Body Rock (1984)

Is there really anything to put in this opening paragraph, other than: Lorenzo Lamas in an early 80s rags-to-riches break dancing movie?

Body Rock has Lamas as Chilly D, a smooth talking ghetto rat who hangs out with some real break dancers, rappers, and DJs, all struggling to make ends meet. On a chance visit to a big wig, hoping the guy will represent them as graffiti artists, he over hears that the big wig is opening a nightclub and needs some talent. After the guy sees Lamas and his buds perform he decides... he just wants Lamas. Lamas doesn't want to leave his buddies behind, but his buddies think this is great, because he can get an in, and then get them an in. Be careful what you wish for, because Lamas becomes too caught up in his new found fame, and suddenly has no time for his old buddies. But fame can be a bitch-- it can all be taken away by one punch to a rich dude making a pass at you.



In our line of work-- or our line of blogging-- we see the word "cheesy" a lot. It's some kind of blanket term we use when we have no idea how to describe what we're seeing, and though I think there are moments when it's apt, often it just comes off as a lazy dismissive. Take Body Rock, for instance. How does one explain the experience of seeing Lamas, who went to private school in New York, try to sound like a ghetto rat? Or try to affect a New York accent? Or try to use a word like "fresh" with any amount of authenticity? Or in a montage learning to break dance? Or rapping? Or bedazzled and singing? Or... or... do you see what I mean? Writing this off as "cheesy" does it an intolerable disservice. Maybe "awesome" is more like it.

I think I had more laugh out loud moments watching this by myself than I've had since I watched The Hangover with some friends last year. I considered on multiple occasions ripping entire scenes out of it and posting them on the image page, until I realized how many that would be. This isn't just Lorenzo Lamas singing, it's a bedazzled Lorenzo Lamas singing. This isn't just Lorenzo Lamas in a montage learning to break dance, it's a Lorenzo Lamas pretending to be a ghetto rat in a montage learning to dance. This is Lorenzo Lamas insert background song here: "She's a Maniac", "I Need a Hero", "Fame". It's too fantastic for words.



The thing with this is, it teetered often on the brink of boring or too full of itself. It teetered on that precipice of let's get too caught up in the plot. But every time, every time I was about to be like "come on guys", boom, they hit me right in the face with a Lamas outfit, or a Lamas rap, or a Lamas line, or a Lamas look. They knew they had a formulaic plot, and they didn't get too deep into it-- that's probably because they had artists in the soundtrack they wanted to feature more, like Laura Branigan, Ashford and Simpson, Michael Sembello (Flashdance)... and... er... Lorenzo Lamas.

We've been talking in previous posts about getting all of the DTV films up of certain Hall of Famers, in particular Don "The Dragon" Wilson. Only three HOFers, Dolph Lundgren, Jean-Claude Van Damme, and Steven Seagal currently hold that distinction-- though we're close on Christopher Lambert, it's just a matter of sorting out which ones are DTV, and which ones are foreign films or TV movies, or even movies worth reviewing. Anyway, Lamas is about 15 away, having not done a DTV film since Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus, but like Lambert, there are some kids movies and TV movies and what not that need sorting out before we can get an accurate idea of how many really are left. The thing is, though, while Dolph or Seagal might be pretty consistent with straight ahead DTV actioners, a guy like Lamas doing everything from soap operas to kids movies, gives us gems like Body Rock, and for that we're eternally grateful.



There are a lot of parts I'm afraid to get into too much because I don't want to give them away. For instance, this movie has the best fall-from-grace scene I've ever seen in this genre. I won't say too much, just that it involves a leather bar and a dude making a pass at Lamas. This also has the best too-big-for-his-britches scene, with Lamas walking down the road in a leather duster with the name Chilly painted on the back. The cut is "very popular in Europe this season" he tells us. This also has a great figuring-out-what's-important-in-life/moment-of-perspicacity scene, with a strutting Lamas happening upon some street break dancers, rocking a reverse Loverboy headband-- black instead of white. Would this film work as well with someone other than Lamas? I don't know, but I don't have to know, because it has Lamas, and it works.

