FUTURE HUNTERS (US/Philippines - 1986; US release 1989) Directed by Cirio H. Santiago. Written by J.L. Thompson. Cast: Robert Patrick, Linda Carol, Richard Norton, Ed Crick, Bob Schott, David Light, Paul Holmes, Peter Silton, Ursula Marquez, Elizabeth Oropesa, Bruce Le, Wang Chang Lee. (Unrated, 100 mins) While Filipino exploitation auteur Cirio H. Santiago is best known for his association with Roger Corman from the 1970s until his death in 2008, he frequently branched out and worked on his own. Some of the better-known non-Corman Santiago films include THE MUTHERS (1976), VAMPIRE HOOKERS (1978), DEATH FORCE, aka FIGHTING MAD (1978), and FINAL MISSION (1984). Perhaps the craziest Santiago joint away from Corman is 1986's FUTURE HUNTERS, where the filmmaker basically goes for broke, throwing every big Hollywood action/adventure genre from the period into one ambitious mash-up before anyone knew what a genre mash-up was. Perhaps more than anything, FUTURE HUNTERS is Santiago trying to make his own version of a Cannon/Golan-Globus production. Its dumb plot and nearly nonstop action could've worked for any Chuck Norris or Michael Dudikoff adventure outing; its rousing score by Ron Jones (who went on to write music for FAMILY GUY), divides its time between mimicking cues from Jerry Goldsmith's KING SOLOMON'S MINES score and something more synth and drum machine-based that does its best to invoke Gary Chang or Jay Chattaway; and its 100-minute running time matches the typical Cannon genre production to the minute. Alas, without a bottom-line guy like Corman to oversee things, Santiago indulges himself a bit too much. Even with a jam-packed plot and a shitload of action, FUTURE HUNTERS somehow manages to drag a bit. A lot of this is due to Santiago letting shots run longer than necessary and not trimming the fat elsewhere. In his quest to showcase every action subgenre he could in a single movie, Santiago somehow lets the pace slack. Had this been done under the Concorde banner instead of Vestron offshoot Lightning Pictures, Corman would've had this thing down to 80 minutes and it would've been perfect. As it is, it's stupidly entertaining in all the right ways, but it really could stand to lose 15 or 20 minutes.
Opening in the year 2025, 40 years after "The Holocaust" turned the world into a post-nuke wasteland, marauding, Mad Max-like hero Matthew (Richard Norton) is the last survivor of a group of renegade warriors who have ventured into the Forbidden Zone to find the head of the Spear of Longinus. The Holy Lance, which pierced the body of Christ on the cross, holds within it the power of creation, and with that the ability to turn back time. Matthew hopes to retrieve it and go back 40 years to prevent the Holocaust, with Wez-esque despotic madman Zaar (David Light) in pursuit. Matthew is transported back to 1986 but is badly wounded right beforehand. Before he dies, he hands off the spearhead to vacationing couple Michelle (Linda Carol) and Slade (a debuting Robert Patrick). So begins an adventure through every genre that pops into the heads of Santiago and screenwriter J.L. Thompson (probably a pseudonym for someone, and erroneously listed as veteran director J. Lee Thompson on IMDb). FUTURE HUNTERS is primarily a RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK ripoff with the globe-trotting search for an ancient artifact, as Michelle and an incredulous Slade attempt to find the actual Spear of Longinus in order to reattach the spearhead and thus, prevent the approaching nuclear holocaust. But it dabbles in Santiago's familiar post-nuke wheelhouse before Norton's Matthew is killed off shortly after the prologue. Then the RAIDERS plot kicks in, then they're off to Asia where Slade meets an old buddy Liu (kung-fu second-stringer Bruce Le) and it becomes a Shaolin martial arts movie for ten minutes as Liu has an extended fight scene with powerful Silverfox (Wang Chang Lee, aka Jang Lee Hwang). Then it's back to RAIDERS as Slade and Michelle are confronted by Bauer (Bob Schott of GYMKATA), the chief henchman of modern-day Nazi Fielding (Ed Crick) who wants the spear in his quest to bring about a new Nazi uprising. Before long, they're a lost in the jungle for a brief segue into ROMANCING THE STONE before they encounter a dwarf tribe played by the same group of little people who play similar roles in all of Santiago's post-nukes, only this time it's a blatant riff on the RETURN OF THE JEDI Ewoks, That detour sends them to a group of Amazon warrior women, one of whom Michelle must battle over a crocodile pit in order to obtain the spear, attach the head, and save the world.
For such a wild plot, FUTURE HUNTERS could have some more spring in its step. Santiago pads a lot of the running time with overlong establishing shots and hanging on to some shots much longer than needed. Still, watching him rip off every '80s blockbuster in sight (you can even say there's some BACK TO THE FUTURE in Matthew's story) is ambitious and pretty ballsy on such a fairly low budget. Though the film was released in the Philippines in 1986, it didn't turn up in the US until its straight-to-video debut in 1989. Though he appeared in several films after, FUTURE HUNTERS marked Patrick's debut and he's a pretty engaging smartass hero, and he's clearly doing a lot of his own strenuous stunt work. Prior to making his impact in pop culture history with his role as the T-1000 in 1991's TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY, Patrick got his start in Santiago's Filipino B-movies after he auditioned in L.A. for the Roger Corman production WARLORDS FROM HELL and, according to WARLORDS director Clark Henderson on the Blu-ray special features for Santiago's WHEELS OF FIRE, "it was obvious to all of us that he was a better actor than everyone else in the room." Corman farmed Patrick out to Santiago, who took an instant liking to the young actor and gave him the lead role in FUTURE HUNTERS, as well as his Vietnam actioner BEHIND ENEMY LINES (1988), along with supporting roles in other Philippines-shot, Santiago-directed Corman productions like EQUALIZER 2000 and EYE OF THE EAGLE (both 1987). Though he realizes the movies were junk, Patrick, who has never stopped working since FUTURE HUNTERS, has always looked back on his time with Corman and Santiago with appreciation, grateful for his first big break and for the experience, as well as for meeting his BEHIND ENEMY LINES co-star Barbara Hooper, another Corman ingenue loaned out to Santiago in the late '80s. They hit it off during during production of BEHIND ENEMY LINES and have been married since 1990.
