The Devastator aka The Destroyers (1986)

It's been a while since we've done some Cirio H. Santiago, so we were long overdue, and this one was on Tubi and looked like a gem. In addition to us, Chris the Brain at Bulletproof, Ty and Brett at Comeuppance, Eoin at Action Elite, TarsTarkas.net, and When the Vietnam War Raged... in the Philippines have all covered this as well, plus it was included in Bulletproof's Cirio H. Santiago Countdown.

The Devastator has Rick Hill as a former special forces guy who's called to a small California town after a former Army buddy that lives there dies. Turns out there's a lot more afoot, as a baddie is growing weed there in the Green Triangle, and he runs the town with an iron fist, including the sheriff, who's complicit. Well Hill ain't complicit, so he rounds up a bunch of his old crew, and they go back to take on those dastardly weed growers. They won't know what hit them!

This is a ton of fun. Hill is exactly the hero you want him to be, the baddies are sufficiently bad, the old Army crew are sufficiently colorful, and the action does what it needs to do. We get plenty of stuntmen shimmying to death from machine gun fire, falling from high heights, or flying through the air after explosions go off behind them. On top of all that, we have a 79-minute run time. That's right, when you're 19 minutes in, you only have an hour left! They just don't make 'em like this anymore, but at one time they did, and we're fortunate that they're on free streamers like Tubi.

We're only at 11 films for Cirio H. Santiago here on the site, which isn't great compared to some of the other directors we've covered. I count 20 between 1981's Firecracker and 1994's Stranglehold that we could review that we haven't yet. That means we have a lot of work to do, but with how much fun his movies are, and the indelible impact they've left on the world of low-budget action cinema, that work will be well worth it. And of the ones we've covered, this is one of my favorites. Santiago doesn't play around, he gets in and gets out in 79 minutes, and doesn't waste any of that time, either giving us action scenes or plot exposition scenes that lead to action scenes soon after. Santiago is one of the best to ever do it for a reason, and this film is a great example of that.

If our Santiago tags are lacking, we're only at seven films now for Rick Hill, but when I look at his IMDb bio, I don't see many more that we can do for him, maybe another six? While he may not qualify for one of our high-tag clubs, he could get Hall of Fame consideration, because he's one of the great leads of low-budget action. I think this is right up there with Deathstalker for one of his best movies, Hill just carries it from start to finish, he's a leading man you have to root for, and it's so much fun to see him blowing up baddies. Whether it's Santiago, or another B-movie stalwart like Fred Olen Ray, Hill seems to understand what's asked of him in these films, and he delivers it. I'm going to do my best to try to get the rest of his DTV flicks up here, because the more Rick Hill the better.

In 1986, I don't know if we could've seen the current US, where many states, including California, have legalized recreational cannabis, but had we had any sense back then, we'd have seen how making it illegal leads to this underground economy where crime lords like the baddie in this film can have power and kill people. No one should be dying so people can smoke weed. And even with the legalization on the state level, it's still illegal federally, which affects where and how it can be grown and sold. Here in Philadelphia, for example, it's not legal in our state, but it is decriminalized in the city, so people can go to New Jersey and buy it there then bring it back. Why? All that tax revenue is leaving the state. But the question is, if it was legalized in this state, would we have nice rural family farms growing it, or would it be a baddie like in this film, only instead of an illegal cartel he'd have a massive corporation, a legalized form of cartel if you will (and if you won't, that's okay too). I guess what I'm asking is, in a world of legalized weed, is there still a place for someone like The Devastator to come in and have to sort our evil growers?

