Scott Adkins at CLOSE RANGE

Action star Scott Adkins (Ninja, Ninja 2, El Gringo, Undisputed 2 & 3, Expendables 2) has a new modestly-budgeted but high-octane thriller coming out, directed by his Ninja/Undisputed collaborator, Isaac Florentine.

Florentine (a former Power Rangers director!) is probably the best action director working in the indie action realm, and his previous films with Adkins have been so much better than they had any right to be. These two make a fantastic team, consistently raising the bar of what can be accomplished on low-budget, direct-to-video genre fare.  

Close Range looks like another winner; check out the trailer below.

An Eye for An Eye

One of my favorite Chuck Norris vehicles has just been released on Blu-ray by Kino-Lorber: An Eye For An Eye (1981), directed by Steve Carver.

If I remember correctly, this is the last of the beardless Norris flicks (did he have a beard in the subsequent Silent Rage? Or just the 'stache? I can't recall).

Veteran exploitation director Steve Carver (Big Bad Mama, Jocks) worked well with Norris, playing to his leading man's strengths and shooting action scenes with a certain amount of clarity and style (They re-teamed on 1983's Lone Wolf McQuade with equally good result.) He also knew how to fill out the supporting casts with talented, veteran character actors, allowing Chuck to concentrate on the ass kicking while others handled the heavy lifting, acting-wise.

In this particular film we have an all-star exploitation line-up, including Mako, Christopher Lee, Shaft's Richard Roundtree, Star Trek DS9's Rosalind Cho and Space Academy's Maggie Cooper, all working their butts off to help make Chuck look good in what's essentially a fairly routine cop movie with a big "Bondian" climax. 

But it's a lot of fun, and very well directed and paced by Carver, with a standout (if too brief) battle between Chuck and wrestler Professor Toru Tanaka. The best part of this film, though, is the late, great Mako, who is in top form as Chuck's acerbic sensei.

The Blu-ray marks the first time the movie has been released in widescreen on domestic home video, and features an audio commentary by Carver.

Return Of The Ninja

I enjoyed 2009's Ninja, starring British martial arts star Scott Adkins. It wasn't a great film, nor even particularly original, but I thought it was a better-than-average direct-to-DVD action flick, and an entertaining throwback to the 80's heyday of Cannon's classic ninja movies. Well, director Isaac Florentine and Adkins have reunited to chronicle another adventure of Occidental ninja, Casey Bowman, with the oddly-titled sequel, Ninja: Shadow Of A Tear.

From the trailer, it looks like it could be fun. I'm particularly pleased to see little Kane Kosugi all grown up and playing the evil ninja in this entry. As a child, Kane frequently appeared alongside his father, the legendary "ninja star," Sho Kosugi, on films like Revenge Of the Ninja, 9 Deaths Of The Ninja, Black Eagle and Pray For Death. His presence just adds to the nostalgia factor for me. Looking forward to this.

Action Pack

First of all, Brandi and I saw The Expendables 2 last week. Enjoyed the hell out of it. The "meta" humor gets laid on a little too thick in the final reel, but otherwise, it's pretty much exactly what I wanted it to be. Big, loud, dumb fun, with all my go-to 80s and 90s action guys standing shoulder-to-shoulder blazing away with ludicrously large firearms. Objectively, it's not a "good" movie - the story (such as it is) is poorly structured, characters pop in inexplicably to save our main heroes and then disappear again, character development is minimal (to say the least), and some of the action scenes are - again - poorly shot. But I still loved it, and look forward to owning it on Blu-ray.

I was explaining to a friend of mine who loves classic horror films (which, you know, I do too) that the appeal of The Expendables flicks to me was the same as one of those horror flicks where you'd get old Bela Lugosi, Tor Johnson & Lon Chaney Jr. together (The Black Sleep) or Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Vincent Price, & John Carradine all in the same movie (House Of Long Shadows), or a Universal monster mash like 1944's House of Frankenstein (which is almost as badly-structured as EX2). It doesn't really matter whether or not the movie is "good" or not, the joy comes from seeing favorite genre icons sharing the screen.

Plus, you know, explosions.

While still in that action flick mood, I thought I'd order the new DVD release of the 1981 South African martial arts movie, Kill And Kill Again, starring James Ryan. I saw this decidedly goofy actioner at the drive-in when I was in High School, paired with its predecessor, Kill Or Be Killed (not available on DVD, unfortunately), and haven't seen it since. And, while I was at Amazon anyway, I succumbed to my weakness for Don "The Dragon" Wilson kickboxer movies, and ordered Blackbelt, which is apparently Don's version of The Bodyguard. With luck, those discs will be here by the weekend.

