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/

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Hardball aka Bounty Hunters 2: Hardball (1997)

First saw this back in the late nineties early 2000s when a buddy of mine and I were on a Dudikoff kick. We actually saw it without seeing the first Bounty Hunters. I'm not sure that matters. Do I care about the continuing misadventures of Jersey Bellini? Could he just as easily be Dakota Pasta Primavera fighting the same baddies as another bounty hunter with Lisa Howard as his screwball romantic comedy-esque love interest? Sure, and I wouldn't care either way.

Hardball picks up where Bounty Hunters left off, with Howard and Duds trying to make the whole bounty hunter/lovers partnership thing work. She dumps him, and he gets the mob after him because she botches a jewelry store heist and they trace the botch to him. So he beats guys up, has a bunch of almost deaths, blows some shit up, and Lisa Howard gives him a hard time and kicks some more guys' asses. Pretty much the first Bounty Hunters.



The question, of course, is why was this movie made? It's one thing for scriptwriters to get lazy and rip ideas off for bad DTV films, but a whole 'nother level when they're too bored to come up with new characters and package the thing as a sequel. Was the first Bounty Hunters so successful? Were people writing the producers, clamoring for more stories involving bounty hunter Jersey Bellini and his on again/off again woman? I'd like to meet those people if they existed.

Getting past the fact that this movie was needless as a sequel, it was as much fun as the first one. There's still the suspending belief that Lisa Howard and her 110 frame can punch people out as effortlessly as Mike Tyson, Dudikoff is as funny yet kick ass as ever, and there's plenty of action throughout. All in all, this does the job. It's what you're looking for in a bad action movie.



With the 2008 class of Hall of Fame inductions coming in a week or two, it's nice to take a second here and recognize a member of the inaugural class, Michael Dudikoff. No one says DTV better than he does. He really hasn't been in any major motion pictures. His fame is only through cable TV and the video store shelf. He's a real classic, and this film is classic Dudikoff. According to imdb, he hasn't done a film since '02. Come on, man, get back in there and make Bounty Hunters 3... or Cyberjack 2... or American Ninja 5.

Tony Curtis is in this as a crime boss. I'll always love him from Some Like it Hot. It's weird seeing him in this, because his role's really small, and it's not very good. Then I look him up on imdb, and he's doing all sorts of bad stuff, some of which they don't even sell on Amazon. Tony, baby, what's going on here? Does this mean if I put together a picture, I got a shot at landing a screen legend like Tony Curtis? Wow.



There's one interesting scene where a guy who looks like Screech has the snot beaten out of him by the bad guy. Anyone who's seen him on Celebrity Fit Club knows what an asshole he was, and so this was kind of an after-the-fact applause scene for us, but it was welcomed. Considering Screech was having trouble paying his mortgage, I wonder what it would cost to land him in a movie where you could have Tony Curtis beat the crap out of him.

Are you a Dudikoff fan? If you are you've probably already seen this. If not, you may not want to. Watch the first one, and if you're really hungering for more misadventures of bounty hunter Jersey Bellini and his partner/love interest... well, you're in luck.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119258/

The Dark Angel: Psycho Kickboxer aka Psycho Kickboxer and Canvas of Blood (1997)

I first got wind of these films after one of my readers suggested them to me in a comment he left for one of my earlier posts. He hadn't seen them yet either. I was very curious. I love kickboxing movies, so one with a psycho sounded awesome. Add the double feature aspect and the 2007 release date-- which to me signaled potential new blood in the DTV market-- and I knew I needed it on my Netflix queue.

Psycho Kickboxer is a YouTube high school video quality revenge yarn with real life kickboxing champ Curtis Bush as a dude who is after the dude who killed his dad and fiancee. Canvas of Blood is a Troma reject about a Vietnam Vet who wants revenge for his daughter's botched hand surgery.



I put these two together in one post because A) they were packaged together, and B) they sucked so bad they didn't deserve one a piece. I like bad movies as much as the next guy, but I can watch YouTube for free, so Psycho Kickboxer's a waste, and Canvas of Blood was a Troma movie without anywhere near as much fun. Neither film was made in 2007, but rather 1997. I couldn't even get an imdb listing for Canvas of Blood, it was so obscure. These were two film school projects snatched up by some low-life distributor in an attempt to make a little money off bad movie honks like myself. It hurts.