Finally, would you look at that beauty! A vintage Detroit Tigers cap! And in the image above that we have a rumpled San Francisco Giants one. In addition to those two, a baddie wears a New York Mets cap, and I swore another wore a Yankees one, but it was blink-and-you'll-miss-it, and I kept missing it. Baseball caps don't really look like that anymore, which I'm okay with, I prefer the modern '47 Brand Clean-Up style, and I have it in a variety of teams. When I started going to more games in 2018, my plan was to get a cap for every ballpark I visited, both Major and Minor leagues, but at $30 a pop, I realized that was too expensive, so now I do souvenir cup sodas, since I'll need a beverage anyway. I also collect them when I see other sports, so I have a bunch of them now. If you're curious, the Mets and Yankees do the best job with them, it's like they're competing with one another to see whose is better. The worst? The Philadelphia Phillies. Ever since they made it to the World Series in 2022--made it, not won it--they changed the style from the standard, shorter and wider version, to something that's taller and thinner. Why, I don't know, I guess they wanted to make it harder for me to stack them with all the others I have, because they made it to the World Series in 2022, not won it.

And with that, I'd say it's time to wrap this up. As of this writing you can get this on Tubi here in the States, among other streamers. If you're looking for some fun, low-budget action that gets you in and out in 80 minutes, this will do the trick. Also, if you haven't yet, check out the Bulletproof Cirio H. Santiago Countdown, where yours truly did a write-up on Dune Warriors! The link to the site is on the left sidebar.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089023

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Deathstalker (1983)

As you can imagine, this is a film that a review site like mine should have up, and now that it's on Instant, I have no excuses--not that I had any excuses before. It is something of a travesty that it's taken me this long to do it, but now that I am, it will be up on here for all of posterity. Also, our friends at The Video Vacuum, Bulletproof Action, and Trash Film Guru have hit this one too if you want to see what they thought about it.

Deathstalker features the all too sweet Rick Hill as our eponymous bad ass hero, who is tasked to take out some nasty sorcerer dude that has a magical chalice and amulet. The thing that can stop him? A kick ass sword that only a great hero and total dude like the Deathstalker can wield, so he takes it and enters the sorcerer's tournament to find the greatest warrior in the land. Is there any question who that is?

This film is 76 minutes of pure bad-assery. The moment Rick Hill pops on the screen until the end credits roll, it's a straight up awesomefest. As far as sword and sorcery films go, this is about as good as it gets. When I watch modern DTV attempts at this genre, and I'm very hard on them in my reviews, now you know why I'm so hard on them, because this is the standard that's been set. I think if you combine it with The Sword and the Sorcerer and The Beastmaster (another film I've been woefully deficient in not reviewing here yet), it makes for a great trilogy. Or you can just watch this three times in a row, it's that good.

And a major reason why it's so great and so iconic, is the hero, played by Rick Hill. He's the perfect charismatic lead, between the way he delivers his lines, the looks on his face, his way with the ladies, even the way he walks. Movies like this need actors like this, otherwise they fall flat. There were other things that made this great, like the writing, including that great scene where Deathstalker finds out his companion is working for the baddie, and he overhears the companion tell the baddie that he's going to take Deathstalker's sword away. When the companion meets Deathstalker in his room, Deathstalker stick the sword in the floor as if to say "it's right there, now all you have to do is pick it up," and then they fight. Totally bad ass. The thing is though, as great as that writing is, it falls flat if Hill doesn't sell it as well, and because he does, when we get to that scene, it's all the more awesome.

As I went through the rest of the cast, I saw Lana Clarkson listed as the woman warrior Deathstalker picks up on the way to the tournament. I didn't know this, but she was the woman Phil Spector murdered. What a crazy thing to read about. According to IMDb, she was barely 21 when this came out, which surprised me, because she seems much more mature. Her character, outside of Deathstalker, was the most interesting, and the lack of development for it was the only complaint I had with the short runtime--though Roger Corman made up for it by giving her the lead in Barbarian Queen.

This was the evil sorcerer, and I noticed he looked kind of like Quan Chi of Mortal Kombat fame. I know they found a lot of their inspiration for the characters from B-movies, so I wonder if this is where the idea of Quan Chi came from. If that's the case, then why wasn't there a Deathstalker character in the game? Maybe because it would've been too awesome. As a baddie went, Munkar, who was played by Bernard Erhard, was pretty sweet. I don't think it mattered though, he could've been running a nonprofit puppy rescue operation, and we still would've rooted for Rick Hill as the Deathstalker to kill him.

