Bloodmoon (1997)

I had this movie buried in my Netflix queue for who knows how long. After I put up No Tomorrow, one of my readers, elementarybeatboxoperator (listed in the Followers section of the blog), mentioned this and White Tiger as two great Daniels films. I went to Amazon for them, and saw them on VHS, and figured that was how I'd get them. Then for whatever reason I was looking up other Daniels movies on Netflix, and saw that they not only had both films, but that I'd also already added them to my queue. To give you an idea, my queue is 267 movies long. Maybe I should do something about that.

Bloodmoon has a serial killer in NYC killing people who are good at fighting. A dude pretending to be Eddie Murphy is on the case, but his boss, Frank Gorshin, thinks he should call in serial killer expert Gary Daniels. Luckily for everyone involved, Daniels is more of a martial arts expert than serial killer expert, because A: it takes him forever to track the killer, leaving more time to kick people's asses; and B: we'd have a horrible ending if Daniels couldn't fight the baddie.



This is pretty sweet. The fighting is actually pretty good. That's the serious critique. Beyond that, this thing plays out like a Troma film, from the close-ups, to the gross fat guy of a computer nerd, to the Willmington, DE that looks more like the Hoboken Troma usually uses for their NYC. There were scenes where Daniels and his wannabe Eddie Murphy would flip over things to get to their destination, and I'd be like "why would you do that?" Then there's the bad guy's costume. I probably should've gotten an image of it, but I forgot. This is a great mix of silliness and solid martial arts work. Not a bad deal.

I've always loved Gary Daniels, and I don't know why it's taken me so long to get more of his films up here. Maybe I was too busy focusing on Seagal and Lundgren films. Whatever the reason, Daniels is a force from off the chain, and he needs more recognition. Call this the Summer of Daniels, as I try to remedy the dearth of posts of movies with him in them. One film I need to get my hands on is Heatseeker, which was directed by Albert Pyun. I see it on Amazon for like $3 (which is $6 after shipping), which is probably my best bet. I wish there was a Netflix that specialized in VHS movies so I wouldn't have to by crappy used copies of all the films I want that aren't on DVD yet.



I kind of liked the Eddie Murphy wannabe in this. He did a pretty solid impression. He was almost a dead on Axel Foley. According to imdb, there's talk of a fourth Beverly Hills Cop. I kind of like that, if they don't decide to make it absurd like the fourth Die Hard. I was surprised to find out that Eddie Murphy is not only an Aries, being born on April 3, 1961, but that he's ten years younger than Steven Seagal. It's just hard to imagine that Seagal will be sixty soon. Is imdb right? Was Seagal really born in 1951?

The baddie was played by a dude named Darren Shahlavi. He was a pretty solid fighter, and he's been in a fair amount of stuff, including I Spy. I wonder if early in his career, when he made this movie, he said "Someday I'll be big enough to act in a movie with the real Eddie Murphy", and then 5 years later, when he was on the I Spy set, he was on screen with Eddie Murphy, and he took a moment to take it all in and thought "I really made it." I say good for you, Darren Shahlavi.



Almost two months ago I did a Miles O'Keefe film called Moving Target and forgot it had Burt Ward in it, partially because I didn't recognize him. I made sure I wouldn't make that mistake again, so when this movie had Frank Gorshin, I was all over it. I think the old Batman TV series is my all time favorite show. I know everyone liked that new Dark Knight thing, and Jack was good as the Joker in Batman, but nothing can really get down to the essence of what Batman was all about like the TV show from the 60s. Where was Cesar Romero's Best Supporting Actor Oscar in 1966 for that Batman movie, huh? (Oh yeah, I'm sure this is getting old, but Frank Gorshin is another Aries, born April 5, 1933-- only five years before Bolo Yeung!)

