Diamond Dogs (2007)

Dolph Lundgren may be a favorite here at Shitty Movie Sundays, but it is not uncommon to watch one of his films and come away feeling like everyone, from the producers all the way down to the caterers, were mailing it in. Such is the case with 2007’s Diamond Dogs, which Lundgren co-directed with Shimon Dotan.

A treasure hunting movie, Diamond Dogs follows Lundgren as Xander Ronson, a former American special forces soldier who had his entire platoon wiped out in some war somewhere, and who is now an underground bare knuckle fighter in Inner Mongolia. It’s a typical down and out backstory for a Lundgren character, as is the debt he owes to shady characters all over town. Salvation seems to come in the form of Chambers (William Shriver), who has come to Inner Mongolia with his stepdaughter, Anika (Yu Nan), in search of a jewel-encrusted Buddhist tapestry estimated to be worth some twenty million bucks. Chambers hires Ronson as guide and security, and the small group, with a couple other hangers on for fodder, set off in search of the lost tapestry and the tomb where it lays. Continue reading “Diamond Dogs (2007)”

Strike Commando 2, aka Trappola diabolica

It’s the utter shamelessness of Bruno Mattei’s films that have made him a Shitty Movie Sundays All-Star. There was no iconic scene from a Hollywood blockbuster that he could not find a home for in one of his movies. Strike Commando 2 (Italian: Diabolical trap), his 1988 followup to the incredible Reb Brown vehicle from a year earlier, steals scenes from Raiders of the Lost Ark and Lethal Weapon, but doesn’t lift plot from those movies. And when I write that Mattei steals scenes, I do not mean thematically. I mean there are scenes in this movie that could have gotten Mattei and producer Franco Gaudenzi sued for plagiarism. Continue reading “Strike Commando 2, aka Trappola diabolica”

All the Kind Strangers

All the Kind Strangers, the 1974 movie from director Burt Kennedy and screenwriter Clyde Ware, is a movie hampered by its medium. It’s an American network television movie, therefore subject to Standards and Practices. An unconscionable level of restrictions on content and story was the norm on American television at the time, and it shows in All the Kind Strangers. A movie that could have had teeth was instead dumbed down.

Stacy Keach plays Jimmy Wheeler, a photojournalist taking a road trip across America in search of…well, that’s never explained. But it looks as if he’s taking the back roads, searching for some gritty Americana he can put on film and maybe turn into a touching piece for Harper’s or The New Yorker. Continue reading “All the Kind Strangers”

Angels of the City

Angels of the City VHS box1989 was a banner year for producers Richard Pepin and Joseph Merhi. After a falling out with Ronald Gilchrist at City Lights Entertainment, the two formed PM Entertainment and began cranking out wonderfully inept direct-to-video movies. They released seven movies that first year, and distributed two more. Three of those movies were ersatz neo-noir Los Angeles thrillers featuring Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs, whom older readers will remember as Freddie ‘Boom Boom’ Washington from Welcome Back, Kotter. The relationship with Hilton-Jacobs was so worthwhile, in fact, that PM tapped him to direct. Written alongside Raymond Martino and Merhi, Hilton-Jacobs helmed Angels of the City, the story of a sorority initiation gone wrong.

Kelly Galindo and Cynthia Cheston star as Cathy and Wendy, a pair of college students at an unnamed Los Angeles university that looks suspiciously like the University of Southern California. One of their professors has given the class a sort of urban anthropological assignment. Over the weekend, they are to interview someone familiar with the streets, whether that be a bus driver, a homeless person, a bartender, etc.

The girls’ spoiled boyfriends, Mick and Richie (Brian Ochse and Rusty Gray), decide to go with a street hooker, to mixed results. More on that later. The girls, meanwhile, push their task to the side, because it’s time for their sorority initiation. In order to gain admission, they have to dress up like hookers and get a hundred bucks from a John. They don’t have to seal the deal, but they do have to get the money. It’s a silly idea in a movie full of them. They could have just disappeared from campus for a couple of hours and withdrawn money from an ATM, but then we wouldn’t have a movie. Continue reading “Angels of the City”

Lockout (2012)

The Luc Besson action grist mill turns them out like few others. Objective quality is hit and miss, but the movies he produces are flashy, in the same way the McDonald’s in Times Square is flashy. They enjoy a proximity to top tier glamor and glitz, but, in the end, it’s just fast food.

From 2012 comes Lockout, a film that so resembles Escape from New York that Besson and company were successfully sued for plagiarism. Co-directors and co-writers James Mather and Steve Saint Leger (Besson was also credited with a writing and story credit) might have been done dirty by that lawsuit. The analogues to Escape are many, but if John Carpenter could claim plagiarism for this flick, then the entire horror and sci-fi movie industry should operate under the constant threat of litigation. Anyway… Continue reading “Lockout (2012)”

The Last of the Finest

Many, many spoilers in this trailer. Be forewarned

Ah, Orion Pictures. Before they went bankrupt in the mid-1990s, they would roll out a dozen movies a year of varying quality. The winners were flicks like The Silence of the Lambs, Bull Durham, Caddyshack, and many others. But they also sated the appetites of the shitty movie fan, giving us Cherry 2000, Malone, Remo Williams, Navy SEALs, and today’s film, alongside Davis Entertainment, The Last of the Finest. For the last thirty years the company has been a shell of itself — just another brand in the MGM/Amazon conglomerate. Never forget, though. Movie studios are temporary. Cinematic ineptitude is forever.

1990 was right around peak time for action flicks, and buddy cop flicks in particular. The formula was perfected and standardized by the Lethal Weapon films, and much of those films’ DNA is present in The Last of the Finest. Continue reading “The Last of the Finest”

Alien Sniperess

The internet is a ruthless killer. Its convenience has strangled retail, shoved a dagger through the heart of newspapers, put a bullet through the brain of the recording industry…et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. The internet has even done a number on the movie business. Hollywood spent a long time consolidating releases into megaplexes, crowding out older theaters and independent distributors in the process. The megaplex killed both the drive-in, and its greatest contributor, regional cinema.

But, lo and behold, it is the internet, normally such a destructive force for prior forms of business, that has saved regional cinema. It’s possible now to shoot a movie digitally and get it onto a streaming platform, bypassing big Hollywood gatekeeping. Low budget b-filmmakers from the furthest reaches of the country are back, just like when they were polluting drive-in and grindhouse screens back in the 20th century. Which brings us to Alien Sniperess. Continue reading “Alien Sniperess”

Body Count (1995), aka Codename: Silencer

What a strange buddy cop flick. From a story by David A. Prior (screenplay by Henry Madden), and produced by David Winters, two of the founders of Action International Pictures, one of Shitty Movie Sundays’ favorite production companies, Body Count is a collaboration with Toei, one of the giants of Japanese cinema. The film even features one of Japan’s biggest movie stars, Sonny Chiba, as the villain. I don’t know what the suits in Japan were expecting, but I have a feeling it wasn’t a direct-to-video b-action flick where one of the most bankable stars in Japan’s history plays the bad guy opposite a pair of character actors in rare starring roles. Continue reading “Body Count (1995), aka Codename: Silencer”