Radical Jack (1999, directed by James Allen Bradley)

Posted on May 8, 2023 by Jedadiah Leland

Billy Ray Cyrus is Jack, a tough-as-nails former CIA agent who is still traumatized by his actions during Desert Storm and the murder of his wife by the international terrorist, Riotti (Benny Nieves).

Stop laughing.

I’ll admit that the idea of Billy Ray Cyrus, the most mild and unthreatening of mullet-headed country music stars, playing a CIA burnout who has killed countless men may sound like something to laugh about but … forget it, I’ve got nothing. Laugh all you want because it is ridiculous casting and, throughout the film, Billy Ray looks increasingly uncomfortable with the character’s R-rated antics. Sometimes, you have to do what you have to do, though. When this movie was made, it’d been seven years since Achy Breaky Heart and even one-hit wonders need to pay the bills. In 1999, reinventing Billy Ray Cyrus as a second-tier action star probably seemed like a good idea. Billy Ray may not be the most convincing CIA agent but he’s still more likable than Steven Seagal.

Billy Ray is sent undercover to a small town in Vermont. Somehow, by working as a bouncer at the local roadhouse, Billy Ray Cyrus is supposed to find a way to expose two local arms dealers, Lloyd (George “Buck” Flower) and Lloyd’s good for nothing son, Rolland (Noah Blake). Lloyd and Rolland are selling weapons to Riotti so this is personal for Billy Ray. But Billy Ray is also romancing Rolland’s ex-girlfriend, Kate (Deedee Pfeiffer) so it is personal for Rolland too.

As both an action hero and a film, Radical Jack isn’t all that radical and Billy Ray Cyrus never looks comfortable in any of the action scenes or the scenes where he makes out with Deedee Pfieffer but there are still plenty of explosions, fights, and chase scenes. Though she doesn’t have much romantic chemistry with Billy Ray, Deedee Pfieffer gives the best performance in the film, playing Kate as someone who knows that she deserves better than what life has given her. Radical Jack was produced by the same people who did Time Chasers and fans of that film will be happy to visit the exact same landing strip and hangar that was featured so heavily in that sci-fi epic. There’s also a twist at the end, which you’ll see coming from miles away and Billy Ray does something unexpectedly cruel with a hand grenade. Radical Jack did not make an action star out of Billy Ray Cyrus but, two years later, he showed an unexpected talent for comedy with his small role in Mulholland Drive. Seven years after playing a burned-out CIA assassin, Bill Ray Cyrus found new fame as Miley Cyrus’s father and Radical Jack would never ride again.

Great Moments In Comic Book History #33: Iron Man #182

Posted on May 7, 2023 by Jedadiah Leland

Tony Stark, the first Iron Man, was an alcoholic.

Those who only know the character from the MCU might be surprised to discover just how self-destructive of an addict Tony Stark was. Though elements of the classic “Demon in a Bottle” storyline were used in Iron Man 2, Tony’s alcoholism was only referenced in one scene and it was largely played for laughs. In the movies, Tony was irresponsible but in the comics, he was so self-destructive that he often could not be trusted with the suit that he created.

Tony’s alcoholism was first addressed in 1979, in a nine-issue story arc that is best-remembered for the issue where Tony finally decides to stop drinking. Unlike a lot of Marvel’s story arcs, Tony’s alcoholism was not forgotten after the conclusion of the initial story. Instead, it was a problem that flared up frequently over the next few years. Whenever Tony ran into any sort of personal or business trouble, he would be tempted to pick up the bottle again and often, he would give in. One reason why other people started to wear the Iron Man armor was because Tony was often too drunk to do so himself.

Finally, 5 years after Tony first realized that he had a drinking problem, this happened:

In the morning, Tony Stark will be sober or dead. This cover, which was done by Luke McDonnell and Steve Mitchell, is one of the best to come out of Iron Man‘s initial run. Along with the imagery of one man sitting alone in the snow, the cover reminds us that Iron Man is just a human being and, like all human beings, Tony Stark is going to have to make an important decision. Will he do the hard work to improve himself or will he give up.

Caught out in the middle of blizzard and helping to deliver the baby of a fellow alcoholic, Tony makes his decision. Though the freezing temperatures kill his friend Gretl, Tony manages to survive and he finally does the one thing that he still needed to do to kick his addiction. He asked his friends for help. From this issue on, it was not unusual to see Tony Stark at AA. Tony still struggled but, in Iron Man #182, he finally made the decision to live.

