When it came time to do a sequel to First Blood, there was a thought that Rambo needed a partner.

Producers wanted John Travolta, but Stallone vetoed the idea. Lee Marvin (who almost played  Colonel Trautman in the first film) was offered the role of Marshall Murdock, but declined.

In fact, that sidekick character is in the first draft James Cameron wrote for this film. Stallone said of what he wrote, “In his original draft it took nearly 30-40 pages to have any action initiated and Rambo was partnered with a tech-y sidekick.”

What ended up on screen was very different.

“Rambo, John J., born 7/6/47 Bowie, Arizona of Indian-German descent. Joined army 8/6/64. Accepted, Special Forces specialization, light weapons, cross-trained as medic. Helicopter and language qualified, 59 confirmed kills, two Silver Stars, four Bronze, four Purple Hearts, Distinguished Service Cross, Medal of Honor.”

Yep — that’s our hero. Given that he kills 74 people in just two days in this film, he’s somehow more successful in Vietnam the second time. But we’ll get to that.

For now, it’s been three years and Rambo is paying for his actions in the original movie when he’s visited by Colonel Sam Trautman. Even though the Vietnam War is over, people remain convinced that POWs have been left behind. The government has authorized a solo mission to confirm if any are alive and Rambo is one of only three men suited for such a mission (who the other two are, I leave up to you, dear viewer, but if one of them isn’t Thunder, I don’t want to know about it).

Marshall Murdock (Charles Napier) is the suit in charge that tells Rambo that all he has to do is take hotos, not rescue anyone or engage the enemy. As Rambo drops into enemy territory, his parachute becomes tangled, leaving him with only a knife and a bow. He doesn’t need all those guns, trust me.

A young intelligence agent named Co-Bao (Julia Nickson) and some pirates take Rambo up river, where he saves an American POW who has been crucified and left to die. The Vietnamese troops attack and the pirates betray Rambo, so he kills everyone. Rambo’s extraction is cancelled, as Murdock says that Rambo has violated his orders and tells Trautman that he never intended for there to be any rescue — it would be too expensive and no one wants another war.

Rambo is turned over to teh Soviet troops who are training the Vietnamese, Lieutenant Colonel Podovsky and Sergeant Yushin. They demand that he read the US government a message to stay away from future missions. Instead, he warns Murdock that he’s coming for him. He escapes thanks to Co and they kiss, only for her to die seconds later. 

Rambo then becomes a slasher villain that we cheer for as he wipes out every single enemy one by one. He even steals a helicopter and uses it to destroy Murdock’s office before demanding that the rest of the POWs get recued. 

Trautman then confronts Rambo and tries to convince him to return home, but our protagonist angrily replies that he only wants his country to love its soldiers as much as its soldiers love it.

James Cameron claims that he only wrote the first draft of the script and that Sylvester Stallone made many changes to it. He claims that the star didn’t like that the sidekick got all the cool dialogue and scrapped most of the POWs backstories.

When the film was released, the political content of the movie was controversial, with many critics not ready to see any heroism in the Vietnam War. For his part, Cameron commented that he wrote the action and Stallone the politics.

That said — at the time of the making of this film, there were 2,500 soldiers missing in action, so you can see where the sentiments were coming from. There were even reports that Delta Force operatives were in training to try and find those prisoners.

Stallone explained the ending of the film quite passionately: “I think that James Cameron is a brilliant talent, but I thought the politics were important, such as a right-wing stance coming from Trautman and his nemesis, Murdock, contrasted by Rambo’s obvious neutrality, which I believe is explained in Rambo’s final speech. I realize his speech at the end may have caused millions of viewers to burst veins in their eyeballs by rolling them excessively, but the sentiment stated was conveyed to me by many veterans.”

This film was beloved by audiences worldwide just as much as it was savaged by critics. It won Worst Picture, Worst Actor, Worst Screenplay and Worst Song (“Peace In Our Time” by Frank Stallone) in the  Razzie Awards. It doesn’t matter — it started an entire genre of military revenge pictures.

Director George P. Cosmatos would go on to work with Stallone again on Cobra, as well as direct the films Leviathan and Tombstone. He was recommended for the film by Stallone’s son Sage, who liked his movie Of Unknown Origin.

This movie marks a true change from the way American audiences would view Vietnam and its veterans. It could have only been made in 1985, to be honest, and exists within that time to remind us of a completely different era.

