The Base 2: Guilty as Charged aka Guilty as Charged (2000)

Usually, when I do a post, I try not to mention the posts that came directly before it, because on some levels I want each review to stand on its own, especially if someone stumbles upon them later on down the road in the archives. I made an exception here though, because this post is the last one in a week that had some really awesome films: Pink Chiquitas, Dead Man Walking, and Dance of the Dead. Usually, if you can get one movie to be a winner like that, it's a good week, but now we're going into a Friday post of a Mark L. Lester flick looking for a clean sweep. It would be sweet, but we have to remember, no matter what happens, it's already been a banner week.

The Base 2 isn't so much a sequel as it is a similar premise as The Base-- which kind of begs the question, why bother, if you're making the same movie? But I'm digressing. Antonio Sabato Jr. takes over for Mark Dacascos, and he's sent in to infiltrate a special forces unit that is thought to be connected with some missing soldiers that were acquitted of crimes they should've been court-martialed for. Antonio discovers that the unit is kidnapping these men and letting them loose out in the woods, where they track them down, hunt them, and kill them. Now Sabato Jr. needs to gather as much evidence as possible for as long as possible to pad out the middle of the film, and not get caught.



Okay, so 3 out 4 ain't bad, right? This one was pretty sweet for the first 30 minutes, and then grinds to a halt, goes through 40 minutes of slow plodding, only to get us essentially back to where we were at the thirty minute mark. Then we get a superfluous shirtless male bondage scene with Sabato (though I guess not superfluous to people who are into that kind of thing), and once that's over with, we're again back where we were at the 30 minute mark, and are then officially able to get on with and end the movie. See, here's the problem: once the unit takes their first victim out to kill him, and Sabato see this, the forty minutes after where he's gathering evidence is useless to us. There's no mystery, we know who did it, and we know he knows. What the film should've done instead was have Sabato save the guy they wanted to kill-- who was a rapist that got off because his father's a senator-- and play a cat and mouse game in the woods with the unit for those forty minutes, complete with some awesome Mark L. Lester directed action sequences. I mean, we all knew the movie was going to end up there anyway, why waste all that energy on crap that meant nothing, when you could've used it where it counted? Plus, you'd've had the extra layer of the morality play between Sabato saving a rapist vs. not following orders. Unfortunately, they didn't do that, and when you combine that with not enough great action-- though there was some-- and fight scenes that were lacking without Art Camacho's fight choreography from the first one, what you ended up with was a dud.

The only other Antonio Sabato Jr. flick we've done to this point is The Asylum flick, Princess of Mars, which he was really good in. I'd say he was good here too, he just didn't have a whole lot to work with-- based on how he was in Princess of Mars, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. I also liked him in The Big Hit, where he had the best pick up line ever: "I want to pour milk on you and make you a part of my complete breakfast."



We got a little James Remar here, playing the Lt. Colonel heading the unit. He's like an everyman's poor man, right? There are any number of bigger names that he can stand in for if you don't have the budget. For instance, Michael Paré. How about a younger version of Lance Henriksen? Maybe a younger Michael Rooker? A modern day James Coburn, perhaps. I kind of see a little Klaus Kinski, and would be curious to see if he could deliver that mania Kinski was so known for. Also, born in Boston-- Beantown baby!

This had Yuji Okumoto as one of the soldiers in the unit, who is, as you know, an Albert Pyun mainstay. As a DTV geek, seeing a Pyun mainstay in a Lester flick is like seeing Chishu Ryu, an Ozu mainstay, in Red Beard, a Kurosawa flick, would be for a Japanese film geek. Too bad we didn't have any Thom Mathews of Tim Thomerson-- and this movie could've used it. We do have our great Mark L. Lester action moments, especially early on, and then it's like someone else takes over directing duties, because this ceases to be an action film entirely. Maybe the fact that it was originally a TV movie made Lester dial down his violence, but I don't know, we saw some ears cut off and a severed head. Anyway, tell me Lester getting his hands on a Deadly Prey style paradigm wouldn't have crushed it. Total waste.



Do you recognize this chick? You sure? Her name's Melissa Lewis, still not ringing any bells? You know why you don't know her? Because she was tagged with the dreaded "And Introducing" in front of her name, the classic career kiss of death in movies like this. The only one I can think of that wasn't a career ender was James Lew in Red Sun Rising, and as we know, that was an "And Introducing" of a very dubious nature. And it seems like it's actresses more than actors too, right? The leading lady has her name couched with the tag "And Introducing", and it's as if she's on the road to great things; unfortunately, those great things end up being marrying a CPA in Van Nuys and having three kids.

The Base 2: Guilty as Charged was only guilty of one thing: suckage (yes, had to squeeze that one in there...). I just don't understand who writes an action movie script and thinks "let's severely limit the possibilities for any action whatsoever for a good 40 minutes in the middle of the film, how's that sound?" It sounds like painfest sauteed in wrong sauce, how's that?

