The Actioneer

Coming Attractions: The Expendables 2

2011-12-16T13:38:00.005-06:00

Prepare to be enraptured, kiddies - the Expendables hath returned - and to sweeten the deal, Sly has crammed Norris and JCVD in his sparklin' new action package. Oh yeah, he's also brought "Hemsworth" along for the ride. No, not the one you sorta liked in Thor, but the one who melted your heart in Miley Cyrus' coming-of-age critical darling, The Last Song.

This time, Santa Fe Film Critics Circle-award winner Simon West is at the helm. Can he re-capture that Con Air magic of yore? We'll find out third financial quarter, next year.

Death at 24fps: Under Siege

2011-05-26T11:28:00.005-05:00

The Movie: Under Siege (1994)
The Perp: Casey Ryback (Steven Seagal)
The Victim: Bill Strannix (Tommy Lee Jones)

SPECIAL ACTION NOTE: For our readers South of the Border, today’s death is presented with Spanish subtitles.

Under Siege kicked off a three year-period known as Tommy Lee Mania – in which character actor Tommy Lee Jones would appear in every other film the Hollywood Dream Machine churned out. In this one, Tommy plays tie-dyed harmonica blower Bill Strannix, who fronts a rockin’ white blues band with a little sideline selling Tomahawk cruise missiles on the black market. Steven Seagal, more of World music fan himself, takes exception to Tommy’s brand of the blues. He expresses this sentiment with a knife through the Coronal suture. After filming, Steve retired to his trailer to cut a few hot demos for his genre-spanning meisterwerk, Songs From the Crystal Cave.

Most unnecessary release of the 2000s?

2011-05-03T10:18:00.001-05:00

Or most flagrant misuse of the word “classic”? You decide.

Rambo (The Ballad of Wayne Scott)

2011-04-27T16:07:00.004-05:00

Music critics generally agree that the “Golden Era” of Italian Disco began in 1976 and ended somewhat abruptly in 1985. Coincidentally that was the same year that American expat Wayne Scott released this homoerotic floor-filler.

Scott looked in the mirror one day and realized he bore a striking resemblance to music superstar Frank Stallone. Weeks later, he stumbled into an Italian cinema, where Frank’s brother Sylvester’s Rambo: First Blood II played to excited audiences. A bolt resounded from the blue – Sylvester Stallone looked a lot like his brother Frank! Also, Rambo II was a popular film.

The Gods of Marketing Synergy had smiled upon young Scott. In a rush of euphoria, he grabbed a notebook and scribbled the words that would become “Rambo (This Time We’re Gonna Win.)” Hooking up with legendary producer Tino Nonzilla – he constructed a mournful elegy of patriotism, vengeance and steaming man sweat – all set to swirling helicopter sound effects.

The single was released two weeks later. Wayne was riding high on fame and Brandy Alexanders. He hired a few Chinese immigrants from a local junkyard to appear as Vietcong in his national television debut.

The cameras rolled, the stage lights shined – Wayne walked out with a red bandana tied tight, gripping his M60 tighter. He lip synced his heart out, took karate kicks at the immigrants, flexed his gym-toned biceps. The audience responded with a puzzled yawn.

The next week, Wayne Scott forlornly returned to his job fixing transmissions at a Fiat dealership just outside of Genoa. In the ensuing years, he tried to recapture the magic, recording further singles like “Cobra (Do The Slither)”, “Demolition Man (Unfreeze Your Love)” and “Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot (No Shooting on The Dance Floor)” – but at that point the Italian public had grown more interested in ignoring songs based on Bruce Willis movies.

Then one day Wayne Scott simply disappeared – leaving no forwarding address, just a scrap of paper on which was scrawled a recipe for “Scott’s Super Sweet and Creamy Brandy Alexander.”

Locals say on dark windy nights they can hear still his voice, singing sweetly from somewhere high up in the Apennine Mountains…

“This time I feel so strong, I’ll sing the winners’ song, I’ll do it all alone, I’ll bring the boys back home…”

Death at 24fps: Universal Soldier: Regeneration

2010-04-08T10:30:00.001-05:00

You may have missed it but last year, but the good people at Sony Pictures Home Entertainment blessed us with another entry in the venerable Universal Soldier series. Promisingly, this one re-teamed original stars Van Damme and Lundgren in what promised to be a real return to form for the sagging franchise. And while Universal Soldier: Regeneration is not what one might call a failure, it’s not quite the slam-bang action thriller we all probably wanted.

Unfortunately most of the movie belongs to stone-faced UFC pit-dog Andrei Arlovski. Saggy-eyed Van Damme looks like he’s been swallowing pharmaceutical-quality Quaaludes as he sleepwalks throughout his scenes – in fact, he wrapped up his portion of the film in a hasty 20 days.

Probably the biggest insult is that Herr Dolph has been hastily shoehorned in for what amounts to a glorified cameo. Lundgren occupies the screen for all of ten minutes. His appearance is completely illogical, save to stick his Nordic mug on the DVD cover. If you feel cheated, you’ve every right to - although his super grisly death scene is pretty memorable.

Alas, saint that I am, the Actioneer has already presented it to you in all its glory.

Move on, kids…nothing else to see here.

Soundtrack Spotlite: Talons of the Eagle

2010-02-13T13:02:00.002-06:00

80’s cinema was rife with inspirational anthems of victory. Lyrics chronicled men and women with their backs against the wall - whose indomitable American spirit allowed them to triumph over the odds and defeat Communism, ninjas, high school bullies, power mad industrialists, narcoterrorists and guerilla insurgents.

Some of these rousing melodies still resonate with us today (“You’re the Best”, “Winner Takes All”, “The Touch”). Some are long forgotten (“Fight to Survive”, “Tales of Power”). And some are “Talons of the Eagle”.

Talons of the Eagle was a tepid effort from “The Lebanese Steven Seagal”, Jalal Merhi. It marked the first of his three collaborations with Tae Bo huckster, Billy Blanks. The movie is of little interest unless you’re curious about what ever happened to “that chick who replaced Suzanne Somers on Three’s Company”.

The theme song though, is something else entirely. To a chugging, mid-tempo backdrop of Toronto’s least-enthused studio musicians, Jonas J. Patricko implores that “you’ve got to learn to play the game, always stay cool” and that “you’ve got to stay strong to survive.” As it blares past the two-minute mark, one longs for the lyrical profundity of Stan Bush…the studio wizardry of Jan Hammer…and then with the last off-key wailing of the wedding band reject back-up singer it ends – and peace once again falls upon the land.

But how long before Patricko strikes again?

Keep your firearms at the ready, Actionettes.

Hello Again, Actionettes

2009-12-26T11:03:00.004-06:00

Me with my adoptive Jopanyali family: (from left) Abbo, Kissa, Mangeni, Magomu, Namono, Nasiche, Madongo, Mulogo, Ogwambi.

No doubt by now you are wondering as to my sudden lapse in communications. Truth be told, I have been hired on special assignment by the Ugandan government to eradicate a local warlord. I subsist on a diet of millet, groundnuts and when lucky - goat meat. The people here are peaceful and warm-hearted. They hold strong to truth, freedom, justice and the other tenets upon which which our forefathers built our Great Nation. For reasons of security and personal safety I cannot reveal my exact location but know this - I think of you daily, my Actionettes, and when next I have a VCR and computer handy I will continue my chronicle of this great and terrible thing we call the Actionverse. Until then...

Death and Bad Acting at 24fps: No Dead Heroes

2009-10-16T10:12:00.003-05:00

The Movie: No Dead Heroes (1986)
The Perp: Harry Cotter (John Dresden)
The Victims: The Cotter Family

Yes, and it doesn't get much worse than this. No Dead Heroes was a bargain basement Filipino cheapie produced during the height of the Cold War Era. Its plot, such as it was, involved an US Army lieutenant kidnapped by the KGB, implanted with a mind-controlling microchip and set forth on a mission to assassinate the Pope.

In this charming scene, KGB officer Ivan has sent Lieutenant Harry on a little test run. Now this 'test run,' a product of the deviant and twisted Soviet hive-mind, involves having the hapless drone wipe out his whole family. Oh, those Reds!

The film is rife with horrendous dubbing and even worse acting. Just witness, these people can't even die convincingly...

Bad FX Spotlite: Hologram Man

2009-10-02T11:56:00.004-05:00

Welcome to the Actioneer's latest and greatest feature: Bad FX Spotlite - a special showcase for those visual effects masters whose special achievements weren't quite recognized by the Academy. There's always next year, fellas. Until then you'll have to settle for the Spotlite.

Evan Lurie is a man of many talents, first and foremost his utilization of the "Chinese Balls Technique" for wooing women (watch out, Derek Evans!). As highlighted in the film Hologram Man (1995), he can also transform into an awkward, paunchy wax figurine that bears only a passing resemblance to him. How he utilizes this in the bedding of the fairer sex, remains to be seen. Conversation starter perhaps? Well, a better one than, "Have you ever seen the movie Poltergeist?"

Death at 24fps: American Yazuka 2

2009-09-29T15:09:00.003-05:00

The Movie: American Yakuza 2 (1996)
The Perp: Koji (Ryo Ishibashi)
The Victim: Psycho (Bobcat Goldthwait)

American Yazuka 2 is a remarkably forgettable mobsters-and-coppers romp remembered by few save Danielle Harris’ semi-pedophilic cult. It does, however, provide sweet schadenfreude for all you haters of 1980’s comic curiosity Bobcat Goldthwait. Bob has a brief cameo as “Psycho,” a mentally imbalanced terrorist-without-a-cause who straps himself with dynamite and holds the local greasy spoon hostage. Little does Bob know, two Yazuka are among the clientele - and Koji (Ryo Ishibashi) and Hideo (Kô Takasugi) don’t appreciate anybody getting in between them and their Moons Over My Hammy®...

Death at 24fps: Cyborg Cop III

2009-09-25T10:46:00.004-05:00

The Movie: Cyborg Cop III (1995)
The Perp: thug (Sir Anthony Hopkins)
The Victim: Evelyn (Jennifer Miller)

Kids, always remember: crime happens when you least expect it. One night you may be innocently walking out to your car and then WHAM! out of nowhere, some thug knocks you unconscious and delivers you to a cybernetic surgeon who implants microchips and other computer paraphernalia inside your body so when the opportune time arrives, he can activate you as a cyborg soldier in the service of the sinister cybernetics corporation, Delta Tech.

Great Moments In Bad Acting: Cyborg Cop III

2009-09-23T13:39:00.003-05:00

Cyborg Cop III, the third and last entry in the Cyborg Cop series, took a haggard, mangy, ready-for-the-shotgun franchise and lamely limped it across the finish line. It’s memorable for very little outside of Ian Roberts’ mind-shatteringly bizarre take on the villainous President of Delta Tech (and music box fetishist), Sheen.

His performance is off-kilter throughout, but this is his coup de grâce. Like Nero fiddling away as Rome burns, Roberts arrhythmically chews his way through the hieroglyphic columns of his flame-licked lair - delivering his final speech to no one in particular save the smoldering remains of his best boy, Oscar...

