No Contest (1994)

I first got wind of this movie when I was looking up Rowdy Roddy Piper films on imdb. My friends and I are huge fans of his, and after Dead Tides, we were hungry for more. It wasn't an easy film to find, though, and I had to wait until I got Netflix to see it. Then it was pushed down on my queue, and when it finally made it to the top, it sat on the TV for a while before I finally watched it.

No Contest has Shannon Tweed as a martial arts film queen hosting a beauty pageant that is taken hostage by Andrew Dice Clay and his baddies, one of which is Rowdy Roddy Piper, and another of which is the guy from that Da Vinci's Inquest show. Anyway, Robert Davi was hired to protect Miss America in the pageant, and he helps Tweed make her way through the bad guys to try and save the girls.



This was what it was. I hate using that term, is what it is, but it's the only way to describe this picture. Bad Die Hard rip-off that might have been cooler with The Dice Man and Piper, but just wasn't. There were some nice explosions, but they weren't that nice. There was some weird thing going on where The Dice Man had the girls wear explosive wrist bands that would detonate if they were too far from something, and then the Da Vinci guy had one triggered to his heart that would go off if The Dice Man tried to kill him, but The Dice Man's computer nerd just reprogrammed it with some random keystrokes and it was set to his heart beat instead. Weird stupid stiff like that that just didn't do it for me.

Piper was a supporting character, so obviously he wasn't in it as much as one would've liked. Also, he was a baddie, so we knew he'd get the crap beaten out of him eventually. This wasn't the awesome baddies he's played on Highlander: The Series or Terminal Rush with Don "The Dragon" Wilson; this was a one-note baddie with no character whatsoever. His death scene was kind of cool, and he had a good fight scene with Shannon Tweed, but overall he was wasted here for my money. At the very least he could've put Tweed in a sleeper hold to give us fans of his something to get excited about.



The Dice Man. Credited here as "Andrew Clay". Really? You're gonna try the Rick Schroder approach to respectability? You're The Dice Man, damn it. "Jack and Jill go up the hill, both with a bucket of quarters...". He had some great Dice Man moments, though. His disguises were great. When he first gets on stage to take the contestants hostage, he talks about his handsome blue suit, which was pretty funny. He also had a great CGI death scene, where he fell into a green screen. It was like killing off a local weather man. Overall, considering he didn't have much to work with with this movie, he did a decent job. He just needs to cut it out with that "Andrew Clay" crap.

This is the third film I've done with Shannon Tweed in it, the other two being Of Unknown Origin with Peter Weller and Cannibal Women of the Avocado Jungle. This one was well after those two. I think if I was going to pick my favorite, it would be Cannibal Women, because Shannon Tweed seems to do funny really well. I think she wanted desperately to do it in this movie. The movie probably wasn't doing much for her, considering how crummy it was, and I think she wanted to sit with the audience and make fun of it too. As a fan of DTV films, she pops up quite a bit, so I'm surprised this is only the third film I've done of hers. I imagine this won't be the last, though.



Miss America was played by a Canadian woman named Polly Shannon. I bring it up, because she was also in Direct Action with Dolph Lundgren. At first I thought it weird that she'd play a high school girl in this movie, and then a rookie cop in the Lundgren flick, but then I realized the films were shot ten years apart. Sometimes I see so many of this things they exist in their own time: cops and action heroes and women all wearing roughly the same outfits, speaking the same lines; it's only the cell phone technology that changes... how I long for the days of the Zack Morris phone...

Skip this. No buts, just skip it. It's nothing special. Piper's not in it much, and his character's not that fun; The Dice Man and Shannon Tweed don't have much to work with; and there are plenty of better Die Hard rip-offs out there. I had a feeling this was going to be lame, I just needed to make sure for the Piper factor.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110675/

Direct Action (2004)

I first saw this film after some friends and I went to a video store looking for The Punisher. We got The Punisher Bait and Switch, where the people at the store told us over the phone they had the Dolph version, but when we got there, they only had the Travolta. We rented this and Army of One as a consolation. I fell asleep before it was over.

