Spoiler (1998)

We're staring to exhaust our supply of Gary Daniels films. There are a few others available, and I plan on hitting them in the near future, but after that, it's either waiting for the pile of flicks he's done after 2009 to be released here in the States, or search around and see if some of the more obscure older ones pop up. But we got this one, so we might as well take advantage of it.

Spoiler takes place in the future, where criminals that try to escape from prison are so named, and when caught again, sent into deep freeze for inordinate amounts of time. Daniels is one of these Spoilers, and after he's caught escaping, he's given 26 years. Then he escapes again, and is given a bunch more. And then he escapes again, and is captured again. When he escapes this time, will he let them take him in alive?



If this sounds like a Groundhog's Day scenario in a movie, it felt like it too. The first 40 minutes or so is just the film spinning its wheels. Really, none of it gets us anywhere other than back to where we started. I want to say "who thinks that's a good idea?", but I'm not so sure the people who made this movie cared. All they seemed to care about was this idea of Daniels not aging and seeing his daughter when she's old and dying, and basing a sci-fi actioner around it. Not that this has a lot of action. First off, Daniels doesn't sport his sweet martial arts. Total waste. Why again did you cast Daniels then? And they had all this other talent that they used each for either one scene or a small part: Bryan Genesse, Meg Foster, Jeffrey Combs, (I think) Timothy Bottoms, and (I think) James Booth. This should've been The Fugitive set in the future, with Daniels using his wits to stay escaped-- not get captured and escape over and over. An idea and a film sauteed in wrong sauce.

The thing is, we've seen from films like Rage, that Daniels can do The Fugitive paradigm and do it well. And we had some really great supporting characters in this that could have filled that out and made it so much cooler. The film starts with Genesse and Daniels in dust-up, but it's really just them hitting each other and falling over. Hell no! You've got two great martial artists, and you can't have them choreograph something awesome for us? Then keep Genesse and have him appear in future scenes-- or maybe have him team up with Jeffrey Combs, who was himself a great baddie, but unfortunately only comes in at the very end. What? He should've been the Tommy lee Jones to Daniels's Harrison Ford. This was not a vehicle where Daniels was allowed to shine, and it suffered for that.



Let's get back to the Jeffrey Combs thing, because when he pops in in the last 15 minutes or so, I'm wondering "where have you been all my film?" He was the ultimate baddie, but he had too little time to flex his baddie muscles. The whole Groundhog's Day theme of this film, where Daniels keeps getting frozen and waking up decades later, meant that a guy as great as Combs couldn't appear for more than one small section, otherwise he'd bee too old later. That's why you scrap a silly premise like that. Also, it's probably time I got more Combs on this site, huh?

As I said above, this entire film was based around this idea of a father staying the same age and seeing his daughter when she's really old and on her death bed. Sounds cool in theory, but in practice, it killed everything that could've been good about the movie. I think sometimes these film makers get married to an idea, and can't see that it's sauteed in wrong sauce. When that happens, you get the best from actors like Gary Daniels left on the shelf, and potentially film anchoring performances from great actors like Meg Foster and Jeffrey Combs wasted on tiny parts.



Finally, I really liked the images of the futuristic cities in this. Again, because much of the film is Daniels getting frozen and trying to escape prison, we don't see those enough either. Ugh, it just makes me see how awesome a sci-fi futuristic Fugitive would have been with what they had to work with, and how much it was all wasted.

I can't do this anymore I need to put this review to bed. You want to watch a movie where Gary Daniels doesn't fight, by all means, but it wasn't for me. You want to watch a movie where the first 40 minutes goes nowhere, by all means, but that wasn't for me either. You want to watch a movie where a great Jeffrey Combs baddie gets barely 15 minutes due to a silly plot premise? By all mean, but it upsets me too much to talk about it. I believe this is out of print, but you can get it new or used on DVD from Amazon, but I wouldn't bother.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120187/

Undercurrent (1998)

I found this used on DVD at the bargain bin of our local record store. After my discount for spending my accrued frequent buyer points, the movie came out to: $.49. Even if this thing sucks-- and I have a good feeling it will-- fifty cents for a Lorenzo Lamas flick I haven't seen yet is worth it.

