Hallmark Review: Hearts of Spring (2016, dir. Marita Grabiak)

Posted on April 18, 2016 by Valerie Troutman

Let me address the mystery first. Just like with Valentine Ever After, there is something of that nature to discuss. Hearts of Spring premiered on April 9th. I didn’t get around to watching it till April 17th. Even by then, Comcast had already marked it as not available for mobile viewing. I thought that was weird. It also bothered me because it meant that I might not be able to provide you with screenshots. Obviously based on the one above, I found a way. As far as I can tell, Hallmark re-aired the movie a couple of times after the original premiere, but have no showings of it as far out as two weeks at the time of writing this. That’s not normal. I first watched the version on my DVR, which is the version they originally aired. I then dug up a copy to give you screenshots. Luckily, the person must have recorded one of the re-airs so I was able to compare the two. They have a good reason. It has nothing to do with censorship of content in the film. It has nothing to do with people like myself who use screenshots in reviewing their films. I have every reason to believe the movie will reappear on the network. That’s all I’m going to say about that.

Let’s talk about the movie now.

The movie opens up and we meet Carly played by Lisa Whelchel.

We meet her during a montage of her daughter growing up that is supposed to establish her credentials for being able to write a blog about raising children. We are also introduced to her daughter played by Whelchel’s real life daughter Clancy Cauble. Her big worry is that her kid is planning for college. That will be her main problem with her kid. She also has a close friend because this film is all about balancing characters on her end with the same characters on his end. Mom tells her that she can go to a movie without question. Just that she needs to be home by 11.

Now we cut Daniel Jackson played by Michael Shanks. Yes, he’s called Dr. Andy Sommers in this movie. Do you care? He’s Daniel Jackson to me.

He’s here so we can have his son enter the room looking for money because he has blown through his allowance. His dad says no because the kid needs manage his money more responsibly. He sulks off sarcastically saying he learned an important lesson. I sure did. It means that Jackson wants his kid to learn how to manage his money responsibly before going to college, which he gives us no reason to believe he is doing since he mentions parties as a reason for needing more money. What does this mean?

He immediately goes out to the waiting room and gets money from his “fun aunt.” You see that kind of thing in a lot of movies. It lets the main family members teach good parenting lessons, but allows the kids to have a bit of a safety net in relatives who occasionally will slip in to soften the blow.

Now that we have established the kind of parents they are, we need to see that she really does enjoy blogging, but has probably only been doing it for a short time.

She has nothing but kind comments left on her blog. We also find out her blog is called “Parenting From the Soul”. She writes the blog as “Bestie Mom”.

That’s why I am officially announcing that I am no longer writing my blog entries as Valerie Troutman. I am now called The Cinema Friend. She likes that having connections online means she’s not alone. I know how she feels. I have numerous chronic illnesses which leave me all but entirely house bound. Even writing that short sarcastic review I did yesterday took a toll on me, which I won’t mention explicitly otherwise I get anonymous hate in the form of thumbs down for daring to mention that kind of a film during a Hallmark review. Go check out my review of Love On The Sidelines to see when that happened to me. Then go read my review of Angel. It took a couple of days and drained every last bit of energy or health I was clinging too at the time. I’m just saying, I get her love of reaching out to people on the Internet and why she will react the way she does later in the film. I’m also saying Hallmark needs to make more of these movies cause some of their audience doesn’t seem to understand courtesy online. I’ve had numerous people ask me questions on my Hallmark reviews, but have only really had one person actually say thank you for me bending over backwards to help them out. Check out my review of Valentine Ever After and scroll down to the comments section for that person. I won’t bring up the black hole ones. But getting back to the movie.

We see her daughter get home. They have a little mother daughter talk. By that I mean Carly tries talking to her but beeping sound sounds come out of her daughter’s cellphone meaning she needs to leave the room immediately. Let’s give her the benefit of the doubt. Someone probably just sent her a picture of Logan’s Hacking Screen from Garage Sale Mystery: Guilty Until Proven Innocent, which is why she laughs. I still can’t thank whoever let that slip into the movie enough (no sarcasm intended).

Now we learn the truly dark side of blogging.

If you do it too much then text will appear next to you spelling out your thoughts. I’m only half kidding here. You do it enough and against your will, your mind will start doing this kind of thing. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve finished watching a movie and need to sleep, but can’t stop thinking of how I’m going to write the review. She makes a baseball analogy here so that Jackson can diss her on it later.

Cut to stock footage of a town to I guess show there is a church even though the church they go to is so not the church in the overhead shot.

I couldn’t figure out where this church actually located. I would say it’s obviously in Canada, but after All Yours used an exterior shot taken in Denmark, all bets are off. Inside, Carly’s friend, whose name is Ryder (Miranda Frigon), says that she should attend a bloggers convention so that I can point out a reused set from another Hallmark movie. They also talk about her daughter having registered for classes at a community college so she will stay close to home. She then makes sure Carly knows that when Jackson comes into her life, she shouldn’t just brush him off. She also tells us that Carly’s husband walked out on her a long time ago. Carly tells her it’s not easy meeting new people. That’s not true. She’s got the creepy guy after her soon. We’ll get to him later because now we have to meet Daniel’s own creepy friend and her annoying kid who really is the cause of all this movies’ problems if you think about it.

Fun Aunt, played by Anna Balvin who appears to not exist in IMDb yet, comes in to actually let this annoying lady and her more annoying kid know where Jackson likes to hang out. Thanks, Aunt!

Meanwhile, over at Carly’s Flower Shop,…

which is not the flower shop from Flower Girl. I only mention that because I noticed someone tweeting Hallmark to ask them that question so I answered her myself. She thanked me, which I could have used on my review of 12 Gifts of Christmas when I went out of my way to help someone figure out the music from the film, but instead only found a thumbs down on the review the very next day. Anyways, I know nobody asked, but this is actually Tracycake’s Bakery Cafe at 21594 48 Ave in where else but Langley, British Columbia. Langley and Fort Langley really do seem to be the capital of Hallmark movie production. If I ever go to Canada, then I’ll have to swing by.

The scene inside the place exists to remind us this was made around Spring. It’s like the pink bunny cellphone case from All Yours. We also cut to Jackson’s office to see him going home. They both go home to find that their kids aren’t going to be there for dinner. They go to the park so we can get a humorous little scene where she notices that Jackson doesn’t know how to eat a taco.

Now we cut to-oh, no. Oh, no! Run, Daniel!

After Daniel is done reminding Carly he exists, we cut to the dinner table to introduce the guy who is even weirder than creepy stalker lady with the nightmare child.

Remember the foot fetish guy from Hitched For The Holidays?

Hitched For The Holidays (2012, dir. Michael Scott)

I think this guy has him beat even though he doesn’t come with his own theme music like the foot fetish guy did. That actually was a thing in that movie. They are saying Amen so he starts to sing the word “Amen”. Then he starts hitting on her. Carly’s friend invited him to dinner because she must have had a brain fart. Everyone looks at him like “where the hell did this guy come from?” He also says he hopes she isn’t spending so much time writing her blog that she doesn’t neglect her real duties. What? Doesn’t amount to anything. Oh, but Henry, played by Andy Thompson, makes sure once again that she knows he’s creepy, in case she didn’t already know, by following her home. He sings too! Thank you, Andy! Thank you for selling this performance so well. He helps to provide the comic relief here.

Meanwhile, Daniel is on a date with crazy lady who had brought her kid because otherwise the main plot of this movie might not have come into existence. They went to Porter’s Coffee & Tea House at 21611 48 Ave, Langley, BC. It’s actually just on the other side of the roundabout from where the flower shop is really located.

The kid gives Daniel flashbacks to when the SG-1 team were replaced by robots. Then the mother tells him about Carly’s blog, which apparently advocates a hands-off approach to parenting. He asks for Daniel’s fries, then squirts mustard on him.

After the annoying dinner that Daniel had to suffer through to advance the plot, he goes right home to find Carly’s blog. I disagree that she should change her name to Beastie Mom as he suggests, but I do love the user name he goes with.

Forget what I said before, I am now officially JugglingCelluloid. He kind of vents about what happened at dinner because of a lady who needs to find a compromise between Carly and Daniel’s parenting styles in order to handle her child. By the way, that’s about the whole movie in one sentence. Of course Carly is new to the Internet so she actually tries picking a fight with Daniel instead of just deleting the comment. In fact, she’s quite satisfied with herself about it.

That’s enough plot for the moment cause we need more creepy.

I think the preacher at the church is saying something, but who cares? The characters sure don’t. This is where we find out the daughter doesn’t want to go to college first, but just travel. She suggests going to Africa or Indonesia.

Carly’s friend now tells her that Daniel’s advice isn’t the worst in the world. Carly’s friend tries to tell her that if she doesn’t want her daughter to go away, then to put her foot down. She says she wants to stick to the way she has always done things. By that she means trying to be her daughter’s best friend. Hence her screen name.

You’ve got the plot now. Let’s hit the high points.

They obviously run into each other because we need them to bicker online while getting close in real life. Then we get a great split screen.

I love this because they do it in a way that makes it look like they are sharing the same room going back and forth how to handle their kids like they’re a married couple. It was a nice touch. They continue to get closer including returning to the taco scene earlier, but she teaches him how to do it without the taco falling apart. Then daughter notices Daniel’s comment on her blog.

Good advice. It’s a nice compromise. Now we just need to sell it to Carly and get Daniel to calm down when it comes to his son.

We go to the Mommy Blogger Convention being held at the beginning of I Do, I Do, I Do.

I Do, I Do, I Do (2015, dir. Ron Oliver)

Creepy guy!

The rest is what you expect, so let’s jump to the almost end of nearly every Hallmark movie. At this point Carly and Daniel are at his place and she bumps his computer, which turns on, so she can discover JugglingDad is him.

The way they get over the romantic speed bump this time is because Carly’s daughter gets sick for the sake of the plot. It really does come out of nowhere. Daniel also happens to be at the hospital so he is the one to treat her. They now both have a heart to heart with their kids. Their kids also finally stand up to them to tell their parents what they really need from them. Carly and Daniel both understand.

Creepy guy again!

Now Daniel gives an apologetic speech about something and who cares? What really matters is that crazy mom and crazy guy have finally found each other.

Daniel and Carly now walk out, and the credits roll.

Also, for people on Twitter, here’s the mint chocolate chip milkshake.

For people who came looking for the songs, I’m sorry, but they didn’t include them in the credits. I refer you to my instructions for figuring this stuff out at the end of my review of Valentine Ever After.

For people who would like my final thoughts on the film. Yes, we have seen this plot a few times in past year from Hallmark (and as far back as The Shop Around The Corner (1940) in general). This is probably the one I enjoyed the most. Yeah, I’m a big fan of Michael Shanks’ work on Stargate SG-1. I’m a little biased. To my knowledge, there were other actors from it in here, but I didn’t notice them. I never watched The Facts of Life, but Lisa Whelchel was good here too. It’s simple, they balanced the characters well, the actors who played their kids did a good job, and I liked this version of the same plot better than the others. Catch it when it shows up again.

Late Night Cable Movie Review: Bad Girls Behind Bars (2016, Sal V. Miers)

Posted on April 17, 2016 by Valerie Troutman

There! The first title card, or image on here I’ve had to black box. Thanks, Sal V. Miers! Seriously, I could use the title cards from Debbie Does Dallas (1978), Deep Throat (1972), and even Water Power (1977) just fine. Early 80s ones often look like the title cards for an ABC Movie of the Week for crying out loud! Why was this necessary? I mean that both ways.

That’s my first and last complaint about the director here because, just like his last film Bikini Model Mayhem, I enjoyed the movie. These very rarely turn me on, but Miers obviously knows that a lot of people who aren’t kids don’t watch most of these films for that reason. They watch for the laughs, the spoof, the jokes, the references, etc. He delivers. The central spoof here is of the Netflix show Orange Is The New Black. You knew that was coming because at least this time the title gives you an idea of what the film is going to be about. However, he works in several other references including one I’m really happy about because someone had to do it.

The movie opens up and we are introduced to Georgina (Jacqui Holland), Sarducci (Derrick Pierce), and what I’m pretty sure is a new breed of tribble. According to his credits on IMDb, Derrick here has played the porno version of Lex Luthor, Crossbones, Deadpool, and Bane.

Georgina is a reporter who is trying to get information from this mafioso type about what a Mr. Big did with $50 million dollars from a casino heist. He makes sure she isn’t wearing a wire, which means showing her breasts. We already saw that she is carrying a recorder and just put it in her purse. He’s not too bright. I think that tribble is leaching off his brain. She agrees to let him get his hands on her “fun bags”, but she would prefer a running joke of this movie…

be called the horizontal hula for now. Now we get an odd back and forth about saying yes and no. This guy plays it safe and is generally confused till she makes it clear that she really does mean yes. I really don’t know why it’s there other than to subtly put in a message here for people that unless the person explicitly says yes, then don’t take the chance. Of course they have sex now. The tribble decides to sit this one out. Georgina kindly tosses it on the floor.

