Timebomb (1991)

Our second 2025 Hall of Fame inductee is the great Billy Blanks. The problem is, we've already reviewed all of his great starring films, so we had to settle for one where he had a supporting role, and it looked like this one had as much of him in it as any of them. In addition to us, Ty and Brett at Comeuppance, and Mitch at the Video Vacuum have covered this as well, so we're completing the triangle.

Timebomb has Michael Biehn as an unassuming watch repairman, who one day meets psychiatrist Patsy Kensit. They fall in love, have children, and live happily ever after. Or Biehn is a former special forces guy with no memory of it who rescues a woman and her baby from a burning building, which lands him on TV, where he's spotted by his former colonel, Richard Jordan. Jordan and his crew, which includes Billy Blanks and Tracy Scoggins, were planning to assassinate a guy who's tapped to be the next AG, but their bosses think a detour is necessary to take Biehn out. Will it end up being a mistake?

This ain't half bad. It drags at points, but the cast is great, and I think it helps those draggy moments. Early on we get a scene where Blanks's characters tries to kill Biehn while Biehn is sleeping, and the battle that ensues is pretty brutal. And while nothing after that is quite that brutal, the action does tend to lean toward brutality versus over-the-top (Stallone style). One scene that had a lot of promise was a porn theater shootout, but it never quite gets there. The problem with a story like this is we know who Biehn is before Biehn does, and so delaying the process of him finding out feels like they're delaying for the sake of delaying in order to stretch the runtime, and that trick never works. The moment Biehn starts speaking Hungarian should've been in the first fifteen minutes, and then we just let it rip from there. The other interesting element is how the baddies, had they just left Biehn alone, would've kept being baddies and could've carried out their baddie schemes in perpetuity. It's a fascinating concept, usually baddies stick to the plan and the hero is the one who mucks it up, but they did their own mucking themselves. For an early 90s actioner with a lot of names, this does what you need, and I think that's enough if you're looking for something on Tubi to watch.

We'll start with the man of the hour, the great Billy Blanks. As one of the gang he isn't in this as much as you'd like, but he's pretty great in the moments we see him, especially in that scene I mentioned above. And he took that ability to his starring roles and made those fantastic as well, whether he was teaming up with Roddy Piper or Bolo Yeung, or he was a baddie trying to kill Loren Avedon, Blanks brought it every time we saw him. It goes without saying that we wish we had more stuff from him, especially in the 90s when he was really cooking, and we can speculate on why he decided to transition from DTV action to creating Tae-Bo, but at least we got the gems we did. He was a big part of why the late 80s/early 90s were the Golden Age of DTV action, and is long overdue for his spot in the Hall of Fame, so we're finally making it happen.

Michael Biehn is an interesting one on the DTVC. This is only his third film, which, considering his name and the volume of DTV flicks he'd one--not to mention classics that may have ended up as a Wild Card post when I used to do those--seems small, but when I looked at his IMDb bio, he doesn't have a lot of DTV action to his credit, and for better or worse, that's the lane this site ended up moving into. The other thing I think is the emergence of Casper Van Dien took some of his potential DTV roles, as Van Dien is younger and better looking. Like if I'm making Shark Attack, in 1990 I'd probably be trying to get Biehn, but by 2000 I'm contacting Van Dien's agent first. This movie was a reminder though of how much fun he is, and I don't know that this works as well as it did if they'd cast Jean-Claude Van Damme or Chuck Norris--the two names the IMDb trivia said the studio wanted director Avi Nesher to cast. That means the movie wasn't as successful financially as it would've been--especially with Van Damme--but was more successful as an actual film, which I think still counts for something.

We'll zip through all the other names in this. Biehn's costar was Patsy Kensit, who we've seen here before in Renegades. She was like in her early 20s in this, but playing a psychologist, meaning she somehow earned her PhD in the time it takes most people to only finish their undergrad. Then we had Tracy Scoggins, who's been on the site four other times, the most recent being Alien Intruder. With her character, the movie wasn't sure if it wanted to take advantage of her looks and have her in short skirts and heels, or have her be one of the cold-blooded killers in the gang, so we were left with some tough scenes for her and the stunt crew where she had to fight Biehn in said short skirt and heels, which made the whole thing look awkward. Modern DTV has faux leather leggings that they can use to split that difference, but I think even back then they had things they could've done to mitigate that situation so we didn't get the awkwardness we did. The main baddie was played by Richard Jordan, someone we've never seen here before, and probably never will again, so it was great this one time to be able to do it. He was exactly the kind of smarmy higher-up military guy a movie like this needed. Finally, Robert Culp makes his third appearance on the site. He was every bit the fantastic Culp you'd want, the only problem was, he had such a small role, it was kind of a waste. I guess we should be happy for any Culp we get.

Finally, we have another Presidential Portrait! It's another Bush 41, which we've seen plenty on here, but it's great to see just the same. I was hoping, with the Vietnam War flashbacks, that we might get our first Nixon, but no dice. So if you're counting, we have all the presidents from Reagan through Obama, and because this is a relatively new thing I've been doing, we've been finding some in movies I've already reviewed too. I'm beginning to see too how it's kind of like what Will at Exploding Helicopter goes through, where a scene has all the makings of an exploding helicopter, but then it doesn't happen. Anytime I see a governmental office of some sort, I have my eyes peeled for the possible portrait--and this movie had a lot of fake outs where I thought for sure I'd see one but I didn't. It was almost out of nowhere when we did get it, above some desk by the wall that we see as Blanks enters the secret planning room Culp and Jordan were in. But it was good that we got it, and gave us a second Blanks screen on his Hall of Fame post. Makes me wonder though if I've missed any while looking up IMDb on my phone during the lulls in a film I'm watching...

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently stream this on Tubi here in the States. It's fun watch, but also a bit brutal, so make sure the people you're watching it with are okay with that. And congratulations to Billy Blanks on his Hall of Fame induction. Here's to you Mr. Blanks, you're truly one of the greats, and this is well deserved.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105597

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

Last Kumite (2024)

This is one Ty from Comeuppance and I covered on episode 202 of the DTVC Podcast, and with the names involved, it was only a matter of time before we got a review on the site as well. I addition to us, Chris the Brain at Bulletproof, and Outlaw Vern have covered this as well.

