Tag Archives: Ronn Moss

Shattered Politics: The Alternate (dir by Sam Firstenberg)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Why is 2000’s The Alternate one of the greatest action films ever made?

Consider this: President John Fallbrook (John Beck) is scheduled to give a speech at a World Hunger Symposium, where he will be announcing legislation that will make it illegal for people not to have food.  (I’m not sure how that would work but whatever.  It’s a movie.)  Eric Roberts is The Alternate, a former intelligence agent who has just been recruited to serve as a member of a team that is being used by Agent William (Ice-T) to test the President’s security.  (Ronn Moss, of Hard Ticket to Hawaii and Bold and the Beautiful fame, plays the fake President.)  The Leader (Bryan Genesse) tells the Alternate that the CIA actually wants to abduct the President for real in order to help boost the President’s reelection campaign.  The Alternate agrees to help but then it turns out that the Leader is actually just in it for the money and he’s planning on holding the President hostage until he gets paid.  While Agent Briggs (Michael Madsen) watches from the outside, The Alternate makes his way through a nearly deserted hotel and attempts to defeat the bad guys.

It’s Die Hard …. with Eric Roberts!

The plot is so convoluted that it borders on self-parody but director Sam Firstenberg keeps the action moving quickly and, to its credit, this is a film that fully understands how to embrace the melodrama.  When the Leader tries to take out The Alternate, he doesn’t just pursue him with a gun.  Instead, he picks up a flame thrower!  When The Alternate gets into a gunfight at the hotel’s pool, he doesn’t just duck behind pillars and fire his gun.  Instead, he grabs a banner and swings back and forth over the water, all the while shooting his gun.  When the President says that he doesn’t like heights, it isn’t just a case of him getting nervous about being on the roof of the hotel.  Instead, he’s so paralyzed that he literally has to be picked up and carried from one location to the next.  When The Leader calls the police and gives them his list of demands, he doesn’t just make the usual threats.  Instead, he speaks in what sounds like a French accent and claims to be a infamous (and possibly fictional) terrorist.  When it’s time to kidnap the President, the kidnappers don’t just use guns.  Instead, they also use blow-darts to paralyze the Secret Service agents.  Everything about the film is gloriously and wonderfully over the top.

(I’ve always felt that, when it comes to low-budget action films, the best ones are the ones that are willing to just be as ridiculous as possible. Bring out the flame thrower. Fly the Money Plane. Cast Joe Don Baker as your lead. Just jump off that cliff and see what happens.)

The Alternate is definitely a film that deserves to be better-known.  (It was also released under the title The Replacement.)  In the realm of Die Hard rip-offs, it’s in a class by itself, a totally enjoyable thrill ride that manages to get more and more excessive with each passing minute.  Bryan Genesse, who also wrote the script, gets to show off some stylish martial arts moves.  John Beck is the wimpiest President ever.  Michael Madsen never takes off his dark glasses.  And, best of all, Eric Roberts gets to be the star!

The Alternate?  Why, it’s just one of the best action movies ever!

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:

