Taken from Rio Bravo (2024)

This is one Ty and I covered on a podcast episode, episode 210 in the archives, part of our Xumo double feature with 12 to Midnight, and with all the names involved, it was only a matter of time before we reviewed it on the site too, so here we are. In addition to us, Chris the Brain at Bulletproof Action has covered this as well.

Taken from Rio Bravo is a sequel to Gunfight at Rio Bravo, with Alexander Nevsky reprising his role as a fictionalized version of Union Army officer Ivan Turchin. This time, some young women have been taken by dastardly traffickers (led by Dolph movie mainstay James Chalke), and it's up to Nevsky and his sheriff friend (Joe Cornet, who also directed) to track them down and rescue them. Along the way, they get some help from a Native American tracker (Don "the Dragon" Wilson), and they encounter all manner of ne'er-do-wells who impede their progress. Finally, as they near the young women and are about to achieve their goal, an old foe enters the fray. Who could that be? I mean, if you read the cast list, you probably know, but still, pretend you didn't so you can be surprised. Will Nevsky and Cornet prevail?

When you do this kind of thing long enough, you find yourself saying things you never thought you'd say, but here I am saying this movie needed more Nevsky! Usually I'm railing against what I call a "Nevsky vanity project," but here he's really realized his version of Ivan Turchin, and when you have a fun gunslinger hero like that in a Western, you want more of them! What happens though is this gets too bogged down in the particulars of trafficking, which also gives us more Chalke than we needed. One scene that stood out involved Chalke wanting to take one of the women he trafficked back to a cabin to have his way with her. It went on too long, and ultimately didn't go anywhere, and while this is happening, we're missing an opportunity for Nevsky to take out more men in a saloon or something. All that said, I think this is the closest Nevsky's come to making this approach work, where he's the star and he casts a bunch of other stars in smaller supporting roles, and I think the Western and the use of his version of Ivan Turchin as the hero is a great formula for him. The runtime is also great at 80 minutes, so he keeps it lean, which always helps. Now he just needs to swing the pendulum back a bit in the other direction and include more of himself as that hero, and I think he'll have it.

Art Camacho is now at 56 tags on the DTVC, which used to be good enough for third all-time, but since we've tagged Cole S. McKay, it's now fourth-best. Either way, Camacho brings his talents as fight choreographer to this, elevating fight scenes and giving the film a sharper feel than its budget would normally allow, which is why you bring him in in the first place, but it's still always great to see. He also has a scene as a character named Camanchero who has a fight with Nevsky, which we don't see often, he's usually behind the camera, so I had to get a screen of that. Between all the PM stuff of his that we still need to get to, and the new stuff he has coming out that looks promising, 60 Club and beyond is more a matter of when than if. One of the greatest to ever do it, and he gives us that here.

We have three other Hall of Famers here who, in true Nevsky style, only have small roles, but they're fun to see, and it gets them more tags. First off, this makes 47 for Cynthia Rothrock, so we're closing in on the 50 Club for her, and with all she has out now, three more movies should be easy enough to make happen, except when you dig deeper, you see stuff that is either only available to rent, or isn't available at all, so unless that changes, it could be a while for her. In this movie, she has a small part as the older sister of the two women that get kidnapped, including one small fight scene which was pretty good. Then for Don "The Dragon" Wilson, this is 42, so still a ways from 50, but unlike Rothrock, he does have a few that we haven't done yet on free streamers, so we'll need to make those happen. Here he plays a Native American, which didn't make any sense, except they could've used the fact that Wilson isn't genetically of Native American descent as an opportunity to show that "blood" shouldn't exactly be the determiner of being part of a first nation, the same way that someone can become American without having been born here. Finally, we have Matthias Hues reprising his baddie from the first film. Unlike Rothrock and Wilson who are in the 40 Club, this is only 22 tags for Hues. I think a big reason for why that is, is I don't necessarily seek out Hues movies, he just happens to be in the ones with people I do seek out. But considering how much he does, I imagine we'll stumble into another 8 movies of his at some point along the way.

Like the previous installment, this took place in "Eastern Texas," despite being shot in Arizona, which doesn't look anything like "Eastern Texas." From there, they're supposed to be going to the Mexican border, because apparently even in the Old West, middle class conservative trafficking panic was about middle class white women being kidnapped and taken to Mexico--though Nevsky didn't go far enough and have one of the women find a water bottle on her car, which I guess showed some restraint. Anyway, the other thing is East Texas is much further away from the Mexican border than West Texas. As I said when I reviewed the previous one, why not just set the movies in West Texas? What is it about "Eastern Texas" that it needs to be there, despite it being shot in Arizona? But then another thought hits me: why does it matter? I'm watching a 2024 Western where Don "The Dragon" Wilson is playing a 60s stereotype of a Native American, harkening back to when movies would have Italians do that, and I'm concerned about the location accuracy? But that's the kind of content you've been coming to the DTVC for since 2007, right?

Finally, in looking at these Nevsky vanity projects, where he gets all these stars and they all have smaller parts, the question then is, "Matt, what would you do if you could get names like Rothrock, Wilson, Hues, or Gruner in a movie?" Yes, I would definitely want them to be in it more, even if they only have a day or two of shooting. And then I have a top five for what my one scene would be, because I would definitely not try to make myself the star. Number 5 would be the standard henchman machine gun shimmy death. Get me in a blazer, maybe put on a ponytail wig, and cut to me shimmying to death while one of the names I mentioned above is hosing me down in Uzi fire. Number 4 would be the knife throw, preferably between the eyes, but if I gotta take it in the chest, that's fine too. I could be lurking around, holding my gun, and then one of the heroes lets fly, and in the next cut I'm falling over with the knife in me. For number 3, it's gotta be taking a Wilson roundhouse kick to the face. With it being a Western, if I fall into a trough of water, all the better. And if you're thinking "Wilson can't get up that high anymore," I'm only 5'7", so it won't be as difficult. Number 2, taking a scorpion kick to the head by Rothrock. This time I wonder, with me being only 5'7" if that makes it harder, because my head is a lower target than some of the taller guys she does that to. Finally, number 1, me as a front desk security guard, Matthias Hues takes me out, preferably with a silencer. Might be difficult to pull of in a Western, but if I'm giving you a movie with more of the stars you want, I think you'll indulge me.

And with that, let's wrap this up. In addition to Xumo, it looks like this is available on more free streamers, including Tubi and Prime. I think with the names and runtime, it's not a horrible watch if you're not paying or it's included in your streaming package. Also check out the podcast episode Ty and I did on this, episode 210 in the archives.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt20202928/

Pick up my newest book, Nadia and Aidan, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Black Creek (2024)

This is one that's been in production for some time, a labor of love for DTVC Hall of Famer and 40 Club member Cynthia Rothrock, we've seen myriad DTV stars attached to it who have dropped out, news of premiers and complementary media like a graphic novel, and finally a pre-order date ahead of it's recent release. Now that it's here and available, let's see how it did. In addition to us, Jon at the After Movie Diner and Chris DePetrillo at Bulletproof Action have covered this as well.

