Cyclone (1987)

The Cyclone the title is referring to is a motorcycle created by Rick Davenport (Jeffrey Combs) that doubles as a military weapon. It’s equipped with lasers, guns and six rockets. It can reach unimaginable speeds and perform practically any stunt. Even the helmet is decked out. It comes with a radar system that speaks and it also shoots lasers. It’s like a ten year old’s wet dream come true!

Making that wet dream even better is Teri Marshall (Heather Thomas), Jeffrey’s girlfriend. She doesn’t know of his government job. She soon discovers when two punks, Rolf (Dar Robinson) and Hanna (Dawn Wildsmith), stab him in the back of the neck with an ice pick while they were out at the club. They’re hired goons of Bosarian (Martin Landau, having fun chewing up the scenery), who wants the transformer to the Cyclone to sell. Why he wouldn’t want the whole bike is beyond me.

While this sounds like a ton of fun, and certainly is at times, it’s not quite the enjoyable experience I was hoping for. The Cyclone doesn’t get used to it’s full potential until the finale. It races around town for a bit (in quite a few montages that drag a bit) and gets in a wicked car chase at one point. But, the lasers and rockets and whatnot don’t get busted out until near the end. I understand why Fred Olen Ray did this. He was building up the suspense and hitting the money shot at the end. While I respect this decision, I feel he stumbled a bit on the way there.

The main issue with “Cyclone” is that it can be boring. A lot of the dialogue can be atrocious and I found some talk heavy scenes to drag. For a film that’s only eighty-three minutes long, it sure has a lot of padding. I’ll give credit to the actors; they do their best with the material. Heather Thomas can be a bit flaky at times, but she handles herself well and is the camera’s best friend. Jeffrey Combs is quite charming in his brief role as her boyfriend and the two surprisingly have chemistry together. Dar Robinson is a hoot as Rolf, while Landau is fun to watch as his boss.

Olen Ray adds some comic relief in the form of two bumbling cops played by Tim Conway, Jr. and Michael Reagan. While they do score some laughs (them falling asleep while on a stakeout made me chuckle), they felt woefully out of place. They add nothing to the story and only waste time. I’m not so sure if Fred was filling dead air or if he just wanted the two of them in his film. It’s quite possible the latter is the case and he penned them in at the last minute.

I need to quit bitching and moaning! While I had my fair share of issues with “Cyclone”, I also had my fair share of fun with it. Though the action sequences only appear sporadically, they deliver on the goods. Olen Ray doesn’t hold back in the finale and goes balls to the wall (replete with a gargantuan amount of explosions). I just wish the road there wasn’t so bumpy.

MVT: Heather Thomas. She may have been flaky in spots, but she was good overall and held her own. She played the eye candy up to the camera, but handled herself well when it came to the action. She was a good choice for the role.

Make or Break: The finale. It saved the film for me. Honorable mention goes to the car chase in the middle, where the goons’ car gets ripped in half.

Final Score: 6/10

Hollywood Cop (1987)

Director/Writer: Amir Shervan

Cast: David Goss, Julie Schoenhofer, Lincoln Kilpatrick, James Mitchum, Troy Donahue, Cameron Mitchell, Aldo Ray

When you think of memorable action film henchmen, Goldfinger’s Oddjob, Lethal Weapon’s Mr. Joshua, and Al Leong from roughly 90% of 1980s action cinema spring to mind. Unfortunately, not every worthy henchman gets the notoriety he deserves. Animal, the bearded and oft-cackling henchman in 1987’s Hollywood Cop, falls into this category not simply because of the film’s relatively low profile, but because director Amir Shervan failed to include the actor’s name in the credits. This was but one in a flurry of egregious errors in Shervan’s American directorial debut, where the hair is feathered, the aviators are polished, and the jeans and jackets are a little on the snug side.

