Foxtrap (1986)

In our continuing mission to get more Fred Williamson on the site, and into the 30 Club and beyond, this had been in my watch queue for some time, but when I discovered it was on Tubi I knew I had no excuse to not make it happen. In addition to us, there are only two other critic reviews, and one of them is from our friends Ty and Brett at Comeuppance.

Foxtrap has Williamson as Thomas Fox, a bodyguard for hire who's hired by Christopher Connelly to retrieve his niece Susan, who's gone missing in Cannes. Seems simple enough, until Fox gets out there, and discovers Susan is in bed with a local crime boss Marco. After some tangles with Marco's goons, Fox is able to rescue Susan and bring her back to LA. The thing is though, Williamson has been in enough films with Christopher Connelly to know that he doesn't seem like the concerned, benevolent uncle type, and with 20 minutes of movie left, there's plenty of time for Williamson to figure out whats going on. Marco and his goons, and then Connelly and his goons, won't know what it them.

This isn't the best of Williamson's directed films. The plot meanders a bit, we get real time scenes of things like him getting his bags out of his car, there's some brutality of women that's a bit much, a music score that sounds a bit silly at times, and editing snafus like a typo in the credits and a visible boom mic. All of that is mitigated by the Williamson factor though, to ultimately deliver us a fun film. As our hero, he's not a hard-nosed detective on the edge, he's a jet-setting man of the world who's completely at home in Cannes or Rome, but can take out a gang of toughs when he has to too. So with any clunkiness we may have in the film's execution, we have plenty of fantastic Williamson to make up for it, and really, when you come to a Williamson film, what else do you want?

Williamson is now at 28 films on the site. The 30 Club is just around the corner, but I have been slacking a bit in my Williamson posts, with the last one coming back in February. The other interesting thing is he's at 12 directed films with this one, which puts him tied with Keoni Waxman in a tie for fifth-most director credits, and one behind Isaac Florentine and Sam Firstenberg for a tie for third. There are a couple things going on in this film that I think show what makes Williamson great. First off, the film is flawed, but his presence alone makes it work. I thought back to Dolph and some of his clunkers, and I don't really know that he made those work just by his presence alone--granted, those clunkers weren't his directed films, but even the ones he's directed that didn't work as well, like Diamond Dogs, he alone couldn't make them fun the way Williamson does here. The other thing is how he makes his character cosmopolitan and at home in places like Cannes and Rome. A common trope is to have the African American hero be straight out of the inner city and plopped into a European city, and the film will play up the clash of cultures for laughs. Williamson leaves that trope entirely, and I think this movie is much better for it. I don't know if I can put Williamson above Dolph for the number one slot all time for DTV stars, but they're closer between 1 and 2 than they have been.

The music in this deserves its own paragraph, because it is such a huge part of the film. It starts off in the opening sequence of Williamson driving--and as someone who's never had his license and probably can't critique anyone else's driving, I have to say he looks like he's all over the road, often crossing over to the wrong side--and it sounds like what you might hear in a long-form corporate ad video, or maybe an 80s fishing show montage segue between segments. From there we have this synthesizer generated woodwind instrument, which at one point sounds like a big number or letter reveal in a Sesame Street cartoon, as we watch a little French man in a knit cap following Williamson in Cannes. We also get some Smooth Jazz that turns into a Bobby Caldwell-esque late 70s soul song when Williamson has his love scene. We then get this groovy organ sound during a shootout, which makes it hard to feel the intensity of Williamson diving over a car to avoid the uzi fire coming at him, it was probably better used accompanying shots of a grimacing Karl Malden somewhat aggressively driving to a crime scene in an episode of Streets of San Francisco. In some respects, the music adds to the film's charm; but other times, like when the synthesizer-generated woodwind instrument comes on a little more strongly as the chase between Williamson and the French man in the knit cap heats up, I find myself cracking up as I'm mimicking the "doo-dah-lee-dee-doo-doo" sound out loud as I'm watching the movie--which, I guess if I'm honest with myself, also adds to the film's charm.

At the end of the credits, the film teases that we should "watch next summer for the FOX and the COBRA." My guess is "the COBRA" was Black Cobra, which came out in 1987, but unfortunately we didn't get more FOX. This is something with the site and podcast, and even my novels, that I always try to make sure I don't do, and that's get too far ahead of myself by promising things that I don't have in the can yet. Take this review for example. If I didn't get a chance to watch this movie, I'd have reviewed the Zagarino film Project Eliminator instead, because I'd already seen that. Same with the podcast, I don't want to tell people what the upcoming episodes will be, because even if I have guests and subjects lined up for them, you never know when someone's schedule, mine or theirs, will jumble everything up. I did hear that at the time Williamson was able to sell films at Cannes to producers just based on the ideas alone, so he probably thought he could do the same with the FOX, until life got in the way, and we're left to wonder what might have been after we see the credits to Foxtrap.

Finally, typos are such a pain in the ass, right? And in a movie in the 80s they have to be the worst. At least when I have a typo in my reviews--and I have tons because I usually can only do one proofread before I post--if I see them I can go back and edit them if I want. Here Williamson has no such luck, "Produced an story by" will forever be immortalized in his film. It begs the question though, at what point is it better to just get the work out there? I mean yes, it doesn't make a great early impression, but this isn't a job interview, I'm not going through hundreds of CVs for a job I posted online, so a couple typos make it easier for me to reject someone; it's a Fred Williamson movie, he already has the position, I'm just ready to see him get after it. If anything, I feel like I should get on him for that parking job. Look at all that space on the right. Between this and when he left his girlfriend behind to be caught by Marco and his goons, he kinda made himself a tough guy to root for, but then he's beating up baddies and smoking cigars while wearing double-breasted suits and dress shirts with the top buttons undone, and I think, "how can I stay mad at you, Fred?"