A 15th Anniversary Cyborg Cop II Salute to the Air Ram

2009-09-21T14:38:00.005-05:00

The sequel to Cyborg Cop, the creatively titled, Cyborg Cop II (1994) was a titular curiosity as it in fact featured no cyborg cops. It did feature an inordinately high use of the fabled air ram: that pneumatic device favored by stunt coordinators to propel stuntmen high into the air (whether appropriate to the action or not).

Some might deem director Sam Firstenberg’s (McCinsey’s Island, Motel Blue) utilization of this hydraulic catapult nigh excessive, but not us at the Actioneer - we see it as a salute to American ingenuity and compressed air and worthy of this very humble tribute...

Death at 24fps: Cyborg Cop II

2009-09-17T12:32:00.005-05:00

The Movie: Cyborg Cop II (1994)
The Perp(s): Jack Ryan (David Bradley), Liz McDowell (Jill Pierce)
The Victim(s): cyborgs (Peter O'Toole, Sir John Gielgud, Sir Peter Ustinov, others)

The Cyborg Cop-series has never been notable for its use of the latest in state-of-the art special effects technology. While Terminator 2 (1991) was wowing us with morphing effects and other feats of CGI wizardry - Cyborg Cop (1993) was pulling cheap pranks like this.

So should we surprised when the second installment scraped for new cost-cutting lows? Surely not. Take this scenario, where we find fanny pack-fashionista Jack Ryan and his sexy, dead-eyed gal pal Liz McDowell unleashing epic wrath on an ineptly murderous army of cyborg criminals. Note how these cyborgs are programmed to transmorph into department store mannequins before detonating. This, as most political historians will note - famously provoked the ire of the powerful mannequin lobby - who were key backstage players behind the passing of the Mammography Quality Standards Act later that year.

Great Moments In Bad Acting: The Revenger

2009-09-15T12:36:00.000-05:00

The fight scene is the bread and butter of Action Cinema. Where the genre may fail in providing complex, memorable characters, sharp dialogue ripe with subtext and thought-provoking, socially-relevant themes - at the end of the day, if there's some good rock 'em sock 'em fist play, then we generally leave satisfied.

So how do you explain this, the "climactic" final battle of The Revenger? Is it pure unadorned contempt for the audience? Or did they just have to wrap up quick before they would've had to pay the Union guys overtime?

Also, I don't really understand how Frank's "finishing move" actually killed that guy. I mean he barely touched him. Did he induce some sort pulmonary embolism with some secret deadly technique he learned while playing the SoCal smooth jazz circuit? I guess some things - like Frank Zagarino's continued ability to get film roles - are destined to remain a mystery.

Pass The Dr. Thunder: The Circuit

2009-09-11T10:54:00.003-05:00

In these tough economic times we must be prudent and confine ourselves to a strict budget. That’s why, although we may have certain moral objections, we may find ourselves stalking the soulless, fluorescent-lit aisles of Wal-Mart; and while there, we may stop ourselves from purchasing that 32 oz. bottle of crisp, refreshing Dr. Pepper and instead reaching for a bottle of tepid, uninspiring Sam’s Choice Dr. Thunder.

"Consider yourself forewarned, Mr. Grunier: while you’re sleeping I may sneak into your hotel room, rend open your chest with my bare quivering hands and consume your still-beating heart. I apologize - this is a compulsion I cannot control."

By the same token, if you’re a producer who’s assembling an exhilarant action package tailor-made for the talents of one Jean-Claude Van Damme but budgets are tight, you may find yourself casting the Sam’s Choice equivalent of Monsieur Van Damme: Olivier Gruner.

The Circuit (2002) ups the ante, by not only starring the budget-line JCVD, but by also lifting the plot from his classic 1988 effort, Bloodsport. Olivier stars as the improbably named Dirk Longstreet (nom de porn?) former "Eastern Seaboard Champion" of an illegal underground fighting society. Dirk’s since gone straight, as a track coach at Generic Local College State University Polytech A&M - but alas, T-R-O-U-B-L-E has a habit of finding the harried French Shotokan Master.

"My brother scores a cameo in the new Rocky movie and I can only swing a role in this PIECE OF SHHHIIIIIIIIITTT!!!"

See, his little brother Jeremy (Ilya Melnikoff) has gotten himself in gambling debt to some pretty rough customers and the only way to pay off his debt is compete in the Circuit, a deadly underground fight club. Now the only way to get his brother out is for Dirk to fight! Thank Satan the living corpse of Billy Drago is there to help him freshen up his kill skills.

Yes, this plot is as well-worn and toothless as meth-addicted Atlantic City boardwalk whore and no, director Jalal Merhi does little to inject it with any fresh ideas or compelling twists. It’s further dogged by glacial pacing and bland fight choreography, in spite of including several of your favorite fighting stars you’ve only sweated over in the pages of Black Belt Magazine including, but scarcely limited to, the Dragon Twins and Billy Blanks’ brother!

Laverne Montoya as Circuit Audience Member 37: Ms. Montoya gives by the far, the standout performance of the entire film.

Apparently, The Circuit made the prerequisite $235 in profit that merits a sequel in the Direct-To-DVD world, as it was immediately followed by The Circuit 2: The Final Punch later that very same year. This film has the habit of popping up on cable every once in while - and if you should see it in your program guide, avoid it like a charging Ebola-infected rhinoceros during mating season.

Death at 24fps: Broken Arrow (pt. 2)

2009-09-09T11:39:00.007-05:00

Video removed courtesy of the good people at 20th Century Fox.

The Movie: Broken Arrow (1996)
The Perp: Terry Carmichael (Samantha Mathis)
The Victim: Max (Shaun Toub)

The Eighties was a great period of Nerd solidarity. The entertainment community, with outstretched arms, celebrated the Nerd with such chef-d'oeuvres as Revenge of The Nerds and WarGames. For the first time, the Nerd was granted genuine flesh-and-blood humanity and justly celebrated for his keen intelligence, technical ingenuity and ability to reprogram the targeting systems of xenon-halogen laser weapons.

Lo, the Nineties were a fallow and desolate period for the Nerd. Irrevocable damage was preyed upon their national character by the exaggerated posturings and buffoonish antics of television’s Screech and Urkel.

Broken Arrow offers little respite. Here the Nerd, despite his rigorous Navy SEAL-training is felled in under a minute by a lowly Park Ranger - and a woman at that, too.

Death at 24fps: Broken Arrow (pt. 1)

2009-09-07T10:34:00.006-05:00

Video removed courtesy of the good people at 20th Century Fox.

The Movie: Broken Arrow (1996)
The Perp: Capt. Riley Hane (Christian Slater)
The Victim: Maj. Vic 'Deak' Deakins (John Travolta)

Broken Arrow was another in a string of misfires from previously relevant Hong Kong export, John Woo. The film is most notable for swathing Samantha Mathis inside a remarkably unflattering Park Ranger uniform.

It also features John Travolta's most cringe-inducing performance since Staying Alive. Witness this explosive scene, in which Ba-Ba-Ba-Ba-Barbarino is out-acted by his own stunt dummy. Man, that dummy really knows how to take a body shot...

Death at 24fps: Hollow Point

2009-09-04T10:31:00.001-05:00

The Movie: Hollow Point (1996)
The Perp: a shipping crate (Gene Hackman)
The Victim: Thomas Livingston (John Lithgow)

Bad dudes, take a lesson from the Bond villains of yore: Never bask in your own vaingloriousness, don't orate or pontificate, and always look up, otherwise your dramatic death will be eminent.

Also, hell hath no fury like woman scorned by the cancellation of her middling syndicated series.

Smooth Jazz, Snuff Films and Revenging: The Revenger

2009-09-02T11:20:00.005-05:00

One oddball trope of Action Cinema is the “sax man with an axe (or Beretta 92FS) to grind.” This was explored to great effect in John Woo’s classic Hard Boiled. This was explored to lesser effect in How to Play Baritone Saxophone: Fixing a Sticky Baritone Saxophone Key . And then there’s The Revenger...

The Revenger stars Frank Zagarino. If you don’t know who Frank Zagarino is, he’s the blonde, charisma-impaired sock puppet behind such instant travesties as Airboss and Orion’s Key (aka Alien Chaser). Frank stars as Mike Keller, a promising young saxophonist who experiments in the sort of high-energy, experimental jazz you might have heard on the keno channel at the Sands Regency in Reno. Well, things are pretty peachy for Mike, he's got a hot record deal in the works and his eye on some sweet digs in Malibu but wouldn't ya know it, his ol’ pal Mackie (Arnold Vosloo) turns up and gets Mike involved in a high-speed police chase that results in one dead cop. And you know what means: five years in hoosegow!

"Frank, finish up your set - DeBarge is on at 7:00."

But never mind that shockingly light sentence for police homicide - Mike gets out and has a happy reunion with his sax (watch out, David Sanborn!). Also, he reunites with his best chick Lisa (Nancy Mulford).

Enter our big baddie: snuff film producer, Jack Fisher (Oliver Reed). Kids, this one of the unfortunate side-effects of a lifelong battle with severe alcoholism - one day you’re cozying up to Raquel Welch and twelve blurry years later, you’re playing opposite Frank Zagarino.

"That's it, Ollie. Just a few more hits of that rock and you'll think you're back on the set of The Three Musketeers!."

But I digress, see Jack thinks that Mike’s got a briefcase of cash that Mackie hid, so he kidnaps Lisa. What’s Mike’s brilliant idea? Find the money, but instead of exchanging it for his turtledove, stick Fisher with an athletic bag full of shredded newspaper. Good one, Mike!

When this brilliant plan comes to naught, Mike enlists the help of his dead brother’s cyclopean Vietnam pal, Harry Crawford (who apparently was eight when he landed at Da Nang) and the two bust into Fisher’s Guccionesque compound, guns a’ blazin’ and rescue the freshly-raped Lisa from Jack’s crack-addled clutches.

After a long, mind-numbing stretch of double-crossings, cocaine consumption, vaginal sculpture exhibitions, beatings administered with prosthetic limbs and trite romantic interludes, it all wraps up at Crawford’s sylvan retreat in the California hills. There's a lot of corpses, and a lot of high-flyin' flames, and one of the most unconvincingly choreographed fight scenes you should ever see in your life.

The total sum of these poorly crafted parts is roughly as exciting as working stock at Office Depot for the summer - and if your fast-forward finger isn't gettin' itchy after the first 10 minutes, then friend, you're made of stronger stuff than I.

Crappier ever after...

We all have Cedric Sundstrom for this blight upon the film world - this is the man who would go on to bludgeon the American Ninja series to death before disappearing into the bowels of South African television. And it must be said that it's truly one of life’s great ironies that Roman Polanski, the man who brought us Rosemary’s Baby and Chinatown, is permanently banned from our Great Nation*, yet the Cossack who squeezed this 20 paratransit pileup from his colon strolls free, a Citizen of the World. But I guess life, much like the The Revenger, doesn't make a helluva lotta sense.

* The Actioneer, its parent company and subsidiaries do not support the plying of underage girls with champagne and quaaludes, then performing lewd and lascivious acts upon them while in, or near, a hot tub.