The audience gets its introduction to Animal in the film’s opening scene, where members of a gang are gathered poolside at the Feliciano mansion before an important operation. Feliciano (Mitchum) has carefully planned the kidnapping of the son of Joe Fresno, a former associate who screwed him out of a large sum of money. He demands that no one be left alive with the exception of the mother. Animal assures him that he’ll “kill them all” and then cackles maniacally. In response, Feliciano asks that the rest of the gang keep an eye on Animal because “he’s strange.”

Shortly before the kidnapping, single mother Rebecca (Shoenhofer) is grappling with the latest of her son’s mischievous outbursts. Little Stevie is washing a goat for the third time that day. Perhaps this is forgivable since they live on a ranch, but chronic goat-washing is the type of behavioral problem endemic to single-parent households. On the bright side, the kidnapping itself is a rousing success. The gang guns down several fleeing ranch hands before wrestling the terrified boy from his screaming mother’s arms. Raises for everyone!

Rebecca is left with a ransom letter demanding $6 million and forbidding police involvement. To whom can she turn for help? The police, of course. She crosses paths with L.A. cop John “Turkey” Turquoise (Goss), fresh off a recent rape and robbery bust that leaves three perpetrators dead and one officer violently ill after witnessing a beheading. Turkey is that ultra-rare breed of cop who works by his own rules and is regularly chastised as a loose cannon by superiors Capt. Bonano (Mitchell) and Lt. Maxwell (Donahue). From what I can tell, he doesn’t live on a houseboat however. Turkey and his partner, Jaguar (Kilpatrick), take Rebecca’s case and vow to bring her son back safely.

Having seen Shervan’s Samurai Cop a few years ago, I expected Hollywood Cop to be its sloppier and even more inept grandfather since it was filmed two years beforehand. Instead, I was surprised to find that this was the (slightly) more polished of the two. While so many of Samurai Cop’s weird moments could be attributed to an inexperienced cast, Hollywood Cop is chock full of grizzled veterans. Mitchum looks bloated but is suitably irritable as crime boss Feliciano, while Mitchell and Donahue do a bit more than cash checks in their limited screen time. The real standout here is Lincoln Kilpatrick, who looks like he’s having a blast as the oversexed and appropriately named Jaguar. Had blues legend Billie Holiday not encouraged him to pursue a career in acting, it's unlikely that he ever would have found himself performing alongside Sidney Poitier in the original Broadway production of "A Raisin in the Sun," or oil-wrestling two busty chicks in a completely unnecessary nightclub scene here. Thanks again for everything Lady Day.

The film’s action scenes are lively, for the most part. The foot pursuit near the beginning of the film which introduces the audience to Turkey leads to a severed hand and subsequent decapitation, both by machete. The shootout sequences contain some of the most wildly inconsistent behavior in the midst of gunfire I’ve ever seen. In one instance, a baddie writhes and twitches after taking several shots before sliding down a staircase to a (dead) stop. That’s reasonable. Just a few minutes later though, his cohort takes a shot to the arm and winces as if pressing on a fresh sunburn. During a climactic gun battle, Turkey shields Rebecca from gunfire by lying on top of her on the ground. This kind of selflessness would be admirable were it not for him sticking his ass in the air in a seductive manner. To quote a Beastie Boys lyric: “in the animal kingdom, they call it presenting.”

This was Shervan’s first American production, and it shows. Actors routinely talk over one another, a boom mic is visible during a scene without any dialogue, and he frequently films scenes with obstructive objects -- such as counter-tops and asses -- in the foreground. Shervan also spends much more time than is necessary on Stevie’s captivity and as far as child actors go, he’s pretty awful. Most of his lines occur in an attempted conversation with a Doberman guard dog. Yup.

Make or Break: The lone car chase near the back-end of the film. Sure, the vehicles Shervan chose are the types of shitboxes you'd inherit from a deceased grandparent. There's little flow, no real sense of danger, and the camera angles are pretty dull. However, even a scene as plodding as this still results in a ramped car, a man on fire, and a carsplosion within a 40-second time-frame. As an intersection of Shervan’s desire for visual bombast and his inability to properly execute it, this sequence was a clear make.