This is available on Netflix, but I'm not sure for how much longer (they tend to dump these older Lamas flicks after a while), so get it while you can. It's what you need, and you didn't even know you needed it.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086985/

Bloody Birthday (1981)

We continue our Halloween 2010 celebration with a camp classic from 1981, Bloody Birthday. By all means, it's okay to sing "birthday, bloody birthday.... birthday, bloody birthday..." When I saw U2 in concert back in I believe it was 2001, in Albany, NY, they performed "Bloody Sunday", and my buddy, a big U2 fan (much bigger than me) said they never play that. No idea why Albany was so lucky, but I'm not complaining.

Bloody Birthday is about three ten-year-old kids who were born on a solar eclipse, and because of that, they have no morals. 10-year-olds with no morals means murderous crime spree, at least as far as I can tell, but because they're 10, no one even considers that they could be the killers-- except for one teen and her ten-year-old brother. Can they stop them before it's too late?



This is a great time. One thing I really liked (and you may not be able to tell from the pics I snagged) is that a good amount of it either takes place in broad daylight, or in well lit situations. I was thinking, as the teen heroine is being chased through a junk yard by a car driven by a couple of the ten-year-olds (one steering, the other using his hands to press the gas peddle), "wow, this is really well lit. When was the last horror movie made that took place in the day like that?" What was interesting about Bloody Birthday, was how they seemed to know ten-year-olds look silly as murders, but they played it straight, especially the kids, which made it all the more fun. You can still beat a sheriff to death with a baseball bat in the afternoon and have it be disturbing.

The leader of the kids looked like a young Skippy from Family Ties. Turns out he was a young Parker Lewis's best friend on Parker Lewis Can't Lose, that Ferris Bueller rip-off show from the 90s (do you remember the actual Ferris Bueller TV show that lasted like a minute?). Whoever he was, this kid was a psycho Anthony Perkins could appreciate. When I think about it though, young kids seem to play better psychos in movies, don't they? (I said "psychos", not "Psychlos", though they might make good those too.)



That's right, your eyes aren't deceiving you, it's DTVC Hall of Famer Michael Dudikoff, appearing in three scenes, and making out with Julie Brown (the red head, not the Downtown variety-- more on that later). He doesn't really have a lot of lines in those few scenes either. Too bad, but back then they didn't know what they had in our man Duds. Speaking of which, imdb has two pre-production credits in his bio. Could it be? After a long hiatus? God, we hope so. As far as the rest of his movies go, I'm not sure what we'll do next, just because I'm having trouble getting my hands on the ones I want. Bear with me, though, we won't give up.

Anyone remember Julie Brown and her MTV show from the late 80s early 90s? Well, if you do, you may not recognize her here, in part because she's naked or in her underwear for a good portion of it. And man, does she have a smokin' body. The ten-year-olds watch her from a peephole her sister bore into the closet. And why wouldn't they, huh? For my straight female and gay male readers, there's some dudage, but nowhere near as much as we get hot naked chicks. Sorry. (I should point out, Downtown Julie Brown, the other Julie Brown on MTV at that time, was in the Gary Daniels flick Fist of the Northstar.



In our seventh paragraph, I wanted to mention the cameo by José Ferrer. He's the father of Miguel, excellent star of one of our favorites, RoboCop. Ferrer the father was a great actor in his own right as well, though-- actually far better, when you consider he won a Best Actor Oscar in 1950. Humphrey Bogart was considered the stand-out in The Caine Mutiny, but if you haven't seen it, Ferrer's rant at the end is spectacular.

I think you'll love this one. A great mix of camp and killing, both silly and sinister. Not only that, but this film is available to rent via Netflix. Wonders never cease, huh?

