hemmens's character swings on a large advertising banner to escape some baddies, and it's just bad-looking CGI. You know had this been PM fifteen years before, a stunt person would've been rigged-up and been swinging through that scene for real. As I mentioned above though, what McKay and his team can do is elevate the moments of practical stunts we do get, so we get something closer to that golden age from fifteen years before, even if it's not quite that. He has a ton of stuff left to cover, especially from that golden age of DTV action, so it'll be exciting to see what comes next, but for right now, it's about finally getting him into the Hall of Fame, which we're doing in this post.

Our other Hall of Famer here is The Asylum, they of the Asylum Rule which states that anyone with over 30 tags is an automatic Hall of Famer. In that sense The Asylum made us induct them into the Hall of Fame by the sheer volume of movies they've made like this who have other people in them. The other thing is, when I first started the site in the late 2000s, these Mockbusters they were doing were ubiquitous, and a fun inclusion to get people interested in what we were doing. We did our share of Transmorphers and Snakes on a Train, and one thing I've found with those films, or the myriad disaster movies and big monster movies, is they often used those films to give people opportunities they wouldn't ordinarily have had. In that sense I think they're working in the same tradition as PM Entertainment, and when it works, like it does here, it's a lot of fun. So, maybe they forced us to induct them into the Hall of Fame, but watching a movie like this one is a reminder that they were also deserving of the honor.

We're going to try to stuff everyone else into this sixth paragraph, so buckle up, because there are a lot of names to get to. We'll start with Heather Hemmens, who I discovered from her IMDb bio is a fellow Mainer! She was great here, but it looks like the only other thing she's done like this was another Asylum joint, Rise of the Zombies, so maybe we'll have to give that a try. Among the Musketeers, I didn't recognize any of them either, but Keith Allen I thought looked like a combination of Todd Newton and Ryan Seacrest, which was perfect for the role he played as the computer whiz in the group. Then we had Xin Sarith Wuku and Michele Boyd as more of the action Musketeers, and like Hemmens were great as action leads. It's unfortunate the The Three Musketeers that this was mockbustering was kind of a bust, because it would've been fun to see this crew come back for sequels--and really, is it a rule that The Asylum can't make their own sequels, even if the blockbuster they're mockbustering doesn't get a sequel? With our baddies we had the late Alan Rachins, who brings this West Wing guest story-arc element to the proceedings, which would've been enough, but we also get Rachins Fu, when he fights Xin Sarith Wuku, which was beyond what I could've asked for. And then with Chokachi as his second-in-command, what I liked there was he brought a poor man's Casper Van Dien vibe, but the real Casper Van Dien would've been too much for Rachins's second-in-command, so it's almost like Casper Van Dien light, or like a side-helping of Van Dien. I never considered it before, but Chokachi works great in that lane where you want Casper Van Dien energy, but the real Van Dien is too big for the role. The Steven Williams one-scene was great. We haven't had him too much on the site before, that's why he wasn't tagged, but always great to see him when we can. Finally, the person in this film with the third-most tags was the one and only James Lew, who has one scene in the beginning, but does most of his damage on the stunt team. That's 20 movies for him now. Could he be our next candidate for an Asylum Rule induction?

Finally, in high school we watched the 1993 version of the film, and my friends I loved the opening sword fight between Chris O'Donnell's D'Artagnan and Paul McGann's Girard, mostly for McGann, like when he screams "liar!" and then the faces he makes while he's dueling with O'Donnell. I remember our friend's mom got mad at us for rewinding it and replaying it over and over, telling us we were going to break the VCR. To this day, 30 years later, when I hear the name "D'Artagnan" I hear McGann yelling "will get you D'Artagnan" in his screechy McGann voice. I hadn't seen that scene in 30 years though, so I thought for this review I'd cue it up and watch it on Disney+, which fortunately they hadn't vaulted like they tend to do with their movies, and it still made me laugh all these years later. While that scene is the lasting legacy of the film for me, I think for most people it's the theme song, "All for Love," by Bryan Adams, Rod Stewart, and Sting. I don't know if that one was intended to be a franchise like the 2011 one, but had it made more at the box office, you have to imagine there would've at least been a sequel. It does make you wonder, why hasn't this concept not worked better? I think the period piece thing is always going to be an issue, but when I looked up adaptations, I didn't see any modern versions other than the one we're reviewing here. Could that be the key to the successful franchise? Maybe The Asylum was onto something.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently get this on Tubi here in the States, which I think is a great deal. This is one of those Asylum movies where the formula works, so it's worth a watch if you're looking for a fun time. Also, here's to you Cole S. McKay, and your induction into the DTVC Hall of Fame. You're truly one of the greats, this is well-deserved.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1977681

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!