Sarducci held up his end of the bargain and “filled [her] in.” Mr. Big has a mistress in prison named Renee Dobbins (Sarah Hunter) who is in jail and not taking interviews. That’s when I’m Shipping Up To Boston by Dropkick Murphys starts playing as we cut to jail because Georgina is going undercover to get the story she hopes will win her a Pulitzer.

Okay, I’m sure if Sal could have played it, then he would have. The movie does borrow the plot element from The Departed (2006) that you expect. She is lead down a hallway by a guy name Jenkins played by Andrew Espinoza Long. I’ve apparently seen every one of these he’s done. The best is easily when he played G.W. Bushwacker in Bikini Model Mayhem. He takes her to a cell, but is quickly whisked off to meet Warden Thorne.

Warden Thorne is played by veteran actor Katie Morgan. You may have actually seen her in mainstream fair such as Zack and Miri Make a Porno (2008) and L!fe Happens (2011). She’s here to tell Georgina about rough and tough prison life. She’s also here so Miers can begin the other running gag in this movie at the expense of director Jared Cohn and his stupid sexploitation film Jailbait (2014).

That’s right! Bras! This movie will make sure you know that women wear bras or bra tops. In Jailbait the lead actress would take off her top all the time. She never seemed to have a bra on. This movie makes sure you see it when the scene starts, often keeps them on for a portion of the scene, and has them put it back on afterwards.

Miers may not have been doing this for that reason, but I really like to think this movie is making fun of how ridiculous Jailbait was in that respect. Trust me. If you watch that movie, then you’ll understand.

The Warden tells Georgina that the person she is looking for is in solitary confinement and to keep all this on the down low. I love how they have Jacqui Holland basically do a porno version of Marilyn Monroe in these movies.

We never really believe that she’s an idiot, but she also never plays a character that is super savvy either.

Now Georgina returns to her cell and we meet Erika Jordan playing Crazy Ass. Aside from her numerous Late Night Cable movies, you just might have noticed her in a cameo appearance in Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No! (2015). Makes sense. I’ve seen at least two actors from these movies show up in SyFy films.

We find out Crazy Ass once lost her girl cause she went straight. Georgina knows her pain because her lover found out he was gay and ran off with her brother. She also mentions that she hasn’t talked to him since the wedding. Based on the two movies I’ve now seen directed by Miers, it’s obvious he has set his guns on current political issues and is quite opinionated about them.

Meanwhile, we cut to the gym from Sexy Warriors.

Once again, they keep those tops on to one degree or another for a good period of their scene. This is probably as good a time as any to mention that we have the return of that awful music from some of the worst of these. At least we don’t get the Johnny Wet Pants song here.

After cutting to a shot of the corner of a prison fence, Crazy Ass reminds us there is actually a plot of sorts here. Then she reminds us that this isn’t Drive (1974), despite her threat here.

Also, it wouldn’t pan out because Georgina already had her tonsils removed.

Back in the cell, Georgina needs to make a phone call, which in the universe of an Orange Is The New Black spoof means reminding us about the running joke of the movie.

Again, the movie reminds us that women do indeed wear bras.

They also put them back on.

Georgina makes her phone call, but finds out the person who knew she was undercover in prison has died.

Notice they made sure to put everything back on the desk. Let that be a lesson to you people. If you are going to have sex in somebodies office, then do the courteous thing by cleaning up your mess. We now return to the cell.

Holland, you already made that threat back in Bikini Model Mayhem. You aren’t Arachne from Drive. Plus, if you keep saying that in these movies, then I’m never going to be able to watch the Hallmark movie Flower Shop Mystery: Snipped in the Bud without thinking about that. We are again reminded that women wear bras and are not just waiting around to lift up their top.

Miers put a not so subtle reference to another movie he recently released this year called Vixens from Venus on the wall in the form of a poster of the solar system. At least it doesn’t say it’s from 1991. What the hell was that in Trancers 6 anyways?

Now Miers takes a pot shot at Clinton and his “definition of ‘is’ is” line before cutting to the lunch room so we can finally be introduced to the one other character you have to spoof from Orange Is The New Black.

That’s Sarah Hunter doing her impersonation of actor Laura Prepon’s character Alex Vause. It’s been about a year or so since I’ve watched Orange Is The New Black, but I think Hunter did a good job here. They not only got the look right, but Sarah does the voice as well and the way she carries herself in general. Kudos to you, Sarah. This is Renee Dobbins.

Now the film introduces how this movie is going to end.

No joke. French Toast that is hard as a rock will be Georgina’s salvation here.

After a conversation to mention there really is meant to be a plot here, Jenkins gets called into the Warden’s office so the movie can remind us that the new Star Wars movie has a porny title.

I love the storage cabinets next to him. Looks like something I could go downtown and buy at The Container Store.

Back in gym, Dobbins shows up to play guess who. Then they have sex because Dobbins needs to make sure that Georgina is going to choose to be with her. This is also part of the spoofing of Orange Is The New Black where the show always teased us whether Piper was a lesbian or bisexual. At least up till the point I stopped watching it.

I love how it now cuts to random shots of prison fences like it does throughout, but then immediately cuts to Georgina finishing burping the worm.

Jokes on him though because she won’t be there in the morning. Turns out Dobbins has been digging a hole with the hard French Toast. By a hole, I mean this.

We also find out that Dobbins was Mr. Big the whole time. She has $50 million dollars waiting on the outside for them. We also find out that the Pope may “shit in the woods”, but Georgina isn’t sure. Then they escape, but not before making a joke that it’s funny for a lesbian convict to tell Georgina to keep going straight. The next morning, Jenkins shows up for his burping, Crazy Ass says they’re not there, and she’s happy for them. End of sort of story.

This one isn’t as good as Bikini Model Mayhem. This one does do far less spoof and more sex. That’s unfortunate. However, this one does something I haven’t seen in any of these. It shows a blooper.

Apparently, he did use the force. Too much force.

Film Review: Angel (1984, dir. Robert Vincent O’Neill)

Posted on April 15, 2016 by Valerie Troutman

With the Trancers series done, I’ve decided to move onto the Angel series. I honestly had no idea what I was in for here. The box art appears to have a 12 year-old on the cover once as “High School Honor Student by day,” and then “Hollywood Hooker by night.” The DVD has the first three films on it. I’m quite sure that the girl on the cover is neither Donna Wilkes, Betsy Russell, or Mitzi Kapture.

Anyways, as I watched it, I knew this movie reminded me of a film I saw late last year. It took me some time because this movie is so subtle about it. Then it came to me. That movie of course being Crackdown Mission (1988).

Crackdown Mission (1988, dir. Godfrey Ho)

Why not? Might as well have been. That’s the Godfrey Ho movie where he spliced Pierre Kirby into the Taiwanese film Girl with a Gun (1982).

Girl with a Gun (1982, dir. Yao-Chi Chen)

Girl with a Gun was a Taiwanese remake of Ms. 45 (1981).

Ms. 45 (1981, dir. Abel Ferrara)

Ms. 45 being Abel Ferrara’s reworking of Death Wish (1974).

Death Wish (1974, dir. Michael Winner)

Death Wish arguably getting the pivotal opening rape from A Clockwork Orange (1971).

A Clockwork Orange (1971, dir. Stanley Kubrick)

You can go on and on with this. There’s also Rape Squad (1974), Fighting Back (1982), the Death Wish sequels, and so many more of these things. Heck, Death Wish even got a porno version called Sex Wish (1976). We even got the kiddie version, as I recall, of this same thing one year after Angel with The Legend of Billie Jean (1985).

If I got Gary on the line, he could probably take me back even further with movies like Something Wild (1961) or other films I don’t recall. Don’t need to though because this movie takes you back about as far as you can go anyways.

The movie opens up and we meet our lead character Angel, played by Donna Wilkes–and what the hell is that?

I would say that Donna Wilkes playing a 15 year-old at the age of 23 was a product of sleazy 80s movies, but I’d be lying through my teeth because of this.

The Poor Little Rich Girl (1917, dir. Maurice Tourneur)

Mary Pickford was 24 when she played the role of a little girl.

As for the child prostitute bit, let’s get that out of the way too because it goes back almost as far as well.

Baby Face (1933, dir. Alfred E. Green)

That’s the scene where we find out her father has been pimping her out since she was 14 years old. Barbara Stanwyck was 25 when she did Baby Face.

After seeing Angel come out of where she lives, we see her walk part of the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Along with these shots of her feet, we also see her say hi to some people cleaning Rex Allen’s star, fix her hair in a window, and then board a school bus. The music plays sad and tragic. It’s hardly upbeat, but was this meant to be a Saturday Night Fever reference? As I recall, Tony Manero is a similar character to Angel.

Saturday Night Fever (1977, dir. John Badham)

I would say that I wasn’t really sure, but considering the opening walk in Birdemic 2 was intended to be a Saturday Night Fever reference,…

Birdemic 2: The Resurrection (2013, dir. James Nguyen)

then I think I am safe saying it is a reference to that movie.

After getting her homework assignment, we meet this guy…

who looks like he got lost on his way to the Revenge of the Nerds (1984) set. He is here to make it clear that Angel is more mature than her age, but that she is keeping up the illusion that she is still very much a little girl. He tries to ask her out, but she turns him down saying her mother doesn’t like her dating. Now without any time wasted, we cut to home, she dolls up, and we’re out to the streets within the first 8 minutes of the movie.

We immediately meet Kit Carson played by Rory Calhoun probably because Bill Williams, who played Kit Carson on TV, had stopped acting in 1981 after making Night of the Zombies (1981) and Goldie and the Boxer Go to Hollywood (1981). Given the titles, and that they starred porn star Jamie Gillis and O.J. Simpson respectively, I’m sure Bill would have done this movie if he could have. Rory Calhoun will be our reference to silent era cowboys for the movie. In particular, Tom Mix. Yes, he brings up Tom Mix so we are sure to get the reference. He also wears the white hat.

You got this so far? Donna Wilkes is Mary Pickford and Rory Calhoun is Tom Mix. Who’s next?

Charlie Chaplin of course!

I believe the movie wants these portions of the film to blur the lines between people peddling sex, and other people peddling Old Hollywood nostalgia. All of this going on while walking on stars for people who are dead, long forgotten, live far from this seedy place, or are going out on sad ends to their careers in their old age.

We see a variety of other colorful characters too. The movie makes sure we hear Kit tell the cops that he has fake bullets in his guns for foreshadowing purposes. A guy who looks like Jim Varney tries to hit on her. Then after turning down one guy, we see Angel riding with a much older guy. However, she sees right through him and figures out he’s a cop. That’s when we meet the another main character of the film named Mae played by Dick Shawn. How are we introduced to him?

He tells Angel not to let “fatso go yet”, sticks his head in the window, and tells him, “Why don’t you go home now and spank your monkey numb nuts!” That way know right off the bat that he is very protective of Angel.

Next we are introduced to Lt. Andrews…

played by none other than Cliff Gorman. Emory from The Boys in the Band (1970).

The Boys in the Band (1970, dir. William Friedkin)

It’s no coincidence that they introduce Mae back to back with Lt. Andrews seeing as Mae and Emory are similar characters.

You want to hear something really odd? Maud Adams’ first role listed on IMDb is an uncredited appearance in The Boys in the Band.

The Boys in the Band (1970, dir. William Friedkin)

The odd part is that Maud Adams is the villain in the third Angel movie.

Angel III: The Final Chapter (1988, dir. Tom DeSimone)

There’s one more connection here that’s worth mentioning. One of the movies Dick Shawn did in between It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963) and Penelope (1966) was a film called A Very Special Favor (1965). A Very Special Favor starring who else but Rock Hudson. The Rock Hudson movie where he actually says this.

A Very Special Favor (1965, dir. Michael Gordon)

Andrews is here to tell us about a killer on the loose who is murdering hookers. He gives us some info about him like he’s probably bisexual, a necrophiliac, and other things. Honestly, that stuff will barely play into this movie at all. It certainly won’t add anything material to the film. Now we cut to said killer played by John Diehl.

Most people probably remember him from Miami Vice. I’ve never watched the show though. I know, tsk tsk to me. He plays every serial killer from every 80s and early 90s movie ever made that had such a character in it. I’ll show you just how much of a stereotype he is later on. You’d think Mae was the major stereotype of the film, but it’s the killer.

