Pushed to the Limit (1992)

I was looking to get some more Mimi Lesseos on the site, and Tubi kept suggesting this one to me, so I figured why not make it happen. In addition to us, Matt Spector at Bulletproof, Mitch at the Video Vacuum, and David Wain at The Schlock Pit have covered this too.

Pushed to the Limit stars Lesseos (who also wrote and produced) as Magnificent Mimi, a star wrestler whose brother (Greg Ostrin) is killed and husband (Michael M. Foley) is seriously wounded by gangster Harry Lee (Eidan Hanzei). To get revenge, she has her husband's sensei Vern (Verrel Reed) train her to fight in Lee's Kumite--that's right, we got a Kumite baby! Only this is more of an evergreen, nightly Kumite, as opposed to a yearly tournament, at least as far as I can tell. Anyway, Lee's champion fighter, Inga, after a successful career as a dancer in Russell Mulcahy-directed 80s music videos, is having trouble finding work in the 90s, so she's changed careers and is now breaking ladies' backs and necks in the ring--though she's kept her make-up from those old videos. Will Mimi defeat Inga and Lee, and bring down Lee's criminal empire?

This definitely borders on what the guys at Comeuppance would call a "That Movie," and by that they mean a Samurai Cop or a Miami Connection. A lot of bad dialog, scenes that don't seem to fit, and an opening credit sequence that looks like The Pod People on MST3K. The difference I think though is Lesseos is a great lead, which keeps the schlock, low-budget elements fun, but also elevates this slightly above those other "That Movies." Another element the guys at Comeuppance always talk about is the Punchfighter, and this Kumite has all of those elements, only in addition to people holding wads of cash, we also have these elderly extended reach claw-like devices that they used to give and take money from the upper levels of the fighting arena. How they kept track of who bet on who is beyond me, I just liked the idea of those devices for myself so I wouldn't need to get on a chair to reach the upper shelves of my cabinets. There are elements of the movie that don't work though. It takes us about a half-hour until we even get mention of a Kumite, and before that, we get introduced to a bunch of Mimi's family members who play no role in the film and only serve to confuse us. Some of the darker sequences are hard to follow, and some of the fights were kind of all over the place and hard to get a consistent look at, which could be headache inducing if you're watching this on a tablet like I was. When the fights were shot well though, they were a fun mix of traditional martial arts with professional wrestling moves, and Lesseos really carried off the fights she was in. Also, I loved the Kumite set, it was like something out of a Fred Olen Ray sci-fi exploitation flick, and the juxtaposition of that kind of T n' A with the fighters here in hot Lycra spandex, but kicking ass and taking names, turned that exploitation on its ear. I think for most of the people reading this, you're going to have a fun time, especially if you're streaming for free, or if you find it cheap in the wild on VHS.

"She's a woman on the 90s." She certainly is, and the movie does a great job of positioning Lesseo's character as a modern woman trying to carve out her own career, versus Inga, an 80s throwback with her hair and make-up, trying to fight the calendar. This is the first of four films Lesseos made between 1992 and 1995, the third of which, Streets of Rage, we've also covered on the site, and while I didn't like this one as much as that one, Lesseos has a great presence and is enjoyable to watch. It made me wonder why she only did these four, and in looking at The Schlock Pit review, David Wain mentioned that she tried to make her movies on her own, which might explain it. For funding on this one, it said she had a $600,000 outside investment, and then funded the rest herself, in part through extreme wrestling matches she did in Japan. She said when she tried to go the more traditional route, filmmakers just wanted her fighting in her bikini, which I get would be annoying for her--only now we see with her new cover for this film, she's in a bikini. It's a shame though, because Lesseos should've had like 20 movies from the early 90s to the early 2000s, just a bunch of films like this where she's beating the crap out of people with the occasional scene interspersed with her training or out at a fancy dinner. I get a shady producer wanting to see her in a bikini, and I also get why she would've said no to that, but we as an audience are the ones who missed out.

We've seen our share of Kumites here at the DTVC. There were the Bloodsport sequels, where we had "The Next Kumite" in part 2, what I'd call "the Reboot Kumite" run by John Rhys-Davies in part 3, and then our first look at a "Dark Kumite," run by Ben Franklin in a prison in part 4. We also had a "Lady Kumite" with Lady Bloodfight, starring Amy Johnston. And then recently, on episode 202 of the DTVC Podcast, Ty and I looked at The Last Kumite, which I took "last" to be not so much "final," but rather "the most recent," because I feel like as long as there are action movies, we'll always have Kumites. This independent Kumite run by the baddie is a mix of the "Lady Kumite"--even though there are men's fights too, so it's like there's a men's and women's division--and the "Dark Kumite," because it is pretty dark. It's also a "Nightly Kumite," which is something we haven't seen yet, usually Kumites are yearly affairs. In my Bloodsport 3 post I suggested a Bloodsport 5 be a Colombian Kumite, where the hero has to fight King from Tekken. I was trying to think of others. What about a "Christmas Kumite"? Like it's a mix between a Hallmark Christmas movie and a Kumite? We could even use Amy Johnston as a young woman who left her hometown, made it big in the city, then returned home for Christmas, only to get roped into the local Kumite, plus find out she really loves her old high school boyfriend, played by any number of lantern-jawed Canadian actors. We could have Wincott hosting it for the full Canadian effect. I think you're picking up what I'm putting down.

