Raven Hawk (1996)

This is one I've been meaning to get for years. For the longest time, there was only a foreign language dub version on YouTube. Sometime last year there was an English-language version, but before I had a chance to review it, it was taken down. Then recently Kevin Hazell reached out on the Facebook page and mentioned a YouTube account, The Movie Man, that had a bunch of stuff uploaded. When I started paging through, I noticed some Pyun flicks, and thought this might be it, and sure enough, there it was. In addition to us, Bulletproof Action and RobotGEEK's Cult cinema have covered this, plus Ty from Comeuppance posted a sweet VHS of this on his Instagram page.

Raven Hawk has Rachel McLish as a woman who, as a girl, is framed for her parents' murders by some corrupt developers who want to install a nuclear waste disposal site on Native American land. After spending twelve years in a mental institution, while being transported to a prison, her van flips and she survives. Now free, she's out for revenge, ready to kill those responsible. At the same time, John Enos III is a reservation police officer investigating her murders. He knows there's more going on here. But the baddies aren't going down without a fight either. They've called in a crew of Pyun mainstays to take her down. Will she be victorious?

This is pretty close to pure Pyun, in that we have a strong female protagonist, who is also a woman of color, ready to take down a bunch of bad guys. I read in the IMDb trivia that he wanted to play up McLish's character's mystical and emotional aspects more, while the producers wanted something more like a female Rambo, so they took it away and made it more of what we got. I liked it as a straight-ahead revenge actioner, but I also see what Pyun was thinking too--why make it in the tradition of the white male protagonist, when you have a female Native American hero you can do more with it. At the very least it would've been interesting to see that, but this worked for me, and I think the amount that Pyun was able to influence it made it work. McLish is great as the hero, and I liked too that there were no damsel in distress moments, no male hero like John Enos III's character coming to save her. It's shame that out of all of Pyun's movies, this is one of the tougher ones to find, because I think it's one of his better ones.

This is the 44th film for Pyun here at the DTVC, but as a director it's number 42--we did Mean Guns twice, which is how he has 45 tags, plus Nemesis 5, which he produced, and then Dollman vs. Demonic Toys where archive footage that he directed in Dollman was used. 42 puts him a good 27 ahead of the director with the second-most director tags here, Fred Olen Ray, who has 15. Looking at what we have left for him, there's Left for Dead--which I discovered is free on Vudu right now, so I need to do that soon!--, Cool Air, and then two I'm having trouble getting, The Interrogation of Cheryl Cooper and Interstellar Civil War: Shadows of the Empire, so that plus his producer credit on the Ray-directed Final Examination would get Pyun close to the 50 Club. If that's the case, that he's one away, maybe we count that second Mean Guns review just to get him in there. One of the best DTV directors ever, and this movie is a great one of his.

 

We'll cut to the chase and get right to our favorite game: who are the Pyun mainstays in this? In this case, all three were tapped by Pyun to be the team of mercenaries called in by the baddies to take McLish down. We start with DTVC favorite Vincent Klyn. Back off Warchild, seriously. He plays a Maori warrior, complete with accent. He's at 19 films here at the DTVC, which is huge for a guy who plays a lot of supporting roles, and puts him now one ahead of fellow Pyun mainstay Norbert Weisser, who was tied with him for 18. Next we have Thom Matthews. That's 12 for him, and while this is a pretty pedestrian performance as Matthews goes, it was good that Pyun got him in this. Same with Nicholas Guest, who is now at 10 movies on the site. Other than Klyn, who would be tagged because he's Warchild--seriously--the others only have tags and the volume of posts on the site because of Pyun. I thought the late Ed Lauter, who is in this as a sheriff, had done more Pyun too, but this is the only film they did together. Same with Mitchell Ryan, who plays Enos's boss.

Rachel McLish did not make a lot of movies, and according to the IMDb trivia, she credits that with her changing her mind about a nude scene Pyun wanted her to do when she's going through a ritual of spiritual transcendence. Eventually she agreed to be topless for it. Honestly, in watching the scene, I don't know that she needed to be nude for it, no matter what the reason. She was a great action lead, and if that was the reason why directors didn't want to work with her, or if it turned her off from the business, that's too bad. I was trying to think how many of Pyun's female protagonists had nude scenes, and one that comes to mind is Victoria Maurette in Bulletface, which was more a series of disjointed scenes in a prison rape sequence. Maybe that's what Pyun wanted to do here as well, not fully show McLish's nude body, but cut and mix things so the focus wasn't on her nudity, but the spirituality. By the same token, if McLish felt uncomfortable with it she felt uncomfortable with it, and could she really trust that what Pyun wanted to do was what would've been the end product, especially since the film was taken from him by the producers?

 

Finally, we have a Star Trek: The Next Generation sighting in John de Lancie--who, unlike Lauter and Ryan, had worked with Pyun before this, in Arcade. In addition to Arcade, he was also in an indie flick we reviewed, Cloned, making this 3 tags for him. For TNG alums, he's one behind Michael Dorn, who has 4 tags. In this he plays a senator who's pulling all the strings, kind of Q-ish actually. Two things I didn't know about him: he's from Philadelphia, and he was born in the late 40s. About the latter, I liked that for the new Picard series they didn't do like they did with Mark Hamill in The Mandalorian and use a computer image of his face to make him look younger. De Lancie played one of my favorite sci-fi characters of all time, and I think a big part of why I loved him so much was de Lancie's performance, so any time I can spotlight him on the site I want to.

And with that, let's wrap this up. As of right now, this can be streamed on YouTube, or bought used on VHS. I think there may also be DVDs outside the USA region. The thing is, this was released here in the States on HBO first, so if they have it, why not put it on HBOMax? They have Collision Course, this wouldn't be too far of a stretch beyond that. A guy can dream, right?

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117446

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

Down Twisted (1987)

This is one I've been wanting to do for a while now, and was excited when I finally got my hands on it. It's another Albert Pyun flick from the mid-80s, has a great cast, and looks like a great time. If it's half as good as Dangerously Close was, we should be happy.

Down Twisted is about a famous, priceless artifact that is stolen and replaced with a replica. The problem is, as it's being shipped back to LA, it's lost, and the parties involved are trying to get it back and figure out who the double-crosser was. Enter Carey Lowell, who is looking forward to her upcoming job interview so she can quit her dead-end waitress job and move-on-up in the world, Jeffersons style. Her dead-beat roommate just happens to be one of the people who knows where the artifact is, and she gets Carey all mixed-up in it. Now she's been shanghaied and shipped across the Atlantic to some Banana Republic with some weenie lawyer, played by Charles Rocket, that seems to know more than he's letting on. The only thing we know is this: when the deal goes down, it's going down twisted.



