♫ It's me, hi, I'm the problem, it's me It's me, hi, I'm the problem, it's me It's me, hi, everybody agrees, everybody agrees ♬ 😉😁
It's my fault we're in this mess today, 'PM Entertainment! Day,' a topic yours truly requested that our Lord Patrick Bromley saw fit to include in this year's Junesploitation! calendar. During the 90's most weekends after midnights (and infrequently on weekedays, also after 12AM) the HBO, Cinemax, Movie Channel and/or Showtime cable networks would air low-budget movies that emphasized action, softc0re s*x, or both. Amongst the dreck of direct-to-video (DTV) stuff that could also be rented in the 'B' sections of video rental stores, 'PM Entertainment' movies stood out from the pack. Almost every PM movie had (a) an army of stuntmen, helicopter pilots and pyro guys on retainer, (b) at least one gratuitous shot of women's b0obs (or full frontal if we were lucky, as many of these films were unrated), (c) one or two spectacular car chases culminating in a glorious slow-motion wreckage, and (d) an under-90 minute running time, many times closer to 80 mins.
And since the four PM Entertainment movies I've chosen are all new to me, I'm playing the same chances most newcomers to PM Entertainment are that I'll get a turkey for my viewing troubles. 🥵🦃 Here we go!
The 'M' in 'PM Entertainment' himself, Joseph Mehri, directs this Dan Haggerty (TV's "Grizzly Adams") vehicle. He plays Jake Baxter, an ex-Marine, once-great car racer who moves to Los Angeles to try and make $60,000 in three months to save his properties in Minnesota. A run-in with a purse snatcher and Jake befriends aspiring actress Jenny (Dana Bentley), who helps him find a cheap place to live and becomes his bestie. Working for a repo collection agency owned by 'Bulldog' (Paul Hayes), Jake and his co-workers run into all sorts of life-threatening weirdos as they repossess all types of vehicles, even a helicopter (!). On their downtime Jake and his co-workers go to watch live drag racing. At that same racetrack, a mobster named King (Robert Axelrod) eventually wants Jake to drive a racing car for him, something frowned upon by King's boss. Then King threatens Jenny with bodily harm unless Jake does as he's told. Jake gets mildly upset.
Looks like I picked a dud out of the gate. 🙁 We do get a few glimpses of nud!ty in an L.A. p0rno set and some decent car stunts (the helicopter repossession is actually pretty cool). Between the blues-heavy soundtrack, gentle May-December romance developing between Jake and Jenny (not nearly as gross as it sounds) and "Repo Man"/mobster stereotypes, "Repo Jake" is a pretty badly-written movie. Dialogue's awful, pace is super slow (we watch Haggery eat soup in front of a TV... in real time! 😰), and the sight of giant Grizzly Adams barely fitting inside a racing car shouldn't be funny... but it is. YMMV, but I didn't get what I came here for. 2.5 BLONDIE-DESIGNED DRAG RACING SPEED DEMONS (out of five).
This is the kind of theme that is perfect for Junesploitation, J.M. A lot of us - including me - do not know these films at all, so it is an opportunity to dive into another world of exploitation cinema. There is also a history of spotlighting production companies in June: Empire Pictures, New World, Concorde, AIP, and Cannon.
Tubi has a selection of PME films (those featuring Don "The Dragon" Wilson, Anna Nicole Smith, and Gary Daniels) to choose from.
Wings Hauser ("Vice Squad") to the rescue! Wings stars and directs (from a script by Joseph Mehri) an L.A. crime thriller that's half pursuit of serial killers that stage murders as movie scenes ("Scarface," "The Deer Hunter," etc.) for snuff video (and personal pleasure) purposes, and half a full-on vanity project. You know you're in good hands when Wings' detective and his partner end up killing the domestic dispute couple they came to assist in self-defense (one of them thrown off a hotel window) to start the movie. 🤣 The pitch-black humor continues when Wings confronts 'Holly' (Kathleen Kinmont), a home invader in his beachfront house that turns out to be a secret admirer. The scenes of Wings plowing Kinmont from behind in his kitchen (complete with jelly and milk chugging! 🤢🤮) are only topped moments later by director Hauser intercutting the couple's lovemaking with the serial killers' (Gary Werntz and Mitch Hara) making a "Psycho" shower re-enactment. There's a token attempt at making Hauser a sympathetic guy who tries to keep young women from being taken advantage of by showbiz dream peddlers, and it's always nice to see Michael J. Pollard ("Tango & Cash") getting some work. And while "The Art of Dying" is another PM Entertainment flick devoid of the usual car chases/explosions the studio's known for, it compensates for by giving us a glimpse of Kathleen Kinmont's... assets, and into the inner workings of Wings Hauser's warped mind. It's a freaking dark place in there, and I can't wait to revisit it on other Wings-directed PM features. 😁 4 L.A. SHIRTLESS NIGHT JOGGERS WEARING PINK THONGS (out of five).
I watched this one, too! A wild ride! So many notable touches-- and neither of us mentioned the tequila rabbit scene! Thanks for the PM Entertainment category suggestion, J.M.!
I forget that, if you were born after 2000, you'd have no idea what PM Entertainment is unless you're a diehard action DTV movie connoisseur. None of the PM movies are sold (individually or in packs, in discs or streaming) as studio collections, ala Cannon or A24. If you grew up in the 80's and 90's, had premium cable and perused the weekend overnight schedules you'd know PM Ent.... or it'd be another credit before a late night movie you don't even pay attention to as you fall asleep watching it. 🥱😓😴
152.- THE SENDER (1998, AMAZON PRIME). Also streaming on FAWESOME, ROKU CHANNEL, FILMRISE).
PM Entertainment followed the money, which back in the late 90's was epic alien invasion sci-fi, ala "Independence Day" and "Mars Attacks!" A very Asylum-like opening set in 1965 about U.S. war airplanes being abducted, then released by a giant UFO in the Bermuda Triangle looks/feels way outside PM's comfort zone (as are later scenes taking place in Area 51). Then R. Lee Ermey ("Full Metal Jacket") and Michael Madsen ("Reservoir Dogs") bicker over the just-recovered remains of an old plane downed by the alien craft, which was piloted by the latter's father. Some conspiracy nuts steal the trailer with the plane wreckage, leading to an epic car/truck chase where shit blows up real good (finally! 😍).
Madsen's Dallas Grayson does the hero thing with Madsen's typical 'I don't give a shit' casualness, same attitude he brings to finding out his daughter's miraculously cancer-free after months of unsuccessful treatment, and that said girl is wanted by an alien lady (Shelli Lether, nicknamed 'Angel') that wants Dallas' little girls to create some energy balls. Even when 'Angel' takes Dallas aboard her spaceship, Madsen looks like he'd rather be doing his taxes. 🥱😤 The government kidnaps Grayson's kid for alien experimentation, leading to road trip chases and even more epic vehicle flippings/fireballs. Thank God the CG spaceship/alien scenes are sparse because they look cheap even by late 90's SFX standards. Robert Vaughn ("Magnificent Seven"), Dyan Cannon ("Heaven Can Wait") and Steven Williams (Mr. X on TV's "The X-Files") are roped into playing spy agency/scientist roles, but since they're not Michael Madsen, they at least look like they give a shit. The ending is meant to tug at the heart, but Mr. Blonde makes sure to ruin that too. An odd duck for PM Ent., but just another typical 'Madsen phones it in' performance. 3.5 GIANT DOLL HOUSES IN LIL' LISA'S BEDROOM (out of five).