You may (or may not) have noticed a new tag, "Chinatown." I decided to start tagging them, after we saw the LA one again. We only have 7 tagged, and of those 7, LA has come up a few times. Other Chinatowns include New York, Tokyo, Melbourne, Australia, and Manila in the Philippines. Hopefully we'll see more--plus I may have more that I haven't reviews found, I only did a search for the term "Chinatown" on my blog. We also had another McDonald's, now 13. I believe we've seen this one before too, it's the one on the Vegas Strip, which Lesseos passes while getting a ride in a limo to a dance gig she has there. I recently had McDonald's while I was at Union Station in DC waiting for my train back to Philly. I told myself I wasn't going to do it, but I couldn't help myself as I passed by, and needed to get a couple double cheeseburgers. It is interesting to think, with 13 posts, that almost 1% of all the films I've reviewed on the site have had a McDonald's in them.

Finally, look at how our baddie is holding his glass of champagne. What are you doing? You're making it warm holding it like that! Do you like warm champagne? He should be holding it by the stem of the glass, instead of the bowl, because the warmth of our hands warms the champagne if we old it like that. What's the point of even keeping it on ice in that bucket, if he's just going to warm it in his hand? I'm getting sick at the thought of warm champagne just looking at that. If you've seen this film before, you might be reading this rant and thinking "Matt, you're upset at how the baddie is holding his champagne, but you're okay with the completely out of nowhere way he suggested he and Lesseos go out to dinner in the previous scene?" That is a great point, in the scene before this, Lesseos finds out her friend is fighting Inga in Lee's Kumite, so she pleads with Lee to cancel the bout, only to have Lee say "let's discuss this over dinner." Wait what? Why? But I guess we needed this scene to establish just how bad our baddie is--I mean, it doesn't get more villainous than enjoying warm champagne!

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently stream this on Tubi and Plex here in the States. Lesseos delivers another fun 90s actions. It's rough in spots, and very low-budget, but it'll get you where you need to go, which I think is worth the stream.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110918 

And if you haven't yet, check out my newest book, Nadia and Aidan, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Tough Guys Don't Dance (1987)

We lost one of the greatest to ever do it this past week, Wings Hauser, and I wanted to review something in his honor. This is one I'd done recently for Jon's After Movie Diner podcast (season 2, episode 20), after having read the novel not long before that, so it was in the can, had a prominent Wings, plus the added benefit of being a Cannon film. In addition to us, and on the After Movie Diner, Mitch at the Video Vacuum has covered this as well.

Tough Guys Don't Dance is based on the novel of the same name, directed by the novel's author, Norman Mailer. It follows Provincetown, MA author and pot farmer Tim Madden (Ryan O'Neal), who wakes up after a night of partying with no memory of what happened, but a front passenger seat of his car covered in blood, and a couple heads in plastic bags in his weed stash. He tells us and his father (Lawrence Tierny) all this, which comes though in flashback format, and we learn that one head may be his estranged wife (Debra Stipe), and the other may be a woman he met at a bar (Frances Fisher). But did he kill them? And if he did, why isn't sheriff Wings Hauser arresting him? He needs to figure it out before the murders get pinned on him!

This is a fun, fascinating ride. Is it a parody of hard boiled detective thrillers? Is it Norman Mailer's mess of a movie that he's trying to pass off as parody because it didn't do well? Does any of it even matter? Yes and no. The no is the bonkers nature of the whole thing, especially with the cast, and the beautiful Provincetown scenery--including Mailer's house. The yes is the fact that much of the film is told in flashback form, which is not how it happens in the novel. I just don't find it to be a great storytelling device, but for whatever reason Mailer felt like that was the way to go. Again, it's a fascinating ride, especially considering the novel is more straight-ahead solid, to have the adaptation be this, and perhaps be this because the original author was too involved, and that he went too far away from his source material. But sometimes we need a bonkers, fascinating ride in our films, and this thing fits the bill.

And in true Wings fashion, he adds to that bonkers-ness in the way that only he can. When I read the novel, I didn't see him as the character he played, but in this Mailer film adaptation, he's perfect for this version of the character. Larger than life, makes you uncomfortable in every scene he's in, but also making the film better for all of it. Honestly, I don't know if one review is enough of a tribute to him, as he contributed so much to the kinds of movies we love, whether they were PM actioners, PM neo-noirs, Nico Mastorakis horror, Jim Wynorski Erotic Thrillers, or films like this where a Norman Mailer needed his frenetic energy. I think if you were looking for something more traditional to celebrate Wings, one of his PM flicks or Mastorakis flicks is probably a better bet; but if you want to go outside of that, or you've seen all of those and are looking for something new, this is a great way to go. Here's to you Mr. Hauser, you were one of the greatest, there will never be another like you, but we're all fortunate that we at least had you.

This was the fourth work of Mailer's I'd read, after The Naked and the Dead, The Armies of the Night, and Barbary Shore, and I'd probably put this third behind those first two I listed. The best way to describe the novel is from one of the reviews, which likened Mailer's foray into the hard-boiled detective genre to "Julia Child making a hamburger," which, while it's still a hamburger, it's a next level hamburger. The movie's something else. It's not an elevated hamburger, maybe it's more like the guava-flavored ice cream I got recently, or maybe even better, the current guava flavor of Monster energy drink. And if I were to think of who Mailer was, the idea that he'd make a guava-flavored Monster energy drink of a movie adapted from his elevated hamburger of a novel makes a lot more sense than this sentence does, at least to me. The movie has the feel of me after taking my lunch break at work, and deciding to stop at 7-11, and seeing the new guava flavor of Monster energy drink, knowing I have to try it. For the first hour I'm back at my desk, I'm full of energy, but I can't focus, I'm all over the place. The first part of the second hour I'm getting a few things done, but the sugar and caffeine speedball are wearing off, and by the second half of the second hour, I'm done and ready to crash. The only difference between this film and my post break on an energy drink work experience, is at you can have fun with the movie, and I think ultimately, whatever Mailer does here, it's fun.