A woman on the run from ruthless kidnappers discovers her rescuer is the man jailed for attacking her 15 years earlier. That’s the story behind director Juliane Block’s (Kinks, 8 Remains) new film, which is available on DVD and digital on August 6.

Emma wakes up to find herself trapped in an abandoned bunker along with two other victims — Ben and Jamie — and they’re all on the run from three brutal ex-solders. Faced with either staying in the bunker or running away with the man who assaulted her and his friend, she chooses the second option.

Why have they been kidnapped? Why are Ben and Jamie there? Who is the real enemy? Those questions — and more — will be answered. There are also several brutal moments in this film, including a spoken part where the soldiers discuss what the animals that they rely on for carnal pleasure. It’s incredibly disgusting and if I say that, just imagine what that could entail.

That said, the film didn’t hold my interest at all. I kept turning it up hoping that a louder volume would help keep my interest. No matter how loud it got, I kept tuning it out.

DISCLAIMER: We were sent this movie by its PR team, but that has no impact on our review.

This movie is based on the French graphic novel Du Plomb Dans La Tete, which was written by Matz and illustrated by Judge Dredd and Rogue Trooper artist Colin Wilson. Directed by Walter Hill, it was Stallone’s worst performing movie in 32 years. I avoided this movie for some time, but I ended up enjoying it.

New Orleans is the home to hitman Jimmy Bobo (Stallone), who brings his partner Louis Blanchard to kill a corrupt cop named Hank Greely (Holt McCallany, Mindhunter). For some reason, Jimmy leaves the prostitute in the room alive.

Not much later, Blanchard is killed by Keegan (Jason Momoa), a rival hitman. That’s when Detective Taylor Kwon (Han from The Fast and the Furious) comes to town looking for the killer of his partner. It turns out that there’s a conspiracy between Robert Nkomo Morel (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Killer Croc from Suicide Squad) and his lawyer Marcus Baptiste (Christian Slater) and a bunch of crooked cops.

Bobo and Kwon end up having to work together, and much like Tango & Cash, Stallone’s partner falls for a member of the family, this time Bono’s tattooist daughter Lisa.

I love Walter Hill’s films like Streets of Fire and The Warriors. This is not even in the same orbit as those films, but it’s not as bad as its been made out to be. There’s plenty of gunplay and mayhem, but if you’re going to go with a Stallone gunplay movie, I’d advise Cobra.

After a devastating family tragedy — my copy still doesn’t have the VFX done but I can assume it must have been pretty awful — Father Jones loses his faith and moves to China, as you do. A dying woman gives him a dragon tooth and soon, he learns that he can transform into a raptor. At first, he’s horrified by his newfound superpower, but a local prostitute convinces him to use his newfound gift to fight ninjas.

If you don’t want to watch this movie after that first paragraph, you may want to rethink coming to our site. This is a $35,000 epic begging for you to devour it.

When he comes back to America, he saves a prostitute named Carol (Alyssa Kempinski) from some muggers by tearing them apart. They make love, which goes against his vow of celibacy. And then, when her pimp confesses that he’s the one who killed our hero’s parents, well, all bets are off. The VelociPastor has a new mission from God and it involves killing lots of people, including a rogue sect of ninja Knights Templar.

I completely expected to hate this movie, seeing it as SyFy or Troma level dreck. To me surprise, it’s cunningly in on the joke and understands exactly the kind of movie that it is. Throw in an utterly bonkers overly edited lovemaking sequence and you have a movie I’ll be telling people about for the next few weeks.

The funniest part of the film — there are many — was when the church brings in an exorcist, played by animator/musician/toy designer/renaissance man Voltaire. Look — any movie where ninjas battle prostitutes and priests is going to be anything but boring. Pretty cool for a movie that came out of a trailer from 2011!

The VelociPastor is available on DVD and Digital August 13 on such platforms as iTunes, Comcast, Spectrum, Dish, Vudu, Amazon, Fandango and Sling. A blu ray release will follow on  September 17. Since its debut, it’s now streaming for free on plenty of platforms. If you want to know more, we also did a review with director Brendan Steere.

DISCLAIMER: We were sent a stream screener and DVD of this movie by its PR team, but that has no bearing on our review.

