Spoiler (1998)

We're staring to exhaust our supply of Gary Daniels films. There are a few others available, and I plan on hitting them in the near future, but after that, it's either waiting for the pile of flicks he's done after 2009 to be released here in the States, or search around and see if some of the more obscure older ones pop up. But we got this one, so we might as well take advantage of it.

Spoiler takes place in the future, where criminals that try to escape from prison are so named, and when caught again, sent into deep freeze for inordinate amounts of time. Daniels is one of these Spoilers, and after he's caught escaping, he's given 26 years. Then he escapes again, and is given a bunch more. And then he escapes again, and is captured again. When he escapes this time, will he let them take him in alive?



If this sounds like a Groundhog's Day scenario in a movie, it felt like it too. The first 40 minutes or so is just the film spinning its wheels. Really, none of it gets us anywhere other than back to where we started. I want to say "who thinks that's a good idea?", but I'm not so sure the people who made this movie cared. All they seemed to care about was this idea of Daniels not aging and seeing his daughter when she's old and dying, and basing a sci-fi actioner around it. Not that this has a lot of action. First off, Daniels doesn't sport his sweet martial arts. Total waste. Why again did you cast Daniels then? And they had all this other talent that they used each for either one scene or a small part: Bryan Genesse, Meg Foster, Jeffrey Combs, (I think) Timothy Bottoms, and (I think) James Booth. This should've been The Fugitive set in the future, with Daniels using his wits to stay escaped-- not get captured and escape over and over. An idea and a film sauteed in wrong sauce.

The thing is, we've seen from films like Rage, that Daniels can do The Fugitive paradigm and do it well. And we had some really great supporting characters in this that could have filled that out and made it so much cooler. The film starts with Genesse and Daniels in dust-up, but it's really just them hitting each other and falling over. Hell no! You've got two great martial artists, and you can't have them choreograph something awesome for us? Then keep Genesse and have him appear in future scenes-- or maybe have him team up with Jeffrey Combs, who was himself a great baddie, but unfortunately only comes in at the very end. What? He should've been the Tommy lee Jones to Daniels's Harrison Ford. This was not a vehicle where Daniels was allowed to shine, and it suffered for that.



Let's get back to the Jeffrey Combs thing, because when he pops in in the last 15 minutes or so, I'm wondering "where have you been all my film?" He was the ultimate baddie, but he had too little time to flex his baddie muscles. The whole Groundhog's Day theme of this film, where Daniels keeps getting frozen and waking up decades later, meant that a guy as great as Combs couldn't appear for more than one small section, otherwise he'd bee too old later. That's why you scrap a silly premise like that. Also, it's probably time I got more Combs on this site, huh?

As I said above, this entire film was based around this idea of a father staying the same age and seeing his daughter when she's really old and on her death bed. Sounds cool in theory, but in practice, it killed everything that could've been good about the movie. I think sometimes these film makers get married to an idea, and can't see that it's sauteed in wrong sauce. When that happens, you get the best from actors like Gary Daniels left on the shelf, and potentially film anchoring performances from great actors like Meg Foster and Jeffrey Combs wasted on tiny parts.



Finally, I really liked the images of the futuristic cities in this. Again, because much of the film is Daniels getting frozen and trying to escape prison, we don't see those enough either. Ugh, it just makes me see how awesome a sci-fi futuristic Fugitive would have been with what they had to work with, and how much it was all wasted.

I can't do this anymore I need to put this review to bed. You want to watch a movie where Gary Daniels doesn't fight, by all means, but it wasn't for me. You want to watch a movie where the first 40 minutes goes nowhere, by all means, but that wasn't for me either. You want to watch a movie where a great Jeffrey Combs baddie gets barely 15 minutes due to a silly plot premise? By all mean, but it upsets me too much to talk about it. I believe this is out of print, but you can get it new or used on DVD from Amazon, but I wouldn't bother.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120187/

Project: Shadowchaser aka Shadowchaser (1992)

I've had this one for some time now, but put it on my back burner in order to get a few other reviews up instead. Then Netflix sent me the DVD with parts two and three, which put my feet to the fire and made me shuffle things around some. It works though, I've been meaning to get some Martin Kove up here anyway. Also, our man Ty at Comeuppance Reviews has hit this one too.