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0236013/

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/

Open Fire (1994)

I wasn't sure if I'd do a Jeff Wincott flick while the Bruins were playing Vancouver in the Stanley Cup. I know what you're thinking "Wincott's from Toronto, they're two totally different cities thousands of miles apart." Don Cherry answered that question back in 2006, when he referred to the Edmonton Oilers as "we" and then followed that up with "that's right, I said 'we'!" He laid down the gauntlet, it's America Jr. v. Boston right now, and I probably shouldn't be reviewing movies from the enemy, but I'll make an exception because Wincott is so awesome-- even if he is Canadian.

Open Fire is Die Hard in a chemical plant starring Wincott as a disgraced FBI agent working construction in the desert who finds out his father's chemical plant is taken over by Patrick Kilpatrick and the serial killer from The Expert-- and perhaps Yuji Okumoto, I can't be sure. Anyway, Wincott is their only hope, so the odds are against the hostage takers.



This was an extremely frustrating movie. Of the 88-minute runtime, too much was used to further a plot that was atrocious. Seriously, you're making a movie about Jeff Wincott, so don't waste ten minutes of my life showing a doughy guy with a mullet driving a decoy car with bomb in it, is that too much to ask? Apparently it was for these film makers. The first 35 minutes had two fights, an appetizer at the beginning with Kilpatrick, then one of the sweetest bar fights ever about twenty minutes later with Wincott. Then around that 35-minute mark, Wincott zip-lines into the base, lands at the feet of one of the guards, and says "I'm the health inspector, we had some complaints", and kicked the guy's ass. Now it's on-- at least that's what I thought, and for a solid 15 minutes it was, until, you guessed it, more bad plot. Crap about Kilpatrick's escape plan and all his explosives. It was so bad that Wincott actually disappears and I asked out loud "hey, wasn't Jeff Wincott supposed to be in this film?" It redeemed itself a little more towards the end with a great end fight between Wincott and Kilpatrick, but overall, this was a waste of some of Wincott's best stuff in favor of cramming a sucky plot down our throats.

And when I say some of Wincott's best stuff, I ain't lyin'. The bar fight, the fights with the guards, the end fight, the one-liners, the mean mugging, and for the ladies, the shirtless jackhammering. He literally disappears from his own film around the hour mark though, as we're inundated with the asinine minutiae of Kilpatrick's plan, and then he comes back in the form of stalking Kilpatrick and his gang and hostages while we're forced to deal with the even dumber doughy guy driving the decoy van with the bomb in it. I don't know, I don't get it. How do you cast Wincott and put him in some amazing fight scenes, and then say "okay, that's enough, now let's cut to a doughy guy driving a van-- the kids'll love that!" The more I think about it the angrier I get, and I need to focus on the positives, that Wincott was great when the film allowed him to be.



I've noticed we've been getting more women commenting here at the DTVC, which is always a good thing-- and maybe more gay men too, who knows. Me being a straight guy, I tend to focus more on how hot the women are in a given film I review, so for everyone who feels left out by that, this shot of a shirtless Wincott using a jackhammer is for you. Enjoy.

Patrick Kilpatrick was a great villain here, and when combined with the serial killer from The Expert, the two were fantastic. Problem: I shouldn't see more of the villains than the hero, especially when the hero is played by Jeff Wincott. No Die Hard rip-off should ever have a plot that diminishes the action, and furthermore, no Die Hard rip-off should cram so much into the villain's nefarious plot that it involves losing the hero for long tracts of time. I'm only watching this film for one reason, and one reason only: to see Wincott kick ass. This isn't about you film makers, it's about Wincott.



Is that Yuji Okumoto? It looks like him, right? But he isn't listed in the credits, and imdb doesn't have him either. Not only that, but his character isn't listed, so I can't tell if it is someone else, and I just didn't know. It's the shadowy world of DTV, where actors and characters get clipped from the credits, and we're left wondering...

This is maybe for Wincott completists, because he has some excellent fights, but even then it's a stretch and there are much better all around flicks of his to check out first. This is more a missed opportunity from a plot-happy group of film makers thinking they had something good, while Wincott sat on the sidelines smoking a cigarette-- now that you mention it, Wincott smoking a cigarette would've made for better film making than of a lot of the crap we ended up with here.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110740/

Brain Smasher... A Love Story (1993)

This is one I've been meaning to do for a long time, but it's not that easy to find. Not only is it only available on VHS here in the States (the UK get a Region 2 DVD, lucky bastards), but it's also usually expensive on the secondary market. Fortunately a buddy hooked me up with his, and now I'm passing the savings onto you... that didn't make any sense, but it sounded good.