Oh man! Oh God, oh man! Oh God, oh man! According to the trivia, Mailer told O'Neal he was going to take that out, but then when he saw it, he liked it, so he kept it. O'Neal felt betrayed, because it made people think he couldn't act, but I almost think him not being able to act was what Mailer was going for. And to my mind, Mailer's right, it does fit with the rest of the bonkers-ness. Oh God, oh man! It's like me getting pinged by a colleague for something while I'm in my post-guava energy drink stupor. Oh God, oh man! "Sure, one second, I'll take a look at that for you..." Wait, what is this City Nerd video about "Most Urbanist Ballparks"? Oh God, oh man! The request can wait 15 minutes, I need to see where Fenway ranks... Oh God, oh man! "I totally agree that it's ridiculous that the LA Dodgers play in the middle of a parking moat, when their team is named after the act of dodging a street car!" Oh God, oh man! Oh God, oh man! Colleague pings again. "I'm sorry, I got sidetracked..." Oh God, oh man! Oh God, oh man! Indeed.

Finally, as much fun as we're having with this movie, it is still with a heavy heart with the passing of Wings. I was trying to think back to my earliest Wings experience. Probably his stint on Roseanne as Danielle Harris's father, and then his guest spot on Beverly Hills 90210 as the guy helping Luke Perry get his money back. From there, fast forward to the early 2000s, when Mind, Body, and Soul was on one of those 10-movie DVD packs I got, and my friends and I loved it. We started looking for all the Wings we could find, and it was that love of Wings's films, combined with our love of Dolph and Roddy Piper films that led to the creation of the DTVC. And with all those Wings films, many of which I picked up on VHS because we couldn't find them any other way, even if they were a total stinker, Wings added something that made them a fun time for us. Truly one of the greats, he will be missed, but we have so many films of his left to cover on the site, so we'll see him again soon. Gone, but never forgotten.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Currently you can get this free on Prime. I think that's the best way to go, though I am curious about the DVD, which has Norman Mailer's commentary. This is a bonkers movie, but can be very enjoyable due to said bonkers-ness.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094169

And if you haven't yet, check out my newest book, Nadia and Aidan, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Phoenix the Warrior aka She-Wolves of the Wasteland (1988)

It had been over four years since we last had a Kathleen Kinmont film on the site, so I figured it was time, and when I saw that this film was on Tubi, it sounded like a no-brainer. In addition to us, Chris the Brain at Bulletproof, Ty and Brett at Comeuppance, Mitch at the Video Vacuum, and Down Among the Z Movies have all covered this, meaning it was probably long overdue for me to cover it too. 

Phoenix the Warrior is a post-apocalyptic AIP flick with Kathleen Kinmont as our eponymous hero. She rescues a young lady, Keela (Peggy McIntaggart), who just happens to be pregnant, and in this future where pretty much only women survived the apocalypse, a pregnant woman is a big deal. So big that Persis Khambatta and her ruler, the Reverend Mother (Sheila Howard) want her, because the baby Keela is carrying is a special boy that the Reverend Mother could use to power herself--or something. Whatever it is, Kinmont needs to protect Keela and her baby at all costs, otherwise the post-apocalyptic world will be destroyed--or something.

As post-apocalyptic exploitation goes, this isn't horrible. We have a tight 90-minute runtime, Kinmont is a great lead, Persis Khambatta kills it as the baddie, and we get all of the usual post-apocalyptic trappings, like buggies and dirt and fun 80s hairdos. You then have the added element of AIP, which gives this a unique quality the way Corman/Santiago ones are unique, or PM's entry Steel Frontier is unique. For example, I tagged Ted Prior because he gets a set constructor credit, but I think it was more that they reused his set from Mankillers, the corrugated iron shanty town looks like a rundown version of William Zipp's evil drug lord lair from that film. That's the kind of thing that will push a usual post-apocalyptic flick like this up a notch or two, and that can mean a lot when you've seen a lot of these--which I have, more than I expected when I started this site! If you're a connoisseur of these kinds of movies, this is worth a look.

We're now at 9 films for Kinmont, which doesn't sound like a lot, but it puts her in a three-way tie with Shannon Tweed and Dona Speir for third-most all-time among women on the site, behind Cynthia Rothrock's 43, and Julie Strain's 10. The other thing is she was alone as second-most all-time when we last reviewed one of her movies, so in that time Strain, Tweed, and Speir have caught her. I was looking at her bio, and there are some movies of hers we need to do, the problem is they aren't as easy to find, a lot of them haven't made it to free streamers yet--and funny enough, this one is on Tubi twice, as both this title and She-Wolves of the Wasteland. I'll work on tracking down more of her stuff from the late 80s/early 90s that fits our site more, because she should have more films reviewed here than she does. Here's to you Ms. Kinmont, you're one of the greats.

This movie was a staple of USA Up All Night in the 90s, which makes sense considering most of the film has women in bikinis or less. According to the IMDb trivia, Kinmont said the filmmakers asked her to go topless too, but she said no, because she thought the nudity was gratuitous, and they weren't paying her enough--the $50 a day she got barely covered the gas required to drive out the Mojave Desert for shooting. The other thing she said was this was a non-SAG role that she took because the filmmakers assured her the film would only be shown overseas, but when it ended up on HBO and USA, she almost lost her SAG card as a result, and she never saw a dime from that cable money. I guess David Winters and AIP really put the "exploit" in "exploitation," huh? And if Kinmont was only making $50 a day, we have to imagine Ted Prior got nothing for them using his corrugated iron shanty town that he went to all that trouble to make for Mankillers. When you put this up against her doing a love scene with Wings Hauser in Art of Dying that involved him pouring milk and food all over her and yelling at the make-up woman to powder his bare asscheeks, you realize that Wings and PM were probably nothing compared to her AIP experience--okay, maybe not "nothing," maybe just not as bad, right?