Project: Shadowchaser has Frank Zagarino as Romulus, an android killing machine designed by diabolical scientist and apparent big time Susan Powter fan Joss Ackland. Romulus has something of an existentialist crisis, and takes it out on everyone else by taking a hospital hostage that just happens to have Meg Foster, the President's daughter, visiting. The feds need to get her back, so they erroneously take Martin Kove out of his deep freeze imprisonment, thinking they're freeing the hospital's architect with the hope that he could give them some insight into a rescue attempt, only to have the team die in an elevator explosion. Now Kove is knee deep in it, but he may also just be America and the First Daughter's last hope.



This had its issues, was pretty derivative-- see Die Hard in a hospital-- but overall I think it worked in that 90s DTV sci-fi action cheese vein. I mean, you're not looking for Kurosawa when you fire one of these bad boys up, and this pretty much hit all the spots you'd want it too. It did have some slow areas, but with Kove involved they weren't too intolerable. He had fun with this, and his attitude had a trickle down affect through the cast, with everyone playing off him, and that fun translated well to the viewer. Maybe a little unremarkable, but for what it was, it worked for me.

Kove was great. He really played up that slick talking resourceful guy who finds himself in an impossible situation. We often don't get to see Kove as the hero (I know there are obvious examples of films where is the hero, I'm just saying they're outweighed by the roles he has as a baddie), so any chance we get is a bonus, because he's so good at it. I can see though why he might prefer being a baddie, because roles like this where the good guy is as fun as the baddie is a rarity-- have you ever noticed the baddie is almost always the most fun role in the film?



Frank Zagarino makes an excellent robot baddie-- though one could make the case that he's even better in part two when his character is given more of a personality. Either way, this is the role Frank Zagarino was made for. How is it that film makers don't look at this and say "man, this guy is so wooden, why don't we do a Project: Shadowchaser and cut the amount of acting that's required?" Also, love the Susan Powter look.

Meg Foster's character was one of the parts of the film I didn't care for, and not because of her, but because it was written very inconsistently. At the beginning we had a tough woman, won't take any crap, not just another pretty face/rich daddy's girl style character that worked really well. Then, as Kove's rescuing her, she suddenly turns vain, decides she needs to change into a dress and heels for her escape, completely betraying anything good the character had built up to that point. Over-writing strikes again, and make a muddled mess out of something that could've been so good-- and that's too bad, because she and Kove had great chemistry.



Your eyes aren't deceiving you, that's Kove with a glued on Grizzly Adams. It doesn't get any better, does it? Forget the goatee, the glued on Grizzly Adams is the way to go. I wonder if he's ever rocked the Grizz in any other roles? See, this is where the reader comments section comes in most handy. If you're going to dismiss discussing the movie completely to read off a list of other movies the cast have been in instead, give me something more than just "such and such was a WAY better movie IMO", give me some meat damn it, tell me some other movies that Martin Kove has been in where he rocks the Grizz. The request/suggestion box is full of movies right now, so if you want to stand out you need to bring it.

Now I'm rambling, so it's best we wrap this up. As far as I know, this is only available on VHS, and can be pretty pricey, even used. Not sure it's worth that, but this is a good one for collectors, so you may want to make that decision for yourself. For me, if you can't get it for less than $5, I'd wait.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105178/

The Wind (1987)

Always looking to get more Wings Hauser on the DTVC, and finding this one available on DVD from Netflix, I decided to go for it. Then I pull the sleeve out of the envelope, and see "1 hr. 52 min." for the running time. A buck-52? That's crazy! Luckily enough, it was bad info (you can never trust the Netflix running time-- or the synopsis sometimes for that matter!), and the real running time was only 93 min. Phew.