Now we get a tender moment between Chaplin, who is called Yo-Yo Charlie (Steven M. Porter), and the soon to be dead hooker named Crystal (Donna McDaniel). According to IMDb, Yo-Yo Charlie will make a return in the sequel. That’s not good. Anyways, he gives her a spinning top, she is soon picked up literally and figuratively by the killer, and then stabbed in the back. I actually like what they did here. In any other movie her death would have started the film to be the opening kill, which also would have established there’s a killer on the loose. Here her death has meaning, still kicks off the plot, and foreshadows a much more important death later in the film that bookends this opening kill. We also have warmed up to her in the short time we have known her so the silent stab in the back actually has some bite and we feel for Charlie when he finds out she’s dead. It helps to set a different tone for the movie than a slasher film.

Then we see the killer with her body.

That will be the last time you see any reference to the necrophilia thing. It’s one of those things in here that makes me feel the movie was rushed because it will suddenly have amnesia about something that seems like it would be pretty important.

Then we cut back to the streets so we can hear Rory Calhoun drop some more names. He mentions Ken Maynard, Buck Jones, and I believe he is about to say William S. Hart when Angel sticks her finger in his back so I can make a reference to Field of Dreams (1989).

Field of Dreams (1989, dir. Phil Alden Robinson)

We have one final major character to be introduced to at this point. That’s why Mae and Angel go back to where they live so we can meet the landlord named Solly played by Susan Tyrrell. Mae accuses her of making the movie Truth (2015), but…

it turns out she is simply doing foreshadowing by numbers. She calls it Fruit With Gun. Mae calls it “shit.” Solly also has a gun about half the size of Angel for later plot convenience.

Now we get a couple of short scenes of Angel at home to start to reveal her background that will explain why her mother and father aren’t around. It’s also there so that we know that both Angel and the killer have troubled backgrounds when it comes to their parents. Except they have dealt with it in completely different ways, but ways that have both lead them to the streets. That’s when we get this scene.

Yep, he makes out with an egg while a creepy picture of him and his mother hangs in the background till he crushes the egg, then kisses the picture. This movie came out in 1984. By 1986 they were already making fun of this exact kind of character.

Ruthless People (1986, dir. Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, & Jerry Zucker)

Might as well be the Bedroom Killer from Ruthless People (1986).

At this point we are about 25 minutes into the movie so it’s like it all of a sudden wakes up and remembers she’s supposed to be a high school student so we better cut back there now. Sometimes there’s an actual reason, and other times it is just there to work naked ladies into the movie because they could have done the scene without having them there. This time around we meet Ric who will be our Biff Tannen for the movie except with little to no plot significance.

You might recognize actor David Underwood if you owned a Sega CD back in the day.

Sewer Shark (1992, dir. John Dykstra)

It’s a shame he didn’t overact this part like he did Ghost in Sewer Shark.

We also meet Patricia Allen played by Elaine Giftos who works for Angel’s school.

She’s here so that the film will have a way of having Angel’s secret about not having her parents around anymore come out and give the last kill an extra punch to the stomach. Throughout this movie I kept thinking I had seen her in something else. Apparently that place was a single episode of Magnum P.I.

Magnum P.I.

I’m not sure what that says about me other than I must like that show more than I thought I did.

Now we finally come around so that our characters can discover the hooker from the beginning has been murdered. Charlie is quite broken up about it. He’s even holding the top he gave her, which is now covered in blood. Mae, Angel, and Kit have a run in with Andrews about their friend being murdered. But with no wasted time at all, we are reintroduced to another unimportant hooker friend from the beginning who runs right over to the killer and leaves with him. In short order she’s dead.

We see Angel arrive with a client who has a Quebec license plate?

Your guess is as good as mine about that one. He finds the dead hooker, then Angel finds her too. The movie cuts to the killer bare ass naked scrubbing himself. The scene seems to go on forever. You’d think this is some sort of I need to wash myself clean thing, but just like the necrophilia bit, it doesn’t amount to anything. At times it feels like there was originally a script for this movie that didn’t include his character because he almost feels like an afterthought. That, or there was a script that did have more for his character, but was cut so this film would only get an R rating.

Now we get one of several scenes in this movie that seem to only exist to remind us that Cliff Gorman, Dick Shawn, Rory Calhoun, and Susan Tyrrell are good actors. Say what you will about the movie, Donna Wlikes, and the fact that Lisa hasn’t reviewed her comeback film 90210 Shark Attack (2014), but they surrounded her with quality.

After Angel gets harassed by Sewer Shark, we cut to the locker room to see cheerleaders getting dressed. It’s weird because it suddenly feels like you’ve slipped out of Angel and into Debbie Does Dallas (1978).

We get a scene of our killer at a porno theater to remind us that Taxi Driver (1976) exists. Would have made my day if he were watching Bat Pussy (1973). He’s arrested and brought in for a lineup so that he can break free to nearly kill Angel and Andrews. This is when the movie gets on the fast track to its conclusion. This is only at about the halfway point, but the remainder of the film will be everything unraveling till Angel is pushed past the tipping point and decides to go Ms. 45 on the streets to get the killer.

After we find out that Angel has been on the street since she was 12, the next important scene is between Mae and Angel. Angel buys a gun…

so that we can then see her visit a church and nearly drop it in the “Offerings” box. She comes close, but puts some money into it instead. Then empowering music plays as we get a long shot of her walking from the back to the front of the church.

Angel pays a visit to Kit’s place now. Not really so we can see her get a shooting lesson, but so that we can setup the ending by making us aware that Kit does indeed know how to shoot. He carries fake bullets when he works the streets, but the guns are real.

Now Angel gets kidnapped by Sewer Shark and his gang just so that we know that she not only has the gun and has been shown how to use that gun, but is willing to fire it if necessary. It’s a minor scene that doesn’t have much importance to the film in the end. Unlike the next scene when it cuts to naked women in the locker room showering. Actually this scene does serve a purpose beyond naked women. It’s there so that we can overhear that Sewer Shark has spread rumors about her, which ultimately leads Patricia to find Angel’s gun. To toss an extra cherry on top of her trauma, the Andy Dick looking guy from earlier actually tries to buy her services. It’s all enough that she now goes to Andrews to talk to him about what’s going on.

Now the film loops us back to the death of Crystal. It starts with Mae and Solly arguing over a game of cribbage like an old married couple. They are funny in this scene. Just like I could go for a TV Show made up of Bea Arthur tending bar from The Star Wars Holiday Special, I could also go for a whole movie with these two.

This scene is the equivalent of Charlie giving the girl his spinning top. We also get a scene where Mae tries to cover for Angel when Patricia comes to visit by pretending to be her mother. That works about as well as trying to convince the killer who now comes for Mae that it matters that he is a guy.

Look familiar?

Ms. 45 (1981, dir. Abel Ferrara)

They both die, but the difference is that they stuck in the conversation with Patricia here to remind us that Mae doesn’t deserve this whereas Ms. 45 edges in this one-sided conversation…

Ms. 45 (1981, dir. Abel Ferrara)

so that we know it’s okay that he was shot and killed. That’s most likely why we first met Mae looking like that guy in this movie.

You could even make an argument that the character of Mae and the casting of Cliff Gorman is the LGBTIQ response to that final scene where she guns down the man dressed as a woman, then adds on that she is shocked when a genetic girl (a betrayer of the cause?) stabs her in the back. This movie even won Best Feature at the San Francisco International Lesbian & Gay Film Festival so it’s not reaching too much on my part.

This is the last straw for Angel. She takes Solly’s giant gun to the streets in order to chase down the killer. They do it complete with repeating the opening scene, except with her walking us following her from behind, at night, in her night clothes, and armed.

Her already fractured innocence now gone.

He probably would have gotten away hiding amongst the Hare Krishnas, but he comes out and tries to attack her with his knife. All the while, Andrews chasing after both of them along with Kit. There is a goof during this chase. She shoots at him here.

However, when they cut to this shot, she appears to have teleported away.

Then they cut back there to show she is indeed still around.

This is one of those parts where the film again reminds you it was probably made quickly.

Seeing as it is the 80s, there is always a secluded alleyway or parking lot for the movie to go. We see Kit shot down before Andrews comes in to take shots at the bad guy and check on Kit. Kit tells him to go after Angel. The chase continues into another alleyway where the film comes its conclusion. Andrews calls to Angel, but she ignores him. The killer grabs Angel and shoots Andrews in the arm. She breaks free, causing Andrews to cover her to take any bullets, but doesn’t have to because Kit rises to the occasion to save both of them.

That’s when the movie essentially has its version of the ending of Targets (1968). Kit and Andrews look at him perplexed as the killer dies saying “It hurts. It hurts.”

With the plot finished, and a cowboy in the picture, they walk off into the not sunset of a neon lit alleyway end.

That’s the first Angel movie. Apparently, Ross Hagen was in here somewhere as “Urban Cowboy.” I have no idea where he was in this film.

The movie as a whole isn’t too bad. They certainly knew what they were doing when they picked the references, the shots they used, the casting, and surprisingly good main song for the movie. I also love the street life shots. I’m a sucker for movies that do that. I also liked the way they juxtaposed innocence in Angel with those who have lost theres to one degree or another while having Angel’s character make that journey herself walking down the Walk of Fame as a schoolgirl to a hooker with a gun. It seems that now days when I write one of these long looks at movies that probably don’t deserve this kind of attention, I either find they are much worse than I thought like Trancers 6 or much better than I thought like with this movie.

It is very much a movie of its time. The world had just come out of two decades of turmoil and was suddenly thrown into one that seemed to want to pretend the previous twenty years didn’t happen. It was also a time when you had a new breed of youth still co-existing with people who were from a time very far removed from the 80s as represented by Kit. To give you an example, Lillian Gish who was born in 1893, was not only alive when this came out, but made two more movies after it before dying in 1993. Mary Pickford had only died 3 years prior to this in 1979. Charlie Chaplin died 7 years prior in 1977.

Movies too had strayed for two decades into cinema the likes of which hadn’t been seen in the United States since movies like Baby Face an other pre-codes of the early 30s. However, after The Godfather and Star Wars films were so successful, the studios returned to the kind of films they made prior to the lifting of the production code. The difference being that they were no longer bound by such a code, but by the purse strings of whoever was funding the picture. That, and on occasion the clout of people working on the film, such as a directors like Tarantino.

Overall, I’d recommend seeing Angel. Especially as a counterpart to Ms. 45 (1981). Just fair warning again, it will feel rushed at times. I have a feeling that, just as with Trancers, this series will drop to watchable next, dreadful with the third film, and unbelievably bad with the fourth film which my “Angel Collection” triple feature doesn’t even acknowledge exists.

Sci-Fi Review: Trancers: City of Lost Angels (2013, dir. Charles Band)

Posted on April 11, 2016 by Valerie Troutman

It took me since September 5th of 2015 to finally reach the very last film in this retrospective of the Trancers series, but I’m finally here. This is the lost sequel that was made…why am I explaining this? There is a title card right at the beginning that does it for me.

Yes, I do have The Evil Clergyman. I will get to it eventually. Pulse Pounders also has a sequel to The Dungeonmaster (1984) in it, but that doesn’t appear to have been released yet.

The movie begins with good old McNulty (Art LaFleur).

He is on his way to be briefed about a prisoner in jail who apparently does not like Jack Deth (Tim Thomerson) who is still in the past. He is being briefed by The Warden of the jail…

played by actress Grace Zabriskie. Ah, the good old days when I could still play dumb. You of course know Grace from Norma Rae (1979), Galaxy of Terror (1981), An Officer and a Gentleman (1982), Leonard Part 6 (1987), Wild at Heart (1990), My Own Private Idaho (1991), Fried Green Tomatoes (1991), Seinfeld, Big Love, and that little short-lived show called Twin Peaks. Oh how I wish I could have claimed I thought that was some late night cable series from the 90s like the TV Show Red Oaks having a character think The 400 Blows (1959) was porn. I still have the right to make a couple American Sniper rubber baby jokes in future posts. You can’t take that away from me! If you are thinking I’m padding out this review because the movie is really short, then you’d be right.

She takes him to every futuristic hallway from the 80’s to meet the vicious murderer named Edlin Shock (Velvet Rhodes). She only says two words in her time there: Jack Deth. He is the one who brought her in.

You can sort of see through the lousy VHS rip this DVD provides that she is being transferred because the movie has to have an excuse for the criminal to escape and they went with this one.

McNulty walks through a door that can conveniently close on him when needed, and she breaks free.

She has the cuffs off now that were holding her hands straight up for some reason. Just thought I’d tell you that, cause the movie never explains how that happened. Nor does it explain this.

That’s right! She somehow punctured and got through the ceiling. Even Zar in Rock’s Winning Workout Without Weights couldn’t do that!

The best he could do was bonk his head on the ceiling.