153.- RECOIL (1998, AMAZON PRIME). Also streaming on FILMRISE, PLEX, TUBI, FAWESOME, ROKU CHANNEL.
As far as I'm concerned Gary Daniels ("The Expendables," "Fist of the Northstar") has earned lifetime privileges with me on the strength of his PM Entertainment magnum opus "Riot." 🤠👍So of course I watched this action vehicle that starts with a Michael Mann "Heat" vibe (shoot-out between bullet-proof bank robbers and the LAPD), then switches to an epic bike-versus-cop cars chase (flipping cars and explosions galore! 🤩🥳) that ends with the perp shot down by police. Turns out the dead robber was the son of Vincent Sloan (Richard Foronjy), the biggest criminal boss in the city, who orders the rest of his sons to kill all the police officers involved. Only Ray Morgan (Daniels) and his partner Cassidy (Gregory McKinney) survive, but soon their families become targets of Sloan's vendetta. Most PM Entertainment flicks don't take themselves too seriously, but this one grows darker and meaner the further down the rabbit hole of revenge it digs. Vincent's wife Julie (Robin Curtis) gives a great dramatic performance as a mob wife grieving both his son and the victims of her husband's vendetta. The last half-hour is Gary Daniels going on an epic revenge rampage, which is fun but contrasts sharply with lighter stuff like a van h0oker (Griffin Drew) showing off her t!ts, or the corrupt police captain (Thomas Kopache) sweating on the phone. The most 'PM Entertainment' of today's new-to-me quartet. 4.10 SOCCER BALLS AS TOMBSTONE DECORATIONS (out of five).
My choice for the day. The car mayhem is extremely well done. I also appreciated the somber tone of the film; a cycle of violence is nothing to be happy about. My one somewhat negative critique is that I found the concluding sequence overlong. Otherwise, I was totally happy with this watch.
BONUS: 30 DAYS OF PINK PANTHER & FRIENDS, DAY 28! 154- THE PINK PANTHER (2006, DVD). Also streaming on AMAZON PRIME, TUBI, PEACOCK, PLUTO, ROKU CHANNEL, YOUTUBE.
Since I didn't see "Son of Pink Panther" in theaters, you can imagine how it felt for a decades-long fan of the 'Pink Panther' movie franchise to walk into a movie theater in 2006 and experience a proper "Pink Panther" movie for the first time in 23 years. I recall hearing lots of children laughing, and that's my main gripe with this Robert Simonds-produced, Shawn Levy-directed $80 million reboot: it aims for a 'PG' rating, which means the humor is mostly targeted at children. The Blake Edwards films were child-friendly, but they were made with general audiences in mind. Composer Cristophe Beck's score underlines many of the jokes/gags with music cues (whenever the producers don't insert pop music snippets for mass appeal), and stuff that was implied in the older films (Dreyfus using Clouseau as a decoy while he pursued his own political agenda) is spelled out for the cheap seats. Some of the changes in this reboot are for the better, like Inspector Clouseau's assistant being a second-rank policeman (Jean Reno's Ponton) secretly working for Dreyfus. Unlike Burt Kwouk's Cato, Ponton's brute force can take the abuse Clouseau inflicts during his sudden self-defense training attacks.
For this reboot the Pink Panther diamond is stolen from the finger of the national French soccer team (Jason Statham cameo alert) on national TV, and Chief Inspector Dreyfus (Kevin Kline, good but not Herbert Lom-level great) assigns the case to bumbling patrolman-turned-inspector Jacques Closeau (Steve Martin, easily the second-best actor/comedian playing the role) hoping the bumbling cop gets media attention away from Dreyfus' secret investigation. Beyoncé has a bigger-than-it-seems small role as a pop star that feels like an excuse for Clouseau and Ponton to travel to New York City (and mispronounce 'hamburger'), while Emily Mortimer shines for her handful of scenes as Clouseau's assistant Nicole. 🥰 It's a fine reboot considering the depths to which the last three PP movies left things, but it lacks the crazy slapstick energy from the better Edwards/Sellers pictures. It's fitting that the star of this movie would go on to solve a series of murders in his own building. Keep an eye out for a movie-stealing cameo by Clive Owen as 'Secret Agent 006,' back when he was in serious consideration for James Bond before Daniel Craig got lucky. 😉😎
ANIMATED INTRO OPENING: 4.15 ROASTED WEENIES OVER BURNING LOG FLAMES (out of five). Kurz & Friends delivers the best animated 'Pink Panther' opening since 1976's "... Strikes Again." I wish the cast/crew names were better integrated into the cartoon than just superimposed names (a few are, like Clouseau bumping his head or lighting it on fire with a magnifying glass), but the quality/pace of the piece makes up for it.
MOVIE RATING: 3.65 PROFESSIONAL BIKE RIDERS STRUCK BY RUNAWAY METAL GLOBE (out of five).
This was pretty much what I was expecting. Not sure I could summarize the plot, something about an ex-CIA agent (Anna Nicole Smith) teaming up with some mobster/ex-VIetnam vet (star, writer, and producer Joey Travolta) to hunt down some bad guy that is trying to kill them/has killed their loved ones. Some truly janky mid 90s computer graphics, helicopter explosion, dummy drops, car cashes, some pretty fun action squences, and a whole lot of 90s fake b@0bs. Final scene with a CD-ROM was amazing.
Huzaaa! My fav thing about Junesploitation is the discovery of new sploitationy goodness flicks. Well thanks to Patrick and JM, today i discovered an entire new to me independent film studio?!?!!! PM Entertainment was completely off my radar.
Recoil (1998)
Holy shit this was fun. Its low but not NO budget DTV action faire. Rather than spend any silly time on plot or character development or genuine acting, it plays like a physical stunt mixtape: extended bank heist? check. huge scare car chases with random explosions? check. Mobs/Cops/Families involved in huge shoot outs? check. Constant Revenge Genre cliches? check. Rando JCVD-adjacent martial arts scenes? check. As cheezeball as it all is, they really do seem to care about action choreography. Theres no escaping the DTV shot-on-video-ness of it all but i had a lot of fun!
Being unfamiliar with PM Entertainment, I needed an in, and I found one: Traci Lords. Turns out she made a bunch of movies with them in the 90s. I gravitated towards this one, because I'm pretty sure I saw someone recommend it some previous June.
An ambitious but underappreciated lady cop has to wage a double battle against nasty Colombian drug dealers and her asshole boyfriend who can't keep it in his pants (imagine cheating on Traci Lords!). Yaphet Kotto is also there as perpetually irritated police captain who is a month away from retirement. The movie has a nicely dark, smoky look to it, and the occasional bursts of action and slo-mo shootouts are brief but well-made. Lords doesn't show much acting range, but she's got enough screen presence to carry low-budget crime fare like this. Both she and the movie feel most alive whenever she's beating someone up, and I wish there was a little more of that.
MAXIMUM FORCE (1992) Three reckless cops are recruited to take down the city’s most dangerous drug lord. The gimmick is that our heroes are working in secret and off-the-books to defeat the bad guy by any means necessary. In this movie, “any means necessary” means lots of martial arts fighting, but I’ll take it. It’s interesting to see a buddy cop movie that’s a trio instead of a duo, and #Junesploitation fave John Saxon is appropriately gruff as the police chief. There’s a bit too much sitting around in the budget-friendly warehouse hideout, but when things take off, this is some cheesy, shlocky fun. Fans of low-budget action should check it out.
