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!

Not Another Mistake aka Cross Fire (1989)

With the sad news that another legend had left us, this time Richard Norton, it was necessary to do a post in his honor, and I thought this would be a good one. I found it on YouTube with hard-coded Dutch subtitles, which is all the better. In addition to us, the guys at Comeuppance have covered this too.

Not Another Mistake is a 'Namsploitation flick (hence the first letter of each word in the title spelling "NAM") where Norton, a former POW who escaped his captors, only to have his wife and daughter killed years after the war in a home invasion, has been called back into action when some intel tells the US military that the unit he left behind in the POW camp might still be alive, and they want him to go in and get them out. It won't be easy though, as he only has a rag-tag group of young recruits to help him, and if he's caught, Uncle Sam will disavow any knowledge of him or his team. As they slog through the jungle, dodging traps and ambushes, they're captured by some baddies. Is this where his old unit is being held? And will he be able to escape and save them?

Maybe not the best film, as it's a bit sloggy in points and a bit all over the place, but it gets the 'Namsploitation job done. Norton is exactly what you want out of him for the lead, it's his film, and he carries it accordingly, like he's hoisted one of his fallen comrades on his back and is lugging them to safety in the jungle. We also get a random recognizable face, in this case Wren T. Brown, plus all the requisite hut explosions, jeep and other vehicle flips--which also explode--and bad guy soldier shimmies as they're mowed down with M-16 fire--the only thing we were missing was a helicopter explosion, but man do they tease us with that! The interesting thing is it's long, 99 minutes to be exact, only like 90 seconds of which was credits; but it's a weird, almost fascinating kind of long. Director/writer Anthony Maharaj makes some interesting decisions, the kinds of things that American screenwriting schools would say you shouldn't do, like randomly showing us cattle crossing a dirt road that has no impact on the story at all, or a real-time shot of Norton packing up and hiding his parachute. Even the ending was off, because we have this clear ending point at the 69-minute mark, where Norton vanquishes the baddie, but then there's this 30 minutes of escaping by train, then a shoot-out on a hill while trying to get onto the rescue helicopter. It made no sense that they did that, but in a way it made it more fun. And that's ultimately what this film is about for me, beyond the great Norton, even when it's making the wrong decision, somehow it works in spite of itself.

Richard Norton is one of the best to do it, and I think this film is a great example of what he brought to the table. It feels like he knew exactly what a movie needed from him, and he knew how to deliver it. It's not just being a professional actor, though that's part of it. It's like he knew what a low-budget 'Namsploitation film was, why he was there, and what he needed to do to make it as entertaining as possible, which turns something like this from unremarkable into a fun time. He could do that in a post-apocalyptic Cirio H. Santiago film, a modern team-up actioner with Cynthia Rothrock, or a Hong Kong flick too. I'd say they don't really make 'em like Norton anymore, but the truth is, they never made 'em like him back then either, he was a one-off, but we as low-budget action fans are lucky we had him, and have so many great films of his to enjoy, like this one. Here's to you Mr. Norton, you're one of the greatest to do it, and you will be missed.

The idea that there were POWs in Vietnam who were still being held long after the war was debunked long ago, but in the late 80s, after the First Blood: Part II and Missing in Action boom, low-budget filmmakers based in the Philippines could pump tons of these babies out based on this myth, and Anthony Maharaj was no different. Now the new debunked hoax that's all the rage for movies is middle class white women and/or their daughters getting kidnapped at Hobby Lobbies and trafficked into Mexico. Maybe I'm biased, but the POW-MIA 'Namsploitations seem more fun, but maybe in twenty years there will be a kid born in the 2000s who starts the Straight-to-Streaming Connoisseur, and they'll be all over the trafficking films from the 2010s to the 2020s the way we are these Vietnam films made in the Philippines from the 80s to the 90s. While a lot of these are available on free streamers, many more are from rare VHS rips, like this one on YouTube with hard-coded Dutch subs, which just makes it all the more fun when someone says something and we see it in Dutch on the screen below it. "They got Pappas." "Pappas is getroffen." That's another area where these 'Namsplotations beat their modern trafficking counterparts, a serious collector can find them on rare, foreign VHS, while the trafficking films often don't even have a physical media release. It begs the question: would I like some of these tired trafficking movies more if instead of streaming on Tubi or Hulu, I was watching VHS rips of them on YouTube with hard-coded foreign language subs? At the very least, it wouldn't hurt to try.

