Active Stealth (1999)

Recently Will from Exploding Helicopter posted the exploding helicopter from this film on his Bluesky, and when I looked it up, I thought "how have I not covered this before?" It looks like something I should've done on the site 15 years ago, but somehow slipped through the cracks. In addition to us and Will, Ty and Brett at Comeuppance, Steve Q at Down Among the Z Movies, and Kenner at Movies in the Attic have covered this as well.

Active Stealth has Daniel Baldwin as a special forces kind of guy who thought his buddy was killed in a mission, only to find he's being held hostage by the drug cartel guy they tried to take down some time ago. Their commanding officer, Fred Williamson, sends Baldwin and his team (including Fred Olen Ray mainstays Tim Abell and Chick Vennera) down to get their friend out, and has them use a plane with the latest in active stealth technology as the means to get there. That's it, in and out, and the film is done in a cool 37 minutes--or is it? It's never that easy, and now it's a matter of who will make it with Baldwin back home to see their families, and who will have a dramatic death scene?

This is your classic IMDb 3.5 star rating complete with user reviews touting it as "the worst movie of all time," but for me who's been doing this for almost 1400 movies plus however many more on the podcast, I see something that's professionally made with a few fun moments. What does that mean for you though, because it may not be anywhere near the worst movie ever or as bad as 3.5 stars on IMDb, but is it worth the 100 minutes the movie's asking of you when you have so many options out there? Here are a few things that I would point to that may help you decide. First, Ray and company have a lot of fun touches that harken back to old post-WWII movies, the best of which might be Chick Vennera, who plays the Italian American stereotype so many of those movies had, and caps off his performance with a too sweet helicopter explosion. Or maybe it's the inclusion of another Fred, Fred Williamson, who doesn't do much beyond talk on the phone, but looks great doing it. Then there's Andrew Stevens, who's just there to wear a mustache and talk in military speak, but looks great doing it too. Or finally, Tim Abell, who's there to be the Southern stereotype to Chick Vennera's Italian American stereotype, and again, looks great doing it. The story meanders a bit, and has the holes in it you'd expect from something that was pumped out more because they had the sets available and could do it quick and on the cheap than anything, and I don't know that those touches above is enough to recommend it, but it had its moments for sure. Also, it'll up your percentage on Will's Films with Exploding Helicopters list on Letterboxd.

We're now at 17 directed movies for Fred Olen Ray, depending on whether or not you count Dinosaur Island as 1 or .5, and I count it as 1, but because of that I give the edge in ranking to Joseph Merhi, who's tied with him at 17 for second all-time after Albert Pyun's 44. This is classic Fred Olen Ray, the studio or whoever wanted a quick and dirty military movie that they could throw on video store shelves or cable channels could use for easy programming, he had the location and called a bunch of people he'd worked with before, and along with some bigger names to add to the tin, they made it happen. He's made a career of getting things done like this, across all genres, and here we have something that works more for our audience than Christmas in Palm Springs or Christmas in Vermont, but even with those his process is the same, he's good at pumping them out on the cheap. If we cut out the Christmas movies and the Lifetime movies, he still has enough actioners and Erotic Thrillers remaining to catch Pyun for most all time, it's more a matter of whether or not we'll be doing the site long enough. Next year we'll hit twenty years, so we'll know by 2047 if I kept things going and Ray finally caught him.

There were two other Hall of Famers in this, Fred Williamson and Cole S. McKay. For Williamson, this was a unique one, in that his character was captured at the beginning, and he's not the hero, or even portrayed as a badass who could be the hero. It really is his name and how cool he looks holding a phone, which I think works in a film like this. He's sitting at 33 films on the site, and looking at his bio, I'm not sure how many more we'll do in the near future. He has a couple he's directed that we still need to do, but it might be more things like this where there are other names involved, and he's more along for the ride, but it's possible that will be enough to get him into the 40 Club at some point. Speaking of DTVC clubs, Cole S. McKay is now at 69 (hey-oh!) films on the site. Our next PM film is going to be The Power Within, which will be the one that gets Art Camacho into the 60 Club, and which also has McKay on stunts, so that'll be his 70th film, but I think he needs something more prodigious for his 70 Club post, so one idea I had was Star Hunter, which he co-directed with Fred Olen Ray. It's possible in the meantime I'll review another movie he did stunts because he has so many of them!

Rounding out the rest of the cast and crew, we have a lot of names to get through. I guess we should start with the film's star, Daniel Baldwin, who felt a bit out of place with all of the Ray mainstays around him, but he's a Baldwin, so the name on the tin means more than whether he fits or not. DTVC favorite Tim Abell is back with his 16th film on the site. Is it possible he's putting together a Hall of Fame resume? Speaking of which, Andrew Stevens will be getting inducted this fall, as this is his 36th film overall between acting, directing, and producing, and I believe his 11th as an actor. Speaking of Erotic Thrillers, Shannon Whirry plays Baldwin's wife. I had never really looked at it before, but a few years before this it looks like she'd stopped doing Erotic Thrillers and was doing more stuff like this, or mainstream TV roles, which I think is okay, considering how many great Erotic Thrillers she made before this. Jim Wynorski was a producer on this, under the name "Noble Henry." When talking about great DTV directors, he's one that probably should have more on the site, but at least he gets another tag here. Finally, wrestling fans will appreciate Terry Funk, who was great as the baddie's righthand man. We've actually seen him two other times on the site, with Road House and Timestalkers. 

Finally, as we're talking about Fred Olen Ray and the DTVC director's tag list, I thought about a picture someone posted on Bluesky of Brian De Palma, George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, and Steven Spielberg. In the comments another person asked has anyone had worked with all five of them, and the best me or anyone else could come up with was Tom Cruise, who's worked with all of them but George Lucas. That got me thinking about who a similar five would be for DTV directors. Definitely Albert Pyun, Fred Olen Ray, and Joseph Merhi, who I mentioned above. From there I think Sam Firstenberg has to be included too, so then it's a matter of who the fifth one is. I was between Jim Wynorski and Charles Band, but maybe we add both, and it could be like adding Jonathan Demme or Oliver Stone to that other five (and if we do Stone, that five out of six for Cruise). If that's our six, do we have a DTV Tom Cruise who's worked with four or five of them? I was having trouble finding someone who had worked with five, but Tim Thomerson has worked with all but Merhi and Firstenberg, and Dudikoff and Ice-T have worked with all but Merhi and Band--though Merhi produced an episode of LA Heat Ice-T did. I would not have thought Merhi would be the sticking point in a lot of these, because so many people did PM films, but it looks like the case. 

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently stream this on Tubi here in the States. I don't know that it's something to seek out, but if you like the names involved, it might do in a pinch. Also, if you're like me and need to get your percentage up on Will's Films with an Exploding Helicopter list on Letterboxd, this will help there too.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0211901

Deadly Breed (1989)

As we in the States celebrate 250 years of not wanting to be the middlemen when it came to colonial oppression and keeping all the profits to ourselves, I figured I'd celebrate in true DTVC style with PM Entertainment's 60th film on the site! And what a doozey, right? In addition to us, out of the five critic reviews on IMDb, three of them are Chris the Brain at Bulletproof, Ty and Brett and Comeuppance, and Mitch at the Video Vacuum, so this is a Superfecta film.