Last Kumite has Mathis Landwehr (in English "Matty Country Defense") as Michael Rivers, youngest son of famous singer Johnny Rivers, and nicknamed "Bloody Rivers" because he's such a devastating fighter. After winning a tournament, he decides to bring his teenage daughter with him to the after party, which is held at a night club, and then decides to have her drive herself home alone while he hangs out with Matthias Hues. Hues wants Rivers to fight in his Kumite in Europe--and maybe get his dad to perform "Secret Agent Man" there as well--and while Rivers refuses, because he's such a great father, his daughter is easy pickin's for someone like Hues to snatch, and now Rivers is forced to get his Kumite on. Will he defeat Hues? And will his dad show up and perform?

This was a nice slice of all right. No, Michael "Bloody" Rivers wasn't the son of Johnny Rivers, but everything else in that synopsis is correct. Did we need the forced-to-fight angle? Probably not, but this film had a bouillabaisse approach to the material that I had to respect, even if we didn't get that Johnny Rivers performance. I mentioned that this had a lot of names above. We have three Hall of Famers, the aforementioned Hues, plus Cynthia Rothrock and Billy Blanks; plus familiar names Michel Qissi, Kurt McKinney, and Mike Möller (who was also fight choreographer); and if that wasn't enough, we had Bolo Yeung's son David, Stan Bush did some of the songs, and director/cinematographer Ross Clarkson has done a ton of great DTV action stuff, most notably many of Isaac Florentine's films with Scott Adkins. So they lined up a bunch of familiar talent, but not only that, they all got what the point of this was, and they delivered. There were definitely some tongue-in-cheek elements, but any that there were were done out of love, which is all us fans want. The hero, Landwehr, has plenty-good martial arts skills, plus fellow fighter Monia Moula was also really talented. Maybe after this they can give us a German buddy cop/cop on the edge kind of deal, they'd be great together in that. Finally, our big bad fighter that our hero had to defeat, Dracko (Mike Derudder), not only had a great name, but he was essentially a juice-head that someone picked up off of Seaside Heights, NJ. Maybe this had its flaws, and it was working on a tight budget, but overall it delivered for me.

While she had more of a supporting role, we have to start with Cynthia Rothrock, because she's our only 40 Club member in the film, this making her 45th film on the site. Her character was Dracko's original sensei, so she helps Bloody Rivers defeat him, because she doesn't like what he's become since leaving the Jersey Shore, and I don't blame her either--she had to beat the GTL out of him. We've seen some scant roles for her recently, like Darkness of Man, so it was good that here, even in a supporting part, she gets a good amount of screentime. At 45 films with a little less than half the year left, is the 50 Club a possibility by 2026? We'd have to do around one film a month for her, and while I have one in the can, Taken from Rio Bravo, and one I'm looking to watch over the next couple days, Black Creek, I don't know if she has enough left that we can do that I can get on a free streamer or one I already subscribe to. We'll see as the year goes on, but making her the fifth member of the 50 Club, and only the third actor, would be really cool.

Our other two Hall of Famers are Matthias Hues and Billy Blanks. Hues is just a straight up scenery chewing baddie, which is exactly what you want from him; and Blanks is a fantastic fight trainer, bringing us back to Showdown where he was great too. Between the two, Hues has been busier lately, with a bunch of stuff out there, some of which we'll probably cover at some point; but while Blanks doesn't have the quantity, he does have a Circuit sequel, Circuit 4: Faith Fighter, which is $2 to rent on Prime. I looked on IMDb, and it has one critic review. What? What are you doing Jalal Merhi? You should be sending that out to all of us so we can cover it. Of course I say that while I have a backlog of screeners I still need to catch up on. Anyway, great to see these two here, and they both turn in fantastic performances.

We should devote at least one paragraph to the film's star, Mathis Landwehr. This is our second time seeing him on the site, after 2017's Ultimate Justice. There's been a long line of next names since I started this site in 2007, and the only one who's really been able to break through is Scott Adkins. Compare that to all the names we've seen who were one or two and done. Matthew Reese in Riot for example. Tony Schiena has had come up a few times. Matt Mullins is another. Amy Johnston looked primed to be a bigger name, but we haven't seen her as much recently--though she is in the newest R. Ellis Frazier film, so we'll have to check that out. Probably the biggest of the ones who never quite made it is Johnny Messner, who now does more supporting work and producing. The thing is, the old guard is still getting after it, and as a result, there isn't as much room to break through as there was in the 90s. One advantage Landwehr might have is the fact that he lives in Germany, and can make a name for himself there first, especially if he's working with an extreme fight talent like Mike Möller. Germany all around has had a much more robust action ecosystem than we have. According to IMDb, he has a couple films in the hopper that look good, so I'll be excited to check them out. Who knows, we might have our next big name.

Finally, this is the Last Kumite. Whether or not this movie intends to put a bow on all Kumite movies, or if other adventurous filmmakers out there will defy this film's title and make further Kumite films, only time will tell. Maybe the next one will be the "New Kumite"? The thing about "Kumite," is the way it's spelled looks like Riunite. I haven't had that in forever, but I remember the commercials. Every time I hear "Reunited" by Peaches and Herb, I think "Riunite and it feels so good." The other song that gets in my head with this film's title is "Last Worthless Evening" by Don Henley. This is the last, kuuu-mi-teee, that you'll have to spend. A bit of a stretch, but tell my brain that when the earworm sets in. There's not always a rhyme or reason to it, but the earworm isn't any less real. As an aside, we always talk about the late 80s/early 90s as the golden age of DTV action. I think it was at least a silver age of Adult Contempo too, right? The late 70s/early 80s has to be the golden age, but when you hit like "Higher Love" in 1986, there's a good maybe seven or eight years of a new age of easy listening that made trips to the doctor's or the DMV much more pleasant. What a great time, I could watch a PM actioner, then turn on my radio and hear Michael Bolton and Kenny G charting. As Steve Winwood said so eloquently, I can light the night up with my soul on fire...

And while no one is really paying tribute to my self-styled silver age of adult contempo, at least here we get a nice tribute to the tournament actioners of that time. You can get it on Tubi as of my writing this, which is a great way to go. And if you haven't yet, check out the podcast episode Ty and I did as well, number 202 in the archives.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt17351056

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

Showdown (1993)

This has been sitting my Tubi queue for a while now, and I knew I needed to get more Billy Blanks on the site, so it seemed like a no-brainer. What I didn't expect was a backdoor 30 Club induction as well--more on that later in the post. In addition to us, Chris the Brain at Bulletproof, Ty and Brett at Comeuppance, Karl Brezdin at Fist of the B-List, and RobotGEEK's Cult Cinema have all covered this as well.