As many tropes as this film had, it also had a lot of trope teases. We mentioned the helicopter explosion tease above. I don't know how many of those we had, whether it was just helicopters looming in the vicinity while our heroes had explosive firearms, or situations like the train chase that just lent themselves to a helicopter in pursuit that could meet an explosive end, but there were many moments that would've led to a helicopter explosion in a similar film, but didn't bear fruit here. Another is the Presidential Portrait, there were multiple foreign US offices that scenes took place in, complete with American flags standing near the actors and bare walls behind them, just screaming out for a Bush 41 portrait, or maybe a Reagan depending on when this was shot. When we watch movies like this, we have boxes we need to check off (or tick off if you speak the King's English), and to come so close on some, only to be left wanting, is frustrating. I'm not usually an advocate of Lucasing films, but if you're still with us, Mr. Maharaj, I feel like maybe you should right some of these wrongs with a new version of the film. Just a thought.

Finally, as this is an in memoriam post, we need to give Mr. Norton a second paragraph. We often talk about the period from the mid-80s to the mid-90s as the Golden Age of DTV action, and no one was more instrumental in making that so than Richard Norton. He was larger-than-life, but could use that presence as either the hero, like he was in this film, or the head baddie, like in Lady Dragon or City Hunter. For me, it didn't get any better than him in a Canadian tuxedo beating the crap out of baddies in Rage and Honor 2, culminating in him taking down Patrick Muldoon while taunting him, "come on Tommy!" And that was the thing, even with that larger-than-life presence, he also seemed very down-to-earth, like after he cleaned out a bar full of heavies, you could sit down and have a beer with him. While he will most certainly be missed, the contributions he made to the world of cinema we love so much can't be understated, and as I said above, we're so lucky to have them.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently get this on VHS, or on YouTube with hard-coded Dutch subtitles. If you've seen all of Norton's other big ones, this is a fun one to watch in honor of him. We'll miss him, but definitely not forget him. Thank you Mr. Norton, you were one of the greatest.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094920

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

Pure Danger (1996)

This is one that I probably should've seen a long time ago, let alone covered by now, but I hadn't, until Jon from The After Movie Diner had me on his show to discuss it--which, as of my writing hasn't been released yet, but it was a fun conversation, so keep an eye on our socials for when it is live, possibly on his new PM Entertainment Podcast instead. In addition to us, Chris the Brain at Bulletproof Action has covered this as well.

Pure Danger has Howell (who also directed) as Johnie Dean (yes the name on the cover--"Between the two stars' names there is THE MAIN CHARACTER'S NAME"), a short-order cook on parole, who, with Becky (Teri Ann Linn), the server at the diner he works at, come into possession of a sack of diamonds. They're on the run from competing gangs of criminals that want to get their hands on them, and when Howell goes to his old friend (Rick Shapiro) to try and fence the ice, they end up back in the orbit of the gangsters that want to kill them. It's a wild, Spiro Razatos-action-directed ride as Johnie and Becky try to survive and get a better life for themselves. Oh, and Carrot Top appears in the final chase.

This is the fun PM ride you came for, but also it has other elements that make it even better. The C. Thomas Howell direction is fascinating. It's not like the ones Wings Hauser did, this is like wacky Tarantino, with his main character Johnie yucking it up with his mustache. Then there's the Italian gangster stereotypes, which PM was always kind of fond of anyway, but Howell has them ramped up to eleven--and perhaps 9 or 10 would've been better, because part of that ramping up to 11 is them using the N word a lot, especially directed at Leon, who's the leader of the other gang. While it feels like it's biting on Tarantino's use of the word in Pulp Fiction, in a way it also reveals how bad that was too, if that makes sense. Speaking of "if that makes sense," Carrot Top is driving a delivery truck in the big finale chase sequence. Yes, you read that right, and it's not someone who looks like Carrot Top that I'm calling Carrot Top for laughs. And the thing is, this is Carrot Top in a Spiro Razatos-action-directed chase, so it's next-level on its own, but then you add in Carrot Top and you have the kind of bonkers beauty you only find in the world of DTV. I don't put it above The Sweeper, but once you've seen that, you have to see this.

