Lady Dragon 2 aka Angel of Fury (1993)

I guess I got the UK VHS of this, because one, it's titled Angel of Fury, and two, it's rated 18 by the British rating system. Not a bad deal for this post to be a symbol of UK/US solidarity, after both of our countries were jobbed by FIFA and the World Cup decisions-- though losing out to Russia isn't even a fraction as ridiculous as losing out to Qatar (not pronounced "cutter", buy the way).

Lady Dragon 2 is not an actual sequel to the original, it's just named like one. Here we have DTVC Hall of Famer Cynthia Rothrock as a karate champion married to an Indonesian soccer star. Billy Drago and his two buddies have stolen some diamonds, and need a way to get them out of the country, and happen upon a bellhop taking Rothrock and her husband's luggage out of the hotel they're all in. Drago stashes the diamonds in one of the hubby's suitcases, and when they make it back to Jakarta, the Dragonator and his buds pay Rothrock and her beau a visit. They carve up the husband's leg and rape Rothrock, but can't get the diamonds because the maid storms in with a shotgun to save the day. Anyway, turns out the hubby kept the diamonds, Drago kills him, and Rothrock swears revenge, taking Drago and his two buddies out one-by-one.



This is a weird one, because the description I'm about to give you will make it sound awesome. It's like a Rothrock Lifetime movie. I know, the idea of Rothrock in a Lifetime movies sounds awesome, huh? Well, this ain't that awesome. It's like it's Lifetime in the wrong areas, and action in the wrong areas, if that makes sense. I mean, the plot hits all the spots of the Lifetime movie: woman attacked by a criminal, husband turns out not to be the man she thought he was, the authorities are no help (but to be fair, Rothrock never gives them a chance to be), so this one woman takes things into her own hands, against the system, against all odds, and wins her vengeance. The problem was, this is Rothrock, and that kind of thing doesn't work with her. She's the one training Meredith Baxter-Birney or Joanna Kerns, not the Baxter-Birney or Kerns character herself. Plus, the areas without action were kind of weird, especially the conversations during her husband's funeral. There were a few bright spots, like the end fights (though the ending itself carried on a little long), and this really cool tribute to A Clockwork Orange in the scene where Drago's gang finishes off Rothrock's husband. Overall though, a total miss for me.

I don't think this film did Rothrock any favors either. She did get to show off her martial arts eventually, but being the damsel in distress first diminished it all for me. I was always under the impression that Rothrock's selling point was that she was a hot chick, but she could hold her own with the big boys, and by that I mean can play parts usually written for men, and play them as a woman without losing any toughness. Sure, we've seen guys like Dolph, Van Damme, and Lorenzo Lamas captured by the enemy and held captive, but this was different. This was a straight up Lifetime movie victim, damsel in distress kind of deal, which might work with a lot of other actresses, but it just goes against what I think Rothrock is about. No matter how much ass she kicked after, it wasn't enough to make up for making her into Meredith Baxter-Birney.



A couple weeks ago I watched The Expendables with some friends, and my buddy's wife, who was already complaining that we weren't watching a movie she wanted to watch, made a comment to the effect of "why do they always have to capture the girl?" I had never really thought about it, I guess in part because they don't always have to capture the girl. Sometimes she's killed off. Sometimes there isn't any girl period. Sometimes she's captured, but we find out she's in on it. But yes, I guess when you get down to brass tacks, more often than not, the girl is captured by the baddie and menaced in some way, and it's up to our hero to save her. This is the stereotype Cynthia Rothrock was supposed to be challenging through her success as an action leading lady, and seeing her bound and gagged and helpless as Billy Drago fondled her in front of her husband, made her the cliché she was constantly challenging in all of her other films.

It was funny though just how much this film followed the classic Lifetime movie paradigm. It was clunky in a lot of cases, because all the characters behaved in ways that made no sense. First, if Rothrock's character was as with it as she ends up being, why did she not insist on filing charges aganst Drago's gang when they first attacked her and her husband? We find out he didn't want to file charges, because he had the diamonds, but what about her? Second, they know full well Drago's gang wants these diamonds, and have already attacked them at their home once, yet they continue to live there, easy prey for future attacks. Why would you do that? Why not get the hell out of their and hide out some place else? Finally, why would Drago's gang try to smuggle diamonds in someone else's luggage in the first place? Diamonds have to be the easiest things ever to get through security. I mean, are there some kind of diamond sniffing dogs I'm unaware of?