Direct Action has Dolph as Frank Gannon, a detective with a large clothing budget on an elite police squad that's gone very corrupt. He plans on testifying against his fellow officers, but before he can, they try to kill him. Now he's been framed for killing some of them, and has so many hours to clear his name and get evidence against them before he's scheduled in court.



Man, I don't know. It's good because it's Dolph, but otherwise it ain't. Maybe the best part was the DVD menu, where we get a montage of clips of Dolph beating people up in the movie. They show us the best parts. The plot was thin, and we knew who was going to double-cross whom at what times. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, because sometimes it isn't, but I think it was here. Also, there weren't that many explosions, which for me was a disappointment, because there was plenty of machine gun fire that was hitting vehicles. I know cars aren't as volatile as movies would have us believe, but I don't want film makers to get the wrong idea and start trying to get all realistic on my ass. Blow them cars up!

Dolph was Dolph here, but I'm not sure what that means. This movie was fun with him, but he's done way more entertaining work. If one were having a Dolph Fest, this one, if it's included at all, should come late at night when everyone's either wasted or not paying attention, because that way you just get the good parts of him kicking people's asses. He still does that well, no matter how boring the rest of the movie is.



This is directed by Sydney J. Furie, who also directed Dolph in Detention. I liked Detention way more, mostly because it was sillier. I didn't know he also directed Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, perhaps one of the finest superhero movies ever. Maybe Dolph and Furie should get together and do another superhero pic, like Moon Knight. I think Dolph would make an awesome Moon Knight. I wish the two of them had contacted me before they made this sack of asscrack, because the last thing we needed was another lousy cop drama, while a Moon Knight movie with Dolph in the title role would have made for an inspired picture.

This might have been the trendiest Dolph has looked in a movie ever. $200 jeans, $45 T-shirt, $100 hair cut (before tipping the shampoo lady, of course). I'm not sure how well it worked. I know in real life Dolph probably wears that kind of thing, but his cop is supposed to be some kind of no nonsense dude who gets shit done. He seems more like the go to the same local barbershop for fifteen years than $100 salon styling type. It also hurt to watch his clothes get destroyed knowing they could've been worn by someone less fortunate, and made that person look nicer.



There's a dude named Alex Karzis in this that you may recognize from Detention. He plays the Euro Trash baddie in that one, and in this one he plays a CIA agent. I'm not sure why he didn't just play the Euro Trash baddie again. Maybe the Euro Trash baddie as a CIA agent. Or maybe the Euro Trash baddie as the main villain in the Moon Knight movie. I'm so mad now that they didn't make that movie.

If you're a Dolph fan, rent this just to see it, but otherwise skip it. If you're a new Dolph fan, still making your way through his filmography, make this one of the last you see: he has so many better ones out there. I think if this film tells us anything, it's if a film maker is given the choice between another crummy cop drama and a Moon Knight film, they should always go for the Moon Knight film, but they probably never will.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0368688/

The Foreigner (2003)

Steven Seagal is definitely rising fast on the DTVC. He may never catch Dolph, but I think I can say he's caught Van Damme and Lambert to take the spot right behind Lundgren. That's a bold statement, I know, but his body of work has been undeniable. Don't get me wrong, I liked 2008's The Shepherd: Border Patrol, but for Van Damme that was after a string of off films; and Lambert has fallen into more "respectable" roles in European films. I'm not knocking either Van Damme or Lambert, I'm just giving Seagal his due.

The Foreigner has Seagal as Jonathan Cold, a former US agent working freelance in Europe. He gets involved with picking up a package and is almost killed in the process. Holding the package, which a lot of people want, he has to fend them off while at the same time find out what this package is and who should get it. Double crosses abound, and all we know for sure is we can trust Seagal.

