Steel Frontier (1995)

This is one I discussed on episode 3 of Jon Cross's PM Entertainment Podcast, which was a really fun conversation, and now we're finally giving it a review here. In addition to us and the PM Podcast, Chad Cruise at Bulletproof, Ty and Brett at Comeuppance, Outlaw Vern, Tom Jolliffe at Flickering Myth, and Mitch at the Video Vacuum have covered this as well.

Steel Frontier takes place six years ago, after the apocalypse, where the world is a big Mad Max-ish mess, and a horrible conqueror (Brion James) has gathered up a bunch of baddies and taken over all the peaceful tire farming towns in the LA County area. Is there any hope? Sure, as is often the case, a heroic lone drifter comes into town (Joe Lara). He starts off by joining the gang, and then does a bit of a Yojimbo move to get Brion James's gang to kill each other. Will he eventually succeed? And in true PM fashion, will he require a lot of explosions and car chases to do so?

This one jumped to number 9 on my all-time PM list (which you can find on the DTVC Letterboxd), that's how much I enjoyed it, and Jon felt the same way. This is PM doing the Italian late-80s Mad Max exploitation flick, but doing it in true PM style. The exploitation comes in the form of violence, with explosions and car chases, which is nice because we don't get the usual sexual assault or other sexual exploitation the Italian films liked to do. We get some great Joe Lara as the lead, Brion James is a fantastic baddie, and the addition of Bo Svenson as James's second-in-command was solid too. From there you get all the beautiful PM action goodness you expect when you see the PM logo on the spine of your VHS, including this massive chimney explosion that the IMDb trivia says is the largest PM ever pulled off--and that's saying a lot considering this is PM we're talking about! PM gets it right again, and we're all better for it.

Out of all the Joe Lara films I've seen--which isn't that many, he's only at 8 now on the site--this is my favorite. He's everything you want in the roguish, Western hero, and we can't wait to see him enter this town and take out James and all his baddies. Another place where this movie deviated from the late 80s Italian films is they didn't do the whole "hero captured and tortured by the baddies, then he recovers and gets his revenge" penultimate act, which was refreshing for me. While I liked Hologram Man better as a film overall, this is the better Lara film for sure, and it's too bad he didn't get more roles like this. By my count, we have 7 or 8 more of his films that we could review, and I don't know how many of those we'll actually cover because they look hard to track down, so he may top out at around 12 movies, and I think that's okay considering how good a job he does here.

PM is closing in on the 50 Club at the DTVC, we're only one away now, and this is one I probably could've used for that milestone, but I didn't want to wait on it too long after the PM podcast episode was released. That's okay, I think there are some great candidates for the big 5-0, there's no shortage of fantastic PM flicks. What makes this one so good, is it's their take on this post-apocalyptic/Mad Max subgenre, and they successfully make it the PM version, they never get away from what they were best at. In the PM Podcast episode, Jon interviews both Paul Volk and Jacobson Hart, and they give great insights on what made this work. Hart in particular talked about how PM didn't do sexual exploitation, that their "exploitation cinema" was the action, and they nail it, especially with two great chase scenes, and that aforementioned chimney explosion. When you see PM on the spine, or listed under company credits if you look a movie up after seeing the thumbnail on a streaming site, you expect a certain level of fun, low-budget action, and this one delivers on that in a way that exceeded even those expectations.

Part of why this works so well is the stunt team PM puts together. The stunt coordinator/second-unit director is Michael J. Sarna, who has done a bunch of other PM flicks--including my personal number two all-time from them, The Sweeper, where he was stunt coordinator under Spiro Razatos as action director--plus the David Bradley classic Hard Justice, and a personal video store mainstay of mine, The Perfect Tenant--which I can't believe I haven't covered yet! In addition to him, we have 50 Club member Art Camacho, and soon to be inducted 50 Club Member Cole S. McKay, plus "Broadway" Joe Murphy sans his stunt coordinating partner Red Horton. And as if all those names weren't enough, we have stunt legend Kane Hodder as one of Brion James's gang, though not credited as doing any stunt work. Guess with all the PM names they had they were able to let him take a break on this one! This is part of the PM magic, let these great stunt names do their thing, and the result is this high-octane alchemy that was the secret to their success.

Finally, we'd be remiss if we didn't mention Brian Huckeba's "Chicken Boy" role. As Jon pointed out, this was a kind of character that showed up in Ozploitation films that this movie is in the tradition of, and Huckeba goes all in on his performance. It just makes things that much more fun and memorable, and with low-budget filmmaking every little bit helps. When the guys at Comeuppance reviewed this, Huckeba commented on it, and if you listen to the PM Podcast episode, Jon interviews him in addition to Paul Volk and Jacobson Hart, and he gives Jon some great jewels when recalling his experience on set. It would be easy for Huckeba to look at this part as a one-off in his career, maybe something he shows his family 30 years later so they can all have some laughs, but the fact that he's still this enthusiastic about this part today is great to see. It's more fun for us to embrace it if the people involved are embracing it too.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently get this on Tubi, Prime, the Roku Channel, and Fawesome here in the States. That's a great way to catch this, but also if you see it in the wild on VHS, pick it up. And if you haven't yet, subscribe and listen to the PM Entertainment Podcast on your favorite podcatcher. Jon is delivering the PM podcast we've wanted for years, you need to check it out.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114537/

And if you haven't yet, check out my newest book, Nadia and Aidan, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

211 (2018)

This was originally covered on episode 192 of the podcast, "Nepo Babies," which we did with Will from Exploding Helicopter, and I figured it was time to get it up on the site, especially since we want to get more Cage on here. In addition to us, Mitch from the Video Vacuum has covered this as well.

