I, Portrait (2021)

Friend of the site Nate Hill reached out to see if we could review some more of his films, starting with this one. Considering how much I enjoyed the first four I watched, that was a no-brainer. In addition to us, Romey Norton at Film Focus Online has covered this as well.

I, Portrait follows famous painter Carmen (Natalie Heslop), who has just married casting director Julian (Hill), and is looking to get back into painting after taking a break. The thing is, if she paints blindfolded, and focuses on what she's painting, whatever she paints becomes reality. Her husband indulges it, if only to have the blindfolding lead to some sexy lovemaking, but the next day Carmen's old friend Stephanie (Sienna Stass) shows up unexpectedly. Could the painting be connected? After getting the initial pleasantries out of the way, Carmen gets the sense Steph wants to hook up with her husband, which naturally would be upsetting to anyone, but when Steph decides to overstay her welcome, now things seem like they're turning downright sinister. Will Carmen get to the bottom of everything in time?

Overall, I really enjoyed this. It brought back memories of 90s Erotic Thrillers, but in a modern, Australian setting, which made it all more refreshing. I had some qualms about a few things, one of which is the ending, which I'll get to in a later paragraph so I don't spoil it for anyone, but there were some real inspired moments too. My favorite scene came when the three of them went out to eat after Stephanie arrived. No dialog, just music and shots of each of their faces, but in those shots, we could see how Stephanie was making eyes at Julian, how Julian was appreciating the attention, and how Carmen wasn't. It built tension and moved the plot in a really creative and organic way that I always love seeing. One of the qualms actually also highlighted something I liked about the film. As the tension was building to the end, there's a break where Carmen and Julian go to a club and listen to a singer, Leslie Lawrence, who's performing this haunting, but also apt song called "Rain." The problem for me was, it was the whole song, and at this point I want to get to that ending because of how well it's all built up! I felt like when I order food, and the app says it'll arrive at one time, but it's 30 minutes later. You can't leave your audience hungry like that! But the fact that that tension was built so well, and that song fit so well, was another aspect I appreciated, so it's a good problem to have. Speaking of songs, Nate's long-time collaborator Jane Badler sings the opening, "Yesterday's Tomorrows," which had a 90s feel and got me in the 90s Erotic Thriller mindset; and then "Secret Smiles," written by William Katt--yes that William Katt--and performed by "Billy Katt," who I assume is him too, so really cool to have him do one of the songs. If you're wondering why William Katt is tagged here, that's why. For me, even with the qualms, this is 80s minutes of Erotic Thriller fun, and well worth checking out.

This is now five films for Nate on the site, and I initially planned to rank them, but this one kind of throws the idea of ranking them out the window. It's more serious than the other four I've reviewed, but what I think I loved most was how, as serious as it was, it didn't forget to include the fun, which is the best part of the Erotic Thriller. I joke about how when I saw Lady Terror, I didn't get the humor in it and had to watch some of Nate's other films, but I wonder if I'd seen this one before that if I would've gotten it more too, because here he isn't as much tongue-in-cheek, it's more straight ahead, and the fun is the fun you find in a well-made Erotic Thriller, so it would've made a good comparison point. One thing I think I would've liked more out of this one though, is if his character was kept out of things a bit more. I think there's an idea of a love triangle, but really it's more about the tension between Carmen and Stephanie, and Julian worked better for me as another vessel for that tension between them.

Speaking of which, the performances by Natalie Heslop and Sienna Stass really made this for me. None of this works if they both weren't all in, not just on the sexual stuff, but the tense interactions and the physical confrontations too. When Stephanie first shows up at the door, we gotta know that she's bad news, and then get the anticipation of the tension that will come as Natalie starts to pick up on that bad news. There were a few moments where I think that could've even been played better. For example, after the dinner date with Julian, the two go horseback riding, and then Natalie offers to do Stephanie's make-up. I think we needed something more there, whether it's Natalie doing Stephanie's make-up to make her look plainer compared to how she looked when they all went out to eat, or maybe she has insecurities, and she purposefully makes Stephanie look hot so it's almost a self-fulfilling prophecy in her mind that Julian will cheat. Right after that scene, Carmen's friend Kelly shows up, and Carmen rudely introduces Stephanie to her as "this is Stephanie, she's from the country," not, "this is Stephanie, she's my old friend from high school." If there could've been some more palpable tension during the make-up scene, like there was at the dinner scene, that rudeness, and then Stephanie's response, would've worked better. Again, that's a minor qualm on what were two great performances.