The Wind stars Meg Foster as a mystery/pulp writer who vacations on a small Greek island to write her next book. It's very isolated, most of the residents are away, and there's a lot of nasty wind everywhere, making things tough. Throw into that mix drifter Wings Hauser, working for the landlord of the place Foster's staying at, who doesn't take his boss firing him too well-- i.e. he beats him to death with a poker. After he catches Foster catching him burying the body, it's now a deadly game of cat and mouse. Will she survive the wind and the Wings?



This could've been better. It had a bit of a dead spot around the hour mark for 10-15 minutes, and then had a natural ending at 80 minutes that director Nico Mastorakis decided to forgo in favor of stretching the film out for another superfluous 10 minutes. For a film like this, built mostly on suspense and ratcheting up the tension, dead spots and not knowing when to quit can be more grating than they might otherwise be in a bad horror or action flick. That's a shame, because otherwise this wasn't too bad. Hauser made a great baddie, Foster was great as the protagonist, and there was a nice mixture of Hitchcockian and horror elements that made this more than just a bad Lifetime movie type deal. Close, but not close enough I guess.

That's Wings Hauser if you need him. Absolutely 100% Wings as the psycho baddie, which is just the way we like him. He plays a really good nutjob, doesn't he? Oh yeah, and then there's the 'Stash. How do you not love a Wings 'Stash? Throw in the LL Bean Rockland Edition Lobster Fisherman's Sweater, and you have a pretty vintage Hauser deal here. Unfortunately, as the baddie, he doesn't get the maximum screen time, but he does his thing when he's there, and that's all we can ask.



One thing we often discuss here at the DTVC is how film makers waste certain cast members by not playing to their strengths, but Mastorakis doesn't do that here as far as Meg Foster goes. He knows one of her best and most intriguing features is her eyes, and he uses that to full effect, adding to the haunting atmosphere of the film. I don't know if the original storyboards called for all the close-ups on her eyes, or if Mastorakis made the role with her in mind, but if she was cast after the fact, he did a great job of mixing it up and taking advantage of a great opportunity afforded him there.

This is only the second Mastorakis film we've done at the DTVC, the other being another Wings flick, Nightmare at Noon. He just celebrated his 70th birthday about five days ago. He hasn't directed a film since 2002's .com for Murder, which has Huey Lewis in it. Yes, that Huey Lewis. Also, there's The Zero Boys, with DTVC favorite Joe Estevez. Not quite the prodigious directing credits of some of our other favorite directors, but not too bad either.



As a hiker, I have experienced some nasty wind myself a few times, including 60 MPH out near Mts. Sherman, Gemini, and Dyer in Colorado. It was pretty scary, especially on this saddle ridge between Gemini and Dyer that wasn't very wide and was steep on both sides. When it gets that rough, all you can really do is crouch down and let the gusts pass. This movie reminded me of some of that, though, despite the film's title, it seemed like more of a nuisance than a major impediment. Even Wings was the one who cut the power to the house, not the elements. Maybe it should've been called "The Wings".

This is available on DVD from Netflix, which is a rarity for something of its kind. I've also seen it in two-packs and multi-packs in bargain bins, so depending on what it's with, it might not be too bad. By itself, and at too high a cost, it's probably not quite worth it, even with the Wings factor.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094327/

Masters of the Universe (1987)

I've been meaning to review this one for a long time, but even after I introduced the Wild Card post so I could include non-DTV films here on a weekly basis, I just wasn't sure how I wanted to attack it. It's been made fun of and laughed at so many times, right? What more could I do with it? But after a long Dolph absence, I knew I needed to do something, so I rented it anyway. When I popped it in the DVD player, though, I saw the word "Commentary" on the menu, and thought: "this could be promising". Turns out all it is is director Gary Goddard, but still, it allowed me to get some questions answered about why this turned out as badly as it did.

