The Underground (1997)

I first caught wind of this when our friend Jon Cross from the After Movie Diner and Miscellaneous Plumbing Fixtures (the latter of which has a new album out that you should grab on Bandcamp now!) brought it up when he was on the Jeff Speakman episode of the podcast. I figured I had to see it, so he got me a copy, and here we are. In addition to us, there are only 4 other critic reviews on IMDb, but one is from our good friends Ty and Brett from Comeuppance (in one of their first reviews ever!), so you can go there to see what they thought. Now, without any further ado.

The Underground is a PM flick starring Jeff Fahey as a cop who, with his partner, are investigating the killings of hip hop artists in the LA area. When his partner is killed, Fahey is a cop on the edge, ready to bring these guys down no matter the cost. The twist: the killers aren't rival rappers, they're a disco group called the Las Vegas Disco Express, and they're upset that a former band mate has sampled one of their songs and isn't paying them. Lucky for Vanilla Ice Bowie and Queen were much nicer about that.

 

Where do we start on this one? This is the PM you came for. Is it one of their best? Maybe not, but it definitely lives up to that logo on the screen. In classic PM style, we have action that builds on itself, bringing us to the scene depicted on the cover where Fahey is riding on the hood of a car in pursuit of the baddie, played by the inimitable Gregory Scott Cummins. We also have the "plucked from the headlines" approach, in this case the violence that was happening between rival rappers, but with the twist that it's actually not rappers committing the crimes at all, and I think that bled into a commentary that was popular among older people at that time, that rap would go the way of Disco eventually--which as we know never happened. Throw in the fact that the film was a take on 48 Hours when Fahey gets his new partner, and you have the makings of a solid PM flick.

PM is technically the film's one Hall of Famer, so we should start with them. We tend to think of them as more of an early 90s phenomenon, but this late 90s period produced some real gems of theirs--in fact my top two PM films, Recoil and The Sweeper come from this time. It's almost like there are two competing vibes with these though: PM is really hitting their stride, but also PM is on the way out, and that duality is only enhanced I think by the idea that we as the viewer feel the same way about movies like these as a whole. We may never get a decade like the 90s for DTV action ever again, especially with the way the market is trending, and I think this film typifies how great the 90s were, because it's probably not going to make any top 10 or even top 20 or 30 lists, but I would take the Pepsi Challenge with it over most of what we've seen in the decades after. As of this posting I haven't done a top DTV films of the 10s, but I did do one for the 00s, and based off that list, I think I would put this in at number 7 after Pistol Whipped. I mean, think of that, a film that I wouldn't even put at 30 for the 90s, I would have 7th best for the 00s. But that shows you how deep and entertaining the 90s were for DTV action. 

 

We haven't done a lot of Fahey here on the site, so to say this is his best that we've done isn't saying too much, but his work in these late-era PM flicks is fantastic stuff, and probably something I need to do more of. He may not have the martial arts ability of a Gary Daniels, but he more than makes up for it in screen presence. The whole cop on the edge thing works for him, with the popped collars, the angry looks, and the slick lines. In looking at his IMDb bio, it seems like it's more the brooding detective type in a seductive thriller that he's cast as as opposed to the cop on the edge, and I get that: the former takes much less work and much less toll on the body. I'm a fan of both, so I'll take it either way.

Before this I hadn't tagged Gregory Scott Cummins, so I took care of that with this review. If you're curious, we've done six of his films before this (I thought it was seven, but it turns out I haven't reviewed the Concorde/New Horizons classic Blood Ties yet). In films like this, he works as that baddie in a can type, where you don't need to use any plot exposition to build him up, we just know he's bad. According to IMDb, he has his MFA in acting, which would explain how he can do that so well. In a 90-minute PM action flick, where we want to get in and get out with as many helicopter explosions and car flips as possible, a guy like Cummins who can come in and be a baddie with no extra work around him is very valuable, and something we sometimes take for granted.

 

Finally, this is our first Brion James film in almost ten years! How does a legend like that go so long without a film? I think the reason is he passed in 1999, and since I've been back from hiatus, I've been trying to split the difference between getting caught up on the 2010s films I missed, and the 80s and 90s films we still hadn't done, like this one, and that meant poor Brion was left out in the cold. On a recent podcast episode with Ty and Brett from Comeuppance, I pronounced his first name "bry-ON", which was the silly way my friends and I said it, and didn't even realize I was saying it that way to them, it's become so ingrained in me. Here's to you Brion (bry-ON), you were one of the greats.

