The Most Dangerous Game (2023)

I first heard about this on a podcast I listen to, Knowledge Fight, which does a fantastic job making fun of and poking holes in Alex Jones's show. When they open their show, they do what they call their "bright spot," and one of them mentioned this, and that it had CT, one of my faves from The Real World. The fact that it had Casper Van Dien was great, and Ty from Comeuppance and I included it in a podcast episode, 126, "Casper Van Double Feature." In addition to us, Chris from Bulletproof has covered this one as well.

The Most Dangerous Game has Judd Nelson as a hunter going into Alaska to hunt bear, along with Bruce Dern, his son (CT), and another guy. Their ship blows up.Dern dies, and the other three end up stranded on an island, only to be found by Casper Van Dien and his large, mute, servant. After some back and forth in his lair, we find out Van Dien is a hunter too--of people! He kills Nelson and the other guy, and sends CT out to survive, along with a brother and sister duo he'd been keeping there for a few weeks. The thing is though, CT is a WWII vet, and he's more than up to the challenge of taking Van Dien down!

Maybe one of the biggest surprises of the year, this film was fun! And not only were Ty and I in agreement on that, according to his review Chris at Bulletproof enjoyed it as well. Yes, it was low budget, and yes, we've seen this story however many times before, but sometimes a simple story on a small budget is all you need. Van Dien was fantastic as a German-accented scene-chewing baddie who reveled in his baddie role; and CT, despite being a novice at this, was very solid as the hero. Then we had Nelson as CT's dad, which was a stretch based on ages, but Nelson is always fun; Tom Berenger plays a guy who's been surviving on the island that CT and the sister encounter, and with him playing that part, how could you not love him? And finally, Bruce Dern is there to pad out the opening, which, to me is a very creative form of padding--the Emmett-Furla-Oasis crew could take notes on that one! Free on Tubi, 95 minutes, simple story with enough intrigue and tension, and fun performances, what more do you need?

We love Casper Van Dien at the DTVC, and Ty is a big fan too, which was why we did the podcast episode featuring two of his films. I think this one gets to the heart of why we're big fans, because he plays this baddie with such aplomb, but yet he keeps him so bad that we never have the Destro Effect, we always want to see CT beat him. This movie doesn't work without that, and I think with someone new to acting like CT, Van Dien's able to do that heavy lifting so CT can be more low-key and not have to stretch himself too much. This is only Van Dien's 9th film on the site, which seems like a really low number, so I need to get more of his films up--though I'm not sure if I'll do the other one we did for the pod episode, Red Prophesies, because he and everyone else is dubbed in that! He has a ton of stuff out for me to review, so we can get that tag count up, and this film is a reminder of why we need to do that, because Van Dien is one of the greats.

Like many in my age group, I grew up on The Real World, from Eric Nies in New York, to what I have as one of the best seasons of a TV show ever, season two in LA, to Puck making a mess of things in San Francisco. I dreamed of being on the show back then, but as I got older, there was a part of me that knew I wasn't cool enough, and part of me that couldn't imagine being filmed all day like that. CT on the other hand, who is about my age, decided to sign up and audition, and look at him now. He was part of a series of guys from Eastern Massachusetts--or "Massholes" as we Mainers called them when they came to our beaches in the summer and clogged up our roads with their bad driving--I say that, but I have many relatives in Eastern Mass, as my grandfather was from Somerville, and his siblings and cousins populated areas like Malden, Saugus, Danvers, and Methuen. But anyway, CT was one in that series of these near-Bostonians, starting with David in Seattle--who I believe CT is related to or grew up near--brash, "r" dropping, ready to kick yah fuckin' ass if you get smaht with them, but out of those CT was the Boston-iest, starting with his season in Paris, where he pretended that he sent the flowers one of the ladies received from her friends, or telling Ace that his hair was "on fi-yah" when he spiked it up with gel, or just punching trust-fund American exchange students on the street. He was made for The Real World/Road Rules Challenge, one of the few Real Worlders who could handle the hardened Road Rules kids, and quickly became one of the show's stars, making him as big as luminaries like Puck in the history of the show. But the question is, can he act? He's working on it for sure, but that presence that makes him so much fun on The Challenge works as a fantastic counter to Van Dien's over-the-top baddie. He has one other film on Tubi that Ty and I will have to do at some point, but I'm also excited to see his career grow. I need more CT DTV films in my life--he's on fi-yah!

Unlike CT who's new to acting, Judd Nelson has been around for a while. What I didn't realize is we hadn't reviewed one of his films since we did The Day the Earth Stopped in 2010, and this is only his third film on the site, the other one being Steel. I'm not sure how that happened, I figured I'd have stumbled into something else like this where he had a smaller supporting role, but apparently not. He is 21 years older than CT, so he could possibly be his father, but could you imagine him playing Bender at 25 with a four-year-old CT at home? And I think it's that and St. Elmo's Fire that makes me think he's younger, when he's older than James Spader, and guys like Vincent D'Onofrio and Tom Sizemore. Like Van Dien, he does a great job of supporting CT as a new actor, even affecting a slight Mass accent, which sounds like it shouldn't be a stretch since he's a New Englander too, but he grew up more like James Spader, not quite going to school with JFK, Jr., but close, so he wouldn't have naturally had an accent like CT does. I think the bigger stretch is the goatee, but like Van Dien, though in perhaps a more subtle way, he was digging into playing a type in this to make the film more fun, and, again, I think this works more because of it. Hopefully it's not another 13 years before the next time we see him here.