Deadly Breed has William Smith as a police chief in full sit-down mode giving detective Kilpatrick (Addison Randall) the job of creating a neo-Nazi murder squad to kill black, Latino, and Asian parolees after they get out of prison, but making it look like the murders happened due to criminal activities so no one will be suspicious. After about 23 of his parolees have been killed though, PO Jake (Blake Bahner) does in fact get suspicious, so he starts digging--and digging, nights spent caressing his braided rat tail over Miller Genuine Drafts while his wife Lana (Michelle Berger) has to pleasure herself alone. Anyway, it's PM, somehow this resolves itself with a lot of explosions and death.

And as a PM movie, this is a rougher sit than we're used to. It would be number 4 on the spine if all the PM films were released as a collection, and while they were still getting a sense of what worked--like shootouts and explosions--they were also getting a sense of what didn't work--like the main character's significant other needing to die in some violent fashion. It also drags in parts, there isn't the PM 15-minute rule yet, the action is almost confined entirely to the end, with smatterings here and there before that. On the other hand, the PM over-the-top-ness (Stallone style) is pretty prevalent, with our neo-Nazi LAPD-led death squad not just harassing or beating people up, but straight-up massacring them. In a way that over-the-top-ness takes some of the sting out of it and makes it less sinister, as opposed to a bunch of masked Proud Boys on a DC subway surrounding a black woman, because there's a sense that the massacre couldn't really happen--but then we live in a 2026 where hate like this is so normalized that it's hard to know what could or couldn't happen. The other thing of course was the rampant racism in the LAPD, and while maybe a Mark Fuhrman wasn't massacring innocent victims, he did have Nazi paraphernalia at his police desk, and did a great job through his racism in creating reasonable doubt in the biggest trial in the last 50 years or so. I can imagine when PM made this in 1989, they couldn't have imagined a significant enough portion of the population today would see Kilpatrick as the hero, not the baddie. And for that, maybe this is the best PM film for the 4th of July in the US in 2026, it was over-the-top then, but notsomuch now. The fact that it's on Fawesome and loaded with commercials is probably fitting as well.

This is the big 6-0 for PM, and while we have better movies still to review that might have worked for a 60 Club celebration, for the 4th of July on America's 250th, I don't think anything was better than this, and in that sense perhaps this is the most fitting 60th post, because one thing PM was good at was reflecting America back at us with this distorted, over-the-top PM lens filled with cartoonish violence, but also baddies getting their comeuppance at the end of the 90 minutes. When a Trump-like figure played by William Shatner tried to gain office in Land of the Free, he didn't succeed and turn America into a White Christian Nationalist haven, he was vanquished by Jeff Speakman after the two duked it out. And here, despite Kilpatrick killing dozens of people, he does shimmy to death from Jake's assault rifle hose job instead of escaping and spreading his murderous hate further. In the real world, baddies not only don't get their comeuppance, they usually make a lot of money off of other people's suffering in the process. PM provided us with an escape that, in the 90s we needed, but in the 2020s, we need even more, so it's great that so many of their films are available in so many places for us to get that 90-minute reprieve. Here's to you Pepin, Merhi, and everyone else at PM who made these films happen, you were truly one of the greatest to ever do it.

Speaking of the people who made PM films happen, we have a lot of them here. Cole S. McKay is now at 68 films on the site, as he does stunts here, with Michael J. Sarna as stunt coordinator, who is now in the 30 Club himself! We also had Paul Volk doing the editing, who just celebrated a birthday, so happy birthday to him! Interestingly Rick Lamb does the cinematography, and while this is his only PM film as cinematographer, he did camera work on several others, plus some Albert Pyun and AIP films, so he's been on the DTVC numerous times. You could see his stamp in the early foot chase scene with the POV shots. This was directed by Charles T. Kanganis, one of six he did for PM, plus he wrote multiple other films for them, so someone we probably should tag at some point, but he was a real PM mainstay, especially in these earlier films of theirs. The same can be said about the film's baddie, Kilpatrick, played by Addison Randall. He's acted in, written, and directed multiple other PM flicks as well, plus City Lights movies. Finally, William Smith is back for his 12th film on the site, a true sit-down role  where he couldn't be bothered to tie his tie tightly or fix his hair. I think he stands maybe one time in the whole film, after police detective Alex (Rhonda Gray) comes in to ask if she can be part of the investigation into her brother's murder, and decorum insists that he has to at least stand to recognize her presence and what she's been through. It's a true thing of beauty.

The other PM mainstays, especially in early PM films like this, are McDonald's and Chinatown sightings. If only Smith had had a Bush 41 portrait in his office, we'd have hit the trifecta, which I don't think has ever happened in any movie on the DTVC before. The McDonald's is a shot of the Golden Arches while a guy is being followed, so we get it both through the windshield (or "windscreen" for my UK readers) and the rear-view mirror as he's looking behind him (sorry, not sure how to say "rear-view mirror" in UK English, "backward-facing looking glass"?). The Chinatown is the LA one we've seen in multiple PM films, and it's one I've never been to before, so maybe I need to make a pilgrimage. I saw that you could even walk to Dodger Stadium from there, and while I'm not sure what kind of walk that would be, I could check two items off of two lists with that, something I've actually done a few other times before, between the White Sox and Chicago's Chinatown, a Yankees game and Manhattan's Chinatown, and a Mets game and Queen's Chinatown. Too bad Pittsburgh doesn't have a Chinatown for when I go to that game later this summer.

Finally--I know that last paragraph felt like the finally--our hero in this movie had a tiny braided rat tail. When I first saw it, he was confronting his wife for using her vibrator because he was ignoring her with all his PO investigations, but I thought maybe it was a wire to an earpiece or a thread coming off his shirt. I should know better when I'm watching a movie from 1989, rat tails can appear out of anywhere, but my brain had moved so far beyond the concept of the rat tail over the last near-40 years that the idea of it is foreign again. After a few other shots of him though I was able to confirm that he did in fact have a small braided rat tail. If you're wondering, I did have a bit of one. I remember going to the Sears or JC Penny hair salon where my mom took me to get my hair done, and them showing me with a mirror in the back how it was coming along. The thing was, I got maybe 2-3 haircuts a year, most of the time I let my hair grow out, so there wasn't a lot of opportunity to make the contrast between the rat tail length and the actual length, and soon enough the rat tail was out and it didn't matter anyway. Normally I would do a "here's to you" thing about something like this, but there's no "here's to you" to the rat tail, just a good riddance.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can get this free on Fawesome, and on YouTube, which I've added to my PM Playlist on our YouTube channel. For a 4th of July 2026 PM film, it might not be the most fun, but it's the most apt. Also, warning if you're watching this in a group, there is a scene where Kilpatrick rapes and kills Lana, and while it's not entirely graphic, it is plenty disturbing. You could even click the 30 seconds ahead button a couple times and skip it.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0167873

And check out my newest novel, Mark in Sales, on Amazon in paperback and Kindle.

The Last Riders (1991)

For our PM review this month, we have this biker film starring Erik Estrada, along with William Smith, and a small early appearance by Mimi Lesseos. Those are the things I know about the film going in, it's what we get that we weren't expecting that make PM films so much fun! In addition to us, Chris the Brain at Bulletproof and the guys at Comeuppance have covered this as well.

The Last Riders has Erik Estrada as the co-head of a biker gang (along with Angelo Tiffe), who, in trying to retrieve some stole drug money, kills the thieves, only to discover one of them is a dirty cop. Dirty or no, the full weight of the LAPD is coming for him, so he needs to give up his gang colors and go on the run. The first place he runs to is old buddy William Smith, who owns a garage in a small town in southern Nevada. He's happy to have Estrada work there and live in a trailer outside of town, and Estrada's happy to settle down, especially when a single mother (Kathrin Middleton) and her daughter (Minnie Madden) show up and need car repairs. But as he starts his new life, it wouldn't be a PM flick if his old life didn't come back to haunt him.