211 is a collision course to wackiness type affair, where a gang of mercenaries who want money that's being held in a bank in a small Boston suburb--err Sophia backlot--happen to rob it at the same time that two local police officers, Nicolas Cage and his son-in-law Dwayne Cameron, are in the area with their teenage ride-along, Michael Rainey Jr., who is stuck doing this ride-along because he committed the offense of "going to a rich private school while black." All hell breaks loose, and it doesn't get any better when we have a secondary thread following an Interpol agent played by Adrian Mutu's ex-wife, Alexandra Dinu. Can Cage save the day, and the movie?

He was able to save the day at least, and as Meatloaf once said "one out of two ain't bad." This movie hits all the spots of bad 2010s DTV featuring a big, one-time Hollywood star. Convoluted plot? Check. Eastern European location doubling for a US town? Check. The one-time Hollywood star playing a grizzled something or other? Check. The daughter of said one-time Hollywood's star's character played by a thin young woman with long hair, who wears jeans and flannel shirts, and has a difficult relationship with said one-time Hollywood's star's character? Check. Younger son-like character along for the ride? Check. Baddies who look like they were pulled from a Vegas night club on the weekend of a UFC event? Check. After we tick off all of those boxes, what are we left with? One moment where Cage goes off, and one fun moment where his actual son, Weston Cage, who's one of the baddies, has his dad in his sniper scope, but unfortunately they don't do more with it. The only realistic element of the movie is the fact that a young black male would be caught up in the system in a predominantly white Massachusetts suburb because he was trying to defend himself from white bullies in his school, and that the police officers he's doing the ride-along with wouldn't bother to ask about it and just treat him like a felon--and to that point, the moment where Cage does ask Rainey Jr. what happened was probably less realistic, I can't see real police officers caring either way. The other thing is, there are a lot of threads that never go anywhere. We meet the bank manager (Millennium mainstay Velizar Binev), and find out it's his anniversary. Very touching, only he gets a bullet to the dome by one of the baddies, and that's it. Why are we meeting him then? And while it's fun to reminisce about early 2000s European football, why is Alexandra Dinu's character in this, except as an Adrian Mutu conversation starter--and I must confess, I didn't know she was his ex-wife, Will told us on the podcast, but it opens up all kinds of doors for conversation, all of them more interesting than this movie. So maybe that's the best bet here, watch this with some friends who like DTV movies and European football, and let the tangents fly once Dinu appears on-screen.

This is now seven Cage films on the site, which doesn't seem like a lot considering how much he has out there for DTV stuff. The reason for this is he doesn't really get into the DTV world in earnest until about 2014, and that was about when I started my unplanned hiatus. If you look in the archives, in 2013 I had 96 reviews, and then in 2014 it's all the way down to 9, and in 2015 7, and then nothing until I came back in 2019. In 2014 he starts pumping these things out, doing like 2 or 3 a year, and this film here is right in the middle of that. By my count, there are over 30 DTV movies of his we haven't done yet, which would make him an automatic Hall of Famer if we did them all. It's an intriguing thought, and had I not gone on that unplanned hiatus, he'd probably already be in, because I would've been reviewing films like this that whole time. The other interesting thing I noticed, when you look at review counts on IMDb, they've been going down over time for most DTV flicks. For example, Bruce Willis had Acts of Violence come out the same year, and it had 38 critic review, compared to this film's 46. Then fast forward to 2023, where Willis's last film, Assassin, only had 23 critic reviews, while two films for Cage that year, Butcher's Crossing and The Old Way, had 55 and 63 critic reviews respectively, and some of his newer ones have even more. The Cage appeal and fascination never quite dimmed like it did for Willis and others like him--take 2022's Savage Salvation, which only has 19 critic reviews, despite having Robert De Niro in it--and now that we're seeing a Cage resurgence, it'll be interesting to see how many more of these DTV flicks he does, or if this will be a career capsule of 10 years and 30+ films, of which we had some real stinkers like this one, and some real gems like Pig.

As I mentioned above, the theme of the podcast episode I did with Will was "Nepo Babies," and the one in question here was Weston Cage, though Nicolas Cage is a nepo baby himself, being Francis Ford Coppola's nephew. (The other film we did was Dangerous, with Clint Eastwood's son Scott, a film I'm not sure if we'll review on here.) I think part of the draw for Nicolas Cage with this movie was that he could work with his son, even if they don't have any scenes together, and I can't fault him with that. And to Weston's credit, he does well enough as one of the baddies--though I think the scene of him smoking should've been cut, he didn't look natural smoking at all. Why not have him eat a sandwich instead? It's interesting that I'm writing this as the world has chosen a new pope--and you may think that as an American I'm excited by the first American pope, but he was part of the priest abuse cover-up, and I feel like we all missed out on not having a pope named Pizzaballa, which is a sign to me that the Catholic church is still behind the times--but anyway, the term "nepotism" came from the practice of popes in medieval Italy promoting their nephews--and "nephews," aka kids they fathered when they were supposed to be celibate--to high positions, so they could then be popes themselves. We see it in a lot of society, but in the acting world it's more glaring I think. I mean, would Weston Cage be in this film if he wasn't his father's son? And while Nicolas Cage has proven to be one of his generation's best actors, even if he changed his name so it wouldn't look like he was riding his famous uncle's coattails, none of it hurt, and probably at least greased the skids a bit so he could meet and network with the right people. On top of that, Will brought up the fact that as a nepo baby, these young actors have a safety net other people breaking into the business don't have the luxury of. They're not waiting tables or taking parts in ads for IBS meds to get work. If you factor that element in with the unforgiving economy we have, we'll probably see more nepo babies as the years go on, and they may take over the industry, the way upper-middle class children have taken over journalism in the US, because they're the only ones whose parents could support them through the unpaid internships that are part of the early stages of a journalist's career.