Brain Smasher... A Love Story is an Albert Pyun flick starring the Dice Man Andrew Dice Clay as a bouncer in Portland,Oregon who runs into supermodel Teri Hatcher escaping from a band of Shaolin Monks led by Yuji Okumoto. Okumoto wants a red lotus flower, and Hatcher's sister has it, but they think they can get it through her. Now she and the Dice Man are on the adventure of their lives, trying to save the world, and maybe falling in love in the process.



This film is fantastic. A really fun 80s-style romp, similar to Big Trouble in Little China, only on a slightly smaller scale. The music was great, the dialog was great, the action wasn't lacking, and the performances more than held up their end. Not only were Teri Hatcher and Andrew Dice Clay solid, but there were tons of Pyun mainstays that were also sweet, including DTVC faves Tim Thomerson and Brion James. Top to bottom, this just works, and works really well.

It really is too bad that it's films like the Urban Trilogy-- each of which had to be fudged together because half of each film was lost in transit by Air France--, that are available on DVD and Netflix Watch Instantly, when so much of Albert Pyun's best stuff, including Brain Smasher, is out of print and only on VHS-- again, unless you're a Brit, and then you get it on DVD. I mean, this has Teri Hatcher, who is kind of a big deal on Desperate Housewives, you'd think an opportunistic distributor would pick up the rights and mass produce a bunch of $5.88 DVDs with her all over the cover.



Speaking of Ms. Hatcher, you don't need me to tell you how hot she is, and playing a supermodel means she's even hotter. She also understood the sillier side of this movie, and really made it work. This was right before she got the Lois and Clark gig, which was what made her a big star the first time, then she fell off a bit before rising again through Desperate Housewives. I wonder what she thinks of this film looking back on it, especially kissing Andrew Dice Clay. One really cool thing Pyun did with her character, as she was running through the streets of Portland to avoid Okumoto and his gang, was have her stand in front of advertisements she did as a model that were displayed in department stores and whatnot. I liked that he juxtaposed her glamorous supermodel world with her current situation, reminding us how much of a fish out of water she was-- or she was supposed to be-- plus, it made for a great shot to have multiple images of her on screen at once.

One of the ongoing jokes in the film was about Americans lumping all Asians into one ethnicity, in this case saying they're all Japanese, and that the Shaolin Monks are ninjas. Throughout, Okumoto's gang corrects people, telling them "Ninjas are Japanese. We are monks, and monks are Chinese!" The joke of course is that Okumoto is Japanese, playing a Chinese character. For me, being a fan of both Chinese and Japanese cinema, and Chinese and Japanese cuisines-- and just being an anth major in college-- I got a kick out of this, because I'm often explaining the differences to people I know too.



Now it's time for everyone's favorite game when reviewing an Albert Pyun flick: name that mainstay; and Brain Smasher had plenty. I already mentioned Thomerson and Brion James, who played great send ups of the classic 1940s Film Noir detective, grilling the Dice Man. We also already mentioned Okumoto, who played the head of the gang of monks. Then there was Nicholas Guest, another detective, only grilling Teri Hatcher instead of the Dice Man. Deborah Van Valkenburgh, who played the accountant in Mean Guns, was Hatcher's sister (she was also in Road to Hell, which I believe hasn't been released yet). Other stars who weren't Pyun mainstays included Peter Kwong, who you may remember from the Olivier Gruner flick Angel Town, but who also had parts in Big Trouble in Little China and The Golden Child; and Liz Sheridan, Jerry's mom from Seinfeld, played the Dice Man's mom. Interesting that we had a second Seinfeld connection, the first obviously being Teri Hatcher in the "They're real, and they're spectacular!" episode.

If you live in the States, either keep your eye out in used VHS bargain bins, or bite the bullet and make the Amazon purchase, but this is one you'll need. If you live in the UK, take a break from all that Steven Seagal buying and pick this bad boy up. You won't regret it.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106475/

Red Sun Rising (1994)

This is one that, as far as I can tell, hasn't been released on DVD here in the US (Amazon lists a Region 2 copy). I don't remember when I first saw it, but I believe it was on a cable station in the late 90s. It has a pretty stellar cast, including Don "The Dragon" Wilson, Star Trek Deep Space Nine's Terry Farrell, Mako, Michael Ironside, and the dubious claim that it was introducing us to James Lew-- more on that later. Oh, and it also has Jacqueline Obradors from Soldier Boyz-- Brophy!

Red Sun Rising has Wilson as a Tokyo detective who watches his partner, Albert Pyun mainstay Yuji Okumoto, get killed by the evil James Lew and his magical martial arts powers. Wilson tracks him and his boss to LA, where he encounters Farrell and Ironside at the local police department, not exactly helping him, but also worried about their own problems with a looming gang war. What does James Lew and his Japanese crime boss have to do with an impending gang war in LA? And can Wilson learn enough from Okumoto's uncle, played by Mako, to defeat Lew?