Black Creek starts with a sheriff (Patrick Kilpatrick) who gets bumped off by an evil landowner (Richard Norton). When the sheriff's sister (Rothrock) shows up and finds out her brother's been killed, she vows revenge. It sounds like a good idea in theory, but Norton's got a lot of men working for him, who in turn work Rothrock over and leave her for dead in the desert. Luckily, bumbling local drinker Roy (R. Marcus Taylor) finds her and brings her to a local medicine practitioner (Don "The Dragon" Wilson), who heals her in a wonderfully psychedelic sequence. With that out of the way and everyone sufficiently healed, it's time for our hero to get after it and get her revenge. Will she make it happen?

This is a fun deal. It's done on a budget, so there's plenty to pick at on that score if one were so inclined, but if it was between not having this because there wasn't the budget to make it look as clean as possible, or having what we got, I prefer the latter. My two qualms were the length, which at almost two hours was a bit long for me; and I think the script could've used some trimming--a lot of instances where someone says something, and someone asks why that is, and then the first person explains further, when we could've just had the further explanation without the back and forth. Those qualms are overshadowed by all the stuff that worked here though, like Rothrock as one of her best heroes since China O'Brien, Richard Norton as a chilling baddie in one of his final performances, and then guys like Wilson, Kilpatrick, and Keith Cooke giving us the fun performances we want from them when we see their names on the tin. It doesn't skimp on the action either, especially with Mike Möller as action director/fight choreographer. Again, budgetary constraints meant they couldn't do the quick edits we're used to in modern action, so instead we got sped up film that may not have looked as nice, but as a fan of everyone's work here, I was okay with it. This is a really great time that's worth supporting if you're a fan of Rothrock and everyone else involved.

I didn't mean to do Rothrock films on back-to-back weeks (and technically this is her third film in two months, with Darkness of Man back in May), but I felt like I needed to get this one reviewed sooner rather than later, if only to get the word out and support it. The reality for me as I was watching it was we needed a series of Westerns with Rothrock in the lead back in the 90s, and this should've been the callback to those movies thirty years later, but unfortunately we never got them in the 90s, so this has to be the movie that makes up for the movies that never were, if any of that makes sense. On the PM Podcast episode on Guardian Angel (which yours truly was also a guest, but not part of the Rothrock interview), she told Jon that she'd always wanted to do a Western and be the lead, and it shows, because she's a natural at it. Her Rose Jennings character in this is right up there with China O'Brien for me as her best character, even better than Kris Fairfield in the Rage and Honor films, and McKay in Guardian Angel. She also said on the PM Podcast interview that she plans to do a sequel, so hopefully that will happen. I think it's up to us to support this kind of thing though if we want to see it happen.

As I mentioned above, Richard Norton is fantastic in this. It unfortunately ended up being one of his final roles, but if it had to be, I think it's a nice thing that it was in this, making it as good as it could possibly be by his performance. In my Not Another Mistake post, I talked about how he knew exactly what a movie needed from him and he knew exactly how to deliver it, and that's so true here. Patrick Kilpatrick also would've made a great baddie, but I like the twist of him being one of the good guys; and then we have Norton giving us this fantastic villain who is sufficiently evil, but never takes away from Rothrock as the hero. We're going to miss him, but at least we have this performance here as a reminder of how great he was--as if we needed it.

Our third Hall of Famer and second 40 Club member in this is the great Don "The Dragon" Wilson, who plays Xiyang, part-Chinese part-Apache medicine and martial arts practitioner. I wish they would've done more with the Apache side if they felt it was that necessary to include that as part of his heritage, like maybe some advanced knife fighting through a sequence where he takes out three or four of Norton's baddies. That aside, Wilson is as all in as Norton was, which is nice considering, like Rothrock, we've been getting a lot of smaller roles from him lately. And after this, we have Taken from Rio Bravo, where he has almost as big a part as this, but beyond that, I think the rest we have of his to do are all small roles. In that sense, when we get a Dragon role and performance like this, we need to take it and run.

Finally, I want to touch on the length of this movie, because, as you know, I'm a stickler for runtimes. Recently in a writer's group I'm in, the topic came up that, if we want our books to sell, we need short chapters. For me, I don't think about my novels that way. If short chapters fit, I'll use them, like in my first novel Chad in Accounting, or my short action novel Bainbridge; if not, you get something like Don's House in the Mountains, which is five chapters over 275 pages. With that in mind, if Rothrock felt like she needed her movie to be almost two hours to tell the story she wanted to tell, then more power to her. If the mindset is similar to mine, where she didn't want to compromise on the story that was important to her just to get things in under 90 minutes, I can appreciate it.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Currently this is available as rent VOD and purchase on most major streaming sites that offer that kind of thing. I personally got it on Fandango at Home through a promo code I had. This is a great opportunity to support indie filmmakers, and hopefully the more we're able to support these efforts, the more movies they'll be able to make.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27078378

And if you haven't yet, check out my newest book, Nadia and Aidan, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Steel Frontier (1995)

This is one I discussed on episode 3 of Jon Cross's PM Entertainment Podcast, which was a really fun conversation, and now we're finally giving it a review here. In addition to us and the PM Podcast, Chad Cruise at Bulletproof, Ty and Brett at Comeuppance, Outlaw Vern, Tom Jolliffe at Flickering Myth, and Mitch at the Video Vacuum have covered this as well.

Steel Frontier takes place six years ago, after the apocalypse, where the world is a big Mad Max-ish mess, and a horrible conqueror (Brion James) has gathered up a bunch of baddies and taken over all the peaceful tire farming towns in the LA County area. Is there any hope? Sure, as is often the case, a heroic lone drifter comes into town (Joe Lara). He starts off by joining the gang, and then does a bit of a Yojimbo move to get Brion James's gang to kill each other. Will he eventually succeed? And in true PM fashion, will he require a lot of explosions and car chases to do so?

This one jumped to number 9 on my all-time PM list (which you can find on the DTVC Letterboxd), that's how much I enjoyed it, and Jon felt the same way. This is PM doing the Italian late-80s Mad Max exploitation flick, but doing it in true PM style. The exploitation comes in the form of violence, with explosions and car chases, which is nice because we don't get the usual sexual assault or other sexual exploitation the Italian films liked to do. We get some great Joe Lara as the lead, Brion James is a fantastic baddie, and the addition of Bo Svenson as James's second-in-command was solid too. From there you get all the beautiful PM action goodness you expect when you see the PM logo on the spine of your VHS, including this massive chimney explosion that the IMDb trivia says is the largest PM ever pulled off--and that's saying a lot considering this is PM we're talking about! PM gets it right again, and we're all better for it.

