Raven Hawk (1996)

This is one I've been meaning to get for years. For the longest time, there was only a foreign language dub version on YouTube. Sometime last year there was an English-language version, but before I had a chance to review it, it was taken down. Then recently Kevin Hazell reached out on the Facebook page and mentioned a YouTube account, The Movie Man, that had a bunch of stuff uploaded. When I started paging through, I noticed some Pyun flicks, and thought this might be it, and sure enough, there it was. In addition to us, Bulletproof Action and RobotGEEK's Cult cinema have covered this, plus Ty from Comeuppance posted a sweet VHS of this on his Instagram page.

Raven Hawk has Rachel McLish as a woman who, as a girl, is framed for her parents' murders by some corrupt developers who want to install a nuclear waste disposal site on Native American land. After spending twelve years in a mental institution, while being transported to a prison, her van flips and she survives. Now free, she's out for revenge, ready to kill those responsible. At the same time, John Enos III is a reservation police officer investigating her murders. He knows there's more going on here. But the baddies aren't going down without a fight either. They've called in a crew of Pyun mainstays to take her down. Will she be victorious?

This is pretty close to pure Pyun, in that we have a strong female protagonist, who is also a woman of color, ready to take down a bunch of bad guys. I read in the IMDb trivia that he wanted to play up McLish's character's mystical and emotional aspects more, while the producers wanted something more like a female Rambo, so they took it away and made it more of what we got. I liked it as a straight-ahead revenge actioner, but I also see what Pyun was thinking too--why make it in the tradition of the white male protagonist, when you have a female Native American hero you can do more with it. At the very least it would've been interesting to see that, but this worked for me, and I think the amount that Pyun was able to influence it made it work. McLish is great as the hero, and I liked too that there were no damsel in distress moments, no male hero like John Enos III's character coming to save her. It's shame that out of all of Pyun's movies, this is one of the tougher ones to find, because I think it's one of his better ones.

This is the 44th film for Pyun here at the DTVC, but as a director it's number 42--we did Mean Guns twice, which is how he has 45 tags, plus Nemesis 5, which he produced, and then Dollman vs. Demonic Toys where archive footage that he directed in Dollman was used. 42 puts him a good 27 ahead of the director with the second-most director tags here, Fred Olen Ray, who has 15. Looking at what we have left for him, there's Left for Dead--which I discovered is free on Vudu right now, so I need to do that soon!--, Cool Air, and then two I'm having trouble getting, The Interrogation of Cheryl Cooper and Interstellar Civil War: Shadows of the Empire, so that plus his producer credit on the Ray-directed Final Examination would get Pyun close to the 50 Club. If that's the case, that he's one away, maybe we count that second Mean Guns review just to get him in there. One of the best DTV directors ever, and this movie is a great one of his.

 

We'll cut to the chase and get right to our favorite game: who are the Pyun mainstays in this? In this case, all three were tapped by Pyun to be the team of mercenaries called in by the baddies to take McLish down. We start with DTVC favorite Vincent Klyn. Back off Warchild, seriously. He plays a Maori warrior, complete with accent. He's at 19 films here at the DTVC, which is huge for a guy who plays a lot of supporting roles, and puts him now one ahead of fellow Pyun mainstay Norbert Weisser, who was tied with him for 18. Next we have Thom Matthews. That's 12 for him, and while this is a pretty pedestrian performance as Matthews goes, it was good that Pyun got him in this. Same with Nicholas Guest, who is now at 10 movies on the site. Other than Klyn, who would be tagged because he's Warchild--seriously--the others only have tags and the volume of posts on the site because of Pyun. I thought the late Ed Lauter, who is in this as a sheriff, had done more Pyun too, but this is the only film they did together. Same with Mitchell Ryan, who plays Enos's boss.

Rachel McLish did not make a lot of movies, and according to the IMDb trivia, she credits that with her changing her mind about a nude scene Pyun wanted her to do when she's going through a ritual of spiritual transcendence. Eventually she agreed to be topless for it. Honestly, in watching the scene, I don't know that she needed to be nude for it, no matter what the reason. She was a great action lead, and if that was the reason why directors didn't want to work with her, or if it turned her off from the business, that's too bad. I was trying to think how many of Pyun's female protagonists had nude scenes, and one that comes to mind is Victoria Maurette in Bulletface, which was more a series of disjointed scenes in a prison rape sequence. Maybe that's what Pyun wanted to do here as well, not fully show McLish's nude body, but cut and mix things so the focus wasn't on her nudity, but the spirituality. By the same token, if McLish felt uncomfortable with it she felt uncomfortable with it, and could she really trust that what Pyun wanted to do was what would've been the end product, especially since the film was taken from him by the producers?

 

Finally, we have a Star Trek: The Next Generation sighting in John de Lancie--who, unlike Lauter and Ryan, had worked with Pyun before this, in Arcade. In addition to Arcade, he was also in an indie flick we reviewed, Cloned, making this 3 tags for him. For TNG alums, he's one behind Michael Dorn, who has 4 tags. In this he plays a senator who's pulling all the strings, kind of Q-ish actually. Two things I didn't know about him: he's from Philadelphia, and he was born in the late 40s. About the latter, I liked that for the new Picard series they didn't do like they did with Mark Hamill in The Mandalorian and use a computer image of his face to make him look younger. De Lancie played one of my favorite sci-fi characters of all time, and I think a big part of why I loved him so much was de Lancie's performance, so any time I can spotlight him on the site I want to.

And with that, let's wrap this up. As of right now, this can be streamed on YouTube, or bought used on VHS. I think there may also be DVDs outside the USA region. The thing is, this was released here in the States on HBO first, so if they have it, why not put it on HBOMax? They have Collision Course, this wouldn't be too far of a stretch beyond that. A guy can dream, right?

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117446

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

Double Dragon (1994)

As we continue our five-movie celebration of our 1000th post, we come in with Jeff LoPresto's suggestion with number 1001. Jeff has been a longtime friend and supporter of the site, even sending us screeners and copies of films he had for us review. The thing I couldn't believe when he suggested this was that I'd overlooked it for so long. I think I just assumed it was above the $10 million threshold for a theatrical picture, which wasn't even close to the case. Between that and the Patrick and Dacascos factors, this should have been a post years ago, but in a way perhaps it's fitting to have it here in this celebration. In addition to us, Cool Target Action Reviews has looked at this, so you can go there to see what he thought.

Double Dragon takes place in the near future/now recent past, after an earthquake has decimated LA. Robert Patrick is an evil businessman who got his hands on half of a sacred medallion, which on its own is pretty great, but with the other half makes him omnipotent. The other half is now in the hands of two brothers, and they'll do anything they can to make sure he doesn't get it.