This was pretty fun. Funny, yes, but fun too. Wilson has some of his better fights, and he and Lew have some good ones at the end. Mako and Ironside were great in supporting roles, though I could've done with more Ironside. The stand out for me was Terry Farrell. She was great. She was hot as always, but also very funny, very good as a tough cop, and carried Wilson in the scenes that required him to do a lot of acting. That was huge, because it allowed Wilson to focus on the fight scenes. Sure, the whole idea of the mystical Japanese martial arts energy which manifested itself in the death poke was very silly, as were James Lew's blue contacts and too sweet mullet. It was good for what it was, a 1990s DTV actioner, and I'm not sure we can ask for anything more than that.

I think we've had a bit of a string of stinkers for Wilson at the DTVC, so it was good to have this one to break that up. It goes without saying that dramatic acting is not Wilson's strength on-screen, that it's his fighting ability that sells his films. What made Red Sun Rising so great, was that it recognized that, allowing him to take a back seat in scenes with Yuji Okumoto, Mako, and especially Farrell, then making sure he had ample opportunity to show us what he could do in the fight scenes. I like that, why make someone like Wilson, who's an athlete first, and actor second, have to do all the heavy lifting, when you have real professionals that can lead, and he can follow their lead, allowing him to react naturally, more than conjure up acting skills that aren't natural.



How do you not love Terry Farrell? Not just Deep Space Nine, but also in Becker, where she was great playing off Ted Danson. According to imdb, she dated Michael Dorn. Can you imagine that? Because they both have great voices, imagine the voice work empire they could've ruled. The funny thing is, I saw her on an episode of Family Ties recently, where she played hottie neighbor Liz Obeck. Great name, huh, Liz Obeck. Anyway, also on imdb, it says she retired from acting around 2002 to focus on her marriage and family.

This film makes a very dubious claim: that it is introducing James Lew. Even if one were to argue that the bulk of his work before that was in bit parts and stunt work, there was still American Ninja V, where he played the main enemy ninja. What, ninja roles don't count? Okay, maybe Red Sun Rising was made prior to AMV, but released after, I'll accept that. But then there's Mission of Justice, or Night of the Warrior, or his TJ Hooker guest spot. Sure, you guys introduced us to James Lew, wink wink, nudge nudge.



Finally, there's a great scene where James Lew blows up a car with a rocket launcher. There's just something about that, a man with a well-feathered mullet, rocking a heavy duster, with the lights of LA against the black of the night in the background, taking a rocket launcher out of a cheap industrial van, and blowing up a car with it-- especially in the early 90s. People often ask me what it is about these "bad movies" that I like so much, and it's that, all of that I just described. People who know, understand what I'm saying.

VHS is your best route for this one, unless you live outside the States, and then you might find it on DVD. I wouldn't go too far out of your way, because it's not that awesome, but if it pops up on cable late at night-- or even during the day-- you could do a lot worse than watching it. Just a solid 1990s DTV actioner.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107937/

Mean Guns (1997) (Revisited)

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

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



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

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



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

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



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

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

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

Hard Justice (1995)

With my recent push to get more of the gems from the late 80s and early 90s, it was probably only a matter of time before I made this one happen. This was another of those films that I saw when I was in high school, forgot about, and was reminded of by some of my readers. Then I rent it, see it again, and think "how did I forget this?"

Hard Justice has David Bradley as an ATF agent that goes undercover in a jail to find out what happened to his friend, who was murdered. This of course comes after an explosion laden gunfight in a waterfront warehouse. As the film deteriorates into the usual action prison film where everyone's in on it and shanks come from all sides, Bradley discovers who he can trust, who sucks, and how many times he can go from beating someone down to getting beaten down himself in solitary.



Death Warrant is perhaps the best prison film ever. Then Live by the Fist. That being said, this is no slouch. The opening scene is just amazing-- I don't even know if words can properly describe how awesome it is-- and from there it doesn't stop, leading up to a sweet prison riot to end the film. When you think 1990s DTV action, this is what comes to your mind. The only demerit I can give is the use of a helicopter at the end of the movie that wasn't blown up. Come on guys, don't get lazy on me, blow that fucking helicopter up.

I've never been a big David Bradley fan. Maybe it was how he spent most of American Ninja 4 as a prisoner as opposed to out there kicking ass. Outside the Law wasn't so hot either. But here he really makes his money. This movie came packaged with Outside the Law on Netflix, but if you go the Watch Instantly route, only Outside is available. Total ripoff. I am going to revisit some of the other films in his catalog based on the strength of this last movie. He hasn't done many, and he hasn't made a film since 1997. One of the most fitting things about his bio is he's listed on imdb as "David Bradley (V)", which means he's the fifth David Bradley, but (V) is also the term imdb uses for Direct to Video.



