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)”
1989 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.
Once upon a time, sunny Greece, one of the jewels of the Mediterranean, and the historical home of critical thinking, was ruled by a military junta. From 1967 to 1974, Greece was not a free country, its citizens politically isolated from the emerging European Union. That all ended when, after a number of disastrous mistakes both domestically and internationally, the Regime of the Colonels was overthrown. This left an indelible mark on Greece, and gave low rent Italian filmmaker Romano Scavolini an idea for a story.