Victim of Desire (1995)

When I saw that this movie existed, starring Shannon Tweed, Julie Strain, Wings Hauser, and Marc Singer, and directed by Jim Wynorski, I knew I had to make it happen, and luckily I found it on The Internet Archive, so here we are making it happen. What I didn't expect was to have an historical moment on the DTVC in the form of our first ever back door 50 Club entry! Who'd'a thunk?

Victim of Desire has Marc Singer as an SEC investigator looking into businessman Leland Duvall's (Wings) finances after $70 million goes missing. Duvall's also on the hook after a judgement is rendered against him when his defective electric blanket kills over 100 people. When Leland's car ends up at the bottom of a ravine, Singer suspects foul play, so he teams up with an LAPD detective (Johnathan "Johnny" Roastbeef from Goodfellas) to look into what happened, and Duvall's widow (Tweed) seems like as good a place to start as any--and with an erotic thriller like this, you know what we mean by that! As Singer gets in deeper, he gets in deeper with Tweed (insert rim shot) but this leads to all kinds of issues with his investigation, and now Mr. Roastbeef is thinking Singer may be in on it too. It's up to Singer to solve this thing and clear his name, but is he going to be a victim of  desire?

This isn't any kind of classic or must watch, but it's exactly what you're looking for when you fire up a 90s Erotic Thriller--well almost, there isn't as much nudity, this is less on the softcore porn side and more on the thriller side, which works well enough for me, but I can see how that may not work for others. In that sense though the title has a secondary purpose, because if you were a kid in the 90s and saw this on the video store shelf or listed in your TV Guide (who is listed as one of the critic reviews by the way--though they don't review it, just summarize it) and thought "ooh, how much will I get to see Shannon Tweed and Julie Strain naked?" and you end up disappointed, you in fact were a victim of desire. For me, it's the names, the Wynorski direction, and the 90s nostalgia. You get things like Peter Spellos as a coroner eating ribs while he goes over the details of Duvall's death to Johnny Roastbeef, Wings Hauser yelling at Jay Henry Richardson, or Julie Strain giving Shannon Tweed a tension-filled massage when we know Strain is up to something. It's a shame this is only available on the Internet Archive, someone's gotta get a version on Tubi!

Let's get to that back door 50 Club entry. I want to say it was The Sweeper episode of the pod (episode 165 in the archives) where guest Chris "The Brain" Kacvinsky from Bulletproof Action and I were talking about Spiro Razatos, and he mentioned another stunt coordinator for PM, Cole S. McKay. I hadn't heard of him before, despite reviewing a ton of movies on his IMDb bio--and to be fair, I'd only heard of Razatos when Gary Daniels mentioned him in an interview, so other than Art Camacho I was really bad on crediting stunt work overall. So now McKay was on my radar, but in a recent conversation with Jon Cross from The After Movie Diner--and the upcoming PM Entertainment Podcast!--McKay came up, and I realized he probably needed to be tagged. And he was, to the tune of 55 movies! This one we're doing now is 56, which puts him ahead of Art Camacho for third-most all time. Obviously he's a definite Hall of Fame induction this fall, but now I also need to update my 50 Club imaging and the 40 and 50 Club lists--also I discovered that I'd missed a PM tag for one of their movies, so they're at 47 films now. This is not his 50 Club post, we'll do a real official entry in near future, plus this fall he'll be inducted into the Hall of Fame, but for now we'll leave at here's to you Mr. McKay, you're one of the greatest.

This is the second of two originally-produced films starring both Shannon Tweed and Julie Strain, the other being Rowdy Girls, which we've reviewed. (There's also Bimbo Movie Bash which has archive footage of Young Blood, Fresh Meat starring Strain and Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death starring Tweed, but they weren't acting together in that.) It's a shame they didn't do more together, because they have a great antagonistic chemistry. Forget Joan Collins and Linda Evans, this was the Dynasty pairing I wanted to see! And I get why some people seeing this would've been disappointed by the lack of nudity from both actors, but for me the novelty of this being one of only two films they did together makes it a special entry, and one we're lucky to have. For numbers, Strain is now at 10 films, which puts her second all-time among women on the site, after Rothrock's 43, and Tweed's at 9, which puts her tied with Dona Speir for third all-time among women. Since we've pretty much exhausted Speir's DTVC oeuvre, expect Strain and Tweed to keep moving past her, but with Rothrock's lead and the fact that she's been pumping out a lot more stuff lately, they'll probably be competing for second, which I think is all right.