I thought I knew what bad movies were all about, but I never knew it could be like this. Rhinestone achieves a level of bad movie that even I didn’t know was possible. It’s as if it sets a bar and then continually trips over it, again and again, taking down the talents of Dolly Parton, Sylvester Stallone and Bob Clark in its wake, like an endlessly swirling toilet that has transformed into a black hole where no goodness can escape.

This is the kind of movie that Ed Wood and Claudio Fragrasso would make fun of. In the grand totality of bad movies, this might very well be the worst that I have ever endured. Just imagine that statement — I am someone that has sat through Troll 2 numerous times, has endured multiple Jess Franco movies in one night and has even made it through countless direct to video films that haunted the shelves of Blockbuster and West Coast Video.

How bad can it get? Real fucking bad.

Phil Alden Robinson made his screenwriting debut with this film and luckily, he didn’t quit, as he went on to write All of Me and Fletch before writing and directing Field of Dreams and Sneakers. He was so offended by Stallone’s rewrite that he briefly considered having his name removed from the film’s credits, but was convinced that it would look good on his resume.

Stallone had plenty to say about this film when he spoke to Ain’t It Cool News: “The most fun I ever had on a movie was with Dolly Parton on Rhinestone I must tell everyone right now that originally the director was supposed to be Mike Nichols, that was the intention and it was supposed to be shot in New York, down and dirty with Dolly and I with gutsy mannerisms performed like two antagonists brought together by fate. I wanted the music at that time to be written by people who would give it sort of a bizarre edge. Believe it or not, I contacted Whitesnake’s management and they were ready to write some very interesting songs alongside Dolly’s. But, I was asked to come down to Fox and out steps the director, Bob Clark. Bob is a nice guy, but the film went in a direction that literally shattered my internal corn meter into smithereens. I would have done many things differently. I certainly would’ve steered clear of comedy unless it was dark, Belgian chocolate dark. Silly comedy didn’t work for me. I mean, would anybody pay to see John Wayne in a whimsical farce? Not likely. I would stay more true to who I am and what the audience would prefer rather than trying to stretch out and waste a lot of time and people’s patience.”

Dolly plays Jake Farris, a country singer stuck in a long-term contract performing at The Rhinestone. She gets into an argument with the club’s manager Freddie (Ron Leibman, whose career is one of the highest highs — winning a Tony in 1993 for Angels In America and being in Norma Rae — to the lowest of the lows, being in movies like Michael Winner’s Won Ton Ton: The Dog Who Saved Hollywood and the abortive Mad Magazine film, Up the Academy), putting five more years of her contract and a night of sex on the line if she can’t turn a regular man off the street into a country star. That said, if she wins, she’s out of her contract.

Freddie gets to pick that man and grabs New York cabbie Nick Martinelli (Stallone), who has no talent and hates country. So she takes him home to Tennessee to teach him how to be country. They constantly argue, which is supposed to remind us of the sparkling dialogue of the 1940’s romantic comedies, but instead just reminds us how little chemistry two of the biggest stars of the 1970;s have with one another.

Tim Thomerson — yes, Jack Deth from Trancers — shows up as Jake’s ex-fiancee Barnett Kale. Richard Farnsworth, who was so magical in Misery and The Straight Story is forced to be in this movie possibly at gunpoint, playing Jake’s dad. Actually, I assume that this movie was some sort of SLA terrorist action where everyone had Stockholm Syndrome and had to make this movie and gradually fell into loving what they were doing.

How else can you explain Stallone turning down Beverly Hills Cop and Romancing the Stone to make this movie? They must have had his family, dog and the turtles from Rocky held at gunpoint.

In her autobiography My Life and Other Unfinished Business, Dolly said tha the soundtrack for Rhinestone is some of the best work that she has dever one. The song “What a Heartache” is a personal favorite of hers, as she’s re-recorded it twice, and the singles “God Won’t Get You” and “Tennessee Homesick Blues” topped the country charts.

That said — this movie also features Stallone singing “Drinkenstein.” I date you to make it through this little number with your sanity intact. Here is just a hint of the lyrics in this, well, song:

“Budweiser you created a monster and they call him Drinkenstein. And the tavern down the street is the labba-tor-eye-ee where he makes the transformation all the time!”

This really happened. This was really filmed. This actually exists.

Dolly also utters a line so mystifying that it had to have been written by an alien race: “Freddie, there are two kinds of people in this world, and you ain’t one of ’em!”