Of course the other big draw in this film is the great Vernon Wells. I don't dig the face tattoo, and he seems to take a little off the amazing Australian accent, but overall he's pretty good. He plays a rival supplier of all things contraband in the prison to the people Bradley's investigating so, despite the fact Bradley's a cop, Wells is his ally. According to imdb, his crowning achievement, Bennett in Commando, will be shown on AMC this 4th of July. This is the kind of gem that is done a disservice by commercials and censoring. How does one guess when the seminal line, "Let off some steam, Bennett" occurs when there's commercials? How graphic will that scene even be? AMC shouldn't even show movies like that.

Japanese That Guy Yuji Okomoto plays the bad guy in this. You may think you don't know who he is, but trust me, you do. I looked him up on imdb, and he's been in six other DTVC movies: Ticker, The Crow: Wicked Prayer, Fortress 2, Mean Guns, Bloodfist V: Human Target, and Nemesis. I guess I should probably tag him, and maybe get rid of some of my tags for other, more superfluous actors. In case you're wondering, he was also in Pearl Harbor, perhaps the most soul crushing film ever made. Another major That Guy in here is Charles Napier. I'm not sure anyone embodies the That Guy concept more than him. When you see him, you just go, "Hey, it's That Guy." Looking him up on imdb for this review was the first time I even learned his name.



One thing about this and a a lot of other prison films was the lack of prison jumpsuit. As far as I can tell, nothing means prison more than the jumpsuit, yet so few prison action films ever employ it. One of the advantages to the jumpsuit, obviously, is that it's harder to hide things in it than say a pair of jeans-- no matter how painted on they might be. I've never actually worn a jumpsuit in my life, prison or otherwise. I don't know, I guess the idea of unzipping my shirt every time I had to take a leak never really did anything for me.

You need Hard Justice. It's one of those things you could live your whole life without, fine in the knowledge that you have everything you want, then, after you've seen it, you can't imagine your life without it, and the idea that your life wouldn't have been quite as bright and you'd have never known, makes you pause a little bit.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113261/

Nemesis (1993)

This has been a long time coming. Nemesis is one of those movies the DTVC was made for, and it's one of those movies that should've probably been one of my first ever posts. But back then I didn't have a copy of the movie. I finally got around to ordering it on Amazon, and the front end of it was cracked, and it didn't look like it would play. I watched The Circuit 2 just in case I couldn't make it work, so I'd have another Gruner film to review in this spot. But alas, we made it, and here it is. Also, this is the maiden voyage of my video capture software which will allow me to grab images off VHS. Not great, but the video wasn't great, so given the circumstances, pretty good.

Nemesis takes place in 2027. In it Gruner plays a cop tracking terrorists, who's ambushed and pretty much dies. He's reborn with cybernetic parts, and Tim Thomerson sends him after an old cyborg flame of his to get some data from her. If he doesn't do it, a bomb in his heart will detonate and he'll be donezo. But things aren't what they seem in 2027, and Gruner doesn't know who's good and who's bad. He doesn't even know if he's human anymore, or what being human even means. Luckily for us, he recovers from this existentialist nightmare in time to kick some major ass.



I'm not sure if, other than maybe Stone Cold, there's been a more requested film on the DTVC. And the demand for it has only gone up since I've made a concerted effort to get more Gruner here. I actually realized when I watched it last night, that I'd seen it before. For some reason I thought Nemesis was something else. The film came out in 1993, and I probably watched it somewhere around then, so that's 15 or 16 years ago. It's crazy to think that.

This is a decent film. It's essentially a futuristic western, which is cool. The action and fighting are decent, with plenty of sweet explosions and gun play. There were tons of silly elements too, like the idea of Japan and The US merging, or that we'd annex Mexico and turn it into New America. And I have no clue what New Rio de Janeiro is. Did the Brazilians become a colonial empire in the future? Maybe all the soccer players and MMA fighters broke off and started their own country on an island in the Bahamas. The truth is, that kind of silliness makes the movie for me as much as the action does.



Gruner's great here. This is the fourth film of his we've reviewed, and I think it's right up there with The Circuit. Maybe just a bit behind it. But I can't argue with anyone who likes this better. Especially when one takes into account the mullet he has in one scene that looks like Adrian Paul in a Scottish Highlands flashback sequence. Amazing. As it stands right now I'm looking at Gruner and Gary Daniels as inductees for the 2009 class of the DTVC Hall of Fame. With the response I've gotten from readers about both actors, I think that'll go over well. Look for The Circuit 2 in the next 8 posts or so as his next film.

The last Pyun film we did was Cyborg, back on post 251 (it was supposed to be 250, but I miscounted, and Beer for my Horses with Toby Keith was 250), so it's been a whopping fifty entries since his last review. That's crazy, and I don't know how that happened, because he has quite a bit out there that still needs to be covered. I may do Alien From LA next, just because it would be interesting to see the non-MST3K version. As far as this film goes, I think going up and down the list of Pyun films, I put this right behind Cyborg, and maybe make it even with Omega Doom. I really like Omega Doom as a Yojimbo remake. This film really has those elements I like too: that kind of western/samurai movie set in the future. I'm excited to see what Tales of an Ancient Empire ends up looking like.