We're now at 48 PM flicks on the site. That's right, the 50 Club is in sight, and I have Steel Frontier already in the can from my guest spot on Jon Cross's PM Entertainment Podcast (episode number 3 in his archives), so we already have 49 slotted in. I recently updated my PM Letterboxd list to go from 10 to 15 movies, and this one slots in at 14 all-time. In the post-Pulp Fiction era, where the world of DTV was under constant attack by indulgent filmmakers trying to make talky, ironic gangster flicks, PM told Howell he could make his own, as long as it fit PM's rule of having action sequences every 15 minutes or so. Then they gave the action sequences to Spiro Razatos to direct, so that alone meant this was going to be great. From there though, because Howell was given the freedom to do what he wanted outside of the action, he could really go for it, with these crazy caricatures that both mock and pay homage to the genre he's working in. I think if this were made today, they'd tone down the use of the N word by the Italian gangsters--and maybe make them less stereotypical too--but outside of that, I don't know that something this fantastic would be made in the modern DTV world, which is too bad, but at least PM made it in 1996.

Spiro Razatos is closing in on the 30 Club, now with 27 films on the site, and according to IMDb we still have a lot of stuff of his from the 90s to cover, so the 30 Club shouldn't be a problem, maybe even this year. He brings it again in this one, with action sequences that lead to action sequences, shootouts that turn into foot chases, then car chases, which culminate in massive explosions. One thing he did a lot of in the final car chase was have two cars come together to smash into a third car in between them. It looked a lot like what he did in the Venom car chase, where Venom used his tentacles to smash cars together. I think that's part of what's so fun about his PM work, beyond how bonkers and beautiful it was, is you can see how he took some of these things in 90s DTV flicks, and used them in major productions that were earning $750 million to $1 billion at the box office in the 2010s. As a fan of the action genre, Razatos is just at another level, it's the kind of stuff where I'm like hook me up to an IV and mainline it right into my veins, and that's the action he gives us here.

It is kind of crazy that we're not getting to Howell until the sixth paragraph, but it just kinda worked out that way with PM and Razatos as our two Hall of Famers. That begs the question: should Howell get in? And it's a fair question, because he has some classics, to which I think we can add this one. We've inducted people with fewer films than him, and he now has two signature films in this and The Sweeper, so it's worthy of consideration, but we also have a stacked line-up of inductees for 2025 already, like Cole S. McKay--who we discovered upon finally tagging him belongs in the 50 Club!--Imperial Films, Daniel Bernhardt, and Kathleen Kinmont. That kind of locks things up for 2025, but there's always 2026, right? And if you're looking for Hall of Fame caliber Howell, after The Sweeper this is it. He's yucking it up with his mustache, but at the same time he's giving us a unique perspective, taking full advantage of the leeway PM gave him. This is the fourth Howell-directed film we've seen on the site, after The Day the Earth Stopped, War of the Worlds 2: The Next Wave, and The Land That Time Forgot, all of those being Asylum films, and so it's probably no surprise that the first of his two PM films he directed that we're covering here shoots to the top of the list.

