Blast (1997)

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

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



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

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



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

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



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

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

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

Nemesis 2: Nebula (1995)

I had been meaning to review this, and the other two Nemesis sequels, for sometime now, but one Albert Pyun movie or another always trumped it. The other thing it doesn't have in its favor is other Hall of Famers, which will immediately cause it to drop in priority. Then there was its lack of availability, but that was solved when I came across it recently.

Nemesis 2 starts in the year 2077, where the cyborgs have taken over and are enslaving the remaining humans. Some have rebelled, and a scientist has created a genetically superior human that can combat the cyborgs. As an infant, the cyborgs hunt her down, so her mom takes her into the past, the year 1980 to be precise, in war torn east Africa, where she's raised by local tribesmen after her mother dies. Back in the future, the cyborgs send Nebula, a Predator like tracker, to capture this superior human, and he meets up with the girl after she's grown into a buff young woman, and the two go toe to toe.



So, this is something of a bait-and-switch, because the opening of the film has these great models and paintings of a future LA ruled by cyborgs, and it all looked awesome, and something I could really sink my teeth into. Then we're sent back to 1980 east Africa, in the desert, and all that futuristic coolness is gone. I get that it was probably more cost-effective to shoot in the Arizona desert than in elaborate futuristic sets, but it was still a disappointment when we were transported away from all that. As far as the rest of the film goes, it's mix of Star Wars, Predator, and Pyun's own Cyborg. It's very low-budget, so if you don't have a stomach for things written off as "cheesy", you'll be in trouble here. For me, it was a fun ride, but territory that was well-worn-- not at all like the inspired Sci-Fi Western Nemesis was.

We aren't even halfway through Albert Pyun's filmography-- though I have a feeling there are some of those ones from the past he'd rather we don't do. Maybe Nemesis 2 was one of those ones, I don't know. I think some of the last reviews I've done of his films, I've been of the opinion that I got what he was trying to do, but it didn't exactly work for me, because of A,B, and C. That's not the case here. I think the main issue with this one was probably the budget, because the idea wasn't a bad one. Maybe Nebula was too derivative of the Predator, or the setting was too much like Tatooine and the rebels too much like Sandpeople, but overall, I liked it as an out-of-the box sequel to Nemesis. The budgetary issues relegate it to that MST3K area, but if you dig bad action, there were plenty of explosions and gunfights.



What this lacked that made Nemesis such a classic though, was that cool mix of genres. While this had elements that felt more derivative than re-imaginings, it's predecessor was really about bending conventions and blending things we hadn't really seen until that point. It felt like a futuristic Western, and with the enormous cast he had, he was able to sell that atmosphere even more. I guess this movie was trying to do the same, by looking at a civil war in east Africa as a brutal, modern Wild West, but with the low budget and relatively unknown cast, it felt more inhibited and less inspired.

The heroine was played by female bodybuilder Sue Price. She was excellent, and more than a bodybuilder, she was really athletic too. According to her imdb bio, the only three films she did were these three Nemesis sequels. I guess I can see that, because it really takes an outside-the-box film maker like Pyun to defy conventions and cast someone like her. It's like a given that a female tough chick would still have to be thin and feminine and less believable in her asskicking than in a skintight outfit. Here, though, we have one that's well-built and naturally athletic. The whole thing worked for me, but I think for most people, it would be a hard image to consume-- women are supposed to look one way, and men are supposed to look another.



I mentioned above that I loved the models they used for the futuristic LA. Probably today those would've been done with computers, and I have to imagine with the kinds of shooting restrictions Pyun is frequently faced with, rendering those cities in CGIs would probably be preferable, and had he had that option in 1995, he would have gone for it. I understand that, but I think we lose something in these computer generated graphics. I like a city like the one in Metropolis, I like it when directors use something other than a computer to make things in their films life-like. I get that the computer can get things done faster and easier, and in some cases cheaper; and I get that sometimes more can be done with computers; but there's something more imaginative, yet more real, about making us believe a city is real without letting a computer do all the work.

