Invasion Force (1990)

This is one we covered on the podcast, back in December on episode 191, with Chris "The Brain" Kacvinski from Bulletproof Action, and it was time to cover it on the site as well, especially considering we hadn't done any AIP in a while. In addition to us, Chris has covered this on Bulletproof, as have the guys at Comeuppance.

Invasion Force looks like it's going to be about David "Shark" Fralick kicking ass and taking names. Not so fast, cowboy, turns out this is just a movie that's being made, none of this is happening for real. As luck would have it though, Richard Lynch is in the vicinity training mercenaries for a plan to take over the local town, which would then lead to them taking over the whole country. As luck would have it for them, they have no idea a movie is being shot on the other side of the mountain, and when they happen upon the film's leading lady, Renee Cline, arguing with her boyfriend, who just happens to also be the film's producer, David Marriott (the Basher from Shotgun), they kill him, but she survives and escapes back to the set, where she tells the director (Walter Cox) and some of the crew what happened, and they decide to load up on all the live ammo they have, and use all their special effects know-how to take these baddies on. Will they survive?

This is another fun time from AIP. Maybe not at the level of a Deadly Prey--though I think this shows they were more self-aware than we may have though with that movie--it's still pretty solid, and has a lot to like. Lynch is exactly the scene-chewing lead baddie you want, and the fact that he plays this whole thing straight adds to its charm. Cline and Cox were also fun as the leads--love that as the name of a legal comedy about two lawyers that were married but now divorced, and have to keep the practice alive--or I guess just the name of a personal injury firm that you see billboards of on the highway, "Cline and Cox will fight for you!" Then there's all the little extras that add to the enjoyment, like the product placement, this time Anheuser-Busch, especially at the cast party with the massive Busch beer can that looked like something from MTV Spring Break; or that the Basher from Shotgun is in this, and gets a great death scene. The fact that something like this is available on Tubi is a great thing.

This is our 11th AIP film on the site, which lags well behind other studios, like PM, Cannon, Imperial, and even The Asylum. A big part of that is how a lot of these films weren't as available when I started the site, but also they don't have the number of names those other studios have had. Essentially, we're reviewing AIP movies because they're AIP movies. Yes, you get names like Richard Lynch or DTVC Hall of Famer David Carradine from time to time, but compared to the names those other studios can give us, many of which are Hall of Famers, AIP sometimes gets lost in the shuffle. Even with Hall of Fame recognition, this October we have Imperial going in, because when we tagged them we discovered they had over 30 movies, so AIP will have to wait another year, but hopefully in that time I'll do a better job of getting more of their films up, because they have so much great stuff.

Speaking of finally getting a tag, David "Shark" Fralick somehow hadn't been tagged to this point, so we took care of that, which makes this his 15th film on the site. I haven't done a count of which first names are represented the most, but you'd be surprised how many Davids we have, it's right up there with Michael and William/Bill/Billy--I mean this film also has director David Prior and producer David Winters tagged. Anyway, Fralick is one of those guys that we see in a lot of these, and while he may not be the guy you seek out--even though he is on the cover of this one--he's one that when you see his name in the cast, you feel like it's got a bit more weight to it. I'm sorry it's taken me this long to tag him, but if any film would be worthy of him getting the tag, it's this--even though his cover is a bit of a red herring, and his part is more in line with the size of the parts he usually gets.

That 15 for Fralick is one more than the film's main baddie, Richard Lynch, a name that's been up for Hall of Fame consideration almost since we started the site, and it seems like every year he gets pushed back. I don't see that changing this year unfortunately, as we have slots already taken for Cole S. McKay, the aforementioned Imperial Films, and Kathleen Kinmont. He's such a fantastic baddie, and this film reaffirms that--as if you needed any reaffirmation, but it's nice to see it anyway. He's almost exactly playing the part he played in Invasion USA, except he wasn't Russian in this. That could've made it even more fun, but he was plenty fun enough. Exactly the baddie you want, every time, and here is no different.

The word "meta" gets thrown around a lot. I looked into it, and technically the term has been around since the late 80s, but it wasn't until later that it became a popular term. For kids reading this that are used to using the term, this movie is definitely "meta" before anyone would've really referred to a movie as "meta." Can you still call it "meta" when it was made before people called things "meta?" It's like "Yacht Rock," music that we called "Soft Rock" or maybe "AM Gold," was called "Yacht Rock" by some Gen Xers, and the term took off among a bunch of kids who like to call things "meta." The thing is, language is always changing, and this is just part of that. For example, I saw the word "nonplused" in Nabokov's Pnin the other day, which means "surprised" or "perplexed," but here in the US there's been a "nonplussed" definition shift to meaning "couldn't care less," probably because people initially confused the meaning, and enough people perpetuated the confused meaning that it's now become the meaning. It's how language evolves, except in my novel Chad in Accounting I used it with it's official, intended meaning, and now people who only understand its meaning as the new, US definition-shifted one, would be confused, as they would if they read Pnin. What I'm trying to say is, no, in 1990 this movie wasn't "meta," but due to changes in language, it's "meta" now, whether we like it or not, because that's "literally" how language evolves. (Like what I did there?)

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can get this on Tubi here in the States. I think that's a great way to go, though if you see this on VHS at a good price somewhere, it would be a fun addition to your collection. And if you haven't yet, you can check out the podcast episode I did with Chris from Bulletproof, episode 191 in the archives.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0238314

And if you haven't yet, check out my newest book, Nadia and Aidan, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Death Match (1994)

Back in April I had the guys from Comeuppance on the podcast to discuss Matthias Hues, and I figured this was one I needed to make happen in order to give my list integrity. As luck would have it, the film's star (not listed on the tin) Ian Jacklin posted a nice copy on his YouTube page. In addition to us and Comeuppance, this has been covered by our friends at Bulletproof, Cool Target, Fist of the B-list, Action Elite, and DTV Digest's Rich Hawes's old site Have a Go Heroes.

Death Match has Ian Jacklin and his buddy as two guys working the docks to make some extra cash. When they split up and Jacklin moves north to take an office job, his buddy joins an underground fighting ring run by Martin Kove and Matthias Hues. When said buddy won't kill his opponent, they put him on ice, and Jacklin needs to abandon his office job dreams and come back to LA to find out what happened to him. It won't be easy, as Kove and Hues are big time players in the underground crime world, so he enlists the help of a local reporter investigating the duo, Renee Allman. Together, can the two find out what happened to his friend?

This is pretty solid DTV 90s action fare, and I think that's what you're coming to this for, so that's a good thing. While this is meant to be an Ian Jacklin vehicle, Hues's larger-than-life presence and larger-than-life hair steal the show. In one scene that's particularly 90s, he goes to beat up Jacklin's friend for not killing his opponent, but the problem is he can't get his bolo tie undone, so he has to rip it off. On top of that, we have two legends in Art Camacho and Benny "The Jet" Urquidez as fight choreographers, and that kind of quality shows in all fight scenes. And then if all that wasn't enough, there are a bunch of cameos from guys like Richard Lynch, Jorge Rivero, Urquidez, and even someone like a Marcus Aurelius. This is the fun 90s DTV action you came for.

