Illicit Behavior (1992)

This is one that Jon and I covered on episode 231 of the podcast, back in October, when we paired it with Deadly Desire as part of a Jack Scalia double-feature, and I wanted to finally get it on the site because it has some other great names; plus we haven't done any Joan Severance before, and that needed to be corrected! In addition to us, Mitch at the Video Vacuum has covered this as well. Trigger warning: sexual assault and abuse are mentioned in this review.

Illicit Behavior has Severance as a housewife with a police officer husband (Scalia) who's known for getting into trouble, and can be a bit of a brute. She also has a brother who inherited a family bar and some other money, which she would like to have to herself. At some point in a therapy session with Scalia, she tells her psychiatrist (Adam-12's Kent McCord) that her brother sexually abused her when they were growing up. This causes Scalia to go to his bar and kill him. That starts an IA investigation by Robert Davi, whom Severance tells that Scalia has been physically abusive toward her. Will Davi fall for her feminine wiles, or get wise to her tricks before it's too late?

This has a few things going for it. First and foremost, we have the names, which, in addition to the ones I mentioned above, we also have James Russo as Scalia's partner, and Jenilee Harrison of Three's Company Fame as Severance's sister-in-law. Names like that give us as the viewer something to anchor in on as the story goes in all kinds of directions, like this one does. And that story, written by Erotic Thriller mainstay Jag Mundhra, goes to some places that I think would've been problematic by 1992's standards, but are much more so today. One of the most common counters to someone's abuse claims is that the victim is making it up to damage the reputation of the alleged abuser, and it leads to many people not reporting abuse at all--"who would believe me anyway?" The reality is abuse claims like this are seldom made up, but using the idea of it being made up as a device for Severance's character to manipulate the men in the story only exacerbates the problem. I don't know that that's something people can get beyond, but if you can, Severance turns in a great performance which does give this some value and makes it worth a watch.

Speaking of Severance, almost 1400 posts in, and she's finally getting her first movie on the site. This feels like a massive oversight, but as I've discussed before, my goal of doing a lot of Erotic Thrillers when I started the DTVC back in 2007 was diverted by all of the engagement I got on the action posts, and Erotic Thrillers were one of many genres that were left behind. With the new series of Jon and I doing Erotic Thriller double features on the podcast, it's led to more of those getting reviews here too, and will lead to more Severance as well, because this is one four films of hers we've already done. When we think of the Queen of Erotic Thrillers, Shannon Tweed and Shannon Whirry both come to mind, but I think Severance is equally worthy of that title, and I think each of them inhabit a unique space in the world of Erotic Thrillers, which for me leaves room for three queens. The space Severance inhabits is this kind of "awe shucks" pretty woman on the surface, who makes guys think she's just there for the taking, while below the surface is slowly--or not so slowly perhaps--wrapping them around her finger to get them to do whatever she needs them to do. Shannons Tweed or Whirry couldn't play that part, the same way Severance wouldn't be able to replace Tweed in Scorned or Whirry in Animal Instincts, but I like that if they're given parts that work for them, you know going in depending on who's on the tin what kind of Erotic Thriller you're going to get. As I said above, we already have a few other Severance films watched that we can review on here, so hopefully we'll see her again soon and make her a bigger part of the site.

Jack Scalia, not Joan Severance, was the reason we watched this though, as Jon and I thought it would be cool to do a Scalia double feature to tie the episode in with Jon's PM Entertainment Podcast, because Scalia had done his share of PM flicks too. I think the biggest thing Scalia brings to the table here is he looks the part, so it's not outside the realm of possibility that Severance's character would fall for him. At the same time, he does a great job of playing a hot-headed lunkhead, which makes a lot of his character's decisions more believable as well. If Severance is one of the Queens of Erotic Thrillers, I don't know if Scalia is a king, that title probably goes to Andrew Stevens, but Scalia has done his share of these, so he at least deserves some consideration--maybe he's the Duke of Erotic Thrillers. Compare that to Robert Davi, who has done his share of these as well, but this was one of the rarer ones where he's kind of a lead, as opposed to his usual roles as the lead's partner or as some kind of fly in the ointment making things harder for other characters involved. He does a great job selling himself as the lovestruck dupe who's willing to do anything Severance tells him to do because he needs her so bad. Scalia and Davi make a great yin and yang, two New York Italian-Americans who were born in the early 50s, Scalia in Brooklyn and Davi in Queens, transported to Los Angeles where they're easy pray for Severance. 