This was amazing. Probably his best, and one of the best DTV films I've seen. It had that Film Noir/Neo-Noir feel to it, and was especially reminiscent of Le Samourai. I loved Seagal and his conflicts with other secret agents. The mystery, the screen shots, the lighting, it was all there. Yet, at the same time, it hit all the classic action movie beats, with solid martial arts, amped up music, and plenty of ridiculous explosions. This was better than a lot of films that were being produced for major theater release at the time.

And you probably couldn't make this kind of film with anyone but Seagal. Maybe Dolph or Lambert or Wesley Snipes. He had just enough Robert Mitchum to pull off that Noir lead, but retained plenty of Seagal to remind us we were watching an action movie. Looking at his filmography, and considering there are still a few I haven't seen, I'd have to say this is by far his best DTV flick. Simply amazing.

Speaking of Le Samourai, Seagal's main rival, played by a dude named Max Ryan, looks a lot like the main character from that French Neo Noir classic. His character doesn't act at all like that character, being much more crazy and loud. There's one scene where he and Seagal have to team up, even though they're rivals, which was a pretty sweet scene. The spy versus spy thing works when done with cool characters, and it works even better when they have to join forces temporarily.

I couldn't get over the surreal sets in this film. Hotel rooms that looked like they were from another time, yet with a modern touch. There's this great scene where Seagal is talking to a woman in a bathtub, and we get this one frame of him, her, the bathtub, and this 18th century backdrop that just looked amazing. I hadn't seen settings that nice since Miami Vice in the mid-80s.

That doesn't mean this didn't have its silly moments. When Seagal and his rival first try to retrieve the package, they're attacked by two men, and they barely escape. They try to figure out who the guys might be, and Seagal says "They were definitely speaking Danish." I had to rewind it and put on the subtitles to make sure that was what he said. In fact, they were Danish. Why, I have no idea. The only thing that would've been better, from my stand point, is if they had been Finnish. I know, I might be one of only a few Americans that finds Scandinavians as funny as I do.

If you haven't seen this, you gotta check it out. It's not just a bad action movie kind of thing. This is really good, and maybe one of the best I've reviewed on here. I mean that. I'm not just messing with you, this Steven Seagal DTV flick is really good.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0312700/

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/

 

One Man Army (1994)

After my friend at Movies in the Attic turned me onto Jerry Trimble's Live By the Fist, I was hooked. Trimble was the man, and that movie was amazing. I knew, since his others wouldn't have George Takei, they wouldn't exactly be as good, but I had a feeling they'd still be awesome. I mean he was no Takei, but Trimble was pretty sweet in it too.

One Man Army is a Walking Tall retread, only Trimble is way cooler than either Joe Don Baker or The Rock, so really this isn't a retread, it's more of an improvement. Anyway, Trimble returns to the small town he grew up in after his grandfather that raised him dies, and the town's in bad shape. In a move reminiscent of Hunter S. Thompson, he runs for sheriff in an attempt to clean the county up, and wins. But the people making money off the poor townsfolk have other ideas, and Trimble needs to kick some justice into their heads.



No Live By the Fist, but what is? It was pretty sweet just the same. Why they made that stupid Walking Tall with The Rock, or it's bad sequels with Kevin Sorbo, when we have the model for how to do it properly right here, is beyond me. I'm not saying I don't like The Rock, and Sorbo's great as Hercules, but when it comes to guys coming back to their small home towns to clean up corruption, I want it done by Jerry Trimble in a low budget actioner. It's just way more fun.

What else can I say about Jerry Trimble? Two-for-two, and it's not even close. This guy just brings it every scene. You can't help but root for him. At the end of the movie, they release all the bad guys he's arrested and let them loose in the town. It kind of reminded me of when I play Mega Man, and I have to fight all the bosses one more time before I fight Dr. Wily. The only difference is, with Mega Man, I gotta do the work, and it sucks, while here I get to watch Trimble do the work, and it's awesome! He was in The Last Sentinel with Don "The Dragon" Wilson, and I think that'll be a good one to do next for both of them, because they're both world kickboxing champs.