This is quite the ensemble cast. You have Pyun mainstays Tim Thomerson, Vincent Klyn, and Thom Mathews. Then there's DTVC faves Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa and Brion James. Then there's a cameo from Branscombe Richmond of Renegade fame. A young Thomas Jane plays Billy, and I must say he's more believable as Billy than he was as the Punisher. Sven-Ole Thorsen has one of the most memorable scenes, when he's blown away by an old lady. Finally, Marjean Holden has a part, and I don't remember seeing her. If you don't know who she is, then you've never seen the Beastmaster TV show, and it's possible you might be better for that. If there's one thing Pyun does well, he loads his films with talent.

This is a difficult find. You can either try Amazon and get it used on VHS, or search the bargain bins in your area and hope you strike gold. It's definitely a necessary watch, and it'll be worth it once you finally do track it down. Why this isn't available on DVD anymore and easier to come by is beyond me.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107668/

The Crow: Wicked Prayer (2005)

I guess I knew this existed a while ago, but I only checked it out after I looked up Tito Ortiz on IMDb. He was listed in the credits of Zombie Strippers, and I was curious to see what else he'd done. Not much, but this is one of them.

The Crow: Wicked Prayer has Eddie Furlong taking the reins as the hero. It has David Borea-whatever, the guy who played Angel, as the devil--or as a dude in a gang who invokes the devil so the devil takes over his body. In doing the ritual, David Borna-whatever kills Furlong and his girlfriend, the ridiculously hot Emmanuelle Chriqui. Furlong's resurrected as The Crow, and you can guess the rest. A host of other people guest star, including Ortiz, the D-Listed Tara Reid, Dennis Hopper, and DTVC favorite Danny Trejo.

Did I mention Eddie Furlong is The Crow? I'm not kidding. I know I do that from time to time here, but I'm not in this instance. And believe me, it's that funny. Almost as funny as David Borne-whatever (David Boreanaz?) playing a bad guy. He's tries to pull it off all Jack Nicholson doing the Joker, and he comes off as someone trying to do Jack Nicholson doing the Joker. The film's also pretty gross, with Emmanuelle Chriqui dying by Tara Reid cutting her eyes out (not shown, luckily), and there's a few massacres of innocent people. I prefer the massacres of myriad stuntmen in bad suits toting uzis. Maybe that's just me.

What's bad about this film, other than the cringe factor with the eyeball death, is also what's good about it. Endless enjoyment making fun of Furlong. He's put on some weight, so before he becomes The Crow, he looks like a chubby older kid who still lives with his folks and eats Doritos all day. As The Crow, he looks like that older kid going as the Crow for Halloween. I just couldn't believe how silly it was, and how no one jumped in and stopped it. James Van Der Beek and Joshua Jackson thought Furlong was a stretch.

Then you got David Boren-whatever as the bad guy. Really? I'm believing that? Why not have him play The Crow, Dennis Hopper play the bad guy, and Eddie Furlong play the Key Grip? I think that would've made for a much better film. The other movie of David Boren-whatever's we've done here was The Hard Easy, which sucked, but had Gary Busey and Peter Weller in it. This could've used both of them and Dolph Lundgren, and it still would've been bad.

Dennis Hopper was funny as this Satan worshiping brothel owner who spoke some fugazi Ebonics. Not as good as the last time we saw him, in The Target, when he told a goat he wanted to drink its urine for the psychedelic properties. Like I said above, he'd have made a better head bad guy. Dennis Hopper as the devil would have been his own original creation, not his bad impression Jack Nicholson doing the Joker.

Danny Trejo, our man, is holding it down as some kind of tribal leader. He has a great scene where he does a dance with his shirt off to bring The Crow's crow back to life. This might be the best Danny Trejo scene since he gave Van Damme a foot massage in Desert Heat. As any great character actor, he does all of these scenes very professionally without a hint of a wink-wink nudge-nudge. That's why we love him here.

Tara Reid has been D-Listed for a fair amount of time now, and I can't believe I never considered checking her out on IMDb to see what kind of DTV crap films she's been starring in. I should probably put her in the Future Hall of Famers section right above Kevin Sorbo. I can't lie, though, Crow: Wicked Prayer was silly, and it was much more fun than any of Sorbo's stuff has been, or Wesley Snipes for that matter. Some of her others look interesting, so we'll see what happens.

If this is on cable late at night, I'd give it a shot. If you're spending money on it, make sure you know what you're doing. You can have a fun bad movie night with it, but in order to really enjoy it, you'll need to be making fun of it the whole time. Have you got the energy?