A relentlessly fast-paced actioner that should please fans of the BOURNE series and the post-TAKEN Eurothriller, THE TAKE was originally titled BASTILLE DAY in France, where its release was delayed once by a November 2015 terrorist attack. It then opened in French cinemas on July 13, 2016 but was pulled three days later out of respect for the victims of the next day's Bastille Day bombing in Nice. Universal genre offshoot High Top Releasing acquired it for the US and retitled it THE TAKE, but didn't give it much of a rollout, topping out at 100 screens in November 2016. It should find an audience on Blu-ray and eventual streaming services, as it's as commercial a thriller as can be, directed in a very welcome coherent fashion by James Watkins, whose credits include the horror films EDEN LAKE (2008) and THE WOMAN IN BLACK (2012) as well as the recent BLACK MIRROR episode "Shut Up and Dance," and he scripted the forgettable sequel THE DESCENT PART 2 (2009). THE TAKE is anchored by a steely, badass Idris Elba as Sean Briar, a lone-wolf, plays-by-his-own-rules CIA agent based in Paris, where he's the loose cannon on a counter-terrorism team investigating a recent bombing that killed four people. The bomb, stuffed into a teddy bear inside a shopping bag, was supposed to be planted at the Nationalist Party headquarters by Zoe (Charlotte Le Bon), a willing accomplice of Jean (Arieh Worthalter), who promised her no one would be in the building. Zoe aborted the mission when she saw members of the janitorial staff on the premises, and before she had a chance to throw the bag into the river, it's swiped by Michael Mason (Richard Madden, best known as Robb Stark on GAME OF THRONES), an American con man and master pickpocket who's been hard at work in Paris fencing wallets, watches, and phones for shady pawnbroker Baba (FEMME FATALE's Eriq Ebouaney). Seeing nothing of value, Mason tosses the bag with some trash outside an apartment building and it blows up seconds later. Security camera footage and surveillance photos pinpoint him as the bomber, which sends Briar, Interpol, and French intelligence in hot pursuit. A cat and mouse game ensues, with Briar and Mason eventually joining forces...if they don't kill each other first!...along with the duped Zoe when it becomes apparent that the bombing was instigated by a group of rogue Paris cops with the intent of blaming the attack on a nearby mosque, creating a protest and a riot as a distraction for a Bastille Day heist of the French National Reserve Bank.
THE TAKE doesn't deviate very far from the formulaic as these things go, but Watkins does a very solid job of handling the double and triple crosses and the crackerjack action and chase sequences. It's not too difficult to figure out the real bad guy who's orchestrating all the mayhem and you'll be able to spot which character may as well be wearing a sign reading "Dead Meat" the moment they go to inform that person of the information they've discovered. But formula works when everyone's on point, and THE TAKE, despite its original French release being affected by horrific, real-life tragedies on two occasions, is terrific entertainment when taken its own escapist terms. And, at 92 minutes, it's smart enough to not overstay its welcome. A lot of its success is due to an absolutely riveting Elba, an actor whose name is constantly mentioned as a potential James Bond, and THE TAKE proves he'd be up to the task. Despite the lack of support from High Top, who opted to spend more money marketing the flop horror film INCARNATE instead, THE TAKE would've easily been a modest, mid-level hit in US multiplexes. (R, 92 mins)
ANTIBIRTH (US/Canada - 2016)
If you can picture BREAKING BAD reimagined as a David Cronenberg-inspired body horror film by GUMMO-era Harmony Korine, then you sort-of have an idea of what to expect with the aggressively unpleasant and off-putting-by-design ANTIBIRTH, but even that description doesn't cover everything. Writer/director Danny Perez has a lot of ideas and inspiration, but he's unable to streamline them into a coherent, consistent vision. As a result, ANTIBIRTH is all over the place, with plot tangents dealing in urban and rural blight, substance abuse, human trafficking, a kidnapped child, secret military experiments, alien beings, and space colonization, culminating in a spirited gross-out finale that's part XTRO and part SOCIETY. In a desolate and depressing small town that's home to a small military base in nowhere Michigan, hard-partying Lou (Natasha Lyonne) blacks out and starts showing signs of pregnancy, even though she swears to her best friend Sadie (Chloe Sevigny) that she hasn't had sex in months. As her belly swells from the accelerated pregnancy, she doesn't give up her ways, still partying, drinking and drugging to excess, living off her dad's military pension and picking up shifts cleaning rooms at a shitty local motel when she needs spending money. Meanwhile, sinister dealer Gabriel (Mark Webber) has obtained an experimental drug and had his flunky Warren (Maxwell McCabe-Lokos) give it to Lou without her knowledge, the end result being the accelerated pregnancy. The drug was given to Gabriel by Isaac (Neville Edwards), a shadowy black-ops figure who occasionally pops into view. As Lou refuses to take her predicament seriously, she makes the acquaintance of the seemingly spacy Lorna (Meg Tilly, in her first theatrical feature since 1994's SLEEP WITH ME), a retired Army vet who babbles incessantly but starts to make sense when she talks of experimental drugs being used on unwitting women, space exploration, and contact with alien life forms.