We last saw Wings Hauser about two years ago when we reviewed Original Gangsters, so it's good to get him back on the site. Two years is too long when you consider how much great stuff he still has out there to review, so I need to focus on getting to it, especially some of the great 90s stuff he did that we haven't covered yet. Part of it is availability, but between YouTube, free streamers like Tubi and Plex, and the Internet Archive, more of it is coming to the surface, so I don't have an excuse. And even though this role doesn't have a lot of screentime, the performance he gives us is plenty robust enough to get the job done. It just adds to the overall fun nature of a movie like this to have Wings yelling at people or looking up from his computer with his mouth agape in that way only Wings can do. He's at 23 movies now, and I don't know if we can get him to the 30 Club this year, but maybe by sometime next year. We'll put it on the map to get it done, because he should be there.

Finally, I mentioned above that Peter Spellos has a small part as the rib-eating coroner. He unfortunately left us in November of 2023, but when it came to movies like these, specially ones directed by Fred Olen Ray or Jim Wynorski, he could pop in on these small roles and really deliver something that added more flavor--kind of like the sauce he was dipping his ribs into in this film. My first time ever podcasting was on Drunk on VHS when host Moe Porn had me and Jon Cross on to discuss Hard to Die, and while they both knew who Spellos was, I didn't, so I joked that I thought his last name was pronounced "SPAY-yos," like it was Spanish, which led to a series of jokes and tangents from us after that. Later Jon became friends with Spellos, and I remember him as a guest on Jon's Crosstalk podcast, where not only was he gracious and a lot of fun to listen to, but he also had some great insight on acting. He, like so many other actors at that time, knew what was expected from them in roles like the rib-eating coroner, and as a true professional, he delivered, and in so doing gave the films he was a part of that much more to make them fun for us in the audience. Here's to you Mr. Spellos, you were truly one of the greats, and you will be missed.

And with that, let's wrap this up. I watched this on the Internet Archive, and you can tell by the screens that it wasn't the best quality, but it got me to the church on time. I don't even know if a VHS exists, but hopefully someday soon it'll be more available. Maybe it's not a classic, but it's worth checking out.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118079

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

Droid Gunner aka Cyberzone (1995)

We continue our Hall of Fame month at the DTVC with our next inductee, the great DTV director Fred Olen Ray. There were a lot of options for a film of his to cover for this post, but I liked that this one had a lot of names in it, plus it was free to stream--can never go wrong there. In addition to us, our friend Mitch at the Video Vacuum has covered this in his "It came from the video store" series, so you can go there to see what he thought.

Droid Gunner (or Cyberzone as you'll see it on the streaming services), has Beastmaster Marc Singer as "Jack Ford," director of such great films as The Grapes of Wrath and Stagecoach--or rather a guy who hunts down androids for a living in the future. When four pleasure droids turn up missing--stolen by one Matthias Hues--, the corporation missing them turns to Singer to find them. Tagging along is a droid specialist from the company, Rochelle Swanson, someone who can deactivate them without damaging them, which is very important when it comes to pleasure droids. Will our hero be able to make all this happen and save the day?

 

This is pure late-night 90s schlock, and I loved it for that. It had your classic Ray Skin-a-max elements, plenty of T n' A, but also great performances from a whole host of names, including, beyond Singer, Hues, and Swanson, Ross Hagen, Peter Spellos, Brinke Stevens, and Kin Shriner (which for someone whose mom watched General Hospital when I was growing up, he was a fun sight). Sure, this is done on a budget, and it bites on all kinds of popular films, like Star Wars, Blade Runner, and For a Few Dollars More, but for the midnight insomnia theater fare that I'm watching it for, it more than delivers.

Ray marks the third director in the Hall of Fame strictly for being a director, the other two being Albert Pyun and Cirio H. Santiago, which, for the DTV fans that we are, is fantastic company. Like those two, he's had some that I really didn't like, some that I loved, and a lot like this where I just enjoyed the ride. I think what I love most about his films, especially from this 90s period, is that he shoehorns a lot of sex and violence into them, but then there are a lot of these other touches like calling the main hero "Jack Ford" or how the plot becomes a take on For a Few Dollars More, which makes it more than just a late-nite 90s schlock exploitation fest. The funny thing is, recently my wife Jen and I were watching a Hallmark Christmas movie that Ray directed, and she was noticing similar touches, like the boy in the orphanage who looked straight out of 50s TV central casting. Like Dacascos, Ray's induction is probably one that's long overdue, but great to finally make happen.