The acting in Psycho Kickboxer was worse than my friends and I when we would get drunk and film something for a school assignment. And the production value was like a home video camera. It was kind of funny to watch, but 90 minutes is way too much. Also, we had some sweet head explosion and arm cut-off-age in the beginning, and they never did anything like that again. I might have had a different opinion of it had they kept that up. But they didn't, so I didn't.



Canvas of Blood looked like the average fare on USA's Up All Night at 3am to 5am. It had some funny parts, but overall it just wasn't fun enough to make that Troma level for me. When it isn't fun, it's only bad, and no one wants that. Probably the hardest thing to watch was the girl's ex-lover kill her dog by feeding it hamburger with cut glass in it. Even if it's pretend, who wants to see that? Bad. Then the last ten minutes was some scene of two dudes getting lap dances at a strip club. For whose benefit is that in there? Certainly not mine.

I guess I knew I was had when I saw the Chess King outfit on the hero in Psycho Kickboxer, because there was no way a movie made in 2007 would have people dressed like they were from 1992 in it. 1997 makes more sense, because bad movie fashion is usually 5 years behind the times. I just thought I was going to see some new blood in the DTV market, and instead it was the same old same old putting lipstick on a pig.



Just be careful with this double feature. I don't want to begrudge anyone a bad movie experience, but these two are bottom of the barrel. You won't recognize anyone in either (though Michael Mann's name comes up as producer in Canvas of Blood-- don't know what he and his lawyer think!), and I just didn't find them to be a lot of fun. Rent at your own peril.

For more info (Psycho Kickboxer): http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0493231/

Redemption (2002)

Some of these movies just show up in my Netflix queue. I put them in in like December when I'm killing time and searching for actors I like, then have no clue what happened when they show up in my mailbox 8 months later. It's kind of a fun surprise-- except for when the movie sucks.

Redemption has Don "The Dragon" Wilson as a cop who's the head of some elite SWAT team. Richard Norton doesn't like him very much, but Cynthia Rothrock does. When a partner's killed, Norton takes his chance and gets Donny thrown off the force. With no money, his hooker friend gets him a job with Chris Penn, who's some big drug lord. After making an assload of cash, he's faced with the decision of continuing his life of crime, or finding redemption by righting his wrongs.



Nope. Absolutely not. Ten kinds of wrong. Not even close. Bor-ing. Here's another excellent case of having a great cast, and doing nothing with it. Very little action. Best scenes are at the very end, where we really see D "The D" Dubs kick some ass, and a dude blows up a car with a rocket launcher. Why didn't someone just cut and paste that type of sweetness over and over until there was 88 minutes of film? Too much plot exposition, too crappy a plot, and with the talent they had, we needed more martial arts and more excitement.

Let's start with Donny. Hall of Famer as of last year. Last film reviewed, Future Kick, wasn't received too poorly. Overall, he's been kind of hit or miss. One of his major drawbacks is he's a horrible actor, so every time he reads his lines, I cringe. His upside comes in his great martial arts skills, and in films where the action's really ramped up, he's really fun to watch. If he's spending less time kicking three guys at once, and more time showing hookers his sensitive side, I feel like I've been ripped off. Also of note, he does get out on the dance floor for a second. He's not anywhere near as funny as Van Damme in Kickboxer, but he's still funny.



Cynthia Rothrock is slated for induction into the DTVC Hall of Fame in October, making her the first female member. This is not her movie, it's Donny's, and so she's not featured too prominently. Her movies have proven a little harder than I thought to track down. Part of the problem is she hasn't done much in the past ten years, and I guess it isn't a priority for Netflix to get their hands on some of the horrible DVD translations of her earlier greats. China O'Brien and Lady Dragon are in the "Saved" section of my Netflix queue, their availability unknown.

Usually in a film starring Cynthia Rothrock, we see Richard Norton, so it was a surprise to see him in one where Rothrock only co-starred. Unfortunately, that meant he wasn't in it much, which I guess would've been all right, but we were teased with a Dragon/Norton showdown, then had it taken away. They kind of scuffle for a bit, and it's poorly choreographed, and no one wins. Are you kidding me? This is almost as bad as when Donny and Lorenzo Lamas were on screen together for two seconds in X-Treme Fighter. Who could be so dense as to purposefully cast Norton and Wilson, then not have them fight each other or together?