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0353324/

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/

Ticker (2001)

This movie had Must Get written all over it: directed by Albert Pyun, starring Steven Seagal and Tom Sizemore, and Dennis Hopper listed as the bad guy. Considering Seagal and Pyun were both inducted into the DTVC Hall of Fame at the same time, I thought it would be sweet to review a film that had both of them. This is a dream bad movie lover pairing.

Ticker has Sizemore as a cop who, with his partner, rapper Nas, stumble upon Dennis Hopper, Jaime Pressley, and two Pyun mainstays, unloading some explosives. Nas bites it, and Sizemore's out for revenge. He calls on Seagal, who runs the bomb squad, to get help in tracking Hopper and his boys. At the same time, Pressley's in the can after the Nas killing, and Hopper wants her out, and he'll blow up a lot of stuff until the cops release her. Can Seagal and Sizemore track Hopper down before it's too late?

This movie was off the chain. The sheer volume of recognizable actors alone made it a hit for me. The action was mediocre, with Seagal barely flexing his martial arts muscles, and the explosions being a tad on the silly side. There's a scene where Hopper and Pressley are riding in a car, and out the window we can see a horribly obvious green screen effect. I think Pyun spent all his money on the cast, and I'm okay with that. The more great actors the better, as I always say.



The list of stars is pretty long. You got the obvious Seagal, Sizemore, and Hopper. Then Pressley, Nas, TLC's Chilli, and the guy who played Waingro in Heat. There's also the guy who played MC Hammer in his VH-1 bio-pic, the FBI guy from Navy NCIS, and the bad guy from The Mask, Peter Greene. That doesn't even count the Pyun mainstays like Norbert Weisser (the android who gets his head knocked around in Omega Doom), Michael Halsey (the hero, so-to-speak, in Mean Guns), and cameos by Ice-T and Vincent Klyn (the latter uncredited, though he was listed as an associate producer). I'm sure a more discerning viewer may be able to pick up on a few I missed.

Seagal was pretty good as a co-main character with Sizemore. They never explain why he knows martial arts as a bomb specialist, we just see him at the end of the film dispatching baddies. I think that's better than making up some ludicrous explanation and wasting our time like some movies do, when I'm sure most viewers are cool with Seagal using martial arts, even if it may not fit his character. In one scene, when he's defusing a bomb, he wears these sweet grandfather glasses. It was like he got them off the rack at a drug store. He looked like my dad trying to read a phone book more than an action hero racing against the clock to prevent a deadly catastrophe. At the end of the movie, Sizemore needs him to talk him through another bomb defusal, and Seagal spends about 75% of the countdown giving Sizemore a life lesson on dealing with stress. We were all like: "Jesus, just tell him how to stop the bomb!"



I didn't know what to make of Sizemore in this. His acting skills are head and shoulders above everyone else, including Hopper. It was like watching David Beckham play soccer on the same pitch as MLS players: the difference in talent was that palpable. I liked seeing him on the screen at the same time as Seagal, because Seagal seemed to understand just how good Sizemore is, and as opposed to the other actors, he didn't try to act at his level, andlook dumb in the process. Together they made the kind of buddy picture Rush Hour thinks it has, and it'd be cool if Pyun could maybe bring them together for another go 'round.

Dennis Hopper is ridiculous in this. For a chunk of the film he sports a bad Irish accent. I'm not sure if his character was faking it, or was supposed to have it, but it was silly all the same. There were times when he lost it, which left us even more perplexed. It was never clear if his dropping the accent was his character affecting an American one, or his character speaking in his real voice, or Hopper just being lazy. It may have been all of the above. Just the same, we got what we'd expect from Hopper playing a baddie: he definitely didn't mail it in. Like Sizemore, his struggles off the set have hurt his career, but been a bonus for us bad movie honks, because we get to see him in films like this.



There was one lapse in continuity in this movie that made zero sense to me. It took place in San Francisco, and Pyun made that very clear, yet all the cars had Illinois plates. I'm not sure I got why they did that. There was nothing San Fran specific that couldn't have been shifted to make the film take place in Chicago. I just can't figure out why the film went on with that glaring mistake in it.

One final note about Ticker. In the beginning, Pyun splices in some scenes from Dolph Lundgren's Sweepers. It was very Agent Red of them. I noticed that the hostage scene looked very similar to the one in Sweepers where they first find the stealth mine. My suspicions were confirmed after a quick check of the film on imdb. These are the kind of film making techniques that make me a proud fan of bad movies. Do they teach taking entire scenes from other movies in film school? Is there a class called FILM 405: The Art of Using Other People's Movies?

If the preceding wasn't enough of a give away, I think this film's fantastic. It's well worth the money spent on a rental. I would totally center a bad movie night around it, it'll definitely deliver. This may be Seagal's best DTV work, and I think that's saying a lot considering some of the gems out there.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0196158/

Bloodfist V: Human Target (1994)

The Bloodfist series is rough for the uninitiated. Don "The Dragon" did 8 of them, all produced by Roger Corman, and there isn't much variation between them. You get some guy framed for something and he's got everyone against him, except usually a woman who gives him a hand. But paper-thin plots aside, the martial arts in these are usually way better than their pay-grade. You gotta respect Don, at the very least, for his expertise as a martial artist.