Showdown has Billy Blanks as a police officer who's called to break up a teenage house party, only to find Patrick Kilpatrick and his brother terrorizing people there. When they attack Blanks, he accidentally kills the brother, causing him to quit the force, and Kilpatrick to swear revenge. Cut to seven years later, and Blanks is working as a janitor at a worst of the worst high school--the kind where they clean the eyeballs up at the end of the night--where young newcomer Ken (Kenn Scott) is terrorized by a gang of martial arts kids led by Tom (Ken McLeod) because Ken talked to Tom's girlfriend, Christine Taylor. Turns out Kilpatrick and Linda Dona are also running an illegal fight ring with these teenage boys. That's enough for Billy Blanks to train Ken and take down Kilpatrick and company.

This is as fun as a 1993 Karate Kid rip-off should be. Blanks is fantastic as the sensei, and the situation that causes him to leave the force is believable enough. Patrick Kilpatrick is great in the Martin Kove role, though more evil and over the top (Stallone style) as a DTV Karate Kid rip-off requires. Then we have our hero, Kenn Marx, who was 25 playing 16 but looks even older than 25, which is sounds great enough, until you factor in that he's opposite Ken McLeod who is 31 playing 16, so they use all manner of Chess King outfits to try to make him look younger--also good to note that he played a college student in College Kickboxers two years earlier, so I guess if that trend of him playing younger roles continued, there's a 1995 film out there where he plays a 13-year-old? From there though we round out the cast with more familiar names, like Brion James as the assistant principal, John Asher (aka Wyatt from the Weird Science TV show on the USA Network) as the high school friend, DTVC favorite James Lew as one of Billy Blanks's attackers, and then the aforementioned Christine Taylor as Tom's girlfriend, fresh off her stint on Hey, Dude, and two years removed from her breakout role--Marilyn Munster on the TV movie Here Comes the Munsters--which I just found out was directed by Robert Ginty--yes, that Robert Ginty! With all this, I think what works best about this movie is it doesn't try to be more than it is, and I think part of the reason for that is it's directed by Robert Radler, who also directed the first two Best of the Best films and the third and fourth Substitute films. This is the fun 90s Karate Kid DTV rip-off you came for. 

We're now at 11 films for Billy Blanks on the site, which doesn't sound like a lot, but we also don't have many more left to review for him either. If you look at the date, 1993, Tae-Bo took off only three years later, which would make sense that he'd focus on that, but I don't think he picked Tae-Bo over DTV movies, I think he picked it because he wasn't getting the roles he wanted in DTV films. Michael Jai White said in a Vlad TV interview that a producer once told him "I wish there was a white you," meaning "I love your skills, but I can't cast you in leads because of the color of your skin." You'd have to imagine Blanks was dealing with the same thing, and once he did make it big with Tae-Bo, when those same people who wouldn't cast him before came calling, he probably didn't return their calls. Another thing I hadn't considered was if something happened between him and Jalal Merhi, because he doesn't make another film with him after 1995's Expect No Mercy until they reunited for The Circuit TV series in 2020. We know from Cynthia Rothrock's YouTube channel that Merhi wasn't always great about paying on time, so maybe Blanks got tired of it? Those are just my guesses, and maybe it was a combination of factors, but I think it explains why someone as talented as he is drops off not long after this. It's a shame, because we as the audience lose out when this kind of thing happens, but at least we have the films of his we do, including this one. A Hall of Fame induction is probably long overdue for him, so expect that this October--and this would've been a great induction post, so now I need to find something else for him!

Speaking of the Hall of Fame, you may be familiar with The Asylum Rule for inductions, which states that anyone who's in the 30 Club is automatically inducted. We've only invoked it that one time, for The Asylum, because we try to preemptively get people in before that--for example, Danny Trejo's induction post was also his 30 Club entry. That brings us here, to this review, where I discovered that Imperial Entertainment didn't have a tag. When I went back and retroactively added it, I saw that they had 29 films--Mean Guns was posted twice, so they had 30 tags. That makes this their 30th film, and as such gains them entry into the 30 Club. So I guess we now have two of our October Hall of Fame inductions set, and it's only February. I was surprised that I hadn't tagged them already, because that opening animation is a thing of beauty, almost as nice as Cannon or PM's. Like those others, it was a sign that you were in for a good time, evoking a comfort food kind of feeling, like smelling McDonald's fries from one of their establishments five miles away. And like that McDonald's, sometimes the person working the fryer was having a bad day, or maybe you got the last order from that batch before they started a new one, but at least it did the job, like Imperial's films, whether they were the cinematic equivalent of a piping hot order of fries or a limp, lukewarm last-of-the-batch order, they got you to the church on time. In this modern age of 8 animations before we get to our movie, each as unrecognizable as the one before it, it's nice that we have access to Imperial's films on places like Tubi.

Out of everyone else, James Lew, who only has one scene when he's part of the gang that attacks Billy Blanks, has the most films on the site, now with 18. It was kinda too bad that it was only that scene, because he and Blanks are good. Once they realized they had Lew, they should've worked in some random fights between him and Blanks throughout the rest of the film, like maybe he holds up a convenience store Blanks is in. If that scene would be too expensive to shot, what if Lew holds up a kid's lemonade stand? After Lew, we have Brion James with his 15th film. In this role, he's a goofy assistant principal who's trying to maintain some sense of control over the school, like Kevin Tighe in Road House before he decides to call in Dalton. In one scene we see that he's been collecting cigarettes he's confiscated from students so he can smoke them himself. Beyond how great a racket that is, is there another actor who could pull that kind of thing off better than him? Finally, Mr. Kilpatrick as our Martin Kove character now has 11 films on the site. I saw that before this he only had one tag, because I'd only tagged him for Best of the Best II and nothing else. I've corrected that, but even 11 seems low. I think that's because a lot of DTV films employ a Patrick Kilpatrick-esque baddie in their films, so it feels like he was in things that he wasn't. I don't think it's because they couldn't afford him, I think it's because he does so much, he's probably not always easy to find available.

