The Debt aka Back to Even (1998)

I first got wind of this when I saw an ad for it on the back of the sleeve of Prayer of the Rollerboys. It looked like it had to be the most amazing thing ever-- I mean, Michael Paré and Lorenzo Lamas, how much more awesome can you get, right? The only way you could screw up a pairing as awesome as that would be to turn it into a suspense/thriller yarn, but why would anyone do that?

The Debt is a suspense/thriller yarn about an expert copy printer, Lorenzo Lamas, who gets into his bookie friend/not friend Michael Paré for a lot of money, and in order to get back to good, he has to find these counterfeiting plates the mob stole from him.



"Okay, here's the deal, I have Michael Paré and Lorenzo Lamas, and I want to make a movie with them. Oh, God no, I wouldn't dream of making an action film, why would I do that? No, I got this rejected Lifetime movie script. Yeah, I figured Lamas and Paré would be perfect. If this works out, I'll hire Steven Seagal and Dolph Lundgren to star opposite Meredith Baxter-Birney in a film about one woman's struggle to find justice when the system's against her. Oh yeah, it should be great."

Seriously, what were these people thinking? And based on Lamas' then woman Shauna Sand getting a high billing, I have to assume he had something to do with the making of this bad boy. But who looks at Lamas and says "I see a nerdy printer." Even if he does all right pulling it off-- even if he hits it out of the park, which he didn't do-- it's still Lorenzo Lamas. He needs to be kicking ass all over the place. And Paré was definitely better, but again, would I rather see him as a bookie thug, or toting enough weapons to supply a small rebel movement in a Third World country into an abandoned warehouse to blow up some baddies? We know what the answer to that is, and for some reason, the only assholes who couldn't see this were the ones that made the damn movie.



Do I sound angry? Well, I feel I have every right. Great low-budget action stars like this aren't paired together often, and it just seems like over and over when they are, the result is crummy and they're poorly used. Look at Retrograde, where Dolph and Gary Daniels were wasted together; or even worse, Daniels and Seagal in Submerged. Is it too much to ask for that when I see Lorenzo Lamas and Michael Paré listed, I get a kick ass action film? Apparently the answer is yes.

This is Lamas' twentieth film here at the DTVC, putting him in a tie with Seagal for second all time, and I imagine he'll be passing that soon, since I have other films of his coming down the pike, while all of Seagal's are up, and we're just waiting for the next new one to come out. I also made a bold prediction in the Hawk's Vengeance post that Gary Daniels might end up being the most tagged DTVC Hall of Fame actor ever, and he definitely has a shot, but Lamas could give him a run for his money. I have a few places I might go next with Lamas. There's Blood Angels on Watch Instantly, Lethal with Frank Zagarino in my queue, and the rest of the Snake Eater series I just found on VHS. So many Lamas choices, so little time.



2010 is supposed to be the year of the Paré, and we're still working in that direction, ending in October with an induction for him into the Hall of Fame. The problem is, even though he's been awesome in all the movies of his we've reviewed, the movies themselves have sucked. We need to get that signature film up there to cement his induction. I'll keep working at it, and we'll get it done.

In one scene in The Debt, Lorenzo Lamas gets kicked in the nuts. I know how he felt, because finding out a movie starring he and Michael Paré is a crummy suspense/thriller yarn was a total kick in the nuts to me. For all you guys out there, I want to save you from that pain, and for all the ladies, if you've ever wondered what all the fuss is about with the whole getting hit in the balls thing, here you go, have at it.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0165098/

The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans (2009)

When I reviewed the Abel Ferrara/Harvey Keitel Bad Lieutenant back in August of 2008, this newer Werner Herzog-directed film starring Nicolas Cage was still in development. I ended up missing it when it played at our local indie theater, but luckily Netflix shipped it out to me the day it was released on DVD. Netflix rules! And just in time for our Wild Card post this week.