In the final analysis, you have to ask yourself: do I like low-budget actioners? Do I like crazy plots that go from 2077 Cyborg LA to 1980 east Africa? Do I like explosions and gunfights, all in a self-contained desert location? What do I think of a derivative Predator villain? For me, I look at these questions and I'm like "fire it up, deepcheeks", but that's just me. Also, this is hard to get at, so I wouldn't go too far out of your way, but if you see it in a used VHS or DVD bin, why not go for it.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113948/

Mean Guns (1997) (Revisited)

My original Mean Guns post came on May 15, 2007, about ten days after post number 1. At that time, I didn't really know who Albert Pyun was. This thing was still meant to celebrate all the B movies my buddies and I enjoyed, so I focused more on actors like Christopher Lambert. I happened to catch Mean Guns on TV, because it had Lambert, was less than impressed, and there's the review I wrote. This was before I had software on my computer to capture images, so the original two I got from somewhere-- I can't remember now. If you're out there and you're pissed I hotlinked your images, well, chill out, and remember, they're not yours either. Anyway, Mr. Pyun asked me recently to give his film another chance, so that's what we're doing with by revisiting it here.

Mean Guns is about a group of killers, snitches, etc. that have been gathered in a prison for what they think is a party. It's not. A major crime organization, aptly titled The Syndicate, has brought everyone that's ever wronged them together, and the last three standing get a share of a $10 million prize. The rest-- well, I'm sure you can figure that out. What follows is a deadly free-for-all followed by an equally deadly game of cat and mouse, as the remaining players form alliances, betray each other, and ultimately, kill each other off.



Okay, let me start with what I liked about Mean Guns. A lot of the characters were great. Michael Halsey was great, Lambert was great, Ice-T was great, all the way down to Pyun mainstays Yuji Okumoto, Thom Mathews, and Tina Coté. The action was solid and the film's premise was intriguing. I believe I said in my initial review that after the first 45 minutes, it's much better, and upon a second viewing, I'd amend that slightly, because there are pockets of action before that, but then it kind of grinds to a halt, and when it picks up again, it never quite regains that frenetic pace it had when Ice-T's men first dump the guns out to the 100 or so gangsters. Also, Mean Guns had some great Western and Hong Kong cinema elements, and I liked the off-beat nature of the violence (other than when the kid was involved, which I'm about to get to). So there was a lot here I dug.

All right, here's what didn't work for me. First and foremost, having the kid there was really weird, especially when she witnesses Tina Coté's death, which would've been played for laughs otherwise. I mentioned in the first post the sped up film in spots, especially with Ice-T staring at Lambert, didn't look right. The dynamic between Okumoto and Mathews felt forced and too derivative, like it was trying too hard to be Travolta and Jackson in Pulp Fiction. On top of that, the conflict between the two when Coté arrives seems really inorganic. Okumoto barely has a chance to get to know her before he's ready to forsake his friendship with Mathews for her. Had she been paired with them from the start, and that scene where she fights a guy in the kitchen been removed (which didn't work for me), the conflict would've looked a lot better. Finally, the almost 2 hour runtime may have been the biggest issue I had. In part, we had elements like Lambert's past that I felt were superfluous-- why not just have Lambert be a crazy guy, and leave it at that, especially if that means getting rid of the kid aspect. Then we also fell into a trap of excitement by repetition. Gunfight after gunfight with no distinguishing qualities. Don't get me wrong, a lot of them were great, they just lost their punch after a while.



That leaves me I guess with the what do I think might have improved it. As I said above, the idea is perfect. A deadly game conducted inside of a prison before it's opened is great. I almost think more could've been done with that. There were some gunfights in the kitchen, but that was it. Also, we never really had a sense of the space. We'd see a character in one place, and the immediate scene after they'd appear in a totally different location. When I think of a prison, I think of a virtual island, but also an environment that can be completely controlled by an individual or a group of individuals, almost in the way that the island in The Tempest was controlled by Prospero's magic. All we had, though, was a lot of what looked like a high school, only with armed guards outside, and with Ice-T watching everything on security cameras. It would've been interesting to see Ice-T, or someone else in the film, play with the space some, open and close cells, sound alarms, set off sprinklers, find some riot gear, hose someone down with a fire extinguisher, anything like that-- in that Hong Kong cinema vein, where the set is a dynamic part of the action.