The 80s were rife with same-sex platonic partners raising kids, so the fact that this film used that device wasn't too out of the ordinary for the time. We had My Two Dads and Full House as examples of straight males living together and raising kids, and then we had Kate and Allie as two straight women doing the same thing. They were skirting the line of same-sex romantic partners raising kids, but never quite getting there, which meant when you had situations like my parents telling me my mom's best friend was living with her "roommate," and that that "roommate" was pregnant by artificial insemination, it was believable because we had Kate and Allie and Murphy Brown to look to as examples for why my aunt and her "roommate" weren't actually in the committed romantic relationship they actually were in. The thing is though, this movie could've gone there, but for some reason in a lot of exploitation films, homosexuality is depicted as this degenerate thing, like here when women hook up with other women, they're the baddies, while Kinmont's hero and the pregnant woman she rescued would never "engage in that kind of thing." Nope, they're Kate and Allie raising their Murphy Brown child in the post-apocalyptic wasteland, nothing else to see here--until a balding, mustachioed man falls into their laps, and then it's on.

Finally, look at that beautiful Zenith TV set. Not sure how its knobs lasted that long after the apocalypse, but considering everything else I'm accepting in this film, I probably shouldn't worry about it. I did some digging, aka "I looked Zenith up on Wikipedia," and I found out when this film was made, Zenith was already in trouble. The HDTV technology they were starting to pioneer was over a decade away from making it to market, and between their market share dipping due to Japanese competitors, and the cost of the anti-dumping lawsuit they were party to that was filed against those Japanese competitors--which Zenith and their co-plaintiffs eventually lost--they weren't pulling in the money they used to while the debts were mounting up. Over time the company that eventually became LG bought an increasing share in them, finally buying the whole thing in 1999, so LG owns what remains of Zenith now. The irony of course with those dials, was Zenith also pioneered the remote control, so for most of that TV's life the dials weren't necessary, unless a kid had it in the 80s and needed to turn the dial between channels to view some squiggly-lined porn, a practice that also became obsolete when TVs stopped using dials, and internet porn became so prolific. What a scene that would've been in this movie though if the people who prayed to the TVs were sitting around it, turning the dial between channels to watch squiggly-lined porn that was being produced in a post-apocalyptic corrugated-iron shanty town built by Ted Prior for another AIP film. You AIP guys really missed a trick there, didn't you?

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently get this on Tubi, under both its names, though the film is the same. This is fun as a post-apocalyptic actioner between the cast and the AIP touches, and sometimes for a film like this that's all you need.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093731

And if you haven't yet, check out my newest book, Nadia and Aidan, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Boudica: Queen of War (2023)

This is one I'd been meaning to do for some time, the problem was this was one of five films Jesse V. Johnson put out between 2021 and 2024, of which this is the fourth of five I need to do (the one I'm missing is 2021's Hell Hath No Fury), so it got lost a bit in the shuffle, but we're making it happen now. In addition to us, Outlaw Vern has covered this as well.

Boudica: Queen of War has Olga Kurylenko as the eponymous hero, who starts the film as the queen to Clive Standen's king of the Iceni, a people living under Roman rule around 60 AD. When he dies, Boudica becomes queen, the only problem is Nero had decreed that women can't have any positions of power in the empire, so the head of the Roman colony in Britain, Catus Decanius (Nick Moran), confiscates Iceni land, has her flogged, and captures her daughters as well. Eventually she's rescued by the Trivante people, led by Cartimanda (Lucy Martin), who let her know that a prophecy has decreed that she should lead them against the Romans. She does, and things work for a time, but eventually Rome asserts it's power and wipes everyone out, yet in the aftermath a legend is born.

This worked on some levels for me. I liked Kurylenko in the lead, she was as great as she usually is. This also has a fun supporting cast, with Moran as the Roman baddie, Lucy Martin as a revelation as the warrior who saves and trains Boudica--she has a fantastic moment where she chops off the arm and then head of local jerkoff who gives Boudica a hard time--Peter Franzen as the Roman trained local warrior who takes up her cause, Clive Standen as the king, and a small appearance by DTVC favorite and Johnson mainstay Dominique Vandenberg, who we love to see anytime. Where this seems off is the use of magic. I don't know that she needs magic, and I feel like it ungrounds a film that needed grounding with its hero, and in some ways diminished what she meant as leader. There was also some license with history that I wasn't sure was necessary. One example of this is conflating the events of this film with the Great Fire of Rome and Nero's death, none of which happen at the same time. It didn't add anything to the film or Boudica's story. Overall though I enjoyed Kurylenko's performance and the supporting cast, plus Johnson does a great job with the battle scenes on a limited budget.

We're now at 7 films for Olga Kurylenko, which may not sound like many, but for women on the site, that puts her in a five-way tie for sixth all-time, and 7 is only three behind Julie Strain's 10 for second all-time. And she has a lot of stuff out there for us to catch up on, so she could move up those ranks quickly. She's not just one of the top women in action right now, she's one of the top names in action period, and this film is an example of what she brings to the table. The screen presence, the ability to mix it up in the action scenes, it's all on display here. She's exactly who Johnson needed as the star if he was going to make this film, and to the extent that it's successful at all, it starts with her and her performance. It looks like she has a ton of great stuff coming up as well, including a return to her Taskmaster character in the upcoming Thunderbolts* film, so I'm excited to see what she does next. Chances are, based on her history, it'll be great.