Undercurrent is a pseudo-Neo Noir starring Lamas as some down-on-his-luck former cop going to see his old cop buddy (Frank Vincent) at his old cop buddy's strip club down in Puerto Rico. What happens next? His silent partner, a local mob boss, wants Lamas to sleep with his wife so he can divorce her and keep his cash, and Lamas is stuck because that old cop buddy is into the mob boss for some money. But like in all Noir flicks, things aren't what they seem, and Lamas needs to navigate these shark infested waters before he's bitten.



This was pretty painful. The first like hour or so is just a slow burn-- like really slow. By the time the hour mark hits and we start getting any semblance of intrigue, it's too late, they've already wasted too much time. A lot of the issues stem from the front loaded plot. Lamas's Noir hero is too altruistic, and as such, it takes us a good twenty minutes before he's even willing to accept the job. Then we get another twenty minutes of him convincing the wife to have an affair with him. This is all crap that easily could've been told in Cliff's Notes form to the police detective. On top of that, the end was pretty drawn out, and with the opening that was already too long, the film couldn't afford that.

That's too bad, because I think Lamas would've been great as a grittier Noir hero, maybe something like Fred MacMurray in Double Indemnity, a guy who isn't all nice. The fact that he's doing a guy who doesn't deserve it a solid hurt a lot of what could've made this film fun. Make Lamas a bad guy, an opportunist, who takes the job because he wants the dough. It was like it was afraid to go bad in some parts, but went bad in others, and almost every choice was the wrong one. As far as Lamas goes, this is tag number 29 for him, meaning he's one away from that prestigious 30 mark. Hopefully we'll get him there soon.



Just a quick question: do you think Embassy Suites likes having their brand associated with cockfighting? Did they sign off on that? Is cockfighting a sponsored event in Puerto Rico, and that's why the Embassy Suites logo is on that mat? The funny thing about the cockfighting is that it's the second Seinfeld connection in this, the other being Brenda Strong as the mobster's wife. She was the woman who never wore a bra, then walked around with it on the outside, causing Kramer's accident and lawsuit.

I'm a huge Frank Vincent fan, and while he was good here, I would've rather seen him as an out and out mob boss himself, especially because the kid that was playing the mob boss couldn't hold a candle to Vincent. He's currently in a vodka commercial with Diddy and (what looks like ) Luke Goss, where he meets Diddy and his entourage at their private jet, and takes them around Vegas VIP style. The commercial should just be Vincent, in a tux, in Vegas, doing whatever. I'd buy that vodka in a heartbeat, and I don't really drink vodka.



Is that Hunter S. Thompson? I guess not, but it looks like him, right? Funny thing about that, it was in another Lamas flick, Blood Angels, where there was a guy dressed like HST in one scene. I wonder if Lamas is a Hunter S. Thompson guy. Probably not, I think he's more a FOX News guy. I'm guessing about all of this of course, I have no idea who Lamas likes or who Lamas reads or who Lamas votes for.

But I know who I vote for, I ain't votin' for this movie (like how I did that?). Even at fifty cents, it's a tough sell if you don't have a review site and need to fill in posts. It just took too long to get to the important stuff, and by the time we got there, it was too late.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0145551/

Rocky IV (1985)

This is our 800th post, which isn't the biggest milestone, but it is on an even hundred, and worth celebrating I think. And what better flick to look at than one that, while it wasn't itself a DTV flick, launched the career of the man we've come to know of as the Babe Ruth of DTV, Dolph Lundgren. Even today, when most people think of Dolph, they think Ivan Drago-- though they often get the famous line wrong. For the record, it's "I must break you", which I imagine Stallone wrote in to drive home the point that Drago didn't have any free will under the Soviet Union-- no "will", all "must".