30 days of fan films, day 28: A FISH CALLED WENDY (2020) Everybody’s seen Gravity Falls, right? Wendy is caught shoplifting from her job at the Mystery Shack, setting off an outrageous chain of events. Despite the obviously threadbare budget, they’ve done a good job recreating the look of the show, including a lot of Easter eggs. Writer/director/star Jo Ashley More is especially fun as Wendy, really nailing the character’s demeanor and attitude. Definitely worth a watch.
SEE! An 8½ WEEKS kitchen sex scene spoof (you’ll be crying—with laughter—over spilled milk)! HEAR! Hilariously seductive banter such as, “Think it would be alright if I dusted your body for prints?” LISTEN! To Wings wax/whine philosophical about women’s lib, relationships, and the loss of male privilege! GROOVE! To the nourish softjazz soundtrack! WONDER! Why the heck Michael J Pollard is bafflingly cast as a psychiatrist! WITNESS! Wings wipe out the villain in front of a gaudy Joe Camel billboard!
And so much more. Snuff films, practical gore effects, gay antagonists, a Sydney Lassick cameo, the mandatory rouge cop film “Turn in your badge and gun” scene with the overemoting police captain (hilarious!). Wonderfully noirish neon-lit shots of early ‘90s Hollywood. Did I mention t!ts and A$$? LOADS OF IT! All wrapped up in a cautionary tale about the evils of the chew ‘em up and spit ‘em out Hollywood machine. As Wings says, “This town’s based on ‘He said.’” Take that, Harvey Weinstein!
Honestly, a Wings Hauser film needs to be worked into every June’s watch list. Sure, they ain’t perfect, but there’s no need to nitpick, just sit back and enjoy the ride. Forget it, Junesploitationer—It’s Hausertown.
MAM -- C & B is definitely on the Bad Movie Night line-up for July! Look for the F This Movie open thread on 7/18 for my thoughts (if it doesn't melt my mind!). And thanks for the kind words :)
J.M. and MAM-- there are two versions of Champagne and Bullets; I am thinking about going with the 99 minute Blu-Ray version over the shorter Get Even version. Is this the best plan? Please advise.
I saw 99 min literally titled Champagne and Bullets (the others are GetEven and Road to Revenge). The others may have a different soundtrack... if you might miss out on any original John DeHart music that would be a tragedy. I say go for the full length original!
"Champagne and Bullets" (99 min.) has all the sex scenes and some slow, boring parts (which includes Wings Hauser monologuing... to normal people that's dull, but to me that's gold! 😍). "Road to Revenge" (75 min.) cuts down on the sex scenes and romance a ton; it's the "Cannibal Holocaust" equivalent of the version with the animal cruelty scenes skipped. "Get Even" (89 min. and John De Hart's preferred cut) trims the sex but doesn't remove it completely, adds different opening titles and a dog kung-fu training scene. 🤔🐶 All three versions were on the Vinegar Syndrome BD release a few years back, and most streaming services default to the 99 min. "C&B." 😎🤓
Holy shit, this movie. While I can’t call it good, exactly, I loved every second of it just the same. C. Thomas Howell, with poofy hair and an ink-black goatee that combine to make him look like an overgrown Peter Dinklage, is a troubled cop recruited by Ed Lauter (because of course it’s Ed Lauter) into an Extreme Justice-style group of vigilante cops.
You’ve seen it all before story-wise, but the draw here is the absolutely bonkers stunt work. People are plowed over, set on fire, and dropped from high places with astonishing frequency. Jeff Fahey’s (curly-haired?) stunt double clings to a car flying off a pier into the water in glorious slow motion within the first 10 minutes and the action rarely lets up from there. Also you know Howell is a tough guy because he wears a House of Pain ballcap for 90% of his screen time. This was so much fun I already want to watch it again.
Imagine a bunch of horny 13-year-olds in the early 90s were given a VHS camcorder, a couple of dozen “models,” and a vacant office building, and were told they had the weekend to make a movie. Tons of fake boobs, groan worthy jokes, and Feldman in a slow-mo, full-nude shower scene with two girls… I guess that’s why this thing exists.
And Feldman fired Haim from this because he was too drugged out to perform. It’s hard to imagine his standards were that high.
Elliot Gould, Todd bridges and Ron Jeremy cameo in this…
Learned what PM Entertainment is this week! After thinking it meant "evening entertainment" and beginning to research Skinemax flicks, I was educated by some wonderful readers. As soon as I saw Die Hard knockoff (is it really a knockoff if it improves on the original in every way? 😉) starring Anna Nicole Smith (RIP) I knew I had to head back on over to Tubi (not sure I've left yet this month tbf). Turns out I wasn't far off with the Skinemax assumption.
There's plenty of jokes to be made, but it was good shitty movie fun (Cruel Jawa delivering similar enjoyment).
Amidst the chaotic finale, Anna Nicole Smith turns the tides on generic baddie #4. Anna Nicole's character tells her to put her weapon down. Baddie replies "fuck you" and, much to my surprise, Anna Nicole immediately just shoots her all "I don't have time for this shit, you had your chance". More horror and action heroes could learn from her attitude (ignore the daydreaming about banging on a picnic blanket while trying to avoid gunfire).
I deliberately filtered out action movies for today, and then I saw 2 Wings Hauser-directed movies available... that made things easier and I'm quite satisfied with my choice—a very fun bad neo-noir.
Basically zillagord said it best, just go read his post up above.
A couple additional points: - The soft jazz soundtrack at times feels like a straight crib of Badalamenti's work in Twin Peaks - Don't miss Hauser chilling at the beach, giving a very chonky bunny a drink from what seems to be a bottle of Jose Cuervo - I actually thought the premise of the villain was pretty cool (and the guy is appropriately creepy). He is a movie director who is replicating death scenes from famous movies, but with real death in his case.
SO MUCH to comment on in this flick! The bunny was so odd-- like, where did that come from??? Also really liked both villains, and appreciated that one was named Latin Jerry hahaha.
Eddie Lomax (Jean-Claude Van Damme) rides across the desert on his motorcycle, suicidal because of his PTSD, on the way to visit his old army buddy (Danny Trejo), who's either alive and very elusive or dead and appears to Eddie as a mystical spirit guide. It's not entirely clear. When a trio of gangster brothers almost kill Eddie and steal his bike, he finds a new reason to live... revenge! He finds help in a local old-timer (Bill Erwin) and a kooky handyman (Pat Morita), and comfort in half the women in town.
In 1999, neither Van Damme nor Avildsen were exactly in their prime, but Avildsen is still a pro and I like Van Damme in his gruff drifter mode. A shame JCVD gets to do very little martial arts, opting for stealth and gunplay instead. That is until the finale, when he finally unleashes the flying kick. 85-year-old Bill Erwin chews some scenery, Larry Drake is good at playing menacing as the gangsters' father, and it's always a pleasure to see Vincent Schiavelli, however small his role.
Mostly very standard late 90's action schlock, with just little touches of weirdness around the edges (the town is apparently famous for UFO's, which doesn't figure into the story even a little bit, Trejo may or may not be magical, Van Damme has a crazy 3some with two young blondes out of nowhere, and the finale hinges on Chekhov's fighter jet).