I mentioned in the synopsis that Rothrock's husband was an Indonesians soccer star. I didn't mean an international soccer star who was born in Indonesia, I mean someone who played in the Indonesian soccer league. He plays for Jakarta, who played a game against Kuala Lumpur-- I guess it's some kind of Indonesian-Malaysian soccer league. I went to Wikipedia to see if this league really exists, and it doesn't, but there is an Indonesia Premier League that is starting in 2011. Should be exciting. I can't wait to see FC 1928 Jakarta battle FC Tashkent in the Asian Champions League.

That was totally digress city, so I'll wrap things up here. This was sautéed in wrong sauce, a bad mix of action and Lifetime movie, unfortunately marrying more of the poorer elements of both cinematic genres, instead of the best parts. Also, Rothrock as a damsel in distress, even if for only one scene, was a bad look for her, and made the film even weirder. Also, as far as I know, this is only available on VHS. I wouldn't go out of your way to get it though.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107356/

Capital Punishment (1991)

I got this on accident, not that I wasn't going to review it eventually, I just wasn't expecting to have it as soon as I did. It was near the top of my Netflix queue, but not in first place, and the films above it weren't available like they were listed as being, and the next thing I knew I had an e-mail in my inbox telling me to expect Capital Punishment on Monday. Well, here it is.

Capital Punishment has DTVC Hall of Famer Gary Daniels as an underground kickboxer who draws the attention of the DEA when his old sensei starts dealing Kick, some Taiwanese designer drug that is very addictive, and causes birth defects. The DEA is being controlled by another HOFer, agent David Carradine, who is in cahoots with the sensei to distribute the drugs in the country. As things unravel, Daniels finds himself increasingly tangled in a web of intrigue and deceit. Can he roundhouse his way out of it?



I have a feeling I'm going to take a hit on this one, but I liked Capital Punishment. I don't know, it just had this surreal quality, like one of those dreams that seems real, until elements occur here or there that don't fit. The scenes were put together in this way that made them almost like non sequiturs. There were no bumpers, no transitions, things just seemed to happen. One moment Daniels is being interrogated, the next he's in a hallway fighting thugs, then he's shot with a tranquilizer dart, and wakes up in his bed. People use words like "immune" as verbs, middle-aged businessmen know martial arts, Daniels kills some people and leaves some alive with no rhyme or reason, and some of the stuntmen wear clothes or recite lines that make absolutely no sense whatsoever-- like this one dude in a bright purple polo and red pajama pants among a gang of thugs that are all wearing black. The best way to describe it is, if Andy Kaufman made a 1990s bad action film, this is what it would look like. And I don't know, I loved it. It was tons of fun. Maybe I'm just getting soft in my old age.

I don't know though, because if you go to my last however many Daniels posts, I haven't been too nice to them. At the very least here, they used him for his martial arts prowess, and didn't inundate us with bad dramatic sequences where Daniels' fighting was foregone for the sake of some misguided plot exposition. This was great because, even though the scenes seemed like maybe they didn't go together or came out of nowhere, he was getting into fights quite regularly, and his fights were tons of fun. In one he empties out a pay phone, puts the quarters in a sock, beats a dude with it, then spills the quarters out of the sock onto the dude, telling him "keep the change". Later, that guy comes back and throws some quarters at him, saying "I think you dropped these". Daniels thanks him by shoving a pool cue through his throat. This might not be Rage or Bloodmoon, but for my money it's pretty close, and for fans of old Daniels, you can't do much worse.



As for our other Hall of Famer in the film, David Carradine looks like he was in another movie, because he has two scenes with one of the other actors, Daniels' helper Linda Lightfoot, and the rest are of him by himself either on the phone, or behind the wheel of a truck. If you go back to the Martial Law II post, in the comments section Mr. Kenner from Movies in the Attic and I had a conversation about Billy Drago being grafted in like John Saxon in a bad Italian movie. I disagreed with him on that case, but in the case of Capital Punishment, I think we have a better example. If not for those two scenes with Linda Lightfoot, you'd say it was like Bela Lugosi in Plan Nine from Outer Space. I have to admit again, I actually liked that though. It just added to that fascinating surreal quality for me.