This is one of those ones that, in 1994, wasn't anywhere near as fun as it is now in 2020. For one thing, 1994 was a bit past Double Dragon's prime as a Nintendo game, and as I remember, the franchise itself was trying to find ways to reinvent itself, like pairing with the Battletoads in one effort, so it wasn't the hot property other franchises were then. On top of that, this suffered from what a lot of other video game adaptations suffered from, like the Super Mario Bros. adaptation. It plays fast and loose with the canon, tries to make it on the cheap, and just piles up as many cliches and overused film devices as it can. They also have to be these origin story bildungsroman-type deals where our heroes have to be non-heroes to start and then find their heroism by the end of the film. In 1994 it all adds up to a bile of blah; but in 2020, it's a fun 90s nostalgia romp. Yes, there are still elements that are sauteed in wrong sauce, like Abobo's transformation, and later torture by being fed spinach by Alyssa Milano, but for the most part, even the bad works in that fun 90s nostalgia mode.

According to imdb, the original idea was more along the lines of the game, with Marian, who in the actual version was played by Milano, kidnapped by the Big Boss's gang, and the guys have to fight their way through the gang to get her back. It sounds like one reason why they didn't do that was to keep it PG for kids to watch. The problem is, for a 15-year-old kid like me, the one we got was such a turn-off, and I could go to my video store or fire up cable TV and see plenty of PM Entertainment flicks doing Double Dragon right and awesome. If it had been made more like the actual game, maybe this becomes a minor franchise. Maybe Mark Dacascos, who was 30 at the time, by playing someone who isn't a teenager, is seen as a more serious action lead and gets bigger parts in Hollywood films. On the other hand, if Alyssa Milano is essentially reprising her role from Commando, only now as an adult, maybe she isn't as interested and they need to get someone else. Maybe we don't watch this today with goofy 90s nostalgia, but with a "this is so awesome I used to watch it all the time when it came out" nostalgia.

And that gets to a different point when we look at movies like these, that are, for lack of a better term, flops. The people involved have high expectations for it. For Dacascos, maybe it's to get into that Van Damme/Seagal territory on the big screen. Maybe Scott Wolf is looking combine success here with his new role on Party of Five to be the next Andrew McCarthy. Maybe Alyssa Milano is hoping to move on from her Samantha on Who's the Boss stigma; or Kristina Wagner move past the world of daytime soap operas. Robert Patrick was probably hoping to build off his great turn as the villain in Terminator 2, which was one of the biggest films of the first half of the decade. When a movie like this ends up only grossing $2.3 million worldwide, even in 1994 numbers, it's not just a disappointment for the studio, it can seriously damage careers, or be the thing that keeps the people involved from making that move to the next tier of movie. If this becomes the blockbuster they were hoping for all of those careers are different. When we think of a movie like Pulp Fiction, we think about what it did for people like John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson, but look at Ving Rhames or Eric Stoltz--or Tarantino, who is still able to make whatever movie he wants in Hollywood 26 years later.

The two names in this that we know the most on the site are Dacascos and Patrick. For Dacascos, again, the fact that he's playing a teenager at 30 should be considered a stretch; but according to IMDb he sprained his ankle on the set and hid it so he could continue on, meaning he thought this was going to be an important opportunity for him and his career. I saw him recently in Wu Assassin on Netflix, and for me, he was right there with Iko Uwais and Byron Mann as the show's standouts. So on the one hand, we watch this now and joke about how sauteed in wrong sauce it is, but on the other, I can't help but think what this would have meant for his career had it been successful. Same with Robert Patrick. This was a more scenery-chewing villain than the relentless killing machine he played in Terminator 2, but he added a level of fun to it that showed he could have done this villain in any number of great big screen actioners opposite Arnold or Van Damme. I wouldn't say that either career has been a failure after this by any means, but I think seeing them here in '94, you can't help but wonder if this had worked, if we wouldn't have seen them in as many films here on the site.

Finally, back off Warchild, seriously. Would you look at that: Albert Pyun mainstay and DTVC favorite Vincent Klyn is here in a one-scene cameo. How amazing would he have been as a boss-style baddie for Dacascos to have to take out as he fought his way to rescue Marian? Nils Allen Stewart played Abobo before his transformation. Again, another great boss if this were set up more like the video game. Either way, what's great is to see Klyn here during our 1000th post celebration. This is now his 18th tag on the site, which is amazing--and more than many Hall of Famers. Here's to you Mr. Klyn, you're one of the great ones.

And with that, we wrap up another post. Right now you can stream this on Prime and Tubi, so it's there for free to check out. There is also a blu-ray out there if you're looking for something more substantial for your collection. Thank you again to Jeff for suggesting this gem as part of our celebration, and also thank you for all the support you've shown the site over the years--you were one of the earliest. It has always been much appreciated.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106761

The Wrecking Crew (2000)

Like Corrupt in the post before this, I figured with Albert Pyun's Urban Trilogy getting the axe from Watch Instantly, I might as well review the two I hadn't done yet. I was hesitant though, because, as I mentioned in the Corrupt post, half of each of these films was lost en route from Eastern Europe to LA, meaning what we got was the best Pyun could do to make lemonade out of lemons, and not films that are indicative of what Pyun usually gives us. But I think it's good to get the word out as to why these didn't come out so good, especially with so many people checking them out and vituperating against them on their own sites or imdb message boards, so that's why we're here now looking at these.

The Wrecking Crew is about a street gang led by Ice-T that's been hired by some high-level governmental authority whose job it is to take out other gangs in other cities. In this case they're in Detroit, and, after conning the three major gangs into meeting in a warehouse for a truce, Ice-T and his boys go in there to clean them out. Can the three leaders of the gangs squash their feuds and come together to defeat Ice-T?



Maybe not as bad as Urban Menace, but definitely was hit pretty hard by that missing footage too. We start with these distorted archive shots of Snoop from when he was Snoop Doggy Dogg. We assume he's some kind of important figure, but that's all we see of him. Then we get Ice-T cleaning up another gang in Chicago, while our Detroit gangs are having big rallies. From there, it devolves into Die Hard with gangs, based around three characters that aren't all that remarkable. I'd really be curious to know what this movie was supposed to be. How did Snoop Dogg figure in? Was there more Ice-T? Was it really only Die Hard with gangs? The thing is, if you see this on the shelf and think "Oh, Snoop and Ice-T, this should be good", and then you watch it and are totally disappointed, just know, what you got wasn't what you were supposed to get.