Well, "makes sense" is a relative term as far as Perez's script goes. There's at least six potential movies that could've been made of any one of ANTIBIRTH's wildly disparate plot lines, but Perez opts to mash them all together and let the goopy body parts splat where they may. For much of its first hour, it seems like Perez is trying to go for some kind of metaphor about urban decay and the epidemic of rampant drug abuse in economically depressed areas. A lot of the scenes between offscreen friends Lyonne and Sevigny have an aimless, improvisational feel that recalls Korine or Gus Van Sant in one of his periodic experimental projects like ELEPHANT or LAST DAYS. It's not a very smooth shift when the horror starts, whether it's the oozing, grossout mess of Lou slicing open a huge blister on her foot or being shocked by an electric jolt from a TV in an effect that would've looked dated in an '80s Empire production like TERRORVISION. It's obvious Perez came up with the climax first and struggled to construct a movie to attach to it, and there's so many dangling plot threads that he completely loses track of Sadie and her kid, who we never heard about until he's referenced in a throwaway line by Gabriel ("You want your kid back, don't you? Is he even gonna recognize you?") and then never mentioned again. Sadie just vanishes from the movie, and Lorna unceremoniously exits offscreen. Lyonne gives it her all in a fearless performance, and it's nice to see Tilly again, and while she's done some sporadic TV work in recent years after taking the latter half of the '90s and the entire '00s off (she resurfaced in 2010 on two episodes of CAPRICA, and on the two-season Canadian TV series BOMB GIRLS), it's hard to see what it was about ANTIBIRTH that prompted her to end a 22-year big-screen sabbatical. (Unrated, 94 mins, also streaming on Netflix)
THE COMEDIAN (US/UK/China - 2016) Directed by Taylor Hackford. Written by Art Linson, Jeff Ross, Richard LaGravenese and Lewis Friedman. Cast: Robert De Niro, Leslie Mann, Danny DeVito, Harvey Keitel, Edie Falco, Charles Grodin, Cloris Leachman, Patti Lupone, Lucy DeVito, Veronica Ferres, Lois Smith. (R, 120 mins) It's pretty ballsy of Robert De Niro to attempt comedy in the same year he gave us the unspeakable DIRTY GRANDPA, but THE COMEDIAN (given a very limited Oscar-eligibility run in December 2016 but only now rolling out nationwide) is a project he and producer/co-writer Art Linson have had in various stages of development for nearly a decade. If there's a sense of familiarity to the end result, it's coming from a couple of different directions: De Niro already tackled stand-up comedy decades ago in Martin Scorsese's 1983 cult classic THE KING OF COMEDY, and the whole idea of following a working, schlepping stand-up has been seen over several seasons of Louis C.K.'s revered FX series LOUIE. Hell, there's even a scene of De Niro walking down the street and shaking hands with the door guy as he walks down into the entrance of the Comedy Cellar, almost straight out of LOUIE's opening credits. All that's missing is a revamped theme song that goes "Bobby, Bobby, Bobby, Bobbbbyyyyyy!"
De Niro is Jackie Burke, a 67-year-old shock comic best known for a MARRIED WITH CHILDREN-style sitcom he did in the 1980s called EDDIE'S HOME, where he played a working-class blowhard cop named Eddie, as crass as Al Bundy and with his own catchphrase he always shouted to his wife: "Arleeeeeeene!" Now scraping by doing nostalgia gigs in rinky-dink clubs where he shares the bill with Brett Butler and Jimmie Walker (a ton of stand-up luminaries young and old appear in cameos as themselves), Jackie is confronted in mid-act by heckling fan demanding he shout his catchphrase. A scuffle ensues resulting in Jackie decking the guy and the whole thing is caught on cell phone video and goes viral. After refusing to apologize to the guy in court, he's sentenced to 30 days in jail and 100 hours of community service. Once he's out, he spends his community service hours at a NYC soup kitchen where he befriends Harmony (Leslie Mann), who's also spending court-appointed time after assaulting her philandering boyfriend and his other girlfriend. Harmony is desperately trying to find a place for herself after spending most of her adult life screwing up and blowing opportunities, and wants to get out from under the thumb of her wealthy, mob-connected father Mac Schiltz (Harvey Keitel), refusing his offer to buy her out of her sentence with a judge friend and move down to his Florida home. Instead, she bonds with Jackie and a tentative romance blossoms as Jackie tries to rebuild his career, which is stuck in an endless rut: even though his fellow stand-ups revere him for his stage act, all any TV execs and fans on the street want from him is "Eddie" and his stupid catchphrase.