Rock’s Winning Workout Without Weights (1990)

If you’re thinking they might show her taking someone’s gun that could be used to make that hole, then…um…nope! The best we get is that as she kicked one of the soldiers, he appears to have shot upward once. Blink, and you’ll miss it.

Anyways, The Warden instantly knows she has reached the room where she can go back in time. So of course they go there and find Raines (Thelma Hopkins).

She tells him that Edlin forced her to send her down the line. McNulty orders Jack’s body brought out of the vault, and gets Raines to send him down the line. By that I mean Alyson Croft is back to play McNulty as a girl. She’s as good as ever in this. In fact, the majority of the film is made up of Tim Thomerson and Alyson Croft reminding us that they really did give the best performances in any of the Trancers movies.

We now cut to the past of 1986 Los Angeles so that Helen Hunt can make what is basically a cameo appearance as Lena Deth. We first see her throwing dishes.

She’s not too happy with the last three years of their time together. Jack tells her they have a great detective agency. However, they have zero clients despite a great newspaper ad that says, “Put your trust in Deth.” Sounds fine to me! A plumbing agency ran that kind of an ad in my city’s local newspaper back in the 50s.

Then again, this is the same paper that ran a story talking about dogs pissing on the paper while it sat on newsstands. They also wrote an apology for making a typo in a classified ad by making another typo in the apology. Maybe she’s right. By the way, I’m not kidding about the pissing thing. It’s a four paragraph story about how “canines criticize” the paper.

Meanwhile, back in the movie, she chews him out, he uses the long second to give a speech, but after kissing her, she storms off anyways. Now Jack sits down to watch…

what I assume is Peter Gunn? They did make a joke about that show in the first Trancers movie. I’m not knowledgable enough about 50s television. That’s when Alyson Croft, as McNulty’s ancestor, shows up to deliver the message that the crazy killer from the beginning is after him.

Along with that, she brings up the fact that it’s a lot easier to protect Jack if he comes back to the future. This is probably the best part of the movie cause they actually bother to bring this next part up. Jack says that if he left now, then Phillip Deth, his ancestor whose body he is in, could be picked off and thus erase his own existence. McNulty says that the bad lady likes to look the person she is going to kill in the eye. That means she’ll follow him back to the future if necessary. However, since they already built this nice apartment set, Jack stays and stops McNulty from shooting him with the back to the future dart. McNulty likes to do that suddenly to Jack. He did it in the first film thus interrupting Jack just before he was going to have sex.

Now a guy fixing the roof shows up because we are only working without about 24 minutes of footage here.

Of course Jack lets him go. Now a red herring shows up. Okay, I kid. She’s not a bird, but she is dressed in red!

If this is actress Velvet Rhodes, then they sure don’t tell you anywhere in the non-existent credits or on IMDb. If she was, then you’d think he would recognize her, but he doesn’t, and neither does McNulty. I don’t think it is. Although, he certainly is skeptical. It really doesn’t matter what happens here. You are watching this just to see Tim Thomerson and Alyson Croft do their thing. They really are good together.

Oh, and the way you know for sure it’s either red jacket lady or roof guy is that they make sure to tell you that McNulty is lucky he has a genetically aligned ancestor to go back into before sending him down the line. That way you know for sure it’s not the killer posing as McNulty.

After a little bit of drinking, a little bit of interrogating, and red herring changing her clothes, this happens.

Yep, roof guy was the one she took over.

A scuffle now ensues, and between Jack and McNulty,…

she and Jack are sent back to the future.

Now the fight continues in the future.

The fight goes to the roof, and she gets knocked off bringing the reason for this plot to exist to an end.

Jack and Raines talk a bit. Jack decides to go back to the past, but with one condition. Could she send him back three hours earlier? You know, that way this movie never actually happened. Of course she can so…

they can attempt to kiss,…

tell McNulty to piss off,…

and actually kiss.

Then this happens.

Thomerson runs across the screen holding some stuff while Helen Hunt dances. Classy, Full Moon Features.

Now you may be asking yourself a question right now. Where were the Trancers in this Trancers movie? You didn’t miss anything. They aren’t here. This is the one and only Trancers movie without any Trancers in it. No mind controlled zombie Trancers from the first one. No drug-induced/mind controlled ones from the second film. No super solider ones from the third one. No vampire ones from four and five. No meteor rock tied into a ray gun that zaps you in the eyes from Trancers 6 either. No Trancers whatsoever. Honestly, I’m glad. I needed a change.

What’s nice about this film is that it really doesn’t break the continuity with the actual Trancers II. If anything, it gives us an early glimpse into how Jack was trying to settle into living in the past. Also, how his and Lena’s relationship was already on the rocks. In the end though, I would only recommend this for real fans of the series.

At the end of this entire look back at the series, the only ones worth seeing are the first one, this one, and the actual second movie. Definitely skip the rest.

Hallmark Review: All Yours (2016, dir. Monika Mitchell)

Posted on April 10, 2016 by Valerie Troutman

I’m really glad my cable box told me what movie I was watching cause that title card sure doesn’t do a good job of it. It would be perfectly natural for someone to look at that and think it says Aee Yours before they realized it said All Yours.

Have you ever wanted to see the TV Show Melissa & Joey condensed down to about 90 minutes without a good reason for the smart guy to become a nanny, not much humor, and not much chemistry between Mom and the nanny? Neither did I. To be fair, I’ve been a big fan of Melissa & Joey for years. When I saw that Hallmark had a movie called The Manny in production, I wasn’t too jazzed. They appeared to have changed the title at the last minute though. I mean you can still see in the credits that the movie was made by Manny Productions Inc.

I think what happened was that at the last minute they got the rights to use I’m Yours by Jason Mraz. They probably figured the title All Yours not only fit with the song, but that it sounded more like the generic greeting card titles that Hallmark likes to use.

I mentioned that I’m a big fan of Melissa & Joey so I was constantly comparing it to that show while watching it. That’s only partly fair because that had many many many hours to develop all of the stuff I mentioned before, while this only had an hour and a half. I will try to be reasonable with the film.

The movie begins and we are introduced to Cass McKay (Nicollette Sheridan). She’s a lawyer. The case she’s arguing doesn’t matter. All the case part does for her character is establish that she is a good and busy lawyer. What this film does here is interrupt her argument over and over to cut to her kids at home.

The son’s sister runs up into his treehouse. You gotta put that No Girls Allowed sign where she can see it. She could argue that it wasn’t displayed properly at his establishment so she had every right to go up there. Believe it or not, these scenes are not just to establish that Cass needs a nanny. They are not just to establish that they need a nanny who can put up with the kids’ hijinks either. One of the excuses the daughter gives for getting up in the treehouse is because the son doesn’t use it anyways since he is afraid of heights. This getting over his fear of heights part of the story will be the equivalent to the bridge from Love, Again for example. Or, to use Melissa & Joey as an example, it’s the equivalent of when Joey finds and talks Lennox off the roof in the first episode of the show, thus proving his worth as a nanny. There will be a similar thing with the daughter playing the violin.

Now we get what I always show in these reviews.

I think they did a good job here. They hid the Canadian cellphone provider by having her connected to the courthouse WiFi. It also looks like they modified the screen too. It’s probably a screenshot she is looking at rather than the real interface. Regardless, good work.

Now we cut to the house to chew out the kids and introduce us to Grandma played by Jayne Eastwood.

I always like looking up these actors who I don’t immediately recognize such as Eastwood here. Wow! She seems to have been in everything under the sun. She’s been in what appears to be a sexploitation flick called My Pleasure Is My Business in the 70s, SCTV; Videodrome; and Care Bears in the 80s, the TV Show Goosebumps in the 90s, My Big Fat Greek Wedding; the remake of Dawn of the Dead; Degrassi: TNG; Chicago; and the musical remake of Hairspray in the 2000s, and in a variety of TV Shows and movies along with My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 in the 2010s. At the time of writing this, she has 215 acting credits on IMDb since her first one in 1970. Amazing!

Now we get something pretty awesome. Yes, we get a brief shot of the future nanny named Matthew Walker played by Dan Payne, but who cares when we have this shot.

Care to take a guess at where this shot was taken? It’s on the sign and attached to the flag pole. Times up! It’s Denmark. No joke. That restaurant is at Nordre Beddingsvej 17, 3390 Hundested, Denmark. I have no idea why they use this shot a couple of times, but they do. I’ve seen Hallmark movies shot in the Los Angeles area, all over Canada, and even a pseudo-Hallmark movie shot in Scotland. Denmark is a new one on me. The rest of the movie is shot in the Hallmark favorite of Langely, British Columbia. If anyone involved in the production of this movie knows why this shot ended up in the movie, then please leave a comment.

Now we go inside and meet Matthew’s father Charles played by Michael Kopsa.

Michael Kopsa is another one of these actors that has had a long and eclectic career. He’s been in some major films such Watchmen (2009) and Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011), but he goes back to the late 70s and early 80s where he got his start doing English dub work for the TV Show Mobile Suit Gundam as well as two of the movies. One of which he appears to have done the English voice of the main character: Mobile Suit Gundam: Char’s Counterattack (1988). Always worth taking advantage of IMDb while you watch movies.

He is here to talk to Grandma about his son. His son is the typical well educated guy who really found what he learned in college isn’t his thing so he’s been drifting around. A real world example of a guy like this is Huey Lewis of Huey Lewis and the News. Lewis is a bit of a math genius and attended Cornell. However, he found out it wasn’t his thing and drifted around playing music before settling down and starting his music career. His father was a doctor. That’s kind of how Charles describes his son. Charles is a developer who wants to tear down and redevelop the marina. His son isn’t a fan of that idea. I’m not either considering the marina never really looks like it’s in need of that kind of work during the film. What happens here is that Charles, Grandma, and Matthew strike a deal. Matthew will take a job as a nanny to Cass’ kids, and his father will reconsidering the redeveloping the marina. They keep that a secret from Cass. There’s your setup.

Oh, and they knew each other as kids so that they already come pre-packaged with some basis for their romance. Despite recognizing him, Grandma trying to make the hard sell, the kids obviously already liking him, and them already knowing each other, when Nicolette Sheridan gives you this look,…

then you know she means business.

Next we get introduced to Henry played by Lochlyn Munro who is kind of the wrong guy, but won’t play that role to the degree that we usually see in other Hallmark movies. On the good wrong guy to the weirdo in Christmas Land wrong guy, I’d say he sits somewhere in the middle leaning towards the decent wrong guy.

During the entire film I kept thinking that I had seen this guy before. After the film I checked the credits and realized it’s you cut to me before I had my wig on Burger King from In The Name of the King: Two Worlds (2011).

In the Name of the King: Two Worlds (2011, dir. Uwe Boll)

We meet him as Cass is introduced to a new court case. It is between two tech billionaires that have brought a case against each other so that their reconciliation as old friends can parallel the story between Cass and Matthew. It also adds a bit of a procedural element to the film that lets Matthew edge his way further into her life rather than having a separation of work and home since he went to law school too.

After suddenly needing to be called back to help the kids, Cass gives in and hires Matthew. That’s when she introduces him to the big calendar that will show us at what point Cass is in her character arc based on how much she breaks it and gets involved in the events listed on it. Then Matthew does something that pisses me off. He points out that Monday and Tuesday are reversed on the calendar.

Dammit, Dan Payne! You’re taking away work from cynical Hallmark critics like myself who like to point out flaws in these movies.

Anyways, she then gives him a phone to remind future viewers that this movie was released near Easter.

Also, it definitely doesn’t come in black. It’s not that kind of bunny, Matthew!

The next big thing is when he takes them to school. They actually don’t hide the name of the school at all in this movie. They say it’s Yorkson Elementary School, and it is. Well, sort of. It’s actually Yorkson Middle School, but close enough. It’s at 20686 84 Ave, Langley, BC V2Y 2B5, Canada. It’s new too because you can see it was in construction a few years ago on Google Maps.

They also bring up again that the girl’s equivalent to her brother’s height issue is playing the violin during this scene.

He takes them rock climbing. This is where we really find out that the boy has issues with heights. So of course, Matthew does what anybody would do.

He builds mini rock climbing walls in the backyard. Pretty cool actually.

This is the point in my reviews when I say you’ve got it now. The rest of the movie is kind of on autopilot. The stuff between Matthew and the kids is really the highlight of the movie. It’s not like Melissa & Joey where there’s more a balance in the quality of interaction between the nanny and Mom as well as the kids. He does have his moments with Cass, but the main focus is on his time with the kids. Cass kind of comes for free with Matthew helping the kids. That’s the way it felt to me while watching it.

The son gets over his fear.

The daughter plays the electric violin in the talent show at the end of the film.

There is of course a last minute speed bump. I think having that is in the Hallmark writing bible that they give anyone who is going to make films for them. However, it really does make sense here given how they set things up and all. Does she overreact? Yes, she does, but she comes around and they kiss at the end of the talent show.