This is Jesse V. Johnson's 14th directed film on the site, which puts him alone in third place all-time behind Albert Pyun's 43, and Fred Olen Ray's 16--kind of like with the women on the site list, where you have Cynthia Rothrock with 43, and then a big drop to Strain with 10. I don't think this is his best work, but in an age where you don't know what you're going to get when you click on a thumbnail on a streaming site, Johnson's films have a high floor which means you know you're going to get a level of quality that, at least to me, means my 90 minutes--or 100 in this case--won't be wasted. Beyond the production values that he does really well on a tight budget, we have his cinematographer Jonathan Hall, who has worked with him on a lot of films, and does a great job here punching up the dramatic scenes to give them more effect, they're really well-shot; and then those names I mentioned above come in and turn in great performances that are fun to watch, again, elevating things and giving his film that higher floor. It looks like for the first time since 2016 Johnson doesn't have a film coming out this year, which will give me some time to catch up on past films of his that I've missed, like Hell Hath No Fury and The Butcher.

It's not often that England gets to depict itself as throwing off the yoke of a colonial oppressor. In fact, other than this, England is usually the colonial oppressor that needs to be defeated, and I imagine most of the world watching a film like this has no sympathy for England. As an American, I think it's only fair to demonstrate some level of self-awareness and point out that when we do it, depict the Revolutionary War as us throwing off the shackles of British Imperialism, it's really a farce--we were the colonial oppressors here in America, we were just pissed that the Brits ignored us for years and let us thrive off all that oppression, and then came in and taxed us after they'd accrued some debts. How dare you not let us keep all the money we were making exploiting the resources we've seized here? It's the same idea though, everyone wants to be the plucky underdog, no one wants to be the massive power that crushes everything good, even if the British Empire and the United States are the Romans in most other scenarios. At least here, the Brits can say they actually were fighting to throw off the yoke of colonial oppression, as opposed to us in America who act like that's the case, when in reality we just wanted to keep more of the spoils of that oppression, and the Brits were like "what? You're really doing this?" and by the time they realized the answer was yes, it was too late. I will also say, as a symbol of a woman fighting the odds, Boudica means more than just Brits throwing off the yoke of colonialism, she represents the struggles women go through in greater society, and I think Johnson does a great job of keeping that metaphorical meaning prominent throughout--though I also think this is where the use of magic detracts from that message some.

Finally, here in South Philly we have tons of this guy above. I'm not sure why he's so prolific, but if I'm out running errands, especially here in deeper South Philly, the odds of me encountering one are pretty good. There's a pizza place on Broad and Snyder here called La Rosa, which is one of the best in the area. Anyway, I had $5 burning a hole in my wallet and grabbed a slice there after a trip to the local co-op, and on my way home, carrying the box it was in, seemingly out of nowhere one of those guys appeared behind me and told me how good the pizza was at La Rosa. It's like they're so ubiquitous down here that they form out of the ether and vanish as quickly. From a tourist standpoint, outside of the Italian Market and the Stadium District, there isn't much reason to come down to the part of South Philly I live in, but if you ever find yourself here, be prepared to see some of these guys in the wild--and if you're lucky, they may even comment on your pizza--and as they should, La Rosa's pizza is worth it.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently stream this on most free streamers here in the States, including Tubi. I wouldn't say it's Johnson's best, but between him, Kurylenko, and the rest of the cast, it's not horrible and worth a look if you have some time to kill. 

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt22688572

And if you haven't yet, check out my newest book, Nadia and Aidan, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Victim of Desire (1995)

When I saw that this movie existed, starring Shannon Tweed, Julie Strain, Wings Hauser, and Marc Singer, and directed by Jim Wynorski, I knew I had to make it happen, and luckily I found it on The Internet Archive, so here we are making it happen. What I didn't expect was to have an historical moment on the DTVC in the form of our first ever back door 50 Club entry! Who'd'a thunk?

Victim of Desire has Marc Singer as an SEC investigator looking into businessman Leland Duvall's (Wings) finances after $70 million goes missing. Duvall's also on the hook after a judgement is rendered against him when his defective electric blanket kills over 100 people. When Leland's car ends up at the bottom of a ravine, Singer suspects foul play, so he teams up with an LAPD detective (Johnathan "Johnny" Roastbeef from Goodfellas) to look into what happened, and Duvall's widow (Tweed) seems like as good a place to start as any--and with an erotic thriller like this, you know what we mean by that! As Singer gets in deeper, he gets in deeper with Tweed (insert rim shot) but this leads to all kinds of issues with his investigation, and now Mr. Roastbeef is thinking Singer may be in on it too. It's up to Singer to solve this thing and clear his name, but is he going to be a victim of  desire?

This isn't any kind of classic or must watch, but it's exactly what you're looking for when you fire up a 90s Erotic Thriller--well almost, there isn't as much nudity, this is less on the softcore porn side and more on the thriller side, which works well enough for me, but I can see how that may not work for others. In that sense though the title has a secondary purpose, because if you were a kid in the 90s and saw this on the video store shelf or listed in your TV Guide (who is listed as one of the critic reviews by the way--though they don't review it, just summarize it) and thought "ooh, how much will I get to see Shannon Tweed and Julie Strain naked?" and you end up disappointed, you in fact were a victim of desire. For me, it's the names, the Wynorski direction, and the 90s nostalgia. You get things like Peter Spellos as a coroner eating ribs while he goes over the details of Duvall's death to Johnny Roastbeef, Wings Hauser yelling at Jay Henry Richardson, or Julie Strain giving Shannon Tweed a tension-filled massage when we know Strain is up to something. It's a shame this is only available on the Internet Archive, someone's gotta get a version on Tubi!