Bloodmoon is a definite. Great martial arts action, coupled with so much silliness you and your friends will have no trouble making fun of it. Throw this on your Netflix queue and have your buddies over for a bad movie night.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118745/

Nemesis (1993)

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

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



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

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



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

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



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

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

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

Enter the Dragon (1973)

When I first started the DTVC, I had no idea I would be still writing it two years later, or that I'd be writing my 300th post. When I look at the archives, I see films like Bad Taste, that were DTV, that would've probably been a better choice for number 300, but because I was trying to get as many films up as possible in the early going, have already been covered. I tried to think of what would really fit a milestone post, and I came up with this. Even if it isn't DTV, it's had a such a huge impact on so many DTV films, that it deserves a place here on the blog.

Enter the Dragon has Bruce Lee working for the British in Hong Kong. He's sent to infiltrate this guy Han's stronghold by way of entering in a fighting tournament Han hosts. Also in the tournament are John Saxon and Jim Kelly. Lee has to do his thing in the tournament by day, and then sneak around the compound by night looking for incriminating evidence so the Brits can call in their forces. The whole thing ends in a huge melee.



I think you know what I'm going to say, otherwise this wouldn't be post 300. This is obviously a classic. I might go out on a limb here for a second, though, and say this isn't necessarily a great film on its own: the plot is pretty uninspired, there's plenty of ridiculousness, like Jim Kelly beating up two cops and driving off in their cop car-- what I'm saying is there isn't much to separate this film from others in the genre.

There isn't much, but the one huge factor this does have that the others don't is Bruce Lee. He's what turns the whole film into a classic. He's so powerful a presence that he can steal a scene just through one look. You almost feel robbed with every second he's not on the screen. It's like watching a bad Film Noir from the 40s with Humphrey Bogart in it. Some actors just have the ability to transform ordinary crap into brilliance. The shame is that this would be the last film of his released while he was alive, because he died the same year, in 1973.



I'm sure I don't need to tell anyone reading this about how huge Enter the Dragon's impact has been in the movie industry. Mortal Kombat was almost a straight remake. What about Bloodfist 2? Just think of all the martial arts films that involve some kind of tournament run by an evil crime lord. All because one man elevated a mediocre movie into something truly amazing, and a generation of film makers saw him and said "I want to make a movie with him", and a generation of actors said "I want to be him".

After Bruce Lee, the next big name in the film is John Saxon, who plays a smooth talking fighter with a compulsive gambling problem. Most of us are familiar with Saxon either through his work in the MST3K hit Mitchell, or his role in Nightmare on Elm Street. I think it's a no brainer that this character in Enter the Dragon is his best. He's cool, funny, flawed, yet at heart a good guy. We wonder at the end if he chooses not to fight Lee because he knows he can't win, or because he really has altruistic motives, but it's immaterial, because he still makes the right decision.



I mentioned above Jim Kelly is in this. He's pretty sweet, as always. When I was in high school, one of my friends wanted to have an MST3K style party where we each rented a bad movie to make fun of. I thought I was a shoo in for the movie of the night with Black Belt Jones 2 aka The Tattoo Connection. It was great, and it had Bolo Yeung. I would be undone, though, by my friend's selection of Bad Taste. "Look Poirier", he said "so great your VCR will cry out for windshield wipers. We have to get it!". That film would go on to be the biggest movie among my group of friends, with us watching it literally hundreds of times; and with it's director, Peter Jackson going on to win an Oscar; while I haven't seen The Tattoo Connection since.

We all love Bolo Yeung here at the DTVC. Wanna guess how old he is? 70. I am not fucking with you. 70 years young. I haven't seen him in anything recently, so I don't know if he looks good for his age or not, but he was 50 when Bloodsport came out, and I thought he looked pretty good for 50 then, considering I had no idea he was even close to FIFTY! According to imdb he swam from China to Hong Kong in the '60s to escape Communism. How is he not the greatest man that's ever lived?