While we usually start with the film's DTVC Hall of Famers--and in this we have two, Camacho and Kove--we'll start with Hues instead, because he's why I came to this, and I really like him here. He was one of those guys who just made a 90s movie better, and this typifies that. How is Jacklin supposed to beat this guy, right? He's huge, a superior athlete, and the hair is formidable enough to send someone running. With Kove, he's a standard evil crime boss baddie, but as the film goes on, there's a sense of "why is Hues working for him? He should be working for Hues!", and the movie even gets that and has that conversation. This is now 17 films on the DTVC, and with many more to review, I think 30 Club and beyond is in his future, we just need to get the films in the can. And then before that, maybe this fall he'll have a Hall of Fame induction?...

 

It would be wrong to go much further in this post and not mention Ian Jacklin, the main protagonist and the one who was supposed to be the star. He's good here for sure, and I think as a good guy it would've been interesting to see him acting with guys like Gary Daniels and Frank Zagarino in buddy pictures, because those would've been some nice fight scenes. Most of the work he did was as a baddie, and often not the main baddie, but ones who showed up here or there to bother the hero. I think beyond this he has one other as the main hero, Expert Weapon, which he also has uploaded on his YouTube page. As an aside, that YouTube page is interesting: one of his uploads is him telling a school board at one of their public meetings that masks don't work, which I didn't watch, but I guess that makes him the male equivalent of a Karen--is that a "Chad'? Perhaps a "Darren"? I know what you're thinking, "Matt, why do we have to gender everything?" You're right, we'll just say he's now a Karen, and leave it at that. At least he was good in this movie, and despite his newfound Karen-ness we did give him his tag, which, with the retroactive tagging gives him 13 movies on the site. Not a bad number.

Our two DTVC Hall of Famers are Martin Kove and Art Camacho. For Kove this is only 17, and among Hall of Famers he has one of the lower tag counts, which was never intentional, but I think because a lot of his stuff is in this 90s DTV action category, and where there's so much to cover, it's easy for a lot of them to get lost in the shuffle. Just looking at Death Match in that mix, would it be top 30 for a 1990 to 1994 list? Top 50? Definitely top 50, but that just reaffirms the point, that the early 90s were chock full of DTV action-y goodness, that we're only getting to a gem like this one 1100+ posts in. I think as we delve into more at the second and third tiers, we'll start getting more Kove reviewed--plus I'm hoping his role in the new Cobra Kai series will get more movies like this bigger releases so we don't have to scrounge around former DTV martial artists-turned Karen's YouTube pages to find them. Anyway, for Art Camacho, this 48 movies on the site. A stalwart of 90s DTV action, what we know of as the genre's golden age wouldn't have been as golden without him, and it'll be great when we eventually get him in as the third person in the 50 Club, joining Dolph and Gary Daniels. If you aren't already doing it, you should follow his Instagram account. He posts great behind the scenes pics and reels of all the things he's working on.

Finally, this film employs a DTV action cliche that's never really made a lot of sense to me: killing off the opponent in an underground fight. Maybe it makes sense as a way to gin up excitement if you have some fighters who are at the end that can't compete with the newer talent, two of them fight to the death, and if you lose one, easy come easy go, right? It's like a macabre version of the glue factory for old horses. But making your best fighters fight to the death seems absurd. It's be like in baseball if the Mets and Phillies played, and the winner had to kill the loser, look at all the revenue you're losing by not having the loser around to keep playing; or if I owned a shop that sold Coke (TM) and Pepsi (TM), and after a customer chose to buy a Coke, I took all the Pepsi cans out back and emptied them in the sewer drain. Yes, I understand it adds a level of drama in the movie if the fight is to the death, and also if these gangsters were really good at business they'd be plying their crime trade legally on Wall Street, but still, what good did it serve Kove and Hues to be killing off their moneymakers? 

And considering I'm critiquing the business acumen of two baddies in a 90s DTV actioner that can currently only be found on the now-Karen star's YouTube page mixed in among his anti-masker uploads, it's probably time to wrap this up. Beyond going to Jacklin's YouTube account, there is a UK DVD version, or you can find it on VHS for a heavy price. I think the Jacklin's YouTube upload is the way to go, but hopefully Kove's recent popularity will get this thing a Blu-ray release, as it deserves it. Do it for the kids.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109576

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

Total Force (1996)

Back in March I had Rich Hawes from the DTV Digest podcast on our pod to discuss this film and its sequel, Absolute Force. He and Mike and Steve had just covered it for their throwback segment on their pod, and when I asked him about coming on, he liked the idea of discussing this and its sequel in more detail than the segment on their podcast allowed; and I, having seen that these were on Tubi, was definitely intrigued. In addition to us, our friends at Comeuppance have covered this as well.

Total Force is about Richard Lynch, a defense contractor who developed a device called the Neurolator--not to be confused with the delightful candy Now and Later, which I used to mix in with my other penny candy when we went to the Goldenrod on York Beach in Maine when I was growing up. No, the Neurolator uses a laser from a satellite to turn opposing soldiers' brains into mush, but not before they become violent zombies who attack their own troops. The problem is, the turn to mush part doesn't kick in, and now Lynch needs to call in the Total Force team, led by Timothy Bottoms, to clean up the mess. Then, after he frames them for dealing drugs (?), Lynch is then taken off the project himself, which causes him to call in mercenary Frank Stallone to break into the facility it's being housed in. Sounds like we need to call our Total Force guys back in, huh?

This movie was awarded zero stars by the guys at Comeuppance. That's right, "we award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul;" and Rich's compatriots on DTV Digest couldn't believe how horrible this was--and if you listen to their show at all (which you should be if you're not), they are almost never this hard on a film. Is this really that bad? Quite possibly, but it's an intriguing bad, which is why I think Rich wanted to discuss it. Writer/director Steven Kaman, who has worked with "rah-rah military beats bad guys" schlock auteur J. Christian, Engvordsen, looks like he's trying to go less black and white with this effort, but he's also trying for this MTV 90s TV show thing that feels all over the place. One scene in a hotel room or something where Frank Stallone and his team are getting their marching orders is a great example, cameras are whipping around all over the place, with all kinds of odd angles, while Stallone is slouched on a couch laughing at this creeper fixer guy getting fresh with Calista Carradine and her twisting the creeper's arm back as a result. We get these random in-cuts of stock footage like we're watching M/A/R/R/S's "Pump Up the Volume," which makes sense in a music video, but why here? When the thing becomes more straight-ahead actioner toward the end though, it's kind of a fun dynamic, especially with Bottoms, Stallone, and Lynch, but that's near the end of the movie, and by then you've been through a lot of kookiness. This is a unique entry in the 90s DTV action catalog, and that alone may make this worth it, or totally not.

Kaman also goes by the name "Sven Nuvo," and he got his start in the early 80s doing cinematography for X-rated movies. In 1987 he teams with the aforementioned Engvordsen for the latter's directorial debut, Hangmen, starring Sandra Bullock in her debut as well. From there he works with Engvordsen a lot, though it seems like as the 90s go on, and Engvordsen shifts into things like Airboss, which are more obvious rah-rah panderers, Kaman no longer works with him, and does this film instead, followed by two others of his own after--one of which is the sequel to this, Absolute Force. In that sense, this movie almost feels like a response to the films Engvordsen would do in the late 90s/early 2000s, like the Airboss series. The problem is, it's as if Kaman had too many things he wanted to say about foreign policy and the military-industrial complex--which he also demonstrates in this film that he may not fully understand, because it seems like he thinks there's an actual complex that exists. While the execution may not be there, I like that he tried to do something other than the rah-rah fest we see so often. Does that award him a star in a five star rating system? Good question, and I don't have an answer for you...