Rocky IV has Sylvester Stallone back as his iconic sports hero, this time taking a break after beating Clubber Lang. A Soviet heavy weight named Ivan Drago has been making news, and Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers) sees this as a last chance at glory. Drago ends up beating him to death in the ring, so Stallone goes on a one-man crusade to take down Drago, and maybe end the Cold War while he's at it.



While this was the highest grossing of Stallone's Rocky films, there's definitely a feeling of shark jumping, especially considering how over the top (no pun intended) so much of it is. Stallone incorporates a montage of clips from the previous films as Rocky reflects on how far he's come, and I think we can't help doing the same. Everything the first one was-- real, compelling, and not out of proportion with what we associate with the real world, while still being big and theatrical-- this one wasn't-- it was always out of proportion and overly theatrical, so by the time we get to the end and Rocky is essentially ending the Cold War in his post fight interview, we aren't surprised by the ridiculousity. But it did have enough of what made the first Rocky so endearing and so successful, in particular Stallone's down-to-Earth working class hero that we can't help but root for, even if we're surrounded by jingoism and silly larger-than-life dramatizations. In the end, shark jumping or no, this is a fun flick in the Rocky series.

No, he wasn't the star, far from it, and no, this wasn't his first big screen role, he had a small part in A View to a Kill, but this is the one that put Dolph on the map. Unfortunately his next film, Masters of the Universe, was a colossal flop, and the one two after that The Punisher, was stuck in limbo and didn't get a US theatrical release (Red Scorpion was in between those two). So began his journey into DTV-dom, with only a blip coming with Universal Soldier, though that film was more a Van Damme vehicle than it was a Dolph flick. We always talk about movies as gems that fell through the cracks when Hollywood ignored them, and here we have the same thing, only with an actor-- their loss is our gain. Who'd'a thunk that a role in a Stallone flick would lead to the greatest DTV action career in history? Here's to you Dolph Lundgren, you're one of the great ones.



It's hard for me to go back to when I was six and get a good grasp on what Stallone and Rocky meant at the time in 1985. I remember the Cold War scare. Though it was near the end, it was still very palpable, and I remember fearing that the Soviets would invade and take my neighborhood hostage. But it's also important to remember that the 80s was Stallone's decade. Schwarzenegger had some good ones then too, but he really came on in the 90s and replaced Stallone then. With that in mind, this is a Stallone at the height of his popularity, revisiting the character that made him most famous. I had this sense as I watched the scene where Rocky looked back on where he came from, and thought about how he needed to get back down to Earth, that his character was trying to speak to Stallone, telling him that this ride won't go on forever, but in his hubris he didn't listen, and in just five short years Rocky V came out, and two years after that Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot. I think the difference between Stallone and Rocky, is that Rocky never felt comfortable as a star, while Stallone craved it.

Getting back to Rocky, the first film, I noticed on Tumblr recently that a kid (like 21 or 22) was talking about the travesty that was the 1977 Oscars, because Rocky won for best picture over Taxi Driver. It's interesting how perceptions of both films have changed over time, especially for kids born in the late 80s early 90s. They've essentially only grown up with Rocky as a cliched sports film paradigm, and have had so many "inspired by a true story" sentimentality porn fests shoved down their throats, that they can't conceive of Rocky as an original and endearing concept, let alone comprehend the film's social and artistic significance at the time. It's kind of hard for us Gen X-ers to comprehend it too, because Taxi Driver just seems so much more sui generis, but at least we have some perspective, we remember when both Rocky as a character, and Stallone as a person, were much more relevant in Hollywood, and that's something kids today can't conceive of. Rocky will always be The Blind Side or Seabiscuit to them, while Taxi Driver will always be Travis Bickle kicking ass.