 

Do or Die (1991)

As we continue in our goal of getting all of Andy Sidaris's LETHAL Ladies films on the site, we have this entry from 1991, which has the distinction of being the only one from Hard Ticket to Hawaii on to not feature the great Rodrigo Obregon. Somehow we'll make it through, and with Pat Morita, James Lew, and Erik Estrada in the cast, that always helps.

Do or Die has Pat Morita as evil villain Kaneshiro, "Kane" for short, who is not happy that our heroes Dona Speir and Roberta Vasquez keep disrupting his criminal plans in previous outings. So when he corners them outside a charity luau, you'd think he'd just kill them and call it good. But then we wouldn't have a movie, so instead he has one of his goons, James Lew, attach a tracker to Speir's watch, they send the ladies on their way, and then he has six pairs of mercenaries that will each go out to kill them. Why not send them all out at once so they win with their superior numbers? Again, if they did, we wouldn't have a movie, so they go two-by-two, while Speir and Vasquez round up the gang, including a newly minted hero Erik Estrada, and they head down to Dallas and Louisiana to draw out the baddies and take them down.

As an entry in this series, this may be one of the weaker ones, but the floor on this series is so high that that still makes this better than most DTV actioners you'll watch, especially when taking the Pepsi Challenge with anything from the 2010s or 2020s. Morita is a fantastic villain, there's a good mix of action and boobs, and all the fun you'd want from one of these is there. Even if we don't have Obregon, we do have the rest of our favorites, including Bruce Penhall, Cynthia Brimhall, Michael Shane as our Abilene who can't shoot straight, Richard Bumiller as the smooth-talking agency man, and Richard Cansino and Chu Chu Malave as our bungling assassins. I think where this might be weaker, is the plot is a bit contrived--again, why is Morita not just killing them, but also, when we have the assassin teams, they're always outnumbered by our heroes, which could be a good statement on how a strong team--a "family" per se?--that sticks together can overcome pairs of baddies--but it felt off because it always felt like the baddies were at a disadvantage, which removed any element of peril. All that said, that just makes this a weaker entry for me, not a bad time overall, and this still delivers on the fun and entertainment you want from a Sidaris LETHAL Ladies film.

Another area where this had a bit of trouble is, when they made Erik Estrada a good guy, it was hard to parse him probably wanting it to be his film, and the fact that these should be Dona Speir's films. She does have her own showdown with one of Morita's baddies at the end without any help from Estrada, but he gets more of the big action scenes, which takes some away from her as the main lead. This is Speir's fifth film in the series, and even with Estrada getting some more scenes, there's also still the overarching sense that this is another one of Speir's films, and that's something that I feel like can't be understated. Recently I recorded a podcast on Olga Kurylenko with Will from Exploding Helicopter (episode 127, coming June 13th, so make sure to look for it!), and I think Kurylenko is probably above Speir in work as far as a female action lead, but Speir holds a special place as a woman in the late 80s/early 90s helming an action franchise when that wasn't being done by anyone else in the US other than Cynthia Rothrock--you may give me Linda Hamilton, but Michael Biehn is the lead for the first Terminator, and Arnold the second. The LETHAL Ladies films after Picasso Trigger are built around Dona Speir as the lead, and, again, I don't think that can be understated, and even with Estrada taking some of the limelight, there's still no question she's the lead. 

Erik Estrada is back, but instead of being his previous baddie self--who was blown up by Speir in the previous entry--he's now playing a new character. It's an interesting idea, especially as I'm looking at the Fast and Furious films as part of my DTVC Extra series that I'm running on the off fortnights where I don't have main podcast episodes. Vin Diesel's approach is to take villains and turn them into heroes in later films, which can be a stretch with someone like Statham's character where he's killing people close to them. What if they did it this way, if Statham just came back as a new character? It worked here, but could it work in something like the Fast and Furious franchise? Probably only for people who watch Sidaris films, right? This is it for him in the series though, which means it could be some time before we see him again here, but we'll see if we can't at least mix in some Light Blast or Night of the Wilding. As much as I say this should be Dona Speir's film, back in the 90s seeing his name on the bill when this was on cable would have been a big seller for me, and it was great that they were able to bring him back for a second film like this.