I really enjoyed this. It had a couple lulls, especially as the loose ends are sorting themselves out and coming together near the end, but overall it's just a fun 80s Albert Pyun flick. It has its Pyun mainstays, it has cool music-- including "No One Lives Forever" from Oingo Boingo and the "Suspicious Minds" cover by Fine Young Cannibals that was also in Dangerously Close--, and has tons of nice 80s style. I think it's one of those ones though where you really have to love the 80s to love the movie, because, as I said, it does have it's slow moments, and it might feel predictable; but if you get geeked from seeing Norbert Weisser, or Thom Mathews in a blue blazer, or Oingo Boingo playing over the opening credits, this is the flick for you.

I wonder how I'd feel about this film if this were review number 70 instead of 762, if I didn't get as geeked about Thom Mathews and Norbert Weisser as I do now with however many Pyun flicks under my belt. I guess what I would say is that I didn't enjoy Vicious Lips as much as this one, and I didn't enjoy this as much as Dangerously Close, so it's not just that I'll like any Pyun 80s flicks no matter what; but I still think it is good to control for my movie going experience as I recommend or don't recommend something. A lot of the fun in this is Pyun's ability to mix genres, and I loved how we have that low-budget 50s adventure flick combined with the style and aesthetics of the 80s-- plus, the 80s adventure flick post Indiana Jones; and I think it works better here than it did in Alien from LA.



One of the things Pyun is known for is his use of female protagonists, and this film is the first of three in a row where he first does that, the two after being Vicious Lips and Alien from LA. It's interesting, because when we think of Pyun, the fist things that come to mind are Sword and the Sorcerer, Cyborg, and Nemesis, which are all led by the classic male protagonist, but I think it's a testament to Pyun as a director that he's constantly trying to go outside of that tradition and give us female leads that are more than just damsels in distress. Carey Lowell here is essentially that first of many, and what I liked about her character was that she would fluctuate back and forth between assertive and vulnerable, making her the most realistic element in an otherwise larger than life movie. It didn't hurt that she's stunning too, and had a lot of close-ups.

It's time to play the Pyun mainstay game again, and we have some good ones here. First and foremost, Thom Mathews, who you can see is bleached blond and rocking a too sweet blue blazer in that scene above. He plays like a hatchet man or something, walking around with a gun with a silencer and a scowl on his face, chewing up scenery. Then we had Norbert Weisser, who has actually been in more Pyun flicks than Mathews. He plays the money man that wants to buy the artifact. After those two there's Nicholas Guest, who plays the guy that double crosses everyone, and is thrown out the window by Mathews. Australian Linda Kerridge plays Mathews associate. This is the first of three straight she does with Pyun, the other two being Vicious Lips and Alien from LA. Finally, in a small cameo, Don Michael Paul plays an airplane mechanic. He's best known for Dangerously Close, but also plays Kathy Ireland's jerk ex-boyfriend in Alien from LA.



Down Twisted can boast that it is the first big screen role for Courtney Cox, who would then go on to have a bigger role in another Cannon/Golan-Globus flick in the following year, Masters of the Universe. All she does here is bump into Carey Lowell as the two are waiting tables, then talks to Lowell about her job interview when their shift is done. I wonder if they pulled her off the Masters of the Universe lot, or if she needed to nail those two scenes in this in order to get the big role opposite Dolph. She probably made more per episode in the last seasons of Friends than the entire acting budgets of either of those films.

This is a used VHS only as far as I can tell, but it can be found for under $10, which I think is a good deal. If you're a big 80s person, or a VHS collector, this is one you should look for. Yes, it might be a little slow in parts, but it has tons of great names, a fun plot, and a solid mix of 80s style and 50s low-budget adventure flick. If you come across it in your travels, I think it's worth picking up.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092922/

Dangerously Close (1986)

This is one I've been meaning to do for a long time, having not seen it in forever, and not knowing until I started this blog that it was an Albert Pyun film. Sometime in the mid-2000s I saw the video for the Smithereens "Blood and Roses", complete with the movie footage in it-- there's a version that doesn't have the movie footage-- and I really wanted to see this again, and just never got around to it. Now I'm here, and we're making it happen. Also, this has been reviewed by our friends Kenner at Movies in the Attic and Ty at Comeuppance Reviews, and both of them are pretty different from the one I'm about to write.

Dangerously Close is about a prep school that has been forced to allow poorer kids from outside the district to attend through a magnet program. These kids have been targeted by a school-run vigilante group called the Sentinels, and now the Sentinels have upped the ante to the point that a core group now kidnap kids they've identified as the worst delinquents, and they scare them in a game called Hunt Down, hoping they'll transfer soon after. Then we throw Danny into this. He's one of the poor kids, but he's also an overachiever and wants what the Sentinels were born with, and wants to befriend them instead of just clean their pools. But is he in too deep when their leader, Randy (John Stockwell), invites him to hang out with them, because Danny runs the school newspaper, and they want to recruit him for propaganda? And if he's in too deep, how does he dig himself out before he too is a victim?



This one really worked for me. Very stylish, well shot, and I liked it as a different take on high school movies outside of "geeks" and "jocks". Haves vs. have-nots, but with the twist that you have Danny, who straddles both worlds due to his socioeconomic status, and doesn't know where he belongs, but ultimately is the one who can crack the case because of his ability to move in all circles. Then there's the soundtrack. I already mentioned the Smithereens, whose song plays over the credits. There's also Robert Palmer's "Addicted to Love", a couple good ones from Depeche Mode and TSOL, and a great cover of "Suspicious Minds" by Fine Young Cannibals. This is just a good, 80s high school movie with loads of style and tension.

There is always the question, when you're dealing with an Albert Pyun film, of how much he had control over the finished product. Cannon and Golan-Globus were also the team that took Cyborg away from him, so you never know. If it is different, I'm curious to know to what degree, because this was pretty sweet, and I think he did a great job with it. I loved the overall mood of it, it was dripping with tension, but it looked very 80s, and he captured a lot of that. I saw somewhere that someone had this as Pyun's best, and though I wouldn't go that far, it's definitely a solid entry in his filmography.



It's time to play everyone's favorite game: name that Pyun mainstay! We'll start with that dreamy fellow above us, Thom Mathews. Then there's the film's top billed star, John Stockwell, whom you may remember from Radioactive Dreams. Don Michael Paul was in Alien From LA (he also did Down Twisted, which is one we haven't gotten to yet.) DTVC favorite Anthony De Longis was in this, I believe, as the high school cop (I couldn't tell, because he always had his sunglasses on). De Longis was in The Sword and the Sorcerer. Finally, the girl who played Judy Jetson in Vicious Lips has a small cameo as a student council member. After all that, though, it would appear that Thom Mathews is the only real Pyun mainstay-- though I imagine he didn't know at the time how many more Pyun films he'd find himself in.