Finally, I want to touch on the degree to which this film features scenes of men forcing themselves on women. There are quite a few, which could be triggering to a survivor of sexual assault. It was done in the film to play up on the exploitation/women in prison and barbaric world setting aspects, and it also worked in making our hero stand apart, because he never needed to force himself on any woman, they came to him willingly. It was almost as if within that exploitation element there was the message that a real man like the Deathstalker doesn't need to force himself on a woman. Regardless, I thought I'd mention it because it could be problematic.

This is the sword and sorcery movie you came for. Rick Hill simply kills it, and everything else is great from there. And at 76 minutes, how can you beat that? Whenever I see another movie from the sword and sorcery genre listed at a 100-minute runtime, I'm suspicious, and Deathstalker is why. If Deathstalker can do it in 76, you should be able to do it in no more than 80. And while this is on Instant, I may just boycott all 100-minute sword and sorcery flicks and watch this instead.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087127/

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Storm Trooper (1998)

I first got wind of this when I saw it reviewed over at Mr. Gable's Reality, which is a really great site if you haven't checked it out. Anyway, beyond the cast, that included Zach Galligan (the guy from Gremlins, not The Hangover), the bad guy from Revenge of the Ninja, Ross Hagen, Carol Alt, and Corey Feldman, it had one of the coolest dudes ever, Rick Hill, also known as The Deathstalker. When I found out Netflix had it, I knew I had to make it happen.

Storm Trooper isn't about dudes in white suits with cool white ski helmets who fight the rebels in Star Wars, it's about cyborg soldiers-- or cops, we're not, and I don't the film makers are sure which-- one of whom escapes, and the military wants him back. He avoids death at the hands of Kool Moe Dee and Ross Hagen, only to wind up in the home of the unstable Carol Alt, who has just murdered her husband in cold blood and is now taking a shower with his dead body in the tub with her. Anyway, Zach Galligan, charged by the bad guy from Revenge of the Ninja with bringing in the cyborg, realizes after Hagen and Cool Moe Dee's failures, that he needs to call in the big guns, i.e. Rick Hill. Now it's on.



Let me use an analogy to explain how this movie works. Just bear with me, it'll be quick. Think of it as a party one your buddies/girlfriends drags you to, that you decide "hey, I ain't got anything else goin' on on a Saturday, why not?", only you get there, and you're thinking maybe you should've stayed in an caught up on your Dickens, because this thing ain't workin'. The chicks/dudes are either not that hot, or have significant others they can't stop talking about, the music sucks, and the company is almost worse. You go to the fridge, because you need a beer quick and fast, and it's as you start getting that bad boy in your system, that someone tells you "hey man, did you know Rick Hill is supposed to be coming?" Rick Hill? Oh man, that guy is awesome. Now this will be a party. And sure enough, he shows up, and kills it. We're talking things like leading the group in singing some Dokken, bowling with an empty half-gallon Bacardi bottle into the party-holder's cheap golfing trophies, prank calls, body shots with the previously unappealing members of the opposite sex-- whatever else you can think of. Then, like any other cool dude, he leaves early, because one should never be the first to get there or the last to leave, and that's it. But you've had a great night, with tons of stories, and you're glad you didn't stay in and catch up on your Dickens.