And boy does it come back to haunt him, which makes for an interesting movie story-wise. In most PM "hero's family is killed and now he's out for action-packed deadly revenge" movies, the family gets bumped off in the first act, and we don't get to know them too well, we just take it for granted that bumping off someone's family's bad, and then from there the hero starts the revenge process in the second act, and gives the baddie their ultimate comeuppance in the third act. Here, the first act is retrieving the drug money, and the second act is him falling in love with Middleton's character and starting a life with her, before she and her daughter are gunned down in the trailer. It's almost like the filmmakers were enjoying watching Estrada and Middleton's characters fall in love, and someone was like "hey guys, we need to get to the revenge part of this, the movie's almost over!" It creates that tonality issue we'd see a lot in early PM, where if you're watching this as a one-off in the early 90s because you found it on cable or at your local video store, you're probably not impressed, but in the context of a bunch of these you're excited to go along for the bonkers PM Entertainment ride. We also get some of the names we've come to know and love, like Cole S. McKay on stunts, Joseph Merhi directing, and Rick Pepin's cinematography. In that sense, you probably need to watch some of the better of these PM films before you get stuck in on this one, and even then, it's low on the list for me; but lower on the list PM is still not a bad way to kill 90 minutes if you're a PM Entertainment fan.

We're now at 58 PM flicks on the site, and what's interesting about this one, is it's their 22nd movie and came out in 1991, but feels like an earlier spine number joint from 1989 when they were still getting the hang of what PM would eventually be--which I guess isn't so crazy an idea when you consider 1989 and 1991 are only a couple years apart, there could be that overlap as they were still figuring out what worked best. And I'm not sure what the best PM moment in this was for me. Maybe when Estrada blows up the trailer with his deceased wife and step-daughter's bodies inside, while he and a tearful William Smith look on. No calling the cops, I imagine the Middleton's ex-husband would like to know what happened to his daughter, even if he was the jerkoff Middleton said he was, but nope, in the world of PM, the fiery funeral is all you need. From there, as he's getting his revenge, the bartender at their biker bar tells him she has feelings for him, and hey, he's back on the market now, even if the remaining embers of his dead wife and step-daughter's bodies are still smoldering near Lake Mead, why not go for it? And I guess that's what I think when I see another PM flick on Tubi, "come on, Matt, why not go for it?", because these things only work in the world of PM--and I don't even know if they work there either, or it's more the fact that they don't work that's so much fun.

One of the more fun aspects of the film was the band at the biker bar that performed over a couple of the montages. They were called The Sheilas, and their sound was in the mold of Pat Benatar's stuff, which is plenty fine for me. Even more fun, the first song featured a flautist. We're not strangers to the flute here at the DTVC, plenty of 80s exploitation films shot in the Philippines made ample use of the flute, perhaps because Italian directors thought jungles and flutes went together like peanut butter and chocolate, but we never actually saw the flautist getting after it like we do here. I never thought of it before, but yeah, a flute solo is exactly the music I need when I'm watching a shot of a biker gang back-angle parking their hogs against the curb. Now, if you're thinking flute music, Jethro Tull probably comes to mind, but can I throw out another name for you? Jazz flautist Ragan Whiteside is one of the best out there, in particular check out her cover of Little River Band's "Reminiscing," great stuff.

Corey Doctorow came up with the term "Enshittification" to describe how tech companies lock users in and then make their products as shitty as possible while extracting as much money out of them as they can. He's said on multiple appearances that he's okay with the term being used beyond the tech space, so I'm going to point out how this movie shows us the ways that so many things we took for granted in the early 90s have been enshittified now. Start with Las Vegas. In the early 90s it was a place where people with not a lot of money could go and have a fun time. Remember the Roseanne episode where she and Dan went with Tom Arnold and Sandra Bernhardt, and Roseanne got drunk and heckled Wayne Newton because she thought he was an impersonator? They ain't goin' to Vegas now, and even when I went in 2013 I could see it changing, nothing was cheap like it was in the early 90s, and in the 10+ years since, it's only gotten worse, as they'd rather cater to whales like Dana White compensating for inadequacies with six-figure blackjack hands than working-class stiffs looking to escape their troubles for a few days. From there, look at Estrada's job as a mechanic. The first thing William Smith would ask him today is, "how good are you with a computer?" And is Smith going to be able to pay him enough to support his new wife and step-daughter, even if they're living in a trailer by Lake Mead? Even Estrada going to the grocery store, it was like "oh man, the grocery store experience was so much nicer back then!" No memberships, no fugazi sales, Pepsi and ConAgra didn't own everything, Estrada paid a living wage so he can buy food, the grocery store workers paid a living wage too. Things aren't only worse now than they were in 1991, they're worse now by design, and have been for a while.

Finally, what the hell are we doing in that picture above? The cap, the mustache, the T-shirt, even the little cigar, and this guy is hanging out at a biker bar no less! You can't recreate this guy today, he'd either be dripping in irony, or imitated by a younger person who's still not generating the look organically. These weren't just decisions that were made in the morning as this man was leaving the house, these were completely legitimate decisions that no one he encountered that day would've looked askance at. And could there have been another beer that he'd be drinking other than Miller Lite? He's not quite what I would call a Cocaine Dad, which is a term I used for guys my dad's age who were born in the late 40s/early 50s, but when the late 80s/early 90s came, couldn't come to terms with the fact that they were getting older, so they pushed beyond their relevance and tried to look the part of someone ten years younger than them--and while they may not have all partaken in some nose candy, you wouldn't have put it past them either. This guy above has no use for terms like "relevance," he's completely authentic--I mean look at him, he's genuinely into the flautist performing her solo, even if he won't remember it tomorrow. Here's to you that guy in the picture above, you're one of the greats.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently stream this on Tubi. As I said above, I think you'll get more enjoyment out of this after you've seen a lot of the better PM films first, but as a free streamer it does the trick.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102275

And check out my newest novel, Mark in Sales, on Amazon in paperback and Kindle.

Scorned (1993)

This is one Jon Cross from After Movie Diner and the PM Entertainment Podcast and I will be covering on an upcoming episode of the DTVC Podcast, which makes this one unique, because I usually do the podcast episode first and the blog post after, but I wanted to get some Shannon Tweed up this month and this felt perfect for that post too, so I figured why wait?

Scorned features Tweed as a woman married to a man who's trying to move up the corporate ladder (Dan McVicar), and in so doing, has her sleep with a potential client. When Andrew Stevens swoops in and gets the position her husband was supposed to receive, said husband does the most sensible thing in that situation and kills himself in his old office before he has to vacate it for Stevens. As if this isn't bad enough, Tweed discovers the company won't pay out his life insurance. At this point she has nothing to lose, so she takes on a fake identity as a high school tutor, and gets herself moved into Stevens's family's pool house, where she seduces him, his son, and his wife, while trying to make their lives hell as payback. Will Stevens find out what she's doing in time to stop her?