Death at 24fps: Wanted: Dead or Alive

2009-08-30T12:47:00.006-05:00

The Movie: Wanted: Dead or Alive (1987)
The Perp: Nick Randall (Rutger Hauer)
The Victim: Malak Al Rahim (Gene Simmons)

Gene Simmons made his auspicious cinematic debut in KISS Meets the Phantom of The Park, which was about as good a movie as Hot In The Shade was an album. In 1984, the newly makeup-liberated Demon, believing his acting chops proven, made his bare-faced film introduction as the villainous Dr. Charles Luther in the Tom Selleck travesty, Runaway.

Wanted: Dead or Alive has him essentially reprising this role, this time as scenery-chewing terrorist Malak Al Rahim, the target of Rutger Hauer’s Energizer Bunny bounty-hunter Nick Randall. It’s a sluggishly-paced, ultimately forgettable film and after Gene has officially inflicted your eyeballs with gonorrhea for a burning sensation-inducing 104 minutes, Rutger mercifully pulls the pin on his fathead.

Great Moments In Bad Acting: Top Dog

2009-08-28T11:02:00.000-05:00

The Movie: Top Dog (1995)
The Perp: Henchman #17

“Hey, Ma. Ma! It’s Terry, Ma. Yeah, you know that movie I’m in? The one with Chuck Norris? Well, the director he liked me so much he gave me a speaking part. So, I been readin’ up, studyin’ - I got this book by this guy Stanislavski. I mean, it’s one line, but you know what they say, ‘There are no small parts, only small actors.’ No, I won’t blow it, Ma! Maybe if you believed in me, I coulda’ been somebody - maybe I coulda’ been the next Chuck Norris. Screw you, Ma! I’ll prove you wrong! I’ll prove everybody wrong! You’ll see. I gotta go, they’re callin’ me back to the set. Bye, Ma.”

Death at 24fps: Drop Zone

2009-08-26T11:36:00.006-05:00

Video removed courtesy of the good people at Lions Gate Entertainment.

The Movie: Drop Zone (1994)
The Perp: Ty Moncrief (Gary Busey)
The Victim: Jagger (Luca Bercovici)

Zubaz: the African savanna-inspired fashion travesty that garishly adorned the legs of a legion of Miami Dolphins fans throughout the early Nineties. They would rocket into prominence in 1991 astride the WWF Tag Team Championship ascendancy of the Legion of Doom before stuttering to a blood-gurgling death as the de rigueur leg-wear choice of a certain Long Island auto-mechanic.

Well, as Mary Jo learned, “Never trust a man in Zubaz.” Luca Bercovici would have done well to heed that lesson before going skydiving with Gary Busey.

Actually, he should have thought twice about doing anything with Busey, Zubaz or not.

Funny at 24fps: Top Dog

2009-08-24T13:05:00.002-05:00

“If a comedy plays in a movie theater and nobody laughs, is it a comedy?” From Socrates to Smirnoff, this philosophical riddle has puzzled the great minds of their age. By that qualification, is Top Dog a comedy? Well, you be the judge...

Black Men Can't Skydive: Drop Zone

2009-08-18T13:38:00.008-05:00

The home entertainment market is positively littered with skydiving travelogues. Most of them have ‘extreme’ titles (Freefall Extreme, Adrenaline Rush, Adrenaline Ride) and feature 90 escalatingly mind-numbing minutes of extreme dudes plummeting through the stratosphere to a bargain basement soundtrack of wank-o-rama guitar licks.

And then there’s Drop Zone (1994), which essentially is a skydiving travelogue, except they’ve attached something resembling a ‘plot’ to it. It’s sorta like that increasingly endangered species, the ‘Plot Porn’, where some hapless writer, typing away in his dingy, cold-water flat, has been tasked with writing everything that 85% of the audience is going to fast-forward through anyway.

"Theo, don't look back but I think the I.R.S. is tailing us."

Well, adrenaline junkies what will you be fast-forwarding through? Namely Wesley Snipes, who looks like he’s being led through this film by a $7,000,000 paycheck tied to a large stick being dangled just off-camera. Wesley plays disgraced U.S. marshall Pete Nessip, who travels down to Florida to investigate the seedy underworld of championship-level skydiving. See, during a Gary Busey-led terrorist takeover of a 747, his brother Theo Huxtable was offed and has been posthumously charged with “endangering the airplane.” Now, Pete’s trying to clear Theo’s (and his own) name through the extreme power of skydiving. Snap on your goggles, kids, the comely, husky-voiced Yancy “Witchblade” Butler will be your guide...

Cue the awesome aerial footage! Cue Hans Zimmer burnin’ up the fretboards with some monster riffage!

"Get on your high-heels, honey - you're Busey's date for the Larry the Cable Guy Roast!"

Director John Badham (Another Stakeout, Bird On a Wire) imbues the the whole affair with a schizophrenic inconsistency of pacing as the movie ping-pongs wildly from photogenic IMAX production to tepid action thriller and back again. Really, if you don’t give two shits about skydiving, you won’t find much of interest here - unless you’re that fringe type who’s been fervently sending forged petitions to Ted Turner to bring back Witchblade. And if that is you, Yancy Butler says to stop going through her garbage.

Death at 24fps: Future Kick (pt. 3)

2009-08-13T15:29:00.009-05:00

The Movie: Future Kick (1991)
The Perp(s): Walker (Don 'The Dragon Wilson), Nancy (Meg Foster)
The Victim: Hynes (Eb Lottimor)

A few weeks back, we here at the Actioneer learned the grisly pleasures of Laserblade, the future's exciting, high-stakes alternative to going to the Greyhound Races. Well, it's baaa-aaaaack! You see, Actionettes, it seems Eb Lottimor just didn't listen to the wisdom of the idioms of his day, namely, "He who lives by the Laserblade, dies by the Laserblade." Note here how director Damian Klaus displays the sort of cinematic technique that should serve him well in the field of gonzo pornography. Look how long he hovers on the money shot after Meg Foster and The Dragon get a faceful of Eb.

Dog Outacts Man: Top Dog

2009-08-11T12:09:00.010-05:00

EXT. AARON NORRIS’ BEACH HOUSE -- DAY

June, 1994. AARON NORRIS, producer/director/stunt coordinator/Chuck Norris’ brother, sits poolside sipping banana daiquiris with his pal, character actor, TIM GRAYEM. The afternoon sun simmers through the brown haze of LA smog on yet another mercury boiling summer day.

AARON NORRIS
So, I was thinkin’.

TIM GRAYEM
What was you thinkin’?

AARON NORRIS
My brother Chuck, we should put ‘em in a comedy.


TIM GRAYEM
Is he funny?

AARON NORRIS
Sure he’s funny. Just the other day he was doin’ this Jack Nicholson impression. He was like, “You can’t handle the truth.” (laughs)

TIM GRAYEM
Oh yeah, the Joker. That’s pretty funny. Batman was a cool movie.

AARON NORRIS
I don’t think that’s from Batman. It think it’s from the movie where he plays the werewolf.

TIM GRAYEM
Oh yeah, that movie.

AARON NORRIS
Well, what should this comedy be about?

TIM GRAYEM
I dunno. What if he were like this black guy, a cop from Detroit and he comes to some ritzy neighborhood like Beverly Hills and then he causes all kinds of trouble, but you know, “funny trouble.” He could also have a laugh that’s funny too.

AARON NORRIS
That sounds funny, but I don’t know if Chuck can play black.


TIM GRAYEM
Um okay, so the other I went down to video store and I rented this movie called K-9.  It had that guy, you know, Belushi, the dead guy’s brother and he’s a cop but his partner, get this, is a DOG.

AARON NORRIS
A dog, that’s funny. Then what happens?

TIM GRAYEM
Well, then the dog, you know, does funny stuff.

AARON NORRIS
“A dog doing funny stuff.” I like it. But we can’t just rip it off. Somebody might sue us. What’s different about our movie?


TIM GRAYEM
Oh! I know! I know! Instead of that Belushi guy, you put Chuck Norris in it!

AARON NORRIS
My brother, Chuck Norris?

TIM GRAYEM
Yeah, that guy.

AARON NORRIS
High five, man, you just earned a Story Credit!

TIM GRAYEM
I did? High five!

They high-five.

INT. MOVIE THEATER, ANYTOWN, USA -- NIGHT

April, 1995. It’s a slow Friday night at a typical small-town cineplex. In a largely unoccupied theater, Top Dog starring Chuck Norris plays imperviously on the screen.

VOICE (O.S.)
This movie sucks!

Death at 24fps: Future Kick (pt. 2)

2009-08-07T16:50:00.005-05:00

The Movie: Future Kick (1991)
The Perp: Walker (Don "The Dragon" Wilson)
The Victim: Bang (Chris Penn)

In spite of his considerable charm, Chris Penn - like Don Swayze and Frank Stallone before him - had the misfortune always to dwell in the shadow of his superstar brother (Michael Penn). He also had the misfortune to appear in this film, where he plays second banana to Eb Lottimor, a man best known for being the ex-husband of the chick who played J.R.'s would-be assassin on Dallas. Here, he's "future kicked" into a live wire by Don Wilson. And then his head explodes. And then some sort of green, bile-like substance come pouring out of his mouth.

Balboa Behind Bars: Lock Up

2009-07-30T17:01:00.009-05:00

When we look back on 1989, it was a year of triumph: the Velvet Revolution, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the opening of the Skydome, and Warner Bros. release of Tango & Cash, a breezy action-comedy romp starring Sylvester Stallone and Kurt Russell. Alas it was also a year of tragedy, the Exxon Valdez, Tiananmen Square, Woodstock ’89 and Lock Up, a middling prison potboiler starring Sylvester Stallone and John Amos.

Lock Up was the “other” Balboa-behind-bars flick of ’89. The one nobody saw apparently, as it didn’t even muster half the box office of its kissin’ cousin, T&C. Why? Well, where should we begin?

Imagine, if you would, the Shawshank Redemption,"the Greatest Movie of All-Time." Trade up Tim Robbins for the Italian Stallion. Now substitute Tom Sizemore for Morgan Freeman. Then take the bible-thumpin’ Bob Gunton and replace him with a scenery-chewin’ Donald Sutherland. Now carefully strain out the subtlety, humanity, poetic dialogue, soaring score and compelling narrative. Now go hop on your bicycle and borrow a soil auger from Ol' Farmer Littlejohn. Take said auger and drill a large post hole right in Shawshank’s cerebellum. Now flambé. Season with garlic and herbs. Serves seven.

Sly plays local mechanic, Frank Leone. Frank’s a “good guy who made a mistake way back when” and he’s dutifully paying his penance to society; when with six months left, sadistic, grudge-bearing Warden Drumgoole (eat your heart out, Dickens) has him transferred to Hell On Earth: Gateway Prison.

The rest pretty much writes itself. The Warden fucks with Frank. Frank is resilient, make a few pals. The Warden hires the seedier prison element to the fuck with Frank. Said seedier element kills one of Frank’s pals. Frank’s taken to the brink, never loses his cool, and sees freedom once again. Cue Survivor. Fin.

