I’m going to do something that would make all the journalists in my family, living and dead, recoil. I’m going to quote Wikipedia. Of filmmaker Ulli Lommel, the unpaid army of contributors at Wikipedia sayeth:
[He] was a German actor and director, noted for his many collaborations with Rainier Werner Fassbinder and his association with the New German Cinema movement. Lommel spent time at The Factory and was a creative associate of Andy Warhol, with whom he made several films and works of art.
This guy was a high-falutin’ artist. At some point in the 1980s, though, Lommel threw off the shackles of fine art and dedicated himself to a career in shitty movies. Thus freed, he brought viewers a string of glorious cheese, including Overkill, from 1987, which he wrote (with David Scott Kroes), produced, and directed.
Overkill follows Los Angeles cop Mickey Delano, played by Steve Rally, whose main claim to fame is being a three-time Playgirl Magazine centerfold (there is even a brief scene where Delano, undercover, shakes it as a male stripper). Continue reading “Overkill (1987)”
The 1980s are a difficult time to explain to people who weren’t there. For the 20th century, every decade had a distinctive look and feel, right up until the late ’90s when everything cultural started to have a whiff of nostalgia. One can look at only a few seconds of a film from the 20th century and be able to tell which decade it came from. Meanwhile, here in this rotten century, nothing seems to have changed since the early 2000s. Fashion, music, movies…there are new names, but a unique, stylistic identity to the times we live in has been lost.
If you, dear reader, are convinced that you’re watching something familiar during Urban Warriors, then congratulations. You are a connoisseur of 1980s Italian Mad Max ripoffs. Only someone with knowledge of this strange subgenre of film would recognize that Urban Warriors, the last film from director Giuseppe Vari, shares much footage with The Final Executioner, released three years earlier in 1984. This flick isn’t the only movie to recycle substantial amounts of footage from The Final Executioner. A couple of years later 
Someone out there, somewhere, owns the rights to Timesweep, the 1987 magnum opus from writer/director Dan Diefenderfer (screenplay credits were shared with Larry Nordsieck and John Thonen). As of this writing, Timesweep is nowhere to be found on streaming services, outside of the nooks and crannies where someone has uploaded an old VHS transfer. For shame. This movie is right up Tubi’s alley, and I’m sure whoever owns the rights could use the extra fifty bucks. Anyway…
Once upon a time, way back in the mid-1970s, some guy in Dallas, Texas, by the name of Bobby Davis, had some dollars in his pocket and a dream. That dream: to write, direct, and produce a blaxploitation flick. He roamed the lounges of Dallas, wading into a sea of nylon and leisure suits in search of the talent he would need to make his vision a reality. Days, nay, weeks, of production pass, and Davis overcomes all of the obstacles which stand in the way of auteurs the world over, and he gets his film in the can. Now, it’s official. Bobby Davis is a filmmaker, forever more. In celebration, and aware that all great artists leave the scene at their peak, he leaves his affairs in order, climbs the Reunion Tower overlooking picturesque Interstate 35E, and hurls himself into the void.