Takin' A Drive

Well, a full 15 years after it came out, I finally got to see the Mark Dacascos action film, Drive (not to be confused with the more recent Ryan Gosling film of the same title). Standard B-movie plot and acting, but the best Hong Kong-styled action and fight scenes I've ever seen in a U.S. film. Terrific stuntwork and Dacascos is friggin' amazing!

The 1997 movie was directed by Steve Wang (Kung Fu Rascals, Guyver), and co-starred  Kadeem Hardison and the late Brittany Murphy. I can't say I was a fan of Murphy's, but she's just delightful in this movie. Villain John Pyper-Ferguson (who, interestingly, was in the 2011 Drive, as well, although Brandi and I know him from The Adventures Of Brisco County), makes a great heavy and has most of the best lines.

Too bad the U.S. DVD is cut by 10 minutes and presented in the wrong aspect ratio. We're finally getting a Region-Free DVD player, so maybe I'll save up and order the uncut UK version (which also has different music, I understand) one of these days.

ADDENDUM: I just ordered the Region 2 widescreen version from Amazon UK for less than $10 American - shipping included! Cool!

Weekend Double Feature: A Force Of Octagon

Here's another great exploitation/action double feature poster - twice the Norris nuttiness!

El Gringo!

I actually rather enjoyed Ninja, the 2009 flick that headlined British kickboxer Scott Adkins. I thought it was a fun callback to the Cannon Films of the Eighties like Enter The Ninja & Revenge of The Ninja, and thought that Adkins was quite decent in the lead role. I have since seen him in the passable DTV action flick, Assassination Games, with Jean-Claude Van Damme, and am looking forward to his appearance in the forthcoming Expendables 2.  As I said in my review of Ninja, I believe Adkins has "all the qualities generally required of an action star - he's good looking, muscular, athletic and doesn't talk too much."

Anyway, I've since started following him on Twitter and Facebook. A couple days ago he posted a link to te trailer for his next starring vehicle, El Gringo. From the the trailer posted above, it looks like a wannabe Desperado, but it also looks like it could be fun.

Nine B-Movies I (Still) Want On DVD

Here's one of my periodic lists of B-movies and cult films that I still want on DVD (or even Manufactured-On-Demand DVD-R) for my video collection. Most of these are favorites from my days haunting mom & pop video stores in the Eighties.

As far as I know (and I hope someone will let me know if I'm mistaken), none of these titles are currently available on authorized, Region 1, DVDs or Blu-ray. (Don't talk to me about R2 or other foreign editions. I know it's difficult to believe, movie buff that I am, but I don't own a region-free player and couldn't afford import discs even if I did).

This was originally a list of ten movies, but I just found out that the 1984 Tom Selleck film Lassiter is due out on DVD later this month. 

Arena (1989)

Avenging Force (1986)

Eliminators (1986)

Force: Five (1981)

Godzilla (1985)

I, The Jury (1982)

Ninja III - The Domination (1984)

PeaceMaker (1990)

The Soldier (1982)

I have about half of these titles on VHS, but aside from the fact that they're all pan & scan versions, they're all so old that the tapes are starting to demagnetize (is that a word?) and the image quality is significantly degraded....

CHUCK NORRIS KARATE KOMMANDOS

My review of this awesome 80s animated series is now posted at DVD Late Show, but I just had to share this video here. Enjoy!

The Dragon Has Bloody Fists

My cinemasochism knows no bounds, apparently, as last week, I ordered two more "previously viewed" Bloodfist DVDs from online dealers. The Bloodfist series, you'll remember, starred kickboxer Don "The Dragon" Wilson in a series of unrelated action vehicles for producer Roger Corman back in the early 90s.

Both discs, ordered from different dealers, showed up in my mailbox in less than a week, and as I was feeling under the weather for the last few days, I had time to to watch them both. Now, I'm not the first guy to subject himself to the whole series, but I may be unique in that I'm actually (non-ironically) enjoying the experience so far.

In Bloodfist IV: Die Trying, Don plays single father/repo man Danny Holt, who repossesses the wrong BMW and finds himself embroiled in a convoluted plot by foreign agents to steal "nuclear triggers" for an unnamed, Middle Eastern nation. Over the course of the film, all of his co-workers are massacred by the bad guys, his daughter is kidnapped, and he's repeatedly forced to kickbox the hell out of cops, Feds, fake cops, fake Feds and other assorted high kickin' assailants, including sexy Cat Sassoon (Angelfist).