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082084/

Schizoid (1980)

This is a movie I've been wanting to cover for a long time, but when I finally found it, I decided I'd wait and review it on Halloween. There was something about it when I first saw it on TV, when I was much younger in the mid 80s (we were all much younger in the mid-80s, weren't we?), the whole thing was just creepy, every character, every scene. I wanted to see if it held up to the test of time.

Schizoid is about a woman, Julie, who runs an advice column. After months of group therapy sessions, she's decided to divorce her husband, who also works with her at the paper. A big reason for this is her new love for her therapist, Klaus Kinski. At the same time, Kinski's other clients are turning up dead, stabbed to death with a pair of long, sharp scissors. Could it be Kinski? His daughter (the chick from Angel-- more on that later)? What about the creepy Christopher Lloyd? The only clues are anonymous letters, sent to Julie, describing murderous desires. Luckily Wilhelm from Seinfeld and Frank Fontana from Murphy Brown are on the case.



All right, so as an adult, this isn't exactly scary, but the creepiness factor still holds up. If you like gore and funny deaths in your horror (like I do), the innocuous stalking and scissor stabbing leaves much to be desired; but from Kinski down, that atmosphere of creepiness is so pervasive it infects every scene, movement, and conversation. I don't know if that does it for you, but if you're a Kinski fan (like I am-- inaugural DTVC Hall of Famer), this is some of his best work. Everything else is kind of dirtier, R rated Lifetime movie of the week, which is kind of cool to me too, but again, might not be enough for you.

Let's look at Kinski, who we haven't had on here in a while. The thing that has always fascinated me about him, was how he would do these films, where the selling point was always as much money as possible for as quick a shoot as possible, and you'd think with that mindset, he'd always mail these performances in, but he never does. It's not hyperbole to call him one of the greatest actors ever. In Schizoid, despite what the name suggests, he's not a raging maniac like we're used to in a lot of his Herzog collaborations. What I loved was seeing the brewing mania within his character as tensions in the story grew-- the way he smoked his cigarette, walked, talked-- it was much more subtle, but no less exceptional. As a DTVC Connoisseur (again, a tongue-and-cheek moniker, for our anonymous Unrivaled commenter), Kinski really is that rare opportunity to see acting greatness, even if the films he's doing it in aren't.



Equaling Kinski is Christopher Lloyd's role as the disturbingly weird maintenance guy in Julie's therapist group. He does a great job of making the people around him uncomfortable, and making us believe he's really doing that. It would've been easy for him to fall back on his Jim from Taxi routine, or the eccentric Doc he would later be known for in Back to the Future, but he didn't do either. The way he stared a little too long, the way he stood a little too close, the way his sense of humor was a little off, it all worked really well, and again, like with Kinski, it worked well in a way you'd never expect in a 1980 low-budget schlock thriller.

According to Wikipedia, the Golan-Globus takeover of Cannon was in 1979, meaning Schizoid would have been one of the first films they got their hands on. Golan-Globus and Klaus Kinski seems like it would have been a match made in heaven, maybe approaching the Kinski/Herzog collaborations, but I'm pretty sure this is the only film they made together. Perhaps the problem was Golan-Globus tried to get too big, which went against Kinski's career strategy of doing quick and small projects that paid quick. It's interesting to note as well that the fall of Golan-Globus is around the same time Kinski passed away. Two DTV luminaries leaving us for good, and as the 90s became the 2000s, that wave of DTV's Golden Age broke, leaving us with now with crap like Unrivaled...



As I mentioned above, this had plenty of other guest stars. There was the poor man's Karl Malden, Richard Herd, who played Wilhelm on Seinfeld. Then you had Joe Regalbuto, Frank Fontana of Murphy Brown (also Marvin Baxter in Raw Deal). That pairing might not work today, with the Boston/New York baseball rivalry as heated as it is (Herd from Boston, Regalbuto from Brooklyn). Mr. Kenner at Movies in the Attic will be excited to hear that Donna Wilkes, the star of one of his DTV faves, Angel, plays Kinski's daughter. Julie's husband was played by Craig Wassman, who has been in, among other things, the Lorenzo Lamas/Michael Paré stinker The Debt, and an Olivier Gruner film we haven't gotten to yet, Velocity Trap.