Another thing I thought about as I watched it, is why didn't a character hide out while everyone killed each other? Like a grizzled vet, a Lance Henriksen type who we see from time to time in thirty second shots, playing solitaire or reading Nietzsche in a janitor's closet or something, while the sounds of gunshots and violence rang out around him. Then, after enough of the players have killed themselves off, he pops in and gums up the works for the other characters who think they're close to the prize.



When I wrote the initial review, three years ago, I made a few jokes, as I often do, one of which said something to the effect of "the sped up film looked like a car commercial, which was probably what this director did before this." I would say Mr. Pyun would have been within his rights to hit me with a "you're a fat kid living in his parent's basement" crack, or even to not even waste his time with my little review blog. He didn't do that though; he instead commented in another post about how he liked being in the Hall of Fame, and joked about how I made it through some of his films like Cyborg and Omega Doom. It's possible in the Mean Guns review he knew I was kidding about the car commercial crack, but in a later post, someone commented that they "didn't like Pyun's work", and he didn't respond at all to it, instead posting a comment telling us what happened with Urban Menace. As a result of all of this, I now make it a priority to look at his work and get the word out there about him. It's an age old saying, you catch more flies with honey, but for smaller production companies and lesser named directors, you could learn something from Pyun's use of blogs like this. Instead of wanting to shout down every negative review and pick a fight with every "fat kid in his parents' basement", use us to your benefit, get us excited about your future projects. I can say he's also taught me a bit about catching more flies with honey...

All right, time to wrap up this second Mean Guns review. Albert Pyun announced on his Facebook page that he's looking to remake this film, setting it on the BP Deep Water Horizon oil rig. I think that could be really great. As far as this Mean Guns' availability, I got it on Netflix Watch Instantly, but Hulu has it as well. The problem with both is it's pan-and-scan. I believe the version I saw on TV was too, but I could be wrong about that. Netflix no longer has it available on DVD to rent though. There's a lot to recommend here, especially with Lambert and Ice-T (though I still don't like Ice-T's fight scenes), but it is 110 minutes long. As I said above, that's my main issue with it, because early on as I was watching it again, I was like "geez Poirier, what movie were you watching, this is pretty sweet", but it loses some steam, and never quite gets it back-- at least in my opinion. By all means, get in and comment on this and say what you think too.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119642/

Spitfire (1995)

As we're trying to make our way through Albert Pyun's vast DTV catalog, today we make a stop at the Lance Henriksen spy romp, Spitfire-- or, if you're Irish, Spetfoyer. Seriously, say it like that, it's addicting. I was stoked to not only see a Henriksen/Pyun collaboration, but this one also features Pyun mainstay Tim Thomerson, and DTVC favorite Brion Jones. I was excited to sink my teeth into this bad boy.

Spitfire is less a spy thriller and more a teen spy romp, featuring Henriksen as an aging agent who finds out he has a daughter, and as any great dad does, he dumps the keys to a locker holding the launch codes to some Ukrainian nukes on her. The baddies want it, they capture Henriksen, and find out the daughter has it, so they're after her. Only thing, she's a spunky little gymnast/martial arts expert with a mean streak-- ask Tim Thomerson, who as a husky Andy Warhol-looking sportswriter, he's gets plenty of concussions from the heavy right hand of this capricious little Spitfire. Oh, concussion humor, how we miss ye...



Let's start with what's good. Though this kind of misses the mark, it's not an action film so much as it's, as I mentioned above, a teen romp. You could actually combine this with Arcade and Alien from LA to make a kind of Pyun teen trilogy. Spitfire plays out as an Inspector Wears Skirts combined with Spy Kids. I know Spy Kids came after, which is why I brought it up, because Pyun is known for being ahead of the curve on things, and though he didn't have the resources to make Spy Kids, we saw with the Spy Kids movies that were made with better resources and were pretty successful, that this formula is profitable. It's like with him using rappers in films before anyone else.