Going back to the Fast and Furious films, these films kind of follow a similar tract, two or three decades before Vin Diesel created the model. From Hard Ticket on, it's always about teams, working together to take down a horrible baddie, and while they may not be as culturally diverse as the crew in the Fast and Furious films, they were early in spotlighting females in lead roles--and actually unlike the Fast and Furious films where women are always supporting roles, this one goes from Speir as the lead to Julie Strain as the lead. And with this cast working on multiple films together, that sense of family bleeds through the same way Vin Diesel has it bleed through in the Fast and Furious ones. I'm sure if you asked Sidaris, he'd have loved to have had the budget Universal gives the Fast and Furious films, but based on the success of the LETHAL Ladies films, maybe when Fast Five came out we should've expected the series to be that successful too, because Diesel was working from Sidaris's playbook, only with more special effects and fewer boobs and buttockses.

Finally, I learned from this film that Dallas, TX and Shreveport, LA are less than 3 hours away from each other. It's one of those quirks about America, unless we've really been in an area for a period of time, we often don't think about how the states are connected in certain areas, or how far one place is from another. Like in my head, Dallas is further in the center of Texas, and I never think about the fact that Louisiana borders Texas, even though if you gave me a blank map of the US I could name both states and see that they border each other. It's a similar thing for me in Philadelphia, people often don't realize how close we are to New York City and Washington, DC--both cities are closer to me than Dallas is from Shreveport. This was not one of the ones that I saw when it came out--much later I saw it on TBS after 2am, that beautiful classic Sidaris opening credit sequence like comfort food for my alcohol soaked brain as I'm eating leftover junk food and trying to keep the room from spinning, I was in no position to question how the team could drive from Shereveport to Dallas so quickly--but had I seen it in middle school or high school, the geography lesson would have been invaluable. Who said Andy Sidaris films can't be educational?

And with that, let's wrap this up. As of this writing, you can catch this and all the other LETHAL Ladies films on Tubi here in the States. While it may be one of the weaker entries, it is still a lot of fun, and delivers in ways that a lot of modern films can't.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101744

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

Guns (1990)

As I'm continuing my work to get all of the Andy Sidaris LETHAL Ladies films here on the site, it was time for this gem from 1990. Beyond the usual suspects, the film also featured Erik Estrada as the baddie, and Danny Trejo as his main henchman. How does it get better than that? In addition to us, our friend Mitch at the Video Vacuum has covered this as well, so you can go to his site to see what he thought.

Guns has our crew at it again, this time we start in Hawai'i, where baddie Erik Estrada hires two assassins to kill Dona Speir's DEA partner, this time played by Roberta Vasquez. A case of mistaken identity leads them to kill the wrong person, but now Speir and Vasquez are on the case, along with Bruce Penhall and Michael Shane (back again as our Abilene who can't shoot straight). They track the killers to Las Vegas, where they suspect Estrada may be in on it. Not a job they can handle alone, so they team up with other old friends, including Edy (Cynthia Brimhall), who sold her restaurant in Hawai'i and now sings while working undercover there. The thing is though, could this be exactly what Estrada wants? Turns out, if they all aren't in Hawai'i, they can't stop his arms shipment coming through there.

This is an interesting entry in the series for sure. It has a fantastic cast, but in some ways that spreads us thin because we have a lot of moving parts. In later entries Sidaris does a better job of using a bigger cast like this so we feel like we don't lose anyone along the way. This one also has less nudity, which is interesting, because a big reason why Hope Marie Carlton was removed from the series after Savage Beach was she refused to do nude scenes, so had she stuck it out she may have only had to do one or two. The action was pretty solid though, as we had ninjas (one of whom was played by James Lew), exploding planes, and exploding Estradas. There were some bittersweet moments as well, as we lost Lisa London's Rocky early on, killed in the line of duty; and this is also bodybuilder John Brown's last entry in the series. The other thing was, with Estrada as the main baddie, our great Sidaris mainstay Rodrigo Obregon only has one scene, which is enough to get him a tag here, but not enough of him in a Sidaris film for my liking. Overall though, this gives you what you came for, and like all of Sidaris's LETHAL Ladies films, it's a fun watch.