I mentioned the music above, but I can't write this entire thing without bringing it up again. Two Depeche Mode songs, which were fantastic. The biggest song was had Robert Palmer's "Addicted to Love". My personal favorite was the Fine Young Cannibal's cover of "Suspicious Minds", which is also on their 1985 self-titled album. On top of that, the theatrical score was really great too, very Miami Vice, which added a haunting element to the rest of the mood. Part of the fun of revisiting an 80s movie is the music, and this doesn't disappoint-- I wonder if the soundtrack grossed more than the film did at the box office.



Another thing I love is the one-piece bathing suit. Don't get me wrong, I'm as happy with a woman in a bikini as the next guy, but I still love the old one-piece, and we don't see it as often today as we did back then. Remember the girl in the hot white one-piece in Huey Lewis and the News' "If This is It"? Of course you do. Here we have Carey Lowell, she of Law and Order fame, and now Mrs. Richard Gere, rocking the one-piece on the beach. Earlier she wears it in and out of the pool in one of the coolest shots of the movie. I don't know if that's a black lit matte painting that he uses to get that look or what, but it was really cool (I stuck that one in the image page, which also has the Smithereens video for "Blood and Roses). Anyway, as we always do, here's to you one-piece bathing suit, you were one of the good ones.

And also as we always do, it's time to rein this in before we go completely off topic. This is only available on VHS, but it's affordable used so that's good. I had the Media Home Entertainment version, but it looks like there's a Vestron Video version out there as well. No idea on which is better, plus, a used VHS of this at this point isn't going to be in the best shape anyway (take a look at some of the images I grabbed for instance). I think this is worth getting though if you see it in an old VHS bin. Just a solid, 80s high school thriller, directed by Albert Pyun.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090904/

Blast (1997)

This is not the easiest find, which is too bad, because it's chock full of great names. If you like your Albert Pyun films filled with Pyun Mainstays, this is the movie for you. One of the difficult things about tracking down a copy, is its name makes it ambiguous in search engines. Plus there's an Eddie Griffin movie of the same name that came out later. I was fortunate enough to have a buddy overseas send me his DVD-- being the DTV Connoisseur has its privileges.

Blast takes place during the Atlanta Olympics in 1996, where the villainous Andrew Divoff and his terrorist gang have taken over a swimming practice and the American women's swim team hostage. One kink in their plans: janitor/former Tae Kwon Do champ Linden Ashby is still kicking around the facility. Bad news, right? And he better save the day, because the rest of the assembled Pyun talent can only sit on their hands while Divoff bumps off swimmer after swimmer.



All right, so let's start with the good. Great cast. Let me rattle them off: Divoff, Ashby, DTVC Hall of Famer Rutger Hauer, Tim Thomerson, Vincent Klyn, Thom Mathews, Yuji Okumoto, Tina Coté, and Norbert Weisser; plus Kimberly Warren from Mean Guns. Wow. Other than Divoff, who cut a sweet baddie, everyone else was spread throughout the film with parts of varying sizes, but every one of them was solid. This had some good fight scenes and action as well, especially when Ashby was taking out Divoff's men Die Hard-style. I also liked the way Pyun cast this as a 50s/60s Red Scare type film, using terrorism as the monolithic evil, instead of the USSR. The one fault I had with the movie though, was how big the story was. There was just too much going on, and it weighed the film down at points. This effect was lessened to some degree because of the cast involved, but I went through periods where I forgot Linden Ashby was in the film at all-- and he was the lead hero! Overall, though, Blast isn't bad.

Look at that cast. If you play the Pyun Mainstay drinking game, you'll be pretty drunk by the movie's end-- you may not even make it. It depends on what you consider a Pyun mainstay, but we have Norbert Weisser, whom imdb says has been in 18 Pyun flicks, Vincent Klyn who's been in 13, Thom Mathews who's been in 12, Tim Thomerson who's been in 9, Tina Coté who's been in 7, Yuji Okumoto who's been in 6, and Andrew Divoff who's been in 4. All we needed was Scott Paulin, Nicholas Guest, Ice- T, and Michael Halsey. And cyborgs, we didn't have any cyborgs here either.



Andrew Divoff is such a sweet baddie. I daresay this film is Div-tastic. He's probably best known for the Wishmaster series, of which I have done none of yet at the time of this posting-- I know, I suck as a human being. Anyway, in Blast, he might be one of the better Die Hard terrorist style baddies, because he has the chops to live up to Alan Rickman as Hans Gruber. If Blast shows us anything, it's that the more Divoff, the better. Div-tastic.

As I mentioned above, I liked the way Pyun drew on the old Red Scare movie. He has a couple screens of text at the beginning, talking about potential terrorist attacks in Atlanta, then ends with a screen telling us that what we were about to see was what could've happened. We're almost a month away from the ten year mark of the 9/11 attacks, and after that happened in 2001, it made sense that the discourse shifted to make terrorism the new Cold War-esque enemy, but here in 1997, Pyun was ahead of that curve (as he often is with this kind of thing). Yes, the film devolves into Die Hard at a swimming practice facility (which I think is the prison from Mean Guns, but I'm not totally sure on that), but it does have those old Red Scare film elements that give it that extra layer beyond the simple Die Hard rip-off.



Check that out, Shannon Elizabeth as a credited extra. She gets a fair amount of screen time as a hostage, but she really doesn't have any lines beyond sobbing in mortal fear, hoping Divoff's cronies don't choose her to be the next sacrifice. I thought this wasn't the first Elizabeth film we've done at the DTVC, but it turns out, as I went back into the archives, that I haven't actually done Jack Frost before. How did that happen? I could've sworn it was one of the first ones I did four years ago. Anyway, Blast came out about two years before Elizabeth's breakthrough in American Pie, and now it looks like she's fallen back into the DTV world-- when she's not playing poker, of course.

