High Voltage (1997)

This is one that's been sitting in my Tubi queue for I don't know how long. It's an Isaac Florentine film, so I knew I needed to get to it at some point, but now that we only have this and two others of his left to cover, I figured it was time to make it happen. In addition to us, Chris the Brain at Bulletproof and Ty and Brett at Comeuppance have covered this as well.

High Voltage is about a group of young bank robbers, led by Antonio Sabato Jr., and including Lochlyn Munro and Amy Smart. They think they have the score of their life coming when they rob a bank in Chinatown, but Sabato Jr. discovers as they're raiding the vault that this is the bank where top Vietnamese gangster George Cheung launders his and other gangsters' money. He tries to abort the robbery, but it's too late, Cheung wants his pound of flesh, and will stop at nothing to get it. Initially running felt like the best option, but now Sabato Jr. and crew want to get all Cheung's cash and take him down, and Sabato Jr. knows just the person to help him do it: Shannon Lee, bank manager and unhappy romantic partner to Cheung, she's all too happy to help Sabato Jr. and company so she can get away from Cheung too. Will they succeed?

This is some good old fashioned Florentine here, maybe a tier below his best stuff, but at the top of that second tier for sure. Great action set pieces, with names we recognize, and this fun mix of Westerns, 90s heist flicks, and Hong Kong Gun Fu. We do get some lull points, and some of those work, like the scenes with Sabato Jr. and Lee, but mostly they're there to let us relax between action scenes, even if they have a real purpose of character development. Outside of Sabato Jr. and Lee's characters, do I care if anyone else bites it in this? Probably not, just throw me onto a set somewhere, fire a bunch of guns, blow some shit up, and have some people beat the crap out of each other. It's a time-honored tradition that just works, and this one does that.

By my count this is 17 directed films on the site for Isaac Florentine, plus a half for his work on Max Havoc: Curse of the Dragon, which puts him in a three-way tie with Joseph Merhi and Fred Olen Ray for second all-time, behind Albert Pyun (co-director on Max Havoc: Curse of the Dragon) and his 44. He has two other films for us to review on the site, Hounds of War, which Ty and I covered on episode 277 of the podcast; and Desert Kickboxer, his first ever directorial feature film. So that means Desert Kickboxer is the only film of his I haven't seen yet, which I think gives me a good idea of where High Voltage ranks among his movies. My favorites of his are the two Ninja movies, Cold Harvest, and Bridge of Dragons. Then we have Special Forces and US Seals II, and I think this slots in with those, fun 90-minute actioners that do what you want from them. What I think is interesting is I would put this above everything he's done since Ninja: Shadow of a Tear, which I think says less about Florentine, and more about the restrictions on DTV filmmaking in the age of streaming and industry consolidation. When I look at his run from this in 1997 to Special Forces in 2003, I don't know that any of those movies would've been given the money and resources to be made at that quality today, and it's not like any of those were breaking the bank! What's great about Tubi though is we can go back and revisit gems like these, or visit them for the first time like I did.

We last saw Antonio Sabato Jr. in 2011 when we covered The Base II, which was his second time on the site after Princess of Mars, so we don't see a lot of him on here, and I discovered that doesn't make sense when you look at his IMDb bio, as he has a lot of other DTV stuff, especially from around this time, but I had no idea and just thought he went more mainstream after this. He does a good enough job here, maybe not the Dolph, Adkins, Daniels, or even Marshall Teague you expect from a Florentine lead, but for what the movie wanted he fit the bill well. Equally great at fitting the bill was Shannon Lee, though it would've been nice to see her do some more martial arts. Unlike Sabato Jr., this is our first time seeing her on the site, and she doesn't have a lot of credits, but there are a few movies of hers out there that we could do, including Cage II, which we talked about last week on The Firing Line post. She did do an episode of the show Warrior in 2023, so maybe she'll do some DTV stuff in the near future as well. Some of these 90s nostalgia films like Last Kumite could use someone like her in them, which would be great to see.

This is probably as good a place as any for a big cast round-up, as there are a lot of people in this. We have Amy Smart as a member of the gang, the same year Starship Troopers is released, and two years before Varsity Blues and Outside Providence, when she really takes off. She has made her way back to the DTV world recently with 2024's Held Hostage in My House, which sounds like a great Lifetime title, but was a direct to Netflix film. Also in the gang was Lochlyn Munro, who's no stranger to our site or the DTV world. Both he and Smart are good as members of the gang, even if his character had more to do than hers. William Zabka's back after we saw him in our SePMtember PM post. Here he's not a scenery chewing baddie, but is fun as an unhinged biker who first helps Sabato Jr. and co., only to double cross them because he wants the money to himself. The baddie is played by George Cheung, who we usually see in more supporting roles, but does a great job as the main baddie. We haven't tagged him yet, and when I looked up his IMDb bio, he doesn't have as much stuff that we've covered on here as I thought, so maybe sometime down the road he'll get that tag. Someone who does have it is the late James Lew, who plays Cheung's second-in-command. Always great to see Lew, he was one of those names that helped make these 90s DTV actioners that much better, and will be missed.