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans isn't quite the movie the other Bad Lieutenant was. Both had drug addicted police lieutenants that get in over their heads with gambling debts and what not, but that's where the similarities end. In this one, Nicloas Cage plays a cop who injures his back saving a criminal from a flooded holding cell during the aftermath of Katrina. He's promoted to lieutenant for his sacrifice, but is also prescribed a cocktail of pain relievers, which leads him down the primrose path to addiction. As his myriad ways of obtaining drugs start to catch up with him and the net is closing in, he finds an unlikely ally in the crime lord he'd been trying to take down for the slaying of a family of five.

I liked this, I don't know if I'd say a lot, but I liked it. There were scenes and images I liked a lot, but the film as a whole had some issues. The end was kind of odd to me, for one thing. Obviously I can't get into that without giving the film away, so maybe someone else who's seen it can either back me up or tell me I'm crazy. Herzog's direction really worked, and he and Cage had a great actor/director chemistry. I'm not sure I can choose between this one or the Ferrara/Keitel one either, because they're so different. While Ferrara's direction made me think of French New Wave, Herzog's made me think of... well... Herzog. A better script would have made it great.

One thing I can say about this, is it's worth ten National Treasures in artistic merit, but it's not worth a hundredth of a National Treasure in terms of earning potential. I think that's why it's so hard to judge Nicolas Cage based on The Weather Man or Knowing, because those sacks of asscrack pay the bills; and if we're realistic, take a lot less work to accomplish as an actor than Bad Lieutenant: PC-NO. A lot of my friends say to me all the time how they can't stand Cage, and I used to agree, until I revisited Leaving Las Vegas last fall, and was reminded of what made Cage great. His role here will remind you again.

Klaus Kinski is a member of our DTVC Hall of Fame, and though we've left him for a bit to look at other actors, it's important to bring him up if we're talking about Werner Herzog. Are they the best actor/director pairing of all time? I think some much better cases could be made for Kurosawa/Mifune or Scorsese/De Niro, so probably no. Are they the most intriguing pair of all time? I think you could look at the five films they've done together and answer yes. But it wasn't really those films I had in my mind as I watched this, it was another of Herzog's: a documentary called Grizzly Man. It was just this window into how Herzog sees the world, and puts a film like Bad Lieutenant: PC-NO into perspective--this idea that the wild is vicious and deadly, and humans that veer too far in that direction face dire consequences. I was kind of upset, because there are some scenes in the film (again, I won't give them away) that I would've liked to known Herzog's thought process on, but this DVD didn't have any director's commentary--it didn't have any commentary for that matter.

One thing evident in the Kinski/Herzog films though, is that it's Herzog who gets Kinski, not the other way around--I can't imagine Kinski would've cared to get Herzog, or anyone else for that matter. In Bad Lieutenant: PC-NO, something different happens: Cage seems to get what Herzog is about, and he works in that realm. It makes this a very different film from those other five. There wasn't that sense of struggle, and I think Herzog needs that when he works. Again, there was no commentary, but I can't imagine Cage was giving him anywhere near the hard time Kinski always did; and oddly enough, I think that harmony affected the film. Herzog tried to convey conflict on the screen in a variety of ways, but I'm not so sure it's something that can always be manufactured if the feeling off set is too harmonious.

Finally, you'd think with Eva Mendes in the film, it would be her that I'm talking about as the hottest woman in the film, and though she was hot, it was Fairuza Balk in only one scene who stood out. This is one area where a foreign director who lives by his own rules like Herzog can really turn some of our preconceived notions upside-down. The average American director looks to Balk for their goth chick or scary chick. Herzog saw something else, and he went with it, resulting in this scene where Balk's character thinks she's going to have sex with Cage, is seductively crawling over him in bed in her underwear and police boots, only to find out he's too wasted and is only there with her to find out how she can get him drugs from the Louisiana Highway Patrol evidence locker. Without her being as hot as she is in that scene, we have no idea how far gone Cage is, and it all works perfectly.