Out of all the Joe Lara films I've seen--which isn't that many, he's only at 8 now on the site--this is my favorite. He's everything you want in the roguish, Western hero, and we can't wait to see him enter this town and take out James and all his baddies. Another place where this movie deviated from the late 80s Italian films is they didn't do the whole "hero captured and tortured by the baddies, then he recovers and gets his revenge" penultimate act, which was refreshing for me. While I liked Hologram Man better as a film overall, this is the better Lara film for sure, and it's too bad he didn't get more roles like this. By my count, we have 7 or 8 more of his films that we could review, and I don't know how many of those we'll actually cover because they look hard to track down, so he may top out at around 12 movies, and I think that's okay considering how good a job he does here.

PM is closing in on the 50 Club at the DTVC, we're only one away now, and this is one I probably could've used for that milestone, but I didn't want to wait on it too long after the PM podcast episode was released. That's okay, I think there are some great candidates for the big 5-0, there's no shortage of fantastic PM flicks. What makes this one so good, is it's their take on this post-apocalyptic/Mad Max subgenre, and they successfully make it the PM version, they never get away from what they were best at. In the PM Podcast episode, Jon interviews both Paul Volk and Jacobson Hart, and they give great insights on what made this work. Hart in particular talked about how PM didn't do sexual exploitation, that their "exploitation cinema" was the action, and they nail it, especially with two great chase scenes, and that aforementioned chimney explosion. When you see PM on the spine, or listed under company credits if you look a movie up after seeing the thumbnail on a streaming site, you expect a certain level of fun, low-budget action, and this one delivers on that in a way that exceeded even those expectations.

Part of why this works so well is the stunt team PM puts together. The stunt coordinator/second-unit director is Michael J. Sarna, who has done a bunch of other PM flicks--including my personal number two all-time from them, The Sweeper, where he was stunt coordinator under Spiro Razatos as action director--plus the David Bradley classic Hard Justice, and a personal video store mainstay of mine, The Perfect Tenant--which I can't believe I haven't covered yet! In addition to him, we have 50 Club member Art Camacho, and soon to be inducted 50 Club Member Cole S. McKay, plus "Broadway" Joe Murphy sans his stunt coordinating partner Red Horton. And as if all those names weren't enough, we have stunt legend Kane Hodder as one of Brion James's gang, though not credited as doing any stunt work. Guess with all the PM names they had they were able to let him take a break on this one! This is part of the PM magic, let these great stunt names do their thing, and the result is this high-octane alchemy that was the secret to their success.

Finally, we'd be remiss if we didn't mention Brian Huckeba's "Chicken Boy" role. As Jon pointed out, this was a kind of character that showed up in Ozploitation films that this movie is in the tradition of, and Huckeba goes all in on his performance. It just makes things that much more fun and memorable, and with low-budget filmmaking every little bit helps. When the guys at Comeuppance reviewed this, Huckeba commented on it, and if you listen to the PM Podcast episode, Jon interviews him in addition to Paul Volk and Jacobson Hart, and he gives Jon some great jewels when recalling his experience on set. It would be easy for Huckeba to look at this part as a one-off in his career, maybe something he shows his family 30 years later so they can all have some laughs, but the fact that he's still this enthusiastic about this part today is great to see. It's more fun for us to embrace it if the people involved are embracing it too.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently get this on Tubi, Prime, the Roku Channel, and Fawesome here in the States. That's a great way to catch this, but also if you see it in the wild on VHS, pick it up. And if you haven't yet, subscribe and listen to the PM Entertainment Podcast on your favorite podcatcher. Jon is delivering the PM podcast we've wanted for years, you need to check it out.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114537/

And if you haven't yet, check out my newest book, Nadia and Aidan, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Left for Dead (2007)

This is one I've been meaning to cover for a long time, but I had trouble finding it. It was available to rent, and I considered doing that, but then Vudu--which is now "Fandango at Home"--had it, and after them, the Roku Channel, so between the two I was able to finally make it happen.

Left for Dead is DTVC Hall of Famer Albert Pyun's mix of the Western and Horror genres. In it we have a town that was overrun by their women of the night--or "whores" as the opening backstory so lovingly calls them--who kill everyone except for the local reverend, because he makes a deal with the devil so he can finally get revenge on them. He roams the town, waiting for them to come back, and 15 years later it happens when one of the ladies' daughter is chasing down the man who may or may not have raped her and made her pregnant. At the same time, Victoria Maurette also wants that man, so they're all on a collision course to wackiness--with a murderous ghost reverend waiting for them!

This could've been one of Pyun's better films, but he relied really heavily on a freeze-frame technique that bogged things down. Here and there I think it could've worked, but the volume of it made it hard to get as stuck in as I'd have liked to. This is also darker and gorier, which, for someone like me who's on the squeamish side, was something that could be harder to watch, but I could manage that better than the constant freeze frames. The thing about the freeze frames is it betrayed how well this was shot, and the great environment they were shooting in in Argentina. The other thing is I really liked Victoria Maurette as our heroine, and Andres Bagg as the baddie, the problem was, they were adversaries more out of situation than any kind of common past--the baddie had his bone to pick with the ladies of the night that laid waste to his town and killed everyone, while Maurette had her bone to pick with the other guy that was accused of rape. I think it would've been better if she was seeking out the baddie as a source of conflict. Overall, as a Pyun fan, I liked what he was going for, and I liked a lot of what this had in it, I just wish he'd gone lighter on the freeze frames.

Our last Pyun review was August of 2022, so this is the first time we've reviewed one of his films since he's passed, which makes this one a little sad. I probably should've reviewed it sooner as a tribute to him like I've done for other legends who have left us, but this wasn't as available, and I created a Letterboxd list where I ranked his films instead, which is something that I think is a little more fitting since we've covered almost all of his films at this point. Where I'd put this one on that list is tough to say. That freeze frame thing is not just me nitpicking, it was tough for me to take. When I reviewed Bulletface I mentioned it then as well, even though it wasn't as frequent as it was in this one. One point I made was, in the age of streaming, the freeze frames feel like buffering, which makes them all the more intrusive, and Pyun actually appreciated that point, as it wasn't something he considered, but it made sense to him. What I love here though is the genre mixing and the imagery. Victoria Maurette as a gunslinger in her dirty wedding dress shooting at a reverend who's been cursed by the devil but given supernatural powers. That was delivered exactly as he wanted it to. And I think the freeze frames were his way of throwing back to the old grindhouse films, especially the old Italian Westerns, so I got why he did it, I just could've done with less of them. As I said above though, it's sad that he's passed, because it looked like he really had some ideas that he was going to bring together for us with older properties like Cyborg and Nemesis, but he never got the chance. Maybe someone will be able to finish those ones off for us at some point, but either way, he's left us with a vast catalog that we can enjoy.