SPOILER ALERT!!! SPOILER ALERT!!! SPOILER ALERT!!! SPOILER ALERT!!!

If you're reading after this, you've been warned, but I needed to talk about the ending, and I didn't want to spoil it for anyone who hasn't seen this yet. I don't know that it would ruin the film for you, and you may disagree that it was even an issue. Leading up to the end, it was great. As I mentioned above, the tension was building, then we get the confrontation, which was everything you want in an Erotic Thriller showdown. But then, as the fight goes to the pool, Julian wakes up from his concussion, and joins the fight, ultimately helping Carmen hold Stephanie's head underwater and drown her. It was too cold blooded an ending, I need the baddie to somehow either die by their own hand, or leave the heroes no choice, and here once they'd sufficiently restrained her, drowning seemed excessive. Now, Nate mentioned a possible future film where he marries the characters from his films into one universe, and if the plan is to say actually Carmen and Julian let Stephanie up and called the cops, and then maybe Phillyda Murphy's Candace Knight breaks her out of the mental hospital she's confined in and the team up to try to take out Jasper, I'll take all this back. Short of that though, it just didn't sit as well with me as the rest of the film.

END SPOILER!!! END SPOILER!!! END SPOILER!!! END SPOILER!!! END SPOILER!!!

Finally, if you've been rockin' with us for any amount of time, you know I'm a bit of a transit geek, so when I saw a Melbourne commuter train in the beginning I was stoked. A quick perusal of the Wikipedia page--which I did during the commercials on Plex--told me that Melbourne's transit underwent a similar period of being diminished in favor of the car as it did in the US, but starting in the late 90s, there's been a resurgence there, supported by the government, that we haven't had here yet. They also farmed out the service to a private company, which we're starting to see here now as well with Brightline service. Anyway, beyond my geekiness, I thought the inclusion of the commuter train was important to the story too. Trains often portend ominous events, and this one appeared at the same time we first saw Stephanie, so it was all kind of Hitchcockian in that way; on the other hand though, the fact that it was a commuter train, something people take to and from work every day, brought home Nate's theme of his stories, how everyday people can find themselves in extraordinary circumstances, and while Julian would never take a commuter train, using it in the background as that metaphor allows Nate to reinforce that theme. It's just more really great stuff that I love seeing in a movie.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Even though IMDb says this is on Tubi, as far as I can tell it's no longer there, so Plex is the best option here in the States, or you can rent it from Prime--which isn't a bad way to support indie creatives either. This is just a fun Erotic Thriller, it's not trying to be anything more than it is, but with the cast and crew fully invested, it fulfills exactly what you want when you fire it up on your streaming device. Can't wait to see what Nate's got for us next!

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6831966

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

White Ghost (1988)

For the first time in I don't know how long, we're inducting a new member to the DTVC Hall of Fame!  No, it's not William Katt, it's Reb Brown!  Yes, I probably should have picked a more Reb-centric flick to do for his induction celebration, but I didn't realize he was in this as little as he was.  Well, we're already knee-deep, so we might as well get after it.  Also, our friends at ComeuppanceReviews.net have looked at this, and they joined me for the podcast we did in discussing Reb Brown and his work.

White Ghost has William Katt as our eponymous hero, a former Vietnam War vet who stayed behind after and lived in the jungle while collecting weapons and marrying Rosalind Chao.  Reb Brown, back in DC, suspects that Katt might still be out there as the mythical White Ghost that locals in the jungle think has been haunting them.  Brown gathers a team of special ops guys to bring him in, led by his former commander, Walker.  They're on a collision course to wackiness!