Finally, terms like Tarentino-esque or ripping off Tarentino come up a lot, especially in late 90s movies like this where it was hard to not see the shadow Pulp Fiction was casting over them. That said, it can be reductive if we're not thinking about all the movies that existed before Pulp Fiction that Tarentino was borrowing from too, which begs the question, are they sharing the same influence as opposed to one borrowing from the other? I think you can make the case in this with the scene in the bar where Amy Smart is playing a cover of "I Can't Help Falling in Love" on the jukebox and dancing around to it that that's kind of biting on Pulp Fiction, though it also kind of feels like the 60s movies that Tarentino was taking that kind of thing from too, and part of why I may give Florentine the benefit of the doubt is much of this film feels more like he was drawing from old Westerns and 60s crime movies, and then giving it a modern touch, as opposed to riding the Pulp Fiction wave; but at the very least, you could make the argument that Pulp Fiction and the need to cash in on that gave filmmakers like Florentine the greenlight to add more elements like that in their movies, or even the addition of them made for a better hook for investors and distributors. Probably the most obvious Tarentino rip-off elements we complain about are the quirky gangster conversations, or an overall talkiness that sounds too derivative to be anything but, which this movie doesn't have; but these touches Florentine add in this film that harken back to an earlier movie age are probably better understood as coming from a similar inspiration rather than an out-and-out rip-off, but as I said above, Pulp Fiction cast such a large shadow, that it's not always easy to unpack that when we see it.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently get this on a bunch of streamers here in the States, including Tubi, which I think is a great way to go. This is earlier Florentine with some great names and great action that you may have missed (like I did), or haven't seen in a while, but I think it's worth a watch (or rewatch if that's the case).

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0129992

The Power Within (1995)

For our SePMtember PM post, I wanted to do one Art Camacho directed for his entry into the 60 Club, but have since realized that Cole S. McKay did stunts on this too, making it his entry into the 70 Club, so we'll have to find one he directed for his official 70 Club post. In addition to us, Chris the Brain at Bulletproof and Ty and Brett at Comeuppance have covered this as well.

The Power Within has Ted Jan Roberts as Stan, a high school junior not living up to his potential. He could be so much better at school, martial arts, and getting a date to the prom if he only tried harder. At the same time, William Zabka has stolen a ring that makes him very powerful, and Gerald Okamura, holder of the other ring, doesn't want Zabka to get both. Unfortunately, Zabka kills him, but before he dies, he gives his ring to Stan, and tells him that as powerful as this ring is, his true power lies within. Now shit is really happening for Stan, his grades are up, Sandy's (Tracy Melchior) going to the prom with him, and he beat up a blackbelt in karate class. The problem is he still needs to deal with Zabka.

What a great time this one was. A big part of it was the cast, where they just loaded this thing up with a ton of fun performances. In addition to the names I mentioned above, we had John O'Hurley as a police detective, Karen Valentine as Roberts's mother, PJ Soles as Melchior's mother, and a Don "The Dragon" Wilson cameo playing himself. Then we have some fantastic fights, choreographed by Camacho and Roberts, that all looked great as well. From a PM movie standpoint, I would say there were only a couple moments that were pure PM. First is when Zabka is in a high-speed chase with the henchmen of a crime boss that want the ring back from him and some police officers, one of the cop cars goes flying over the top of a city bus, with explosions and everything; and second, when Roberts is being held in O'Hurley's office after a big fight, he needs to escape to rescue Melchior, who's being held by Zabka, and instead of going through the door, he crashes through a window. That's gotta be a PM motto: "Why use a door when there's a perfectly good window you can crash through." If you can find this, I think it's a fun one and worth checking out.

60 films for Art Camacho, of which 13 are director credits, including this one. It's a huge milestone, after Dolph, Cole S. McKay, and Gary Daniels, he's only the fourth person to the 60 Club, and I think it just speaks to his work ethic. The interview he did on the PM Entertainment Podcast episode for A Dangerous Place (which yours truly was also a guest on) really gets into that, where he talks about all the ways he seized various opportunities PM gave him to work in their movies, including directing films like this. The result is that we as fans of the genre ultimately are the winners, because we have a lot of fun movies like this to watch due to his talent and work ethic. When I look at his bio, beyond the fact that we have five more movies that he's directed to review on here, he still has a ton of stuff that he worked on in various capacities to cover, so the 60 Club is just the start, but it's well-deserved too. Here's to you Mr. Camacho, you're one of the great ones.

On a more somber note, since our last Ted Jan Roberts post, Magic Kid, we've learned that he passed away in 2022. Really sad for anyone to pass away that young, but with Roberts, seeing him in something like this, there's a sense of what could've been. He and I were born in the same year, so it maybe gives me a different perspective, but one thing I do notice in watching action movies is they tend to like older men in the leads. Take Scott Adkins, who turned 50 this year, he really didn't start getting the big leading roles until he was in his 30s. Even something like Special Forces had Marshall Teague in the lead. And maybe that was the issue in the 2000s, he was too old for kids and teen roles like this, but too young to take the next step in his action film career, leaving this gap that he may have been able to pick back up on in the late 2000s/early 2010s, but by then it was too late it seems. And maybe even more tragic, we're seeing an influx of films featuring 90s action leads again, so depending on how his martial arts skills were, he could've probably found roles in this new ecosystem. Again, it was really sad news, he'll truly be missed.