Boom mic, big time. And it just hovers there too, like someone's dog or cat moseying into the frame when they're on a zoom call for work. On the one hand, I want to forgive this and say maybe they didn't plan on releasing a widescreen cut, so they figured the stuff on the left wouldn't be in the final version of the film. I'd buy that, except IMDb only lists the 1:85:1 aspect ratio, and the mic is right above Ken McLeod's head, and I feel like they intended to have him in the shot. Speaking of IMDb, in the goofs section people mention that a stack of books that gets knocked over in one shot is magically restacked in the next, that a folder that was on a table in one shot is magically being held in someone's arm in the next, and that "Selina, KS" was mispronounced, but they all missed the boom mic? Imagine being that pedantic that you're concerned about a stack of books, but you miss a boom mic that was in the shot for the entire scene! I guess when you crowdsource information the way IMDb does, that's the crowd you're sourcing it from.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently stream this on Tubi, Freevee, Plex, and myriad other free streamers here in the States. If you haven't seen this before, it's a fun time. It knows it's a 90s DTV Karate Kid rip-off, it doesn't try to be anything more, and in the process is exactly what you want. 

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111174

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

 

Low Blow (1986)

This is one I did because I needed to get some more Leo Fong on the site. I don't know that anyone who does a site like we do couldn't need more Leo Fong on their site. In addition to us, our friend from Down Under Simon at Explosive Action has covered this, along with Karl from Fist of the B-List; and this is a Complete the Triangle post for us, as we join our friends at Comeuppance and The Video Vacuum in also reviewing this one.

Low Blow has Fong as a PI who's hired by a rich guy after the rich guy's daughter joins a cult. As is usually the case, things aren't exactly what they seem, as the cult's leader, Cameron Mitchell, is blind, and right under his nose his right-hand woman Karma is taking over power and turning the cult into a prison camp, along with the help of her henchmen, including the great Billy Blanks. Though this nefarious crew gets the drop on Fong initially, that only lasts so long before he escapes, recruits a crew of toughs of his own, Stack Pierce among them, and goes back to the compound to take care of business. These evil cultists won't know what hit them... actually they will, it'll be Leo Fong and his gang.

This is another one of those fun low-budget action bangers you came for. In looking at the other four reviews from colleagues I mentioned above, I think the one thing we were all in agreement on was this was just a fun time. The movie starts with him taking down robbers in a diner, saying "hey, is my ham sandwich ready?" when he enters, and then just shooting the bad guys, knocking one into a classic menu board with moveable letters that we don't see as much anymore. A lot of it after that is Fong in a Member's Only jacket, beating the crap out of people. How much more do you really want in a movie? Okay, then Cameron Mitchell as a cult leader, Billy Blanks as a cult tough, and Stack Pierce as an aging boxer/buddy of Fong's. Yes, by any objective measure, this has some obvious flaws, but in a way the flaws in and of themselves make the film that much more endearing. This is pure Fong trying to make the movie he wants to make on a shoestring budget, and I think for the most part he does what you need him to.

It's crazy to think that not only is this only the third Fong film on our site, but we also didn't even have a tag for him. I think the issue with Fong is a lot of his stuff isn't as available as some of the others, so I've left him, and now we're over 1100 reviews in and he's barely been covered. The good thing is, with the advent of YouTube, more of his stuff is available than it was--including this gem--so I have more of an opportunity to get more of his stuff reviewed. (The bad thing is, we just upgraded our Hulu to include Disney+ and ESPN+, and the volume of out-of-market NHL on ESPN+ is fantastic. It's like, I want to watch Blood Street on YouTube, but there's a Devils-Sabres game streaming followed by a Kings-Canucks game, what am I supposed to do?)

We last did a Billy Blanks movie on December 28th, 2011, so just over ten years ago. I think part of the reason for that is we had done just about every DTV film he'd done to that point, and since then he hasn't really done too much else. Here he doesn't really have a big role, and while he had a good fight with Fong, this is not a "Billy Blanks film" per se, it's more a Leo Fong movie that has Blanks in it; but when it comes to Blanks, we'll take 'em where we can get 'em--which is now 10 films on the site. In terms of a DTV Hall of Famer, it's hard to say, because the quantity isn't there; but could he be in the running for quality? Some of his leading parts in the 90s were some of the best of that era, which says a lot.

There's always this idea when it comes to cults that I'd never be susceptible to something like that, but yet, here I am obsessively cuing up multiple NHL games on ESPN+. I mean, what if former Bruins great Cam Neely DM'd me and started telling me about his new religion he's started? I'd definitely listen. Hell, if PJ Stock, or even Blaine Lacher reached out to me, I'd definitely listen. No, I'd be putty in their hands, it would only be a matter of time before I'm subjected to hard labor in a camp far from home and my wife is calling in Leo Fong to get me out. We don't really have the money for that kind of thing, so it's probably better I keep my mind sharp and aware and not think I'm so above this whole cult thing.

With this last paragraph I wanted was go over the great scene--or series of scenes--where three guys attack Fong, and not only does he dispatch them, but when they try to escape in their car, he disables it, smashes the windows, then dons some eye protection and uses a high-powered saw to cut off the roof of it and turn it into a convertible. This is why we come to movies like this, moments like these are what make it for us. I also think this is why modern DTV doesn't work when the quality is lower the way 80s ones did. There's an earnestness, even when it comes off silly, that just hits in a way that's entertaining. What's nice now is a lot of these are available on YouTube, so you don't need to scramble on the secondary VHS market to find them.

And with that, let's wrap this up. As of this writing, this is now available on Tubi. Before that, and probably after that when Tubi eventually takes it down, it's also available on YouTube. However you see it, it's a fun time.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091442

And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, A Girl and a Gun, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

 

 

 

Balance of Power aka Hidden Tiger (1996)

This one has been on Watch Instantly for a while, and with Billy Blanks, Mako, and James Lew in the cast, it was near the top of my queue. It was just a matter of finding the right spot for it, and this week worked out. Now let's see if it was what I expected. Also, our buddy Ty at Comeuppance Reviews did this one, about a year ago.

Balance of Power has Blanks as a guy in a poor urban neighborhood trying to keep kids off the streets and on the right path with his dojo in town. Problem is, James Lew, who is a fighter for a bad Japanese crime boss that sells the drugs that keeps Blanks's neighborhood in the dumps, expects Blanks to pay protection money to keep the dojo in business, and when Blanks refuses, he shoots and kills one of the neighborhood kids Blanks had been reforming. Enter Mako, Lew's sensei, and now Blanks's sensei, as he trains Blanks to fight in the Japanese crime boss's underground tournament, the idea being he beats Lew in the final fight after the boss bets all his money on Lew, and when he's bankrupt he's out of business. It's a crazy Grinchey idea that might just work.