Finally, when we see Donny "Don" Most as Howell's parole officer early in the film, I figured he'd have this seventh paragraph locked up, and I'd spend it talking about Happy Days, maybe getting into how the "Jump the Shark" episode didn't kill the show, that they actually went on for another 5 seasons, many of which as the top-rated comedy in America. I was mentally drafting the paragraph as the film went on, only to discover Carrot Top--yes, the Carrot Top, Scott "Carrot Top" Thompson--driving the delivery truck in the final chase scene. What do you do with that? You just sit back and love it, that's all you can do. Looking at his IMDb, he was also in the Howell-directed Hourglass, so they must have been, or maybe even still are, friends, which may explain something else. Courtney Thorne-Smith appeared with Howell in the volleyball classic Side Out (another plus for Howell's Hall of Fame case). When Carrot Top was making Chairman of the Board, did Howell suggest Thorne-Smith for his leading lady in that film? Which would mean Side Out set in motion a series of events that led us to Thorne-Smith going on Conan O'Brien to do publicity for the season finale of Melrose Place, where Chairman of the Board was mentioned, and Norm MacDonald famously took it down. Also mentioned in that appearance, Donny "Don" Most, so it all comes full circle.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Currently this is on YouTube, Fawesome, Plex, and the Roku Channel here in the States. I mention all of these, because some have edited-for-TV versions, so you want to be careful of that. The YouTube one is uncut, so that one's safe. This is another fun PM ride, well-worth checking out.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117406

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

Pushed to the Limit (1992)

I was looking to get some more Mimi Lesseos on the site, and Tubi kept suggesting this one to me, so I figured why not make it happen. In addition to us, Matt Spector at Bulletproof, Mitch at the Video Vacuum, and David Wain at The Schlock Pit have covered this too.

Pushed to the Limit stars Lesseos (who also wrote and produced) as Magnificent Mimi, a star wrestler whose brother (Greg Ostrin) is killed and husband (Michael M. Foley) is seriously wounded by gangster Harry Lee (Eidan Hanzei). To get revenge, she has her husband's sensei Vern (Verrel Reed) train her to fight in Lee's Kumite--that's right, we got a Kumite baby! Only this is more of an evergreen, nightly Kumite, as opposed to a yearly tournament, at least as far as I can tell. Anyway, Lee's champion fighter, Inga, after a successful career as a dancer in Russell Mulcahy-directed 80s music videos, is having trouble finding work in the 90s, so she's changed careers and is now breaking ladies' backs and necks in the ring--though she's kept her make-up from those old videos. Will Mimi defeat Inga and Lee, and bring down Lee's criminal empire?

This definitely borders on what the guys at Comeuppance would call a "That Movie," and by that they mean a Samurai Cop or a Miami Connection. A lot of bad dialog, scenes that don't seem to fit, and an opening credit sequence that looks like The Pod People on MST3K. The difference I think though is Lesseos is a great lead, which keeps the schlock, low-budget elements fun, but also elevates this slightly above those other "That Movies." Another element the guys at Comeuppance always talk about is the Punchfighter, and this Kumite has all of those elements, only in addition to people holding wads of cash, we also have these elderly extended reach claw-like devices that they used to give and take money from the upper levels of the fighting arena. How they kept track of who bet on who is beyond me, I just liked the idea of those devices for myself so I wouldn't need to get on a chair to reach the upper shelves of my cabinets. There are elements of the movie that don't work though. It takes us about a half-hour until we even get mention of a Kumite, and before that, we get introduced to a bunch of Mimi's family members who play no role in the film and only serve to confuse us. Some of the darker sequences are hard to follow, and some of the fights were kind of all over the place and hard to get a consistent look at, which could be headache inducing if you're watching this on a tablet like I was. When the fights were shot well though, they were a fun mix of traditional martial arts with professional wrestling moves, and Lesseos really carried off the fights she was in. Also, I loved the Kumite set, it was like something out of a Fred Olen Ray sci-fi exploitation flick, and the juxtaposition of that kind of T n' A with the fighters here in hot Lycra spandex, but kicking ass and taking names, turned that exploitation on its ear. I think for most of the people reading this, you're going to have a fun time, especially if you're streaming for free, or if you find it cheap in the wild on VHS.