We'll use this paragraph to round up the rest of the names in this. First off, it's our 62nd PM Entertainment flick on the site, so we're really starting to make our way through their catalog. My PM Entertainment Letterboxd list is live again, so you can check that out and see where I put this. As I said above, this is 70 films for Cole S. McKay, so we'll be doing a special 70 Club post for him in the near future. I know we'll be doing at least one movie he did stunts on between now and then, but who knows, he may have even more before we get to that post, because he's in so many films doing stunt work. Speaking of clubs, 40 Club member Don "The Dragon" Wilson has 45 films now with this one-scene cameo as himself. That puts him two behind Cynthia Rothrock for third-most all time as an actor, but she has a movie in the can that I'll be reviewing this week, so that gap will widen again. We also have Gerald Okamura in back-to-back weeks, now putting him at 21 films on the site. He's another one that appears in a ton of stuff, so who knows how many more films of his we'll do, but he was great here as Roberts's ancient sensei and previous ring holder. I can't believe I'm almost to the end of the paragraph and haven't yet mentioned how great William Zabka was as the main baddie. Chewing scenery all over the place, just having a great time, he played a big part in why this film worked. Finally, John O'Hurley of Seinfeld fame was in this as the detective, our second time seeing him on the site after Mirror Images. No love scenes for him here, though there was a burgeoning romance between him and Karen Valentine as Roberts's mother.

Finally, we had a few scenes with a chimp in this one. At the end of the credits there was the mention that no animals were harmed in making this film, but I beg to differ, because the only humane way to have a chimp in your film is to not have one, or now with the technology we have, make them with CGIs. You've heard me on this crusade before, but chimps are particularly egregious in my mind, because they share 97% of our DNA. Forget putting them in movies, they shouldn't be in zoos or be had as pets either. To give you a sense of how close to humans they are, there's currently a chimpanzee war in Uganda between two factions that split apart, lopsided in favor of one faction over the other, leading to a lot of deaths. There's actually a Netflix documentary on this that's narrated by Mahershala Ali if you want to know more. So let's leave chimps alone to be chimps, our movies and zoos will be fine without them; and considering it's illegal to keep humans as pets, it should be illegal to have chimps as pets too.

And with that, let's wrap this up. I found this on YouTube, and while it's not the best quality, it'll get you to the church on time. Hopefully as more of these PM flicks are finding their ways to streamers, this one will as well, because I had a lot of fun with it.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114171/

Shootfighter II (1996)

As we continue with our October Hall of Fame inductions, joining Julie Strain in the class of 2021 is the one and only Bolo Yeung. In trying to find a good induction post, I was originally going to go with the first Shootfighter, until I realized I'd already seen and reviewed it! I guess with over 1100 reviews over 14 years, I'll forget some, but I feel like Shootfighter shouldn't have been one of those. Anyway, I settled on the sequel, which was on YouTube. In addition to us, our friends Ty and Brett at Comeuppance have done this one, so you can go to their site to see what they thought.

Shootfighter II takes place after part one. A mysterious man named Lance (Joe Son) has his own shootfighting ring in Miami, and after a San Francisco cop's son is killed in it, he enlists our guys from part one (Yeung, William Zabka, and Michael Bernardo) to go undercover to take it down. The cop also gets another fighter named Shark (Brett Baxter Clark) to help infiltrate them, which causes some tension because he's a bit older--a Boomer vs Gen X vibe in the late 90s. When it's revealed that Lance is Yeung's brother, all bets are off, leading to a massive climactic fight at the end.

 

This definitely does the trick for 90s action. It doesn't quite hit the notes part one did for me (which is strange that I can say that considering I didn't even remember watching it until I saw my review, but that's neither here nor there), but it was still a lot of fun. Evil fighting ring? Check. "Rich people" in 90s fashions waving money around and yelling at the fights? Check. Baddie in double-breasted suits and a ponytail? Check. One of our heroes with a too-sweet man mane? Check. William Zabka? Check. And of course Bolo Yeung unleashed at the end? Check. This is the 90s VHS video store banger you came for, only now you can watch it on YouTube and don't need to worry about rewinding or late fees.

Bolo Yeung probably should have been in the Hall of Fame sooner, but I think the thing was I hadn't done a lot of movies with him in them, and some of the ones I had done had him with a smaller part. On the other hand, he was such a staple of late 80s/early 90s DTV action, and the Shootfighter movies were a great example of that. The other thing about Yeung is he was one of the great bridge stars, at least for me. We all remembered him in Bloodsport and Double Impact, and then seeing his name on the cover of a DTV flick at the video store, my buddies and I would have to watch it. That was one of the ways we learned that the DTV world even existed, and Bolo played a big part in that. What's great here is how unleashed he is at the end. It's just pure Bolo taking out baddies. Truly one of the all-time greats, and probably should have been inducted sooner.