I think this is the kind of movie people think of when they think of the DTVC. A low-budget 90s actioner, maybe not-so-much a video store find as much as a late night cable find, but tons of fun just the same. It has some solid martial arts, a traditional plot-- though this one has the added layer of Blanks trying to make a difference in the inner city--, and as many funny moments as it does quality ones. I mean, what do you do with James Lew fighting in a diaper? Or James Lew fighting in a diaper and shoving a guy's face in some bubbling Funky Cold Medina, a moat of which is inexplicably surrounding their fighting area? Yet you can't deny the sincerity in Blanks wanting to use the honor, discipline, and humility of martial arts to give kids in the inner city an alternative to the drug gangs as a means to make something of themselves; and you can't deny the sincerity of Blanks's performance and fighting skills. This is a good low-budget actioner for people who love low-budget actioners.

Say what you want about Blanks's acting ability, his genuineness is beyond reproach. I think the biggest impediment in this film to his acting is the fact that he has a lot of social messages he wants to get out there, but he's unable to mitigate fitting into the context of a plot messages that would come off much more naturally if Billy had us one-on-one in conversation. But, do we come to a Billy Blanks action film for acting, or do we come for his relentless approach to fight scenes? The latter of course, and he gives us that. Outside of a couple early on, we get more training montages with Mako than we do fights, but they build up as they go, so that each one in the tournament is better than the next, culminating in a great one with Lew, followed by an even better one with his boss. Also, I couldn't help but notice that Blanks would make a great Sagat in a Street Fighter adaptation, don't you think?



The main baddie's main henchman is played by what looks like a poor man's Nicholas Guest. He even has the English accent. I'd never seen him before, and figured, a poor man's Nicholas Guest, this must be his only credit. Not so fast, the guy's name is Adrian Hough, and he's been in like every syndicated and cable TV show since 1999. Wow, who'd a thunk there was that much call for a poor man's Nicholas Guest-- as I'm sure many of you are saying, "isn't the poor man's Nicholas Guest Nicholas Guest?" Apparently there's more than enough work out there for two of them.

Usually I talk about the film's nostalgia element in the next paragraph, but we saved that for something bigger-- much bigger. Anyway, as I mentioned above, Lew shoves a guy's face in what looks to be Funky Cold Medina. You better believe I looked up that video on YouTube. It may have been close to twenty years since the last time I'd seen it, and maybe ten since I'd last heard it. I was surprised at how well I remembered the lyrics, but I guess a lot of that stuff is like riding a bike, it's always there. Unfortunately, for the guy who had his face shoved in the Funky Cold Medina, he didn't get a lot of chicks, his face was just burned.



And that leaves us with this. It happened. Someone outdid David Bradley and his fanny pack from Cyborg Cop. James Lew, as you can see in that picture above, is wearing a diaper. What is he, one of those guys that fetishizes being a baby? I'd have given you a close up, but I want to keep my all ages status for the blog. I know James Lew didn't get a lot of opportunities for bigger parts like the one he got here, and we at the DTVC love him and love seeing him in stuff, but you needed to put your foot down at the diaper.

Overall, this is plenty of good ol' fashioned 90s bad action fun. If anyone reading this is thinking "you had me at Billy Blanks", then you'll get what you paid for with him, because he delivers. I'd get it while you can on Watch Instantly here in the States, otherwise you're looking for a VHS. Hidden Tiger is the UK DVD title, so anyone in Region 2 should look for it under that, though according to imdb it's Balance of Power in Germany, and might be that in the UK on VHS too.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115618/

Expect No Mercy (1995)

I didn't exactly what to expect with this movie, but I definitely knew what not to expect, and that was mercy. I think it's good that they let us know that going in though, that way if I do get some mercy, it was totally unexpected and refreshing. This was also reviewed over at Cool Target Action Reviews if you want to get a second opinion.

Expect No Mercy has Wolf Larson as an extremely Shaun Cassidy looking baddie that runs a virtual reality martial arts training facility/paid assassination business. Jalal Merhi is the man on the inside trying to get evidence against them, and DTVC favorite Billy Blanks is another cop sent in to help him after the previous dude in Blanks's spot was killed. Can they get the evidence they need and stop Shaun Cassidy in time before he assassinates a prosecution witness?



This wasn't too bad. Solid 90s action schlock. Blanks and Merhi had some great fights, Anthony De Longis was a solid head baddie's hatchetman, and the action was definitely there. At one point, things slowed to a crawl, and I was thinking this review would sound different than it is, but that slow to a crawl was only the calm before a too sweet shootout at a remote cabin. As far as the 90s schlock goes, great throwback virtual reality silliness, with the headgear, the special effects, a disembodied Jalal Merhi head-- everything you could want.

We love us some Billy Blanks here at the DTVC, and he's pretty sweet in Expect No Mercy. He and Merhi were a part of the fight choreography, and it showed. Some were a little "I hit you twice, you hit me twice"-- the kind of crap I get all over the modern punchfighting flick for-- but the majority were really nice, and were all shot really well. If you're going into a movie like this for some quality Billy Blanks, this isn't a bad deal.



Yes, that is the disembodied head of Jalal Merhi. Maybe he's not the best actor-- okay, he's definitely not the best actor!-- but at least in Expect No Mercy he gets a good chance to show off his martial arts skills. Though he and Blanks are essentially equals in the film, he gets the fight with Anthony De Longis, while Blanks fought Shaun Cassidy; but a bigger reason for that is that Merhi gets the girl, and she was being guarded by De Longis. While his martial arts skills are legit, it's his jewelry store money combined with a little Canadian tax credit money that allows him to produce and pick a nice leading lady to make out with-- in this case Laurie Holden. Unlike Talons of the Eagle though, we're fortunately spared a sex scene complete with Merhi in his tight black skivvies.

Wolf Larson looked so much like Shaun Cassidy, I was convinced he was Cassidy until I saw the credits. How awesome would it have been if the baddie was Shaun Cassidy? Or if Wolf Larson was playing Shaun Cassidy as a baddie? "After starring for years in The Hardy Boys, I decided to take the money and create this massive virtual reality martial arts training facility/assassination business." Maybe there could be shots of him looking at old Tiger Beat magazines with Anthony De Longis, reminiscing about the good ol' days, then he suddenly gets angry, rips it up, and shoots one of his grunts.



Whoa, seriously movie? Really? A Poor Man's Billy Drago? Who does that? Who says "I'm not sure we can get Billy Drago, but this guy will work, right?" He looks like a cross between Billy Drago and David Coverdale of Whitesnake. I guess the idea behind the Poor Man's Billy Drago in this instance is he can play a small role, and people like me won't be complaining "oh man, it was a Billy Drago bait-and-switch". Still, I've always thought the Poor man's Billy Drago was Billy Drago, so this is a new revelation.

