Only the Strong (1993)

This is an oldie but goodie, though calling it an oldie doesn't sound right. 19 years ago? This thing is older than most kids on Tumblr! How did the 90s become so long ago so quickly? But I think movies like this only get better with age, and with Watch Instantly getting ready to dump it, I figured I'd make a trip down memory lane before I missed my chance.

Only the Strong has Mark Dacascos as a Green Beret working down in Brazil training the locals, where he learns the Brazilian fighting style of Capoeira. After his honorable discharge, he returns to his old haunts in the Miami projects, where he finds his high school in disarray, the teachers disillusioned, and the inmate running the asylum. After he takes down the Rasta guy from Michael Jackson's "Black or White" video though, and the kids are into it, he and his old teacher buddy, Geoffrey Lewis, decide to try this Capoeira thing on the 12 worst kids in the school, to see if they can be rehabilitated. But when one of the kids' drug lord cousin threatens Dacascos and the kids, it's up to him and them to fight back. Will they prevail?



This one has definitely gotten better with age. All of those nostalgic notes add to the overall vibe, from the clothes, to the hairstyles, to the music. It all takes you back to 1993. Also, the sappier, cheesefestier moments seem much more fun than they would've been to a 14-year-old me watching this when it was new back then. Dacascos turns in a solid performance, and his martial arts are on-point as usual; plus Geoffrey Lewis and Stacey Travis (who plays Dacascos's love interest) were solid in support. Add in the goofy montages, some decent fights, and that classic "Bah-nah-nah-weh" soundtrack, and you've got yourself a good time.

After seeing this now, and knowing that Dacascos didn't become the huge star that we thought he'd be from this breakout role, it's interesting to see why it didn't work out for him. I think to start, this didn't do as well in the theater, though for 1993, $3 million-plus is pretty good; then you throw in the dud that was Double Dragon, which set him back a bit. In 1998, I think we thought he had it again when he starred in the Crow syndicated TV series, but, unfortunately that only lasted two seasons. So for the most part he's ended up here in DTV work, which has been our gain. You can see in Only the Strong how much talent he has, and it would be nice if now, 19 years later, he'd get more starring roles, especially in DTV stuff, what with the DTV market having a little more credibility now.



Yes, we're spotlighting Geoffrey Lewis, but we're also spotlighting that too sweet vintage Izod/Lacoste polo he's rocking. If you look Lewis up on imdb, he has over 200 acting credits. The guy gets after it, but it seems like it's in Sheldon Lettich's films that he gets the bigger supporting parts, which is good, because it showcases his versatility, like here, where he plays a teacher. Here's to you Geoffrey Lewis, you're one of the good ones; and here's to that vintage polo too. I actually found one of those at a Goodwill in Portland, ME for $3. I think you can get like $50 or $60 for it on eBay.

Speaking of Sheldon Lettich, a couple months ago I posted an interview Marcos Freitas did with him on our DTVC Tumblr page. It's really cool and worth checking out. He doesn't talk about this film much, but does get into more of his collaborations with Jean-Claude Van Damme, plus some backstory tidbits, like his dealings with Frank Dux, who did the fight choreography and had a small cameo in Only the Strong. I had heard some of the stuff before, but it's always cooler to get it from the director's mouth.



There were a lot of cool vintage moments in this. I mentioned the polo. We also had a sweet Poison logo on one of the kids' shirts. I remember when I was a little younger than I was when this came out, I had a bunch of hair metal T's, including a couple Poisons, and I'd wear them to Sunday school. The kids who had to dress up were jealous of me. We also had this guy in the film, the Rasta from the end of the "Black or White" video. His name is Jeffrey Anderson-Gunter, and it looks like he still works somewhat, having imdb credits up until 2007. It seemed like this guy was everywhere in the early 90s, so it's cool to see he's still doing his thing.

If you haven't seen this in a while, I'd give it a look. I don't know if in 1993 I'd be giving it the solid recommendation I am now, but it's 2012, and 1993 feels a lot more fun twenty years later. Think of it as a form of cinematic comfort food. You can't go wrong with the 90s.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107750/

Legionnaire (1998)

I actually thought I had already posted this film, but when I went through my posts, I found that I hadn't. That's a good thing, because I'm starting to run out of Van Damme films, and he doesn't spit them out as frequently anymore as Seagal and Dolph do. We're all eagerly awaiting JCVD to be released on DVD here in the States, and of course there's that Universal Soldiers thing he's doing with Dolph...

