Bad Bizness aka More Mercy (2003)

This is a film I'd been looking to do for a long time, as I'm trying to get as many Albert Pyun films reviewed on the site as I can. Finally it made its way to Tubi, under the alternate title More Mercy, so I was on it. In addition to us, our friend Mitch at the Video Vacuum has covered this, so you can go to his site to see what he thought as well.

Bad Bizness stars Traci Bingham as a hotel detective at a resort in Bali where women are being murdered. Call women, women of the night, moonlighting models, Bingham's not sure what the connection is, but there is a connection. Her boss, Norbert Weisser, would just as soon sweep this under the rug, as would his boss, Master P, so they give Bingham and her partner, Brent Huff, a shot at finding out who did it before they have to call in the Bali police and the whole thing goes sideways. In order to find out who this killer is, Bingham needs to delve into the seedy world of female surf magazines and the photographer/madam who runs them. All fingers point to a sleezy ponytailed rich guy with a soul patch as the killer, but something tells us the viewer that's just too easy...

When I first started the site, I called this The Direct to Video Connoisseur as this tongue-in-cheek concept evoking an image of an Alistair Cooke-type watching Dolph Lundgren action flicks while wearing a robe and ascot or something. After watching this film though, I began to feel like I was becoming a real connoisseur of sorts. Seeking out a movie simply because Albert Pyun started it and Jim Wynorski finished it, it's like discovering a movie Scorsese started and Spielberg finished; or Kurosawa started and Bergman finished. And ultimately that's the value this movie has now, almost 20 years later. The movie itself doesn't have a lot of mystery, but it seems like there's a lot of mystery surrounding the production: when did Pyun stop and Wynorski take over? Why did Pyun stop in the first place, was he fired or did he quit? A Fred Olen Ray film, Final Examination (which I haven't seen yet) was filmed in the same location around the same time, shares a lot of the same cast, and also has Pyun as a producer. Is there a connection? Was Pyun supposed to film that too? Information online is scant, so it would be interesting to learn more if we can.

Beyond all of that, this thing is pretty low budget, and doesn't always make a lot of sense beyond the love scenes. There's a strip club, but it's in a theater where you might see a play, so the woman dances on the stage, and the men sit in the audience. The changing room for said strip club is a restaurant bathroom. Master P literally phones in all of his scenes from a Las Vegas hotel room, in a role that would have made Eric Roberts and Bruce Willis proud. And speaking of hotels, the one that this one takes place in looks suspiciously like it's in Hawaii instead of Bali. But at the same time, there are elements that make this a bit more fun 20 years later. Julie K. Smith is a great addition as a lesbian woman whose partner is killed by the serial killer. Traci Bingham is exactly the kind of strong female lead, especially a woman of color, Pyun would center his movie around; but she's also the kind of strong female lead Wynorski would want in one of his soft core boob fests, and I like that he teases us with that side without ever fully giving it to us, as Bingham remains fully-clothed and doesn't have a full love scene--and why does she need to, when we've got Julie K. Smith to do the honors. Even the fact that a sleazy guy with a ponytail and a soul patch plays on our 90s sensibilities of what bad is so much that we have to think he's the killer helps to make this a fun ride. But I think you also have to be a certain kind of viewer to have fun with it like that, as this isn't for everyone.

While Albert Pyun is now listed as having 44 tags, he only has 43 films, because we did Mean Guns a second time (at his request). We don't have many left to do at this point. I was finally able to track down Raven Hawk online, and then Cool Air and Left for Dead are available to rent; plus we have the aforementioned Final Examination that he produced. There are two others that he released in the 2010s, The Interrogation of Cheryl Cooper and Interstellar Civil War. I can't find a way to watch the latter, but it looks like through Pyun's site I can rent the other one. That still would put him just shy of the 50 Club, but even without that, he's by far the most tagged director on the site. There are definitely directors like Wynorski and Ray who have the output available to catch him, but I'd have to be doing this site for years more for anyone to get near 40 movies like him--I think Ray has the second most of a director with 15, so that means he's almost 30 behind Pyun. That gives us a sense of just how big Pyun has been for the DTVC, a legacy that will never be surpassed.

Jim Wynorski is one, on the other hand, who we haven't seen as much on the DTVC, but hopefully that'll change soon. He's credited in this film under the name Bob E. Brown, which could be a reference to the R & B singer and member of New Edition; the hair metal video vixen (my favorite of which is Hurricane's "I'm Onto You"); or even the former American League baseball president. I think part of the reason why Pyun has so many tags, and someone like Wynorski so few, is Pyun worked with a lot of big names, and the names tend to make movies move up in my review queue, so he got a bit of a head start because his films overlapped more with how the site evolved in the late 2000s-early 2010s. Now that we've exhausted most of Pyun's filmography, where Wynorski may have room to get more films in, we have directors like Jesse V. Johnson and Isaac Florentine eating up some of that space. When I look at Wynorski's filmography, it's really just the names that make the difference, because otherwise he has a lot of movies that belong here--and one feather he has in his cap that Pyun doesn't: he's worked with Dolph.

As far as I can tell, we haven't played the Pyun Mainstay game since 2013, so I figured we'd bring it back and give some shine to one of the most mainstay-iest of mainstays, Norbert Weisser. This is his 18th film on the DTVC, only one of which, Android, wasn't a Pyun film. That's the most of any Pyun mainstay, and while we have someone like a Thom Mathews who's had 10 films on the site and all of them were Pyun flicks (remember, Mean Guns was reviewed twice, so that's why he has 10 instead of 11), 17 out of 18 is pretty prodigious. I wonder what he thought when Pyun was no longer directing. Maybe it didn't matter, since most of his scenes were shot in this chair right here. 

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently find this in the States on Tubi under the name More Mercy. It really is for Pyun and/or Wynorski completists, and late-night cable cinema from the late 90s/early 2000s connoisseurs. If you start it and you're like "what am I watching?", you're probably safe to turn it off. But if you start it and you're like "why do I watch stuff like this?", you're probably best to stop questioning it and settle in for the next 90s minutes or so.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0373163

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

 

 

 

Road to Hell (2012)

Recently Albert Pyun sent me a link to screen his new film Road to Hell on YouTube.  The film is pretty much finished, and looking to be released by Lions Gate in the first quarter of 2014, so this screener was for us reviewers and whatnot to take a look at it for him to see if there were any glaring issues.  I asked him if he wanted me to write a review of it now, and he did, so here we are.  Let's see how it went.

Road to Hell is a sequel to Streets of Fire, with DTVC favorite Michael Paré reprising his role as Tom Cody.  He's headed to see his long lost love Ellen in Edge City, and finds himself on an isolated desert road.  This road he's on is Purgatory, and the Archangel Gabriel (played by Joei Fulco) is trying to save Cody's soul before the Devil can take it.  On the way, he encounters two spree killers: Caitlin and Ashley, dangerous women with their own demons.  Will he survive this meeting?  And if he does, will he find the redemption he seeks in Edge City?



I really liked this movie.  One of Pyun's best in my opinion, especially among his newer films.  It's bold and innovative, and his penchant for taking chances pays off here as well as I've ever seen it.  The film looks really nice, and he captures the liminal space aspect we want from a film taking place in purgatory.  Cynthia Curnan's story fits Albert's directing style organically, as does the score featuring longtime Pyun composer Anthony Riparetti and songs performed by The Roxy Gunn Project (with lead singer Roxy Gunn playing Cody's daughter).  And then there was Paré, who got a film worthy of one of his most iconic characters, and he nailed it completely.  It's like he never lost touch with that character after all these years, yet he still moved him forward to make him into the character Cynthia wrote for him.  On top of Paré, I really liked Joei Fulco as Gabriel, and Claire Kramer as Caitlin, plus Courtney Peldon as Ashley and Pyun mainstay Deborah Van Valkenburgh reprising her role as Cody's sister.  It's a little gory, so if you have a weak stomach you may want to be careful, but if you're looking for something different, and bloody, Road to Hell delivers.