Daniels' sensei was played by Tadashi Yamashita. He's not quite the ninja star Sho Kosugi is, but he does all right. You may have remembered him as the Black Star Ninja in American Ninja. In Capital Punishment he was great. His scenes made almost no sense, not because his English was bad-- his English was the most coherent element!-- but because of what happened in them. He'd be in a business meeting with two prospective drug dealer/investors, and the thing would devolve into a fight with guys coming at him with martial arts moves, and him taking them down and breaking their necks. Part of me wonders what he thought of shooting on this movie. I mean, it must've helped that he didn't speak English that well, so as not to be too confused by what he was supposed to be doing.



I was trying to think of what to do for the seventh paragraph, and I decided on a second one devoted to Gary Daniels. This will be his 21st tag, which puts him in fourth all-time among actors, behind Dolph Lundgren, Lorenzo Lamas, and Michael Dudikoff. That number isn't as important as the number 50+ (okay, not really number, but you get the idea), because that's what Daniels could ultimately end up with when all is said and done. We like to call Dolph the Babe Ruth of DTV, well, that would make Daniels the Hank Aaron or Ken Griffey Jr. Right now he has six films in production, plus some others that will be out soon, like Tekken and Game of Death (which stars Wesley Snipes), so it's not like he's going to stop anytime soon either. The one argument one could make against him is that a lot of his tags come from really small roles, as opposed to Dolph, who is almost always the star of his films; but a tag is a tag, and Daniels is on pace to have the most.

I'm not sure if I can recommend this one. I loved it, yes, but in some sense it was from a weird fascination. I don't know, it felt like a Crispin Glover movie, the way things went together. But it was an action film, and a lot of fun. I guess you gotta ask yourself, what kind of action movie do I like? If you like them so bad they're good-- so weird they're fun-- this is your kind of movie.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101541/

Shootfighter: Fight to the Death (1992)

There was a post a while back where someone hit me with a comment saying something to the effect of "dude, you gotta get Shootfighter up here. Bolo Yeung, William Zabka, it's all good." I can't remember when, or what post, or even the actual comment, I just know it was a long time ago. Anyway, I finally tracked it down after a long time of searching, so here it is.

Shootfighter has Bolo Yeung as a former underground shootfighting great, who retires as a champ after seeing his buddy's throat ripped out in another fight by Martin Kove. In LA, he trains William Zabka in the world of legitimate fighting, while Zabka runs a dojo teaching kids martial arts to make ends meet. He gets into some trouble with a loan shark, and at the same time, his best friend and girlfriend's brother comes back into town. The best friend is more of a streetfighter, and he reminds Zabka that Zabka only knows how to fight for sport. These money issues and pride issues come to a head when Kove's men come calling, roping Zabka into fighting in their dangerous shootfighting circuit in Tijuana. Can Bolo Yeung get down there in time to save the day?



Hell, if he can swim to Hong Kong to escape communist China, he can get down to TJ, and when he does, it's pure awesome. Everything here is pure awesome. It is a little brutal, in a zombie movie kind of sense, with people having hearts ripped out, throats ripped out, and the skin on forearms bitten off. But it's done in that B-zombie movie kind of way that's more funny than sick-- it's just important to note that it's also R rated. Beyond that, the film really sets itself up as the film The Karate Kid should have been, i.e. totally awesome. Sure, Pat Morita is great, but he's no Bolo Yeung. Kove is still stellar as the head baddie, but then they cut out the Macchio role, allowing us to root for Zabka, which just works out so much better. Then you have all the great martial arts, the blood and gore, and a cameo from John Barrett. This is one of the best of the decade, and that's saying a lot considering it's a 90s movie.