Well, the answer my faithful readers, is one Mr. David DeFalco. This is the fourth film of his I've reviewed, and because of the star power he had at his disposal, it might be the most disappointing. Gangland at least made good use of Sasha Mitchell, Costas Mandylor, Kathleen Kinmont, and Vincent Klyn. I don't know why he didn't make the screenwriters and director change this to a post-apocalyptic thriller where Wilson, Rothrock, and Norton have to fight their way through all sorts of baddies to save a doctor who has the cure for a plague. DeFalco should only produce movies like that.

This is the second film of Chris Penn's I've done, and also the second where he co-starred w/ Wilson (the other being Future Kick). It's pretty obvious that as an actor he's head and shoulders above his cast mates. I loved his part in this, and wanted more. Usually David DeFalco goes with Andrew Dice Clay for this type of role (loudmouthed Italian big shot), so it was a nice to see this alternative.

I'd have to say this isn't worth the money. It's a shame, too, because there's really no reason for it. We need some laws in place that hold film makers accountable for the misuse of great star power. But until then, you have people like me here to warn you ahead of time to not waste your cash.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0303387/

New Rose Hotel (1998)

I saw this recently after some friends bought it. None of them had heard of it, which was surprising due to the star talent. They decided to save it to see what I thought before they watched it. I hadn't heard of it either, and was intrigued. The director of Bad Lieutenant and King of New York doing a film with Christopher Walken, Willem Dafoe, and Asia Argento: just seems like a can't miss.

New Rose Hotel is a futuristic post-cyberpunk suspense yarn with Walken and Dafoe as corporate defectors. They convince valued employees to switch employers. In their sights is Hiroshi, a genius biologist and geneticist working for MAAS. Competitors Hosaka want him to lead their laboratories, and Walken sees a huge opportunity. He employs high priced escort Asia Argento to seduce Hiroshi, and the plan seems to be working. But is anything ever what it seems in these kinds of movies? Can you really trust anyone? As a guest on Jerry Springer once said so eloquently: "When you lie down with snakes, you get fleas." Yep.



On our first viewing, my friends and I weren't paying as good attention as we should've, and we found ourselves befuddled. For them, the being befuddled left them unhappy. For me, it left me intrigued, and I wanted to watch it again to see if I could figure it out. Turns out the movie's not too difficult to pick up, you just have to watch it and listen. Once it all made sense, it wasn't as cool. Walken's kind of sweet, but he's not in it as much as he should be, and he has a limp, which is sillier than it is endearing. Also, the focus switches from Walken to Dafoe, which is disconcerting. Walken was the only character worth investing in, and even that may have been more the actor than the writing. Pretty disappointing from Abel Ferrara, considering what else he's done.

Like I said, Walken's awesome. He has some great one-liners, which makes for very entertaining viewing. My favorite went something like this: "I wrote a haiku. A dog walks into a bar, orders a scotch and toilet water. See, that's a haiku." Maybe the best scene came when he threw a party for Dafoe with four Asian prostitutes. He's supposed to be celebrating Dafoe's birthday, but the crown and robe he's wearing makes him look like the Central European Father Christmas. I guess the Walken rule is still there: he's always awesome.



Dafoe. Cool guy. Weird seeing him naked a lot. Weird seeing him have sex with Asia Argento. Just weird. Again, cool guy, just don't need to see him naked. No offense. I'm sure he wouldn't want to see me naked either, and I'm cool with that. If I'm Abel Ferrara, next time I do more Walken saying funny things, and less naked Dafoe. The ending was a collection of Dafoe flashbacks to his nude scenes. Really? I needed that? If I'm in desperate need of an ipecac, I'll hit the drug store. At least then I have a choice of when I want to take it.

I liked Asia Argento in this. I liked her more in XXX, but she was still cool here. I can see why Ferrara cast her. She exudes this femininity that makes her irresistible. I know a lot of women who say things like "I wish I was a guy. Guys have it so easy. You don't have to do this or that. Just throw on some jeans and a polo, and maybe shave, and you're set. We have to do all this blah blah blah." I totally appreciate what these women are saying, and I don't blame them for giving up and sporting a buzzcut and wearing jeans. But Asia Argento just seems to love being a woman, and everything that means. For a role like this, you need that for her to be believable as the seducer. I just didn't need to see her making out with Dafoe so much.