The end result is more akin to Chained Heat II rather then say, I Am a Fugitive From A Chain Gang. And just to drip venom in your wallet’s wound, the whole affair is saccharine-coated with one of Bill Conti’s most maudlin scores yet. The only element that makes this steaming bucket of rhinoceros piss worth recommendation is the presence of the endlessly watchable psychopath, Sonny Landham. But rather then rent Lock Up, why not purchase THIS fine item and stare at it for 115 minutes. No doubt, you’ll find the experience more intellectually stimulating.

Death at 24fps: Future Kick (pt. 1)

2009-07-27T17:22:00.007-05:00

The Movie: Future Kick (1991)
The Perp: Hynes (Eb Lottimer)
The Victim: Two-1 (Shawn Phillips)

These days for futurist amusement we have such trivial time-wasters as Laser Quest. Thrill as you grope your way through the dark, plastic blaster in hand, becoming the latest blast-charred conquest of a Mrs. Simmons' second grade class. Sure, it's great for corporate parties but don't you wish it was a little more "real?" Does the legitimate threat of death really get your adrenal gland 'a pumpin'? Then Laserblade was tailor made for you! The controls are simple: just give your most concentrated stare, grunt like a Cro-Mag, then watch the brain matter, skull shards and blood-mist fly!

Don Wilson Future Kicks You in The Balls

2009-07-20T11:41:00.014-05:00

In 1982 Ridley Scott (plus a host of artisans, writers and actors) created Blade Runner, and the people declared it was good. In 1991 Damian Klaus (plus a host of cruise ship arts and crafts instructors, chimpanzees handcuffed to typewriters and State Championship kickboxing competitors) created Future Kick and the people took up torches and barn shovels and gathered in a furious mob that spilled into the streets of Encino, demanding the head of Damian Klaus.

“We demand the head of Damian Klaus,” a voice from the crowd cried.

“Yes,” shouted an elderly man, “or we will set fire to your town of Encino until nothing’s left but barren earth. Then we will toss salt on that barren earth. Then we will urinate on the salt. Then we will engage in sexual congress with women of ill-repute.”

“I say we start with the Children’s Community School,” shrieked one woman, her pendulous breasts flapping with every indignant syllable.

A local greengrocer, pistol ready at his side, ventured cautiously into the street. “Damian Klaus,” he declared, and hush took hold of the mob, “moved to Panorama City five weeks ago. But before you venture off to visit your evil deeds upon Panorama City, may I present to you this parchment signed in Damian Klaus’ own blood swearing that he will never direct another movie again.”

This placated the mob and they soon retreated to a local cineplex to see Curly Sue starring Jim Belushi. 101 minutes later, they burned the cineplex to ground. Many died. A bereft John Hughes would never direct another movie again.

Were it not for this dubious tale, recounted in the back pages of the Encino Sun, Future Kick, much like the Seal of Solomon or The Book of Thoth, may have been lost completely to the mists of time. But your humble Actioneer has recently unearthed its unique cinematic horrors, which I have found in a horrible and reeking state of decay.

The best I can say about this film, is that at 76 minutes, it’s mercifully brief. Somehow though, Damian Klaus has crafted those 76 minutes to feel like Erich Von Stroheim’s original 10-hour cut of Greed.

Imagine if Blade Runner, Total Recall and The Terminator got together for a weekend-long PCP binge/homosexual orgy. By some miracle that confounded and enraged Pat Robertson, Kirk Cameron and their ilk, Blade Runner became pregnant with child. Then while carrying the child to term, Blade Runner subsisted on a strict diet of Wild Turkey and experimental-grade amphetamines while Total Recall and The Terminator repeatedly kicked Blade Runner in the stomach for nine months. The stillborn child would be Future Kick.

It’s a film that hobbles hither and thither without purpose. The plot, what there is, lacks repeating, save to say it takes place in yet another dystopic future where there’s robots, $1-a-lapdance strippers, body-organ thieves and a deadly underground sport called “Laserblade.” Our drowsy, drooping eyes are only occasionally sparked to life by gratuitous shots of botched boob jobs and hyper-violent mayhem. Even Don “The Dragon” Wilson looks bored, as if visions of more Bloodfist sequels danced merrily in his head. In the end, the whole thing gets tied up nice and tidy with an “Oh, it was all a dream” curtain-closer.

Whoops. I dropped a “Spoiler” there without prior warning. Did I ruin it for you? Good. You can thank me later. I just granted you 76 better-spent minutes of your life back. Now go work in a soup kitchen or train seeing-eye dogs or something.

Death at 24fps: The Hitman

2009-07-17T15:41:00.005-05:00

The Movie: The Hitman (1991)
The Perp: Cliff Garrett (Chuck Norris)
The Victim: Hassan (Michael Benyaer)

Learn wisely from this hapless Iranian mobster's fatal lesson: Chuck is slow to forgive the Iranian hostage crisis and never, ever curse in Chuck's presence. This brief excerpt, over the course of a mere 19 seconds, singlehandedly summarizes the entire Norris ouvre: dull, witless and above all, Pro-Amurrican.

Death at 24fps: Soft Target

2009-07-14T11:59:00.006-05:00

The Movie: Soft Target (2006)
The Perp: Captain John Rouse (Gary Busey)
The Victim: Buzz (Suzanne von Schaack)

Gary Busey, he of one of the most sociopathic screen presences this side of Sonny Landham, can stamp any scene with his own unique brand of psychosis. This scene begs several questions. Where was Busey's handler this day? Was this dialogue actually in the script or was the script girl too afraid to contradict Busey? Why does his co-star look genuinely frightened? Only Gary Busey can take a by-the-numbers erotic thriller and transform it into something of Beckettian bizarreness.

Great Moments In Bad Acting: Soft Target

2009-07-08T16:18:00.002-05:00

The Movie: Soft Target (2006)
The Perp: Rosie The Waitress

Hey, Actionettes! Welcome to a steamin’ oven-fresh new feature of the Actioneer: Great Moments in Bad Acting. We kick it off with this lovely uncredited lady. She plays Rosie, the waitress and resident eye-candy at Frankie Nugentti Jr.’s mobbed-up Italian restaurant.

Now many of our great actors have worked their character’s professions in order to prepare a role - Robert De Niro famously drove a cab for a month before donning Travis Bickle’s M65 tank jacket. On that token, our anonymous actress playing Rosie should have the whole waitress thing down pat. Judging by this performance though, perhaps she was studying under the animatronic serving wenches in the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland.

Oh Baby, Daddy's Got So Much Money!: Soft Target

2009-07-05T10:30:00.001-05:00

When you hear the title Soft Target, you're probably expecting some steamy late-night potboiler starring Shannon Tweed's rack. You'd be wrong. This one stars Michelle Kauffman's rack and another pair of boobs (rimshot) Don ‘The Dragon’ Wilson and Olivier Gruner.

Director Art Camacho, apparently hot to recapture the magic that was X-Treme Fighter, teams up with Donny the Dragon again for another sure-fire snooze ride - and like that DVD-saster, he takes the more is less approach and crams the silver disc full of half-familiar second-raters and never-wuzzers.

"Okay, okay. I’ll stop calling you ‘the poor man’s Van Damme’ if you stop calling me ‘the poor man’s Mark Dacascos.’"

Black Caesar himself, Fred Williamson shows up for five minutes. So do Martin Kove (of Karate Kid fame) and adult star T.J. Hart (of Only the A-Hole 8 fame). Art also roped in Gary Busey - but come on, these days that guy will do anything (and I do mean ANYTHING) if you give him a ham sandwich and half a freezer bag of untrampled Peruvian cocaine.

Anyhoo, Dragon and Olivier are two cops, who really don’t like each other, assigned to track down high-class escort Angel (Kauffman), the only witness to a brutal police slaying. Turns out the hit was an inside job, the result of a collaboration between mobster Frankie Nugentti Jr. - played with cartoonish panache by apparent cosmetic dentistry victim, Michael Cavalieri - and a crooked cop.

"Before my life ends, I guess the best I can say is that being in this was at least less humiliating than 1990: The Bronx Warriors."

After tracking down Angel, the unlikely pair is on the run - the Mob cutting them off at every turn. Thankfully, they still manage some time for some soft-focus sex scenes. Porn cover girl T.J. and softcore Internet model Kauffman are obvious game for a little on-screen gratuitous nudity; Don, on the other hand, has the slightly ill-at-ease ‘Oh gee, my wife is gonna kill me’ look on his face as Michelle dangles her silicones mere inches from his eyes. This may explain why he gave the ol’ ball-and-chain an Associate Producer credit.

"No, I’m serious. Pat Morita: hung like a fuckin’ rhinoceros."

All in all, there’s not much to distinguish this so-so effort from the glut of other quickie Direct-to-DVD actioners out there. Unless of course you’re that one drooling lunatic locked up in their parents' attic who’s been clamoring for the day that Don ‘The Dragon’ Wilson and Olivier Gruner FINALLY teamed up. Then my friend, this dud’s for you.

Everyone else, you may find THIS a bit more stimulating.

Death at 24fps: American Samurai

2009-07-02T11:59:00.004-05:00

The Movie: American Samurai (1992)
The Perp: Andrew ‘Drew’ Collins (David Bradley)
The Victim: Kenjiro (Mark Dacascos)

After losing in the final round of Live Blade, Kenjiro tries to pull the ol’ hara-kiri fakeout - but you gotta wake up pretty early in the morning to fling a Samurai sword through Drew Collins’ back...

Mafioso Half-Breed: The Hitman

2009-06-29T12:28:00.010-05:00

Stallone had his marble-mouthed street savvy. Arnold had his ironic sense of humor. Jean-Claude had his Gallic sex appeal. None of ‘em had real acting chops, neither did say, Gary Cooper, but charisma not dramatic abilities maketh a star. Then what the hell did Chuck Norris have? Long before he become a Right Wing politico and a long-running Internet MEME, there was the man, the stubbly red beard and those unwaveringly monotone line-reads.

"So you see that's why had Reagan's economic policies been given more time to gestate, we wouldn't be in the mess we're in today and little colored boys like you would be wealthy just like us whites. Blame your mom for voting Clinton in '92."

Whether he’s making a cold-blooded threat or cracking a sardonic joke, Chuck always sounds the same. But whereas the similarly lacking Steven Seagal often found interesting vehicles to mask his dramatic deficiencies, Chuck always managed to stumble upon material as juiceless as himself. The Hitman, while better than say, Sidekicks, isn’t really the exception.

It starts in Seattle, Officer Cliff Garrett (Norris) and his partner Del Delaney (Michael Parks) are embroiled in a dockside skirmish with local baddies. After the gunsmoke clears, Del turns on Garrett - riddling him with bullets and leaving him for dead.

"Chuck apologizes in advance for any intimate beard rash that may result from his oral attentions."

Deep in a coma, Cliffy waivers between life and death in the county hospital. The attending doc tells Garrett’s boss Chambers (Ken Pogue) that he might be a “different man” if he recovers. Boy, is he ever! Three year later, the new Chuck has ditched the mustachioed and blown dry cop crop - now he wears a full beard and a long, slippery Kentucky waterfall! He’s also become awful trigger happy as of late.