I don't know how well I can recommend this to everyone. If you prefer creepiness to savage gore in your horror movie (and let's be straight here, this is more suspense thriller than horror film), you'll probably enjoy it. There are some other aspects as a movie geek that I got down on, especially how in 1980, though this was meant to sell in the burgeoning video market, it was made to be watched in a theater, and there were a lot of devices that would startle someone at a theater that at home, especially with most people watching Mono TVs, don't work. If you're a 70s/80s nostalgia buff, this might work for you.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081459/

R.O.T.O.R. (1988)

Mr. Kenner at Movies in the Attic has wanted me to tackle this bad boy for some time now. It was definitely long overdue. Well, we're getting after it now. And when I say getting after it, I mean getting after it. Also, it's fitting to have this film right now, because the Texas Rangers are playing the San Francisco Giants in the World Series, and R.O.T.O.R. takes place in Dallas.

R.O.T.O.R., besides being one of the most annoying film titles ever to type, is a sci-fi film about a good ol' boy slash expert scientist in the field of robotics named Captain Coldyron. He's cut from the project, though, when politics gets in the way, and a shorter Kurt Rambis and a robot take over, only to bungle it up and let R.O.T.O.R. get out. Now he's on a murderous rampage, and only Coldyron, and Steele, a female bodybuilder slash metal alloy expert who designed his skeleton (the metal can think for itself), can stop it. Dear God, what destructive force hath they unleashed on humanity?... or Dallas specifically?



What do you think, you got the chops for this one? It's what we in the biz call deceptively easy, almost like Phil Jackson coaching the Bulls back in the 90s. Remember, everyone said all he had to do was roll the balls out, when in reality, it took a special coaching talent to take a team that should win, and make it win. Anyone can make fun of R.O.T.O.R., but can you make fun of it well? Again, it's not as easy as you think.

I don't know where to start. The awesomely bad music, one of the songs performed by "Larry's Dad"-- don't ask me, it's in the credits. Then there's the robot skeleton doing Tai Chi. What about Coldyron. I know what you're thinking, that name alone is hilarious. Well, he more than lives up to that name. The guy almost makes fun of himself he's so hilarious, so in order for you to do better, you really have to be on your game. The dialog is a little hard to deal with. Yes, it's funny, but it's also very tedious, because no one ever gets straight to the point. But just as it's grating on my nerves, I'll get a random "shut up, Coldyron!", or something liek that, and I feel better again. This is a fun time, but in the hands of a real heckling pro, it can be gold.



Margaret Trigg plays Sonya ("Sony" in the credits). As you can see, she's pretty hot. According to imdb she almost had her big break in 1996 with a Jim Henson Productions show called Aliens in the Family. Unfortunately, it didn't go over well, was relegated to Saturday mornings after one primetime airing, and died a couple weeks after that. Even more unfortunately, Ms. Trigg herself passed away in 2003 at the young age of 39. It's too bad, because she made R.O.T.O.R. much easier to last through, as she was one its few bright spots.

There is one scene in this I think I can describe without giving it away too much. Coldyron is at a gas station ($.69 a gallon, if you're wondering), and he notices there's an armed robbery. He scares off the driver, then confronts a robber who exits the store with a hostage and a gun to her head. Coldyron's gun is hidden under a newspaper he'd just bought for that purpose. Anyway, the criminal doesn't take him seriously, thinking all Coldyron has is a newspaper, and Coldyron lets it fall, shooting the dude in the forehead. Then the woman, apropos of nothing, takes out the second robber with some fancy karate. Maybe the best scene of the movie.