I know in my last post I ripped Wanted for being a sack of asscrack, and I think I'm going to do it some more, though not just Wanted, but most new movies in general. There's a scene in this film where fruit is thrown in the air, and people throw daggers into them. All we see is the fruit going up, someone throwing a dagger off screen, and then the fruit falling with a dagger in it. I bring this up, because if this had been made today, the whole thing would've been done with CGIs, and the film makers would've been extremely proud of themselves, like in Wanted when they had bullets flying into each other. Why do they think we need that? It worked fine in Enter the Dragon without that crap, in fact it worked better, because it looked much more realistic.

If you haven't seen this, what are you waiting for? This is a must watch if there ever was one. If you haven't seen it in a while you probably should catch it again too. This is really what's about. So much has come from this one film, and I'm sure so much will come from it in the future. A true masterpiece with a true master of the craft in Bruce Lee.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070034/

Wilder (2000)

I found this on Netflix's Watch Instantly feature, and figured I'd give it a go because I wanted to get another Hauer flick up. I didn't have great expectations for this, and often my instincts are right.

Wilder has Pam Grier as a detective investigating a murder, and her prime suspect is an Ob-Gyn played by Rutger Hauer. But if Hauer was really the baddie, then the movie would be over in twenty minutes, and we still had another hour or so left, so things weren't as they seemed. Turns out more women are being murdered, and they all had sicknesses stemming from radiation poisoning that would've killed them anyway. Now Grier realizes she's up against it, as the DA looks like he's in on whatever fix there is, and all signs point to a pharmaceutical firm trying to cover it's ass. To make matters worse, Hauser's flirting with her, and she's starting to fall for him, even though he's still the prime suspect to everyone else.



This was Lifetime Movie Network at it's finest, and I can't figure out how they got Hauer and Grier to play their parts. This needed Meredith Baxter-Birney and Bruce Boxleitner. Or maybe Victoria Rowell and Gerald McRaney. The actors just didn't fit here. They had too much edge for a Lifetime drama. On the other hand, their being out of place was the only thing that made it interesting, as it was pretty much just a Lifetime Movie Network throwaway pic.

Rutger Hauer was funny. He wasn't a baddie, which was cool. I got a kick out of watching him flirt with Grier. I think it does get old seeing him be a bad guy all the time, and it wasn't like we never saw him here, he was one of the stars, so there was no Hauer bait-and-switch. All-in-all, I can't complain about him, it was just that the movie sucked. I have a few in mind for the next film of his: Mentor, an indie flick that showed at Tribeca; Mirror Wars, a Russian airplane film with Armand Assante and Malcolm McDowell; or Bleeders.



One of the actors in this also starred in Punisher: War Zone. That wasn't a bad movie. It wasn't great, but it wasn't bad, and interestingly enough, it only made $7 mill in the theater, so it's sorta kinda a possibility for inclusion. What was crazy was the sheer amount of ludicrous violence in it. In one scene the Punisher punches through a dude's face. Wow. Again, it was not the Lundgren Punisher, but what made this one better than the Travolta one was that it wasn't trying to replace the Lundgren one. They weren't saying the Lundgren one was bad, they were just doing their own thing.

So this is it. I'm out. I have nothing else for you. I just talked about pam Grier a few posts ago when she starred in the Busey hit No Tomorrow, so I won't tread over that territory again; and otherwise, the movie just didn't have anything else. It was a bad Lifetime movie, straight up. If you like that kind of thing, and I ain't mad atcha if you do, check LMN in your local listings. Otherwise it's not worth it, even for the Hauer factor.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0246332/



But... since I have a paragraph, let me talk about another movie I just rented that came out last year and did pretty well: Wanted. That bastard was atrocious. I ain't lying. My roommate and I were trying to watch it, and at a few points we almost quit on it. First off, you can guess the whole thing almost from the beginning. Second, it was either really bloody or a bunch of CG special effects. Those were your options. It may have the biggest body count I've ever seen in a movie, in that a whole train full of people was sent plummeting into a ravine. Why would you do that? And it was the hero's fault it happened, and he didn't seem to care, and neither did anyone else. Just the same, the thing pulled in like over $130 million. This is why I almost never go to the movie theater anymore, because this is the crap they try to sell me, and it actually works with enough of the population that they can keep selling it. And the film had two Oscar winners in it in Morgan Freeman and Angelina Jolie. All I can say is this new Star Trek film and X-Men film better be good.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0493464/

