♫ 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).
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).
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).
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).
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).
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).
152.- 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).
BONUS: 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).