I think this movie was shot in the Philippines. It definitely wasn't shot in the US, no matter how much they'd have you believe that. It didn't look like any American South to me. The best was they tried to pass the least Asian of the local population as Mexicans. Bringing Sorbo and Hercules back up, it was like watching all the local Maoris playing Ancient Greek thugs. Good stuff.

My one complaint was the use of the dog as his partner. Cheesy. Why go Rin Tin Tin on our asses, when you've got Jerry Trimble. I like having the dog there as his pet, but having it save his life? And more than once? Perhaps the most hilarious was when he was in a burning house, and the dog was helping to drag him out. Straight up ridiculous.



I was watching this with a friend, and I told her the moment the female lead showed up on screen that we would be seeing her boobs. I was right, but I don't think I'm gifted with powers of foresight more than I've just seen enough of these to know how they work. Her love scene with Trimble was set to smooth jazz, which was pretty funny. It was like The Weather Channel, and I was expecting a voice to come in and say "The current temperature is... 45... degrees under... PARTLY CLOUDY... skies." The woman's name is Melissa Moore, and she's been in some of the Vice Academy movies, which were an Up All Night staple with Gilbert Godfried and Rhonda Shear. I need to check some of those out again.

Get this. Get it with Live By the Fist if you haven't already seen that too. Trimble is a machine and there are very few lull points: it's constant action. I just wish all action movies were at least this good.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110733/

Inferno aka Operation Cobra (1997)

Back in June I did a post for American Kickboxer 2, which starred an amazing actor named Evan Lurie. My goal was to get more of his films on the site, but things happen, and it's taken me over six months to get another done. This one stars DTVC Hall of Famer Don "The Dragon" Wilson as well, which made it a more intriguing pick.

Operation Cobra has Donny as a cop whose partner, played by Rick Hill, is killed in an explosion set by Lurie, a bad guy drug dealer. Donny chases him to India, where he's working on some computer program. Turns out there's some other bad guy named Grayson, and Donny can't figure out how he and Lurie are linked. Then it turns out his partner didn't die after all, but is actually Lurie's boss, or something or other. Either way, D "The D" Dubs is kicking ass and taking names.



Loved this. 82 minutes of pure action movie fun. I was over two-thirds of the way through it before I checked to see how much was left, which is a good sign. Usually I'm twelve minutes in when I do that! (It's called ADD!). The action was great, Wilson, Hill, and Lurie were all awesome, and the martial arts scenes were very solid. Sure, it was silly as all hell, but it was never pretentious, never tried to take itself too seriously, and it knew its audience and what its audience wanted. Can you ask for anything more?

A definite hit for Wilson. He's better when he doesn't have to act too much and can let his martial arts skills do the talking. They spoke loud and clear here. He kept fighting these Indian ninjas or whatever, and they'd pop up all over the place. One time they saved him from having to dance, which we saw him do in Redemption. Two great fight scenes with Lurie, but probably would've liked to see more. Either way, a great Wilson flick.



I can't believe it's taken me so long to get more Lurie up here. He is just so amazing. His smooth voice juxtaposed with his vicious martial arts skills are a perfect combination. He's so cool I don't even mind that he has a ponytail, which is a huge thing for me. He isn't killed by Wilson, but instead is bitten by a snake. While I was getting the image of that, the BSPlayer I use for some reason was playing the film with the director's commentary audio track on. Anyway, the director was talking about how the snake actually bit Lurie in that scene, and after he mentioned it, I could see it. Watch for that when you get that far, it's pretty sweet.

Rick Hill is the bad guy here. He's been in two other films I've reviewed: Class of 1999 II: The Substitute and Dune Warriors. He's one of those guys that's been in quite a bit, and he tends to focus more on post-apocalyptic sci-fi actioners and Conan the Barbarian rip-offs. I don't blame him, those are fun. Unfortunately not many of his movies are on DVD, making him slightly more inaccessible than some actors that don't do as many good movies. I'm going to see how I can mitigate that, because I grew up with a lot of his pictures, and they're a big part of why I'm doing this.