Finally, this was killed in the IMDb reviews, but part of me wonders if that's a good thing? A lot of times low budget flicks like this get as many people associated with the project or friends and family of them to give it 10s, so when I see a bunch of 10s I get suspicious. This didn't do that, the same way that an Albert Pyun would never do something like that, and perhaps maybe that's a good sign. Sure, maybe with low budget flicks when you see bad reviews they're accurate, but more often than not, people who kill something like this on IMDb are expecting it to be something bigger than it is, and don't grade it on a curve to account for budget and other limitations it might have going in; but at the same time, people who can't let those bad reviews sit and need to get their friends and family to inflate the numbers are hurting their credibility just as much. I get it, if you put in an earnest effort to make something you think is solid, warts and all, seeing someone shit all over it has to be frustrating. Hopefully though there are enough people out there that get what you were going for, and those opinions matter more than someone who just wants to kill you on a movie website--which it sounds like we have here.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can get this on Tubi here in the States, and I think based on the number of other places that has it streaming for free, it's probably available outside the US. This is a fun DTV flick that will get you to the church on time.

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

Eliminators (2016)

This is one I'd wanted to do ever since I watched the two I Am Vengeance films with Stu Bennett--who is listed as his WWE name, Wade Barret, on the tin for this one, but either way, I just figured Adkins and Bennett would be great. The thing was, it bounced back and forth between free streaming and rental, and I kept missing it. Finally I was able to include it in my Adkins Fest (which was covered in a podcast episode of the same name back in June of last year, episode 101). In addition to us, Chris at Bulletproof has covered this as well.

Eliminators has Adkins as an American living in England (?) who kills two home invaders, and is held by the police in protective custody to potentially face charges. Turns out he was in witness protection there, as a crime boss that he took down wants him dead. The twist: the crime boss is his father in-law and grandfather to his daughter. To kill him, the crime boss calls in the best, Stu Bennett. At the same time, the crime boss is trying to get Adkins daughter, so it's a deadly game of cat and mouse. Will Adkins make it?

This is good enough to get you to the church on time I think. The whole Adkins playing an American in England makes no sense, because he's a Brit, but director James Nunn, who we also saw in One Shot, covered in the same Adkins Fest, also had him play an American, so maybe he learned that from Isaac Florentine and is leaning into it. Anyway, on top of that, we also have the same plot device of Adkins being a widower single dad who has a kid that gets kidnapped, though to be fair to this film, it looks like they did it first, but can it be helped that I'd seen Legacy of Lies and Seized before it? On the other hand, the action is solid, Stu Bennett is a great counter to Adkins's hero, someone that really presents a legitimate, sizeable obstacle for him to overcome, which I think is important for how an action film plays out, as we get some real peril for our hero. That unfortunately brings us back to how much fun it would've been if Adkins had been able to play a Brit to see them both interact as Brits, but I digress, sometimes you just gotta take a good actioner when you can get.

We last saw Mr. Adkins when we did One Shot back in April, and in that review we mentioned that his output had slowed a bit. To give you a sense, when this film came out in 2016, he had 7 other films released, while in 2023 he has had John Wick 4, and then a film called Lights Out is listed as in post-production and expected to come out this year. I think that's okay, because it gives us a chance to catch up for him. We're now at 26 movies covered, but by my count, we have another 8-10 we could do of his, include Hard Target 2, the last of the Adkins Fest ones I need to do. 36 wouldn't be a bad number, but looking back to 2020 when he was doing 4-5 films a year at a minimum, we thought he was in the running to catch Dolph's record, and now it's probable he won't catch fellow Brit Gary Daniels even, let alone Dolph. What we get here though, and what we often get when he's front and center on the tin, is a solid performance, which is something I always appreciate--I just wish fewer directors would make him be an American! Follow Dolph's lead in Castle Falls, or Jesse V. Johnson in every film they've worked together on, they get that part right.

Another great Brit in this is Stu Bennett, and unlike Adkins he's allowed to play a Brit. The only other time we'd seen him on here was in Ross Boyask's I Am Vengeance films, where he was fantastic, and I think he does as great a job here as the baddie. According to IMDb, he's been doing more for the WWE--which is where he goes by the name Wade Barrett, the same as his name on the cover here--but he does have a project in pre-production called Code Name: Azrael with Ross Boyask, which also has Gary Daniels, Don "the Dragon" Wilson, Cynthia Rothrock, Eric Roberts, Matthias Hues, and Dominique Vandenberg listed. How amazing does that sound? I know we're supposed to be talking about Eliminators, but I can't wait to see that movie! And as far as when we might see Bennett again, other than his WWE stuff and some TV appearances, he has one other film as far as I can tell, Fanged Up from 2017, so if that ends up on streaming we may make it happen.

As we mentioned above, this is now the third time we've seen the Adkins as a widower dad, which makes it feel like an American 60s TV show. I tried to find where it started, and I don't know if it was The Rifleman in '58, that seems like the earliest one, and then you had The Andy Griffith Show and My Three Sons that came out in 1960. Barbara Billingsley had to be worried every time her agent called--"Is this when they finally decide to kill me off and make Ward a widower too?" I was thinking it was the same as the adding a new kid device that 80s sitcoms used, only we also still had Full House that went the widower route as well, so it wasn't like the TV industry abandoned it entirely. Other shows employed it with adult kids, like Sanford and Son and Frasier, but it's not quite the same as a dad raising his kid or kids on his own. For whatever reason, in that tradition, people making movies with Scott Adkins have decided to use it as a plot device for him. If they're going to keep doing it, I hope at least one film has at least one scene where he's sitting in a den in a cardigan sweater smoking a pipe.