"She's a woman on the 90s." She certainly is, and the movie does a great job of positioning Lesseo's character as a modern woman trying to carve out her own career, versus Inga, an 80s throwback with her hair and make-up, trying to fight the calendar. This is the first of four films Lesseos made between 1992 and 1995, the third of which, Streets of Rage, we've also covered on the site, and while I didn't like this one as much as that one, Lesseos has a great presence and is enjoyable to watch. It made me wonder why she only did these four, and in looking at The Schlock Pit review, David Wain mentioned that she tried to make her movies on her own, which might explain it. For funding on this one, it said she had a $600,000 outside investment, and then funded the rest herself, in part through extreme wrestling matches she did in Japan. She said when she tried to go the more traditional route, filmmakers just wanted her fighting in her bikini, which I get would be annoying for her--only now we see with her new cover for this film, she's in a bikini. It's a shame though, because Lesseos should've had like 20 movies from the early 90s to the early 2000s, just a bunch of films like this where she's beating the crap out of people with the occasional scene interspersed with her training or out at a fancy dinner. I get a shady producer wanting to see her in a bikini, and I also get why she would've said no to that, but we as an audience are the ones who missed out.

We've seen our share of Kumites here at the DTVC. There were the Bloodsport sequels, where we had "The Next Kumite" in part 2, what I'd call "the Reboot Kumite" run by John Rhys-Davies in part 3, and then our first look at a "Dark Kumite," run by Ben Franklin in a prison in part 4. We also had a "Lady Kumite" with Lady Bloodfight, starring Amy Johnston. And then recently, on episode 202 of the DTVC Podcast, Ty and I looked at The Last Kumite, which I took "last" to be not so much "final," but rather "the most recent," because I feel like as long as there are action movies, we'll always have Kumites. This independent Kumite run by the baddie is a mix of the "Lady Kumite"--even though there are men's fights too, so it's like there's a men's and women's division--and the "Dark Kumite," because it is pretty dark. It's also a "Nightly Kumite," which is something we haven't seen yet, usually Kumites are yearly affairs. In my Bloodsport 3 post I suggested a Bloodsport 5 be a Colombian Kumite, where the hero has to fight King from Tekken. I was trying to think of others. What about a "Christmas Kumite"? Like it's a mix between a Hallmark Christmas movie and a Kumite? We could even use Amy Johnston as a young woman who left her hometown, made it big in the city, then returned home for Christmas, only to get roped into the local Kumite, plus find out she really loves her old high school boyfriend, played by any number of lantern-jawed Canadian actors. We could have Wincott hosting it for the full Canadian effect. I think you're picking up what I'm putting down.

You may (or may not) have noticed a new tag, "Chinatown." I decided to start tagging them, after we saw the LA one again. We only have 7 tagged, and of those 7, LA has come up a few times. Other Chinatowns include New York, Tokyo, Melbourne, Australia, and Manila in the Philippines. Hopefully we'll see more--plus I may have more that I haven't reviews found, I only did a search for the term "Chinatown" on my blog. We also had another McDonald's, now 13. I believe we've seen this one before too, it's the one on the Vegas Strip, which Lesseos passes while getting a ride in a limo to a dance gig she has there. I recently had McDonald's while I was at Union Station in DC waiting for my train back to Philly. I told myself I wasn't going to do it, but I couldn't help myself as I passed by, and needed to get a couple double cheeseburgers. It is interesting to think, with 13 posts, that almost 1% of all the films I've reviewed on the site have had a McDonald's in them.

Finally, look at how our baddie is holding his glass of champagne. What are you doing? You're making it warm holding it like that! Do you like warm champagne? He should be holding it by the stem of the glass, instead of the bowl, because the warmth of our hands warms the champagne if we old it like that. What's the point of even keeping it on ice in that bucket, if he's just going to warm it in his hand? I'm getting sick at the thought of warm champagne just looking at that. If you've seen this film before, you might be reading this rant and thinking "Matt, you're upset at how the baddie is holding his champagne, but you're okay with the completely out of nowhere way he suggested he and Lesseos go out to dinner in the previous scene?" That is a great point, in the scene before this, Lesseos finds out her friend is fighting Inga in Lee's Kumite, so she pleads with Lee to cancel the bout, only to have Lee say "let's discuss this over dinner." Wait what? Why? But I guess we needed this scene to establish just how bad our baddie is--I mean, it doesn't get more villainous than enjoying warm champagne!