And a huge part of that is Bolo Yeung. Whether he's putting mustard on French fries in Tiger Claws II, dressing like a woman in Breathing Fire, or throwing a crushed Alka Seltzer tablet in Jean-Claude Van Damme's face in Bloodsport, he's always great to watch. It's funny, because of his size and fierce scowl, he's usually cast as the baddie, when he actually makes a great good guy, as evidenced by his role here in Shootfighter.



Anyone who grew up in the 80s has to love William Zabka, right? On some levels, though he is on the side of the good guys here, he does channel that heel element that marked the early part of his career. This will be his third tag, the first two being Gale Force and Interceptor Force, but it won't be his last, because he does have some other DTV films to his credit, including the sequel to Shootfighter. As an aside, he has a cameo in Hot Tub Time Machine, a surprisingly great movie.

John Barrett is in this with a short cameo. I've never gotten why they don't use him in films like this for more than the cameo. I think he's great, a great actor, a great fighter. His one scene is kind of brutal, and it doesn't end well, but I loved the pants he had on. This was one of those early 90s "did he have to wear those pants?" kind of films, but Barrett's worked. I might be out on a limb on that one though.



I had two places I wanted to go with this paragraph. First, I wanted to lament the fact that I'd been to San Diego before, and didn't make it down to Tijuana, and this film reminded me of that regret. The other was a personal story based on Zabka's character's name, Ruben. I knew a kid named Ruben back in college. He was an interesting cat, he could tightrope walk, hitchhiked home from school-- which was over an hour away-- all sorts of crazy shit. Anyway, he told us this story about how he met this girl at a party, went back to her place, and hoped to hook up, but she wasn't ready to move that fast, so he slept on her couch. He's kind of disappointed, but thinking he has an in with this chick, only to be woken up by her gay male roommate trying to do him! He freaked and split from there in only his boxers. About three days after he tells us the story, a girl remarks to his roommate that she saw flowers in his room, and asked who his secret admirer was. "How do you know they weren't Ruben's?" he says, to which she replies "I don't think Ruben would get anything like that..." and one of my buddies jumps in and says "Oh, you'd be surprised what Ruben gets!" I told that story to some friends when I got home for the summer, and that became our catch all phrase, "you'd be surprised what Ruben gets!"

This can be tough to get at, but it's so worth it. In my mind, one of the best of the 1990s, and it's to bad it's taken me this long to get at it, but here we are now, better late than never. Also, have you noticed I write less on the ones that are really awesome than I do on the ones that I didn't like? Maybe I need to fix that in future posts.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105395/

Bad Pack (1997)

We'd been looking to get some more Rowdy Roddy Piper up here, so when I found The Bad Pack, I figured why not. It also sports Ralph Moeller, Robert Davi, Marshall Teague, Sven-Ole Thorsen, Larry B. Scott (Revenge of the Nerds and Snake Eater II), and Brent Huff ( Strike Commando 2, and he also directed). Ensemble cast, Seven Samurai or Magnificent Seven remake, can't go wrong, right?

The Bad Pack is about a town in Texas near the Mexican border that is terrorized by a militia group run by the evil Marshall Teague (he might not be overtly saying he used to fuck guys like you in prison, but he's certainly thinking it.) A couple townspeople get bold and go looking in LA for a mercenary. They find Robert Davi, who's less than impressed, until Larry B. Scott, a CDM (Can Do Man-- though he often calls himself a "CDM Man", which I guess would make him a "Can Do Man Man") lets him know that there is tons of money at Teague's compound. So Davi rounds up his friends-- four of them-- who with Davi, Scott make a six-man army ready to hand that militia it's ass. Then they find Brent Huff on the side of the road, and that rounds out their seven.



I kind of liked this movie. Sure, it had some shortcomings, first and foremost among them, Vernon Wells is only in like 1 and 1/2 scenes (more on that later). It also was somewhat light on the action, but what action it had, it was pretty fun. Also, Davi, Piper, and pretty much everyone else did a great job. This really is DTV made for DTV fans. You get the great one-liners, the great explosions, the great baddie that you really want to root against, and the great heroes you want to root for. This one worked for me.