Herein lies the rub though. Would our readers get down on something like this? Probably not. Do we sign on for Lance Henriksen as the cool spy in the opening scene, fighting off Brion James and some other thugs while in a tuxedo and with the woman he's about to lay lying next to him with her boobs literally exposed? Yes! Do we sign on for the Lance Henriksen we get for the rest of the film, handcuffed and kicked around, totally helpless? Absolutely not. Do we sign on for a teen romp that, minus a few cold blooded killings, would be perfect for ABC Family. Definitely not. This is not what you signed on for, and you won't be impressed.



Albert Pyun is close to launching Tales of an Ancient Empire. His previous release, Bulletface, is slowly making its way into the secondary market, so maybe I'll be able to cop it used. I really want to check them out, and with the support he's given us here in the past, I'd like to return that favor. It just would be a lot easier if his movies were available on Netflix. Anyway, here's the link to his website if you want to check it out: http://www.albertpyunmovies.com/. I'm not sure where the Pyun train will take us next. I'm thinking Nemesis 2, but we'll see.

What do we make of Lance Henriksen? I don't mean here, but in general. I don't know, sometimes he's good, but a lot of times I feel like he's cast when the first choice isn't available, yet has a way of acting like the movie is centered around him. I just realized too that I've kind of accepted that Henriksen is worth the price of admission, but I can't point to a single instance where I could prove that axiom to be true. I don't begrudge anyone the prerogative to dig Henriksen, the question is, do you like him, or the idea of him?



Spitfire does not feature a Brion James bait-and-switch, rather, he just has a small cameo. In a sense, you could still call it a bait-and-switch, because he shows up at the beginning, so you think he'll be rockin' with us for the duration, only for him to die off in that opening scene. It's like the whole film is a bait-and-switch, that great opening scene with Henriksen in a tux, his lady lying there with her breasts out, the bad spy woman delivering one of the best movie lines ever: "I hate getting blood on Hermès sheets", all heralding a film that never was, was never going to be, replaced with a teen romp.

That's it in a nutshell, a teen romp. If you're down with a teen romp, go for it, but I know most of our readers aren't so much. What I want to do instead, is write this post as a warning to anyone who sees "wow, Pyun spy film starring lance Henriksen, sweet!" No, not so sweet.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111264/

Heatseeker (1995)

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

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



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

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



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

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



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

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

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

Omega Doom (1997)

I don't remember when I first saw this. It was like seven or eight years ago, maybe on Joe Bob Briggs' show, or some other late night thing. I saw it again recently (as in a year or two ago) when I was up late drunk, and passed out before the end. It's one of those things where late at night I'm looking for something to watch, and I see the name of DTVC Hall of Famer Rutger Hauer, and it peaks my interest.

Omega Doom is a take on Kurosawa's classic Yojimbo set in a post-apocalyptic future where androids rule and humans supposedly are regrouping to take over. Hauer is the hero who enters a town with two gangs of androids that he has to play against each other and take out. He's an android too, I think. Unlike Yojimbo, though, it turns out in the end that Hauer has been sent by the humans to clean out the android population... I think... maybe he was just a loner... maybe I missed something when I watched it.



In terms of the Yojimbo redux in the DTV market, Omega Doom is better than Desert Heat, the Van Damme movie. The only reason for this: Omega Doom doesn't think the audience is too dumb to pick up on it's Kurosaw-ian roots, while Desert Heat felt they needed to tell us that at the end. There's nothing I hate more than bad action films telling me I'm dumb.

The Hauer factor in this is very solid. There's no Hauer Bait-and-Switch here, he's in it as the lead, showing up in at least 75% of the scenes. This may not be Blade Runner or The Hitcher Hauer, but it's definitely really good DTV Hauer, and you really can't ask for much more than that.

This is bad action/sci-fi in no uncertain terms. The androids make no sense: they can be decapitated myriad times and survive, but a shot with this light thing to the abdomen is fatal. The androids, except for Hauer, makes tons of loud noises when they walk, as if a foley guy was a nephew of one of the studio execs, and demanded a bigger role in the film. The only proper word for the whole thing is comical. And it's a good comical too.