Considering he probably can't go a day without someone quipping "You talkin' to me?" to him, there's a lot of De Niro in Jackie as everyone he encounters demands he give them an "Arleeeeeene!" But THE COMEDIAN stumbles where it matters most: De Niro's stand-up bits as Jackie just aren't funny. Often, they're cringe-inducing in a bad way and too reliant not just on playing blue but going for that same kind of pointless raunch and childishly scatalogical way that torpedoed DIRTY GRANDPA. Is this a De Niro thing? Is this his sense of humor? Is Jackie playing to a crowd of seniors in a retirement home and changing the words of "Makin' Whoopee!" to "Makin' Poopie!" supposed to be funny? Considering Jackie's status as a legend among his peers (Jim Norton, after another Jackie video blows up online: "You're more viral than Charlie Sheen!"), his routine is pretty hacky, whether he's entertaining the homeless at the shelter or cracking gay and Jewish jokes at his niece's (Lucy DeVito) wedding to her same-sex partner, an act that includes one-liners about collecting the semen of homeless guys and doesn't go over well with Jackie's long-suffering brother Jimmy (Danny DeVito) and his shrewish wife Flo (Patti Lupone). While the stage bits tank, there's other pleasures to be had with THE COMEDIAN: it's great to see De Niro and DeVito busting each others' balls in their scenes together, and it's always a welcome sight to see De Niro and Keitel onscreen together, especially when Jackie talks about wanting to "bang the shit out of" Harmony and calls Mac "Pops."
Director Taylor Hackford and the screenwriters (among them Linson, journeyman Richard LaGravenese, and "Roastmaster General" Jeff Ross) take the story down an admirably dark detour when Jackie's long-suffering manager (Edie Falco) gets him a spot on the dais at a Friars Club roast of the beloved, 95-year-old Betty White-like screen and TV legend May Miller (Cloris Leachman) and she drops dead in the middle of his turn at the mic ("I didn't even get to my best lines!" Jackie grumbles). Terence Blanchard's melancholy jazz score combined with the location work in a Manhattan where it's constantly raining and gray does a wonderful job of conveying the sense of gloom and desperation Jackie feels over his career, with Hackford really succeeding in creating a very authentic "New York City" feel that makes the city an actual character in the story, and that's something you don't see much of these days. Likewise with the setting, there's also occasions where it has somewhat of a Woody Allen mix of comedy and drama going on, especially with the romantic pairing of 73-year-old De Niro and 44-year-old Mann. THE COMEDIAN has genuine affection for the world of the working comedian, and the roster of cameos is impressive--Norton (who served as a technical adviser), Butler, Walker, Hannibal Buress, Nick DiPaolo, Billy Crystal, Richard Belzer, Gilbert Gottfried, Stewie Stone, and Freddie Roman among others can be spotted--but Jackie's routines just don't cut it, even though the audience and everyone else within earshot are always doubled over with laughter. De Niro nails the body language, the stage presence, and the mannerisms of a veteran stand-up, but his act sounds like stuff that didn't make the cut of DIRTY GRANDPA (jokes about jerking off, pulling out, making the cunnilingus gesture at May, etc), and the improbably feel-good ending is just lazy. There's a charming, insightful film that manages to make its presence known throughout THE COMEDIAN, but the comedy doesn't hold up its end of the bargain
BLASTFIGHTER (Italy - 1984; US release 1985) Directed by John Old Jr (Lamberto Bava). Written by Max von Ryt (Massimo De Rita) and Luca von Ryt (Luca De Rita). Cast: Michael Sopkiw, Valerie Blake (Valentina Forte), George Eastman (Luigi Montefiori), Mike Miller (Stefano Mingardo), Richard Raymond (Ottaviano Dell'Acqua), Patrick O'Neil Jr (Massimo Vanni), Elizabeth Forbes, Carl Savage, Michael Saroyan (Michele Soavi), George Williams, Giancarlo Prati, Billy Redden. (Unrated, 90 mins)
An Italian FIRST BLOOD knockoff that also works in elements of DELIVERANCE and SOUTHERN COMFORT, BLASTFIGHTER was originally conceived as a yet another post-nuke ROAD WARRIOR ripoff until a new script was commissioned and the filmmakers just kept the same title. BLASTFIGHTER probably refers to a state-of-the-art experimental combat shotgun that's used by the hero, but it can just as easily describe the hero himself. Jake "Tiger" Sharp (2019: AFTER THE FALL OF NEW YORK's Michael Sopkiw) is a disgraced Atlanta ex-cop just paroled after serving eight years for blowing away the creep (Giancarlo Prati) who murdered his partner (Massimo Vanni, billed as "Patrick O'Neil Jr") and then killed his wife. Tiger's cop buddy gives him an off-the-books SPAS shotgun to off the corrupt D.A. who repeatedly shielded the creep and sent Tiger to prison, but he can't bring himself to pull the trigger. Instead, he heads to Clayton, the small town where he grew up, intent on living a quiet, solitary life in the Sharp family cabin.
Of course, the rowdy, redneck townies won't allow that to happen. Tiger repeatedly clashes with bullying Wally Hanson (RAIDERS OF ATLANTIS' Stefano Mingardo, billed as "Mike Miller") and his buddies (including Eurocult regular Ottaviano Dell'Acqua, billed as "Richard Raymond"), who hassle him at the market and kill a helpless fawn he's adopted. Tiger runs into his childhood buddy and local sawmill owner Tom (George Eastman)--who's also Wally's older brother--and learns that Wally and his doofus pals are poaching wildlife and selling the carcasses to a black market herbal medicinist from Hong Kong who's set up shop in the area. Tiger busts up that operation, sending the Hong Kong guy and that entire subplot packing, but now he's pissed off Wally. Arriving just in time for the backwoods mayhem is Tiger's estranged daughter Connie (Valentina Forte, billed as "Valerie Blake"), who's nearly gang-raped by Wally and his goons after they kill Tiger's visiting cop buddy as well as Connie's boyfriend Pete (Michele Soavi, billed as "Michael Saroyan"). Despite Tom intervening to keep his stupid brother from letting things escalate (the Clayton depicted here has possibly the most absent sheriff in film history), that's exactly what happens, with Wally gathering up all the yahoos from town to hunt down Tiger in the woods before a final confrontation that will pit two lifelong friends against one another.