Legionnaire has Van Damme as a boxer in 1920s France who is paid to throw a fight, but doesn't, and ends up killing some bad guys in self defense. As a last resort, he runs to the French Foreign Legion to escape prosecution. His prize: he's sent to fight in Algeria. While he's there, he has to deal with the desert, the Berbers, and even bad guys from the crime boss he screwed over by not throwing the fight. Anyway, it all ends in a big blow out at a French fort that's under siege by the Berbers.



What the hell was this? Jean-Claude of Arabia? Really? He had like two decent fight scenes, and that was it. This was a bad war movie, but unlike say Sahara, which had Bogart, this had Van Damme, so there were no redeeming qualities. Had the people making it had half a brain, they would've rewrote the entire script so Van damme single-handedly took out the Berbers Die Hard-style. Maybe they overrun the fort, and he's like in the basement looking for something, and he avoids being taken in the initial sweep. Then he slowly takes them out one by one...

This is the unfortunate result when a great action actor tries to do something "serious". Why not just make another movie where you beat the crap out of Bolo Yeung? That's what we want to see. Why couldn't he have been the Berber leader? Van Damme's old nemesis leading Algerian tribesman against the oppressive French colonial force. It would've been great. Think of the conflict generated in the viewer's mind: root for Van Damme, and you're rooting for French colonial power; but root for the underdog Algerians, and you're rooting for the evil Bolo Yeung. That sounds like my kind of movie.



If you're wondering, there is the gratuitous Van Damme buttcheeks scene. Unlike many of his others, though, here he shares the buttcheek spotlight with a whole bunch of other buttcheeks. Here's the question for my female readers: is this enough for you? What I mean is, considering all the scantily to not-at-all clad women in action movies for us guys to look at, is the perennial Van Damme buttcheek shot enough? What about the Dolph pecs and abs shot? Or the Seagal in a baggy sweatshirt shot? Are you forced to turn to the romantic comedy for your eye candy? I can't say I blame you if you do. Matthew McConaughey is probably much better than Van Damme's buttcheeks.

I looked up the French Foreign Legion on Wikipedia just for my own personal edification. It is still an active force, and they currently have troops in places like Djibouti and Afghanistan. They could make a Legionnaire 2 where the grandson of the guy Van Damme played goes to Afghanistan or Djibouti and fights Bolo Yeung in order to right the wrongs of the previous film. It could be the Die Hard-esque film it always should've been. Who would play Sarkozy? Gary Busey, of course.



After this there are two more Van Damme films other than JCVD that qualify for inclusion on the DTVC: No Retreat, No Surrender, and Black Eagle. The kicker with both of these is Netflix doesn't have them, so I'd have to buy them on Amazon. The former isn't even on DVD. Considering JCVD is coming out on April, 28th, I probably won't get to the other two before then.

If you're a huge Van Damme fan, I imagine you've already seen this, so there's no need in me advising you on it. If you're a huge action fan, though, and you haven't seen this, I'd say skip it. It's just not what you need to be doing with your time. It's not an action film as much as it's a bad war movie. Go see The Shepherd: Border Patrol instead.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0126388/

The Hard Corps (2006)

I saw this in the video store and rented it solely for the Van Damme factor. Well, that and Vivica A. Fox was in it, and I was kind of surprised to see she'd fallen on such bad times. I mean, they usually just get random hot chicks with no acting portfolio to play Van Damme's love interest, how did they pull off Vivica A. Fox, right?

The Hard Corps is about some former boxer who's trying to fix his community with expensive housing developments. He's gotten on a gangstah rap record mogul's bad side, and when the dude gets out of jail, he puts a hit on the boxer. Vivica A. Fox is the boxer's sister, and she figures their regular security detail ain't enough. They call in some guy who's friends with Van Damme. Van Damme is an Iraq War vet with some post-traumatic stress issues. All that really means is he has flash backs whenever it's convenient to the plot. Anyway, Van Damme protects the boxer, kills the rap mogul, and makes out with Vivica A. Fox. Good Deal.



