Bedroom Eyes 2 (1989)

This is one we covered on the podcast, episode 207, with Jon Cross from The After Movie Diner and The PM Entertainment Podcast, along with the first Bedroom Eyes, and because of the Wings factor, we had to get it on the site eventually too, so that's why we're here now. Also, we want to get more erotic thrillers on the site, so that helps too.

Bedroom Eyes 2 picks up however many years after part one left off, with Wings Hauser taking the baton from Kip Gilman in the lead role of Harry Ross. He's apparently married Carolyn (not spelled "Caroline" this time), the woman who used his toes to have an orgasm in a restaurant in the first film. The only problem is, she's cheating on him with an artist she's showcasing at her studio. To get revenge, he hooks up with Linda Blair, whom he met at the local aquarium, because he likes to go there? Anyway, the fun starts when JoBeth returns, the woman who tried to kill him in the first film, and did kill some other people, so it's kind of odd that she's on the streets now. Anyway, he needs to find out why she's out, and what she's up to, toot sweet, otherwise he could be her next victim.

Essentially, you're getting what you get from this one. Plot holes, elements that stretch credulity, needing to don safety goggles with all loose ends flying together at the end. But then you get the erotic elements of the erotic thriller, the sex, the stocking tops, the lingerie, which wouldn't be enough on its own to save a movie like this, so that's where Wings comes in. Maybe not something you'd put on your top ten Wings list, but it's Wings enough to make you satisfied if you're coming for the Wings factor, which on some levels we were. I think the final mark in the plus column for this is the 85-minute runtime, which always helps--even if it was a little scary when we got near the end and there wasn't much time to resolve everything, I just had to put on my seatbelt and go for the ride, but an okay ride it was.

We're now at 25 films for Wings, which seems like a paltry number for an inaugural Hall of Famer, but we lost him for a bit while we reviewed films from other Hall of Famers. A big part of that was that he didn't do anything DTVC worthy after 2010's Rubber, but then also with his older stuff, things were either hard to find, or I wasn't sure how much I wanted to do them based on who else was in the cast. The availability issue has changed over time, and more of these movies that I had trouble tracking down are now easier to find, like this one here (more on that in the next paragraph). Hopefully that means soon Hauser will be in the 30 Club and beyond soon. He truly was one of the best to do it, and we get a lot of that here. He's no Kip Gilman, he brings all the frenetic energy you want, he's a big guy, he's unpredictable, and that carries what would've been a run-of-the-mill late 80s erotic thriller. If anything, he's fun to watch in this, which for me is enough as a huge Wings fan.

Though, as you may have noticed, it's hard to see anything with this film quality. You'd be right in thinking I got this off of YouTube or Internet Archive from someone's VHS rip upload, and while this probably was a VHS rip upload, it's from a pay subscription streamer called Cultpix. That's right, and they charge almost $7 a month for that kind of quality. And beyond the quality, I suspected this was a VHS rip because it includes the open and close from when it aired on Joe Bob's Drive-In Theater on The Movie Channel back in the early 90s. Yes, that was fun to see, and would've been fun if I was watching someone's VHS rip on YouTube for free, but when I'm paying $7 a month, I expect a quality version. I mean, Christ, could I start my own subscription streaming service with a bunch of VHS rips? PoirierFlix? Or maybe use the DTVC name? Direct to Video Connoisseur Flix. I'll check at my parents' to see if my copy of Bill Maher's Pizza Man on an old SLP VHS marked "Matt's stupid pizza guy movie" by one of my siblings is still kicking around so I can add it to the streaming library. (And if you're curious, I'm one of four critic reviews on that movie.)

We didn't have a new McDonald's appearance in this, but we did get a Wendy's with that old sign that looks so beautiful. As a kid, we didn't have a Wendy's in our town, only McDonald's and Burger King, so getting Wendy's somewhere was a treat until I was in high school and Portsmouth, NH finally got theirs--which is still there I believe. What I liked about it here, is, in as much as I could see due to the poor quality version, is the old Wendy's sign gave the scene this gritty streets-at-night feel that added to the ambiance. Could you have that now with the current sign? Like if a character had just cheated on his wife and was wandering around the city at night after the fact, would the current iteration of the Wendy's sign add anything? I was trying to think of other old signs like that that would add that kind of ambiance. Maybe old Taco Bell? We do have a KFC in the shot too, but I don't know that it's adding anything the way the Wendy's is. I did a search, and the old Arby's is kind of cool, with the big cowboy hat, especially if it were in an urban setting at night.

