Private Wars (1993)

For our PM flick this month, we're looking at Steve Railsback's one film for them, because who doesn't want to see what Railsback's up to in a PM actioner? And to prove that point further, this has also been covered by Ty and Brett at Comeuppance, Matt Spector at Bulletproof, Karl Brezdin at Fist of the B-List, plus Jon Cross reviewed it on Letterboxd, so I'm a little late to the party.

Private Wars has Railsback as a cop who's sufficiently on the edge, which leads to corrupt chief Michael Champion getting him booted off the force, which leads him to get a job as a PI and crawl into a bottle of liquor. But he's called back into action when an old friend's neighborhood is being terrorized by a gang of toughs. Something about this seems off though, why are these toughs so well organized? Enter The Ben Gazzara in Road House-ish Stuart Whitman, a land developer who wants to scare everyone out and develop the neighborhood on his own. Not only does he have Champion in his pocket, but his hatchet man is none other than James Lew. Is Railsback going to dry up enough to take all these baddies down?

This was a lot of fun. It was like PM's take on the off-beat action comedy, which ended up being perfect for Railsback, but also perfect for the too sweet van flip in the opening chase scene. I mean, that thing jumped higher than Lorenzo Lamas in Viper aka Bad Blood jumping over a car. I don't know what I'd expect a PM version of the off-beat action comedy to be, but this felt like it, and while we didn't get anything as fantastic as "Sweet Freedom," this also had a pretty nice soundtrack too. It did have some jokes that fell flat a bit though, like when Railsback initially turns down the request to help, the community auditions people to help, and the bit that follows is cringe-y at best, and doesn't age well at worst. Still, the action is exactly what we want from PM, especially the three-headed end fight scene, and with Railsback's fun lead, this has a lot to hang its hat on. That begs the question though, what do we do with the PM version of the off-beat action comedy? In terms of ranking, maybe top 30? Which, when you're talking about a studio with the output of PM, top 30 means you're going to enjoy your 90 minutes, you just may not have a classic on your hands. I think that's okay, not everything needs to be a classic, sometimes a fun 90 minutes does the trick. (Oh, and speaking of Lamas, scenes of him from CIA: Code Name Alexa appear on a TV, so he gets another tag, putting him three away from the coveted 40 Club!)

We're now at six Steve Railsback movies, but this is the first one where he was the lead, and I think a lot of it worked. I don't know if I see Railsback in a Recoil or Art of Dying, but for this role he nailed it--and nailed it better than some of the bits we get. I mean I guess who else plays a good drunk, but somehow can also beat up a bunch of bikers, then take on Vince Murdocco and John Salvitti in a fight in a holding cell? When his character's making love to Holly Floria, who is 20 years his junior, while his best friend is getting beaten to death, the demerits that we would give another hero don't stick to Railsback, it's like he can't help himself, but when the chips are down, he's ready with a pump action shotgun. In PM world, that's often all you need, and all the James Lews and Stuart Whitmans need to watch out when he does. He's got a decent amount of stuff out there that we still need to do, and some of it looks pretty good, so hopefully we'll see more Railsback on here soon, because he was a lot of fun in this one.

The late Michael Champion feels like he was created in a lab in Canada to be the perfect baddie in a syndicated TV show or Canadian city passing for an American city movie production, so imagine my surprise when I discovered that he was a Yank from Indiana, and had a long history before the 90s in American TV shows. I mean you look at him here, and it feels like he was plucked right off a Da Vinci Inquest set, even though he never did that show, or any show like it! Wonders never cease, huh? I mean, yes, his pre-90s stuff like Beverly Hills Cop he makes more sense as an American, and in Total Recall he was the recipient of the infamous "look who's talkin' " line, so I'd be forgiven for not recognizing him there, but I think post-The Swordsman he pivots into a full-on syndicated TV/DTV actioner look that feels like it was created in a lab in Alberta or Saskatchewan. We unfortunately lost him in 2021, but in the 90s he was a force that made movies like this just a bit better. Here's to you Michael Champion, you were one of the great ones.

As you can see, there are a lot of other names in this. First off, Art Camacho is now at 59 movies, as he plays the guy in the holding cell that Vince Murdocco beats up. Maybe for next month's PM flick we can do one he directed to celebrate him entering the 60 Club. And then we had stunt team Red Horton and "Broadway" Joe Murphy, with Horton listed as stunt coordinator and action director, but Murphy listed as a second unit director as well. They had some fantastic stuff in this, so kudos to them. Then we had James Lew and his too sweet mullet coming in with his 21st film on the site, which means he could be getting some Hall of Fame consideration; and Vince Murdocco with his 12th movie on the site, which I think when you're talking Vince Murdocco, that's not bad at all. Murdocco and John Salvitti team up with Railsback at the end to create the three-headed end fight scene I mentioned above. What happens is, Whitman calls in two out of town specialists who do a great job showing off how well they can use martial arts weapons, and each of them fight Murdocco and Salvitti, while Railsback fights Lew. What a beautiful way to make the most of the martial artists you have at your disposal, another win in the PM column.

Finally, is that a McDonald's in the background there? It looks like the Golden Arches, doesn't it? This is in the opening chase, and it's looped multiple times, so I got a lot of looks at it, but couldn't tell for sure. If it's not a McDonald's, it looks so similar that a McDonald's representative may have contacted them about it. Could it be a McDowell's kind of thing, but maybe like a gentleman's club? I love the idea of that, opening up a gentleman's club called McDowell's or whatever, using a sign that looks Golden Arches-esque, but people thinking they're getting fast food are getting exotic dancers and two drink minimums instead. "God, I don't want a private dance, I just wanted a couple double cheeseburgers!" Anyway, until we know for sure, I'm erring on the side of yes, which means this is the 22nd time McDonald's has appeared on the site. Are we going to have to induct McDonald's into the DTVC Hall of Fame? I don't even know how we do that, but I guess we'll see when we get there. (And yes, that is a man hanging off the front of that van. And I know, that means I've seen so many of these PM films that a man hanging off the front of a van is so commonplace that I'm more concerned about whether or not that's a McDonald's in the background.)