This movie is really rough. There isn't anything memorable about it. I think there may be some kind of message about hip hop being bad for the black community, or about the way some African Americans give back when they become successful, while others are a cancer. If there was, the film didn't do a great job conveying it, and it smacked to me as more of a white Republican treatise on good versus bad "Negroes" in American society. It was hard to watch either way.

The Van Damm-age is pretty lame too. He flexes his martial arts here and there, but it's weak. He has it out with the boxer, and I was expecting a solid fight, a la Kiss of the Dragon with Jet Li, but instead I got a bad imitation of the Piper fight scene in They Live with his buddy when he's trying to get him to put on the glasses-- only the Van Damm one was without the humor. This isn't as bad as or In Hell or Second in Command, but it's not anywhere near the kind of fun bad action Derailed or The Order was. I hope Van Damme picks it up and does a few solid Die Hard rip-offs instead of these boring, low-on-action, movies-with-a-bad-message. They just don't work, and I think they alienate his target audience: us bad movie honks.



Vivica A. Fox is hot in this, naturally. She's over forty, and not much younger than Van Damme, which is even more impressive. As an actress, she does a poor job breathing life into this atrocious script, but she really nails it in pretending to be attracted to Van Damme. Either that, or she actually digs him, which I think is a stretch. The make out scene at the very end was tough to watch. You could tell Van Damme was really looking forward to it. There's a sense whenever he hooks up with hot chicks like that in his movies that he's giving us this "What do you think of that guys? Don't you wish you were me? I'm awesome." He needs to realize that none of us wish we were ridiculous.

There was a guy who played Van Damme's old buddy that was played by a poor man's Daniel Bernhardt. I thought this was the best. I did the math out: if Van Damme is now the poor man's Van Damme, that makes Daniel Bernhardt the guy who collects bottles from trash cans man's Van Damme. Now, with the poor man's Bernhardt, we have the Depression era hobo spitting the grounds out of his coffee and hopping trains man's Van Damme. And he's in the same movie as Van Damme, which had to be interesting for him. The obvious question is why not get Bernhardt himself and skip a step. I think it has to do with the Timecop phenomenon. If an actor and the poor man's version of him inhabit the same space, it could be bad.



This movie's boring as all get-out. It's not worth renting or buying or spending any money on whatsoever. Maybe if it's on USA or something, watch it passively while doing something else, but even then I'd have to say it's a no go.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0462329/

Perfect Target (1997)

It must be difficult on some levels being Daniel Bernhardt. He's billed as the poor man's Jean-Claude Van Damme, but with Van Damme's stock having fallen so much, Van Damme's essentially become the poor man's Van Damme, and Bernhardt's left out in the cold. He needs a career make-over, and I think I'm the guy to do it. Okay, maybe not, but it'd be cool.

Perfect Target has Mr. Bernhardt buttressed by two screen greats, Robert Englund and Brian Thompson, in a South American action thriller in a fictitious South American country. You'd think maybe a Nostromo rip-off, but these film makers definitely don't have the wherewithal to read Conrad. Instead Thompson and Englund are baddies (surprise surprise) and they set up Bernhardt and another dude (who you may have seen on TV if you watch CBS crime dramas) for the assassination of the country's president. It turns out the pres's wife was in cahoots with Thompson and Englund to get her in power, and Bernhardt has to flee with the other guy into the jungle, where it just so happens the other guy has a hot sister that's leading a rebellion. The rebels suck, so Bernhardt trains them into well-oiled killing machines, then he invades the presidential compound to reclaim what was rightfully his. I don't know what that was, though.



Wow. That's all I can say. It doesn't get much sillier than this movie. And Bernhardt leads the silly parade. He's the grand marshal. Perfect Target was one of Bernie's first films, and he still had some work to do to refine his craft. Not that he doesn't still have some work to do, it's just that then he really had some work to do, and his on-the-job education was plenty entertaining for us. This was no Bloodsport 4.

Brian Thompson is Brian Thompson. I was surprised it took as long as it did (like 15 minutes in) before he showed himself to be a bad guy. His imdb mini-bio lists him as being a versatile actor. Yes, he's versatile at being Brian Thompson. He can be Brian Thompson as Shao Khan, or Brian Thompson as the guest star on this week's JAG, but he's always Brian Thompson. I, for one, am cool with that. I've rocked with a bunch of really bad films in my time on this planet, this one included, and I can say it's a joy to know that whenever I see that classic Brian Thompson face, I know that's one element of the movie that I don't have to worry about being bad. Another note on the face: if it wasn't for Robert Z'Dar's existence, Brian Thompson would have the most ridiculous visage in Hollywood. As it stands, though, his face is just kinda funny, because Z'Dar's is ridiculous.