I don't know that this was horrible, but it had some horrible moments, like when Rosalind Chao is captured and has bamboo shoots shoved under her fingernails.  That's a bit much for me.  Beyond that, it has a heavy body count and lots of explosions.  I think for these kinds of DTV 80s jungle actioners, we've seen worse, but we've also seen better.  I think what usually carries it is the stars, and beyond Katt, Brown, and Chao, we had an interesting cast.  Katt's old CO was played by Wayne Crawford, Karl Johnson was Crawford's right-hand man, and in his crew he had John Barrett (uncredited) and Graham Clark (who starred with Brown in Space Mutiny).  I don't know that that's enough of a cast to carry this, especially if you're putting Reb Brown on the bench for all but the last few minutes.

That bit at the end though was pure classic Reb Brown.  He's in front of a helicopter, two-fisting machine guns, and screaming while he mows down Vietnamese soldiers.  Even if this weren't the movie we were reviewing to induct Brown into the Hall of Fame, that still wouldn't be enough.  Reb Brown was made for these jungle warfare romps.  Get him a tank top, head band, and a cache of weapons, and let him loose on the movie.  Even if this was supposed to be a Katt vehicle, it needed more Reb Brown.

Reb Brown enters the Hall of Fame with one of the lower tag counts (this will be his ninth, which is lower than a lot of non-Hall of Famers), but I think why he gets in is his spirit, similar to a Klaus Kinski--but in a totally different way--embodies what DTV is all about.  Also, his films tended to be on the lower end, especially the Philippine jungle ones, but there was never a sense in any movie he did that he mailed it in, and that I think matters more than anything for us as a viewer.  I never thought when I first saw him in Space Mutiny almost 20 years ago that I would have a blog, and on that blog be inducting him into our Hall of Fame, but here we are; and here's to you Reb Brown, you're one of the good ones.

William Katt was an interesting choice for the lead.  The better movie might have been with Brown in Katt's role, and Katt in Brown's, but that's one of the problems with DTV: the bigger name gets the bigger role, unless it's a bait-and-switch.  If you're going to pay Katt that much, you might as well use him.  The other thing too is, in 1988, he was only two years removed from The Greatest American Hero, and was still doing Perry Mason TV movies as a reoccurring character.  It makes me wonder if maybe this was slated for a theatrical release, and then something derailed it, and it ended up DTV.

I think sometimes with these action movies we need to suspend belief when it comes to the amount of weaponry and ammunition they have, but this film actually deals with that in a pretty realistic way.  Katt character collects it off of fallen soldiers and from various abandoned storage locales.  With the way the US funds its conflicts, it's not inconceivable that he could find a lot of that stuff left behind.  It would have been cooler though if he found some other things, like MREs.  Sure, we're action fans, but it doesn't always have to be about shooting and explosions, does it?  Okay, maybe it does.

It's time to wrap it up.  For me, this may be for 80s Jungle Flick completists, but I don't know if I can recommend it beyond that.  After Brown's great screaming action near the very end, there isn't much that I found to distinguish it from a lot of the others out there.  You can get this on Prime, or stream it on YouTube.  I think as far as our DTVC Hall of Famer, Strike Commando and Robowar are two better ones for him, plus Space Mutiny, all of which are also on Prime.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096436

Snake Island (2002)

I've had this in the can for quite some time. The problem was it starred William Katt, which in and of itself isn't exactly a problem, but I didn't know he was also in Cyborg 3, and I couldn't have too many William Katt films too close together, so I had to shelve this bad boy to post it later.

Snake Island has William Katt as an author doing research for a new book. He goes to a resort on Snake Island, and things go from bad to worse. A tourist group is stranded there, waiting for supplies to get them away. The snakes don't want them there, and they make that clear. Can Katt and the tour guide survive the night and get off the island?



This wasn't too bad. Pretty silly. It tried intentionally to be silly, but that didn't hurt it as much as it might have in other cases. The first half of the film was all close calls, which was kind of frustrating. You gotta start the body count quick in a film like this. There's a party scene where two women inexplicably take their tops off, which is fine with me, but might annoy some. One thing I found was the African feel-good music they played during the credits sounded just slightly like Erasure's "A Little Respect", which put that song squarely in my head for days afterward.