I know some of my readers are not big Albert Pyun fans-- and many of them don't miss an opportunity in a comment box to tell me so-- so hearing me in these two posts trying to explain away some real duds probably has them thinking "Sure, I bet, and why were all the rest of his films crap?" I guess the first thing I would say is "what are you doing at the Direct to Video Connoisseur if you don't like Albert Pyun?", because Albert Pyun's approach to film making is the kind of thing we celebrate here. But the other thing is, you can't be all like "I can't stand big Hollywood", but then not be cognizant of the difficulties film makers face when they try to work outside of the major studios. For me, I like hearing these stories, and I think it's really cool that Pyun took the time to comment here and tell us what happened with these urban films. Unfortunately, part of that charm that we like in low-budget independent films, that they have to be innovative and make do with less, means that when shit happens and half the film is lost by Air France and they have to try and salvage something, you end up with this.



The Ice-T here is more of your run-of-the-mill Ice-T, the vintage mean-mugging over-enunciating Ice-T. Not the chilling baddie we got in Corrupt. I don't know why we get the guy from this more than we get the guy in Corrupt, but we do. Maybe it's him wanting to get out there and try new things. I don't know, he played a kangaroo man in Tank Girl, what more does he want? He also produced this movie, so I imagine he was as disappointed as Pyun was when half the film turned up missing-- I imagine everyone involved with the project was.

It doesn't escape me that, while this was filmed in Eastern Europe, it took place in Detroit, which is probably where this would've been shot had it been made today-- which also would've meant that there would've been no need to ship it with Air France to LA. The majority of the action in this takes place in an abandoned warehouse. Well, they'd have their pick of abandoned warehouses in Detroit.



I'm skipping the Pyun Mainstay game for this post, because, like Corrupt, all we had outside of Ice-T was Vincent Klyn. Instead, I wanted to bring up something that caught my eye as a former wrestling fan. You can barely see it in that pic there, but that dude is giving the other guy the Camel Clutch. Remember that? When Sgt. Slaughter became an Iraqi in the early 90s? He'd get Hulk Hogan in the Camel Clutch, trying to make him tap out. Man, those were the days.

Other than the Camel Clutch, there isn't much going on here. If you haven't seen this before, and see it on the shelves, just know what you're getting yourself into-- an attempt to make lemonade out of lemons--; and if you have seen it and wanted to know why it was so bad, well, now you know. It's hard to make a movie come out the way you want if you've lost half of your footage.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0196219/

Corrupt (1999)

A little over two years ago I reviewed a film of Albert Pyun's called Urban Menace, starring a number of Hip Hop luminaries like Big Pun, Fat Joe, Snoop, and Ice-T. It was pretty bad, but not in a way that didn't work; rather, it was amateurishly made, which isn't indicative of Pyun's work. Later, in my Radioactive Dreams post, Pyun commented, telling us the story behind why Urban Menace, and his other two urban films, Corrupt and Wrecking Crew, were of such poor quality. In transport from Eastern Europe to LA, Air France lost a crate containing half of each film, forcing him to scramble to make something resembling three feature films, and the result is what we have. Because of this, I had put off reviewing the other two films, but since Netflix was dumping them from Watch Instantly, I figured I'd give them a look and maybe help get the word out for people who might see them or have seen them, and were ready to rip them on their own sites or on imdb.

Corrupt has Ice-T as the eponymous villain, a local thug making moves to consolidate his power and take a stranglehold on the neighborhood. He has a thing for a Jodi (Karen Dyer), but she's dating Miles (Ernie Hudson Jr.) and wants nothing to do with Ice-T. Things change though when her punk younger brother (Silkk tha' Shocker) re-appropriates some of Ice-T's drugs, and now, if she wants her brother to live, she needs to agree to be Ice-T's lover while Miles is out of town. Problem is, things go nuts when Silkk tha' Shocker's girlfriend tells Miles on her.



This one was remarkably better than Urban Menace. The big thing is we had a very strong performance by Ice-T, perhaps his best this side of New Jack City. It makes me wonder what this could've been if we'd had the rest of the film. At 66 minutes though, we get a complete-enough story, I think what the added footage would've done was give us a more polished product. I also liked this story better than the one in Urban Menace, this was much more down to Earth, looking at characters struggling to get out of the 'Hood, some going legit, and some going dirty. Hopefully someday the rest of the footage will turn up and we'll get a director's cut showing us what this should've looked like.

I don't blame Pyun if he doesn't like the idea of these films being out there with his name on them after what happened. Especially with the big name rappers associated with them, they tend to be some of his more heavily marketed films, which has gotta be even more frustrating. What this has done for me as a reviewer, though, is it's shown me that there's all kinds of crap that can happen to affect film's outcome, things that have nothing to do with how talented the cast and crew are. And it's usually the kinds of films we review here at the DTVC that are most likely to have suffered some of these calamities. It makes me wonder how many other films I've reviewed that have had half their footage lost by Air France.



I wasn't kidding about the Ice-T performance, he was great. Extremely menacing, but not in that affected way we often see from him as a baddie. This was a legit, cold-blooded gangster, think like Jim Brown in Crackhouse. Who knows if we lose some of this in the full version that we never got to see, or if he's even better, but what we got here was good. He anchored those 66 minutes, and made this work for me much more than it should have.

We've seen Silkk tha' Shocker before in Hot Boyz, where he was horribly miscast as the film's lead. Here he's a supporting character, a kid trying to make moves that ultimately get him in over his head and forces his sister to make tough decisions to save his life. Hot Boyz tried to have us believe that Snoop would be an underling in Silkk tha' Shocker's gang, while this film knew we'd easily believe that he'd look well above his pay grade trying to rub shoulders with Ice-T, and it worked that much better.



There isn't much of a Pyun Mainstay Game to play here, the big one other than Ice-T being DTVC favorite Vincent Klyn, who has one scene as a bum hitting on Dyer. Klyn still hasn't made a movie since 2004's Max Havoc: Curse of the Dragon, which is very disappointing. With Pyun getting a lot of the old gang out of retirement, including Sasha Mitchell, maybe we'll see Klyn again in one. Man I hope so. "Back off, Warchild. Seriously."