All right, with that, let's wrap this up. As far as I know, YouTube is the best way to watch this, and the version on there isn't bad. You can find it on my PM Entertainment YouTube playlist, and while you're there, why not subscribe to our channel? It's been a while since I've posted a new original video, but every podcast episode is on there.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107879/

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

The Last Riders (1991)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Midnight Warrior (1989)

For our PM review for April, I wanted to get this one in, because I had discussed it recently on an episode of the PM Entertainment Podcast, where I was part of a three-person weave along with host Jon Cross and Chris the Brain from Bulletproof Action. In addition to us, Ty and Brett at Comeuppance have covered this as well.

Midnight Warrior, aka "Mid-night Warr-ee-orr," stars Kevin Bernhardt as Nick Branca, a young Italian-American man who doesn't know how to eat spaghetti properly, but is great at finding provocative footage of news stories that he can sell to local TV stations for good money. One night as he's out chasing one of these stories, he saves a woman from a burning car after a PM-style crash. That makes him a hero, and everyone wants him to cover their stories now. The problem? Branca has found a nice girl from up the street named Angelina Mantucci (Lilly Melgar), and after a date or two he decides he wants to leave the Mid-night Warr-ee-orr life and settle down. His slimy boss Buddy (Bernie Angel) doesn't like the idea of his cash cow calling it quits, so he makes a decision on his own to do something to bring Branca back. But will this decision be his undoing?

We're do you go with this one? Great soundtrack? Check, as I'm writing this, I have the theme song in my head, which was just "Mid-night Warr-ee-orr" repeated as B-roll of LA at night flashed before us. Well-shot? For sure, Joseph Mehri's direction with Rick Pepin's cinematography was great. What about the acting? For the most part it worked--though poor Nonna in the extended family scene having to follow Bernhardt's all over the place card tricks and riffing for Rick Pepin's daughters was a tough spot to put her in. It's the story where we lose it I think. The premise was great, but early on we kind of don't know where it's going, then when we think we do, the rug is pulled out from under us in the kind of bonkers twist only PM could give us. We also get our PM car explosions and pizza joint owners getting shot through plate glass windows that mitigate any of the missteps. The fact that this would be number 2 on the spine if all the PM films were rereleased in original release order is a mark in its favor as well. If you've seen a lot of PM films, and you're looking for one to kill 90 minutes, I think this is a great choice.

This is our 57th PM film on the site, and I'd say if I were ranking them all, I'd put this in the bottom half. It's not horrible, but it's not one of those all-time PM classics either. As Jon, Chris, and I discussed on the PM pod, it seemed like the PM crew were still figuring things out, so this was the film where they learned to walk so later in the 90s they'd be able to drag Jack Scalia on a satellite dish from the back of a bread truck that's speeding down the highway. An interesting note on this, it's Joseph Mehri's 16th directing credit, which puts him one behind Fred Olen Ray for second all-time on the site, after Albert Pyun's 44ish (depending on how we count some of his films that were finished by someone else). That begs an interesting question: could he go into the Hall of Fame again? He and Richard Pepin are both in together as the P and M of PM Entertainment, and I only tag them separately for their directing work--which may not be fair to Pepin, because he did a lot of great cinematography work that he's not tagged for. Because my Hall of Fame is based off of sports halls of fame, I did some digging. The Baseball Hall of Fame says no, you only get inducted once, and that covers everything. The Basketball one on the other hand, does allow for multiple inductions, like in the case where a team was inducted, then allowing for an individual to be inducted as well. An example of this would be Michael Jordan, who was inducted as part of the Dream Team, and as an NBA player. So maybe not only Merhi, but Pepin as well should have their own individual inductions. It's worth considering.

The premise that this film was based on, "if it bleeds, it leads," was something that has only gotten worse in the intervening 30-plus years, not better. If you watch the news here in Philly, you'd think we were all living in RoboCop's Detroit or something; and the cable news phenomenon just exacerbated things even more. In 2016 Trump became the perfect "if it bleeds, it leads" president, where everything he did warranted a "breaking news" chyron at the bottom of the screen. None of the media outlets could handle it in 2020 when Biden was elected, the chyron looked silly when it was "Biden's dog bit one of his secret service detail." I guess that's the same as starting a coup to prevent a lawful transfer of power, tomato-tomahto, right? But this is what's fascinating about DTV films from this time, they may have missed the mark on a lot of Sci-Fi stuff, but they were spot on about a lot of socio-cultural stuff like this. The thing they couldn't have predicted though was OJ, he took what was happening in the late 80s/early 90s, and supercharged it. Bernie Angel would've had Bernhardt coming out of retirement to follow OJ during the Bronco Chase. And had it been PM, the Bronco would've flipped through a police car barricade, only for Bernhardt to save OJ before it exploded.

Usually this paragraph would be a round-up of all the other cast and crew, but because there weren't many other people to discuss, I thought I'd use it as a round-up of all the other bonkers moments I missed. First, near the beginning, we find out that Bernie Angel's character's base of operations is a diner. He has his own circular booth, with TVs plugged in via extension cords, and all manner of papers and documents strewn about. Even in 1989, who did that? Even in a café today, they'd see that and say "um, no... no, you can't do that here." Later, our hero visits his mom, who makes him some pasta. When he meets the neighbor lady, his face is covered in red sauce, like he'd never eaten pasta in his life, or forgot how to use a fork to put food in his mouth. After he saves the woman from the burning car, a local TV reporter goes to his house so they can hook up. When he gets home though, he doesn't know who's there, he just sees clothes lying around and hears the shower get turned on. His first thought is it's his mother visiting. What? Does his mother use his shower a lot? And does she leave her clothes lying around too? I mentioned above about poor Nonna. I have no idea what that was, it was some extended family thing that Bernhardt's character and Melgar's character were attending, but whose family was it, his or hers? And why was he doing a magic trick for Rick Pepin's kids? Then he finishes by having Nonna do some, while he hits on Melgar's character, and the best Nonna can think to do is sing a song from the Old World. Your guess was as good as mine. Finally, when our hero and the neighbor lady are back at his place, she mentions wanting a dog, and his response is to go on this soliloquy about why he prefers birds. It was so fantastic, Jon created a shirt for it that you can buy on the PM Entertainment Podcast Threadless page. I've been meaning to get one myself!