Let's get to that back door 50 Club entry. I want to say it was The Sweeper episode of the pod (episode 165 in the archives) where guest Chris "The Brain" Kacvinsky from Bulletproof Action and I were talking about Spiro Razatos, and he mentioned another stunt coordinator for PM, Cole S. McKay. I hadn't heard of him before, despite reviewing a ton of movies on his IMDb bio--and to be fair, I'd only heard of Razatos when Gary Daniels mentioned him in an interview, so other than Art Camacho I was really bad on crediting stunt work overall. So now McKay was on my radar, but in a recent conversation with Jon Cross from The After Movie Diner--and the upcoming PM Entertainment Podcast!--McKay came up, and I realized he probably needed to be tagged. And he was, to the tune of 55 movies! This one we're doing now is 56, which puts him ahead of Art Camacho for third-most all time. Obviously he's a definite Hall of Fame induction this fall, but now I also need to update my 50 Club imaging and the 40 and 50 Club lists--also I discovered that I'd missed a PM tag for one of their movies, so they're at 47 films now. This is not his 50 Club post, we'll do a real official entry in near future, plus this fall he'll be inducted into the Hall of Fame, but for now we'll leave at here's to you Mr. McKay, you're one of the greatest.

This is the second of two originally-produced films starring both Shannon Tweed and Julie Strain, the other being Rowdy Girls, which we've reviewed. (There's also Bimbo Movie Bash which has archive footage of Young Blood, Fresh Meat starring Strain and Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death starring Tweed, but they weren't acting together in that.) It's a shame they didn't do more together, because they have a great antagonistic chemistry. Forget Joan Collins and Linda Evans, this was the Dynasty pairing I wanted to see! And I get why some people seeing this would've been disappointed by the lack of nudity from both actors, but for me the novelty of this being one of only two films they did together makes it a special entry, and one we're lucky to have. For numbers, Strain is now at 10 films, which puts her second all-time among women on the site, after Rothrock's 43, and Tweed's at 9, which puts her tied with Dona Speir for third all-time among women. Since we've pretty much exhausted Speir's DTVC oeuvre, expect Strain and Tweed to keep moving past her, but with Rothrock's lead and the fact that she's been pumping out a lot more stuff lately, they'll probably be competing for second, which I think is all right.

We last saw Wings Hauser about two years ago when we reviewed Original Gangsters, so it's good to get him back on the site. Two years is too long when you consider how much great stuff he still has out there to review, so I need to focus on getting to it, especially some of the great 90s stuff he did that we haven't covered yet. Part of it is availability, but between YouTube, free streamers like Tubi and Plex, and the Internet Archive, more of it is coming to the surface, so I don't have an excuse. And even though this role doesn't have a lot of screentime, the performance he gives us is plenty robust enough to get the job done. It just adds to the overall fun nature of a movie like this to have Wings yelling at people or looking up from his computer with his mouth agape in that way only Wings can do. He's at 23 movies now, and I don't know if we can get him to the 30 Club this year, but maybe by sometime next year. We'll put it on the map to get it done, because he should be there.

Finally, I mentioned above that Peter Spellos has a small part as the rib-eating coroner. He unfortunately left us in November of 2023, but when it came to movies like these, specially ones directed by Fred Olen Ray or Jim Wynorski, he could pop in on these small roles and really deliver something that added more flavor--kind of like the sauce he was dipping his ribs into in this film. My first time ever podcasting was on Drunk on VHS when host Moe Porn had me and Jon Cross on to discuss Hard to Die, and while they both knew who Spellos was, I didn't, so I joked that I thought his last name was pronounced "SPAY-yos," like it was Spanish, which led to a series of jokes and tangents from us after that. Later Jon became friends with Spellos, and I remember him as a guest on Jon's Crosstalk podcast, where not only was he gracious and a lot of fun to listen to, but he also had some great insight on acting. He, like so many other actors at that time, knew what was expected from them in roles like the rib-eating coroner, and as a true professional, he delivered, and in so doing gave the films he was a part of that much more to make them fun for us in the audience. Here's to you Mr. Spellos, you were truly one of the greats, and you will be missed.

And with that, let's wrap this up. I watched this on the Internet Archive, and you can tell by the screens that it wasn't the best quality, but it got me to the church on time. I don't even know if a VHS exists, but hopefully someday soon it'll be more available. Maybe it's not a classic, but it's worth checking out.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118079

And if you haven't yet, check out my newest book, Nadia and Aidan, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Alien Intruder (1993)

This is one of those ones I thought I'd done earlier on on the site, but didn't, and then for some reason it ended up getting pushed down the list, for almost 18 years it seems. Strange, considering this is the first PM flick I remember watching, so it has some significance. In addition to us, our friend Chris the Brain at Bulletproof Action has covered this as well.

Alien Intruder takes place two years ago in 2022, where a Commander Striker (William December Williams) gathers a Dirty-Dozen-style team of four convicts (Dirty Quartet?) to investigate a space freighter that went incommunicado. We know what happened, because in the opening scene, a crazed Jeff Conaway killed everyone at the behest of Tracy Scoggins, before turning the gun on himself (it was like the Rolling Stones song, "it's just a Conaway, it's just a Conaway"). After the guys do some virtual R&R, they start to notice Scoggins appearing in their fantasies, and then eventually appearing in their realities! Does Mr. December Williams hold the key to what's going on? And will our rag-tag group of heroes figure it out in time to stop Scoggins?

This one starts a little slowly, but it's the kind of slowly that in the mid-90s when I first saw this would be boring, but in 2025 is a fun nostalgia trip--even if it was only three years ago! In one scene, Maxwell Caulfield and the other guys are playing cards and busting each other's chops, and in that spirit Caulfield calls one of them a "brick shithouse," which is Generation Jones speak for "ya big lug." You can just imagine on college campuses in the early 80s people calling each other "brick shithouse," and even if they didn't, it's fun to imagine, right? Scoggins is great too as the alien temptress. The VR fantasies are like music videos with their themes and settings, and she's pretending to be the "video girl," only with a diabolical twist. And then they have a PM twist too, because PM uses the VR fantasies to inject action into the film, including a massive explosion at a gas station that sends a stunt guy flying off in the background--if only they did that in Michael Bolton's "Missing You Now" video! Top it off with the great Billy Dee Williams, and you have yourself a fun PM sci-fi actioner.