Do I recommend it? Maybe marginally. I liked October Kiss better as a Hallmark nanny love story. If you want the the nanny to be a guy, then I really do recommend Melissa & Joey. The best part of the movie I would say is with the kids played by Genea Charpentier and Kiefer O’Reilly.

Here are the songs:

Sci-Fi Review: Trancers 6 (2002, dir. Jay Woelfel)

Posted on April 5, 2016 by Valerie Troutman

Technically this movie doesn’t begin with the title card. It actually starts by telling us Full Moon Pictures and Young Wolf Productions present that title card. The ‘6’ is huge as if to say, “seriously we made a 6th one of these.” Trancers 4 & 5 may have been sad, but that was because it was terrible seeing Tim Thomerson and his iconic role reduced to such garbage. This one doesn’t even have Thomerson in it. It’s just a terrifically bad movie. Nevertheless, let’s have some fun with it.

The film begins with a guy watching footage from the end of the movie before he realizes he too is in Trancers 6.

There’s only one thing to do when you see shot on video footage made to look even worse of a woman trying to stab another woman to death. That’s to get up, play with some switches, and then break the news to stock footage from the previous Trancers movies that time travel is going to happen again. During this we also get a voice inserted that isn’t Thomerson to say a line they couldn’t find in one of the previous movies. You might be wondering if it at least sounds like Thomerson. Nope!

Stock footage Deth is not happy about this. But before Trancers III Jack can argue his way out,…

Trancers III (1993, dir. C. Courtney Joyner)

he is sent into the future of 2006 to make a cameo appearance in Evil Bong, an extra that doesn’t look like Thomerson appears on a slab,…

Trancers (1984, dir. Charles Band)

and the film cuts back to Old Los Angeles of 2022.

So 6 years from now and 300 years 1 minute 49 seconds earlier from the opening scenes. Seriously, it says that second thing.

Moving on! We now meet Jack’s ancestor, but for a few minutes as herself. Her name is Josephine Forrest played by the only actor I’m going to credit on this film named Zette Sullivan. It’s bad enough I have to remind people she was in this movie. This was her second, and last role she ever did. Kinda sad because despite what follows, she didn’t deserve to disappear from films.

She’s an astronomer with an apartment where she can look through her telescope from the comfort of her own couch. That’s weird. She sees a meteor shower happen. She records where it was and calls it in. She is told to be careful, but she has no idea what that means. Doesn’t matter. That meteor shower thing will barely factor into this movie. Now she sets down her bowl of slop to look at her fish tank before knocking the bowl over.

This is a very important scene you see. The reason is because she says, “Oh, shoot!” You see what they did there? Flash! Fall! Get up!

“That was an ass breaker of a ride.” Other lines. “Shit! I need to clear my head.” That’s how we know for sure that Zette Sullivan has been given direction to stop acting like a regular person who has watched too many Jimmy Stewart movies and to begin channelling her inner Humphrey Bogart.

“I woke up this morning with a bad hangover
And my penis was missing again
This happens all the time
It’s detachable”

-Detachable Penis by King Missile

Of course she goes to the fridge to get a drink. Yes, I am going to call her a her despite it supposedly being Jack inside of her. I don’t want to sully the character’s good name by pretending he’s actually here. In the fridge, she finds everyone’s worst nightmare: tofu, non-fat yogurt, beet juice, and carrot juice.

“Oh, my God! What a fucking nightmare!”
-My Cousin Vinny (1992)

Then she finally realizes she’s a woman now. By that I mean she looks at her hands, her breasts, then looks in the mirror.

That’s it. I’m sorry, but this is what happens if you have a penis and suddenly discover it isn’t there.

Switch (1991, dir. Blake Edwards)

That’s when Breasts walk into the room.

He is the ancestor of the guy from the beginning of the movie. He tells her that Josephine is Jack’s daughter. How much of a role will he play in this movie? Barely any. Aside from that piece of information, he’s just here to tell us his ancestor was a “ho” and give Josephine some stuff like a gun. That, and to have tits in the movie. I love that he brought along with him three pictures of the exact same thing to give to her.

Those are pictures of her being stabbed to death. A fate she needs to stop from happening.

Now she goes over to her desk to find out some information on herself. I would make fun of the CRT monitors on her desk, but who cares. There’s funnier things than that.

The next morning she gets her gun and threatens a pair of pantyhose with it before struggling to get them on.

I would love to believe that’s why she goes with a long skirt, but considering other things that happen in this movie. I just believe they thought they needed that scene because you will never see her have any problems with heels, makeup, or any of that stuff from now on. I’m actually glad about the heels part. Movies really over-exaggerate the difficulty of wearing them. The pantyhose thing is actually refreshing.

Make note of the outfit. She thinks this cool red car is hers. Make note of the red car too. After realizing the car isn’t hers, but the other car next to it, the camera cuts and…

I’m pretty sure the color of her top just changed. It could just be the lighting changing the color of the top. Regardless, make note of the purse. The movie won’t remember.

Now she arrives at work and…

is that a bright blue top now? The purse handle certainly is longer. What happened to her cardigan? Just in case you thought she might have left it in the car, the film cuts to the next scene at a hot dog stand to assure us that it did indeed forget she wasn’t wearing it in the previous scene.

There’s that long purse handle too. This scene exists to introduce us to these people who will show up later because otherwise they would need to hire more actors.

Then as she is heading into work…

she appears to have changed again back into the more beige version of the top. Damn Trancers! Before, they were just killing people, but now they are destroying all continuity.

She walks in front of the secretary so we can see that the cardigan has disappeared yet again.

It’s a magic cardigan!

Now we meet the short-lived Eddie Deezen of this movie.

Hmm…do I make the joke, or do I restrain myself? Nah! The movie is garbage. It deserves all the jokes I can come up with so I can get through this.

WarGames (1983, dir. John Badham)

I think it’s fair to say this Eddie Deezen has backdoors in mind while looking at Josephine. However, in the movie, he just reminds her that she sat at the wrong desk after giving her creepy stares and she moves over to her computer.

Remember kids, “Mondays Are Fundays.” I think Bob Geldolf & The Boomtown Rats would disagree. Even The Bangles would say that Sundays are in fact the Fundays. Okay, enough music jokes…for now. After clicking on the icon in the center of the screen without a mouse cursor and seeing that her meteor sightings were denied, a flight attendant comes to get her.

She is there to take her to see Mr. Castle and again to introduce us to an actor who will come back around again. Josephine takes a good look at her butt before going in to meet with him just to remind us that her sexual orientation has not been altered because of the gender body swap. If you didn’t get it this time, then don’t worry. The film will remind you again of this fact later. Believe it or not, at that point, it actually serves a real purpose in the story. This is an odd Full Moon production because it appears to try to send a message of being a strong woman, not smoking, not drinking, living a healthy lifestyle, and about fighting back when people try to prey on your weakness given your apparent position in society. Well, sort of. Just think of it as some marbling in the pile of cow dung.

Now Josephine sits down to talk with Mr. Castle. Blah, blah, blah, something exploded into the Earth even though we didn’t see that happen, blah, blah blah, you saw a gaseous explosion above the Earth’s atmosphere, and she’s fired.

After having a conversation with a security guard, we find out that this Eddie Deezen isn’t the jackass he appeared to be. He’s a Trancer jackass.

She proceeds to fight him. Oh, and he talks too. These must be the Trancers from the third film on, minus any real strength. He tells her that Mr. Castle wants her dead, breaks free, turns into pixels, jumps out of a window,…

and then dissolves on the ground.

That’s when Jim Walls…

appears to tell Josephine she didn’t follow proper trooper procedure and sends her back to try again.

After getting a call, Josephine is off to meet her astronomer friend at an observatory who apparently…

is still living in 1991 according to that poster behind him. The doctor confirms her findings about a meteor crashing into the Earth, and bad guys show up. All you need to know is that the long second works even better than before. You start to use it with your hair up,…

then the camera cuts to put your hair down,…

followed by the long second getting activated which puts your hair up again,…

and finally as you run away, your hair is down again.

Yes, that is the car from the parking lot earlier that she thought was hers. No reason for it to be the same car, but it is. She gets in that car and mows down a Trancer on the ground before getting out to shoot another one with her hair up again.

Now she bends down to take the dead Trancer’s jacket, but pops back up with her hair down again.

She also takes his pants because clearly those are her size. This part happened before she popped up with her hair down again.

The movie now briefly cuts back to the future to show the guy playing with a computer followed by fake Jack being attacked by ripple special effects.

Josephine follows one of the Trancers from the observatory and Breasts shows up to talk to her. He tells her that she is fading in the future so she better make sure her parents get together at the Enchantment Under The Sea dance. He actually says she is fading up the line because of her potential failure in the past.

Now we are off to the last main set of the movie, and the movie still has an hour to go. She gets there by following a white truck that picked up three Trancers that were hanging out nearby. Her first encounter at this shanty town/base of operations is with a guy I call Lucas.

The Wizard (1989, dir. Todd Holland)

However, since she doesn’t have the Power Glove, he takes her in. They stick her in a room with a musical reference.

“Who draws the crowd and plays so loud, baby, it’s the guitar man
Who’s gonna steal the show, you know, baby, it’s the guitar man
He can make you love, he can make you cry
He will bring you down and he’ll get you high
Somethin’ keeps him goin’ miles and miles a day
To find another place to play”

-The Guitar Man by Bread

This is where the sexual orientation part actually has a purpose. He is dirty. They pretend he is one of the many transients who has been taken in by the bad guys to be turned into Trancers. The reason it matters is because he offers to have sex with her, and she tells him she isn’t into guys. That rules out a way he can get close to her in order to mislead her. That’s the last time it’s brought up. It’s better than that whole thing in Switch where he doesn’t have sex with the one girl because even though he is in a woman’s body and loves girl on girl, he is supposedly so homophobic that he can’t do it. It sounds even dumber when I write it out.

I forgot to mention that Bad, Bad, Hot Dog Man from earlier is here too.

He’s the baddest hot dog vender in the whole damn town.

I couldn’t resist. It’s going to be awhile till I can reference it properly in a review of Sneakers (1992) where you get to hear it sung by some Chinese guys.

This is when the Waitress In The Sky…

shows up to tell us she is now Hell Bent For Leather…

and give an inspirational speech to her people. She tells them that the ray gun attached to a fake meteor is going to make them powerful so they can fight back against the system. This lady volunteers…

and turns into this.

Remember that she looks like that after she is zapped because the movie will forget it when they go to zap Josephine even though it does that with every single other person. All Josephine will do is act like Kristen Stewart in Twilight: New Moon (2009), and they all believe she has been Tranced.

Some guy is brought in and torn apart by two of the Tranced ladies. Then they are taken to two people having a barbecue who they kill before being singed by Hot Dog vendor.

That’s when the film cuts to Flight Attendant and Castle. They do some plotting here that no one cares about. The importance of this scene is to remind us there actually was a crew that worked on this movie because we can see their reflection in the TV screen.

Now we get a random sex scene between Flight Attendant and The Guitar Man. This is apparently how he reports to her. His penis must tell her somehow. Even more random, it cuts to things like this during the scene.

This is now only halfway through the movie. Yep!

Flight Attendant keeps saying she is helping these extras who are about 20 years late to be zombies in Day of the Dead (1985). This stuff goes on and on and on.

I do like this guy in the background though who is training by lifting a road sign.

This is how she looks after she has been supposedly Tranced even though everyone else looked like a zombie afterwards.

She dodged it using another long second Breasts gave her. There’s also a thing about Flight Attendant’s butt knocking this over…

even though it will have no purpose in the film that I could discern.

Now Josephine is sent off to bring in her scientist friend. He’s just brought in to provide convenient items when the plot needs them. Also, just before he is taken it looks like somebody’s hand appears slightly in the bottom left hand corner of the screen.

You’ve got the movie now. They all just hang out at this place while the scientist is forced to work on improving their Trancing so they can replace people in power. They do this till enough time has run out on the movie for the final showdown to occur. I’m not going to waste your time with a blow by blow of this part. Let’s cut to the fight, and summarize it with a musical number!

*piano music start*

Again! Run, Shoot, Shoot, Fight, Shoot, Aim

Right! That connects with turn, Turn, go outside building, go inside building, Jump, Run, Run, Kick, Kick, Leap, Kick, Aim

Going on! And turn, Turn, Shoot, Duck, Back Up, Run, Pivot, Run, Walk, Walk, Walk

Now imagine that whole combination facing towards the cameras, and you have the battle.

There are a couple of plot things here such as the meteor being the source of the Trancing ray. It doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t. They don’t even use it consistently. One minute it turns people into Trancers, then it’s just turning them mindless, then it’s blowing up ground, and then it’s making cars disappear.