Maurette was great here as the lead, but the problem was the story didn't make her lead as much of a lead as we'd have liked. She had more to do in Bulletface, but this character seemed like it could've been more compelling. The imagery alone of the gunslinger wearing her wedding dress is fantastic, and Maurette plays it as well as you'd want, it's just, again, we have a lot of other things going on between the other women, the other guy, and the baddie, that we sometimes lose her. This is the kind of thing that should be as iconic as Django dragging his coffin, it's such a perfect idea, but I think if there's a criticism of Pyun's work, it's that he has so many perfect ideas, and sometimes when they're all put together, some of each is lost and we end up with the law of diminishing returns. But it's always those things that work that keep us coming back.

Here in the US on weekend afternoons and all day on Sunday, one of the retro channels shows TV Westerns, and considering how big they were in the 60s and 70s, they had to have been a part of Pyun's viewing experience growing up. What I love here though is he takes so much of their tropes and standards, and turns them on their head. One is the idealized version of the world they presented, as if things were somehow simpler, nicer, cleaner, and whiter back then. Pyun takes that and makes everything messy, with everyone covered in dirt throughout--which makes it closer to something like the Spaghetti Western, but this is even dirtier than those. Also those old Westerns had themes like "White Makes Right" and the "Noble Savage," none of which is present here. The other thing is, Pyun pulls Western themes in a lot of his futuristic films, like Omega Red and Nemesis, so it was cool to see him make an actual Western, and then Pyun it up so to speak to put his spin on it.

In the opening title cards that give us all the backstory, the ladies of the night are referred to as "whores," and the term is used a bunch, so much so that it hurts my 2024 sensibilities, and probably would've hurt my 2007 ones too. Also, as someone who grew up in New England, I can't help reading it with that accent, saying it like Mark Wahlberg in Fear. On top of that, the guys at "No Budget Nightmares" have ruined the term for me after they covered Las Vegas Bloodbath (which I reviewed after as well). In that movie, the killer refers to what he calls "daytime whores," which sets off his killing spree--"maybe he didn't like daytime whores!" Who even knows what that means, but maybe because it made no sense in that bonkers no-budget film, it stuck with me, and every mention of "whores" in this had me shaking my fist at the screen saying "daytime whores!"

Finally, like we do with other names who have had this kind of impact on the site, we're giving Pyun a second paragraph as we wrap this up--though this is actually an extra paragraph because I put my images in the wrong places, which caused me to miscount my paragraphs! This is Pyun's 43rd director credit on the DTVC (and 46th tag all-time, but we reviewed Mean Guns twice, and tagged him for his production work on Nemesis 5 and archived work in Dollman vs Demonic Toys), which is not only the most all time, but is 28 ahead of the second-most director tags, Fred Olen Ray. Ray definitely has a enough films to pass him, but will I do enough of them? I'd have to do 4 a year, which as a Hall of Famer he should get at least that, but even at 4 a year, he wouldn't catch Pyun until 2031! We do have a few other Pyun films on the table that we can review at some point. Cool Air is available to rent on some of the streamers; and then Interrogation of Cheryl Cooper looks like it's available to rent though Vimeo on his old streaming site. Then there's Interstellar Civil War that doesn't seem to be anywhere, but maybe it will be? Or Cyborg Nemsis: Dark Rift, that may have been fully shot and screened in a very rough version. Could it be finished by someone else and released? And finally we have listed as in production on IMDb, Cyborg: Overture aka Bad Ass Angels and Demons. It looks like some shooting has been done on that. Could it be finished? Maybe by Dustin Ferguson who did Nemesis 5--or for symmetry, Jim Wynorski, who finished Bad Bizness aka More Mercy when Pyun was let go from the project. If you consider he's at 45 overall films between directing and producing, those ones I listed get us to 50, which would put Pyun in the 50 Club.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Currently this is free to stream on The Roku Channel and Vudu aka Fandango at Home. Between the two, The Roku Channel is much better on commercials, so I'd watch it there--with Fandango at Home I was 6 minutes in--after getting a commercial before we even started!--when the film was interrupted again with another commercial, abruptly inserted in there while someone was talking. Anyway, I think this is more for Pyun completists, but in that respect it's worth it.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0918645

And my newest novel, Don's House in the Mountains, is available now on Amazon! Click the image to buy.

Gunfight at Rio Bravo (2023)

This is one Ty and I covered on the site back in episode 128 in June of last year. After Red Prophecies was kind of a dud for our "Casper Van Double Feature" episode, we decided to give Nevesky a second chance, and the fact that this had Gruner and Hues didn't hurt either. In addition to us, Chris the Brain at Bulletproof has done this one as well.

Gunfight at Rio Bravo has Nevsky as Ivan Turchaninov, very loosely based on the real life Civil War general of the same name, who instead of retiring to Chicago as he did in real life, has instead taken up shop in a small town in "East Texas." When Marshal Olivier Gruner shows up with a very dangerous prisoner, Matthias Hues, he hopes to house him in the local jail while he takes a load off. Hues and his gang have other plans, and his gang lays siege to the town in order to get Hues out. As luck would have it, Nevsky just happens to be a Civil War hero--though he'll never tell you that, he'll let Gruner and others tell you just how amazing he is. Now with Nevsky as their secret weapon, Hues's gang won't know what hit them.

This is your standard Nevsky vanity joint. Who's the man? Nevsky's the man. Were you not sure? Don't worry, he'll tell you again--or rather, as I mentioned above, have other people in the cast tell you while he looks on with false modesty. Now, when you get beyond the Nevsky vanity project element, there are some nice features. Scant runtime of 80 minutes which is even less when you factor in the credit padding. Gruner is great, and similar to Van Dien in Showdown in Manila, he could've probably carried the proceedings on his own. We also have a great baddie in Hues, and just when you think the Destro Effect is going to kick in, he threatens to set a church full of innocent people on fire--but even then, I still kind of rooted for him as the baddie. Finally, Art Camacho's fight choreography gives this Western a taste of Millionaire's Express, which is a nice touch. And that's the paradox of the Nevsky vanity joint: the "look at how cool I am" element can be insufferable, but the talent he's able to gather can make it all worth it, and I think ultimately, especially factoring in the runtime, that's what happens here.

We're at 51 movies for Art Camacho now, but you can see why I wanted Chinatown Connection instead of this to celebrate his 50th on the site. I think he does more work in this film to make it as good as it is, so perhaps on his end he would've preferred this as his 50th post, but to see him in front of the camera was fun too--and I think overall Chinatown Connection is a more fun movie. (As an aside, do we know why "funner" isn't a word in English? or maybe it is, because spellcheck isn't giving me the red underline...) This was one of the films he's worked on that he posted behind the scenes shots of on his Instagram, which always makes me more interested to see the finished product. There are a lot of great fight choreographers out there, but Camacho is probably the best in the DTV action world, and he shows it again here.