This is no longer on Watch Instantly. I think if you're a big Ice-T fan, this might be worth checking it out. Otherwise, I'm not so sure. I wanted to do these reviews more to get the word out regarding what happened to them, though maybe after hearing that you might be more intrigued to check them out. You can always page through the Albert Pyun tag to see some films of his that I've reviewed that are of a much higher quality.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0194773/

Dollman vs. Demonic Toys (1993)

This is another one that I'd been planning to do for some time, and when Emily of Deadly Doll's House of Horror Nonsense came to me for posts featuring miniature baddies for her Vertically Challenged Villains Month, I figured I'd bump this one up and do it now too, like I did with Puppet Master II. I should point out, it's been a long, long time since I've seen Demonic Toys and Bad Channels, two of the three films that this is a sequel of, the third being Dollman, which we did sometime ago. It might mean I missed some things I'd have picked up on if those other two were fresher in my mind.

Dollman vs. Demonic Toys is like a comic book crossover of Full Moon projects, featuring Dollman Brick Bardo (played again by Tim Thomerson), who, after beings stranded on Earth, goes out to California to find Nurse Ginger (Melissa Behr), who herself was shrunk and left shrunk at the end of Bad Channels (actually, in Bad Channels it was Bunny, not Nurse Ginger who was left shrunk, but does it matter?). He makes it to her house and they form a romance, hoping to live happily ever after. Not so fast cowboy. Enter Tracy Scoggins, who has been hunting the Demonic Toys. She hears about Ginger and Brick, and thinks Brick would be perfect to take down the Demonic Toys due to his size. His big gun doesn't hurt either. The Demonic Toys won't know what hit them.



This is exactly as I described it, a comic book crossover in movie form. That's what it felt like, a cool one-off. Even the length, just over an hour, fits that vibe. As someone that grew up with comics and loved it when one-off issues were released with characters from different books put together, to see something like this that captures that vibe is really cool. Tim Thomerson is his usual awesome self reprising his role as Brick Bardo, and the showdown between him and the Demonic Toys is everything I could've asked for. Scoggins and Behr were also great, as was Phil Fondacaro, who had a small part as a security guard (no pun in tended). Add to that Quiet Riot in the film's soundtrack, and you can't lose. Even though a chunk of the film gives you enough backstory that you can watch this without seeing the previous films first, you should at least take advantage of Dollman and Demonic Toys on Watch Instantly beforehand, because it'll make this one a little more fun.

I guess we start with Tim Thomerson, right? He's so deep into his Brick Bardo character that there's no question about anything being silly with him fighting an over-sized baby doll or duking it out with a Conan O'Brien action figure. He plays it so straight, yet so cool, that it all works and makes it that much better for all of us. In fact, the entire cast plays it pretty straight, which makes all the difference in films like this. Thomerson also has an interesting distinction here at the DTVC: he's one of the few non-Hall of Famers to have more tags than some of the inductees. The question is how to rectify that: get more films for those Hall of Famers, induct Thomerson this fall, or both?



I want to stay with this shot of Thomerson here, because it's archive footage from Dollman, which was directed by Albert Pyun. I wasn't sure if I should the tag Pyun, because it is his footage that's being used. I mean, I've tagged actors for smaller appearances than the amount of footage from Dollman that we had in this. I wonder how that works as far as Pyun goes for money, or if Band owns the rights. Same with the actors, like Michael Halsey, Vincent Klyn, and Jackie Earle Haley. I don't believe they're credited either. Should I tag them or not too? There's also the character name "Brick Bardo", which Pyun has used a lot. Was there any dispute about who owned the rights to it after the fact? Another interesting Pyun connection here was Anthony Riparetti, who worked on the music. He's worked on a lot of Pyun's films, usually credited as "Tony" Riparetti.

I loved the Conan O'Brien action figure. How is that not awesome? He of course predates Conan's run on Late Night by about a year, but still. It's too bad Conan doesn't have the rights to all his characters, because you could have a great crossover with them and the Demonic Toys. Imagine Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, the Reverend Otis K. Dribbles, the Masturbating Bear, Pimp Bot, maybe even the Ear of Corn, all fighting the Demonic Toys, or maybe the Puppets from the Puppet Master series. A guy can dream, right?



As I mentioned above, this film clocks in at a cool 64 minutes, which isn't much. I always hear the term "feature length" tossed around, and wanted to find out exactly what it was, so I did what anyone would do, I went to Wikipedia. According to them, there are multiple definitions for feature length, some as short as 40 minutes, but the rough standard for an adult feature is 80 to 210 minutes. Do I think this one at 64 minutes should've been longer? No, 64 worked, and I imagine, if Band were forced to make it 80, he'd just add five more minutes of archive footage from each of the three original films, and one more minute of credits, and he'd have his 80. Give me shorter with less padding every time. I always say, anything after 88 minutes is borrowed time and better be damn good.

We are two-for-two this week on Full Moon flicks, the other being Puppet Master II. I daresay I like this one even more. If you like Full Moon, you like Thomerson, and you like the old comic one-off with tons of different characters, this is your flick. Right now it's on Watch Instantly. I can't think of a 64 minutes better spent. (Okay, maybe I can think of a few ways, but not many.)

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106743/

Final Equinox (1995)

Our buddy from down under over at Explosive Action sent us this, so we thank him for that. You can also read his review of it at his site. Final Equinox features Martin Kove and Vincent Klyn, which on the surface looks sweet, but stars Joe Lara, which definitely throws up red flags. Let's see how it went.

Final Equinox takes place "in the not too distant future" (like next Sunday AD, perhaps?), where double threat David Warner-- astrophysicist and PhD in archaeology-- finds some alien artifact. That's when baddie Martin Kove has it stolen from the government, and now the government wants it back. Somehow Joe Lara is mixed up in all of this, and with his ponytail and leather pants, tries to save the day-- and the planet.



This was a definite pain cave, and believe me, it will bludgeon you. Very little action, and what there is is pretty run-of-the-mill. Not sure why Joe Lara is the star, because he barely uses any martial arts, and is here for his acting prowess [cough cough]. Kove is a great baddie, and Warner is fun as the double threat scientist, but the plot is dull and lifeless, scenes go on longer than they have any right to, and ultimately we're left wondering why this movie was made at all. There were a few interesting ideas this movie could've explored that might have made for a better movie, in particular the idea that life was created by an alien race's Genesis bomb, but it was beyond this film's ken to go deeply into anything, yet the mindless action wasn't there to make the paper thin plot forgivable. As an aside, about ten years ago a buddy and I saw a movie called Deep Cheeks on the shelves at the local gentlemen's cinema outlet, and for years we've been calling this or that "Deep Cheeks". With that in mind, for the rest of this post, I'll be referring to this movie as "Final Deep Cheek-uinox".