Previous Great Moments In Comic Book History:

Great Moments In Television History #31: Rodney Dangerfield On The Tonight Show

Posted on May 7, 2023 by Jedadiah Leland

Since we could all probably use a laugh or two right now, here’s ten minutes of Rodney Dangerfield doing what he did best on the May 30th, 1979 episode of The Tonight Show.

Previous Moments In Television History:

Game Review: Sidetrack (2023, Andi C. Buchanan)

Posted on May 7, 2023 by Jedadiah Leland

In Sidetrack, you are a teenager who walks the same route to school every day. Every day, you walk past an abandoned subway station. Today, though, you see that the station is suddenly open and you decide to explore. From the first station, you can take the train to as many or as few locations as you want. Each location has a different feel to it. The first station that I visited featured people who were made of wood and I had to exchange my money for wooden coins. Another station was full of friendly spiders while another had biting fish. Exploring each station brings the chance of finding something that you can use to enhance the experience your experience at another station. You can visit and re-visit all of the stations as much as you like but when you finally decide to return home, the experience is over.

Designed with Twine and featuring stations that were created by guest authors, Sidetrack is about as pure of an Interactive Fiction experience as you could hope to have. It’s a story that lasts for as long as you want it to and that goes where you direct it to go. Well-written and intriguing, this is not a game where you have to worry about getting stuck because you picked the wrong verb or you missed a step in solving an intricate puzzle. This is a game that you experience like a surreal but unforgettable dream. Take the journey and see how many stations you can explore.

Play Sidetrack.

Future Zone (1990, directed by David Prior)

Posted on May 7, 2023 by Jedadiah Leland

David Carradine is back as super glove-wearing bounty hunter John Tucker in this sequel to Future Force!

Once again, it’s the future. In the future, everyone drives a car that was made in the 70s and spends most of their time in the abandoned warehouses that are meant to represent their places of business. Hard-drinking John Tucker meets and starts to work with the newest C.O.P.S. recruit, Billy (Ted Prior). Billy can shoot just as fast as Tucker and seems to know all about Tucker and his wife, Marion (Gail Jensen). That’s because Billy is from the future. As he explains it, some “friends of mine built a time portal,” and Billy used it to come back to the past and save Tucker from being killed by a bunch of criminals. Why is Billy so concerned about saving John Tucker? Did I mention that Marion is pregnant?

Future Zone is just as dumb as Future Force but it is set apart from the first film by its use of time travel. The best part of the movie is that neither John nor Marion are surprised to hear that Billy’s friends just happened to build a time portal. Nobody asks why they built a time portal or even how they built a time portal. The time portal is the most important thing about the movie but everyone shrugs off its existence. Are time portals a common thing in the future? Does everyone have a time portal? How does the time portal work? How is Billy able to go into the past at exactly the right moment? When it is time for him to go back to his time, how does he let his friends know? These are all good questions that no one asks.

The other thing that no one asks is why Tucker doesn’t wear his super glove all the time. His super glove can do anything, from shooting lasers to blocking bullets. If I had a super glove, I would wear it all the time. Tucker keeps it in the trunk of his car and only summons it at the last possible moment. Why even have a super glove if you’re not going to use it?

Future Force (1989, directed by David Prior)

Posted on May 6, 2023 by Jedadiah Leland

The time is the future, which looks a lot like 1990s Los Angeles. Because of out of control crime, the police have been deemed useless and have been defunded. (Like that could ever happen in real life!) Seeing a need and a decent profit margin, private enterprise has stepped up. The law is enforced by C.O.P.S., which stands for Civilian Operated Police Systems. Not held back by the Constitution or any oversight at all, C.O.P.S. has become just as corrupt and dangerous as the criminals that it battles. When a reporter named Marion (Anna Rapagna) threatens to do a story about the out of control C.O.P.S., the head of the company hacks the justice system and puts out a warrant for Marion on the charge of treason. Because of the seriousness of the charge, the bounty hunters of C.O.P.S. don’t have to bring her in alive to get paid. In fact, they are encouraged to bring her in dead.

Tucker (David Carradine) is weary and disillusioned member of C.O.P.S. but he is still enough of an idealist that he wants to arrest Marion without killing her. When he discovers that Marion is being set up, Tucker goes out of his way to protect her from the evil Becker (Robert Tessier) and all the other C.O.P.S. It turns out to be pretty easy because Tucker is apparently the only members of C.O.P.S. who isn’t terrible at his job. Helping Tucker out is a wheelchair-bound hacker named Billy (D.C. Douglas) and a robotic glove that can shoot laser beams.