This is only post number 13 for Mr. Piper. Looking over his DTV oeuvre, there aren't many DTV films left that are really appropriate for this site. He doesn't have a huge role in this, and he plays a driver with a bum leg, so no body slams or sleeper holds. You're certainly not watching The Bad Pack expecting Tough and Deadly. You're probably wondering why, if his DTV output is so scant, he's a DTVC Hall of Famer? Most of ten or so DTV films where he's a main star are really great. Plus, he did They Live. Plus, he he's Rowdy Roddy Piper. Inaugural Hall of Famer, and well deserving of it.



Many of you know my taste in movies spans many genres and styles, and that includes a enormous love of Akira Kurosawa's films. We've seen some remakes of his other works in the past, in particular, Omega Doom and Desert Heat remaking Yojimbo. The plot of Seven Samurai also lends itself to remakes, and though this might be better classified as a remake of a remake, Magnificent Seven, the idea is roughly the same. I think this one did a pretty good job with the source material, which is probably why I enjoyed it so much.

You might be wondering about Robert Davi as the main hero. In the first diner scene, when he takes out a bunch of armed robbers, it doesn't look as great as it should. But Davi sells everything else, playing the stoic old warrior to the hilt, then really bringing it in his final fight with Teague, delivering one of the all-time best gun to the back of the head disarmament scenes. One issue I had, though, was in an earlier scene, he plays blackjack with Teague, and with twenty showing, he hits, drawing an ace. Later, when he kills Teague, he calls him a bad card player. In actuality, it was Davi who was the poor card player, because he hit on twenty.



Man, we got robbed on Vernon Wells. Only one scene, and he looks like John Goodman with a mullet. Seriously? What happened to Bennett? Why isn't anyone telling him to let off some steam? And am I the only one who noticed that he has an Australian accent? Why waste that? Sven-Ole Thorsen isn't supposed to have lines, and you gave him more lines and scenes than Wells. Bad move Brent Huff. Bad move.

I'm thinking VHS is the only route on this bad boy, depending on where you're living, though Amazon has a few DVD versions floating around on their website. If you find it, and don't have to spend a lot on it, it's a pretty fun time, and I'd say worth it.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0147868/

Night Hunter (1996)

I've always loved the idea of Don "The Dragon" Wilson as a vampire hunter. Sure, I like the idea better of Sarah Michelle Gellar as one, but I digress (and can digress even more by mentioning her Buffy co-star Charisma Carpenter-- that's two mentions of her in a little over seven days). Anyway, it's just the idea of Wilson as some dark, brooding, duster-wearing anti-hero, I mean, don't get me wrong, he's plenty good at kicking ass in his movies, but there's always been an aw-shucks element in his style, and I was curious to see what a movie would look like without that, see if he could carry it off.

Night Hunter has Wilson as the son of James Lew, one in a long line of vampire hunters. He sees his father killed by Vince Murdocco and the rest of a gang of vampires. He grows up and exacts his revenge on them, only to find out they aren't the last of their kind. There's Vincent Klyn, Ron Yuan, Maria Ford, and the head honcho, Nicholas Guest. At the same time, he's wanted for murder for the killings of Murdocco and his clan; and in his escape from them, he bumps into hottie Melanie Smith, who plays a reporter investigating his case. Wilson needs to defeat these vamps before the solar eclipse, otherwise they'll breed or something, and if they do that, it could be bad.



This could have been awesome, except for one enormous bad decision on the part of the film makers: in every fight scene, they shook the camera. You know, like how they do on Star Trek to simulate the bridge being attacked. I mean, you have great talent like Wilson, Yuan, Lew, and Klyn, not to mention Art Camacho choreographing the scenes, and you gotta do a camera effect that makes me sea sick? This could have been tons of fun, and instead it was pretty much ruined. Good work out of you guys, whoever decided on that one.

We're cruising right along on our Don "The Dragon" Wilson completion project. After this we'll be down to ten more. Also, one more after this will get him to that rarefied air of 20 tags. As far as Night Hunter goes, there was something inorganic about him in this role. It's like they were trying too hard to do The Crow and other anti-heroes of the time, so they crammed him into it. The duster and hair were actually more Lorenzo Lamas as Reno Raines in Renegade. I think too, his natural tendency is to be a pretty stand-up guy, and no matter how much the role calls for being dirty and gritty, that decent guy will always rise to the top-- and to be honest, I'm good with that. He kicks plenty of ass as a decent guy, doesn't he?