 We've done almost all of Pyun's films here at the DTVC, and I'm not about to try to figure out where this one stands with ones like Brainsmasher or Nemesis, or really any others, because this one is so different.  I mean, I could recognize elements from films like Radioactive Dreams or Vicious Lips, and maybe the bloody, violent, dark nature of Road to Hell is what he ultimately wanted Cyborg to be; but really, what's there is Pyun's unique vision and desire to try new things and take risks, which is something you can see in a lot of his films.  And like those films, it doesn't always work-- like I thought his attempt to explore Ellen Dream's (Roxy Gunn) backstory in an interview with a local radio host didn't come off as natural, even though I liked that it had a rock n' roll feel like the rest of the film-- but more of his risks and instincts paid off here than didn't, and we were left with something that I found to be very entertaining, and a distinctly Pyun film experience.



When I told my girlfriend I was reviewing a film with Michael Paré in it, she told me that growing up she had a pin-up of him from her Teen Beat on her wall, maybe from Eddie and the Cruisers.  For the most part here at the DTVC, we've either done his DTV stuff from the 90s where he had lead parts, or his recent DTV work where he's often either the baddie or has a small cameo.  To see him here though, even as the lead in a picture that is very different from the usual action flick, was really great, and I think brought back some of that 80s heartthrob magic.  Between Pyun's direction, and Jim Hagopian and Michael Su's cinematography, they really leaned on Paré's face, and his more mature features that he has now lent themselves really well in crafting that Film Noir vibe Pyun was going for, but without him being the lead that he is, it wouldn't have come off, and he has that same leading man charisma that he had back then.  So while it's great to see him in anything, and those cameos and roles as baddies are fun, we need more films like this with him in the lead, and hopefully we'll get them.

In the lead up to this film, Pyun was telling us on his Facebook page about this new actress Joei Fulco he found and cast in this film and the upcoming Cyborg Nemesis.  I know from having seen a lot of his films that he has a great instinct for young talent, especially young women, and isn't afraid to lean on them in key scenes, so I was curious to see what he was talking about with Fulco.  I didn't have long to wait, because she starts the film off introducing us to the action, and he wasn't exaggerating about her talent.  This was a tough role he put on her, having to give us the backstory in a monologue at the beginning of the film, when all we want is some action to draw us in, she's doing it with just her voice and her face; but she did it, she read it almost like she was having a conversation with us, and it all completely worked.  If she doesn't pull that off, not only does Pyun risk us not being engaged with his film right from the start, but also the redemptive quality of Paré's Cody is totally lost on us.  Instead we're rooting for Cody because of Fulco's Gabriel, which sets the stage for the rest of the film to work.



I mentioned above that Pyun drew a lot from Film Noir, and another genre he drew from that we've seen him go to before is the 50s and 60s dangerous women exploitation film.  I've seen other film makers try to emulate this kind of Russ Meyer film too, and miss completely.  I think because Pyun has always gone deeper than just the sex aspect, and makes his women in these films fully rounded characters, which makes it work much better; and seeing that aspect in the characters of Caitlin and Ashley is a great example.  They aren't just wild women who take their clothes off, make-out, and kill, they have motivations for their actions, and as such when they interact with Cody things are more tense and less predictable.  It's touches like that in Pyun's films that I often enjoy no matter what, but when they work really well like they did here, it's so much better.

Fans of Streets of Fire will like the music, and many songs from the original are here.  The Roxy Gunn Project does some, with Roxy Gunn playing Ellen's daughter and performing them as the soundtrack to Cody's adventure, adding to the tone of Cody's redemptive quest.  They definitely had that 80s feel that the original film had, not to mention the outfits of the band performing at the end of the film.  It's interesting when you think of films Pyun did like Radioactive Dreams and Vicious Lips which were from that time and had some of the elements of Streets of Fire, to then feel like here I'm seeing him bring elements from those films into this was really cool.  Unfortunately, the late Dan Hartman's "I Can Dream About You" didn't make an appearance.  I guess you can't have everything.



No review of an Albert Pyun film would be complete without playing our favorite game: Name the Pyun Mainstay.  We'll start with the obvious one, Deborah Van Valkenburgh, who wasn't in this so much for being a Pyun mainstay as she was reprising her role from Streets of Fire, but she's still a mainstay and needs to be included.  She has a few scenes where she's interviewed by a police interrogator about her brother, plus a flashback scene, then comes in at the end to interact with Cody.  I think fans of the first film will enjoy seeing her here.  Speaking of the police interrogator, he's voiced by none other than Norbert Weisser.  We don't see him on-screen, just hear his voice, but it's him all right, and this makes 16 films of his that he's done with Pyun that we've reviewed here.  Finally, Scott Paulin also does some voice work, playing a man who drives Paré into Edge City.  Like Weisser, we never see him on screen.  Also, his character name is Brick Bardo, keeping up Pyun's tradition of having a character with that name in his films.

As I said above, it looks like this will be out in the first quarter of next year.  For updates on it you can follow Albert Pyun on Twitter @albertpyunfilms and like him on Facebook at Albert Pyun Movies.  The movie is very unique, but I think long time Pyun and Paré fans should definitely check it out, and really anyone looking for a different and compelling film experience.  I love it when film makers take chances, and Pyun always does that; but he also has a wealth of skill and experience as a director, and all of that comes together here and really works.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1253859/

Invasion aka Infection (2005)

We've had this one in the Netflix Instant queue for sometime, and often, as we were about to get to it, we'd either get our hands on an Albert Pyun film I wanted to do more, or he'd release a film that would jump this in the priority line.  But we're here now, ready to make it happen.

Invasion takes place in a small town, where a police officer, Brick Bardo (played by Pyun mainstay Scott Paulin) gets a call to help out a man doing some night fishing in a remote state park.  When he gets there, he finds a meteorite, and is also accosted by the man he's there to help, who implants a bug in his ear, Invasion of the Body Snatchers/Star Trek II: Wrath of Kahn style.  As you can imagine, these bugs take control of the host, whose job it is to spread the bugs to more people.  Bardo's first victims: a couple chilling at Lover's Lane down the road.  Problem, he gets the guy, but the girl (played by Paulin's daughter, Jenny Paulin Dare (as Virginia Dare)) escapes in Bardo's vehicle.  Trapped in the park, she now has to survive long enough until help arrives.



I don't know where to go with this one.  The bulk of it is a one-take found footage film shot from a camera mounted to the police car's dash.  The camera only moves as the car moves.  We seldom see people speaking on-screen.  I thought about it like this: if Albert put a comment on the blog or sent an e-mail telling me "I'm working on this new project.  It'll be like a classic 1950s sci-fi drive-in flick, only almost the entire thing will be shot in one take from a camera on a police car dashboard, like found footage, but on another level.  Cynthia Curnan is writing, Tony Riparetti is doing the score, and I have this great new cinematographer, Jim Hagopian.  Plus, we have Scott Paulin and Norbert Weisser, and Paulin's daughter Jenny is a real talent.  I'm really excited for this."  I'd read that, and think "I can't wait to see this!", because it seems like such a good idea.  But in practice, I think it's a little too long.  A 35-minute short probably would've nailed it, because the talent is there-- including Pyun-- it's just hard to maintain a movie for over an hour in this manner.