Finally, look at that image above. Do you see the "Bo Knows" ad in the upper right corner? As a kid in the late 80s, it didn't get any better than Bo Jackson. I'd watch This Week in Baseball and couldn't wait to see what Bo Jackson highlights they had for us, like when he tried to call time out then hit a home run anyway when the ump wouldn't grant it; or when he threw Harold Reynolds out at home on a play he had no business making. His time with the Raiders I didn't see as much, because the late afternoon AFC game was usually blacked out after the Patriots were on in the early window, so we always had the CBS NFC game in that window, but I remember the highlights of him trucking Brian Bosworth to get a touchdown. As a running back, he threw his body into defenders like he had a spare at home in the closet, so it probably wasn't so much that he got injured and it cut his career short as much as he managed to not get injured for so long despite playing like that. Either way, he was a force, and we may never see anyone like him again. 

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can stream this on Fawesome here in the States, plus there's a decent version on YouTube which is included in my PM Entertainment playlist, which you can find on our DTVC YouTube channel. And also don't forget to check out the episode we did on the PM Entertainment Podcast!

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0145082

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

Intent to Kill (1992)

For this month's PM flick, I thought I'd do the last of the three early 90s PM flicks Traci Lords did that I needed to review. In addition to us, this is a Superfecta movie, because Christ the Brain at Bulletproof, Ty and Brett at Comeuppance, and Mitch at the Video Vacuum have all covered this; plus Jon Cross at the PM podcast did an episode on this as well.

Intent to Kill has Traci Lords as a cop on the edge. Her chief and mentor (Yaphet Kotto) wants her to be safe, so he takes her off the assignment she had to take down a Colombian drug cartel member (Angelo Tiffe), only to have her find more trouble elsewhere. Her live-in boyfriend (Scott Patterson) is a deez, dem, and doze Italian American from North Jersey who does his hair and slaps on cologne to get the paper so he can flirt with the neighbor who likes to ride her bike in her dental floss bikini. As you can imagine, she catches her beau in their waterbed with a lady he met at the bar, then proceeds to go Mitchell on his antique car he loves so much. Now it's on her to stop this Colombian and his cronies, only she not only has to deal with them, but her jealous ex that's trying to sabotage her career.

This one is a lot of fun. It's everything you want in a PM flick: a strong lead, great car flips and stunts, fun supporting stars, and this crazy PM world where danger is everywhere and our hero needs to shoot her way out of it at a moment's notice. At the same time, there's a lot you wouldn't expect about Lords's character being a woman in a man's world, and how even the people that want to help her succeed, like Yaphet Kotto's character, still impede her progress. The end was a little bit off for me, because Lords's character gets herself in a bad situation that wasn't consistent with how she was in the rest of the film, but I also understood it was their way of getting rid of Scott Patterson's character, and considering how he was, in PM world he had to go--hey hey, ho ho, Scott Patterson's got to go! You either like PM flicks or you don't, and if you do, this is right up your alley.

These three Traci Lords early 90s PM flicks all feature great performances by her, which is kind of crazy when you consider how young she was acting opposite all of these older guys. It's not just that she holds her own, it's believable that she would be the best and most capable among the older male characters she's acting opposite of. Looking at her career, in '95 she was starting to get parts on network TV shows like Melrose Place and Roseanne, and I think there was a sense that a bigger breakout was coming, but it never quite came, and she ended up coming back to PM to close out the decade with two more films. This is now her sixth film on the site, which doesn't sound like a lot, but there's a five-way tie for sixth most all-time among women on the site at seven movies, so she's one away from that, and we have another film coming this month with her in it, so she'll be hitting that in a couple weeks. The question from there is, is the Hall of Fame in sight? Everyone in the top five all-time for women on the site are in, and the bottom of that list is nine films, so I'd say it's in sight.

We're now at 56 PM films at the DTVC, which sounds like a lot, but we have another 50 or so to go to have them all, and if we're doing one a month, we won't get there until 2030, so we still have some work to do. This has a lot of what you want in a PM flick. For example, when Lords catches Patterson in bed with another woman, the bed is a waterbed. Like when Patterson runs after Lords, the woman he's sleeping with is bobbing up in down due to the waterbed waves. That alone is amazing, but then he chases Lords out to his car, where she proceeds to do a Mitchell with the woman's panties and the gas tank of his car, lighting the panties and blowing up the back of the car. How amazing is that? Only PM would think to do the waterbed/Mitchell combo like that, because they're probably the only ones who could pull it off. I also mentioned above the DP duo of Blakey and Pepin. We get these beautiful shots of the LA streets at night from Blakey, and then Pepin gives us these fantastic, clean looks of the action moments. Finally, we have the stunt team of Red Horton and "Broadway" Joe Murphy working on this one, combined with Scott McAboy as second unit director. It gives you that quality of PM you want when you fire one of these up and want to escape for 90 minutes.

What do you do with Yaphet Kotto in this? He's the police chief, he sits in his office and tells Lords she's causing so much trouble it's driving him to drink bourbon in the afternoon, yet when he sees her at the bar after she catches Patterson in bed with another woman, he proceeds to drink from her Bud Dry sitting in front of her, so maybe his character has more of a drinking problem beyond Lords's antics. He never leaves the station except for that visit to the bar, the rest of the time he's either in his office or out among the desks that the rest of the detectives are sitting at. We have seen Kotto before, in the Busey film Eye of the Tiger, and it's weird seeing him in stuff like this, but in looking at his IMDb bio, it's closer to 50-50 on the low-budget DTV stuff than you'd expect from someone who had the career he had. That then begs the question, is the Hall of Fame a possibility for Kotto? It looks like it's more in play than I expected.

Finally, going back to the cinematography, and just looking at PM films overall, they did more than just set their films in LA and shoot in LA, they made LA a character in their films the way we think of New York City as a character in movies. And I'm not talking about LA as a novelty location like in Beverly Hills Cop, or suburban LA like in License to Drive, but like really making the city of LA a character, using more local locations, and not being afraid to be specific. Like when Lords is following a lady of the night who was connected with one of the Colombians, we saw places like Frederick's of Hollywood, but in the context of a gritty Hollywood in the middle of the night. I think a lot of filmmakers and studios were afraid to give people that LA, thinking the audience wouldn't get it, but it feels like the PM folks didn't care, which I think is great. And now 30 years later it's a time capsule that we can go back and watch.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can get this on Fawesome, or there's a decent copy on YouTube too, which I added to my PM playlist on my YouTube channel. This is another good one from PM and Traci Lords, worth checking out.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107222/

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

To Be the Best (1993)

In 2026 I've decided to start something that I started last month without realizing I was starting it, and that's reviewing one PM for the first post of every month. That means we'll have at least 12 PM flicks reviewed this year. Not a bad deal, and I figured for our first one I'd do one I'd been meaning to do forever, which also has an exploding helicopter, so I can tick that off the list too. In addition to us, the PM Podcast covered this, plus Toyman at Bulletproof, and Karl Brezdin at First of the B-List.