A Robocop rip-off that lacks that film’s satiric bite, Future Force takes place in a future where everyone drives cars from the 70s and where every bar is a strip club that looks like it could have been used in the type of movies that used to show up on late night Cinemax. It’s a future of empty warehouses, deserted streets, and fires in trash cans. Robot glove aside, the movie’s future is unconvincing even by the standards of 1989. There’s a lot of car chases and strange gunfights where no one seems to be aiming at each other but there’s also many scenes that were added to pad out the movie’s running time. Marion gets upset when Tucker ruthlessly kills two people who were trying to kill her but she barely shrugs when she later discovers that the bad guys have killed her sister. As bad the movie is, give some respect, though, to David Carradine whose general air of “I don’t want to be here, just give me my paycheck so I can go home,” fits his character like a glove.

Mutant Hunt (1987, directed by Tim Kincaid)

Posted on May 5, 2023 by Jedadiah Leland

The time is the near future. Paul Haynes (Mark Umile) has invented the Delta 7 cyborgs, who are supposed to help humanity. However, the evil Z (Bill Peterson) has somehow gotten the cyborgs addicted to a drug that causes them to commit a murder every six hours. When Paul objects his cyborgs being turned into killing machines, Z takes him hostage. Paul’s sister, Darla (Mary Fahey), runs from two of the cyborgs and they all end up in the apartment of Matt Riker (Rick Gianasi), a mercenary who is an old acquaintance of Paul’s. Riker defeats the two cyborgs in his apartment, though his own pleasure droid is sadly sacrificed in the battle. Riker then gets together with his friends Johnny Felix (Ron Reynaldi) and Elaine Eliot (Traunie Vrenon) so that they can destroy the remaining Delta 7s and rescue Paul. Johnny knows martial arts and has come up with a way to track the remaining cyborgs. Elaine is a stripper who is also one of the world’s best fighters. They’re about as strong a group as I guess society could hope for. What they don’t know is that Z and his associate, Domina (Stormy Spill), have got a Delta 8 waiting to meet them. What Z does not know is that Riker is a pyromaniac who, unlike the typical movie hero, doesn’t worry about fighting with honor. What the audience never knows is why Z corrupted the cyborgs to begin with or why he took Paul hostage instead of just having the cyborgs kill him. It’s an evil plan but it’s not one that appears to really be about accomplishing anything.

Mutant Hunt is a low-budget science fiction film that has a plot that is impossible to follow. Again, even though I sat through the entire movie, I am still not sure what Z was actually trying to accomplish with his murderous cyborgs. This is one of those films where the future is represented by empty warehouses and plenty of neon signage. Because the film is so low budget and the acting is so unconvincing, Mutant Hunt has developed a cult following among those who think that the film is so good that it’s bad. Actually, despite some impressive makeup work with the mangled cyborgs, Mutant Hunt is just bad. It takes a little from The Terminator and a little from Blade Runner and then mashes it all together with a plot that feels like dystopian mad libs. The end result is an incoherent movie that feels much longer than just 77 minutes.

Midnight Ride (1990, directed by Bob Bralver)

Posted on May 4, 2023 by Jedadiah Leland

Driving to a friend’s house after getting into a late night argument with her husband, Lara (Savina Gersak) makes the mistake of picking up a hitchhiker. At first, Justin McKay (Mark Hamill) seems like a nice guy but he quickly reveals himself to be a serial killer. Haunted by his terrible childhood and the abuse he suffered at the hands of his mother, Justin has decided to get revenge on the world by going on a killing spree. He’s even got a polaroid camera with him so that he can have a souvenir of every murder that he commits over the night. Holding Lara hostage, Justin forces her to drive him to his ultimate destination, the hospital where he was once the patient of Dr. Hardy (Robert Mitchum). Following behind Lara and her murderous passenger is Lara’s husband, Lawson (Michael Dudikoff). Lawson is a former military policeman turned civilian cop and has experience taking down the bad guys. But Lawson’s leg is also in a cast and not even he is prepared for how savage and dangerous clever Justin turns out to be.

What is Midnight Ride like? Think of The Hitcher, just without that film’s subtext of an unacknowledged attraction between the driver and the hitcher. Also replace Rutger Hauer giving a smooth, menacing, and seemingly indestructible performance with Mark Hamill sweating, bulging his eyes, and fidgeting throughout the entire film. Midnight Ride is a competent thriller and Michael Dudikoff is a good working class hero but the main reason to see Midnight Ride is to watch Mark Hamill chew the scenery and play a character who is so evil and destructive that not even Luke Skywalker would have risked going anywhere near him. Justin McKay has much more in common with The Joker than with Luke Skywalker. Justin is the type of killer who, after murdering a hotel clerk, steals her glass eye and wears it as a necklace. Hamill really throws himself into the role, savoring every crazy moment. Dudikoff is stolid and dependable while Hamill often seems like he might be trying to burn the entire movie to the ground. While Hamill chews up the scenery, Robert Mitchum barely seem to notice the scenery at all. Hamill gives a masterclass in overacting while Mitchum gives a masterclass in barely bothering to act at all. Mitchum was famous for saying that he didn’t give a damn and I can’t think of any film where he gave less of a damn than Midnight Ride. Dudikoff may be top-billed but this is a Hamill/Mitchum joint all the way.

