Rage (1995)

Well, post 349 marks a first here at the DTVC, our first duplicate title. At least I think so. I can't remember if we've done any before this. Anyway, the first movie we posted called The Rage had Lorenzo Lamas, Gary Busey, and Roy Scheider. This one has Gary Daniels. 6 of one, half a dozen of the other, right?

Rage stars Daniels as a second grade teacher with a rich author wife and nice daughter. He takes said daughter to her friend's house, and on the way home finds himself in the hands of the federal government. They give him some experimental serum, and all hell breaks loose. He starts kicking ass and taking names. The only one who doesn't think he's a mass murdering nutjob is a local TV reporter, who, with his young camerawoman, hopes to break this story and help Daniels get back to his nice life.

This is pretty sweet. Great fight scenes with Daniels. One in particular when he's going at it with a dominatrix and her slave/customer is amazing. The problem for me was the action went from good to excitement by repetition. For example, great chase scene where Daniels is cruising around in a de facto bulletproof tanker, crushing cop cars, etc. But instead of wrapping it up and giving us the awesome bus collision, they give us ten minutes of the same Daniels driving, hitting the same cop cars, and showing the same explosions. Bo-ring! Wrap it up, B! They did the same thing later with a helicopter scene. Just inordinate amounts of time with Daniels hanging off a building and guy shooting at him from point blank range, and missing completely. Still, there was plenty of fun stuff with Daniels. I guess these things can't be perfect.

This is the second straight film we've done of Daniels' where he's rocking a dyed do. I don't get it. Was he playing Anne in Anne of Green Gables at the local playhouse? Just the same, he was awesome here. It wasn't his fault the director didn't know when to cut and when to keep things. One good cut they made was to jump right from Daniels getting his injection to him kicking lab assistants and security guards' asses. This guy is amazing. That's all there is to it.

Like I said above, there was an amazing scene where Daniels dukes it out with a dominatrix and her slave. It comes after Daniels has broken into the guy's house, and is stuffing himself and making a mess on his floor, spilling milk and whatnot. They find him like that, and go into attack mode. Then it's just them throwing each other through tables and windows. Then the cops show up and Daniels is taking them out too. Well conceived fight scene.

This has Jillian McWhirter, which makes it the fifth film we've reviewed with her in it. I guess it's time we tagged her. She didn't play Daniels' wife, she played the reporter's camerawoman. Speaking of the reporter, he has a hilarious monologue at the end, where he talks about Daniels' character as a great American hero, and says it's up to us to stand up to our government the way he did. The way he did? With a supersoldier serum in us and an extensive background in martial arts so we can kick everyone's asses? Who writes this shit, really?

Is that a Twisted Sister pin on your lapel? That's right, Mark Metcalf, Doug Neidermeyer from Animal House has a small role in this as the Lt. Governor. He needed a bigger role, though. He needed to get right in Daniel face and yell "What are you gonna do with your liiiife!" Then Daniels could say, in his British monotone "I wanna rock," then beat the crap out of him.

This is a good movie. Prepare yourself for a little excitement by repetition, because it's the film one major drawback. After that, though, you've got great Daniels, some great fight scenes, and some solid explosions and chases. Worth putting on your Netflix queue.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114224/

Looking for more action? Check out my short action novel, Bainbridge, and all my other novels, over at my author's page! Click on the image below, go to https://www.matthewpoirierauthor.com/

 

The Librarians aka Strike Force (2003)

There's a weird story surrounding this film. I looked Daniel Bernhardt up on imdb, and saw a movie called The Librarians listed that also starred Burt Reynolds. According to Amazon, it wasn't available to buy. Anyway, so I'm waiting for word about that one, and in that time, I find a movie at my local record store called Strike Force, which listed William Forsythe, Erika Eleniak, and our hero, Daniel Bernhardt. I bought it along with the Rothrock classic Outside the Law, watched and reviewed that one, and Strike Force was lost in the shuffle. So I find Strike Force while digging up Dolph Lundgren's Cover Up, and figure I'll give it a shot. That's when I type it into imdb's database, and it comes up The Librarians. Crazy how the world of DTV movies works, huh? (Is that the longest opening paragraph to a post ever?)

The Librarians has Forsythe heading a mercenary team, including Bernhardt, that specializes in rescuing kidnapped peoples. They're hired by an old friend to find his grand daughter. She's been kidnapped by a dude who's into all kinds of bad stuff, including white slavery. Erika Eleniak is after this dude as well, because he captured her sister. Forsythe and his crew really have their work cut out for them dealing with this guy-- at least that's what the movie tells us, but they seem to make it look easy.