Outside the Law (2002)

I found this movie used in a local record store in Portsmouth, NH while killing time before my buddy's bachelor party. You can't go wrong when you see Rothrock in the bargain bin, at least that's my experience.

Outside the Law has Cynthia Rothrock as a special agent type cop who sees her fiance gunned down in Columbia while they're trying to work a bust in a huge drug deal. She finds out when she makes it back to the States that her surviving the bust is a problem for the whatever department she's working for, and she's declared persona non grata, meaning she's on the run. Before she gets too far she ends up at a restaurant run by a woman and her younger brother, and the woman is dating an abusive gangster, played by Jeff Wincott. Wincott beats her to death, so Rothrock sticks around to make sure Wincott gets his.

Pretty sweet. Pret-ty sweet. This is one of those where the plot could get in the way, and every time I think it will, a group of thugs comes around the corner and Rothrock kicks their asses. In case there aren't enough explosions, Rothrock and her buddy load a warehouse with dynamite and set the fuckers off. That's what I want to see. I got what I paid for here.

Rothrock just reinforces her DTVC Hall of Fame induction with this performance. Great one-liners, great fight scenes. In one, she smashes a dude's face through a lamp sitting innocuously on a table. How cool is that? Also, this is the second Rothrock film in a row we've covered where she carries on conversations with a dog, with her having done the same in Guardian Angel. Again, she's not as good at that as Will Ferrell in Anchorman or the sketch he did for SNL where he sold a video that trains dogs through sarcasm; but it works, and it's a good bumper to the scenes where she kicks guys in the balls.

There's been some call from a few areas to get some Jeff Wincott up here, and really this one's kinda not what they had in mind, I'm sure. I have a couple where he stars in the pipeline, so you can really see his action prowess. This one he never uses any martial arts skills, and never fights anyone. Call it a Jeff Wincott Amuse Bouche, if you will.

There are two elements to creating a great heel in a movie: the first is we have to find him utterly annoying; and second, we need to see him get the crap beaten out of him every time he's on screen. This film does that perfectly. They get some guy with a goatee and slicked back hair (second only to the goatee and ponytail combination for sheer toolishness), have him say obnoxious things and grab women's butts, and then Rothrock shows up and kicks him in the balls. It just works over and over. To contrast this, the Bosworth film we just reviewed, The Operative, has a heel, also with a goatee, and a potential for a ponytail with his long hair; and yet when he acts like a heel, his only retribution is his hitting Bosworth in the back of the head with the butt end of his pistol. This is the message to all film makers out there: if you're going to make a heel, we need to see his ass kicked, and kicked repeatedly. Thank you.

The local detective on the take was played by the dad from The Wonder Years. I used to watch that show sorta kinda when I was growing up. It was cool, but not that cool. I think I always thought Fred Savage was kind of a douchebag. Remember The Wizard, I think it was called, that movie that sucked major ass? I'm sure Fred Savage isn't a bad guy, he just played a lot of douchebag-ish parts, but at 10, I had no ability to separate a person and the characters he or she played. If you're really not a douchebag, Fred Savage, than I'm sorry for ever having thought you were.

If you see this in a bargain bin like I did, go for it. It's so good, and so worth it. I think I paid like $5, which definitely wasn't too much. I don't know if I'd go ten, but five totally worked.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0290014/

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/

Best of the Best 3: No Turning Back (1995)

My friend at Movies in the Attic (a link to which you'll find in the section labeled "Other Great Sites") was not a fan of this movie, and he made no bones about telling me how he felt. As far as he was concerned, the film was racist for the sake of being racist, and it didn't go over well with him. I hadn't seen it in so long, and with my having reviewed the other Best of the Bests, I figured it was time to give it another spin.