I think most of my readers would enjoy this. Best way to know: if you hated National Treasure, you'll like Bad Lieutenant: PC-NO. I also think, if you're a big fan of the Ferrara/Keitel version, you should watch this. It's no cheap knock off, this is it's own movie, and it's interesting to compare the two. If I was going to pick, I'd say the earlier one is the more complete film, making it better in my eyes.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1095217/

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/

Hawk's Vengeance (1997)

Word on the street is this is a Snake Eater sequel, only sans Lorenzo Lamas. Believe me, you won't have any problems understanding the subtle nuances of Hawk's Vengeance's plot if you haven't seen the previous films.

Hawk's Vengeance has Gary Daniels as the eponymously named British special forces dude who comes back to the States when he finds out his step brother (though technically it's his half-brother) is murdered. As he investigates things, he finds there's more to a war between a Chinese gang and some local skinheads than meets the eye. Unfortunately, his methods of investigation are a tad on the violent and deadly side, which has caused his brother's partner some alarm. Not enough alarm to not have sex with him, just enough to slap him in the face. Anyway, as he closes in on his brother's killer, we close in on a first class Daniels style beatdown.



My feelings on this film can be summed up in one scene. Towards the end, Daniels is going through the baddie's office building, confronting various henchmen, and one of them in particular almost beats Daniels in a fair fight, Daniels only besting him by running a power drill like device through the guy's eye. The gore doesn't bother me, because we barely see it. It's the fact that our hero isn't good enough to take out a henchmen-- and a henchmen who's appearing in only that scene-- without resorting to underhanded methods. Why, then, should we believe it when he takes out the head baddie? And this is common throughout Hawk's Vengeance. Lesser bad guys that should be getting wasted by him are giving him a hard time, to the point where he needs back up to save him. This is not what we sign on for with a Gary Daniels flick. I liked a lot of the action, explosions, etc.; and some of the fights scenes were good; but I expect a certain level out of Daniels, and this just wasn't quite there.

Maybe I'm being picky, but I just feel like I expect Jim Rockford to get a bottle broken over his head when facing a group of thugs, not Gary Daniels. Daniels should be able to whip around and block it without looking. This brings up an interesting issue that we often see the converse of in Steven Seagal films: how does one find the balance between making it too easy on the hero to the point that he's almost omnipotent, and making him look like Kane's wussy son on Kung Fu: The Legend Continues? I guess it's all personal taste. Look at something like Drive, where Dacascos was better than any of the henchmen he faced one on one, but in groups, though he could still take them, it took a lot of work and a lot of ingenuity. I think that's the part of the scale I like best, and I would say Hawk's Vengeance was just a little too far on the Kane's wussy son side of the scale for my tastes, and personal tastes differ.



Mr. Daniels is slowly making his way up the ranks, with this being his 14th film reviewed, which puts him eighth among Hall of Fame actors (Dolph 33, Seagal 20, Van Damme 19, Lorenzo Lamas 19, Dudikoff 18, Busey 16, Lambert 16). With like 25-30 left, and also like 9 or 10 in development credits, including the upcoming Tekken, the potential is there for him to be the most tagged actor of all time. I think our next one will be Epicenter, based on the great review I saw of it on my friend Mr. Kenner's Movies in the Attic. I'm trying to figure out what will be a good time to kick off our next genre series-- at least not for a few weeks-- but once that happens, the opportunities for Daniels to get more reviews will fall off considerably.

We often talk about my lack of ability to handle too much gore in action films. Horror films usually aren't so bad, because it's so over the top; but in action films it's sometimes overly cynical or completely unnecessary, and in those cases ruins the film for me. Hawk's Vengeance had two such scenes, both involving the same guy in something of a macabre running joke, where first he has his fingers accidentally slashed off, and then his ear. It was just weird and gross, and told me what kind of people were making the movie. There were plenty of other scenes in the movie that I was fine with, from the drill to the eye (off screen), to the dude's head sent through a spinning fan, to the heart transplant-- but none of those things were played poorly for laughs. I remember Django had a famous ear removal scene, and that one worked for me too. Again, it just looks like a personal taste thing, but in this case the finger and ear slashing was the action film version of the dick and fart joke, only sicker.



