tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16718747212131587632024-03-06T18:36:05.878+10:30Crustacean HateReviews of Guy N. Smith novels, exploitation films and other detritus scraped from the bottom of the pop culture barrel.Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03222596744187012495noreply@blogger.comBlogger304125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1671874721213158763.post-67709949334717197382011-10-12T22:09:00.000+10:302011-10-12T22:09:00.757+10:30Bloodfist 3: Forced to Fight (1992)Someone done woke The DragonThose hoping to see the continuing adventures of Jake Raye may be disappointed to discover that Bloodfist III: Forced to Fight has absolutely nothing to do with the first two movies apart from Don "The Dragon" Wilson (World Kickboxing Assocation World Light Heavyweight Champion). It was originally intended to be released under the title Forced to Fight but the firstDavehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03222596744187012495noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1671874721213158763.post-23857022024977247832011-10-07T21:51:00.002+10:302011-10-07T21:51:00.605+10:30Bloodfist II (1990)No shotguns allowed, Don! You're destroyingthe sanctity of this brutal deathmatch!Apparently after winning the Red Fist tournament Jake (Don "The Dragon" Wilson, World Kickboxing Association Light Heavyweight World Champion) returned to America and became a professional kickboxer. I guess he got over that whole missing kidney thing. During his championship bout he accidentally kills his opponent Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03222596744187012495noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1671874721213158763.post-55329292022447398452011-10-02T21:50:00.003+10:302011-10-03T10:18:33.357+10:30Bloodfist (1989) Blood? Check. Fists? Check.Roger Corman isn't one to sit idly by while a popular cinematic fad runs it's course, and Bloodfist was his attempt to cash-in on the recent success of kickboxing movies, Van Damme's Bloodsport being the most obvious influence. I would have liked to be in on the meeting where they decided on the title. "Blood... fist?" "Sure, why not? Let's go get hammered." BloodsportDavehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03222596744187012495noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1671874721213158763.post-22013012202918889012011-09-13T22:08:00.000+09:302011-09-13T22:08:00.097+09:30Sabat 1: The Graveyard VulturesI haven't read any Guy N. Smith novels in a while, so you know what that means. Time for me to go on Sabatical...In the Sabat novels Guy N. Smith attempted to create a memorable lead character that could sustain an ongoing adventure series. Let's face it, Professor Cliff Davenport may be the world's sexiest megacarcinologist, but even the giant crabs tend to outshine him in the personality Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03222596744187012495noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1671874721213158763.post-6723142888193431042011-08-30T19:52:00.000+09:302011-09-02T19:53:40.945+09:30Born to Raise Hell (2010)
It's a high-octane, white knuckle thrill ride!
It was clear from the prologue that I was going to have a few problems with this movie. The opening scene features a subtitle that reads "Bucharest, Romania", which is rarely a good sign, followed by a nonsensical voiceover that is clearly not Seagal. Then there is a gunfight with Tony-Scott-on-PCP editing that goes way beyond any hopeDavehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03222596744187012495noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1671874721213158763.post-79255341307077760262011-08-25T21:26:00.003+09:302011-08-26T09:00:53.943+09:30A Dangerous Man (2009)Seagal will fuck you up ugly
In a strange coincidence I received DVDs for both A Dangerous Man and A Serious Man in the mail on the same day, which left me with a difficult decision to make. One Coen brothers' black comedy about a Jewish physics professor struggling with his faith. One DTV action film where Steven Seagal kicks Chinese dudes in the junk. A difficult choice for any cinephile, Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03222596744187012495noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1671874721213158763.post-117758574456472612011-08-22T22:00:00.000+09:302011-08-22T22:00:03.244+09:30The Keeper (2009)Yee-haw!