Best of the Best 3: No Turning Back has Phillip Rhee back at it as Tommy Lee (not the well-endowed Crue drummer), this time visiting his sister in a small Southern town called Liberty. Her hubby is the sheriff, and the sheriff has his hands full with a group of well-armed Neo-Nazi terrorists. Obviously, he can't handle this on his own, so Rhee's gotta step up and take care of business. Throw in Gina Gershon as a prim but no less hot school teacher, and you got yourself a movie.



I must say I have to respectfully disagree with my friend here. The racism was depicted in this film as nothing short of evil. It may have been a little too visceral, but it was definitely plausible. One additional element I liked was how Dee Wallace Stone's son joined the Neo-Nazi gang because he was poor, jobless, and educationless. This is a formula that terrorist groups look to for recruitment all over the world, and it was a touch of realism I wasn't expecting in a DTV actioner. The film also did a great job discussing how separate but equal only reinforces the idea that one group of people is inferior, which is an important point in developing racial sensitivity in this country.

That being said, where this film was totally unrealistic was in how the sheriff wasn't in on it. What I mean is, had the local police been in cahoots with the skinheads, you could see them taking over the town; but with the sheriff actively opposing them, it makes no sense that he wouldn't call in the FBI. The federal government would love to know if a Neo-Nazi terrorist group was arming itself with stinger missiles and high-powered assault rifles, and in a few days they'd shoot down there and take them out. The common joke about the KKK is that they have more undercover FBI agents in their ranks now than actual members. It just would've made more sense if Rhee had to take down both the local cops and the skinheads.



Speaking of Rhee and the overall action, it was pretty stellar. Rhee is just amazing. I don't know how this guy ended up only being in so few films. According to imdb he's only 46, which, when compared to Seagal, makes him a baby. He just kicks so much ass, it's ridiculous that he has such a small filmography. He also directed this film, and the action was relentless. Once it kicked in, it didn't stop. Rhee understands what we want out of an action film: killer martial arts, major explosions, and extreme gunfire. This film delivered in spades.

Rhee's sheriff brother-in-law was played by Shooter McGavin from Billy Madison 2: Happy Gilmore. As far as the Billy Madison movies go, I think Happy Gilmore is probably the one I liked best, after the original, of course. By the time we hit Billy Madison VI: Little Nicky, I felt like maybe the series had run its course, but the film still made almost $40 mill, and who knows how much more after with rentals, DVD sales, and TV rights. I can't blame Sandler for still going to that well if the cash is there, even if the movies make me feel dumber for having watched them.



The bad guy was played by Mark Rolston, a pretty ubiquitous That Guy who you'd know if you saw him. He was in one film we've already reviewed, Scorcher, which had Rutger Hauer as the President. Anyway, who he is isn't important. What got me about him was how he wore these big black boots over his jeans. As I'm sure many people know this is a style that women rock quite a bit nowadays, and mentally I've kind of associated that look with femininity, so seeing him rock that look too made me him seem off. It was just weird. Maybe it's just me.

So I'm all in favor of this one. I say just take a night and watch all four, because even though I haven't reviewed it yet, I can tell you four's hot too. The racism in three is rough stuff, but it doesn't go unvanquished, and it's pretty well understood that it's a very bad thing that must be dealt with. Rhee's awesome, the action's awesome, how can you go wrong?

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112483/

Modern Vampires (1998)

After the disappointing Against the Dark, the Seagal vampire flick, DTVC reader RepoGenetic (who you'll find in the "Followers" section of the blog) suggested this film. It definitely has a star studded cast, with yet another Oscar winner in the late Rod Steiger.