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently stream this on Tubi and Plex here in the States. Lesseos delivers another fun 90s actions. It's rough in spots, and very low-budget, but it'll get you where you need to go, which I think is worth the stream.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110918 

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

Tough Guys Don't Dance (1987)

We lost one of the greatest to ever do it this past week, Wings Hauser, and I wanted to review something in his honor. This is one I'd done recently for Jon's After Movie Diner podcast (season 2, episode 20), after having read the novel not long before that, so it was in the can, had a prominent Wings, plus the added benefit of being a Cannon film. In addition to us, and on the After Movie Diner, Mitch at the Video Vacuum has covered this as well.

Tough Guys Don't Dance is based on the novel of the same name, directed by the novel's author, Norman Mailer. It follows Provincetown, MA author and pot farmer Tim Madden (Ryan O'Neal), who wakes up after a night of partying with no memory of what happened, but a front passenger seat of his car covered in blood, and a couple heads in plastic bags in his weed stash. He tells us and his father (Lawrence Tierny) all this, which comes though in flashback format, and we learn that one head may be his estranged wife (Debra Stipe), and the other may be a woman he met at a bar (Frances Fisher). But did he kill them? And if he did, why isn't sheriff Wings Hauser arresting him? He needs to figure it out before the murders get pinned on him!

This is a fun, fascinating ride. Is it a parody of hard boiled detective thrillers? Is it Norman Mailer's mess of a movie that he's trying to pass off as parody because it didn't do well? Does any of it even matter? Yes and no. The no is the bonkers nature of the whole thing, especially with the cast, and the beautiful Provincetown scenery--including Mailer's house. The yes is the fact that much of the film is told in flashback form, which is not how it happens in the novel. I just don't find it to be a great storytelling device, but for whatever reason Mailer felt like that was the way to go. Again, it's a fascinating ride, especially considering the novel is more straight-ahead solid, to have the adaptation be this, and perhaps be this because the original author was too involved, and that he went too far away from his source material. But sometimes we need a bonkers, fascinating ride in our films, and this thing fits the bill.

And in true Wings fashion, he adds to that bonkers-ness in the way that only he can. When I read the novel, I didn't see him as the character he played, but in this Mailer film adaptation, he's perfect for this version of the character. Larger than life, makes you uncomfortable in every scene he's in, but also making the film better for all of it. Honestly, I don't know if one review is enough of a tribute to him, as he contributed so much to the kinds of movies we love, whether they were PM actioners, PM neo-noirs, Nico Mastorakis horror, Jim Wynorski Erotic Thrillers, or films like this where a Norman Mailer needed his frenetic energy. I think if you were looking for something more traditional to celebrate Wings, one of his PM flicks or Mastorakis flicks is probably a better bet; but if you want to go outside of that, or you've seen all of those and are looking for something new, this is a great way to go. Here's to you Mr. Hauser, you were one of the greatest, there will never be another like you, but we're all fortunate that we at least had you.

This was the fourth work of Mailer's I'd read, after The Naked and the Dead, The Armies of the Night, and Barbary Shore, and I'd probably put this third behind those first two I listed. The best way to describe the novel is from one of the reviews, which likened Mailer's foray into the hard-boiled detective genre to "Julia Child making a hamburger," which, while it's still a hamburger, it's a next level hamburger. The movie's something else. It's not an elevated hamburger, maybe it's more like the guava-flavored ice cream I got recently, or maybe even better, the current guava flavor of Monster energy drink. And if I were to think of who Mailer was, the idea that he'd make a guava-flavored Monster energy drink of a movie adapted from his elevated hamburger of a novel makes a lot more sense than this sentence does, at least to me. The movie has the feel of me after taking my lunch break at work, and deciding to stop at 7-11, and seeing the new guava flavor of Monster energy drink, knowing I have to try it. For the first hour I'm back at my desk, I'm full of energy, but I can't focus, I'm all over the place. The first part of the second hour I'm getting a few things done, but the sugar and caffeine speedball are wearing off, and by the second half of the second hour, I'm done and ready to crash. The only difference between this film and my post break on an energy drink work experience, is at you can have fun with the movie, and I think ultimately, whatever Mailer does here, it's fun.