Finally, as we talk about streaming versus physical media, this film might be the best example of the struggle there. It's been yo-yoing between free streamers like Tubi and rental-only on places like Prime. As of this writing, it had just been clipped from Tubi after spending months on there. It's interesting, because some, like Abduction, which I haven't seen yet, seem to live on Tubi and never go away, while others, like this, you have to catch them when they're there. Physical media proponents would say this is why you need to buy it on DVD, because you'll always have it, and while I agree with that for the most part, my wife and I live in a small two-bedroom apartment, so we don't have the room for a massive collection, and I don't know that I need a DVD copy of this in a collection anyway. I know from J. Horton on one of his YouTube videos, often when a movie's been out for a while rental is the way to go, because one rental gets you more money than maybe 10 streams, and that makes sense. It's possible too that this was only on Tubi due to the bump they were expecting from Adkins being in John Wick 4, which might play into decisions on why something goes to Tubi for a short period or not. If that's the case, he's doesn't have a big budget production on the horizon, so other ones that I've been waiting to return like Incoming so I can get images for the blog may be shelved to rental for the foreseeable future.

And with that, let's wrap this up. While this is only available as a rental as of this writing, if you're going to see it I think it's best to wait for it to yo-yo back to free streaming. It's solid, but not enough to spend $3 on a rental when there are so many free things to watch out there.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4587366

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

The Best Man (2023)

This is one I'd been looking to do for a bit, the only problem was Comcast upped the price on its new releases from $5.99 to $7.99, and the cap to take advantage of their $1 rental deal was $5.99, so it wasn't just a difference of $2 for me to rent this, it was actually $7! Anyway, it finally dropped down to $5.99, so I could make it happen for $1.

The Best Man is about a mercenary group, that includes Luke Wilson, Brendan Fehr, and Dolph Lundgren, who is sent to rescue the daughter of a rich, beady-eyed, be-mulleted and be-goateed MAGA dad. One of their buddies dies in the process, but also Luke Wilson falls in love with the daughter. Fast forward, and this rich, beady-eyed, be-mulleted and begoateed MAGA dad has bought out a resort casino for the weekend to host their wedding, which is attended by Fehr and Dolph. What could go wrong? Remember that member of their team who died? He ain't so dead anymore, and now the poor kitchen staff is going to get it. MAGA dad, his daughters, and our trio of surviving mercenaries? They do the whole Die Hard thing and prevail; but the poor kitchen staff, they're the ones who get it.

This movie suffers from a few issues. Number one, the first 45 minutes is wedding set-up. It's the most useless waste of padding I've ever seen. The only thing worse than attending weddings is having to sit through people going over the set-up of weddings before them, or people we don't care about showing up and other people we don't care about greeting them hugs and "it's so good to see yous." It's like how 50% of all the AITAs on Reddit are some kind of Millennial wedding drama, like who should pay for what, or why so-and-so doesn't want to participate in some kind of thing the couple wants everyone to do. It's insufferable. Number two, keeping to that AITA theme, other than Dolph and Brendan Fehr, there's kind of an ESH--everyone sucks here--vibe to things. Luke Wilson makes the call to leave their buddy behind, and he's also definitely not a fan of his reverse shots and is mentally firing his agent in most scenes; we have, like I said, a beady-eyed, goatee'd, mulleted MAGA as the dad, and though he doesn't espouse any MAGA beliefs, he's a pair of Ray-Bans shy of being every guy in those MAGA profile pic collages, and it's like, the poor kitchen staff gets slaughtered, but he lives on to be able to, what, make more videos of himself shooting up Bud Light cans because they did an ad campaign with a trans influencer? His other daughter, played by Scout Taylor-Compton, is kind of a dud of a character who we find out is the CFO of her father's company, despite not displaying any intelligence or business acumen whatsoever, so why are we rooting for her? But then we have a baddie, who, despite being somewhat sympathetic because his team left him behind, is too one-note-y to be fun, plus he only shows up after the 45-minute mark. And number three, this employs a multiple flies in the ointment approach to the Die Hard paradigm, which doesn't work, because the whole point of the Die Hard paradigm is it's one person against all odds. All that to say, Dolph is great in this, for what we get of him, and I liked Brendan Fehr as well. Is that enough to get us to the church on time? Maybe, maybe not.

68 Dolph movies, two away from 70. And at this point in his career, he's still got it enough to be value-add to something as sauteed in wrong sauce as this was. Also, after Operation Seawolf, this is another recent outing where he plays an alcoholic, which he seems to enjoy leaning into. The thing is, during the Die Hard thing when he meets up with Luke Wilson's bride-to-be, played by Nicky Whelan, we just know he's going to take care of business, and we're excited to see him do it. He's been doing this long enough, and he has the presence to pull it off when nothing else around him is working. If you go to my Dolph List on Letterboxd, I've put this in the middle of the bad half, and I think that's about right. With almost 70 films of his covered here, they're not all going to be hits, but at least with this one he's enough of a hit in it for him to make it work better.

Unlike Dolph, who has been on here 68 times, this is only our second time seeing Luke Wilson, the first being Idiocracy way back in July of 2007. Also unlike Dolph, who has the presence to pull a role like this off, Luke Wilson was too Wes Anderson-y for me to believe him as a mercenary--and to be frank, I don't know that he cared if I bought him in that role or not. If we'd had more of him in the film, it would've been fun to see the juxtaposition, but we lose him for large portions, and when we see him it's like "oh, I forgot he was in this!" Considering we also have Gasoline Alley on Hulu, it looked like maybe he was going to be staying at the DTV Hotel a little more, but looking at his bio, he's doing more indie things and more respectable Netflix productions, which means, not only do we see him in this not caring that he's coming off too Wes Anderson-y, but there's also a sense that in every scene where he has to act with MAGA dad he's mentally firing his agent for getting him stuck in this film. What we really needed is he and Dolph to be in a buddy romp film crossed with a Die Hard paradigm, instead of this film that we got.