Most Italian exploitation fare from this period was made with the intent of passing itself off in the most American way possible. This often involved a certain amount of location work being done in the States, mixed with interiors being shot in Rome. In the mid '80s, however, the US location work became significantly more extensive, with states like Georgia, Nevada, Florida, and especially Arizona welcoming Italian crews for numerous films. With almost everyone in the cast and crew hiding behind Americanized pseudonyms, BLASTFIGHTER, directed by Lamberto Bava (credited as "John Old Jr" as a tribute to his legendary father Mario Bava, who went by "John M. Old" on a couple of movies), puts forth a lot of effort to look as American as possible, shot almost entirely on location in Atlanta and Clayton, GA, the latter being the same general vicinity where much of DELIVERANCE was shot. Also contributing to the "See, this isn't Italian...it's American!" ruse is the recurring use of the Bee Gees-penned "The Evening Star," a big hit for Kenny Rogers the same year of BLASTFIGHTER's release, but represented instead by a cover version by someone named Tommie Baby. The production even found Clayton resident Billy Redden, best known as the "Dueling Banjos" kid in DELIVERANCE, handed him another banjo, and had him stand with it in the downtown Clayton market with some other confused locals watching the Italian crew hard at work (which begs the question, why is everyone just standing in the tiny market watching Billy Redden play a single half-assed banjo lick before Tiger walks in?). There's some interior work obviously done in Rome, but most of BLASTFIGHTER takes place out in the elements of Clayton and the surrounding rural area, which lends much grittiness and authenticity to the action, as well as the surreal appeal of things just being slightly off because no matter how much effort they put into the illusion, these Italian knockoffs never quite fully succeeded at passing themselves off as totally American. Even in the hick environs of rural Clayon, the local boys don't yell "Yee-haah!" as much as Wally and his buddies do.
Of course, for fans of such things, that's all part of the charm and why movies like BLASTFIGHTER--a movie whose battered Vestron Video VHS tape was guaranteed to be found in every video store you walked into well into the 1990s--have remained such nostalgic cult items decades later. It helps that BLASTFIGHTER is a legitimately entertaining action movie, with American Sopkiw a credible genre star considering he only made four movies over a three-year period before quitting acting (and he's dubbed here by Larry Dolgin). Fresh off Sergio Martino's 2019: AFTER THE FALL OF NEW YORK--the pinnacle of the Italian post-nukes--Sopkiw, 29 at the time of filming, is miscast in BLASTFIGHTER as the father of a character played by Forte, who was around 17 or 18 at the time (and dating CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST director Ruggero Deodato, who cast her in the next year's CUT AND RUN). Some effort is made to make Sopkiw look a little older--with his stache, he actually resembles both Franco Nero and Maurizio Merli, which makes one wonder how badass one them would've been as Tiger--but he and Forte just don't really gel as father and daughter. Still, it's easy to look past it, as he's a solid action hero who handles a lot of his own stunts along with Forte.
Released in the US in late 1985 by Almi Pictures, BLASTFIGHTER has just resurfaced in a terrific-looking limited edition Blu-ray restoration by Code Red in another defiant example of the death of physical media being significantly exaggerated. There's interviews with Bava, Sopkiw, cinematographer Gianlorenzo Battaglia (credited on the film as "Lawrence Bannon"), and Eastman, who was clearly caught on a bad day, going full Howard Beale in one of the more scorched earth special features interviews of late, declaring "I never liked Lamberto Bava," going on to call him a "half-man" and "an idiot," and emphatically stating "Let's be honest, most of the movies I did are atrocious." Sopkiw is on hand for a commentary track with Mondo Digital's Nathaniel Thompson that has some interesting observations here and there, but despite Thompson's efforts to prod for more info, Sopkiw just isn't the best interview subject. He's foggy on a lot of details--understandable after 33 years--and won't talk about his other Bava film DEVIL-FISH (aka MONSTER SHARK) because "that's another contract," and "my contract said the interview was for this and AFTER THE FALL OF NEW YORK," (which Code Red is releasing later this year) and, worst of all, he comes off as dismissive of the film, his short-lived movie career, and the very idea that his movies have a cult following.
Sopkiw with Code Red's Bill Olsen, still trying to make "Banana Man" a thing.
Sopkiw says doing conventions isn't worth his time and that "only a half dozen people are interested in these movies anyway." He doesn't seem to like movies much at all (he's never seen THE GODFATHER, didn't realize BLASTFIGHTER was a FIRST BLOOD knockoff because he wasn't aware of FIRST BLOOD, didn't care for MAD MAX: FURY ROAD, and doesn't like watching movies in HD), he seems to go through several mood swings over the course of the commentary, and his reluctance or inability to go into any significant detail and his repeated shout-outs to Quentin Tarantino to give him a call get old after some time (Bava also mentions Tarantino in his interview--must Tarantino be invoked on every one of these?). It's a sharp contrast to how good-natured Sopkiw was on the disastrous commentary on Media Blasters' old DVD release of AFTER THE FALL OF NEW YORK, where he seemed enthused to be there until "post-nuke historian" Dolph Chiarino infamously hijacked the track to shit-talk and settle scores with message board scenesters, bloggers, and writers (the DVD was eventually recalled and reissued without the commentary). There was probably a better commentary to be had with Thompson and some other genre historian just discussing the movie and the creative personnel, but nevertheless, BLASTFIGHTER looks great on Blu-ray (once you get past an intro with Sopkiw and Code Red's Bill Olsen in his inane "Banana Man" costume that you can't bypass) and holds up quite well as one of the more entertaining Italian ripoffs of its day.