Martin Kove was an excellent 90s style baddie in Final Deep Cheek-uinox. Bad clothes, cigar, willing to give the order to waste someone at the drop of a hat. We can at least say this was an improvement on Kiss of the Vampire, which for one reason or another couldn't recognize Kove for the great main baddie he is, but this had so much bad in it that even Kove couldn't save the day. Too bad.



If you're like me, you don't understand the concept of Joe Lara. The hair, the leather pants, the pretty boy eyes, the lack of acting ability, it all adds up to "huh?" But then there's Lara here in a straight jacket with some kind of elaborate harness gag that looks like a watch or something's been shoved in his mouth. This made sense. When I think of Joe Lara, and I wonder why he's cast for this or that part, or wonder why he doesn't cut his hair because it's not doing him any favors, or why he's wearing leather pants because they make him look like a cheeseball, I see now that it all adds up to this. Without all of that, I wouldn't buy him in a straight jacket with an odd looking harness gag in his mouth getting kicked around by a prostitute or thrown out of a moving van. An odd oasis of getting it right in a desert of getting it wrong for Final Deep Cheek-uinox.

As I mentioned above, Final Deep Cheek-uinox broached a really cool idea, that some alien race planted a Genesis bomb here that started life on the planet. I guess the problem is, you'd have to account for eons of time between when an alien race would've dropped the bomb, and then would've come back to marvel at their work; or eons of time that they'd be studying their work. Maybe the better play would be that they forgot about it, or maybe they did it on another planet, and those people came here to see what we were up to. I think from Final Deep Cheek-uinox's standpoint, this is all way too complicated for what they wanted-- but maybe they should've thought of that before they bludgeoned us to death with a boring-ass plot that wasn't any better.



Final Deep Cheek-uinox had some interesting co-stars. There was DTVC favorite Vincent Klyn, who was one of Kove's gang. He's killed by blue electricity to the temples. Then there was a poor man's Sam Jones, which, as you can imagine, is a bad sign for your movie if you can't get the real Sam Jones-- I mean, isn't the poor man's Sam Jones Sam Jones? Finally, there was veteran character actor David Warner. Who knows what he was doing here. Hopefully he thanked his agent after shooting by leaving a flaming paper bag full of dog crap on the guy's front porch.

We've completely spiraled out of control here, talking about flaming bags of dog crap and Final Deep Cheek-unox. I apologize for that, I must have a case of the sillies as I'm writing this review. That's a lot more than I can say for the entertainment value of this movie though. Steer clear of it, I suffer the pain so you don't have to.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113065/

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/

Cyborg Director's Cut aka Slinger (1989)

When word first surfaced that a director's cut of Cyborg had been found, I was pretty excited to see what this was all about. Then, when Albert Pyun offered to send me a copy so I could review it, I was even more excited. This is a very unique experience because, unlike most director's cuts which are a totally finished product, and often meant to replace the original cut in the market, this is a very rough version, not cleaned up, and intended for us as fans of the original to look at and see what we think of it. So without further ado...

Slinger, or the Cyborg Director's Cut, has some very distinct differences in story from the version we're familiar with. First off, there's no plague. Van Damme is chasing Vincent Klyn more out of revenge than to save a cyborg. As far as the cyborg goes, she's carrying data that will help get the electrical grids up and running--or so she says, because we discover rather quickly that she and the people she works for have secret ulterior motives. And then there's Klyn, who has a different raison d'etre as well: he's like a conqueror or killer in the name of Satan, almost like a take on the medieval crusader. He feels like this world is meant to be, and wants to stop the cyborg from fixing it, so he's recruiting forces from other gangs and planning to invade Atlanta.



We're going to start with what I liked. The new story plugs some of the holes the old one had, like, first and foremost, why the cyborg would be in New York getting key information to cure the plague. It made no sense, but this makes more sense, that there'd be info on an old computer she needed to get at. Also, this version handles the length of time to get from New York to Atlanta much better. On a technical aspect, the DC introduces the musical score that was intended to go with the movie, and which is definitely superior. There were a couple moments when it was a little heavy handed--best example was when Prophet reveals herself to be a cyborg, and there's a "bom-bom-bom", which was a bit much-- but that was rare, and more often, it fit the mood and the shots better. The music from the theatrical version was really just filler, while here it was a part of the film. (More on the music later.)

I think the what I didn't like was very minimal, but I figured I'd put it in here anyway. The voice effects on the flashback sequences, especially the echo, was kind of cheesy. I did like the flashback sequences here better overall though. I also liked better in the theatrical version (from here "TV") that we didn't learn the full extent of what Klyn and his gang did to Van Damme and the family until he was crucified. In the DC we learn about it earlier, but I think it had more punch by waiting. On the other hand, the crucifixion scene makes much more sense in the DC with Klyn as a twisted religious figure. I also liked the end fight between Klyn and Van Damme in the TV better. In the DC it's cut down a little more.



Overall, I think the DC fits more with what Albert Pyun was going for, with the Spaghetti Western aspect and the samurai films. The TV had elements of that, but it became more low-budget actioner--which was fun too, don't get me wrong. I'm left trying to imagine if Cyborg would be as much of a cult favorite had the DC version been the one we got originally, which is hard because the actual video is so rough. I actually watched the theatrical one right before the DC so I could compare the two better, and I really think that there wouldn't have been a drop off in the film's following had the DC been released, and when you combine that with the fact that the pluses of the DC outweigh those of the TV, I would have to say the DC wins. Between the superior music and the story that made just a little more sense, I'm left wondering what the Cyborg property could've been beyond the first one had the DC been the one released in 1989.

I went back to my review of the TV, and in it I said that it was maybe Pyun's best film, so to find out that the project had been taken from him was intriguing to say the least. I wasn't sure what I would think going in, because Cyborg is such an iconic film that so many from my generation saw at a young age (perhaps too young) and it was part of what sparked our interest in the action and sci-fi genres. Now that we're 20+ years after the film's initial release, I'm not sure we can do like Lucas did with Star Wars and try to erase the original from existence; but there's definitely a place for this director's cut to coexist with the version that we grew up with, and I'd like to see it as a finished product, with the images cleaned up and maybe even a director's commentary or introduction or interview--if that's possible, I don't know. If not, this on it's own is still pretty cool.



The soundtrack by Tony Riparetti and Jim Saad will be available in April 2011 on CD from Howlin' Wolf Records (www.howlinwolfrecords.com). When the editing process was taken away from Pyun and this score was axed, I have to imagine they went with some stock music from a previous film or something, because that's really what it sounds like, and before this, I'd never noticed the music in Cyborg. I don't know what the thinking in cutting it was either, if it was too married to the original edit that it didn't fit, or if it was too intrusive and they wanted the music to be merely filler. It's one of those crazy realities of working in movies, that people can put all this effort into making the music for a feature length film, only to have it all axed. At least now all that hard work is finally coming to light.