And that's it in a nutshell (or a rather large, paragraph-long analogy). The moment I see Rick Hill's name in the opening credits, I'm waiting, watching the front door, for him to get there. And when he does, he more than doesn't disappoint, he's pure gold. No one in this film was able to handle this awful DTV movie material like he was. Okay, Ross Hagen was good too, but he's in the movie for like five minutes, so that doesn't count. I realized that, like that life of the party guy I described, I had taken Rick Hill and what he does for granted all this time. Maybe because it's been too long since I've seen Deathstalker-- something I plan to remedy soon!-- but I found in Storm Trooper, as everyone else seemed so out of place, reciting the bad dialog filled with non sequiturs without a clue as to how bad it sounded, here's Rick Hill, completely comfortable and affable, reminding me why I go for movies like this. Here's to you Rick Hill, you're one of the great ones.



That's Corey Feldman with an eye patch. I wish I could remember off hand the noise he made after Rick Hill kicked him in the stomach, it was like an air compressor or something, but even funnier. Even though his name is all over the cover, he's not in this much, a bit of a Feldman bait-and-switch. I will say, after Rick Hill and Ross Hagen, he was the next most comfortable in working with what this movie was giving, so that was a good thing. I think, even though he's barely in this, seeing him in it with an eye patch like this has to be worth it for Feldman fans. Maybe for Corey Haim fans too.

This is only our second Ross Hagen film, the other being Alienator, and that one had much more Hagen than this one did, because he's only in this one for like five minutes. Have you seen his imdb picture? He looks like Charlton Heston. You probably know him more for his MST3K movies, like Sidehackers and The Hellcats. He's actually still making movies and acting, his most recent work lending his voice for the too sweet video game Red Dead Redemption, as London Ricketts. Another of his more recent ones was in 1999, he played Det. Crank Gabovsky in a Skin-a-max flick directed by this film's director, Jim Wynorski, who's kind of in that Fred Olen Ray category of director who does everything from Skin-a-max to low-budget action. (In fact, Olen Ray did Alienator.) Anyway, I saw that on his imdb filmography, with that character name, Crank Gabovsky, and new I had to mention it.



Your guess is as good as mine as far as Carol Alt went in this. The character made no sense, and she made it make even less sense the way she played it, maybe because as a not so experienced actress, she didn't know what to do with what they gave her. Anyway, it was fitting then, the way they decided to end it, because it's almost as if they gave up too, and just threw the baby out with the bathwater. In a way, it worked, because, if you go with the party analogy, the life of it, Rick Hill, had already exited, so why not have a reminder that it's probably time for you to call it a night too, before things get any weirder-- that chick/dude you've latched onto, don't ignore the red flags, he/she is that unstable! Cut your losses and be happy with the Rick Hill.

And that's the crux of it. Rick Hill or bust, but it's definitely not bust with Rick Hill this time around. Considering you can get this on Netflix, it's not a bad deal. All the other names range from all right to not that great, but only one name matters, and he delivers. Also, if you haven't already, go check out Mr. Gable's Reality.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0145495/

Cyborg 2 (1993)

I first saw this on Spike really late at night. The crazy thing about it is that it flew completely under my radar. It came out in 1993, but I had no idea it existed until like 2006. And not only that, it has Oscar winners Jack Palance and Angelina Jolie in it. I figured with the Academy Awards last Sunday, this would be an apt post.

Cyborg 2 takes place some time in the future after the first one. Things are somewhat better, and two companies, Pinwheel and Kobayashi are vying for corporate supremacy in the field of cyborg technology. Pinwheel has created a cyborg that doubles as a bomb, and they've made Angelina Jolie into one. Elias Koteas is her fight trainer, and Jack Palance, playing a disembodied voice, convinces the two of them to escape Pinwheel. Pinwheel sends the always gross Billy Drago after them, but Pinwheel's CEO has other plans, and he sends a cyborg of his own to get things done. Palance manages to get the two on a ship to Mombasa, the free-zone for cyborgs.



This wouldn't have been a bad film, except for Billy Drago. Not only was he in it, which was bad enough, but they made his face all bad after he gets glass in it. Eww. He has a fight scene with Koteas at the end, but with a gross face, I didn't enjoy it. Why do people do things like this? Whose idea was it to A: have Billy Drago, and B: make him grosser than he already is? He was all preening in the mirror and pulling his face apart like he's trying to make himself look nice for William Holden in Sunset Boulevard, and it made me cringe the whole time.