Speaking of Michael Bolton, the last time we saw Billy Dee Williams on here was in February of 2012, with Gary Busey in the submarine flick Steel Sharks--do you remember that Michael Bolton song, "Steel sharks, wrapped all around me..."? Maybe not. Anyway, the only reason my friends and I rented this back in the mid-90s was because it had Billy Dee. I didn't know anything about PM Entertainment, but in that period between Return of the Jedi and Phantom Menace, Star Wars fans needed anything they could get, and Billy Dee Williams in a low-budget DTV sci-fi flick seemed like a good bet--not to mention as high schoolers we were also Colt .45 fans, if you knew someone who was over 21, you could give them $5 and they could get you a 40 and keep the change to buy themselves some cigarettes. What a simpler time. You don't get a lot of Williams in this, but PM does a good job of sprinkling him throughout so you never go too long without him, which is a nice thing. Here's to you Mr. Williams, you're truly one of the best.

This is now 46 PM flicks on the site, but as I mentioned above, this is the earliest one I remember watching. Also as I mentioned above, I didn't know it as a PM flick--we didn't know what that really was back then, it was just another logo we saw a lot--we only rented it for Billy Dee Williams. If you look at the release date, 1993, we would've rented this around the time it came out, but back then the mom and pop we rented from, People's Video, didn't gouge on new releases like Blockbuster and the other big chains did, so it was the same $2 as the older movies. When Alex, the guy who owned the video store, was picking it out of the catalog, he was probably thinking Star Wars fans like us would grab it because it had Billy Dee Williams on the cover, and at least for us he was right. I couldn't have imagined 30 years later there'd be this thing called blogging, and that I'd be almost 18 years in on a site of my own reviewing it, let alone watching it again on a "streaming" site called Amazon Prime--forget the fact that Donald Trump is not only our president, but he's on his second term. PM had a better vision of what the 2020s would be in 1993, we just weren't worthy of it.

Speaking of the future, we usually talk about flying cars as the thing that didn't end up happening, but the one we usually miss is laser guns, which were prevalent in this film. How did no one pick that up? Especially here in the States, we love shooting people, a laser gun seems like a natural invention. I guess because guns are so easy to get and shoot up schools with, people were probably like "why would you want a laser when you can mow down tons of people, especially kids, with an automatic gun firing bullets?" It makes sense, there's no way a battery could hold enough charge for the laser shots required to equal a high-capacity magazine. And if there's one thing the United States does better than the rest of the world, it's mass shootings. We also like our deaths due to car violence too, which is probably why we never went too far into flying cars either. "If cars are in the sky, what reason would we have to displace people and wildlife to expand freeways in order to save drivers 30 seconds on their commute? And then who would be hit by cars at dangerous intersections if all the cars were in the air? Nope, better to keep the cars on the ground where they can hit more people and we can scar the landscape with more highways and parking." And that's why no laser guns and no flying cars.

Finally, Maxwell Caulfield's outfit here was too good not to comment on. Fluorescent yellow and blue Lycra spandex shorts with a black codpiece (??), and finger-less gloves. And look at the Wes Anderson-style shot composition with him leaning against the door frame, the woman fresh from the Hot Tropic pageant on the other side, and the living room and the windows with the view of the beach to the right. Just an absolute thing of beauty. Now I do need to confess, when I lived in Maine ten years ago, I biked a lot, and as such I needed the finger-less gloves and the spandex shorts. They served a purpose though: the gloves and shorts had gel padding in them, which mitigated the impact of my aluminum bike bouncing on the road. Also, if it helps, the shorts were all black and didn't have a codpiece, and I always wore a shirt too. Maybe it doesn't, and I understand. I realize too that in the interests of being forthright with my audience, I've just made this paragraph in celebration of that fantastic shot above all about me, so I apologize.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Currently you can stream this on Prime. I think there's also a decent YouTube version. As far as PM goes, this isn't a top 10 or even a top 20, but their deeper catalog is a lot of fun too, and this film is a great example of that. Plus you can't go wrong with Billy Dee Williams!

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106244

And if you haven't yet, check out my newest book, Nadia and Aidan, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Diamond Cartel (2015)

This is it, post number 1300! Not only that, but Mr. Don "The Dragon" Wilson becomes the eighth member of the 40 Club, and the fourth member to reach the club primarily as an actor. In trying to find the right film, I went with this star-studded bonkersfest from Kazakhstan, which has also been covered by Ty and Brett from Comeuppance--who have been telling me I needed to do this one for some time, so good to finally make it happen!

Diamond Cartel involves a deal between (I think) crime boss Armand Assante and (maybe) crime boss Michael Madsen, that's been brokered by Don "the Dragon" Wilson. As happens with most deals at the beginnings of movies, this deal goes bad, in this case because of an ambush. Among those ambushers is young lady Aliya (Karlygash Mukhamedzhanova), who takes the money and tries to run off with her boyfriend. Now we don't know who to trust. Assante wants his money. Rival crime boss Cary Tagawa wants Assante's money. Wilson wants Assante to pay him. And then when things can't get any wackier, our young couple get to the coast to get a boat out of dodge, and none other than Peter O'Toole is there to help them escape.