MVT: Director Amir Shervan. Even when the execution is clunky, his approach to filmmaking is sincere and the results are entertaining. When his dialogue is unrealistic and his characters' actions are inconsistent with acceptable human behavior, we dig him all the more for it.

Score: 6.25/10

Hollywood Cop isn’t a good film by most standards but like so many other action films of the 1980s, its charm lies in its flaws. This is “beers and buds” fodder and a pretty enjoyable watch for what it is. Even if you don’t dig the action, the bearded thespian behind the Animal character is a revelation.

Dead End City (1988)

I would only recommend “Dead End City” to two groups of people. The first being those who have run the gamut on the thugs taking over subgenre. The others being those who have devoured the tastier Robert Z’Dar projects. Both are utilized here, but not to their full potential. There are delicious nuggets of both, but a lot of vanilla content in between.

The film starts out very promising. Gangs have overtaken the town with the police force not being able to strike back. Their solution is to simply give up their property to the gangs and ship the victims off to a refugee camp. Jack Murphy (Greg Cummins) doesn’t want to give up his factory due to it being a family heirloom. Begrudgingly, his coworkers (including a blind man who constantly forgets he’s blind) stick with him to defend the factory.

The gang that wants to overthrow Jack is The Ratts, led by Maximum (Robert Z’Dar). Despite him being the leader, it’s clear he’s not running the whole show. I won’t spoil who is, but it’s pretty obvious. This limits Z’Dar’s screen time, which is a huge deficit. Despite him seemingly phoning in his performance, he still brings the Z’Dar charisma that is entertaining to watch. Nobody will mistake Z’Dar for a splendid actor, but he has tremendous screen presence!

More time is devoted to Jack and his crew, which gets beefier with the arrival of Opal Brand (Christine Lund), a television reporter who brings along her crew. They’re plan is to get a quick, biased story on Jack and his coworkers, framing them to be another gang. When a real gang demolishes their car (it looks like a wrecking ball hit it), they’re stranded in the abandoned factory, as well. There’s also a hyperactive gentlemen who drops by to hide out, but he’s disposable (enough that I don’t even care to look him up).

The first action sequence, which takes place before Opal’s arrival, is extremely entertaining. Jack and company have a shootout with The Ratts that’s a little different from the norm. Our heroes stay locked up in the factory, poking holes in the walls to shoot out of. The walls themselves can be easily shot through, which poses a problem for Jack and the rest, but it obscures them from the Ratts’ view.

Once this scene ends, the film goes downhill. It never reaches the depths of drudgery, but it becomes very rudimentary. Jack and Opal fall in love, despite having no chemistry; we get to learn about the rest of Jack’s crew, who aren’t that interesting (outside of the aforementioned blind man); we learn who’s really behind the operation (which is about as surprising as a hooker having venereal diseases); Z’Dar gets limited screen time to plot with his cronies. We still get the occasional action sequence, all of which are good. They just go from diverse to average.

One compliment I must give director Peter Yuval is in the scene where Jack, having learned who’s behind the operation, goes back to the factory. When he enters, all of the dead bodies from earlier are still strewn about the building. He tiptoes over them to get to his destination. This is a small blip on the radar, but one that I really enjoyed. It was a nice, tiny touch that Yuval made that showed he was trying to be creative.

“Dead End City” isn’t a bad film. It’s definitely entertaining in spots. However, it plays by the book too heavily after the first act and has some serious dry spots. Using Robert Z’Dar a bit more would have helped, as he was his charismatic self as Maximum. He may have seemed a bit less energetic, but still fun. If you haven’t explored most of his catalogue, I suggest starting with “Trained to Kill”, “Maniac Cop” and “Tango & Cash”. If you haven’t seen many gang films, I suggest starting with “Vigilante” and “The Warriors”. If you have seen those, then seeing “Dead End City” is at least worthwhile. Just not something you need to rush out and find.

MVT: Despite not being featured as heavily as I’d hoped, I’ll still choose Robert Z’Dar. He may be phoning it in, but he’s still a lot of fun as Maximum and gives Jack a good foil.