This is pretty funny. It's not awesome, at any point. I got the sense that Forsythe was tired of playing bad guys, so he made this movie with a buddy of his so he could play the good guy for once. Not only that, but I think he hates punk kids. The evil white slavery et al gang he fights call themselves the Techno Kids. This is pretty much Forsythe's personal applause movie. Is it as bad as any of Kevin Costner's (For the Love of the Game, for instance), probably not. The action's pretty good, but disappears quite a bit in favor of silly conversations where women remark on how "smooth" Forsythe is, or where Forsythe tells us why what he's doing means so much to him, which is really annoying. Of course, we also get to see Forsythe's perma-scowl the whole time, so it's funny.

I think more than anything, Forsythe was in over his head here, and though it comes off as ridiculous, it actually could've been more enjoyable in parts. Bernhardt fights Matthias Hues in one scene, and that should've been hot. Instead it was a series of silly images of Bernhardt doing roundhouses at nothing and Hues flying backward. Yes, it was great to make fun of, but I was also disappointed that I was promised a fight between two great DTV action stars, and got a bunch of crap. That's the problem with these kinds of things: is it worth renting this to make fun of, when it's so bad?



I probably should've reviewed this on Monday, because that was Daniel Bernhardt's 44th birthday. Well, I'm sorry. Happy belated birthday, Danny. This is his ninth film here at the DTVC, which is more than some Hall of Famers (Cynthia Rothrock, for instance). He'll be tied with C. Thomas Howell for most among non HOFers. What scares me about Bernhardt is that he's following Howell's path. In Howell's case, he's made enough films to be considered, it's just a matter of if they're good enough or not, and a lot of them aren't. Bernhardt doesn't have the resume, but his recent spate of films hasn't done him any favors either. This movie makes it three posts in a row where Bernhardt wasn't the main star of the film. That's even worse when you consider those three are the three newest films of his we've reviewed. According to imdb, he hasn't been top billed since 2004's Nature Unleashed: Tornado. He has a new film that hasn't been released yet, called Ultimate Champion, where his name is right under UFC star Stephan Bonner's. We'll see what happens there, but it's not looking good for the Poor Man's Van Damme.

This is the second film we've done with the great Burt Reynolds, the other being the Albert Pyun mess Crazy Six. I looked him up on imdb, and saw he was in a movie called In the Name of the King. Remember that one? Jason Statham, in the theaters about two years ago? Wow, I never actually saw it, but it looked hilarious, and I saw that it only made about $5 mill in the box office. Maybe I should do a week of movies that should've been DTV, but weren't. So far I got that one and Basic Instinct 2. Can anyone think of any others?



I want to devote a paragraph to this guy. Ed Lauter. He was also in two other recently reviewed movies: The Sweeper and Mercenary. A That Guy if there ever was one, he's usually cast as a detective or government agent of some sort. Often, he's not a good guy, so if you see him, he's probably up to now good. Considering he's shown up so much recently I needed to give him some love, so this is for you Ed Lauter, you're one of the good ones.

If you can get this cheap, go for it. I found it on DVD for $3, and that may have actually been too much, but in NH we have no sales tax, so it was a solid $3. That's definitely the breaking point. At the very least, it's funny to watch Forsythe go through all the trouble just to make himself a good guy. We're sorry you make such a great bad guy, it's not our fault.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0362820/

Streets of Blood (2009)

This was suggested to me when I was adding other movies to my queue. I added it purely on the strength of Val Kilmer, 50 Cent, and Sharon Stone. The idea of a new DTV film with those three actors intrigued me.

Streets of Blood takes place in the aftermath of Katrina in New Orleans. Kilmer and 50 play narcotics cops trying to maintain order as drug cartels from around the country try to fill the vacuum left by the devastation. Sometimes they have to bend the rules, and the question is are they doing it for the right reasons, or the wrong ones. Sharon Stone is the precinct's psychiatrist, and she's called in from time to time to evaluate their psyche. Now the FBI is causing problems, and FBI agent Michael Biehn sees an opportunity for power in the rebuilding city. That's not the worst part. There's a snitch for the FBI in their squad, and Kilmer doesn't know who he can trust.