Finally, this movie was shot in Toronto, which often passes for New York City in films. As you may or may not know, I've never been to Canada before, despite growing up in Maine, only about 4 hours or so from the border. Recently I watched Ms. Marvel on Disney+, and as Kamala Khan was visiting Pakistan and experiencing the county of her heritage, I thought about what that would be for me. Ireland on my mother's side, and then based on my last name you're probably thinking it would be France on my father's side, which might be the case, but as far as I know it can only be traced back as far as Canada. When my sister did one of those DNA tests, his side of the family came up as any one of Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, Sicilian, or Mediterranean French, so if they weren't the last one on the list, somehow they picked up a French last name and ended up in Quebec from one of those places--which had to be a shock to the system after the first winter--and then from there, in the 19th century, they moved to New Hampshire in the US. I was thinking Montreal then, but my dad said when he did a trip there when he was in his 20s, he was told our relatives lived way up in the country, which I'd have no way of getting to without driving, so I guess I'd have to settle for Montreal, which I can take a train to from Philadelphia. I won't become a Canadiens fan though.

And with that, let's wrap this up. As I mentioned above, this is available on Cultpix, which I don't think is worth it, but if you see the VHS hanging around in a used shop or something, it's worth picking up, if only for the Hauser factor. And also check out the podcast episode I did on this with Jon, episode 207 in the archives, where we look at this and the one before it.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099113

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Silent Assassins (1988)

In the quest to get more Sam Jones on the site, we're here with Silent Assassins.  The other names I liked in this were Linda Blair, Mako, and Phillip Rhee.  It just looked like a great low-budget 80s actioner.  Also, our buddy Ty at Comeuppance Reviews has done this one, so you can go there to see what he thought (this is definitely a Ty kind of flick).

Silent Assassins has Jones as Sam Kettle, an LA detective who goes to take down this horrible criminal, only to have all his partners killed as the bust goes bad.  He and his wife Linda Blair plan to move away to Colorado to start a new life, when this criminal kidnaps veteran old guy character actor Bill Erwin, who is a bio chemist, in order to get some heavy duty formula he has.  Now Jones is back on the case, along with Jun Chong, whose niece was kidnapped along with Erwin, and Rhee, whose dad, Mako, wants him to help.  Will they be enough to take down this criminal and his gang?



Yeah this is what you want here.  All kinds of good 80s, between the music, the clothes, and the cars; Sam Jones is all kinds of good Sam Jones; and then Rhee and Chong as the fight choreographers took this thing to another level.  It had its slow moments, but I think the 80s awesomeness allows it to transcend that; plus some of the scenes of Erwin and the girl in captivity were a little dark-- though there's the fascination aspect of Erwin, off-screen, having bamboo shoots shoved under his fingernails-- I mean, it's like the violent deconstruction of America's favorite grandpa.  Beyond that, the action is stellar and tons of fun.  Near the end, there's a scene where a baddie with a rocket launcher is on a rooftop, and Jones shoots him down and retrieves it.  Then we're teased for five minutes, and I'm like "come on, shoot it already!", but when he does it's so fantastic, like Tiger Woods fist pump worthy.  This is well worth checking out if you get the chance.

How do you not love Sam Jones?  Flat tops, five o'clock shadow, profile glances over up-turned collars, it's all great.  He was 34 when he did this, which is crazy, because I'm 34, and I still look like I'm 24, where he looked like a total dude.  In fact, I don't know anyone my age that's as much of a dude as he is in this.  I think Maximum Force might be the better movie, but this Jones is as good as it gets, and a definite watch for any fans of his.



Ty mentioned, and I concur, that Linda Blair's representation on the cover is very misleading.  She is not teaming up with Jones and taking out baddies.  She's his wife, and wants him to leave his life as a police officer.  At no point does she don a leather outfit, and only once does she use a gun.  Take that for what you want: a disappointment, a silly thing that happens in these 80s DTV actioners, or a bait-and-switch.  I liked her in this though, and she and Jones had great chemistry, which made them fun to watch.

Bill Erwin as the scientist was a trip.  First, he was in the film for more than I'm used to seeing him in a film; and second, he was tortured.  I don't know how many serious roles I've seen him in, but this was very serious here.  Again, he's America's favorite grandpa!  Looking at his imdb bio, before he died in 2010, he had over 200 film credits, and many of which came when he was much younger, so I wonder what he was as an actor before he was America's favorite grandpa.  Another late great talent in this is Mako, who played a former Yakuza member working as a businessman in LA.  He has a great samurai sword fight near the end that was great to see.  Gotta love Mako, and both he and Erwin have been, and will continue to be, missed.