With that larger cast, we don't see as much of Speir as the action lead, but the film makes no mistake that she's it. William Bumiller plays a DEA higher-up on the case with them, and there's some sense that he kind of calls the shots, but ultimately when things need doin', it's Speir that gets 'em done. She has three great scenes in particular, first being that one I took the screen of above, where she downs an airplane with her rocket launcher. Later, when ninjas invade her workout session with Shane and John Brown, she comes in and saves the day, shooting Lew with a large gun. And then finally, her end showdown with Estrada, where she brings her rocket launcher back and makes sure to use all four rockets on him. Even with her role being smaller in screen time due to the size of the cast, she reminds us why she's one of the all-time queens of action with each scene she's in. Beyond her, we have Cynthia Brimhall returning to play Edy, and Roberta Vasquez returning too, but to play a new character as Speir's partner. Same thing with both women in this, characters with a lot of agency who can take care of business and don't need their men to bail them out. The three of them should've been the real Charlie's Angels, I would've loved to have seen what they and Sidaris could've done with that movie adaptation. I've been on the fence about Speir's addition to the Hall of Fame, but I think, despite the low number of tags she'll have when all is said and done, the place she has as one of the all-time action queens is too hard to pass up.

Speaking of tags to get into the Hall of Fame, Danny Trejo is now at 29, and as we discovered with the Asylum, 30 Club is automatic entry. Whether we do another Trejo film before the fall '23 inductions, I think we should get him in anyway, because with that many tags and his volume of DTV work, he deserves it--but I think he will get at least one more tag before then, because he was in 4Got10, one of the last Dolph DTV films we have to review on the site. To get to this film on his IMDb bio, you need to page down a lot, but even in 1990 he was working a lot, as that same year he also had Marked for Death and Maniac Cop 2 come out. Here he plays Estrada's main henchman, so he's in the film a fair amount. This is unfortunately his only Sidaris film, but the fact that he was in it among his many other acting credits is really fun, and he does a great job with it. Truly one of the greats who will finally be getting his due with the DTVC this fall.

On the other end of the tag spectrum, this is only Erik Estrada's fourth, and first since we did Caged Fury in 2012. There are a couple of his I should've done by now, including the 80s classic Light Blast, and the PM flick Night of the Wilding. His performance here was a reminder of why I shouldn't have taken so long to get more of his stuff on here. It's not like he has a ton of DTV work, with more TV appearances and TV movies to his credit, but there's enough that he shouldn't have gone 11 years between posts. At the very least, we'll see him again soon when we do Do or Die, the next film we have to cover in Sidaris's LETHAL Ladies series.

Finally, a chunk of this film took place at The Rio hotel and resort in Vegas, which is a place I've actually been to. When I visited my friends in Vegas in 2013, they had a suite comped due to their poker play that we stayed in. I feel like this entrance was exactly as it looked then, over 20 years later. Last fall I had to go to San Francisco for work, and my initial flight to Oakland was cancelled, so I had to get another that involved an 8-hour layover in Vegas, but other than that, I haven't been back to Vegas since then. Seeing the Rio though brings back memories to that trip ten years ago. I was there for a week, but after about three days I'd exhausted everything I could do, and everything else cost money, and consistent streams of money. One thing that's interesting about the way Sidaris uses Vegas, is he doesn't focus on gambling. No one is playing the slots, or betting on NFL games, or belly-up to the blackjack table. We see the Rio because that advertising is helping to keep down costs and allows Sidaris to make his movie the way he wants to make it, but the Rio we're sold is less about gambling and more about luxury suites with maybe a Chuck McGann magic show or a Cynthia Brimhall musical performance thrown in. For people who have never been before, I think Vegas is worth it once, but a week is probably too long. Mix in a trip to see the Grand Canyon too.