So with that, let's wrap this up. This is worth checking out if you see it on a streaming service or it pops up on cable. As far as I can tell though, none of the major streamers carry it, and it's not on YouTube. For my money, Tubi should have the entire PM catalog available to stream, but for some reason they only have like maybe half? That needs to change. Either way, this is worth a watch if you get a chance to see it.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120412

And if you haven't yet, check out my novel Chad in Accounting at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Bloodfist VII: Manhunt (1995)

I could've sworn I'd reviewed this one way back when I first started the DTVC. I know I saw it on Spike, and back then, if I caught a film like this on Spike, I'd just write the review and see if I could Print Screen some images from the trailer. Those were some crazy days back in 2007. It feels like forever ago, huh? And apparently they were more crazy than I thought, because a few months ago I went to the archive to look at my Bloodfist VII review, only to discover, it didn't exist. Boy do I have egg on my face.

Bloodfist VII has our hero Don "The Dragon" Wilson back in his reoccurring/non-reoccurring role, this time as a drifter heading to Mexico when he bumps into Jillian McWhirter, who pulls the ol' "can we share a hotel room I'll wake up before you in the morning and steal your car and leave the keys to my Beamer" maneuver, which Wilson doesn't take too kindly too. He tracks her to a house in Hollywood, which has been ransacked, and in which he's ambushed by an off-duty cop, whom he kills. After a quick interrogation where he tells police captain Stephen Williams what happened, some other off-duty cops take him to a place to beat info out of him he doesn't have, he escapes, and the Bloodfist parts IV, V, VII, and VIII paradigm is on, where it's Wilson against the world, and he can't trust anyone as he tries to put the pieces together and clear his name.



I actually really liked this one. It's 86-minute running time moved very quickly, and didn't have the usual downtime and awkward plot exposition scenes that hamper some of the other films in the series. Wilson was great, especially with the martial arts, and Stephen Williams was too amazing for words (though I'm going to try in a couple paragraphs). Don't get me wrong, this is pure DTV bad action, from the music, to the shimmying stuntmen getting sprayed with Uzi fire, to the Chess King fashions, but it's the kind of pure DTV bad action that works really well, especially in 2011.

This was the kind of movie that got Don "The Dragon" Wilson into the Hall of Fame. I mean, the film starts with Rick Dean at a biker bar acting like a sleazeball, just asking for D The D Dubs to smack him with the butt end of a pool cue. And from there, it's either Wilson fighting, or Wilson running from the cops in some great foot chase scenes. We don't need Wilson to act, we need him to fight, and that's what we got here, great Wilson action.



The reason we don't need Wilson to act? That's right, Stephen Williams did all the acting we needed. I swear they wrote the character name "Marvosa" into the script just to hear Williams say it. I mean, the moment he steps on-screen, it's like he's saying "step aside children, Daddy's here", and from that moment, he owns it like it's his-- "this is my house, my lawn, my barbecue, and I'm willing to let you kids hang out, just as long as you know whose shit this all is." What a coup it must have been to get him in this movie, but we're all better for it.

There was a Neo-Geo sighting. There's a pic of it on the image page. I guess it was at the police station. I went with that for this paragraph over the Ian Jacklin sighting and Jillian McWhirter's hair-- which I have no idea what they were thinking with that, "hey, let's give a 30-year-old woman a 50-year-old haircut." I don't really remember the Neo-Geo. They had it at the local arcade, but I don't think I played it. Too much Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter I guess.



Who's that dude rocking the Chess King/Color Me Badd outfit? It's Stephen Quadros, or as I like to say, The Poor Man's Kevin Bacon. There were some better pictures where he looked more like Kevin Bacon, like one of him wearing a welding mask, but I just loved the clothes here. This is an area where I like the 80s/90s movies better than today's that the modern movie can't really help. This shirt is the Ed Hardy busy T-shirt of 1995, and just because the older one has the charm of age on its side, doesn't mean it's any less egregious a fashion error. Maybe in ten years we'll see a dude in a punchfighting flick with a sleeve of tats and an Affliction T and we'll be like "they don't make clothes like they used to." Maybe we won't.