Bloodfist V, like it's predecessors, doesn't pick up where the previous installment left off. In this one, we see Donny with a mullet getting shot by people. He wakes up in a hospital with amnesia and a haircut. A woman shows up, saying she's his wife, and they escape the hospital and the Asian mafioso trying to kill them. Turns out the woman's a prostitute hired to pretend to be her hubby, and when they go back to her pimp, we find out the pimp, played by American Ninja's Steve James (the guy who played Jackson), is in on the set up. The next 45 minutes has D. "The D" Dubs trying to figure out who he is. He thinks he's a special agent. Then he thinks he's a criminal. We find out he was a criminal, but he's good, and the prostitute was working for the government to set him up, but she loves him now, so she saves him from Steve James, who it turns out isn't her pimp, but her boss in the NSA, who also wants to kill Donny. Who cares if it's convoluted, it's Bloodfist.

Don is pretty decent in this. It's not like 4, where he fights an equally solid fighter in Gary Daniels. That's kind of disappointing, in that I'd like to see Don flex his martial arts muscles, and we don't get as much as we'd want here. Still, he's ever the survivalist.

Denice Duff is Don's love interest, and she does all right. She's actually hotter later when she dresses in her NSA business suit attire. There's also a gross scene where she's being interrogated by the Asian baddie, and he sticks an acupuncture needle right under her eye. Many of you that are fans of bad horror and sci-fi are no doubt familiar with her other work. For me personally, I remember her vividly in a Matlock episode my mom was watching once where she played the girlfriend of an older guy married to Matlock's cousin.

This film also had the distinction being the last movie that wasn't a TV movie for bad action great Steve James, who unfortunately died of pancreatic cancer in 1993, before this film was released. He was probably best known as Jackson in American Ninja 1 and 2. He had a very prolific career, despite dying young. I'd have liked to see him as the star in a movie, but unfortunately that will never happen.

With the lack of great martial arts, we're left with very little here. The action is all right in the bad action film sense, but is that enough? We can get that re-watching a great Dolph Lundgren film. Also, since the Bloodfists don't have any kind of impact on the other films in the series, you can get away with skipping one or another. I'd say skip this one. At best, watch it at 2am if you're suffering from insomnia or writing a paper.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106434/

Mean Guns (1997)

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

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



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

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

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



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

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

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

Fortress 2 (1999)

After seeing the unfathomably hilarious and bad Fortress, we absolutely had to watch the sequel when we found out there was one. I can't see what in the first one would have warranted a sequel, but some people with money greenlighted it and it was made. I hope it turned a profit.

Fortress 2 takes place somewhere in the future after the first film. Lambert is hunted and recaptured by the evil Men-Tel corporation. Instead of the underground prison, which would be old hat for Lambs, they ship him to one in space. There they make him do menial tasks like donning a space suit and fixing things outside the ship (I thought people needed special training to work in space. What are we spending all that money on astronauts for?). Inside, he also meets a woman he used to chill with. With her help, he forms another teen gang like the one he had in the first movie, and they plot their escape. P.S. Pam Grier's in this too.

What can I say that I didn't say in reviewing the first movie? What can this film say that it didn't say in the first movie? Will they make a third and see how he escapes that? Underwater? Floating in the air? Maybe Lando's Cloud City? What if you shrink him and put the prison inside someone's colon? See how you get out of that, Lamby Baby.

I wonder what they offered Lambert to do this movie. I hope he asked for it all up front, as opposed to getting some on the back end, because this couldn't have sold much. There were some funny scenes. They made him work outside the space station, and of course, he almost dies. He tries to escape by hiding in a cargo box. It didn't work, which didn't make any sense--not that he got caught, but that he tried it. The final escape was rather implausible. The shipping guy just decided to let everyone on the ship. As they flew off, the prison exploded. I'm assuming that's one reason we don't have prisons in space: because they explode too often.

Lambert gives you a solid Lambert performance. His accent is funnier than usual. It might just be the movie, but it's good. They gave him some kind of punishment where he was stuck in a glass dome and exposed to the sun. I could see he drew upon some old acting school teachings to pull that off. Who knows if this film would've worked with Dolph or Van Damme, but I know it wouldn't have been as ridiculous... okay, maybe it would've.

P.S. Pam Grier was in this film.

Avoid this fucker. Only see it if you saw the first one, and managed all right. If you couldn't handle the first one, you'll be killed with this one, and out any money you invested. If you see it on TV, TiVo it if you dare. Don't erase anything to tape it, though. And don't wake up early on a Saturday to watch it either. It's just really bad.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0179183/

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/