The scientist gets stabbed in the back, the Flight Attendant gets her head blown off, and then boom!

With that done, Josephine returns to kill Mr. Castle who turns out to be an alien.

Now the movie actually sequel baits big time that Josephine is the new Jack Deth going out to hunt down the remaining Trancers. It seems like they really thought this would reboot the franchise.

Everything is wrong with this movie. I honestly can’t give you one redeeming quality here other than maybe the pantyhose thing. The sad thing is that I can think of a way this possibly could have been saved. Rather than having Jack go back into the body of his daughter, have him end up in McNulty’s ancestor instead. The girl played by actress Alyson Croft who was not only in the original film as that character, but in the sequel too. She was good and pulled off the seasoned male cop in a young woman’s body well. I would have brought her back and just made up some nonsense that this time something happened causing Jack to end up in the wrong body. Quantum Leap broke the rules one time for that Civil War episode so Sam Beckett could take credit for saving Martin Luther King’s ancestor and giving him his last name. Why couldn’t they have just done that here? Croft was only 27 when this movie came out too so she certainly would have been young enough for Full Moon. What a shame.

I just probably gave this particular installment in the Trancers series more attention than anyone else or that it even deserved. Well, we have one more to go after this. We will be going back to the original second Trancers movie that was made as part of an anthology film called Pulse Pounders (1988) and released on its own only a couple of years ago.

Following The Amazon Prime Recommendation Worm #8: Oliviero Rising (2007), A Scandalous Journey (2002), Little Lili (2003), Blindspot (2008)

Posted on March 30, 2016 by Valerie Troutman

I had to get these four out before they completely faded from my memory. We do have more misleading Amazon Prime posters, which I know is what you really come for with these posts so I will try not to disappoint. Sadly, I do have the first film on this list to bring you. I think it will end up being the worst movie I see this year. It will really take something awful to beat it. Here we go!

Oliviero Rising (2007, dir. Riki Roseo) – I know you can’t hear it, but I am chuckling as I am writing this. First off, that’s a scene from the very end of the film. Second off:

Thirdly, they didn’t even get the right title in their fake poster. Here’s the realistic poster for the movie. Sort of.

Fourth, the plot summary on IMDb has nothing to do with the movie: “A young and charming employee (Gallo) finds himself victim of an ‘office intrigue’ engineered by his attractive female boss.” Finally, I’m pretty sure that the “Rising” in Oliviero Rising refers to Vincent Gallo’s penis. I’m not kidding. The story is about Gallo getting over his mentally induced erectial disfunction. Shall we talk about this a bit? It does have a scene I can’t avoid telling you about. Shivers just ran down my spine.

Usually when I write about these movies I just watch them on the big screen so I don’t have screenshots to share. Sometimes there’s that rare film that causes me to stop and switch to my iPad. This was one of them. As a result, I do have a few of them to share.

The movie begins and we meet Oliviero who appears to drive a tuck for a living. We see him stop the truck and lift up air without showing the actual person in the scene. I’m pretty sure that Gallo wasn’t present for this scene or any of the truck driving parts. We see later that air is a baby porcupine. After a really weird and inappropriate scene with a psychiatrist, Gallo and his family are off to Italy. They are there for a family funeral. Nothing really happens there except bad directing. Here’s the “highlights”, if I dare to call them that.

Ernest Borgnine riding while singing in a pink cadillac with a suit of armor in the back seat.

A small jump cut as Ernest Borgnine rolls in the armor because either he wasn’t actually there or he knocked it over so they reshot it from the point where it fell over. There is a lot of lazy and awkward editing in this movie. Some of it very obviously done because not all the actors were there or sets couldn’t be used at the time they were needed.

Enest Borgnine not putting his penis into her vagina meaning he is screwin’ the cushion. I know Borgnine shows up in many different films in much the same way Whoopi Goldberg does, but this? Why? Why? Why?

This is the “Superior Seduction” the poster was referring to.

She tries to seduce him, which he has no interest in.

I must apologize, but I don’t have the scene with Vincent Schiavelli who you may recall as the angry subway ghost from Ghost (1990). He is trying to help Oliviero get over his ED. He actually stops, looks into the camera, and lectures women in the audience about their alleged worship of the penis. First off, I’m sure lesbians are rather indifferent towards the penis. They probably just feel men’s pain for all the weird things it does out their control. If a straight girl leaves you because you can’t get it up or keep your penis hard, then she is a horrible person. She is the guy who leaves a straight girl because her sex drive has taken a dip. Penises are weird. People with that equipment are not lying or exaggerating when they say it has a mind of its own. It takes a fair amount of work to try and get any modicum of control of it during sex. However, none of this translates to worship of the penis.

There is also the scene where Gallo’s wife has sex with his girlfriend because he can’t get it up for her. Seriously. Wife gets frustrated, goes right over to the girlfriend’s room, and they have sex while Gallo is in the hallway.

I think Ernest Borgnine summed up my feelings about this movie when he walks past the bones in the castle and tells them, “fuck you”.

A Scandalous Journey (2002, dir. Michele Placido) – If by scandalous you mean the story of a woman who writes poetry, meets a guy, then seems to stop writing, and instead supports her now mentally disturbed husband who also writes before he winds up in a mental institution. It’s not scandalous in the slightest. It has a beginning and an end. So I guess it technical it is a journey since they don’t stay in one spot the whole time. That’s really it. The rest is just how much you like good performances in a really boring story that grates on your nerves. I wish I could provide you with more details, but this was so incredibly forgettable that I can’t. I remember the next one more and it was forgettable, but at least it had an irredeemable asshole that the film is blind to seeing as such. That made it stick in my mind more. Even the more realistic poster is misleading.

You basically get a film made by an Italian director who probably wishes this was still the era of films like The Night of the Shooting Stars (1982) or 1900 (1976). It isn’t. Moving on.

Little Lili (2003, dir. Claude Miller) – Wow! They’re “Young & Hungry For Fame.” I could understand if they were just young, but also hungry for fame? This is clearly going be story about Ludivine Sagnier who is so hungry for fame that she’ll sleep with Robinson Stevenin to get to the top. I mean what else are you going to read from that poster? Well, I read that this is a movie based on a play by Chekov about a young pretentious self-loving asshole who makes a shitty short film that his family defends as if he is some guardian of pure unadulterated cinema as characters wander around to make sure we spend way too much time with this twit before the movie decides it has no idea how to redeem the character so it suddenly leaps over many years where he is now going to reshoot the events of the film on an artificial looking set that belongs in a Douglas Sirk movie before the film finally ends. That’s what I see. I also see that dickwad we are told to cheer for not listed on the poster. That character is played by Bernard Giraudeau who of course went on to do next to nothing after this film rather then the two actors whose names are on the poster. Oh, and after it leaps over all that time, he’s still a jerk who looks down with contempt at people who dare to not make shitty foreign films like the one you will be seeing if you watch this movie. Also, it continues to remind you of better directors, films, and actors throughout. I think I even spotted a reference to Rohmer’s film Claire’s Knee (1970). Amazing! Stay as far as you can from this garbage. I want the film that poster promised me. It sounds stupid, but I doubt it’s as bad as this thing was.

Blindspot (2008, dir. Ad Bol) – The poster is certainly accurate about “You cannot see.” I could barely make out the opening scenes because they were so dark. That was followed by the remainder of the film that I couldn’t understand. The movie begins with a woman doing a weird dance before she wakes up. It was a nightmare. Then we see a guy take a woman hostage in a room. I thought things were going to progress there, but then it seemed to come apart when they were talking, but it was in a voiceover while they were in clearly different places. After that, it goes off to tell the story of some guy who gets involved with a woman who died and her sister who needs to confront her father about him abusing both of them as children. There are some affairs in here. How any of this ties together, especially with the opening scenes, I have no idea. It’s a confusing mess. I wanted to scream at the director that if he didn’t know how to this kind of non-linear plot, then to stop trying. It didn’t help that it would suddenly cut at odd times. There is also an audio lead-in that I think was the only one in the movie and it only adds to the viewer’s frustration. Hell, this could have been linear, but it was so disorienting that I couldn’t tell. Skip!

Sadly, I can’t recommend a single one of these this time. Maybe I’ll have better luck next time.

Film Review: The Heroic Trio (1993, dir. Johnnie To)

Posted on March 27, 2016 by Valerie Troutman

Jeez! It seems like it was just yesterday when I remembered that a Batman/Superman/Wonder Woman movie was coming out this month. Now Ryan already has his review of it up. Here I am sitting on this, the sequel called Executioners (1993), and way more Batman and Superman movies than I care to list left to review. With that in mind, I’d better get on it if I want to even finish by the end of the next month, or the month after that.

I have done several Superman movies and a Batman movie already. That Batman movie technically had Wonder Woman right near the end, but I wasn’t comfortable with that alone. Aside from the 1974 TV Movie, this movie, and it’s sequel, were the only ones that popped up as having a Wonder Woman in them. Even IMDb lists the character of Tung as Wonder Woman. She doesn’t exactly look or act like you would expect Wonder Woman to act. In fact, my subtitles call her Super Heroine and the version on Netflix calls her Shadow Fox. But the movie has Maggie Cheung, Michelle Yeoh, and Anita Mui playing superheroes in a reworking of The Terminator/Terminator 2/Lady Terminator. By The Terminator, I mean the 1984 version. I think we can be fairly certain that director Johnnie To was unaware this version of The Terminator existed.

The Terminator (1991, dir. Ben Hernandez)

It is also filled with references to everything from Silver Streak (1976) to Remo Williams (1985) to the Flying Guillotine movies. I can’t really bring myself to feel mislead that I was going to get a Chinese Wonder Woman. By the way, I apologize in advance for all the references I’m sure I have missed. But, I don’t apologize for not including screenshots of the two scenes that no one needs to see if they don’t watch the film themselves.

The movie begins and we hear on the radio that 18 babies have been kidnapped in the last three months as a car pulls up at to an old house. This is when we meet Wonder Woman (Anita Mui), her husband Lau (Damian Lau), and the real estate agent. He takes them inside this dump that only really looks good from the outside. As he tries to sell it, he is also honest. You know, full disclosure and all that. He has to tell them that it is “structurally sound. It had a minor fire, that’s all.”

Lethal Weapon 3 (1992, dir. Richard Donner)

He quickly thinks that there’s no way he’s going to make a sale here. He even kicks at one of the pillars in the house causing it to fall down and a bird’s nest to land on his head.

However, much to Chinese Leo Getz’s surprise, she wants the place anyways. But you know what’s even more of a surprise? The next scene that happens right after they say they will take the house. I’ll explain it, show it, then give you my theory as to why it exists.

Her husband spots a guy outside trying to hot wire their car. He grabs a vine from the roof of the house and dives out the window with it like he’s Tarzan. After landing, he proceeds to use it to lasso the thief and yank him out of the car. He then hands the guy hand cuffs telling him to cuff himself, which he does. It then cuts to Wonder Woman and the real estate agent. He says, “He’s so cool,” to which she responds, “Of course, my hubby is a cop.” Here’s what it looks like.

No, it’s never brought up again. It’s as if the film just wanted you to know that Hong Kong cops can do that. Believe it or not, I have seen an otherwise unexplainable scene such as this somewhere else before. If memory serves, the movie is actually a favorite of Lisa’s. I haven’t seen it myself, but I have seen The Cinema Snob review of it. It’s a movie called Pieces (1982). There’s a scene where a girl on a college campus is walking around at night when out of nowhere a Chinese guy tries attacking her with martial arts before passing out next to her. A guy comes up to say it’s his Kung Fu professor. The Chinese guy gets up, apologizes saying he had some bad chop suey, and then walks off.

Pieces (1982 dir. Juan Piquer Simón)

The reason for it is that the producer of the movie Dick Randall also produced Bruceploitation movies. To give a little advertising for those films he had one of the Bruceploitation actors do that random scene. I figure there must be a similar explanation for why Damian Lau does this bit. It’s my best guess.

Next we cut to the police station where the Invisible Woman (Michelle Yeoh) is screwing with the cops.

We find out that all the babies that have been kidnapped are male babies. She leaves a threatening notice for the Commissioner that it will be his baby that is going to be kidnapped next. Now the movie cuts to a hospital.

This set is so 1993 that I thought the Super Mario Bros. might show up at any time.

Super Mario Bros. (1993, dir. Annabel Jankel & Rocky Morton)

After some talking, a lady asks why they can’t just call in Wonder Woman. That’s when the Invisible Woman tries to snatch two more babies. Well, not really. She picks them up and throws them out a window. These are special babies though because they take forever to fall to the ground. They take long enough for the guy in the window and a woman on the ground to have a conversation about which one to catch. Also, long enough for Wonder Woman to show up running across power lines to make her dramatic entrance.