IRONMASTER (France/Italy - 1983) Directed by Umberto Lenzi. Written by Alberto Cavallone, Dardano Sacchetti, Lea Martino and Gabriel Rossini. Cast: Sam Pasco, Elvire Audray, George Eastman (Luigi Montefiori), William Berger, Pamela Field (Pamela Prati), Jacques Herlin, Brian Redford (Danilo Mattei), Benito Stefanelli, Areno D'Adderio, Giovanni Cianfriglia, Walter Lucchini, Nello Pazzafini, Nico La Macchia. (Unrated, 93 mins) "When warriors stop showing their power, it's the beginning of the end. We're only happy in battle! War is our reason for living! What's the use in having invincible weapons if you can't use them?" "But everyone hates us, Vuud."
This isn't to suggest that the makers of the 1983 Italian QUEST FOR FIRE-meets-CONAN THE BARBARIAN-with-a-bit-of-EXCALIBUR ripoff IRONMASTER saw a certain world leader's ascendance happening 34 years ahead of time, but the eagerness of Vuud (George Eastman), the film's villain, to use all the weapons at his disposal does draw comparison. Vuud's father Iksay (Benito Stefanelli), the aging leader of their caveman tribe, is eager to step down after the next hunt but is stalling because he doesn't think his son is capable. Vuud is next in line by right, but Iksay expresses concern to his council Rag (Jacques Herlin) over the bad-tempered, impulsive, Sonny Corleone-esque Vuud: "He's unable to control himself," Iksay says, adding "What would become of this tribe if it were led by someone so restless?" Rag assures him Vuud will mature into the job but Iksay is unconvinced: "I don't know. I just don't believe in him."
Sam Pasco as Ela
Iksay would rather hand control of his tribe off to the more well-liked and even-tempered Ela (Sam Pasco), but he never gets the chance since an impatient Vuud bashes in his father's skull, a vicious act witnessed by Ela. Ela outs Vuud as a murderer, to which Vuud naturally responds by attacking Ela in a violent rage, accidentally killing Rag when he tries to break up the scuffle. Vuud is banished to the surrounding desert, where he encounters the duplicitous Lith (Pamela Prati) and discovers iron in the shape of a sword in the aftermath of a stock footage volcanic eruption. Believing he has found a new form of weapon beyond their customary rocks and sticks, Vuud returns to the tribe and is hailed as a god, his first act to banish Ela to six days and nights crucified in the desert as he and Lith take charge, roaming the land, dominating and enslaving every peaceful tribe they encounter. The cave people are ordered to accept this as their new normal and anyone who objects is killed. Ela befriends Isa (Elvire Audray), the daughter of kindly tribe leader Mogo (William Berger), who assembles his people to help Ela take back his tribe and overthrow the despotic Vuud and the scheming, self-serving Lith, his chief source of encouragement and prodding.
George Eastman as Vuud
There was no shortage of CONAN THE BARBARIAN ripoffs flooding theaters and drive-ins throughout the early-to-mid '80s, and the Stone Age-set IRONMASTER, co-written by Alberto Cavalline (the 1978 coprophagia ode BLUE MOVIE) and frequent Lucio Fulci collaborator Dardano Sacchetti, and directed by Italian genre stalwart Umberto Lenzi (ALMOST HUMAN, CANNIBAL FEROX), is probably one of the weakest (hey, they can't all be YOR: THE HUNTER FROM THE FUTURE). It has some undeniable entertainment value for Eurotrash devotees and fans of Italian knockoffs, whether it's the presence of perennial Eurocult fixture Eastman, the familiar dubbing voices (almost all of them are here) or an amazing shot where Lith is jogging away and actress Prati is the victim of a gratuitous nip slip that Lenzi just left in the movie. One of its chief points of interest is that most of the exteriors were shot at some striking locations in Custer State Park in South Dakota, which gives the film a look and feel that's unique to this subgenre (and Lenzi and the producers were really fixated by a nearby herd of grazing buffalo, as nearly every cast member gets a scene running by them at one point). The other noteworthy aspect of IRONMASTER is that it's the sole mainstream film appearance of Pasco, an American bodybuilder better known as "Big Max," who appeared in numerous gay porn films at the time and was also a popular model for COLT, a leading producer of gay pornography and sex toys since 1967. Pasco is dubbed in IRONMASTER, and in an interview on Code Red's new Blu-ray, Lenzi dismisses him as "worthless" and "pathetic" as an actor as well as in action scenes, saying he didn't move in a "masculine" way. Pasco and his porn world monikers "Big Max" and "Mike Spanner" vanished and were never seen or heard from again after 1985, so it's generally assumed he died around that time, with several corroborating comments on a couple of different message boards mentioning he spent his final days doing private modeling gigs and hustling in NYC before succumbing to steroid-related liver failure in 1985. Lenzi is also similarly unkind to Audray (THE SCORPION WITH TWO TAILS), who committed suicide in 2000 at the age of 40, saying she came along in a package deal with the French co-producer that she was dating at the time. The dull and slow-moving IRONMASTER is really only for the most die-hard Italian ripoff completist, but such people are out there (guilty as charged), and it's a small victory for children of the '80s to see these VHS staples getting such nice HD treatment decades down the line.