  1. Paul’s Case (1980)
  2. Star 80 (1983)
  3. Runaway Train (1985)
  4. To Heal A Nation (1988)
  5. Best of the Best (1989)
  6. Blood Red (1989)
  7. The Ambulance (1990)
  8. The Lost Capone (1990)
  9. Best of the Best II (1993)
  10. Love, Cheat, & Steal (1993)
  11. Voyage (1993)
  12. Love Is A Gun (1994)
  13. Sensation (1994)
  14. Dark Angel (1996)
  15. Doctor Who (1996)
  16. Most Wanted (1997)
  17. Mercy Streets (2000)
  18. Raptor (2001)
  19. Rough Air: Danger on Flight 534 (2001)
  20. Strange Frequency (2001)
  21. Wolves of Wall Street (2002)
  22. Border Blues (2004)
  23. Mr. Brightside (2004)
  24. Six: The Mark Unleased (2004)
  25. We Belong Together (2005)
  26. Hey You (2006)
  27. Depth Charge (2008)
  28. Amazing Racer (2009)
  29. The Chaos Experiment (2009)
  30. In The Blink of an Eye (2009)
  31. Bed & Breakfast (2010)
  32. Enemies Among Us (2010)
  33. The Expendables (2010) 
  34. Sharktopus (2010)
  35. Beyond The Trophy (2012)
  36. The Dead Want Women (2012)
  37. Deadline (2012)
  38. The Mark (2012)
  39. Miss Atomic Bomb (2012)
  40. Assault on Wall Street (2013)
  41. Bonnie And Clyde: Justified (2013)
  42. Lovelace (2013)
  43. The Mark: Redemption (2013)
  44. The Perfect Summer (2013)
  45. Revelation Road: The Beginning of the End (2013)
  46. Revelation Road 2: The Sea of Glass and Fire (2013)
  47. Self-Storage (2013)
  48. Sink Hole (2013)
  49. A Talking Cat!?! (2013)
  50. This Is Our Time (2013)
  51. Bigfoot vs DB Cooper (2014)
  52. Doc Holliday’s Revenge (2014)
  53. Inherent Vice (2014)
  54. Road to the Open (2014)
  55. Rumors of War (2014)
  56. So This Is Christmas (2014)
  57. Amityville Death House (2015)
  58. Deadly Sanctuary (2015)
  59. A Fatal Obsession (2015)
  60. Las Vegas Story (2015)
  61. Sorority Slaughterhouse (2015)
  62. Stalked By My Doctor (2015)
  63. Enemy Within (2016)
  64. Hunting Season (2016)
  65. Joker’s Poltergeist (2016)
  66. Prayer Never Fails (2016)
  67. Stalked By My Doctor: The Return (2016)
  68. The Wrong Roommate (2016)
  69. Dark Image (2017)
  70. The Demonic Dead (2017)
  71. Black Wake (2018)
  72. Frank and Ava (2018)
  73. Stalked By My Doctor: Patient’s Revenge (2018)
  74. Clinton Island (2019)
  75. Monster Island (2019)
  76. The Reliant (2019)
  77. The Savant (2019)
  78. Seven Deadly Sins (2019)
  79. Stalked By My Doctor: A Sleepwalker’s Nightmare (2019)
  80. The Wrong Mommy (2019)
  81. Exodus of a Prodigal Son (2020)
  82. Free Lunch Express (2020)
  83. Her Deadly Groom (2020)
  84. Top Gunner (2020)
  85. Deadly Nightshade (2021)
  86. The Elevator (2021)
  87. Just What The Doctor Ordered (2021)
  88. Killer Advice (2021)
  89. Megaboa (2021)
  90. Night Night (2021)
  91. The Poltergeist Diaries (2021)
  92. The Rebels of PT-218 (2021)
  93. Red Prophecies (2021)
  94. A Town Called Parable (2021)
  95. Bleach (2022)
  96. Dawn (2022)
  97. My Dinner With Eric (2022)
  98. 69 Parts (2022)
  99. The Rideshare Killer (2022)
  100. The Company We Keep (2023)
  101. D.C. Down (2023)
  102. Aftermath (2024)
  103. Bad Substitute (2024)
  104. Devil’s Knight (2024)
  105. Insane Like Me? (2024)
  106. Space Sharks (2024)
  107. The Wrong Life Coach (2024)
  108. Broken Church (2025)
  109. Shakey Grounds (2025)
  110. When It Rains In L.A. (2025)

Scenes I Love: Ronn Moss Blows Up An Assassin in Hard Ticket To Hawaii

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today, we celebrate the birthday of actor and musician, Ronn Moss!

In honor of this day, I was going to share a few scenes of Ronn as Ridge Forrester on The Bold and the Beautiful but then it occurred to me that, as much as all good people love B&B, Hard Ticket to Hawaii is even better.  In today’s scene that I love, Ronn Moss not only blows up a skateboard assassin but the assassin’s sex doll as well.  No one messes with Ronn Moss, his driver, or the Molokai cops!