Best part of the film: Daniels date with his brother's partner. I've been on my share of first dates, some good, some bad; but I've never had a woman show up in a leather skirt. The whole outfit looked like she raided the vice squad wardrobe. And of course, the next scene, after she and Daniels rent a cheap motel room to have sex in (classiest first date ever), she walks around with just her bra on, while in the skirt, nylons, and heels. Another point to make. When I first started the blog, and didn't have any software to capture images, I was at the mercy of the Internet for whatever I could find, and often all I could get were pics of whatever actress in the film took her clothes off. As I was looking for an image of Hawk's Vengeance's cover, my search results turned up the old suspects of all the nude pics, and I felt a little nostalgic for the old days.

Hawk's Vengeance would probably go somewhere in the middle of Daniels' films for me, but as a fan of his work, I've seen a lot better. I think even on its own merits as a DTV action film, especially from the genre's Golden Age in the 1990s, it's still pretty pedestrian. For comparison sake, check out Kenner's review here (it's at the bottom).

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116500/

Unstoppable (2004)

Wesley Snipes had fallen off a bit as far as DTVC reviews goes, mostly because I thought I was stuck with only Hard Luck left. Then, last week, I was going through my Netflix queue (which is pretty large), and I found Unstoppable. This had to be a mistake, right? Why would I leave this one out and do all the others? Well, it wasn't a mistake, somehow I'd neglected it.

Unstoppable has Snipes as a former special forces guy that is mistaken for a CIA agent posing as an FBI agent tracking former CIA agents trying to sell a government drug they stole that causes massive hallucinations and makes the person under its effects very subject to suggestion. The ex-CIA agents inject him with the drug and take him back to a mental hospital to interrogate him to see what he knows, thinking he's an FBI agent that's onto them. Snipes escapes, and all hell breaks loose, and the only one looking out for his best interests is his police detective girlfriend, played by Jacqueline Obradors.



Man, this is a tough one to call. It has some great action, and Snipes really brings it; but it was just weird with the whole Snipes under a hallucinogen, and also there were some serious lulls as the plot was trying to work itself out. I think where this film hurt itself, is Snipes is one of the coolest action leads out there, and a lot of that is taken away by having him under the influence of this drug. We see it in flashes, but when I'm signing on for a Wesley Snipes film, I want it for more than just flashes.

I never got around to seeing Brooklyn's Finest, and it looks like his next potential release, Gallowwalker, was filmed back in 2006, so I'm not sure what any of that means for his once burgeoning DTV career. Oh wait, then there's the yet to be released Game of Death, which has Gary Daniels and Robert Davi. That's what I'm talking about. What I'd like to see from Snipes, that I haven't seen out of any of his DTV fare, is a good old fashioned straight ahead actioner. Too often these films get too caught up in their bad plots, techno music, and Bourne Identity rip-off cinematography and editing. It's okay to be Blade II, especially when the alternative is being dumb and dull.



I wanted to set this review up so it would come after Tough and Deadly for a reason. It's not just the fact that the plots are similar: CIA/special forces guy drugged and let loose on society; it's really what Wesley Snipes has meant to the action genre in general. Just look at what Billy Blanks had to go through in the 80s and 90s to get good starring roles. Wesley Snipes was really the first mainstream African American action hero to have the level of success that he's had, and it's because of him that you have people like Will Smith making the cash he has in stinkers like Bad Boys II.

Jacqueline Obradors is very pretty in this film, even if she's playing a tough police detective. I like that, because often in films like this, the feeling is the female has to be one or the other: hot and tough, or pretty and weak. Recently I had a chance to catch another Obradors film, Soldier Boyz, when it aired on EncoreAction. I must say, I had even less patience for it now than I did when I first saw it. Seriously, let's train some teen killers in ten minutes and send them into a remote area of "Vietnam Today"? What a stinker! though very hilarious. If I can say anything about Unstoppable, even if it didn't work in parts, it was not as bad as that.



Do you recognize Kim Coates? You should, because the guy has been in almost everything. Major That Guy. Another connection to this film and Tough and Deadly, Coates is from the same city as Roddy Piper: Saskatoon. I hear Glass Tiger is from there too. I'd love to see them in concert. ...someday, you'll be shedding your tears...