Or rather, Mr. Williamson, sir. Anyway, let's wrap this up. Right now this is on Tubi here in the States, which I think is a great way to go. Hopefully someone like Vinegar Syndrome will release all of his directed movies on Blu-ray, but until then, I think Tubi is your best bet, and it's worth it to get your Williamson fix.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091072

And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, Holtman Arms, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Robo Vampire (1988)

This is one that's been in the can for a while now. Almost one year to the day of this posting, on May 18th of 2022, Mitch of the Video Vacuum and I did a podcast episode discussing this and Ninja Terminator, episode 99 in the archives. It's taken me that long to review either of those films, but we're finally making this one happen now. Also, I asked ChatGPT to review this for us too, and you can see how they did on my Twitter and Facebook pages.

Robo Vampire is about a heroin cartel in Asia that employs a mystic who can turn corpses into vampires, and he creates an army of vampires to protect their shipments. On one occasion the vampires kill a DEA agent, and through a breakthrough procedure, he's turned into a robot cop. At the same time, one of the corpses the mystic turned into a powerful gorilla vampire has a dead girlfriend who wants revenge on the mystic for ruining their plans in the afterlife. All while this his happening, over in Thailand another DEA agent has been captured by other elements of the cartel, and they send in a special agent and his crew to try and break her out and take down their operations there. Will it all work out for everyone?

Does anyone care? As it was termed in a Den of Geek article, it's "cinematic anarchy," or maybe better put, "cinematic bouillabaisse," as anything you can imagine is tossed into this. Just look at our robo cop. He's a mix of the actual RoboCop, a samurai, and the Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz, with a dash of silver lame 80s ski suit tossed in. The team of scientists who perform the procedure to make the robo cop are an 80s British synth pop band moonlighting while waiting on their big break--alas, by '88, if it hadn't happened for them yet, it wasn't going to happen, as the market was changing here in the States. We have the classic footage from another film cut in Godfrey Ho scenario, but to be honest that second film, an 80s Thai actioner, ain't half bad; and the fights between the mystic and the ghost girlfriend of the gorilla vampire are actually pretty spectacular. But then we have vampires who move by hopping around with their hands out in front of them like kids pretending they're riding a horse, and one of their vampire powers is they can shoot missiles out of their hands. And how do we even get a gorilla vampire? I guess its the vampire scarring he has on his corpse face, but the scarring, hair, and fangs make him very gorilla-y. I don't know that the art of cinema gets any better than our robo cop guy slowly getting surrounded by a gang of hopping vampires, his stilted movements accompanied by the requisite robotic sound effects, as he takes in his impending peril. This either works for you or it doesn't, but if it does, God it so works.

This is our seventh Godfrey Ho film on the site, though here he's credited as "Joe Livingstone"--not to be confused with "Ron Livingston," aka "that guy from Office Space." By my count on IMDb, this is one of maybe 40 films he had released in 1988, it's hard to count them all, and normally that would be astounding, but he was recycling old footage and splicing in other films to make them all, so it wasn't like he was out shooting 40 films in one year. It sounds crass, but when I watch one of these, and see the ways he dubs over the original dialog and edits the pieces to make the film at least somewhat coherent, it's pretty remarkable. From that oft quoted by me Den of Geek article, it really is cinematic anarchy, and I don't really know from an artistic standpoint what the equivalent would be. Maybe sampling during the dawn of hip hop in the late 70s and early 80s? Even that though doesn't fit, because you'd also be talking about the rappers laying down one or two tracks, and then those tracks also being recut into myriad songs. It shouldn't be understated though that this is art, it's almost this pop art kind of thing, like a cinematic Andy Warhol giving us Elvis silkscreens or paintings of soup cans. "Americans like vampires and RoboCop? I can give them that, I have the tools here to make it happen." And the "make it happen" is this stunning bouillabaisse that no modern AI could recreate.

The thing is Godfrey Ho does the mash-ups that Hollywood either can't do due to rights restrictions, or because they take themselves too seriously to come up with it themselves. I mean who wouldn't want RoboCop vs Vampires? Imagine RoboCop walking into some cutesy Eastern European night club, taking out a bunch of leather-clad Euro Trash vampires? Or hell, mash it with Twilight, have Robert Pattinson hopping around with all his angst and his hair. We could even borrow from The Wizard of Oz and have RoboCop's joints get rusty with all the precipitation in Oregon. But no, Hollywood takes themselves too seriously, so we have to hope Godfrey Ho will do it for us, but he gets it all wrong because he doesn't understand how any of these things work in American culture, and while the gets it all wrong is a ton of fun to watch, why can't someone who does get how it works get it all right for us? Like look at the actors dressed to look like an 80s British synth pop group? Hollywood could actually get the guys from Duran Duran! Or hell, imagine Human League or the Thompson Twins in lab coats designing RoboCop so he can blow up the kids in Twilight. Yes, the results of Ho's films are often goofy, but he tells us what's possible in cinema if we just go for it. Why can't we go for it more instead of just pumping out the same franchise drivel?