Right now this only has 11 critic reviews on IMDb, and none of the big names, like Bulletproof or Action Elite have covered it yet. In the past, a new Dolph flick would've gotten everyone rushing to cover it first, some even getting screeners to get it before someone like me who would've been waiting for it to end up on Tubi. I don't know what to make of that. Are we seeing a change in this kind of thing? Are companies not sending out as many screeners as they did in the past? Is there even a sense that early buzz hurts more than it helps? I looked at Dolph's four most recent films, this, Come Out Fighting (which we haven't done yet as of my writing this), Operation Seawolf, and Section 8, and other than that last one, which has 19 critic reviews, none of the others have more than 11--and then compare all four with Castle Falls, which had 28 critic reviews. One thing that I think may be causing this, is blogging and website reviews are becoming less popular, as podcasts are now king. I wonder myself if I hadn't gone on hiatus right as I was starting my podcast in 2014-2015, if we had been growing the podcast all of those years in between, if we'd still be posting reviews like this as well? Probably, but you never know.

As we've been doing, with Dolph at this high a movie count on the site, he's getting a second paragraph in his reviews--though I should point out I really liked Brendan Fehr in this, and he's now two-for-two, because I also really liked him ten years ago when we covered him in the Christian Slater film Stranded. Anyway, the two films Dolph needs to get to 70 will be easy enough, as we have one from the past, 4Got10, ready to be reviewed, and then eventually Come Out Fighting will drop in price like this did. After that, we have some that he wasn't in much, like Small Apartments, Fat Slags, and Sharknado 5, or something like Seal Team, which is a cartoon about seals that he lends his voice to. There is the completist in me that wants to get all the Dolphs in, but another part of me that thinks getting him to 70 and then waiting for Wanted Man to drop will allow other names that could use more films, like Fred Williamson, more room to get those in. After Dolph's 68, next in line is Gary Daniels at 57, then Art Camacho at 48, so Dolph's record is safe for a long time with or without a Small Apartments or Sharknado 5. 

And with that, let's wrap this up. As of right now this is available to rent on various streamers. Unless you're a Dolph completist, I don't even think this is worth a free streamer, let alone a rental. Between the 45 minutes of wedding padding, the slaughter of innocent kitchen staff, and the ESH vibe, it's not much of an addition to the Die Hard paradigm.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13400336

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

Beach Fever (1987)

We're at our 1200th post on the DTVC, and I was trying to think of something that would work for this milestone. 1200 isn't a huge number, but it's milestone enough. Then I thought about this one from the late 80s that had Kato Kaelin. It was one I tried to record when it was on USA Up All Night, but it didn't happen, so it's a moment of redemption to get it done now, and thought the nostalgia factor might make it worth reviewing for number 1200.

Beach Fever has Kato Kaelin as a beach bum who meets Sake, a Japanese immigrant who is as many bad Asian stereotype jokes as you can imagine. He and Kato team up to find out definitively how to hook up with women, and in the process Kato meets a nice girl, Sandy, and Sandy has a younger brother who likes to run experiments. One of his inventions is a cologne that makes women unable to control their lust for the wearer. When a pimp and a muscle head get wind of this, they capture the brother, make him whip up some of the formula, and the pimp uses it to make women work the street for him. Can Kato and Sake find them and stop them in time?

Seldom are things worth the wait, and this was one of those ones that wasn't, but just the same, it was so all over the place that it was at least enjoyable as a bad movie to some extent. The dialog was a mess the place, sometimes people talked over each other; we'd have musical interludes when you least expect them, with women singing on the beach; and sometimes the film just didn't make any sense. It was like someone asked ChatGPT to make an 80s Beach Romp with Kato Kaelin in it, plus bad Asian stereotypes, and the Spanish Fly trope, and this is what we got. The other issue of course is how gross and outdated the Spanish Fly thing is--it's essentially normalizing and making light of removing consent, kind of the way Romantic Comedies often normalize and make light of stalking. There isn't a gun or another form of force, nor is there anything slipped into a drink, but the Spanish Fly is coercion nonetheless, as the women don't have any say in who they're hooking up with. By the same token, as problematic as that part of the film is, the Kato Kaelin element combined with how low quality this is does make it an odd entry in any beach romp marathon you might have.

Here is the story around this film for me, and it may be one you've heard me tell before. In the late-90s I was looking through the TV Guide for what films were going to be on Up All Night that weekend, and I saw this listed, along with Kato Kaelin's name, in the 3am block. Watching it might have been enough, but I need to have it, the only problem was, we had a really cheap VCR that only went up to like 13 channels, so to record anything on cable, like on the USA Network that was in the 30s, we'd need to hook the cable box up to the VCR, and turn the VCR to channel 3 to run the cable box through it. What this meant was we couldn't program it, or if we did, the cable box needed to stay on the channel we wanted to record. I figured, 3am, I was fine, no one in my family would be watching TV at that time. On the contrary, I got up at 4:30 to see how it was doing, and found my dad watching Headline News. That was back when Headline News was just a 30-minute version of CNN that ran on a loop, and he would watch the same news stories over and over. I was heartbroken, but there was no way to tell teenage Matt that 25 years later there'd be this thing called YouTube where people would upload movies like this, or that the myriad ones he did tape would either be taking up space in a landfill, or taking up space in bins in his parents' basement. So here I am at 44 making good on the disappointment that teenage Matt endured.