For those that don't know, Masters of the Universe is loosely based on the action figures and the 23 minute cartoons that acted as advertisements for said action figures. Dolph Lundgren plays He-Man, and Frank Langella (yes, that Frank Langella) plays Skeletor. Skeltor has taken over Castle Grayskull, and Dolph and his crew use some kind of device to go to Earth, and then they need to somehow find the device and get back, while Skeletor wants the device too and he wants He-Man so he can kill him and show all of Eternia that he's the true king.



Before watching the film with Goddard's commentary, I had always thought the people involved with making it were either lazy or arrogant or both; that they thought that because the cartoons were so simple and silly, they could throw together a script and make a movie about it without much effort. I was wrong about that. According to Goddard, Golan-Globus came to the writer, David Odell, and said write us a script about He-Man that's set here on Earth so we can make it cheaper. Then they went to Goddard, who hadn't directed a film before, and said make us this film adaptation in under $17 million and in quick enough time that it can be out for the summer. That explains a lot, and makes me more sympathetic to how bad the film turned out.

I have to respectfully disagree with him though, when he says that all in all the film was a success, or rather, that it turned out well. No it didn't. He also said a lot of people my age see it as one of their all time favorites. Again, no they don't. Maybe they tell you that, Mr. Goddard, because you sound like a nice guy in the commentary, and after hearing what you had to say, I fully believe you did everything you could to make this a success, but it was sautéed in wrong sauce from the start. Someone brought you in out of medical school to perform open-heart surgery on the back of a moving truck without all the instruments you needed. He-Man on Earth to save costs? And then you said you didn't want to do this or that because you didn't want it to look too much like Star Wars? Didn't you realize the whole thing looked too much like Star Wars? Critics called it the "Star Wars of the 80s", and you completely ignored that in your commentary, when it was obvious to all of us. I'm willing to accept that you and everyone else involved did your best to make this as good as possible, but good as possible isn't good.



This was Dolph's first film after Rocky IV, and when you tack on the distribution disaster of The Punisher, his fate as a DTV star was pretty much sealed. Universal Soldier might be seen as an exception, but he played second fiddle to Van Damme there. It was Masters of the Universe and The Punisher versus Bloodsport and Cyborg that paved the paths for both actors, and though Van Damme eventually made it to where Dolph is, and though from Dolph's demeanor it would seem he's fine with the way things worked out, it's interesting to wonder what if, isn't it? Surprisingly, this was a little light on the Dolph, but what there is of him, is awesome as usual.

Masters of the Universe, though a financial strain on Golan-Globus and Cannon, was not the one that ultimately took it down-- that honor goes to Superman IV: The Quest for Peace-- but it didn't help. If you're interested you can read the Wikipedia article on Golan-Globus and Canon by clicking here. Who knows where'd they'd have ended up if they'd stuck to low-budget action and Oscar winning foreign films, but they had the rights to Mattel and Marvel properties, so it only made sense to want to use them. The problem with those things, as we're seeing now, is they're an all or nothing proposition: they either need to be nine-figure blockbusters, or they shouldn't be made. I know in the mid-80s $17 million was a lot for a film, but in the 2010s nine figures is a lot for a film too; and I also know that throwing money around doesn't always work either (see Transformers: Rise of the Fallen), but keeping the budget artificially low, or trying to make Masters of the Universe on the cheap, isn't a recipe for success either. Again, it's either all or nothing, and they tried to just go with more than they usually spend instead of all, and ended up paying more for it.



Wow, I'm already at paragraph seven. I guess no comment on Courtney Cox's first film, or that a future female Trekkie heartthrob was in this as well as Cox's boyrfriend, or how much I loved the toys as a kid, or even James Tolkan not telling Tom Cruise how he'd have him flying cargo ships of rubber dogshit out of Hong Kong. If I only have one paragraph left, I'm using it on Frank Langella. Goddard couldn't say enough about how they wanted to make the Skeletor mask look a certain way so it would retain Langella's facial expressions, which is fascinating, because Goddard, who hadn't directed a feature film before that, and hasn't really since, understands a simple truth that James Cameron and a bunch of Avatar honks didn't: that great actors do so many subtle things with their faces, and that subtlety adds so much to the film. Anyway, Langella is a true professional actor, and he didn't mail in this role at all. He put the same amount of effort in here that he did in Frost/Nixon, which is amazing.