As I mentioned above, I asked ChatGPT to write a review on Robo Vampire, and posted screens of the results on the DTVC Facebook page and Twitter account if you want to see them. Part of the reason why I did that, beyond wanting to see what it could give me, is that AI is seen as the next bastion of the Godfrey Ho Effect, but a lot of times the way people discuss it, they act like this is AI thing sui generis, because they have no idea who Godfrey Ho is or what his films are like. One of the things I saw from the ChatGPT review, is it's a solid enough review, but it doesn't have the artistic soul that a review written by a human does, the same way if AI did a mash-up of Twilight, RoboCop, and the Human League video for "Human," it couldn't give us something as fun as Robo Vampire. It works in a pinch if you're a high school kid who needs to get a paper done--and I remember myself in high school in the mid-90s when the world wide web was new, finding some Truman Capote fan sites and copying details from their breakdowns of In Cold Blood on the Geocities pages to do my book report, my junior English teacher none-the-wiser as he gave me an A, so I get that part of it--but in terms of replacing actual art, even in this bouillabaisse form from Godfrey Ho, there's always going to be that need for the soul of the artist to drive it.

Finally, look at that, is that a White Castle? The design is all off, but I can just taste those fantastic sliders at the mere mention of it. I haven't been to one in forever, since they closed the one near Penn Station in NYC. My wife told me when she went to high school here in Philly, there was one near her school, but that one's since been closed, and there aren't any more in the Philly area. How can that be? I'm going to a Mets game in July, maybe I'll need to make an extra stop on the 7 train on the way back. Some people say the ones you get frozen in the grocery are just as good, and they do work in a pinch, but I can never get them to come out the way they do when I'm getting them freshly made. Recently there was a Wawa on the corner of 12th and Market that closed, and it looks like it's still vacant. Put a White Castle in there, and it would do a killing with all the tourists--though maybe that's not a good thing, because every time I tried to go I'd have to deal with the tourists like I do when I want a snack at Reading Terminal Market.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Here in the States you can get this on Tubi for free. It's just the taste of Cinematic Anarchy or Cinematic Bouillabaisse you're looking for. And if you want to hear more about Godfrey Ho, you can check out episode 99 in the archives that I did with Mitch from the Video Vacuum, and episode 69 that I did with Jon Cross from the After Movie Diner, which is where he first references the Den of Geek article I was talking about.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0121694

And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, Holtman Arms, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

White Elephant (2022)

This was another in the Bruce Willis DTV films Ty from Comeuppance Reviews and I have been looking at on the podcast. He'd already seen it on AMC+, but once Hulu got it I was able to make it happen too, which we did on ep 123. We figured with the cast, and the fact that it was directed by Jesse V. Johnson, that it may be better than the usual DTV EFO Willis films.

White Elephant has Michael Rooker as a hitman for mob boss Bruce Willis. He's been training his replacement in anticipation of retirement. Problem is, during one of his replacement's jobs, he's caught by two police detectives, one of whom is played by Olga Kurylenko. Willis wants them both dead, and while her partner was an easy job, Kurylenko proves to be a bit tougher, which means Rooker needs to get involved. He sees similarities between her and a woman in his life who died, and that makes him sympathetic to Kurylenko's plight, causing him to go rogue and join her side. They run back to his fortified mansion in the country, and prepare for the final siege of Willis's men. Will they survive? Either way, consigliere John Malkovich is staying out of all of it.

Ty and I were right on this one, it is a pretty good deal. Rooker and Kurylenko are solid, plus it has the Jesse V. Johnson action you're looking for. That end fight is everything you'd want, but also the action scenes before it are great too and do a great job building to that final siege. We also have good Willis mitigation, with him playing the mob boss he doesn't need too many scenes, though Johnson pushes it by having him get shot in an assassination attempt, and later in the hospital it looks like we have a double who gets comforted by Rooker. Overall though, we have a nice runtime, fun cast, and solid action scenes. To me this is everything you want in a DTV actioner.

We're now at 12 Willis films on the site, but with Ty and I covering so many for the pod, we now have 8 in the can that we could review at any time--and that's 8 and counting as Ty and I do more of these for the podcast. By my count there's roughly another 20 I could watch and review, which is huge, because by that math that would put Willis in the 40 Club. While that's far off, I think DTVC Hall of Fame consideration needs to be in play. If more of them were like this it'd be an easy decision, but they aren't, we have a lot of EFO tossed together stinkers to consider too. Is that possible that we could be keeping one of the greatest movies stars of all time out of the Hall of Fame because the quality of his DTV stuff isn't there? The other thing is the automatic induction if he hits 30 films, which is very possible too, and is even more fascinating. Using our baseball analogies as I'm wont to do, it's like he's amassed a first ballot hall of fame career in Hollywood, but has a Craig Biggio career in DTV. For those who aren't familiar with Craig Biggio and American baseball, Biggio did pretty well as a player, but wasn't an all-time great that you'd want for a hall of fame; but he had over 3000 hits, and anyone who has over 3000 hits is in the hall of fame, so he was put in too despite not having the greatest career. Will Willis be our Craig Biggio?