You may notice that the Kato Kaelin tag has more than just this film. That's because when I looked at his IMDb bio, I discovered he'd been in two films we've reviewed, Cyborg 3 and Revamped. Not only that, but he did extras casting for Bad Blood aka Viper and Red Sun Rising. The Kato Kaelin aspect of the OJ trial was one of the more fascinating of the whole thing. Professional House Guest, trips to McDonald's in the Bentley, this mop of Gen X hair combined with the Gen X blank look on his face while on the stand--though I discovered on IMDb that he was born in '59, so he was the one teaching Gen Xers to look like that! The idea that that guy was in a movie that was on Up All Night was too fantastic for words at that time, but now, almost 30 years from the Bronco Chase, it all existed in a different time, a time where we put tapes in big box-like devices and recorded things off of TV on them, a time when USA showed things other than Law and Order reruns and Fast and Furious movies. A time where a guy like Kato Kaelin can be a star just by being a professional house guest to the right famous double-murderer. He was viral before we had the term, no vocal fry or up-talk, no unboxing videos or selfies, just him on the stand looking like someone off the cast of Singles. It's kind of American Dream-ish, right down to the double homicide.

The 3am block of USA Up All Night was a bastion of fascinating cinema, and even without Kato Kaelin, this was exactly the kind of film you'd see there. Another one I remember was Kill, Kill, Overkill, aka Twisted Fate, a schlock fest directed by the late Donald G. Jackson, who was best known for Hell Comes to Frogtown. We also had Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death. In middle school and early in high school, before I discovered alcohol, it was usually sleepovers or a Saturday night by myself, and I'd usually be fading during the 1am block, and may wake up in the middle of the 3am film. Later when I'd drink on the weekends, it was making sense of what I was seeing on the screen while the room was spinning. If it was anything good, I'd need to track down the TV Guide to see what it was, and that was if the TV Guide had the correct listing. But then, how would you find that movie again to watch the whole thing? Video stores often didn't have these, they were too obscure even for them. And even if they did, how would you ask for Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death? Bikini Carwash or Vice Academy made sense, they littered the comedy sections, and the guy with the ponytail behind the counter would wink at you when you rented them; but "hey, do you have this beach movie that has Kato Kaelin in it?" would get you first a "do you mean the OJ guy?" and then a shake of the head with a dismissive laugh followed by a "no way man." But it was something we had, whether it was Up All Night, or the 3am movies on Comedy Central--where I saw another Bill Maher classic, Pizza Man, which I found in a bin at my parents' with the label "Matt's stupid Pizza Guy movie" on it, written by one of my siblings who at one time had been going through all the tapes we had to see what was on them--or the 2am block on TBS, after Road House was done, which was usually a nice Andy Sidaris flick. Now we have all of these films at our finger tips to watch whenever we want, which is nice, but it was also fun back then not knowing what we would get if we were up that late.

Finally, what milestone post would be complete without me making a McDonald's reference, but look at what the kid is making: it's a Shamrock Shake! I just happened to be up in New England for St. Patrick's Day this year, and made sure I got one. I remember during the Pandemic, St. Patrick's Day 2020 was right when things were the worst, we had lockdowns, people cheered for nurses instead of attacking them and shouting inane conspiracy theories at them, and we sprayed our packages with Lysol--not those packages, the ones from Amazon--anyway, at that time, going to McDonald's was out of the question, so I got the stuff to make my own Shamrock Shakes, and they were actually better. The thing is though, while they take more work to make on my own, we're also in a bit of a McDonald's desert post-Pandemic, with all of the Center City, Philadelphia McDonald's closed, and us without a car I'd have to take a bus or walk ten blocks to get to one--and that's not the most fun 10-block walk either. All that to say, if they don't open any new McDonald's between now and next St. Patrick's Day, I'll be like this young man here, mixing my own Shamrock Shake.

And with that, let's wrap this up. As of right now, you can either watch this on YouTube, or you may be able to find the DVD version that has a picture from Kaelin testifying at the OJ trial on it. I'm not kidding, it exists, there's a picture on IMDb, it's pretty fantastic. And with this being a milestone post, I'd be remiss if I didn't thank all of you for your support. We started this thing back in 2007, and I had no idea what it would be, but now, despite a four-year hiatus, we're still going strong, so here's to 1200 more!

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092624

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

Made Men (1999)

Back on DTVC podcast episode 113, "Two Non Bonds," I had Will from Exploding Helicopter on to chat about two films that had former James Bonds in them, and this film, featuring Timothy Dalton, was one of the two we chose. If you haven't checked it out yet, you can find it in our archives, it was a fun conversation.

Made Men has the great Jim Belushi as a former mob guy who stole $12 million and then testified against his boss, so before anyone could find out where the money was, he was put into witness protection. The film starts with some of the mobster's hit men coming to take Belushi away, but when they bump into local sheriff Timothy Dalton, things start to go haywire, and only get worse when Belushi escapes, and the hit men chase him to meth cooker Steve Railsback's, shack in the woods. Now it's a series of shootouts and double-crosses, with character's like Michael Beach's not exactly being who they seem, and all the while Belushi's character vacillates between guy you want to love, and guy you can't stand. In the end, who will end up with the money?

This is a fun late 90s romp, essentially made fun by Belushi's performance, plus Dalton's as the sheriff. Belushi seems to make his character unlikeable by design, and just as we think we may like him, he does something bad. Dalton is just chewing scenery and loving every minute of it as the small town sheriff, but he's also a little sadistic too, which makes it more intriguing. Juxtaposed with all these characters, we have Michael Beach as something of a straight man, because, if we didn't have him, we'd have no one to relate to, and he helps to anchor us among all the craziness. All in all this is just a fun 90s organized crime romp.