I have to give Pyun credit for going for it again, and I don't see this as a total failure.  I went on Netflix to see the reviews-- which can often be a harrowing experience-- and found more people that felt the way I did than I thought.  The thing is, it sounds gimmicky, and it could've been gimmicky, but Pyun isn't doing it that way.  If that were the case, he wouldn't have had the attention to detail in other areas that he did; and the work it must've taken to coordinate these scenes as he's shooting so much in one take must've been immense, plus the cinematography was not simply found footage all over the place crap, it all worked.  This was an attempt to take a new approach to movie making from an established and experienced film maker, and for me, with the talent he had, I think this could've worked over a shorter time; but there were people who not only disagreed with me, but disagreed with my misgivings and liked it more than I did.  Besides, even Citizen Kane has gotten "worst movie ever!" type reviews, so I imagine Pyun has to take those ones with a grain of salt.



One aspect of his films that I've noticed now that I've watched quite of few of them, is that he has a knack for casting really strong young actresses.  I don't know if, in the low-budget film world, too many casting directors don't give credence to female acting talent, or only focus on beauty and not talent too when they shoot, but it seems like Pyun consistently casts great young women, and leans on them for their great performances to carry his films.  We saw it here with Jenny Dare Paulin, especially one scene that required her to react for an extended period on-screen while we listened to the sounds of a violent struggle going on on the other side of her walkie-talkie.  It looked like a tough scene to act through, and she did really well.  Another thing I wanted to remark on is her outfit.  Her character had her prom that night, so she's in her prom dress, and while being modern, there's something very 1950s about it, so we can see that 1950s sci-fi movie element of the film in her that way.  These are the kinds of touches that Pyun adds to films that makes even ones like this that didn't totally work, at least work on some level.

As always, it's time to play our favorite game: name that Pyun Mainstay!  First up, we had, as mentioned above, Scott Paulin as the first sheriff.  Norbert Weisser plays the voice of an expert on the invasion/infection, which we hear from Jenny Dare's standpoint through her radio; and then he plays the deputy on-screen, though the voice of the deputy on the radio is someone else.  I remember when I first saw Weisser on-screen, I was like "hey, but his voice was...?", then I saw it in the credits.  Also, Jenny Dare Paulin was not the only mainstay offspring in the film.  Morgan Weisser, Norbert's son, played Dare Paulin's boyfriend.  He was 34 when this was made, which might explain why there were no close-ups on him playing a high schooler-- I'm 34 now, and who knows if I could play a high schooler either.



I want to finish with my own personal take on the 1950s invasion film.  For me, I came into contact with them in two ways: growing up on late-night or early morning television; and through MST3K.  With TV going almost exclusively with either new movies, or syndicated reruns of first-run programming; and with MST3K having been off the air for many years now, many people don't have the access to that kind of movie like they used to.  Sure, they know Plan 9 or whatever, but to know the genre and the type of film consistently to recognize aspects like the old guy needing help with his car, or the old townsperson who's been infected, it helps in understanding where someone like Pyun making a movie like Invasion is trying to go.  It's okay to still not like it after that-- one could make the case that MST3K makes fun of these movies because they're so bad, so why be inspired by them?-- but I think what's going on is people aren't getting what Pyun's going for, because a lot of them haven't been exposed to it, so they judge it harshly.  It's just a theory, and I could be wrong.

And with that, let's wrap this up.  This is available on Netflix Instant.  It says 80 minutes, but roughly 15 is credits, and then about five is prologue and epilogue, leaving you with an hour of one-take dashboard cam found footage.  If that sounds intriguing, I say go for it.  I will say, while it's probably not for everyone, you aren't watching a film based on a gimmick.  Pyun is really going out on a limb to try something different.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0472465/

Tales of an Ancient Empire aka Abelar: Tales of an Ancient Empire (2009)

I was trying to think when I first saw this listed on imdb. I want to say, almost as long as the DTVC has existed, this has been listed in various forms of development with rumored cast members added and dropped and whatnot. Then we were lucky enough to have the film's director, DTVC Hall of Famer Albert Pyun, come to us for feedback on things like the introduction, and keeping us up-to-date on its status. Well, now it's finally here, on the shelves, released from Lion's Gate. Let's see how it did.

Tales of an Ancient Empire is the long awaited sequel to The Sword and the Sorcerer. It follows the heroine Princess Tanis as she searches for her half-siblings, including the rogue Kevin Sorbo; and her father, an even bigger rogue and better fighter, Michael Paré. She needs them to defeat the evil vampiress Xia, who has taken over her kingdom, Abelar. Will they prevail?



This was a very interesting flick that unfortunately had a very unfulfilling ending. It started a tad slow, with the first 40 minutes or so jumping in and out of flashback mode, but I think it overcame that and became something that was a cool take on the modern sword and sorcery flick, using some cool cinematic techniques, genre mixing, and giving it a more macabre edge; but that ending was, I don't know, not there. It was like a Cliff's Notes version of an ending, with a few still shots, some drawings, and a narrator telling us what happened. We watch the sword and sorcery adventure flick for the end battle, to see our hero overcome the villain, and without that it makes everything else lose its meaning. Also, despite what the cover says, this was a tale centered on the princess, played by Melissa Ordway, and to have Sorbo be the one to slay the villain (or rather, to be told it was Sorbo by the narrator) betrayed that. Even if we know roughly what's going to happen, if we'd only had something, just a little battle, I would've felt better about this, because otherwise it was pretty good.

Before I get any further in, I want to discuss the cover, because, if you've been rockin' with the DTVC for some time, you know my feelings on misleading covers, and this is one. What makes this one different, though, is that Pyun himself on his Facebook page came out against the cover because it was misleading and not the way he wanted to sell his film. I'm not saying there's a Sorbo bait and switch, but he's more the supporting character to Melissa Ordway's hero, and the other guy (Matthew Wellig) is barely in the film for two scenes, while the cover makes it look like he and Sorbo are embarking on this film-length quest together. Pyun said Lion's Gate had the say on the cover, but what I don't get is, why wouldn't they want Ordway on it with Sorbo? She's very attractive, and I imagine she'd sell more copies than Wellig, especially in the demographic that sword and sorcery caters to. You already have enough beefcake in Sorbo, why not add some beauty too, and at the same time not be so obviously misleading the consumer.



Melissa Ordway takes her place in line among the long list of Pyun female protagonists. This is the one thing that I think will frustrate people misled by the cover the most, that I, having seen over thirty of Albert's films, was very comfortable with. I've always liked how he works in very testosterone heavy genres, like action and sci-fi, and instead of sticking with the conventions, he's bucked them by casting women in the lead roles, and not making them women playing men, or women as mere objects for men to ogle, but real women as real heroines. Again, it wouldn't have been too hard to put her on the cover with Sorbo, and by not doing it, it does both Pyun and Ordway a disservice. Also, a previous Pyun protagonist, Victoria Maurette, co-stars. You may remember her from Bulletface and Left for Dead-- the latter I unfortunately haven't seen yet. It was cool to see her working with Pyun on another project, and she was as good here as she was in Bulletface, so hopefully this won't be the last of his films we see her in.

One thing that I thought was really cool about this movie was the pulp comic book feel it had. The imagery, between the actual drawings and the live action scenes, was great. A lot of the shots had the feel of a comic book frame, but in a way that retained their cinematic qualities. There were also some settings that felt like westerns, Japanese samurai films, or Hong Kong cinema. These are the things that I come to an Albert Pyun film for, to see things done that I've never seen, knowing that he's going to take risks and try something new and not play it safe. He could've just made another Hercules episode, and I think a lot of people would've been happy, but he wouldn't have, and I like and respect that. Another thing worth pointing out, the script was written by Cynthia Curnan, and the music done by Tony Riparetti, two people who have worked closely with Pyun on projects in the past. There was a symbiosis between director, music, and story because of that that enhanced the film. This wasn't just a script that was thrust on Pyun to direct, and the music wasn't just laid down as an afterthought. When you have that symbiosis, it makes the movie a little more genuine.