Firepower (1993): Firepower is a glorious, neon-soaked movie that feels like it was written by someone who had only ever seen RoboCop and Enter the Dragon and decided the best way to merge them was to set the whole thing in a future where crime is legal, and the fashion sense is pure early-90s dystopian chic.
Welcome to the year 2007. I know, I know—we’ve lived through that year, and it mostly involved dial-up internet and the rise of social media, but in the world of Firepower, it’s a lawless nightmare. Cities have been carved up into Hell Zones, essentially pockets of urban collapse where the police are forbidden to tread. It’s a brilliant setup for a low-budget movie because it explains why everything looks like it was filmed in a half-abandoned industrial park in Sun Valley.
Enter our dynamic duo: Darren Braniff, played by Chad McQueen, and Nick Sledge, played by tGary Daniels. Braniff is the straight man cop, the guy who plays by the rules until the rules stop working, and Sledge is the loose-cannon Brit who is basically a one-man wrecking crew. They’re tasked with infiltrating the Hell Zone to bust a racket involving a counterfeit AIDS vaccine.
It’s the kind of high-stakes, socially conscious plot point that was ripped straight from the headlines of 1993, then immediately discarded in favor of guys fighting in a death-cage. Once they step into the zone, the movie stops pretending it’s a police procedural and starts being what it actually is: a collection of excuses for Gary Daniels to display his world-class kickboxing prowess.
But why did I choose this movie? It's the only film role for the late, legendary WWE Hall of Famer, The Ultimate Warrior. Cast as the main villain, The Swordsman, Hellwig is an absolute wall of muscle. The film handles him perfectly: he doesn’t have much to say, which is smart, because his job isn’t to deliver Shakespearean monologues. It’s meant to look like a mountain of neon-colored menace, crushing people in a cage.
The heart of Firepower is the Death Ring, an underground tournament run by the villainous Drexal (Joseph Ruskin). The plot eventually forces our heroes to enter the tournament, which turns the movie into a series of increasingly elaborate death matches.
The fighting is not the polished, wire-fu spectacle of Hong Kong cinema (though Daniels brings some of that training to the table), nor is it the slow, heavy brawling you’d see in a modern UFC fight. It’s raw, it’s rhythmic, and it’s over-the-top.
To prepare for his role, Jim Hellwig reportedly trained for three weeks with martial arts instructor Richard Rabago and the film’s fight coordinator, Art Camacho (who also plays Viper). It wasn’t enough to make him a world-class kicker, but it was certainly enough to make him look like a terrifying physical threat on screen.
Daniels initially turned down the role because the pay wasn’t up to his standards, and he was sick of deathmatch movies. The executives at PM finally convinced him to read the script, and he realized the character of Sledge had enough sarcastic wit to be worth the trouble. Thank goodness he changed his mind.
The P in PM, Richard Pepin, directed, and the script was by Michael January. Keep an eye open for George Murdock (the voice of God in Star Trek V), stunt coordinator and former pro wrestler Nils Allen Stewart, Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs (who played Joe Jackson in The Jacksons miniseries because he looks exactly like Joe Jackson to the point that I thought, “Why is Michael Jackson’s dad in this movie?”) and, of course, Gerald Okamura.
This is the movie where Gerald Okamura fights Ultimate Warrior and I’m glad I watched it.
Art Camacho, fight coordinator in 1993's "Firepower," had ascended to the director's chair by the time 1998's "Recoil" (also starring Gary Daniels) came around. Have you seen many/most PM Entertainment features, B&S? They seem to be your kind of flick. 🙃🙂
Inject PM Entertainment directly into my veins! Jeff Wincott IS the Last Man Standing. The last straight cop on a corrupt force out to take him out after his partner is gunned down. Yes, this is a DTV movie starring Jeff Wincott, but my days of discriminating against DTV movies are long gone. And Jeff Wincott kind of kicks ass. Wall to wall action: shootouts, car chases, massive explosions and jaw-dropping stunts. There is a wrong way on an LA freeway chase that is amazing. I’m not going to go crazy and say that it’s better than the one in To Live and Die in LA… but it’s close! This is my favorite movie I’ve seen this month. PM Day RULES!
Anna Nicole Smith plays a helicopter pilot and a job puts her on the scene of a terrorist takeover of a building!
The dialog is....not great. But there's shootouts and explosions and bodies falling from high places. Add in some slow motion intimate scenes and you've apparently got a PM Entertainment picture!
THREE INTIMATE SCENES! Just one (the 'I want a baby!' shower/bedroom one) would make it a PM Entertainment standard bearer. But the flashbackto the picnic while she's in the building (that lets us know she knows how to shoot guns)? And the, ahem, r@pe by bad guy ('God has been good to you, hasn't it?')? WTF??!! 😵😱🫤
This opens with a really fun credits. Lots of woman in bikinis. Lots of close ups of their pubic area and breasts. Lots of sun and sand and breasts. At one point I was "Hey that lady isn't even wearing a bikini". And that's pretty much the movie. It's summer, and every babe is in a bikini. Until sometimes they're wearing nothing at all.
No, not a disappointment at all! I had yet to get my Sexploitation fix this month, and this fit the bill perfectly. I knew what I was getting into when I chose something titled Bikini Summer. It had some comedy between the long scenes of bikini clad women.
What a movie ! Went by in a flash, at some point I thought I was 30 minutes in and I was already an hour in. The editor clearly had a healthy dose of cocaine when working on this.
J.M.'s and Zillagord's reviews talked me into this one, and it did not disappoint. I had a great time.
Wings Hauser pours soup on Latin Jerry's head (angrily) and milk on his girlfriend's head (sexily?). His character's got a thing for pouring opaque liquids on heads.
Steel Frontier (1995 DirJacobsen Hart & Paul G. Volk)
A post-apocalyptic western trying for a Man with No Name feel and very loosely based on Fistful of Dollars-plot. Im tried with this one even restarting it twice but just couldn't pay attention. The only movie of the month to lose me. Its not bad or good I just couldn't get in the mood to watch it.
A picture of "Skyscraper"... NICE! 😍🥰
ReplyDelete♫ It's me, hi, I'm the problem, it's me
It's me, hi, I'm the problem, it's me
It's me, hi, everybody agrees, everybody agrees ♬ 😉😁
It's my fault we're in this mess today, 'PM Entertainment! Day,' a topic yours truly requested that our Lord Patrick Bromley saw fit to include in this year's Junesploitation! calendar. During the 90's most weekends after midnights (and infrequently on weekedays, also after 12AM) the HBO, Cinemax, Movie Channel and/or Showtime cable networks would air low-budget movies that emphasized action, softc0re s*x, or both. Amongst the dreck of direct-to-video (DTV) stuff that could also be rented in the 'B' sections of video rental stores, 'PM Entertainment' movies stood out from the pack. Almost every PM movie had (a) an army of stuntmen, helicopter pilots and pyro guys on retainer, (b) at least one gratuitous shot of women's b0obs (or full frontal if we were lucky, as many of these films were unrated), (c) one or two spectacular car chases culminating in a glorious slow-motion wreckage, and (d) an under-90 minute running time, many times closer to 80 mins.
And since the four PM Entertainment movies I've chosen are all new to me, I'm playing the same chances most newcomers to PM Entertainment are that I'll get a turkey for my viewing troubles. 🥵🦃 Here we go!
150.- REPO JAKE (1990, DVD). Streaming on AMAZON PRIME, FAWESOME, FILMRISE).
