Category: Action

Pray for Death (1985)

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This movie taught me about a ninja’s various superpowers. There’s the super strength which allows a ninja to open a locked door just by pushing it real hard. There’s also the super toughness that enables a ninja to withstand having a board of balsa wood smashed across his chest without apparent harm. Then you’ve got a ninja’s super gymnastic moves so that he can do cartwheels and flips during battles instead of just running here and there like us mere mortals are forced to get by with. But perhaps most astounding of all his battle skills is his super precognition!

Sho Kosugi’s wife wants to go live in the United States. Sho (Black Eagle, Revenge Of The Ninja, Rage Of Honor) is secretly a ninja though and says that America is too violent and no good can come of moving from the safety of Japan to the Unites States. Continue reading “Pray for Death (1985)” →

Shadow Warriors (1995)

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ShadowWarriorsCoverIt’s a cybernetic explosion that threatens to tear the city of Kiev apart! If the streets don’t exactly run red with blood, they almost certainly find themselves awash with the grease that’s positively dripping from the stringy mane sported by good cyborg Evan Lurie. His slimy pony tail was last spotted in the Don The Dragon Wilson India-based thriller Operation Cobra and though he doesn’t suffer near the glorious fate he did in that film (bitten on his head by a snake), it’s a much more moving death scene.

After a lengthy pursuit of his evil (I say he’s evil because he’s a Big Russian named Mikail, but he’s actually the most sympathetic character in the movie) cyborg counterpart, Evan finally confronts his and his cybernetic brother’s fate! They exist in a world where there is no place for them! It’s time to die for good! Their resurrected forms are an unholy insult to all that is holy about being alive and stuff like that! Continue reading “Shadow Warriors (1995)” →

U.S. Seals: Dead or Alive (2002)

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US Seals Three DVD CoverThe U.S. Seals trilogy ends the only way it possibly could – with the coming of Stormbringer! In two glorious previous films, the Seals battled an old guy who threatened world security with boring rhetoric (U.S. Seals) and an island of bad guys full of super special gas that prevented the use of bullets and thus necessitated the use of swords, blow guns, and kickfighting (U.S. Seals II). All of that though was a lazy summer day at Pollyanna’s tea party compared to the mission to recover Stormbringer!

Though Stormbringer sounds like the name of Odin’s sword, it was actually something far more deadly, powerful, and scary than some wimpy has-been God’s weapon of vengeance! It was an old Russian bomb with SIX warheads! That means you’re pretty much getting U.S Seals 6 for the price of U.S. Seals 3! Continue reading “U.S. Seals: Dead or Alive (2002)” →

U.S. Seals II (2001)

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US Seals Two DVD CoverIn the grand tradition of The Godfather Part II and Psycho Cop Returns, U.S. Seals II drops in under cover of darkness and totally obliterates its predecessor. And most startlingly of all, it does so without using any guns!

The first U.S. Seals was a stodgily conventional special ops melodrama that failed to bring anything new or patriotic to the elite military unit genre with its routine revenge story and its less-than-jacked middle-aged villain.

Add in all the by-now over-familiar reliance on cheap eastern European locations, extras, and military equipment, and you can forgive a grunt like me who’s done a ton of tours with flicks like this over the years from nodding off during the silly fist fight that concluded that movie. Still, there were two more U.S. Seals films after that, so someone must have seen something in the series, right? Continue reading “U.S. Seals II (2001)” →

U.S. Seals (2000)

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US Seals DVD CoverU.S. Seals is one of those great concepts hampered by a pleasingly generic story and strictly competent execution.

A Navy Seal unit battles terrorist pirates all across the globe in an effort first to shut down these dirtbags and their thieving, murderous ways, but only really getting revved up to kick ass once the head Navy Seal’s wife gets herself blown up due to a car bomb that also left the Seal’s only son injured!

That’s plenty in and of itself to get any American who supports the troops, their wives and little kids pumped up enough to watch this with no questions asked. That this is another Nu Image Films release (see also Air Strike and Special Forces) where they were able to apparently rent out the Bulgarian Navy for a day or two so that a helicopter and a few other pieces of equipment could be used is pretty much all the further endorsement anybody needs. It also demonstrates how wise it was to let Bulgaria join NATO. Continue reading “U.S. Seals (2000)” →

Unknown Origin (1995)

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Unknown Origin DVD CoverWell, here we go again! It’s the year 2020, man has trashed the planet, and the only hope is undersea labs run by big evil corporations!

If that sounds like the set up for producer Roger Corman‘s Lords Of The Deep to you, then you are not only correct, but also have my sympathies for apparently having been subjected to that waterlogged abomination.

But Roger is all about second chances! Because a second chance costs half as much as an all new first chance! Thus, this not very intriguing or original premise is also the jumping off point for another of his company’s movies, Unknown Origin. Continue reading “Unknown Origin (1995)” →

Revolt of the Praetorians (1964)

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RevoltofthePraetoriansPosterThe historical record of the assassination of the Emperor Domitian being a combination of mundane palace intrigue and anti-Domitian bias clearly wasn’t the stuff of a sword and sandal fetish film starring tanned hunk Richard Harrison so it was left to first time director Alfonso Brescia to make the story much more well hung with action, all in the patented Italian style of the era. So it is then that Domitian finds himself being beset by a commando raid of jugglers lead by a midget!

It is a testament to the greatness of both the film and Brescia (Cross Mission, Beast in Space) that such an event not only didn’t seem silly, but entirely necessary! After all, those jugglers carried clubs which could be used to clout unfriendly Roman guards to unconsciousness while storming the secret passage that ran underneath the palace! Continue reading “Revolt of the Praetorians (1964)” →