 

The same way we needed to bring up Byron Mann in Dacascos's induction post, we'd be remiss if we didn't continue our efforts to spotlight Matthias Hues as well. He plays a bit of a roguish baddie in this, but also has a lot of fun with it, which is great to see. His playfulness underpins the tone Ray was going for, despite some of the dark future nature of the movie overall. As I've said in previous posts, we generally think of the stars as the people who carry these low-budget films, but when you look at the number of supporting people in this, many of whom do a lot of Ray films, you can see how important it is to have people like Hues who can show up and do their thing to round out the film and make it fun despite the time and budgetary constraints. Here's to you Matthias Hues, you're one of the great ones.

It's strange that we aren't getting to Marc Singer until the sixth paragraph, but with the DTVC, it's hard when you're in a Fred Olen Ray film that has Matthias Hues in it. Anyway, I really liked Singer here as the hero. He seemed to get what Ray was going for with the gunslinger-Western type, and he leaned into it well. Looking at his bio, it does surprise me that we don't have more of his stuff on here. I think other than this, we just have Savate with Olivier Gruner and Ian Ziering. He didn't even have a tag yet, which is crazy for someone of his stature. Well, we've at least taken care of that now. I'll need to at least cover the Beastmaster films in the future, so I imagine this won't be the last of him we see here.

 

Finally, among the other costars, I wanted to mention Kin Shriner, who is best known (though probably not known at all to most reading this) for his role on General Hospital. I bring this up, because my mother used to watch the ABC Soaps when I was growing up: All My Children, One Life to Live, and of course General Hospital. At that time, all of the three major broadcast channels had at least two, if not three or four daytime Soaps on--many people were up in arms in the late 80s during the Oliver North hearings, which preempted them a lot if I remember correctly. Anyway, my wife and I decided to check the other day, and on ABC, only General Hospital remains, and then Days is still on NBC, and CBS has Young and the Restless and Bold and the Beautiful. That's it of a once proud TV genre. Who knows exactly what did it, maybe fewer housewives staying home--though in college my bodybuilding buddy couldn't go to class before Days was over--; or my hunch, that the proliferation of talk shows and court shows, which don't require paying writers and actors, made Soap Operas less cost effective; and unlike scripted prime time TV, which saw a revival in the 2010s after being decimated by reality shows and true crime shows in the 2000s, it looks like the Soaps didn't have the same recovery. I want to say it's too bad, but obviously I wasn't watching them to know how many of them had been cancelled already, but it is still too bad for the people out there who did watch them for so long. Maybe saving the Soaps that are left is a good cause for me to take up...

But before we do that, it's time to wrap this up. You can stream Droid Gunner aka Cyberzone a lot of places for free, in particular Tubi, which has a good ad rate. I say, the next time you're up in the middle of the night and looking for something to watch, give this a spin. It'll take you back to the 90s in a good way.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112906

Hard to Die (1990)

A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to be invited onto the Drunk on VHS podcast with Moe Porne and Jon of the After Movie Diner.  The subject was this Jim Wynorski joint (where he's credited as Arch Stanton).  The discussion moved from Wynorski's Ozu-esque establishing shots, to his Hitchcockian use of shadows and lighting to create tension in his audience.  Okay no, we actually spent very little time talking about the film, instead doing 80 minutes discussing Hobo Butt Flutes and a crime series starring Peter Spellos only his name is Pedro Spellos, with the "e" a long "a" sound and the "ll" pronounced the way it is in Spanish.  It was a great time, they're both really cool guys, and you should definitely go to their sites and check out what they have going on.  Also, if you want to hear what my voice sounds like, you can check out the podcast here. (On the page, right click on the download link and click "save link as".)

Hard to Die is billed as Die Hard with lingerie workers or something, or maybe it's billed as a slasher film crossed with Die Hard, or a spoof of Die Hard, I have no idea, but it really has nothing whatsoever to do with Die Hard.  It's about four women who work at the main office of a lingerie company, among them the great Gail Harris (credited as Robyn Harris), Debra Dutch (credited as Debra Dare), and Melissa Moore (credited as Melissa Moore, and she meets a far better fate than the Bacon Grease Foo of Samurai Cop).  These poor ladies are burning the midnight oil for their be-ponytailed jackass boss who I'm assuming Wynorski's casting director pulled from the nearest Chess King.  Anyway, after the sprinkler system goes off and the ladies need to have their nude shower scenes to clean up, someone starts bumping them off.  Early money's on the gross creepy Orville Ketchum (Pedro Spellos), but we B-movie watchers and former fans of Murder, She Wrote know the obvious choice is seldom the correct one.



