MonsterHunter

“Let me tell you something. You read my fucking lips. I will never sign anything or admit to anything…that would slander my name, my God, or my country. You understand me? I loathe you. I despise everything you stand for. You’re a low life pathetic, drug-dealing, greedy, Petrovian piece of dog shit. That’s what I think of you. So if you have anything to say to me, say it right to my nuts.” Read More »

This is basically just a limp rehash of the Jon Hall/Maria Montez Arabian Nights movie that Universal released the year before. That one apparently made them a bunch of money so they figured they could film it again with the same two stars and make even more money. And it really is the same film. Jon Hall plays the rightful ruler of Baghdad in both who is trying to regain the throne from some pretender, Maria Montez is the acting-challenged red head posing as an exotic beauty who really loves Hall’s character but is being forced to marry the usurper in both, and at some point in each movie the lovebirds have some mistaken identity problems which allows the director to drag out the story before the mistake is discovered. Read More »

There’s a lot of stuff in Angel Town (directed by Eric Karson of Black Eagle fame) that doesn’t seem to go anywhere. Olivier Gruner’s presence at Southern California University is good for about two scenes and nothing else. There’s some talk about Gruner training the Olympic team or something. There’s the flashbacks he has to his youth in France where he was treated poorly. And best of all, there’s the scene at the beginning of the movie when Gruner was still in France and a woman screws him in a cemetery! And he still decided to go to America! Read More »

Legend has it that some evil genie was pissed because of the way this Universal movie portrayed the whole milieu of ancient Arabia (not enough emphasis on evil genies probably) and as a result he smote all those involved with the film. Star Jon Hall committed suicide after a battle with cancer, Maria Montez drowned in her own bathtub, and Sabu croaked before he was forty. I’m not really a big believer in this story (mainly because I made it up), but I always like to dampen your enjoyment of escapist fare such as this by dropping on you the fact that in spite of everyone’s broad smiles, derring-do, and happy endings, all these people were destined to terrible fates (well except Ms. Montez - after all, she could have lived to act some more). Read More »

Proving once again that old saw that anything Hollywood can do successfully, the Italians can do cheaper and with Antonio Margheriti, Ark Of The Sun God starring David Warbeck is Rome’s low-budget rip of Raiders Of The Lost Ark. However, what AOTSG lacks in originality and funding, it makes up with in Trans-Am chases. That’s only one of several personal stamps that Antonio (showing up here in the credits in his American secret identity of Anthony M. Dawson) leaves on this movie like the bootprint of a Bruno Maglia knock-off. Read More »

At long last, Steven Seagal fans who like guys getting stabbed have a movie to call their own! Attack Force features our Rotund Rambo plunging blades into hopped-up Eurotrash like he actually cared if he saved Paris from having the diabolical drug CTX dumped in its water supply! Of course, he really doesn’t care all that much; saving Paris is just an unfortunate by-product of getting revenge for the murders of his strike team at the beginning of the film. In fact, since Steve was actually shooting this movie in Romania and nowhere near Paris, he might not have even been aware that Attack Force took place in Paris. Same with his stunt doubles and the guy dubbing his voice about one-third of the time. Read More »

It’s Terminator meets Die Hard meets Frankenstein meets an Olivier Gruner movie! And that means exactly two things: lots of scenes of guys crawling in air shafts, elevator shafts and sliding down trash chutes and that I’m turning on the closed captioning so that I have a fighting chance to understand just what in the hell Olivier is muttering about this time! Don’t worry though if you’re like most of Olivier’s fans and can’t read because Olivier does most of his muttering in this one with futuristic guns and futuristic android kung fu! Read More »

The United States of America is the greatest country the world has ever seen. Freed from the tyranny of an oppressive colonial power centuries ago, the Home of the Brave represents a beacon of hope to those who come to its shores in search of the sweet minty fresh breath of freedom! But there are those deep in the bowels of its leadership that would pervert all we hold dear! Powerful men who would stop at nothing to achieve their own deranged agenda! Men who operate under the soul-shriveling name of…the Pentangle! Read More »