To Be the Best is about a kickboxing/martial arts tournament, where the US team is one of many entrants, and their biggest competitor is the Thai team, composed of residents from the Bangkok Chinatown. The coach of the US team is former disgraced fighter Rick Kulhane (Martin Kove) and his two sons Sam (Phillip Troy Linger--and no, he didn't have to let it) and Eric (Michael Worth), who is the team's best fighter. The problem is the evil Alex Cord is hanging around, and he has $500,000 on the Thai team's best fighter Hong Do (Steven Vincent Leigh), and to make sure his bet comes in, he's threatening Eric's girlfriend (Brittney Powell). Will Eric throw the big fight?

This does exactly what you want PM to do, except the middle is a bit draggy, which we'll get to in a second. It starts with some underground fighting, where a man who's a cross between a poor man's Nick Vallelonga and a poor man's Johnny Roast Beef tries to get Worth to throw the fight, and when he doesn't, to show Worth he means business, he has his helicopter pilot take Worth for a ride, hanging him from a cord while he flies him around Vegas. The pilot gets a little too into it though, and crashes into one of the hotels, causing Worth to go flying into one of the suites. It's as amazing as it gets, only to be followed up in the next scene by another underground fight in LA that gets broken up by the police, leading to a two-pronged chase with one set of cops chasing some guys in a white car, and another chasing Linger (which he didn't have to let it) on a dirt bike. The problem was, the movie couldn't keep that kind of energy up, and things bog down a bit with some sparring montages, broken up by a nice bowling alley fight, and then it's just a tournament film, until the end, which is another fantastic group of great action set pieces to finish things off. I think where that leaves us, is this is a great time, and while it's maybe only a top 30 PM flick for me, that's still going to be a fun way to spend your 90 minutes.

We're now at 54 PM films, and this is one of those ones where you'd think it would've been done sooner, but for some reason it kept getting pushed back, and I think the only reason I bumped it up to now is the fact that it has an exploding helicopter, so I can chip away at my paltry number on Exploding Helicopter's Letterboxd list. And what a thing of beauty that helicopter explosion is, and while the movie isn't able to maintain that energy throughout, the fact that had it at all is why we come to PM films. This is also number 58 for Art Camacho, who's not only fight coordinator, but he plays one of the US team as a character named "Runt"--which at no point is that expounded upon, that's just the name they gave him. Definitely in 2026 he'll be our fourth member of the 60 Club. We're also seeing Martin Kove again for the first time since VFW in 2024. He's at 19 now, so we'll see if we get him past 20 this year. And then for our stunt coordinators, this film features the duo of Red Horton and "Broadway" Joe Murphy, with the former as second-unit director, and the latter stunt coordinator. They're at 17 and 16 films respectively, which I think are numbers we'll see get bigger as we do more PM flicks.

Two names that are finally getting tags are Michael Worth and Vince Murdocco. Neither have big numbers--five for Worth, 11 for Murdocco--but they both were such a big part of 90s DTV action, especially these PM flicks, that the tagging was overdue--especially if Ian Jacklin's been tagged, because they inhabit a similar space, though to Jacklin's credit, he has more tags than either of them with 13. Worth is the star in this one, and I think there's a sense that maybe PM was positioning him to do more stuff like this, but this ended up being his last film with them, I think due to him making Fists of Iron, which I believe no one that worked on that other than Art Camacho did another film for PM--Matthias Hues hadn't worked with them before, and Richard Munchkin only did some LA Heat and Hollywood Safari episodes. Murdocco is something else. Just saying "it also has Murdocco" evokes a sense of a certain kind of low-budget 90s actioner, and while that movie is often also a PM film, after 1994's Magic Kid II, he doesn't do any other films for them either, but he also wasn't a part of Fists of Iron, so I don't know if it was due to any kind of issues with PM. They may just not have had a place for him as they moved into different movies and got bigger names. I guess I get it, but how could you not have a place for Murdocco?

What the hell is going on in that image below? Are we looking at a potential 10.0 Mulletude mullet? Sure, the business on top is a little more manager at a hardware store business than you'd want, but the party in the back is almost Sunset Strip hair band rager--probably more like backstage afterparty at a Midwestern tour stop for a hair band, and maybe not the headliner like Poison, but an opening band like Trixter or Hurricane--but I'm quibbling on something that at least has to be a 9.8 on the Mulletude scale, and spending way too much time explaining why I'm deducting two tenths of a point, instead of basking the beauty that is that fantastic ape drape. And the thing is, it comes at a time when I'm not sure what's happening with this movie because it's mired in a bunch of fights and intrigue around Alex Cord being a dick, but then I finally get my shot of the Vegas Strip McDonald's so I can tag that, and then boom, I'm hit in the face that with Hall of Fame caliber mullet, and it's just all Tiger Woods on the 18th hole birdie fist pumps from there. I went back through our old posts, and saw that I gave the Barbarian Brothers a 9.8 for their mullets in Double Trouble, and I guess that's because they're more workman-like and added to the overall Barbarian Brothers charm, but that means I either need to go back and drop that rating, or bring this one up a tad. 9.9 sounds too high for this mullet, even as amazing as it is, so maybe the Barbarians need to go down to 9.5 or so.

Finally, one of the elements running through the film is Martin Kove's character's love of the LA Raiders. I'm sure it was just tossed in, but based on his character's age and when the team moved from Oakland, it wouldn't make a lot of sense that he'd root for them, unless there was some kind of quirk in his character or special unique reason for it, neither of which was mentioned. Being born in the late 40s, if he's from LA he'd have grown up with the LA Rams as his team, because the Oakland Raiders didn't move to LA until 1980, when he would've been in his 30s. To give you a history of NFL football in LA would give you a popsicle headache, but if you're not familiar with the league, you could look the NFL up on Wikipedia and find there are no Raiders in LA, the two LA teams are the Rams and the Chargers, but there is a Las Vegas Raiders. Two years after this film was released, the Raiders went back to Oakland, one year after the Rams moved to St. Louis, leaving the second largest city in the US without an NFL team, until the Rams moved back to LA in 2016, and the San Diego Chargers moved to LA one year later; and then in 2020 the Raiders moved from Oakland to Las Vegas. (I'm sorry, I said I wasn't going to get into it, and I did anyway, so hopefully the popsicle headache wasn't too horrible.) My point is, Kove's character should've been a Rams fan, but it's kind of more PM-ish that he rooted for the Raiders instead.