This isn't too bad, especially if you're a consumer of 80s/90s bad action. Solid fights, solid action, retro 90s computer effects, and a fair amount of fun. It's no longer in print, but you can get it used on DVD and VHS here in the States. If you see it for $5 or less, I'd say pull the trigger.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112998/

TC 2000 (1993)

It took me a little time to track this down, otherwise I'd have done it by now. Just look at that cast. It's huge, robust, dare I say prodigious. I don't remember when I first saw it, probably on TNT or a buddy rented it. It's definitely the kind of film that I made the DTVC for, so it's good to finally be getting after it.

TC 2000 takes place in the future, after the environment has deteriorated, and any humans with means have moved underground, leaving the topside an impoverished wasteland. Billy Blanks and Bobbie Phillips are police officers who keep surface dwellers from getting underground, but after they're ambushed by a gang of them, led by Jalal Merhi, and Phillips ends up dead, Blanks is wrongly accused of her death, and he flees to the surface, where Bolo Yeung teaches him the power of the Chi; while Phillips is turned into a cyborg, and she's sent to the surface to do something for her old boss, who it turns out is a bad guy, with a bad guy right-hand man played by Matthias Hues.



This is fantastic. This is the kind of movie the blog was made for, and the kind of movie you come here to check out. Great martial arts, great stars, and a futuristic plot set in the boiler room of a factory. Does it get any better than that? This is early 90s DTV action at its best, tons of fun, tons of action, and nothing to take too seriously: the perfect combination. Get the crew together and fire it up for your bad movie night.

How do you not love Billy Blanks? He's had better martial arts in some of his other films, but this one gives him more screen time than a lot of those. And he and Bolo Yeung had great chemistry (more on that later). The one drawback might be that he only wears the shades from the cover a couple times, but I'm not so sure that's a bad thing, because he has tons of close-ups with funny looks on his face, which for me is much better. Would I have liked some better martial scenes-- not that these ones were that bad, just that we've seen better, especially in The King of the Kickboxers-- probably, but overall, Blanks was so great, I didn't mind.



In this picture Bobbie Phillips looks pretty hot, right? And as the cyborg, from the forehead down she really does look hot, it was just her hairdo that didn't work. It was one of those middle of the head ponytails where the hair comes out and flows down over the head. It was the kind of hairdo that the girls with bad dye jobs who wore Adidas track suits to the mall and always got into fights used to have when I was growing up. I don't know, I was half expecting her to talk in wannabe Ebonics and come through the screen to try and steal my Da' Brat CD. "Sooo, sooo, Funktafiiiied..." (Was I the only one whose environment was Suburban Ghetto enough for these girls to exist?)

Matthias Hues is a beast. He even makes Bolo Yeung look small. I know how silly it sounds to do the whole "in real life he could take so and so", but other than Dolph Lundgren, who has similar size and speed, Matthias Hues is someone none of the guys who pretend kick his ass on screen would want anything to do with if he came looking for them with bad intentions. I guess that's why he makes such a great baddie, because he is so big and fast-- and because he has a German accent, let's not forget that.



This review marks a first here at the DTVC. In the past I've uploaded video clips from the movies I reviewed, but this is the first time I ever enhanced one. There are two training montages in TC 2000, and I thought they were both great, but when I cut them together, I noticed the transition was bad between the first and second, so I decided to cover the whole thing with different music. It's on the image page, so take a look at it and tell me what you think. The Bolo Yeung interpretive dance at the beginning was my personal favorite.

This is only available on VHS as far as I know. If you look it up on Amazon, one of the links they'll direct you to is another film, Expect No Mercy, which is on DVD, stars Jalal Merhi and Billy Blanks, but is not the same film. TC 2000 is totally worth picking up if you find it anywhere. Amazon is a little steep, but $5 or so after shipping is worth it, so if you can find it for that, pull the trigger.

For more info:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108277/

China O'Brien II (1991)

This was a tough get. It's only available on VHS, and it's not always cheap. For a site like this though, China O'Brien II is a must, considering it's one of the roles Cynthia Rothrock is most associated with. Plus, Richard Norton, Keith Cooke, and a special appearance by DTVC favorite Billy Blanks doesn't hurt either.

China O'Brien II picks up about two years after part 1 leaves off. While China has cleaned up her small town, a big time drug dealer has escaped from prison, and the guy who sent him away just happens to be living in witness protection in her town, with his wife and her daughter, the former who happens to be China's friend, and the latter who happens to be dating Dakota (Keith Cooke). It's just the drug dealer's dumb luck that of all the small towns in all the world, the guy who ratted on him and made off with his $5 million dollars would choose the one that has Rothrock, Cooke, and Norton as its police force. Poor him.

This is what you came for. Good, solid, straight ahead, DTV late 80s/early 90s action. Rothrock is good, Norton is good, and Cooke is good, plus there's a small cameo at the end by Billy Blanks (more on that later). I say this a lot here, but they don't make movies like this anymore, and that's too bad. It starts off small and builds the action up, getting better each time, with well choreographed fights that look great, combined with the requisite gunshots and explosions. This might not be the best of the best, but this is exactly the kind of film that kept me coming back to my video store for more of the same.

As I mentioned above, China O'Brien might be the character Cynthia Rothrock is most known for, and here you can see why. They really do a great job of flipping the classic masculine hero paradigm, and make her a strong lead who never defers to another male--even with an alpha dude like Richard Norton--in fact, he defers to her. On top of that, she has some really great martial arts sequences, driving home just why she's cast as the action lead. This with part 1 make an excellent Rothrock double feature.

He's huge! Good ol' Richard Norton is back, reprising his role as Matt from the first go-'round. He and Rothrock are like the Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire of DTV action. He does a great job here of letting her take the lead, but coming in and kicking ass when he's needed too. Beyond the fighting, there's also the funeral scene where he rocks a Canadian tuxedo. How cool is that? Everyone else is in black--even Keith Cooke, though it is his leather jacket--and there's Norton, Canadian tuxedo, looking as if he's about to hit the bar to catch the Flames/Oilers game with some buds and throw back some Rolling Rocks. Classic.

Keith Cooke is back again, though his Dakota character is given almost a Robin plot tract. Based on how sick his skills are, it felt kind of weird. He dates the step-daughter of the guy the drug dealer wants, and she's in high school. Keith Cooke, in his early thirties, playing someone young enough to pick up a high school chick? Was he that young in the first one? Then he's kidnapped by the drug dealer along with the wife and step-daughter and held for ransom to force the guy to bring the cash he stole. To me, none of that works. What worked was him being the quiet, mysterious loner who kicks tons of ass, especially when we see his sweet skill set. He's no Robin, more like the Martian Manhunter.