Things take place in one of those ridiculous futures that only exist to set up the preposterous premise of the movie. In this case, it’s the silliest one since Logan’s Run. Instead of everyone dying when they hit thirty (shoot, you’re already dead inside by then anyway), there’s this law known as the Battle Royale Act. I wasn’t terribly sure of all the provisions, but along with mandatory uniforms and probably school prayer and posting the Ten Commandments in classrooms next to the pamphlets on chlamydia and other STDs, the bill also sets up the hot new game show, Battle Royale! Read More »

Did I hate this movie? Not really. Did I love it? Can’t say that I did. Well, did I at least have the slightest idea what was going on in it? Of course I didn’t! Oh, I understood that the first Battle Royale was a big hit and that a sequel was mandatory, but while they attempted to replicate a portion of the first movie, they also tried to expand things and waded into all sorts political muckety-muck that if I understood what point they were trying to make, I would probably be horribly offended as a real American. Luckily, as a real American, I can appreciate a person’s right to express their idiotic views so long as they’re wrapped up in lots of explosions, violent deaths, and gun battles. I’m much more interested in having a movie kick me in the ass than I am in being an ideologue. Read More »

Easily much better than the previous “greatest movie about baseball in Japan,” 1992’s Mr. Baseball starring Tom Selleck, Battlefield Baseball succeeds because of the relative dearth of baseball-related antics (as well as the dearth of Tom Selleck) and instead uses the trappings of baseball merely as a way to get across its message that everyone wants to feel loved - even a high school baseball team of homicidal mutants. Read More »

Jonathan Cold is back! Presumed dead after his last deadly mission, Cold proves that when you’re the best in the business, and your business is doing dirty deeds for the Company, staying dead is sometimes even harder than saving the world! I must confess that when I heard Cold was back in the game, two thoughts raced through my mind. The first one was that I couldn’t wait to see Cold use his unique talents to bust open whatever international terrorist scheme some third world dirtbag was attempting to unleash. The second thought I had was, “who the hell is Jonathan Cold?” Read More »

An important piece of work in the history of the cinema, Black Eagle sees the passing of the torch from one of our greatest second-rate action heroes of the early to mid 1980s to one of our greatest second-rate action heroes of the early to mid 1990s as Sho Kosugi squares off with Jean-Claude Van Damme in a muddled cold war flick marked chiefly by both stars’ inability to speak English intelligibly. Read More »

Borderline compelling in a minor trainwreck sort of way, Bloodmatch keeps you watching because you’re never sure what it’s up to. That’s not to say that it’s some sort of groundbreaking film or ingeniously plotted or anything like that. It’s straight forward enough - though to be honest I’m not sure I ever really grasped the finer points of the story. It’s just that what is going on is so unpleasant, you’re hoping that they’ll somehow figure out a way to make it all palatable to the viewer. You probably won’t be surprised that they never do. You’ll probably be even less surprised that the movie is directed by Albert Pyun. Read More »

I suppose there’s a reality where a movie featuring an evil floating brain named Glyptofane Sex who is intent on preventing Earth from being re-seeded with human life isn’t just an example of the “let’s use a floating brain as a bad guy just because floating brains are intrinsically evil” school of filmmaking. Read More »

So much of the Vietnam POW experience is portrayed in a negative light. There’s the obscene physical abuse as well as the unrelenting mental torture. There’s the inhuman living conditions and the years away from loved ones. There’s the uncertainty of whether you are going to live through the next morning or whether you’re going to get another meal. Then, even if there is a rescue mission mounted by a one man killing machine named Rambo or Braddock, there’s the distinct possibility that you might be one of the anonymous grubby guys who dies in the escape attempt. Read More »