I could recommend this if you're a big Snipes fan. It's not his best stuff, but he does his best with the material he's given. I mean, in the grand scheme of things, Snipes could've been rescuing a rich girl being held by Cary Tagawa, using a bunch of teen murderers he'd trained five minutes ago, and with one of the kids being named Brophey. Now that would've been rough, eh Mr. Dudikoff?

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0349889/

Tough and Deadly (1995)

Last week we kind of hit a patch of three straight stinkers, and I find it can be taxing on both me as the writer, and you as the reader, if there's too much negativity here at the DTVC, so I figured I'd go to the well and grab this Piper/Billy Blanks gem. I had seen it originally on TNT back in the late 90s, but that was over ten years ago, and as I've found in revisiting these things, sometimes they aren't as good as I remember or as good as I thought they were.

Tough and Deadly is about a former CIA operative, Billy Blanks, who is captured, drugged, then escapes, only to wake up in a hospital bed with amnesia. Roddy Piper, a PI and bounty hunter, sees this John Doe as a potential payday, so he takes him in. As both start to learn just who Blanks really is, and how deep the shit he's in really is, it's possible Piper may have bitten off more than he can chew-- except he's Piper.



So my memory let me down again... because this was way awesomer than I remembered it! Billy Blanks and Piper were great, the action never let up, I mean, what more could you ask for? Yes, maybe Billy Blanks' amnesia was a tad contrived, and it seemed like it was only for the convenience of the plot that he would regain memories, but do I care? Not when the fight scenes are great and constant. Remember rule number one: don't let the plot get in the way of the action. Well, they followed that rule with very tangible, positive results. My only complaint was I'd have liked to see more Richard Norton. He has like two scenes in the film, and he and Blanks could've had some better fight scenes.

All this talk of me trying to get all of Gary Daniels and Michael Dudikoff's DTV catalog reviewed up here, and I'd completely neglected Rowdy Roddy Piper, which is asinine on my part. I'm not sure anyone outside of Dolph Lundgren, the Babe Ruth of DTV action, has turned in more consistent performances than Piper. The one problem with sorting out his catalog that we don't see with a Daniels of Dudikoff, though, is from about 2000 on, Piper has a lot of movies under his belt, but not a lot of starring roles. The next one of his we'll do is Back in Action, another Billy Blanks collaboration.



Before we discuss Mr. Blanks, Tough and Deadly did have another DTVC Hall of Famer in it, one of our faves, Richard Norton. As I said above, he only has two scenes, both of them fights with Billy Blanks. I feel like a complete ass, because Norton celebrated his 60th birthday back in January, and I completely missed it. I've been doing this a lot lately, so I should probably mark on a calendar every important DTVC birthday. As far as I remember right now, we have Steven Seagal's 59th coming up on April 10th, and Roddy Piper's 46th on April 17th. I'm not sure what Norton's next film will be, because you never know where he'll turn up, but according to my Netflix queue, he's in the Dudikoff flick Strategic Command, so plan on that one coming soon.

Now for Billy Blanks. This is the first film of his we've reviewed here, which isn't as crazy as you'd think, just because he hasn't done that much. His martial arts skills are off the chain, so I have to assume his lack of roles might be his choice. Another thing to consider is there aren't really any African American martial arts stars in the 80s and early 90s. I think if you're Blanks, it's like you're either in a Blaxploitation throwback, or you're a sidekick, and I don't blame him for not wanting roles like that. You can just tell from this movie that the people involved weren't used to shooting an African American hero. His face was often obscured by shadows because the lighting was set for Piper's paler complexion. That's too bad, because Blanks' skill set would've made him a Hall of Famer if he had the roles. Let's hope Michael Jai White gets more opportunities like he did in Blood and Bone to be a great DTV action lead, and Wesley Snipes can come in and take over for Seagal and Jean Claude Van Damme as another former big screen star turned DTV action lead.