The soundtrack on this is amazing. First and foremost, you have Survivor's "Burning Heart". I'm not ashamed to admit that that's on my iPod in my exercise mix alongside Loverboy's "Turn Me Loose". Just a fantastic montage song, the kind that makes you wish by the end of it that you'd just done 6 months worth of exercise in 3 minutes. Then John Cafferty has "Hearts On Fire". You can never go wrong with John Cafferty. Also we have some Go West, with "One Way Street", and 80s soundtrack mainstay Kenny Loggins, who teams up with Gladys Knight for "Double or Nothing". One of my personal favorites was "No Easy Way Out", which was performed by Robert Tepper-- There's no easy way out/there's no short cut home! Finally, I can't go over the Rocky IV soundtrack without mentioning James Brown's "Living with a Hernia"-- er, I mean "Living in America"-- which was written by Dan Hartman of "I Can Dream About You" fame.

I don't know why I included a shot of Stallone in that Hugo Boss sweatshirt above, I just thought it was so cool. I wish they made sweatshirts like that today, I'd totally buy them. Anyway, I wanted to talk about the sport of boxing, because Stallone was recently inducted into the boxing hall of fame for his work in making boxing films, in particular the first one. In this one, he bends the rules of what's allowed in boxing, especially in the Creed/Drago fight. He went for the element of Creed wanting to die like a warrior in the fight instead of growing old and deteriorating, but the way the whole thing went down, with no ringside doctors, the press surrounding him after he hit the canvas, the ref not stopping the fight when it was obvious Drago had won. For me as a boxing fan it was a little hard to watch, and I wanted scream at the TV when Rocky yells "Can somebody get a doctor!", because every fight has a doctor at it, and he'd have been in the ring before Rocky was.



The boxing thing wasn't nearly as bad as this here. The training scenes were shot in Jackson Hole, Wyoming with the Grand Tetons in the background. If you don't know, the Tetons are over 13,000 feet in elevation, and require, at the very least, rock climbing at a 5.4 difficulty. I get that in the film these were supposed to be fake mountains in Siberia, but anyone looking at them can see that they aren't hills, they have some serious altitude and some serious rock climbing associated with them, so to see Rocky on a whim in just some snow boots and a leather jacket run up to the summit of one was ridiculous. It was also very silly, because they obviously just dropped a stuntman off near the top of one of the peaks and had him run around, then cut to Stallone somewhere else. It was that kind of thing that added to the shark jumping effect.

This is available on a really nice DVD from MGM video. Don't let my screenshots fool you, the DVD is two-sided, with one in widescreen and the other full screen, and I only decided to use the full screen side because I think they look better on the blog. It's a beautiful widescreen transfer on the other side, worth watching on a nice TV. If you see it used or on sale at a big chain, I'd scoop it up. This is a fun film and full of nostalgia-- plus it's the movie that introduced us to Dolph, and for that we're forever grateful.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089927/

Tales of an Ancient Empire aka Abelar: Tales of an Ancient Empire (2009)

I was trying to think when I first saw this listed on imdb. I want to say, almost as long as the DTVC has existed, this has been listed in various forms of development with rumored cast members added and dropped and whatnot. Then we were lucky enough to have the film's director, DTVC Hall of Famer Albert Pyun, come to us for feedback on things like the introduction, and keeping us up-to-date on its status. Well, now it's finally here, on the shelves, released from Lion's Gate. Let's see how it did.

Tales of an Ancient Empire is the long awaited sequel to The Sword and the Sorcerer. It follows the heroine Princess Tanis as she searches for her half-siblings, including the rogue Kevin Sorbo; and her father, an even bigger rogue and better fighter, Michael Paré. She needs them to defeat the evil vampiress Xia, who has taken over her kingdom, Abelar. Will they prevail?