Boxing Time (2016, directed by Evan Jacobs)

Posted on May 3, 2023 by Jedadiah Leland

About as pointless as a film can get, Boxing Time is 65 minutes of a boxing promoter named Art (played by director Evan Jacobs) talking on his phone. He tries to convince his wife to allow him to talk to his daughter. He talks to the boxing commissioner, who is being a real pain about the upcoming fight. He talks to people who want to fix the fight. Art talks and talks. Usually, only his side of the conversation is shown and the movie doesn’t even show us the boxing match that everyone is so worked up about. After all the build up, the movie cheats the audience by not letting them watch the main event.

It’s set up as a found footage film with a title card explaining that Art was filming himself because he had been diagnosed as having a paranoid personality disorder and that the footage comes from the last month of Art’s life. Despite knowing that we’re watching the last days of a doomed man, it’s hard to care about Art. He’s not a sympathetic character and watching him talk on the phone for 65 minutes is about as much fun as watching anyone talk on the phone for 65 minutes. Boxing Time (also known as #boxingtime because why not?) is an extended acting exercise that ends up lying flat on the canvas.

The Brawler (2019, directed by Ken Kushner)

Posted on May 2, 2023 by Jedadiah Leland

The Brawler is a biopic of boxer Chuck Wepner (adequately played by Zach McGowan). A resident of Bayonne, New Jersey and nicknamed “The Bleeder” because of how much he usually bled in the ring, Wepner was the first boxer to face Muhammad Ali (played by Jerrod Page, who looks and sounds like Ali but who has none of his fabled charisma) after Ali’s famous defeat of George Foreman. No one gave Wepner much of a chance. Ali barely bothered to train for the match and falsely accused Wepner of using racial slurs while talking to him. To everyone’s shock, Wepner not only went 15 rounds with the champ but he even knocked Ali off of his feet. Wepner ultimately lost the fight but he won the hearts of many of the people watching. He also inspired Sylvester Stallone to write and star in a movie called Rocky.

Though he was famous being “the Real Rocky,” Wepner initially didn’t make a dime off of Rocky or any of the sequels that followed. While Stallone became a superstar, Wepner got addicted to cocaine, fought exhibition matches against Andre the Giant and a bear, and finally ended up in prison. After getting out of prison, Wepner returned to his old job of selling liquor and made money signing memorabilia. After he nearly got arrested as a part of a fraudulent autograph scam, Wepner finally took Stallone to court and sued for the money that he felt Stallone owed him. Stallone settled, making Chuck Wepner the only man to go the distance with both Muhammad Ali and Sylvester Stallone.

If the plot of The Brawler sounds familiar, maybe you’ve seen one of the many documentaries that have been made about Chuck Wepner. Or maybe you saw Chuck, a 2016 film about Chuck Wepner that starred Liev Schrieber. The Brawler hits all of the same points as Chuck, so much so that it almost feels like an unofficial remake. (Both films even features a voice-over narration from the actor playing Chuck.) The main difference between the two films is that The Brawler spends a lot more time on Wepner’s time as a drug addict and it also portrays Stallone (played unconvincingly by Anthony Mangano) in a much more negative light. Even though Wepner screws up every opportunity that he’s offered (including a chance to appear in Rocky II), it’s Stallone who is portrayed as being a villain because he didn’t always return Wepner’s calls and Stallone’s assistants were sometimes rude. While Chuck spends all of time whining about how unfair his life is, Stallone comes across as being often clueless but hardly malicious in the way he treated Chuck. It’s not easy to make a Hollywood superstar into a more sympathetic character than the poor underdog who is suing for the money that he’s owed for inspiring one of the most successful franchises of all time but The Brawler manages to pull it off. In Chuck, Wepner is an inspiring underdog who never lets life keep him down. In The Brawler, Wepner is a self-destructive child who lets down everyone who tries to help him. When it comes to Chuck vs The Brawler, it’s Chuck by a clear knock-out.

The most interesting thing about The Brawler is that Burt Young has a cameo as a man watching the Wepner/Ali fight in a bar. You have to wonder how Stallone felt about that. Et tu, Paulie?