And with that, let's wrap this up. As of this writing, all of Sidaris's LETHAL Ladies films are free to stream on Tubi and Plex here in the States. There's also a Mill Creek Blu-ray set. While this isn't my favorite of them, I don't know that there's a bad one of this series, and with that in mind Guns is definitely a great time.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099720

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

Savage Beach (1989)

After going seven straight reviews on newer movies, it was time to go back to the 80s, and back to our work on reviewing all of Andy Sidaris's LETHAL Ladies movies, which I've been doing since 2021 when I watched them all in one go for my podcast episode on Dallas Connection with Mitch from the Video Vacuum, which you can check out in our archives, episode 82. In addition to us and Mitch on his site, Joe Bob Briggs has also covered this, in a review he wrote in 1989 for the Orlando Sentinel, so you can see what he thought too.

Savage Beach follows our favorite DEA agent Dona Speir and her civilian sister Hope Marie Carlton, busting drug dealers while working under cover as air couriers in Hawai'i. On one such delivery trip, they get caught in a storm and end up stranded on a deserted island. Turns out it ain't so deserted, between the Japanese WWII vet who's been living there for 40 years, and then the Filipino Marxist dissident (Rodrigo Obregon), US Navy officer (John Aprea), and mysterious other guy who snuck into their group (Bruce Penhall) coming to find gold. Everyone is on a collision course to wackiness, but will our lethal ladies survive this savage beach?

This is another great one from Sidaris. Yes, there are a ton of moving parts, some of which don't exactly make any sense, but does it matter here? I'm okay with a guy on a computer talking about "probability vectors" if he's saying it to John Aprea, Bruce Penhall, and the great Rodrigo Obregon with a fantastic mustache. Joe Bob Briggs described the stranded WWII vet as "Claymation" due to the make-up they used to make him look old. In another movie maybe that's a detriment, but here it just added to the fun. One issue was, due to the myriad moving parts, we didn't get as much Dona Speir as the lead doing her action lead thing until the end, but that's a "minor quibble" (as the guy from Trekkies said) in what is an otherwise fun ride. Like all of Sidaris's other films, there is plenty of toplessness from both the women, and a couple of the guys, so if you're in a mixed group of movie watchers, this may not be as good a pick, but also like all of Sidaris's other films, if everyone knows what this will be going in, this is a sure bet for a fun movie night.

Going back to Speir as the lead, this is the first one in Sidaris's LETHAL Ladies films where he completely pivots to having her be the focus and completely diminishes the Abilene who can't shoot straight character--which is now "Shane Abilene," played by Michael Shane, who I believe was a Playgirl model in his own right--as an aside, I remember when my mom turned 30, her best friend got her a Playgirl magazine as a birthday present. I wonder if Shane was in that issue...? Anyway, this is supposed to be about Dona Speir. In the last Sidaris review I did, Picasso Trigger, I talked about how I had her fifth after Pam Grier, Michelle Yeoh, Cynthia Rothrock, and Zoe Saldana among top female action leads, right above Milla Jovovich and Michelle Rodriguez. You could make a case that Jovovich and Rodriguez could be above her, but not only did Sidaris give Speir the franchise with this film, but he did it in 1989, at a time when the film industry wasn't keen on female action leads, let alone giving women the leads in a franchises. The idea that we'd write off her contributions because she's taking off her top because her character is changing her clothes while piloting a plane that's about to crash land is also very 1989. Speir has "it" as the lead in this, and from the moment that plane crash lands, we know she's going to do whatever needs to be done to take care of this situation; and when she and Carlton are caught by Obregon, Aprea, and Penhall, and Obregon says "let's tie them up!" she warns them that that will be a mistake--we're not just here to be damsels in distress, we've got guns and we know how to use them! Yes, the myriad moving parts diminishes a bit of her first time officially taking the helm in this film, but she still takes it and affirms why Sidaris was right in making that move in the series.