This was a very interesting flick that unfortunately had a very unfulfilling ending. It started a tad slow, with the first 40 minutes or so jumping in and out of flashback mode, but I think it overcame that and became something that was a cool take on the modern sword and sorcery flick, using some cool cinematic techniques, genre mixing, and giving it a more macabre edge; but that ending was, I don't know, not there. It was like a Cliff's Notes version of an ending, with a few still shots, some drawings, and a narrator telling us what happened. We watch the sword and sorcery adventure flick for the end battle, to see our hero overcome the villain, and without that it makes everything else lose its meaning. Also, despite what the cover says, this was a tale centered on the princess, played by Melissa Ordway, and to have Sorbo be the one to slay the villain (or rather, to be told it was Sorbo by the narrator) betrayed that. Even if we know roughly what's going to happen, if we'd only had something, just a little battle, I would've felt better about this, because otherwise it was pretty good.

Before I get any further in, I want to discuss the cover, because, if you've been rockin' with the DTVC for some time, you know my feelings on misleading covers, and this is one. What makes this one different, though, is that Pyun himself on his Facebook page came out against the cover because it was misleading and not the way he wanted to sell his film. I'm not saying there's a Sorbo bait and switch, but he's more the supporting character to Melissa Ordway's hero, and the other guy (Matthew Wellig) is barely in the film for two scenes, while the cover makes it look like he and Sorbo are embarking on this film-length quest together. Pyun said Lion's Gate had the say on the cover, but what I don't get is, why wouldn't they want Ordway on it with Sorbo? She's very attractive, and I imagine she'd sell more copies than Wellig, especially in the demographic that sword and sorcery caters to. You already have enough beefcake in Sorbo, why not add some beauty too, and at the same time not be so obviously misleading the consumer.



Melissa Ordway takes her place in line among the long list of Pyun female protagonists. This is the one thing that I think will frustrate people misled by the cover the most, that I, having seen over thirty of Albert's films, was very comfortable with. I've always liked how he works in very testosterone heavy genres, like action and sci-fi, and instead of sticking with the conventions, he's bucked them by casting women in the lead roles, and not making them women playing men, or women as mere objects for men to ogle, but real women as real heroines. Again, it wouldn't have been too hard to put her on the cover with Sorbo, and by not doing it, it does both Pyun and Ordway a disservice. Also, a previous Pyun protagonist, Victoria Maurette, co-stars. You may remember her from Bulletface and Left for Dead-- the latter I unfortunately haven't seen yet. It was cool to see her working with Pyun on another project, and she was as good here as she was in Bulletface, so hopefully this won't be the last of his films we see her in.

One thing that I thought was really cool about this movie was the pulp comic book feel it had. The imagery, between the actual drawings and the live action scenes, was great. A lot of the shots had the feel of a comic book frame, but in a way that retained their cinematic qualities. There were also some settings that felt like westerns, Japanese samurai films, or Hong Kong cinema. These are the things that I come to an Albert Pyun film for, to see things done that I've never seen, knowing that he's going to take risks and try something new and not play it safe. He could've just made another Hercules episode, and I think a lot of people would've been happy, but he wouldn't have, and I like and respect that. Another thing worth pointing out, the script was written by Cynthia Curnan, and the music done by Tony Riparetti, two people who have worked closely with Pyun on projects in the past. There was a symbiosis between director, music, and story because of that that enhanced the film. This wasn't just a script that was thrust on Pyun to direct, and the music wasn't just laid down as an afterthought. When you have that symbiosis, it makes the movie a little more genuine.