I guess that leaves us with only one more thing: is this worth buying? First off, if you're interested in purchasing it, you need to first send an e-mail to curnanpictures@gmail.com with Cyborg Director's Cut in the subject line, and let them know that you're interested. From there they'll send you an e-mail letting you know what you'll get, and what the cost is. For $25--US, it's a little more for Canada and Europe--you get the Cyborg Director's Cut, Pyun's feature film Bulletface, plus his autograph and personal message on the cover. You can see some of my cover shots I included in this post, which will also give you an idea of the new cover art, which is pretty sweet too. In the e-mail you get back before you buy you'll also be given a link to a video clip just so you see what it will look like. They make no bones about it, this is for die hard fans and collectors, and if you don't count yourself as either, this might not be for you--you're looking at a very rough cut. On the other hand, to get a sense of what Albert Pyun really wanted to do with the film that he might be most famous for is definitely worth checking out.



Final verdicts: now that we're nearly 20 years on with the theatrical version, I don't know that I can say I'd rather the DC in it's place, but I also don't know that I can say I wouldn't have been as enamored with the DC as I've been with the TV had the DC been the one that was released back then, so I don't know why the project was taken from Pyun. I've always thought that Cyborg was a wasted property, and watching both versions today brought that sense back again. This wasn't just something that more could've been done with linearly--as in with better sequels--but horizontally as well, with things like novels and mid-late 90s syndicated TV shows that took place in the same time but in different locations with different characters. It might be too late for all of that now--although, while the syndicated TV market may be dead, a series of YA sci-fi books might still work--but the Cyborg saga under this DC storyline may not be over yet, if the end credits are any indication. There's mention of a Cyborg Legacy: The Rise of the Slingers. We'll have to wait and see, but that could be really cool.

Also, one quick mention before I wrap this up: the voice overs sounded like Thom Mathews. I'm not sure if it's him or not, just saying it sounds like him. Imagine him in a Cyborg spin-off as a Slinger...

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097138/ and curnanpictures@gmail.com

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/

Dollman (1991)

This movie has the triple threat of Charles Band, Tim Thomerson, and DTVC Hall of Famer Albert Pyun. Throw in its availability on Watch Instantly, and it was a must. I mean, how do you not love the idea of Tim Thomerson as a cop from another planet who chases a criminal to Earth, where he only stands 13 inches tall?

Dollman is pretty much what I just said above. Thomerson plays Brick Bardo (classic Pyun name), a renegade, violent cop from a planet 10,000 light years away, who chases after the living severed head of one of his oldest enemies, into a ban of energy that transports them in their space ships to Earth, the South Bronx to be exact, where they're only 13 inches tall. Bardo finds he can help a local woman in her fight against crack dealing gangs that have taken over her neighborhood, but she isn't sure she wants his help because he's so violent-- even at 13 inches!



This is a lot of fun. Sure, it has a couple too silly for words moments, like when Bardo jumps out of an upper story window to the street below, where he grabs onto a moving car and rides it to where the baddies' hideout is; but for the most part it's just a fun low-budget sci-fi actioner, with a lot of familiar faces and some pretty gory shoot-outs. The film starts with a hostage situation in a laundry mat on Bardo's home planet, and he shows up, everyone there expecting he wants to help. Nicholas Guest, the cop on the scene, asks him what he plans to do. "I'm going to wash my whites in hot water, and my colors in cold water with a warm rinse." "What?" "This is where I do my laundry, and that's what I plan to do." It starts out this awesome, and pretty much keeps it going from there. Throw in appearances from other Pyun mainstays Vincent Klyn and Michael Halsey, and a baddie played by former child actor and current it actor Jackie Earle Haley, and you have a formula for a good time.

We've been on a pretty good string of Albert Pyun films lately, so hopefully we'll keep that up. It's hard to go wrong with a movie about a violent cop played by Tim Thomerson that's only 13 inches tall and likes to blow people apart with his custom made firearm, and with a running time of 75 minutes without the credits, that's usually an even surer bet. Beyond the camp, there were also some really cool sets and shots, especially of Tim Thomerson with a fallen building behind him that looks like an old mushroom box or something. Obviously, this movie is more about fun than anything, but it's always good to see some shots that are more on the artistic side, because it tells us, the viewer, that at least the process is being taken seriously, even if the content isn't meant to be.



This role by Jackie Earle Haley came a few years before his 13-year hiatus, which saw him come back in 2006 with an Oscar nomination. Not a bad deal if you ask me. I actually really liked him on the few episodes I've seen of Human Target. Here he plays a gang lord who comes across the severed-head bad guy Thomerson was chasing, and while he's trying to carve out supremacy in the South Bronx, he's also after Thomerson because the severed told him he could become a problem. It was a good role. I don't know that we could get him in another Pyun film now though.

"Back off Warchild, seriously." It's time to take inventory of this film's Pyun mainstays, starting with Thomerson. There was also Nicholas Guest, Michael Halsey, and DTVC favorite Vincent Klyn, listed here as "Vince Klyn". None of them get more than a scene or two outside of Thomerson, but it's always good to see them.



According to imdb, Dollman was filmed both in LA and in the South Bronx, so I'm not sure how much of the South Bronx stuff was filmed on location or back out in LA. I've actually been to the Bronx before-- maybe not the South Bronx, I'm actually not sure where exactly I was, because we were lost. I was with a couple classmates in college going from UMaine to DC for an anthropology conference, and the girl driving had these weird directions that involved getting off of one Interstate in the Bronx, then getting onto another. It was a trip, and when I saw the highway we wanted, the girl was like "we can't go that way, it's a one-way street", and I was like "Jesus, just go, let's get the hell out of here." It's always funny to get rural Maine mixed with the city, because rural Maine never has any idea how to cope with it. I would like to go there again under better circumstances though. The parts we were in didn't look that bad.

You've probably learned more than you wanted to about my brief experience in the Bronx, so I'll wrap this up. Simply put, 75 minutes, Albert Pyun, Tim Thomerson as a 13-inch violent Dirty Harry style cop, and a good amount of gore and fun. What more could you want?

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101751/

Knights (1993)

This is an Albert Pyun flick that I've been meaning to get to for a while, but for one reason or another it's always been pushed back. Well, it will be pushed back no more, it's time to bake this cake. Also, our friend Mr. Kenner at Movies in the Attic reviewed this as part of his Albert Pyun Fest, if you want to check that out. (By the way man, I hotlinked your cover image. Hope you're not mad at me...)