We last saw Olivier Gruner here about 2 and 1/2 years ago when we did Sector 4: Extraction. He's one that tends to get lost in the shuffle, which is why I wanted to get another one of his films on here. He's at 24 now, which means the 30 Club is in the conversation, and based on the number of films of his we haven't done yet, it should happen. We don't get a lot of great Gruner action the way we would if this was strictly his vehicle, but what we get I think is good. I was looking through his IMDb bio, and while there are a bunch of new ones we could do, I think we have a few from the 90s and early 2000s where he's more the lead that we should make a priority of too. Either way, we should avoid going another 2+ years before we see Gruner on here again.

And then our third Hall of Famer is the great Matthias Hues, who is now at 20 films on the site--which, we don't have a "20 Club," but is kind of a milestone just the same. He's a fantastic baddie, and one thing I like is how he's transitioned his baddie as his career has progressed. Early on, it was about his imposing figure coupled with his elite athleticism. I think only Dolph and Michael Jai White have that unique combination of size and athleticism Hues has, and in those 90s actioners he was in, he really made those movies special when he was in them as a baddie. Now that he's older, the athleticism is less of an element, but his personality and screen presence is so great that it more than makes up for it, so he still cuts an imposing baddie. Unlike Gruner, it's actually only been a few months or so since we last saw Hues, and with all the stuff he's been doing, I imagine we'll see him again soon.

Finally, I am in no way an expert on Texas, I've only been twice, once to San Antonio in 2009--which incidentally was during the H1N1 flu scare, and I remember going to the Alamo and a woman telling her significant other not to use the guest book pen--how I long for those simpler pandemic times--and then just this last year when I went to Dallas for work--and incidentally got to see the Texas Rangers play live, the eventual World Series champs, and only the second team I saw play live in their home park the same year they won the World Series, the other being the 2013 Red Sox. Anyway, I'm digressing a lot here, but my point is, with only these two short trips totalling less than two weeks, I knew enough of East Texas to know that this movie wasn't "East Texas," and I was right, it was Arizona. The thing I don't understand was why it needed to be set in East Texas in the first place. For historical accuracy, the Ivan Turchaninov this was based on had retired to Chicago by now, so this alternate, fictitious history could've just as easily happened in Arizona, or even West Texas where there actually is desert. If you only have to have been to East Texas twice like I have to know it ain't desert there, why not set the movie somewhere else if you have to shoot in a desert?

And with that, let's wrap this up. This movie has four things going for it: Camacho's fight choreography, Gruner and Hues, a scant 80-minute runtime coupled with credit padding, and it's free to stream on Tubi, Plex, and Freevee here in the States. I think those four should be enough to sell you, and then when you get those Nevsky vanity joint touches, you can have fun with them.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14388612

And my newest novel, Don's House in the Mountains, is available now on Amazon! Click the image to buy.

Outlaw Johnny Black (2023)

This is one I'd been waiting for for some time, once I saw it listed on Michael Jai White's IMDb bio. After how great Black Dynamite was, 14 years was plenty of time in between to get his next effort, and I was excited by the fact that he was going to take a stab at Blaxploitation Westerns. When my cable company offered their $1 weekend rental deal again, I figured that was the perfect time to make this happen.

Outlaw Johnny Black has White as the eponymous hero. He's searching for a guy named Clayton (Chris Browning) who killed his father, but in the process gets mixed up with the law, and finds himself pretending to be a preacher in the small town of Hope Springs. Beyond his own subterfuge, an evil land baron (Barry Bostwick) is trying to take the old preacher's property through violent and corrupt means, meaning someone with Black's skills are needed. A woman named Jessie Lee (Anika Noni Rose) has been mobilizing the townspeople against Bostwick, and while she and Black don't get along initially, she realizes he's the man to help them. But will his past catch up with him before he has the chance?

This is really good. It's 2 hours and 10 minutes long, which is longer than my usual 90 minutes, but I could tell that White, Byron Minns, and company really wanted to go bigger with this, which is something I could appreciate, and most importantly, I think they pulled it off. This is bigger than just a DTV actioner, and bigger than just White and co. dipping their feet into making Westerns, and I think it worked. Like Black Dynamite, the comedy is there, as is the send up to Westerns, but then also the proper tribute to the Blaxploitation Western, a sub-genre that I wasn't as familiar with myself until I started digging more into Fred Williamson's career--Johnny Black's outfit is a tribute to Williamson's in Joshua. White delivers as the hero the way he does in Black Dynamite as well, giving us a larger than life presence but also excels in his comedic timing; and then the rest of the cast does their thing as well, from Minns as the preacher whose name White steals, Rose as the leading lady, our baddies in Bostwick and Browning, and then like Black Dynamite, a whole host of supporting names like Kym Whitley, Tommy Davidson, Jill Scott, and Randy Couture, among many others. This is the movie I was looking for from White as a next film after Black Dynamite.

This is only Michael Jai White's third film of the year, which isn't great considering the number of stuff he has out there, and that was a big reason why I wanted to get this one as soon as I could. When I had Jon Cross of After Movie Diner on the DTVC Extra podcast to talk about Bloodfist III and IV, we talked about my top 5 DTV actions stars of all time, which are 1. Dolph, 2. Williamson, tied for 3. Wilson and Rothrock, and 5. Gary Daniels. He asked me if Wilson could ever move up that list, and I didn't think so, that if any change could happen in the top 5, it might be as we go on with Williamson that he may pass Dolph. With that in mind, in looking at Michael Jai White, he's someone who could crack the top 5 and maybe go higher, based on stuff like this. I mean no one other than Williamson has ever made anything like this before, let alone Black Dynamite as well, and that has to weigh heavily into a ranking like that. If you go 6-10, I have 6. Lamas, 7. Seagal, 8. Dudikoff, and 9. Van Damme. I used to have Adkins at 10, but I think at the very least White is tied with him now, if not passing him into the 10th spot with a film like this. White is not only a dynamic martial artist, but he's a dynamic overall talent, and he shows us that again in this film.

With a Western featuring black and white characters, the issue of the N word is inevitably going to come into play. If you look at Williamson's Westerns in the 70s, white characters threw the word around constantly, to the point one of his movies even had it in the title. Then you had Tarantino's Hateful Eight, where Samuel L. Jackson's character gets called it a lot. White and Minns in writing the script went a different route here by using a word that's similar but not the same. It's still close enough that I feel awkward using it in this review, but I liked that they did that. There's a debate around using that word in an artistic sense. Who should be able to say it or write it, especially in Tarantino's case as a white person writing dialog for white characters that are saying it. White and Minns don't even mess with it, but they do joke about it, like when a baddie goes to call Johnny Black a "Ni--" and gets kicked in the face, and while he's on the ground says "I was going to say nincompoop!" I think it just gets back to the fact that White and Minns and the rest of the people making this and Black Dynamite are working on a different level.