We last saw the great Richard Lynch here in 2013, and at that time we said it was a travesty he wasn't in the Hall of Fame. Now it's 2022, and he still isn't in there, so what does that make it? The thing about him is he's like a baddie in a can: you just open him up and throw him in a pot, and he's ready to eat. The problem is though, do you let him do his thing, or do you disrupt his flow with a bunch of other stuff? There's a scene where he's talking to Bottoms through a video phone, and it's all kinds of edits and different kinds of film all put together, which is meant to give us a sense of the technology. Again, I get what Kaman was going for, but the result was Lynch looked sillier than he looked sinister. Just the same, it's good to see Lynch back, and with all the credits he has out there that we haven't covered, I have no excuse to not get the next film of his up sooner than 9 years from now. (Scary to think about that isn't it, what the world will be like in 2031!)

Another issue with the film was that Frank Stallone and his crew--Calista Carradine, Oleg Taktarov, and Tom Bresnahan--were cooler than Bottoms's Total Force. Kaman at least mitigated this by having them kill innocent people, but then he further mitigated by having Stallone and Bottoms team up after Lynch turns a bunch of lab workers into zombies with the Neurolator and has them attack everyone while he tries to escape in a helicopter. From a Destro Effect standpoint, Kaman has committed a major error: he made is cooler baddies sufficiently bad, but then didn't give them their comeuppance. You can't use those two Destro Effect mitigating factors together, if you're using one you have to abandon the other. But as we saw with other decisions Kaman made, he just didn't care--or he was trying to make the point that one man's terrorist group is another man's government wet works clean-up crew team? Unfortunately if that was the case, I don't think it worked, and we were left with baddies who killed innocent people and got away with it at the end.

 

Finally, going back to Kaman potentially not understanding what the military-industrial complex is--or at least making it look like he didn't understand it--I guess it might be good to remember that in 1996 this kind of information wasn't as readily available. I myself didn't learn about it until a few years later, when I was in college and it came up in my Sociology 101 class. Nowadays you can look it and anything else up on Wikipedia, so not understanding a concept like this fully is less forgivable. Also, if you go on Twitter, you'll see a deeper understanding of how the military-industrial complex works, with people tweeting about how a fraction of our military budget would fund public college for everyone who wants it, or how PBS and infrastructure costs make up such a small percentage of the overall budget compared to military spending. We also talk about the trickle-down effects, like how the military-industrial complex begets the police-industrial complex and the prison-industrial complex. These were all concepts that were beyond the scope of what Kaman wanted to do with his movie, but it's interesting how he was trying them out in 1996, while his former directorial comrade Engvordsen was selling us on how great the military-industrial complex was in his late 90s and early 2000s films.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently stream this on Tubi in the States, but I think Rich said in the UK you had to settle for YouTube. Whichever it is, free-to-stream is the way to go if you want to check this out. For Ty and Brett at Comeuppance to give this zero stars, and for Mike and Steve on DTV Digest to dislike it so vehemently, it has to be a unique brand of bad, which I think it is. For more info on it before you jump in, you can listen to episode 95 of the podcast where Rich and I discuss it. It was a great conversation and worth checking out!

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0145534

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

Maximum Force (1992)

Our friend Johnny Sullivan, screenwriter of the great Recoil (Twitter @johnnyblackout), left a comment on my Facebook asking if I'd seen/reviewed Maximum Force, starring Sam Jones.  It had been on my radar, but his mention, combined with a few other people suggesting it-- and the fact that I wanted to get more Sam Jones on the DTVC anyway-- jumped this near the top of my list.  Luckily I knew someone who had it, and was able to check it out.  Also, our friends Ty at Comeuppance Reviews and Explosive Action looked at this one as well (can you imagine either of them missing something like this?), so you can check that out to see their takes.

Maximum Force is a PM Entertainment actioner about a crime boss named Tanabe, played, of course, by the late Richard Lynch.  He's rich, and owns a lot of LA's police force.  Enter Sam Jones, Sherrie Rose, and a young electronics and gun expert played by Jason Lively.  Each has his or her own reasons for taking down Lynch, but it's police captain John Saxon who has the biggest reason, and he decides he can bring these folks together to join forces and get the job done.  Problem is: Lynch won't go down that easily, and hopefully for him police chief Mickey Rooney will help him remain in power.



This is pretty sweet.  It has that PM Entertainment everything but the kitchen sink approach to action, starting in the first five minutes with a chopper explosion.  That's right, they knew they needed to have a helicopter explosion in there somewhere, so they figured they'd just get it out of the way at the beginning.  Also, they expertly navigate Lynch's opening background speech to his underlings, by mixing in action scenes with Sam Jones and Sherrie Rose, then punctuating Lynch's speech with a death by Saran Wrap of one of his goons.  For people out there making action movies, this is how you do it.  PM Entertainment had this right more often than not, and as far as I can tell, you guys are getting it wrong more often than not 20 years later.  Stop getting it wrong, or we'll turn our backs on you and go exclusively back to when these movies were good.

One of the problems Johnny and others have had in looking for Sam Jones films on the DTVC is the lack of a tag.  That was a mistake on my part, and it's now been rectified, and right out of the gate this is his eleventh on here.  The key with Sam Jones as a hero is to cultivate that Tank Concrete/Lump Beefbroth aesthetic, without falling into 300-pound Pork Roast territory.  It's a bit of a tough line to straddle, but this film does it well.  When I think of the perfect Sam Jones role, the one we'd all like, it'd be something like a reality show where he confronts RATers or guys who proposition 12-year-old girls on the Internet, kind of in a Chris Hanson Dateline kind of way, only with a real strongman aspect.  Like he gets them in a headlock, and he's like "Oh, you think it's okay to spy on women through their webcams and mess with people's computers?" or "Oh, you think it's okay to talk to 12-year-old girls about sex in chat rooms?", and they're like whimpering and breathing hard and their faces are turning purple, and we're loving to see these shitheads get their comeuppance, before they're shipped off to jail.  That's the kind of Sam Jones we want, and any movie that casts him in the lead, needs to cultivate that, otherwise he's just a beefy guy in a flat top.



How often do we ever get to see John Saxon as a good guy?  It's few and far between.  I've realized that he's one that, while he seems like he should be on here a bunch, isn't really.  The only other two to this point are Enter the Dragon, which we did for our 300th post, and Final Payback, a Richard Greico flick.  He's so much fun to see though, so I need to look out for more of his stuff.  In this one, I couldn't help seeing him in Mitchell, and listening to his lines riffed by Joel and the 'Bots on MST3K.  There was one scene where he was telling us the background of Jones, Rose, and Lively, and he sounded like his character in Mitchell, talking to Joe Don Baker about some payoff while his Christmas presents are in the background and he's holding a Slim Jim in his hand.  I just wanted to bark out Mitchell lines.