This is a classic of the Erotic Thriller genre for a reason. You have iconic images like the one above, it hits all the Erotic Thriller bingo card spots, but then you have Tweed turning in this chilling, yet sympathetic performance, a supporting performance from Kim Morgan Greene as Stevens's wife that was better than it had any business needing to be, and then Stevens as a director who understands what makes these movies work, and is able to deliver them at a higher level than most. It has some plot holes, which I won't discuss to avoid giving anything away, but they leave you thinking "why didn't they see that before?" There are also some stunt moments that look a little silly--though we won't put the blame on our man Cole S. McKay as stunt coordinator for that, I don't know if he had the freedom he'd have on a PM flick, because I don't remember a PM flick featuring two dummies falling down the stairs meant to represent two women falling down the stairs together. Overall though, as I said, this is a classic. If you haven't seen it before, or you haven't seen it in a while, definitely try to track down a copy and check it out!

With this movie Shannon Tweed moves into a tie with Kathleen Kinmont for third all-time among women at the DTVC with 10 films, one behind Julie Strain's 11, and way behind Cynthia Rothrock at 47. Obviously we'd like to get that number up, but when you go through her IMDb bio, a lot of the stuff she's done isn't available anywhere. The streaming world is still coming around to embracing the 90s Erotic Thriller, but also some of those films she made then had very limited releases, or only a cable TV release, and now they're possibly gone to us forever. Even this one, something considered a classic in the genre, isn't on any streamers and isn't easy to track down as a physical copy. It's a world that deserves to be seen, so hopefully as many of these movies can be made as available as possible. Back to this one, out of all of the films of hers we've covered so far, this is probably her best performance, and the film itself might be best of those too. She goes for it in every way, and gives us a femme fatale that we almost root for. Out of the ten, I think this is only the second Erotic Thriller of hers we've done, so I think as we get deeper in on this genre, it'll be fun to see more of these, because she's one of, if not the Queen of Erotic Thrillers, and a big part of why that genre was so popular in the 90s.

Another part of that was Andrew Stevens, who directed, produced, and starred in this. While the Queen of the Erotic Thriller could be up for debate (though Jon and I had it between Tweed and Joan Severance), it feels like Stevens is the King. In the We Kill for Love documentary, he talked about how he was transitioning from actor to producer, but understood that as an actor he still had enough of a name to get funding for a movie and sell it better to distributors. What that means, at least for me, is that as an actor he wanted Tweed and their other co-stars to have more of the spotlight, which helps make this a unique entry, because it's told from Tweed's standpoint, when most of these are told from the male lead's point of view. Also, Stevens and his DP, Christian Sebaldt, crafted some really inspired shots, like the one above that looks like something out of a De Palma film. He knew how to make an Erotic Thriller, and the genre wouldn't have been what it was without him, which really comes through in this one.

As I mentioned above, we do have another Hall of Famer in this, stunt coordinator Cole S. McKay, who does stunt coordinating on a lot of Erotic Thrillers. I don't know if I'd say it's his hallmark, but we do get someone thrown through a window. It is interesting that the film decided to go with the dummies falling down the stairs instead of hiring two stuntwomen to do it, and maybe it's safer that way, but beyond PM, I've seen stuntmen fall down the stairs in other Erotic Thrillers McKay was stunt coordinator on, so I wonder if it was a budget and safety thing here. Watching all of these in the 90s when they were new, I had no idea who Cole S. McKay was, but we do take for granted that stunts should look a certain way, without considering who's doing them and what kinds of risks are involved. It's fun now since I've been doing this site and I know who he is to go back and watch these, and admire his work in making it all look realistic--or not if he needs to go with dummies instead of actors.

Finally, what do we have here? A Red Sox cap? How do you not love that? Maybe if you're a Yankees fan, but I can at least appreciate a Yankees cap in the wild too (though to be fair, I didn't mention that Traci Lords's character was wearing an oversized Yankees shirt to bed in the Intent to Kill review--must've slipped my mind!). The team was pretty rough at that period, I couldn't have imagined them not only winning four World Series in the 2000s and 2010s, but also that the ownership group that brought those World Series would be so disliked by Red Sox fans after--me included--because they decided to stop spending and are now treating the team like "hey, aren't you happy we've won four?" Yes, it's been 30 years since that hat was shot in this movie, but it would only be a short 11 years between that and 2004, when the Red Sox broke the curse, which to me that 11 years felt much longer than the 20 years since. With baseball season starting, I'll still be rooting for my Red Sox, even if the owners don't care as much about spending to win as they used to.

And with that, let's wrap this up. This is not an easy find, but if you can find it, it's worth checking out. I believe there are some used VHS and DVDs out there, so as long as the dealers aren't gouging you'll be good. And keep an eye out for that podcast episode later this month!

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111093/

And check out my newest novel, Mark in Sales, on Amazon in paperback and Kindle.

Judgement Day (1999)

I was looking to get more Ice-T on the site, and I saw that this was on Tubi. In addition to him, it has Mario Van Peebles, was written by Fred Olen Ray, Cole S. McKay was stunt coordinator, and has stars from two of my favorite shows, Barney Miller and Beverly Hills, 90210. In that sense, it was less about whether I should review it, and more about why I hadn't done it already! In addition to us, Matt Spector at Bulletproof has covered this as well.

Judgement Day is about an asteroid that's heading for earth in three days. Higher-ups Max Gail and James Eckhouse want to use a device developed by Linden Ashby to intercept and destroy it, the problem is, Mario Van Peebles and his religious cult have kidnapped Ashby because they don't want the asteroid stopped. Gail thinks he has a leak in his department, so he gets FBI agent Suzy Amis to track Ashby down, but she can't do it alone, so she gets Ice-T out of prison, because he has a score to settle with Van Peebles himself. It's a race against time now, will it be relief accompanied by smiles and hardy handshakes in the war room, or doom and destruction?

You can probably guess the outcome, and to be fair, who wants to be deprived of those smiles of relief and hardy handshakes after the planet's been saved? Especially knowing Wojo and Jim Walsh are in the war room hoping Linden Ashby's device works. On the way there, there's almost a 48 Hours interplay between Amis and Ice-T as they track down Van Peeble's base of operations, which is a nice twist on the disaster movie that I'm surprised The Asylum hasn't used more often. That said, the Fred Olen Ray story has that feel of a few story templates fused together, and it might not have worked, except for the prodigious cast I listed above. For example, in addition to Van Peebles, Tom "Tiny" Lister is his right hand man. A rival drug dealer Ice-T and Amis go to for info is played by Coolio. Amis's boyfriend is Larry Poindexter--and no, unfortunately he doesn't drive a car while blasting Guns N' Roses' "Move to the City." Once you have all these names, it's just a matter of getting in and out in 90 minutes, having a few good action moments spread throughout, and then letting those names cook, and I feel like this one does all that.

We're at 19 movies now for Ice-T, and I think this might be my favorite of his performances. Also his screen time in this is probably more than four or five of the other movies of his we've covered combined, which was refreshing too. He's in the Hall of Fame for a reason, and this reinforces that. The moment he's onscreen, you know it's going to be good, but then there's the mix of hard edge and off-beat and quirky that allows him to thrive in the 48 Hours paradigm. The other thing about Ice-T is he was a rapper first, and this movie uses one of his songs, which is also fantastic. I don't know if between rights issues or studio time if he recorded a fresh track that it's realistic to expect every Ice-T movie to have his music in it, but it would be nice if more of them did, because it was a great touch here. We haven't done one of his films in two years, so I need to rectify that and get more of his stuff up more frequently, because he's always a great time.