Finally, in the screen shot above, you'll notice the sign "Big Jack's". A couple of buddies and I do this radio spoof thing called DINK Radio, and one of our recurring jokes is Big Jack's Stolen Car lot, where Big Jack's is a shady car salesman. He also runs a bunch of other businesses, like an insurance firm. It was just kind of funny to see the name pop up here.

All right, Kenner was totally right that this was a must, but be ready if you want to get after it. It will take all of your movie heckling skills. But you've trained hard, you've sat through many bad actioners, sci-fi yarns, and campy horror flicks. It's time to put those skills to good use. Get your beer or soda, tons of junk food, and a bunch of friends, and have at it-- see which one of you is the grandmaster.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098156/

Ring of Fire (1991)

We're about 15 films away from getting all of Hall of Famer Don "The Dragon" Wilson's movies up, and I've got a good beat on a lot of them (unlike Michael Dudikoff, Lorenzo Lamas, and Cynthia Rothrock), so I think we're going to try and sew up as many of those as possible by this time next year, if not sooner, and what better time to start than the present. Doesn't hurt that this also has Gary Daniels.

Ring of Fire is a loose Romeo and Juliet adaptation with a gang of Caucasian martial arts toughs pitted against a gang of Asian martial arts toughs, and the love between Don "The Dragon" Wilson and Maria Ford is at odds with this dangerous feud. I'm not kidding, that's the movie. The left turn this takes is that Tybalt kills Benvolio, and because of that, Wilson has to fight him at the end for revenge. Mercutio just gets his ass kicked.



Where do I begin? Maybe Don "The Dragon" Wilson at the Masquerade ball, dressed as the Phantom of the Opera, and the silly 80s teen dramedy shot of him approaching a lovestruck Maria Ford from across the dance floor. They tried their best by making Donny a 32-year-old just out of med school guy, in an attempt to make him seem more youthful in spirit, but he was in his mid-to-late 30s when this was filmed, and looked ridiculous as a teen romantic lead-- which is basically what he was, only really fighting at the very end. The rest of the film was Karate Kid mixed with West Side Story, which , I don't know, you tell me if that sounds great. Some decent fight scenes, a lot of 80s cheesy goodness, but the rest of it was entirely sauteed in wrong sauce.

Donny was giving it the old college try here-- and when I say old, I'm being literal. It just wasn't his bag until the end when he really got into it and was able to fight. The thing is, he's not Bruce Lee, you can't get away with keeping him from fighting through the whole movie. I'm only watching Don "The Dragon" Wilson to see him fight, just ask any Bloodfist film. The idea was noble: set Romeo and Juliet against the tensions between Asians and Caucasians in LA, but Shakespeare only lays down the foundation, after that you need a solid carpenter, plumber, and electrician to finish it, and none of that was present here, so ultimately Donny was left alone to freeze in a half-built house. I'm not sure where this Dragon Completion Project will take us next, but you can be sure we'll be here again in 8 posts with another one of his movies. I know, you can't wait.



Someone else worthy of a completion project is Mr. Gary Daniels-- or G. Diddy as the kids call him... um... er... maybe they don't-- but we have much further to go to get there, plus he's still making movies, and then there's some old ones that aren't that easy to find. Ring of Fire was only Gary's fourth ever, and he was treated as such, only having a small role as a heel who gets taken down a peg by Wilson's cousin, aka the Benvolio character. I actually do have a few possibilities in mind for the next Daniels movie, it's just a matter of which one I get my hands on first. Stay tuned after Halloween.

The white V-neck T-shirt is an interesting phenomenon. Women will often jump all over it as a bad thing if a guy they don't like is rocking one, yet love it if a guy they find hot has one on. I used to rock one myself, but I stayed in the medium size range (I'm only 5'7") to keep the V from creeping too far down my chest. It's hard to tell if that's me not being daring enough, or demonstrating a modicum of taste, but Ron Yuan here takes it to a level I've never seen before. That thing almost reaches his naval. On the other hand, there's the crew neck white T that works well too, just ask the oppositely built Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire and David Bowie in The Man Who Fell to Earth. Ron Yuan, fashion icon, or going too far?