Above we mentioned Sherrie Rose teamed up with Jones to take Lynch down.  We see her a lot on here, but not always in big roles, but this was a big one.  She had some fight scenes, and she shot Sonny Landham, who had a very small scene as a pimp, while Rose was acting as a prostitute undercover.  Michael Delano played a snitch that Sam Jones pushed around for info-- though in true PM style, that involved Jones handcuffing him to a side-view mirror, then Jones driving around as a stuntman hung to it.  Delano was yelling "This isn't right!", then he said "I want a phone call!", so Jones drove his van through a phone booth.  So great.  There were also a few quickies: Ken McLeod was a bouncer in two scenes and got punched in the face by Jones; Ron Yuan had one scene where he fought in Lynch's underground fight club; then we had Asbjørn "Bear" Riiis as Jones's friend "Bear", who shows up at the end, takes a bunch of guys out, then is shot; and then we had Jeffrey Anderson-Gunter listed as Rastaman, as one of Lynch's underlings.  Finally, we had Mickey Rooney as the police chief.  How do you not love him?  He has one scene with Saxon where he tries to buy him off, then another where he gives a monologue about corruption and how money rules everything.  It's the kind of thing we love at the DTVC, small parts by guys like this who have four Oscar nominations and are known for much better stuff.



Finally, last June Richard Lynch passed away, leaving behind a prodigious filmography of 160 credits, of which we've barely cracked the surface of the films he did that belong on here.  My personal favorite role of his was as the baddie in Invasion USA.  The travesty is that we've been planning to put him into the DTVC Hall of Fame for a few years, and just haven't made it happen.  Right now he's in the "In Memoriam" section, but we'll move him to the Hall of Fame soon.  I can't think of anyone who embodies that title more.  Here's to you Richard Lynch, you were one of the greatest.

As far as I can tell, this is out of print, but available used on Amazon both as DVD and VHS.  For PM Entertainment, it's not the best, but it's still really good.  If you're a collector, the Amazon prices aren't bad; if not, I'd keep an eye out for it in a bargain or used bin.  Also, you can stream it on Amazon too.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104831/

Miner's Massacre aka Curse of the Forty-Niner (2002)

This is one I've been meaning to get to for some time, especially with the prodigious list of names associated with it. You've got Hall of Famer Martin Kove, plus DTVC favorites Richard Lynch, John Phillip Law, Vernon Wells, Karen Black, and Jeff Conaway. Can this possibly be bad? Do I need to ask based on some of the stinkers we've seen on here before?

Miner's Massacre is about a girl whose brother has just found some buried treasure, and sends her a map and a sample to let her know it's legit. Little does she know that he was killed by a ghostly Vernon Wells, the demoniac incarnation of an evil 49er who guards that gold, so when she gathers up her friends to find him and his treasure, it's a collision course to wackiness.



This was a fun little horror film, though those names on the marquee are a little misleading. Let's see, Lynch has two scenes, one where he rips off one of the kids, and one right after where he's killed by Wells. That's better than Kove, who barely has one scene, and I don't believe he ever has a shot to himself. They intimated that he'd be a bigger part after he's introduced, but it never happens. Of this robust cast, Black has the biggest part, as the crazy aunt who tries to warn the kids and whatnot. Conaway has one flashback scene as a priest, which is technically Vernon Wells's only scene too (I believe someone else plays his modern, ghostly self). Then there's John Phillip Law, who plays the town sheriff, and also only has a couple scenes. I like that these actors are sprinkled in, but in some cases-- especially Kove's-- I would've liked to have seen more of them. Also, while some of the kills were good, some of the scenes with the kids where no one was getting killed could've been a lot shorter. I put this in the classic 3AM Paper Procrastination category, as opposed to something you'd go out of your way for.

Martin Kove is the film's one Hall of Famer, so we might as well start there, even though there isn't much to start. What, could they only afford him for half a' day? 15 minutes maybe? It did seem like his character was going to have more of an impact on the way the film went, but he really just disappears after that one scene. Also, weirdly enough, it's Karen Black's character who goes to him and tells him what's wrong, and he tells her to go inside his place where she's safe, while he looked like he was going to go out and get after it; only then, it's Black, not Kove, who is in the next scene with the kids, telling them about the evil 49er. Maybe there was supposed to be more Kove here-- though, on the other hand, he's an associate producer, so maybe there really wasn't.



"Let off some steam, Bennett." That's right baby, Vernon Wells. I can't tell from the imdb credits if he was just in the scene where he plays his human self, or if he played the demon too. He makes a great villain in any case, and it was fun to see him in this, even in that limited capacity. I know what you're thinking, and I totally agree, the better thing to do would've been to have him not as a 49er, but in the chain mail like he was in Commando. And Martin Kove having to take him out instead of the kids. And Richard Lynch being blown up with a rocket launcher.

Of all the one-scene cameos in this, I'd say it was Lynch's, just edging out Jeff Conaway's that I was the most fine with. Would I have wanted more Lynch? Of course, who doesn't. And when you think about it, if this were the 1990s and this were a PM Entertainment actioner, Kove, Lynch, and Wells would've been the leads, with Black, Conaway, and Law all holding down solid supporting parts. Maybe throw in Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs, Sam Jones, and Ernie Hudson, and you have yourself a winner.



Man, I love John Phillip Law. And if you love him too, you'll love his couple scenes as the town sheriff. That trademark voice, and creepy ear-to-ear grin, it's all there. I found myself quoting some MST3K Space Mutiny lines like "Man you look good" or "We're always laughing you and me", because he's so Calgon. But he's also more, he's quintessentially John Phillip Law, the B-Movie mainstay who brought it long before MST3K put him on the map. Here's to John Phillip Law, you were one of the good ones.

With a scant (scanty?) running time of 85 minutes, and availability on Watch Instantly, this isn't a huge investment. A pretty fun horror flick with some big names sprinkled throughout might be enough to get you to the church on time. For me, this isn't something you center a bad movie night around, it's more like something you dip into if you're dealing with a bout of insomnia, or, as I mentioned above, it's 3AM and you're procrastinating on that paper.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0325214/

Trancers II (1991)

This movie has been long overdue, considering I did Trancers over six months ago. I should've had them all reviewed by now, forget just being on part 2. But we can't go back and fix it-- actually we can, I can just mess with the dates of the posts and make it look like I did them months ago, but I'd never do that--, so I'll just do my best to get them done as quickly as possible from here on in. If you can't wait for me, though, and I don't blame you, Mr. Gable at Mr. Gable's Reality has looked at the others, so you can see what he has to say.

Trancers II takes place six years after part 1 left off. Jack Deth (DTVC favorite Tim Thomerson) is settling down with Helen Hunt, living in Hap Ashby's mansion. Turns out Winslow has a brother though, played by none other than Richard Lynch, and has as one of his top hatchetmen none other than Jeffrey Combs dressed like he was just released from a parallelogram hurling through space. So back in the future, McNulty is sent back in time to give Deth the word-- this time his ancestor is a 15-year-old girl-- and hopefully find Deth's wife from back in the future too, who was also sent back to the past, and is in the extremely hot body of Megan Ward. Will Jack Deth prevail again?



Though this wasn't the 76-minute awesomefest the first one was, it was still pretty good. It had some great one-liners, some great action, and some great performances from the entire cast, which as you could see from the synopsis, was rather prodigious. It wasn't the total 80s sci-fi tongue-in-cheek Film Noir actioner that made the first one so great, and instead it had a tendency to dwell too much on a pretty heavy duty plot that weighed things down at times, but overall, it was a fun time, and worth checking out.