This is no longer on Netflix, but can be bought new at Amazon for as little as $3. Thing is, that's too expensive when you tack on the additional $3 in shipping. It does mean it could turn up in a bargain bin here or there, so keep an eye out. This is a total fun time.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112533/

Rage (1995)

Well, post 349 marks a first here at the DTVC, our first duplicate title. At least I think so. I can't remember if we've done any before this. Anyway, the first movie we posted called The Rage had Lorenzo Lamas, Gary Busey, and Roy Scheider. This one has Gary Daniels. 6 of one, half a dozen of the other, right?

Rage stars Daniels as a second grade teacher with a rich author wife and nice daughter. He takes said daughter to her friend's house, and on the way home finds himself in the hands of the federal government. They give him some experimental serum, and all hell breaks loose. He starts kicking ass and taking names. The only one who doesn't think he's a mass murdering nutjob is a local TV reporter, who, with his young camerawoman, hopes to break this story and help Daniels get back to his nice life.

This is pretty sweet. Great fight scenes with Daniels. One in particular when he's going at it with a dominatrix and her slave/customer is amazing. The problem for me was the action went from good to excitement by repetition. For example, great chase scene where Daniels is cruising around in a de facto bulletproof tanker, crushing cop cars, etc. But instead of wrapping it up and giving us the awesome bus collision, they give us ten minutes of the same Daniels driving, hitting the same cop cars, and showing the same explosions. Bo-ring! Wrap it up, B! They did the same thing later with a helicopter scene. Just inordinate amounts of time with Daniels hanging off a building and guy shooting at him from point blank range, and missing completely. Still, there was plenty of fun stuff with Daniels. I guess these things can't be perfect.

This is the second straight film we've done of Daniels' where he's rocking a dyed do. I don't get it. Was he playing Anne in Anne of Green Gables at the local playhouse? Just the same, he was awesome here. It wasn't his fault the director didn't know when to cut and when to keep things. One good cut they made was to jump right from Daniels getting his injection to him kicking lab assistants and security guards' asses. This guy is amazing. That's all there is to it.

Like I said above, there was an amazing scene where Daniels dukes it out with a dominatrix and her slave. It comes after Daniels has broken into the guy's house, and is stuffing himself and making a mess on his floor, spilling milk and whatnot. They find him like that, and go into attack mode. Then it's just them throwing each other through tables and windows. Then the cops show up and Daniels is taking them out too. Well conceived fight scene.

This has Jillian McWhirter, which makes it the fifth film we've reviewed with her in it. I guess it's time we tagged her. She didn't play Daniels' wife, she played the reporter's camerawoman. Speaking of the reporter, he has a hilarious monologue at the end, where he talks about Daniels' character as a great American hero, and says it's up to us to stand up to our government the way he did. The way he did? With a supersoldier serum in us and an extensive background in martial arts so we can kick everyone's asses? Who writes this shit, really?

Is that a Twisted Sister pin on your lapel? That's right, Mark Metcalf, Doug Neidermeyer from Animal House has a small role in this as the Lt. Governor. He needed a bigger role, though. He needed to get right in Daniel face and yell "What are you gonna do with your liiiife!" Then Daniels could say, in his British monotone "I wanna rock," then beat the crap out of him.

This is a good movie. Prepare yourself for a little excitement by repetition, because it's the film one major drawback. After that, though, you've got great Daniels, some great fight scenes, and some solid explosions and chases. Worth putting on your Netflix queue.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114224/

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

 

Last Man Standing (1996)

This film actually came out the same year that the Bruce Willis movie with the same name was released. I wonder if The Asylum has ever considered that move. Just put out a movie with the exact same name. Forget Transmorphers, go with Transformers, and have it just be people who transform into things. The only thing Hasbro or whoever have the copyright for are alien robots that transform into things. The Asylum would be well within their rights to release a film called Transformers that has people transforming into animals or whatever, wouldn't they?

Last Man Standing has Wincott as a cop who stumbles onto some guys divvying up their cuts of a robbery. After he arrests them, turns out these guys are in with the cops. Like high ranking cops. They're less than stoked with Wincott, and they try to pull the old "you're reckless. Hand over you're gun and badge, you're on desk duty", but to no avail. You can't keep a good cop like Wincott down. Tagline for this film: "Everyone has the right to remain silent." What the eff does that even mean?