Okay, I know what you've all been waiting for: "tell me about everyone else in this film!" I've already mentioned Sorbo, who plays the co-hero or slightly supporting hero to Melissa Ordway. He's great in that Lee Horsley role as the brave rogue. Paré plays his father, and he's even more heroic and more of a rogue. He appears at the very beginning and the very end. The other DTVC Hall of Famer in this is Olivier Gruner, and he has a small part alongside Sasha Mitchell. Yes, that's right, I said Sasha Mitchell. When was the last time we saw him, huh? He's buffer than he was, so you may not recognize him. He's not listed on imdb as being in the film, but both he and Gruner are listed in the sequel, Red Moon. Then we have Ralf Moeller with a small part as one of the palace guards, Sarah Ann Shultz as one of Sorbo's sisters, Whitney Able as Xia, and Jennifer Siebel Newsome as the Queen of Abelar. Finally, our Pyun mainstays. Beyond Mitchell and Maurette, we had Norbert Weisser at the beginning as Xusia, Xia's dad, and Scott Paulin in a small role as Tou-Bou Bardo, a play on Pyun's classic character name, Brick Bardo. (Also, we had Morgan Weisser, Norbert's son, meaning we have the children of Pyun mainstays in Pyun films now!) Oh yeah, Lee Horsley has a one scene cameo reprising his role from the first film, which was fun to see.

The ending is what makes this one so hard, because it left me with a "that's it?" feeling that was hard to reconcile with the rest of the film that I enjoyed. One thing that's good about this one as opposed to Pyun's other recent efforts, is that you can get it via Netflix and Red Box, so you can try it out prior to buying it (I did buy it-- no regrets though!) to see if it works for you. As a sequel to Sword and as a sword and sorcery flick that tries new things, it's really good, the ending just didn't work for me.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1136688/

Road of No Return (2009)

I came across this one while doing a search of Michael Madsen on Netflix Watch Instantly. It also had DTVC Hall of Famer David Carradine, which made it even more of a draw. I was a little nervous though, because I've seen these ones with guys like this in them before, and seen them go horribly wrong. Let's hope this one didn't.

Road of No Return is about four hit men that are brought together by Madsen and Carradine as part of a secret extra-judicial mission to assassinate drug kingpins. When one of the four does a little research to find out who the guys are that hired them, Carradine gets scared and calls in the cleaners to deal with the whole thing. As if things couldn't get any more difficult for our quartet, during one of their hits they save two very young girls that were about to be sold into white slavery. Now they have to save themselves and protect the kids.



Okay, we get it, you're ironic. No no, really, we get it. The hit man's mom coming to clean the hit men's house? Get it, ironic. The Chinese Christian missionaries that interrupt one of the hits. Yep, pretty ironic. There's a point though where so much irony makes it not ironic, it makes it contrived, and that's what this was. Throw in some lame sentimentality, and some really serious elements that didn't blend at all with the quirky ironic ones, and you've got a 90 minute pain fest.

One thing about this one though was that the scenes with Carradine and Madsen were great, and Carradine especially. Usually seeing Carradine on the cover of a flick from 2009 means he's in it for like five minutes, and while he's nowhere near the star that the cover shot and top billing will have you believe, he is something of a main baddie, and as such, had his screen time. He does this kind of movie well. He can handle the scenes that are a little too talky, and make fun material that was increasingly becoming more and more contrived. This film came out the year he passed away, and a quick check of his imdb bio shows that he still has three more posthumous projects on the way, on top of the seven that came out from 2010 on. Just shows you how much he worked, right up to the end-- and why he's a DTVC Hall of Famer.



Madsen, though still pretty good, wasn't quite what Carradine was. I don't want to say he mailed this one in, but maybe that he was too comfortable. He's probably seen this material so many times, and seen it better so many times, that he played down to what he was given. I still enjoyed seeing Madsen on screen, and he still elevated the material, but this wasn't what he was in something like Final Combination.

I think a big part in pulling off irony is in making it not seem contrived, and we already mentioned that this film killed that possibility by loading up on it so much. This might as well have been a hipster with his beard and scarf waiting in line to get the new iPhone while reblogging memes on Tumblr with his old one, that's how ironic this was. Another big part of it though is the actors have to pull it off, and that didn't really happen either. We had this one dude that was playing like a white supremacist, and it felt like he was so uncomfortable playing that part, that the idea so abhorred him, that he went so over the top, which made it even worse and harder to watch. Then when he finds out (as we expected, it being ironic and all) that his ethnic background isn't entirely white, the reaction is even harder to watch. Why even have crap like this in the movie when it isn't going to work?