Okay, I know what you've all been waiting for: "tell me about everyone else in this film!" I've already mentioned Sorbo, who plays the co-hero or slightly supporting hero to Melissa Ordway. He's great in that Lee Horsley role as the brave rogue. Paré plays his father, and he's even more heroic and more of a rogue. He appears at the very beginning and the very end. The other DTVC Hall of Famer in this is Olivier Gruner, and he has a small part alongside Sasha Mitchell. Yes, that's right, I said Sasha Mitchell. When was the last time we saw him, huh? He's buffer than he was, so you may not recognize him. He's not listed on imdb as being in the film, but both he and Gruner are listed in the sequel, Red Moon. Then we have Ralf Moeller with a small part as one of the palace guards, Sarah Ann Shultz as one of Sorbo's sisters, Whitney Able as Xia, and Jennifer Siebel Newsome as the Queen of Abelar. Finally, our Pyun mainstays. Beyond Mitchell and Maurette, we had Norbert Weisser at the beginning as Xusia, Xia's dad, and Scott Paulin in a small role as Tou-Bou Bardo, a play on Pyun's classic character name, Brick Bardo. (Also, we had Morgan Weisser, Norbert's son, meaning we have the children of Pyun mainstays in Pyun films now!) Oh yeah, Lee Horsley has a one scene cameo reprising his role from the first film, which was fun to see.

The ending is what makes this one so hard, because it left me with a "that's it?" feeling that was hard to reconcile with the rest of the film that I enjoyed. One thing that's good about this one as opposed to Pyun's other recent efforts, is that you can get it via Netflix and Red Box, so you can try it out prior to buying it (I did buy it-- no regrets though!) to see if it works for you. As a sequel to Sword and as a sword and sorcery flick that tries new things, it's really good, the ending just didn't work for me.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1136688/

Deceit (1992)

The imdb date on this Albert Pyun flick is a little misleading. 1992 was when it was released in Portugal (according to them), but the film was actually shot in 1989. I've read a few different accounts of the shooting online, but the common themes of all seem to be this: it was done over three days, in 1989, after the Cyborg shoot. Let's see how it turned out.

Deceit follows Pyun mainstay Norbert Weisser as he kills himself by drinking bleach in the opening scene, only to have some mysterious force enter his body and reanimate him. After the opening credits, we're rejoined by a shaggier Weisser asking a young couple for a ride. Already in the car with the young couple is Eve, who, after Weisser reveals that's he's an "alien sex fiend" and kills the couple, Wesieer forces into an abandoned warehouse where he plans to meet his alien partner in crime, fellow Pyun mainstay Scott Paulin. It's then that the two aliens compete for Eve's affections, potentially to the detriment of their mission on Earth.



I really enjoyed the first hour of this, and while it did grind to a halt a bit in that last half-hour, it didn't totally derail it for me. It's definitely not one for everyone, but it has some classic Pyun elements that fans of his will recognize: Paulin's character is named Brick Bardo; there's some fun pseudo-existentialist philosophy, especially from a radio DJ; and we have a strong female lead, in this case Eve, who doesn't start off strong, and has many weak moments throughout, but ultimately comes through. The problem in the final third came because what had started out as some great, fast moving, entertaining dialog was winding itself out of control, plus the plot felt like it was devolving into bad slapstick, which caused me to lose interest. Overall though, this is a fun, small-scale, off-beat 80s flick, and I enjoyed it.

Of the 30-plus Pyun films I've looked at here on the DTVC, this is the hardest one to put in proper terms or describe accurately so you can get a beat on whether or not you'd like to track it down. I'm not so sure that's a bad thing though. It's good to have movies out there that aren't easily defined, that someone who hears the name Albert Pyun and thinks Cyborg and Nemesis might watch and think "what is this?" But I think if you are a fan, and you've seen some of his other stuff from this period, in particular Down Twisted, Radioactive Dreams, and Vicious Lips, and also something like Brain Smasher that he made after, a lot of this will be recognizable and make more sense.



I'm a sucker for shots like this one of the clock here. That's why I'm such a huge Ozu fan, because his movies a chock full of things like that. The lighting on the clock gives it a Metropolis look too, or really anything from the silent film era. Another shot I was a big fan of was of the car radio dial that was shown as the DJ gave his pseudo-existentialist monologues. Often shots like these come off as indulgent, but in the context of the rest of what Pyun did here, they worked.

Usually this spot is reserved in Pyun flick posts for the Pyun mainstays, but because this film only had two, Paulin and Weisser, and we've already mentioned them, I figured I'd bring up the girl who played Eve, Samantha Phillips. She's gone on to have quite a career in everything from radio, to TV, to a Penthouse spread, to lots of DTV flicks. Maybe we'll see her again on here sometime. I don't want to discuss the specifics of her performance in Deceit too much because the evolution of her character is the crux of the film, so I'll just say I enjoyed it, and leave it at that.



Finally, I'm not sure if you can see that image above, but if not, click on it and go to the image page for the full size one. I also just realized that, because it was the second of two pages of credits, and you don't have the one before it, it's like it's apropos of nothing. It's the "thank you" section, and at the bottom, there's "Jean Claude Van Damme" with the caption "Without whom this film would not have been possible." I'm not going to speculate on what that means, just figured I'd include it.

You can actually get this new from Amazon on VHS, because they have their own Amazon.com exclusive version. I think that's pretty cool. If you've already gone through some of the others in Pyun's filmography that I mentioned, and you enjoyed them, I'd give this a try. I think you'll like it.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097176/

Down Twisted (1987)

This is one I've been wanting to do for a while now, and was excited when I finally got my hands on it. It's another Albert Pyun flick from the mid-80s, has a great cast, and looks like a great time. If it's half as good as Dangerously Close was, we should be happy.

Down Twisted is about a famous, priceless artifact that is stolen and replaced with a replica. The problem is, as it's being shipped back to LA, it's lost, and the parties involved are trying to get it back and figure out who the double-crosser was. Enter Carey Lowell, who is looking forward to her upcoming job interview so she can quit her dead-end waitress job and move-on-up in the world, Jeffersons style. Her dead-beat roommate just happens to be one of the people who knows where the artifact is, and she gets Carey all mixed-up in it. Now she's been shanghaied and shipped across the Atlantic to some Banana Republic with some weenie lawyer, played by Charles Rocket, that seems to know more than he's letting on. The only thing we know is this: when the deal goes down, it's going down twisted.



I really enjoyed this. It had a couple lulls, especially as the loose ends are sorting themselves out and coming together near the end, but overall it's just a fun 80s Albert Pyun flick. It has its Pyun mainstays, it has cool music-- including "No One Lives Forever" from Oingo Boingo and the "Suspicious Minds" cover by Fine Young Cannibals that was also in Dangerously Close--, and has tons of nice 80s style. I think it's one of those ones though where you really have to love the 80s to love the movie, because, as I said, it does have it's slow moments, and it might feel predictable; but if you get geeked from seeing Norbert Weisser, or Thom Mathews in a blue blazer, or Oingo Boingo playing over the opening credits, this is the flick for you.