Finally, Phil Morris is in this as the bad CIA agent. Seeing him as a baddie when we know how funny he can be in things like Seinfeld and Black Dynamite was very surreal. There was no tinge of him as Kramer's lawyer, or a tongue in cheek Black Panther licking a bullet. I've always liked things like this, watching great comedic actors play it straight. I didn't know he's also the Martian Manhunter on Smallville. I guess I wouldn't know that because I don't watch the show, but still. Also of note, he celebrated his 51st birthday yesterday, on April 4th.

You can get this on DVD (not on Netflix, but on Amazon), but I scooped it on VHS for the nostalgia factor. Either way you do it, it's a fun time. This is just some good ol' 1990s DTV action, and there's never anything wrong with that.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114706/

American Samurai (1992)

The idea of this film intrigued me. David Bradley paired with Mark Dacascos in a samurai film. Of course, only ten minutes in and I realize that Dacascos is the bad guy. Suddenly I was having misgivings...

American Samurai has Bradley as a kid whose family crashes a plane over some remote areas of Japan with an infant him in it. He alone survives, and a dude who runs a samurai training place takes him and trains him, much to the chagrin of the guy's real son, Mr. Dacascos. Dacascos swears revenge for the favor his dad has shown Bradley, and fast forward so many years and Dacascos hires some thugs to steal a sacred family samurai sword from Bradley's home in LA. That means Bradley, a journalist, traces the sword to Turkey, where he goes after it pretending to be after a story. A Romantic Comedy ensues, and then a rip-off of Enter the Dragon with weapons.



I don't know what to say. I imagine the idea sounded great on paper, but it only translated so well on screen. Fighting with weapons is only so entertaining, and when some of the people involved look ridiculous-- see Conan wannabe and Anachronism the Great, a viking-- it only looks worse. This is especially disconcerting when you have two quality martial artists and instead of them doing what they do best: hand-to-hand combat; you have them in a couple of fairly clunky sword fights. I understand that they're samurai, and samurai fight with swords, but if these guys aren't great at them, mix it up and have some martial arts stuff with no weapons first, just to let us know what we have.

Let's start with Bradley. Why doesn't he often work in these situations? I think here it was the material. He only had a few instances where he was the man, and just as often he was getting tasered and being ordered around by the baddies. That kind of thing just doesn't work in an action film. Why they needed to cram this story into an Enter the Dragon rip-off is beyond me as well. Make it a detective film, have him track down leads, get caught in traps of baddies, and have to fight his way out. Then at the end, Dacascos kidnaps his Romantic Comedy lead, and they have their final showdown.



More than Bradley, they really wasted Dacascos. Let this guy cut it loose and show the world what he can do. After seeing him in Drive, I have very little respect for any film maker that doesn't give us that level of action when he or she has Dacascos at his or her disposal. Not only that, but his long hair made him look feminine. At the beginning he was revealed as a Yakuza. Why not have him in Turkey on some kind of drug deal, and Bradley has to take him down. Throw in a couple scenes where a larger group of cops try to take him in, and he takes them all out with his bare hands.

There was one interesting scene at the beginning when Bradley first loses the sword and dreams about it. There's an Onibaba style demon samurai that Bradley faces in his dream. At first I thought this was telling us how this would be a samurai film in the style of x, y, and z; instead it was telling us that there are good films out there, and this is not one of them.



Maybe it's not the fanny pack moment from Cyborg Cop, but it's close. After another bad dream, Bradley wakes up in his tighty... err... orangies? Anyway, it wasn't a good look. Maybe not as bad as the fanny pack, but close. As we make our way through the rest of Bradley's brief period in the movie industry, I'm left to wonder how many more moments like this we have to look forward/fear coming. And we're still left with the mystery of why Bradley stopped making movies in the first place.

This could be good with a group of people making fun of movies, but there's just so much more out there with funnier scenes to choose from, so I'm not sure I can even recommend it on those merits. If it ever ends up on something like EncoreAction, I'd say DVR it and give it a look see. Otherwise, don't go too far out of your way.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106258/

April Fools Day (2008)

In our time honored tradition at the DTVC-- or for the second year in a row-- we celebrate my favorite holiday, April Fools Day, with a film, last years being the 1986 aptly titled April Fools Day. Why do we do this? Because I was born on April Fools Day 31 years ago, and since I write the blogs, I get to pick what the favorite holiday is. I know, maybe I'm a bit of a narcissist.