DTVC favorite Vincent Klyn is one of many in a great supporting cast. We also had Ron Yuan and James Lew, two guys we're used to seeing as hatchetmen in Asian gangs in DTV films. All of these guys brought it in one way or another, which made it more of a shame that every great fight was ruined by that shaky camera trick. Ugh! Speaking of Klyn, Point Break was on Versus of all channels last week. "Back off Warchild, seriously."

Nicholas Guest played the head baddie. You may remember him as the head master in USA High, among other roles. He usually plays the stuffed shirt style English man, which suits him better than the slick evil vampire. I don't know, maybe the people making the film thought one Limey was as good as another, that they didn't need Julian Sands or Bruce Payne. I was also of the understanding that all Englishmen make good baddies, but upon seeing this, I realize that that was a stereotype. Maybe it's the half Mick half Frog in me, but to all my readers from England, I wholeheartedly apologize. Go Gunners!



Over and over I hear all about some latent eroticism inherent in the whole vampire thing, and I never get it. Other than the fact that you're talking about men with tons of experience but none of the side effects of aging, there's nothing about biting people's necks and lots of blood that's hot. This film takes a different track for a moment. The two female leads are played by Maria Ford and Melanie Smith, and they have something of a Russ Meyer inspired scene in an elevator where, after some silly punches to Ford's face by Smith, Ford throws Smith against the wall, then pins her arms behind her back, holding her helpless. Total girl-on-girl action. I get that I'm not the target demographic for Twilight, and I get that there's a level of teenage angst that drives those stories; but for my money, Twilight would be a whole lot hotter with some serious girl-on-girl action. That's hot, vampires are not.

This would have been a real winner if not for the shaky camera affect. All right, maybe not a real winner, but pretty fun. Sometimes, less is more, and that's especially true here. If you're daring, though, this is actually available on Netflix-- though who knows for how much longer, because Wilson's films are fading out of print, and when they're out of print, Netflix doesn't make them available anymore.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113981/

Chain of Command (1994)

This film should not be confused with the Roy Scheider film of the same name that came out in 2000 (Kenner reviewed that one at Movies in the Attic). On another note, this Michael Dudikoff movie was reviewed by one of our long time supporters, elementarybeatboxoperator,storylike on his review site. He's totally been holding out on us, and I feel like a dork for not knowing it existed until a few days ago, but if you get the chance, go check it out. You can also listen to Tatu's cover of "How Soon is Now" on his blog's music player (one of many great songs).

Chain of Command has Michael Dudikoff as Ross Merrill--wait, sorry, Merrill Ross--a former Green Beret who has seen enough killing and decides he wants a quieter life working for an American oil company in the Middle East. Looks like trouble has found him, because a former CIA agent with the most amazing mullet ever and his team of mercenaries takes the oil company plant hostage, and only Dudikoff escapes. Then a really hot chick who looks like she might be from a Michael Bolton video shows up, kidnaps Dudikoff, press-gangs him into helping save the hostages on behalf of her terrorist organization, because they're being blamed for the hostage taking, and they're less than stoked about that. From there it's twists and turns and intrigue and explosions.



This movie commits a cardinal sin in the world of action movie making--the hero runs away from the baddie. This works in something like Dream a Little Dream 2, but not in an action film. We're paying to see Dudikoff kick ass, not run away; and then, why does he then fight the baddie at the end? Oh, now you can take him? This happens at about the 45 minute mark of what was looking to be a pretty solid film; but it's an unforgivable sin, and one the film couldn't recover from. Things then go from bad to weird, when our hot chick that looks like she's from a Michael Bolton video is tied to a pool table, only to be burned by the baddie with a cigar, and have her nipples and vagina menaced with a knife. Weird, and not a place they needed to take this movie. It wraps up well with a nice end fight and Dudikoff mowing some stuntmen down with machine gun fire, but overall, not the greatest.