I think this movie will work on you in two opposing ways.  First, it'll hit you with that nostalgia factor.  This is USA Up All Night kind of fare for sure, only if you find it on VHS you can get it uncut, which is even better. Second though, it's pretty unremarkable and not a lot happens for the first 45 minutes or so.  I think with those two factors, because I'm writing this review in 2014 and not 1994, the nostalgia factor wins out, at least it did for me.  If this were made today with the modern state of DTV, I'd be killing it; but it's Wynorski and he made it in 1990, so it works.

This is where we usually talk about the film's main star, but other than Pedro Spellos, the star would be the director, Wynorski, so I guess we'll start there.  That's him below in his director's cameo.  He put himself in the film but not his name in the credits, as he went by Arch Stanton, which I think is fantastic (according to imdb it's the name on a grave in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly).  If I ever had a son or a male cat, I'd name him Arch Stanton.  When I first started this blog almost seven years ago, I expected to have tons of Wynorski flicks reviewed, but this is only his sixth.  It shows you the degree to which the DTV world has changed in that time, with new DTV films starring major Hollywood actors coming out more often and companies like The Asylum making huge noise with schlock fare like Sharknado, Wynorski's great 90s flicks have been lost in the shuffle-- not to mention the submissions from independent film makers and distributors looking for me to review their films, which is something I love to do but something I never expected when I started either. With the state of the modern schlock flick and B-movie goof fest, in particular The Asylum and their imitators, we either forget about guys like Wynorski or Fred Olen Ray who really did it right, or we elevate their work to a higher level because we're just craving that kind of thing after being denied it for so long.  If anything, it's a reason for me to keep going into the past as much I'm trying to keep up with everything new that's coming out, because it's the 90s flicks that got me and a lot of other people into this kind of stuff in the first place.



Pedro Spellos.  We last saw him here in the Ray/Wynorski collaboration Dinosaur Island, where he played a doughy virginal man whose grossness didn't turn off the Amazon woman on the island that he was betrothed too.  Just when you thought he couldn't be any grosser, he reprises his role of Orville Ketchum from Sorority House Massacre II, making him something of a Wynorski mainstay.  As gross as his character was and as much as I wanted him to be killed off quickly, I understood that he probably worked for a warm meal and was willing to schlep gear, so Wynorski had to keep him in the film as long as he could to keep the budget down.

Other stars in the film were Melissa Moore, who we've seen a few times in classics like Samurai Cop.  She seems like the Audrina from The Hills of the 90s B-movie (ouch, did I just admit I watched The Hills, or maybe I admitted that on here way before...).  Gail Harris (listed as Robyn Harris) played the lead.  She was in the three Circuit films with Olivier Gruner that we reviewed sometime back.  Jon loved her Northern accent, and we enjoyed imagining her as a butty in a Northern mine.  One of my favorites was Debra Dutch (credited as Debra Dare) as another of the girls.  She made these great exaggerated facial expressions, like she used to do silent film work or something.  In any slasher film you need someone like her that you root for, even though you know she's at impossible odds to be the Final Girl, and Dare/Dutch was that for me.



Finally, take a look at that guy's hat.  Boston Red Sox baby, getting some shine in 1990.  In 1990 the Red Sox would be swept again in the ALCS by the Oakland A's, getting swept before in 1988.  With how good the Sox have been the last ten years, we forget what they were between 1986-1990: three trips to the ALCS, with one trip to the World Series in 1986 that ended in disaster.  Now the Red Sox don't lose those games, and the 11-year-old me in 1990 could not have fathomed the 34-year-old me watching them win a third World Series in 10 years this past fall.  Nor could he have imagined the dump that was Fenway then turned into the amusement park it is now.  I don't know which is worse: drunk belligerent assholes and peeing in troughs back then; or that God awful "Sweet Caroline" thing they do in the middle of every 8th inning now.  Ugh!