I wonder how I'd feel about this film if this were review number 70 instead of 762, if I didn't get as geeked about Thom Mathews and Norbert Weisser as I do now with however many Pyun flicks under my belt. I guess what I would say is that I didn't enjoy Vicious Lips as much as this one, and I didn't enjoy this as much as Dangerously Close, so it's not just that I'll like any Pyun 80s flicks no matter what; but I still think it is good to control for my movie going experience as I recommend or don't recommend something. A lot of the fun in this is Pyun's ability to mix genres, and I loved how we have that low-budget 50s adventure flick combined with the style and aesthetics of the 80s-- plus, the 80s adventure flick post Indiana Jones; and I think it works better here than it did in Alien from LA.



One of the things Pyun is known for is his use of female protagonists, and this film is the first of three in a row where he first does that, the two after being Vicious Lips and Alien from LA. It's interesting, because when we think of Pyun, the fist things that come to mind are Sword and the Sorcerer, Cyborg, and Nemesis, which are all led by the classic male protagonist, but I think it's a testament to Pyun as a director that he's constantly trying to go outside of that tradition and give us female leads that are more than just damsels in distress. Carey Lowell here is essentially that first of many, and what I liked about her character was that she would fluctuate back and forth between assertive and vulnerable, making her the most realistic element in an otherwise larger than life movie. It didn't hurt that she's stunning too, and had a lot of close-ups.

It's time to play the Pyun mainstay game again, and we have some good ones here. First and foremost, Thom Mathews, who you can see is bleached blond and rocking a too sweet blue blazer in that scene above. He plays like a hatchet man or something, walking around with a gun with a silencer and a scowl on his face, chewing up scenery. Then we had Norbert Weisser, who has actually been in more Pyun flicks than Mathews. He plays the money man that wants to buy the artifact. After those two there's Nicholas Guest, who plays the guy that double crosses everyone, and is thrown out the window by Mathews. Australian Linda Kerridge plays Mathews associate. This is the first of three straight she does with Pyun, the other two being Vicious Lips and Alien from LA. Finally, in a small cameo, Don Michael Paul plays an airplane mechanic. He's best known for Dangerously Close, but also plays Kathy Ireland's jerk ex-boyfriend in Alien from LA.



Down Twisted can boast that it is the first big screen role for Courtney Cox, who would then go on to have a bigger role in another Cannon/Golan-Globus flick in the following year, Masters of the Universe. All she does here is bump into Carey Lowell as the two are waiting tables, then talks to Lowell about her job interview when their shift is done. I wonder if they pulled her off the Masters of the Universe lot, or if she needed to nail those two scenes in this in order to get the big role opposite Dolph. She probably made more per episode in the last seasons of Friends than the entire acting budgets of either of those films.

This is a used VHS only as far as I can tell, but it can be found for under $10, which I think is a good deal. If you're a big 80s person, or a VHS collector, this is one you should look for. Yes, it might be a little slow in parts, but it has tons of great names, a fun plot, and a solid mix of 80s style and 50s low-budget adventure flick. If you come across it in your travels, I think it's worth picking up.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092922/

Blast (1997)

This is not the easiest find, which is too bad, because it's chock full of great names. If you like your Albert Pyun films filled with Pyun Mainstays, this is the movie for you. One of the difficult things about tracking down a copy, is its name makes it ambiguous in search engines. Plus there's an Eddie Griffin movie of the same name that came out later. I was fortunate enough to have a buddy overseas send me his DVD-- being the DTV Connoisseur has its privileges.

Blast takes place during the Atlanta Olympics in 1996, where the villainous Andrew Divoff and his terrorist gang have taken over a swimming practice and the American women's swim team hostage. One kink in their plans: janitor/former Tae Kwon Do champ Linden Ashby is still kicking around the facility. Bad news, right? And he better save the day, because the rest of the assembled Pyun talent can only sit on their hands while Divoff bumps off swimmer after swimmer.



All right, so let's start with the good. Great cast. Let me rattle them off: Divoff, Ashby, DTVC Hall of Famer Rutger Hauer, Tim Thomerson, Vincent Klyn, Thom Mathews, Yuji Okumoto, Tina Coté, and Norbert Weisser; plus Kimberly Warren from Mean Guns. Wow. Other than Divoff, who cut a sweet baddie, everyone else was spread throughout the film with parts of varying sizes, but every one of them was solid. This had some good fight scenes and action as well, especially when Ashby was taking out Divoff's men Die Hard-style. I also liked the way Pyun cast this as a 50s/60s Red Scare type film, using terrorism as the monolithic evil, instead of the USSR. The one fault I had with the movie though, was how big the story was. There was just too much going on, and it weighed the film down at points. This effect was lessened to some degree because of the cast involved, but I went through periods where I forgot Linden Ashby was in the film at all-- and he was the lead hero! Overall, though, Blast isn't bad.

Look at that cast. If you play the Pyun Mainstay drinking game, you'll be pretty drunk by the movie's end-- you may not even make it. It depends on what you consider a Pyun mainstay, but we have Norbert Weisser, whom imdb says has been in 18 Pyun flicks, Vincent Klyn who's been in 13, Thom Mathews who's been in 12, Tim Thomerson who's been in 9, Tina Coté who's been in 7, Yuji Okumoto who's been in 6, and Andrew Divoff who's been in 4. All we needed was Scott Paulin, Nicholas Guest, Ice- T, and Michael Halsey. And cyborgs, we didn't have any cyborgs here either.



Andrew Divoff is such a sweet baddie. I daresay this film is Div-tastic. He's probably best known for the Wishmaster series, of which I have done none of yet at the time of this posting-- I know, I suck as a human being. Anyway, in Blast, he might be one of the better Die Hard terrorist style baddies, because he has the chops to live up to Alan Rickman as Hans Gruber. If Blast shows us anything, it's that the more Divoff, the better. Div-tastic.

As I mentioned above, I liked the way Pyun drew on the old Red Scare movie. He has a couple screens of text at the beginning, talking about potential terrorist attacks in Atlanta, then ends with a screen telling us that what we were about to see was what could've happened. We're almost a month away from the ten year mark of the 9/11 attacks, and after that happened in 2001, it made sense that the discourse shifted to make terrorism the new Cold War-esque enemy, but here in 1997, Pyun was ahead of that curve (as he often is with this kind of thing). Yes, the film devolves into Die Hard at a swimming practice facility (which I think is the prison from Mean Guns, but I'm not totally sure on that), but it does have those old Red Scare film elements that give it that extra layer beyond the simple Die Hard rip-off.



Check that out, Shannon Elizabeth as a credited extra. She gets a fair amount of screen time as a hostage, but she really doesn't have any lines beyond sobbing in mortal fear, hoping Divoff's cronies don't choose her to be the next sacrifice. I thought this wasn't the first Elizabeth film we've done at the DTVC, but it turns out, as I went back into the archives, that I haven't actually done Jack Frost before. How did that happen? I could've sworn it was one of the first ones I did four years ago. Anyway, Blast came out about two years before Elizabeth's breakthrough in American Pie, and now it looks like she's fallen back into the DTV world-- when she's not playing poker, of course.

This is definitely for completists or hardcore B-movie fans, because if you don't think it's awesome to see names like Tim Thomerson, Yuji Okumoto, and Andrew Divoff on the marquee, you'll have much more trouble with the down times when the weight of the plot becomes too heavy for it. On the other hand, if you love seeing names like that, I think you'll really enjoy this one. As far as I know, here in the States this is out of print and only available used on VHS, making it probably that much more a purchase for completists and hardcore fans only; and I know there's a Region 2 DVD floating around, so if you're in Europe or another area like Australia that is Region 2 compatible, you might have better luck.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115701/

Nemesis 4: Death Angel (1996)

This is the fourth and final film in Albert Pyun's Nemesis series. I've had it for a little while now, but a few other Pyun films took precedence, so we're finally making it happen today. Let's see how it all shakes out.