The last time we saw Michael Rooker on here, it was 2010 when we did The Marine 2. This is a much better film than that was, and Rooker has a much better role than he had in that one. My introduction to him was in Mallrats, but I know a lot of people are familiar with him through his work as Yondu in the Guardians of the Galaxy series--and I think that's my favorite name to say, "Yon-duuuuu." It's good to see him here playing an aging character who's coming to terms with the life he led, a kind of character we don't often see Rooker play when he's in supporting parts or cameos in bigger things. With him being a part of three major franchises, Marvel, DC, and the Fast and Furious, he'll probably have no problem paying the bills, but it'll be fun to see if he does more of this kind of thing in the future, as he was really good here. Also of note: he did two DTV films in 2022, and both were with Willis, the other being the Tubi Original Corrective Measures, which we've also covered on the podcast on episode 116.

With this post, Jesse V. Johnson crosses an important director milestone at the DTVC, he now has 10 directed films reviewed, which I think makes him the 10th director ever to have that honor. As of this writing, I haven't seen Hell Hath No Fury or One Ranger yet, but I'd say out of the others, this is my favorite of his since Avengement. Looking at who's doing DTV right now, it's probably him and Isaac Florentine as the best, and you know when you see his name attached that there's going to be a minimum level of quality that, even if it's not one of his best, will at least put this above a lot of the other DTV stuff out there and make for solid watch. In this world where we have so many options, and with EFO out there drawing us in on the promise of big names but not delivering, to feel confident knowing I'm going to get a certain level of quality can't be understated. Looking at the podcast episode Ty and I did, we paired this with Survive the Game, which was exactly the EFO rough sit I'm describing, so even we banked on the Jesse V. Johnson mark of quality to mitigate the pain we were getting from the EFO film we chose. It'll be exciting to see what Johnson does next, but he's already putting together one of the best DTV action directing careers.

Usually the "finally" paragraph is some personal anecdote or aside that is only tangentially connected to the film, but I couldn't write the whole review and not spotlight Olga Kurylenko. I'm always talking about the top women in action, but I've been leaving her out of the conversation, which is bad on my part. If you look at her CV, she's as good as anyone going right now, and compared to some other names like Amy Johnston or Natalie Burn, she's even better. On my Andy Sidaris LETHAL Ladies posts, I talk about how high up the list of women in action Dona Speir is, but looking at this CV I think Kurylenko might be ahead of her too. At this point this is only her third film on the site, so I need to dig in and watch and review more of her stuff, but she could already be behind Rothrock as second best DTV female action star. Total oversight on my part to not have been spotlighting her more.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Here in the States it's AMC+ and Hulu, which isn't a bad deal. This is a solid actioner that delivers what you're looking for, no need to worry if you queue this up on a Saturday night. And the podcast episode is 123 in the archives, definitely worth checking out. You can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, or your favorite podcatcher so you don't miss the next time Ty and I cover more Willis flicks.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14686544

And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, Holtman Arms, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

City Hunter aka Sing si lip yan (1993)

This is one I watched a few years back when I was doing my Gary Daniels list on Letterboxd, and I planned to review it soon after, but it never happened. And then late last year, I was a guest on Scott Murphy's All 90s Action, All the Time podcast, and we were covering this film, so I watched it again, with the plan to review it soon after as well. Now with Daniels's 60th birthday coming in a few days, I figured this is as good a time as any to get it done.

City Hunter has Jackie Chan as the hero, Ryo Saeba, based off of the Manga comic of the same name. He gets a job to track down a rich newspaper magnate's daughter, who ends up taking a cruise, meaning Chan has to follow her onto it. The problem: terrorist Richard Norton and his gang, led by his head henchman Gary Daniels, are taking the cruise hostage so they can extort the rich people onboard for their money. Now it's up to Chan to be the fly in the ointment. He's not alone though, we have a baccarat player who's also an expert card thrower, and a government agent undercover as a young lady hoping to pick up some rich businessmen, who are also able to help him. Will they ultimately prevail?

There are a few places to go to with this. Let's start with the action and martial arts. Exactly what you want from Golden Harvest starring Jackie Chan. Some really inspired scenes, culminating in a great finale between Chan and Norton. We also had the iconic scene with Chan and Daniels where they played Street Fighter characters, giving us a sense of what it would be like if Daniels ever got to play Ken. The other place to go is the comedy, and one could make the point that a lot of it didn't age well: we have homophobia, gross chauvinism, with a dash of racism thrown in; beyond that though, I think some of it just wasn't funny. Bits would go on past their saturation point, leaving me wanting the old Vaudeville hook to come off-screen and pull whoever was in the joke off the stage. Some of the humor did work though, especially with Chan, who is not only a fantastic martial artist, but also a great physical comedian, and he delivers that Buster Keaton vibe you want when you see Chan on the tin--and like Keaton, who did black face in College, Chan employs some brown face here when he plays Dhalsim in the Street Fighter scene, but I digress. I think between the novelty of seeing Daniels and Norton together in a Jackie Chan Golden Harvest film, plus the level of the martial arts, this is worth checking out, even if some of the humor will make you cringe a bit.

With Daniels turning 60 in a few days, it's interesting to look at this one from 30 years ago, when Daniels's career was in its earlier stage. Even more interesting is, only two years after this, he did Fist of the Northstar, which was the one he expected to catapult him to the big time, but unfortunately didn't end up working. From there though, he spends the next 10-15 years putting together one of the greatest DTV CVs ever, with films like Bloodmoon; the "three Rs" of PM, Rage, Riot, and Recoil; and Cold Harvest. But then something happens, the 2000s come, and guys like Seagal and Van Damme drop down to DTV, and while someone like Dolph was able to survive, Daniels was given fewer leading roles, in some cases needing to settle for religious films shot in Thailand. He wasn't alone in this though, Rothrock and Wilson also suffered a similar fate, the only thing was, it seemed like Daniels came out on the other side in a bit better place, getting some starring roles again in films like Skin Traffik, Misfire, and Rumble. But when we come back to this one, he has a smaller role, but you can see where he was going, and it's not a surprise that he'd get a part like Kenshiro in Fist of the Northstar, the surprise is that he never quite made that big screen level.