There's one scene I have to mention that was hilarious. Don, lying in his bed, has a snake crawl under the covers with him. It's so hilarious. I don't want to give too much away, but it's the kind of thing someone should post on YouTube. From what I can tell, The Dragon does more of these silly scenes than anyone else in the DTVC Hall of Fame. Of course Dolph has his share too.

You gotta get this. It's on Netflix, so it's an easy grab if you have that. This is what bad action's all about. Donny doesn't disappoint, and the star power of Lurie and Rick Hill is well exploited. If fun is what you're after, there's no shortage of it here.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119367/

The Gingerdead Man (2005)

This just seemed like a no-brainer: Gary Busey in a movie about a murderous gingerbread man. But I've read this book before, and I've been around the block enough to know a Busey bait-and-switch when I see it. I could only hope I was wrong.

The Gingerdead Man has Busey as a mass murderer who is convicted and sent to the gas chamber. His mom takes his ashes and puts them in a box marked "Gingerbread Spice", and sends to the bakery owned by the mom of the girl who testified and put Busey away for killing her dad and brother. The spices are put into the gingerbread batter, and voila, mass murdering gingerbread man.



I don't know what this sack-of-asscrack was. After Busey's one scene at the beginning, I kept hitting the display button on my remote to see how much time was left. My friends and I tried to make fun of it, but it was just too blah. The best parts of this were the one scene with Busey, the Busey outtakes, and the interview with him during the making of featurette. This just hurt too much otherwise.

And believe me, we went into it with an open mind looking for something silly. They just didn't pull silly off well. The jokes weren't funny, the idea of a murdering gingerbread man probably sounded better on paper, and the lack of Busey meant nothing to hold onto. Supposedly he's the voice of the Gingerdead Man, but it sounded so weird it didn't matter. When I want Busey's voice, I want him as the cop talking to Johnny Depp in Fear and Loathing, or him taking on Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon. Here he sounded like the Leprechaun, which was just dumb.



On the other hand, Busey is so amazing that his few scenes and outtakes and whatnot were worth having this on my Netflix queue. I don't know how I'd feel if I spent $10 buying it, but with the small investment I did put down, I think I got my money's worth. My friends agreed. We just wanted more Busey, and we got so little. I'd give the movie an Abusive rating of 2, and the extras a 4. I'm sure Busey was attracted to this role because it allowed him limited screen time and some added voice work, making it easy money, but his fans out there need more. He was so good in that first scene, and the rest of the cast was so bad overall, that it just felt like a wasted opportunity.

Most of the other actors you'll probably recognize from commercials and bit parts in this or that movie. One of them seems to be more on the rise than the others, based on his imdb bio, and that's Jonathan Chase, who played Brick Fields. He's been in some TV shows, and also had a part in the Shia Labeouf crapfest Eagle Eye. There's two other credits he has that look particularly interesting. First, Another Gay Movie, with Scott Thompson, who I think is hilarious; and second, 7eventy 5ive, a horror movie which also has DTVC Hall of Famer Rutger Hauer. That's in my Netflix queue, and this film reminded me to not only bump it up, but also that I haven't reviewed a Hauer film in a while. Of course it's also listed as "Very Long Wait", so who knows if I'll get it...



An actress named Daniela Melgoza has a small role playing a Latin girl working at the bakery who's knocked out by the Gingerdead Man, stripped naked, decorated like a cake, and thrown in the freezer. Maybe not her best moment in her short acting career, but according to imdb, she did a film version of Richard III with David Carradine and Danny Trejo that was made in 2008 where the eponymous lead is a Mexican drug cartel leader. I'm curious to see it, but can't find a release date. I hope it's out on DVD sometime in 2009.