I'm going to try not to go too fast and furious (Vin Diesel style) as I get through the other names in this, but there's a lot, so buckle up. First, among Hall of Famers, we have Cole S. McKay as stunt coordinator, plus he's in one scene which you can see above. We're at 65 for him now, and I have at least one other movie of his in the can that I need to review, so he'll be up to 66 soon enough. Then we have Fred Olen Ray as screenwriter. I think this is the fifth movie of his we've done that he wrote, but because he didn't direct this doesn't add to that total for him, which I think stands at 17, second-most all time among directors. Mario Van Peebles is great as the baddie, he gives you everything you want there, and is a name we always enjoy seeing on the site. Same for the late Tom "Tiny" Lister, who plays Van Peebles's righthand man, and gives you everything you want in that role. Then we have Linden Ashby, someone we've seen a few times and probably should be tagged. His part's not as big, but it's vital, so it was good they cast someone like him in the role. I mentioned Larry Poindexter. He probably gets it the worst in this, but that's okay, he'll always have American Ninja 2. Then as a big Barney Miller fan, how do you not love Wojo? We've seen him here before too, in particular DC Cab comes to mind, but here he's great as higher up tasked with stopping the asteroid. Fans of Firestorm (not sure if there are any of those out there) would know Suzy Amis, who ended up marrying James Cameron after this and hasn't done another movie since. If you're going to go out, why not have it be an Ice-T DTV flick written by Fred Olen Ray and directed by John Terlesky. That's right, Deathstalker II and Chopping Mall's John Terlesky directed this, as he did another Van Peebles/Ice-T film we did a couple years ago, Guardian. Finally, we'd be remiss if we didn't mention the late Coolio in a one-scene cameo. I don't know how many movies aren't improved by a Coolio one-scene cameo, and this film certainly wasn't an exception.

One name you may have noticed that's missing above is James Eckhouse, aka Jim Walsh from Beverly Hills, 90210. I wanted to give him his own paragraph, because I think he's one of the best TV dads of all time, but he never gets included on that list. Maybe that's because he was a little young to be playing a father to kids born in the early 70s, considering he was only born in 1955, but I always loved how he and Carol Potter's Cindy Walsh were the two grounding forces on the show. That might be why the show wrote them out eventually, because I think they wanted to untether the kids somewhat and let them find their way without the Walshes there to provide stability. Who knows what the reason was, but I'd take the Pepsi Challenge with James Eckhouse's Jim Walsh against any other TV dad out there, other than maybe Hugh Beaumont's Ward Cleaver and Robert Reed's Mike Brady. So, here's to you James Eckhouse, you're one of the great ones.

Finally, we get two common movie lines in this. The first one is so common Will at Exploding Helicopter has a Letterboxd list for movies that feature it, and that's "we've got company," which we get when Tom "Tiny" Lister is trying to drive off with Van Peebles, his wife (Shireen Crutchfield), and their bounty, Linden Ashby, when Lister notices the cops are coming and gives us the line. The second one was "it's the 90s." Anyone who lived through the 90s knows what this means, anything that was considered outside the bounds of conservative, buttoned-up, Reagan 80s culture was now given a grudging acceptance with those three little words, "it's the 90s." Women standing up for themselves? "Hey, it's the 90s, am I right?" Gay people demanding more rights? "I mean, to each their own, it's the 90s after all." Sinead O'Connor ripping up a picture of the Pope? "Okay, let's not get carried away..." Here it's within an off-beat, quirky, and slightly homophobic back and forth between Ice-T and Suzy Amis that we get the line, when Ice-T asks why she's not married, then asks if she's a lesbian, to which he explains he doesn't have a problem with it if she is, because "it's the 90s." Maybe we need a little bit more "it's the 90s" in our society today, because, man "it's the 2020s" covers a whole host of bonkersness that I don't even want to start on.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently stream this on Tubi here in the States, which I think is a great deal. The names alone sell it, but in a sea of thumbnails on a streaming services, sometimes that's all you need. Hell, it's the 2020s, am I right?

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0221309

And check out my newest novel, Mark in Sales, on Amazon in paperback and Kindle.

Angels of the City (1989)

Continuing our trend this year of doing a PM post to start the month, I wanted to do something with Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs, and decided the first of the two he directed would be a good way to go. (We've done the other one before, Coldfire.) Now you might be thinking, wasn't 57 Seconds the first February post? I'm still under he delusion that I'm posting on Saturdays instead of Sundays, and maybe I need to give up the ghost on that. Anyway, in addition to us, Mitch at the Video Vacuum covered this as part of his "It Came from the Thrift Shop" series, and Jon at PM is looking to cover this one soon too.

Angels of the City is about a group of kids in their late 20s going to USC, but acting like they're in their early 20s. They get an assignment from their sociology professor to interview people from another level of society from themselves, so two guys  decide to interview a lady of the night. Their girlfriends (Kelly Galindo and Cynthia Cheston), on the other hand, are pledging a sorority, and part of their initiation is to pretend to be ladies of the night for an evening. Both the guys and the girls end up in the middle of a turf war between two rival pimps, though the ladies get it much worse when they're kidnapped by one of them, and have to fight for their lives in some of the worst places of LA. Will they make it home alive?

This is quite a movie. Yes, it has the low-budget look of early PM, and you definitely see them trying to make the best of limited resources, like in an early scene where a lady of the night is being chased by some baddies on Hollywood Boulevard, and we see reused footage and locations being looped to extend the chase. But the thing is, the scope of what LHJ and company were trying to do here is admirable, and I think they pull it off in a lot of ways. Essentially it's a darker version of the 80s teen romp film, where a bunch of rich kids run up against the seedy underbelly of the city, but instead of that underbelly being a bunch of caricatures and stereotypes, they're complete people, while the kids, especially the two young ladies, see just how much they've started life on third base. I think the other issue is this movie has a 30-minute epilogue, and while it resolves itself well, there is a sense of "how did we end up here?" Grading PM on a curve though, between the ambition to want to do this commentary on 80s teen romp comedies, and the novelty of watching early PM--including a great death scene for Cole S. McKay--this is worth checking out.

Usually we start with the Hall of Famers, but I wanted to spotlight the film's director, co-writer, and co-composer Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs. In his review, Mitch mentioned that the same year this came out, his Welcome Back Kotter costar John Travolta had Look Who's Talking released in theaters, and while I know LHJ would've loved to have had a film like that himself, I liked that he took advantage of the platform PM was giving him to try to do something deeper. And it felt like everyone else at PM was into it and onboard, perhaps because it's the story of LA that wasn't often told. It's not just that there's a seedy underbelly, but that seedy underbelly exists right next to places like USC where some of the richest kids live; but also that that seedy underbelly is composed of actual human beings who didn't have it as lucky as those rich kids at USC, and to see that juxtaposition come through in every scene, even in what felt like a tacked on epilogue, was really impactful. The only other film he directed after this was Coldfire, but considering the kind of social commentary he demonstrated here, it would be nice if someone else gave him the platform to do more of this.

Many of the PM names you know and love are here. We have Rick Pepin on cinematography, furthering a template that PM used with him, and later Ken Blakey, where you could have an actor without a lot of directorial experience take the helm, and lean on either Pepin or Blakey as their DP. It also serves to give us the "PM look" we know and love later on, even if the quality of the film stock on this early one isn't quite what they use later. We also see Cole S. McKay doing stunts, including a great death scene as one of the rival pimp's goons; plus I've finally tagged stunt coordinator Michael J. Sarna, who starts off with 28 tags! When we look at the PM stunt coordinators, he's right there with McKay, Spiro Razatos, and Red Horton and "Broadway" Joe Murphy, so his tag was long overdue. Paul Volk, someone who probably should also be tagged, does editing duties on this, which I think he earns his money on some of these scenes where things are happening in different locations, and he needs to make them appear to look like one. Finally, Addison Randall was an assistant director, a name we see a lot of in early PM. If you look at their first handful of films, other than this one with LHJ at the helm, all of the other films were directed by either Joseph Merhi, Charles Kanganis, or Addison Randall.