This is our first Jackie Chan film on the site, after almost 1200 posts. I know he doesn't do a lot of DTV stuff--and this technically isn't DTV either--but you'd think we'd at least have a Wild Card post or something like we've had for guys like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sly Stallone. I think the big reason why we haven't seen more in his case, is he doesn't have a lot of films like this that have other names, which is the kind of the thing we have to review it whether it went DTV or not. Due to issues with the director, Chan said this is one of his least favorite films, but his martial arts and stunt scenes are what you want from him. What's interesting, if you compare him with Daniels, this is also two years out from Rumble in the Bronx, the movie that got him fame here in the US, and led to a string of big budget Hollywood hits, so while it didn't work out for Daniels, Chan was that marquee Hollywood name for a time. For me, that's what got me to go back to his Hong Kong stuff like this film, after seeing Rumble in the Bronx in the theater, and fortunately as a result of that success, more of it became available. If this ends up being the only time we see Jackie on here--or if we don't see him again for another 1200 posts--at least we got him this one time on the DTVC.

The other Hall of Famer in this was Richard Norton in what is now his 25th film on the site, meaning the 30 Club is on the horizon for him. He's probably one who should've been there sooner, but we tend to lose him for months at a time, and often review films like this one where he's a secondary name to someone like Daniels, which is too bad, because he's big enough on his own, as he demonstrates here. Between the total scenery chewing of his baddie, to the great final fight with Chan, it's all there, everything we love about Norton. One thing that's helped him in recent years has been the advent of YouTube and the availability of some of his rarer titles on there. Something like a Blood Street that I had trouble tracking down, I can now find on YouTube and get reviewed on the site. I think as we wrap up guys like Daniels and Dolph, we'll have more openings for guys like Norton, so it'll be cool to get some of those up on here.

One thing I realized when I reviewed Operation Seawolf a few weeks back, is I'm reviewing Dolph films at a greater clip than Gary Daniels films, and the proof is there in looking at the archives: my last Daniels post was in early December, and since then we've done three Dolph films. I could make excuses, like how Dolph has had more films come out recently and I've needed to prioritize them, but I've also had movies like this in the can for a while now that also have needed a review. Either way, we're now at 57 films for Gary Daniels, three away from joining Dolph in the 60 Club--and joining Dolph as the only stars to have as many films as they have years on the planet--and he's still the only other member of the 50 Club with him. I don't know how much the lack of Daniels has been my fault though. If you look at his IMDb bio, Repeater just came out on Tubi, so I can get that one in; but The Gardner is still only available to rent, Astro wasn't that great and is one I'm reviewing just because it's Daniels, and then he has a couple more religious films, which I do plan to do at some point since I've already done one of his others, but how do you make them a priority when there's so much else out there. All that to say, we'll get Daniels in the 60 Club, but Dolph my still put some space between them for first and second most tags all time.

And with that, let's wrap this up. As of this writing, you can stream this free on Tubi here in the States. That version is the Hong Kong release with English subtitles I believe. There's also an American cut with dubbed voices that may be more your speed, and I think that may be on Amazon. No matter how you see it, this is a fun one that you'll want to check out. And also you'll want to check out the conversation I had about this with Scott Murphy on his podcast All 90s Action, All the Time. If you haven't already, you can subscribe to it on your favorite podcatcher.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103950/

And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, Holtman Arms, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Young Rebels (1989)

This is one I did on the podcast back in August, episode 105, with Jacob Gustafson of the Awful Awesome book series, and I've had it in my queue to review all that time. I guess there's no time like now to finally make it happen. In addition to us, this is a Superfecta Film, as Comeuppance, The Video Vacuum, and Bulletproof have all covered it before as well.

Young Rebels has neither youth nor rebellion, but rather is an Amir Shervan joint about a guy, played by Jon Greene (as Johnny Greene) who has a down-on-his luck brother that's into a mob boss for a lot of dough. To settle the debt, Greene agrees to fly a helicopter to pick up some guys in Mexico for the mob boss, but when that goes south, the mob boss, as mob bosses are wont to do, decides he wants his revenge, so he starts by killing Greene's brother. Turns out he messed with the wrong guy, so Greene gathers up some friends, including Tadashi Yamashita, to take the mob boss, and the mob boss's son, Robert Z'Dar, down. It's going to be a blood bath--or maybe just an extended shootout and extended strip scene bath, but a bath nonetheless.

This is pure Shervan. All of our late 80s action movie excess is run through Shervan's Iranian filter and reflected back at us. How long should a strip scene go before it crosses from sexy into uncomfortable? Shervan has no idea, American guys seem to spend hours in these places, so why not make it as long as possible? And does seeing a sweaty doughy man responding to the strippers make it more uncomfortable for the viewer? Why would it, don't American men go to these places with other guys all the time? What about the shootouts taking place in late 80s finished basements, known at the time as "dens,"--before we had to give everything cute names like "man caves"--how long should those be? I mean, Americans like action and they love their guns, the longer the better, right? And to that point, who cares how good the dialog is? Does it even need to make that much sense? It makes sense enough to me, that should be all that matters, right? While this doesn't have the all out classic level of ridiculousness that Samurai Cop does, for the kind of movie this is, it hits all the right spots.