I've fallen a few movies behind in my On-Deadly-Ground-style spiritual odyssey through the DTV ouvre of Mr Steven Seagal. This one had been sitting on my DVD queue for some time, but I hadn't felt compelled to review it since the two subsequent films (A Dangerous Man and Born to Raise Hell) were still MIA. A year or two later and the Region 4 DVDs have lazily flopped onto Australian Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03222596744187012495noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1671874721213158763.post-73034668406778674682011-08-19T21:44:00.003+09:302011-08-20T15:11:55.356+09:30Rage and Honor 2: Hostile Takeover (1993)
It's been a couple of years since the events of Rage and Honor. Kris Fairchild (Cynthia Rothrock) has made the baffling career move from schoolteacher to CIA agent and Preston Michaels (Richard Norton) is still on the run from the bogus murder charges he was framed with in the first film. Kind of a bummer that Kris didn't do more to clear his name after all they'd been through together, but I Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03222596744187012495noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1671874721213158763.post-25777839227914692262011-05-03T23:06:00.000+09:302011-05-03T23:06:00.229+09:30Rage and Honor (1992)I can't go on like this.Your hair... it's too awesome.This film is one of a number of Cynthia Rothrock/Richard Norton team-up films that came out in the early 90s. Rothrock plays a school teacher named Kris Fairchild, who spends her evenings teaching underpriveleged kids "the art of martial science". Richard Norton plays Preston Michaels, a cop on transfer from Australia plus part time Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03222596744187012495noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1671874721213158763.post-33265891563348891852011-04-27T22:22:00.005+09:302011-04-28T12:43:40.439+09:30Thor (2011)If there were any doubt before, let this movie stand as conclusive proof that I don't know what the fuck I am talking about. Back in my Iron Man 2 review, I said that this was the one part of the Avengers franchise most likely to go tits up. Kenny Branagh has never had great success as a commercial director and Thor's outsized universe of Norse space-gods seems like the kind of Silver Age Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03222596744187012495noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1671874721213158763.post-12032619008126339592011-04-11T23:13:00.000+09:302011-04-11T23:13:00.976+09:30Sucker Punch (2011)I really liked the beautiful, dialogue-free opening sequence of this film, which shows the chain of tragic events that lead to Baby Doll (Emily Browning) being committed to a mental institution by her evil stepfather and a crooked orderly (Oscar Isaac). As I've explained in other reviews, I'm a sucker for gothic, spooky mental institutions, so I was a little disappointed when it turns out that Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03222596744187012495noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1671874721213158763.post-35488584293042234152011-03-20T22:15:00.000+10:302011-03-20T22:15:00.704+10:30Ip Man 2 (2010)Sammo Hung, pushing 60 and still kicking ass.Shame on you, Seagal.Ip Man was a pretty great kung fu film and a big international success, so it's not surprising that they made both a sequel and a (Donnie-Yen-less) prequel. The sequel picks up a few years after the first film, with Ip Man and his family packing up their shit and moving to Hong Kong, where Ip Man hopes to open up a kung fu school Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03222596744187012495noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1671874721213158763.post-39954358982375706812011-03-15T22:29:00.001+10:302011-03-15T22:29:00.238+10:30Centurion (2010)They may take our lives,but they will never take our eyeliner!It's pretty clear by now that Marshall is perfectly happy making genre flicks that are heavily influenced (or in the case of Doomsday, brazenly plagiarised) from the beloved films of his youth, but a certain running theme is beginning to stick out at me. I think Neil Marshall might hate Scottish people. First you had Dog Soldiers, Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03222596744187012495noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1671874721213158763.post-3849487064164995992011-02-16T22:41:00.002+10:302011-02-16T22:41:00.472+10:30Black Swan (2011)Natalie Portman plays a dancer in a New York City ballet company. The director selects her for the challenging lead role in a new production of Swan Lake (real original, guy), a dual role that requires her to play both the innocent White Swan and the more seductive Black Swan. While her icily perfect technique makes her ideal for the White Swan role, he remains unconvinced that she has the Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03222596744187012495noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1671874721213158763.post-40695498247323084462011-02-12T22:23:00.004+10:302011-02-16T16:21:35.004+10:30Machete (2010)It would have been cool if he had agun that shoots machetesSorry everyone, I guess I'm partly to blame for Machete flopping. I could blame it on hype burnout or the mediocre reviews or having to wait three fucking months for it to arrive in Australian cinemas, but really I just never got around to it. Mea culpa. Really though, did anyone expect it to do well? A feature length version of a Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03222596744187012495noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1671874721213158763.post-42963063583754711422011-02-10T22:18:00.000+10:302011-02-10T22:18:00.512+10:30Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974)I bet he regrets wearing whiteI like all the Sam Peckinpah films I've seen, but somehow this one slipped me by until now. I even tricked my wife into watching it with me by telling her it's not a Western, which is technically true. She got a bit suspicious during the opening