Look at that James Lew hair! We haven't seen him in over two years, when we did Star Raiders, a film where he played a baddie who had the top half of his head missing, so to come back with this entry where he's sporting that beautiful lettuce is fantastic. Also love the skinny tie. This is how we need our Lew in a film, and I know father time has come in to steal that amazing moss from the top of his head, a true travesty, we can come back to gem like this movie and see it in its full glory for us. On top of that, we get a great fight between him and Al Leong, who, I had no idea, didn't have a tag before this post! It turned out, that kind of made sense, in that this is only his 9th film on the site--compared to now 15 for Lew. As I looked over his filmography, I see a few reasons for this: one, he doesn't have as many DTV credits as Lew, and also doesn't have as many of the meatier roles Lew's had--a lot of Leong's parts are "Asian Thug" in bigger screen roles. That's one thing that's great here, is Leong has a bigger part, but also we get to see him fight Lew, two 80s/90s bit part character actors facing off. In his review of this, Mitch said everyone has their favorite Sidaris moment, and for me it's in Hard Ticket to Hawaii when harold Diamond and Ronn Moss pass a man riding his skateboard with his hands, and Moss says "Man, he must be smoking some heavy doobies," but after that, that fight between Lew and Leong, just for the novelty of it, has to be up there. Here's to you James Lew and Al Leong, you are two of the greats.

Because I watched all of the Sidaris LETHAL Ladies movies in 2021, that year for Letterboxd my top actor was Rodrigo Obregon and my top director was Andy Sidaris. Beyond the fact that that was fantastic to post that on Twitter for my year-in-review, it also goes to show what a great run Obregon and Sidaris had together. Mitch calls Sidaris "the Skinamax Alfred Hitchcock," and like all great auteurs he has his mainstays, but it's hard to think of another pairing between actor and director that have been as fruitful and iconic. Yes, Scorsese has had his collaborations with De Niro and DiCaprio, or Ozu with Setsuko Hara and Chishu Ryu, or Kurosawa and Mifune, or Fellini with Mastroianni--the lists are endless, but there's something about Sidaris and Obregon that has a comfort food quality, like that first bite of an In-N-Out Double-Double when I'm on the West Coast, or a Wiz Wit cheesesteak at Tony Luke's--it's comforting, but almost unctuous in its comfort. I hadn't tagged Obregon before this, so I rectified that issue, and while the bulk of his now 6 tags are Sidaris films, he does have one that wasn't: the Olivier Gruner/Isaac Florentine Western actioner Savate. Also, if you're wondering, 2022's Letterboxd top director and actor for me were both Fred Williamson. I think if it wasn't going to be Sidaris and Obregon again, Williamson sweeping both was the way to go.

Finally, I wanted to vent about a pet peeve of mine. Often, and it seems to be in commercials more than anything, so that probably explains the inanity enough right there, but we see this thing where someone asks, thinking they're so smart and clever, "why does Hawai'i have interstate highways?" Oh you're so witty! That's hilarious! Don't forget your sly grin emoji! Why does Hawai'i have interstate highways? Because interstate highways get money from the federal government for their upkeep, and the people of Hawai'i pay federal taxes. Alaska and Puerto Rico have them too, yet no one mentions those in their witty commercial conversations that are telling us absolutely nothing about the product their selling--seriously, what does Jason Bateman asking about why Hawai'i has interstate highways have to do with a car's performance? Yes, they aren't technically interstate, but neither is Interstate 4 in Florida, or Interstate 27 in Texas. Also, the reason why we have 21 as our drinking age is due to the fact that the Interstate Highway system in America is funded by the federal government. When a group of prom-goers crashed their car in the late 80s, a group of Karens known as Mothers Against Drunk Driving lobbied the federal government to raise the drinking age, and they used federal highway funds to pressure states to raise the age to 21. Don't want go back up to 21? Fine, your Interstate Highways can fall apart then. So while you can go to prison or get killed in a war at 18 here in the States, you have to wait until 21 to buy a sixer of Pabst Blue Ribbon pounders. If only we had Twitter and Tik Tok in the late 80s, we could've shamed those MADD Karens into submission on social media before they got up a head of steam. Those Gen Z kids would've known what to do with them!

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can still stream the Sidaris LETHAL Ladies films on Tubi here in the States, so unless you invest in the DVD boxed set--which I will be soon--Tubi is a good deal--and if you're over 21, you can drink legally while watching them. This is a fun entry in the series, and notable both for Speir taking over the helm from the Abilene who can't shoot straight, and for the Lew-Leong fight. 

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098257

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

Star Raiders: The Adventures of Saber Raine (2017)

I saw this on Tubi, and with Casper Van Dien and Cynthia Rothrock on the tin, plus the great James Lew, I figured this could be a fun time. Of course, whenever I think something is just going to be a good time, if often isn't, isn't it? So here's to hoping that it is instead of it isn't.