I'm not saying it totally ruined the film. The future was pretty cool. I'm not sure what happened to the great Atlanta from the first one, but this was a pretty bleak time. Koteas, Jolie, and Palance were all good. What wasn't Billy Drago all gross was pretty awesome actually. But like Heath Ledger's Joker in The Dark Knight, the specter of Drago lurking made even the scenes he wasn't in intense.



Obviously The DTVC doesn't come across Oscar winners often, so when we get one, it's kinda a big deal. This time we got two. Jack Palance technically did win in 1991 for City Slickers despite the fact that Gary Busey should've won for Point Break; and then there's Angelina Jolie. I realized when looking her up on imdb that other than this and Hackers, I haven't seen any of her films. I think I saw five minutes of a Tomb Raider movie on TNT, and who knows why that was. Anyway, even with Elias Koteas and Jack Palance, Jolie is head-and-shoulders the better actor/actress. I didn't realize she's only 33 years old. That's four more than me, but also 12 less than Brad Pitt. I don't know why, but I always thought she was older and closer in age to him.

Speaking of Brad Pitt, Elias Koteas was in the Oscar nominated The [notso] Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Personally, I liked his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Crash better than either this movie or the one that garnered all the award nominations. And let's be clear, the Crash I'm talking about is the good one with James Spader, not the sack-of-asscrack that won best picture when Brokeback Mountain was ten times better. Also, Koteas is the second TMNT alum featured on the DTVC, Corey Feldman being the first.



I wasn't sure what to do about tagging Jean-Claude Van Damme. He's in it in the form of clips from the previous movie. I guess I'll tag him, and then whoever reads it can see that he's really not in it, only sorta kinda. Word on the street is that he and Dolph are teaming up again for another Universal Soldier. I hope it's DTV, though if it is in the theater, I'll make an exception and review it here.

If you think you can handle the Drago grossness factor, I say give this a shot. It may just be something wrong with me, too. Most people probably don't find Drago that gross, even when his face is all cut up and falling apart. This isn't as good as the first Cyborg, but how many Godfather II's are there out there anyway? It's good for what it is.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106639/

Inferno aka Operation Cobra (1997)

Back in June I did a post for American Kickboxer 2, which starred an amazing actor named Evan Lurie. My goal was to get more of his films on the site, but things happen, and it's taken me over six months to get another done. This one stars DTVC Hall of Famer Don "The Dragon" Wilson as well, which made it a more intriguing pick.

Operation Cobra has Donny as a cop whose partner, played by Rick Hill, is killed in an explosion set by Lurie, a bad guy drug dealer. Donny chases him to India, where he's working on some computer program. Turns out there's some other bad guy named Grayson, and Donny can't figure out how he and Lurie are linked. Then it turns out his partner didn't die after all, but is actually Lurie's boss, or something or other. Either way, D "The D" Dubs is kicking ass and taking names.



Loved this. 82 minutes of pure action movie fun. I was over two-thirds of the way through it before I checked to see how much was left, which is a good sign. Usually I'm twelve minutes in when I do that! (It's called ADD!). The action was great, Wilson, Hill, and Lurie were all awesome, and the martial arts scenes were very solid. Sure, it was silly as all hell, but it was never pretentious, never tried to take itself too seriously, and it knew its audience and what its audience wanted. Can you ask for anything more?

A definite hit for Wilson. He's better when he doesn't have to act too much and can let his martial arts skills do the talking. They spoke loud and clear here. He kept fighting these Indian ninjas or whatever, and they'd pop up all over the place. One time they saved him from having to dance, which we saw him do in Redemption. Two great fight scenes with Lurie, but probably would've liked to see more. Either way, a great Wilson flick.