We have a new tag, and a new almost 40 Club member! Dian Hristov is the stunt coordinator, and I recognized his name as a Seagal stunt double in Belly of the Beast, so I thought I'd dig into his IMDb bio. Turns out he's done stunt work on almost 40 films we've reviewed here on the site! This is in large part due to the fact that he works with Millennium Films, and we've reviewed tons of their movies. And it's not just Seagal films. A lot of Dolph and a lot of Van Damme too, plus Isaac Florentine--who also produced this film, which is why he's tagged here. When you look at our October line up, we have a packed Hall of Fame class already, and while with him almost in the 40 Club, we can't not include him, we're already inducting Cole S. McKay, so he may have to wait until 2026. This begs another question: why isn't Millennial Films in the Hall of Fame? They have over 60 tags, plus a bunch more that I haven't tagged because I stopped keeping track. The short answer is, I don't know, but at least we'll get Hristov in eventually. Unlike Camacho, McKay, and Razatos, who worked in the 80s and 90s, and made the 90s the greatest DTV decade ever, Hristov is part of the DTV world's shift in the 2000s, but he helped make that a fun decade, and seems to have done his darndest to make the 2010s a little better too, despite where the market was going at that time. Here's to you Mr. Hristov, you're one of the greats.

Finally, you know if I teased Adrian Mutu in the opening paragraph, I was going to dedicate our penultimate paragraph to him, so here we are. In the early 2000s when I first had my own apartment out of college, I added the Fox Soccer Channel to my cable package, which meant every weekend I could watch my Arsenal and however many other Premier League teams every weekend. That was when I was introduced to Mutu, who was playing with Chelsea in the early 2000s, though what I remember more wasn't him playing for Chelsea, but the Sky Sports simulcasts on Mondays on Fox Soccer, where they updated us on his various scandals. He then went to Juventus, was part of two scudetto winning clubs, and then had those titles subsequently revoked as part of the Calciopoli scandal. The thing was, Serie A wasn't broadcast on Fox Soccer until later in the 2000s, when he was with Fiorentina, which was when I remembered him more. It's a name I hadn't thought of in maybe 15 years, so to have a 2018 DTV movie I'm discussing on the podcast be the thing that brings him back up is fantastic--and the fact that it wasn't on an episode with Scott Murphy from All 90s Action, All the Time, where we're known for having tangents on European football--and in fact have discussed Mutu's countryman, Gheorghe Hagi on a couple of occasions--is even more astounding. And this wasn't a tangent Will and I were on either, he brought it up as a notable fact about the film, which is even crazier. You just never know where these DTV films will take you.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Currently this is on a variety of streamers here in the States, including Plex, Fawesome, and the Roku Channel, so if you're interested, you can check this out in one of those places. I don't know that it's worth it though. What is worth it is checking out the pod episode Will and I did on this, number 192 in the archives, titled "Nepo Babies."

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4976192

And if you haven't yet, check out my newest book, Nadia and Aidan, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Invasion Force (1990)

This is one we covered on the podcast, back in December on episode 191, with Chris "The Brain" Kacvinski from Bulletproof Action, and it was time to cover it on the site as well, especially considering we hadn't done any AIP in a while. In addition to us, Chris has covered this on Bulletproof, as have the guys at Comeuppance.

Invasion Force looks like it's going to be about David "Shark" Fralick kicking ass and taking names. Not so fast, cowboy, turns out this is just a movie that's being made, none of this is happening for real. As luck would have it though, Richard Lynch is in the vicinity training mercenaries for a plan to take over the local town, which would then lead to them taking over the whole country. As luck would have it for them, they have no idea a movie is being shot on the other side of the mountain, and when they happen upon the film's leading lady, Renee Cline, arguing with her boyfriend, who just happens to also be the film's producer, David Marriott (the Basher from Shotgun), they kill him, but she survives and escapes back to the set, where she tells the director (Walter Cox) and some of the crew what happened, and they decide to load up on all the live ammo they have, and use all their special effects know-how to take these baddies on. Will they survive?

This is another fun time from AIP. Maybe not at the level of a Deadly Prey--though I think this shows they were more self-aware than we may have though with that movie--it's still pretty solid, and has a lot to like. Lynch is exactly the scene-chewing lead baddie you want, and the fact that he plays this whole thing straight adds to its charm. Cline and Cox were also fun as the leads--love that as the name of a legal comedy about two lawyers that were married but now divorced, and have to keep the practice alive--or I guess just the name of a personal injury firm that you see billboards of on the highway, "Cline and Cox will fight for you!" Then there's all the little extras that add to the enjoyment, like the product placement, this time Anheuser-Busch, especially at the cast party with the massive Busch beer can that looked like something from MTV Spring Break; or that the Basher from Shotgun is in this, and gets a great death scene. The fact that something like this is available on Tubi is a great thing.

This is our 11th AIP film on the site, which lags well behind other studios, like PM, Cannon, Imperial, and even The Asylum. A big part of that is how a lot of these films weren't as available when I started the site, but also they don't have the number of names those other studios have had. Essentially, we're reviewing AIP movies because they're AIP movies. Yes, you get names like Richard Lynch or DTVC Hall of Famer David Carradine from time to time, but compared to the names those other studios can give us, many of which are Hall of Famers, AIP sometimes gets lost in the shuffle. Even with Hall of Fame recognition, this October we have Imperial going in, because when we tagged them we discovered they had over 30 movies, so AIP will have to wait another year, but hopefully in that time I'll do a better job of getting more of their films up, because they have so much great stuff.