And with that, let's wrap this up. The Roku Channel has this, but when I watched it the audio wasn't synched, so I watched it on YouTube instead, which was fine. However you watch it, it's a solid addition to your PM experience, and one you should definitely check out.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108346

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

Ice (1994)

Recently Will from Exploding Helicopter mentioned his Lettrboxd list of films that have exploding helicopters in them (one of the best Letterboxd lists in my opinion) and I was sitting at a paltry 23% of them watched--of which 10% of those are Dolph and Daniels movies. In an effort to get some more of those films in, I'm doing one of the four PM flicks with exploding helicopters that I haven't watched yet. Also, this is a superfecta movie, because in addition to us, Chris the Brain at Bulletproof Action, Ty and Brett and Comeuppance, and Mitch at the Video Vacuum have covered this too.

Ice has Traci Lords as the wife in a husband and wife duo who rob ne'er-do-wells for insurance companies. They're hired to rob crime boss Vito Malta (Jorge Rivero), but then when her husband (Phillip Troy Linger) decides to keep the diamonds, all hell breaks loose. He gets the crazy grinchy idea of having Lords's estranged brother (Zach Galligan) fence them, but he's a mess and only gets them taken by a rival crime boss. When her husband is killed in a shootout, it looks like the only person Lords can trust is a local detective (Jaime Alba), who may or may not have a thing for her. Will she make it out alive?

This is a good ol' PM time. It starts with a robbery that was edited from the robbery in Ring of Fire II, which is why Evan Lurie is tagged--though not Ian Jacklin, even though I think he's in the scene too. Just tack on a little Michael Bailey Smith, and it's a totally different scene, right? From there, you have a great lead in Lords mixed with all the great PM moments you want, with exploding cars, that exploding helicopter I mentioned above, and a shootout at a semi-pro hockey game where multiple players are killed. Can you imagine, you grew up in the Northeast or Minnesota or Michigan or something like that, played some hockey in high school, move out to LA, and make it onto this semi-pro hockey team, only to be shot and killed by some mafiosos trying to get a bag of diamonds. Only in the world of PM, but it's such a sweet world, and we're happy to be living in it for 90 minutes.

We're now at 53 PM flicks on the site, which sounds like a lot, but I don't even think that's half-way through them all. It had been a while since we'd last done one, and in watching this I realized that was a mistake, I should be watching and reviewing at least one PM flick a month, because they're so good for the soul. We start with that opening robbery, which, as I mentioned above, was lifted from Ring of Fire II, but thinking about it from PM's standpoint, they'd think "how many people would've seen both of these movies, and then if they did, how would they be able to let everyone else know?" I mean, what was it in 1994, a BBS? Would there have even been a PM Entertainment BBS? I certainly wasn't looking for that kind of thing, I was asking my buddy to get all the moves to Mortal Kombat II--I remember how popular I was going to the arcade with the printout, complete with the sides of the paper that had the holes in it, showing everyone there the moves. So while I'm trying to do Mileena's Friendly, PM is laughing all the way to the bank after repurposing a robbery scene, and only thirty years later are we picking up on it, and we actually appreciate the ingenuity. It's all part of the PM charm, which is on full display in this one.

Art Camacho did fight choreography, making this his 57th film on the site, only three away from becoming the fourth member of the 60 Club. I think we have seven more of his PM collaborations left to do, but it's hard to know because he did so many different things for them, he might have other credits I didn't see when I scanned IMDb. And then for stunt coordinators, we had the team of Red Horton and "Broadway" Joe Murphy, one of the top PM teams along with Spiro Razatos and Cole S. McKay. I looked, and they should have 17 and 15 tags respectively, so I've taken care of that. That combination of Camacho with Horton and Murphy give us the action quotient we expect from PM, with some great shootouts, plus car flips and the helicopter explosion; and some great fight scenes, especially with Traci Lords. To complete the PM feel, we have Ken Blakey as DP/cinematographer. He makes sure the movie has the PM look we've come to know and love. We spoke above about how if you watch a lot of PM flicks, you notice things like them reusing scenes from previous movies, but also, this consistency with the look and the action creates this comfort food vibe, when you see that PM logo before the film starts, it's like smelling that burger on the grill at your favorite burger joint, and the first flipped car or person sent through a glass window is that first, juicy bite. Is that the best metaphor for PM? They're the Double-Double Animal Style of movie studios?

We're now at 5 movies for Traci Lords, three of which are PM flicks. Like the last one we talked about from her, A Time to Die, she's the star, and does a great job leading the film. Also like that film, it's kind of crazy to see her in her early 20s acting opposite these men who are ten and twenty years older than her, and not only holding her own, but in some cases making it look like these guys aren't in her league. There was a definite It Factor there that I guess never quite materialized, but in the early-to-mid 90s she had some great DTV stuff, much of which we still need to get to. Among the other names, I thought this was only our second Zach Galligan film, after Cyborg III: The Recycler, but I forgot he was also in Point Doom (directed by Art Camacho), and Storm Trooper (which if you haven't checked, has a great IMDb critics review page. Four reviews, ours, Chris the Brain at Bulletproof, Mitch at the Video Vacuum, and The Schlock Pit. Where are the guys from Comeuppance on that one?) He's great as the scam artist brother who's always getting into stuff. Michael Bailey Smith is here for his 8th time. Always great to see him, and it was also great that the new Fantastic Four movie gave him a cameo considering his great work as the Thing in the Corman version. Finally, Evan Lurie gets a 12th tag from his archive footage appearance in the Ring of Fire II robbery scene. It looks like we have one more movie for him, Death Game aka Mortal Challenge, and then we'll have his entire filmography covered.