People have sometimes complained that I'm too hung up on runtimes, which is fair, even though it's pretty consistent among the DTV/low-budget movie blogging/podcasting community that anything over 90 minutes is borrowed time, which means as a filmmaker you need to make more out of that time to make it worth it for us. More often than not, those 100-minute plus films don't manage to make that extra time worth it, and for Michael Jai White, Byron Minns, and co. to go in planning to make something over two hours, it was a gamble, but one that paid off. I'd say around the 45-minute mark the film loses steam a bit, but for the most part it manages to stay entertaining throughout. Part of it is the writing, and Jon Cross made a point about this when he was on the DTVC Extra podcast I mentioned above: humans can only laugh or be scared so much before it comes too much. What White and Minns do to mitigate that is they give us enough that's entertaining without while giving us a break from laughing or feeling tense, which, combined with a story that progresses along pretty well except for that one slower patch I mentioned. The thing is though, it is a gamble, and it requires great material. This movie is the exception that proves our 90-minute rule, but it is the rare film that's worth that extra time.

Finally, Fred Williamson has a cameo at the end along with Jim Brown and Michael Madsen. The issue then is that make this Williamson's 30th film on the site! I considered holding off on this one so we could get a better film for his 30th post, one that has him in it more, but I thought that would be too ridiculous, especially when I had this film watched and was planning to review it in this slot, to make it sit for a month or more while I try to get another Williamson post in? The other thing though is, while he only has this one cameo, he has it because the film is paying tribute to his influence and contributions to the world of cinema, so I think that combined with the fact that I can just make his 31st movie be the one where he gets the full accolades, made the decision to just go ahead with this review an easy one. It's a really great scene, where he and Jim Brown are watching everyone from a balcony at the end, and they recognize the job every did making the movie and upholding the traditions they started in the 70s.

And with that, let's wrap this up. As of this writing, you can rent this on Amazon Prime or your cable company here in the States. From a money standpoint, you have to decide what your budget is, but I think renting something like this has the added benefit of showing the studios that a movie like this can sell, it doesn't need to be all comic book heroes or Bruce Willis to draw us in.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8667828

And my newest novel, Don's House in the Mountains, is available now on Amazon! Click the image to buy.

Rowdy Girls (2000)

We continue our 2023 Hall of Fame inductions with one of the all-time greats, and someone who played a big part in my love of DTV films, Shannon Tweed. Now you'd think an erotic thriller would probably be a better bet for her induction post, but I saw this was finally on Tubi, and I thought I'd seen it before and remembered liking Tweed in it, plus it was a Troma flick with another Hall of Famer, Julie Strain, so I figured it would be a good one.

Rowdy Girls has Tweed as a woman in the Wild West who is on the run with some money she stole from someone who'd stolen it from a bank. Disguised as a nun, she's hoping no one will bother her or her money, but she's wrong. First, a young lady on the stage coach with her, (Deanna Brooks), tries to steal it, and then later her coach is waylaid by a gang, which includes Strain. Eventually she and her money are parted, so she teams up with a local deputy whose brother was killed by Strain, and they try to track it down and help him get his revenge. Will they be able to take out these baddies and live happily ever after?

Again, I couldn't remember if I'd seen this before or not, but it was as good as I thought I'd remembered it at least. It felt like a Wynorski film, with all the boobs and buttocks--in fact we also had a stunt buttocks with Strain's then husband, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles co-creator Kevin Eastman, having his cheeks pinch hit when the guy playing opposite Strain in a love scene didn't want his buttocks shown on camera--but also felt like the way you'd want Troma to do a Western, so it makes sense that they'd have distributed this. Beyond the T-n'-A, it had a lot of Troma comedy, but also hit all the beats we expect in a Western. The cast also did well matching the tone this was going for, led by Tweed and Strain, who both do equally well baring all in one scene and delivering tongue-in-cheek dialog in another. This is just a fun flick from 2000.

Unlike Danny Trejo who entered the Hall of Fame and the 30 Club at the same time, this is only Tweed's 7th, which I believe puts her with Lisa London and Tina Cote as joint third for most tags as a woman on the DTVC, behind Kathleen Kinmont with 8 and Cynthia Rothrock with 42. This is also her first post since we did Hard Vice in November of 2021. That may make you wonder why she's getting this Hall of Fame nod now, which I get. The main thing is in looking over my own experience with DTV films, erotic thrillers were a big part of that, and I'm planning to do more of them in the future on the site, which is part of the reason why I wanted to do this now; but also in looking over her CV, she has a lot of action roles as well, many of which we haven't covered yet, plus she was in one of my favorite comedies ever, Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death. 80s and 90s DTV wouldn't be what they are without her, and I think for that reason alone, this was overdue.

For our film's other Hall of Famer, we have the great Julie Strain. I checked, and this is only her second film on the site since her induction two years ago, which isn't good that we haven't been doing more of her films. She's fantastic here as the baddie, which was cool, but the better movie for me would've been if she and Tweed were teaming up as bounty hunters taking out a bunch of outlaws, so I wouldn't have had to root for one over the other. As far as getting more Strain up, in our quest to get all of Sidaris's LETHAL Ladies films on the site, we still have three more of those that she's done. From there it'll be a matter of finding films of hers on places like Tubi, but making sure they aren't the edited version. One example is Battle Queen 2020, which is on Tubi, and also has Jeff Wincott in it. The Tubi version cuts 16 minutes off the original. I guess I could review it based off of that one, but I'd rather see a clean, uncut version. That's one thing that's good about Rowdy Girls, as far as I can tell, it's totally unedited. 

While Troma isn't in the Hall of Fame, it's definitely a potential future Hall of Famer. I think the case can be made if The Asylum is in, Troma definitely should be in, which I agree with, the only thing is The Asylum made it in automatically by getting into the 30 Club, and in the process creating the rule for which it's named that Danny Trejo and Scott Adkins also almost got into the Hall of Fame on. The other thing is Troma has more horror, and we don't do as much horror, and they often don't have the names in them that Asylum films do, so we're more likely to cover an Asylum film, which isn't necessarily a good thing, it's more like it's something that's happened without me realizing it, and now we have 34 Asylum films on the site and this is only our 11th Troma flick. If Tubi is going to have more Troma like this though, I have no excuse to do more--plus I could just fork over the $5 a month to get Troma Now and get all the films if they have them on there. One thing I also noticed when I went on their site: it looks like they've moved away from the Hell's Kitchen location, which is sad. If you look at Hell's Kitchen on Google Maps, you'll see how expensive it would be to stay there, so that makes sense. They're currently located in Long Island City in Queens, which is still possible for me to get to from here in Philly, so maybe I'll make the trip up sometime.