If you haven't seen this before, go for it, you'll have a great time. If you have seen it, and hate it, maybe reading this review, or watching it on your own with the director's commentary, will allow you to be a little more sympathetic. Though Mr. Goddard isn't same quality of director as another Goddard we all know (Jean-Luc!... sorry, I had to do that...), he did the best with what he was given. Who knows what a modern Masters of the Universe would look like today, but there's no guarantee it'll be better. That doesn't excuse this one, just puts it in perspective, at least for me.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093507/

Best of the Best 2 (1993)

This is a movie I've been trying to get up for a long time. It's one of those movies that makes me proud to be a connoisseur of DTV video (is that redundant?). Watching it again recently just reinforced how much I love it.

Best of the Best 2 takes place some time after the first one. Phillip Rhee, Eric Roberts, and Chris Penn have all opened a karate school in Las Vegas. Penn has also found his way into an underground fighting ring called The Colosseum, run by Ralf Moeller and managed by Wayne Newton. Penn's killed by Moeller in a fight, and has his body dumped in the river, but not before Roberts's son witnesses the event and tells Rhee and Roberts. They go after Moeller and Newton, only to have to go into hiding to train to fight Moeller when he sends a hit squad after them. He's salty because Rhee sent his face into a mirror, cutting him badly. Long story short, Moeller catches Rhee, makes him fight him, while Roberts rushes in to help save the day.

Don't get me wrong here. Though I may call this awesome, and it is, I must stress that it is extremely silly. One of my roommates came in as they were dragging Penn's body from the river, and Rhee says to Roberts "They're calling it an accident!" She burst out laughing. That's what you can expect from this: it's paint-by-numbers, but paint-by-numbers done well. Great martial arts, a fair amount of gunfire, some explosions mixed in, and a plot that didn't get in the way of the action.

Phillip Rhee was better here than in part 1. His martial arts skills are off the hook. He has one scene when he and Roberts are taking out a Ralf Moeller hit squad, and this guy has a gun on him. So he disarms him by twisting his wrist, and he's got the guy's arm, and he's saying to him "do you want to shoot me now? Huh? Do you?" That being said, I was unimpressed with the scene where he's captured by Moeller's goons. I know I tend to give Seagal a hard time because his characters seem to be omnipotent, but at the same time, it's annoying to see a hero so awesome relegated to wuss status so easily by a few armed men. The same armed men he took out just as armed however many scenes before. We as movie watchers would've believed it just as much if he'd not been captured, but instead infiltrated the fight the way Schwarzenegger did in Conan, or Bernhardt did in Bloodsport 3.

This film makes the rather dubious claim that it's introducing us to Ralf Moeller. I was suspicious, so I looked him up. Not only was he in Cyborg, but he also did Universal Soldier. Why would they make a claim like that? They must've thought he'd be the next Schwarzenegger. If you listen, he even sounds like him sometimes. I think even as a poor man's Arnold, he's not quite there, if you consider his work on the Conan series. Could you see him now trying to drum support for a gubernatorial campaign? "Help me get special interests out of Sacramento." It just sounds better when Arnold says it.

Chris Penn is killed off here, and unfortunately, they don't bring him back as a twin brother or something later on. I guess it had to happen, I was just disappointed when it did. Penn is no longer with us in real life, but he left behind quite a legacy in the film world. His IMDb bio is interesting, because it fluctuates between big screen blockbusters to DTV actioners starring Don "The Dragon" Wilson. I'm not sure who his agent was, or if he just owed a lot of people during his career, but you'd think he'd've been able to turn one or two of those bigger movies into something where he didn't have to do the bad ones anymore.

Wayne Newton plays a definite heel here. I'm not sure I care too much about that. He very easily could be a heel in real life. One thing I do know is that his birthday is two days after mine, so he and I are both Aries. As is Steven Seagal. I wonder if there's anything to this zodiac stuff, and if so, if Newton, Seagal, and I all have certain personality traits in common. Maybe the three of us could go on a picnic this summer and find out. I'd like that.

