Maximum Force (1992)

Our friend Johnny Sullivan, screenwriter of the great Recoil (Twitter @johnnyblackout), left a comment on my Facebook asking if I'd seen/reviewed Maximum Force, starring Sam Jones.  It had been on my radar, but his mention, combined with a few other people suggesting it-- and the fact that I wanted to get more Sam Jones on the DTVC anyway-- jumped this near the top of my list.  Luckily I knew someone who had it, and was able to check it out.  Also, our friends Ty at Comeuppance Reviews and Explosive Action looked at this one as well (can you imagine either of them missing something like this?), so you can check that out to see their takes.

Maximum Force is a PM Entertainment actioner about a crime boss named Tanabe, played, of course, by the late Richard Lynch.  He's rich, and owns a lot of LA's police force.  Enter Sam Jones, Sherrie Rose, and a young electronics and gun expert played by Jason Lively.  Each has his or her own reasons for taking down Lynch, but it's police captain John Saxon who has the biggest reason, and he decides he can bring these folks together to join forces and get the job done.  Problem is: Lynch won't go down that easily, and hopefully for him police chief Mickey Rooney will help him remain in power.



This is pretty sweet.  It has that PM Entertainment everything but the kitchen sink approach to action, starting in the first five minutes with a chopper explosion.  That's right, they knew they needed to have a helicopter explosion in there somewhere, so they figured they'd just get it out of the way at the beginning.  Also, they expertly navigate Lynch's opening background speech to his underlings, by mixing in action scenes with Sam Jones and Sherrie Rose, then punctuating Lynch's speech with a death by Saran Wrap of one of his goons.  For people out there making action movies, this is how you do it.  PM Entertainment had this right more often than not, and as far as I can tell, you guys are getting it wrong more often than not 20 years later.  Stop getting it wrong, or we'll turn our backs on you and go exclusively back to when these movies were good.

One of the problems Johnny and others have had in looking for Sam Jones films on the DTVC is the lack of a tag.  That was a mistake on my part, and it's now been rectified, and right out of the gate this is his eleventh on here.  The key with Sam Jones as a hero is to cultivate that Tank Concrete/Lump Beefbroth aesthetic, without falling into 300-pound Pork Roast territory.  It's a bit of a tough line to straddle, but this film does it well.  When I think of the perfect Sam Jones role, the one we'd all like, it'd be something like a reality show where he confronts RATers or guys who proposition 12-year-old girls on the Internet, kind of in a Chris Hanson Dateline kind of way, only with a real strongman aspect.  Like he gets them in a headlock, and he's like "Oh, you think it's okay to spy on women through their webcams and mess with people's computers?" or "Oh, you think it's okay to talk to 12-year-old girls about sex in chat rooms?", and they're like whimpering and breathing hard and their faces are turning purple, and we're loving to see these shitheads get their comeuppance, before they're shipped off to jail.  That's the kind of Sam Jones we want, and any movie that casts him in the lead, needs to cultivate that, otherwise he's just a beefy guy in a flat top.



How often do we ever get to see John Saxon as a good guy?  It's few and far between.  I've realized that he's one that, while he seems like he should be on here a bunch, isn't really.  The only other two to this point are Enter the Dragon, which we did for our 300th post, and Final Payback, a Richard Greico flick.  He's so much fun to see though, so I need to look out for more of his stuff.  In this one, I couldn't help seeing him in Mitchell, and listening to his lines riffed by Joel and the 'Bots on MST3K.  There was one scene where he was telling us the background of Jones, Rose, and Lively, and he sounded like his character in Mitchell, talking to Joe Don Baker about some payoff while his Christmas presents are in the background and he's holding a Slim Jim in his hand.  I just wanted to bark out Mitchell lines.

Above we mentioned Sherrie Rose teamed up with Jones to take Lynch down.  We see her a lot on here, but not always in big roles, but this was a big one.  She had some fight scenes, and she shot Sonny Landham, who had a very small scene as a pimp, while Rose was acting as a prostitute undercover.  Michael Delano played a snitch that Sam Jones pushed around for info-- though in true PM style, that involved Jones handcuffing him to a side-view mirror, then Jones driving around as a stuntman hung to it.  Delano was yelling "This isn't right!", then he said "I want a phone call!", so Jones drove his van through a phone booth.  So great.  There were also a few quickies: Ken McLeod was a bouncer in two scenes and got punched in the face by Jones; Ron Yuan had one scene where he fought in Lynch's underground fight club; then we had Asbjørn "Bear" Riiis as Jones's friend "Bear", who shows up at the end, takes a bunch of guys out, then is shot; and then we had Jeffrey Anderson-Gunter listed as Rastaman, as one of Lynch's underlings.  Finally, we had Mickey Rooney as the police chief.  How do you not love him?  He has one scene with Saxon where he tries to buy him off, then another where he gives a monologue about corruption and how money rules everything.  It's the kind of thing we love at the DTVC, small parts by guys like this who have four Oscar nominations and are known for much better stuff.