The 'M' in 'PM Entertainment' himself, Joseph Mehri, directs this Dan Haggerty (TV's "Grizzly Adams") vehicle. He plays Jake Baxter, an ex-Marine, once-great car racer who moves to Los Angeles to try and make $60,000 in three months to save his properties in Minnesota. A run-in with a purse snatcher and Jake befriends aspiring actress Jenny (Dana Bentley), who helps him find a cheap place to live and becomes his bestie. Working for a repo collection agency owned by 'Bulldog' (Paul Hayes), Jake and his co-workers run into all sorts of life-threatening weirdos as they repossess all types of vehicles, even a helicopter (!). On their downtime Jake and his co-workers go to watch live drag racing. At that same racetrack, a mobster named King (Robert Axelrod) eventually wants Jake to drive a racing car for him, something frowned upon by King's boss. Then King threatens Jenny with bodily harm unless Jake does as he's told. Jake gets mildly upset.
Looks like I picked a dud out of the gate. 🙁 We do get a few glimpses of nud!ty in an L.A. p0rno set and some decent car stunts (the helicopter repossession is actually pretty cool). Between the blues-heavy soundtrack, gentle May-December romance developing between Jake and Jenny (not nearly as gross as it sounds) and "Repo Man"/mobster stereotypes, "Repo Jake" is a pretty badly-written movie. Dialogue's awful, pace is super slow (we watch Haggery eat soup in front of a TV... in real time! 😰), and the sight of giant Grizzly Adams barely fitting inside a racing car shouldn't be funny... but it is. YMMV, but I didn't get what I came here for. 2.5 BLONDIE-DESIGNED DRAG RACING SPEED DEMONS (out of five).
This was your idea? This is the first day I've had to go to Youtube to find a movie. Wish me luck! :)
DeleteThumbs up, super soldier! 👊🤠
DeleteThis is the kind of theme that is perfect for Junesploitation, J.M. A lot of us - including me - do not know these films at all, so it is an opportunity to dive into another world of exploitation cinema. There is also a history of spotlighting production companies in June: Empire Pictures, New World, Concorde, AIP, and Cannon.
DeleteTubi has a selection of PME films (those featuring Don "The Dragon" Wilson, Anna Nicole Smith, and Gary Daniels) to choose from.
151.- THE ART OF DYING (1991, PLEX)
ReplyDeleteWings Hauser ("Vice Squad") to the rescue! Wings stars and directs (from a script by Joseph Mehri) an L.A. crime thriller that's half pursuit of serial killers that stage murders as movie scenes ("Scarface," "The Deer Hunter," etc.) for snuff video (and personal pleasure) purposes, and half a full-on vanity project. You know you're in good hands when Wings' detective and his partner end up killing the domestic dispute couple they came to assist in self-defense (one of them thrown off a hotel window) to start the movie. 🤣 The pitch-black humor continues when Wings confronts 'Holly' (Kathleen Kinmont), a home invader in his beachfront house that turns out to be a secret admirer. The scenes of Wings plowing Kinmont from behind in his kitchen (complete with jelly and milk chugging! 🤢🤮) are only topped moments later by director Hauser intercutting the couple's lovemaking with the serial killers' (Gary Werntz and Mitch Hara) making a "Psycho" shower re-enactment. There's a token attempt at making Hauser a sympathetic guy who tries to keep young women from being taken advantage of by showbiz dream peddlers, and it's always nice to see Michael J. Pollard ("Tango & Cash") getting some work. And while "The Art of Dying" is another PM Entertainment flick devoid of the usual car chases/explosions the studio's known for, it compensates for by giving us a glimpse of Kathleen Kinmont's... assets, and into the inner workings of Wings Hauser's warped mind. It's a freaking dark place in there, and I can't wait to revisit it on other Wings-directed PM features. 😁 4 L.A. SHIRTLESS NIGHT JOGGERS WEARING PINK THONGS (out of five).
I watched this one, too! A wild ride! So many notable touches-- and neither of us mentioned the tequila rabbit scene! Thanks for the PM Entertainment category suggestion, J.M.!
DeleteI forget that, if you were born after 2000, you'd have no idea what PM Entertainment is unless you're a diehard action DTV movie connoisseur. None of the PM movies are sold (individually or in packs, in discs or streaming) as studio collections, ala Cannon or A24. If you grew up in the 80's and 90's, had premium cable and perused the weekend overnight schedules you'd know PM Ent.... or it'd be another credit before a late night movie you don't even pay attention to as you fall asleep watching it. 🥱😓😴
Delete152.- THE SENDER (1998, AMAZON PRIME). Also streaming on FAWESOME, ROKU CHANNEL, FILMRISE).
ReplyDeletePM Entertainment followed the money, which back in the late 90's was epic alien invasion sci-fi, ala "Independence Day" and "Mars Attacks!" A very Asylum-like opening set in 1965 about U.S. war airplanes being abducted, then released by a giant UFO in the Bermuda Triangle looks/feels way outside PM's comfort zone (as are later scenes taking place in Area 51). Then R. Lee Ermey ("Full Metal Jacket") and Michael Madsen ("Reservoir Dogs") bicker over the just-recovered remains of an old plane downed by the alien craft, which was piloted by the latter's father. Some conspiracy nuts steal the trailer with the plane wreckage, leading to an epic car/truck chase where shit blows up real good (finally! 😍).
Madsen's Dallas Grayson does the hero thing with Madsen's typical 'I don't give a shit' casualness, same attitude he brings to finding out his daughter's miraculously cancer-free after months of unsuccessful treatment, and that said girl is wanted by an alien lady (Shelli Lether, nicknamed 'Angel') that wants Dallas' little girls to create some energy balls. Even when 'Angel' takes Dallas aboard her spaceship, Madsen looks like he'd rather be doing his taxes. 🥱😤 The government kidnaps Grayson's kid for alien experimentation, leading to road trip chases and even more epic vehicle flippings/fireballs. Thank God the CG spaceship/alien scenes are sparse because they look cheap even by late 90's SFX standards. Robert Vaughn ("Magnificent Seven"), Dyan Cannon ("Heaven Can Wait") and Steven Williams (Mr. X on TV's "The X-Files") are roped into playing spy agency/scientist roles, but since they're not Michael Madsen, they at least look like they give a shit. The ending is meant to tug at the heart, but Mr. Blonde makes sure to ruin that too. An odd duck for PM Ent., but just another typical 'Madsen phones it in' performance. 3.5 GIANT DOLL HOUSES IN LIL' LISA'S BEDROOM (out of five).
153.- RECOIL (1998, AMAZON PRIME). Also streaming on FILMRISE, PLEX, TUBI, FAWESOME, ROKU CHANNEL.
ReplyDeleteAs far as I'm concerned Gary Daniels ("The Expendables," "Fist of the Northstar") has earned lifetime privileges with me on the strength of his PM Entertainment magnum opus "Riot." 🤠👍So of course I watched this action vehicle that starts with a Michael Mann "Heat" vibe (shoot-out between bullet-proof bank robbers and the LAPD), then switches to an epic bike-versus-cop cars chase (flipping cars and explosions galore! 🤩🥳) that ends with the perp shot down by police. Turns out the dead robber was the son of Vincent Sloan (Richard Foronjy), the biggest criminal boss in the city, who orders the rest of his sons to kill all the police officers involved. Only Ray Morgan (Daniels) and his partner Cassidy (Gregory McKinney) survive, but soon their families become targets of Sloan's vendetta. Most PM Entertainment flicks don't take themselves too seriously, but this one grows darker and meaner the further down the rabbit hole of revenge it digs. Vincent's wife Julie (Robin Curtis) gives a great dramatic performance as a mob wife grieving both his son and the victims of her husband's vendetta. The last half-hour is Gary Daniels going on an epic revenge rampage, which is fun but contrasts sharply with lighter stuff like a van h0oker (Griffin Drew) showing off her t!ts, or the corrupt police captain (Thomas Kopache) sweating on the phone. The most 'PM Entertainment' of today's new-to-me quartet. 4.10 SOCCER BALLS AS TOMBSTONE DECORATIONS (out of five).