I was trying to think of teen romp films that this could be answer to, and the two that first come to mind are License to Drive and Adventures in Babysitting. Another could be Risky Business. There's a cutesy, Hollywood idea of what sex work is, and what it means to be pushed to the margins of society, and the main characters experience it, live through it, and end up on the other side sleeping in their comfortable beds, while the people who are struggling no longer exist. And I think maybe that's why LHJ wanted the 30-minute epilogue, because it wouldn't have felt right to him to just roll credits after the young ladies escape their ordeal. He adds another layer in that epilogue too, where the sociology professor is more fascinated by what the girls experienced than concerned, so even he's coming from a place of seeing sex workers and other people struggling as more a novelty than as actual people. Ten years later when I was in college studying anthropology, my professors seemed more sensitive to this, making sure we looked at people as fellow human beings, and not subjects in a case study for a paper, and maybe that was why I was more sensitive to what LHJ and company were going for with the professor character in this film.

Finally, at the beginning of the film the radio announcer mentions Magic Johnson, and later a guy delivering Chinese food is wearing a Magic Johnson jersey. In 1989, the Lakers were a year removed from winning their fifth title with Magic, and despite the rise of the Pistons and the Bulls, plus the Trailblazers in the Western Conference, there was no reason to believe that run wouldn't continue. Two years later they lost to the Bulls in the Finals, and then Magic revealed he was HIV positive, and that was it. Now, no one should feel bad for Lakers fans, because they've won six more titles since 2000, which puts them in a tie with my Patriots for the most among the US Big 4 sports during that time, but it is interesting to think how we get so used to the world being one thing--that Magic Johnson had to retire early because he was HIV positive--that it's hard to put into perspective what that time capsule looked like right before it. Yes, the Lakers were declining a bit from their 80s dominance, but there was a sense that they still had another six or seven years left with Magic, they just needed to retool and within a couple years they'd be back. But alas it never happened, and the 90s were a lost decade for the Lakers, until they drafted Kobe and traded for Shaq. Again, not feeling bad for Lakers fans, just saying the mentions of Magic Johnson here forced me to look back at that slice of time and think about how different things were.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently get this free on Tubi here in the States, which I think is a great way to go. Between the novelty of early PM, and just the scope of what Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs and company were going for, I think it's worth checking out.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099042

And check out my newest novel, Mark in Sales, on Amazon in paperback and Kindle.

3 Musketeers (2011)

It's that time again, DTVC Hall of Fame inductions! And our first one is one we knew was going to be in as far back as March when we first decided to tag him, and discovered he had over 50 movies on the site! That's right, the one and only Cole S. McKay. This film is one of two he directed for The Asylum, the other being 200 M.P.H., and after hearing Will from Exploding Helicopter say good things about it, I figured it's be a great one for McKay's induction post.

3 Musketeers is about an elite US military special ops team of the same name (Xin Sarith Wuku, Keith Allen, and Michele Boyd) who get framed for blowing up a South Korean airliner while doing some special ops stuff in North Korea. Meanwhile back at the Pentagon, agent D'Artagnan (Heather Hemmens) is sent to talk to a crackpot named Planchet (the great Steven Williams), but when he's assassinated, she knows this goes way deeper, so she tracks down the Musketeers for help. Turns out their former boss, Treville the Cardinal (Alan Rachins) is planning to assassinate the President of the United States! Will our heroes be able to stop him?

This was a pretty fun time. It does have some lulls in it, and it has the cheap CGI we've come to expect from The Asylum, but beyond that this does what you need it to do. I think the best part is Heather Hemmens as the lead. She underpins the whole approach The Asylum is going for here where they're doing something different with the Three Musketeers story, and that's furthered with the Musketeers themselves, Xin Sarith Wuku, Keith Allen, and Michele Boyd. This is a fun team that I want to see succeed, which is the key to making something like this work. On the opposite end, Alan Rachins is a great baddie, with David Chokachi working well as his second-in-command. Unlike a lot of the PM films McKay worked on though, CGI replaces a lot of the stunts, shootouts, and explosions, and that keeps this from being an all-time classic that some of those are; but I think the fun cast and the work McKay and the stunt team does in the moments that aren't CGI elevates this beyond the usual Asylum fair, making it worth a watch.

63 tags before a Hall of Fame induction may be a record, unless we decide to put Millennium Films in, but at least it'll be a record for a person. As I've mentioned before, Cole S. McKay was first put on my radar when I had Chris the Brain Kacvinsky from Bulletproof Action on the pod to talk The Sweeper (episode 165 in the archives). We were talking about Spiro Razatos, and he mentioned McKay then as another great stunt guy. From there, doing the PM Entertainment Podcast with Jon Cross, McKay kept coming up, so after reviewing Victim of Desire back in March I decided to tag him, and he had over fifty movies that we'd reviewed on the site! Since then, we've now done an additional 7 movies (this one included), meaning at that rate he could pass Dolph to be the most tagged all time! What's interesting with this movie, is you see the moments where The Asylum skimps with CGI that PM allowed their stunt teams, led by talents like McKay, to get after it. For example, we get a moment where Hemmens's character swings on a large advertising banner to escape some baddies, and it's just bad-looking CGI. You know had this been PM fifteen years before, a stunt person would've been rigged-up and been swinging through that scene for real. As I mentioned above though, what McKay and his team can do is elevate the moments of practical stunts we do get, so we get something closer to that golden age from fifteen years before, even if it's not quite that. He has a ton of stuff left to cover, especially from that golden age of DTV action, so it'll be exciting to see what comes next, but for right now, it's about finally getting him into the Hall of Fame, which we're doing in this post.

Our other Hall of Famer here is The Asylum, they of the Asylum Rule which states that anyone with over 30 tags is an automatic Hall of Famer. In that sense The Asylum made us induct them into the Hall of Fame by the sheer volume of movies they've made like this who have other people in them. The other thing is, when I first started the site in the late 2000s, these Mockbusters they were doing were ubiquitous, and a fun inclusion to get people interested in what we were doing. We did our share of Transmorphers and Snakes on a Train, and one thing I've found with those films, or the myriad disaster movies and big monster movies, is they often used those films to give people opportunities they wouldn't ordinarily have had. In that sense I think they're working in the same tradition as PM Entertainment, and when it works, like it does here, it's a lot of fun. So, maybe they forced us to induct them into the Hall of Fame, but watching a movie like this one is a reminder that they were also deserving of the honor.