This is a good time. If you love bad action, you'll love this. It's got everything you could want, without being bogged down too much in the stuff you don't. You're best bet is to slap it on your Netflix queue.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106393/

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/

Future Kick (1991)

I had never heard of this film before seeing it on the site Movies in the Attic (listed under the section "Other Great Bad Movie Sites). The guy who owns it came across the Direct to Video Connoisseur, and sent me a message via MySpace. When I went to his, I saw the poster for this bad boy, and thought it looked awesome. He told me it wasn't that great, but I had to see it for myself, especially since it has DTVC Hall of Famer Don "The Dragon" Wilson.

Future Kick takes place in 2025. The Earth sucks, so rich people have moved to the moon, leaving the planet to the poor and depraved. A company at some point in time invented android or cyborg policemen (it was never totally clear to me), but they were so pure, when they found out the company was corrupt, they turned on their creators. Now the company wants them all eliminated, and Don "The Dragon" Wilson is the only one of them left. He lives as a poor bounty hunter, hiding from the authorities. While turning in a criminal, he comes across a mustachioed cat with a proposition. Unfortunately this man doesn't make it to the meeting he planned with Don, because Chris Penn and this other dude have killed him because of what he knows about their organ stealing operation. Now the guy's wife is searching for the killers, and only Don can help.



I kinda liked this. Don't get me wrong, it's rough. But it's only 76 minutes long, which means there isn't much time for dull plot exposition or character development, leaving only the fun behind. There were some great head explosions, which I can't get enough of in a film. The future, though silly too, was cool... sorta. It looked like a future where the 80s ruled. I've seen much worse, so I can't get on this one too much for it's version of Earth 2025. The idea of the ultimate gated community on the moon was ridiculous, but for a movie of this caliber, the more ridiculous, the better.

Don was pretty sweet in this. This was like his third film, after the first two Bloodfists (unless you count a cameo in Say Anything...), and so he hadn't really mastered the craft yet (though, has he really?). I'm not sure if he had an acting coach then, but they had to have fired him soon after this. On the other hand, it could've been like when I tutored football players in Anthropology 101 at UMaine. Most of the players got Ds, and I figured that meant I was doing crappy, but my boss was excited. It's possible Donny's acting coach was going for a passing grade here too.



This film is graphic, but in a Robocop ludicrous sense. You can't take any of it seriously. The main baddie takes out people's hearts with this three pronged weapon that looks like a more sinister version of the little stand pizza places put in the middle of their pizzas so the box won't collapse on it in transit. Maybe the grossest scene comes when D "The D" Dubs gets his pinkie cut off, but he's an android, so it's not the same. There's also some electronic game with a glowing ball, and if you lose, your head could explode. It just looks so hilarious, it's hard for it to be disturbing.

That being said, according to imdb, Iceland and Finland banned this gem. I never really had any respect for Iceland, but Finland's diminished considerably in my eyes. What were you thinking Finland? I'm taking my Finnish flag down and replacing it with a Swedish one. Not only did they not ban this, but they have Zlatan Ibrahimovic, who's probably cooler than every Fin combined. I'm sorry, Finland, I didn't mean that. We'll get through this, I know it.



Chris Penn isn't in this much, and when he is, he's a cyborg like Don, so he doesn't have much personality. It's an interesting conundrum. On the one hand, it's Chris Penn, which is really awesome. On the other hand, there isn't much to savor, which sucks. I guess what frustrates me is that the bad guy, who Penn was working for, not only wasn't cool, but was less famous than Penn. Why not just switch the two? These are the kinds of decisions that are the difference between having your movie distributed or banned in Finland.

What do you want me to say? This is pretty fun. At 76 minutes you can't beat it. Don't go too far out of your way to procure, ie, don't spend too much money. Put it on your Netflix queue and show it to your buddies on a bad movie night. Like Quaker Oats, it's the right thing to do.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101931/