Tim Thomerson is back as Jack Deth, probably his most notable role, and while he didn't have as great of material to work with here as he did in part 1, it was still pretty sweet, and he delivered. He also had to love that he got to make out with both Helen Hunt and Megan Ward. One thing that's never really been discussed before, are Thomerson's numbers for a potential Hall of Fame induction. In an actor, the two things the panel usually looks for are a big DTV resume, and one memorable role; and Thomerson has both of those. Not to mention, the fact that his birthday is only seven days after mine helps his cause: all good people are Aries.



Not an Aries, but someone who celebrated her 42nd birthday only three days ago as of this posting, is Megan Ward. She is really hot, and Charles Band understood that, because he had no shortages of close-ups on her face throughout the movie. Usually, if you're Tim Thomerson, or really, if you're any guy, you're thinking Helen Hunt as my wife, I'll take that. But then Megan Ward comes along and throws herself at you too. Not only that, but she's also your wife. I don't know how I'd feel at 45, if I were married, if my wife left and came back in the body of a 22-year-old Megan Ward. I think I'd feel kind of guilty, because I'm still 45, with saggy pecs and a spare tire around my waist. I guess if you're as awesome as Tim Thomerson, though, you're not worried about it.

Let's round out the rest of this cast. Richard Lynch, as we already know, is a first-rate baddie, and nothing changes here. I'm not going to give away his death scene, but for me, it's second only to the rocket launcher blast he took in Invasion USA for his best death ever. Jeffrey Combs could've had a bigger role, because he didn't have much to do, which for me was a disappointment. He also wasn't playing a crazy guy. He had slicked back hair and a goatee, which, when combined with his black turtleneck and black coat, made him look like he was one of Zod's gang. "Kneel before Combs!" I'd have liked to see Thomerson deal with Combs shooting red lasers out of his eyes. From the last movie, we also had Telma Hopkins, who you may remember from Family Matters, and veteran character actor Art LaFleur. Finally, in a one scene cameo, Barbara Crampton played a TV talk show host interviewing Lynch. One more I want to mention too was Alyson Croft, who reprised her role from first film as Art LaFleur's ancestor, now a 15-year-old. She was great, smoking cigars and making hard-assed detective comments, eliciting "Damn it McNulty!"s from Thomerson. That whole dynamic was one of my favorite parts of the film.



Also reprising his role is Biff Manard, back as Hap Ashby. He wears a lot of Angels gear, which back then would've been the California Angels, but now are the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, and in between, they were the Anaheim Angels. In 2009, I was out in LA, and a buddy and I took the commuter rail from Union Station (which also appears in Trancers II) over to Anaheim to see the Angels play my Boston Red Sox. Very cool experience, and I recommend anyone who's visiting LA, baseball fan or not, to go check out a game there if you're in town during baseball season. The ballpark is right at the train station, so it's really convenient. (As an aside, my Sox lost that game.)

Maybe not as amazing as its predecessor, this still delivers and is well worth it. It's currently on Watch Instantly, but as I've been saying lately, the quality of Netflix's service has left something to be desired, and who knows how long after this posting that it'll still be on Watch Instantly (within days of my Dance of the Dead post, Netflix put up a note saying it'll be gone on October 1st.) For a more sure bet, look for this on DVD or used VHS. Either will do.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103116/

The Sword and the Sorcerer (1982)

This movie is almost as far from DTV as we can get: made in 1982, grossed almost $40 million at the box office (only movie it couldn't catch that year was Porky's, which, let's be honest, it's Porky's, nothing could top that). But the distinguishing mark it has is that it was the first film of DTVC Hall of Fame director and friend of the blog Albert Pyun, and this post will make his 30th tag, so I wanted to commemorate it with what is his most successful and one of his best known films. Also, we're closing in on the release of the film's sequel, Tales of an Ancient Empire, and considering I hadn't seen this one in a while, I wanted to get a refresher.

The Sword and the Sorcerer has DTVC favorite Richard Lynch as Cromwell, an evil conqueror who brings back to life the evil sorcerer Xusia, played by Richard Moll, so he can use his power to conquer the richest city in the world. He succeeds, kills Xusia, and then kills the ruling family, with only the king's son Talon (Lee Horsley) escaping. Talon grows up to be something of a heroic rogue, and he returns to the city of his birth to get his revenge, right at the time a young prince and princess are planning a rebellion to overthrow Cromwell. The prince is captured, and the princess hires Talon to save him, for which he'll be paid with a night with her, Skin-a-max style. Can he defeat the evil Cromwell? And what happened to Xusia? Will he come back for his revenge as well?

This movie is excellent. I usually don't go in for the fantasy genre, but Sword throws a lot of its conventions on its ear. First off, it's much more graphic, with some excellent kills, and a lot more bare flesh, including nudity. Second, it's less concerned with inundating us with the minutiae of its plot, and more concerned with the bare bones of the story, told in broad strokes, combined with some great action. Third, as far as that action goes, the sword fights aren't a bunch of dandies clanking around with épées, it's like swing once, then blood, and lots of it. This is an R rated movie, and gets the most out of that R rating. Finally, I like the film's overall message, that there is a real karma out there based on how we treat people. Throughout the film we come into contact with characters who in some fashion owe a debt to Talon, and its Talon's selflessness in helping others that ultimately saves him as many of those people come to his aid; while Cromwell selfishly and brutally seeks out power, doesn't care who he hurts, and in the end, he can't trust anyone.

If we can draw anything from Pyun's first directorial effort, it is his want to mix genres and turn them on their ears. Having been born in 1979, and first coming into contact with this in the late 80s, that is well after Star Wars and Indiana Jones, so for me it's easy to say The Sword and the Sorcerer drew from those; but it's probably more accurate to say that Pyun had the same influences that Lucas and Spielberg did, and that's where the similarities lie. You can see the 50s-60s pulp influence, the Japanese samurai influence, and the swashbuckling Three Musketeers style influence, all things we also see in Star Wars and Indiana Jones. One Japanese movie connection I saw with the overall story was with Sansho the Baliff, though that might be a stretch. What I like about Sword though, is that Pyun really makes it an R rated film, and isn't afraid to get gory, get naked, make sexual jokes--in short, take the fantasy genre and give it the edge it so rarely has from people who are too hung up on emulating Tolkien.

Loved Richard Lynch as the baddie. While he maintained his great New York accent, he also brought his classical training as an actor to the table, and both were excellent. We have this idea of him here at the DTVC as the baddie in a ton of really bad flicks, like the recently reviewed Werewolf, so it was good to see him get after it with a role that really played to his strengths. He's one of the ultimate baddies, and nowhere is that more evident than in The Sword and the Sorcerer

Lee Horsely played the hero--yes, that Lee Horsely, aka Matt Houston, the womanizing, Texas oil man who would chopper into LA and solve various crimes. There really is no Texas accent to speak of here--though that might have been funny--and I thought he kind of looked like Peter O'Toole. It's like he brought the Matt Houston larger than life persona into the role of Talon, without making him obviously Texas, if that makes sense.