Okay, I'm getting way off track here-- much like our podcast did-- so let me reel it in and wrap this up.  Used VHS is the way to go, and it's a little pricey.  If you were to find it in a VHS bin consider it a great score and even at $5-$10 it's worth it.  I know more of these are popping up on Instant too, so hopefully it'll be on there soon as well.  Also, I want to thank Moe at Drunk on VHS again for having me on his podcast and he and Jon at the After Movie Diner for the great time recording it.  Again, check out what those guys are doing if you haven't already.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103111/

Dinosaur Island (1994)

This was suggested to me on Instant, and right away I saw that it was co-directed by two of the greatest schlock auteurs, Fred Olen Ray and Jim Wynorski.  How can that not be good?  Throw on DTVC favorite Ross Hagen, and I was sold.  (The 79-minute runtime didn't hurt either.)

Dinosaur Island is about a troop of soldiers, led by Captain Ross Hagen.  He's bringing three guys back to the US to stand trial for misconduct.  They're relatively good guys, just a bunch of goofballs and trouble makers.  Anyway, the plane goes down and the troop washes ashore on a remote island.  There they find a bunch of beautiful native women who are terrorized by a massive dinosaur.  If they can kill the dinosaur, then they can live with these women happily ever after.



This movie was a lot of fun.  An exploitation send-up of the 50s deserted island savage women movies.  It's very USA Up All Night, and I'm sure this aired on it at some point.  It's perfect for a bad movie night, because it does a great job of making fun of itself, but there is plenty of room to make your own jokes too.  Now it is very R rated, so make sure you're in like-minded company if you do a group viewing, but if you know people that dig this kind of thing, it's great.  Wynorski and Ray deliver.

Ross Hagen is great in that Poor Man's William Holden role that we saw in those films of the 50s.  He uses terms like "terra firma" and won't let his guys forget about their mission; but he's also able to have a good time and joke with the guys too.  I was worried that we'd lose him here, because there's a point near the beginning where the film looks like it's going to focus entirely on the three guys, but fortunately my fears were assuaged, and he came back.  He's always so much fun, and he doesn't disappoint here.



The dinosaurs were absolutely fantastic schlock mega cheese.  So much fun to watch.  They were like a mix of Harryhausen and 1950s film technology.  And the shots of them with the actors were so dead-on, totally nailed those old movies.  Again though, while they may have been making fun of the genre, the way it was made left plenty of room for your own riffs, which I think makes a movie like this that much better.  Sometimes with the modern send-ups, they make the monsters so poorly, and use a lot of bad CGI, that we're left with only laughing with the film makers.  Ray and Wynorski know how to make these films right for their audience, and they pull it off.

Speaking of which, it doesn't say on imdb how this collaboration happened, if it was a collaboration at all.  Who knows if one guy started it and the other finished.  We don't like to think of it like that though, do we?  We like the idea of these two schlock titans teaming up like Lucas and Spielberg to give us the Indian Jones of low-budget films-- not to mention Roger Corman produced it, an even bigger figure in the schlock film industry.  As a side note, in the credits DTVC Hall of Famer David Carradine gets a thank you, and according to imdb, some of the film was shot on his land.  Too bad he couldn't be in the film too.



Look at that credit.  That came near the very beginning, and lets you know what kind of movie you're in for.  The thing is though, even with a warning like that, where they're all like "this is going to be a goofball fest", there are things that make no sense and are so much fun too.  On the image page, I took a screen of this shot of a dinosaur I guess howling at the moon as the sun set.  It was in this 70s-style TV film stock though, like it was a 70s PSA about saving the dinosaurs or something.  "A dinosaur is a terrible thing to waste."  "Somewhere a dinosaur is crying."  I don't know, but it was pretty fantastic whatever it was.

This is tons of fun, and a great USA Up All Nite throwback.  The availability on Netflix Instant makes it a no-brainer.  Wynorski and Ray deliver, and Ross Hagen is a nice slice of all right too.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109627/

Guyver aka The Guyver (1991)

A while back you may remember I reviewed Midnight Ride with Michael Dudikoff and Mark Hamill. As I was tagging Hamill, I noticed he only had one other film on here, Time Runner. That didn't sound right. I knew I had to have covered The Guyver at some point. Turns out I hadn't. Man, do I have egg on my face.

The Guyver (listed as just Guyver on imdb) is a sci-fi comedy based on Japanese comic books. The idea is that aliens made humans to be the ultimate killing machines. Then they upgraded them so they could turn into large beast like things. Anyway, an ancient alien created a fail safe called The Guyver, which is a suit of armor that bonds itself to a person. Long story short, a college kid gets the armor before the bad aliens that are making people into beasts, and they want it from him. Mark Hamill plays a CIA agent with a moustache.