You probably shouldn’t come out of a movie about Vietnam thinking that you would have rather really been in Vietnam than watched the movie. That just doesn’t seem right. Then again, you shouldn’t come out of a Camillo Teti movie thinking that you would have rather really been watching his Cobra Mission 2. That’s just plain crazy talk. This is probably the first Nam movie that will trigger post traumatic stress disorder in people who never fought there. Read More »

A couple of observations about Vietnam vets and post traumatic stress disorder need to be made after watching this odd hybrid of the Italian cannibal and Rambo genres. It probably would be better for your mental well-being if you are having flashbacks about how crappy the war was, specifically when your hometown buddies take a bite out of your arm when you’re rescuing them from a tiger cage, if your bedroom wasn’t adorned with photos from the war, including a really nicely framed and matted picture of a bunch of stuff blowing up. Read More »

The best thing you can say about this old-time serial (and to paraphrase that guy from Slap Shot, “piss on old-time serials!) is that you sure do get a lot of serial for your buck. Of course, after sitting through it for about ten minutes, it becomes quite clear that the worst thing you could say about this old-time serial is that you sure do you get a lot of serial for your buck. At 244 minutes, this baby is only four minutes shorter than notoriously long aneurysms like Liz Taylor’s Cleopatra. For those of you who don’t possess my Rainman-like math skills, 244 minutes is somewhere in the neighborhood of about a week. Read More »

I’m going to lay it all out on the line for you because I know I’m right. Captain America is the greatest superhero ever created. Oh, he may not be the most popular anymore and the hip kids may snicker at his patently jingoistic attire and gimmick. They’ll probably complain that he’s a dinosaur better suited to an earlier time when good and evil were easy to tell apart. Read More »

With his rakish grin, his prowess with his sword, and the slickest hairdo I’ve ever seen on a pirate, I would feel quite comfortable having Errol Flynn escort my voluptuous fifteen year old step daughter out for a night on the town. The guy just emanates “gentleman.” Besides, you actually have proof that Mr. Flynn was a gentleman as he was acquitted by an all-woman jury of the statutory rape of not one, but two young gals. Was there so little to do in the early forties that young women had to make up bogus sex charges against the screen’s biggest sex symbol? Luckily today, our top stars are too busy denying that they’re gay for us to take seriously the baseless charges of some trailer park hussy (we leave that to our presidents, I guess). Read More »

Car Crash is the single best 1970s movie of 1980! This film from Antonio Margheriti (Ark Of The Sun God, Jungle Raiders) stars two of the biggest names of the decade - Trans Am and Travolta! Trans Am riveted the nation with his performance in the various Smokey And The Bandit films where he single-handedly carried the annoyingly smug Burt Reynolds to super stardom. John Travolta was practically the entire late 70s himself with his TV show, singing career, Grease, and Saturday Night Fever! Clearly, John was pretty busy and if you thought he’d find time to pick up a $700 check for an Italian movie about a big time demolition derby, then up your nose with a rubber hose, Sweathog! The Italians though were experts at tapping into what they perceived to be popular in American culture and then delivering the absolutely palest of imitations. Thus we find ourselves watching John’s brother Joey in the starring role! Read More »

Sometimes I look back on my life and reflect at the amazing and positively fantastical things that I have seen. Mind boggling disasters, assassinations, the collapse of Communism (except in China, North Korea and Cuba), KISS taking their make up off and then putting it back on, and of course the rise and fall of Diet Vanilla Coke. The thing though that causes me the most goosebumps when I sink back into one of my lengthy summer evening revelries is that I actually was alive to see commercials on TV for Michael Dudikoff movies that were coming to actual movie theaters! Read More »

This time all our boys come home! No, really - this time we mean it! Three losers and a guy with a rich wife get the idea to head back to the Nam while sitting in a bar listening to a news report about a POW who escaped to freedom. I should correct myself. Make that four losers. The guy with the rich wife is sitting in the bar with his marine buddies on his daughter’s wedding day. Read More »