This is definitely for completists or hardcore B-movie fans, because if you don't think it's awesome to see names like Tim Thomerson, Yuji Okumoto, and Andrew Divoff on the marquee, you'll have much more trouble with the down times when the weight of the plot becomes too heavy for it. On the other hand, if you love seeing names like that, I think you'll really enjoy this one. As far as I know, here in the States this is out of print and only available used on VHS, making it probably that much more a purchase for completists and hardcore fans only; and I know there's a Region 2 DVD floating around, so if you're in Europe or another area like Australia that is Region 2 compatible, you might have better luck.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115701/

Mean Guns (1997) (Revisited)

My original Mean Guns post came on May 15, 2007, about ten days after post number 1. At that time, I didn't really know who Albert Pyun was. This thing was still meant to celebrate all the B movies my buddies and I enjoyed, so I focused more on actors like Christopher Lambert. I happened to catch Mean Guns on TV, because it had Lambert, was less than impressed, and there's the review I wrote. This was before I had software on my computer to capture images, so the original two I got from somewhere-- I can't remember now. If you're out there and you're pissed I hotlinked your images, well, chill out, and remember, they're not yours either. Anyway, Mr. Pyun asked me recently to give his film another chance, so that's what we're doing with by revisiting it here.

Mean Guns is about a group of killers, snitches, etc. that have been gathered in a prison for what they think is a party. It's not. A major crime organization, aptly titled The Syndicate, has brought everyone that's ever wronged them together, and the last three standing get a share of a $10 million prize. The rest-- well, I'm sure you can figure that out. What follows is a deadly free-for-all followed by an equally deadly game of cat and mouse, as the remaining players form alliances, betray each other, and ultimately, kill each other off.



Okay, let me start with what I liked about Mean Guns. A lot of the characters were great. Michael Halsey was great, Lambert was great, Ice-T was great, all the way down to Pyun mainstays Yuji Okumoto, Thom Mathews, and Tina Coté. The action was solid and the film's premise was intriguing. I believe I said in my initial review that after the first 45 minutes, it's much better, and upon a second viewing, I'd amend that slightly, because there are pockets of action before that, but then it kind of grinds to a halt, and when it picks up again, it never quite regains that frenetic pace it had when Ice-T's men first dump the guns out to the 100 or so gangsters. Also, Mean Guns had some great Western and Hong Kong cinema elements, and I liked the off-beat nature of the violence (other than when the kid was involved, which I'm about to get to). So there was a lot here I dug.

All right, here's what didn't work for me. First and foremost, having the kid there was really weird, especially when she witnesses Tina Coté's death, which would've been played for laughs otherwise. I mentioned in the first post the sped up film in spots, especially with Ice-T staring at Lambert, didn't look right. The dynamic between Okumoto and Mathews felt forced and too derivative, like it was trying too hard to be Travolta and Jackson in Pulp Fiction. On top of that, the conflict between the two when Coté arrives seems really inorganic. Okumoto barely has a chance to get to know her before he's ready to forsake his friendship with Mathews for her. Had she been paired with them from the start, and that scene where she fights a guy in the kitchen been removed (which didn't work for me), the conflict would've looked a lot better. Finally, the almost 2 hour runtime may have been the biggest issue I had. In part, we had elements like Lambert's past that I felt were superfluous-- why not just have Lambert be a crazy guy, and leave it at that, especially if that means getting rid of the kid aspect. Then we also fell into a trap of excitement by repetition. Gunfight after gunfight with no distinguishing qualities. Don't get me wrong, a lot of them were great, they just lost their punch after a while.



That leaves me I guess with the what do I think might have improved it. As I said above, the idea is perfect. A deadly game conducted inside of a prison before it's opened is great. I almost think more could've been done with that. There were some gunfights in the kitchen, but that was it. Also, we never really had a sense of the space. We'd see a character in one place, and the immediate scene after they'd appear in a totally different location. When I think of a prison, I think of a virtual island, but also an environment that can be completely controlled by an individual or a group of individuals, almost in the way that the island in The Tempest was controlled by Prospero's magic. All we had, though, was a lot of what looked like a high school, only with armed guards outside, and with Ice-T watching everything on security cameras. It would've been interesting to see Ice-T, or someone else in the film, play with the space some, open and close cells, sound alarms, set off sprinklers, find some riot gear, hose someone down with a fire extinguisher, anything like that-- in that Hong Kong cinema vein, where the set is a dynamic part of the action.

Another thing I thought about as I watched it, is why didn't a character hide out while everyone killed each other? Like a grizzled vet, a Lance Henriksen type who we see from time to time in thirty second shots, playing solitaire or reading Nietzsche in a janitor's closet or something, while the sounds of gunshots and violence rang out around him. Then, after enough of the players have killed themselves off, he pops in and gums up the works for the other characters who think they're close to the prize.



When I wrote the initial review, three years ago, I made a few jokes, as I often do, one of which said something to the effect of "the sped up film looked like a car commercial, which was probably what this director did before this." I would say Mr. Pyun would have been within his rights to hit me with a "you're a fat kid living in his parent's basement" crack, or even to not even waste his time with my little review blog. He didn't do that though; he instead commented in another post about how he liked being in the Hall of Fame, and joked about how I made it through some of his films like Cyborg and Omega Doom. It's possible in the Mean Guns review he knew I was kidding about the car commercial crack, but in a later post, someone commented that they "didn't like Pyun's work", and he didn't respond at all to it, instead posting a comment telling us what happened with Urban Menace. As a result of all of this, I now make it a priority to look at his work and get the word out there about him. It's an age old saying, you catch more flies with honey, but for smaller production companies and lesser named directors, you could learn something from Pyun's use of blogs like this. Instead of wanting to shout down every negative review and pick a fight with every "fat kid in his parents' basement", use us to your benefit, get us excited about your future projects. I can say he's also taught me a bit about catching more flies with honey...

All right, time to wrap up this second Mean Guns review. Albert Pyun announced on his Facebook page that he's looking to remake this film, setting it on the BP Deep Water Horizon oil rig. I think that could be really great. As far as this Mean Guns' availability, I got it on Netflix Watch Instantly, but Hulu has it as well. The problem with both is it's pan-and-scan. I believe the version I saw on TV was too, but I could be wrong about that. Netflix no longer has it available on DVD to rent though. There's a lot to recommend here, especially with Lambert and Ice-T (though I still don't like Ice-T's fight scenes), but it is 110 minutes long. As I said above, that's my main issue with it, because early on as I was watching it again, I was like "geez Poirier, what movie were you watching, this is pretty sweet", but it loses some steam, and never quite gets it back-- at least in my opinion. By all means, get in and comment on this and say what you think too.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119642/

Bloodmatch (1991)

Mr. Kenner over at Movies in the Attic brought it to my attention that Bloodmatch was available on Hulu. Sounded like a good idea to me, until I fire it up, and it was all choppy and jumpy. I know it's an issue with my computer, but I can't figure out why Hulu eats up so much RAM or whatever that I can't watch a film, but Netflix Watch Instantly runs fine. I will say that ESPN3.com also has the same issues on my computer that Hulu does, so I know it's not Hulu; but regardless, it was just unwatchable. Anyway, I tracked down my own copy of it, and here it is for you.