Sam Pasco, aka "Big Max," on the cover of a 1979 issue of COLT Men
RESIDENT EVIL: THE FINAL CHAPTER
(US/Germany - 2017) Written and directed by Paul W.S. Anderson. Cast: Milla Jovovich, Ali Larter, Iain Glen, Shawn Roberts, Ruby Rose, Eoin Macken, Fraser James, William Levy, Rola, Lee Goon Ji, Ever Anderson, Mark Simpson. (R, 106 mins) The Paul W.S. Anderson-shepherded RESIDENT EVIL franchise has been a mostly reliable source of empty calorie junk food over the last 15 years, with the only real stumble being the second film in the series, 2004's RESIDENT EVIL: APOCALYPSE. Directed not by Anderson (who was busy with the execrable ALIEN VS. PREDATOR) but by veteran second-unit guy Alexander Witt--who hasn't directed a film since--APOCALYPSE remains the nadir of a series that sprang back to life when Anderson returned to the director's chair for the fourth entry, 2010's 3D RESIDENT EVIL: AFTERLIFE (HIGHLANDER director Russell Mulcahy helmed 2007's so-so RESIDENT EVIL: EXTINCTION). Unfortunately, with RESIDENT EVIL: THE FINAL CHAPTER, the purported conclusion to the series (not likely), things take a turn toward the APOCALYPSE end of things. Fatigue was starting to set in with the most recent entry, 2012's RESIDENT EVIL: RETRIBUTION, but with THE FINAL CHAPTER, everyone involved, starting with star Milla Jovovich, just seems to be over it. The worst decision Anderson makes here--and perhaps he did so under the false assumption that it would liven up a stale formula--is to utilize the services of editor Doobie White. White's credits include CRANK 2: HIGH VOLTAGE, RECLAIM, and MOMENTUM, action films that rely on lighting-fast cutting so that no shot seems to last longer than a second. It's RESIDENT EVIL done quick-cut/shaky-cam style, rendering most of the action sequences an unwatchable, headache-inducing blur. Not only does that aesthetic not gel with Anderson's usual style, but it's nearly a decade past its sell-by date. Anderson takes a lot of shit from fanboy types, but he's always been a stylist first and foremost, and his films do have a distinctive look and feel to them, all the way back to his 1994 debut SHOPPING. Why he would decide, nearly a quarter century into his filmmaking career, to start ripping off the worst tendencies of Michael Bay and the Neveldine/Taylor CRANK guys is a mystery. To say that THE FINAL CHAPTER is marginally better than APOCALYPSE is damning with faint praise, but it's still an incoherent, hideous mess to look at and tantamount to a digital migraine.
Quickly wrapping up the cliffhanger ending of RETRIBUTION with a de facto "Previously on..." recap, THE FINAL CHAPTER begins with Jovovich's Alice wandering the ruins of Washington D.C., and encountering the hologram of the Red Queen (Ever Anderson, Jovovich's Mini-Me daughter with husband Anderson). The Red Queen directs Alice to venture back to the wasteland that is Raccoon City to break into The Hive, the Umbrella Corporation's underground compound, where there's an airborne antivirus to cure the pandemic T-Virus that turned the whole world into zombies with only 4000 humans remaining. The Red Queen was created in Alice's image, her father a humanitarian scientist with the Umbrella Corporation who was murdered by his business partner Dr. Isaacs (Iain Glen, returning from APOCALYPSE and EXTINCTION) and Umbrella flunky Wesker (Shawn Roberts, returning from AFTERLIFE and RETRIBUTION and continuing his "I'm almost Hugo Weaving from THE MATRIX" act) when he foolishly decided to put people before profits. Alice gets away from Isaacs, now a ranting prophet wanting to bring about the end of the world, and makes her way to Raccoon City where she encounters the obligatory ragtag band of survivors, including Claire Redfield (Ali Larter, returning from EXTINCTION and AFTERLIFE) and must make their way into The Hive with 12 hours left to save what's left of humanity and start over. They've got Isaacs in a tank leading a zombie horde straight to them as well as Wesker pacing around his underground lair arguing with the Red Queen hologram, who has promised to tell amnesiac Alice the truth about herself.
That truth is obvious since Anderson reveals his cards too early, enabling any viewer with the capacity to fog a mirror to figure out the secret long before Alice does. Gathering cast members from past entries gives THE FINAL CHAPTER that comfort food, high-school reunion, victory lap feel that RETRIBUTION had, but none of the supporting cast are put to good use--Roberts' Wesker and Larter's Claire have nothing to do--except for Glen, who seems to having a good time hamming it up as the evil Isaacs. As the ho-hum story moves from one loud jump-scare, verbose exposition drop, and eye-glazingly incomprehensible set piece to another, you can practically feel the burnout along with Jovovich after six of these. The accelerated pace of the action scenes comes off not so much as a jolt of inspiration on the part of Anderson but rather, an eagerness to just get through this as quickly as possible. Anderson doesn't even take advantage of the easy political subtext of Isaacs and his transformation from scheming CEO to end-of-days Bible thumper. Once upon a time, George Romero was attached to direct a RESIDENT EVIL adaptation prior to Anderson's involvement all those years ago--can you imagine what he could've brought to this in his prime? Even middling installments like EXTINCTION and RETRIBUTION have solid zombie action and some striking dystopian imagery. Here, you can't see any of that because Anderson has instructed White to keep it cut at such a frenetic pace that your eyes can't even process what you're seeing (watch that turbine scene and imagine how much more effective it would've been if sensibly edited). It'll probably be a big enough hit in Asia, where it opened huge in December 2016, a month before it was released in the rest of the world (that also explains the very brief presence--at least in the US version--of South Korean TV star/singer/model Lee Goon Ji) that it'll likely be rebooted with or without Jovovich and Anderson, but it'll be awfully difficult to get excited about it.