Don is fine here - these sorts of films don't really require a great actor, after all. And he gets some decent support from vets like James Tolkan (Back To The Future, Masters of the Universe) as an FBI agent and Amanda Wyss (A Nightmare on Elm Street, To Die For) as the stock "pretty girl who gets caught up in his troubles and helps him despite all reason" (i.e. Rae Dawn Chong in Commando, etc.).

The plot is standard DTV stuff, and doesn't hold up to much inspection, but director Paul Ziller manages to work a fight in every few minutes, and, for the most part, those fights actually do serve the narrative and keep the flick moving at a good pace. I also thought the fights were better staged than usual for a Wilson flick. I was disappointed that the final clash with the late Sassoon was so brief, but overall, I enjoyed the movie.

In Bloodfist V: Human Target, Don wakes up in the hospital after being shot in the head, suffering from amnesia (as, you know, always happens in these cases). Denise Duff (the Subspecies series) shows up, claiming to be his wife, but it's soon clear that she's lying. In fact, like the previous entry in the series, no one in the film is who they're first portrayed as, and the viewer is soon as confused as poor Don (who may not be much of a thespian, but has "confused" down pat).

But... there are a fair number of fights, Duff is, as usual, appealing and pretty, and the great Steve James (American Ninja 1, 2 & 3, The Delta Force, I'm Gonna Get You Sucka) makes his final feature film appearance (he died of pancreatic cancer the same year) as the flick's "Big Bad" and has a couple of decent bouts with Wilson.

It'll be a while before I can order any more Bloodfist movies (I'm told that part III is the best one), but I don't regret getting the ones I have. I find them perfectly satisfactory cinematic junk food, a lot more palatable than 90% of what passes for B-action films these days.

More Confessions of an Unrepentant B-movie Addict...

For some reason, I've been on a Don "The Dragon" Wilson kick (no pun intended) lately.

Back in 1989, producer Roger Corman decided he wanted to cash in on the popularity of Jean-Claude Van Damme's early hits, Bloodsport and Kickboxer. Story has it that he actually approached the Muscles from Brussels, but JCVD turned the legendary exploitation mogul down. In any case, Corman was undeterred, and recruited Don Wilson, a multiple-title winning American kickboxer from South Florida to play the lead in his film, Bloodfist.

Wilson had the martial arts cred and was an okay-if-offbeat looking young man, who, if lacking in acting ability, at least possessed a certain likable, "average Joe" kind of quality. When it comes to action stars, likability and convincing moves are a lot more important than thespic skills, and Wilson has been starring in low-budget actioners ever since.

Anyway, as I said above, for some reason, I've been into Wilson's movies lately, which has a been a bit problematic since Netflix's selection of his flicks is inexplicably sparse, and most of his DVDs are out of print. I tracked down used copies of Bloodfist and Bloodfist II online, and will probably be picking up some more when I can afford them.

I enjoyed Bloodfist - which was pretty much exactly a combination of the two JCVD movies I named above - but I enjoyed Bloodfist II even more. That one was a super-cheap rip-off of Enter The Dragon! Both feature supporting casts of genuine martial arts competitors, so the fight scenes are better than average for chop-socky flix of their era.

I also just picked up, from a local video store that was going out of business, a much more recent effort of his, the cop flick Crooked (aka Soft Target), released in '06. That one teamed him up with fellow B-movie action star Olivier Gruner in a fairly predictable, direct-to-video effort that I also enjoyed. It was pretty bad, frankly, but I had fun with it, and dug the B-movie cast (Gary Busey, Martin Kove, Fred Williamson, etc.).

The Bloodfist series eventually ran to 8 or 9 installments, with Wilson playing a different character in each one after the first two. They were all released on DVD in the early days of the format by Corman's own label, but they're long out of print now. It may be sad, but, with the help of this Internet thingy, I hope to eventually get them all....

Ninja!

I've always loved the cheesy ninja movies produced (primarily by Golan-Globus' Cannon Films) in the 1980s, starring Sho Kosugi and Michael Dudikoff, et al. In fact, I'm a huge fan of the studio's four-film American Ninja series (and yes, I know there's a movie called American Ninja 5, but it's not really part of the series, just some deceptive/dishonest marketing by the distributor) - I truly enjoy the complete absurdities of the comic book plots, the clumsy choreography and the low-tech cheapness of the productions. In fact, my only complaint is that there weren't more of them.

Hell, I'm kinda embarrassed to admit it, but when I was in art school, I bought some shuriken throwing stars and ninja "tabi" boots from ads in the back of a karate magazine. If I'd had the money, I'm sure I would have bought a whole ninja outfit, too.