Finally, last June Richard Lynch passed away, leaving behind a prodigious filmography of 160 credits, of which we've barely cracked the surface of the films he did that belong on here.  My personal favorite role of his was as the baddie in Invasion USA.  The travesty is that we've been planning to put him into the DTVC Hall of Fame for a few years, and just haven't made it happen.  Right now he's in the "In Memoriam" section, but we'll move him to the Hall of Fame soon.  I can't think of anyone who embodies that title more.  Here's to you Richard Lynch, you were one of the greatest.

As far as I can tell, this is out of print, but available used on Amazon both as DVD and VHS.  For PM Entertainment, it's not the best, but it's still really good.  If you're a collector, the Amazon prices aren't bad; if not, I'd keep an eye out for it in a bargain or used bin.  Also, you can stream it on Amazon too.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104831/

Guns and Lipstick (1995)

This has been one of those holy grail type films that I've had a fair amount of trouble tracking down, but because it has such an immense cast, I never stopped looking.  Really, it wasn't so much that I had trouble tracking it down, it was that when I did, it was often really expensive.  For instance, my local record store had a used copy for $16.  Can you believe that?  Finally, I bit the bullet and put down $5 plus $3 shipping to get it from Amazon.  Let's see if it was worth it.

Guns and Lipstick has Sally Kirkland as a PI who was wrongly removed from the LAPD.  She has a case protecting Sherrie Rose, but Rose ends up dead anyway, and Captain Robert Forster wants to pin it on Kirkland because she wouldn't date him when she was on the force.  Turns out, Rose had something a lot of people wanted, include crime boss James Hong, his fake daughter Bobbie Phillips, and albino Sonny Landham (no Predators were involved.)  She has her allies though, including Rose's brother Evan Lurie, local bar owner Paul Benedict, and crazy drunk Wings Hauser.  Oh, and Joe Estevez has a small scene too.



This was a story that was all over the place, didn't really know what it wanted to be, could've been cool old school gun shoe thriller with Kirkland great as the lead detective and a great cast of characters around her, but really was just another mystery yarn that felt like it had plot twists for the sake of plot twists, just to add to the run time.  Raymond Chandler this was not.  On the other hand, there is a fun element to fist pumping every time a familiar face popped up on screen, and the 90s elements are in full force, especially the sweet mullets.  Ultimately, I feel like this is really only for completists and people like me who have review sites that focus on movies like this.

I started with Sally Kirkland instead of the film's one DTVC Hall of Famer, because she was the star, and I liked the idea of the classic off-beat detective film led by a woman.  Really, this idea would've worked better as a 90s TV drama, and this movie probably would've worked better as a 42-minute episode, because it's not like Kirkland couldn't have carried this.  She also got to get the hunk, as her and Evan Lurie hooked up.  She was the right person for the role, unfortunately the film didn't hold up its end of the bargain.



Here's Wings playing the piano.  He's not in this much, but when he is, he's pretty great.  Near the end, he ends up in a car with Kirkland, and right away he's just staring out the window with his mouth agape in that trademark Wings style.  He flips out at her earlier in the film in a drunken rage.  One time by the fire, he gives her a massage.  He drinks Seagram's 7 straight from the bottle, then plays the piano and sings some raspy song.  I mean, it's all just Wings-y.  Is this $8 worth of Wings?  Maybe not, but if you're a Wings fan, you'll appreciate what you're seeing.

Let's try to go through everyone else.  Forster is the classic cop heel.  He's always bringing Kirkland in to arrest her, but the charges don't stick.  James Hong is pretty sweet as the crime boss.  Too many of his scenes are covered with smoke, so we can't see him.  Landham as the albino was weird.  You can try to explain to me why that made any sense.  Benedict was funny as the bar owner, I always love seeing him in anything.  Then there was Joe Estevez, who has one scene near the beginning where he sexually harasses Kirkland as he frisks her, then throws her onto her chair.  Not one of his fines moments, but it's Joe Estevez, so it's always fine for us.