This movie sucks bad, but for the few seconds Busey's in it, he's good. I don't know what that does for you. What I do know is don't be fooled into thinking this is a fun goofy horror film, because it's not: it hurts, and at 70 minutes the hurting doesn't end quick enough. It's fun to watch Busey in things, but sometimes I wonder if it's not better to just watch Point Break again if I want my fix.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0364376/

Busted (1997)

I was looking up movies with the two Coreys on Netflix, and found this potential gem. We're talking Corey Feldman's directorial debut. Not only that, but according to imdb, this is his only job as director, until 2008's Bloke Goes to Hollywood, which is in post-production right now. I figured this had to be good.

Busted is about a small beach side town in California that has no crime and a bored police staff. In order to clean up prostitution, they have decided to run a brothel inside their jail. Feldman is the second in command, and when his boss is suspended so the department can be audited, it's up to him to keep the sex-for-money under wraps so they can all keep their jobs. Corey Haim is barely in it.



This is like a Skin-a-max style comedy, with lots of sex and nudity, and some really bad jokes. We're talking jokes on the level of National Lampoons Last Resort, also starring the Coreys. The music was awesome, especially the title song that plays at the beginning. Really bad rock with a guy who sings like someone making fun of Bob Seger. The issue I tend to have is that making fun of comedies can be a challenge, like the guys at MST3K said when they took on Catalina Caper. While at moments it's fun to mock the bad humor, at other times it just hurts.

I liked Feldman as a director, though I'm not sure how much effort goes into directing a de facto Skin-a-max flick. I'm curious to see what the next one's like. I like Feldman in general, and I try not to get too down on him for the bad movies he did during the nineties. He was still trying to eke out his living as an actor after the industry had labeled him a pariah. But as a comedic actor, he was still trying to find his instrument, and the growing pains showed, as we felt them too in every bad joke we had to endure.



Corey Haim, on the other hand, is second billed, and barely in the film. His drug issues were probably the culprit, but it's interesting how Feldman mitigates the problem of having someone who was supposed to have a major role suddenly appear in only a couple scenes. When Haim pops up, all the characters interact with him like he's been there the whole time, and we as an audience are supposed to buy that, I guess. Either that, or should we care, especially if we're watching a Corey Feldman directed Skin-a-max comedy.

One person I wouldn't expect in a Corey Feldman directed Skin-a-max comedy is Elliott Gould (spelled with one "T" in the credits). I wonder if he sat in his trailer thinking "I was in M*A*S*H damn it! I've been nominated for an Oscar!" I wonder if he even had a trailer. He plays a game show host for a dreamlike game show called Would You Believe? that pops up whenever Feldman has to lie to someone. Not only does he mail it in, but he doesn't even use first class postage.



I was wondering how I'd use my last paragraph before the final conclusion. Todd Bridges is in this, spending most of the movie in a jail cell, and I thought that would be funny to comment on, but also maybe too easy. Then there's Feldman's simplistic view of prostitution being something that's not so bad because it's not hurting anyone, but I felt commenting on that would be too soapboxy, and who wants to read that. I decided on discussing Feldman's partner, who looks like Jacoby Ellsbury, star five-tool outfielder for the Boston Red Sox. If you're someone who hates the fact that all the Boston teams have been winning lately, this Ellsbury lookalike might be too much for you. Me, having grown up an hour away from Boston, obviously like that the teams are winning, but I am a little guilty and a little embarrassed about the way some of the bandwagoners in New England have suddenly become huge sports fans. Just know that not all Boston fans are obnoxious, and some of us understand why everyone else was rooting for the Giants in last year's Super Bowl.

Unless you're a hardcore Two Coreys fan, stay away from this one. Maybe if you really like to make fun of bad movies, and you want the challenge of a bad comedy, you might put this on your Netflix queue. I will say it is a different ball game than making fun of bad horror and bad action, so if you've got some experienece under your belt and think you're ready for the next challenge, this would might be the way to go.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115791/