We're going to try to stuff everyone else into this sixth paragraph, so buckle up, because there are a lot of names to get to. We'll start with Heather Hemmens, who I discovered from her IMDb bio is a fellow Mainer! She was great here, but it looks like the only other thing she's done like this was another Asylum joint, Rise of the Zombies, so maybe we'll have to give that a try. Among the Musketeers, I didn't recognize any of them either, but Keith Allen I thought looked like a combination of Todd Newton and Ryan Seacrest, which was perfect for the role he played as the computer whiz in the group. Then we had Xin Sarith Wuku and Michele Boyd as more of the action Musketeers, and like Hemmens were great as action leads. It's unfortunate the The Three Musketeers that this was mockbustering was kind of a bust, because it would've been fun to see this crew come back for sequels--and really, is it a rule that The Asylum can't make their own sequels, even if the blockbuster they're mockbustering doesn't get a sequel? With our baddies we had the late Alan Rachins, who brings this West Wing guest story-arc element to the proceedings, which would've been enough, but we also get Rachins Fu, when he fights Xin Sarith Wuku, which was beyond what I could've asked for. And then with Chokachi as his second-in-command, what I liked there was he brought a poor man's Casper Van Dien vibe, but the real Casper Van Dien would've been too much for Rachins's second-in-command, so it's almost like Casper Van Dien light, or like a side-helping of Van Dien. I never considered it before, but Chokachi works great in that lane where you want Casper Van Dien energy, but the real Van Dien is too big for the role. The Steven Williams one-scene was great. We haven't had him too much on the site before, that's why he wasn't tagged, but always great to see him when we can. Finally, the person in this film with the third-most tags was the one and only James Lew, who has one scene in the beginning, but does most of his damage on the stunt team. That's 20 movies for him now. Could he be our next candidate for an Asylum Rule induction?

Finally, in high school we watched the 1993 version of the film, and my friends I loved the opening sword fight between Chris O'Donnell's D'Artagnan and Paul McGann's Girard, mostly for McGann, like when he screams "liar!" and then the faces he makes while he's dueling with O'Donnell. I remember our friend's mom got mad at us for rewinding it and replaying it over and over, telling us we were going to break the VCR. To this day, 30 years later, when I hear the name "D'Artagnan" I hear McGann yelling "will get you D'Artagnan" in his screechy McGann voice. I hadn't seen that scene in 30 years though, so I thought for this review I'd cue it up and watch it on Disney+, which fortunately they hadn't vaulted like they tend to do with their movies, and it still made me laugh all these years later. While that scene is the lasting legacy of the film for me, I think for most people it's the theme song, "All for Love," by Bryan Adams, Rod Stewart, and Sting. I don't know if that one was intended to be a franchise like the 2011 one, but had it made more at the box office, you have to imagine there would've at least been a sequel. It does make you wonder, why hasn't this concept not worked better? I think the period piece thing is always going to be an issue, but when I looked up adaptations, I didn't see any modern versions other than the one we're reviewing here. Could that be the key to the successful franchise? Maybe The Asylum was onto something.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently get this on Tubi here in the States, which I think is a great deal. This is one of those Asylum movies where the formula works, so it's worth a watch if you're looking for a fun time. Also, here's to you Cole S. McKay, and your induction into the DTVC Hall of Fame. You're truly one of the greats, this is well-deserved.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1977681

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

Repo Jake (1990)

Our friend Jon Cross over at the PM Entertainment Podcast has been doing a celebration of PM films this month called "SePMtember," and I thought I'd get in on the festivities with this PM flick I'd been meaning to watch for a long time. In addition to us, we have a legit Murder's Row of other reviews, with Chris the Brain from PM, Ty and Brett at Comeuppance, Mitch at the Video Vacuum, and Simon from Explosive Action all having covered this as well. A sign that I'm long overdue to join the party.

Repo Jake is an early PM joint featuring the great Dan Haggerty as the eponymous hero, a burly fellow from Minnesota who moves out to LA temporarily because he hears the repo business is booming out there. Once he gets on with a repo company, it doesn't take much for him to rise to the top of the rag-tag fun group of fellow repoers--and fortunately the people he needs to repo cars from are just deadbeats, we wouldn't want to have to think about people struggling to make ends meet and falling behind on their payments during the recession in the early 90s, would we? Anyway, one of those deadbeats is a pimp and porn producer, and after Jake repos his car, he gets revenge by threatening Jake's new lady friend. Now he has to win a demolition derby-style race for said pimp--oh, by the way, Jake was a former Indy car driver. Wonders never cease.

There are a few places you can go with this. From a PM standpoint it's fun to see the seeds of some of the things that would be hallmarks of their films appear here, like people being thrown through windows, exploding cars, and Cole S. McKay appearing in a scene. The wave is starting to build here, and it's like we're wading in the water, watching the wave come in, waiting for those PM classics to come in push us to shore. There's also the 90s nostalgia. I loved seeing Haggarty come in on a Trailways bus--try not to think of someone with his massive frame having to sit on a bus from Minnesota to LA though, Christ, I'm 5'7" and my back and knees are seizing up just thinking of that trip! But the third element is taking it as a film on its own merits, and that may be where it falls a but flat. We get the classic PM action to start, but they hadn't developed that every 10-15 minutes rule yet, so we get dead spots too. The race scenes were hard to follow, and I couldn't make out where anyone was. And then the music, if it wasn't a wailing harmonica, it was a Casio preset whimsical theme. With all that in mind, while I usually use the term "connoisseur" ironically--and I guess I still am here--you have to really dig this kind of thing to enjoy it, which I did, but not everyone will.

We're now at 52 PM flicks, and if it seems like I've been covering a lot of them lately, you're right. This is three months in a row with a post, four months out of the last five, and 7 of the last 9. This is the earliest one we've watched in a while though, you can tell from that early logo, and between the logo and the script on the opening credits, it was a lot like Shotgun, only without the too-sweet theme song. There were other hallmarks of PM that we could see here too. Like when one of the repo guys fell asleep, and some of his coworkers put lipstick on him, then woke him up and sent him out on a job. That was it, nothing else happened, like the kids who put the pizza box in the oven in Riot and then after Chinese food with Daniels, are never heard of again. Another hallmark I mentioned above was Cole S. McKay, who had a scene driving a car Haggerty is trying to repo. Before you know it, Haggerty is on the hood hanging on for dear life while McKay is driving all over the place. It was a great way to get McKay's 62nd tag on the site. We also have Merhi's direction with Pepin's cinematography on a Jacobson Hart script, and Paul Volk working on post-production. With all these names working together, they were able to refine their craft with each successive movie, which I think more than anything was what made PM so great, each film was part of the process, not just a one-off.

This is only our second Haggerty film on the site, the other being Axe Giant: The Wrath of Paul Bunyan, which we reviewed in 2013. It does seem odd that 1300+ posts in and this is only his second film, especially when we have a classic like Elves that I discuss with Mitch on the podcast every year around Christmas. And it's in that mid-80s to mid-90s period where he did a lot of DTV damage, so I probably should make an effort to get more of his stuff up. He does have another PM flick, from the same year as this, Chance with Lawrence Hilton Jacobs, where Haggerty also plays a repo man, just not the same one he plays here. The thing about him that's so great is he has this avuncular quality that always makes him endearing to watch, whether it's as a race car driving repo man in penny loafers like he is here, or when he's tearing it up on Battle of the Network Stars. For all the things about this film that didn't work, he's definitely one that does.

We generally don't do our McDonald's paragraph this early in the post, but it is the 16th film we've had with a McDonald's, so I feel like maybe they've moved past the penultimate paragraph territory. And the thing is, similar to Presidential Portraits, I wasn't always tagging them in the past, so sometimes when I rewatch things we've already reviewed, I catch one and add the tag. Could we see McDonald's getting into the Hall of Fame on the Danny Trejo rule? I've looked at other fast food places, and none of them appear as much as McDonald's, I think in part because the one from this film and the one on the Vegas strip are in a lot of films from this period. Recently I made a trip to Chicago to see a White Sox game (ballpark number 14 for me!) and before my flight back I hit the McDonald's flagship location, where they have some international offerings, including the Big Arch Burger. Not to be confused with the Arch Deluxe, the Big Arch is two quarter-pound patties with white American cheese and this Arch sauce, along with some other accoutrements. The white American cheese was a bit strong for me, but otherwise I liked it. The best way to describe it? It's like what the rest of the world must think of American cuisine in the form of a burger.