 

The last time we saw William Zabka on here, it was 2011's Cross, which was chock full of other B- and C-list stars, of which Zabka would have been on the lower end in terms of recognizability (which I don't think is a word). Fast forward to 2021, and he's by far the biggest name in that cast or this cast, even bigger than that film's star, Brian Austen Green. A big-time Netflix hit series will do that for you, but it's been great to see as someone who's been a fan of Zabka for a long time. Here, of course, he's not the Zabka he is now yet, 25 years ago it was just Karate Kid name recognition, combined with Bolo Yeung's, that makes us want to rent this movie when we see it in the video store. I wonder if the new success will lead to more DTV opportunities for him now. I looked on IMDb, and he hasn't done much other than Cobra Kai since that took off, so maybe it's just a matter of time before the roles come.

One thing that makes a film from 1996 better in 2021 than it was in 1996, is the nostalgia factor, which this film definitely has, especially in Michael Bernardo and Brett Baxter Clark. Bernardo's man mane is absolutely fantastic, and what is that shirt he's wearing? You could see him in a Charles and Eddie- or Club Nouveau-style 90s pop band giving us his best overly affected wannabe soul singer voice on an upbeat slightly reggae infused Donnie Hathaway or Bill Withers cover. And then Brett Baxter Clark, probably best known to DTVC readers as part of Kahn's gang in Star Trek II or in the Andy Sidaris classic Malibu Express, here he could have been the hunky yet suspicious supporting guest part in a Murder, She Wrote of Matlock episode, the guy we think could have done it, but we find out didn't, despite having plenty of other sketchy things going on. Throw Zabka in there, who's 31-playing-25 with his post Chessking outfits, and the villainous Joe San in his oversized double-breasted suits, and it doesn't get much better.

 

Finally, this movie touches on what is ultimately the major design flaw in the sport of Shootfighting: you're killing off your product, so to speak. Part of how the guys are able to infiltrate Joe Son's shootfighting ring is he needs more fighters, because every night his number of fighters is always cut in half. The thing is, we have this sense that Joe Son is very successful, because he has all number of people on his payroll, from his own guards, to a guy who runs drawbridge, to a helicopter pilot--not only that, he has a limo outfitted with something installed that makes the back seat airtight and then deploys a sleeping gas through its ventilation system. None of these things are cheap, yet somehow he manages to make all of this money off a shootfighting ring where his best and most popular fighters are always one bad night away from being gone, forcing him to sell new fighters to his rich fan base. Imagine if the NBA had worked like that? Once Michael Jordan lost in the '86 playoffs he's dead? Or would they have beaten the Celtics because Larry Bird would have been killed after the C's lost to the Lakers the year before? But wait, the Lakers lost to the Celtics the year before that, so then would that have meant Magic Johnson died first? I guess we can all feel lucky that the NBA doesn't work on the shootfighting construct.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Unfortunately right now YouTube is the only way to go, which is bad because the film also features a "B n' B" love scene--boobs n' butt--so it has an age restriction, which I found out means if I try to watch it through the YouTube app on my cable box, I have to do this convoluted process where I need to start the film on my phone app, then link it to my TV with a code, which then allows me to watch on my TV with the age restriction. At 42 years old, it feels like a bit much, so hopefully someone out there will pick it up on a streaming site like Tubi. Also, congratulations again on Bolo Yeung's induction to the DTVC Hall of Fame. It's much-deserved and long overdue.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114433

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

 

Cross (2011)

I came across this while doing a search for C. Thomas Howell on imdb recently. It had a pretty stellar cast, so I figured I'd give it a go, and Netflix sent it to me from their shipping center in White River Junction, VT, because apparently my local shipping centers in Portsmouth, NH, Manchester, NH, and Portland, ME didn't have it. Looks like there's plenty of pain to go around.

Cross is about some special amulet made by God or something at the beginning of time to give some lucky holder the power to protect the innocent, and as luck would have it, David Silver, aka Brian Austen Green has it in 2011. Anyway, he has a gang of mercs and whatnot, and then there's a baddie played by Michael Clark Duncan who runs a good chunk of LA, and he's commissioned by a bad immortal viking played by Vinnie Jones to collect blood samples from ladies in town who might be descended from Gods so he can make a special staff that will finally kill him-- and everyone else on the planet. Now it's up to Green and his gang to stop them.



This was a solid buck-45 of torture. Just bad all around. Not funny in parts that were supposed to be funny. Not enough action. Bad manufactured tension. Scenes that overstayed their welcomes by a good five minutes-- which adds up over the course of 105 minutes. It was just poorly written which made for a lot of tediousness and redundancies. They slapped titles on the screen for almost everything that happened, as if they were afraid we weren't smart enough to figure it out on our own. "Okay, so the informant just told Green to go to such and such warehouse. Oh shit, it's the next scene, where are they now? Oh, the title says such and such warehouse, of course. Silly me!" They'd do something like show us a girl being kidnapped from her apartment, then make us sit through some of Green's gang searching that girl's apartment for her for, only to come to the conclusion we already knew! By the end of it, I was almost numb to the pain, but when Green sees his girl tied to a post, and he spends like five separate scenes not being able to get her undone and her yelling "C'mon hurry!", I was on the verge of tears. The things I put myself through to do this blog. I should've just watched Point Break again and re-reviewed it.