Yes, that handsome devil in the tangerine tank top is Billy Blanks. He's also wearing zebra print pants there. He has a small, uncredited part as the drug dealer's extra hired muscle called in for the final siege of the small town. He has only a few scenes, then one fight with Cooke that isn't quite as good as their fight in King of the Kickboxers. Considering the film only had like an 81-minute running time, an extra five to beef up that fight scene wouldn't have been so bad. My only complaint for an otherwise great flick.

To buy this on Amazon might cost you in the $10 to $15 range, which for me is a little expensive for a used VHS. Your better bet is to just keep your eye out in a bargain bin or a flea market or Goodwill, then, if you don't see it, maybe fork over that kind of cash. Unfortunately this isn't available on DVD.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101579/

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

Talons of the Eagle (1992)

This is one I've been looking to do for a long time, and was planning to do it before I went on hiatus, but when I came back, it was lost in the shuffle. Then in relatively quick succession, both Ty at Comeuppance Reviews and Karl at Fist of the B-List reviewed it, and reminded me that I had neglected it for too long. It was time to make it happen.

Talons of the Eagle has DTVC favorite Billy Blanks as a New York DEA Agent who is sent to Toronto to nip the drug supply chain in the bud, along with Jalal Merhi. Both guys are what we in the biz call "mavericks" or "loose cannons", so they get along great. They have to learn some Eagle Talon style Kung Fu though, before they can infiltrate the evil James Hong's gang through his tournament. After a few montages they're set to go, and they impress Hong enough that he lets them in. There are two problems though: first, Hong's righthand man, Matthias Hues is suspicious of them, and second, the chick who took over for Suzanne Somers on Three's Company is an agent that was sent in prior to our heroes, and they don't know if she's "crossed over".



This definitely cooks. Billy Blanks is the standout, but Merhi is solid, and Hues and Hong make great baddies. Plus you have some other excellent performances rounding out the cast, including Priscilla Barnes, Eric Lee, and Qingfu Pan. There were some weak points, like in the tournament, our heroes take way too many hits from their opponents to make us believe they learned anything from all those montages. I mean, Merhi had a lot of trouble with the "Pepperidge Farms Remembers" guy, and Blanks was less than convincing against an Iron Sheik wannabe. There's also as many laughs as there are great fights and action, foremost among them, Merhi in his tighty blackies, or the fact that the only thing to drink in Toronto was Canada Dry. A great combination of silly and hot makes for a winner in my book.

Billy Blanks is a star, but unlike the two he did with Roddy Piper, Tough and Deadly and Back in Action, in this he plays second fiddle to Merhi, which is a little off-putting. He does get the end fight with Hues, though, so in that sense he was used well. There's just so much electricity in his performances, it's really too bad he didn't do more work. I'm not sure if that's because the early 90s weren't ready for an African American DTV action lead, or if he didn't want as much work, or maybe a combination of both, but seeing him here just makes me want more. I should also point out that this was a rare pre-Rush Hour pairing of two heroes that weren't Caucasian. This film was very much ahead of its time.



This will be the eighth of fifteen acting credits for Jalal Merhi here at the DTVC. It feels like he had a bigger impact on the DTV industry, but when you factor in the large amount of overlap between his acting credits and his director, producer, and writer credits, 15 is about it. He's kind of in that David Bradley territory, only he does more than just act. Maybe he's a Lebanese cross between Orson Welles and David Bradley, only instead of the fanny pack, he has the tighty blackies. Don't know what he was going for there, but I spared you a pic of it on the image page. Mr. Merhi, if you ever decide to make any more movies and cast yourself in them, I'd go boxers over briefs.

Does anyone remember how the whole replacing Suzanne Somers on Three's Company went down? She had some contract dispute, and so for a season, instead of being with the rest of the cast, she would go into a box and shoot scenes to make it look like she was communicating with them over the phone from some far-off place. I was too young to remember the whole thing when it originally aired, but do remember when it was on Nick-at-Nite, and thought how odd it was. Almost as weird as when Gabe Kaplan had issues with Welcome Back Kotter, and they had his wife teach the Sweathogs. Anyway, Priscilla Barnes, Somers's eventual replacement, plays Merhi's love interest/undercover agent, so that's why I brought all that up.



Had to snag another McDonald's shot. This comes in some New York file footage at the beginning of the film. I wonder if that McDonald's is still open. I've realized that perhaps with all my McDonald's talk I'm giving the wrong impression of my eating habits. Don't get me wrong, I love McDonald's, but I also love Doritos and chocolate (not together, of course), but I don't eat them all the time. I wonder if I lived on the West Coast if that would be a different story though, with In-N-Out burger and Del Taco. Or Chic-Fil-A, which we don't have up here either, but I get when I go down south. Temperance would be much more difficult to practice then.

Talons of the Eagle is available on Netflix, making it an easy get for anyone looking to make it happen. This is a well-rounded film that offers solid fights and low-budget silliness in a great package that's hard to not like. Definitely worth it.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105530/

Bloodfist (1989)

Here we are, post number 549, and somehow Bloodfist has slipped through the cracks up until this point. I could have sworn I'd reviewed both this and part 2 already, and as I was watching this again for this review, I had a sense of deja vu as I saw certain images, thinking, "I could've sworn I grabbed that scene." Anyway, it was all my imagination, but here we are now, rectifying the issue.

Bloodfist has DTVC Hall of Famer Don "The Dragon" Wilson as Jake, a fighter in California, whose brother, a fighter in Manila, is killed. He goes over there to get to the bottom of things, and finds all roads lead to an underground fighting tournament, which he enters, hot on the trail of the murderer. The problem is, his trainer, a local who got him into the tournament, isn't too enthused with Donny figuring things out before he fights in the final. Who can Donny trust when the chips are down?



I don't really know where to go with this one. I guess, because it's a classic, it's worth looking at. Some of the fights are good, some are lackluster. The one big thing it has going for it is the running time, because you're in and out in 80 minutes, which isn't bad. On the other hand, the training montage is silly, and worse than that perfunctory and a bit superfluous, which hurts because that's more fighting or other action we could have had in its place. It is what it is, a derivative tournament film with the distinction of being Don "The Dragon" Wilson's first starring role.