I don't want to dwell on the fake abuse aspects of this because it can be triggering and I don't want to do that, so I'll just say quickly that I think that plot device was used because the classic "woman simply using her feminine wiles to get men to bump off other men for her" may have seemed too worn at that point, especially for someone like Jag Mundhra who had written a lot of these. There's another problematic aspect of this though that I do think using this device is more of a commentary on and the way it's used here turns the notion on its ear. It's the idea that men who save women from some kind of abusive or dangerous situation are somehow deserving of their romantic love as a result. It's a bad trope we see a lot in action movies--Seagal saves a beautiful woman half his age from a trafficking brothel, and she professes her undying love to him, that kind of thing. Here Severance feigns the damsel in distress role, and Davi thinking he's "won" her by protecting her from Scalia, is none the wiser that she might have ulterior motives. So while we have one element of this that's problematic and shouldn't have been a plot device, there's this other element that exposes another problematic trope at the same time. Maybe next time they can find a way to do the second thing without the first.

Finally, you'll notice my screen of Severance has her in a St. Louis Cardinals cap. You knew that was going to happen if I saw an MLB baseball cap in a movie. I was trying to think of where else we'd seen MLB baseball caps on the site before, and how many we had at this point, but because I haven't tagged them, it would be hard to tell, but I think either way this is our first St. Louis Cardinals one. Of all the MLB baseball games I've seen (according to my MLB Ballpark app, it's 76 and counting), I've only ever seen the Cardinals once, when they played here in Philly during Albert Pujols's last season in 2022, which makes him the player with the most career home runs I've ever seen play live (his 703 home runs 7 more than Alex Rodriguez, who I saw play with the Texas Rangers in 2002). I've never been to St. Louis before--or the state of Missouri for that matter--but as a lifelong baseball fan that's a park and baseball environment I've always wanted to experience. Maybe someday I'll be able to make the trip out there and make it happen, but at the very least we have a reason to spotlight them with this paragraph in this review.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently catch this free on Fawesome, which I think is a good way to go. Just remember depending on who you're watching this with that descriptions of abuse play a big part in the plot, and in ways that are not always handled well. And check out the podcast episode we did as well, number 231 in the archives.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104485/

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

Intimate Stranger (1991)

This was one I watched on cable when it first came out, because my friend's parents had a descrambler box, so we could watch anything on Showtime, HBO, or even the pay-per-view channel. I'd always wanted to review it for the site, but when it first appeared on Tubi, I missed my chance. When it came back recently, I made sure I didn't miss it again.

Intimate Stranger has Debbie Harry (yes, that Debbie Harry, only under the name "Deborah") as an aspiring singer who makes money as a phone sex operator. When a man calls (Tim Thomerson) and claims to be killing a woman while he's on the phone with her, she goes to the police, only to have the detectives laugh at her. Luckily James Russo was listening, and as he's trying to make detective, he sees this situation as his opportunity. So he borrows a bunch of call tracing equipment and had his buddy in the department run some credit checks on the caller's credit card. As they get closer, will they be able to stop someone when they don't even know what he looks like? But can he kill her when he doesn't know what she looks like either? 

Beyond the fact that this was a fun Erotic Thriller, my biggest takeaway was that 12-year-old me shouldn't have been watching this. It's explicitly sexual and really dark. It's possible too that I didn't see the beginning where Thomerson kills a woman he has tied down to a bed, while telling Debbie Harry over the phone that "my inside stuff comes out, and her inside stuff comes out. My inside stuff is white, her inside stuff is red." The thing that did make more sense to me at the time than it did now, was Debbie Harry in the lead. I knew her from Blondie, so why wouldn't she be in a cable Erotic Thriller? But now I'm like, I know her from Blondie, why is she in this cable Erotic Thriller? It's a novelty that makes it stand out, and we even get a couple of original songs from her that are only in this film, like her cover of "Piece of My Heart." In addition to that, Thomerson is fantastic as the killer, always love seeing young James Russo in these early 90s films, Paige French was great as Harry's younger sister, and we have nice one-off scene with Tia Carrere. While this is available on Tubi, you should go check it out.