The major chasm this movie had to bridge was the idea of David Silver from 90210 as an action hero. Aaaaaaaannnnnt!!! Wrong! Not even close. David Bradley in a fanny pack thinks that's a stretch too far. And especially not the dark, brooding type of hero. What's next, signing him up for the new Crow feature? Maybe if the material had been written better, he might have had something to lean on, but the average 90210 episode had more drama and tension than this did by miles. To quote his character from the show: "I might be white, but I ain't Vanilla!" Well, I beg to differ. Maybe Megan Fox can get him some better work in her flicks.



You're probably wondering why, out of all the people in this-- and there were a ton-- I chose a pic of Suzie Abromeit, who played Green's love interest. I did it because I remembered how good she was in Beatdown, and then I realized, Beatdown was an all around better movie than this by quite a bit. Her character especially was a let down, because it looked like she might get to be the same tough no nonsense well-rounded woman she was when we saw her before, but the role was lopped off without being finished and she was relegated to one-dimensional damsel in distress status. It was indicative of a lot of the movie, ideas started but not seen through; things that look great on paper but not so much on screen. It was just a big mess.

Here's a list of notable people in the film: Tom Sizemore, Michael Clarke Duncan, Jake Busey, William Zabka, Vinnie Jones, C. Thomas Howell, Robert Carradine, and Tim Abell, plus Danny Trejo has a two second cameo in the opening credits. None of them have very big parts, but C. Thomas Howell's is barely one scene where he's a bartender serving Green-- and in this film's style, we're inundated with too many jokes about Green ordering a water. I see now, though, how in this imdb age, getting cameos like this is a great form of bait-and-switch. The more actors we've heard of that people might be looking at through more prominent films, the more likely someone like me is to come across the DTV flick they just starred in and write a review for it-- or at the very least have the name in my head when I'm perusing a Red Box; and even though I'm crushing this movie, publicity is publicity. Hell, they list former Irish pop singer Samantha Mumba, who isn't even in the film! Nice work if you can get it.



Vinnie Jones. What comes to mind when you think of him? Brutal, kickass, British, right? If someone looks at him the wrong way, it's that person's funeral, but for us the viewer, it's ten kinds of awesome to watch him put the hurt on the guy. I thought that's what we had going on here when he shows up and some doughy toolbag of a Clarke Duncan henchman with beady eyes starts crackin' foxy on him. Nope. First, he tells Duncan to kill the guy or they can't work together, but Duncan instead kills another of his henchmen who cheated at Go Fish, then he tells Jones that he's loyal to his men yadda yadda yadda he won't kill the doughy toolbag that was asking for it yadda yadda yadda, and Jones, instead of taking care of business himself, says, "good, that was a test to see yadda yadda yadda whatever", and that's it, end scenes. Are you serious! You understand that we're watching this to see Vinne Jones slam a douche like that's head in the car door several times. Or something. Just do something instead of bore us with useless mindless chatter! Please!

But unfortunately that was too much to ask of the people making this movie. Are you looking for some pain? Like I mean having Vinnie Jones slam your head in a car door kind of pain? Probably not, so I'd steer clear of Cross. Luckily I reviewed this one on a Friday, because now I have a few days to recoup before I review something else.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1046245/

Ablaze (2001)

Being that we're making a final push to get the rest of Michael Dudikoff's DTV oeuvre up at the DTVC, I knew I'd have to do this bad boy sooner or later. Let's get through it together, like we're peeling off a Band-Aid, all at once.

Ablaze is a convoluted mess of a plot about a fireman who does police work with Ice-T and works in a fire station with Michael Dudikoff. Either that, or it's about Tom Arnold, who owns both an oil refinery and a hospital that makes patients pay for play (this film might have been ten years before its time in that aspect!). In a stroke of what would've been irony had it not been in a contrived movie, Arnold's refinery has a massive explosion, causing an enormous disaster in the city, and his hospital is the nearest source of emergency care, causing altruistic doctor Amanda Pays to dump Arnold's bottom line based health care in favor of humanitarian medicine. Then something called a firestorm threatens the hospital, and Dudikoff has to bring the firemen in to save them.



On the sleeve the disc came in from Netflix, the synopsis read like this:

A by-the-book investigation into a hotel fire generates quickly into a mad rush to find a deadly arsonist as killer infernos begin raging all over the city. The cops soon discover that someone is creating deliberate death traps -- picture-perfect fires for a serial arsonist turned serial killer! Heading up the investigation is none other than Tom Arnold. (That's like tossing gasoline on a smoking ember, isn't it?)