Knights takes place in an undetermined spot in the future, after the apocalypse, in Arches National Park near Moab, Utah. As humans are trying to pick up the pieces, they're having problems with some super powerful cyborgs, led by Lance Henriksen, that need their blood to sustain their systems. All hope looks to be lost, until Kris Kristofferson shows up, a cyborg created to kill these other cyborgs. On his way to exterminate them, he saves Nea, a girl squatting with one of the tribes, and he teaches her how to fight against the cyborgs. Together, they look to defeat this scourge on humanity.



I had a lot of fun with this one. Sure, there are nits to pick about it I guess, especially if one were taking it too seriously, but as far as I could tell, this was meant to be a fun ride. It had a heavy stable of actors, from DTVC Hall of Famer Gary Daniels, to major Pyun mainstays like Tim Thomerson and Vincent Klyn (though both in small parts), in addition to the stars I already mentioned. Plus, there was the gorgeous scenery of the national park, which Pyun spared no expense in delivering to us in all its glory-- essentially allowing it to be a character on its own. Maybe the fight scenes weren't what you'd want, especially because it seemed like he went more for Japanese samurai film style fight scenes over the Hong Kong actioner, which worked for me, but might not have for some others. Also, the whole deal with Kathy Long fighting with Kristofferson's torso tied to her back might have been too silly for a lot of tastes, though again, not mine. Hey, if you're in it to have fun, it doesn't get much better than Knights.

Gary Daniels is Lance Henriksen's right hand man. He does have some good fights, so it's not as bad as the smaller roles we've seen him in-- especially lately-- but he's by no means a main star. This is not one of those moments though where I'm going to complain about the size of his role, because I think it worked perfectly here. He wasn't going to be the main baddie over Henriksen, and Pyun's getting Kristofferson was way too big a coup not to have him as the hero. Plus, Kristoferson gave the film that Western element, that, when combined with the setting, made for a really great aesthetic. It should also be pointed out that in 1993, when this was made, Daniels didn't have many starring roles to his credit, so considering his status at the time, this was the perfect sized part for him.



Another move Pyun made in this film that really worked for me was the shifting of the protagonist, having the girl, played by kickboxer Kathy Long, take over. Again, if you're picking nits, you'd complain that it's impossible that she'd learn enough martial arts in four weeks to be able to take down all the guys and cyborgs that she does. My answer to you would be "you're okay with the cyborgs that need human blood to feed, but a girl learning martial arts in four weeks is what you're stuck on?" One of the things I've always loved about Albert Pyun's work is his consistency in trying new things and rethinking the old standards, and a big one is in casting women as heroic leads. He's doing from the director's and screenwriter's chairs what Cynthia Rothrock is doing from the actor's. His films may not always work-- and not work for myriad reasons that don't always have to do with the idea of the film itself-- but at least we know he's trying to new things, which is a lot more than we can say about a lot of other people we check out on here.

Tim Thomerson versus Lance Henriksen. I know, I've never considered it before, but this film raised the question... okay, I raised the question, after seeing the movie. Anyway, Tim Thomerson had a small part in the beginning, and then that's it for him, but it had me thinking, what if? Now, I'm not taking anything away from Lance Henriksen's performance in Knights, because he was excellent as the slightly goofy, slightly gross, yet very evil baddie, I'm just putting it out there, who makes the better baddie overall? Or rather, who makes the better DTV star? I'm calling it a tie for the sake of political correctness, but by all means, weigh in and let me know... hell, am I crazy for even asking?



I've never been to Arches National Park before. We almost went while I was out in Colorado, but we spent too much time getting to the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, and it was just too far away to get there and back to where we wanted to go. As far as Knights goes, Pyun takes full advantage of this beautiful scenery. He plays with the space in a way that I was critical of him for not doing in Mean Guns with that film's prison setting. He really made it into another character, the way someone like Woody Allen makes New York City into one of his film's characters. It just added another layer of depth that made the movie that much more enjoyable-- though I'm a bit of an outdoors buff, so I might be unique in that assertion.

As far as I can tell, this movie is VHS or bust, so if you can get it, I'd go for it. Don't spend too much, but $5 is a good price. This is just a lot of fun set in a beautiful location with a lot of names you recognize. Ain't nothing to get mad at here.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107333/

Night Hunter (1996)

I've always loved the idea of Don "The Dragon" Wilson as a vampire hunter. Sure, I like the idea better of Sarah Michelle Gellar as one, but I digress (and can digress even more by mentioning her Buffy co-star Charisma Carpenter-- that's two mentions of her in a little over seven days). Anyway, it's just the idea of Wilson as some dark, brooding, duster-wearing anti-hero, I mean, don't get me wrong, he's plenty good at kicking ass in his movies, but there's always been an aw-shucks element in his style, and I was curious to see what a movie would look like without that, see if he could carry it off.

Night Hunter has Wilson as the son of James Lew, one in a long line of vampire hunters. He sees his father killed by Vince Murdocco and the rest of a gang of vampires. He grows up and exacts his revenge on them, only to find out they aren't the last of their kind. There's Vincent Klyn, Ron Yuan, Maria Ford, and the head honcho, Nicholas Guest. At the same time, he's wanted for murder for the killings of Murdocco and his clan; and in his escape from them, he bumps into hottie Melanie Smith, who plays a reporter investigating his case. Wilson needs to defeat these vamps before the solar eclipse, otherwise they'll breed or something, and if they do that, it could be bad.



This could have been awesome, except for one enormous bad decision on the part of the film makers: in every fight scene, they shook the camera. You know, like how they do on Star Trek to simulate the bridge being attacked. I mean, you have great talent like Wilson, Yuan, Lew, and Klyn, not to mention Art Camacho choreographing the scenes, and you gotta do a camera effect that makes me sea sick? This could have been tons of fun, and instead it was pretty much ruined. Good work out of you guys, whoever decided on that one.

We're cruising right along on our Don "The Dragon" Wilson completion project. After this we'll be down to ten more. Also, one more after this will get him to that rarefied air of 20 tags. As far as Night Hunter goes, there was something inorganic about him in this role. It's like they were trying too hard to do The Crow and other anti-heroes of the time, so they crammed him into it. The duster and hair were actually more Lorenzo Lamas as Reno Raines in Renegade. I think too, his natural tendency is to be a pretty stand-up guy, and no matter how much the role calls for being dirty and gritty, that decent guy will always rise to the top-- and to be honest, I'm good with that. He kicks plenty of ass as a decent guy, doesn't he?