This was a really good movie. I didn't like the end-- it kind of betrayed the way the characters were written-- but otherwise, this was good. I don't mean good because you can make fun of it good, I mean really good. Kilmer, Stone, Biehn, and 50 Cent all turned in solid performances. I didn't have a problem with Kilmer's New Orleans accent, or Stone's Southern Drawl. The story was solid, except for the end, and I think there they just wrote themselves into a corner. I mean, it was no The Departed, but not much is, and even The Departed had a bad ending.

I didn't intend to review another crime drama set in post-Katrina New Orleans so soon after Death Toll (Death Tool is more like it), but I'm glad it worked out that way. The people who made the sack of asscrack that was Death Tool can look at this and see how it's supposed to be done. Dialog that makes sense, characters that are both conflicted yet have realistic motivations, and a story that makes us care about what happens in the end. And you wanna know what else? The director calls himself Charles Winkler. What? No "Phenomenon"?



I've always been a big Val Kilmer fan, so I was worried he might mail this one in. No worries, he turned in a great performance. It wasn't quite John Holmes in Wonderland, but he also didn't have that kind of material to work with. Now I'm excited to see him in more stuff. According to imdb he has like 11 projects in various stages of development, but he also has like five or six other DTV films that have come out recently. Where I was for that? None of my video stores got those. I'll start pouring through those ASAP. Also, in November, he's in the Werner Herzog film Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, which should be good. By the way, if you have Netflix, you should look him up on there. He has the funniest picture ever.

I can't believe I'm going to say this. 50 Cent was good. I know, I know, someone should check my forehead to see if I had a fever. Now, his lack of acting ability did show at the end when the writers abandoned him and made his character lose his direction, because he wasn't able to pick up the slack there the way Kilmer did. He has a DTV film coming out called Before I Self Destruct, which he not only acts in, but wrote, produced, and directed. I'll probably pass on that one. I don't see Fitty as the next Orson Welles.



Rounding out the cast we had Michael Biehn and Sharon Stone. Biehn's bad FBI agent came across exactly like the bad agent he played in Art of War. I found a few films in his DTV repertoire that might be good, but usually when a DTV film wants Michael Biehn, they settle for the Night Eyes guy, because he makes a pretty good poor man's Biehn. Sharon Stone's a different ball game. She was huge in the 90s, and then that was it. I'm surprised she can't get more roles like the one in this film in bigger motion pictures. I looked up Basic Instinct 2, and according to imdb, it only grossed $5 mill in the box office. Hmm... I wonder...

This isn't a fun DTV action movie, it's a solid crime drama. If you're in the mood for a serious movie, this is a good outside of the box choice if you see it at your local video store. Beyond the story and acting, it also gives us a look into what New Orleans is like three years later. I'd call this another one of those DTV hidden gems.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1203523/

Striking Range (2006)

I found this on Netflix's Watch Instantly feature. Between the small amount of Jeff Speakman in Plato's Run, and how Lou Diamond Phillips was the one bright spot in Death Toll, I figured I'd give this a shot. The trailer for it on imdb made it look pretty good.

Striking Range is about a team of mercenaries or private security guys or something headed by Lou Diamond Phillips. His old flame, Yancy Butler, has hired him at the behest of her boss to protect him and his son and their new weapon. It's this thing that puts holes in people with a laser that changes the molecular structure of whatever it hits. Jeff Speakman wants it, so he sends a team of his thugs in after it. Then there's some random dude with a mask who's good with a knife that's causing problems too. Double crosses and plot twists abound, and all we know is LDP is our guy.



I kinda liked this. It had some dull parts, and there were points where even the action was boring, which is never good. I also didn't like the lack of good Speakman fight scenes. He did some roundhouses at the end just as an afterthought. Considering the film only had a 90 minute running time, how hard would it have been to have a five minute scene where Speakman is jumped by some thugs in an alley and he beats the crap out of them. On the other hand, the dialog was funny (both intentionally and unintentionally), there were some good shootouts, and LDP was nice. I'll give it a mild thumbs up.

I'm liking LDP. This guy's a pretty good actor. I was looking over his imdb bio, and I had forgotten about Extreme Justice. I put it in my Instant Queue, and hopefully I'll get to it soon. As far as this film goes, he did his thing. I normally wouldn't think he could carry an action film as the lead, the way a Dolph or Seagal or even Snipes can, but he did it. It looks like he's doing more TV movies and crime dramas right now, so who knows how many more newer films we'll be able to review with him in them, but there's a huge catalog from the 90s and early 2000s to explore, including Extreme Justice, so this won't be the last we hear from him.