Finally, I want to go back to the fact that Kevin Eastman, co-creator of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, did stunt buttcheek work in this. By 2000 I was not only long done playing with Ninja Turtles, but my dad had thrown all my old figures out--along with my He-Man figures, Star Wars figures, GI Joe figures, etc.--but what I discovered in looking it up on Wikipedia, is Eastman was also done with Ninja Turtles at this time, having sold his share of the franchise to co-creator Peter Laird--who then sold it to Viacom nine years later. For me as a kid in the late 80s, the Ninja Turtles came along at a perfect time, because He-Man had run itself down, and I needed something new to collect. What I didn't realize until I thought about it now for this paragraph, was how this also got me into comic books, because I got the Ninja Turtle comics as well, and saw all the cool Marvel and DC comics next to them on the shelves, which then led to comic books being the next thing I got into collecting when I aged out of the Ninja Turtles; also, I think seeing Elias Coteas in the first Ninja Turtle movie made me a fan of him, which I still am--his part in the Sopranos intervention episode was fantastic, and that's one of my all-time favorite television moments. It's cool how watching some of these movies can bring back nostalgia like that, even if it's in the form of a major media franchise's co-creator acting as a stunt buttocks in a Troma Western starring Shannon Tweed and Julie Strain.

And with that, let's wrap this up. As of my writing, you can get this in the States on Tubi and Plex, plus it might also be on Troma Now if you're subscribed. I had a lot of fun with this, it's exactly what you want from a Troma Western with Shannon Tweed and Julie Strain in it. And here's to Shannon Tweed, of the greats, it's good to finally get her in the Hall of Fame as well.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0177185

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Scorched Earth (2018)

After seeing her in the first of the two Kickboxer reboots, and also catching her in The Mandalorian when I was watching it with my buddy on his Disney+, I wanted to get more Gina Carano on the site. When we talk about the next wave of action stars when the old guard stops making movies, she feels like she has the talent to be right up there with names like Scott Adkins. As we know though, talent only counts for so much, the right projects are just as important, so the question is, does this fall into the "right project" category? This was also covered on Roger Ebert's site, so you can go there to see what they thought. (Spoiler: they killed it.)

Scorched Earth takes place in a post-apocalyptic future where, due to global warming, people need to filter their water and wear masks with ground silver to avoid getting sick. Enter Carano as a bounty hunter, who decides to infiltrate a compound filled with baddies, hoping to bring them all in. That kind of thing usually goes well, until it doesn't, and when it doesn't, the question is will Carano survive? If she does, those baddies better watch out.

As I mentioned, the reviewer at Ebert's site killed this. I don't know if I would have been as harsh, but I had concerns with it as well. It's a standard futuristic western that really doesn't do anything new. It relies more on the quirks in its setting, in particular the fact that you need a mask to go outside, than relying on the star power and the story. From a story standpoint, we know pretty much everything that's going to happen, which is fine, but that's when this needs to be a Carano vehicle, and it wasn't that. I think the limitations set by the air not being good and the infiltrating the baddies' lair storyline hampered what Carano could do, which left us with a film that could have been led by anyone.

That then begs the question, what would you have done? If I've got Carano, I want a good fight choreographer and hand-to-hand fights. If I'm going western, I'm either going traditional Yojimbo paradigm, or maybe something more stylish; but definitely something that establishes that Carano is totally bad ass, the way a Jesse V. Johnson or Isaac Florentine establishes early on that Adkins is a total bad ass. The opening sequence where she takes out a bounty was really good, and if they could have continued that level of action throughout, I think we could have had something. Instead it was all cat and mouse game with her trying to keep her cover. If the same thing had happened with a Scott Adkins film, we'd be complaining about it too.

When we think of Carano in Haywire, there was a sense that she could be the next big action star--not just female action star, but action star period. Since then she's had some small parts in big budget flicks like Deadpool and Fast and Furious 6, combined with some DTV flicks like this one. I said in my Kickboxer: Vengeance post that she should have been the lead in that one, but I think that maybe shows that we haven't come as far as we'd like to think in having women action leads. It's one thing to have non-action leads in female-centered action flicks like Captain Marvel and Wonder Woman, but the film industry has an aversion to having a woman who can fight be an action lead. Zoe Bell is another example. For studios that are afraid to greenlight films like that, it's important to note that after Dolph, no one gets more likes on my Instagram than Cynthia Rothrock. She outdoes Seagal, Van Damme, you name it. Hopefully with Carano's work in The Manadalorian, filmmakers will take notice. There has to be a China O'Brien or Rage and Honor project out there for Carano, and if it happens, I think it'll be big.

The futuristic Western is a great idea on a budget, because you can do it on the cheap, there are probably already turnkey sets and props available, you just need a script, get the cast and crew out there, and shoot it. It's deceptively simple, but the problem is, the Western is harder to pull off than we think. I was looking through my Western tag to see what had worked in the past. The best one I've done is Django from 1966. I mean, would it have been so bad to just remake Django with Carano in the lead? For a futuristic take, there was Cold Harvest, directed by Isaac Florentine and starring Gary Daniels and Bryan Genesse. That one had the sci-fi aspect, but was also a mix of Hong Kong action and the Western. What if they had done something like that here and given Carano a solid martial arts baddie to fight? Why not Bryan Genesse?

Finally, this also had John Hannah, who I'm a big fan of, and I really liked his role here as Carano's mentor and the town doctor. He was a great choice for that Western character who has seen a lot, but can't pass up a good fight, especially when it's supporting some he cares about. The problem is, we lose him for large portions of the film because of the whole infiltrating the baddie compound plot device. If you're going to have a Hannah, and make him as cool as he was here, it can be an issue if the other characters aren't as compelling while he's sitting on the sidelines. That could have been where Genesse helped.

That's two Genesse mentions in two paragraphs and he wasn't even in the film, so it's time to wrap this up. Unfortunately this film was too heavy on plot and didn't lean on Carano's action enough to make it work. Hopefully there's an action film coming that will really allow her to shine, but this just wasn't it.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2392748

Gallowwalkers (2012)

This is one we've been hearing about for a long time.  It was shot back in 2006, and I think as early as 2008 Netflix was listing it as something you could put in the "Saved" section of you DVD queue.  Finally it made it out a few months ago, but it was stuck on "Long Wait" status, so I couldn't get it.  I got Amour instead, then became busy and didn't get a chance to watch that, having it at home for almost two weeks (a really great movie by the way), and by the time I got it watched and the DVD back to Netflix, this was finally available, and we're finally doing it now.

Gallowwalkers stars DTVC favorite Wesley Snipes as Aman, a man whose lover is raped by five men, and then dies giving birth to the child that was consummated in the assault.  Snipes swears revenge on them, and kills them all.  But what connection do they have to the undead-- known locally as "gallowwalkers"-- who are terrorizing the people living in the small desert communities around which Snipes lives, and if they can't die, how can Snipes defeat them?