Speaking of finally getting a tag, David "Shark" Fralick somehow hadn't been tagged to this point, so we took care of that, which makes this his 15th film on the site. I haven't done a count of which first names are represented the most, but you'd be surprised how many Davids we have, it's right up there with Michael and William/Bill/Billy--I mean this film also has director David Prior and producer David Winters tagged. Anyway, Fralick is one of those guys that we see in a lot of these, and while he may not be the guy you seek out--even though he is on the cover of this one--he's one that when you see his name in the cast, you feel like it's got a bit more weight to it. I'm sorry it's taken me this long to tag him, but if any film would be worthy of him getting the tag, it's this--even though his cover is a bit of a red herring, and his part is more in line with the size of the parts he usually gets.

That 15 for Fralick is one more than the film's main baddie, Richard Lynch, a name that's been up for Hall of Fame consideration almost since we started the site, and it seems like every year he gets pushed back. I don't see that changing this year unfortunately, as we have slots already taken for Cole S. McKay, the aforementioned Imperial Films, and Kathleen Kinmont. He's such a fantastic baddie, and this film reaffirms that--as if you needed any reaffirmation, but it's nice to see it anyway. He's almost exactly playing the part he played in Invasion USA, except he wasn't Russian in this. That could've made it even more fun, but he was plenty fun enough. Exactly the baddie you want, every time, and here is no different.

The word "meta" gets thrown around a lot. I looked into it, and technically the term has been around since the late 80s, but it wasn't until later that it became a popular term. For kids reading this that are used to using the term, this movie is definitely "meta" before anyone would've really referred to a movie as "meta." Can you still call it "meta" when it was made before people called things "meta?" It's like "Yacht Rock," music that we called "Soft Rock" or maybe "AM Gold," was called "Yacht Rock" by some Gen Xers, and the term took off among a bunch of kids who like to call things "meta." The thing is, language is always changing, and this is just part of that. For example, I saw the word "nonplused" in Nabokov's Pnin the other day, which means "surprised" or "perplexed," but here in the US there's been a "nonplussed" definition shift to meaning "couldn't care less," probably because people initially confused the meaning, and enough people perpetuated the confused meaning that it's now become the meaning. It's how language evolves, except in my novel Chad in Accounting I used it with it's official, intended meaning, and now people who only understand its meaning as the new, US definition-shifted one, would be confused, as they would if they read Pnin. What I'm trying to say is, no, in 1990 this movie wasn't "meta," but due to changes in language, it's "meta" now, whether we like it or not, because that's "literally" how language evolves. (Like what I did there?)

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can get this on Tubi here in the States. I think that's a great way to go, though if you see this on VHS at a good price somewhere, it would be a fun addition to your collection. And if you haven't yet, you can check out the podcast episode I did with Chris from Bulletproof, episode 191 in the archives.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0238314

And if you haven't yet, check out my newest book, Nadia and Aidan, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

The Baby in the Basket (2025)

This is a film we covered on the podcast on two separate occasions, once before the film was made, in April of 2023 on episode 122, where we had Nate Shepka and Tom Jolliffe on to get the word out on the kickstarter; and then more recently back in February when the film was released, in episode 197, we talked with the guys again to go over highlights and some of the backstory behind the making of; and now we're finally here giving it a proper site review. In addition to us, The Guardian has covered this as well, so we're in great company!

The Baby in the Basket follows a nunnery located on an isolated island in Scotland during WWII. The nuns themselves all have various issues they're working through, which would be enough to make a great reality show, but not a movie. Enter an abandoned baby in a basket left on the nunnery's doorstep. One of the nuns, Agnes (Amber Doig-Thorne) thinks the devil is afoot, and she wants to kill the baby; while the Mother Superior (Maryam d'Abo) thinks this is her one chance to be a mother in the more literal sense. Who's right? And who will be left alive for it even to matter?

As I said on the pod episode, I really enjoyed this. It feels like old Hammer Horror, but where a Hammer film would've focused on Nathan Shepka's caretaker, as it would've probably been the Oliver Reed part, here he's more of a supporting character in favor of the nuns, which makes it a more modern take on Hammer Horror that I appreciated. Black Narcissus is another one that comes to mind, and even though it's not a direct sequel, Maryam d'Abo's Mother Superior is like what Sister Clodagh would've been doing years later after she left the Himalayas. I don't know that any of this works though without the great job from the cast. Beyond turning in professional performances, it felt like the actors were really enjoying the craft of acting, which for me as a viewer makes the experience more enjoyable too. That's what I want from a fun, Saturday night movie, and this delivers.

This is the second Shepka-Jolliffe collaboration we've covered here, after When Darkness Falls--which we've also covered on the pod, both on episode 122 when we talked about this, and 103. I don't know that I can say I like one better than the other, because they're both pretty different. This is more traditional horror, while When Darkness Falls is a slow-burn thriller. But they both worked for me, and if I extend that out to Renegades and Cinderella's Revenge, two others that Jolliffe has written that we've reviewed, and Lock and Load and Dead Before They Wake, two other films that Shepka has directed and produced (Dead Before They Wake he co-directed with Andy Crane, who co-directed this as well), that's six movies that run the gamut of styles and genres, but all movies I enjoyed. Their next one is in production now, Death Among the Pines, and I can't wait to check that one out too. If these other ones are any indication, it should be another fun time!