I had this problem in watching the film where I mixed Dafoe and Walken's names up incessantly. My friends thought it was funny, which was okay, but I've also caught myself doing it throughout this post, and that's really annoying. I'm not sure when I first merged the two in my head-- probably at some point far back in my youth, when I must've thought they looked similar. I don't think they look alike now, so it's interesting how some misconception made early in childhood has had such an impact on my development that I'm still mistaking the two when I talk about one or the other over twenty-five years later. I guess I shouldn't have audited Psyche 101.

I don't know if I'd recommend this. Watch Bad Lieutenant and King of New York first, just so you know how good Ferrara is. My friends have a notion that anything watched with me there for commentary is more enjoyable than with me absent. This goes for more than movies: reality shows, concerts, people watching. That being said, this movie was still a dud, even with my jokes to prop it up. That should tell you something.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0133122/

Kickboxer 2: The Road Back (1991)

I don't remember when I first saw this gem. I think it's always been a part of my life. The real travesty is that I don't own it. I don't know why that is. Maybe it's always been on my To Buy list. Maybe I've just never seen it at the right time. Maybe I'm just a moron. Who knows?

Kickboxer 2: The Road Back is 90 minutes of pure awesome about a kickboxer, played by Sasha Mitchell, who's the younger sibling to the two kickboxing brothers in the Van Damme movie. Cary Tagawa, playing a Thai businessman, wants revenge for Tong Po's loss, so he figures having Tong Po kick Mitchell's ass will suffice. Mitchell doesn't want to fight at first, so Tagawa has his goons burn his gym down. That was a mistake. He thought he had everything planned out, but he never planned on Mitchell being so awesome.



God I love this movie. It's so amazing. The plot's sweet, the fights are great, and the music is insane. They have the best songs for the beginning, middle, and end. That perfect late 80s crap action give-it-all-you-got rock song with the dude over singing. One of them the guy even does some scat. Wow. And this idea of Sasha Mitchell doesn't want to fight in the kickboxing association, so they burn down his gym. Only in bad action does this kind of thing happen. Can you see Dana White burning down Randy Couture's gym because he left the UFC? But it works so well in Kickboxer 2.

Pyun was having a bad spell here at the DTVC. For a Hall of Famer, two stinkers in a row is a mini crisis. But this film was a big reason why he got in the Hall of Fame, so I was waiting for just this occasion to pull it for him. That way if his newest film, Left for Dead, sucks, he'll at least have this extremely positive review in the middle.

Sasha Mitchell is great in this, as he is in Kickboxer 4. With the strength of this performance, it's kind of a shame he doesn't do more DTV films. According to IMDb, he hasn't done anything since 2005, and a DTV work since 2000's Luck of the Draw with Michael Madsen, Dennis Hopper, and Ice-T. Have to check that out, because we're running out of Mitchells to review. His kickboxing skills are sweet to watch. He's built perfectly for delivering solid knees to the face of his opponent while having him locked in the Muay Thai clinch. We need him back.



Cary Tagawa is great as the baddie. The idea of using unlimited Thai funds to usurp Peter Boyle's upstart kickboxing federation in order to get Tong Po a rematch with the youngest Sloan brother in order to retain Thai honor is fantastic, and Tagawa plays his part without the slightest twinge of irony. He really is one of the great DTV baddies, and we need only look to two Dolph Lundgren greats, Bridge of Dragons and Showdown in Little Tokyo, for proof of that. As an aside, if you ever wanna see a softer side of Cary, check him out in the bland Disney made-for-TV flick Johnny Tsunami, where he plays the cool surfer grandfather.

This has so many people in it. Peter Boyle, the dad from Everybody Loves Raymond is the guy starting a kickboxing federation. Albert Pyun mainstay Vincent Klyn plays Tagawa's righthand man. That means with Tong Po, you have three people playing Thai characters, and none of them are Thai. Miami Vice fans will love John Diehl as the accountant/manager/whatever to Mitchell. One cameo I dug was Brian Austin Green as the young punk who Mitchell teaches a lesson to at the very beginning. You may remember Green as David Silver on Beverly Hills 90210. My favorite moment from his run on that show was the time he was working the wheels of steel with this dude from the ghetto, and the kid was surprised at how good he was. Silver's response: "I may be white, but I'm not vanilla!"