Back in October of 2021 I did Royce on Will's Exploding Helicopter podcast--if you're not subscribed to that too, you should be--and on it, I discovered, I kind of like Jim Belushi. Why is that so shocking? I wondered myself, and when we watched this, I enjoyed him here too. In my head I decided it was just that he played a standard, doughy, white, Boomer dad on national TV, something safe and fun for middle America in flyover country, and I associated him with that image. But then for this review, I went back to my K9: PI review, from all the way back in August of 2007, and read this that I wrote then: 

"I've never understood the whole Belushi thing. I don't see how he not only gets work, but network sitcoms, and not only network sitcoms, but ones that people watch enough so that they stay on the air beyond the pilot. I asked my friends, to see if maybe it was just me, but it seemed unanimous that people think he's a tool. I'm sure as a dude in real life he's probably not so bad, but as an actor and funny man, it just ain't there. In fact, it's beyond not there, it actually hurts a little."

Did I say that? K9:PI was a rough one, and at that time, when the blog was just starting, I tended to go heavier in my opinions, and Belushi took the brunt of the pain I endured for that one. We all grow as people though, and 28-year-old me is different from 44-year-old me, and my tastes have changed. Like when I was a kid and I hated pickles and mustard, and now I need both on my burger. Jim Belushi is my pickles and mustard now I guess.

Timothy Dalton was the reason I was watching this though, not Belushi, and he didn't disappoint either. I knew he could do comedy, like when he did The Beautician and the Beast, but in that he was more of a straight man, and this was more of a scenery-chewing fun character. I haven't seen License to Kill in probably 30 years, and I've never seen The Living Daylights--though it has a great theme song by A-ha--so I think they could both use a rewatch. Interestingly enough, only The Living Daylights is part of a streaming package I subscribe to, HBOMax, while somehow License to Kill isn't part of any of the major ones--according to Letterboxd it's on Paramount+ on Apple+, which apparently is different from the Paramount+ I subscribe to, because it's not on that. How are they not all in one place so you could do a marathon of them? Especially for someone like me who's barely seen any of them? Come one streamers, get your act together.

Surprisingly, of all the names in this, Michael Beach was the one who was already tagged, having been in two movies on the site, the last almost ten years ago to the day of this posting on June 19th of 2013 when we looked at Assassins Tale as one of the screeners we received from Kevin at MTI video at that time. When we first see him as part of the mobster's goon squad coming to take Belushi, we know from experience that Beach generally isn't in a movie with a role like that, and sure enough we find out there's more to him as the film goes on. As I mentioned above, what he does best here is plays the straight man, or anchor to keep us grounded while we're dealing with all these cooky characters. Near the end, when he has Belushi at gun point and he wants the money, he loses his patience, the same way we as an audience have lost our patience with Belushi's character and his constant lying and messing around. It was one of those performances that I didn't realize I needed until after I'd watched it and was discussing the film further, but it was very necessary, and Beach did great with it.

Finally, when you go to the IMDb page for this film, under film connections it mentions three sequels that, when I looked them up, seem to have nothing whatsoever to do with this film. I looked up the director of those three films, Steve Rahaman, thinking maybe he did a film called Made Men too that this was confused with, but he didn't. It's one of the more fascinating things about IMDb, that you can edit the site on your own, so is this a case where a filmmaker is attaching his films to another film in the hopes that people will come across his films? Or did some random person just add those films to the connections page thinking they belonged together. It worked for me, because I was curious enough and looked up the films and Rahaman's other work. IMDb is a bit like the Wild West, but we movie bloggers and reviewers rely on it for so much. Look at Don "The Dragon" Wilson, who had films listed on his IMDb bio that were subsequently removed. That brought his tag count down, and has delayed his entry into the 40 Club; and it lowered his exploding helicopter film count on Will's site. I guess to some extent, we need to take what we see on IMDb with a grain of salt.

And with that, let's wrap this up. As of this writing, you can get this on VHS, DVD outside the US, and, the way I did it, on YouTube. As you can see from my images, the YouTube version is only so good, but it'll get you to the church on time. And if you haven't yet, check out the podcast episode I did with Will that covered this, 113 in the archives, "Two Non Bonds," where we discuss this and the Pierce Brosnan film Live Wire.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0175877

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

Do or Die (1991)

As we continue in our goal of getting all of Andy Sidaris's LETHAL Ladies films on the site, we have this entry from 1991, which has the distinction of being the only one from Hard Ticket to Hawaii on to not feature the great Rodrigo Obregon. Somehow we'll make it through, and with Pat Morita, James Lew, and Erik Estrada in the cast, that always helps.

Do or Die has Pat Morita as evil villain Kaneshiro, "Kane" for short, who is not happy that our heroes Dona Speir and Roberta Vasquez keep disrupting his criminal plans in previous outings. So when he corners them outside a charity luau, you'd think he'd just kill them and call it good. But then we wouldn't have a movie, so instead he has one of his goons, James Lew, attach a tracker to Speir's watch, they send the ladies on their way, and then he has six pairs of mercenaries that will each go out to kill them. Why not send them all out at once so they win with their superior numbers? Again, if they did, we wouldn't have a movie, so they go two-by-two, while Speir and Vasquez round up the gang, including a newly minted hero Erik Estrada, and they head down to Dallas and Louisiana to draw out the baddies and take them down.