This movie is great. Tons of fun. It's not very serious, but even as a comedy it's kinda bad, which makes it entertaining both in itself, and to make fun of. I always love guys in monster suits fighting, so you've got that. Mark Hamill in the 'stache is great too. Contrary to what the DVD cover says, he isn't the Guyver. This also has Jimmie Walker. The lines are great, the action is both good and campy, and you've got guys in monster suits-- what more could you want?

When I first saw this, probably fifteen years ago, I didn't get that for the most part it was intentionally silly. To my mind it was utter crap and should be dealt with as such. I think later, when I was five or six years older, I saw it again and got the purposeful humor and liked it more. Now, at thirty, I see where the comedy works, and I see where it's crap, and I'm able to appreciate both. I've always said the hardest bad films to make fun of are comedies, because they're not taking themselves that seriously either. That gives this film an added level of interest, because it's not only an icon of early 90s bad sci-fi, but it's also a comedy, so you know you're a master of the art if you can tackle it.



I have to assume that many of my readers are Star Wars fans. Personally, my favorite alumnus from the series that makes his way onto the DTVC is Billy Dee Williams, but I understand liking Mark Hamill as well. I kinda think he sounds silly, and here with him rocking a 'stache and trying to sound like a tough cop... err CIA agent, it was even funnier. I'm not going to tell you what happens to him in The Guyver if you haven't seen it, but it's pretty funny.



Dy-no-mite! Ain't we lucky we got 'em... Good Times! How can you not love Jimmie Walker? That alone makes this great. Then you got the conehead-like guy, Michael Berryman; scream queen Linnea Quigley; and hottie Asian actress Vivian Wu, who guest starred in a Highlander episode. I wonder if I tagged every movie that had someone who had been in a Highlander episode, how many I'd have. Of course, every Christopher Lambert, Brion James, and Adrian Paul film, so there's a bunch right there.

If you haven't already, you need to see this. This is one of those staples for bad movie fans. Also, if you haven't seen it in a while, see it again. It gets better with age. Probably something that should be in all bad movie collections.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101988/



I saw District 9 last night (yes, I do actually see films in the theater). I was told by some people that it was "awesome". I don't know if that's the word I'd use. Great, intense, thought provoking, yes; but awesome, no. It would be like saying Schindler's List is awesome. If you think visceral metaphors to Apartheid, the Holocaust, Blackwater atrocities in Iraq, or African rebels cutting off arms is awesome, more power to you. Don't get me wrong, the movie was the best I've seen all year, and if you're totally ignorant to the metaphors I mentioned above, you may even think it's awesome. My advice: expect an in your face intro to cultural anthropology delivered in the medium of a sci-fi action film. If you want just a sci-fi action film, go see Transformers instead.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1136608/

Inferno aka Operation Cobra (1997)

Back in June I did a post for American Kickboxer 2, which starred an amazing actor named Evan Lurie. My goal was to get more of his films on the site, but things happen, and it's taken me over six months to get another done. This one stars DTVC Hall of Famer Don "The Dragon" Wilson as well, which made it a more intriguing pick.

Operation Cobra has Donny as a cop whose partner, played by Rick Hill, is killed in an explosion set by Lurie, a bad guy drug dealer. Donny chases him to India, where he's working on some computer program. Turns out there's some other bad guy named Grayson, and Donny can't figure out how he and Lurie are linked. Then it turns out his partner didn't die after all, but is actually Lurie's boss, or something or other. Either way, D "The D" Dubs is kicking ass and taking names.



Loved this. 82 minutes of pure action movie fun. I was over two-thirds of the way through it before I checked to see how much was left, which is a good sign. Usually I'm twelve minutes in when I do that! (It's called ADD!). The action was great, Wilson, Hill, and Lurie were all awesome, and the martial arts scenes were very solid. Sure, it was silly as all hell, but it was never pretentious, never tried to take itself too seriously, and it knew its audience and what its audience wanted. Can you ask for anything more?

A definite hit for Wilson. He's better when he doesn't have to act too much and can let his martial arts skills do the talking. They spoke loud and clear here. He kept fighting these Indian ninjas or whatever, and they'd pop up all over the place. One time they saved him from having to dance, which we saw him do in Redemption. Two great fight scenes with Lurie, but probably would've liked to see more. Either way, a great Wilson flick.