All right, I know I keep promising more Speakman, and we're getting there. First we had Hot Boyz, where he has a total of five minutes of screen time. Then there was Plato's Run, where we see him at the beginning and end, with nothing in between. In Striking Range he's the bad guy, so we see him a little more. We're getting there. He was good for what they were having him do. He had one line where he pulls up to the building where LDP is working security, and at the gate a guard asks Speakman for his ID. He replies "No ID, no appointment, I'm just here to kidnap and torture Billings for information." (The quote is actually featured on the imdb entry.) I know, I know, I need to just bite the bullet and review a film where Speakman is the main star.

I've never understood the concept of Yancy Butler. I just don't see it. Maybe someone could explain it to me. Like Witchblade. Did that make sense to anyone? Is she supposed to be hot? A sex symbol maybe? I decided to do a Google image search of her, and there definitely were some hot pictures. Maybe what it is is she's always scowling in all the roles I've seen her in. In Striking Range, even when she was smiling it was a fake smile. I think when she plays the tough chick, she always overdoes it, maybe because in real life she isn't as heartless as the characters she plays.



The guy who plays Billings son is played by Troy Baker. Nothing special, his resume is mostly a bunch of video game voices. So why am I mentioning him? Because he's another April Fools Baby. Born on April 1st, 1976, three years before me. That's two in three weeks, with Sung Hi Li from Art of War III, who was born on the first in 1970.

If you have Netflix's Watch Instantly, and you have 90 minutes to kill, this isn't a bad option. You may even want to through it on your DVD queue. It's not anything special, and it could've been better in parts, especially as far as Speakman was concerned; but for what it was, it does the job all right.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0457290/

War of the Worlds 2: The Next Wave (2008)

I knew this would be a bad idea. I knew an Asylum War of the Worlds sequel, directed by C. Thomas Howell, would hurt me. But I had reviewed the first one, and needed to do my job as a DTV film reviewer to sit through this one and tell my readers what it was like.

War of the Worlds 2: The Next Wave picks up two years after the first one. Humans are rebuilding their lives after the first invasion, and they haven't done a great job of it. There's very little infrastructure and people are living in near post-apocalyptic conditions. Howell's wife has died, but his son's still alive-- that is until the aliens come back and one of their walkers zaps him. Now Howell doesn't want to live either and wants the aliens to zap him too. At the same, some scientists have a base where they're working on a way to combat the aliens. In two years, despite having lost all of our infrastructure, these scientists have managed to create new airplane and weapons technology. Things resolve themselves pretty much as you'd expect.



All right. Deep breath. And.... This was utter crap. Ridiculously bad. What was Howell thinking? And this wasn't just bad, it was weird. Like waiting on the platform for the subway and a random guy who smells like urine is talking to you weird. The whole time I was just waiting for the train to come so I could run away from it. On the ships, people were put in these rooms where they had gross nets on them and hoses stuck in their mouths. A girl who had a nasty virus and cuts on her face would save them. Howell and Kid from Kid N' Play escape a ship, only to appear in some holographic world where they meet the virus girl and her virus guy friend. What kind of mind conceives weirdness like that? Then, for no good reason, Howell injects himself with their virus. I mean no good reason, because he then draws some of his infected blood and sticks it in the alien, thus recreating the end of the last movie. Why didn't he just inject the virus into them directly, i.e., not infect himself with it first? Why, I ask? Because that would mean doing something that made sense, and that was far beyond this film's ken.

On imdb, someone tried to defend this by saying we needed to suspend belief and allow ourselves to be taken into Howell's HG Wells world. Are you kidding? Why don't I just go hitchhiking in the Midwest at 3AM and hope some crazy dude talking about the time machine he invented gives me a ride (actually happened to a friend). This person then went into all the things that were wrong with it, from the story to the special effects, etc. I'm actually good with the bad special effects and silly story. It's the weirdness of this world that I don't like. It made me uncomfortable, like I was sitting in a car next to some random dude that picked me up.



C. Thomas Howell. Anyone who watches soccer understands the metaphor I'm about to draw here. A player has just made a nasty slide tackle. The whistle blows. He slinks off, but the ref calls him over. He sulks, shakes his head, and the ref just smirks and holds up the yellow card. Well, Mr. Howell, you don't just get a yellow card, I'm forced to give you a red. That's right, and a five match ban. Forget your feeble attempts at artistic wide shots of people walking in front of buildings-- that stuff was actually kind of funny. As were the ships that could communicate with Earth from Mars via radio without delay, or the fact that you're still going with aliens as Martians when we know no life has ever been on that planet. It was the weirdness that hurts me. It makes me question everything I've ever seen you do. I loved the overacting after your son was zapped. That was hilarious. I was weirded out by the people with nets on drinking fluid out of hoses. I was weirded out by the virus girl trying to save the day. The fact that stuff didn't weird you out makes me wonder.