My choice for the day. The car mayhem is extremely well done. I also appreciated the somber tone of the film; a cycle of violence is nothing to be happy about. My one somewhat negative critique is that I found the concluding sequence overlong. Otherwise, I was totally happy with this watch.
DeleteBONUS: 30 DAYS OF PINK PANTHER & FRIENDS, DAY 28!
ReplyDelete154- THE PINK PANTHER (2006, DVD). Also streaming on AMAZON PRIME, TUBI, PEACOCK, PLUTO, ROKU CHANNEL, YOUTUBE.
Since I didn't see "Son of Pink Panther" in theaters, you can imagine how it felt for a decades-long fan of the 'Pink Panther' movie franchise to walk into a movie theater in 2006 and experience a proper "Pink Panther" movie for the first time in 23 years. I recall hearing lots of children laughing, and that's my main gripe with this Robert Simonds-produced, Shawn Levy-directed $80 million reboot: it aims for a 'PG' rating, which means the humor is mostly targeted at children. The Blake Edwards films were child-friendly, but they were made with general audiences in mind. Composer Cristophe Beck's score underlines many of the jokes/gags with music cues (whenever the producers don't insert pop music snippets for mass appeal), and stuff that was implied in the older films (Dreyfus using Clouseau as a decoy while he pursued his own political agenda) is spelled out for the cheap seats. Some of the changes in this reboot are for the better, like Inspector Clouseau's assistant being a second-rank policeman (Jean Reno's Ponton) secretly working for Dreyfus. Unlike Burt Kwouk's Cato, Ponton's brute force can take the abuse Clouseau inflicts during his sudden self-defense training attacks.
For this reboot the Pink Panther diamond is stolen from the finger of the national French soccer team (Jason Statham cameo alert) on national TV, and Chief Inspector Dreyfus (Kevin Kline, good but not Herbert Lom-level great) assigns the case to bumbling patrolman-turned-inspector Jacques Closeau (Steve Martin, easily the second-best actor/comedian playing the role) hoping the bumbling cop gets media attention away from Dreyfus' secret investigation. Beyoncé has a bigger-than-it-seems small role as a pop star that feels like an excuse for Clouseau and Ponton to travel to New York City (and mispronounce 'hamburger'), while Emily Mortimer shines for her handful of scenes as Clouseau's assistant Nicole. 🥰 It's a fine reboot considering the depths to which the last three PP movies left things, but it lacks the crazy slapstick energy from the better Edwards/Sellers pictures. It's fitting that the star of this movie would go on to solve a series of murders in his own building. Keep an eye out for a movie-stealing cameo by Clive Owen as 'Secret Agent 006,' back when he was in serious consideration for James Bond before Daniel Craig got lucky. 😉😎
ANIMATED INTRO OPENING: 4.15 ROASTED WEENIES OVER BURNING LOG FLAMES (out of five). Kurz & Friends delivers the best animated 'Pink Panther' opening since 1976's "... Strikes Again." I wish the cast/crew names were better integrated into the cartoon than just superimposed names (a few are, like Clouseau bumping his head or lighting it on fire with a magnifying glass), but the quality/pace of the piece makes up for it.
MOVIE RATING: 3.65 PROFESSIONAL BIKE RIDERS STRUCK BY RUNAWAY METAL GLOBE (out of five).
To the Limit (1995)
ReplyDeleteThis was pretty much what I was expecting. Not sure I could summarize the plot, something about an ex-CIA agent (Anna Nicole Smith) teaming up with some mobster/ex-VIetnam vet (star, writer, and producer Joey Travolta) to hunt down some bad guy that is trying to kill them/has killed their loved ones. Some truly janky mid 90s computer graphics, helicopter explosion, dummy drops, car cashes, some pretty fun action squences, and a whole lot of 90s fake b@0bs. Final scene with a CD-ROM was amazing.
Huzaaa! My fav thing about Junesploitation is the discovery of new sploitationy goodness flicks. Well thanks to Patrick and JM, today i discovered an entire new to me independent film studio?!?!!! PM Entertainment was completely off my radar.
ReplyDeleteRecoil (1998)
Holy shit this was fun. Its low but not NO budget DTV action faire. Rather than spend any silly time on plot or character development or genuine acting, it plays like a physical stunt mixtape: extended bank heist? check. huge scare car chases with random explosions? check. Mobs/Cops/Families involved in huge shoot outs? check. Constant Revenge Genre cliches? check. Rando JCVD-adjacent martial arts scenes? check. As cheezeball as it all is, they really do seem to care about action choreography. Theres no escaping the DTV shot-on-video-ness of it all but i had a lot of fun!
Intent to Kill (1992)
ReplyDeleteBeing unfamiliar with PM Entertainment, I needed an in, and I found one: Traci Lords. Turns out she made a bunch of movies with them in the 90s. I gravitated towards this one, because I'm pretty sure I saw someone recommend it some previous June.
An ambitious but underappreciated lady cop has to wage a double battle against nasty Colombian drug dealers and her asshole boyfriend who can't keep it in his pants (imagine cheating on Traci Lords!). Yaphet Kotto is also there as perpetually irritated police captain who is a month away from retirement. The movie has a nicely dark, smoky look to it, and the occasional bursts of action and slo-mo shootouts are brief but well-made. Lords doesn't show much acting range, but she's got enough screen presence to carry low-budget crime fare like this. Both she and the movie feel most alive whenever she's beating someone up, and I wish there was a little more of that.
Yaphet Kotto! I'm in!
DeleteI almost went for this one because of Traci Lords and Yaphet Kotto!!??
DeleteMAXIMUM FORCE (1992)
ReplyDeleteThree reckless cops are recruited to take down the city’s most dangerous drug lord. The gimmick is that our heroes are working in secret and off-the-books to defeat the bad guy by any means necessary. In this movie, “any means necessary” means lots of martial arts fighting, but I’ll take it. It’s interesting to see a buddy cop movie that’s a trio instead of a duo, and #Junesploitation fave John Saxon is appropriately gruff as the police chief. There’s a bit too much sitting around in the budget-friendly warehouse hideout, but when things take off, this is some cheesy, shlocky fun. Fans of low-budget action should check it out.
30 days of fan films, day 28: A FISH CALLED WENDY (2020)
Everybody’s seen Gravity Falls, right? Wendy is caught shoplifting from her job at the Mystery Shack, setting off an outrageous chain of events. Despite the obviously threadbare budget, they’ve done a good job recreating the look of the show, including a lot of Easter eggs. Writer/director/star Jo Ashley More is especially fun as Wendy, really nailing the character’s demeanor and attitude. Definitely worth a watch.
THE ART OF DYING (1991, Wings Hauser)
ReplyDeleteFlying high upon the Wings of SLEAZE!