This is some great Dudikoff notwithstanding. His acting is really good, and he delivers lines his in a very entertaining fashion--it all felt really natural and cool for a DTV actioner. He also swears a lot, which worked surprisingly well too. For the ladies, he has a great scene early on, putting on a pair of what looks to be 501s. A very dudely thing to do. But watching him run away was not his finest moment, and I just wonder what the idea was behind that? You also had the hot chick that looked like she was from a Michael Bolton video capturing him on two separate occasions. I just don't get how we're buying him as this great hero, when he's running away and getting captured. Anyway, as far as Dudikoff the DTVC Hall of Famer goes, this post puts him in a tie with Lorenzo Lamas for second all time--but Lamas wins the tie breaker, because American Ninja 2 was reviewed twice. I didn't realize this, but we're only 8 away from having his entire DTV oeuvre up. If I can get my hands on those 8, I'll get to it as soon as possible--even at the expense of the Don "The Dragon" Wilson completion project.



The woman I affectionately referred to as "she looks like a hot chick from a Michael Bolton video" was played by Keren Tishman, who now goes by the name Keren Aroni. IMDb has this as her only credit, but she names a few more on her personal website (http://www.kerenaroni.com/), including a guest spot on 90210. It looks like the majority of her work now comes from hosting TV shows and interviewing people. As far as the moniker I gave her for Chain of Command, "looks like a hot chick from a Michael Bolton video," at the beginning, in her first scene, her dress is very dated--very 1990--and with her hair and her make-up, it was just very hot chick from a Michael Bolton video. You could see her breaking dishes with him in "How Can We Be Lovers if We Can't Be Friends." The one thing I noticed was, this was definitely her first acting gig, because she over acted her lines, especially the sexually charged ones with Dudikoff. I loved how she kept the "you sees" and whatnot, which sound great when the script is written, but sound unnatural when spoken out loud.

This film isn't officially a Golan-Globus production, because Menahem Golan had left at the time. It was also Cannon's last gasp as a production company, bringing to an end an amazing era in DTV movie making. Had they stuck to this kind of film--low-budget action--they might have made it a little longer; but they branched out, tried new things, and ultimately, that bit them in the ass. Also noteworthy, Chain of Command had some political implications, but there were no overt messages or preaching--at least that I could tell--though one could make the case that maybe they were saying Israel's place in the Middle East would be more secure if US oil companies were more insistent on OPEC Arab nations recognizing Israel. It's a minute message, and one that requires some sifting to get at, so I might be fishing. They avoided that cardinal sin, but as we mentioned above, committed one much worse.



Finally, this film sports a poor man's Andrew McCarthy. I know, I know, that beat out the too sweet mullet our baddie sported for the subject of this seventh paragraph, but I sprinkled mentions of it throughout the post, that counts, right? Okay, you're right, a beaver pelt that epic deserves it's own paragraph. I mean, the thing is a definite 9.8+ in Mulletude. When you see the baddie at the beginning, he has the awesomeness tucked away under a baseball cap, making him look more like he's cut from a Michael Biehn mold. Then you see him, and if you look closely, you can see strands of hair peaking out underneath the hat, and you're just waiting for that reveal--and when it comes, it's a waterfall of sweetness beyond anything you can imagine. To make matters better, there are multiple scenes of the baddie and his ape drape with hair metal playing in the background. It made it all the more astounding then, when this same baddie is menacing our Michael Bolton video chick by burning her with a cigar and threatening to cut her nipples and vagina with a knife, because it took a lot of the fun out of it for me. First you show me you comprehend the power you're wielding in your film movie maker, but then you demonstrate you don't have the capacity to understand it fully.

And that's that. If you like your Dudikoff running away and getting captured, you'll love this. I think there's some aspects to like, like the mullet, or Dudikoff when he's not running away or getting captured; but the bad supersedes it for me. Oh, by the way, forgot to mention the character actor who always plays the drill sergeant is in this as well--not as a drill sergeant.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001154/

Nemesis 2: Nebula (1995)

I had been meaning to review this, and the other two Nemesis sequels, for sometime now, but one Albert Pyun movie or another always trumped it. The other thing it doesn't have in its favor is other Hall of Famers, which will immediately cause it to drop in priority. Then there was its lack of availability, but that was solved when I came across it recently.