Make or Break: I almost want to say the first action sequence made the film for me, but the arrival of Opal Brand (which is a terrible name, by the way) broke the film for me. She didn’t add anything outside of a bland love interest and led the way in dragging the film down with lame character exposition.

Final Score: 5.5/10

Wardogs (1987)

Ever since I basked in the glory that was “Deadly Prey”, I had been in search of a low budget action flick to stand toe to toe with the GGtMC classic. I’ve perused through thrift stores and dug around the wonderful world of the internet. It’s when I wasn’t looking that I stumbled upon the next golden action extravaganza. While on a trip to pick up “The Iron Giant” at my local video store, I stumbled upon a VHS copy of “Wardogs (The Assassination Team).

This bucket of cheese was released by Vista Home Video. It comes in one of those mini clam shells that stick out in your collection, demanding attention. The cover is adorned by two soldiers equipped with guns starting off into the distance. Behind them is a flaming truck that just exploded. It perfectly signifies what this film is about.

The CIA has a secret organization of “wardogs”. These are vets who have been drugged and brainwashed by Spacek (Bengt Fridh) to kill innocent civilians. When his brother, Rick, is pronounced dead, Charles Stewart (Timothy Earle) believes it to be a lie. No body came back; just an urn filled with supposed ashes. With the help of reporter Dean Daniels (Gunnar Ernblad), he tracks down the truth and bites off more than he can chew.



A new war is waged between Rick and the “wardogs”. These soldiers are nearly invincible, acting more like cyborgs than human beings. They can take many bullets without flinching and have the deadliest chops outside of a kung fu film. They’re also highly trained with guns and have recruited some excellent snipers. When they strike, a pile of bodies is left behind.

There are two distinct action sequences that stand out in this film. The first comes early and it takes place at a gas station. This gas station is apparently owned by Coca-Cola, since ads and bottles of the product are strewn about the place. It’s like walking into Buffalo Bill’s house if he were addiced to Coca-Cola. The only other product (besides gas) that the owner seemed to be selling were Marlboros. I guess they needed to gain the budget somehow.

At this gas station, the “wardogs” ambush innocent civilians and pump bullets into all of them. Children aren’t exempt, as one little boy is pumped full of lead. Just a few moments earlier, he watched as his father, who was giving him ice cream, was shot point blank in the head. Then he watched his grandmother have multiple bullets driven into her back. It’s a gruesome scene.



The other action sequence takes place at an amusement park. The “wardogs” find Charles and Dean there and go to town on them and anybody in their way. One poor schmuck got shot atop of the water slide. He got to take the ride, but wasn’t conscious for it. His bloody carcass slipped down the slide and dropped into a pool full of people. Simply glorious!

Despite a low budget, the action itself looks good and Bjorn Carlstrom and Daniel Hubenbecher seemed to be blessed with an infinite amount of guns, tanks, cars, grenades and explosions. Every ten minutes or so something’s being blown to smithereens. None of it looks hokey. A lot of it looks more convincing than recent action movies of the past few years.

The only true downfall of the film (as the directorial mistakes are minor) is the ending. It goes from being an action film to a horror film. The finale acts more like the conclusion of a slasher film than it does a high-octane action orgasm. It comes out of left field and feels strained. I understand what Carlstrom and Hubenbecher were going for. It simply needed to be inserted into another film.

In my quest to find a successor to “Deadly Prey”, I feel I’ve finally found the holy grail. Just like that film, this is a wild and crazy action film that could only be found on the home video market. The creators don’t give a damn about good filmmaking and just want to feed junkies’ minds for an hour and a half. “Wardogs” delivered on that.



MVT: I’m going to go with Bengt Fridh as Spacek. Though he doesn’t have a lot of screen time, he makes the most of his role. He plays the stereotypical action villain to a tee and sports a wicked wife beater.

Make or Break: I could go with either action sequences I mentioned earlier. I’ll stick with the amusement park, as that was in the middle of the film. That solidified what type of action movie this was going to be; a cheesefest. That’s exactly what I wanted.

Final Score 8/10