Finally, we have a classic Taco Bell logo sighting. It was across the street from the hockey rink Zach Galligan kept the missing diamonds in. Here in Philly it's one of the few fast food places still in Center City, so I enjoy grabbing something there while I'm running errands. When this movie came out though, we had a location in the Fox Run Mall in Newington, NH, and back then you could get hard shell tacos for $.49 a piece. With a $10 allowance, I could do 4 tacos, and still had over $7 left to play Mortal Kombat until my parents or my friends' parents came to pick me up. It still is a pretty good deal, for $6 I can get three hard shell tacos, and while I was comparing PM to In-N-Out Burger, I like that I can swap the ground beef for black beans and remove the cheese for one of the few vegan fast food options. Add in some fire sauce and it's a nice slice of all right. As far as the Fox Run Mall, it's slated for demolition early next year, but I was able to go in one last time and get some pictures.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently get this on Plex or the Roku Channel here in the States, which I think is a good way to go. A fun PM flick, plus you can check another film with an exploding helicopter off your list. What's not to love?

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107182

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

Alien Intruder (1993)

This is one of those ones I thought I'd done earlier on on the site, but didn't, and then for some reason it ended up getting pushed down the list, for almost 18 years it seems. Strange, considering this is the first PM flick I remember watching, so it has some significance. In addition to us, our friend Chris the Brain at Bulletproof Action has covered this as well.

Alien Intruder takes place two years ago in 2022, where a Commander Striker (William December Williams) gathers a Dirty-Dozen-style team of four convicts (Dirty Quartet?) to investigate a space freighter that went incommunicado. We know what happened, because in the opening scene, a crazed Jeff Conaway killed everyone at the behest of Tracy Scoggins, before turning the gun on himself (it was like the Rolling Stones song, "it's just a Conaway, it's just a Conaway"). After the guys do some virtual R&R, they start to notice Scoggins appearing in their fantasies, and then eventually appearing in their realities! Does Mr. December Williams hold the key to what's going on? And will our rag-tag group of heroes figure it out in time to stop Scoggins?

This one starts a little slowly, but it's the kind of slowly that in the mid-90s when I first saw this would be boring, but in 2025 is a fun nostalgia trip--even if it was only three years ago! In one scene, Maxwell Caulfield and the other guys are playing cards and busting each other's chops, and in that spirit Caulfield calls one of them a "brick shithouse," which is Generation Jones speak for "ya big lug." You can just imagine on college campuses in the early 80s people calling each other "brick shithouse," and even if they didn't, it's fun to imagine, right? Scoggins is great too as the alien temptress. The VR fantasies are like music videos with their themes and settings, and she's pretending to be the "video girl," only with a diabolical twist. And then they have a PM twist too, because PM uses the VR fantasies to inject action into the film, including a massive explosion at a gas station that sends a stunt guy flying off in the background--if only they did that in Michael Bolton's "Missing You Now" video! Top it off with the great Billy Dee Williams, and you have yourself a fun PM sci-fi actioner.

Speaking of Michael Bolton, the last time we saw Billy Dee Williams on here was in February of 2012, with Gary Busey in the submarine flick Steel Sharks--do you remember that Michael Bolton song, "Steel sharks, wrapped all around me..."? Maybe not. Anyway, the only reason my friends and I rented this back in the mid-90s was because it had Billy Dee. I didn't know anything about PM Entertainment, but in that period between Return of the Jedi and Phantom Menace, Star Wars fans needed anything they could get, and Billy Dee Williams in a low-budget DTV sci-fi flick seemed like a good bet--not to mention as high schoolers we were also Colt .45 fans, if you knew someone who was over 21, you could give them $5 and they could get you a 40 and keep the change to buy themselves some cigarettes. What a simpler time. You don't get a lot of Williams in this, but PM does a good job of sprinkling him throughout so you never go too long without him, which is a nice thing. Here's to you Mr. Williams, you're truly one of the best.

This is now 46 PM flicks on the site, but as I mentioned above, this is the earliest one I remember watching. Also as I mentioned above, I didn't know it as a PM flick--we didn't know what that really was back then, it was just another logo we saw a lot--we only rented it for Billy Dee Williams. If you look at the release date, 1993, we would've rented this around the time it came out, but back then the mom and pop we rented from, People's Video, didn't gouge on new releases like Blockbuster and the other big chains did, so it was the same $2 as the older movies. When Alex, the guy who owned the video store, was picking it out of the catalog, he was probably thinking Star Wars fans like us would grab it because it had Billy Dee Williams on the cover, and at least for us he was right. I couldn't have imagined 30 years later there'd be this thing called blogging, and that I'd be almost 18 years in on a site of my own reviewing it, let alone watching it again on a "streaming" site called Amazon Prime--forget the fact that Donald Trump is not only our president, but he's on his second term. PM had a better vision of what the 2020s would be in 1993, we just weren't worthy of it.

Speaking of the future, we usually talk about flying cars as the thing that didn't end up happening, but the one we usually miss is laser guns, which were prevalent in this film. How did no one pick that up? Especially here in the States, we love shooting people, a laser gun seems like a natural invention. I guess because guns are so easy to get and shoot up schools with, people were probably like "why would you want a laser when you can mow down tons of people, especially kids, with an automatic gun firing bullets?" It makes sense, there's no way a battery could hold enough charge for the laser shots required to equal a high-capacity magazine. And if there's one thing the United States does better than the rest of the world, it's mass shootings. We also like our deaths due to car violence too, which is probably why we never went too far into flying cars either. "If cars are in the sky, what reason would we have to displace people and wildlife to expand freeways in order to save drivers 30 seconds on their commute? And then who would be hit by cars at dangerous intersections if all the cars were in the air? Nope, better to keep the cars on the ground where they can hit more people and we can scar the landscape with more highways and parking." And that's why no laser guns and no flying cars.

Finally, Maxwell Caulfield's outfit here was too good not to comment on. Fluorescent yellow and blue Lycra spandex shorts with a black codpiece (??), and finger-less gloves. And look at the Wes Anderson-style shot composition with him leaning against the door frame, the woman fresh from the Hot Tropic pageant on the other side, and the living room and the windows with the view of the beach to the right. Just an absolute thing of beauty. Now I do need to confess, when I lived in Maine ten years ago, I biked a lot, and as such I needed the finger-less gloves and the spandex shorts. They served a purpose though: the gloves and shorts had gel padding in them, which mitigated the impact of my aluminum bike bouncing on the road. Also, if it helps, the shorts were all black and didn't have a codpiece, and I always wore a shirt too. Maybe it doesn't, and I understand. I realize too that in the interests of being forthright with my audience, I've just made this paragraph in celebration of that fantastic shot above all about me, so I apologize.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Currently you can stream this on Prime. I think there's also a decent YouTube version. As far as PM goes, this isn't a top 10 or even a top 20, but their deeper catalog is a lot of fun too, and this film is a great example of that. Plus you can't go wrong with Billy Dee Williams!