scene, which has guys in hats riding around a Mexican villa on horseback, but after the villa's owner gives the titular Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03222596744187012495noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1671874721213158763.post-77430267191631960002011-02-06T22:17:00.000+10:302011-02-06T22:17:00.562+10:30Gnaw: Food of the Gods Part 2 (1989)They grow up so fast.I don't know who was clamouring for a follow-up to Bert I. Gordon's killer rat flick Food of the Gods, especially 13 years after the fact. It wasn't me. Was it you? Whoever it was, they'll probably be disappointed since this film has virtually nothing to do with the first one and even less to do with the H.G. Wells book from which it derives it's name. These days you'd give Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03222596744187012495noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1671874721213158763.post-84474069842257133662011-02-04T22:23:00.000+10:302011-02-04T22:23:00.322+10:30True Grit (2010)The Coens have claimed that this is a straight adaptation of the book rather than a remake of the 1969 version. It probably does hew a little closer to the book than the original, but that still sounds like damage control. John Wayne casts such a long shadow over the Western genre that it's hard not to see this film and compare it to the original. They had to justify it to all the fans, like theDavehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03222596744187012495noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1671874721213158763.post-42150693595119180942011-02-04T22:09:00.000+10:302011-02-04T22:09:00.267+10:30Christmas Evil (1980)Santa has something to stick in your stockingYeah, I know this would have been more appropriate to post around Christmas, but I'm afraid I has a period of holiday lethargy in mid December that managed to stretch right on through January too. I guess I could save this review until next Christmas, but fuck it.Silent Night, Deadly Night attracted a lot of controversy due to it's depiction of a Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03222596744187012495noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1671874721213158763.post-85384056255020141592010-12-13T22:05:00.007+10:302010-12-14T09:07:21.172+10:30Food of the Gods (1976)...ratsFrom the 50s through to the mid 80s, Bert I. Gordon wrote, directed and/or produced over twenty horror and sci-fi flicks, including Empire of the Ants, Village of the Giants, War of the Colossal Beast etc. He did a lot of films about giant animals going on murderous rampages, a prediliction which earned him the nickname Mr B.I.G. I'd assume he had some sort of Napoleon complex and that Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03222596744187012495noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1671874721213158763.post-62452678867166822672010-12-10T21:59:00.000+10:302010-12-10T21:59:00.399+10:30Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982)Don't you hate those assholes who leave theirhalloween decorations out until Christmas?After the box-office busting Halloween and the pretty decent follow-up Halloween II, John Carpenter decided that they'd taken the story of Michael Myers as far as it could go. Halloween III: Season of the Witch, directed by Carpenter's frequent collaborator Tommy Lee Wallace, was intended to reboot the Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03222596744187012495noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1671874721213158763.post-252909282234521972010-12-07T23:23:00.001+10:302010-12-07T23:23:00.743+10:30The Social Network (2010)Like a lot of people, I scoffed when I heard that David Fincher was going to direct Facebook: The Movie starring the poor man's Michael Cera. Clearly I was selling a lot of people short, because as it turns out it's actually a pretty good movie. It's based on a book that I haven't read and I have no idea how much of it is true, but when the results are this entertaining I don't really give aDavehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03222596744187012495noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1671874721213158763.post-35266285013738350212010-12-04T22:00:00.000+10:302010-12-04T22:00:00.244+10:30Dying Breed (2008)Cheeky!Let me tell you a little bit about Alexander Pearce. He was an Irish convict who was shipped off to a penal colony in Van Diemen's Land, now Tasmania. He escaped, and when he was captured he claimed he had cannibalised his fellow escapees. They didn't believe him, but when he escaped for a second time he was recaptured with bits of his partner-in-crime in his pocket, even though he Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03222596744187012495noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1671874721213158763.post-28291279290586822652010-12-01T21:42:00.001+10:302010-12-01T21:42:00.764+10:30Frozen (2010)Well, at least you didn't lick itI have a truly massive backlog of reviews to get through, but first I'd like to drop a few word-bombs about Frozen. I will also warn you that this post features bigger spoilers than an Asian kid's Honda Civic, so if you have any interest in seeing this film at all, close your browser and go and watch it. It's okay, I'll wait. Or maybe I'll just skip to Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03222596744187012495noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1671874721213158763.post-58863523837294419652010-10-25T22:18:00.001+10:302010-10-25T23:16:04.618+10:30Best of the Best 4: Without Warning (1998)You should see him handle a wet towelIn the fourth and final film in the Best of the Best saga, Tommy Lee (writer/director/producer Phillip Rhee) once again takes center stage. It appears he's given up on the life of a wandering hero since the events of Best of the Best 3: No Turning Back, and in the intervening three years he has gotten married (not to Gina Gershnon), had a daughter, become a Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03222596744187012495noreply@blogger.com0