Bloodmatch has Albert Pyun mainstay Thom Mathews as a dude whose brother was beaten to death by some kickboxers for not throwing a fight. After torturing Michel Qissi into giving some names of those responsible, he has a nurse he knows help gather the four offending parties, through a combination of guns and chloroform, and tape them to seats in a Las Vegas arena. Matthews' plan is to fight each one to the death, until one gives up exactly who is responsible.



Let's start with the good. Solid fight scenes, an 81-minute runtime, and a boatload of genuinely great cheese. Perhaps best of all was the music, which seemed totally out of place in most places. It was like the sombre music you might find to the intro of a bad 1980s DTV sci-fi movie. Yet this music played over most of the film's best action. Your guess is as good as mine, but I'll take it over the bad Disturbed retreads we forced to listen to in a lot of today's bad actioners. Then there were the one-liners. "I'd love to kick the shit out of your head." Sure, why not, or rather, how awesome is that?

Now for the bad. Even at 81 minutes, there were some scenes of protracted dialog that were excruciating to deal with. If you're asking whether or not I think an 81-minute movie could be shorter, I guess I'd say, try replacing that patch of bad dialog/acting either with some more unintentionally funny stuff-- like people threatening to kick the shit out of people's heads-- or give us more or longer fights. The scene I'm specifically talking about was when the four suspects wake up from their chloroforming to find themselves taped to arena chairs. They just go back and forth with each other, and between the writing and the acting, it feels like it goes on forever. The other complaint I had was a lack of Vincent Klyn and Michel Qissi. First, in Qissi's case, you have the best fighter, and you use him for one scene at the beginning. Second, in Klyn, you have the coolest guy in the movie, and he's barely in his one scene slightly toward the middle. I know it's been almost 20 years since this came out, but maybe Pyun could go back and turn Bloodmatch into a buddy picture featuring Qissi and Klyn.



Speaking of Pyun, you can tell he was doing his best to put lipstick on a pig here, and I think he did a great job. Considering he didn't write the script, he couldn't help the awful scene in the arena I described above, and I imagine Klyn was only in the scene he was in as a favor to Pyun, essentially adding awesomeness that wasn't originally supposed to be there. Word on the street is that things are going well with the Tales of an Ancient Empire release, so we at the DTVC wish him continued success with that. I think the next film of his we'll review will be Nemesis 2.

Back of Warchild. Seriously. That's right, DTVC favorite Vincent Klyn is back. He's barely in the film, which often seems to be the case, where he's just lending his talents for a bit to help out Albert Pyun. I wonder if Kathryn Bigelow invited him to her Oscar winning party. Can you see Klyn bellying up to the caviar, loading up a cracker, and then someone puts a hand on his shoulder and says "Back off Warchild. Seriously."



Maybe I'm going way out on a limb here, but it seemed like Pyun was going for some real Film Noir tones, between the music, the way he had the actors recite the dialog, and some of the colors and shots. We know from films like Radioactive Dreams, and the newer Bulletface, that Pyun is a fan of Noir. Whether he did it on purpose or I'm imagining things (or being a Pyun apologist if you're so inclined), it just feels like he tries to make lemonade out of the lemon projects he's sent, and maybe in these earlier films that he did that it isn't so evident. It's one thing I think that's great about his current situation, where he seems to have more creative freedom and can make more of the pictures he wants. What's too bad, though, is that these new films aren't available on Netflix, where a wider audience would have access to them.

This is early-90s action cheese as only Pyun can do it. Bloody, great fights, funny dialog, and out of place music. Maybe I'm softer on these films than I am their modern counterparts, and I'm good with that accusation. If this film were made today, with someone other than Pyun at the helm (Isaac Florentine would be one exception, though), it would be ten kinds of nasty wrong, from the music, to the fights, to just the whole approach to the material. That's why you should skip those films, get someone with a nice computer that you can hook up to a nice TV, and stream Bloodmatch on Hulu for your bad movie night. I think you'll have a fun time.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101482/

Heatseeker (1995)

I'm always conflicted at the DTVC on whether I'd rather write the blog from the stand point of a regularly occurring phenomenon, or as an archive of film reviews that someone can go to and look at each one independent of the others. For instance, when I found my buddy's VHS of Heatseeker, I thought it would be great to review on the same week I planned on reviewing The One-Armed Swordsman and Master of the Flying Guillotine, because it was so similar to those two. On the other hand, if someone just clicks on the Albert Pyun or Gary Daniels tags, or a link in a future blog to them or anyone else associated with this movie, that provenance of the original post won't mean as much. I guess what I try to do is write for both types of reader, the everyday and the future visitor.

Heatseeker takes place in 2019-20, and is about corporations who specialize in cybernetic implants that enhance people's lives. Norbert Weisser is the evil CEO and head designer of one corporation, and he has completely outfitted Gary Daniels with state of the art equipment, and wants to show him off by having him fight against every other cybernetic implant corporation's best fighter. He also wants Keith Cooke, the world's best un-enhanced martial artist to compete, and when he refuses, Weisser kidnaps his woman and makes him. Can Cooke use the one quality humans have over machines, his heart, to prevail over the Tin Man Gary Daniels?



Some of the reviews of this film were pretty harsh, and though I wasn't a huge fan of it either, I think I see what Pyun was going for, and I was a fan of that. It looked like he wanted to take the Hong Kong cinema element of the handicapped fighter, the Zen concept of using a detriment to one's benefit, and put it in a futuristic setting. Instead of a one-armed boxer, Pyun's hero's one handicap is that he's a human fighting cyborgs, and the way he can use that handicap to his advantage is to be as human as possible. Again, I love the idea, it was the execution that was sautéed in wrong sauce. By having Cooke's character be forced into fighting, as opposed to fighting on his own to prove a point, we're forced to suffer through Cooke being knocked around for the first chunk of the film, so when he prevails at the end, it's much less believable. Imagine this: Cooke's lady forbids him to go, but he goes anyway, leaving her waiting at a hotel, just like the One-Armed Swordsman. Why not have him willingly fight, and no one else believe he has a chance because he's a human?

As you see I went with Gary Daniels' Max Headroom look. I've never understood the idea of making the lead actor's eyes a weird color. Remember when Terminal Justice did the same thing with Lorenzo Lamas. Anyway, Daniels was the baddie, but his martial arts were still pretty sweet. I would say, as far as DTVC Hall of Famers go, this was clearly Pyun's film, and Daniels was just along for the ride, as Keith Cooke was the hero, and it was more of a Pyun and Cooke film than a Pyun and Daniels film. Firepower will probably be our next Daniels film, whenever we get to it.