Robert Englund takes a turn here as someone other than a horror movie villain. For me, my favorite film he did was Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, and that's only because of that too sweet Dokken song on the soundtrack, "Dream Warriors". Is that not the best song ever? I loved it in the video when the lead guitarist broke out of chains in Freddy's dungeon just in time for his guitar solo. Why don't they make videos like that anymore? The 80s were so cool.

As far as the rest of the film goes, there's not much there. The action sucks sorta kinda. At the very beginning Bernhardt throws down in a cockfighting ring, and that's all right. That leads the viewer to think this might not be boring and plodding, but it so is. What they should've done was just send Bernhardt around to various cockfighting venues and have him get into brawls with Thompson and Englund looking on in derision. I'd still go with Perfect Target as the title. I'd also use 'Dream Warriors' as the movie's theme song. Maybe it could even end at a cockfight that Dokken was performing at. God that would rule.



One classic bad action cliche that this bad boy upheld was the hot chick who looks hot even while roughing it in the jungle. Bernie's love interest did an excellent job of not only leading an armed insurgency, but also keeping her hair very bouncy and her complexion soft. Unlike many of these films where the hotness of the actress is just window dressing, here it has a utilitarian function. If she hadn't been as hot, Bernhardt wouldn't have stayed around to train her rebels. He wanted to flee to the next country and start over, but the prospect of sleeping with the rebel leader kept him on board. As opposed to the rest of the film, I actually bought that part. Of course it was based on the ludicrous premise that a Hollywood caliber make-up artist lived in the jungle with her and had the resources there to make her look like she hadn't been sleeping outside in a tropical rain forest for however many years. Six of one, half a dozen of another I guess.

This is a cute film, and if you and your buddies really want a bad one to trash on movie night, you may want to toss it in if your video store is offering a rent one get one free deal. It's got plenty of material to work with. Overall I'd say this is meant strictly for pain junkies like myself who like their movies really bad, and don't care who knows it-- and it was even pretty bad for me.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119883/

Last Warrior aka Last Patrol (2000)

About two years ago my friends and I held a Dolph Fest in honor of DTVC Hall of Famer Dolph Lundgren. He's essentially the Babe Ruth of bad movies for us, and we needed a weekend film festival to celebrate his work. Ten movies over Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. This film was one I bought specifically for the occasion, because it was one none of us had seen.

Last Warrior is sorta kinda a post-apocalyptic thing with Dolph as a military dude ready to lead us to the promise land. In the near future, an earthquake measuring 9.5 on the Richter scale splits LA off from the mainland US. The survivors are trying to gather and make an attempt to get back to the mainland... I think. We find this out from a constant Dolph voice-over that sounds like bad Film Noir. There's a prison run by a dude and his geologist friend, and the inmates worship him to the point of drinking urine. Dolph and he are on a collision course to wackiness. There's a group of kids Dolph needs to help out too, as if he didn't have enough to deal with. Finally, in case you're not sufficiently bored and confused, a voodoo Christian woman does a chant and makes it rain. Not like a rich Hip Hop star dumping money on strippers, but actual rain.



This film was the low point of the Dolph Fest. Two friends started playing Ghost Recon while we watched, and one of them cranked up the sound on his computer, which was really annoying. Part of the reason for the lack of interest was probably my friends having ADD, and this was the fourth film that day, which may have danced beyond their attention span threshold. I know it was a tad much for me too. But on the other hand, this film was so slow and plodding that I can't blame any of us for calling it a day. There were huge pockets of exposition buffered by small pieces of action. It sucked.

The Dolphage wasn't too bad. No gun play, but a fair amount of martial arts. He hits a dude in the head with a brick a la Friday or Home Alone 2. In the first Dolph Fest, we used clips of films we weren't showing as bumpers between the other movies, scenes like Dolph smashing Heyerdahl into the toilet in Silent Trigger. I think when we do our second fest later this month, we'll probably use the brick scene as a bumper. We definitely won't be showing the whole thing.