As an entry in this series, this may be one of the weaker ones, but the floor on this series is so high that that still makes this better than most DTV actioners you'll watch, especially when taking the Pepsi Challenge with anything from the 2010s or 2020s. Morita is a fantastic villain, there's a good mix of action and boobs, and all the fun you'd want from one of these is there. Even if we don't have Obregon, we do have the rest of our favorites, including Bruce Penhall, Cynthia Brimhall, Michael Shane as our Abilene who can't shoot straight, Richard Bumiller as the smooth-talking agency man, and Richard Cansino and Chu Chu Malave as our bungling assassins. I think where this might be weaker, is the plot is a bit contrived--again, why is Morita not just killing them, but also, when we have the assassin teams, they're always outnumbered by our heroes, which could be a good statement on how a strong team--a "family" per se?--that sticks together can overcome pairs of baddies--but it felt off because it always felt like the baddies were at a disadvantage, which removed any element of peril. All that said, that just makes this a weaker entry for me, not a bad time overall, and this still delivers on the fun and entertainment you want from a Sidaris LETHAL Ladies film.

Another area where this had a bit of trouble is, when they made Erik Estrada a good guy, it was hard to parse him probably wanting it to be his film, and the fact that these should be Dona Speir's films. She does have her own showdown with one of Morita's baddies at the end without any help from Estrada, but he gets more of the big action scenes, which takes some away from her as the main lead. This is Speir's fifth film in the series, and even with Estrada getting some more scenes, there's also still the overarching sense that this is another one of Speir's films, and that's something that I feel like can't be understated. Recently I recorded a podcast on Olga Kurylenko with Will from Exploding Helicopter (episode 127, coming June 13th, so make sure to look for it!), and I think Kurylenko is probably above Speir in work as far as a female action lead, but Speir holds a special place as a woman in the late 80s/early 90s helming an action franchise when that wasn't being done by anyone else in the US other than Cynthia Rothrock--you may give me Linda Hamilton, but Michael Biehn is the lead for the first Terminator, and Arnold the second. The LETHAL Ladies films after Picasso Trigger are built around Dona Speir as the lead, and, again, I don't think that can be understated, and even with Estrada taking some of the limelight, there's still no question she's the lead. 

Erik Estrada is back, but instead of being his previous baddie self--who was blown up by Speir in the previous entry--he's now playing a new character. It's an interesting idea, especially as I'm looking at the Fast and Furious films as part of my DTVC Extra series that I'm running on the off fortnights where I don't have main podcast episodes. Vin Diesel's approach is to take villains and turn them into heroes in later films, which can be a stretch with someone like Statham's character where he's killing people close to them. What if they did it this way, if Statham just came back as a new character? It worked here, but could it work in something like the Fast and Furious franchise? Probably only for people who watch Sidaris films, right? This is it for him in the series though, which means it could be some time before we see him again here, but we'll see if we can't at least mix in some Light Blast or Night of the Wilding. As much as I say this should be Dona Speir's film, back in the 90s seeing his name on the bill when this was on cable would have been a big seller for me, and it was great that they were able to bring him back for a second film like this.

Going back to the Fast and Furious films, these films kind of follow a similar tract, two or three decades before Vin Diesel created the model. From Hard Ticket on, it's always about teams, working together to take down a horrible baddie, and while they may not be as culturally diverse as the crew in the Fast and Furious films, they were early in spotlighting females in lead roles--and actually unlike the Fast and Furious films where women are always supporting roles, this one goes from Speir as the lead to Julie Strain as the lead. And with this cast working on multiple films together, that sense of family bleeds through the same way Vin Diesel has it bleed through in the Fast and Furious ones. I'm sure if you asked Sidaris, he'd have loved to have had the budget Universal gives the Fast and Furious films, but based on the success of the LETHAL Ladies films, maybe when Fast Five came out we should've expected the series to be that successful too, because Diesel was working from Sidaris's playbook, only with more special effects and fewer boobs and buttockses.

Finally, I learned from this film that Dallas, TX and Shreveport, LA are less than 3 hours away from each other. It's one of those quirks about America, unless we've really been in an area for a period of time, we often don't think about how the states are connected in certain areas, or how far one place is from another. Like in my head, Dallas is further in the center of Texas, and I never think about the fact that Louisiana borders Texas, even though if you gave me a blank map of the US I could name both states and see that they border each other. It's a similar thing for me in Philadelphia, people often don't realize how close we are to New York City and Washington, DC--both cities are closer to me than Dallas is from Shreveport. This was not one of the ones that I saw when it came out--much later I saw it on TBS after 2am, that beautiful classic Sidaris opening credit sequence like comfort food for my alcohol soaked brain as I'm eating leftover junk food and trying to keep the room from spinning, I was in no position to question how the team could drive from Shereveport to Dallas so quickly--but had I seen it in middle school or high school, the geography lesson would have been invaluable. Who said Andy Sidaris films can't be educational?

And with that, let's wrap this up. As of this writing, you can catch this and all the other LETHAL Ladies films on Tubi here in the States. While it may be one of the weaker entries, it is still a lot of fun, and delivers in ways that a lot of modern films can't.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101744

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

Project Eliminator (1991)

This is one I watched ahead of a podcast episode I did with the guys from Comeuppance Reviews almost a year ago to the day that I'm writing this post. We were discussing our top five Frank Zagarino films, and as you can imagine, any discussion like that would include this gem. You can check that out, episode 100 in the archives. In addition to us and Comeuppance, Chris from Bulletproof Action has covered this as well.