This film is a rarity in that it employs Keith Cooke, not as a part of the supporting cast, but as the main hero. Unfortunately, because he gets his ass kicked for a good chunk of the movie, he wasn't as good as he could've been, but I don't put that on him. Ever wonder what Mr. Cooke has been up to? Check this video out on YouTube.

One of the worst plot devices in movies is the play-by-play guy. Few things sound worse than an actor reading from a script, trying to mimic the spontaneity of real play-by-play accompanying a real sporting event. I see what Pyun was going for with it. The tournament was very Master of the Flying Guillotine and Enter the Dragon (Mr. Weisser, I think I'd like to leave your island), and the play-by-play, along with the TV screens and cyber martial artists, were supposed to follow that Cyber-Punk-fused-with-Hong-Kong-cinema paradigm. Again, cool idea, but just didn't translate well on the screen-- at least for me.



If you play the Albert Pyun drinking game, you know the key is looking for how many of his ubiquitous mainstays pop up in his various films. This time we had the aforementioned Weisser (who has the distinction of being his number one mainstay), Tim Thomerson, and Thom Mathews. Vincent Klyn must've been busy. The shot above, featuring two mainstays, would mean you'd have to drink double. One interesting thing to point out while we're on the subject of Norbert Weisser, and with last week's post on Hard Boiled, is that Weisser starred in Schindler's List, which just happens to be my number one film of the 90s.

I can't recommend a film based on effort or a cool idea that didn't quite come off. If you're looking for Hong Kong cinema fused with Cyber Punk, Albert Pyun actually has some great ones, like Cyborg and Nemesis; and then there's Omega Doom, which was a great Kurosawa fused with Cyber Punk flick. If what we're saying is one out of four didn't work, I'd say that isn't a bad ratio; and there were a lot of aspects of Heatseeker that did work, it was just the ones that didn't were enough to overshadow the ones that did. Also, this movie is only available on VHS. Figured I'd throw that out there.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113278/

Alien from L.A. (1988)

Like many people, I first saw this on MST3K. I didn't see that Albert Pyun directed it, and didn't put two-and-two together that the genius behind Cyborg directed a film panned by Mike and the 'Bots. Now, maybe fifteen years later, I have a blog where I review DTV movies, and Albert Pyun is in my Hall of Fame, so I have the task of watching it sans silhouettes.

Alien from LA has Kathy Ireland as geeky girl from the beach who finds out her professor-father fell down a bottomless pit in Northern Africa. She follows him out there, falls down the same pit, and finds herself in the lost city of Atlantis. Because this film was made in 1988, the locals don't call it Hotlantis or the ATLS, and the inhabitants look like something out of a 1984 New Wave video. Now Ireland has to find her dad, escape back to the surface, and put on that bikini we've all been waiting for her to wear.



This was hard to deal with without Mike and the 'Bots to mock it. Very slow, lots of things not happening. It's just this endless cycle of Ireland almost being caught by someone, escaping, telling people about herself, and then almost being caught again. Netflix described it as a slick retelling of Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth. I don't know if by "slick" they mean Deep Roy with disgustingly long, red eye lashes, but I didn't see a lot of slick going on. What it needed was Sasha Mitchell kicking people's asses. Cute and quirky works when something's happening, but nothing was happening here.

I wasn't sure if I should be hard on this or not considering I now know Albert Pyun is reading my posts. But when I found myself knee deep (Roy) in a plot that didn't look like it would ever resolve itself, I felt like I had to be honest. I do wonder, though, what it's like as a director to have a film used in an episode of MST3K. I've seen plenty here at the DTVC that could've been used, and one other, Future War, that was used, so it's always kind of crossed my mind. Is it an honor, is it taken in stride, or is it a low point? I will say, as far as Alien from LA goes, the MST3K commentary makes the film complete-- fills in the dull parts, if you will.



Kathy Ireland is supposed to be playing a type of ugly duckling that matures and becomes a beautiful swan by the end of the film. I didn't see it. She had big glasses that were very unflattering. Big deal, she's also very hot. She had a high-pitched voice. Again, big deal. It was only hard to listen to when she spoke loudly, which she barely did. I guess she wined a lot, which would've been tough to deal with, so maybe the point of the film was she learned to wine less, and became beautiful. I don't know.

The hero was played by a dude who's been in tons of Perry Mason TV movies. My mom eats that kind of stuff up, so I've seen him a bunch. He dons this atrocious Australian accent, which sounds fake right from the jump. How anyone can't do an Australian accent is beyond me. And you call yourself an actor? I think it's funny too when people mistake accents for dialects. Dialects are almost separate languages. Speaking a Russian dialect does not mean speaking English with a Russian accent, it means speaking an actual form of the Russian language.



Pyun mainstay Thom Mathews makes an appearance. Maybe I should tag him. I think he's been in like five or six other films on the DTVC. Norbert Weisser, another Pyun mainstay is tagged, along with Vincent Klyn. I think I did have him tagged at one time, but deleted it. Does it really matter? Are there any Thom Mathews fans out there that'll be upset if I don't? Are there any Norbert Weisser fans out there that are happy that I did? I'm a huge Vincent Klyn fan, and I'm stoked I tagged him.

If you're going to see this, make sure it's the MST3K version. You'll dig that one more. If you're looking for good Pyun, stick with Cyborg, Nemesis, Omega Doom, etc. More action, less snoozefactor.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092532/

Nemesis (1993)

This has been a long time coming. Nemesis is one of those movies the DTVC was made for, and it's one of those movies that should've probably been one of my first ever posts. But back then I didn't have a copy of the movie. I finally got around to ordering it on Amazon, and the front end of it was cracked, and it didn't look like it would play. I watched The Circuit 2 just in case I couldn't make it work, so I'd have another Gruner film to review in this spot. But alas, we made it, and here it is. Also, this is the maiden voyage of my video capture software which will allow me to grab images off VHS. Not great, but the video wasn't great, so given the circumstances, pretty good.

Nemesis takes place in 2027. In it Gruner plays a cop tracking terrorists, who's ambushed and pretty much dies. He's reborn with cybernetic parts, and Tim Thomerson sends him after an old cyborg flame of his to get some data from her. If he doesn't do it, a bomb in his heart will detonate and he'll be donezo. But things aren't what they seem in 2027, and Gruner doesn't know who's good and who's bad. He doesn't even know if he's human anymore, or what being human even means. Luckily for us, he recovers from this existentialist nightmare in time to kick some major ass.