She throws her equivalent of batarangs to pin the two babies to the wall, which are apparently still near the top of the building after all this has happened. Also, apparently the two batarangs come straight down on the babies, are then are shown in Wonder Woman’s hand, then come in horizontally to pin the babies to the wall. You know, something tells me this film isn’t very realistic and might have been rushed into production.

Wonder Woman spots some blood on the wall where the babies are and throws her batarangs at them thinking someone might be there. It obviously hits the Invisible Woman. Why it hits the wall yet still causes her to bleed is anyone’s guess. Maybe they just grazed her. Regardless, one of the babies flies off the wall while the other is taken away by the Invisible Woman. Wonder Woman then leaps into action and catches the baby with some rope who is still exerting its magic ability to defy the laws of gravity. She catches the baby with rope and yanks it towards her like her husband Tarzan Lau from the beginning. Maybe that scene was to tell us she learned that trick from her husband. I doubt it though cause the rest of the film will make it very clear to the viewer that he is just a regular cop while she is the superhero. Doesn’t matter. She tells her husband to have the blood on the wall looked into.

He doesn’t know it’s his wife because he has clearly contracted Lois Lane syndrome. She then calls her husband to tell him she will be late.

Now we cut to the Invisible Woman in a car with the baby she has kidnapped. Like all the movie’s I’ve been watching lately, we need to pull out the “of course” for this scene. Of course she heads for a random manhole and kicks it up with her foot. Of course after climbing down to the sewers they turn out to be the set for the bad guys. Of course she runs into this movie’s Arnold Terminator…

who proceeds to fight her, get his finger cutoff, and then eats it. Cause of course he does. Now we meet Robert Patrick Terminator crossed with Lady Terminator who is also on loan from the 70’s. I’ll just call him the Evil Kung Fu 1000.

He keeps saying that “China must have an emperor.” Funny that Maggie Cheung would go on to be in the film Hero (2002), which many consider to be Chinese government propaganda that said it was okay to slaughter a bunch of people if it meant unifying China. Those babies will not die in this movie. Maggie does kill a bunch of small children though who are down there rather than allowing them to become servants to this king of sorts. At the end of the movie, the babies will be found alive. Little side note, if you have only seen Hero, then watching The Emperor and The Assassin (1998) is essential. It’s a much better and realistic film about the same story.

Oh, and you see the children die. She throws dynamite into the group of them that are in chains. You can see the looks on their faces. You can see one of them fly in the air. You also see at least one of them piss themselves as they are dying. When it comes to this part, the movie doesn’t play any games like it does with the rest of the film. Remember, this film came out the same year as Farewell, My Concubine (1993) and The Blue Kite (1993), which certainly had the Chinese government’s panties in a twist. At this time Chinese studios were also entirely cutoff from government funding. I wouldn’t be surprised if Johnnie tried to cloak a message here with superheroes and such. Another little side note. If you watch this movie on Netflix, then that scene is edited out of the movie. The kids still die, but it’s implicit, offscreen, and you really don’t know it happened because you only saw the babies and they are rescued in the end. The only hint at this is a very quick flashback to the children before being blown up that they didn’t edit out. But it’s so quick no one who didn’t know there was something missing would notice.

Anyways, the movie now goes into a flashback. We see a guy standing next to a little girl in white who will turn out to be the child version of Wonder Woman. He is pointing at a girl in red who is the child version of the Invisible Woman telling her she has to climb up this rope hanging over a cliff all by herself.

She doesn’t make it up the cliff. How she survived the fall…I don’t know. I’m just going to assume that Michelle Yeoh is such a badass that she has the same powers as Michael Des Barres who survived this.

MacGyver

That was a nightmare the Invisible Woman was having. This is where it gets a little weird. She wakes up in a bed that is on the other side of some glass separating her from the rest of the room. On the other side is a professor who is working on the invisibility suit. Apparently, it doesn’t work under direct sunlight.

Not sure how this setup happened or exactly what she is doing for him in this situation. I do know that she is on that side of the glass because the other side isn’t safe health wise while he works on the suit. I also know that she is there because we will find out that she is meant to steal the suit permanently once it works perfectly.

Next Wonder Woman visits a fortune teller to try and figure out why all these babies are being kidnapped. The fortune teller tells her that they are destined to be emperors. That’s when a little girl falls out a window, they obviously didn’t count on people being able to pause the film with accuracy in 1993, I won’t post it, and Wonder Woman jumps out to save her.

She also saves a cat that fell out of the window shortly after the little girl fell. I love that she looks around at the children in the windows as if to say keep it under your hat, but apparently the fortune teller she was sitting next to didn’t notice anything. She was probably meant to be blind, but there’s nothing in the scene to indicate that except her wearing sunglasses. Oh, and of course the child and the cat have the magic ability to fall at just the correct speed to be caught.

Back at the Wonder Woman estate, she is chopping vegetables and her husband is cutting a log. Wonder Woman has a flashback to a little girl kissing her and referring to her as an older sister, but it doesn’t make any sense. Good scene.

Downtown at Aota Chemicals a hostage situation is taking place. So of course the cops call in Cobra.

Cobra (1986, dir. George P. Cosmatos)

I know Maggie Cheung’s character has an actual name in this movie, but I don’t care. I’m just going to refer to her as Cobra Cheung. She’s not a cop like Cobra, but does this kind of work freelance. However, she does just what Cobra would do in this situation. She straddles a barrel, lights the back of the sucker on fire, and flies into action.

She dispatches some of them and launches the others out in barrels for the cops to arrest. Before leaving, she offers her services to the commissioner to get his son back for him if he pays her. If memory serves, in the Netflix version she just offers to get his son back for him. In the original she wants more money if she brings him back alive, and a lesser sum if she brings him in dead.

Next, something happens back at the hospital where a madman is going to kill all the babies. It seems like it was just a last minute script addition in order to get Wonder Woman and the Invisible Woman in the same room for a bit before Cobra Cheung snatches a baby. Even having watched this movie twice, I’m still not sure why she takes this baby from the hospital. I understand that Wonder Woman and the Invisible Woman are in the same room in their regular clothes so that we can see that the Invisible Woman isn’t all bad as she lets her hand get cut up to rescue the babies from being killed.

Next we get a fight scene between all three of the ladies while the baby is there. This movie likes to follow projectiles in the air.

For those of you who grew up in the 90s…

you’re welcome.

Sadly, the baby falls during this fight and lands on a nail. Wonder Woman takes the baby back to the hospital, but it dies.

Now we get a flashback that seems to indicate that not only did red girl survive the fall earlier, but that she left leaving Wonder Woman to alone do whatever the harsh trainer guy wanted both of them to do in the first place. I’m not sure why they bothered with this origin story stuff. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, I probably haven’t followed it correctly, and it it doesn’t add anything to the film except to tell us they had connections prior to the events of the film.

Next we get a scene between the Invisible Woman and Cobra Cheung that had me confused. All you need to know is that Cobra wants the babies dead rather than to be turned into something evil, and this happens.

Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins (1985, dir. Guy Hamilton)

Now we see how the Invisible Woman came to work for the Evil Kung Fu 1000. No explanation of how she got there, but he tells her she is no longer called Ching Ching, but will be known as Third Chan. Then he hits her on the back of the head with a log.

Yep! That’s a thing that happens.

Next we get a couple of scenes for character development. Who cares when we need to get to the all important Arnold Terminator eating birds scene.

That’s another thing that happens.

Cobra Cheung goes down to check out what’s happening in the sewers. She throws a bunch of birds up to distract this guy so she can look around. All that really matters here is that Cobra Cheung now knows the babies are being held down there in bird cages, and Arnold Terminator is now sent to kill Wonder Woman.

Cobra Cheung now shows up at the police station to tell them she’s off the case of the kids by throwing gold onto the table the cops are sitting at which disappears when the camera cuts.

Another good scene. Moving on now. As Cobra Cheung is leaving on her motorcycle, Wonder Woman throws the baby from American Sniper at her, which she catches.

Now we need more action and references. That’s why Arnold Terminator has taken a train station hostage, destroyed the computer, and brought a flying guillotine with him.

Master of the Flying Guillotine (1976, dir. Yu Wang)

Wonder Woman and Cobra Cheung get to the train station, but not in time to do much except this.

They drive the motorcycle into the wall, bounce off of it spinning, throw dynamite at Arnold, jump off, and the motorcycle is destroyed. That’s a thing that happens too. Then the train crashes into the station.

Silver Streak (1976, dir. Arthur Hiller)

That’s when Arnold tries to stop the train himself…

but he forgot he was a Terminator ripoff and not Superman…

Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987, dir. Sidney J. Furie)

so he is disposed of as far as that scene is concerned.

Now the movie gets on the fast track to its conclusion. Wonder Woman visits her husband in the hospital. He now knows her secret identity. Things get more desperate between the Invisible Woman and the professor because his research is killing him now. Then all three of them meet up on the set of every Kung Fu movie from the 70s.

This scene only exists so they can fall over a cliff to recreate the flashback scene shown here.

They decide to work together. Then without showing them climb up, it cuts to this…

so that I can do this…

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989, dir. Steven Spielberg)

You might be wondering how her motorcycle is intact for this scene. No idea. You just have to roll with it.

Now the Arnold Terminator pays a visit to the professor to get the invisibility suit. He bends Cobra Cheung’s shotgun while they try to stop him.

Then this reactor like thing that was in the professor’s lab gets punctured. The room turns red and everything. They cause him to fall in it. He has the professor’s notes on a tape when he goes in. He punches his hand out of thing holding the tape player. That’s the last we see of him. I’m guessing that’s a setup for the sequel.

Now they go to fight the Evil Kung Fu 1000. First though, we have to kill the kids.

Ninth Chan is Arnold Terminator. Moving on because you don’t want to see it. The battle ensues before leaving the sewers to the set of Highlander II: The Quickening (1991).

Highlander II: The Quickening (1991, dir. Russell Mulcahy)

Considering the plot of the sequel to this movie, I’m sure Highlander II and its ilk were in the director’s mind while making this film.

They fight for awhile till Cobra Cheung is able to put a stick of dynamite into the Evil Kung Fu 1000’s robe.

Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991, dir. James Cameron)

After going up in flames, the movie does exactly what you think it does.

You can take your pick here.

Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991, dir. James Cameron)

The Terminator (1984, dir. James Cameron)

Lady Terminator (1989, dir. H. Tjut Djalil)

The way the Evil Kung Fu 1000 looks like after emerging from the flames, I think the director probably had a combination of The Terminator and Lady Terminator in mind.

In short order, he latches onto the Invisible Woman to make her fight for him.

See No Evil, Hear No Evil (1989, dir. Arthur Hiller)

Eventually they are able to break the Invisible Woman free, and the bad guy falls to his death to shatter on the concrete. Then they walk off into the distance.

Well, there is one more short scene. We cut to Wonder Woman and her husband watching TV. This is when we find out that the husband has coined their name as The Heroic Trio and that the cops rescued the babies.

That’s The Heroic Trio. It has plenty of martial arts. It has plenty of mistakes. It doesn’t soft pedal things. It’s somewhat confusing. It’s a little insane. Overall, I would say I enjoyed it. If nothing else, it was fun to see all three of these famous Chinese actresses together onscreen. Especially since Anita Mui is no longer with us and Maggie Cheung appears to have stopped acting. They’ve all done better work, but I still recommend this enjoyable mess of a movie. I’m looking forward to watching the sequel.

Film Review: Supermen Against the Orient (1973, dir. Bitto Albertini)

Posted on March 22, 2016 by Valerie Troutman

Forgive me, but I watched this last week. I may have some trouble remembering the complex storyline. Good thing I have the movie right here. Let me just turn it on.

“I smack ’em! I whack ’em! I scratch ’em! I bash ’em! I cream ’em! I ream ’em! And then I redeem them!”

Ah, it’s all coming back to me now!

First off, me being half Italian, I can assure you that title translates to Knockoff Burt Lancaster, Harpo, and Rick Wright Rob a Safe in the Orient. The alternate tile being Supermen Against the Orient. By the way, the opening song is awesome!

The movie opens up on a deal gone wrong between criminals after two guys pop out of boxes with guns.

There is more talent on display here in this opening scene than in all of Superdragon vs. Superman. Just the fact that they have two fights going on during this scene on two different boats in the same frame is incredible. They even have the courtesy to make sure the bad guys were in black and blue while the other guys were in white. It’s small, but it makes fights easier to follow. Being confused about who is who gets in the way of enjoying fight scenes.

Oh, and it’s clearly done by people who are fans of 60’s crime and western films. A lot of style on display here.

After torturing the two guys who popped out of the boxes, the bad guys find out about something in Bangkok. Cut to a boardroom meeting and who cares. All you need to know is that they need Captain Wallace. They describe him like they are going to bring in Peter Sellers or something.