Modern Vampires has Casper van Dien as a vampire rolling through Los Angeles to see what's going on. Count Dracula (Robert Pastorelli) is less than pleased with him because he had a chance to kill vampire killer Van Helsing (Steiger), but didn't do so. He's made things worse for himself by protecting a young vampire acting as a prostitute and killing men with impunity, because she's drawing too much attention to the activities of other vampires. Now Van Helsing's followed him out to LA, and he has a posse of Crips ready to aid him in his quest to kill all vampires. They're on a collision course to wackiness. This also has Kim Cattrall, Udo Kier, and Natasha Lyonne.



Wackiness is the key word here. Or off-beat might be a better one. This was very bloody, had lots of nude chicks, and tried to make it all as silly as possible. I think it worked a fair amount of the time. Comedians like Craig Ferguson and Robert Pastorelli didn't hurt. It was a tad ridiculous at points, and some of the jokes didn't work, but I think overall it was a pretty solid effort. Better than Against the Dark.

Casper van Dien was all right. This is the third film of his we've done, the other two being Cutaway, with Stephen Baldwin and Dennis Rodman; and the recently released Starship Troopers 3. I'm not sure what to do about future posts for him, because a lot of his films listed on imdb are said to be TV movies. Cutaway was listed as a TV movie, which made no sense, because I didn't remember it ever being on. Then I saw that this movie was supposedly a TV a movie too, and that makes even less sense, because it's filled with blood, nudity, and swearing. I looked into it further on imdb, and couldn't figure out in what country it was released on TV. Definitely not here. Brazil maybe? I looked it up on Wikipedia, and they say it's straight to video, so that's what we're going with.



It was great doing a Rod Steiger film. Obviously my site doesn't lend itself to classics like On the Waterfront or In the Heat of the Night (his role in the latter movie garnering him his Oscar win). He was pretty sweet in this movie, and although he had a bad fake accent, I liked his better than another Oscar winner, Ernest Borgnine, and his bad accent in the Brandon Lee hit Laser Mission. Steiger died in 2002, otherwise he would've celebrated his 84th birthday ten days ago. Another Aries, like me and Steven Seagal.

Craig Ferguson was funny in this, as you can imagine. I'd only seen him on the Late Late Show. When I was in LA back in 2001, Craig Kilborn did that show, and my buddy and I got free passes from some dude in front of Mann's Chinese Theater to be in the audience. What a weird experience. First, we were told if we were a "good" audience, we'd get a special gift, and what we got was a copy of the Gear magazine Kilborn had guest edited. Also, we were conditioned to laugh at anything that could possibly be construed as a joke, and that conditioning was handled by a self-styled stoner comedian. He was really unfunny, his pot jokes were what you might get from the dude in college who smoked like twice and thought he was a rebel, and in order to validate his on stonerness, he gave a special gift to the two real stoners in the audience. The three guests were Tyrese, whose performance had to be redone because his mike chord was unplugged; Jesse from Saved by the Bell, who was promoting he role in a Woody Allen flick; and Hector Elizondo. Perhaps the best was when my buddy and I got back to his mom's house in San Diego to watch ourselves, and we heard the audience noise filled in with an artificial laugh track.



One aspect of this movie that I believe was unintentionally funny was the disjointed dialog. People would respond to other people's words in really unnatural ways. Casper van Dien would say something innocuous, and the girl he was protecting would blow up at him. I'm wondering if the scriptwriter or director had ever had any experience with normal human conversations. Maybe that's just how people act out in LA. "I think we should go get a burger, what do you think?" "What? Take that back you fucking bastard!"

This isn't a bad movie. I'm not sure in terms of a monetary value how much one should spend on it. If you're into horror comedy, you should definitely stick it on your Netflix queue. Anyone else, I'd say watch it, but don't necessarily make a priority out of it. If you haven't seen The Circuit yet, you should probably do that first. If it's on a TV channel like HBO that shows films uncut, watch it there, but definitely not on Sci-Fi (Sy-Fy?), because an edited version would suck.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120805/