We last saw now DTVC Hall of Famer Robert Z'Dar back in October when we did his induction post, which was also an Amir Shervan film, Killing American Style. Like that one, this was a bigger role for Z'Dar, which let him do more. The problem here was, part of that doing more was watching a woman do a strip tease with a long necklace of pearls that she drags through parts of her body that maybe she shouldn't have, and Z'Dar has to react to it like he's into it. There is no real face someone can make to show they're into it that doesn't look ridiculous, especially on camera, which means Z'Dar was already working uphill before he even agreed to do that scene, but he ends up making it more cringey for us the viewer. The question is, where do we go from here with Z'Dar? He does have some stuff on Tubi and YouTube, but the reality is, a lot of it is two or three notches below where we usually go with all the stuff that's available now. There are a couple though, like Red Line and Double Blast, which our friends at Comeuppance have already covered, that I think we need on here, so this definitely won't be the last we see of Mr. Z'Dar.

We're now at three Amir Shervan films on the site, and I slot this one between the other two, right after Samurai Cop and before Killing American Style. It's a fascinating filmography though, where he's an established director in Iran, then is forced to come to the US after the Iranian Revolution, and while the next generation of filmmakers there are, despite the restrictions put on their work by the government, a few years out from putting out some of the best stuff in the world at that time, Shervan is giving us what are objectively some of the most off the wall low-budget actioners ever. As we get into the later part of the 90s, in Iran we get Kiarostami's Taste of Cherry, Makhmalbaf's Gabbeh, Dariush Mehrjui's Leila--and Mehrjui was actually a contemporary of Shervan's before Shervan left Iran--and Majid Majidi's Oscar nominated Children of Heaven--and even before that, in 1992, one of my favorites, Nargess, directed by Rakhshan Bani-etemad, all while Shervan is giving us Samurai Cop and Young Rebels. It's really fascinating to consider these two tracks in parallel, that we have a set of directors who are the darlings of international cinema working in the country Shervan was forced to flee, while he's struggling to put together some schlock actioners that he thinks are what Americans at that time wanted. What we get isn't maybe something worthy of the Criterion Collection, but it's fun just the same, making it a short but sweet legacy in the DTV action world.

Our hero is played by Jon Greene, and when we look at his filmography on IMDb, it's a lot of "police officer," "police detective," or "police sergeant"--in fact, we've seen him before as "Officer Baylor" in Crack House. This was his one time to shine as the hero, the problem was, I think in Shervan trying to push the "young" element in the film, he ended up making him into the guy I used to see in the convenience store on a Friday when I was growing up who definitely looked like he was onto cooler and better things than me and my friends who were loading up on junk food before a night of video game playing. Was that guy really about do something cooler than that though? When I finally got to be his age, I learned that life generally wasn't that much cooler, that maybe finishing every level in Super Mario 3 without warping was better than getting wasted and having a hangover the next day, and now it's even worse, as guys that age post on social media what they're doing to try and make it look even better. At least that guy back then, or me 10 years later, didn't need to worry about making everything look better to keep up with the Joneses on Instagram, didn't need to worry about how our sneakers looked, if our T-shirts had designer logos on them, if the place we were at was more of a destination than what our friends were posting. No, that guy in his mullet, dirty high-tops, and faded jeans was living his best life before we coined horrible terms like that and needed to hashtag it on our social media posts about what we were doing. 

Finally, as I mentioned above, parts of this film take place in the finished basement, or den, of the house where they were filming. When I was in high school, a friend of ours had one of those finished basements complete with a bar and a bathroom, and he used to host big sleepovers with five or six of us on a weekend. We could sneak out the backdoor to smoke weed, or go to get late night food, often the friends with cars letting them roll in neutral to avoid waking up his parents before they started the engine. Nowadays, that den would be called a "man cave," the dad wouldn't let his son use it for sleepovers, and Ring cameras would patrol the backdoor so no one could sneak out. Were we "young rebels," or just kids in a small town in Maine who were looking for something to do? And to go back to the previous paragraph, we couldn't wait until we were old enough to have our own places where we could smoke our weed and come and go when we felt like it. The problem, as I'm sure you know, is your own place comes with bills, which means you need a job too. Now we don't even need to sneak out to get weed, I can take a bus to New Jersey and get gummies legally--and if I snuck out at 1am here in Philly, I don't know what kind of unsavory characters I'd run into, but I can order my Taco Bell through Doordash so I don't need to sneak out to get it. Here's to you 90s den and all that came with you, you were one of the good ones.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Here in the States you can stream this free on Tubi. That's your best bet. It's not quite Samurai Cop, but it will anchor your Saturday movie night well enough. As the guys at Comeuppance said, they don't make 'em like this anymore, and I agree with them that that's not a great thing.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2394099

And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, Holtman Arms, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

One Shot (2021)

This is one I watched last year while I was house sitting for my sister and brother in-law, during my mini-Adkins fest, which was featured in DTVC Podcast episode 101, aptly titled "Adkins Fest," a solo episode I did last year where I covered this and three other Adkins films. In addition to us, our friends at Bulletproof have covered this as well.