This is your classic Man v. The World 90s action paradigm, so don't go into it expecting a killer plot with amazing twists and turns. What you do get is Wincott kicking a fair amount of ass, which is good. There are some nice chases, some nice shootouts, etc. The film starts great with Wincott and the head baddie falling from six stories into a pool. Who doesn't like that? It may not keep that level of intensity up, but it does enough to get the job done.

I put this post after my Cyborg Cop post to make a point. Jeff Wincott is the man. He wouldn't be caught dead rocking a fanny pack. Can you see the wardrobe guy trying to give it to him. "Ummm... Mr. Wincott... I have your... fanny pack..." No response, just cock one eyebrow, take a drag off the cigarette, and exhale. "Umm... the director told me you... umm... needed to.... put this..." Another drag, followed by, in a monotone: "I'm not wearing that." This world is divided into two types of men: the David Bradleys, and the Jeff Wincotts. Which are you?



Jeff Wincott smokes like a chimney in this film. I think it's cool, which may or may not be a good thing. If you're wondering, in college I was addicted to cigarettes, and it took some effort to quit, so I'm coming at this take from someone who knows what smoking's all about. I like seeing a hero in an action movie burn one heater after another. I like seeing an action hero be a health conscious nut who wouldn't touch a cancer stick if his life depended on it too. I just hope that our new crusade against cigarettes in this country won't eliminate the former type of action hero from our culture. I understand that kids look up to these guys as role models, and want to emulate them; but, for me at least, it's those smug bastards in those obnoxious Truth commercials that make me want to smoke more, just to spite them, than any Bogie or James Dean picture ever could.

Jillian McWhirter plays Wincott's wife. She was also in two Bloodfist movies, so she knows the drill in the Man v. The World paradigm. That seems to be the only thing those movies were ever about after part III. I must say, if I had to chose between Wincott and Don "The Dragon" Wilson, I'd take Wincott over him anyday. Maybe I really am becoming a DTV Connoisseur...



You may recall that the other Last Man Standing was a remake of Yojimbo. As you may or may not know, my favorite remake of Yojimbo is Omega Doom. I bring that up, because, if you take a look at the post for Future Hunters, you'll see the first ever comment on the blog by a DTVC Hall of Famer. That's right, Albert Pyun, director of Omega Doom, dropped some love on the DTVC. Pretty cool, huh? Also, speaking of Kurosawa films, my local indie/art house theater showed Hidden Fortress last Wednesday. I may be the Direct to Video Connoisseur, but I do occasionally like to see good movies on the big screen too.

This is worth throwing on your Netflix queue. You'll like it. Wincott is one of those cats that are worth looking into, especially after you've gone through the majority of the Segal and Lundgren catalog. This movie's as good as any to introduce you to him.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116831/

Stranglehold (1994)

I saw a trailer for this while watching another Jerry Trimble film. I can't remember which one it was, but I'm not sure how much that matters. With Live by the Fist and One Man Army being so awesome, I was geared up for another Trimble action-fest.

Stranglehold is about some chemical manufacturing plant in Malaysia run by an American corporation that's taken hostage by a huge Australian man and his cronies while an American congresswoman is visiting. The congresswoman's dad has a former CIA operative, Jerry Trimble, tag along for protection, and boy did they need him. Now Trimble's gotta get the congresswoman out alive, while stopping the Australian from escaping with some nerve gas.



This was a huge waste. Jerry Trimble, amazing kickboxer, and the director has him running around with an assault rifle the whole time. Trimble tried valiantly to pull it off, but that's not how he gets down. He looked like a fish out of water. Now, with Trimble in an extremely limited martial arts capacity, we're stuck with a low-rent Die Hard ripoff. For a film with a 70-minute running time, it felt like I was watching it for three hours.

The director of this film was Cirio H. Santiago, and he's done five other films reviewed here on the DTVC, including the amazing Live by the Fist and One Man Army. That makes this movie all the more inexcusable. What was this guy thinking? Did he not know the masterpiece he made with Live by the Fist? How could he not have? Sure, this had some great explosions, and there was plenty of shooting, but when I see Jerry Trimble's name on the cover, I expect Live by the Fist caliber fighting too.