If you’re familiar with the original Cobra Mission, a movie titled Cobra Mission 2 might just trick you into thinking it had something to do with the original classic tale of a POW rescue mission gone horribly wrong. Unfortunately, Cobra Mission 2 spins the mostly unsatisfying yarn about Roger, the best there is at whatever it is he does. (Mainly throwing knives into people and sporting poofy hair that never wilts in the middle of a Latin American coup. In short, the usual.) Read More »

The single greatest movie character ever invented? The cop on the edge! He’s the guy who plays by his own rules, is often times on suspension, and frequently gets cussed out by his superior for “violating” some obscure “right” that’s been conferred on the criminal scum of this nation by a liberal activist judge. We know their names like our family’s names. Dirty Harry, John McClane, Mel Gibson, those two black guys in the Bad Boys movies, and Farley Wood. Read More »

I picked this particular title up out of the steaming heap of anime that generally featured big-eyed ten year old girls in short cheerleader skirts fighting off horny demons with lots of frisky tentacles because I thought it would be cool instead of deviant. Don’t get your hopes up though, this one isn’t deviant either. Whatever possessed me to think that any kind of anime could be cool? Two words: space pirates! Read More »

In space no one can hear you scream “filler episodes!” Volume 2 of the Cosmo Warrior Zero saga features episodes 5-8 of the thirteen episode series and is highlighted by space pirate Captain Harlock’s giant guard cow rampaging through a wild west town. Usually, those sort of bovine antics would be enough to unhesitatingly recommend the title (even if there was never any of the expected giant cow pie scenes that such a creature promised), but while the story even has a midget killing the giant cow with a bazooka, things grind to a halt when they haul out that most tired of cliches whenever someone is hunting someone else that they secretly respect. Read More »

The Cyber-Tracker (or “CyberTracker” depending on the movie) franchise is brought to an explosive conclusion in this sequel which is positively cybertastic! Three long years after the events in the first CyberTracker film, Eric, Connie, and Jared return to do battle once again with evil cyborgs who are charged with enforcing the law, but have this disconcerting habit of being used to kill innocent people and assassinate politicians. The stakes are even higher though this time around because the Cyber-Trackers come in all sorts of awesome flavors! Read More »

It’s time for another one of those bargain basement action icon team ups that can occasionally nudge a movie like Cyber Tracker from cyber crapper status all the way up to cyber clunker status! Much like the Jeff Speakman flick Scorpio One which had the Perfect Weapon take on Brent “Huffbo” Huff of Strike Commando 2 fame, Cyber Tracker creams the undiscerning action audience’s jeans with the mouth watering showdown between Don “The Dragon” Wilson and Richard “The Kick Fighter With A Mullet” Norton. If it doesn’t stack up to the fight on the space station between Speakman and Huff where Speakman smacked Huff in the head with a fire extinguisher, that just goes to show that when you have such legends brawling, the edge often comes down the intangibles. Intangibles like space stations and fire extinguishers. Read More »

I realize that most of you are expecting to read something marginally amusing about how rotten this movie is. You want to hear me run the Muscles from Brussels, Jean-Claude Van Damme, down for his penchant for staring dumbly about, like a little girl lost in a department store and about to wet her pants. You desire the expected cheap shot about how V.D. croaks out his meager lines like he’s had half his tongue removed while the remaining half is swelled up. Read More »

Typically uninteresting alien invasion story mixed with an evil government agency’s hidden agenda that’s saved by a healthy dose of Scalia! Professional macho man Jack Scalia plays a guy haunted by his past! But not just any guy! As we’re told by a dude checking out his credentials, Scalia was special forces in Vietnam, winning the Bronze Star, Purple Heart and even the frigging CMH! That’s Congressional Medal of Honor to you liberal pansies who hid in Canada when your country needed you most! Read More »