One of the standout performances for me was Michaela Longden, because of how her character's story arc went. She comes in and establishes herself as the nun who's troubled and questioning her faith, then she leaves the film to go back to the mainland, and comes back for the last 45 minutes or so while all hell is breaking loose. She really had to make a mark in those early scenes, because we then have all that time in between to get to know everyone else, and as I said above, everyone in the cast did a great job, so it would've been easy to lose her, but those opening scenes, especially opposite Maryam d'Abo, definitely left that impression. It was a different role from the one she had in When Darkness Falls, where she was the lead and the film centered around her struggle. I think her performance also matched the Hammer Horror energy that the film had overall, but, again, with Tom Jolliffe's writing taking it in a different direction, she could do more to affect the outcome than just be the dangerous wild card who's having a crisis of faith.

Among the other performances, I loved the juxtaposition between Amber Doig-Thorne's Agnes and her "fully believe in God and believe that God is talking to me" version of faith, versus Maryam d'Abo's Mother Superior and her "adherence to rules and discipline" version of faith, and how the two clash as the film goes on. There's also the humanity in d'Abo's Mother Superior wanting to be a mother after sacrificing that for her faith for so long, and it's that one time she's slipping in her discipline and adherence to the rules that proves her undoing. I think from there, I liked how Elle O'Hara's Valerie is caught between the two, she's used to the routine and structure of the nunnery, and when the baby comes and things start breaking down, her sense of self starts to go with it. That's a part most horror movies wouldn't bother fleshing out, she'd just be there to be killed off, so the fact that it was fleshed out, and she gave it life, was another touch that gave the film more depth. Finally, there was Lisa Riesner, who plays the young newcomer who doesn't speak, and dances nude in the courtyard in the middle of the night. To be fully game for a part like that takes courage--usually with the exploitation films we do here, when a producer says a nude scene was part of the "character development," it sounds dubious, but because she was game, and because of how the part was written, it actually did add to the film in a substantial and not gratuitous way.

Finally, I mentioned above that Shepka's young caretaker was inhabiting an Oliver Reed-type role. The way this would work in a Hammer film in the 60s, is the young hero ends up in the remote location, where evil is afoot, and he needs to find a way to escape. Maybe Peter Cushing or Christopher Lee is lurking in the background. I was trying to think how many Hammer films were woman-led like this one, and the best I could think of was Die! Die! My Darling!, where Stephanie Powers is that Oliver Reed character stuck in a dangerous, isolated situation, and Tallulah Bankhead plays the evil Christopher Lee/Peter Cushing type. Usually in a Hammer film a scenario with a group of women would go like this: Shepka's character shows up at the nunnery, and then learns the nuns are all evil, murdering temptresses, and the question is, can he escape before it's too late? And I think having Shepka's character feel like it would've been Oliver Reed's enhanced the Hammer vibe, while at the same time focusing on the nuns showed that this was also breaking from some Hammer traditions. It was bringing Hammer into the 21st century, and as the kids say, I'm here for it.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Here in the States you can watch this on Tubi or rent it on Prime. When I think of a Hammer Horror on a Saturday night, like on Svengoolie, this is a modern movie that fits that bill; but it also gives you a bit more, which is a credit to the work of the cast and crew. Speaking of which, Svengoolie is a repeat this week, so why not load up on snacks give this a watch instead?

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt26594761

And if you haven't yet, check out my newest book, Nadia and Aidan, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Darkness of Man (2024)

This is one we covered on the podcast, episode 194 in the archives, with Sean Malloy from "I Must Break This Podcast," and with Jean-Claude Van Damme and Cynthia Rothrock, we had to get it on the site eventually too, so we're making it happen now. In addition to us, Chris the Brain at Bulletproof Action has covered this as well.

Darkness of Man has Van Damme as Russell Hatch, an Interpol agent who was supposed to be protecting a witness, but when she's killed, he agrees to protect her son. Years later, said son is now a teenager, and said son doesn't get along well with either the grandfather who's taking care of him, or Van Damme, who acts as the guy driving him to school while living in an extended stay hotel. At the same time, the kid's uncle runs an organized crime ring, which is going up against the Russians in an all-out turf war. Will the son get caught in the middle? And if so, will Van Damme be able to protect them? Is this his chance at redemption after failing to protect the mother all those years ago? Oh, and isn't Cynthia Rothrock in this film?

When Sean and I were looking at Van Damme movies to cover, it was between this one and the two Kill 'Em All films, and Sean said he needed to do this one first because he'd already seen it, and wanted to cover it while it was still fresh in his mind so he didn't have to watch it again. And that pretty much sums this one up, it's a rough sit, and you don't want to put yourself through it again. Why? First off, it's long, 107 minutes. Second, we have a lot of moving parts, and to try and sort them all out, we have Van Damme's voice-overs. Third, there are random things that feel like they were grafted into the movie, like the fact that Kristanna Loken's character is a veterinarian. Finally, we have a lot of moments where not a lot happens. It's a recipe for a tough sit. There are some bright spots though. We have some fun Van Damme fights, and director James Cullen Bressack went for some old Film Noir tones, that, when combined with the cinematography of Pascal Combes-Knoke led to some inspired shot composition; and I think something does need to be said for filmmakers and stars trying to do something outside the usual DTV fare, so I don't want to dump on this completely, it just missed for me overall.