My friend at Movies in the Attic (you can find a link to his site in the section listed "Other great sites") told me that Van Damme didn't do this film because he didn't get a long with Albert Pyun after a falling out during Cyborg. I didn't know that. I wonder what the film would've been like with the Muscles from Brussels. Don't get me wrong, I like Mitchell, and I like this with him; I'm just curious. What would be cool is if part 6 had Van Damme fight Mitchell, then team up and beat a bunch of other guys up. Can we do that?

If you haven't seen this, you can't call yourself a bad movie honk. I probably should've posted it sooner, but I wanted to save the best Kickboxer for last, and I also wanted to see it again to put all the great parts fresh in my mind. However you gotta make this happen, do it. You won't disappointed.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102202/

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/

Chaos (2005)

I picked this up looking for more Wesley Snipes films to review. The first two I did were kind of iffy, so I thought the addition of Jason Statham and Ryan Phillippe would boost his chances of getting a good post.

Chaos is about a disgraced hostage negotiator played by Jason Statham, who, with his partner, is found liable of negligent police work after a girl is killed in a standoff. He's pulled back into action, though, when a bank is robbed, and the ringleader of the heist (Snipes) asks the new negotiator for Statham specifically. In order to make sure he does well, he's given hot shot rookie Ryan Phillippe to keep an eye on him. But things aren't what they appear here, and as Statham and Phillippe dig deeper, they find more questions than answers.



This was pretty sweet. One of those gems that falls through the mainstream cracks and into our DTV laps. According to imdb, the film had a limited run in Europe, but beyond that it was completely overlooked. Too bad, because it's a smart and well engineered suspense film with solid performances by Snipes, Statham, and especially Phillippe. Looking at my recent posts, there weren't too many that I recommended, so I think it's refreshing to put in an update with something I really dug.

Snipes was all right in this, but the question is: does this count? I have to give it to him as the official scorer, which gets him off the schneid and makes him 1-fer-3. The reality is, this isn't a Snipes driven action fest, and he's third billed after Statham and Phillippe. I'm still waiting for that breakthrough Snipes DTV bad action that's close to his great work in Blade, but I'll take this in the meantime.



Statham, as always, was awesome. How can anyone not like this guy? He has like one or two other films that could make it to the DTVC, like Revolver, which grossed like $40,000 in the US, but for the most part he's too mainstream, i.e., he's too big for us. But, luckily, he signed on for a project that the major distribution houses didn't know what to do with, and he ended up here. We're glad to have you, baby, if only for a second. I gotta see that Death Race too. I skipped it in favor of Babylon AD, which I don't remember much of because I was hammered for it.

This isn't the first Phillippe film I've reviewed. You may remember 12 May 2007's Invader aka Lifeform post. Then he was just starting out as an actor in 1996, still a year off from breaking out in I Know What You Did Last Summer. This film comes at the other end of the spectrum, a year after the Oscar winning Crash. He's definitely better in this than either Lifeform or Crash, which surprised me. It just added another layer to the film's quality.



In one scene Statham was trying to get under Phillippe's skin by suggesting the Pac-10's overrated after Phillippe admits he attended Washington University. This is a misconception that's been perpetrated by the East Coast biased sports media for decades. Having been a student for a long period of time, and now trying my hand at writing, I'm up late pretty often, and I can tell you that I'd rather watch a Pac-10 football or basketball game than another infomercial for eXtenze (sp?). I live in ACC country now (near Boston), but I'm willing to admit that the Pac-10 is head and shoulders above the ACC in football, and probably behind only the SEC and Big XII. The Pac 10 is not overrated, just on past too many people's bedtimes.

I can't really tell you anymore for fear of giving too much away. I would hate to spoil it for anyone. This is a better quality than most DTV, and though I love the Jerry Trimble 77-minute prison film as much as the next guy, it's nice to mix it up and find a hidden gem of a different quality.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0402910/