According to imdb, Michael Jai White is in this movie. I didn't see him, nor did I find his name in the credits. This is a huge mystery to me. I'm not tagging him just in case, but I wonder... This wouldn't have been his first film, appearing in the second two Toxic Avengers, and in 1991 was only a year removed from Universal Soldier. Too bad, because this movie could've really used him. As far as his recent work goes, he hasn't done anything that could be included here since 2009's Blood and Bone, though he was in a Mortal Kombat short as Jax. In the Damage post I was talking about Stone Cold Steve Austin as someone who could step in and be that next generation of DTV action stars after the current ones retire, but no one has more potential to do that than Michael Jai White, so let's hope he gets after it some more.

There were some other points. Maria Ford was hot and rocking some hot 80s gear, Vince Murdocco and Dale Jacoby were great meatheads; but overall, this was too much teen romance about two non-teens, and too little the great fights that talent like this should've delivered. We'll see what happens in Ring of Fire 2, which if I remember correctly is based on The Tempest-- but don't quote me on that.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102793/

Damage (2009)

This one kind of snuck by my radar, but our friend Sutekh over at Explosive Action brought it to my attention. We know I was less than stoked with The Stranger, seeing it as a lazy waste of an awesome Stone Cold Steve Austin, and was hoping for better things here. Let's see what happens.

Damage is part Hard Times (the Coburn/Bronson film, not the Dickens novel) part Lionheart, with Stone Cold Steve Austin as a parolee needing money to pay off the man he killed's daughter's heart transplant (in as contrived a situation possible, the wife gets him parolled and then implores him to get the money). He enters the underground fight game, but the weaselly dude who gets him in has all kinds of debts, so every time he thinks he has the cash, the weasel needs to pay off another crime boss. Anyway, that's pretty much it.



Wow, this hurt-- bad. To give you an idea how bad, instead of doing a montage of them going around to get backers for Austin's fights, they made us sit through every agonizingly poorly written scene of that, and then montaged some of the fights. Really? That's what I want to see, Stone Cold Steve Austin in a flannel coat and black knit cap, trying to be all stoic and deep and down-to-Earth, talking to crime bosses. And the fight scenes weren't great either. Trading overly bloody punches is cool here and there, but I need something different, especially when I remember how well Stone Cold could fight in the WWE. Where are his wrestling moves? Punching a guy in the chest is a finishing blow? Are you serious? Three words: Stone Cold Stunner. There were a few good fights, a few good lines, and it looked like it had some promise in the beginning, but the people making it thought they could write stimulating dialog and could get away with boring us to death with minimal action, and that if they made it gratuitously bloody, we'd forget all of that. No dice. They needed to simplify this plot, cut out a lot of the crap, and ramp up the action.

This should in no way be an indictment on Stone Cold Steve Austin. I loved him in the WWE, and if anyone has the charisma, size, screen presence, and fighting ability to follow in the footsteps of DTV greats like Dolph and Seagal, it's definitely him. The Stranger was a little bit closer, in that at least they had some tongue-in-cheek moments like Austin speaking Spanish and destroying some Federales with a wooden chair so they couldn't torture him with the tools of ancient dentistry. This film, Damage, could have really worked. It worked with Hard Times, it worked with Lionheart, and it worked with Blood and Bone. But all of those films didn't forget who they were, or what kind of film they were making. You're not Jim Jarmusch, and Stone Cold Steve Austin isn't John Lurie or Tom Waits, and we're good with that. Minimize the backstory, make it less convoluted, and get after it in the fight scenes. And I'm not talking UFC-esque brawls. The UFC works in real life because it's real, but in a movie, the fighting has to be more theatrical. We need more Stone Cold and less Steve Austin. The guy can carry an action film, he just needs to be allowed to do it, and he wasn't here.