Well, coming out on DVD in a couple of weeks is Ninja, starring British martial artist Scott Adkins as a "white ninja" battling an evil counterpart. From the trailer it looks like a near-perfect updating of the Cannon Films good ninja vs evil ninja formula - photography's a little slicker, CGI blood instead of ketchup, more wire-fu - but otherwise, pure, old school drive-in chop socky.

I expect to get a copy for review soon, and will definitely cover it for DVD Late Show. I'm actually eager to see it. I've been thinking for a long time that ninjas were due for a pop culture comeback. Will Ninja measure up to the sheer brainless pleasures of 1983's Revenge of the Ninja? We'll see....

Where VHS tapes go to die...

I spent a very large part of my twenties haunting Maine's independent video rental stores. Both the small, local chains and hole-in-the-wall mom & pop video shops. If I came across a corner market with a video rental niche, I checked it over carefully. I think I intimately knew the stock of every video store in Augusta, Waterville, Brunswick, Topsham, Bath and Rockland, Maine.

What was great about these stores was the vast selection of obscure exploitation crap that crammed the shelves. Oversized boxes with some of the most astoundingly lurid art you can imagine. Titles and images that, to this day, are permanently seared into my aging gray matter.

I love DVD, and am thrilled both by the quality of the format and its relative affordability, but even with all the weird stuff on disc, there's so much more that was issued only on tape - and is all but forgotten today.

Fortunately, someone's archiving the best of those sleazy and garish box covers online. I stumbled across this page earlier this evening, and it was a genuine blast from my personal past. I can't begin to tell you how many of these tapes I rented - or simply picked up off the shelf and examined before deciding against laying out my cash.

If you're even remotely nostalgic for the VHS era of the 80s and early 90s, you should really check it out.

Back to the 80's

Last week, on a day when I just didn't feel up to doing any work, I decided to put together a DVD compilation of old action movie trailers from the Eighties. No good reason; I was just feeling down and thought it might cheer me up, which it did.

For me, this was a golden age of action cinema, mostly because you could actually still go to the theaters to see low-budget "B" exploitation and action films. Companies like Crown International, Empire, New World – and especially Cannon – could still get theatrical distribution in those days.

I can vividly remember seeing a lot of these movies when they came out. I remember watching American Ninja and Invasion U.S.A – among others – with my pal Bill Crump on our weekly "Bad Movie Nights," at the Waterville Cinema Center (it's a church now). I also remember seeing Revenge of the Ninja my first week in New Jersey when I went down there for art school, and seeing 9 Deaths of the Ninja in the same mall theater shortly before I moved back to Maine. The appeal was strictly visceral – it didn't matter that the stories were basic and predictable or that characters were paper thin cliches or that the acting was terrible, it was all about flying fists and feet, bombs, bullets and boobies.

They don't call 'em exploitation films for nothing, you know.

Now, the descendants of those second tier studios and their product tends to be relegated solely to cable and home video... and, well, that stuff's just not as much fun on the small screen.

Of course, I watched an awful lot of these movies on cable TV and VHS, too. I have a friend named Mark Gerardi who used to waste lots of weekends in the late Eighties with me, sitting on my sofa, eating super-sized drive-thru orders of Chicken McNuggets and watching double and triple features of cheesy action films on tape.

We used to have apartments in the same building, and around noon on Saturday, he'd call and wake me up and ask if I wanted to hang out. After the usual "So, what do you want to do? I don't know, what do you want to do?" exchange failed to come up with anything new or compelling, we'd usually head for the local video store a few blocks away, and stock-up on VHS tapes.

Of course back then, our local video stores always had two sections devoted to the genre among the shelves. There was always the ACTION section (Stallone, Schwarzenegger, etc.) and the CLINT, CHUCK & CHUCK (Eastwood, Bronson & Norris ) area. Sometimes, there'd be a MARTIAL ARTS shelf, too. I think we watched every tape in those sections – many of them repeatedly.

By the mid-90's though, most of these kinds of movies were going strictly direct-to-video. One after another, the surviving action icons – Stallone, Van Damme, Seagal – moved out of theaters onto the rental shelves. Seeing them in a movie house wasn't even an option. And, consequently, I think the budgets dipped a little lower and the production values got even worse. Instead of shooting for cheap in Hong Kong or the Philippines, they filmed even cheaper in Canada or Czechoslovakia.

I have collected a lot of my favorites on DVD over the last ten years, but a lot of stuff still isn't available on disc. Still, I probably have more than would be considered healthy.

Anyway, I've been feeling nostalgic of late, and even after assembling my 50 trailer disc, I still wanted to ramble on about these movies a bit, and that's what a blog is for, right?

Aren't Ninjas About Due For A Comeback?