I really enjoyed this movie.  First off, it was really striking visually.  It was a mix of a lot of great Western conventions, from the desolate landscapes to the Sergio Leone-style extreme close-ups.  The colors popped, the sets were all nice, and the actors all seemed to be on board with the director's vision.  This was an out-there concept for a movie, with it having some real macabre elements, but not exactly being a horror movie; yet too many horror conventions to be a straight-ahead Western; and despite being that out-there, the cast bought in, which brought the whole film together.  Snipes especially was into this, and it showed.  He was the lead, and he relished it, and made the film that much more fun.  I didn't know what to expect when I went in, but what I got was a really cool movie that mixed a lot of genres and influences and gave us something truly unique and entertaining.

We haven't seen Snipes on here in over 2 1/2 years, when we did Game of Death, but man, what a way to come back.  This is as good a Snipes as I've seen in a long time.  I watched the behind the scenes interviews featurette, and the fact that he was in that at all was big, because a lot of times the name actor of the film doesn't do the interviews for that; but beyond that, he sounded really excited to be working on this project, and was also excited that the film was shot in Namibia and hoped it could help build the film industry there.  All of that came through in his performance, plus we know from the Blade series that he can lead a film like this, and it all worked.  Definitely nice to have him back.



One thing I liked about the approach to this Western is that it felt like it was set in a liminal space.  I think even Snipes himself said his character was trapped in a kind of purgatory.  A lot of Westerns end up like that by default, but there's always this idea that these isolated areas are somehow a part of the greater United States or Mexico, depending on where they're set.  Here it was like these people and this place were not exactly in this realm.  Even the ordinary things weren't quite real.  Yet even in all of that, at its core this film is a Western, and the fastest gun still wins.  It was a really great use of a lot of traditional Western devices.

We had some other interesting people in this.  Patrick Bergin has a small role as the hanging marshal in a small town called Enoch's Hammer.  I always like seeing him on here.  Kevin Howarth played the main baddie.  The same way that Snipes seemed to enjoy being the hero, he was great as the villain.  Riley Smith played Fabulos, the young gun who Snipes recruits to help him take out Howarth's gang.  He was a great second to Snipe's character, where he looked young enough to not be at Snipe's level, but old enough to look like he knew what he was doing.  Then there was the great former wrestler Dallas Page, who played one of the baddie's hatchet men.  He wore a big metal helmet most of the time, and when it was off his face was obscured by a lot of make-up.  Finally, the woman who played Snipe's adopted mother was great too, but I don't know who she is because she doesn't have her picture on her imdb.  This is a message to all actors and actresses out there: get your picture on imdb, that's how we find out who you are.



Finally, we've seen Tanit Phoenix on here a fair amount.  She was in Lost Boys: The Thirst, and the two Death Race prequels, all three filmed in her native South Africa.  This was by far her best performance, but I think that was because she had the material here.  The character was written like and had the aesthetic of Claudia Cardinale's character in Once Upon in the West, and from there I think Phoenix was able to bring her style to the role.  Especially in the Death Race prequels, there's a one dimensionality to her character, even over two films, so it was good to see her get something more rounded and see what she could do with it.

I think this is a must see, but it is a different film, so if you're not up for that I'd say wait on it.  I thought it was great, and I was glad to finally make it happen.  As of right now you can get this on the usual DVD suspects, like Netflix and RedBox.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0829176/

From Dusk Till Dawn 3: The Hangman's Daughter (1999)

Back in 2008 I reviewed From Dusk Till Dawn 2: Texas Blood Money, and I was less than impressed.  I guess because of that, when Netflix Instant became a thing, and this film showed up on it, I stuck it in my queue and forgot all about it.  Now we're finally making it happen.  Let's see if it was worth the wait.

From Dusk Till Dawn 3 has the great Michael Parks as Ambrose Bierce-- that's right, the writer.  He's looking to meet up with Pancho Villa and join the Revolution.  Along the way his carriage is waylaid by the outlaw Johnny Madrid and his gang, who are on the run from Temuera Morrison, the Hangman, whose daughter Esmeralda has run off with Madrid.  Anyway, all of these people find themselves at a mysterious bar run by Danny Trejo, and the rest, as they say, is vampires.



This was definitely a far superior film to part 2.  It was a great western, then a great horror film, yet retaining some semblance of being a western.  Also, as a western, it played up on a lot of the savage elements of the Old West to give it enough of a horror tinge.  Then we had some really great shots that felt more like a Terry Gilliam flick, which added a surreal effect, and made the film that much better.  And there were great performances from Parks as Bierce, Marco Leonardi as Madrid, Morrison, and Trejo.  I also liked Rebecca Gayheart as a travelling missionary whose new husband is using her for her money; Ara Celi as Esmeralda; and Jordana Spiro as a girl pretending to be a boy.  There were a few scenes that didn't work for me, especially one where Gayheart's husband was fighting one of Madrid's gang.  Gayheart's husband was a heel, I don't want to see him beating someone up, no matter who it is.  Those scenes were fewer than the good ones though, and overall this one really worked.

Michael Parks is a big reason why.  He's fantastic as Ambrose Bierce, total charismatic lead, exactly what you want when you see Michael Parks listed in the cast.  Every scene he's in, he owns, but he owns it so effortlessly, almost in a way that's like he's lending it out to the other actors in the scene with him, but we're just waiting for him to reclaim ownership.  At the same time, he's never trying to upstage anyone or overdo it, it's just a pure professional performance in a fun role and a fun movie.



As I said this Mexican Wild West was a little more macabre than the usual fare, which gave it more of a horror feel, even when there wasn't any actual horror in the scenes.  Very bloody and deadly, but also nice touches like the hangman's clothing, and the scene around the hanging; or the coach drivers, one of whom has had his tongue cut out, the other who's blind.  Very creepy old scary movie kind of things.  The horror when it does come is as gross and gooey as it gets, it pulls no punches.  It's an all out vampire feeding frenzy.  I think that will appease the horror fans enough who have to wait until the end for that vampire action.

Johnny Madrid was played by Marco Leonardi, who was in one of my favorite films of the '80s, Cinema Paradiso.  To see him as a gunslinging Mexican outlaw in this was quite a trip, but he was so great.  He had every element of the character down, from his savagery and lawlessness, to his sense of honor and right that seem to conflict with the previous two traits.  Then he had the gun wielding charisma you want from that role, which brought it all together.  Leonardi is definitely not an actor I would've expected to see here at the DTVC, but as we've seen in our over 900 posts, you never know who's gonna show up.



I want to talk quickly about the cinematography, because it did have an almost Terry Gilliam like feel to it.  Those carnivalesque close-ups and pan-outs, moving camera, wide shots of people wandering through a desert that looks more like a Dali painting.  I don't know how many times I've seen people try to pull these things off and ruin the whole film, but here it worked.  I think it helped too to have Parks, whose portrayal of Bierce felt like something out of a Gilliam flick too.  It added a lot of atmosphere, and kept reminding us that things weren't what they seemed.

While this is on Instant, it's worth a look.  For Parks alone it's worth a look, but everything else seemed to click too.  Again, it had a few missteps, but those missteps didn't hurt it enough to prevent me from giving it a positive recommendation.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120695/