SEE! An 8½ WEEKS kitchen sex scene spoof (you’ll be crying—with laughter—over spilled milk)! HEAR! Hilariously seductive banter such as, “Think it would be alright if I dusted your body for prints?” LISTEN! To Wings wax/whine philosophical about women’s lib, relationships, and the loss of male privilege! GROOVE! To the nourish softjazz soundtrack! WONDER! Why the heck Michael J Pollard is bafflingly cast as a psychiatrist! WITNESS! Wings wipe out the villain in front of a gaudy Joe Camel billboard!
And so much more. Snuff films, practical gore effects, gay antagonists, a Sydney Lassick cameo, the mandatory rouge cop film “Turn in your badge and gun” scene with the overemoting police captain (hilarious!). Wonderfully noirish neon-lit shots of early ‘90s Hollywood. Did I mention t!ts and A$$? LOADS OF IT! All wrapped up in a cautionary tale about the evils of the chew ‘em up and spit ‘em out Hollywood machine. As Wings says, “This town’s based on ‘He said.’” Take that, Harvey Weinstein!
Honestly, a Wings Hauser film needs to be worked into every June’s watch list. Sure, they ain’t perfect, but there’s no need to nitpick, just sit back and enjoy the ride. Forget it, Junesploitationer—It’s Hausertown.
Between this and "Champagne and Bullets," Wings Hauser WINS Junesploitation! 2026. 💣💥🤩
DeleteHe's in C & B???? OMG!
DeleteWings is definitely in the Junseploitaiton HOF
Deletezillagord-- Wings is constantly delivering something weird or wacky in his scenes in Champagne & Bullets... He's out of his mind in that movie!
DeletePS: I also chose The Art of Dying, and this is a great summary.
MAM -- C & B is definitely on the Bad Movie Night line-up for July! Look for the F This Movie open thread on 7/18 for my thoughts (if it doesn't melt my mind!). And thanks for the kind words :)
DeleteJ.M. and MAM-- there are two versions of Champagne and Bullets; I am thinking about going with the 99 minute Blu-Ray version over the shorter Get Even version. Is this the best plan? Please advise.
DeleteI saw 99 min literally titled Champagne and Bullets (the others are GetEven and Road to Revenge). The others may have a different soundtrack... if you might miss out on any original John DeHart music that would be a tragedy. I say go for the full length original!
Deletehttps://www.movie-censorship.com/report.php?ID=916979
"Champagne and Bullets" (99 min.) has all the sex scenes and some slow, boring parts (which includes Wings Hauser monologuing... to normal people that's dull, but to me that's gold! 😍). "Road to Revenge" (75 min.) cuts down on the sex scenes and romance a ton; it's the "Cannibal Holocaust" equivalent of the version with the animal cruelty scenes skipped. "Get Even" (89 min. and John De Hart's preferred cut) trims the sex but doesn't remove it completely, adds different opening titles and a dog kung-fu training scene. 🤔🐶 All three versions were on the Vinegar Syndrome BD release a few years back, and most streaming services default to the 99 min. "C&B." 😎🤓
Delete🙏
DeleteThe Sweeper
ReplyDeleteHoly shit, this movie. While I can’t call it good, exactly, I loved every second of it just the same. C. Thomas Howell, with poofy hair and an ink-black goatee that combine to make him look like an overgrown Peter Dinklage, is a troubled cop recruited by Ed Lauter (because of course it’s Ed Lauter) into an Extreme Justice-style group of vigilante cops.
You’ve seen it all before story-wise, but the draw here is the absolutely bonkers stunt work. People are plowed over, set on fire, and dropped from high places with astonishing frequency. Jeff Fahey’s (curly-haired?) stunt double clings to a car flying off a pier into the water in glorious slow motion within the first 10 minutes and the action rarely lets up from there. Also you know Howell is a tough guy because he wears a House of Pain ballcap for 90% of his screen time. This was so much fun I already want to watch it again.
Thanks for watching! Adding to Action films watch list!!
DeleteBUSTED (1997) dir. Corey Feldman
ReplyDeleteImagine a bunch of horny 13-year-olds in the early 90s were given a VHS camcorder, a couple of dozen “models,” and a vacant office building, and were told they had the weekend to make a movie. Tons of fake boobs, groan worthy jokes, and Feldman in a slow-mo, full-nude shower scene with two girls… I guess that’s why this thing exists.
And Feldman fired Haim from this because he was too drugged out to perform. It’s hard to imagine his standards were that high.
Elliot Gould, Todd bridges and Ron Jeremy cameo in this…
Oof! Don’t bother.
Skyscraper (1996)
ReplyDeleteLearned what PM Entertainment is this week! After thinking it meant "evening entertainment" and beginning to research Skinemax flicks, I was educated by some wonderful readers. As soon as I saw Die Hard knockoff (is it really a knockoff if it improves on the original in every way? 😉) starring Anna Nicole Smith (RIP) I knew I had to head back on over to Tubi (not sure I've left yet this month tbf). Turns out I wasn't far off with the Skinemax assumption.
There's plenty of jokes to be made, but it was good shitty movie fun (Cruel Jawa delivering similar enjoyment).
Amidst the chaotic finale, Anna Nicole Smith turns the tides on generic baddie #4. Anna Nicole's character tells her to put her weapon down. Baddie replies "fuck you" and, much to my surprise, Anna Nicole immediately just shoots her all "I don't have time for this shit, you had your chance". More horror and action heroes could learn from her attitude (ignore the daydreaming about banging on a picnic blanket while trying to avoid gunfire).
The Art of Dying (1991, dir. Wings Hauser)
ReplyDeleteI deliberately filtered out action movies for today, and then I saw 2 Wings Hauser-directed movies available... that made things easier and I'm quite satisfied with my choice—a very fun bad neo-noir.
Basically zillagord said it best, just go read his post up above.
A couple additional points:
- The soft jazz soundtrack at times feels like a straight crib of Badalamenti's work in Twin Peaks
- Don't miss Hauser chilling at the beach, giving a very chonky bunny a drink from what seems to be a bottle of Jose Cuervo
- I actually thought the premise of the villain was pretty cool (and the guy is appropriately creepy). He is a movie director who is replicating death scenes from famous movies, but with real death in his case.
SO MUCH to comment on in this flick! The bunny was so odd-- like, where did that come from??? Also really liked both villains, and appreciated that one was named Latin Jerry hahaha.
DeleteInferno (1999, dir. John G. Avildsen)
ReplyDeleteEddie Lomax (Jean-Claude Van Damme) rides across the desert on his motorcycle, suicidal because of his PTSD, on the way to visit his old army buddy (Danny Trejo), who's either alive and very elusive or dead and appears to Eddie as a mystical spirit guide. It's not entirely clear. When a trio of gangster brothers almost kill Eddie and steal his bike, he finds a new reason to live... revenge! He finds help in a local old-timer (Bill Erwin) and a kooky handyman (Pat Morita), and comfort in half the women in town.
In 1999, neither Van Damme nor Avildsen were exactly in their prime, but Avildsen is still a pro and I like Van Damme in his gruff drifter mode. A shame JCVD gets to do very little martial arts, opting for stealth and gunplay instead. That is until the finale, when he finally unleashes the flying kick. 85-year-old Bill Erwin chews some scenery, Larry Drake is good at playing menacing as the gangsters' father, and it's always a pleasure to see Vincent Schiavelli, however small his role.