Film Review: Hard Ticket To Hawaii (dir by Andy Sidaris)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

I absolutely love Hawaii.

Years ago, my family spent a wonderful summer in Hawaii.  I’m not a swimmer and I have a morbid fear of drowning but oh my God, I loved walking along the Hawaiian beach.  It was the most incredibly beautiful place that I had ever seen.  The water was so blue.  The trees were so green.  And the people … oh my God, the people were so friendly and generous!  I have never had more drugs randomly offered to me than when I was walking on the back in Hawaii.  Even the screaming homeless people in Hawaii seemed nicer than the screaming homeless people on the mainland.

Of course, the truth is that no place is perfect.  Undoubtedly, Hawaii had its dark side.  I mean, just look at the 1987 film, Hard Ticket to Hawaii.

Directed by Andy Sidaris and officially the second film in his Triple B (Bullets, Bombs, and Babes) franchise, Hard Ticket To Hawaii has been described as being the greatest B-movie ever move.  I don’t know if I’d go that far but it’s certainly the only Andy Sidaris film to ever air on TCM.

Hard Ticket To Hawaii tells the story about … well, actually, it tells a lot of stories.  This is a Sidaris film, which means that it’s collection of bad puns, double entendres, cartoonish violence, and totally random scenes that don’t really link up to anything else in the film.

For instance, there’s a scene where a sportscaster interviews two former football players and has a panic attack when he thinks that the N-word has been broadcast on national television.  But then it turns out that the feed went out before the word was uttered so … hey, problem solved.  And it’s never spoken of again.

And then there’s an aging actress and a sleazy producer and they have a few scenes before they vanish from the film.  I’m not sure why they were in the film in the first place.  Maybe they were friends of Andy Sidaris.

And then there’s the giant mutant snake.  It says something about the narrative strangeness of Hard Ticket To Hawaii that the giant mutant snake is just a relatively minor subplot.

The actual plot begins when two innocent Molokai cops are executed by some smug drug dealers.  “Ah!” you say, “it’s going to be a film about drug runners!”  No, actually it’s a film about diamond smugglers because the whole drug things get abandoned fairly quickly.

A stash of stolen diamonds is accidentally recovered by Donna (Dona Speir) and Taryn (Hope Marie Carlton).  Donna and Taryn work for Molokai Cargo.  They transport packages and they take tourists around the island.  Except, Donna is also a secret government agent and apparently, Taryn is in the witness protection program.

Anyway, they not only find the stolen diamonds but they also lose the aforementioned mutant snake.  With the smugglers determined to get the diamonds, Dona calls in Rowdy Abeline (Ronn Mass), cousin of Cody Abeline who was the lead character in Malibu Express.  As soon as Rowdy arrives on the island, he is targeted by an assassin on a skateboard.  The assassin is carrying a gun and sex doll but he didn’t consider that Rowdy would have a bazooka in the back of his jeep.

Meanwhile, there’s a guy named Shades who just hangs out on the beach while holding a submachine gun.  He’s guarding something and Rowdy knows that he needs to get by Shades.  Fortunately, a local woman always play frisbee with Shades.

“Good,” Rowdy says, “I can use that.”

And use that he does.

Now, this may all seem incredibly stupid but last year, the Alamo Drafthouse showed the frisbee scene before a showing of Free Fire and the audience went crazy.  Seriously, it’s an iconic scene, even if it doesn’t make any sense.  And hey, now I know what to say that next time a total stranger tells me that I have a nice ass.

You too, Pilgrim!

Hard Ticket To Hawaii is insane.  (I haven’t even mentioned half of the crazy stuff that happens in this movie.)  It makes absolutely no sense but it’s so quickly paced that it doesn’t matter.  Hard Ticket To Hawaii cheerfully embraces its weirdness.  It may not be any good but it is a lot of fun.

Add to that, Hawaii, as always, looks great!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCM6HCTJeRU