See, Garrett has become Grogan, undercover hitman for the Seattle Mafia. Never mind that his itchy trigger finger probably would have rendered the State’s case inadmissible in court and resulted in Chuck’s dischargement from the police force. None of it matters, really. By film’s end, all the targets of the State’s case are dead and Chuck, he’s become too disillusioned about the criminal justice system to give two shits about his career anyway.

"Nuncio, not tempered glass nor state zoophilia laws can tear our love apart."

How did it all come to this? Well, a new breed of hood has muscled into town: the Iranian Mob! They’re suspiciously Un-American: they practice a strange religion, eat strange food, speak a strange language and enjoy bellydancing. I smells evil, and it smells like chelow kabab! The presence of the Iranians sparks an all out gang-war involving both the Italians and the French-Canadian Mob (?) and somewhere, pulling all the strings, is Chuck’s former partner Delaney.

It’s all really bloody and all really boring. To break up the tough guy posturing and rampant xenophobia, there’s a saccharine plotline with a fatherless kid-next-door. I suppose this is meant to imbue Chuck’s character with a drop of humanity, but more likely you’ll just be giving the fast-forward button a work out. You can do the same for most of this witless, unmemorable actioner and trust me, you won’t be missing much. Still, it’s much better than THIS.

Death at 24fps: Cyborg Cop (pt. 4)

2009-06-26T15:37:00.003-05:00

The Movie: Cyborg Cop (1993)
The Perp: Jack (David Bradley)
The Victim: Quincy (Rufus Swart)

Well my little Actionettes, as they say all good things must come to a close - so ends our sumptuous feast of Cyborg Cop kills and thrills. But what a note to end on! Here, Officer Jack finds himself embroiled in quite a tussle with Quincy the Robot. What's an industrious man of the law to do? I won't ruin it for you, suffice to say you might find the ending a bit, well ... 'shocking'. [cue Statler and Waldorf]

Death at 24fps: Cyborg Cop (pt. 3)

2009-06-25T17:10:00.004-05:00

The Movie: Cyborg Cop (1993)
The Perp: Jack (David Bradley)
The Victim: Kessel (John Rhys-Davies)

How to explain this scene's conclusion? Is it a simple case of laziness? Perhaps it's some twisted homage to Raiders of The Lost Ark, which coincidentally starred John Rhys-Davies (you all know the scene of which I speak). I'll put odds on laziness.

Death at 24fps: Cyborg Cop (pt. 2)

2009-06-23T15:42:00.002-05:00

The Movie: Cyborg Cop (1993)
The Perp: Quincy (Rufus Swart)
The Victim: Kessel's Henchman

Here, pastel-favoring Third World despot Kessel (John Rhys-Davies) sends one of of his hired lambs to the slaughter in order to impress potential investors in his cybernetics program. Cyborg Quincy joins said lamb in a game of robot fist-human skull-shotgun. In case you don't know the rules: robot fist beats both human skull and shotgun.

Death at 24fps: Cyborg Cop (pt. 1)

2009-06-19T10:54:00.001-05:00

The Movie: Cyborg Cop (1993)
The Perp: Jack (David Bradley)
The Victim: Quincy (Rufus Swart)

It's Friday, my little Actionettes, and in the spirit of the end of the work week, your ol' pal the Actioneer serves up a cinematic treat sure to satisfy your greedy lil' eyes. Here be the final showdown from Sam Firstenberg's trash classic Cyborg Cop. It's an epic battle so batshit-insane it could only come from deep within the bowels of Direct-To-VHS Hell. Trust me, you'll NEVER see the end of this one comin'.

Sunshine, Cybernetics and Fanny Packs: Cyborg Cop

2009-06-16T17:22:00.011-05:00

John Rhys-Davies has never been a man to pass up a paycheck. For every I, Claudius in the man’s resume, there are at least ten Chupacabra Terrors. So one shouldn’t be all that surprised to see ol' Salah hamming it up as Kessel, the cabana wear-clad baddie of 1993’s straight-to-video misfire, Cyborg Cop.

"JRD gots to get paid, son."

The title is a bit misleading, this isn’t another Robocop-come-lately - this a beast of decidedly different breed. Sam Firstenberg, obviously hot to recapture the magic that was American Samurai, once again casts David Bradley as his quick-fisted, fanny pack-donning lead. Bradley plays Jack Ryan, a retired lawman who travels to the fictional Caribbean locale of St. Keith to investigate the disappearance of his long-lost brother, Phillip.

Along the way, he ‘meets-cute’ with feisty female reporter, Cathy, played by Alonna Shaw - who displays the sort of acting chops previously isolated only to adult film sets. Of course in that spirit, she will display her other ‘assets’ later on as their screen romance blossoms.

"Wha? Dis ya no Robocop sequel? Me still g'wan meet Peter Weller?"

Firstenberg makes ample use of his tropical-settings, so expect to see a generous splash of ‘local color,’ including bumbling Third World cops, low-grade Reggae and stoned-out Rastamen. And because this is the American Ninja-auteur himself, be sure we’ll be treated to plenty of poorly-choreographed fighting sequences and comically incompetent car chases.

But nothing in Firstenberg’s filmography (and that includes Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo) quite prepares you for the appearance of Quincy - a sluggish, rubber-suited cyborg whose primary objective is to exterminate our harried hero. His other less explicit, more implied objective seems to be sending the audience into fits of uncontrollable laughter. Quincy can punch through a human skull. He also has a retractable razors in each of his ten fingers. And just to over-egg the proverbial pudding, he has a gun holster soldered to his chest. But rather than inspire fear, Rufus Swart’s clumsy performance renders Quincy’s every battle a slapstick farce - especially his final confrontation with Philip (whom Kessel has transformed into another cyborg), a sequence so ineptly staged it must be seen to be believed.

In certain states, acting in this film may constitute child abuse.

Really, the same could be said for this entire film. For moments like the aforementioned ‘Battle of the Borgs’ are legion. Cyborg Cop isn’t the worst of the robot cop films - that honor undoubtedly goes to R.O.T.O.R. (1989) - but it just might be the funniest.

Death at 24fps: Leonard Part 6

2009-06-12T12:05:00.002-05:00

The Movie: Leonard Part 6 (1987)
The Perp: Leonard Parker (Bill Cosby)
The Victim: Man Ray (David Maier)

You'd have to be as thick as a Cliff Huxtable signature sandwich to miss the homoerotic overtones of this sequence from the Cos' surreal anti-PETA propaganda comedy. After fending off a group of Medusa Johnson's veggie-thugs with raw beef patties, Leonard unsheathes the coup de grâce: his Oscar-Meyer wiener.

Why Couldn’t We Just Be Brothers?: American Samurai

2009-06-10T10:34:00.012-05:00

From the title you might mistake this for some sort of precursor to Tom Cruise’s Glory-meets-Mr. Baseball epic The Last Samurai (2003). You’d be wrong. It sucks just as much (Oh yeah, I said it!) but this is just another in series Bloodsport-come-latelies that flooded the direct-to-video market in the early 90s.

David Bradley exhibits his range by tossing aside his American Ninja throwing stars and picking up his American Samurai samurai sword. Mark Dacascos unconvincingly assumes the Bolo Yeung role as Kenjiro, Bradley’s hot-headed, Yakuza-tied half-brother. We even have a bearded Ogre buddy in the form of Harrison (Rex Ryon) and if you’ve seen Bloodsport, you know this sap isn’t long for this world. Learn well from his valuable lesson: “Never bring a Bowie knife to sword fight.”

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. The much-told tale begins in rural Japan. When young Drew Collins’ (Bradley) plane crash lands into Tatsuya’s (John Fujioka) backyard - the aging samurai master adopts the gaijin, schooling him in the Ancient Way of the Samurai. When Tatsuya bestows upon Drew “the family sword of the Sanga Clan”, Tatsuya’s biological son Kenjiro spirals into a blind rage.

Move locations to Los Angeles. Ace reporter Drew wakes up one balmy night to be assaulted by thugs sent by Kenjiro to retrieve the sacred katana. Now swordless, Drew flies out on assignment to Istanbul to investigate the death of a fellow reporter. Turns out the dude was filleted ... with a sacred katana!

Drew does some more snooping around - with his new sexy photographer friend (Valarie Trapp) - until he’s tasered in a Turkish disco and forced to fight in Live Blade. Its exactly like Kumite, except the brackets are filled with contestants who seem to have ripped through the very fabric of time. Witness a Viking! A Barbarian! Shaka Zulu!

You can pretty much guess how all this ends. Bolo kills Ogre. Frank Dux kills Bolo. FIN.

Responding to the collective yawn of VCR owners everywhere - Bradley slipped back into the role of the American Ninja once more. For his part, Dacascos would make a personal vow: never play a villain again. Leave that to the experts.

The Rambo Effect in the Japanese Video Game Industry

2009-06-08T13:13:00.011-05:00

Rambo: First Blood Part II exploded into cinemas in the summer of ’85 and don’t think our pals across the Pacific weren’t taking notes. Soon enough, the arcades were blipping and buzzing with a new litter of baby binary-John Rambos.

And now, send in the clones...

Ikari Warriors (1986)

SNK didn’t try to hide their Rambo-roots here, it was called “Rambo: Ikari no Dasshutsu” in Japan. Ikari Warriors followed two of Stallone’s split-zygote clones as they machine-gunned a path to the village of Ikari. The inane sequel found the duo “caught in a time warp, hurled thousands of years into the future” where they had to save the land of “Alexia Lomta” from “Zang Zip.” I did not make this up.

Play it!

Secret Commando (1986)

When Sega ported their Commando-clone Ashura to European shores, gone were the gi-clad Eastern protagonists, in were these First Blood Brothers. Ashura and Bishamon were such dead ringers, that when they acquired the American rights to the Rambo-license, Sega just switched out the title screen.

Contra (1987)

The game took place in the distant future (September 12th, 2631, to be exact) in New Zealand of all places. Here, blondie Bill and his brunette buddy Lance were Earth’s last hope in the face of alien intruder Red Falcon and his minions. It became a bigger hit when it was ported to the NES and introduced ‘Up-Up-Down-Down-Left-Right-Left-Right-B-A-START’ to the pop-cultural landscape.

Play it!

P.O.W.: Prisoners of War (1988)

SNK’s next grab at the Rambo-gold starred second-generation Ikari clones Bart and Snake of Army Special Forces Unit "M.” Their Mission: infiltrate the “subversive organization” GOON. In case you’re wondering, GOON stands for “Government of Offensive Network.” In case you’re wondering just what “Government of Offensive Network” means exactly... well, let’s just say your guess is as good as mine.

Play it!

Bloody Wolf/Battle Rangers (1988)

Another Snake, who with his bald-pated brother-in-arms Eagle are tasked by a Trautman-esque Colonel to “rescue kidnapped president alive.” Data East went so as far as to actually include a painted likeness of Sly (and curiously enough, Arnold) on its flyer. Bloody Wolf would become a minor MEME due its hilariously mangled mistranslation. Sample line: “You! Invaders! Get you the hot bullets of shotgun to die!”