I don't really have a seventh paragraph for this one, so I guess I'll mention the other cliche convention it fell on, the "we'll start with the end first, then go to the beginning" device, which in this case actually gives away some of the movie. When we see only one girl, but later she's introduced with another, we know that other will bite it soon because we have to get back down to just one. And killing off little girls gives the film a mean-spirited feel that, again, betrays the quirky ironic tone the film is leaning so heavily on.

All right, this is enough. You know I didn't like this, and you don't need me to tell you anymore why. Don't let the Madsen and Carradine fool you. Both have tons on Watch Instantly to look at (though for some reason Netflix is only showing me two for Carradine, when I know he has more than that-- they need to get their shit together over there!). This is your run of the mill "hit men in ironic situations" yawnfest.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1298716/

Warriors (1995)

I don't remember where I first encountered this, how it first appeared on my radar. I think I was looking up something else, and this was suggested in addition, you know, the ol' "people who looked for this, also liked this" kind of thing. Anyway, all I needed to see was Gary Busey and Michael Paré, and I was sold.

Warriors has Busey as a dude in a double-secret black ops group where all the guys are highly skilled and all of them have had their deaths faked by the government so no one can prove they were working for the US. When his father, another high up military officer, sneaks a message to him that he wants to see him, Busey breaks out and goes AWOL, which makes the military less than stoked. They call in his old student and not so secret black ops dude Michael Paré to bring him in-- dead or alive. Now it's a deadly game of cat and mouse played out in the mountains between two highly trained killing machines.



This one wasn't bad, but the only reason it wasn't was that it had Busey and Paré. There were a lot of dead spots, a lot of points of lame plot exposition, but our two leads carry it so well it's worth watching, especially Busey. I think that's a good thing though. We watch these movies less for how good we expect them to be and more to see these guys work, and this film delivers that. I could watch a movie that was 90 minutes of Busey and Paré running errands, and if it had enough of them in it, I'd enjoy it.

The Busey was stellar. I daresay this is pretty Abusive. The line delivery, the facial expressions, it's all there, everything you want. My favorite was when he went to this hotel room to talk to the hooker that slipped him the message from his dad, and she's being attacked by her pimp (Chris Heyerdahl). He attacks Busey too, and Busey knocks him out. The hooker asks Busey "is he dead?", and Busey says in a soft, measured tone "I wouldn't hang around here if I were you, I'd move fast." Great stuff.



According to the trailer (which I posted on the Facebook page), I've been mispronouncing Michael Paré's last name. It's not PAH-ray, it's pah-RAY-- or is the trailer wrong? Anyway, pah-Ray or PAH-ray, he's pretty sweet too. The movie's plot is a little fluid, so we're not sure if Busey or Paré is supposed to be carrying the film, but both are so solid it works; and while Busey is just Busey, Paré has this cool ability to carry scenes or take a step back and let Busey have it, which adds to the time they're on screen together. It's January of 2012, and like most Januarys here at the DTVC, our New Year's Resolution is to get more Paré up, but unlike those years in the past, I'm going to try and hold myself to that. Let's see.

Recognize that young fella below? That's right, Chris Hayerdahl, he who was beaten up next to a nasty toilet by Dolph in Silent Trigger, and he who sported the dildo ponytail in The Peacekeeper. He has a very small part here as the pimp of a girl who has a much bigger part. Here's what happens after he gives Paré a hard time. Not a pretty sight, huh?



Finally, I wanted to finish with something a friend told me recently about white birch trees. He was playing some online video game, and the people who created it added some white birches to the game environment, and I guess people who hadn't seen them before referred to them as "zebra trees". "Zebra trees"? I want to go into a rant about how people need to get out more or something, but part of me thinks "zebra trees" is pretty awesome.