April Fools Day 2008 is a bit of a remake of its 1986 predecessor, in that both are about a rich girl and a series of murders (or not murders?) that take place on my favorite day of the year. Where it changes is, it starts on April 1, 2007, when a jaded socialite has a party in honor of one girl's coming out (she's not a lesbian, just rich) in order to play a prank on another one. Things go wrong, and that other one dies after said prank. One year later, everyone involved or seemingly involved in that prank get a letter telling them they better confess, or they'll get bumped off one by one. They ignore the note at their own peril... or do they?



The ending of this was really bad. I understand what they wanted to do: they were afraid we'd all see the initial twist coming, so they needed to add an extra one. Only problem was, that extra one gave the whole film a really bad tone. The socialite that the film centers around, the one who committed the initial prank that went deadly, is the one who's put through the wringer with all of these deaths or not deaths around her, and the only side we the audience see of her is her in distress, meaning when she gets killed accidentally by the film's twist, it just leaves a bad taste in our mouths. It did in mine at least.

That socialite was played by the extremely hot Taylor Cole, who you may or may not recognize from her role as the bad guy's dead girlfriend in 12 Rounds. I actually didn't recognize her from that role because her hair's so short, meaning I spent the film going "where do I know her from?" Anyway, did I mention she's hot, because she is. This film would've been a snoozefest had it not been for watching her run from set to set in her hot black boots and short dress. I can see how she ended up in more big budget pictures like 12 Rounds.



If we're comparing this to its 1986 counterpart, there's really no comparison, the earlier one is much better. Sure, it doesn't have Taylor Cole, but after that, it has better kills, a better feel, a better story, and even a better secondary twist. Even accounting for how I'm a bigger fan of the 80s slasher style film, the 2008 April Fools Day felt more like a Final Destination crossed with Cruel Intentions than anything else. Plus, because the couple that's put through the ringer make out okay in the 1986 version, even the ending of that one feels better.

I must say, the Butcher Brothers, the people who wrote and directed this, must have had a bad experience with a rich girl at one time in their lives. Some girl probably scorned their advances or ran their shorts up the flag pole, and she just happened to be rich too, and all they wanted to do was get her back. You could smell the resentment a mile away as Taylor Cole was put through ordeal after ordeal. No, this wasn't as bad as Captivity by any stretch, but there was still an overarching sentiment that they wanted this "rich bitch" to get hers; but because they did such a poor job of setting her up as a bitch-- I mean after the first half hour or so, when the party and initial prank were all done we went right into her being afraid and crying immediately at the sight of a drowned man in his pool-- we had no other choice but to root for her, which is what we want out of all movies, to have some girl or guy or couple who somehow survive this horrible night and make it out okay on the other side. When we see the girl we've been rockin' with for 90 minutes crouching down behind a wall with a meat cleaver in her hand fearing for her life, you can't just get her through the ordeal, only to blow her head off in a "twist".



And that gets me to my final point. A film made by men needs to be careful with how they treat their female characters, especially the one around which the film is centered. You make a very bad statement when you scare the hell out of a girl for the better part of an hour of film time, then end the film by blowing her head off, especially when your initial point is you want to teach her a lesson for her previous pranks. Even more so when throughout the film you've had her say she learned that lesson and that she never does pranks anymore, blowing her head off is that much more depraved. It just comes off as "let's teach this uppity bitch a lesson". If the film makers had unresolved issues with a rich girl from high school who was too good for them, or a teacher or other female authority figure that they wished they could get the better of, go see a shrink and find a healthier way to deal with it. Healthier than making us sit through your fantasies of getting back at whatever woman for 90 minutes in a movie at least.

I must say, this film might be worth it for Taylor Cole. She was the only redeeming quality, but what a redeeming quality it was. If you want a fun horror film, see the 1986 version, because that one worked. This one's just too blah. We'll see what we have for an April Fools movie next year.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1018817/