Where do we start with this one? We got a dubbed Wilson, a dubbed Olivier Gruner, and a dubbed Peter O'Toole. The plot is all over the place--I made it look pretty straight forward, but, like the Aliya character is a dealer at Assante's casino, and he sets her up so she owes him a lot of money, but instead of being under his thumb, a guy she grew up with gets her stuck in with Tagawa's gang so she can be trained as a sniper. I'm sorry, what? And when she tells the boyfriend this after they're reunited, he's angry with her about it? Later when she thinks he's agreed to give Assante all the money so he leaves them alone, she shoots him. Luckily he doesn't die? This is like a modern companion to White Fire, it's that bonkers, and features a big diamond too. Plus the names are prodigious. In addition to the ones I've mentioned, we also had Tom "Tiny" Lister and Bolo Yeung, because why wouldn't we? (More on Bolo Yeung later.) Is the action good? I don't know, I don't know that value judgements like "good" or "bad" make sense with something like this, you just go with it, buy the ticket, take the ride, and wake up in Astana--just make sure to check that both of your kidneys are intact!

The 40 Club for Mr. Wilson, one of the best to ever do it; and a very circuitous route to get here, as he's one of the few to ever have tags removed because films that IMDb said he was in, like Siege of Firebase Gloria, we later found out he wasn't. But we're here now, we've made it, and for as bonkers as this film is, including the dubbed voice, it might be a fitting film for his 40 Club entry because he's here strictly due to the name he's created for himself all these years. As a kid, when I was first learning what DTV movies were, he was one of the first names I gravitated to, you knew if his face and name were on the tin, that you were in for a great time. At this point he does more supporting roles like this than he does starring roles, which I'm okay with considering how many great films he's given us. The 40 Club has been a long time coming, but we got there, and there isn't a DTV star who's more deserving.

Among the many other names in this, the star is Karlygash Mukhamedzhanova, who plays Aliya. The problem is, between all the name actors that needed screentime, and the story that seems to be shoehorning all kinds of stuff in, we lose her as the lead for chunks of time. She's also the narrator--at least we think, or her narration could be dubbed too. The thing is, the left-turn-ski stuff we get with her character, when she's telling her boyfriend how she was missing for two years because she had to escape Armand Assante by becoming an assassin for Cary Tagawa, it's not as ridiculous as White Fire's "give a woman at a bar plastic surgery so she looks like Ginty's sister, and then Ginty has sex with her" storyline, but it's ridiculous enough, and I don't know how you sell that, but she does her darndest. I saw on IMDb that she did another Kazakhstan action production, this time starring Vinnie Jones, but no one else with him. Michael Madsen must've been too busy I guess, but based on this performance, there are a lot of direct to video movies here in the States that could use her, so perhaps this won't be the last time we see her.

This film has two other Hall of Famers, Bolo Yeung and Olivier Gruner, the 11th and 25th tag for each respectively. Again, more on Yeung in a second, but the fact that Gruner is only 5 away from the 30 Club is a big deal. And as bonkers as this movie is, check out screenwriter Richard Pierce's appearances on the Comeuppance podcast to hear some great stories about making Sector 4: Extraction with him. To round out everyone else, Madsen is now at 15 films, Armand Assante is at 7--which I couldn't believe we'd done that many of his films!--, Cary Tagawa is at 14, and Tom "Tiny" Lister is at 8 films. And then, craziest of crazy, we have one tag now for Peter O'Toole, right? Actually, I forgot that I also reviewed Supergirl during my DTVC Wild Card series look at comic book films. In 2019 my friend and I saw Lawrence of Arabia in the theater, and now I'm seeing him here, dubbed by someone who may or may not have had a stroke, in what ended up being his final film performance. It's always amazing who we end up finding in the world of DTV.

As if this film couldn't get anymore bonkers, according to the IMDb trivia, Bolo Yeung requested that a cat be present in his fight scene near the end of the film, as a tribute to Bruce Lee and his fight with Chuck Norris in The Way of the Dragon, which also has a cat onlooker. I believe this one was CGI, which, as you may know if you've been on here enough, I'm fully in favor of CGI animals being used in films. Cats want to relax, run around and chase things, and eat, possibly with some head scritches and pets mixed in. As much as I'd enjoy a nice Bolo Yeung fight, for a cat, it's really not all that important, and I respect that and think we all should as well. I do think though if you're going to go CGI cat, why not go full Sebastian from Josie and the Pussycats, right? Maybe have him laugh at them, or put a fishbowl on his head and go snorkeling. Just a thought, but even as simply an onlooker, cats always add value to any film they're in. Why more DTV filmmakers don't add them, especially CGI ones, is beyond me. It's easy points with me. Two simple rules to get you a recommendation: stay under 90 minutes, and add cats.

I figured we'd do a bonus paragraph for Mr. Wilson on getting to the 40 Club, and on us getting to 1300 posts. When I started this site in 2007, I never thought I'd be here 18 years later still plugging away at it, or that the posts would still be getting the kind of readership and reception they still do, especially with me taking a four-year hiatus in the middle. After all the people I've met along the way, the next best thing has been to go through so many films from stars like Don "The Dragon" Wilson, who I love. Some I'd seen before I started the site, like some of the Bloodfist films, but many were things I'd never heard of; and if it wasn't for Wilson, I probably wouldn't be reviewing this gem, but here we are, and I'm still enjoying it. So here's to you Mr. Wilson on making it to the 40 Club; and here's to you, everyone who's still with us after all these years. I wouldn't have kept the train moving--or gotten it back on the tracks in 2019--if it wasn't for the support and readership, so thank you very much for that, it means the world, and hopefully we're all still here for the next 1300 posts!

And with that, let's wrap this up. Right now this is on Fawesome here in the States, after sitting in my Tubi queue for about five years then getting removed by them. You never know when a film like this will get bounced, but luckily the name recognition tends to keep it on at least one of the free streamers.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2538778

And if you haven't yet, check out my newest book, Nadia and Aidan, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!