Nemesis 2 starts in the year 2077, where the cyborgs have taken over and are enslaving the remaining humans. Some have rebelled, and a scientist has created a genetically superior human that can combat the cyborgs. As an infant, the cyborgs hunt her down, so her mom takes her into the past, the year 1980 to be precise, in war torn east Africa, where she's raised by local tribesmen after her mother dies. Back in the future, the cyborgs send Nebula, a Predator like tracker, to capture this superior human, and he meets up with the girl after she's grown into a buff young woman, and the two go toe to toe.



So, this is something of a bait-and-switch, because the opening of the film has these great models and paintings of a future LA ruled by cyborgs, and it all looked awesome, and something I could really sink my teeth into. Then we're sent back to 1980 east Africa, in the desert, and all that futuristic coolness is gone. I get that it was probably more cost-effective to shoot in the Arizona desert than in elaborate futuristic sets, but it was still a disappointment when we were transported away from all that. As far as the rest of the film goes, it's mix of Star Wars, Predator, and Pyun's own Cyborg. It's very low-budget, so if you don't have a stomach for things written off as "cheesy", you'll be in trouble here. For me, it was a fun ride, but territory that was well-worn-- not at all like the inspired Sci-Fi Western Nemesis was.

We aren't even halfway through Albert Pyun's filmography-- though I have a feeling there are some of those ones from the past he'd rather we don't do. Maybe Nemesis 2 was one of those ones, I don't know. I think some of the last reviews I've done of his films, I've been of the opinion that I got what he was trying to do, but it didn't exactly work for me, because of A,B, and C. That's not the case here. I think the main issue with this one was probably the budget, because the idea wasn't a bad one. Maybe Nebula was too derivative of the Predator, or the setting was too much like Tatooine and the rebels too much like Sandpeople, but overall, I liked it as an out-of-the box sequel to Nemesis. The budgetary issues relegate it to that MST3K area, but if you dig bad action, there were plenty of explosions and gunfights.



What this lacked that made Nemesis such a classic though, was that cool mix of genres. While this had elements that felt more derivative than re-imaginings, it's predecessor was really about bending conventions and blending things we hadn't really seen until that point. It felt like a futuristic Western, and with the enormous cast he had, he was able to sell that atmosphere even more. I guess this movie was trying to do the same, by looking at a civil war in east Africa as a brutal, modern Wild West, but with the low budget and relatively unknown cast, it felt more inhibited and less inspired.

The heroine was played by female bodybuilder Sue Price. She was excellent, and more than a bodybuilder, she was really athletic too. According to her imdb bio, the only three films she did were these three Nemesis sequels. I guess I can see that, because it really takes an outside-the-box film maker like Pyun to defy conventions and cast someone like her. It's like a given that a female tough chick would still have to be thin and feminine and less believable in her asskicking than in a skintight outfit. Here, though, we have one that's well-built and naturally athletic. The whole thing worked for me, but I think for most people, it would be a hard image to consume-- women are supposed to look one way, and men are supposed to look another.



I mentioned above that I loved the models they used for the futuristic LA. Probably today those would've been done with computers, and I have to imagine with the kinds of shooting restrictions Pyun is frequently faced with, rendering those cities in CGIs would probably be preferable, and had he had that option in 1995, he would have gone for it. I understand that, but I think we lose something in these computer generated graphics. I like a city like the one in Metropolis, I like it when directors use something other than a computer to make things in their films life-like. I get that the computer can get things done faster and easier, and in some cases cheaper; and I get that sometimes more can be done with computers; but there's something more imaginative, yet more real, about making us believe a city is real without letting a computer do all the work.

In the final analysis, you have to ask yourself: do I like low-budget actioners? Do I like crazy plots that go from 2077 Cyborg LA to 1980 east Africa? Do I like explosions and gunfights, all in a self-contained desert location? What do I think of a derivative Predator villain? For me, I look at these questions and I'm like "fire it up, deepcheeks", but that's just me. Also, this is hard to get at, so I wouldn't go too far out of your way, but if you see it in a used VHS or DVD bin, why not go for it.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113948/