The best film trilogy of all time is the House Party series. From the dance scene in part one, to the pajama jammy jam of part two, to David from the second Real World in part three, these movies truly did have it all. That makes Kid's role in this movie all the more troubling. Did he need the work? Was Howell calling in a favor? And what was up with his hair? I'm not saying it all needs to be standing up in the air like like it used to, but at least make it cool. He looked like he just got off work as a pharmacist at Wal-Mart. No offense to pharmacists at Wal-Mart, I'm actually friends with a couple, but you could just see his picture on the wall under the title "Pharmacist on duty".



The first film had Jake Busey. He would've made a huge contribution to this one. Sure, he was killed off in the last one, but what does that matter. First off, continuity was a loose concept on this production to begin with. Second, the scientist woman was cast in the first film in another role. Busey could've played someone else too. This movie just needed something, anything, and Busey could've provided that. Of course, maybe Howell called Busey, and he looked at the script, and then promptly went to the court house to get a restraining order telling Howell he couldn't go within 200 feet of him.

If this wasn't so weird, I'd say rent it for the silly factor, but the truth is, it is weird. I'm not sure if I blame The Asylum or Howell or both-- there's plenty of blame to go around. I read on Netflix or imdb that someone actually rented this thinking it a sequel to the Spielberg film. I guess that means, from the Howell and Asylum perspective, this was a success. Godspeed guys.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1183733/

Hoodrats 2: Hoodrat Warriors (2008)

This was suggested to me by Netflix after I rented something else. I don't remember what it was. It certainly wasn't Hoodrats 1. If you're wondering, the reviews for the first Hoodrats were atrocious, but the ones for part two claimed it had women using trash can lids as shields. Where do I sign up?

Hoodrats 2: (Hoodrat Warriors) (they use the parenthesis in the opening titles!) is about three girls whose best friend is beaten by her boyfriend and loses her unborn baby. One of the girls decides her best bet is to go upside the boyfriend with a bat, and takes her two unknowing friends along for the ride. Well, that boyfriend is the most powerful gangster in the city, and now he wants them dead. Will they survive the day and get him off their backs?



I don't know where to go with this. Obviously it was bad. It was definitely funny bad for the most part. The trash can lids as shields were there. The lead girl drives this amazing car with the license plate "ICUHATIN". Was I watching a real movie or a Mad TV sketch? Maybe the best was how the girls had never really fought in their lives, and suddenly, because they decided to take a stand, knew martial arts moves that only someone with formal training could pull off. One girl had a guy in a Muay Thai clinch; another was using jiu-jitsu to defend herself on the ground. Here's the long and the short of it: if you think you've got what it takes to tackle this film, you could have tons of fun. Don't go it a alone, but let your buddies know what they're getting into. This is MST3K level stuff.

There was a nice message buried in the poor cinematic output. Women are being torn apart by bad, manipulative men. The gangs of girls attacking our three heroines for the bad boyfriend represent women in real life fighting over a guy, when they should probably be fighting the guy instead. That makes sense, but not all women are manipulated by these guys-- some of the women are as manipulative. Also, at the end, there was this tone of women being superior to men. Now, I won't say they're wrong, that guys are superior; but I will say they're wrong, and that men and women are equal. I was rooting for them until they got all small minded about it.



The girl who I guess you could call second in command, Celia, was hot as hell. She looks ridiculous on the cover, but in the movie she's hot. I just wanted to rescue her from the ghetto, but I know she'd never like it in Maine, the winters are just too brutal. I could see us meeting at a bookstore in LA, hitting it off, her being intrigued that I'm a writer (not knowing I don't have any money). We'd go out a couple times, then the day would come where I'd call her, and not hear from her. The next day she'd show up, bruises on her face, telling me it was nothing. But I'd know she got worked over by a gang of girls using trash can lids as shields.

The bad boyfriend is played by the guy from that Southwest Airlines commercial where he dances, showing off for a girl in a club, and knocks over the DJ's turn tables. I love that commercial, and when I saw this guy, I was so excited. Then he beats the crap out of his girlfriend, and I was less so. He never danced in this movie, which was dumb. Why would you have that guy and not have him dance? You had girls with trash can lids as shields, but you can't mix in a dance number for that guy?