Had that been the actual movie, it might have been great, and in the first ten minutes, where there's this too sweet chase with Ice-T and our fireman hero going after some serial arsonist, it looked like that's what we were getting. But that wasn't the movie, and instead we got a convoluted disaster pic with no identity, manufactured tension that often made no sense, and a great cast that was essentially wasted-- and when I say wasted, I mean they weren't in the movie nearly enough. Dudikoff, Ice-T, Tom Arnold, and William Zabka were all wasted, receiving little to less screen time. Amanda Pays had a little more to do, but it wasn't enough to save this from leaving me thinking "what's the point?"

I think Soldier Boyz thinks this was the dumbest movie Michael Dudikoff has ever done. A former special forces soldier recruiting kids from a juvenile prison to rescue a girl from Vietnam thinks Ablaze was ludicrous. Usually I applaud Dudikoff for playing it straight and lending bad films like these credibility, but in the case of Ablaze, it ended up being a bad look for him. This was not a movie that needed credibility, it didn't need humoring, it needed someone on the other side sharing in every moment that left us nonplussed, not pretending that we shouldn't be stunned or not knowing how to respond. Tom Arnold, for instance, did do that for us. In every scene he was in, you could see him mailing it in with fourth class postage, and that's what this film was worthy of.



I shouldn't be so harsh on Ablaze, because in watching it again yesterday for the blog, I could see where it went wrong. It was this constant adding of pieces, tacking things on, trying to fix things, but only making them worse. It was someone thinking he or she had a concept for a disaster movie, but not seeing that it was an idea sautéed in wrong sauce. The thing that I think was unforgivable, though, was gathering this huge cast and pretty much having them there for their names on the box.

I was joking with a buddy the other day about how growing up, we all feared that going into high school, we would get picked on by kids who were like William Zabka. Of course, we grew into teenagers, actually went to high school, and learned there were no William Zabkas, and the only fears we had were of the teachers catching us making a dime-sack transaction in the bathroom. Still, Zabka to this day resonates as one of the ultimate 80s baddies. I mean, we almost expected to see his face during the big Darth Vader reveal at the end of Return of the Jedi. In Ablaze, he does play a bad guy, Tom Arnold's right-hand man, but he's as wasted as everyone else, getting killed off early on.



As much as this movie was bad, it was also weird, but weird in a bad way. One of the weirdest was the running story of an aging starlet in purple, snake skin print leather pants, who was acting as a nurse or something. She helps out a kid, talks to our hero, then, inexplicably, disguises herself as a patient and walks out into the inferno between the hospital and the waiting firefighters, and gets herself burned to death. None of it made any sense, and just added to my disdain for the film-- though ladies, you shouldn't let this paragraph deter you from wearing purple leather pants if you're ever so inclined.

This is available on DVD through Netflix, or to buy in a lot of bargain bins (I found it at Big Lots, though of course I passed on it). Seeing all the names will probably be enticing. Don't let them fool you, this is a 90 minute painfest with little to redeem it. If you're a major chase scene connoisseur, you may want it for the opening scene, which was legitimately good, otherwise, stay away.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0217979/

Shootfighter: Fight to the Death (1992)

There was a post a while back where someone hit me with a comment saying something to the effect of "dude, you gotta get Shootfighter up here. Bolo Yeung, William Zabka, it's all good." I can't remember when, or what post, or even the actual comment, I just know it was a long time ago. Anyway, I finally tracked it down after a long time of searching, so here it is.

Shootfighter has Bolo Yeung as a former underground shootfighting great, who retires as a champ after seeing his buddy's throat ripped out in another fight by Martin Kove. In LA, he trains William Zabka in the world of legitimate fighting, while Zabka runs a dojo teaching kids martial arts to make ends meet. He gets into some trouble with a loan shark, and at the same time, his best friend and girlfriend's brother comes back into town. The best friend is more of a streetfighter, and he reminds Zabka that Zabka only knows how to fight for sport. These money issues and pride issues come to a head when Kove's men come calling, roping Zabka into fighting in their dangerous shootfighting circuit in Tijuana. Can Bolo Yeung get down there in time to save the day?



Hell, if he can swim to Hong Kong to escape communist China, he can get down to TJ, and when he does, it's pure awesome. Everything here is pure awesome. It is a little brutal, in a zombie movie kind of sense, with people having hearts ripped out, throats ripped out, and the skin on forearms bitten off. But it's done in that B-zombie movie kind of way that's more funny than sick-- it's just important to note that it's also R rated. Beyond that, the film really sets itself up as the film The Karate Kid should have been, i.e. totally awesome. Sure, Pat Morita is great, but he's no Bolo Yeung. Kove is still stellar as the head baddie, but then they cut out the Macchio role, allowing us to root for Zabka, which just works out so much better. Then you have all the great martial arts, the blood and gore, and a cameo from John Barrett. This is one of the best of the decade, and that's saying a lot considering it's a 90s movie.

And a huge part of that is Bolo Yeung. Whether he's putting mustard on French fries in Tiger Claws II, dressing like a woman in Breathing Fire, or throwing a crushed Alka Seltzer tablet in Jean-Claude Van Damme's face in Bloodsport, he's always great to watch. It's funny, because of his size and fierce scowl, he's usually cast as the baddie, when he actually makes a great good guy, as evidenced by his role here in Shootfighter.