Nemesis 4 moves us back to the future, in 2080, when the war between cyborgs and humans is at an uneasy peace, and the warriors from that conflict are now selling out their services to the burgeoning crime syndicates. Enter our hero, Sue Price as Alex, working as an assassin. She's becoming disillusioned with it, and her boss thinks she should retire, but she decides against it, despite a strange visitor who looks like the angel of death. Then things go pear shaped when she mistakenly kills the son of a major crime boss, and he puts a $100 million bounty on her head.



This entry brings the series full circle. We're back to the future, we're back to the intrigue and the cat and mouse games of the first film. I liked the mix of 50s-60s exploitation with some cool Noir-ish and sci-fi themes. It wasn't really an action flick like the previous ones, so that might turn some people off, but I was okay with that. What I had trouble with was the dialog. In some instances it meandered and became repetitive; others it contradicted itself. Price asks Pyun mainstay Norbert Weisser why the crime boss' son didn't have body guards. "His reputation is his protection. He knows if anyone even looks at his son the wrong way he's dead." Okay, good point, only Weisser continues: "But he did have guards, and he gave them the slip. That's why they knew to call [Nicholas Guest's character] so fast to warn him that you might kill him." Okay, so which is it, he doesn't need bodyguards, or he has them but he gave them the slip? This happened enough that it affected the overall quality of the film for me.

Despite the dialog issues, the actual story and style really worked for me. Again, as I mentioned in my reviews of the previous two films, if you have issues with low-budget special effects, this might not work for you, but that's not something I have a problem with. There were a lot of really cool images, like the vintage cars, or the cyborgs in 50s style clothing; plus, the sets were great, with the abandoned, burned out buildings. There were also some images that will test your sensibilities, like the scene where Nicholas Guest's character has cyborg sex with Sue Price. I don't know, I kind of like that Pyun just went for it there, but that's the kind of thing you need to see and decide for yourself.



This is a different Sue Price from parts 2 and 3. In those two, she was portrayed as more like a masculine type hero. Here, though, she's very feminine, wearing dresses and heels-- or often nothing at all-- and having sex with guys. It was one of those areas where Pyun inserts depth into what is an otherwise low-budget sci-fi flick, because he took Price's Alex character, who was essentially a tool created by humans to combat cyborgs, and inserted her into a world where cyborgs and humans were no longer at war with one another. Now she's trying to find her identity-- and her femininity, which is much more difficult when she was created to be a cyborg killing machine of a woman. It worked really well to tie the film together.

I didn't see in the credits where this was shot, and the imdb page doesn't list it. It seems like Eastern Europe somewhere, but I'm not sure. As I mentioned above, it's a pretty cool setting, with the abandoned and burned out buildings. I mentioned in the Game of Death post that Detroit is starting to take on some of that feel, that some of the people making that one said it was like one big studio lot with the mass amount of abandoned buildings. It'll be interesting to see if more films like this one are made in Detroit in the future, as opposed to Bulgaria or Romania. I'm not doing the rah rah American thing, I'm just saying anything to help that area recover the better.



A post on a Pyun flick wouldn't be complete without a look at all the Pyun mainstays that made their way into it. We already mentioned Norbert Weisser and Nicholas Guest, both playing cyborgs. Andrew Divoff plays Price's boss-- I didn't even recognize him; and then Simon Poland, who I thought I recognized as an 80s New Wave singer, but was totally wrong about-- I must've just recognized him from other Pyun films. This has nowhere near that epic cast that the first flick had, and based on how short the run time was, I don't know how you could've fit any of them in it anyway. This cast was good enough.

I'd say this one was my second favorite of the four, after part 1, but that was a hard act to follow anyway. These are all available on Amazon, and though I've seen part 4 listed on DVD, I'm not sure if there's a Region 1 release of it here in America. When in doubt, there's always used VHS.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113949/

Nemesis III: Prey Harder (1996)

I managed somehow to get my hands on Nemesis 2 and this film on VHS. These suckers are a little bit harder to come by than one might think. I have a beat on part 4, so don't worry about the end of the Albert Pyun Nemesis saga ending prematurely here. Anyway, before we get to part 4, we have a little business to attend to first with part 3.

Nemesis III takes place right where the prior installment left off-- sort of. It starts 22 hours after part 2, but then goes back in the form of flashbacks and whatnot. In the future, the cyborgs have sent a whole bunch of trackers and assassins and such into the past to get our homegirl, Alex. We find her lying in the desert with a massive head wound and amnesia. She runs across Tim Thomerson, whom she thinks is a good guy, but he just wants to scan her with his laser eyes and take her back to the future-- he's a bad cyborg named Farnsworth 2, get it, because he was Farnsworth in part 1. Anyway, a struggle ensues and she stabs his eye then her memory comes back. From here, we find out somewhat how she went from taking out the Nebula in part 2, to lying on the ground with a head wound in part 3.



And therein lies the rub, as we like to say here at the DTVC. The film starts by bombarding us with images from the previous film, which would be great if we hadn't seen it, but we have, so we're like "yes, I remember that! Give me something I haven't seen yet!" Then you get the amnesia thing, with more flashbacks, then the realization that we were watching what will now become the end. It was too awkward for me, and hurt what would have been a very fun movie-- made it more tedious than fun. It would be easy to attack the film for the low-budget special effects, but you're here at the DTVC, if you can't handle low-budget special effects, you may want to find a Tumblr account devoted to scenes from Avatar and Inception.

What I liked about this one was how it attempted to bring more in sci-fi elements, which was what part 2 lacked. I also liked that Pyun cast two of his better mainstays, Norbert Weisser and Tim Thomerson. That at least let's us know we're watching an Albert Pyun movie, and these guys seem to do Pyun films better than most actors he casts. They get what Pyun is doing, and they're good at selling it. I would have had a lot of fun with this one had it not been for the flashbacks and weird storytelling method. Simple is often the easiest way to go, and the best for us, the viewer-- and overly complicated or gimmicky often ruins what could be a potential winner.



There's one scene with Thomerson that was so awesome. He's driving around in a jeep with some grunt cyborg, and I guess the guy says something that upset him, because he hauls off on the dude, then kicks him out of the car, and shoots him. And shoots him again. And again. And again. At some point I don't know what to make of it, I'm even like "dude, just die already!", but he still gets up, and Thomerson still shoots him. It was fantastic.

I don't know what to say about the special effects. I had fun with them, but someone else might find them tawdry or crass. One thing he does is adds in lasers and green eyes on the cyborgs. Another involves this fish-eye effect that obscures these golf cart things that the cyborgs drive. I don't know what that was-- maybe some kind of hyper speed-- but obviously it was more funny than cool. You have to ask yourself on those things what you're going into a film like Nemesis III: Prey Harder for. For me, it's just that sort of thing, so I'm good there. It's the awkward nonlinear storytelling that threw me for a loop.



I decided to use this seventh paragraph to mention that there's a trailer for Albert Pyun's new film, Tales of an Ancient Empire, over at his site, pyunmovies.com. As always, for any news on Pyun's projects, you can click on the link to his site over in the "Other Great Sites" section.