Finally, Phillip Rhee and Jun Chong did the fight choreography in this, and it added another level to what would still have been a great 80s DTV actioner without their work.  They also did a great job of saving their best stuff for the end, almost like a fireworks display, and the finale was great.  We don't see a lot of Rhee throughout much of the film, but man, what we get near the end is plenty good; and I haven't seen much Chong before, and according to imdb he didn't do much, but like Rhee, he was great here too.  This is definitely a Sam Jones picture, but these guys played key roles, both on screen and behind the scenes.

This is out of print in the States, so used DVD or VHS is the way to go.  I think it's a must for collectors, but also one to keep your eye out for in bargain bins and whatnot.  For fans of late 80s/early 90s action, this is the kind of thing you want.  Great too for people like me that are still getting into Sam Jones led films.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096109/

Bail Out aka W.B., Blue, and the Bean (1989)

My friends and I found this film in one of those 50 movies for whatever low price kind of deals. It said it had Hasselhoff in it, so we figured it'd at least be entertaining for that. The reason my buddy bought this collection originally was its inclusion of a Joe Don Baker classic, Mitchell. If you're as big a MSTie as I am, you must watch Mitchell at least one time in the non-MST3K version. It's a trip. Not only that, but you learn what happened to John Saxon.

Bail Out is about some bounty hunters, headed by Hasselhoff, who work for a shady bail bondsman played by the guy who played Capt. Lipschitz on Silk Stalkings. They're hired for a big score, which is making sure an heiress, played by Linda Blair, gets to her court date on Monday on a huge drug trafficking charge. The fly in the ointment is that the Colombians want her because they need compensation for the $5 million in coke they lost and they think her rich dad should reimburse them. She's kidnapped, and it's up to Hasselhoff and his boys to save the day. Danny Trejo's in this for a moment near the end.



One of the striking things about this film is how dated it seems. I don't mean because it was made in 1989 and we saw it in the new millennium. I mean for 1989 it seemed like it was much older. The film quality was like that in a Charlie's Angels or Rockford Files episode from the 70s. Then there's the use of racial stereotypes: the white guy who leads the show and gets the girl, his black friend who's a smooth talker and knows the streets, his Latino friend who does all the dirty jobs, and their stingy, penny-pinching Jewish boss. This was embarrassing to watch.

The Hasselhoff-age was pretty decent. He had this mullet that I would probably rate a 7.2 in mulletude. I've never been quite sure how I'm supposed to take Hasselhoff. As a young kid, watching Knight Rider, I still didn't know just how much Hollywood expected me to take him seriously, and then I was in first grade for God's sake. Just the same, I remember an episode of Baywatch Nights where he was playing pool in the last five minutes, and he hit this shot that I still refer to as The Hasselhoff, and have only hit it myself a couple times. The 9 ball was just off the rail in the middle of the table, and cue ball was down further, not quite in line with it. He shot the cue so it hit directly next to the 9, slamming it against the rail and back out into the side pocket on the other side of the table. It was hot.

Linda Blair is in this as the damsel in distress slash Hasselhoff romantic interest. I felt she was sufficiently attractive in that role, but I have the sinking suspicion that the movie makers would have gotten someone hotter if they thought they could. It's just the kind of movie this was. In 1989, though, you could do a lot worse than Linda Blair, and for me she was one of the few bright spots in an otherwise crappy film.



I recently had a conversation with a group of people about Saved by the Bell. Some of them had actually made it through their 25-plus years on the planet without having seen this television tour-de-force. The conversation started when I mentioned Zack Morris' cell phone. Anyone who's seen the show enough would know exactly what I'm talking about. Anyway, Hasselhoff has a nice Zack Morris phone in this, and it's held up as some kind of status symbol, which I guess in 1989 it would have been. Now it just looks silly.

There was one memorable scene. Near the end, Hasselhoff needs to shoot a helicopter with a grenade launcher or something. He takes his sweet-ass time waiting for a clean shot while his friends are sprayed with gunfire from the baddies flying it. Finally he blows it up, and then does this great celebration. We had to watch it a few times, one, because it was so funny, and two, because we had so little to be pleased about in this horrible movie.

If you see this by itself in the store, avoid it at all costs. It's such a waste. On the other hand, if you have a friend like we did with one of these 50 movies for whatever price collections, and see this in it, and you need to kill an hour and a half, it might not hurt to give it a try. Out of the 50 movies, this'll probably be one of the best, which isn't saying much, but it's kind of how these things work.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098614/