We’ve all admired director Edward G. Ulmer’s ability to make decent little movies like Detour and The Man From Planet X with nothing beyond a camera and a few actors. He had an uncanny ability to elicit an atmosphere and a look with these movies that belie their abbreviated shooting time and their even more abbreviated budget, so I was intrigued to see how his Journey Beneath the Desert would turn out. Could Ulmer finally be the guy to deliver on the promise of all those “lost races under the earth ruled by sexy broads” movies that inevitably disappointed? Continue reading “Journey Beneath the Desert (1961)”
Category: Action
The Mines Of Kilimanjaro (1986)
I know what you’re thinking. “Ugh, another wan Indiana Jones imitation with lame stunts, rickety temples, and treasure that appears to be fashioned from tin foil and one of my grandma’s vases.” Continue reading “The Mines Of Kilimanjaro (1986)”
Karate Rock (1990)
I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve been stopped on the streets of my all-American small town and asked which of Fabrizio De Angelis‘ karate movies, Karate Warrior or Karate Rock, was better. That’s a lot like asking a fellow which of his step-kids he hates the most. Sure, you hate them all, but in different ways. Continue reading “Karate Rock (1990)”
Bye Bye Vietnam (1988)
You probably shouldn’t come out of a movie about Vietnam thinking that you would have rather really been in Vietnam than watched the movie. That just doesn’t seem right.
Then again, you shouldn’t come out of a Camillo Teti movie thinking that you would have rather really been watching his Cobra Mission 2. That’s just plain crazy talk. In fact Bye Bye Vietnam is probably the first Nam movie that will trigger post traumatic stress disorder in people who never fought there. Continue reading “Bye Bye Vietnam (1988)”
Karate Warrior 6 (1993)
As Karate Warrior embarked on his sixth, final and most majestically numbskull quest ever, I found myself overwhelmed with the enormity of it all. After six films, I had spent more time with Karate Warrior than I had with my own father!
Wrestling with the sense of loss now that this journey was finally ending, I found a semblance of peace as I recalled the words of one of the great philosophers of our time who said “here at last, on the shores of the sea… comes the end of our Fellowship. I will not say do not weep, for not all tears are an evil.”
And Gandalf the White was right! It was totally ok to shed some tears over Karate Warrior’s last adventure! Tears of laughter! Continue reading “Karate Warrior 6 (1993)”
Karate Warrior 5 (1992)
Karate Warrior’s girlfriend kidnapped and held for ransom! One of Karate Warrior’s closest friends and newly inducted member of the legendary Extra Large Club of America implicated! A monster of a man training relentlessly for a deadly showdown at the iconic second floor strip mall karate club (right above the “Wide Fashion” store) where all of Karate Warrior’s biggest victories have taken place! And Karate Warrior only has time to train for about 30 seconds with Sensei and hoping that Sensei’s patented Most Respected Sternum Punch can somehow overcome all the freaking odds of all previous Karate Warrior movies put together! Continue reading “Karate Warrior 5 (1992)”
Karate Warrior 4 (1992)
With no English-friendly version of this fourth film in a series of six Italian Karate Kid rip offs, it was left to an Italian language (with Greek subtitles!) DVD to finally tell this, the most afterschool special-ish of all Karate Warrior’s missions! But without knowing any Italian or Greek, could any of it make a lick of sense to me? Trick question! Even in English, I don’t understand half of what’s happening or why in these movies about a dweeb in a sissy yellow robe! Continue reading “Karate Warrior 4 (1992)”