Star Raiders: The Adventures of Saber Raine is an adventure as bold as the size of its title, starring Casper Van Dien as the eponymous hero--or at least the name at the end of the long title eponymous. He's a former decorated soldier from earth who is disgraced after he attacks his own ships to help an alien woman escape. Now a hired mercenary, he's helping a troop of soldiers from another planet rescue their prince and princess who were captured and taken to a far away land. Along the way, they encounter all manner of evil beings looking to trip them up, plus everything with the prince and princess and their captor isn't what it seems. The only constant is we know Casper Van Dien is the man, and he knows how to get stuff done. (And wasn't Cynthia Rothrock in this?)

The IMDb user reviews of this were pretty harsh, and I feel like this is earnest enough that it doesn't deserve that. For me, this would have been a fantastic syndicated TV show in the late 90s, and I would've watched it between Hercules and Beastmaster episodes. As a movie, I'm not so sure. I loved a lot of the costumes and the creations for the aliens, but then James Lew's as the baddie with half his head taken off looked gross to me, so it was like it took away from that. Casper Van Dien as the rogue hero was fantastic, but because we had so many characters, we lost him for periods, and he was really underpinning the whole thing--especially since we lost Lew with his half-head costume, and Rothrock was only in it at the very end. The other thing was, I think between Van Dien and the budget for the costumes and the alien make-up, the budget wasn't what you'd want in the special effects department, and that betrayed a lot of what this was going for--again, something in a late 90s syndicated TV show we'd forgive, but maybe not as much in a sci-fi flick from 2017.

Casper Van Dien has become a favorite here at the DTVC--in part because in the past he's retweeted, reposted, and replied to my social media posts about our reviews of his films, which is always appreciated. In the last film we saw him in Showdown in Manila, we talked about how his roguish good guy totally stole the show from the guy who was supposed to be the lead, Alexander Nevsky. Here he's not stealing the show from anyone here, he's meant to anchor the whole thing, and I think he does as great a job as he did in Showdown. We need to get more of his stuff up here, because whether the film works or not, he seems to always be great in it, which is all you can ask for.

Again, I think the problem is we lose him because we have a lot of intrigue going on on the baddie end of things, and that's where a James Lew without half his head missing could have really been the Yang to Van Dien's Yin--or would he be the Yin to Van Dien's Yang? A good baddie really makes it in films like this, and we've seen Lew on the DTVC do many great turns as the baddie, and from my experience he does a better job with the top half of his head intact. I also noticed that it's been almost a decade since we've seen him, so it's too bad that we actually don't get to see him here, meaning I need to find something else he's been in so we actually get a chance to see him again.

Cynthia Rothrock, the film's one Hall of Famer, is in this for a tiny bit at the very end. It's enough for her to get a tag, but when it comes to doing Rothrock films here at the DTVC, we won't count it as a Rothrock post, so we won't move some of the ones where she has a starring role further down the list because of it. I think the idea is this is supposed to be a series of films, and as such, she would come in and reprise this character in a bigger way later. Just because Rothrock's role was scant, that doesn't mean the female action talent in this was overall. We had Brit Laree as one of the soldiers from the prince and princess's plane working with Van Dient; Sarah N. Salazar as the princess; and then Holly Westwood as alien woman Van Dien saves who now works with him. All three of them were great and it would be cool to see what they do going forward in the DTV action sphere.

I'm going to use this last paragraph to talk about the exceedingly long name this film has. We always joke about the number of two-word titles in the DTV world, but now with social media and the different ways we chat about movies online, shorter titles help in a lot of ways. One, they're easier to remember--if this were either just "Star Raiders" or "Saber Raine," I would know exactly what it is to tell anyone else I'm chatting with about it; but two, when I need to post about this review on social media, I'm stuck writing this seven-word title on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. When I look at all the reviews I have lined up after this, even the sequels don't have as many words in the title. Just like I prefer an 88-minute movie or less, I like a nice small title too.

And with that, it's time to wrap this up. This isn't horrible, and I think the fact that it is an earnest effort helps. The other thing that helps is the great Casper Van Dien performance. Overall, it takes me back to those 90s syndicated TV shows I loved, but that may or may not work for you. The fact that it's free on Tubi also helps--the only thing you're out is your time.

For more information: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2039380