This movie was exceedingly mulletous.  We're talking mullets aplenty.  We had full out business in front and party in the back 9.5 in mulletude mullets.  We had skullets.  We had the classic skullet 'stash combo.  We had twin ape drapes among extras leaving a building Kirkland was entering.  The best one was one of Hong's thugs.  It was one of those "oh man, I can't believe you did that!", the "it's awesome" and "it's ridiculous (in the true sense of the word, not the 'a lot' slang sense we often see it as)" at the same time.  If a 90s movie can give you one thing, it's sweet beaver pelts.



Oh... oh what's that?  Evan?  What's that?  Oh, oh no!... oh my God, oh no, what am I... what am I looking at?... Evan please, say it ain't so!  Oh God... Fanny Pack!

I don't think I can write anymore.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0155733/

No Retreat, No Surrender 3: Blood Brothers (1990)

It's taken me a little while to get my hands on this one and complete the No Retreat, No Surrender series, but we've got it, so let's do it. Our friend Karl at Fist of the B-List has also done this one, so you should check that out too.

No Retreat, No Surrender 3 doesn't have anything to do with part 2, it just has Loren Avedon. Avedon plays a rebellious younger brother who runs a dojo and wears a CCCP jacket, while his brother, Keith Vitali, and his father run a private spy company. After his dad's birthday, his dad is killed by a terrorist baddie named Franco that looks like a poor man's Roland Gift with bleached hair cut in the Billy Ray Cyrus style. Now the question is, can the feuding brothers, Avedon and Vitali, get along long enough to avenge their father's death?



This is a bit of a tough one, but I really enjoyed it. The action, when it's there, is extremely high octane. We're talking Hong Kong cinema level martial arts and stunts, which is really exciting to watch. Then you have the bad acting, worse dialogue, and amateur level direction-- seriously, were all those boom mics showing up on purpose?-- all of which was funnier than it was annoying when set against the too sweet action. The problem for me was that there were gaps in the action that at first were funny, but as the film went on, the bad acting, dialogue, and story wasn't as funny anymore, making those gaps tedious. Still, it does recover, and really brings it with a finale worthy of the solid scenes we'd seen leading up to it. I'm giving this a recommendation strictly to bad action fans and no one else-- again, if you overuse the word "cheesy" when describing a late 80s/early 90s DTV actioner, this is probably too much for you; but if you're into great action and are willing to have fun with the bad spots, you'll be rewarded.

Really liked Loren Avedon here. I think we've brought this up before, and other sites have discussed it as well, but it's a shame Avedon hasn't been in more stuff, based on how sick his skills are. Mr. Kenner at Movies in the Attic told us he spoke to the man himself, and one of the things he said was Avedon had a falling out with Lorenzo Lamas, and Lamas made it hard for him to get work after that. If that's true that's too bad, because Avedon is almost 50 years old, so we may have missed his best years-- though at 50 he'll still be over ten years younger than Steven Seagal, so maybe we'll see him again.



What was up with all the boom mic-age? I lost track of how many there were. And you had multiple kinds too, from the fuzzy outdoor variety, to the standard one you see here. Once or twice is a novelty that we love when watching a low-budget film, but after awhile it becomes ridiculous. Is it that hard to keep the thing from floating into the shot? I guess it is, and that's why we love you.

We've done some other Keith Vitali flicks on here, American Kickboxer 1, Bloodmoon, and Revenge of the Ninja. Don't know if I remember him in any of them. His acting is pretty rough-- which is hilarious-- but his fight skills are right there with Avedon's. According to imdb though, Avedon worked 4-6 hours a day to train, while Vitali came into the role out of shape. He also busted his arm for real before shooting, so it was written into the film that his arm was shot, and then the rest of the movie people made cracks about his cast. Keith Vitali, exactly what No Retreat, No Surrender 3 needed.



Most movies cast a veteran character actor as the President. We've seen Roy Scheider, Rutger Hauer (I know, he's not a native born American-- Birthers!), even Jerry Springer (I know, he was born in London-- Birthers!). This movie took a different tact. They used file footage of Bush 41, and acted like the villains were targeting him with a rocket launcher by drawing some green sights over it. Hey, it saves money, right? That's all public domain footage right there, you can do whatever the hell you want with it. So bad it's ingenious!