If my friend and I did start this in the middle, the thing that got us to keep watching was Debbie Harry. At the time though I didn't know that this was a novelty, that she really didn't have any other lead roles like this; but because she was in it, it made it much easier to track down 35 years later, I just had to search her name on IMDb. Watching it now, when I'm roughly the same age Harry was when she made this, I see that she was supposed to be playing a younger character, but the maturity of her personality makes that impossible. Like when she's in the police precinct reporting the murder she heard, and the detectives are laughing at her, it doesn't work, because there's no way to not make Harry come off like she's in complete control of that room. In a way though that makes it all the more interesting, because she's such an immense artistic talent that it's there in every thing she does, every scene, like when she's reading Leather Nun, or sitting in a dimly lit bar drinking Wild Turkey, or sticking her cigarette between her toes while she's lying on her couch taking a phone sex call. I can see why she didn't do more of these, because even though it's stylish and fun to watch, the story is a bit all over the place, and it ended up direct-to-Showtime, so I imagine if you're Debbie Harry the juice of these films isn't worth the squeeze. But at least we have this one.

As a 12-year-old I wouldn't have been dissecting why I was drawn to these movies beyond the sex and the hot women, but looking at it now, I can see how it informed some of my tastes later on as I grew up. In addition to Erotic Thrillers, I was watching other Film Noir at that time, like Humphrey Bogart films on The Movie Loft on TV38, and episodes of Miami Vice, which had a lot of Film Noir elements, so my brain was tuned to enjoy stuff like that. Ten years later, as the DVD market exploded in the early 2000s, Erotic Thrillers became more straight-up soft core porn and less stylized Film Noir with a lot of sex in them, but now I could get all five seasons of Miami Vice on DVD, and I could pick up both the more famous Bogart Film Noir films, and get some of the lesser-known ones in DVD bargain bins. I think as a result, I forgot how great the Noirish elements were in these 90s Erotic Thrillers, but coming back to them like I have, especially now that many more of them are available on streaming, I can see the aesthetic that I more subconsciously appreciated back then. I mean, look at that first screen I posted of Harry sitting at the bar, between the light, the composition, the colors, all of it is fantastic, and it's part of why I love these movies so much.

Another reason is all the names we get in addition to the lead. James Russo is someone we see in a lot of modern DTV playing a mob boss or a crooked cop, but there was an earnestness in a young James Russo that I always love, going back to his part in Beverly Hills Cop. I decided to finally tag him, and see that this is only his 4th film on the site, which feels low, but I think part of that is he also did a couple that we covered on the pod which I haven't reviewed yet. That's one less than Tia Carrere, who now only has five films on the site, which also feels low. She's only in this for one scene, but this is the same year Showdown in Little Tokyo and Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man were released, so I think she did okay all things considered. Then we have the great Tim Thomerson, who's making his 17th appearance on the site, and is absolutely scary as the killer in this. There's one scene in particular where he's cutting the crust off a sandwich and eating it while Grace Zabriskie lies dead on the floor next to him, which was chilling. Rounding out the cast, Paige French plays Harry's younger sister. You probably don't remember, but way back in December of 2007 we saw her in Meatballs 4, so it's been almost 19 years; and then we had Mel Johnson Jr., who we all know from Total Recall, playing Harry's neighbor across the hall in her apartment. So while Debbie Harry was the biggest name, we had a lot of other great names in this too.

Finally, look at that double bill on that marquee. First off, I would love to have seen Marked for Death in the theater. As it was, my friends and I rented it as soon as it came out on VHS. It's crazy to think that Seagal's first four or five movies were so big, he was able to live off of that reputation to the tune of another six big screen movies, and roughly 40 DTV films. Here in 1990 when this was shot though, we didn't know we weren't going to get much more great Seagal after this, we thought that ride was going to go on forever. And then with The Krays, I bought that on VHS back in the late 2000s because it has the Kemp brothers from Spandau Ballet in it, but I never got around to watching it, and I have no idea what happened to that copy. The interesting thing is, in 1991, PM Dawn released "Set Adrift Off Memory Bliss," which sampled Spandau Ballet's "True." It was kind of mind-blowing at the time, "True" hadn't been released that long ago, and now it's being sampled in a hip hop song? And the video had Tony Hadley in it, giving it his stamp of approval. 35 years later, it was probably the smart move by Hadley and Spandau Ballet, because "True" has like 300 million more views on YouTube than "Set Adrift Off Memory Bliss."