As for Nemesis III, it's up to you. It is still fun, just pretty tedious due to the way the story was presented. You see the same scenes and images repeated, and the repetition becomes frustrating after a time. If you're a completist though, and can get a hold of this and it's partners cheaply, I'd say go for it.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113950/

Heatseeker (1995)

I'm always conflicted at the DTVC on whether I'd rather write the blog from the stand point of a regularly occurring phenomenon, or as an archive of film reviews that someone can go to and look at each one independent of the others. For instance, when I found my buddy's VHS of Heatseeker, I thought it would be great to review on the same week I planned on reviewing The One-Armed Swordsman and Master of the Flying Guillotine, because it was so similar to those two. On the other hand, if someone just clicks on the Albert Pyun or Gary Daniels tags, or a link in a future blog to them or anyone else associated with this movie, that provenance of the original post won't mean as much. I guess what I try to do is write for both types of reader, the everyday and the future visitor.

Heatseeker takes place in 2019-20, and is about corporations who specialize in cybernetic implants that enhance people's lives. Norbert Weisser is the evil CEO and head designer of one corporation, and he has completely outfitted Gary Daniels with state of the art equipment, and wants to show him off by having him fight against every other cybernetic implant corporation's best fighter. He also wants Keith Cooke, the world's best un-enhanced martial artist to compete, and when he refuses, Weisser kidnaps his woman and makes him. Can Cooke use the one quality humans have over machines, his heart, to prevail over the Tin Man Gary Daniels?



Some of the reviews of this film were pretty harsh, and though I wasn't a huge fan of it either, I think I see what Pyun was going for, and I was a fan of that. It looked like he wanted to take the Hong Kong cinema element of the handicapped fighter, the Zen concept of using a detriment to one's benefit, and put it in a futuristic setting. Instead of a one-armed boxer, Pyun's hero's one handicap is that he's a human fighting cyborgs, and the way he can use that handicap to his advantage is to be as human as possible. Again, I love the idea, it was the execution that was sautéed in wrong sauce. By having Cooke's character be forced into fighting, as opposed to fighting on his own to prove a point, we're forced to suffer through Cooke being knocked around for the first chunk of the film, so when he prevails at the end, it's much less believable. Imagine this: Cooke's lady forbids him to go, but he goes anyway, leaving her waiting at a hotel, just like the One-Armed Swordsman. Why not have him willingly fight, and no one else believe he has a chance because he's a human?

As you see I went with Gary Daniels' Max Headroom look. I've never understood the idea of making the lead actor's eyes a weird color. Remember when Terminal Justice did the same thing with Lorenzo Lamas. Anyway, Daniels was the baddie, but his martial arts were still pretty sweet. I would say, as far as DTVC Hall of Famers go, this was clearly Pyun's film, and Daniels was just along for the ride, as Keith Cooke was the hero, and it was more of a Pyun and Cooke film than a Pyun and Daniels film. Firepower will probably be our next Daniels film, whenever we get to it.



This film is a rarity in that it employs Keith Cooke, not as a part of the supporting cast, but as the main hero. Unfortunately, because he gets his ass kicked for a good chunk of the movie, he wasn't as good as he could've been, but I don't put that on him. Ever wonder what Mr. Cooke has been up to? Check this video out on YouTube.

One of the worst plot devices in movies is the play-by-play guy. Few things sound worse than an actor reading from a script, trying to mimic the spontaneity of real play-by-play accompanying a real sporting event. I see what Pyun was going for with it. The tournament was very Master of the Flying Guillotine and Enter the Dragon (Mr. Weisser, I think I'd like to leave your island), and the play-by-play, along with the TV screens and cyber martial artists, were supposed to follow that Cyber-Punk-fused-with-Hong-Kong-cinema paradigm. Again, cool idea, but just didn't translate well on the screen-- at least for me.



If you play the Albert Pyun drinking game, you know the key is looking for how many of his ubiquitous mainstays pop up in his various films. This time we had the aforementioned Weisser (who has the distinction of being his number one mainstay), Tim Thomerson, and Thom Mathews. Vincent Klyn must've been busy. The shot above, featuring two mainstays, would mean you'd have to drink double. One interesting thing to point out while we're on the subject of Norbert Weisser, and with last week's post on Hard Boiled, is that Weisser starred in Schindler's List, which just happens to be my number one film of the 90s.

I can't recommend a film based on effort or a cool idea that didn't quite come off. If you're looking for Hong Kong cinema fused with Cyber Punk, Albert Pyun actually has some great ones, like Cyborg and Nemesis; and then there's Omega Doom, which was a great Kurosawa fused with Cyber Punk flick. If what we're saying is one out of four didn't work, I'd say that isn't a bad ratio; and there were a lot of aspects of Heatseeker that did work, it was just the ones that didn't were enough to overshadow the ones that did. Also, this movie is only available on VHS. Figured I'd throw that out there.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113278/

Arcade (1993)

This is one of about five or six Albert Pyun films on Netflix I have left to review, so I thought I'd go for it. The deciding factor when faced with multiple Pyun options? John de Lancie, of course. This wasn't a first choice among potential Albert Pyun films, though. First, I wanted to do his newest one, Bulletface, but that one isn't available on Netflix, and I don't have the money right now to buy it outright, no matter how good a bargain it's offered at. Another I'd wanted to do was Heatseeker, but that one's only available on VHS, so I put it out of my mind for a while. Can you guess what happened then? I get Arcade home, watch it, capture images of it, and then later in the week, I come across Heatseeker in a buddy's VHS collection tucked away in his garage. "Oh, I must've bought it when that video store went out of business. Sure, you can take it, I don't think it was any good anyway..." Since we already had Arcade, and it's fresh in my mind, I decided to do that now, and Heatseeker we'll do next week, satisfying our Gary Daniels crowd at the same time.

Arcade stars the lovely Megan Ward as a teen dealing with her mom's suicide and her dad's inability to cope with her mom's suicide. She and her friends are big time gamers (including the kid from A Christmas Story, Seth Green, and AJ Langer), and they invite her to join them for a launch party for the game Arcade, the latest in virtual reality technology, and shilled by the one and only John de Lancie. Ward's boyfriend disappears while playing the game, and she soon discovers the game is what, as my nephew would say, disappeared him, and she has trouble convincing anyone to believe her, meaning they're disappeared too. All except for the kid from A Christmas Story, because he has a crush on Ward, and we all know if someone has a crush on someone, he or she will believe anything that person says. They investigate, go to de Lancie and his head programmer, Pyun mainstay Norbert Weisser, devise a plan, and then play the game to get their friends back.



Even though this was a DTV movie, it played out more like a Nickelodeon original film, maybe a Goosebumps story arc or something. That doesn't mean Pyun doesn't add his own personal touches to make this something bigger than that-- there are welcome cyber punk elements, and of course, the inclusion of Norbert Weisser-- but he was fighting an uphill battle. Looking at it in situ, though, as opposed to what the average DTVC reader would want out of a movie, for a 1993 pre-teen video game thriller, it works. The thing is, most of our readers are looking for Mean Guns, not Arcade, and there's nothing wrong with that, it just means that though this film isn't bad, it's probably not for you.

We love Albert Pyun here at the DTVC, not only because he directs the kinds of films we all enjoy, but because he's been kind enough to comment, which is always great. With that in mind, I feel bad that I haven't been able to reciprocate that support as much as I'd have liked, primarily by not checking out his newest film, Bulletface. Unfortunately it's only available through his website, http://www.albertpyunmovies.com/, and though you can buy it for a very reasonable price, I just don't have the money right now to get it. To give you an idea of what I get for my $17 or so a month from Netflix: in May alone, I received 10 movies at home on DVD, and got another 15 on Watch Instantly-- and that includes 10 days where I didn't watch anything while I was on vacation! So $11 before shipping, with the Inferno version of his film Left For Dead included, definitely sounds like a great deal, but on my limited budget, it becomes almost frivolous. That doesn't mean I won't buy the film as soon as I can, just an explanation as to why I haven't gotten to it yet. I also want to make clear to anyone wondering why I don't just get a torrent of it for free: as a policy I don't download movies that are still in print, but that goes double for Mr. Pyun's work. I want to support his movies as much as possible.