If your favorite parts of Italian war movies are the scenes of jeeps driving around some ugly foreign country, Days Of Hell will have you creaming in camos! Easily taking home the coveted title “Italian War Movie With Most Jeepage Per Minute,” Days Of Hell helmer Tonino Ricci (Rush, Rage, Raiders Of The Magic Ivory) brings an added depth to all the Jeeping around in the film, by having his crack commando team frequently jumping out of it to shoot native tribesmen and Russians. Additionally, in one Jeep-orgasmic sequence, D Team actually splits up and starts cruising around in two Jeeps! Two Jeeps? Admit it, you just got an M-16-sized chubby! Read More »

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been stopped on the street by total strangers and told “Deadly Outbreak is just Die Hard in a chemical plant.” I suppose they’re just trying to be cute or hip or one of the popular kids or whatever, but I’ve never been one to maintain a polite silence in social situations (and I have the lack of friends to prove it) so I always fire back with both barrels. “Die Hard is just Deadly Outbreak in a skyscraper,” I respond and then bring it all home by adding, “but without Jeff Speakman!” Then I go all Kenpo over their ass just like Jeff would do! Read More »

They killed his favorite prostitute! They framed him for her murder! Sent to prison where he must learn to survive using only the skills that have made him the single best kickboxer in all of southeast Asia, Jack Dammeron’s life is about to get much worse! His attorney, the very best legal beagle in all of southeast Asia is none other than his wife! Can she put aside her irritation with Jack for screwing hookers on business trips while he’s too self-centered to agree to have children with her to get an acquittal? But her life is about to get much worse! She turns out to be pregnant! And the only way out of this serpentine mess is through the most dreaded of all competitions! Deathfight! Read More »

Does it make me a bad person if as soon as I saw the pregnant Mrs. Delta Force Commando, I was hoping she would be viciously murdered? I suppose I should explain. When you’re Delta Force Commando and have retired from the Delta Force for a military desk job, you’re always going to be yearning for some good old-fashioned black ops/plausible deniability mission that sees you slitting throats, blowing up choppers, and generally destabilizing unfriendly Third World governments. I know making sure the Puerto Rican base you’re stationed at maintains its inventory of staplers and paper clips is also an important part of American national security, but the rush you get from counting boxes of copy toner isn’t quite the same as diving out of exploding jeeps. Read More »

Would it make me a lazy oaf to call this movie Dullta Farce Commandope Boo? Maybe, maybe not, but it would most definitely make a liar out of me! Everything about Delta Force Commando II is twice what Delta Force Commando was! Twice as less action from Fred “The Hammer” Williamson! Twice the use of the same locations as War Bus Commando! Twice the confusing, bland, and poorly staged intrigue! And much more than two times as many scenes of Battlestar Galatica legend Richard Hatch over-emoting to the point of unintentional parody! Read More »

I don’t talk about it much because it’s pretty sacred and all, but I’m part Indian. And let me tell you, that part of me loved every minute of Desert Kickboxer! The alternately touching and thrilling story of Indian half-breed Joe Mullethawk grabbed me by the hair, threatening to scalp my very head with its doublecrosses, flashbacks, fighting, and yes, it’s loving! Writer/director Isaac Florentine (Savate, Cold Harvest) knows that no man is more manly than when he’s being haunted by the demons of his kickboxing past! Or when he’s using the tale of his haunted past to bang some purty squaw who’s on the run from a drug kingpin! Read More »

The story goes (according to the two minute interview on this disc) that Franco Nero and his good buddy Nello Rossati were in Columbia shooting Alien Terminator together when they decided they should do a sequel to his classic spaghetti western Django. This must have come as a surprise to Sergio Corbucci, who made the original and wasn’t invited to join in their reindeer games, but who am I to begrudge Franco the chance to cash in on the name of Django when every single other person in the Italian film industry had already done so years ago? Read More »

Three of the cinema’s best genres are finally mixed together to produce a love child of death, dismemberment, and amputee fellatio! Taking the very finest elements of the Vietnam POW movie, the stolen Nazi gold movie, and the micro-budget mid 1980s Italian action movie, Dog Tags manages to even work in a strip club scene for no reason except that director Romano Scavolini (Nightmare In A Damaged Brain) is just that damn good! Could anything less be expected from the brother of the writer of American Rickshaw? Read More »