As far as I know, this is only available on VHS here in the States, but overseas you can get it on DVD-- in fact, Amazon offers a Region 2 DVD set of all three No Retreat, No Surrender films. I think it's really a matter of where you are in the bad action movie world. Do you love these things with absolutely no irony whatsoever? In that case, you should look for a copy of this. If you just kind of do this thing for some goofy fun to laugh at "cheesy" movies, this might be too much. To give you an idea, it wasn't too much for me, but I've had a blog for over four years where I review stuff like this on a regular basis.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100266/

Martial Law II: Undercover (1992)

A while back, I mentioned something to Kenner at Movies in the Attic about a potential Top 10 DTV Movies of the 90s post, which would definitely be a large undertaking, considering what a huge decade for DTV the 90s was. Anyway, I gave him something of a preliminary proposal of what I was thinking about, and he gave me a counter proposal, so-to-speak, of the films that he thought I missed, and Martial Law II was one of those films. I vaguely remembered it, and my vague memories tell me that all of these 1990s DTV actioners are awesome, so I didn't think much of it, but knew it was worth going over again if Kenner felt it deserved a mention like that. Anyway, I thought it would be necessary to do Martial Law before I reviewed its sequel, which I did a few weeks ago, and now, here we are with this one.

Martial Law II is something of a sequel, only instead of Chad McQueen, we have a too sweet Jeff Wincott and an equally awesome DTVC Hall of Famer Cynthia Rothrock. When Wincott's buddy dies of an apparent drunk driving accident, Wincott is suspicious, and his suspicions land him at a night club run by one of the greatest heels of all time, John Sears from 90210, making the step up to full-on baddie. They don't like Wincott snooping around and asking questions, and Sears' hatchetman, DTVC fave Evan Lurie, has it out with him, blowing Wincott's cover. That's why he has Rothrock, a kickass cop with a background in tending bar, infiltrate Sears' club and see what's up. At the same time, Wincott snoops at his police precinct, thinking some of his fellow cops are dirty, including his chief, Billy Drago. Can Wincott and Rothrock kick enough ass to prevail and get their dead buddy justice?



Not only can they, but they can do it with ten kinds of awesome on top. This is just non-stop sweetness. This is what I'm talking about right here. Every fight was great, every actor turned in great performances, nothing was wasted, nothing was left on the table, and I left totally fulfilled. Wincott kills it, Rothrock is solid, you gotta love John Sears and Evan Lurie as your baddies, plus you have Billy Drago as a cleancut police chief, meaning his creepiness is a little more subtle; and Sherrie Rose, Leo Lee, and James Lew all play members of Sears' gang. As far as what made it awesome, I don't know where to begin. Each fight scene built on the one before it. They became progressively better. Plot exposition, when it was there, was short, well performed, and bled seamlessly into the action. There were other things I loved too, like the smooth jazz in the montages and other bumpers, some of which featured pretty rockin' sax solos; and perhaps one of the best uses of a shotgun ever in the denouement. This is as good as it gets.

We start where we always start, with the film's Hall of Famer(s), and for Martial Law II, that would be Cynthia Rothrock. You'd think with her being the one holdover from the original, she'd be the lead this time, but the film actually does work better with Wincott in that role, so I'm fine with it. They do do a better job giving her more and nicer looking fight scenes, so I liked that. Whereas in part one she was more like Chad McQueen's moral support, here she was a very capable and contributing partner, and provided the sensibility and levelheadedness in contrast to Wincott's fire and brash demeanor. I'm not sure where we'll go next with her, because we have so many options, being not even halfway through her 40+ film DTV oeuvre, but for right now, we'll bask in her awesomeness in Martial Law II.



Now for Mr. Wincott. Everything you love about him is in full effect here, from the mean mug and the Bogie-esque snarl, to the Toronto/New York accent, to the great one-liners that are more sick attitude than toolishly clever, to the most important aspect, the great fighting. I mean, when you see the name "Jeff Wincott" in the opening credits, or on the box, this is what you're looking for, and when a film can deliver on it's top billed star like that, it just makes the whole movie watching experience so worth it. On a side note, I know I'm the Direct to Video connoisseur, but Mr. Wincott is currently in theaters in the new Denzel film, Unstoppable. Haven't seen it, so I don't know how big of a part he has.

We all love Evan Lurie here at the DTVC, and I was glad that he had a pretty sizable role. You just never know with him, because some film makers don't understand the awesomeness they have at their disposal when they cast him. We know, of course. Ever since I saw him in American Kickboxer 2, I've been hooked, and though he's never matched that stunning performance, in Martial Law II, at least he's solid. There's one Lurie film I've been trying to get for a while, called Guns and Lipstick, which also has DTVC Hall of Famer Wings Hauser, and another DTVC fave Joe Estevez. I found a copy of it at the local record store-- for $8 used! Are you serious? Amazon has it for $5, but when you throw in shipping, that ends up being $8 too. It's a shame.