Project Eliminator is essentially a sequel to the Zagarino film Striker, where he's back as John "Striker" Slade. We start with our hero is getting a ride from a trucker out in the Southwest somewhere, wearing a Canadian tuxedo and sporting a fantastic man mane. He has the trucker let him off and calls a buddy, David Carradine, who has work for him. While he's waiting though, he needs to take out some Point Break-esque Former Presidents robbers, because we can't wait that long for some sweet Zags action. After Carradine picks him up he finds out his job: the creator of a flying laser has been kidnapped by some terrorists that are forcing him to remake it for them. Those baddies include classics like David "Shark" Fralick and Brett Baxter Clark. They don't stand a chance against Zags.

This is a pretty sweet deal. First off, while I prefer my Zags with a crew cut or a nice surfer cut, the man mane was fantastic too. With that, the Zagarino alone would be enough to recommend this, but what we also get is the rare 90s Engaged Carradine. He's yucking it up with Zagarino, playing the piano in a bar, wearing a cowboy hat and a bolo tie. This is no sit down role. This is no Karate Cop, where we last saw him back in 2021, serving up some jackrabbit stew to Ron Marchini, he's actually a fully fleshed out part of this film. On top of that, we get some recognizable toughs, like David "Shark" Fralick, and Brett Baxter Clark--who interestingly enough played a character named Shark in Shootfighter II. If you're going to have a fully man-maned Zags in a Canadian tuxedo, you need a be-five-o'clock-shadowed Clark with nicely poofed and feathered hair giving him dirty looks as a counter. And no, this isn't a Members Only jacket Clark has tucked into his pants, it just looks like it.

We haven't seen Zags since he was inaugurated last fall, which is a shame that we lost track of him that much. We're now at 15 films for him, which normally we'd say isn't great, but for someone like him that we're just starting to push to get more films up for, it's not horrible. Here we get the whole package, and as I mentioned, I prefer him with the shorter hair look, but to get this once in a while isn't horrible. I think I have a couple more that I watched for that podcast last year that we can cover, plus he has some on Tubi that I can grab, so we should see him again soon. One thing that struck me about this one though, is how good he is, but for the late 80s/early 90s, which was such a deep reservoir of great DTV action, he and this film are definitely a few tiers below. I don't know that we ever get back to that level of great DTV film again, but what's great is we can enjoy it now on various streaming services. Getting him to 20 by the end of the year is probably a stretch, but I think if I make more of a conscious effort to get more of his stuff up, we should see him a few more times before the year is out.

As I mentioned above, we last saw David Carradine in 2021 with Karate Cop, which happened to come out the same year as this one. His performances couldn't be more different. I looked and we've also reviewed two others he had in 1991, the Daniels flick Capital Punishment, and the Cirio H. Santiago joint Dune Warriors--also when I wrote the Martial Law post that was listed as '91, but it's now been moved to 1990. That gives you a sense of the fast and loose nature of Carradine's 90s DTV career, which, to be honest, is a large part of what got him into the Hall of Fame. Quantity over quality, but on this scale where you get something like Capital Punishment where his scenes feel grafted in, Karate Cop where he only has one scene that involves him selling this disgusting looking jackrabbit stew in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, and something like this where he's a full participant. It was like the old video store, you went in and never knew what you were going to get--like when I rented Dune Warriors thinking it had something to do with Dune--but you kept going back, because you never knew when you were going to get a gem like this.

Because this came out the same year as Point Break, we can't assume either was ripping off the other by using Former Presidents robbers, it's an apparent case of polygenesis. The other thing here is that the Former Presidents are only in it for a short scene, and then that's it. I don't know that we needed a man-maned Zags in the original Point Break, but the idea of a DTV sequel would've been pretty sweet. At this stage we could still do it, only with Zags in the Busey role, and maybe you mix it up for the Keanu, like Amy Johnston or Natalie Burn. Iko Uwais actually looks young enough that he could pass for Keanu's age at that time. You could do like a whole series of Point Break DTV sequels maybe. I'd be up for writing the scripts if someone wants to give me a call...

Finally, this was shot in Albuquerque, NM, which is a place I've never been to before--need to get out there and see the Isotopes play, right? I have been to New Mexico before though, when I visited Four Corners, which, for people outside the US, is the only place in the US where four states touch. There's a whole park on Navajo land dedicated to it, and they have stations set up in each state where you can buy souvenirs. I have a shot of me in a push up stance with a foot or hand in all four states at once. If you're curious, as of this writing I've been to 28 of the 50 states. I read somewhere that the average American has been to 17, but only 2% of all Americans have been to all 50. If you look at the ones I've been to on a map, there's a hole where West Virginia is, as I have all the states around it, and then a huge chunk in the center of the county other than Texas is missing too, including Illinois where Chicago is. What constitutes a visit for me is leaving the airport or getting out of the car off the highway, which means Wyoming counts when my buddy and I shot up 25 to Cheyenne and hit a McDonald's, visitor center, and truck stop off one of the exits; but Illinois doesn't, despite me changing planes in Chicago multiple times, and New Jersey, which I'd ridden through countless times, didn't officially count for me until my wife and I went to Atlantic City in 2014. One area where I'm hampered in my quest, is I don't drive, and a lot of a Americans get a bunch of states on cross-country drives--even something like Four Corners requires a car, which fortunately I had my buddy driving while we were in Colorado on hiking trip. Unfortunately this means I may leave the planet without becoming one of those 2%, a sad reality that I either have to accept, or I need to pack up my bindle and hope a freight at the local train yard here in Philly--which if you're wondering, yes it's within walking distance to me, or I can take the bus some of the way there.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Here in the States you can currently get this on Tubi, which is a good deal. It's a fun Zagarino actioner with the rare Engaged 90s Carradine included. In addition, you can check out the episode where the guys from Comeuppance and I discuss Zagarino, episode 100 in the archives, "Zig-Zagarino."

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0148639

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