Jack Scalia co-stars with his gigantic hair as the bad ass submarine designer who dives down a billion miles into the ocean to blast some respect into mutant sea monsters that have gone and wrecked his sub! And don’t lie to me and say you didn’t just rip a fricking hole in the crotch of your wet suit when you read that! Incredibly, like some sort of unbelievable deep sea anomaly that can only exist because of the extreme conditions down there, Endless Descent goes out and just blows away the lofty expectations you have for a film featuring Scalia vs. mutants! Read More »

Heroes In Hell gives you an up close and personal look at the lives of a group of World War II POWs. It’s up close and personal not because you get to know the characters or you are treated to a day to day examination of what life in a German prison camp entails. It’s up close and personal because most of the freaking film is shot right in these guys’ faces! And it didn’t serve to build tension or give a sense of claustrophobic suspense so much as left the viewer straining to see around everyone’s big fat skull! Read More »

I like a main character in a movie that needs as much action as I do! Too many times we’re saddled with reluctant heroes and guys who only grudgingly go about the business of serious ass kicking. Where are the dudes who want to take it right to the dirty scum that’s threatening to take over everything that matters to them? Isn’t there anyone willing to risk everything for the simple pleasure of killing Borneo pirates? Aren’t there any two-fisted guys in red neck kerchiefs and sea captain’s hats that don’t mind invading the island stronghold of the evil Tiger single-handedly while time bombs are going off everywhere around him? Sure there is! Imagine a guy with balls the size of the big boulder that tried to roll over Indiana Jones in Raiders Of The Lost Ark! That’s Captain Yankee! Read More »

In what has to go down as one of the great disappointments in the history of cinema, at no time during director Antonio Margheriti’s Killers Are Challenged does star Richard Harrison (Giants of Rome, Messalina Against the Son of Hercules ) ever utter the phrase “the name is Fleming. Bob Fleming.” Despite being deprived of what would have certainly provoked snickers among even the actors in the scene where that line might have been uttered, the film does not disappoint in any other area as it manages to ineptly attempt to cash in on the James Bond craze of the mid 1960s with all the success of its preternaturally dimwitted lead character. You know who I’m talking about - Fleming. Bob Fleming. Read More »

Producer Augusto Caminito is at it again! The man who brought us the most famous Italian Indiana Jones clone ever to use a longshoreman’s hook in The Mines Of Kilimanjaro rents some caves in Tunisia to dramatize the legendary quest for Cleopatra’s lost treasure in Mark Of The Scorpion! If you’ve never heard of Cleopatra’s lost treasure, don’t feel like a moron for letting your subscription to Sports Illustrated For Treasure Hunters lapse because her goodies turn out to be a mostly empty trunk with an ancient scroll and a few ugly gold trinkets in it! Read More »

The third No Retreat, No Surrender film benefits greatly from the fact that no one has ever heard of any of these movies to begin with! When you’ve got a Shrek the Third, a Rush Hour 3 or the third time a guy named George Bush was in the White House, so much of the reaction is along the lines of “what’s the point” and “not again” and the much more succinct “sucks.” But that’s only because people have something to compare it to and come into the project with a set of expectations that can’t possibly be met. (Really - could you ever recapture that Chris Tucker/Jackie Chan magic again?) Read More »

It’s a fencer’s worst nightmare come horribly true! Three time state champion Alex Freyer is battling for a potential national title as well as a spot on the next Olympic team! During his match after a bunch of thrusting, parrying, and whatever else passes for manly fighting action in a fencing contest, Alex sticks his opponent in the chest! And total disaster strikes! His sword breaks and goes right into the guy’s face! Now disgraced and a pariah cut off from the only thing he ever loved, Alex has no choice but to sign up for the illegal sword fights taking place at an underground club! Is there anyway out for Alex? Any path back to redemption once he has prostituted his fencing gift for mere money? Any chance the viewer won’t be cramping from laughing at Alex’s blonde mullet? Read More »