Okay, if you haven't guessed it, I'm a big Beverly Hills 90210 dude. I don't know why, but I've always gotten a kick out of it. Anyway, the major heel of the early college years, Keg House Frat leader John Sears, played by Paul Johansson, is the main baddie in Martial Law II. I was visiting a friend about a year ago, and she was watching One Tree Hill, and I saw him on there too, and was pretty excited. She told me he killed his brother or something. Once a heel, always a heel. In Martial Law, he moves up the ladder this one time to head baddie, and he does a great job. I guess if you're so good at playing the heel, it's probably not hard to turn the volume up a little more, right? It was cool though for me, to be able to meld my 90210 fandom and my DTV action fandom.

I think outside the US, this was released on DVD, but here I'm pretty sure it's strictly VHS. I'd go VHS if I were you anyway, simply for the nostalgia factor. I should point out, though, this isn't just a fun time, it's a total kickass time, and if you're not ready for this much awesome, you may want to pass and watch something more pedestrian-- say a crummy TapOut film. Otherwise, this what you came here for, get after it.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104823/

The King of the Kickboxers (1990)

My friend Kenner at Movies in the Attic has been on me about this one for a while, and when I did Tough and Deadly starring Billy Blanks a couple weeks ago, he put on a full-court press, hitting me with e-mails containing YouTube and Amazon links letting me know all the myriad ways I could experience this gem. I finally got a hold of it and made it happen on my own.

The King of the Kickboxers is about this undercover cop in New York who's always getting into trouble and living life by the seat of his tight acid wash jeans. Anyway, the chief wants to get rid of him for a little while, and sends him to Thailand to work on a snuff film case. It's not what you think: American fighters are being duped into acting in action films where they're really killed, and the killer is Billy Blanks. Our hero remembers Blanks, because Blanks killed his brother ten years before when they were in Thailand and the brother won a kickboxing tournament. Anyway, when our hero gets there, he finds out he's not ready yet, and luckily the Native American from China O'Brien is willing to give him a hand. Can our hero defy the odds and take down Blanks?



I don't know where to begin. First off, it's awesome. It starts with this title graphic that looks like an SNK Neo-Geo video game, then moves into some of the most poorly choreographed kickboxing in a ring you'll ever see. Just when you think this is a sack of asscrack, the kickboxer and his little brother (who grows up to be our hero) are attacked by Billy Blanks and his boys. Blanks then proceeds to blow up a golf cart with machine gun fire, letting us know that this is the official start of the film. It only gets more amazing from there. Jerry Trimble has (unfortunately) a small part as a two-sweet mulleted drug dealer, and our hero takes him and his goons down, just carrying over the energy from the Blanks scene before it. The action is stellar, the martial arts some of the best you'll see, and the acting and plot, though woeful, only enhance the experience, as opposed to detracting from it.

Billy Blanks as a baddie martial artist is great. I'm not exaggerating when I say he's up there with Michel Qissi as Tong Po or Bolo Yeung as anything. This is key to any great bad action film, as the baddie must make us detest him enough, yet at the same time respect his fighting skills and fear him. If our hero isn't facing an enormous challenge, or we aren't rooting for him either, the film isn't fun, and that's what we're in this for, to have fun. On top of all this, the end fight between he and our hero did a great job of paying us back for our investment, as it was worthy of Blanks's baddie and the work our hero put in in montage time to defeat him.



If I have one complaint though, it was how little Jerry Trimble there was. I know he was just getting started in the film industry, but still. The mullet was amazing, and the martial arts were tight. You know a movie is good when they can have a talent like Trimble in it for only one scene, and still be as awesome as The King of the Kickboxers was. Other people you may recognize were Ong Soo Han, who, like Billy Blanks, has starred in an action film with Rowdy Roddy Piper; Sherrie Rose as the love interest; and Don Stroud as our hero's contact in Thailand. Again, a great cast that just enhanced a great film.

Mr. Kenner remarked, and I agreed with him, that the late Richard Jaekel as the police captain was one of the best we've seen in a role like that. Whether you agree with us or not, what's interesting to note here is that we're remarking on an actor's job playing the police captain in a bad action movie versus other actors we've seen do the same part. We've seen that many bad action films that we're examining the art of the police chief. I'll have you know, though, that I passed up a used DVD copy of Guns and Lipstick at my local record store last night because they wanted $8 for it. I might be a self-professed connoisseur, but I'm not crazy.