Anyone who grew up in the 80s has to love William Zabka, right? On some levels, though he is on the side of the good guys here, he does channel that heel element that marked the early part of his career. This will be his third tag, the first two being Gale Force and Interceptor Force, but it won't be his last, because he does have some other DTV films to his credit, including the sequel to Shootfighter. As an aside, he has a cameo in Hot Tub Time Machine, a surprisingly great movie.

John Barrett is in this with a short cameo. I've never gotten why they don't use him in films like this for more than the cameo. I think he's great, a great actor, a great fighter. His one scene is kind of brutal, and it doesn't end well, but I loved the pants he had on. This was one of those early 90s "did he have to wear those pants?" kind of films, but Barrett's worked. I might be out on a limb on that one though.



I had two places I wanted to go with this paragraph. First, I wanted to lament the fact that I'd been to San Diego before, and didn't make it down to Tijuana, and this film reminded me of that regret. The other was a personal story based on Zabka's character's name, Ruben. I knew a kid named Ruben back in college. He was an interesting cat, he could tightrope walk, hitchhiked home from school-- which was over an hour away-- all sorts of crazy shit. Anyway, he told us this story about how he met this girl at a party, went back to her place, and hoped to hook up, but she wasn't ready to move that fast, so he slept on her couch. He's kind of disappointed, but thinking he has an in with this chick, only to be woken up by her gay male roommate trying to do him! He freaked and split from there in only his boxers. About three days after he tells us the story, a girl remarks to his roommate that she saw flowers in his room, and asked who his secret admirer was. "How do you know they weren't Ruben's?" he says, to which she replies "I don't think Ruben would get anything like that..." and one of my buddies jumps in and says "Oh, you'd be surprised what Ruben gets!" I told that story to some friends when I got home for the summer, and that became our catch all phrase, "you'd be surprised what Ruben gets!"

This can be tough to get at, but it's so worth it. In my mind, one of the best of the 1990s, and it's to bad it's taken me this long to get at it, but here we are now, better late than never. Also, have you noticed I write less on the ones that are really awesome than I do on the ones that I didn't like? Maybe I need to fix that in future posts.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105395/

Interceptors aka Interceptor Force (1999)

I don't really know what's taken me so long to get this movie done. I've had it on Watch Instantly for over a year now, maybe close to 18 months. I think what happens is I throw a film on my Instant Queue, and then forget about it, with the idea that I can get to it whenever. Right now I don't just have DTV films in there, but tons of Criterion Collection movies. If you have Netflix, Criterion on Watch Instantly is one of the coolest things, because a lot of the great foreign classics you've maybe not gotten to yet but have always been meaning to are on there. Of course, if you're like me, there's so many I've been meaning to see, and I just never seem to be able to get to them.

Interceptor Force has Olivier Gruner with 80s teen sensation William Zabka and Showgirls alum Glenn Plummer as mercenary extractors that are called in by Brad Dourif to go to Mexico and pick up the debris of a crashed fighter jet. What they don't know is the debris is really extraterrestrial, and the alien that came with it is a dangerous killer. Not only that, the Mexican town is run by a drug cartel, and they want to kill Gruner and his crew too. And not only that, but Dourif made them take two extra people with them, Boa vs. Python's Angel Boris and a guy who looked like a young Adrian Monk, and these people are keeping things from them, only revealing them as the plot requires. Will Gruner make it out alive?



First 15 minutes, amazing film. Gruner kicking ass and taking names, then picked up by a plane and joking around with Zabka and Plummer. Who'd a thunk we'd only get one more great scene like that for the rest of the film. Everything else was bad Predator crossed with bad Terminator 2. The problem with all these alien invasion films is they get caught up in their crummy plots. They make these aliens that are impossible to stop, write themselves into corners, and then walk all over the paint and track it back into the house, making a bigger mess, instead of starting over and making a better overall story. The way to go would've been politician's daughter is kidnapped by the drug cartel, and Gruner's men are called in to get her back.

Gruner was awesome here, which made this all the more disappointing. At least they didn't completely waste him, but they didn't use him enough. Gruner's at his best when he's allowed to really get after it. He makes the one-on-ten fight believable, which in turn makes it awesome. This also puts Gruner in double figures for movies up here finally, which is kind of surprising. I looked back at my past Gruner posts, and a lot of them say the same thing-- why doesn't he have more reviews? I guess he's just one of those ones who gets lost in the shuffle. Next up for him will be T.N.T., which I'm shocked Netflix still has.



This is our second William Zabka film, the first being Gale Force, starring Michael Dudikoff and Treat Williams. Anyone who digs 80s movies like I do, has to love William Zabka. It's often hard to reconcile how he looks in these DTV films with the bully or heel from a lot of my faves. What I found interesting when going over his bio is how few films he actually did. He was such an icon of that era, in my brain I associate him with so many other movies that he didn't have anything to do with. I'm trying like a trooper to get my hands on the Shootfighter films, which are must haves. Cross your fingers.