There were other great performances in the film too, including Kathleen Beller as the princess, Richard Moll as Xusia, Joe Regalbuto as Talon's buddy (you may remember him as Frank Fontana from Murphy Brown, and/or the DTVC reviewed flick Schizoid), Robert Tessier as the prison guard, and Anthony De Longis as a villager/budding warrior, and whose sword fighting prowess ironically wasn't on display. Everyone seemed to get what was tongue-in-cheek, what was R rated, and most importantly, what was an attempt to change our preconceived notions of the fantasy genre.

One actor that wasn't used as well as the DTVC faithful would've liked, was one of our favorites, Reb Brown. He has a couple scenes, then his character is captured along with the rest of the gang, and off screen his tongue is cut out, after which he's paraded in front of the other prisoners as a threat that they should talk, when he tries to take out Tessier the prison guard, and is killed off. I understand that this was a big screen production, and Reb Brown was probably not on the top of the list of actors they wanted to center the film around, but he's Reb Brown, our guy, so I gotta at least throw it out there that more of him is always better.

Anyone who's been rockin' with the DTVC for a while knows that I'm not the biggest fan of computer effects, and a movie like this is a big reason why, because there were a lot of great effects that came off with no CGIs whatsoever. The best was the very end, where Xusia reveals himself as Cromwell's second in command, and breaks out of his skin. Really great stuff that I don't think translates well at all if the thing is done with CGIs. I understand that it's probably cheaper and quicker to go the CGI route, but it doesn't look quite as nice, at least not to me.

This is a definite gem. Unfortunately the Anchor Bay DVD that I borrowed from my friend is no longer in print, and can be fairly costly on Amazon in the secondary market, which I will say here, based on the version I'm looking at, while it's a great transfer, it's not worth paying more than $10-15 new for, considering there aren't any great extras or anything. This is truly a cult classic of the 80s and a great film that deserves a high quality DVD release, which will hopefully come sooner rather than later.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084749/

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Werewolf (1996)

This is one I've been wanting to get after for a long time now. Between the Richard Lynch, the Joe Estevez, and the fact that MST3K has hit it, it seemed like a sure bet. The question was, could I manage it without Mike and the 'Bots first?

Werewolf takes place in Flagstaff, Arizona, where some archaeologists led by Richard Lynch find what looks like a werewolf skeleton. Joe Estevez is one of a few local Native Americans hired by Lynch and his archaeologists-- and physically attacked by his ill-tempered colleague-- and he sees bad things in this skeleton, and he's right when his buddy turns into a werewolf too. Then some dude comes into town, and he's also attacked by Lynch's ill-tempered colleague, getting slashed by the werewolf skull. As you can imagine, he turns into a werewolf too, and all hell breaks loose.



Wow, this is all kinds of bad. Slow moving broken up with some hilarious moments of ineptitude. Not to mention, the main stars after Lynch and Estevez all speak English as a second language, and sound stilted and unnatural when they deliver their lines, making for more unintentionally funny moments. What makes it a tough watch though is the long periods of inactivity. In a group this is something that could probably be handled, and if you can handle it, you'll be rewarded with some amazing stuff, including a werewolf driving a car into some exploding barrels, one of the funniest werewolf horror movie kills in the history of film, and a well proportioned female archaeologist wearing a white tank top with no bra in a chilly pool hall.

That being said, the MST3K version is the definite choice if you're attempting this solo. Think of it like rock climbing-- it's safer to have someone there to hold the rope and guide you through the route, and the MST3K guys are experts. This also had some pretty funny host segments, which wasn't always the case during the late Mike era. The best jokes for me came during the werewolf driving sequence, where they made cracks about him behaving like a dog: "I hope he remembered to crack the window for himself" "He's just going to run around in the back seat while he's driving" [about the traffic lights:] "Hey, I'm color blind!" They also used lycanthrope as a verb, referring to the werewolf transformation as "lycanthroping". Top to bottom an excellent episode.



One of the things that struck me about the MST3K heckling was that they didn't know who Richard Lynch is. In one scene where he had a white sweater on, they joked about how much he looked like a grandmother. It really elucidated the dividing line between what we do and what MST3K does, because, while we both watch bad movies, they do it for a job, and we do it for fun. They have no idea who Richard Lynch is, and they're cool with that; we know exactly who Richard Lynch is, and with a movie like this, seeing his name on the cover is a selling point. Is that a bad thing?

Joe Estevez is only in this at the beginning, and then for whatever reason, he's gone. The hair is fantastic. He must've had other things going on, because he would've been great throughout the film, especially with that hair. The guy does like five or six movies a year, so I wonder if it's a deal where, if a film maker wants him in his or her film, they have to lock him up quick, or he's already committed to like three projects and the best they can hope for is a cameo at the beginning. He has over 215 acting credits on imdb. I wonder if that's a record, and if it isn't, how many he needs to break it.



MST3K brought up a great point about werewolves: they aren't very canine-ish, if you know what I mean. They're more like felines in the things they can do. I mean, how many dogs do you see climb buildings or trees? How about use their claws to attack people? I get that they're supposed to be half human half wolf, but maybe half human half tiger would make more sense. Also, loved the Native American connection to werewolves in this, ten years or so before Twilight.

The stand-alone DVD of this is no longer in print, and can be kind of pricey on Amazon. The VHS is much less so, so that may be the way to go if you're thinking of attacking this without Mike and the 'Bots. The MST3K version, on the other hand, is available on Netflix Watch Instantly, which was how I watched it. I think you're better off letting them do the heavy lifting, but if you and you're friends are looking for a challenge, this could be worth it.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118137/

Armstrong (1998)

I've been meaning to get to this one for some time now. First it was on Netflix Watch Instantly, then it wasn't, then I went on hiatus at the end of the summer, then I came back, it came back, but other movies kept bumping it down the pecking order. Now we're finally here. Also, this has been done by two other blogs that are well known to readers of the DTVC, Ty at Comeuppance Reviews, and Sutekh at Explosive Action.

Armstrong has Frank Zagarino as an ex-CIA dude in Russia training their new version of the KGB that's supposed to be more US friendly. At the same time, a very moist Charles Napier has been sent by the President to look into some nukes being sold by rogue members of the Russian military to terrorist organizations. He's killed by Joe Lara, but not before Zagarino gets the proof he needs on a video tape. The problem is, how far up the military chain does this go in Russia? As far as Richard Lynch?



I kind of dug this one. It was a little long, but the whole thing was so gratuitous that I kind of let that pass. I mean, the plot was pretty well worn but funny, the action scenes were hilarious but in a fun way, plus, this was directed by Menahem Golan, and we know he knows how to do bad action. In fact, this felt like something that was made in the early 90s, not 1998-- only the style of the Pepsi logo in one scene gave the shooting date away-- so you could see how it might have fit Golan's other "Cannon", get it? This is the kind of movie you're dealing with here: Kimberley Kates has a full-frontal scene when she comes out of the shower, which transitions into her putting on wet clothes, no underwear, Lara pointing a gun between her legs and looking up her skirt, then her running around in a see-through wet blouse during a foot chase. The foot chase goes on way longer than the action warranted, and really kills the film's momentum, but there was a sense that Golan and whoever else that was involved in making the film were like "hey, we convinced Kimberley to do the wet T-shirt scene, let's get our money's worth." If you dig that kind of thing, you'll dig this.