All right, with that out of the way, let's get back to Arcade, and its lead, Megan Ward. I think the role I remember her best in was PCU, but she's also done her share of TV dramas and whatnot. Total hottie as well, which doesn't hurt. What adds to her overall hotness in Arcade is her ability to roll with the punches, and transcend all the ridiculousness inherent in a movie like this one. There's something endearing about a girl (or 24-year-old woman at the time in her case), who can wear a skintight body suit and oversized racing helmet, and not let onto us just how silly the whole thing is, even if she might be thinking it just as much as we do.

I've never been a big fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation, so I have no idea why I know so much about it, or why I love seeing any of the cast members acting in anything else. And it's not like I'm ashamed of it or anything. I mean, I'm writing a blog about Direct to Video movies, I certainly don't think being a Trekkie is anything bad, right? I really don't like the show, yet I love watching it. Does that make any sense? Anyway, John de Lancie has a small part in this as the salesman for the video game company. Pretty sweet if you ask me.



Even sweeter is Norbert Weisser's knit tie in this scene. You can't really see it from the image, but it's there. I love ties. I own a bunch that I've collected over time at various Goodwills and thrift stores. This astounds my friends, because I've never had a job where I needed a tie, meaning I seldom wear one. Maybe that's why I think they're so cool. It's also one of the most often screwed up aspects of men's attire. I don't know how many times I see guys on TV, or even more so in my everyday life, draping some Godawful excuse for neck wear over the front of their shirts. It just breaks my heart. (I think the most often screwed up aspect of men's attire is the size of the dress shirt. I don't know how many times I see guys in these billowing adornments that make them look like they raided their father's closet as a child.) One of the more difficult ties to wear right is the knit, which is why I tend to stay away from it, but Weisser really pulls it off here, adding a touch of style to an otherwise drab lab suit.

I've totally gone off topic here, which is what usually happens on that seventh paragraph, so let's reign it in and wrap it up. Arcade is probably not for most of the DTVC's readers, especially those looking for something more like Nemesis or Mean Guns; but at 80 minutes, it's a fun trip down memory lane, and has a lot of familiar faces. As long as you know what you're getting into, I think you'll have a fun time.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106302/

Radioactive Dreams (1985)

Last week I reviewed an Albert Pyun film called Urban Menace with Snoop Dogg and some other rappers in it. It didn't turn out well, in fact, it was so bad, I couldn't fathom that Albert Pyun actually directed it. This was bad news, and I knew I had to rectify the situation as soon as possible, because Albert Pyun has been good to us here at the DTVC-- he's the only Hall of Famer to ever comment on a post. Anyway, as luck would have it, I came across a copy of Radioactive Dreams on VHS.

Radioactive Dreams takes place on April 1, 2010 (my 31st birthday), 14 years after the nuclear holocaust. Michael Dudikoff and Cougar from Top Gun grew up in a bomb shelter, abandoned by their fathers, and have finally tunneled their way out to the post-nuclear surface. Their only concept of the world is through mystery novels written by dudes like Phillip Marlowe (hence their names, Phillip and Marlowe). Anyway, at the same time, there is one nuclear bomb left, and whoever gets control of it will gain control of the world, and a woman carrying the keys to unlock them drops said keys in Duds and Coug's car while she's trying to make off with Duds' gun. Now the two make their way to Edge City, where everyone wants the keys, and their naïve Hardy Boys weltanschauung is put to the test.



Before I get into the film, I need to discuss something else. How is it possible that someone could direct this in 1985, and then make something like Urban Menace fifteen years later. This is more than just Kevin Smith making Jersey Girl, or Scorsese making Kundun-- at least those two movies looked like they were made by someone who had made a movie before. Urban Menace looked like a film student's final project, and Radioactive Dreams looked like a real movie done by someone who knows how to make films. Even more mind boggling is the fact that Albert Pyun had however many films under his belt between Radioactive Dreams and Urban Menace, many of which also looked like they were directed by someone who had directed a movie before. Urban Menace just makes no sense.

All right, enough of that, let's celebrate a good film, instead of dwell on a bad one, and Radioactive Dreams was good. It's just such a cool concept: take the Hardy Boys, and stick them in a world where the greasers, hippies, punks, disco dorks, mutants and sadists all rule. Then make it as 80s post-apocalyptic future as possible, right down to the amazing Pat Benetar knock-off soundtrack. This is the kind of film that I got into this for. All the things I gave Waterworld a hard time for, Radioactive Dreams followed through on. Dudikoff and Cougar weren't asses like Kevin Costner's character. As opposed to being a dumb movie that people tried to convince me was fun, this was a fun movie that was a silly spoofed on things like Mad Max 2, which really worked. The only drawback, of course, is that this isn't available on DVD. Wow.



And that brings up another point, because on top of being directed by a DTVC Hall of Famer, it also stars DTVC Hall of Famer Michael Dudikoff, and like a lot of his filmography, it's either on DVD but out of print, or only available on VHS. Dudikoff is that level of DTV action star that he should have every film of his reviewed, like Dolph, Seagal, and Van Damme, and I'm going to try and make that happen, but it's a huge impediment that I can't just pop on Netflix and load up my queue. Radioactive Dreams isn't really Dudikoff as the American Ninja type hero, and hearing him scream or talk in a high pitched voice might be hard for some, but it worked for me because the rest of the movie worked. This wasn't like Midnight Ride, where it annoyed me that he allowed himself to get beaten up by Mark Hamill so much.

Among the other stars, like Cougar from Top Gun and George Kennedy, there was a staple of Pyun films, Norbert Weisser. He actually has the distinction of being the one person who has starred in more Albert Pyun films (15) than Vincent Klyn (12). What's interesting is, of the six previous films of his (Weisser's) I've reviewed, one them, Android, actually wasn't an Albert Pyun film. Anyway, Radioactive Dreams marks the first film together for these two long time collaborators, which I think is pretty cool. I don't know if maybe you can see, as Norbert Weisser's on screen torturing Cougar for the nuclear bomb keys, that twinkle in his eye that made Albert Pyun see something special in him-- you can almost hear the Six Pence None the Richer playing in the background... Ohhh Kiss me...



This was a Vestron Video, and anyone who watched a lot of movies in the 80s knows that logo (or one of their other ones). They disappeared a long time ago, but I think for a lot of us they were a big part of what the 80s video age was all about, and it's one of the things I'm trying to capture here with this blog. Yes, I like to do newer films on DVD, but there's also a lot to be said for those old movie nights, especially as a kid with a bunch of friends on a sleep over, when we went to the video store and picked out the grossest looking horror film, or most bad ass looking action film, and ate a lot of junk food and lived it up. This was before Blockbuster and DVDs and Netflix and On Demand, when video stores were locally owned and carried just as many old barely known bad movies as they did new releases of the big budget ones, and often we settled for the barely known ones because the one or two copies of the new one were out. I can't believe I'm only going to be 31 on April 1st, and I'm already reminiscing about the good ol' days of the 1980s, but that's kind of what's happened. I can't just go to my local video store and rent Radioactive Dreams anymore, which is too bad. (For more on Vestron Video, check out Cinema du Meep's great post.)

You can get a torrent of this, but really, it's better to get it on VHS, which may not be easy. I guess the best way to describe it is a guilty pleasure, but I'm not so sure anyone should feel guilty enjoying themselves with this. It's just a good time from the 80s, and as a bonus, features two DTVC Hall of Famers. Definitely a good film to redeem Albert Pyun with after the horrible Urban Menace.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091818/