Here is Captain Wallace played by Robert Malcolm. He’s pretty funny in this movie. He’s here to finally get married. It’s the third time he’s tried.

Boy, the guy singing over the opening credits wasn’t kidding when he said he reams ’em.

Anyways, people show up to drag him away to serve his country of America. Yeah, he’s actually supposed to be from America in this Italian film. He goes to Bangkok.

After calling for a taxi, this guy pops out to look at our hero.

Clearly, he wants to check out our hero’s awesome mustache!

He also follows him in his car. Then a car chase ensues that lasts the enormous time of…

a few seconds. After Superdragon vs. Superman I expected this to go on for 7 minutes at least.

He now checks in at the hotel where he bumps into this lady.

She will be our Supergirl later on. Yes, I know she looks blind in that screenshot, but she isn’t.

Now the movie goes on Thailand vacation.

It’s like these scenes are here not only to add some realism, but as if the filmmakers cut a deal with the tourism board. You can shoot here, but show off some of the sights please!

After going to the pool and a kickboxing match for reasons that don’t matter, the film has fulfilled it’s Thai quota for the movie so it’s off to Hong Kong. He needs to find the “kung fu expert”. Although Jackie Chan is supposed to be in this movie, he’s just an extra and not the man he is looking for.

Wallace goes to the American embassy, which is run by an Italian character actor sitting in front of a picture of Nixon.

He’s a cryptic prick who says he has some sort of secret weapon that is so secret that he can’t tell Wallace about it even though he is supposed to use it to protect Wallace. No joke. He says all that crap along with a bunch more. He’s quite annoying in this movie. So is what should have been a subplot behind Wallace (the safe) under the painting that is next to the cover of Radiohead’s Kid A album. Wallace actually does guess at what this super secret thing could be. He says he thinks it may be a Buck Rogers Ray Gun. He’s in the wrong decade for that kind of a guess. That’s Reagan era stuff. It’s long johns. In other words, it’s a full body suit that makes you invulnerable to projectiles. Oh, and character actor farts before saying that kung fu is like a laxative because everything comes from inside. If he had only waited four more years, then a film a man like him would go see could have taught him how to solve his little problem.

Not going to say till I review it. If you know, then don’t tell. It’s a surprise!

Now we are off to continue the search for Jackie Chan in this movie at a kung fu competition.

He’s probably in this crowd somewhere just like Phil Collins in A Hard Day’s Night (1964).

We also meet Harpo (Salvatore Borghese), and who I like to call Rick Wright (Antonio Cantafora) even if he isn’t nearly as short as Larry Manetti.

Super Stache is called out to fight the kung fu champion. After a good old ass kickery. This happens.

Then we are in the hospital.

There had to be an easier way to meet the champ. Don’t worry about him. A good acupuncture treatment and he’s back in business. By that I mean it’s time for training. Such as punching hot coals.

I’m sorry, but Cüneyt Arkin punches rocks to train.

Now their palms are as strong as steel! They can kill a horse with one hand.

That’s all well and good, but Chuin can finger punch a nail.

Next we get a scene to remind me how much I like traditional Asian dresses/tops, that same guy from earlier is still watching Super Stache, and…

Supergirl, whose pink top I would take off of her cold dead body, tells him to watch out for people who are keeping their eyes on him. Particularly the guy under his table. Then we go back to stick feet into fire followed by a joke about donkeys and ointment for the ass. Moving on.

After ridiculously going around pretending he is Chinese, which no one believes, Wallace runs into Supergirl.

Blah, blah, blah, their kung fu means that bullets don’t work, blah, blah, blah, watch out, blah, blah, blah.

Now Super Stache goes out on the street to get his ass kicked again.

Luckily, Supergirl comes to his rescue and deals with them.

Now Super Stache meets with his friends to ask for their help.

They say they’ll help, but only if he helps them rob the safe at the embassy. After he is initially offended at the prospect, he agrees. The movie is at the halfway point. It’s a heist movie now. Seriously! It now carries on primarily with robbing the safe for about 30 minutes. No joke. 30 minutes! We get a few things in here like this.

This too.

It goes so off track that there is a scene where Super Stache runs to a library to find out when Abraham Lincoln was born and died in order to figure out the safe combination. The movie eventually gets back on track for the last 15 minutes or so of the film.

Finally, here are the Supermen and Supergirl vs. the dudes in black. I really don’t know what the deal with with these guys is, but after they attacked random business owners in the street I knew they had to be stopped.

With masks they can completely withstand bullets.

Except that guy in the front. He has to use his arms. Oh, and this guy jumps in the air.

Somedays you just gotta do midair splits.

There are a few goodbyes and the embassy guy does more of his comedy shtick, but that’s it! It was way better than Superdragon vs. Superman, but why did it have to go into that whole rob the safe thing? It had a good setup. I liked the actors. Them being Supermen and having a Supergirl too is fun. It could have worked better if they had stuck with it, but the safe thing is really boring and takes over the movie.

I’d still recommend this if only for Super Stache. He really is funny. It’s a shame that according to IMDb he only made two other films the same year as this one called Sinbad and the Caliph of Baghdad as well as And They Smelled the Strange, Exciting, Dangerous Scent of Dollars. In the first, he played Simbad. In the second, he played Butch ‘Charity’ Jenkins. Maybe someday I’ll see them.

In the meantime, I’ll pull out my complete series box set of The Greatest American Hero when I need my fix of comedians in red suits.

I Should Have Watched Something Else, But I Sat Through Superdragon vs. Superman (1975, dir. Chia Chun Wu)

Posted on March 17, 2016 by Valerie Troutman

The movie is also called Bruce Lee Against Supermen. By that they mean Bruce Li Against 80 Minutes Of Your Life. I really should have been watching something else.

Right now a woman is riding a shark while wearing a bunny suit. (Zodiac Fighters, 1978)

The movie begins with a car chase. Get used to that cause it will happen a lot. This time it’s a police car chasing a couple of criminals. The criminals see that the police are catching up. They are carrying a bag full of money, which they promptly toss out the window. A man and a woman find the money, but are surprised by Bruce Li dressed as Kato.

Why is he dressed like Kato? Who knows? Once a battle after the credits is done, he won’t do it again for the whole movie. There will be a mention of The Green Hornet who I’m pretty sure is two guys dressed like Supermen. Kato takes the couple to his car and drives them away to the police station.

Right now a dog taught to hate is heading towards a tragic end. (White Dog, 1982)

Now the film cuts to the opening credits. There are flies all over them. I’m not sure why. Later we’ll see flies on the Superman uniforms of the Supermen who might be The Green Hornet in this movie.

After dropping the couple off at the police station we see Kato drive away. He doesn’t get far before he appears to have trouble with his tire. After getting out he is attacked from behind.

One thing immediately clear is that not only is Bruce Li not as good an actor as Bruce Lee, but not as good a fighter either. However, everyone else is worse than him in this movie.

After Bruce Li dispatches with them, it cuts to one guy in a suit strangling another guy in a suit. The guy being strangled tells him The Green Hornet did it. That’s when it cuts to some newspapers to tell us that Dr. T has invented a way to refine food from petroleum by-products. He has been invited by the Arabs so he is going to travel to the middle east with his daughter. Then we get to see the Supermen who might be The Green Hornet.

They also have this glowing ball.

Sadly Burt Reynolds doesn’t talk to them through it. Instead, it flashes, and a printer spits out something we can’t read. If you watch this movie, then I hope you enjoy this shot of the Supermen because you won’t see them again in uniform till the very end of the film.

Right now a Russian Count may or may not be coming to the rescue. (The Marquise of O, 1976)

That’s when we cut to the bad guys talking to a guy who is willing to pay big bucks for the bad guys to get Dr. T’s formula. He is willing to pay a lot of money. Now we cut to the “Middle East”

No joke. That’s supposed to be an Arab. That Chinese guy right there is supposed to be an Arab. You might be wondering what he sounds like. He sounds like a Chinese stereotype. I think he is trying to do a Middle Eastern accent, but it’s hard to tell. I seriously doubt they cared. Now the movie cuts to Will Our Heroes Be Able to Find Their Friend Who Has Mysteriously Disappeared in Africa? (1968) as they take Dr. T out to a dig site.

When they arrive at the site they hand the doctor some ore. He suddenly has an attack, but is okay once his daughter gives him some medication. Then he takes a good long look at the ore. We get nice closeups of the ore. We get a zoom shot on her dropping a liquid on the ore. We get a zoom shot on the doctor looking through a magnifying glass at the ore. Once that padding of the movie is done, the daughter decides to go swimming.

Right now a playboy is realizing he killed someone. (Il Sorpasso, 1962)

This is when the movie decides it’s time to show us the daughter swimming around naked. Oh, and we see the bad guys spying on her, but it’s really just so we can see her naked. Will they actually say anything? Nope. She just gets dressed, then cut to an airplane landing.

Now we watch a man cross the street for a minute or so before hailing a cab to pad the movie out some more. Then we cut to fighting.

We don’t know what they are fighting about at first, but who cares! They’ve got 80 minutes of your life to take away so some of it might as well be mildly entertaining. It turns out they were just practicing. We find out…

this guy in red needs help protecting Dr. T and his daughter. I’m quite sure it’s Bruce Li, but I’m not sure if he was one of the Supermen at the beginning or not. Doesn’t matter because in the next scene Dr. T is getting kidnapped and shoved in a car. In a car that’s passing, the two guys above spot the car and give chase. A long slow car chase.

Right now a pen tester is going through somebody’s trash. (Sneakers, 1992)

Back in the movie the car chase is still happening with a needlessly crazy angle…

that doesn’t add anything to the film.

Right now a boxer is finding out that winning the fight doesn't keep him from the fate he didn't know was coming. (The Set-Up, 1949)

Right now a boxer is finding out that winning the fight doesn’t keep him from his fate he didn’t know was coming. (The Set-Up, 1949)

After a four minute slow speed car chase our two heroes pretend to be lying on the road to stop the kidnappers. They take them by surprise and a fight breaks out.

I call that kick, the Dolemite. That’s where you just place your foot near their face and they pretend to get hit.

Right now you’re looking at Degrassi long before Netflix got ahold of it.

After three minutes of fighting we cut to this guy…

who is ordering a sniper. Then we cut to who I assume is Bruce Li and Dr. T’s daughter walking around.

Then they walk around some more.

Right now you’re looking at an Eastern you should see. (White Sun of the Desert, 1970)

After three minutes of walking around we cut to a shot of a building. For reasons that I don’t know, a guy who I assume is still Bruce Li walks up to a little girl and somebody takes a shot at him. He grabs the little girl and they hide behind a pillar. She is carrying a little wind up toy. Bruce winds it up and places it on the street. He leaves the girl to make a run for the building.

He runs to the top of the building where the shot came from. Then he throws a rope over the edge of the building and rappels down the side of it to pad the movie out some more.

Then he gives chase.

Right now this woman is in the middle of having explained to her what happened last year. (Last Year at Marienbad, 1961)

After seven and a half minutes of him chasing him, the two fight.

It cuts to this shot during the fight.

After leaving the audience wondering Where’s Waldo? it then cuts back to the two of them on the top of the building where the bad guy falls to his death.

Back to the phone guy, and we learn that “The Green Hornet” is a real problem for him. But after listening to the unseen person on the other end, he says he’ll just get Superman. Maybe that’s this next guy who now does his part to pad this movie out more.

After he spends a minute of doing his martial arts/calligraphy routine, we cut to ninjas flipping.

No really, random ninjas inserted that flip around for 10 seconds. Maybe Godfrey Ho did this part of the movie.

Right now you’re looking at a very famous scene of a historical event that didn’t take place where the film says. (Battleship Potemkin, 1925)

Now a guy and a girl speak in Adam and Eve talk before padding the movie out with sex.

We cut to the doctor getting kidnapped again before cutting back to sex. Now the doctor’s daughter runs on the street, bumps into a guy, and he takes her to the sex scene. Then we see more sex to pad the film out some more. Daughter bursts in and immediately starts a cat fight with the girl. After one tries to hold the other’s head under a running shower, we cut to this.

While they have to wait for “Green Hornet”, the doctor is getting tortured by bad camera effects.

Planet of Dinosaurs (1977)

Right now that’s how I feel about the rest of this review. Let’s cut through this: chase, fight, pointless hostage scene, fight, chase, fight, pointless hostage scene, fight, fight, fight, chase, and movie!

Make that the middle finger, and you have what I felt the film was trying to tell me. You didn’t miss anything. It’s all padding. The chase scenes go on forever, the fighting is boring, and the plot is almost non-existent. Please go watch the other movies and TV Shows I mentioned rather than subjecting yourself to this. Well, that is except for the one just below this text. That documentary was awful.