We're now at 35 films for Van Damme, even though he has 36 tags, because our 400th post was a Van Damme film fest, so it doesn't count for inclusion in the 40 Club. At 35, could he get there? In the hopper we still have Kill 'Em All, and then for DTV stuff left to watch, there's Swelter, Welcome to the Jungle, and We Die Young. That's 39, and depending on how we feel about The Gardiner, he could get there. As much as this movie didn't work, the thing I appreciated was how present Van Damme was, and how much he was trying to stretch himself and try something different. The fact that he's still doing that at this stage in his career, when he really doesn't have to--he could just be in the movie and cash the check--is refreshing, and is the reason why I'm still going to keep watching his stuff. (Though to be fair, Seagal is the exact opposite of Van Damme, and I still watch all of his stuff too.)

Cynthia Rothrock has a one-scene cameo, but a one-scene cameo is enough to get another tag, which puts her at 44. I don't even really know what she's doing here, she's the nurse checking in on Van Damme after he survived a shooting, and that's it. She doesn't even share the screen with Van Damme, who knows who she's even speaking to when they shot her lines. I thought when this first came out that she was higher billed on IMDb, but now I don't see her on the first page, so either I was wrong, or something changed and they shuffled the cast names to make her less prominent. It brings up an interesting concept in the world of IMDb, using listings on an actor's bio to sell a movie. Even if she's not on the first page of the movie's listing, when you go to Rothrock's bio, this is the fourth film from the top, and the only one of those four that's not rent VOD. If you click on it, and see it also has Jean-Claude Van Damme, and it's on Hulu, why wouldn't you want to see what that's about? And then you get this tough sit of a movie that doesn't know exactly what it wants to be, and Rothrock only has this one scene where she doesn't even fight at all. By then it's too late, Hulu and the movie got their stream, and you've been had. Will IMDb bait-and-switches become more prominent as we go on? We do have a couple movies in the hopper where she had bigger roles than this, The Last Kumite and Taken from Rio Bravo, so we'll be seeing more of her soon. Unless you're a completist like me, this isn't worth it if you're a fan of hers.

There are a bunch of other names in this, all playing parts of varying degrees. We mentioned Kristanna Loken above. She's the only other one who's tagged--still as "Painkiller Jane," because I haven't had the energy to retag her, even though this is only her sixth film on the site, so it wouldn't take that much work. It's crazy to think Painkiller Jane was still airing when we started the DTVC, it's been that long. We also had a couple James Cullen Bressack mainstays in Zack Ward, Scut Farkus from A Christmas Story, and Kristos Andrews. They play Russian mobsters here, and small, supporting roles. Then there were some nepo babies, with Weston Cage, and Van Damme's two sons Kris and Nicolas. Then we had MMA star Nick Diaz, former child star Spencer Breslin, and hip hop star Sticky Fingaz. I thought that was everyone, but totally forgot that Eric Roberts is in one shot where he orders a taco from a food truck. Your guess is as good as mine, but he was there.

One name I didn't mention, because I'm saving it for this paragraph, was the late Shannen Doherty. A 90s icon who grew to prominence with Beverly Hills 90210, then received a bad--and probably undeserved--reputation as being difficult to work with when she left that show. Soon she had two movies that were going to be her Hollywood breakouts: Blindfold: Acts of Obsession, which ended up going directly to the USA Network here in the US instead of getting a theatrical release; and Mallrats, Kevin Smith's follow-up to Clerks that wasn't as well-received, though I think people my age really loved it. Eventually she got on another TV show, Charmed, but that ended in more on-set strife, and from there she bounced around from TV movie to TV movie, which is where she ended up in the orbit of James Cullen Bressack, who cast her in a bunch of his films, with this one unfortunately being her last. I think one of the most enduring parts of her legacy is that when we think of 90210, we think of her, even though she was only on 111 of the show's 292 episodes, because she played such a compelling character, and they never really replaced her. Here's to you Ms. Doherty, you were one of the greats, and you'll be missed.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently get this on Hulu here in the States. As I said above, it's a bit of a tough sit, and with barely any Rothrock too. Proceed at your own peril. And if you haven't yet, check out the podcast episode we did on this, number 194 in the archives.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt23173980

And if you haven't yet, check out my newest book, Nadia and Aidan, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Acts of Vengeance (2017)

I say this a lot, but this is one I'd been meaning to do for some time now. It's directed by Isaac Florentine, and he's one I want to do all the films of. The problem was, it was on Netflix, then dropped; then it was on Prime, then dropped. Finally, it was on Tubi, but this time, when I saw the 5-day warning before it was removed, I made it happen. Out of the 40+ critic reviews, this has also been covered by Chad Cruise at Bulletproof, Ty and Brett at Comeuppance, Tom Jolliffe at Flickering Myth, and Mitch at the Video Vacuum.

Acts of Vengeance has Antonio Banderas as a defense attorney whose wife and daughter are killed. In his misery, first he puts himself through getting his ass kicked in underground fights, and then actually learns to fight for real. He also takes a vow of silence and reads Marcus Aurelius's Meditation, and strikes out to find out who killed his family. Could it be the Russian mob? Maybe a case of wrong place at the wrong time? But would that make for a good movie? Well, at that point the only other two named actors we have are Paz Vega and Karl Urban, which one do you think did it?