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106244

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

Magic Kid (1993)

I knew I needed to get more PM on the site, and I also knew I was two movies away from getting Don "The Dragon" into the 40 Club, so I figured this wouldn't be a bad one to cover. Luckily it was on YouTube, because what Pluto lists as this one, is actually the sequel. In addition to us, Chris DePetrillo at Bulletproof has covered this as well.

Magic Kid has Ted Jan Roberts as a 13-year-old martial arts prodigy from Michigan who, with his sister (Shonda Whipple), goes to LA to stay with their uncle (Stephen Furst) and his girlfriend (Sandra Kerns) when their parents (Lauren Tewes and Chris Mitchum) need to get rid of them for a few weeks. Turns out Uncle Flounder's an alcoholic inveterate gambler who's into mob boss Joe Campanella for 10 large, but when they come to collect, Roberts beats the crap out of them. Now the mob is out for blood, so upstanding Uncle Flounder has them running around LA while he figures out what to do, subjecting Roberts's 15-year-old sister to all kinds of adult males hitting on her, and needing Roberts to get them out of various jams. Who knows, maybe The Dragon can help?

This is as ridiculous as it sounds, but has this nice amount of PM that gets it over the goal line. Maybe not as many explosions or car flips, but plenty of fight scenes, where Roberts takes all manner of stunt guys and kicks, punches, and throws them into bodies of water, through panes of glass, and over balconies--and among those stunt guys we have Red Horton and Broadway Joe Murphy, the stunt coordinating team responsible for PM classics Zero Tolerance and T-Force, so it was nice to see Roberts throw them into pools or off balconies too. We also had Art Camacho as not only fight choreographer, but he played Roberts's sensei and hosted the tournament in "Michigan" that led the movie. There were some odd parts about the film, like how it was normalized that adult men were hitting on a 15-year-old girl, or how much of a degenerate Furst's character was despite being responsible for a 15-year-old and a 13-year-old, but when you see that PM logo, and see Wilson appearing as a version of himself, combined with Roberts as a fun hero, it just kinda works.

We're officially at 39 films for Wilson on the site. I say "officially" because we'd had to remove a couple tags due to some erroneous IMDb credits that have since disappeared. Part of the reason why he's taken a little longer than other DTV stars to hit that mark, is, like myself, he went on a bit of a hiatus, only the end of his in 2015 happened to coincide with the start of mine. Even as we're catching up, none of those newer ones other than New York Ninja really feature him in the lead the way his 90s stuff did, and while this movie only has him in a small part in the beginning--appearing in Roberts's dream no less--a smaller part in the middle, and then a nice fight sequence with Roberts at the end, it's more what his character represents here, that 90s action star that we all loved watching, and whose stuff from that time is still iconic. For all of us, he'll always be "The Dragon," and it was great to see him as "The Dragon" in this.

This is our third Ted Jan Roberts film on the site, after Hollywood Safari (which also has Wilson, and at that time was the last of his known DTV films that I had to review) and A Dangerous Place, so out of his six PM flicks, we're half-way through. It's interesting how PM tried to split the difference with him here. They had a young, martial arts prodigy, and at the same time there was this spate of martial arts films directed at kids, so they must've thought the mix was gold, the only problem was, PM weren't great alchemists. They tried to make Roberts the hero in a kids movie, but they didn't know how to pull it off tonally. For example, I mentioned adult males hitting on Shonda Whipple's character, who, even though in real life she was 19--which was weird enough for guys in their 30s to be hitting on her--was supposed to be 15. In one scene a bunch of surfers on Santa Monica Pier are hitting on her, and Sandra Kerns says "guys, the lady said no." What? "The lady said no"? The lady is 15! How about that be the reason they need to back off? There's another scene where Uncle Flounder has the kids sleeping on the beach to avoid the mob. And he even had the audacity to expect them to share a sleeping bag while he had his own. They refuse to let him get away with that at least, and force him to sleep without a sleeping bag, but still, it was a rough deal. And just the whole premise, a man who's almost 40 expecting a 13-year-old to beat up adult mob bosses that are after him for betting money he didn't have. I don't know that they got much better at this by 1997's Hollywood Safari either, but I think it's fascinating just the same that they were trying it.

Speaking of the 40 Club, we had two other members in this film, PM Entertainment in their 45th film on the site, and Art Camacho in his 54th. Also, this was directed by Joseph Merhi, the 13th film he's directed on the site, moving him into a four-way tie for third most among directors. What was interesting though were the other stars. Lauren Tewes as the mother was great. What a great get to have Julie, our cruise director, in a PM flick! Also I see that she was born in Braddock, PA, which is where John Fetterman was mayor, someone who is now known for one of the great heel-turns in politics. And then we had Stephen Furst, aka Flounder from Animal House, as the uncle. He does his best here, but because things were so tonally all over the place, it was a tough sled. Despite that, he came back to direct the sequel one year later. Finally, for Charles in Charge fans, we had Sandra Kerns, who never made another film after this, instead focusing on raising her kids in Pacific Pallisades. I guess if this was it for her acting career, this isn't a horrible way to go out.

Finally, we usually dedicate this paragraph to something silly or offbeat about me personally, but considering this film was shot in LA, I think it's important to mention the wildfires and the people affected--including potentially Sandra Kerns, if she and her family still live in Pacific Pallisades, we hope they're all okay. We watch so many films, especially from the 90s, that were shot in LA, it's a part of the world that for decades has invited us into the space where they live for our entertainment, but times like these remind us that people make their homes there, and like any of us, take for granted that that home will always be there. Our hearts go out to everyone affected by these fires, and hope everyone is okay. And God forbid you do need to evacuate, for God's sake, leave your keys in your car in case Steven Guttenberg needs to move it. For people reading who want to help, this CNBC article shows you charities that have been vetted, and how to spot scams: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/01/09/california-wildfire-relief-where-to-give.html

And with that, let's wrap this up. YouTube is your best bet right now, unless you can find a cheap DVD or VHS. This is more for PM or Don "The Dragon" Completists, of which I'm a card-carrying member of both, and if you are too, or either just one or the other, this will get you to the church on time.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107482

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

Shotgun (1989)

In our continuing mission to try to get all of PM's flicks on the site, we have this gem, which according to IMDb is the third PM flick ever. I love the idea of having a PM Collection like the Criterion Collection, and this is number 3 on the spine. In addition to us, Chris at Bulletproof, Ty and Brett at Comeuppance, Simon at Explosive Action, and Mitch at the Video Vacuum have all covered this, so I'm definitely late to the party.