I imagine the picture above has already told you where I'm going with this last paragraph. Loren Avedon, our hero, is shown here sporting... a Fanny Pack! Unlike David Bradley's similar fashion disaster in Cyborg Cop, though, King of the Kickboxers was a solid enough movie to transcend something so atrocious. Still, even if the point of the fanny pack was to have Avedon's undercover character come off as a naive dork looking for a fight, the tacky shirt and white pants were sufficient. The Fanny Pack is an abomination, and I can't let even a film as great as this one off the hook for such a felonious transgression.

To give you an idea of how awesome this movie is, I captured 12 images of it (which you can find on the image page), and that was me showing restraint. There might be another 20 to 30 other scenes that'll make you laugh, make you pump your fist, or just make you nod your head in understanding that what you got here is good. Find it on YouTube, buy it on Amazon, or scoop it a local used retailer. Whatever you gotta do, make it happen. You won't be disappointed.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102217/

Deadly Bet (1992)

I watched and reviewed this primarily for the Wincott factor. Jeff Wincott is the Bee's Knees, the Cat's Pajamas, and it had been along time since I'd reviewed one of his films. I'm also looking to showcase more PM Entertainment films here at the DTVC, and Deadly Bet fit that bill as well, so it was like two birds with one roundhouse.

Deadly Bet has Wincott as a gambling man who gambles a little too much and pays for it with his girlfriend, Lucy Ewing. Perhaps Wincott wasn't the guy JR had in mind for her during the Dallas days, but we here at the DTVC think he's well within her league-- until Wincott puts her up for collateral in a bet with a guy named Rico, and Rico takes her in. After some issues with alcoholism and some more bad bets, Wincott gets a chance to make some real cash and get his girl back, he's just got to fight in Rico's tournament and beat him.



As far as a Wincott film goes, I've seen better. It was fun and silly, but the fight scenes were pretty mediocre, which was a shame coming from the dude who did Last Man Standing. I'm not really sure with this story how one would work more fights into the script, but I would've been fine with just better fights for the ones we had. When I think of Wincott, I think of three or four guys at a time and him just running through them all. Overall, not a bad film, but could've been better.

Jeff Wincott is the man. It's amazing that he never became bigger than some of his cohorts. His recent work is mostly in smaller roles. I saw one listing saying he played an attorney in One Tree Hill. I mean, that's cool and all, but even better would've been if he beat up a bunch of the local jocks on the show who come to mug him or something. Maybe he does, I haven't seen the episode. Who knows when we'll see Mr. Wincott again, but hopefully sometime soon.



One of the funnier things in this was Wincott's facial continuity. Early on, when Rico beats the crap out of him, his face is all bruised. From that point on it's a guessing game to see if from one scene to the next his face will still be all bruised. And it wasn't like a small shiner or anything, one half of his face was all black and blue. It was just great how one scene his face would be fine, and the next it would look like he passed out and fell flat on his face the night before. Maybe that's why Wincott didn't become a bigger star, because he had too many films like this that he didn't want to put on his resume.

Charlene Tilton from Dallas plays Wincott's love interest. My mom used to watch Dallas when I was growing up, and I think that's where I got my fascination with the prime time soap opera. I'm not really sure how to explain it, but let's take Dallas as an example. JR Ewing was the ultimate TV baddie. As a writer, I really appreciate something like that. I mean, think of the 80s. There were two famous villains from that time, Darth Vader and JR Ewing. Sure, you get plenty of silliness like Evil Twins and that kind of nonsensical intrigue, but in Star Wars you got the same thing with the whole Vader being Luke's father thing, so how different is it really?



Finally, newly inducted DTVC Hall of Famer Gary Daniels has a cameo at the beginning of Deadly Bet. He's sporting the most amazing head of lettuce ever. I don't think I've ever seen him in anything looking like that since. I realized now that I haven't done a film since the inductions in November for any of the actors in that class, so I should probably get on that. I can't wait to see him in the new Tekken film, though I see in the credits that there's no King or Armor King. I used to dominate my friends at Tekken Tag Tournament using those two, and then I saw in a strategy guide that they were considered by far the two best and had an unfair advantage against the other fighters. Oops. Maybe they didn't want them in the movie for that reason too, but I would love to see King and Armor King delivering the ol' Giant Swing.

There's much better Wincott out there than this one, so if you haven't seen the other's ones I've reviewed, go for those first. I'll do my best to get some more of his up here that are better representations of how awesome he is.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104066/