So, with a thrill in my head and a pill on my tongue, I'd say it's time to wrap this up. You can currently stream this on Tubi here in the States. It's definitely worth it. They may not make movies like this anymore, but they made 'em then, and we're lucky we can have them at our fingertips--until Tubi or whatever streaming service decides to take them down, of course.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104519

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

Code of Honor (2016)

With Mr. Seagal turning 70 this weekend, we had to do one of his movies to celebrate, and this one's been in the can for a long time, so what better time to review it--especially since soon I'll be getting to the point where I'll need to watch it again in order to remember what happens in it. In addition to us, our friend Mitch at the Video Vacuum has done this one as well.

Code of Honor has Seagal as a retired military colonel who has snapped and is now waging a vigilante war against local drug dealers and mobsters. The cops have no idea how to stop him, but as luck would have it, his former protege, Craig Sheffer, is in town, and he knows what they need to do to take him down. The problem is, Sheffer has his own demons to tackle. When a dancer at a local club is a witness to one of Seagal's attacks, Sheffer agrees to help her, and protecting her and her son proves to be the chance at redemption he's needed. At the same time, criminals are still dying. What does Sheffer know about his former mentor that could help bring him down? It turns out they're connected in a way that goes much deeper than just Sheffer trying to stop him.

 

For a Seagal DTV actioner, especially one from this period, this isn't too bad. Mitch had this as his best DTV flick since Pistol Whipped, which I agree with and think was definitely true when it came out, and really only now I'd personally put Attrition over it. The major difference between this and Attrition though, is in Attrition we had a totally invested Seagal, whereas here we have our usual not invested Seagal, but the film construct makes it all work. Seagal doesn't talk until 48 minutes in. It works. He sits most of the time. Same thing, it worked with what they were going for here. The problem is, the card this film played from a story standpoint, can only be played once--it's the film equivalent of a gun with only one bullet, and they fire it here, so no other movie can use this approach to mitigating the Seagal Factor. Beyond that, the action was good, Sheffer was solid, and Louis Mandylor was the DTV mainstay we've come to know and love. For 2010s DTV Seagal, this is a pretty good bet.

By my count, we have three Seagal films left, Cartels, Gutshot Straight, and End of a Gun; and then we have others like Clementine and The Onion Movie if we want to do that. It makes sense, as he hits the big seven-oh, that he'd slow down some. We can compare his turn in this to another vigilante flick, Death Wish V, where Bronson was 73 when he made that. Is that the number for Seagal? Or should we expect him to go beyond that? An 80-year-old Seagal still making DTV actioners? And considering Bronson was killing people with remote control soccer balls in that movie, and also considering Seagal has been sitting more in his films since he's hit his 60s, maybe Death Wish V is the model for the newly septuagenarian Seagal going forward. I for one would be okay with that. This film also provides a roadmap for a potential less active Seagal, but, as I mentioned above, it's the gun with one bullet, and the film has already shot the bullet, so another film can't use this story device. 

This is our fourth Craig Sheffer film here on the site, but this might have been my favorite role of his. He does the heavy lifting expected of someone costarring in a Seagal DTV actioner, but it doesn't feel like he's doing the heavy lifting to support Seagal. The way the story unfolds, it slowly becomes more about Sheffer, which is very different from the usual Seagal fare where Seagal remains the main character around which the story revolves, but he sits while the younger star has all the hard action scenes. It's the perfect mitigation of all the limitations Seagal puts on a production he's in, and Sheffer is great in his part to make it all work. I don't know how many more times we'll see Sheffer on here, but he has a fair amount of older DTV stuff that we haven't done yet, so this definitely won't be the last time. Another DTV mainstay who we've been seeing a lot of here lately is Louis Mandylor. He's in that new breed in the mold of Eric Roberts where he's trying to pump out as many films in a year as he can, yet unlike Roberts he also has some pretty substantial parts in some of these movies, especially the Jesse V. Johnson actioners. He I definitely can say this isn't the last time we'll see him, because he's been in some films I have in the can that I'm ready to review.

One of my favorite comic book characters is The Punisher, and I appreciated the way this movie used the Punisher Paradigm. It's easy to just rip off that concept, but they did some unique things that worked. By the same token, I like the idea of Seagal as the actual Punisher in a reboot DTV film series. If you think about it, his first appearance was in Spider-Man 129 in 1974, which would've made Seagal 22, so he could be a modern, elder Punisher, making sense of nearly five decades of killing. That's the thing with comic book characters, instead of aging they're often rebooted, but for someone like the Punisher, who has no superpowers, he'd age like the rest of us, and it would be great to see that ground covered. There is some hope now that despite Disney taking over the Netflix Marvel shows, they haven't cut them at all; by the same token, could we see Disney doing the Punisher, especially a 70-year-old Seagal Punisher, the way it needs to be done?