And with this review, we're down to 13 films left in out Dragon completion project. This is an interesting case on why he became a DTV action star, because I think you can see what Roger Corman and whoever else saw in him. He wasn't a great actor, and the tapered pants didn't do anything to make him look any better on-screen, but when he squared up for the fight scenes, there was that look in his eyes, that elite athlete look, like "you won't beat me" or "if you're going to beat me, it's going to hurt a lot. Are you ready for that?" That translates well to the audience, giving him instant credibility. The problem always is, while he's good in those fight scenes, the rest of the time, we don't know what to make of him. Elite athlete does not always translate into solid actor.



Billy Blanks is sweet for his few scenes. His fighting actually looked the best out of everyone, including Wilson. I'm still not sure why it never happened for him, like it did for guys like Wilson. I know before I've speculated that his race might have been an issue, and on some levels, one could still make that case. I'm trying to think, after Wesley Snipes, how many African American action stars there are. And then, if you eliminate all the converted former rappers, how many do you have? And it's not like there's no one with potential out there. Look at Michael Jai White. He's great period, with no qualifiers, as was Blanks in the late 80s early 90s, great period, not just great African American. People must have looked at him and said "no one will buy a black action hero". That's our loss, unfortunately, because whenever we see him, he's great.

On the image page, you'll notice a kid with a rat tail. I figured I needed to snag that. I remember in 8th grade, my science teacher had one, and we were telling him how out of date they were. I want to say they were cool in like 4th grade, which would have been around when this was made. That kid's probably my age in the picture. If you're wondering, yes, I tried to grow a rat tail, went to the beauty school with my mom to get my haircut, and the stylist there started the process for me. It was pretty weak, compared to some of the other kids, so I gave up. Not that I had any better hairdos than that, I just didn't have the rat tail.



I like this mention of Chinatown in Manila. I was trying to think of other films we've had that have featured Chinatowns in them. Obviously, anything taking place in San Francisco, New York, or LA that had anything to do with martial arts showcased those Chinatowns. Into the Sun has the Tokyo Chinatown, which was cool. If you ever make it up to Boston, we have a pretty cool Chinatown here (the oldest in the country, actually). It's right down the road from South Station.

If you haven't seen this one, I think it's good to get it out of the way, just to be able to say you've seen all the Bloodfists-- kind of the same way I need to be able to say I've reviewed all the Bloodfists, right? Anyway, the DVD is currently out of print, meaning Netflix won't rent it. If you keep an eye out though, you'll probably catch it on TV.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096952/

Back in Action (1993)

I got this on VHS at the same time I picked up Tough and Deadly. I would've reviewed it sooner, but Mr. Kenner at Movies in the Attic insisted I fit in The King of the Kickboxers instead, so we did. Funny thing happened along the way: I think Back in Action might be the better movie...

Back in Action has DTVC Hall of Famer Rowdy Roddy Piper as a cop organizing a huge drug bust. Problem is, Billy Blanks's sister is dating one of the dealers, the dealer brings her along, and Blanks shows up to get her back. Well, he attacks one of the guards, the guy's gun goes off, and in the ensuing shootout Piper's partner is killed, and the main baddie thinks his dealer's girlfriend tipped off the cops. So the baddies want to kill the sister, Blanks wants to kill the baddies for wanting to kill her, and Piper doesn't know what to do with Blanks while he's trying to get revenge for his fallen partner.

Now this is what I'm talking about. Pure awesomeness. Constant action, great fights, and two stars who more than live up to their billing. It just doesn't get any better. First off, Piper was good as always, but the material really let him be him, which is all we ever want. Forget the plot, just let him go for it. Then Blanks comes in just to let you know, kicking ass and taking names. He and Piper have a knock down drag 'em out fight that made me think of They Live. I wouldn't say it's that good, but it was close. And finally, there was no lull. At most there was maybe ten minutes of down time between scenes. I'm not sure what is so hard for other movie makers out there to understand about this: just fucking go for it! We don't watch these films for plot, character development, etc., we watch them for the kick ass factor, and Back in Action certainly had it.

This might be Piper's best ever. Okay, second best after Hell Comes to Frog Town, and if you're counting They Live, it falls down to three, but it's a very solid three. I've never had a complaint with Piper's performance in any movie he's done. No one brings it like he does, period. What I usually take issue with is how Piper is used, whether the part isn't big enough, the character isn't cool enough, or the plot hinders us from getting the Piper we all want when we load one of his films into our VCR or DVD player. Back in Action fulfilled the promise the front of the box made when it listed Roddy Piper as one of its stars, and for that alone it was amazing.

This is three Billy Blanks films in row that ruled, and I'd say out of all of them, while this is the best movie, his best performance was in The King of the Kickboxers. That was one of the best baddies of all time. Here he flubbed some lines, sounded over rehearsed at moments, and his character was kind of weird the way he didn't respect his sister early in the film. Still, he kicked major ass, and he and Piper were great together again, even though they were more of a team in Tough and Deadly. We're going to definitely work on getting more of his films up, Talons of the Eagle next on the list.

Another thing that always makes a great film is a great baddie, and this one had it in Nigel Bennett. As far as I know, the only other film of his we've reviewed is Phase IV, which also had Dean Cain and Brian Bosworth. This guy works in the Julian Sands/Bruce Payne mold, which makes sense, because he's from England as well, Wolverhampton to be exact. He must be excited, because his Wolves look like they might stay up in the Premiership this season.

I do have one complaint, and maybe it's not so much a complaint as much as it's an observation, or an overall issue with action films. The two female leads are kidnapped by the main baddie and used as bait for Piper and Blanks. Classic scenario we're all familiar with. Also classic is when the baddies don't restrain either captives, allowing them to pick up weapons, etc., and kill the baddies holding them hostage. This was even more egregious here, because at one point they caught Piper and taped his wrists to the arm of the chair they had him in. It's ridiculous. Do these bad guys not understand why the police handcuff them when they're arrested? It's not because of tradition, or because it's just something they've always done. They do it so it's harder for the people they're holding captive to attack them and escape. Somehow we're supposed to believe criminal masterminds are completely unfamiliar with this concept?

Anyway, that's just me poking fun at the film, a film that otherwise was simply... awesome. If you haven't seen it, get it anyway you can. As far as I know VHS is the only way to go, which is too bad, because a movie like this belongs on DVD; though I kind of like it on VHS for the nostalgia factor. This is what you want when you go for a Piper film, and Blanks is just as good. An all around great flick.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109195/

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