This is the second William Katt film we've reviewed where he plays an author (third film overall). Here he's an established author, while in Alien vs. Hunter he's trying to make it work. Is there something authorial in his demeanor? For me I can only see a man who gains superpowers when he puts on a special outfit. Though this film didn't have him don the suit and save the day, they did the next best thing and had him wear a cricketer's gear.



Cricket's awesome, and I think more movies should be based on it. Don't ask me how cricket works, it's just the idea of the sport I like. What about a dude who goes around Casey Jones style beating the crap out of baddies? Or a group of English terrorists posing as a traveling cricket team? The possibilities are endless. If they can make a movie based on Modern Pentathlon, they can make one based on cricket.

A man named Wayne Crawford wrote, directed, produced, and cast himself as the hero in this. He also got to hook up with the hottest chick in the film. No shame in his game, apparently. I guess if he didn't hook himself up like that, all his friends would be giving him a hard time. Just the same, it's smells a little Woddy Allen-ish. Maybe Wayne Crawford is going to marry his wife's adopted daughter too.



This will be the sixth snake movie we've reviewed here, and I'd say it's up there as one of the better ones. The worst snake film we've covered was Snakes on a Train, and I'd say the best was Boa vs. Python, which was also the first film we've ever done. In that range, Snake Island was much closer to the latter than the former. The further any film can be from Snakes on a Train the better.

This isn't a bad deal. If you see it on Sci-Fi (Sy-Fy?) late at night, give it a go. I wouldn't spend any real money on it, unless you're having a snake film film fest, then you can add it in. I think it's best kept on Sci-Fi at 3 AM, personally.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0320483/

Cyborg 3: The Recycler (1994)

After seeing parts one and two, I knew I needed to see this one to complete the trilogy. The first one is really just timeless; the second one has two Oscar winners; but this third one lists the man, Evan Lurie. I was stoked to give it a look see.

Cyborg 3 takes place however long after part two, and now Angelina Jolie's character is played by Simone from Head of the Class. She's preggers, which is a big deal, considering she's a cyborg and all. The other issue is that humans and cyborgs aren't getting along, and there's these Recyclers who capture cyborgs, kill them, and sell the spare parts. A particularly bad one, Richard Lynch, gets wind of Simone from Head of the Class, and he chases her to Cy Town, the cyborg free town. Now the busted up cyborgs take a stand against Lynch and his baddies, fighting for their lives and a peaceful existence.

This was kind of a gross film. Like it was one of those gross futures, where everyone's gross. The cyborgs in Cy Town were all disfigured. The bar Lynch goes to is disgusting. I mean I guess the future was gross in the first Cyborg, but it wasn't that gross. This just seemed like it was gross for the sake of gross. I can never get behind that. Gross has to be done well.

The action was very sparse. Really it was an hour and ten minutes of nothing much, and twenty minutes of a decent shoot out at the end. Evan Lurie had some good fights, but really all that did was make me want to see more of him, and wished I was watching American Kickboxer 2. No movie should make me wish I was watching American Kickboxer 2. I think that's a rule all film makers should live by. I'm not saying I didn't like American Kickboxer 2 (on the contrary, read my review), I'm just saying a movie shouldn't make me want to watch that instead.

Evan Lurie, as I mentioned above, is in this. He's barely in it, but when he's there he's sweet. He shows off some samurai sword work. He also demonstrates his solid martial arts skills. I just can't understand having a talent like his in a movie like this and barely utilizing it. This was no Operation Cobra, I can say that for it.

Speaking of stars, this movie had quite a few. It had the guy from Gremlins, the aforementioned Simone from Head of the Class, Richard Lynch as the head baddie, William Katt and Michael Bailey Smith as cyborgs with Lurie; and then for good measure, Malcolm McDowell. And Malcolm McDowell seemed like he would be a baddie of some importance, but he's killed off in the first ten minutes. Why? Why would Malcolm McDowell do that? Why would the filmmakers only have him in it for such a short time? Was he pulling a Kinski, insisting on a role that would allow him some money in a short shooting schedule? Who was his agent? And most importantly, what was it like to have this released the same year as Star Trek Generations? Why didn't Conan O'Brian ask about Cyborg 3 when he had him on the show promoting the Star Trek film?