I'm not sure if, other than maybe Stone Cold, there's been a more requested film on the DTVC. And the demand for it has only gone up since I've made a concerted effort to get more Gruner here. I actually realized when I watched it last night, that I'd seen it before. For some reason I thought Nemesis was something else. The film came out in 1993, and I probably watched it somewhere around then, so that's 15 or 16 years ago. It's crazy to think that.

This is a decent film. It's essentially a futuristic western, which is cool. The action and fighting are decent, with plenty of sweet explosions and gun play. There were tons of silly elements too, like the idea of Japan and The US merging, or that we'd annex Mexico and turn it into New America. And I have no clue what New Rio de Janeiro is. Did the Brazilians become a colonial empire in the future? Maybe all the soccer players and MMA fighters broke off and started their own country on an island in the Bahamas. The truth is, that kind of silliness makes the movie for me as much as the action does.



Gruner's great here. This is the fourth film of his we've reviewed, and I think it's right up there with The Circuit. Maybe just a bit behind it. But I can't argue with anyone who likes this better. Especially when one takes into account the mullet he has in one scene that looks like Adrian Paul in a Scottish Highlands flashback sequence. Amazing. As it stands right now I'm looking at Gruner and Gary Daniels as inductees for the 2009 class of the DTVC Hall of Fame. With the response I've gotten from readers about both actors, I think that'll go over well. Look for The Circuit 2 in the next 8 posts or so as his next film.

The last Pyun film we did was Cyborg, back on post 251 (it was supposed to be 250, but I miscounted, and Beer for my Horses with Toby Keith was 250), so it's been a whopping fifty entries since his last review. That's crazy, and I don't know how that happened, because he has quite a bit out there that still needs to be covered. I may do Alien From LA next, just because it would be interesting to see the non-MST3K version. As far as this film goes, I think going up and down the list of Pyun films, I put this right behind Cyborg, and maybe make it even with Omega Doom. I really like Omega Doom as a Yojimbo remake. This film really has those elements I like too: that kind of western/samurai movie set in the future. I'm excited to see what Tales of an Ancient Empire ends up looking like.



This is quite the ensemble cast. You have Pyun mainstays Tim Thomerson, Vincent Klyn, and Thom Mathews. Then there's DTVC faves Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa and Brion James. Then there's a cameo from Branscombe Richmond of Renegade fame. A young Thomas Jane plays Billy, and I must say he's more believable as Billy than he was as the Punisher. Sven-Ole Thorsen has one of the most memorable scenes, when he's blown away by an old lady. Finally, Marjean Holden has a part, and I don't remember seeing her. If you don't know who she is, then you've never seen the Beastmaster TV show, and it's possible you might be better for that. If there's one thing Pyun does well, he loads his films with talent.

This is a difficult find. You can either try Amazon and get it used on VHS, or search the bargain bins in your area and hope you strike gold. It's definitely a necessary watch, and it'll be worth it once you finally do track it down. Why this isn't available on DVD anymore and easier to come by is beyond me.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107668/

Crazy Six (1998)

I found this film looking up Albery Pyun on imdb. The mixture of Rob Lowe, Mario van Peebles, Burt Reynolds, and Ice-T seemed intriguing to me. After Ticker, which was another Pyun film that was something of an ensemble cast (featuring Steven Seagal, Dennis Hopper, and Tom Seizemore), I figured this one had a good chance of being entertaining.

Crazy Six is about Rob Lowe as the eponymous junkie conman living in Prague or something who gets involved with a hot Russian lounge singer right after he pulls off a bad job for Mario van Peebles that involves ripping off Ice-T. People kill other people, people double cross other people, Burt Reynolds plays a US cop living in Eastern Europe, and Rob Lowe gets the girl.

This was really bad. As bad as the name sounds. The beginning had this exposition that read like a post-apocalyptic thriller, only it was describing Eastern Europe post-communism. Not only that, but the titles and graphics in that beginning looked more like a low-budget state funded student film airing on the CBC. I won't lie, I can accept that kind of production if I'm watching Degrassi Junior High, but a film maker should have a different set of goals. Beyond that, the film had it's moments, with the hilarity of Lowe and Mario van Peebles' characters; but overall there was way too little action for this to be anything but boring.



Rob Lowe has been in the news recently for various indiscretions. This comes after he'd had a huge career comeback post The West Wing. Crazy Six was made before that comeback, when Lowe was still living down his first scandal. That doesn't mean he's a Dennis Hopper or Tom Seizemore-- someone that's a great actor who a Pyun can get on the cheap because of his problems in Hollywood. Lowe doesn't really bring it here. He looks as ridiculous as his name with his mullet and moustache, and his acting doesn't really elevate an otherwise silly character, rather relegates it to that head shaking level, where everytime we see him on screen, we just say "no".

I got a kick out of Ice-T. Pyun really wastes him, and I have to assume because he's a Pyun mainstay, he took this rather small, one-dimensional role, as a favor to his buddy. For the most part, Ice-T spends the films with a look on his face like he smells something funny. Then, at the very end, when he gets his one scene where he has some legitimate acting to do, he actually turns in the best performance other than Burt Reynolds. That one scene might be the coolest thing I've seen Ice-T do as far as acting goes after the Player Hater's Ball on The Chapelle Show.



Burt Reynolds made no sense in this, but he did a great job. Unlike Lowe, who couldn't transcend a poorly conceived character, Reynolds shined. He played a US cop working in Eastern Europe, for whatever reason. Do a lot of American cops work in Eastern Europe? What do the local cops in those countries think of this? Are we paying for these cops with government money? Either way, if this was the kind of stretch Pyun needed to make to get Reynolds in the film, I can't begrudge him that. He could've made him a Martian sent to Eastern Europe to protect Rob Lowe, and I would've been cool with it. In fact, I'd have liked it better.

Mario van Peebles plays a French ganglord, and he has the worst French accent ever. He's not speaking like someone who speaks English as a second language, but English with a little French mixed in and an occasional "th" replaced with a "d". At some points he loses the accent all together, like he stopped trying. Why he had the hubris to think he could pull this off is beyond me. But if he didn't, though, it wouldn't have been as funny or entertaining, so I guess I shouldn't be complaining too much.



One quick note. Two Pyun mainstays other than Ice-T feature in this. Norbert Weisser has done 16 films with Pyun, of which I've reviewed 5 (Captain America, Adrenalin: Fear the Rush, Ticker, Omega Doom, and now Crazy Six). Then there's Thom Mathews, who's done 11 films with Pyun, of which I've reviewed 3 (Mean Guns, Kickboxer 4: The Aggressor, and now Crazy Six-- though it's important to note he was also in the MST3K classic Alien From LA, which Pyun also directed.).