Images shamelessly pilfered from Moby Games

Death at 24fps: Cobra

2009-06-05T10:58:00.002-05:00

The Movie: Cobra (1986)
The Perp: New World Cultist
The Victim: Innocent Bystander (Bradley Bovee)

In a hostile world takeover there’s bound to be a little collateral damage - enter this poor sap. This fellow, possibly a mild-mannered CPA on his way to celebrate his anniversary with his mousy wife, is hacked open like a Thanksgiving bird whilst walking back to his car after work. While his demise is certainly less heralded than the Night Slasher’s epic hook-and-furnace extinction - his surprised “Hey! Hey!” right before he takes it in the sternum with an axe is priceless.

Feel The Heat: Cobra OST

2009-06-03T10:42:00.007-05:00

1986’s Cobra re-teamed Sylvester Stallone with First Blood Part II director George P. Cosmatos. Its respectable, if unspectacular, box office performance proved lightning doesn’t always strike twice. Neither did its accompanying soundtrack. While similar in style to the soundtrack of Sly’s other hit from 1985 (Rocky IV), it didn’t take hold of the American public like its predecessor had.

‘Springsteen-lite’ John Cafferty provides the movie’s theme song, “Voice of America's Sons” and thematically, it has little to do with the film whatsoever. It’s a peppy, summer radio tune driven by a roller-rink organ, as pleasantly inoffensive as any of Cafferty’s contributions to the Eddie & The Cruisers soundtracks.

Righteous Brother Bill Medley turns in two undistinguished duets, neither of which are worthy of his muscular, soulful baritone. The Miami Sound Machine and Robert Tepper contribute a couple of blue-collar odes to “workin’ hard” and “tryin’ to make a livin’” - they’re nice, but Tepper’s “Angel of the City” doesn’t quite match the standard of his own “No Way Out” from the previous year.

There’s also a pair of ‘inspirational’ anthems here, the sort that were churned out by the hundreds for 1980s movie soundtracks. Impressively-mohawked Jean Beauvoir invites us to “Feel The Heat” and its sound and lyrical conceit have the feel of a Rocky IV track that just missed the cut. Same in the case of Gary Wright’s “Hold On To Your Vision” (Sample lyric: “You live to the wall / takin’ all ‘till you fall / but you always get back up again.”).

Sylvester Levay provides the original score and it’s a punchy mix of synthetic-gloss and guitar heroics - but it’s not something you’ll find yourself revisiting more than once.

Scotti Bros. reissued this in 1992, and it’s gone out of circulation since. Rocky IV, on the other hand, was re-released in 2006 as a remastered special edition with bonus tracks.

BONUS LINKS:
Jean Beauvoir - Feel The Heat (video)
John Cafferty - Voice of America's Sons (video)

This Game is a Disease: Cobra (C64)

2009-06-02T10:13:00.001-05:00

The Warners people obviously had big plans for Marion “Cobra” Cobretti in summer of ’86 . Thinking the kiddies would take Cobretti to heart as they had with Rocky and Rambo, they struck a licensing deal with the good folks at Manchester, England-based Ocean Software Ltd.
This wasn’t the first time Sly was digitized, he had previously appeared in Rocky Super Action Boxing (1983, ColecoVision) and Rambo (1985, MSX). If the quality of those offerings is any indicator, well, you should know what you’re in for with Cobra.

Marion begins his high-octane Commodore 64 adventure in the mean, pixelated streets of LA where he’s in hot pursuit of his main chick, Ingrid. Frustration sets in early as we realize Cobra is not the finely-tuned killing machine he was in the film...

Our boy’s got a four-pronged arsenal of grenades, a knife, a pistol, and his signature laser-sighted machine-gun. Problem is, when the dude steers like an Edsel stuck in Mississippi mud, the entire Fort Bragg weapons locker couldn’t help you out. Hence, a lot of the game consists of watching your “Burgometer” dissipate into crumbs as you're continually bested by even the lowliest New World thugs.

What’s a Burgometer you ask? Well, Marion’s health is represented by a cheeseburger, yes, a cheeseburger which slowly fragments as he takes damage. When your cheeseburger’s all gone, so are you. That’s probably the most unique element of this vessel-bursting Rush'n Attack knock-off.

If you have the patience to endure Cobra’s three frustrating levels, you’ll come face-to-face with the dreaded Night Slasher himself. If you’re like most, I’d advise you consult your manual:

IF FOR ANY REASON YOU HAVE DIFFICULTY IN RUNNING THE PROGRAM, AND BELIEVE THAT THE PRODUCT IS DEFECTIVE, PLEASE RETURN IT DIRECT TO:
MR.YATES, OCEAN SOFTWARE LIMITED, 6 CENTRAL STREET, MANCHESTER M2 5NS.

Let’s Bleed, Pig!: Cobra

2009-06-01T10:57:00.000-05:00

By year’s end, Sylvester Stallone had the key to the city. Over a six-month-period he had starred in two of the Top 3 Grossing Films of 1985. The second Rambo had been especially huge. Sly also wrote it. So naturally, reason stood that he would write the next one. Then they would hire that big, fat Italian mook who shot Rambo II. You know, you team these two goombas up again, you can’t lose! You just lean back in your overstuffed Verona leather executive chair and watch the green pour in.

It didn’t quite pan out that way. Three reasons why:

1) Paramount would release Top Gun the previous weekend. It would be the top-grossing picture of the year.

2) Stallone wasn’t the only writer on Rambo. A talented young fellow named James Cameron had done the first draft. The Terminator had been a sleeper hit, but James was about to blow up in a big way with Aliens. The kid had his finger on the pulse of the public.

3) John Rambo and Rocky Balboa were already known quantities to movie-goers. Marion Cobretti wasn’t.

"See that? That's the last guy who told me Oscar sucked!"

Essentially Dirty Harry re-tailored for the Sly-persona, its respectable, if unspectacular, box office performance was a disappointment to the Warner Bros. suits. It signaled a fallow period for Stallone, who found himself in a bit of a funk until he tied on the red headband again for the abysmal Rambo III.

The film starts out assuredly enough, with a well-staged grocery store scene in which Cobra chugs a Coors before dealing out his throw-knives-first, ask-questions-later-brand of justice. Of course, the liberal pussy media and liberal pussy Detective Monte (Andrew Robinson) are up in his shit about the way he takes care of business - thank God at least Reagan’s in office.

"Bitch, you better have my Snowboard Academy money!"

From there, Marion hops into his impossibly cool, customized-to-Kingdom Come 1950 Mercury Monterey and things get a bit hazy and forgettable. There’s a lot of explosions and car chases and civilian casualties but there’s nothing really iconic here like Rambo reaching into his quiver of explosive arrows. Probably the most memorable bit in the sagging mid-section is Brigitte Nielsen’s bizarro robot modeling shoot (set to Robert Tepper’s “Angel of the City”) - cocaine, anyone?

After much human and automotive carnage, it ends where all action films end: an abandoned (but curiously still-operational) industrial site. This time its a refinery. Director Cosmatos uses the environment well - particularly in the dispensation of fiery death to primary villain, the Night Slasher (Brian Thompson). Then Cobra grabs his lady love and hits the road - right after he hits Detective Monte.

Cobretti doesn't play by the rules: he uses SCISSORS to slice his pizza.

This ain’t bad, it just ain’t top-shelf Stallone (Rocky) or even fun bottom-shelf Stallone (Over The Top). It’s an 80s artifact down to its MTV-editing, synth-heavy soundtrack and hawkish political message. Despite Cobra’s cool box office reception, the source novel would be remade yet again as Fair Game with the white-hot pairing of Cindy Crawford and Billy Baldwin ‘steaming up’ the screen...or was it ‘smearing their own shit’ on the screen? But that’s a subject for another blog entry...

COBRA WEEK BEGINS MONDAY...

2009-05-29T12:39:00.003-05:00

Monday the New World begins. That’s right, we’re gonna do some catching up with the Zombie Squad as we begin a weeklong celebration of Sylvester Stallone’s Cobra. Why Cobra? I’m not entirely sure myself. But no matter: clean your Jati-Matic submachine gun, throw on your Ray-Ban Outdoorsmans and come join the party, pigs.

Chasing the Dragon: X-Treme Fighter

2009-05-27T15:31:00.008-05:00

Cinema history is filled with classic director-actor pairings: Fellini and Mastroianni. Ford and Wayne. Scorsese and DeNiro. Art Camacho and Don ‘The Dragon’ Wilson is not one of them.

Beginning in 1995, the duo has bumbled their way through four outings, each worst than the last, but their 2004 offering X-Treme Fighter just might mark their lowest of low points.

"Oh my God! I just had a nightmare that I made SEVEN Bloodfist sequels!"

Imagine some bastard hate child of Tron and a martial arts demonstration at your local mall and you’re on the right track. Even the ill-at-ease Lorenzo Lamas seems to have too much ‘artistic credibility’ to show up for more than a day of shooting ... but I guess this was BEFORE Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus.

Someone long ago said that writing about music is like dancing about architecture, the same can be said for writing about movies. So in that spirit, I’ll tarry no further. Ladies and gents, X-Treme Fighter in all its truncated glory:

Love at 24fps: American Kickboxer 2

2009-05-21T18:12:00.006-05:00

The Movie: American Kickboxer 2 (1993)
The Couple: David (Evan Lurie) and a Kickboxing Student

Masters of seduction like David know how to get the ladies naked and in their hot-tub: "Chinese Balls". The actual terminology is Baoding Balls and they're not really used to "stimulate all the right pressure points" but that's okay - if you're Dave, you don't really have to know what Baoding Balls are to activate their seductive powers.

You could try this too, but as you probably lack a sexy overbite and two bottles of Jheri curl activator you probably would FAIL.

WARNING: CONTAINS BUTTOCKS!

Dirty Dancing in the Road House

2009-05-19T11:58:00.009-05:00

Lemme just lay this out there. I’ve always hated white bluesmen. I don’t care how ‘technically-gifted’ he is, every time Stevie Ray Vaughan launches into one of his 12-bar wankfests I turn my radio dial. I can tolerate Clapton right until he uncorks another Willie Dixon vintage. And Johnny Winters: pack it up for the next state fair, snowy. So the likelihood of "Road House: The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack" being my cuppa was slim from the get-go.

You may remember Jeff Healey as Casey. His Jeff Healey Band were the house band at the Double Deuce in Road House. His blues guitar prowess is on ample display here (check his solo “I’m Tore Down”) so if this be your thing, by all means: enjoy.

There also a few old-timers in the house. The Voice of Chevy, Bob Seger provides a credible cover of Fats Domino’s “Blue Monday”. Well, it’s credible until at 1:22, some studio hack detonates a catastrophic synth-sax solo. We also get Little Feat (post-Lowell George), who contribute “Rad Gumbo,” a generic zydeco ditty whose ‘radness’ is better suited for a Putamayo Summer Sampler than an action movie soundtrack.

The movie Road House contains a wealth of music from artists as diverse as Wilson Pickett, the Crew Cuts and Alabama - so the fact that this compilation caps off at a stingy eleven cuts is a bit troubling. Even more troubling is that executive producer Jimmy Iovine decided to squander two of the those tracks on golden throat Patrick Swayze. If we can take anything positive out of Jimmy’s indiscretion, it’s that after singing on two previous soundtrack albums (Dirty Dancing, Next of Kin), Pat finally hung up his microphone for good after this one.