One Shot has Adkins as a Navy SEAL who, with his team, is escorting Ashley Greene to a secret military base where a suspected terrorist is being kept. The thing is, he knows about an attack that could kill thousands, so Greene wants to bring him back to the US and get him to talk. The problem is, he's already being tortured by Ryan Phillippe, who runs the base, and that has his fellow terrorists scared that he may already be talking. So said terrorists load up a clown car with hundreds of men, and lay siege to the base. Now it's up to Adkins and his men, against all odds, to fight through all these guys, get the terrorist to the chopper, and get him to the US. Will they succeed? Also, this film is done in all one continuous scene, made to look like one continuous shot, like an extended action version of the Spice Girls video for "Wannabe."

This isn't horrible, but I think it's hamstrung by the one shot device. In a short I think it could work really well, but for 96 minutes, we need cuts to other things happening. We also need cuts to individuals. Ryan Phillippe says something bad, I need a cut to Adkins's face to see him roll his eyes or something. I think it was clever the way they tried to mitigate that though through the one shot device, I guess I just don't know why I need the mitigation, right? Was there a contest to see who could do the best one shot action film? This is like the guy who wrote a novel without using the letter E. Maybe director James Nunn just wanted to see if he could do it, and he did, so in that sense it's successful. One of the other issues people had was the clown car aspect of a military truck showing up with some terrorists, and somehow that truck turns into hundreds of men. That's the kind of thing that's forgivable if you have some crazy PM Spiro Razatos action-directed 90-minute action fest, but here, where a lot of the action is just shooting at each other and we're hamstrung by the one shot device, I can see why people called that out--plus the one shot device in and of itself is saying the film wants to be taken more seriously, and as such something like a clown car effect will be given more of a side eye. Overall, I think this is a solid, fun actioner, kind of squarely in the middle of what you'd want from an Adkins flick.

As of this writing I still haven't seen John Wick: Chapter 4--almost 3 hours in the theater with no intermission means I probably won't see it until it comes out on streaming--but I am excited to see what Adkins does in that film. Here he's just the solid presence we've grown to know and love, and that really carries this thing more than the one shot device. I kind of pulled a fast one last fall when I reviewed Close Range during my Hall of Fame posts, only to be using it to induct Isaac Florentine, but now that we're at 25 films and counting for Adkins, I think his induction this fall is almost a fait accompli--I mean, do we want to force The Asylum Automatic Induction Rule at 30 posts for him? It's bad enough that we'll be doing it for Danny Trejo. One interesting thing is his output has slowed a bit. That may be due in part to the pandemic, but it makes it easier for us to keep up. For example, this is only one of two films he had come out in 2021, the other being Castle Falls. In 2020 he had 4, and in 2019 he had 5. And if he's going to be doing more big screen stuff like John Wick, it'll be even easier to catch up. By my count, I see about 11 films of his we could review on the site, which would put him near the 40 Club if we did them all. Again, probably a sign that we need to get him into the Hall of Fame sooner rather than later.

Director James Nunn has worked with Adkins before, on Eliminators and Green Street 3, of which I've seen the former, and I liked that film better than this. Yes, that one had the classic Adkins story trope, child kidnapped and he has to fight to get her back, but the action, especially between him and Stu Bennett, was great. And maybe that hurt this film more than the one shot device, the lack of a great baddie, because the one we had was sufficiently villainous bad, but he wasn't Stu Bennett charismatic bad, if you know what I mean; and to be honest, Adkins, though his presence carried the film, his character wasn't anything spectacular either, more just a one-note special forces soldier who's only better than your Chad Michael Murray or Jesse Metcalfe in a Willis Emmett-Furla-Oasis flick by virtue of it being Adkins. But maybe this is where I'm being hard on this movie and Nunn, because this isn't an EFO Willis actioner, it is more inspired than that, and being inspired is something we've seen less of over the last 15 years or so of DTV action. For that I think we can applaud Nunn, he's trying to give us something unique, and in that respect I think it worked.

We're now at 4 Ryan Phillippe films here on the site, which I hadn't realized we had that many, but as I looked at them, I remembered reviewing each one, I just needed to click on his tag for a reminder of them. Unlike Jesse Metcalfe or Chad Michael Murray that I mentioned above, Phillippe has made the transition from teen heartthrob to action guy much better, and he works well in the role he has here, dick federal guy giving Greene a hard time, but who can also get shit done. In looking at his IMDb bio, I see that he has some other stuff we can review, but not a lot. It doesn't look like he's leaning into these kinds of roles as much, and is doing things that are slightly bigger and more nuanced. That probably means we won't see him much more on here, but also with those few that this won't be the last time we see him. It'll be interesting to see if they work as well as he did here.

Finally, the clown car effect in this film brings up an interesting question: what can a DTV action film get away with as far as verisimilitude? I think really it all depends on how great the action is, how great the hero is, and how many iconic moments we have. Also, how serious are they trying to play it. The obvious one is the one guy beating up a bar full of baddies. We assume one guy, no matter how skilled, wouldn't be able to do that, but if the action is choreographed in a way that's exciting, we'll go with it. Another big one is the baddie who has endless resources, including an endless supply of goons, which is what we see here with the clown car effect. Sometimes it's ninjas, which work great because you can recycle stunt people for them and no one will know. In the 90s we always loved the beefy guy in a black suit who was just waiting for our hero to knock him out, or even better, spray him with uzi fire so he can shimmy to his death. The thing is, if you're putting out a schlock low-budget actioner, all of these things are seen as charming more than things we'd ding the film on when we're discussing it. When you put out a film that's all one shot though, you're looking to give the film a level of credibility that say a PM actioner or a Corman-produced Philippines romp wouldn't have, and as such, the clown car effect we get here is less charming and more something we'd give an eye roll to. When you want the film to be taken seriously on that level, it's more important to get those other parts right.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently stream this on Hulu, so if you have that subscription you're good to go. I think this is worth checking out, especially if you're an Adkins fan. It's not his best of his recent ones, but it does the trick.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14199590