I can't believe it's taken me so long to get more Lurie up here. He is just so amazing. His smooth voice juxtaposed with his vicious martial arts skills are a perfect combination. He's so cool I don't even mind that he has a ponytail, which is a huge thing for me. He isn't killed by Wilson, but instead is bitten by a snake. While I was getting the image of that, the BSPlayer I use for some reason was playing the film with the director's commentary audio track on. Anyway, the director was talking about how the snake actually bit Lurie in that scene, and after he mentioned it, I could see it. Watch for that when you get that far, it's pretty sweet.

Rick Hill is the bad guy here. He's been in two other films I've reviewed: Class of 1999 II: The Substitute and Dune Warriors. He's one of those guys that's been in quite a bit, and he tends to focus more on post-apocalyptic sci-fi actioners and Conan the Barbarian rip-offs. I don't blame him, those are fun. Unfortunately not many of his movies are on DVD, making him slightly more inaccessible than some actors that don't do as many good movies. I'm going to see how I can mitigate that, because I grew up with a lot of his pictures, and they're a big part of why I'm doing this.



There's one scene I have to mention that was hilarious. Don, lying in his bed, has a snake crawl under the covers with him. It's so hilarious. I don't want to give too much away, but it's the kind of thing someone should post on YouTube. From what I can tell, The Dragon does more of these silly scenes than anyone else in the DTVC Hall of Fame. Of course Dolph has his share too.

You gotta get this. It's on Netflix, so it's an easy grab if you have that. This is what bad action's all about. Donny doesn't disappoint, and the star power of Lurie and Rick Hill is well exploited. If fun is what you're after, there's no shortage of it here.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119367/

Army of One aka Joshua Tree (1993)

My friends and I first came across this classic when we fell for the Punisher bait-and-switch. We were looking all over for the good Punisher--the one with DTVC Hall of Famer Dolph Lundgren in it. Most places only carried the new bad version with Travolta and a grimacing Thomas Jane. Anyway, this Bangor video store that rented both mainstream and porn videos told us over the phone that they had the film. They didn't, it was the new one, but we found this bad boy instead. If you're wondering, I eventually had to purchase the good Punisher from Amazon.

Joshua Tree or Army of One has Dolph as a trucker shipping illegal cargo for a dealer named Jimmy Shoeshine and a crooked cop played by Just Shoot Me's George Segal. Things go bad when a bike cop pulls Dolph and his driving partner over, and the partner and bike cop end up dead with Dolph taking the rap. While being moved from one detention center to another, two guards try to kill him, and he takes them out. Now he's on the run and he wants revenge. He takes Days of Our Lives star Kristian Alfonso as a hostage, and when she sees his too sweet abs she decides he's the side to be on. Now he's just gotta clear his name before the net closes in.

This is a good time--not that it ever isn't when Dolph's involved. There were some great chase scenes, especially later on when Dolph steals a red Ferrari and Segal counters with a Lamborghini. It was like the old days when me and my friends had Micro Machines and debated which car was cooler. If the chases weren't enough, there was plenty of shooting and explosions, and Dolph brought it in the fight scene department. Finally, just to complete the action film paradigm, Kristian Alfonso shows off her boobs. Cars, karate, explosions, and boobs: what more could you want?

Dolph was great in this except for one thing: his character name. Wellman Santee. What kind of shit is that? Look at the awesome Tank Concrete-esque names Dolph's had over the years: Lance Rockford (Defender), Sam Decker (Detention), Jack Devlin (Blackjack), Ivan Drago (Rocky IV), just to name four. In his newest three films he goes by Mike Riggins, Ryder, and Xander Ronson. How can any self-respecting film maker think Wellman Santee is a name associated with a guy who kicks as much ass as Dolph does? Someone should've made an executive decision and dubbed over all mentions of Wellman Santee with the name Brock Gridiron, or Todd Jackhammer, or... well, you get the idea.

Interesting choice of George Segal as the main baddie. He did Just Shoot Me about four years after this was released, but I didn't see it until well after I'd gotten to know him from the show. I just couldn't marry the concept of him as a crooked cop with the him I knew as a fashion magazine owner in my mind. I was waiting for David Spade to give him advice on how to kill Dolph. This is why it's important to cast the right baddie when making a film like this. Think of the guy from Die Hard: he never goes out of style. Neither does Brian Thompson. On the other hand, I can't think of someone I would've cast in place of Segal. He kind of fits. Maybe William Shatner or George Takei would be better, but that's it.