BONUS LINK:
Jeff Healey Band - When the Night Comes Falling (video)

Created to Obey: T-Force

2009-05-15T11:15:00.001-05:00

When the final credits rolled, T-Force left me with one nagging question: Why would police robots need genitals? If the primary function of the Terminal Force is to enforce the law, what purpose do their cybernetic wangs and hoo-hahs serve? After much ruminating, I came to the conclusion that its probably just an excuse for director Richard Pepin to show off Evan Lurie’s ass and Jennifer MacDonald’s tits. This is a cheapo cash-in actionsploitation flick, after all.

Following the monster success of Robocop (1987), the cinematic landscape was littered with inferior wannabes - R.O.T.O.R. (1989), Cyborg Cop (1993), Robocop 2 (1990) - but T-Force stands out from the pack ... it also rips off the Terminator. Plus it has Malibu from American Gladiators!

When the movie opens, some dude who looks like Ted DiBiase has kidnapped the British Ambassador and the only squad that can save the day is the “cybernaut unit” T-Force. Enter Adam Omega, Cain, Zeus, Mandragora and Athens, guns ‘a blazin’. But wouldn’t you know it, thing go wrong - Adam (Lurie), “misunderstanding” his mission, ends up turning the Ambassador and a slew of innocents into pizza topping.

For the City of Los Angeles, this is a publicity nightmare - so Mayor Pendleton (Silver Spoons' Erin Gray!) and Police Chief Richman order the T-Force program shut down immediately. This does not sit well with Adam, he sees this as a threat to "threat to [T-Force’s] self-preservation" and he leads a bloody rebellion. The whole robot gang follows him, except for Cain (Bobby Johnston) who soon teams up with grizzled cyberphobic cop Jack (Jack Scalia) to extinguish the uprising.

The whole production has the dramatic inertia of grass growing. What’s most disturbing is Johnston is the only T-Forcer who can believably play a robot. How hard is it to be robotic? Marble-mouthed Evan Lurie made a brief career of it - but here he finally feels the need to emote. Bad timing, Evan.

If this be the sort of thing you get your kicks off of, pick up R.O.T.O.R. or Cyborg Cop instead - two like-minded Saturday night beer blast cinematic disasters which are guaranteed laughs. Good luck finding them on DVD though. In a cruel twist of fate, T-Force is readily available and retails at $6.99 ... just bring the hard stuff instead.

What NOT to Wear with Jean-Claude

2009-05-13T15:34:00.009-05:00

Monsieur Van Damme has worn more than his share of regrettable outfits in his day. Today we celebrate the fashion sensibility (or lack there of) of the one and only Muscles from Brussels.

1. Jean-Claude models a selection from his Dammage7 clothing line. Needless to say, it did not herald the rebirth of stone-washed denim.

2. Somewhere Minnie Mouse is naked and shivering.

3. No, that's not Duckie - that's Van Damme's wife, Gladys Potugues. Oh yeah, and check out Jean-Claude's Miami Beach grandma shirt.

4. Despite this obvious publicity stunt, JC ended up losing the role of Blade to Wesley.

5. Photographic evidence: standing next to Iron Mike can make anybody look well-dressed.

No, You Have A Nice Day: American Kickboxer 2

2009-05-11T12:05:00.008-05:00

Okay, here’s the scenario: You and your new husband are engaging in a little he-in’ and she-in’ on the kitchen counter when suddenly a helicopter hovers into your backyard and kidnaps your only daughter. A man calls demanding one million dollars. What do you do?

If you answered call up your domestically-abusive cop ex-husband and bed-hopping kickboxing instructor ex-boyfriend you’re following the line of logic that writers Jenö Hodi and Paul Wolansky have drawn through American Kickboxer 2. And what an odd couple these two make! Kickboxer David (Evan Lurie) is a self-loving, health food-eating libertine. Policeman Mike (Dale “Apollo” Cook) is straight-talkin’, beer-swillin’ good ol’ boy. Talk about a clash of personalities! These two unlikely partners just might save the day ... that is, if they don’t kill each other first!

Anyway, Lillian (Kathy Shower) ropes in her two former suitors by telling each of them that they are the father of little Suzie and then, as they say, we are off to the races. It seems wherever these two go, trouble follows and it manifests itself in hilariously incompetent fight choreography. Of particularly note is the roadhouse ruckus at the “secret mercenary hangout” (which is inconspicuously located right on Hollywood Blvd.). Casting - judging by the wooden acting and obvious punch-pulling - seems to have been pooled from whatever regulars just happened to be in the bar that night.

And if David and Mike’s adversaries can’t beat ‘em with their fists, they try to slay ‘em with their wit. Or maybe just sucker punch them while they wrap their brains around such inscrutable Zen koans as: “You know the difference between justice and revenge? Justice is when somebody does it, revenge is when you do it!”

Lurie and Cook may be the stars here, and David Graf (Police Academy’s Sgt. Tackleberry) may provide the celebrity wattage, but the film indisputably belongs to one man:

He strides the film like a Filipino Colossus - tongue flicking, roaring exultantly, gracefully propelling his impressively brawny bulk through two epic screen battles.

What became of him? Perhaps he lost his life combating Communist insurgents in the Bicol Peninsula. Or possibly he lives a quiet life with family and children in the Manila suburbs. This matters not, for he’s preserved forever in celluloid for future generations to bask in his eternal glory.

The 6th Day, Totally Recalled

2009-05-08T13:29:00.012-05:00

Say what you want about Vince McMahon. That he’s an adulterer. That he’s a doper. That he’s a monopolizer. That he treats wrestlers like circus animals. That over the last fifteen years he’s encrusted professional wrestling with such a thick layer of exploitative, sophomoric sleaze that it will probably never fully recover. Say what you want, but ol’ Vince sure is an optimist. So much so, that he placed his beloved product, the XFL in a movie set in the future. In the 6th Day not only has the XFL surpassed the NFL in popularity - it’s expanded! This assured that a month after the movie was released on DVD, it was already a hilarious anachronism.

Ah, well, we never did get to see those Roadrunners and Centaurs play, but we did get Arnold back in fine form, in the sort of ludicrous sci-fi vehicle that the 80s were supposed to have left behind.

The story takes place in a future “sooner than you think” in which the science of cloning has been perfected. It has solved the problem of famine and losing your beloved pets. If the fancy strikes you, you can clone just about any living thing you want ... except for human beings. Laws have been passed that forbid that. But wouldn’t you know it, a bunch of greedy bad guys are cloning humans on the sly, and they’re making their services available only to the extremely wealthy.

Never mind all that, it’s an excuse to have two Arnolds in one movie and I tell ya, seeing two Arnolds exclaiming “Cool!” in unison is worth the price of admission alone. Where else do you get such glittering one-line gems as “All I know is that there is somebody in my house, eating my birthday cake, with my family, and its not me!” Okay, maybe Jingle All The Way ... but let’s not go there today.

If you’re having Total Recall-deja vu, you’re not alone - director Roger Spottiswoode seems to have taken his visual cues from Verhoeven. It’s littered with glittering, automated sights and sounds. The future is a busy and chaotic place and once again, Arnold is just of out step with it all. But alas, that PG-13 rating means there’s no triple-breasted babes this time out, boys.

Hollywood hack-meisters Marianne and Cormac Wibberley (I Spy, Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle) try to imbue the movie with some deeper “message” but they lack the writing chops to pull it off. The 6th Day seems to want to ignite some stimulating after-movie dinner debate, but its done with the subtlety of sledgehammer to the face. Then again, if subtlety’s what you’re aiming for - don’t cast Arnold.

The Return of The Return of Bruno

2009-05-04T10:02:00.008-05:00

Let’s face it, people: the Blues Brothers sucked. At the end of the day, their legacy is a single rather enjoyable film in which they’re consistently outshone by the music legends they’ve surrounded themselves with. The whole schtick was ultimately a platform for Belushi and Aykroyd to live out their teenaged fantasy of being the ass end of the Stax-Volt Revue.

Perhaps that’s a little harsh. Sure, they weren’t the second coming of Sam and Dave, but at least they had the good sense to hire a helluva back-up band. The same can’t be said for Bruce Willis.

A little background: Bruce, his ego in full bloom from the success of Moonlighting, decides that acting isn’t enough for him, he wants to be a singer. But wait, wait ... he needs a cool alter-ego too! Enter Bruno Radolini. Bruno’s a 60’s journeyman rock singer who’s had several brushes with greatness but never quite made it. Why he never made it would become apparent later.

Somehow, Bruce’s agent convinces both Motown and HBO that this is a good idea, and an album plus companion TV rockumentary are unleashed upon the unsuspecting public. The resulting album, The Return of Bruno is released and enjoys modest chart success, peaking at #14 on Billboard 200 and producing a #5 hit with “Respect Yourself.” The second time out though, America wouldn’t be so charitable - Bruce’s sophomore release If It Don't Kill You, It Just Makes You Stronger, effectively killed off Bruno for good (although he does make a few live appearances at Planet Hollywood openings).

It’s easy to see why listeners didn’t go for a second helping. The Return of Bruno is a pretty strong argument for a unilateral ban on singing TV stars - as if William Shatner’s The Transformed Man wasn’t enough. But whereas Shatner’s debut has endless kitsch appeal, this is just a bore. Willis’ thin, Seagram’s-and-cigarettes growl is only slightly better than his anemic pop-blues settings. The covers here ("Under the Boardwalk," "Respect Yourself”) will only have you longing for the originals and his own originals will have you longing for the subtle songwriting pen of Don Johnson.

Not bad enough to be good, not good enough to actually be good - The Return of Bruno is best left gathering dust in the cut-out bin of your local record shop.

BONUS LINKS:
Bruno Radolini - Jackpot (Bruno's Bop) (live)
Bruno Radolini - Down In Hollywood (live)

Death at 24fps: One Tough Bastard

2009-05-01T12:12:00.007-05:00

The Movie: One Tough Bastard (1995)
The Perp: John North (Brian Bosworth)
The Victim: Karl Savak (Bruce Payne)

If you wanna kill somebody - especially an important somebody like, say, your arch-nemesis - there’s no more dramatic way to do it than than push him off a building. Or a cliff. Or perhaps some iconic landmark. At least this is what the movies have taught us. According to the Movie Deaths Database, “Falling” is the number one death device of filmmakers - clocking in at an impressive 134 fatalities (and counting). But nobody milks the drama more than director Kurt Wimmer did right here.

To Boz or Not To Boz?: One Tough Bastard

2009-04-29T10:30:00.002-05:00

For you youngsters out there, describing Bozmania is like describing the Polish–Moldavian War: you had to be there to truly understand its magnitude. In 1987 Brian Bosworth hit pro football like an Oklahoma-sized asteroid. He was big, blonde and had attitude to the max. His hybrid mohawk-mullet became haute couture for rural youths everywhere. His autobiography became a New York Times Bestseller. Then came the injuries. After only 27 games, the Boz retired from the NFL for good.

But the Brian Bosworth story doesn’t end there, no. In 1991 the Boz came back, reinvented as the action hero for the 1990s. The film was Stone Cold, an outlaw biker flick that made full use of the Bosworth persona. It cost $10 million. It made $9 million. Just like that, he was yesterday’s papers.