And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, Holtman Arms, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Operation Seawolf (2022)

This is one I rented back in December when I had a discount from my cable company. I figured that would be it and I'd review it here, but then it appeared on Tubi and Ty from Comeuppance and I decided to take advantage of that for the podcast, so he watched it on there and we discussed it on our episode titled "A Dolph and Hotch UnSub with Grillo Cheese," because we covered this and Shadow Wolves with Hotch from Criminal Minds. Anyway, we now covering it for the site too so we have it here.

Operation Seawolf has Dolph as a WWI sub commander who now, in the closing days of WWII, is sent on a mission to attack America's homeland. He gets a new sub, which is under another command, and now that he's taking over, they're not so sure they want to follow him. At the same time, Frank Grillo is giving orders from a chair in an office in the US, and he's telling Hiram A. Murray's anti-sub ship to find and take this submarine out. Will our man Dolph prevail? And should we be rooting for him since he's a Nazi?

This was actually good. More a drama than an actioner, but also a lot more Dolph than you'd expect from the cover--again, perhaps the fact that he's a Nazi may have meant we couldn't have him front and center on the cover. And they do attempt to mitigate the Nazi thing by having Dolph be someone who's against Nazis but wants to do his duty for his country, plus by having Hiram Murray's all-black unit being the one hunting them down. I think they do a better job with the former, but unfortunately they don't develop Murray's character and his crew enough to make them enough of a factor. What makes this all the way through is Dolph's performance. It's fully invested, and involves a lot of screentime, the latter of which is something we haven't from him in a long time--maybe since 2016's Don't Kill It as far as his DTV work. The Dolph performance combined with the ability to screen it free on Tubi makes this a definite watch.

We're now at 67 films for Dolph, with one more left in the can, 4Got10. Unlike Seagal though, who we finished up recently, Dolph has other ones coming up that will keep us busy before we need to dive into ones like Small Apartments or Seal Team or even Sharknado 5. The thing is, most of his new stuff involves him taking on smaller roles, which makes sense at this stage in his career, but something like this where he plays a mature character whose story is anchoring the film is a nice change of pace. Yes, the screens I took show him looking haggard or falling asleep, which might make you think this is more silly than serious, but it works, and it works because of Dolph's performance. As we make our way to getting him into the 70 Club, we'll probably see more smaller good roles, so when we get something more robust like this, we need to hold onto them like grim death.

We're firing up the Grillo again for the second time on our site. This is no Boss Level, what we have here is primarily a sit down role, where from time to time he stands up and uses a pencil to mark things on a map. He's supposed to be a WWII Commander, but he has a 2020s haircut and nicely sculpted modern five o'clock shadow. That's okay though, I'd rather have Grillo doing this role than anyone else, and the haircut and five o'clock shadow aren't as bad as Mickey Rourke's cowboy hat in War Pigs. We do have some more Grillo in the can, so this won't be the last time we fire up the Grillo, but it'll be interesting to see how much of his stuff we get on the site with all the other names we need to get to. He's a lot of fun, even in a small role like this, so even if we only see him every six months or so, it's better than nothing at all.

Ty and I remarked that perhaps the most surprising thing about this after the size and quality of Dolph's role, was the fact that we had an interesting sub movie! Most of the time DTV sub movies turn into the dreaded sub slog--you know the type, "excitement" by repetition with multiple scenes of commanders looking off somewhere with grim expressions on their faces saying "fire," while young male supporting characters push some buttons and look into some periscopes, while footage of torpedoes cruising through the water head toward a target as we're supposed to be watching with bated breath for something to happen. Where this works is the story is more compelling, and Dolph's performance makes it even more so. Then when we get action, more of it is above ground than below, which also helped. When you've been doing this as long as we have, eventually you see everything, and a sub movie that's not a slog is now one we've finally seen.

Finally, as we've been doing, we'll give Dolph another paragraph due to the volume of films of his we've covered on the site. Unlike Seagal who has a couple films in development, but no idea when they're coming out, Dolph has two films slated for release this year, plus what looks like three more DTV flicks and three big screen flicks coming after that. I don't know that he'll continue that pace, but we know he'll hit 70 this year, and if he keeps pumping out a few films a year, he could hit 80 in 2026--if we're still writing the site then. The thing is, his influence and ability to move the needle hasn't slowed much, meaning when he has something new come out, we need to prioritize it over other stuff we might have in the can. So not only does he have more then ten films between him and the person with the second-most films, Gary Daniels, but there's no way for him or anyone else to catch up when I'm a position where I need to review Dolph's new films before anyone else's. It's a massive legacy, one that will probably never be surpassed.

And with that, let's wrap this up. As of right now, you can stream this free on Tubi. Between the story and Dolph's performance, that's more than worth it. And if you haven't yet, check out the podcast episode where Ty and I discussed this, episode 120 in the archives, "A Dolph and Hotch UnSub with Grillo Cheese."

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13429928

And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, Holtman Arms, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!