iBOY (US/UK - 2017) Directed by Adam Randall. Written by Joe Barton, Mark Denton and Jonny Stockwood. Cast: Bill Milner, Maisie Williams, Miranda Richardson, Rory Kinnear, Jordan Bolger, Charlie Palmer Rothwell, Aymen Habdouchi, Armin Karima, McKell David, Shaquille Ali-Yebbuah, Christopher Colcuhoun. (Unrated, 90 mins) Once you get past the hokey title, the Netflix Original iBOY is a decent-enough time-killer blending sci-fi elements with the vigilante genre, set in familiar-looking HARRY BROWN, FISH TANK, and ATTACK THE BLOCK London housing projects and bathed in that Michael Mann-ish blue sheen that makers of British crime thrillers love so much. Based on a novel by Kevin Brooks, iBOY focuses on Tom (Bill Milner, grown up since the 2007 cult movie SON OF RAMBOW), a shy, quiet teenager who lives in a public housing block with his grandma (Miranda Richardson). He has a crush on classmate Lucy (GAME OF THRONES' Maisie Williams) and when he goes to visit her nearby flat, he walks in on a burglary in progress with Lucy in her bedroom screaming for help. Tom impulsively flees and tries to call for help, but he gets shot in the head and is comatose for ten days. Once he's awake, he's informed that pieces of his iPhone are lodged into his brain from when he was shot, and attempting to remove the fragments is too risky a procedure. All things considered, he's generally fine other than a large scar on the side of his head but complications arise when Tom begins picking up wi-fi connections and phone signals that allow him to instantly hack anyone around him, cataloging images and data of whatever everyone he passes is saying or texting into their phone, iPad, laptop, etc.
Of course, this overloads his brain but he eventually learns how to control it, and when he realizes that the guy who shot him is troublemaking classmate Eugene (Charlie Palmer Rothwell), Tom decides to use his newfound powers for revenge on Eugene and his crew of small-time criminals who work for drug dealer Cutz (Aymen Habdouchi). He starts by playing simple pranks, but it quickly escalates to dangerous games like draining bank accounts and sending them on wild goose chases so he has time to break into Cutz's pad, steal his entire inventory, plant it in the homes of Eugene and all the underlings, then anonymously tip off the cops. This leaves paranoid Cutz frantic about losing his merch and the trust of his gang, and unable to explain what's happening to his boss, big-time London gangster Ellman (Rory Kinnear). All the while, Tom, hiding behind the moniker "iBOY," becomes a folk hero of sorts, a high-tech surveillance vigilante cleaning up all the crime and corruption permeating the housing block.
It's not the most plausible premise, but it's engaging enough to make you wish director Adam Randall and the screenwriters kept the momentum going through a sluggish midsection. The notion of Tom turning into a one-man Big Brother is intriguing, and there's a lot of humor in the games he plays with Eugene and the others, whether it's on their phones or controlling the computer system in their vehicles. It doesn't make much sense that with all of these new powers that permit him to see and hear all and even emit a high-pitched sound to incapacitate his enemies, he still doesn't pick up that Cutz and his gang are right behind him when they ambush him. And sometimes, his capabilities seem to go beyond the possibilities of simple hacking, turning him from a cloud-connected avenger to a Lawnmower Man-inspired CHRONICLE reject whenever it's convenient for the plot. I suppose the idea is that his powers are growing stronger, but we sort-of miss that realization taking place. And why can he suddenly do that trick with the high-pitched whistle?
After a meandering second act, things really pick up with the first appearance of Ellman a bit after the one-hour mark. As played by Kinnear, perhaps best known to Netflix viewers for his starring role as the British Prime Minister having the worst day of his life in the unforgettable BLACK MIRROR series premiere "The National Anthem," Ellman is a fascinating and complex character who you'll wish had more screen time. Ellman grew up in these projects and has a chip on his shoulder about it, not denying his roots but instead infiltrating high society to take it down from within. When he realizes his operation has been put in jeopardy by "iBOY," he doesn't want revenge--he wants to recruit him. Ellman has a sense of honor--when Tom's only other friend Danny (Jordan Bolger) rats him out, Ellman scolds "If you're gonna betray your friend, at least look him in the eye when you do it!" He's prone to wry observations like "Cutz is a man with a hammer in a world of china, know what I mean?" and seething sarcasm, as when Eugene and his stooges kidnap Lucy and she ends up outsmarting them: "You got everything under control here? I mean the hostage does have the gun." Kinnear sinks his teeth into the role and in the course of just a few minutes, creates the most detailed and multi-layered character in the movie, stone-cold serious but making you laugh at the same time ("Really, Cutz? The granny?" after Cutz impulsively knocks Tom's grandma unconscious). iBOY isn't a kids movie at all--it's dark, bleak, profane (even Arya Stark drops a bunch of F-bombs), and violent, played completely straight and would easily get an R rating if it was in theaters instead of bowing on Netflix. iBOY shows enough flashes of brains and inspiration that it's worth a watch, but it drops the ball with a certain degree of frequency. It's entertaining, but ultimately, it's still the kind of movie that gathers all of its characters for a climactic showdown at an abandoned warehouse.