Overall, I'd avoid this. It's too boring: the action is too sparse, and the plot itself is too useless to invest anything in. That's too bad, because if you see this at your local rental store or on Netflix, you'll probably want to check it out, just based on the cast. You can watch it at your own peril, but I'm warning you, it's pretty rough.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118897/

Mean Guns (1997)

I saw this on Encore Action while looking for something on a Thursday evening when the Sox were off. I caught it from the middle, and when I saw it again in it's entirety, I got a whole different perspective on the film. Let's just say missing the first 45 minutes might not have been a bad thing.

Mean Guns is about some mob group called The Syndicate, of which Ice-T is some kind of head dude or something. The Syndicate takes a prison they had just built, and uses it to put 100 people who have ripped them off before and have them kill each other off, with the last three standing sharing in a prize of 10 million dollars. Actually, we find out only 99 of them double crossed the syndicate. DTVC Hall of Famer Christopher Lambert plays a nutjob hitman who just happened to be in the area killing his ex-wife and her new boyfriend and kidnapping his daughter, and asked Ice-T if he could join in on the macabre game. There's another hitman named Marcus, who seems a tad more altruistic, and he takes a middle-aged female accountant under his wing to keep her safe. As far as I can tell, this Marcus is the protagonist, and we're rooting for him to win. I won't give away the ending.



I was annoyed by this film. There was this mambo music that kept playing in the background that was either supposed to be funny, ironic, or both, but was really just difficult to deal with after a while. I'll take a bad Jan Hammer wannabe and a C.C. Deville derivative any day. The director also did a lot of sped up film and sped up shaky film. It didn't look cool, it looked like a bad car commercial. Maybe that's what the guy did before he did this film.

I must admit, I don't always get Ice-T. I get him as a musician or on Law and Order, but in these bad action movies where they try to make him Samuel L. Jackson, it just doesn't wash. The extended slo-motion walk sequence where we just watched Ice-T didn't work for me. Him doing karate on people didn't work either. When I saw this the first time and missed 45 minutes, the Ice-T character just sat in his command base and watched what people were doing, waiting for the final three. That worked for me. Get rid of the silly martial arts and the contrived toughness, and you've got a badass baddie.

Christopher Lambert is pretty sweet in this. He plays a nutjob hitman, as I mentioned above, and he plays it well. He doesn't have much to work with, but he seems to be the most comfortable in the skin of a bad action movie character. Most people I know only saw this film for Lambert, and I'd say it's worth it. It's no Fortress, but it'll do. I guess it's not as ridiculous, but it's also not as much fun to watch.



I'm not sure if the intent for this film was a send up of the bad action genre, but if that's the case, it was a bad job. I've seen this type of movie done well (Torque), and I think if it's done poorly, it makes the film makers look not as smart as they think they are. There were plenty of moments that looked like they were played up for laughs, like these two buddy hitmen, but the lines were so poorly written and the action so poorly done, that instead of laughing I got a headache. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt, and just say they were trying to add some humor to a bad action movie.

The moral of this story is: don't try to dress up a bad action movie with what you think is fancy film FX or humor through irony. We as bad action connoisseurs would rather you skip that and give us the all the shooting and ass kicking we need. I'd recommend this movie as far as a rental, or if you have On Demand, you can get it free from now until July. It's fun to make fun of, and I guess even more fun to make fun of how good they think they are. Also, I'd skip the first 45 minutes, because that's where you really get to the crux of the bad action. The fat's been cut off by then.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119642/

Kickboxer 4: The Aggressor (1994)

I first saw this film on FX. I had seen the first three (one with Van Damme, and two and three with Sasha Mitchell), and I had some time to kill before I met a friend for lunch. Not only did this movie put me in the right frame of mind, but it gave us something to talk about over our meal.

Kickboxer 4: The Aggressor has Sasha Mitchell falsely accused of murder by the Evil Tong Po, and sent to prison. About a year and a half in, he's called out by federal investigators because his woman has been kidnapped by the Po Dawg. They send him down to the compound in Mexico, where Mitchell sneaks into the kickboxing tourney Po's throwing. As you can imagine, the Evil Tong Po wants nothing to do with Mitchell, because he kicks Po's ass whenever they fight. He was right to be worried: a pissed off Mitchell chases him to some outside banquet setting, and beats the tar out of him.

You know a movie is good, when the bad guy kills people for strange reasons. The Evil Tong Po kills some of the tourney fighters after he announces the fight is to the death, and they don't want to fight like that. His guys on the balcony with Uzis mow them down. I just didn't get that at all: "What, you don't want to break people's necks in the tried and true bad action movie method of turning the head to one side? I'm going to shoot you for that."

You also know a movie is good when people don't do a great job playing dead. In one scene, the Evil Tong Po shows Mitchell the undercover federal agent and chick that he killed. If you keep your eye on the woman as Po and Mitchell go back and forth, you can see her breathing. As a DTV veteran, I look for that kind of stuff in the background, because I've heard the dialogue so many times before.

I dug Mitchell in this. He's understandably pissed off, and as a viewer, you just can't wait for him to start kicking ass. The Evil Tong Po comes off more as the annoying kid who played a prank on Mitchell (kidnapped his wife), and now he's paying the price. I just never saw Po as a potential threat to our boy.

Class of 1999 II saw Mitchell as a bad guy, and I couldn't get behind it. On the other hand, I liked Mitchell as the brooding, angry, good guy. It added a dimension to his ass kicking. I wish he'd go back to DTV, but according to IMDb, he hasn't done anything since ER in 2005. If he's through, that would be an unfortunate waste of talent.

The problem with this film is the Evil Tong Po. By number four, we've had it with him. He was an amazing villain in the first one, where he fought Van Damme at the end. But here, we knew he was going to get the snot beaten out of him. Besides, Po is kind of gross looking. I nearly threw up when I saw him licking Mitchell's wife. I would've like Po replaced by a real villain like Gary Busey. I know what you're thinking, how could Busey be a threat to Mitchell? The answer's simple: they could've made him a cybernetic Gary Busey, with super human strength that Mitchell would've had to overcome. That would've been hot.

This movie's worth a look at if you've seen the others. It's packaged with some other movie--I can't remember what, but that kind of defrays the cost for you. This movie has all the elements for a bad movie night rental: bad acting, bad script, bad plot, and bad editing. Your friends will enjoy it.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110255/

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/