Finally, for our actual finally paragraph, would you look at that sweet, late 80s Texas Rangers cap. There's a little mark in the middle, which I think was meant to obfuscate it enough to avoid MLB's lawyers calling to complain, but otherwise it's perfect. In 2023 I was lucky enough to be in Dallas for work, and was able to get a Lyft over to Arlington to see a Texas Rangers game (ballpark number 11). I looked online, and no place makes this version new anymore. As far as the ballpark, if you get a chance, it's worth seeing a game there. When I went, I got a cheap seat in the upper deck, but one of the ushers told me to sit in the section below that because they hadn't sold out, something I've never had an usher do before. The problem with the park though is there's no public transportation out there, and it's not in Dallas. For someone who goes to games here in the Northeast, and who doesn't drive, being able to take the subway--or even a light rail option--is much nicer.

And with that, let's wrap this up. As of this writing, you can get this on Prime, which is a great way to go. It's probably a deeper cut PM, you've gotta really like movies like this to enjoy it, but if you do, I think you'll have a great time like I did.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0340312

Pick up my newest book, Nadia and Aidan, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Dark Breed (1996)

We received some very sad news last week, Rick Pepin, the P in PM Entertainment, passed away. I wanted to post something in his honor, and this is one of the films he directed that I'd been meaning to review anyway. In addition to us, Chris the Brain at Bulletproof, the guys at Comeuppance, Simon at Explosive action, and Fred Anderson at Ninja Dixon have all covered this as well.

Dark Breed is about a group of astronauts, including Jonathan Banks and Felton Perry, that return to earth and don't seem like themselves. Former astronaut and soldier Jack Scalia is called in to contain them. But when Robin Curtis is captured by the big wig in charge, Cutter (Lance LeGault), and beaten by two mustachioed gentlemen; and then his ex-wife, who was also on the failed space mission, takes him to a diner and tells him that everyone, including her, have been infected by aliens--but fortunately she's been infected by a good alien, not the bad aliens the other astronauts were infected by--Scalia knows this goes much deeper. Now they need to stop both the bad aliens and Lance LeGault. At least Scalia is handy with a rocket launcher.

This is up there as one of my favorite PM flicks, slotting in at number 12 all-time on my PM Entertainment list. A big part of it is Cole S. McKay's action sequences, which I think are some of the best from PM, including a fantastic car chase where Scalia's character is riding a satellite dish that's being towed by a bread truck like he's on an inner tube attached to a speed boat on a lake. I saw some reviews on IMDb and Letterboxd calling this just a cheap rip-off of Predator or Alien, but how can you watch a car chase like that and have that opinion? I think Fred Anderson in his review summed up my thoughts, saying that even if it is a mix of all those other movies, the action is what makes it such a fun time. Beyond that, Scalia is the perfect hero, giving us plenty of bad ass moments, like when he takes a rocket launcher from a sergeant below him, and shows him how to use it, turning his baseball cap backwards in the process--perhaps giving us the one exception to the rule that men over 40 shouldn't wear their baseball caps backwards. Then you add in the supporting cast, with the great Jonathan Banks as the head alien baddie, Lance LeGault chewing scenery as the head government baddie, a trio of great leading ladies with Robin Curtis, Cindy Ambuehl, and Denise W. Scott, and then the inimitable George "Buck" Flower as an unhoused individual who encounters the aliens. This is the too sweet PM you came for.

It's hard to describe the legacy Rick Pepin, with his production partner Joseph Merhi, created with PM Entertainment. 90s action wouldn't be 90s action without them, but also would 2010s action be what it was without guys like Spiro Razatos and Cole S. McKay having the freedom to do the crazy stunt scenes they did in these films. In wanting to do something in Rick's honor, I decided to review one of the films he directed, even though his work as cinematographer created what we know of as "the PM look," because Jon Cross from the PM Entertainment Podcast said these sci-fi movies he directed were what he especially enjoyed. I think out of those, I'd put T-Force and Hologram Man above this, but it's not far behind them. For us fans of action movies, it doesn't get much better than PM Entertainment, and with Pepin being the P in PM, he leaves behind something that he and Merhi created that I don't think will ever be matched. Not to mention personally giving me hours of enjoyment with all the fun movies they produced. Here's to you Mr. Pepin, you truly were one of the great ones, you'll really be missed.

We're now at 61 movies for Cole S. McKay, but we're closing in on October so we can officially get him into the Hall of Fame. And while I wanted to do a movie he directed for his induction post, this would've been a great one for that too. It also would've been a great one for his entry into the 60 Club, which ended up being Save Me due to movies getting shuffled around and our need to do The Stray for Michael Madsen's passing, but with this being the post in honor or Rick Pepin, we can't use it for his 60 Club post either. Looking at all the films I've seen that he was stunt coordinator/second-unit director on, I have this behind Hologram Man as his best, maybe just above Skyscraper, though it's close. I mean just the car chase with Scalia's character riding the satellite dish, I'd take the Pepsi Challenge with that against any of Spiro Razatos's great PM stuff, and McKay had plenty of other scenes in this that were great as well. He also gets a cameo as a guy attacking George "Buck" Flower, before one of the aliens beats the crap out of him. We'll get him in the Hall of Fame in just over a month, the question is, how many more tags will get before then!

This is our second Jack Scalia film on the site, the other being T-Force, so I'd say that's a pretty good two-film run. He has plenty of other DTV stuff out there for me to review, including The Silencers from this same year, which was also directed by Rick Pepin and action-directed by Cole S. McKay, so we know I'll have to do that one eventually. He's just fantastic here, everything you'd want in an action lead, total bad-assery. Speaking of two-film runs, the only other time we reviewed a Jonathan Banks film was Last Man Standing, a film I have at 4 on my all-time PM list, three places higher than T-Force, so Banks's might be better than Scalia's! Unlike Scalia though, Banks doesn't have a lot of other DTV stuff, so we may not see him again unless he finds his way into a Randall Scandal or something in the future. I recently finally got around to watching Breaking Bad, which he was fantastic in, so seeing him here now gives this an added element that I enjoyed. 

Finally, the Lance LeGault's character in this was named "Cutter." I don't know about you, but every time I hear "cutter" I think of Coors Cutter, Coors's non-alcoholic beer from the 90s. I did like most nowadays, and looked Coors Cutter up on Wikipedia, but the info is scant. They said the beer was introduced in 1991, revamped in 1994, but now mostly discontinued. I remembered it as part of that early 90s non-alcoholic trend that included O'Doul's and Miller Sharps. The one my grandmother drank was Genesee, which I thought was cooler than any of them, and I think if I needed an NA beer that's probably what I'd get. There's been a new trend recently in non-alcoholic beers, with Heineken joining in, and some companies exclusively brewing NA stuff, which I see advertised for sale at sporting events, after venues stop selling alcohol late in the games. For me, I don't drink much anymore anyway, but when I want to enjoy a beer without the alcohol, I get a hop tea instead. You get the hops taste without any of the alcohol side effects--though if I getting them to have while watching one of my teams play, I make sure I get the chamomile ones, because I don't need any additional caffeine while I'm stressing out about the outcome!

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently get this on Tubi here in the States, which I think is a good deal. This is one of my favorite PM flicks, well worth checking out. And also a great one to watch in honor of Rick Pepin, a legend who, with his partner Joseph Merhi, gave us hours of fantastic movies, for which I will be forever grateful.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116026

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