In the few scenes where Trimble actually did have to do some hand-to-hand combat, he excelled, as one would expect. In the trailer for the film, all these martial arts magazines are credited with saying how great the film was, and after watching it, I'm wondering why, because there was almost no martial arts action. Was it out of respect to Trimble? Even the tagline says "Bare Hands. Fast Feet. Short Temper. Ryan Cooper needs no weapon." Sure, he needs no weapon, if an assault rifle doesn't count as a weapon. I can see him using the gun sometimes for the good of the story. I'm just looking for an 80/20 or 70/30 split, with the emphasis being on the hand-to-hand stuff, and this film was more like 90/10, all machine gun.

This had a great Australian actor named Vernon Wells, not to be confused with the Blue Jays center fielder. This guy was great, and his fight at the end with Trimble was reminiscent of Joe Don Baker and Merlin Olson in Mitchell. According to imdb, this cat has been in tons of great DTV stuff, and it's strange that he's never had a film reviewed here before. We'll see if he comes up in the future.



That's that, baby. Not much going on here. A waste of 70 minutes of your life. When I go in expecting Trimble, I want Trimble, not a misguided director's attempt to make him into a Schwarzenegger wannabe.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111300/



But while I have an extra paragraph to play with, I figured I'd mention the new Star Trek movie. It was pretty sweet. The new actors were all faithful to the characters they'd played-- except for one. Sulu was played by the guy from Harold and Kumar that wasn't Kumar, and for whatever reason, he didn't have a deep voice. What? I'm not saying it needed to be Takei deep, but come on, throw me a bone here. Everything else was good, though. For those who don't like Star Trek, I think you'll enjoy it anyway, because it works well as a sci-fi film outside of the milieu of the rest of the series; but for those die hards, it has enough inside jokes to keep you happy too. Just that lack of a good Sulu voice kills me. "Wang!"

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0796366/

Dune Warriors (1990)

I rented this movie back as a freshman in high school. I was having a buddy over for the first time, and I knew he was a big sci-fi honk. I really didn't know much past Star Wars and Star Trek and all the bad things I watched on MST3K, but I wanted to look like I did. As such, when I saw this I thought "Oh, Dune, sci-fi guys love Dune. This'll be a sweet film. Well, it was a sweet film, just not the way we planned.

Dune Warriors is a very short remake of Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, so short, in fact, that they cut the roster down from seven to five. The movie takes place in a grim post-apocalyptic future, where some warlord known only as William is terrorizing the local landscape. One town, the water rich Chinle, wants to fight back, but they're a peaceful people, and don't know where to turn. They send a chick out, and she finds David Carradine, who then finds four other cats in the Mos Eisley-esqu Freetown. They fortify Chinle and take down William in a battle royal.



Looking back, this film had absolutely nothing to do with dunes, so it was probably titled with the sole purpose of duping people who didn't know better, like me, to spend money on it. I fell for it. At 14, my buddy and I didn't really make it much further in the film before we decided to watch some Beavis and Butt-head episodes I taped. The next day, we wanted to see if we could get another friend to tell us the movie was awesome if we talked it up before he watched it. We told him it was better than Star Wars. About fifteen minutes in, he turned to us and said "Hey guys, this is good, but Better than Star Wars?"

At 77 minutes, though, this isn't as harsh as some in its category that run over 100. I'm not sure why bad movies are so long sometimes. 88 minutes, or eleven reels, is the perfect length for a bad film. To all cheap film makers out there: dump enough boring plot exposition to get us in under 88. All we want are the explosions and the fight scenes. Give me five minutes to explain how the bad guy killed the good guy's wife or partner or whatever, then get back to the flying cars flipping thirteen times and landing in a huge ball of fire. Thank you.



One of our favorite scenes came in the first five minutes, when William is pillaging another village. The editing in this is horrible, and very choppy at parts. Guys get stabbed or punched in three distinct takes spliced together so they look like three distinct takes spliced together. There was one where a guy cut off another guy's head in three shots like that, and after the head fell away, there was a fourth cut of the murderer smiling. It was this great shit-eating grin, and we had to watch it multiple times because we thought it was so funny. I'd done better editing in short movies I made for class projects.

David Carradine is all right in this. It's not quite as much fun as watching him in Kung-Fu: The Legend Continues, where week after week he'd have to save his wussy son in the park from a band of ill-intentioned ninjas. He doesn't really flex his martial arts muscles in this as well as he did in that, which is a slight disappointment. I never understood why his son was such a tool on that show. My friends noticed it too. One time, when a buddy and I were at a bowling alley playing Killer Instinct, he noted: "Hey, look, it's Kane's wussy son hanging out with his kids." The guy looked pretty close, and we were wondering if we shouldn't take any chances and get out of there before the ninjas showed up.