Oh man! Oh God, oh man! Oh God, oh man! According to the trivia, Mailer told O'Neal he was going to take that out, but then when he saw it, he liked it, so he kept it. O'Neal felt betrayed, because it made people think he couldn't act, but I almost think him not being able to act was what Mailer was going for. And to my mind, Mailer's right, it does fit with the rest of the bonkers-ness. Oh God, oh man! It's like me getting pinged by a colleague for something while I'm in my post-guava energy drink stupor. Oh God, oh man! "Sure, one second, I'll take a look at that for you..." Wait, what is this City Nerd video about "Most Urbanist Ballparks"? Oh God, oh man! The request can wait 15 minutes, I need to see where Fenway ranks... Oh God, oh man! "I totally agree that it's ridiculous that the LA Dodgers play in the middle of a parking moat, when their team is named after the act of dodging a street car!" Oh God, oh man! Oh God, oh man! Colleague pings again. "I'm sorry, I got sidetracked..." Oh God, oh man! Oh God, oh man! Indeed.

Finally, as much fun as we're having with this movie, it is still with a heavy heart with the passing of Wings. I was trying to think back to my earliest Wings experience. Probably his stint on Roseanne as Danielle Harris's father, and then his guest spot on Beverly Hills 90210 as the guy helping Luke Perry get his money back. From there, fast forward to the early 2000s, when Mind, Body, and Soul was on one of those 10-movie DVD packs I got, and my friends and I loved it. We started looking for all the Wings we could find, and it was that love of Wings's films, combined with our love of Dolph and Roddy Piper films that led to the creation of the DTVC. And with all those Wings films, many of which I picked up on VHS because we couldn't find them any other way, even if they were a total stinker, Wings added something that made them a fun time for us. Truly one of the greats, he will be missed, but we have so many films of his left to cover on the site, so we'll see him again soon. Gone, but never forgotten.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Currently you can get this free on Prime. I think that's the best way to go, though I am curious about the DVD, which has Norman Mailer's commentary. This is a bonkers movie, but can be very enjoyable due to said bonkers-ness.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094169

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

Phoenix the Warrior aka She-Wolves of the Wasteland (1988)

It had been over four years since we last had a Kathleen Kinmont film on the site, so I figured it was time, and when I saw that this film was on Tubi, it sounded like a no-brainer. In addition to us, Chris the Brain at Bulletproof, Ty and Brett at Comeuppance, Mitch at the Video Vacuum, and Down Among the Z Movies have all covered this, meaning it was probably long overdue for me to cover it too. 

Phoenix the Warrior is a post-apocalyptic AIP flick with Kathleen Kinmont as our eponymous hero. She rescues a young lady, Keela (Peggy McIntaggart), who just happens to be pregnant, and in this future where pretty much only women survived the apocalypse, a pregnant woman is a big deal. So big that Persis Khambatta and her ruler, the Reverend Mother (Sheila Howard) want her, because the baby Keela is carrying is a special boy that the Reverend Mother could use to power herself--or something. Whatever it is, Kinmont needs to protect Keela and her baby at all costs, otherwise the post-apocalyptic world will be destroyed--or something.

As post-apocalyptic exploitation goes, this isn't horrible. We have a tight 90-minute runtime, Kinmont is a great lead, Persis Khambatta kills it as the baddie, and we get all of the usual post-apocalyptic trappings, like buggies and dirt and fun 80s hairdos. You then have the added element of AIP, which gives this a unique quality the way Corman/Santiago ones are unique, or PM's entry Steel Frontier is unique. For example, I tagged Ted Prior because he gets a set constructor credit, but I think it was more that they reused his set from Mankillers, the corrugated iron shanty town looks like a rundown version of William Zipp's evil drug lord lair from that film. That's the kind of thing that will push a usual post-apocalyptic flick like this up a notch or two, and that can mean a lot when you've seen a lot of these--which I have, more than I expected when I started this site! If you're a connoisseur of these kinds of movies, this is worth a look.