The Michael Bailey Smith tags on the blog have been wrong for a while, and I've been meaning to fix them. I didn't have him tagged for the Don "The Dragon" Wilson Fred Williamson flick Whatever it Takes, and I had him erroneously tagged for the Seagal flick Submerged, when in fact he had starred in another Submerged that was made in 2000, and which I haven't covered here. I'm sure there were many Michael Bailey Smith fans out there who were outraged that his tags weren't correct, but those same fans were probably too embarrassed to admit they were Michael Bailey Smith fans to complain to me about it.

Make sure you watch the first two Cyborgs first, and if you feel you must, you can give this a go. The first Cyborg is so good, I have trouble recommending this at all in any connection with it. If you can handle the grossness, maybe it won't be so bad, but I don't know. Let's just put it this way: don't say I didn't warn you.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112765/

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AVH: Alien vs. Hunter (2007)

Some people think I'm a glutton for punishment going back to The Asylum like I do, and they're probably right. But Da Vinci Treasure was really good, and I Am Omega wasn't so bad, so I figured I'd give them another crack at it. This picture seemed like a logical next step.

Alien vs. Hunter has William Katt as a writer in a small California town that's been invaded by aliens. A small group of townspeople join up with him to try and escape them or kill them. As the movie goes on, they notice that one alien seems to want to kill the other. Eventually they kill the bad alien, and the seemingly good one disappears back into space.



The thing with this movie that I never considered going into it was: the movies it's ripping-off are silly and campy already. It's like, why am I watching a silly and campy rip-off then? Is William Katt enough? Probably not. Not only that, but a good chunk of this film is just people yelling at each other about what the next course of action should be. Did they not see AVP? The awesomeness was in the Predator fighting the Aliens. But since neither was alien was cool in this, and they didn't really have the two fight each other that often, it was just plain lame.

I haven't seen William Katt in anything in a while. Probably since the House movies. On imdb, I saw a film called Snake Island listed, and one user commented "It should've been called Suck Island". That just sounds too amazing to be true, so it's in my Netflix queue as we speak. In this film, he was classic William Katt, and I was hoping he would find a box with a superhero outfit in it and take out both aliens with his new superpowers, and then fall in the ocean because he wasn't any good at flying. The last scene could've been him on a couch with a blanket around him shivering, with Dedee Pfeiffer taking his temperature. Had the people making this been cool enough to think of that, AVH would've been cooler than AVP. Unfortunately it seems only I think of things like that.



I've always wanted a Batman vs. Predator movie, and I can only assume the recent success of The Dark Knight and the non-success of the second AVP will mean that my dream may never happen. Ugh! I don't want to take anything away from Heath Ledger's amazing performance, but the most amazing thing ever would be an Adam West style Batman fighting a Predator played by a comedic actor. He'd have a hot chick and some random guys in henchmen suits, and he'd rob a bank using some fluorescent green gas that knocks everyone out. Again, why am I the only one who thinks of things like that? Look, it's a call from Commissioner Gordon. "Batman, the Gotham City Bank was robbed yesterday. Eye witness accounts described a man with dreadlocks, like a Jamaican or Manny Ramirez. That can only mean... " I know, the Predator!

That was a major digression, but there really isn't much more to talk about in this one. Dedee Pfeiffer was the other name in the film, and she's in another The Asylum feature ripping off Journey to the Center of the Earth. On imdb I saw a film she did back in 1995 called Deadly Past that also has Mark Dacascos. It's not out on DVD yet, but Dacascos is making a case for Hall of Fame induction, so anything I can get of his will help. I got a couple others lined up anyway.



Next up from The Asylum is Universal Soldiers. Speaking of that, word on the street is Dolph and Van Damme are lined up to do another Universal Soldiers picture soon. I looking forward to that, and you'll know that whenever we here at the DTVC know something, you'll know something too.

Don't bother on this one. Just see the real AVPs instead. They're way more fun, and they actually have the Predator in it. I just want too say, Hollywood, call me and let's talk about getting this Batman vs. Predator off the ground. It'll be great.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1094162/