It was 1988. Only a year had passed since Strike Commando had invaded our cinemas and our hearts. Strike Commando fever was everywhere, from guys dying their hair Reb Brown Blonde to an attendance spike at Disneyland following the Strike Commando’s heartfelt endorsement of it to a dying native boy. Almost as easily as he had defeated the Big Russian twice on the big screen, Rebbo had become an silver screen icon along side the likes of Trash from Bronx Warriors and Bronx Warriors 2, the adult dwarf who played the child of a woman in Burial Ground and kept trying to suckle her, and Dean Jones. Eventually, the inevitable question came up for the team behind Strike Commando - what next? Read More »

A lot of us guys who kicked ass over in Nam got a dose of that Post Traumatic Stress Disorder that good old sneaky Charlie was lacing their tunnels with. The severity of the PTSD seems to vary depending on the dogface. For instance, I got a fairly mild case of it. Generally, my symptoms consisting of yelling “incoming!” at the top of my lungs and diving under my desk at work whenever somebody rips a fart. Sure, it tends to hamper my upward mobility in the business world, but it isn’t exactly crippling. Plus I avoid a lot of stink, too. Read More »

Seven Golden Men Strike Again (the sequel to Seven Golden Men) is mostly remembered for stealing Green Arrow’s boxing glove arrow gimmick and modifying it to be used with a bazooka. I suppose some of you would probably also remember it for such suspenseful spy moments as the times that the professor in charge of things constantly broadcasts his burps to his sexy assistant’s speaker-broach in an effort to prevent her from getting hot and heavy with the Latin American dictator she’s trying to seduce as part of a plot to kidnap him. There’s also the incident where the Professor plays some funky music over the ship’s radio as part of his getaway plan which causes the sailors on other ships who hear it to do some simple dance steps. Clearly, the world of mid 1960s Italian espionage cinema was one where thinking outside the box was as routine as using giant electromagnets on a submarine to hijack a large freighter loaded down with Russian gold! Read More »

Frequently when I’m at one of those Strike Commando conventions they hold a couple of times a year, I hear other fans debating which was their favorite Rebbo moment. For some it was when he fought the big Russian to the death. For others, it was when he fought the big Russian to the death a second time. Still, you have your holdouts that maintain it was when Rebbo burst forth from the water in super slo-mo, screaming and big gun blazing. There’s also a school of thought that when Rebbo was running along the rice fields in super slo-mo, screaming while rockets and bombs exploded around him was perhaps the finest display of Rebbo mayhem in his 100 minute long tour of duty. Read More »

The first time was for his country! And for his crew of blown up strike commandos! And for that little kid named Lao that he promised he would take to Disneyland where the popcorn grows on trees! This time though…it’s personal! Strike Commando returns with his most vengeance-filled mission ever as he beats the Philippine jungles (standing in for the Nam) looking for his mentor, the man who saved his life back when they were both fighting the Man’s dirty little war! Read More »

The mark of a successful movie is how it affects you on a personal level. Did you pick up any new catchphrases? Were your beliefs challenged or even altered? Was there a moment in the film that set you on a different course in your life? I’ve seen lots of movies like this. Top Gun made me want to join the Navy, fly planes, and date Kelly McGillis. Hoosiers made me think that maybe short, slow farm kids from the schools who never had a chance could compete with all those big city high school basketball teams with shiny shorts. And those Naked Gun movies convinced me of O.J.’s innocence (come on, could Nordberg harm a fly, let alone lop the heads off of a couple of folks?). But it was The 36th Chamber Of Shaolin that caused me to chuck my old life and run away to join a Shaolin temple in an effort to work my way up from the first chamber up to number 35. After this movie kicked my ass so bad that I had to write this standing up, I was fully prepared to devote the entire weekend to training my mind and body in the ways of these ancient monks. Read More »