We're now at 9 films for Kinmont, which doesn't sound like a lot, but it puts her in a three-way tie with Shannon Tweed and Dona Speir for third-most all-time among women on the site, behind Cynthia Rothrock's 43, and Julie Strain's 10. The other thing is she was alone as second-most all-time when we last reviewed one of her movies, so in that time Strain, Tweed, and Speir have caught her. I was looking at her bio, and there are some movies of hers we need to do, the problem is they aren't as easy to find, a lot of them haven't made it to free streamers yet--and funny enough, this one is on Tubi twice, as both this title and She-Wolves of the Wasteland. I'll work on tracking down more of her stuff from the late 80s/early 90s that fits our site more, because she should have more films reviewed here than she does. Here's to you Ms. Kinmont, you're one of the greats.

This movie was a staple of USA Up All Night in the 90s, which makes sense considering most of the film has women in bikinis or less. According to the IMDb trivia, Kinmont said the filmmakers asked her to go topless too, but she said no, because she thought the nudity was gratuitous, and they weren't paying her enough--the $50 a day she got barely covered the gas required to drive out the Mojave Desert for shooting. The other thing she said was this was a non-SAG role that she took because the filmmakers assured her the film would only be shown overseas, but when it ended up on HBO and USA, she almost lost her SAG card as a result, and she never saw a dime from that cable money. I guess David Winters and AIP really put the "exploit" in "exploitation," huh? And if Kinmont was only making $50 a day, we have to imagine Ted Prior got nothing for them using his corrugated iron shanty town that he went to all that trouble to make for Mankillers. When you put this up against her doing a love scene with Wings Hauser in Art of Dying that involved him pouring milk and food all over her and yelling at the make-up woman to powder his bare asscheeks, you realize that Wings and PM were probably nothing compared to her AIP experience--okay, maybe not "nothing," maybe just not as bad, right?

The 80s were rife with same-sex platonic partners raising kids, so the fact that this film used that device wasn't too out of the ordinary for the time. We had My Two Dads and Full House as examples of straight males living together and raising kids, and then we had Kate and Allie as two straight women doing the same thing. They were skirting the line of same-sex romantic partners raising kids, but never quite getting there, which meant when you had situations like my parents telling me my mom's best friend was living with her "roommate," and that that "roommate" was pregnant by artificial insemination, it was believable because we had Kate and Allie and Murphy Brown to look to as examples for why my aunt and her "roommate" weren't actually in the committed romantic relationship they actually were in. The thing is though, this movie could've gone there, but for some reason in a lot of exploitation films, homosexuality is depicted as this degenerate thing, like here when women hook up with other women, they're the baddies, while Kinmont's hero and the pregnant woman she rescued would never "engage in that kind of thing." Nope, they're Kate and Allie raising their Murphy Brown child in the post-apocalyptic wasteland, nothing else to see here--until a balding, mustachioed man falls into their laps, and then it's on.

Finally, look at that beautiful Zenith TV set. Not sure how its knobs lasted that long after the apocalypse, but considering everything else I'm accepting in this film, I probably shouldn't worry about it. I did some digging, aka "I looked Zenith up on Wikipedia," and I found out when this film was made, Zenith was already in trouble. The HDTV technology they were starting to pioneer was over a decade away from making it to market, and between their market share dipping due to Japanese competitors, and the cost of the anti-dumping lawsuit they were party to that was filed against those Japanese competitors--which Zenith and their co-plaintiffs eventually lost--they weren't pulling in the money they used to while the debts were mounting up. Over time the company that eventually became LG bought an increasing share in them, finally buying the whole thing in 1999, so LG owns what remains of Zenith now. The irony of course with those dials, was Zenith also pioneered the remote control, so for most of that TV's life the dials weren't necessary, unless a kid had it in the 80s and needed to turn the dial between channels to view some squiggly-lined porn, a practice that also became obsolete when TVs stopped using dials, and internet porn became so prolific. What a scene that would've been in this movie though if the people who prayed to the TVs were sitting around it, turning the dial between channels to watch squiggly-lined porn that was being produced in a post-apocalyptic corrugated-iron shanty town built by Ted Prior for another AIP film. You AIP guys really missed a trick there, didn't you?

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently get this on Tubi, under both its names, though the film is the same. This is fun as a post-apocalyptic actioner between the cast and the AIP touches, and sometimes for a film like this that's all you need.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093731

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