Frank Zagarino is back again. This will be his fourth film, but only his third starring role. We didn't do this one though solely for him, though having him helped. The Napier and the Lynch didn't hurt things either, plus, having Lara as the heel really worked. I mean, replace Lara's double-breasted suit with a Star Trek: The Next Generation T, and he'd be one of those guys they showed in Trekkies selling replica Klingon weapons at the convention. It would've been nice if he and Zagarino had a better end fight, but it was still good.



Richard Lynch was in this as a Russian colonel, so he affected a Russian accent. It was funny, because his native Brooklyn accent is still pretty apparent. Try to mix those two together. He was also kind of a secondary baddie to Joe Lara, which didn't feel right-- Lynch should always be the big baddie. This is only his sixth film on the DTVC, and I know we had talking in the past about making a concerted effort to get more of his films up here, because he is such a great DTV baddie. He's always on my radar for that reason, it's just a matter of making it happen.

This had to be the most moist film we've ever reviewed on here. Everyone was just covered in Patrick Ewing style perspiration. First it was Napier, but then the rest of them followed suit. I'm talking like "I've been hiking in 90-degree weather" dripping wet kind of moistness; or "I'm way overweight and the AC doesn't work at the Chinese food buffet" kind of moistness. Whose idea was that? It wasn't appealing, it was gross.



As I mentioned above, Kimberley Kates has a full-frontal nude scene-- we're talking top and bottom. Then she runs around for a good ten minutes of screen time in a wet see-through blouse. There's even a very tasteful part where she sits down in front of a room service cart to eat, and Lara pops out from underneath it and points his gun between her legs, making sure he gets a good look too-- she's wearing no underwear. She also gets punched in the face a few times, tied to a chair, and when all is said and done, she's rescued by Zagarino and his Russian friend, and the three walk off into the sunset together, none the worse for wear. One of the funnier things she did was make this pirate "Arrgh!" when she's first getting tied up.

This is pure bad Menahem Golan, reminiscent of the Cannon days, but not quite as good. I saw it as a solid bad movie night film. It's not just so bad it's good, but it's gratuitously bad it's good, and sometimes that gratuitousness (gratuity?) can be too much for some people, i.e. the film takes on too much of that lowest common denominator principle. I can see that, and Armstrong definitely pushed it, but in the end it worked for me.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0139029/

Lone Tiger (1999)

This was one of those sneaky ones that I had in my queue, not at the top but near it, and then, when all the ones above it were deemed unavailable, it was sent to me. Will it have been a nice surprise or worse than a Daffy Duck themed tie for Christmas. Also, Ty at Comeuppance Reviews took the plunge on this bad boy as well.

Lone Tiger is about a dude from Japan who comes to Las Vegas with a very furry tiger mask-- it looks like a furrier skinned it off a real tiger's face!-- and an eye for revenge. His dad used to wear the mask as a wrestler, and our man needs to know who murdered him. Also, he has his dad's score to settle with wrestler The Dark Tiger, played by Mattias Hues, the guy his dad was supposed to wrestle before he was killed. Anyway, when shady underworld dude Richard Lynch offers him some cash and a shot at joining Timothy Bottoms's wrestling league-- and as a result a shot at Dark Tiger-- he takes it, even though he and his trainer, Robert Z'Dar, are total douchebags. Oh yeah, and our hero befriends some street urchins too.



The only thing that made sense about this film was that it wasn't very good. First off, it has a running time of around 105 minutes, and we know if you're moving past the 88 minute mark, your film better be damn good, and this one wasn't even close. Second, was I supposed to take it seriously? I mean, between the mask, and the wrestling that was I guess guys fighting for real or something, and Timothy Bottoms's well-feathered hair, the whole thing seemed like a joke. The fights were extremely clunky too-- I wonder why, oh wait, I think I got it, the fights were clunky because the main hero was doing all his scenes with his vision obstructed by a ridiculous looking tiger mask! And the thing is, usually you can take something like this for the so bad it's good ride, and it would have been, except now we're brought back to that extended running time. By the time we hit the awesome stuff at the end with Robert Z'Dar coughing up his cherry Starburst (TM), any fun energy this film might have had had been exhausted.

One element of this film that looked intriguing going in was that we had three of the best DTV baddies, Richard Lynch, Robert Z'Dar, and Matthias Hues, all in one film. I had a feeling one of the three would end up being a good guy, and that was Hues, which was actually a really cool turn for him, because he works well as a good guy. I don't know that I'd like to see him as a good guy all the time, because he makes a better bad guy, but it's nice for a change. The other thing is, he had a really fun scene where he got to do some pro wrestling. This is where this film went wrong though, because they didn't give us more of that and less of our hero eating fried chicken or telling Richard Lynch he wouldn't kill for him.



Something tells me Robert Z'Dar was sold on this film when his agent told him he'd only have to wear sweatpants and act like a douche the whole time, only exerting himself for one scene at the end. Where do I sign up, right? Still, as long as that meaty face is featured prominently, I think we're all all right. I do think it wasn't very fair of the director to continue shooting while Z'Dar was coughing up his cherry Starburst at the end. Someone should've performed the Heimlich or at least kicked him over a dining room chair so he could perform it on himself.

We're much more used to the Timothy Bottoms that looks like our former President, G.W. Bush, so this extremely hair-feathered version is a bit of a trip. He and Richard Lynch-- whose hair is also fairly well-feathered, but we're used to that with him-- are like former adversaries or something, and they have a score to settle or something, I don't really know, by that point I was like 75 minutes in, and had really stopped trying. One could've double-crossed the other in an amateur bowling tournament for all I knew.



There was one plus, another McDonald's made an appearance. I'm wondering if I should start tagging them. If anything, it made my mind wander all the more as the film dragged on. I was like "man, that McDonald's sounds good right now, I bet I could run over there and back without missing anything..." It was cold out that day, though, and my tiger mask was at the cleaner's, and I couldn't risk the frostbite on my face.

You can get this from Netflix on DVD. How bad does that taste, huh? Almost none of the Bloodfist films are available, but hey, we got Lone Tiger. I don't know why I'm complaining, I was the moron who put it in his queue...

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0285680/

One Man Force (1989)

I saw Mr. Sutekh's review of this on his blog, Explosive Action, and I knew I needed to get me some. Then the light bulb went off in my head, and I realized I could post this film and showcase our man from downunder's site at the same time. Go check him out-- after you finish reading this post, of course. Cheers myte!

One Man Force is about this big bear of a man, Jake, played by John Matsuzak (Sloth from The Goonies). He doesn't do things by the book, and has a penchant for using large appliances to attack people (I was going to say "penchant for attacking people with large appliances", but the dangling participle made it sound like he attacks people who have large appliances...). This reckless style gets his partner dead, and in order to make amends and bring his partner's killers to justice, he goes out on his own. But what does the kidnapping of pop star Stacy Q have to do with his partner's killing and Latin drug cartels? Does it matter?