I can't believe it's taken me so long to get more Lurie up here. He is just so amazing. His smooth voice juxtaposed with his vicious martial arts skills are a perfect combination. He's so cool I don't even mind that he has a ponytail, which is a huge thing for me. He isn't killed by Wilson, but instead is bitten by a snake. While I was getting the image of that, the BSPlayer I use for some reason was playing the film with the director's commentary audio track on. Anyway, the director was talking about how the snake actually bit Lurie in that scene, and after he mentioned it, I could see it. Watch for that when you get that far, it's pretty sweet.

Rick Hill is the bad guy here. He's been in two other films I've reviewed: Class of 1999 II: The Substitute and Dune Warriors. He's one of those guys that's been in quite a bit, and he tends to focus more on post-apocalyptic sci-fi actioners and Conan the Barbarian rip-offs. I don't blame him, those are fun. Unfortunately not many of his movies are on DVD, making him slightly more inaccessible than some actors that don't do as many good movies. I'm going to see how I can mitigate that, because I grew up with a lot of his pictures, and they're a big part of why I'm doing this.



There's one scene I have to mention that was hilarious. Don, lying in his bed, has a snake crawl under the covers with him. It's so hilarious. I don't want to give too much away, but it's the kind of thing someone should post on YouTube. From what I can tell, The Dragon does more of these silly scenes than anyone else in the DTVC Hall of Fame. Of course Dolph has his share too.

You gotta get this. It's on Netflix, so it's an easy grab if you have that. This is what bad action's all about. Donny doesn't disappoint, and the star power of Lurie and Rick Hill is well exploited. If fun is what you're after, there's no shortage of it here.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119367/

Dune Warriors (1990)

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

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



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

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



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

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



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

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

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

Class of 1999 II: The Substitute (1994)

I caught this movie at 3am on a Monday morning a couple years ago after finishing a 25-page paper for a grad school class on China challenging the global economy. I needed a relief, and this movie was okay for it.

Now people often ask why Sasha Mitchell isn't in the DTVC Hall of Fame. It's a close call, I agree, but he needs more of a body of work. His decision to do guest spots on ER instead of making another DTV film has hurt him on a lot of ballots. We know how much work it takes to do those movies, so it's not like he can't do both.

What makes Mitchell great, of course, is his role as Cody on the TGIF hit Step By Step. In my China class, I mentioned watching this film after doing my paper, and the first remark a classmate made was "Cody from Step by Step?" It's amazing how one finds a fellow DTVer almost anywhere, but I digress.

Class of 1999 II: The Substitute takes place somewhere in the near future after the first movie. Don't worry if you didn't see the first one, because there's plenty flashbackage to get you up to speed. Mitchell is the last of the cyber teachers from the first movie, and he's signed on as a sub at a school. He starts immediately killing the bad students. The movie also has Rick Hill, who in my mind is a top notch That Guy, playing a detective tracking Mitchell.

I guess the one thing I dug about this movie was that it took place in the future, which was the past by the time I watched it. I love the idea that in 1994 kids were so bad that a script writer felt in five years drastic measures would be needed. Not only that, but I loved even more that in five years there'd be some kind of technology that would allow someone to make robot teachers like this. This is what I watch DTV for, and this movie delivered.

I have some big qualms, though. First, there's a plot twist, that I won't give away, but one that requires an enormous leap of faith, even for a bad action movie. Second, I just can't get behind Sasha Mitchell as an unfeeling robot killer. He could be a bad guy in the right film, just not this one. In thinking of Boa vs. Python, I'm left wondering why Mitchell didn't hop on that project. Maybe he just doesn't have a great agent. If it's the guy that suggested Class of 1999 II, Mitchell should find a new one.

Overall, I'd avoid this in most cases. At 3am, if you're wide awake after writing a 25-page paper, and nothing else is on, go for it. If you see it at the video store, pass. If you want to see some Cody from Step by Step, look to Kickboxers II, III, and IV, which are more fun and deliver more dollar value.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109442/

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