• The cover of Femme Noir #1 made the front page of the Bangor Daily News (Maine) newspaper's "Lifestyle" section today, accompanying an article about the city's upcoming comic con, BangPop.

The article can be read on their website here.

I'm eagerly anticipating Saturday's show. It will be my first convention appearance in several years, and I'm looking forward to meeting some of the other genre creators who live in Maine. Here's hoping that BangPop has a decent turn-out, and becomes an annual event. I'd like to see Maine have its own, quality pop culture con.

• Over the weekend, Brandi and I went camping in Cobbscook Bay State Park. Unfortunately, we had to cut our trip short by a day when the weather turned bad, but we did have a pleasant Friday afternoon, evening and Saturday morning in the woods.

On the way home, I also got a chance to stop by one of my favorite used book stores and pick up a few vintage Men's Adventure paperbacks.

My big "find" was a copy of the mid-Seventies Spider paperback, Death Reign of the Vampire King. What's so cool about this item is that Pocket Books updated the 30's pulp hero to make him an Executioner clone! Check out that cover painting – the handsome, blond secret agent look is a far cry from the black-cloaked and masked original! I've been looking for these editions for years, and was thrilled to finally find one.

I also scored a couple of Black Samurai novels by Marc Olden. I've read good things about this blaxploitation/martial arts paperback series in the past, and am looking forward to checking them out.

• Speaking of martial arts, I've been revisiting a bunch of 80's Cannon Films ninja flicks lately. I've been watching Sho Kosugi in Return of the Ninja, and Michael Dudikoff and the late, great Steve James, in the American Ninja series. I don't know what it is, but I genuinely love these movies. Maybe it's just simple nostalgia, but I really get a kick out of these flicks, with their clumsy choreography and potboiler plots... and not in a cynical, ironic way, either. Maybe it's because they're so crude by today's standards, without the slick fighting moves and CGI effects, but something about them really appeals to me.

• Getting back to the Men's Adventure paperbacks for a minute, I'm also in the midst of re-reading the Omega Sub series from the very early 90's. It's essentially a post-Apocalyptic take on Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. It chronicles the adventures of the crew of an American super submarine, The Liberator, which survives World War III because it was on a mission under the Polar Ice Cap when the nukes started flying. Now, they sail around the world trying to aid survivors while battling radioactive mutants and a mysterious sub that appears to be a twin of their own.

I bought them when they came out about 15 years ago, and enjoyed them. I'm re-reading them now because a month or so ago, I received a nice fan letter about my work on the Kolchak Tales: Night Stalker of the Living Dead miniseries. It turned out to be from author David Robbins, who wrote the majority of the Omega Sub series. Remembering how much I liked the books, I recently dug them out and started re-reading them. Fun stuff.

I guess maybe my taste in entertainment did peak when I was fifteen....

Breasts of Fury

When is a terrible movie good?

When it entertains.

This is the rationale behind the phrases "guilty pleasures" and "so bad it's good," and the reason why I really enjoyed the fightin' femme flick D.O.A. Dead Or Alive.

It's based on a video game, so anyone who goes into this expecting high art or even a coherent, rational narrative is just setting themselves up for disappointment. The plot – what little there is – is concisely described by one of the producers in the "Making Of" featurette as "Charlie's Angels meets Enter The Dragon," and that's pretty much all of it. But – it's fun.

Directed by HK action director Corey Yuen, whose multitude of credits include the quintessential Michelle Yeoh/Cynthia Rothrock ass-kicker, Yes Madam, and the entertaining (and underrated) So Close, D.O.A. is pure, mindless entertainment. Yuen is best-known as a martial arts choreographer on various Jet Li and Jason Statham films, so you know that the action scenes are extremely well done. But more than that, they're filled with humor, and even characterization – no two characters in this movie fight the same.

The film is pure eye candy, with the largest cast of bikini-clad butt-kickin' babes since Andy Sidaris passed away. Devon Aoki, the ninja hooker from Sin City, and statuesque siren Jaime Pressly are the main stars, and both acquit themselves nicely, managing to create likable characters out of the cyphers they've been given to play. Eric Roberts is a suitably campy villain, and Kane Kosugi, the son of 80's "ninja" star, Sho Kosugi, does his father proud as one of the few male fighters.

It's dumb, loud, flashy, and fast, and I enjoyed it a lot. Even my wife liked it. Your mileage may vary, but hey, from the description I've given in this review, you probably already know if its your slice of cheesecake. It's sure mine.

Here's the trailer;

City of Violence

I just got a press release about an upcoming 2-disc DVD of a recent Korean martial arts/crime flick, City of Violence. I don't know much about this, but the trailer looks great:


Hopefully, I'll be getting a review copy of this soon.