I guess for the bad, this film is pretty mediocre. Sure, it's great bad action/sci-fi, but it has no real memorable moments. There's plenty to laugh at, but nothing that'll have you dying. It's like slightly better than a Sci-Fi Pictures Original, with Rutger Hauer in it too. I'm not sure what that does for you. I liked it, but it's probably only like in my top 50 of all time bad movies. Maybe.

If you can pick this up for $2 on VHS like I did, I'd say do it, because that's not much of a risk. It's also a solid choice if it's on TV late at night, and nothing else is on. If you're having a bad movie night, this might be better shown after the main event, like they do on UFC Pay-Per-Views; but not as the big thing everyone comes over to watch. This is really meant for hard core bad movie watchers, and you should view it after the kids go to bed.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117238/

Mean Guns (1997)

I saw this on Encore Action while looking for something on a Thursday evening when the Sox were off. I caught it from the middle, and when I saw it again in it's entirety, I got a whole different perspective on the film. Let's just say missing the first 45 minutes might not have been a bad thing.

Mean Guns is about some mob group called The Syndicate, of which Ice-T is some kind of head dude or something. The Syndicate takes a prison they had just built, and uses it to put 100 people who have ripped them off before and have them kill each other off, with the last three standing sharing in a prize of 10 million dollars. Actually, we find out only 99 of them double crossed the syndicate. DTVC Hall of Famer Christopher Lambert plays a nutjob hitman who just happened to be in the area killing his ex-wife and her new boyfriend and kidnapping his daughter, and asked Ice-T if he could join in on the macabre game. There's another hitman named Marcus, who seems a tad more altruistic, and he takes a middle-aged female accountant under his wing to keep her safe. As far as I can tell, this Marcus is the protagonist, and we're rooting for him to win. I won't give away the ending.



I was annoyed by this film. There was this mambo music that kept playing in the background that was either supposed to be funny, ironic, or both, but was really just difficult to deal with after a while. I'll take a bad Jan Hammer wannabe and a C.C. Deville derivative any day. The director also did a lot of sped up film and sped up shaky film. It didn't look cool, it looked like a bad car commercial. Maybe that's what the guy did before he did this film.

I must admit, I don't always get Ice-T. I get him as a musician or on Law and Order, but in these bad action movies where they try to make him Samuel L. Jackson, it just doesn't wash. The extended slo-motion walk sequence where we just watched Ice-T didn't work for me. Him doing karate on people didn't work either. When I saw this the first time and missed 45 minutes, the Ice-T character just sat in his command base and watched what people were doing, waiting for the final three. That worked for me. Get rid of the silly martial arts and the contrived toughness, and you've got a badass baddie.

Christopher Lambert is pretty sweet in this. He plays a nutjob hitman, as I mentioned above, and he plays it well. He doesn't have much to work with, but he seems to be the most comfortable in the skin of a bad action movie character. Most people I know only saw this film for Lambert, and I'd say it's worth it. It's no Fortress, but it'll do. I guess it's not as ridiculous, but it's also not as much fun to watch.



I'm not sure if the intent for this film was a send up of the bad action genre, but if that's the case, it was a bad job. I've seen this type of movie done well (Torque), and I think if it's done poorly, it makes the film makers look not as smart as they think they are. There were plenty of moments that looked like they were played up for laughs, like these two buddy hitmen, but the lines were so poorly written and the action so poorly done, that instead of laughing I got a headache. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt, and just say they were trying to add some humor to a bad action movie.

The moral of this story is: don't try to dress up a bad action movie with what you think is fancy film FX or humor through irony. We as bad action connoisseurs would rather you skip that and give us the all the shooting and ass kicking we need. I'd recommend this movie as far as a rental, or if you have On Demand, you can get it free from now until July. It's fun to make fun of, and I guess even more fun to make fun of how good they think they are. Also, I'd skip the first 45 minutes, because that's where you really get to the crux of the bad action. The fat's been cut off by then.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119642/