This movie had two interesting, yet conflicting messages. There was one that was an indictment of the health insurance industry, because the girl needs $250,000 for a heart transplant-- though part of me wonders if that was an indictment, or rather something celebrated, that we don't just hand out heart transplants, you gotta earn that shit, not like in those pansy socialist European countries with their socialized medicine. Anyway, the second message, was much more irresponsible. They give a horribly inaccurate depiction of the parole system, painting it as derelict and unconcerned with what parolees were doing, meaning they could be out committing more crimes. This myth that parole is bad for society, and that it needs to be abolished, is a very dangerous one. Parole, when done as it's intended, is a much preferable way to releasing criminals back into society and keeping tabs on them, than just letting them free when their sentence is done. People misunderstand when a judge sentences someone with parole as an option, erroneously thinking they're being let out early, as opposed to using parole as an incentive to behave in prison; and by painting the parole system as one that couldn't care less what parolees are doing, when that's not always the case, it makes people more likely to support politicians who run on a "tough on crime" platform, when the truth is, they're voting for the opposite, because judges lose the tool of parole as an incentive for prisoners to reform in prison.

The brightest spot in Damage was the always hot Laura Vandervoort. I liked her better in Into the Blue 2: The Reef, where she had blond hair, but beggars can't be choosers. The thing with her is, she always has a look on her face that's very intelligent and understanding of what's happening around her, which worked out well in Into the Blue 2, because it fit her character, but in Damage, she had a few moments when her character wasn't supposed to be so smart or with it, but that look betrayed that element, and made it unnatural. That's one aspect of Into the Blue I liked better than Damage, the people who made that one weren't afraid to cast someone as hot as Vendervoort as the intelligent lead who figures things out and is a step ahead of everyone. Damage easily could've dumped the weasel guy, and had her play Austin's handler and get rid of the cheap rocker girl outfits-- hell they could've even made her a bad guy like Eamonn Walker in Blood and Bone. It just showed again how pedestrian this film was, and I love pedestrian when amps up the action, but I can't forgive it when it bores us to tears.



I want to use this seventh paragraph to discuss a trend in recent DTV actioners that's slightly disconcerting: the move to more realistic UFC style fights instead of the theatrical martial arts filled ones we're used to seeing. I get that Austin probably doesn't know a lot of martial arts beyond wrestling, but what he does know is how to fight in a way that's entertaining. There's a reason why Hong Kong cinema works, it's pleasing on the eye. Sure, it might be ludicrous that one dude could kick the crap out of twenty baddies, but it's just a ludicrous that anyone could take the kinds of punishment demonstrated in these UFC style fighting movies and stay standing. The difference is, one looks awesome, and one looks clunky and hard to watch. Stone Cold Steve Austin trading punches and getting stitches sewn into his face by Laura Vandervoort is not as cool as Stone Cold Steve Austin riding in on his Harley, throwing a bunch of stuntmen around like Armor King in Tekken, and then having beers tossed to him from off camera.

All right, for a movie that hurt, I wrote plenty on it, so I better wrap it up here. I have faith that someone sometime will finally get it right with Mr. Austin. He's just too good to be wallowing in these lackluster films that don't properly utilize his talent, and Damage was certainly one of those.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1314177/

Kill Zone (1993)

We're reviewing Kill Zone because I wanted a film that featured both of the 2010 DTVC Hall of Fame inductees, David Carradine and Cirio H. Santiago. I usually don't go in for the low-budget, Philippines or Thailand filmed, Vietnam war movie, but I made the exception for this occasion.

Kill Zone takes place during the Vietnam War, and has David Carradine as a colonel who does things on his own terms. That includes sending a special forces team into Cambodia without authorization. That team is led by a low-rent version of the dude from Burn Notice, and Dallas Cowboys great Tony Dorsett. Once there, they find a local tribe isn't stoked that the Viet Cong is running operations in their country, nor that their own government isn't too concerned, so they take matters into their own hands, which is great for the US troops there, because they have an ally. Now the question is, will they succeed before the bureaucratic net closes in on Carradine?