Another scene could be the rain one. Out of nowhere, a voodoo Christian women does a chant or something, and it starts pouring. It was so absurd, it pulled my friends away from Ghost Recon. I just couldn't figure out why the scene was even in the movie. Nothing led up to it, nothing suggested that people with mystical powers existed; it was so out of left field, like Manny Ramirez cutting off Johnny Damon's throw to the shortstop.

I'm not sure I got why LA was incommunicado with the mainland. I would hope if LA was made an island after a major earthquake, the coast guard at the very least would be able to sneak over and make contact. What about Hawai'i? The film was made in Israel, so maybe the Israelis don't know of the existence of Hawai'i. It was one of many issues that weren't thought out well and very poorly explained. I usually like when bad action films have plots with huge holes and major continuity issues, but in this case, they spent so much time explaining things, that I just got more frustrated and angry. There were others too: why was there a Latin dude running a prison and having the inmates drink urine? What about the kids? Where'd they come from? I guess it really doesn't matter.



During the Dolph Fest we noticed our favorite Swedish Beefcake has a habit of getting shot in the left arm. This is especially true of his DTV films. For the most part these wounds are incorporated into the film in a way that at least fits the plot. Usually after being shot he has a bandage on it or some kind of tourniquet, but the wound itself seems superfluous and does little to hinder his heroics. Try Detention, for the quintessential instance of this phenomenon. What makes Last Warrior great is that the left arm shot is completely perfunctory. It's comes out of no where, and seems like an afterthought. If I didn't know better, I'd say the left arm shot might actually be a running joke for Dolph, and he felt he needed to throw it in this film too.

This movie is boring and hard to handle. You may want to rent it, just to see what it's about, and I'm here to warn you to tread very carefully. If you're new to bad movies, try Showdown in Little Tokyo, Bridge of Dragons, or The Punisher first. I could probably give you another five or six Dolph films to watch before that too.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0214871/

The Order (2001)

First off, don't confuse this movie with the mainstream release also called The Order (2003), which has fellow DTVC Hall of Famer Peter Weller as a Warrior Pope (or, at least a guy who strives to be one). This one's better than the 2003 one, because it has way more Van Damme-age than the other has P Dubs.

My buddy and I originally found this one morning on USA. It was a very good thing. Van Damme plays a thief who steals from rich bad guys (just so we can like him as a hero more--do we need that? I mean he's Van Damme: if we didn't like him, we wouldn't watch the movie anyway). His dad goes missing in Israel, and he goes to look for him. He uncovers a secret religious order that's like a mixture of all the Abrahamic religions, and one of their guys goes renegade (not like Lorenzo Lamas, but like the bad Watcher Horton in Highlander: The Series). Van Damme is arrested and is sent to be deported, when he convinces the hot police woman sent to escort him to the airport to let him stay. Sound familiar? It was a plot device used in the Joe Don Baker classic Final Justice (which you may remember MST3K did simply to kill Joe Don after they heard he was not happy with his treatment when they did Mitchell).

Best part of the movie? Van Damme dons a disguise as a Hasidic Jew. He runs around with the curly sideburns. I'm not saying that's funny in general, just funny when Van Damme looks like that. It's really the only thing that makes this worth seeing at all. That and Chuck Heston, of course. I don't know if he's got really bad dementia, or his career has fallen off with his NRA activism in a slightly more left-leaning Hollywood. Either way, his inclusion in this film is our gain.

 
Drawbacks are many. The plot's hard to bear, even considering my low realistic expectations for a DTV action movie. When writers steal plot devices from a Joe Don Baker film that MST3K used to launch fat and dumb jokes for an hour-and-a-half, something's not right there. Unless, Van Damme (who co-wrote), was putting that thread in as an ode to MST3K; if that's the case, it's fantastic, but I doubt it. Also, the action's a little stilted and predictable for a Van Damme actioner. Derailed, though pretty much a complete Under Siege 2 retread, was much better from the bad action standpoint. After such gems as Double Impact, Double Team, Kickboxer, and Bloodsport, I expect a little more from Van Damme, and this movie just wasn't quite there.

If you're having a Van Damme night with a bunch of friends, maybe rent this. It's definitely worth TiVoing if you see it on your program guide. But spending money on it, unless you can get it for like $2, is probably not a great idea. You're better off dipping into the old classics than turning to this one.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0193364/

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/