There was a pretty sweet supporting cast, with Ernie Hudson jr., Brad Dourif, and Glenn Plummer. Also, we have Angel Boris, who is special because she starred in Boa vs. Python, the first film we ever reviewed here at the DTVC. Shows you how big of a deal it was to me, considering I was away for the weekend and forgot that Saturday marked the three year anniversary. I'm a moron, because I thought May 5th was our first day. Anyway, we've come a long way in that time, and I want to thank everyone for all their support. If it wasn't for you we wouldn't have even made it out of May 2007, let alone May 2010 and beyond.



Whenever I feel like a moron, I found a new way to raise my self-esteem: Ancient Aliens on the History Channel. Have you seen this show? All these crazy dudes with crazy hairdos try to explain everything in human history by saying aliens did it for us or taught us how to do it. I saw it late Saturday night, only to find out it's actually on in primetime! I can see 2AM to capture that crazy insomniac demographic, but primetime? There's enough of a market for that? I want to believe they're all just like me, and want to feel smarter, because the idea that that many people are watching that show and thinking everything humans ever accomplished was through the aid of fictitious aliens... that kinda scares me.

Interceptor Force is pretty pedestrian outside of two great Olivier Gruner fight scenes. Considering it's on Netflix Watch Instantly, if you have that you're only investing your time, which isn't so bad. I'm not even sure it's in the "so bad it's good" category, because the story is so lame and derivative. Again, other than the two great fight scenes, nothing to write home about.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0167215/

Gale Force (2002)

It's been a while since I've managed to get a Michael Dudikoff film up here. He's a card carrying member of the DTVC Hall of Fame, and with good reason. Unfortunately, though he is still alive, he hasn't made a film since 2002 (according to imdb, this is his second to last film.). Hopefully he will give us a little something something in the future. Maybe another American Ninja film. A guy can dream, right?

Gale Force is about Lifetime Movie mainstay Treat Williams as a cop who needs cash quick, and is in trouble with the force after he accuses the mayor's daughter of staging her own kidnapping. His boss has him do a reality show where he and the other contestants will go to some island and search for treasure. Meanwhile, the show's beleaguered host has set it up so mercenary Michael Dudikoff and his crew of soldiers, including 80s teen movie bully William Zabka, will steal the treasure and give him a cut. All of this is derailed when a hurricane sweeps through the area, and the executive producer is too money hungry to abandon making the show before it hits (I guess none of these people had ever heard of insurance). Anyway, it's up to Treat to save his fellow contestants from both the natural disaster and Dudikoff and Zabka.



This movie has a bunch of people in it. It has Booger from Revenge of the Nerds, the hot chick from Dear John and The Big Easy (TV show, not movie), and Mr. Kotter's wife from Welcome Back Kotter. This is great when you add these types of people to a Michael Dudikoff and a William Zabka.

What's bad is when you have people like this, and you load the movie up with tons of Treat Williams. This would've been way better if Treat Williams played Dudikoff's role, and Dudikoff was the hero. Then switch it so Zabka plays Mr. Kotter's wife's part, and she plays Treat's second in command. That would've been way more awesomer. As it was, I'm still having trouble with Treat Williams as the main hero. It never worked in the Substitutes, and it doesn't work here. He's more the husband who doesn't believe his wife's being stalked at first, but then has a change of heart at about the 47 minute mark (with commercials) after her brake lines have been cut. The wife can be either Judith Light, Joanna Kerns, or Meredith Baxter-Birney.



One thing the film did mitigate well was the Treat/Dudikoff final fight. I was afraid they'd have Treat kick his ass, which would've been a bitter pill to swallow. Luckily they had Dudikoff beat him down, then die in a helicopter accident. Under no circumstances should Treat Williams ever take down Michael Dudikoff, just on levels of awesomeness alone. I mean come on: American Ninja 2 vs. Deadly Matrimony or Every Mother's Worst Fear, it's no contest.

I loved the idea of the executive producer who, upon finding out a storm will threaten the lives of the people on the show, decides they need to stay where they are because he's afraid of losing money. Who comes up with this? The amount of money the studio would lose after all the lawsuits from family members of the deceased would far outweigh any gain from not evacuating the people. Of course, if the people were evacuated ahead of time, that would mean there'd be no movie. Maybe what they should've done was have Dudikoff go to the island, and find out an evil man is cloning ninja warriors, and have to work with William Zabka to take them down. I know what you're thinking, that's the plot of American Ninja 2. So what? It's better than this.



I loved that William Zabka was in this, even if it was on a limited basis. He played almost the exact character he did in the Karate Kid movies, Just One of the Guys, and Back to School. It would've been a better movie for me if he'd just had a scene where he beat up Treat Williams and smashed his boom box. Or even better, he could've picked on Booger, allowing Booger to reprise his role from Revenge of the Nerds.

But I digress. This film is a waste of space. The lack of Zabka and Dudikoff coupled with the volume of Treat-age makes for a bitter formula. Instead of seeing this once, you should see American Ninja and Karate Kid again. This film is definitely not the way to get your Dudikoff/Zabka fix. If you're asking yourself "who actually needs to get a Dudikoff or Zabka fix?", feel good knowing you're a normal human being. I, on the other hand, probably am not.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0301327/