This was a very interesting movie. Yes, it had all the hallmarks: Filipinos passed off as Vietnamese or Cambodian, plenty of explosions and gunfire, and valiant soldiers overly dramatically making the ultimate sacrifice for their guys. What surprised me was how most of the film, cheesy and poorly acted as it was, was totally black and white, only to have buckets of gray splashed on it at the end. I wonder if it was Cirio H. Santiago making his own statement about the toll American military intervention has had in that part of the world, both in Vietnam and Cambodia, but also well before that in the Philippines. It was a sudden level of exploration I wasn't expecting, and I don't want to give it away, but there was a sense of "who should I be rooting for?" or "was that an applause scene?", and eventually it sorts itself out, but not before some serious damage is done.

Does that make it good? Man, I don't know. Not enough David Carradine for my tastes, because when he's on screen, he kills it. There's a lot of "excitement by repetition", meaning, we just go from one scene of pitched battles, explosions, shooting, and yelling to the next one; and the only reprieves we get are in the form of David Carridine interludes. After Tony Dorsett, there really isn't anyone else worth tuning in for. This film was a Reb Brown in the lead role away from being a really fun time. Yes, the message at the end was great and important, but even the 81 minutes it takes to get there feels like a lot longer.



It goes without saying that we've seen better from both Carradine and Santiago, but to blame either of them is a little harsh. Again, a Reb Brown instead of the low-rent version of the guy from Burn Notice would've made the film entertaining. It just goes to show that at this level, when the resources aren't great, and the subject matter is rather worn, who you get is a much bigger factor than who is directing it. In the art house world, it's a more even balance between director, script, and acting, but a great director can make up for lackluster acting or story; here, in the low-budget DTV world, when directors like Santiago and Albert Pyun are expected to pump films out at a porn industry pace, it's all about who we're seeing on screen, and how often we're seeing him or her. I think that's why Santiago is only the second director to make the Hall of Fame, compared to all the actors.

As I mentioned above, this film features NFL all-time great Tony Dorsett. Quick facts on him: only player ever to win the Super Bowl, a college national championship, enshrined in the college football hall of fame, and the pro football hall of fame. He also won the Heisman Trophy, and had the record for most NCAA Div I-A rushing yards until Ricky Williams broke it in 1998. A true hall of famer, apt for this hall of fame DTVC post. I don't have the numbers in front of me, but this isn't the first NFL player to have his film reviewed here. We had Eddie George in the Seagal flick Into the Sun. Kyle Turley was in the Rutger Hauer stinkfest Dead Tone. Of course, there's DTVC Hall of Famer Fred Williamson, who played in Super Bowl I, and Jim Brown, who was in On the Edge with Williamson. I'm sure there are a few more I'm not thinking of at the moment, so if there's any I missed, feel free to mention it in a comment. By the way, Dorsett, aries, born on April 7, 1954.



Look at that gem right there, a Lyndon Johnson Presidential Portrait! With all of these Vietnam War in the Philippines movies you'd think we'd see more of him, and maybe Nixon, but this is the first one we've come across on the site as far as I can tell. By the same token, it's not like we've done a ton of these movies either, so there haven't been the opportunities I'd have thought for these. Fortunately we have a resource, the site When the Vietnam War Raged... in the Philippines (the link is in the Other Great Sites section on the left sidebar), which does a great job cataloging these films. Hopefully through that we'll find some more Johnsons, and maybe an elusive Nixon! A guy can dream, right?

No recommendation here, unless you're into these kinds of films. If that's the case, this is one you should put on your radar, because it offers something a little different, especially at the end. Otherwise, it's a pretty boring 81 minutes with some great interludes featuring new DTVC Hall of Famer, David Carradine.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107316/

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