Seven Samurai isn't the only film this borrows from. Star Wars is in it quite regularly with the Jawa-like midget people in red robes, and the Mos Eisley-eque Freetown. Carradine also wears a robe and has a sensibility that reminds us of Alec Guiness as Obi-Wan. There's also the blantant Mad Max elements, from the cars to the clothes. If you throw in that the title was meant to make us think this was based on a Frank Herbert novel, then nothing about this film is original. It's like the film makers put a bunch of movies on a dart board and took turns figuring out what to take from next.

This might one of the worst films ever. As such, it's fun to heckle with a group of friends, and if you see it at your local video or store or in a bargain bin for like $2, don't hesitate. It's 77 minutes of funny bad movie, and at the very worst, by the time you get bored of it, it's almost over anyway. You may also want to use it if you're a professor at a film school to demonstrate bad editing techniques. Good work, fellas.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099474/

Bloodfist VIII: Trained to Kill or Hard Way Out (1996)

In seeing this on Spike recently, I had another case of bad movie deja vu. You know what I'm talking about: you think for sure you've never seen a certain movie before, but halfway through it, things look familiar, and it's more than just bad movie cliches. Then it dawns on you that yes, in fact, you have seen it, and you just didn't remember. With this film, it turned out I'd seen it a while ago, probably at a time when digital cable guides didn't exist, so I watched it without even knowing what it was. In my mind, the only thing worse than watching a bad movie once, is watching it twice because I didn't remember the pain I'd suffered the fist time. I guess as a connoisseur of bad cinema, I should probably get a journal like wine people do, so I can recall what it was like: film had bold explosions and potential with great actors, but horrible after taste with unoriginal plot. Also smelled bad once it had a chance to open up.

Bloodfist VIII, aka The Ocho, takes the overused Bloodfist premise of Don "The Dragon" Wilson against the world, and moves it to Ireland. I guess LA told Roger Corman that seven Bloodfists was really pushing it, and if he wanted to make an eight, he'd have to take his business elsewhere. Anyway, D "The D" Dubs is a former CIA agent turned high school teacher trying to raise his erstwhile estranged son. Someone puts a hit on him for killing a dude in Italy, and in order to clear his name, the trail takes him to Dublin. The CIA follows him there, because they want to kill ol' Donny too. As in every Bloodfist, he prevails against all odds.



Wanna talk about pulling blood from a stone. They were scraping the bottom of the barrel when they put this one together. I can't lie, with the extreme success of Bloodfist VII: Manhunt, I probably would've greenlighted an eight too. It's not like any of the actors had anything better to do, I'm sure. Why not take a paid vacation to Ireland? I bet Donny hadn't been before they shot this.

Speaking of Donny, he really gives this the ol' college try. He's having trouble making the same stale storyline not so stale. I bet he's the guy you have as a roommate that saves every scrap of food because he thinks he can make a taco bake or something out of it. I'm that guy too, and I know sometimes you just gotta bite the bullet and throw that stuff out. And then you gotta bite the bullet again and buy some new food at the grocery store.



I guess that's the issue with the Bloodfist series: they never did anything new. There was nothing that I could discern from the earlier movies that said explicitly that movies IV through VIII absolutely had to have a guy that was some sort of fugitive with everyone against him with no one he could trust. The first two weren't like that, and the third was only sorta kinda like that. Why they felt compelled to make the others essentially the same film is beyond me. I know after this they really tried to mix it up with Bloodfist: 2050, but that doesn't do anything for me here with number VIII, which is what I'm reviewing.

This may be one of the most nondescript films I've ever done for the DTVC. Other than Donny, there's nothing in it that makes it memorable at all. I've had trouble grinding out more than four or five paragraphs. It's not extremely bad; but on the other hand, if it was, it might be more entertaining. Instead it's just a big pile of blah. The only way I'd recommend watching it is if you're suffering from insomnia or up late typing a paper, and this is on at 2 AM, and it's your only option. Otherwise skip it. It's not worth any money you spend on it, no matter how small; and it's not worth any time you could spend doing something else, like watching another movie, or reading a book.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115711/