Finally, back to Seagal, in addition to those last few DTV flicks I have to do here, there's the matter of the True Justice releases. For those that aren't sure what those are, instead of releasing Seagal's True Justice series as complete seasons on DVD, they released a series of two-episode "movies," and these "movies" are now available on Tubi. What's interesting is these were once listed on Letterboxd as part of his filmography, but have since been removed, I think because they're technically not movies; though, in the DTV world, we see this thing a lot, especially with failed TV shows, they'll be merged and packaged as movies to recoup some of the lost revenue on them. I guess the thing with these True Justice ones is we'll worry about them when we finish the last few actual DTV movies Seagal has left that we still haven't reviewed. It is very Seagal though that he would have his TV series released this way, isn't it?

And with that, let's wrap this up. As of my writing this, you can stream this for free on Tubi. I think if you're looking for great Seagal on his 70th birthday, a classic like Hard to Kill or Marked for Death is a better way to go; but as far as DTV Seagal from the 2010s, this is one of the best--which isn't saying much, but still means this is a good time.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4060866

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

Confessions of a Pit Fighter (2005)

I saw this at the local video store, forgot about it, then saw a trailer for it on another DVD. Between the Flav, The Armand Assante, and the Quinton Rampage Jackson, I had a good feeling. Of course, it could still go terribly wrong, so I went in with my guard up.  

Confessions of a Pit Fighter is about a dude from East LA who killed a man in a pit fight, and went to jail for a while for it. When he gets out, he finds out his brother is pit fighting, trying to make some scratch for his pregnant homegirl. What none of them know is that Flavor Flav and Armand Assante are in cahoots organizing pit fights, and they have a horse in the race in the person of Rampage. He kills the pit fighter's brother in a fight, and now the guy is out for revenge. 

 

This wasn't too bad. I mean, don't get me wrong, it was horrible, but it was fun to watch. No women were raped, nobody's eyes were gouged out-- nothing gross like that. Just a bunch of pit fights that were pretty well choreographed, and Flavor Flav, Armand Assante, and Rampage. Anyway you slice it, good fights, funny plot, great supporting cast-- just a plain old good time.

Let's start with Armand Assante. This guy is great. We've had many people play mob bosses here at the DTVC, but I don't think anyone has pulled it off like he did. He channeled Pacino and Brando, but gave us enough Assante, with a dash of bad movie tongue and cheek. The other film we covered of his was The Killing Grounds, and in that one he played a cop mitigating racial tensions between Germans and Turks in Berlin. He was believable in both roles, but I think he had more fun here. I definitely had more fun with this movie than that one.

As you may know from previous posts, I'm a big UFC fan. I think if any big name fighter has the personality to pull off an acting career, it's Rampage. He's always funny in interviews, always has something great to say. The one problem I had with him here as the baddie was his lack of lines. At one point I thought they were saying his character, who was from Brazil, couldn't speak English. Then he walked up to the main character at a party and says "He smells like a bitch", which was hilarious. Let this guy talk. The other problem I had was how he looked like he was on the verge of tears every time he hit someone. Don't do that Rampage. This film also reminded me that I haven't seen Never Surrender yet. We'll get on that. 

Flavor Flav! I must confess (Confessions of a Pop Culture Junkie), I watched the first two seasons of Flavor of Love. It was just so fascinating. No TV network casts reality shows the way VH-1 does. The people they find are so amazing. Anyway, I'm getting off topic. Flav was good here. Better than Treach in Art of War III. Way better. Rappers can act. Yes, Flav wasn't trying to play a secret agent, and I bet he'd have just as much success, but based on what I've seen of Treach, I couldn't see him pulling of Flav's role here either. 

The hero was played by a dude named Hector Echavarria. He also directed Never Surrender. He's an Argentine dude, and according to imdb, he has a lot of projects on the way, so we'll see what happens. If Never Surrender is good, he may find his way into the Potential Hall of Famer section of the blog. I liked him here as the hero, and his martial arts skills were pretty solid. 