Shotgun follows Ian (Stuart Chapin), a detective who, with his partner Max (Rif Hutton), work the vice beat in LA. After reports come in of a "basher" working over ladies of the night, Ian discovers his sister, who happens to also be a lady of the night, falls in with this guy, and meets an untimely end. If Ian was on the edge before, now he's over the edge, which leads to him losing his badge and gun, forcing him to work as a bounty hunter. He's so good at his job, he earns the nickname "Shotgun," but he hasn't given up on the case, and in true PM style, this is building to a huge blowout. 

This is some really fun early PM, but it's also really early PM. I mean look at that font above telling us it's a Pepin and Merhi production? Even AIP could afford better looking credits than that. We also don't have any names in this, beyond Paulo Tocha as a hotel desk clerk, and then Rif Hutton, who you may remember from his KFC commercials where he was the manager of the Lake Edna restaurant (more on that later). Just the same, we get glimpses of the action that will end up being PM's hallmark, and the hero, played by Stuart Chapin, is hilarious, both when he means to be and when he doesn't. In one fantastic scene, he fills a guy's buttocks with buckshot, then tells the guy "if I wanted conversation, I would've shot Dick Cavett!" Indeed, though I doubt Dick Cavett would've taken that shit lying down. We also get a fantastic theme song for Shotgun, that's more beautiful than words can say. Because this is very low-budget and doesn't have as many names, it's probably a movie night choice for your more discerning bad action movie friends--connoisseurs, if you will.

And if you won't, I understand--whatever that means. This is the second-earliest PM flick we've looked at here, after LA Heat, which means this is so early that a few City Lights movies still came out after. This one was written and directed by Addison Randall, who, with Charles T. Kanganis, made up the core of the early PM creative team in addition to Pepin and Merhi, and as such this really feels like a Randall or Kanganis film. The things that would become hallmarks of PM, cops on the edge, topical stories, and shootouts and explosions, are here, they're just waiting for the magic of names like Spiro Razatos or Don "The Dragon" Wilson to show up and take them over the top (Stallone style), or a name like Wings Hauser to drag them under the top(?) in a way only he can. They were just starting out here, and it shows, but knowing what they're going to become, it's fun to go back to the past like this and join them on that ride.

I wanted to talk about the film's lead, Stuart Chapin, who unfortunately left us in 2016. Also unfortunately he didn't get much more work than this film. On the one hand, I can understand why as far as PM were concerned, when soon after they were getting names like Wings Hauser and Don "The Dragon" Wilson for their films, a relative unknown like Chapin would've been left out in the cold; but on the other, why not make a name out of Chapin? Yes, he looked more like a guy who'd sell grilled cheese out of the back of his Jeep Comanche while touring with the Dead, but don't let that "who wants to play some hacky sack?" exterior fool you, Chapin is plenty willing to deck a smug asshole IA guy or fill a bail jumper's buttocks full of buckshot before he brings him in. He should've at least gotten one more film, maybe a sequel to this, Revenge of Shotgun?--complete with a new "Shotgun" theme song, right?

Before the final showdown, this film takes a page from The A-Team by having our hero and his old Army buddy do some welding to turn a large Jeep into a death machine of sorts so they can confront the baddies down in Mexico. What makes this better than your average A-Team welding montage though, is it's set to the "Shotgun" theme song, which is a fantastic song; and we see our hero and his buddy, as they work harder, need to shed layers and get sweaty. The friend even has a Freddie Mercury look to him, very "extra in a gay leather bar scene in an 80s comedy," the kind of thing that was funnier back then than it is now, like "oh look at buttoned-down Eugene Levy getting hit on by that guy with a mustache, sunglasses, and a leather baseball cap. Levy's uncomfortable around gay people, hilarious!" I don't know what they were going for with that montage, but whatever it was, I loved it. We just needed that Shotgun's Revenge sequel with more sweaty montages of men welding set to the hero's theme song. Such a missed opportunity for PM. "Shotgun... sweaty sweaty welding..."

Finally, who remembers the Lake Edna KFC ad campaign? Rif Hutton from this movie, wearing a dress T-shirt and tie, with his kooky family watching football and eating buckets of the Original Recipe, or his kooky customers chowing down on honey BBQ wings, served by his kooky staff. He was only a couple years removed from this film when he did that, but unfortunately it was maybe ten years too early, because back then ad campaigns were more disposable. How many years have insurance companies kept the same people? Or you have situations where companies bring back someone from a previous campaign, like the "can you hear me now?" guy, as if he's some kind of fixture in the zeitgeist--and maybe he is. Had Hutton done these Lake Edna commercials in 2002 instead of 1992, sometime in 2010 KFC would've done a big Super Bowl ad to bring him back, and no one would've really given a shit outside of hacky morning talk shows the next day doing segments on the Super Bowl ads--and confusing Samuel L. Jackson and Lawrence Fishburne in the process. (As an aside, is it only Americans who celebrate ads like that? We're essentially celebrating people lying to us and tricking us into buying a lot of shit we don't need. Why do we do that?) The world of fried chicken has come a long way in the last 30 years, and I don't remember the last time I had KFC. It has this combination nostalgia feeling and feeling of pain in my stomach, like I want to eat some and I don't. (As a second aside, in college, I remember a chubby white kid with dreads told my buddy and me that KFC changed their name from Kentucky Fried Chicken because they stopped using real chicken. He was undeterred when I told him it was because they thought the word "fried" sounded unhealthy, or that factory farming chickens is much cheaper than growing fake chicken meat in a lab. My friend and I ended up tracing the origins of his urban legend to a Time article about a research lab generating cell tissue. It felt like a great own at the time, but really, the own was the guy being a chubby white kid with dreads.)

And with that, let's wrap this up. Currently this is free to stream on Plex and the Roku Channel. I prefer the latter because their commercials aren't as intrusive. This is classic early PM for the bad action movie connoisseur, you can't go wrong with it.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0145464

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/