DTVC favorite Vincent Klyn is one of many in a great supporting cast. We also had Ron Yuan and James Lew, two guys we're used to seeing as hatchetmen in Asian gangs in DTV films. All of these guys brought it in one way or another, which made it more of a shame that every great fight was ruined by that shaky camera trick. Ugh! Speaking of Klyn, Point Break was on Versus of all channels last week. "Back off Warchild, seriously."

Nicholas Guest played the head baddie. You may remember him as the head master in USA High, among other roles. He usually plays the stuffed shirt style English man, which suits him better than the slick evil vampire. I don't know, maybe the people making the film thought one Limey was as good as another, that they didn't need Julian Sands or Bruce Payne. I was also of the understanding that all Englishmen make good baddies, but upon seeing this, I realize that that was a stereotype. Maybe it's the half Mick half Frog in me, but to all my readers from England, I wholeheartedly apologize. Go Gunners!



Over and over I hear all about some latent eroticism inherent in the whole vampire thing, and I never get it. Other than the fact that you're talking about men with tons of experience but none of the side effects of aging, there's nothing about biting people's necks and lots of blood that's hot. This film takes a different track for a moment. The two female leads are played by Maria Ford and Melanie Smith, and they have something of a Russ Meyer inspired scene in an elevator where, after some silly punches to Ford's face by Smith, Ford throws Smith against the wall, then pins her arms behind her back, holding her helpless. Total girl-on-girl action. I get that I'm not the target demographic for Twilight, and I get that there's a level of teenage angst that drives those stories; but for my money, Twilight would be a whole lot hotter with some serious girl-on-girl action. That's hot, vampires are not.

This would have been a real winner if not for the shaky camera affect. All right, maybe not a real winner, but pretty fun. Sometimes, less is more, and that's especially true here. If you're daring, though, this is actually available on Netflix-- though who knows for how much longer, because Wilson's films are fading out of print, and when they're out of print, Netflix doesn't make them available anymore.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113981/

Bloodmatch (1991)

Mr. Kenner over at Movies in the Attic brought it to my attention that Bloodmatch was available on Hulu. Sounded like a good idea to me, until I fire it up, and it was all choppy and jumpy. I know it's an issue with my computer, but I can't figure out why Hulu eats up so much RAM or whatever that I can't watch a film, but Netflix Watch Instantly runs fine. I will say that ESPN3.com also has the same issues on my computer that Hulu does, so I know it's not Hulu; but regardless, it was just unwatchable. Anyway, I tracked down my own copy of it, and here it is for you.

Bloodmatch has Albert Pyun mainstay Thom Mathews as a dude whose brother was beaten to death by some kickboxers for not throwing a fight. After torturing Michel Qissi into giving some names of those responsible, he has a nurse he knows help gather the four offending parties, through a combination of guns and chloroform, and tape them to seats in a Las Vegas arena. Matthews' plan is to fight each one to the death, until one gives up exactly who is responsible.



Let's start with the good. Solid fight scenes, an 81-minute runtime, and a boatload of genuinely great cheese. Perhaps best of all was the music, which seemed totally out of place in most places. It was like the sombre music you might find to the intro of a bad 1980s DTV sci-fi movie. Yet this music played over most of the film's best action. Your guess is as good as mine, but I'll take it over the bad Disturbed retreads we forced to listen to in a lot of today's bad actioners. Then there were the one-liners. "I'd love to kick the shit out of your head." Sure, why not, or rather, how awesome is that?

Now for the bad. Even at 81 minutes, there were some scenes of protracted dialog that were excruciating to deal with. If you're asking whether or not I think an 81-minute movie could be shorter, I guess I'd say, try replacing that patch of bad dialog/acting either with some more unintentionally funny stuff-- like people threatening to kick the shit out of people's heads-- or give us more or longer fights. The scene I'm specifically talking about was when the four suspects wake up from their chloroforming to find themselves taped to arena chairs. They just go back and forth with each other, and between the writing and the acting, it feels like it goes on forever. The other complaint I had was a lack of Vincent Klyn and Michel Qissi. First, in Qissi's case, you have the best fighter, and you use him for one scene at the beginning. Second, in Klyn, you have the coolest guy in the movie, and he's barely in his one scene slightly toward the middle. I know it's been almost 20 years since this came out, but maybe Pyun could go back and turn Bloodmatch into a buddy picture featuring Qissi and Klyn.



Speaking of Pyun, you can tell he was doing his best to put lipstick on a pig here, and I think he did a great job. Considering he didn't write the script, he couldn't help the awful scene in the arena I described above, and I imagine Klyn was only in the scene he was in as a favor to Pyun, essentially adding awesomeness that wasn't originally supposed to be there. Word on the street is that things are going well with the Tales of an Ancient Empire release, so we at the DTVC wish him continued success with that. I think the next film of his we'll review will be Nemesis 2.

Back of Warchild. Seriously. That's right, DTVC favorite Vincent Klyn is back. He's barely in the film, which often seems to be the case, where he's just lending his talents for a bit to help out Albert Pyun. I wonder if Kathryn Bigelow invited him to her Oscar winning party. Can you see Klyn bellying up to the caviar, loading up a cracker, and then someone puts a hand on his shoulder and says "Back off Warchild. Seriously."



Maybe I'm going way out on a limb here, but it seemed like Pyun was going for some real Film Noir tones, between the music, the way he had the actors recite the dialog, and some of the colors and shots. We know from films like Radioactive Dreams, and the newer Bulletface, that Pyun is a fan of Noir. Whether he did it on purpose or I'm imagining things (or being a Pyun apologist if you're so inclined), it just feels like he tries to make lemonade out of the lemon projects he's sent, and maybe in these earlier films that he did that it isn't so evident. It's one thing I think that's great about his current situation, where he seems to have more creative freedom and can make more of the pictures he wants. What's too bad, though, is that these new films aren't available on Netflix, where a wider audience would have access to them.

This is early-90s action cheese as only Pyun can do it. Bloody, great fights, funny dialog, and out of place music. Maybe I'm softer on these films than I am their modern counterparts, and I'm good with that accusation. If this film were made today, with someone other than Pyun at the helm (Isaac Florentine would be one exception, though), it would be ten kinds of nasty wrong, from the music, to the fights, to just the whole approach to the material. That's why you should skip those films, get someone with a nice computer that you can hook up to a nice TV, and stream Bloodmatch on Hulu for your bad movie night. I think you'll have a fun time.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101482/