Anyone who's a fan of Days would recognize Kristian Alfonso as Dolph's leading lady. My mom was actually a fan of the ABC soaps, so I didn't come into contact with Alfonso until college, when a neighbor in my dorm watched it. He and I had class at the same time, and I would shoot over to his room and we would leave together. He always had to wait until Days was over to go, though, and so I followed the soap's storyline for an entire semester with only the last five minute wrap-ups each day. Anyway, with that in mind, I was pretty surprised when I saw her topless in this film. The only thing I can see is that in 1993 she'd been doing Days for ten years, and wanted to get into films, and figured this would be a way to break out of her soap star mold. Based on her IMDb resume, it didn't work.

There are some great co-stars and cameos in this. The sheriff helping Segal track down Dolph is played by Geoffrey Lewis, the guy who raised one of the Van Dammes in Double Impact. Dolph's murdered driving partner is played by Ken Foree. You may remember him both from Kenan and Kel, and Dawn of the Dead. In Dawn he was the guy who survived with the blond chick. I loved at the beginning when he tells her "I've lost a lot of brothers today," and she says "real brothers... or soul brothers?" to which he replies "both." His widow is played by CSI: Miami's Khandi Alexander. George Segal's wife is played by Michelle Phillips of The Mamas and the Papas. Then there's Nick Chinlund, who plays Lewis's deputy. You may know him from Chronicles of Riddick as the guy telling Vin Diesel "You should've dusted my dick when you had the chance."

Much of the film draws illusions to the Bogart classic High Sierra, and I get those. But I see another film and theater parallel: Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire. Much of Dolph's manhandling of both Kristian Alfonso and Michelle Phillips reminds me of Stanley Kowalski. One thing we know about that was Kowalski embodied some of Williams' own fantasies regarding being manhandled by a brutish young man. I'm not sure if the director or script writer is depicting his desires for Dolph through the women in this film, or if he just has a low opinion of women and thinks they need to be thrown around and roughed up from time to time. Either way, in both cases (Alfonso and Phillips), the female characters seemed to enjoy it.

This is a definite one to watch. It's in my top 15 of Dolph films. Even if you're not the Dolph fanatic I am, the bad action-ness of it alone is worth it. Like I said, it fills all the main categories of a great bad movie: cars, karate, explosions, and boobs. Plus there's plenty of recognizable faces. If you haven't seen this before, give it a shot. I've seen it listed more frequently on DVD as Army of One, but you may see it as Joshua Tree as well, so look for both.

Note: As one of the commenters mentioned, and I've since discovered, Alfonso wasn't nude in this, she had a body double.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106309/

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/

Agent Red (2000)

I bought this for one reason and one reason only: DTVC Hall of Famer Dolph Lundgren. I would have to say he's the only man alive that can make a movie that I know I won't feel bad about buying--ever.

Agent Red is a tough one to do a synopsis of, because there are a lot of other movies mixed into it. According to IMDb the producer had three days to reshoot 45 minutes of film, and to do that, they used scenes from six other pictures, one of which was Storm Catcher, another Dolph movie. From what I could gather, this was Die Hard on a sub with Dolph trying to keep some renegade Russians from getting a biological weapon.

The Storm Catcher footage was great. In the original, a guy dresses in Dolph's outfit and hijacks a stealth fighter. What they do for Agent Red is make it out that Dolph is the guy in the suit, stealing the stealth from someone else. Only difference: the guy in Storm Catcher is about a half a foot shorter than Dolph. My friends and I were dying watching it. One of my all time favorite Dolph lines comes from the set up to the Storm Catcher scene, where Dolph is joking with some guy about what he's about to do. The guy asks if Dolph can fly the plane, and Dolph says: "hell if I know" in this perfect voice... maybe only I found that funny.

I don't even know what to say about this film. It was like a Clancy film ripoff, that was a Die Hard ripoff, that was an Under Siege ripoff. It was like a big Mad Libs, with shots and action sequences filled in by the director with pencil. It was like out of the Ed Wood handbook.

And you know what? I liked it. I'm sure the Dolph factor had a lot to do with that. It was like bad action at its worst, and best. There was just no shortage of fun in it. My friends and I were laughing the whole time. Dolph was his ever beefy self, he had a hot female doctor to hook up with, and there was plenty of killing and beating to go around. How could you not like it?

I'm not so sure buying this is the best option. I think I paid $9 for it used. But if you can get it for cheaper or rent it, definitely do so. This is a great bad action movie, and it's both a good starting point for the novice bad movie watcher, and a classic for the veteran. It's just good all the way around.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0218080/

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/