Look at the font on that title screen! Is this a DTV actioner released on Netflix in 2017, or a 1992 TV movie of the week? "This week on the CBS Movie of the Week: Acts of Vengeance: A Perry Mason Mystery." Now granted, Isaac Florentine is bringing it from an action standpoint, especially when we have Tim Man as the fight choreographer--obviously you're not getting that in a 1992 Perry Mason TV movie, though William R. Moses could mix it up a bit if you need him. The other thing is we start out of the gate with a fight, but then we get the dreaded freeze frame with narration that tells us it's time for flashback mode. I don't need my Isaac Florentine actioner told in flashback mode. It's fascinating in something like Tough Guys Don't Dance, which is like this mess of a thing that all works in spite of itself, but an Isaac Florentine actioner starring Antonio Banderas doesn't want to work in that kind of energy, it's supposed to be a 90-minute action fest that I can relax and watch with a bag of Doritos and a Dr. Pepper on a Saturday night. And ultimately this has enough of those moments, especially with the Florentine-Man combination on the fight scenes, that it does what I need it to do, even if other aspects didn't work for me.

With his 13th directed film on the site, Florentine is in a five-way tie for third most all time for directors. Also, once I watch Hounds of War, his latest film, I'll have seen each of his last 10 directed movies (11 if you count Max Havoc: Curse of the Dragon, which he had a part in directing with Albert Pyun), and I'll only have three more of his directed films to watch after that, at which point I'll have done them all. As a DTV action fan, he's the kind of director that you want to have seen everything by, and this movie, despite its flaws, is a great example of why. Yes, I could've done without the flashback-narration style of storytelling that this employs, as it does get in the way of the action; but the action is another level. I don't care that I'm on a Bulgarian back lot posing as Pittsburgh when the fights look nice. This might not be one of his best films, but Florentine's movies have a higher floor than most other filmmakers in the DTV world, which is what you want when you're watching a film from a director of his caliber--don't let that title screen fool you!

This is our third Antonio Banderas film here at the DTVC, the others being Machete Kills and The Big Bang, which, if you're wondering, is now joint-most on the site among Antonios with Antonio Fargas, and one ahead of Antonio Margheriti's two. Anyway, he does enough of what you want from a lead in a movie like this, he's sufficiently Antonio Banderas, so when you see him on the tin, you're not disappointed. It looks like he's been doing more DTV stuff recently, especially with a director I haven't explored yet, Jon Keeyes, but that means we can expected to see more of him on here, which I'll be excited for. My favorite stuff of his is his Almodovar, especially the films from the late 80s/early 90s. What a career arc for him, from Almodovar, to one of the biggest names in Hollywood, to DTV flicks with Isaac Florentine, imagine the film fests you could do with his work. Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, Desperado, and Acts of Vengeance would make for an interesting night one, right?

Among the other names in this, we have Karl Urban and Robert Forster who we've seen on the site before. Urban plays the cop who helps Banderas out when he's getting over his wife, and then we find out he also dabbles in underground fighting. Can't see him doing a heel turn, can you? Then Forster has one scene as Banderas's father in-law, and he gives him a hard time at the funeral. While it was fun to see Forster, if I were Banderas's character I wouldn't have taken any shit from him the way he did, but that's just me. Someone we haven't seen here yet--and another Almodovar alum--is Paz Vega, though we did cover Rambo: Last Blood for the DTVC Extra podcast, and she was in that. She's really good here, and with Banderas gave this an elevated feeling--which was betrayed by that opening title screen, but what can ya do?

Finally, you'd think with the song "All I Have to Do Is Dream" by the Everly Brothers featured that that would be the focus of this penultimate paragraph, as I'm a big fan--and who wouldn't be, they were the greatest rock duo ever, even Rolling Stone agreed (though that list is pretty dubious beyond them at the top. Like no Hall and Oates at all, the duo that broke all the records the Everly Brothers set, or Steely Dan all the way down at 15? Classic Rolling Stone, I guess we should just be happy they didn't put Outcast and the White Stripes above the Everly Brothers too!). At this stage you could say I've already done the paragraph on the Everlys, but I needed to also mention that Urban's character was named "Strode," which is similar to "Stroad," a term in Urbanist circles that refers to a thoroughfare that tries to be both a multi-access street and a limited-access high-speed road, and ultimately fails at both. America is teaming with them, and as someone who doesn't drive, they're a menace. Four, sometimes six lanes of traffic, flanked by massive strip malls, fast food drive-thrus, and big box stores, all with massive parking footprints, none of which is intended for someone like me on foot. The stroad is American car dependency at it's most bonkers, and while you'd think living in a city like Philadelphia I can avoid them, unfortunately not quite, as Roosevelt Boulevard is the most dangerous stroad in the country, and even Oregon Avenue here in South Philly turns into one on both it's east and west termini, and while it's not as bad as the stroad of the suburban sprawl, if we have a housing emergency after the local hardware stores have closed, I need to navigate that mess of cars and parking and dangerous intersections to get what we need at Home Depot, and then navigate it all home. Every time Banderas said Urban's character's name, "Strode," I just thought of massive intersections with short, or maybe busted walk signals, and cars coming in and out of entrances that I need to dodge. It made my pulse elevate.

And with that, we leave my treatise on the stroad and American car dependency, and I'll wrap this up. It looks like no sooner than this was dumped from Tubi that Prime, Plex, and the Roku Channel picked it up, so you can catch it there. It probably fits better in an Isaac Florentine movie night than an Antonio Banderas one, but who knows, maybe pair it with Matador or Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down and it may work.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6288694

And if you haven't yet, check out my newest book, Nadia and Aidan, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

The Island (2023)

This is one I'd been meaning to do since it came out in 2023, but it's spent its entire streaming life on STARZ, which I lovingly refer to as "STARZ Purgatory," because that's one of the streamers I don't subscribe to. As luck would have it though, my cable company gave us a free week of STARZ, and I was able to make it happen. None of the other names we follow have covered this yet, perhaps owing to its status in STARZ Purgatory.