Mostly very standard late 90's action schlock, with just little touches of weirdness around the edges (the town is apparently famous for UFO's, which doesn't figure into the story even a little bit, Trejo may or may not be magical, Van Damme has a crazy 3some with two young blondes out of nowhere, and the finale hinges on Chekhov's fighter jet).
Firepower (1993): Firepower is a glorious, neon-soaked movie that feels like it was written by someone who had only ever seen RoboCop and Enter the Dragon and decided the best way to merge them was to set the whole thing in a future where crime is legal, and the fashion sense is pure early-90s dystopian chic.
ReplyDeleteWelcome to the year 2007. I know, I know—we’ve lived through that year, and it mostly involved dial-up internet and the rise of social media, but in the world of Firepower, it’s a lawless nightmare. Cities have been carved up into Hell Zones, essentially pockets of urban collapse where the police are forbidden to tread. It’s a brilliant setup for a low-budget movie because it explains why everything looks like it was filmed in a half-abandoned industrial park in Sun Valley.
Enter our dynamic duo: Darren Braniff, played by Chad McQueen, and Nick Sledge, played by tGary Daniels. Braniff is the straight man cop, the guy who plays by the rules until the rules stop working, and Sledge is the loose-cannon Brit who is basically a one-man wrecking crew. They’re tasked with infiltrating the Hell Zone to bust a racket involving a counterfeit AIDS vaccine.
It’s the kind of high-stakes, socially conscious plot point that was ripped straight from the headlines of 1993, then immediately discarded in favor of guys fighting in a death-cage. Once they step into the zone, the movie stops pretending it’s a police procedural and starts being what it actually is: a collection of excuses for Gary Daniels to display his world-class kickboxing prowess.
But why did I choose this movie? It's the only film role for the late, legendary WWE Hall of Famer, The Ultimate Warrior. Cast as the main villain, The Swordsman, Hellwig is an absolute wall of muscle. The film handles him perfectly: he doesn’t have much to say, which is smart, because his job isn’t to deliver Shakespearean monologues. It’s meant to look like a mountain of neon-colored menace, crushing people in a cage.
The heart of Firepower is the Death Ring, an underground tournament run by the villainous Drexal (Joseph Ruskin). The plot eventually forces our heroes to enter the tournament, which turns the movie into a series of increasingly elaborate death matches.
The fighting is not the polished, wire-fu spectacle of Hong Kong cinema (though Daniels brings some of that training to the table), nor is it the slow, heavy brawling you’d see in a modern UFC fight. It’s raw, it’s rhythmic, and it’s over-the-top.
To prepare for his role, Jim Hellwig reportedly trained for three weeks with martial arts instructor Richard Rabago and the film’s fight coordinator, Art Camacho (who also plays Viper). It wasn’t enough to make him a world-class kicker, but it was certainly enough to make him look like a terrifying physical threat on screen.
Daniels initially turned down the role because the pay wasn’t up to his standards, and he was sick of deathmatch movies. The executives at PM finally convinced him to read the script, and he realized the character of Sledge had enough sarcastic wit to be worth the trouble. Thank goodness he changed his mind.
The P in PM, Richard Pepin, directed, and the script was by Michael January. Keep an eye open for George Murdock (the voice of God in Star Trek V), stunt coordinator and former pro wrestler Nils Allen Stewart, Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs (who played Joe Jackson in The Jacksons miniseries because he looks exactly like Joe Jackson to the point that I thought, “Why is Michael Jackson’s dad in this movie?”) and, of course, Gerald Okamura.
This is the movie where Gerald Okamura fights Ultimate Warrior and I’m glad I watched it.
Art Camacho, fight coordinator in 1993's "Firepower," had ascended to the director's chair by the time 1998's "Recoil" (also starring Gary Daniels) came around. Have you seen many/most PM Entertainment features, B&S? They seem to be your kind of flick. 🙃🙂
DeleteThey’re a blind spot so I’ll have to get into it.
DeleteLast Man Standing (1995, dir. Joseph Merhi)
ReplyDeleteInject PM Entertainment directly into my veins! Jeff Wincott IS the Last Man Standing. The last straight cop on a corrupt force out to take him out after his partner is gunned down. Yes, this is a DTV movie starring Jeff Wincott, but my days of discriminating against DTV movies are long gone. And Jeff Wincott kind of kicks ass. Wall to wall action: shootouts, car chases, massive explosions and jaw-dropping stunts. There is a wrong way on an LA freeway chase that is amazing. I’m not going to go crazy and say that it’s better than the one in To Live and Die in LA… but it’s close! This is my favorite movie I’ve seen this month. PM Day RULES!
SO MANY great picks today. Im definitely putting this one on my list as while i think i was aware of Jeff Wincott, now im a fan. Lets go!!!
DeleteANOTHER one to add to the list!! Junesploitation! 2027 is almost booked hahaha.
DeleteSkyscraper (1996)
ReplyDeleteAnna Nicole Smith plays a helicopter pilot and a job puts her on the scene of a terrorist takeover of a building!
The dialog is....not great. But there's shootouts and explosions and bodies falling from high places. Add in some slow motion intimate scenes and you've apparently got a PM Entertainment picture!
THREE INTIMATE SCENES! Just one (the 'I want a baby!' shower/bedroom one) would make it a PM Entertainment standard bearer. But the flashbackto the picnic while she's in the building (that lets us know she knows how to shoot guns)? And the, ahem, r@pe by bad guy ('God has been good to you, hasn't it?')? WTF??!! 😵😱🫤
DeleteBikini Summer (1991)
ReplyDeleteThis opens with a really fun credits. Lots of woman in bikinis. Lots of close ups of their pubic area and breasts. Lots of sun and sand and breasts. At one point I was "Hey that lady isn't even wearing a bikini". And that's pretty much the movie. It's summer, and every babe is in a bikini. Until sometimes they're wearing nothing at all.
Nothing explodes? No stunt v@g!nas? PM disappointment! 😉😛
DeleteNo, not a disappointment at all! I had yet to get my Sexploitation fix this month, and this fit the bill perfectly. I knew what I was getting into when I chose something titled Bikini Summer. It had some comedy between the long scenes of bikini clad women.
DeleteI think the PM Entertainment is a keeper
ReplyDeleteI get it on the upcoming Free DAy, but i wish it was not.
Hologram Man (1995)
ReplyDeleteWhat a movie ! Went by in a flash, at some point I thought I was 30 minutes in and I was already an hour in. The editor clearly had a healthy dose of cocaine when working on this.
And it even has the creepy guy from Blade Runner!
Didn't know William Sanderson was in this! Thanks for the tip!
DeleteThe Art of Dying
ReplyDeleteJ.M.'s and Zillagord's reviews talked me into this one, and it did not disappoint. I had a great time.
Wings Hauser pours soup on Latin Jerry's head (angrily) and milk on his girlfriend's head (sexily?). His character's got a thing for pouring opaque liquids on heads.
I like when the bad guy says, "Stop shooting me!"
😄
Delete
ReplyDeleteSteel Frontier (1995 DirJacobsen Hart & Paul G. Volk)
A post-apocalyptic western trying for a Man with No Name feel and very loosely based on Fistful of Dollars-plot. Im tried with this one even restarting it twice but just couldn't pay attention. The only movie of the month to lose me. Its not bad or good I just couldn't get in the mood to watch it.
So sad for you, especially when so many other F-heads found stuff to like in PM Entertainment's catalogue. 😰😓
Delete