It would be four long years before audiences would glimpse him again - but his fate was to be on the small screen, not the big screen - which brings us to his direct-to-video effort, One Tough Bastard.

From frame one, danger signs flare ahead. This is gooey, sentimental stuff. The Boz, a family man? Where are the earrings? Who clipped the ape drape? Why has M.C. Hammer received special billing?

After years of building the Bosworth persona, he just tosses it away. Do we really wanna see the Boz in a corduroy blazer (with patches) and sensible khakis? When Arnold dresses like this, he plays it for laughs because it chafes against the very Arnold persona. But this ... this is serious. Bosworth is a Republican Party canvasser on steroids. And strangely enough, his antagonist Karl Savak (Bruce Payne), with his long peroxide locks and nose rings, looks more like the Boz than the Boz does.

Ah, but we take the hand we’re dealt and settle into our couches for some entertainment.

We’re not long in before Brian’s family is murdered by Savak’s incompetent hatchet-man, Marcus. This of course, has been a sturdy, reliable motivation for many action protagonists before, so why not revisit it again? So the Boz tracks down Marcus to LA but he’s under the special protection of FBI agent, Karl Savak. (Yes, he’s FBI and somehow his hair and piercings aren’t in direct violation of the strict FBI dress-code.) It seems Savak is involved with drug kingpin Dexter Kane (Hammer). He’s stolen some top-secret weapons from the the U.S. Military and plans to sell them to Kane for a king’s ransom. Unfortunately, he’s missing the special ammo required for the top-secret weapons which has accidentally fallen into the hands of “good kid going down the wrong path,” Mikey. Got all that?

No matter. There’s some decent, but never great, action here and probably one of the longest “plunge to their death” scenes in film history. We also get character actor Payne at his scenery-chewing best - as in a scene where he scrawls in large, red letters on his “Things To Do!!!" List to “KILL MARCUS.” Also, Hammer’s squirming turn as Dexter Kane is stunt-casting at its hysterical worst. Where else do we get to hear the pop-rap pastor uncomfortably spouting lines line: “Don’t you realize the only way you gonna talk to me again is through one a’ them straight-up psychic bitches?”

Bastard's director Kurt Wimmer would go on to make the criminally under-seen cult sci-fi flick Equilibrium (2002) - though those looking for the inventiveness of that film will find little of it here. If you’ve cultivated a thirst for more Wimmer, better to check out Ultraviolet. On second thought, just watch Equilibrium again.

Rage, Honor and Curtain Calls

2009-04-27T10:58:00.009-05:00

Last lines. Those parting words that echo on as we fade to black. “Well, nobody’s perfect.” “Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.” "Forget it, Jake... it's Chinatown." Often a single pithy phrase can elucidate the essence of an entire film.

Consider the last line from Rage and Honor (1992). Australian ex-pat cop Preston Michaels (Richard Norton) hitches a ride to anywhere from a nameless good ol’ boy in a mustard-yellow pick-up. The trucker, in a flabby stab at small talk, inquires if the Aussie is enjoying his visit to the States. Michaels stares right through him. The trucker turns and issues a thick stream of chaw out the window. He turns back and shrugs, “Aw, who gives a shit?”

There’s not much to “give a shit” about in writer-director Terence H. Winkless’s middling effort. At its heart, it’s a story of sibling rivalry. As children, Kris Fairchild (Cynthia Rothrock) and Conrad Drago (Brian Thompson), were the victims of a vicious family assault that turned the little darlings into a pair of orphans. They were adopted by a sensei who schooled them in the martial arts. But our young Conrad, he had hate in his heart, and he took his revenge upon his parents’ murderers. This did not please the sensei - for revenge is an act without honor - and he set Conrad free to the mean streets of Los Angeles.

Flash forward two decades. Roll film. Kris is now an inner-city school teacher who also runs her deceased master’s dojo. Conrad has become a crime kingpin. He spends his days ensconced in his shady criminal lair - engaging in various forms of self-abuse, chop-sockying ice-blocks in half and bedding his psycho-sexual moll, Rita Carrion (Terri Treas). Inevitably, brother and sister will meet for one final confrontation - but in between we are treated to a convoluted plot of drugs, dirty cops, voyeurism and a lot of dull, poorly photographed fight sequences.

Brian Thompson’s sinisterly subdued performance is one of the few things to recommend here. As our leads, Rothrock is glassy and vacant - thankfully, partner Norton has his own raffish charm and he’s wisely been given all the best lines. Their comic-foil, Stephen Davies turns in a cheerily loose-limbed burlesque as Baby, a drug-addled former junk bond trader. But the film’s best moments belong to Alex Datcher. Her Hanna the Hun is the Grande Dame of a Sapphic sisterhood of lace-and-leather toughies. She plays it big: like a back-alley Eartha Kitt in a pair of torn fish-nets. She slowly savors every carefully elocuted line, letting them hang in the air with lip-smacking relish. She genuinely seems to be having fun. If only we were.

Seagal in Development Hell: The Final Option (SNES)

2009-04-23T12:02:00.018-05:00

Steven Seagal never had his own video game. Arnie had a bunch. So did Sly. Hell, even Van Damme had a couple. So in 1994, the good people over at TecMagik sought to change all that.

The game was The Final Option and it was going to break right on the heels of Steve’s big directorial debut, On Deadly Ground. Alas, it wavered in development hell for quite some time and TecMagik, either having lost interest or funding, turned their attentions to Deadly Honor, a new title they were developing for N64 and PlayStation (which was also canceled).

Eventually somebody over there at the now-defunct TecMagik decided to dump the unripened fruits of their labors into a ROM and circulate it around the Internet for all to enjoy ... although ‘enjoy’ might not be the most appropriate word here.

The game starts you right in the thick of the action - Steven has infiltrated “Nanotech’s Underground Munitions Depot.” What are the objectives of Mr. Seagal’s mission? We’re not really sure. What is Nanotech? It’s unclear, but it’s obvious this corporation is up to some unconscionable evil because we can see human bones amassed within the dungeonesque walls of their “Underground Storage Facility.”

Anyway, Steven is instantly beset by what look to be phone technicians and lab chemists provoked to violence by his mere presence. What’s the Master of Aikido to do? Awkwardly flail at his attackers, apparently, for Steven moves with the grace of an intoxicated Emperor Penguin.

The big gimmick here is that the game uses actual digitized film footage of Seagal himself (Steve, is that really you?) - but the muddy effect here is more Pit Fighter than Mortal Kombat. Combat is a bore. Steve can punch, kick, block, shoot and throw knives. There’s also a bit of ham-handedly implemented platforming. True to form, the jumping controls are dicey and more often than not, you’ll be treated to Steven’s hysterical munchkin-like scream as he plummets to his death.

The levels are labyrinthine and with no clear objectives you’ll find yourself blindly fumbling along until through mere coincidence you ‘pick up the right thing’ or ‘push the right panel’ to complete the level. There were allegedly a total of six completed stages in the game - culminating in a final showdown at the “Nuclear Fusion Facility.” I made it to the second stage before I hit the proverbial brick wall.

The Final Option's cancellation was probably for the best - On Deadly Ground was enough of a smack-to-the-face of Seagal fans for one year. It would also seem that it would be Steve's last shot at pixelated glory - fifteen years have passed and the pony-tailed one still remains video gameless. Developers, if you’re listening: I’m sure you can buy the rights to The Glimmer Man reeaaallll cheap.

Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins ... And Ends

2009-04-21T13:19:00.023-05:00

The history of ‘yellowface’ in cinema - a practice in which white actors would tint their skin with makeup and tape back their eyelids to appear ‘Oriental’ - dates back to the Silent Era. Richard Barthelmess had famously lent a gentle dignity to the character of Cheng Huan in D.W. Griffith’s Broken Blossoms (1919) - even in the face of such tasty bons mots as “What makes you so good to me, Chinky?”

Several of the major stars of the Studio Era had at one time or other ‘yellowed-up’ for the Silver Screen, including Katharine Hepburn, Fred Astaire, Edward G. Robinson and even the Duke (improbably enough, as Genghis Khan). The practice reached its ‘nadir’, as it were, in Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961) with Mickey Rooney’s blustery, buck-toothed Mr. Yunioshi - a performance so mind-bendingly offensive it still draws protest from the Asian-American community whenever the film is screened.

One would think by 1985, liberal Hollywood would have ceased this antiquated practice, which makes the casting of Joel Grey as Korean ‘Master of Sinanju’ Chiun in Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins, the more puzzling. Then again, this was the decade of Long Duk Dong.

Remo Williams began life in 1971 as the hero of The Destroyer novels. The series - written by Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir - was the sort of hawkish, Right-leaning literature one might imagine John Milius reading whilst sinking his toes in some far-off Polynesian beach.

In late 1984, British director 62 year-old British director Guy Hamilton was hired to bring Remo to the Silver Screen. Hamilton was no stranger to the Action genre, having directed some of the better James Bond offerings of the ’60s and ’70s, including Goldfinger and The Man With Golden Gun. Another Bond vet, screenwriter Christopher Wood, was brought on board to pen the screenplay (after Murphy and Sapir’s draft was soundly rejected by the MGM suits). Consequently the movie has the sort of light touch and Byzantine plotting of a Bond, rather than Destroyer adventure.

Long story short: Fred Ward plays an NYPD cop, who, following a bizarro assault awakens in a hospital with a new face (well, they’ve shaved his mustache) and a new identity: Remo Williams, the latest recruit for CURE, an top-secret organization “dedicated to preserving the constitution by working outside of it.” Under the tutelage of a kooky Korean martial arts master, he must take down millionaire corporate turncoat, George Grove (Charles Cioffi).

The film is littered with memorable set pieces - particularly Remo’s fight atop the Statue of Liberty (itself a crib from Hitchcock’s Saboteur) - but it doesn’t quite gel as a whole. It has the feeling of an appetizer rather than complete meal. Chiun’s training sequence takes up approximately half of the film. The romance plot-line between Remo and Major Fleming (Kate Mulgrew) is left unresolved. Baddie George Grove seems like the warm-up to some supervillain of Blofeldian proportions. This was all probably due to the overly optimistic sequel innuendos of the title.

It’s easy to see how this movie got lost in the shuffle in the fall of 1985. This was an adrenaline-and-anabolic-fueled era where Rambo was slicing up Vietnamese like a Cuisinart. By comparison, Remo is positively tame. The effect of violence never extends beyond a blood-stained shirt or a superficially lacerated forehead. Granite-faced Ward is not an action hero for the Reagan decade - his modest physique seems underfed compared to the muscular megalomania of Sly and Arnie. Guy Hamilton’s deliberately-paced production lacks the frenzied, run ’n gun verve of First Blood Part II and its ilk. The end result feels as exhausted as Roger Moore looked in A View to a Kill.

Needless to say, plans for a sequel were nixed and Remo soon retreated back to the pulpy print from whence he came. For his part, Joel Grey would emerge from the detritus unscathed - receiving a Golden Globe nod for Best Supporting Actor. Three years later Chiun would be recast for a television pilot with none other than Roddy McDowall ... yellowface and all.