I'm going to cheat here and work in an extra paragraph, because Art Camacho directed this, and it may be his best work ever. This wasn't that bad. I think I'd put Crooked aka Soft Target, which had Don "The Dragon" and Olivier Gruner, above it, but this was a close second. I'm still kind of afraid to check out Half Past Dead 2, but maybe after this effort, Camacho's earned my viewership. Big if, though. 

This is worth a rental. It's bad, but a good bad that you can make fun of. I thought it was funny enough anyway. It doesn't try too hard to be something it isn't, and the cast you're renting it for all turn in solid performances. If you didn't listen to me on Art of War III, listen to me here. (And if you really didn't listen to me on Art of War III, I'm sorry.) 

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0463947/

Redemption (2002)

Some of these movies just show up in my Netflix queue. I put them in in like December when I'm killing time and searching for actors I like, then have no clue what happened when they show up in my mailbox 8 months later. It's kind of a fun surprise-- except for when the movie sucks.

Redemption has Don "The Dragon" Wilson as a cop who's the head of some elite SWAT team. Richard Norton doesn't like him very much, but Cynthia Rothrock does. When a partner's killed, Norton takes his chance and gets Donny thrown off the force. With no money, his hooker friend gets him a job with Chris Penn, who's some big drug lord. After making an assload of cash, he's faced with the decision of continuing his life of crime, or finding redemption by righting his wrongs.



Nope. Absolutely not. Ten kinds of wrong. Not even close. Bor-ing. Here's another excellent case of having a great cast, and doing nothing with it. Very little action. Best scenes are at the very end, where we really see D "The D" Dubs kick some ass, and a dude blows up a car with a rocket launcher. Why didn't someone just cut and paste that type of sweetness over and over until there was 88 minutes of film? Too much plot exposition, too crappy a plot, and with the talent they had, we needed more martial arts and more excitement.

Let's start with Donny. Hall of Famer as of last year. Last film reviewed, Future Kick, wasn't received too poorly. Overall, he's been kind of hit or miss. One of his major drawbacks is he's a horrible actor, so every time he reads his lines, I cringe. His upside comes in his great martial arts skills, and in films where the action's really ramped up, he's really fun to watch. If he's spending less time kicking three guys at once, and more time showing hookers his sensitive side, I feel like I've been ripped off. Also of note, he does get out on the dance floor for a second. He's not anywhere near as funny as Van Damme in Kickboxer, but he's still funny.



Cynthia Rothrock is slated for induction into the DTVC Hall of Fame in October, making her the first female member. This is not her movie, it's Donny's, and so she's not featured too prominently. Her movies have proven a little harder than I thought to track down. Part of the problem is she hasn't done much in the past ten years, and I guess it isn't a priority for Netflix to get their hands on some of the horrible DVD translations of her earlier greats. China O'Brien and Lady Dragon are in the "Saved" section of my Netflix queue, their availability unknown.

Usually in a film starring Cynthia Rothrock, we see Richard Norton, so it was a surprise to see him in one where Rothrock only co-starred. Unfortunately, that meant he wasn't in it much, which I guess would've been all right, but we were teased with a Dragon/Norton showdown, then had it taken away. They kind of scuffle for a bit, and it's poorly choreographed, and no one wins. Are you kidding me? This is almost as bad as when Donny and Lorenzo Lamas were on screen together for two seconds in X-Treme Fighter. Who could be so dense as to purposefully cast Norton and Wilson, then not have them fight each other or together?



Well, the answer my faithful readers, is one Mr. David DeFalco. This is the fourth film of his I've reviewed, and because of the star power he had at his disposal, it might be the most disappointing. Gangland at least made good use of Sasha Mitchell, Costas Mandylor, Kathleen Kinmont, and Vincent Klyn. I don't know why he didn't make the screenwriters and director change this to a post-apocalyptic thriller where Wilson, Rothrock, and Norton have to fight their way through all sorts of baddies to save a doctor who has the cure for a plague. DeFalco should only produce movies like that.

This is the second film of Chris Penn's I've done, and also the second where he co-starred w/ Wilson (the other being Future Kick). It's pretty obvious that as an actor he's head and shoulders above his cast mates. I loved his part in this, and wanted more. Usually David DeFalco goes with Andrew Dice Clay for this type of role (loudmouthed Italian big shot), so it was a nice to see this alternative.

I'd have to say this isn't worth the money. It's a shame, too, because there's really no reason for it. We need some laws in place that hold film makers accountable for the misuse of great star power. But until then, you have people like me here to warn you ahead of time to not waste your cash.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0303387/