I want to make a point clear before I get to the final paragraph. I'm from Maine. I have no idea what East LA is, what it's like to live there, or grow up there. I'm not calling this a bad movie, though, because I "don't get it", I'm calling it a bad movie because it sucks. I have no idea what it's like to live in 1960s Tokyo either, and I loved High and Low. The dialog here was bad, poorly written, and unnaturally delivered. There were plenty of scenes that were useless and did nothing to move the plot forward. One of those scenes could've been replaced with a scene at the beginning showing the girls in a dojo learning martial arts, which would've made their ability to fight using martial arts more believable. When I'm making fun of the movie, I'm making fun of those aspects, not the fact the people are speaking with Spanish accents or that they've grown up in violent circumstances. And the fact the girls are fighting with trash can lid shields-- I'm making fun of that too...

Do you think you have what it takes? The movie is there on Netflix. You have some material to start with because the bad guy was in the Southwest commercials. For you and your buddies, this is your MST3K moment. 90 minutes of pain turned into laughs. I'll be quite frank, I'm not sure I have what it takes. Celia got me through it... be still my heart...

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1261419/

Mercenary (1997)

I bought this on VHS a while ago, and just kept putting off watching it. I mean, I've had it since like May, so I don't know what took me so long. Anyway, here it is now, finally.

Mercenary is an old HBO movie with John Ritter as a really rich man whose wife is killed by terrorist Martin Kove. He hires Gruner and his mercenary team for revenge. The catch: Ritter wants to be there to shoot Kove in the head. That's an issue, because Ritter doesn't have any special forces experience, and he's not in the best shape. That's not the real kicker, though. Someone's tipped off Kove and his boys that Gruner's coming, and they're ambushed. Now Gruner has to get him and Ritter out alive and find out who set him up.



This was pretty good. It had a nice bad action feel to it. Gruner lived up to his end, Kove was a good bad guy, and it had Ritter and Robert Culp. It did get redundant, especially near the end, when we were treated to twenty minutes of nothing happening as Gruner and Ritter try to escape in a helicopter and crash in the wilderness. Maybe HBO's time restrictions forced them to make the movie longer than necessary. Who knows, it still put me to sleep, which sucked, because the ending wasn't bad.

Gruner was great. At the beginning, he has to rescue Jaime Pressly from kidnappers, and it's an awesome scene. Why the rest of the movie couldn't be that is beyond me. It came close to it a couple times, but never quite got there. Gruner with a gun isn't Gruner fighting guys hand to hand. When he's unarmed and being taken into his cell, we can't wait to see him dismantle his two escorts. The same vibe isn't there when he's shooting an AK-47 behind a barrel.



John Ritter in 1997 was doing a bunch of TV movies and whatnot. I think his role as a gay man in Sling Blade was his one major job at that time. It wouldn't be for another five years that he started his comeback on network television in the sitcom Simple Rules for Dating my Teenage Daughter. Then he died. One thing I can say, no matter what role he did, he was always Jack Tripper. There was a sense, in this movie, as he escaped with Gruner from this or that dangerous situation, that he was really covering up his hijinx from Mr. Roper. Can you imagine Gruner on an episode of Three's Company?

Robert Culp and Martin Kove rounded out the cast. Culp, we know, was in I Spy and Greatest American Hero. He's just great as the wise older member of the team who's a little off-beat, but can still kick ass when the situation calls for it. For Martin Kove, I think no matter how many hours he's logged at the Cobra Kai, he's no match for Gruner. Wouldn't Karate Kid have been better with Gruner instead of Ralph Macchio?



People who have read my Shepherd: Border Patrol and Jill the Ripper posts know about my coming across an imdb tag stating the films featured "shirtless male bondage". Well, this film has the same tag. If you are a fan of shirtless male bondage, I have to apologize, because I decided to forgo the Gruner pic for this review. I just can't afford to be hit with the adult content label. If my blog gets a reputation for shirtless male bondage, I'll have to start carding people at the door, and no one wants that. Buy the movie if you're really that into it.

You can only get this on VHS right now, unless it pops up on an HBO or something. That means to get it on Amazon, you'd have to pay whatever it costs plus $2.99 shipping and handling. Anything more than $2 total is too much, so I'd just keep an eye out for it in a bargain bin somewhere.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119660/