Nope, it certainly doesn't. In the very beginning, when Jake's partner expresses his misgivings about the raid they're about to make on a drug deal, I got nervous. I was wondering how I'm supposed to like this when the hero is such an enormous tool that he gets his friend killed. Then this hilarious music plays while the friend takes a few deadly slugs to the torso, then Jake proceeds to lift up a refrigerator and charge another shooter. From there I was hooked. It was like watching a great physical comedian with Matsuzak. How can you not laugh when Ronny Cox tells him he's suspended, and he freaks out, violently clears off Cox's desk, and yells "fuck you!" Somewhere around the 35 minute mark, my attention started to wane, but out of nowhere, Jake's in a car chase, and he sends the people chasing him into a Pepsi sign and an exploding boat, and the next day, in the crash aftermath, he's drinking a 2 liter bottle of Slice. I could go on, but I don't want to give too much away, like the brawl in the S&M bar, or the poor stunt double that was taken through the ringer as Jake hangs from the window of a speeding truck, trying to choke out the driver. There was so much to love.

Matsuzak passed away earlier in the same year this was released. That's too bad, because it looked like maybe he was making a shift from bit parts in various TV crime dramas and action shows, into the DTV world. Based on what we saw here, the potential was enormous. He was just this big force, yelling out these hilarious obscenities and throwing his weight around. I don't know if it was all intentionally funny, but it all worked. It's a shame that he's no longer with us, but it looks like we also missed out on a lot of great work that never was.



This film brought together three classic That Guys in Charles Napier, Ronny Cox, and Richard Lynch. One of these guys in a film would be fantastic, two, amazing, but all three? Oh snap! On top of that, you had Stacy Q-- who did "Two of Hearts" for of my readers born after 1980, or who aren't 1980s music aficionados-- and Sharon Farrell, who, among her many roles, was in one of my all time faves, Can't Buy Me Love-- I have to give a mention to fellow Mainer Patrick Dempsey whenever possible.

I have no clue why, but this stance of Matsuzak's below cracks me up. Am I crazy, or am I right? I mean, what is he doing there, stretching out his hamstrings? Getting ready to run? No, he's making small talk with the cop manning the evidence room. There was so much that Matsuzak did that was either intentionally or unintentionally funny, but for some reason this stood out as absolutely hilarious.



Finally, this movie showcased a lot of product placement. Matsuzak only wore Adidas, while his partner's son wore Quicksilver. Then there were the Pepsi, Slice, and 7-Up appearances. There was even a Discover card sighting. The one that stuck out the most was the Miller Lite though, because I'd forgotten the old "Tastes Great, Less Filling" days. Back then I was young, and didn't understand that Miller Lite was only cool for kids in college playing beer pong (I didn't even know what that was), or what a person throwing a barbecue serves to avoid giving out anything really good that might cost more. Only a tool actually orders Miller Lite at a bar, at least if it's not on a special or something. Now their ads tell us "Man up and drink Miller Lite". Is it possible for commercial products to jump the shark? They do know they're Miller Lite, right? While they're suggesting that certain members of the male population are tools, they have to know that their product is the number one contributor to male tooldom in America. Either man up and order some straight bourbon, bitch, or don't start calling us out for not being manly enough-- especially because we don't drink watered down beer.

That rant went on way too long. I think it's because I watch too much ESPN, and those dumb beer commercials are ubiquitous. Anyway, we got off track, which is too bad, because One Man Force is awesome, and if you haven't seen it, you need to make it happen. It is available on DVD, but it's out of print and can be expensive. VHS is the better route, and if you're a collector of of bad DTV action, this is a must. Fantastic. And take a look at Explosive Action while you're at it.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098026/

The Forbidden Dance (1990)

I was always under the impression that there were two Lambada films that came out at the same time, but I could never remember what the other one's name was. I knew one was Lambada: The Forbidden Dance, and one was something else... well, I finally figured it out, as I was watching this one, what the two were named-- one was Lambada, and one was this, the Menahem Golan produced The Forbidden Dance, and over time, I just fused the two titles in my mind, yet still remembering that there were two distinct films. I think the reason why is we never just said one thing or the other, it was always "Lambada: The Forbidden Dance". Anyway, what I'm trying to say is this week's box office bomb is only as half as good as it should've been, though I have a feeling this is the funnier of the two films.

I never do this, but the Netflix synopsis is better than anything I could ever do: "An Amazon Indian princess (Laura Elena Harring) travels to America when a major corporation's plans threaten to destroy her rainforest homeland. When the company refuses to arrange a meeting with her, she and her boyfriend decide to raise her environmental message by dancing the Lambada on television. Trouble is, the corporate bigwigs have a lot at stake... and they'll do anything to keep the couple off the air."



All right, maybe I could do a better synopsis. The Forbidden Dance is a story of worlds colliding as an Amazonian princess and her local witchdoctor head to the US to convince a corporation not to tear up their homeland. She's stonewalled, forced to work as a maid, then a dancer/almost hooker, and is saved by a lazy trust fund kid with a penchant for dancing and shopping at the Chessking. Together they dance the Lambada, get on a TV show, and tell the world about the damage destroying the rainforest is doing to the world.

They just don't make movies like this anymore... because the Chessking is out of business I guess. Really, an SNL sketch couldn't write some of the jokes that weren't intended to be jokes, especially the big finale with the tribe's king in full garb and the witchdoctor coming to see the princess dance, only to find the hero has a horribly sprained leg from jumping out of a building after rescuing Laura Herring from the clutches of the evil Richard Lynch, only to have the witchdoctor, by using a python, heal the sprained ankle just in time for the hero and heroine to dance-- I've seen a lot of comedies that aren't anywhere near that funny. Just amazing.



That's right, I said Richard Lynch. He's back and badder than ever. Burning down the rainforest-- have you no shame? Where's Chuck Norris when we need him? When he captures Laura Herring, he makes her dance the Lambada for him on some stage he has, and he comes up on stage with her, like he's going to dance too, and then the Chessking tool shows up to save her. If Richard Lynch had gone through with it, actually danced, I wouldn't have placed this in the box office bomb post, it would've been a best of all time post.

One of my friends said, rather smugly, "I'll let you watch that and I'll keep my hour and a half." And do what? When did we all suddenly become death row inmates, vigorously guarding every minute we don't spend sleeping or in traffic or waiting in line, to make sure we do the absolute best thing possible with it, only to find that best thing to be another baseball game on TV or back-to-back episodes of House on Fox. Is it really so bad to just say "I watched Lambada: The Forbidden Dance, and it was fucking hilarious!" People need to stop taking themselves so seriously.



I gotta get in a little anthropology here. First, Harring's character is named Nisa, though Nisa was the famous !Kung woman, and the !Kung are from Africa, and the Amazon is in South America. Second, there is some truth to people like Richard Lynch going in with guns and forcing natives off the land to raise beef. What they don't talk about is how they kill the natives to make sure they stay off it, it isn't just about the rainforest being depleted. Also, the witchdoctor has special powers that even anthropologists would say are ridiculous-- no one can defy the laws of physics and makes explosions occur with the wave of a feather, or loud growling happen out of nowhere. Furthermore, if this witchdoctor had all these powers, why didn't he used them on the men trying to take their land? And there must be a few of these guys out there that could work together against a common enemy. Oh wait... did I just ask why The Forbidden Dance wasn't more realistic? Yes, you guys are right, why do people who write blogs reviewing Direct to Video movies take themselves so seriously?

This movie is hilarious. You thought Steel or Cool As Ice was hilarious-- well you were right, they were too-- but this is just as funny. If you're having a shitty time of it, I can't think of a better way to relax and laugh at the world; and unlike Steel and Cool as Ice, you can get this one at Netflix.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099595/