The Island has nothing to do with the Aldous Huxley novel Island, or the Peter Benchley novel The Island, and instead follows LAPD detective Mark (Michael Jai White), whose brother is murdered by a cartel leader (Edoardo Costa) on the small Caribbean island Mark grew up on. He returns home to find out what happened, and discovers that the cartel leader rules the island with an iron fist, and the local police are afraid to challenge him. Enter Mark, who is a bad, bad man, and will stop at nothing to take this cartel down. Will he succeed? And if so, at what cost?

This isn't a bad deal. White is exactly what you need as the lead, and then supporting characters played by Jackson Rathbone and White's wife Gillian are solid too, as is our baddie played by Edoardo Costa. We also have some really nice action sequences, again anchored by White, but also Rathbone and Gillian White do a great job as well. I also liked the setting on the Caribbean island, and the story thread about White having left and now coming back, and the tension that was there between him and some of the people he left behind. Beyond the unique location and the cultural Caribbean themes, this doesn't do much to step outside of the usual action film paradigm, but when I'm looking to spend 90 minutes to watch Michael Jai White and company beat up a bunch of baddies, I just want it to deliver, and this definitely does that.

With 28 films on the site now, the 30 Club is in sight for Michael Jai White, and he has a bunch of stuff on free streamers that I can cover, so we should see him get there by the end of the year. He has another film in STARZ Purgatory, MR-9: Do or Die with Frank Grillo, which I wasn't able to get to during the STARZ free week we had, so maybe if we get another free week I'll be able to make it happen. Either way, White proves again why he's one of the best in the business with this movie. He's the star, he knows what we want when we see his name on the tin, and he delivers. In my DTV top ten stars, I have White at 10th, behind Van Damme at 9, Dudikoff at 8, Lamas at 7, and Seagal at 6. It could be a bit before he passes any of those, but I think he's also been doing enough lately to keep himself above my number 11 all-time, Scott Adkins. Another great performance by him to add to an already Hall of Fame resume.

 
I was thinking this was our first film with White's wife Gillian, but she was also in Welcome to Sudden Death, which we've also covered. First one where she has a bigger role let's say, and she's great here, perfectly at home in the action and martial arts world. Thinking about someone we lost recently, Richard Norton, and the iconic pairings he had with Cynthia Rothrock, I could see the Whites carving out something similar here in the modern DTV world, fighting the good fight to keep DTV action viable and entertaining in a world of shrinking budgets and shrinking screentime for stars. One that I definitely need to get to now is Take Back, because it looks like she has a bigger role in it--not that her role here is insignificant by any means. I'm excited to dive into more of her stuff after this, and see what she has in store for us in the future as well.

As I mentioned above, this also has Jackson Rathbone of Twilight fame. His character early on is kind of a cross between a young Eminem and maybe a Simon Sez Dane Cook, complete with the beating up the perp while reading him his rights--you know that routine, "You have the right to remain silent..." punch... "you have the right to an attorney..." kick to the ribs... and so on. He redeems himself later and is a bit more easy to manage, but it got me thinking, just what hath Twilight wrought on the DTV world? Beyond Rathbone, we also have Kellen Lutz and Ashley Greene doing a bunch of DTV flicks, and as far as I can tell for all three, the main selling point for them is the fact that they were in Twilight. You could also tack on Cam Gigandet, though I feel like that's more of a stretch because he was only in the first one. Some enterprising DTV director should make a movie with all three of them, maybe with Peter Facinelli as the head baddie. They could be like a crack team of spies who travel the world and do action stuff. Perfect for Millennium Films to produce in Bulgaria, right?

Finally, I want to get back to the STARZ Purgatory thing. If you look in our tags you'll see the "Starz Play 11" (which I'm discovering now I misspelled "STARZ," that it's supposed to be all caps--who knew?), which was when STARZ was pulling all of their movies off of what was then called Netflix Instant. Initially STARZ was using Netflix as their streaming outlet, and it worked well for both Netflix and their burgeoning streaming service, and us subscribers who were just getting used to the idea of a streaming service to have all that content, which complimented the DVDs we were already getting as part of our subscription. STARZ eventually went out on their own, and they're a bit of a lone wolf in the streaming world, below all of the big names, they don't have any major properties to tie themselves to, or even a major technology like Apple+, yet somehow they've managed to get themselves exclusive rights to some of these DTV actioners, plus, before Sony struck a deal with Netflix recently, they also were doing Sony's streaming for them--hence Venom: Let There Be Carnage and Spider-Man: No Way Home also being stuck in STARZ Purgatory as opposed to joining other Sony Spider-Man/Spider-Verse without Spider-Man titles on Disney+ or Netflix. And this wouldn't be so bad 15 years ago, when I would've just added The Island to my Netflix DVD queue, and watched it for the site that way, but now that's no longer an option. First, Netflix no longer does DVDs; second, this movie wasn't released on DVD in the States, as far as I can tell; and third, computers no longer come with DVD players, so how would I get images for the site? So unless I want to shell out $3.99 to rent it on Prime, STARZ Purgatory it is, and every once in a while my cable provider gives us a free week of STARZ so I can venture into that liminal world, watch as many films as I can, and then return to tell everyone the tale.

And with that, let's wrap this up. As I said above, here in the States, this is in STARZ Purgatory until further notice, so if you don't have STARZ, you'll need to rent it on Amazon. While I think it's a good time, I don't know that it's worth a rental when there are so many things available on free streamers, or on streamers you're probably already subscribed to. That said, hopefully it'll make its way out of STARZ Purgatory soon, because it's a solid film, and worth everyone checking out.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt21853596

And if you haven't yet, check out my newest book, Nadia and Aidan, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!