Okay, VHS is the only way to go here, but you can either get it new or used from Amazon. I wouldn't do that, I'd just keep an eye out for it. It's a good bargain bin find, as opposed to something you need to go out of your way and order special.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111670/

The Carpenter (1988)

I saw the VHS cover shot of this flick on Tumblr a while back, and I knew I had to make it happen. Look at that Wings Hauser right there. How could I resist? Never miss an opportunity to get more Wings up here.

The Carpenter is about a woman from the city who has had a nervous breakdown, so her hubby buys a fixer-upper out in the country for her and him to live in. While the crew working on it during the day are pretty lazy, the older mysterious fella working at night known as Wings Hauser is a whole other story. Long story short, he's the ghost of the dude that built the house, went bankrupt doing so, massacred a bunch of repo men, and got the chair. At first our leading lady is drawn to Wings, but she eventually discovers that he's no Casper.



This is a slow roller. It has it's moments, both in the serious vein with some really stylistic classic thriller-esque shots; and in the silly vein with Wings. There's one amazing scene that I uploaded to the image page, where he cuts this dude's arms off with a power saw. It's surreal, like something Dali and Bunuel would've done, the way the guy doesn't scream, the way the woman barely reacts, and the matter of fact demeanor with which Wings goes about the killing. It came at the 24-minute mark, and I was excited that the film might pick up from there, but it didn't, still just giving us the occasional great Wings scene without much else to buttress it. Ultimately this is a Lifetime flick with Wings Hauser as a crazy killer popping in here and there.

But man, when Wings shows up, he shows up. His performance is fantastic. Between the dialog and the way he delivers it as the anachronistic carpenter from the past, and the killer streak he manages to mix with that, it's as good a' Wings as you can get. But because he's the villain, and the mysterious ghost villain to boot, we don't see him that much. That's too bad, because he's carrying this film. This is only our 17th Wings flick on here, meaning we still have three more to go to get him above the line of 20 for DTVC Hall of Famers, which is especially where I want to get all inaugural ones at least. With such a vast filmography, we'll go way beyond that, it's just a matter of tracking them down.



Looking at the cover again, I can see where this movie went wrong. It didn't know whether it wanted to be Hitchcock or Tobe Hooper. The cover looks like Tobe Hooper, right? And it looks like a really fun ride too, like this campy, bloody slasher flick with Wings as a crazy carpenter. Unfortunately, while we get that in spots, it never really happens. It's the classic dilemma we B-movie honks have to contend with: misleading covers.

The couple was played by two veteran character actors that weren't really veterans when they made this: Lynne Adams and Pierre Lenoir. They're the usual "man, they look familiar, what do I know them from?" that leads to a check on imdb that yields "oh yeah, of course, I knew I recognized them from somewhere!" Adams, was in Johnny Mnemonic as "Yakuza with a rocket launcher", and was also in the Miles O'Keeffe/Fred Williamson flick Silent Trigger. Lenoir was in the Gary Daniels flick Hawk's Vengeance. Both have been in myriad TV shows, which is probably where anyone would recognize them from.



In my Tucker and Dale vs Evil post I mentioned something about being a Bruins fan and how that film being shot in Vancouver brought to mind the Canucks, and how I wouldn't get into a rant about them. I shouldn't do the same here, with this film being shot in Montreal. If you don't know, the Canadians (or "Habs" for short) are the equivalent of the Yankees for Red Sox fans-- maybe even worse, because the Bruins and Habs have played more games and more games that matter against one another. While my B's have had the upper hand recently, overall the Habs, like the Yanks, have the all-time lead; but we'll revel in our current success as long as we can!

Okay, before this turns into an NHL blog, we'll wrap things up. This is actually available now on DVD. Not sure what the transfer is like, or if there's goodies and what not. I went the VHS route, and as you can see, that's not the best quality. I'm not sure why I'm even getting into this though, because this is a bit of a snooze fest outside of a few good scenes. Check out some other Wings flicks first before you try this one.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097017/