I have no idea how Bob Clark — the same director behind Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things, Black Christmas, A Christmas Story, Porky’s and Deathdream — was behind this movie. Relatedly, I can’t even comprehend how Dolly Parton — who I love enough to have seen live on multiple occasions and who has proven herself as an able comedy actress — and Sylvester Stallone — whose movies I’ve spent weeks of this site discussing — could all be pulled into such a nightmare.

I really can’t stop you from watching this movie. In fact, I’ll probably watch it again. If you come to my house, I may even suggest that we watch it together. But I’ve come to realize that I enjoy painful movies. This movie makes the worst regional drive-in movie look like the finest New Hollywood soul searing tearjerker. It makes Manos, The Hands of Fate look like a Frank Capra movie. From here on, when someone asks how bad a movie is, I will use this film as the measuring stick for just how bad it can get.

A group of terrorists led by Abdul (one of Iran’s most well-known actors, Behrouz Vossoughi, who also played Petko on TV’s Falcon Crest) kidnaps Margaret the First Daughter while she’s shopping on Rodeo Drive. She’ll only be released if the President — played by William Smith from Grave of the Vampire and Invasion of the Bee Girls — releases Abdul’s men who are by held by the Israeli’s as terrorists.

The President doesn’t negotiate with terrorists. Instead, he calls in the FBI, the LAPD and Stallone.

Frank Stallone.

Frank Stallone stops singing doo wop on the alleys of Philadelphia long enough to become Hack Stone, a former CIA operative who now runs a martial arts school. Back when he worked in the Middle East, he and Abdul were the best of friends. Sadly, they arrested four men and Hack wanted to take them to trial. Abdul wanted to kill them. Two escaped and killed Abdul’s wife and son, so now the two former best friends are archenemies.

The LAPD is led by Captain Stills, who is the magical Cameron Mitchell, snarling and dropping f bombs in every scene. He’s perfect in this movie, doing what he does best, making a movie that’s boring into something so strange that you can’t stop watching it.

This is a movie where terrorists decide to hold the President’s baby girl in an old bean factory. That’s right. That’s actually the plot. But hey — that poster is pretty great, right? Sometimes, if you can’t say anything nice, compliment the poster.

You can watch this on Tubi and Amazon Prime.

With only three days to prove his innocence, a struggling ex-soldier (Derek Davenport) is forced to take one last job and save his sister (Amelia Haberman, who was in not one, but two Krampus-themed films) or go to jail for a crime he did not commit.

This comes from writer/director Joseph Mbah, who was also behind Krampus Origins and the upcoming Battlefield 2025.

Richard (Davenport) is dealing with the memories of his military past while struggling to make ends meet as a Uber-style driver while also looking after his sister Sarah (Haberman). On a day that he’s running late to pick her up, a man named Chris (Richard Lippert) kidnaps a co-worker’s daughter and Richard gets blamed for the crime.

When Chris takes Sarah as well, that’s when this all gets even more personal. There’s also Detective Moro (Michael C. Alvarez), who thinks Richard had something to do with the crime.

I don’t know what the deal with the wound and bruise makeup was in this movie, but it’s so dark that it’s borderline distracting in parts. Also, the PR for this film compares it to Commando, which is a pretty high bar for it to reach. Amazingly, this movie ends with a total science fiction twist that seems to set up for a sequel, then hits you with over ten minutes of credits that pad its hour-ish run time to eighty-five minutes.

Expo is available on digital on demand from Green Apple Entertainment.

DISCLAIMER: We were sent this movie by its PR team, but that has no impact on our review.

This movie didn’t start out being about rock climbing.

Carolco Pictures had originally signed Sylvester Stallone to appear opposite John Candy — of all people — in Bartholomew Vs. Neffa, a John Hughes written and directed comedy about feuding neighbors. That movie was dropped, but Stallone stayed on for two more projects.

Isobara: Written by Jim Uhis (who adapted Fight Club and also wrote Jumper), this movie was about a genetically created monster set loose on a high-speed runaway train. Stallone and Kim Basinger were set to star with either Ridley Scott or Roland Emmerich directing. However, artistic disagreements between Carolco and producer Joel Silver caused this movie to get canceled.

Gale Force: Described as “Die Hard in a hurricane,” Renny Harlin was set to direct Stallone in a film where he’d play an ex-Navy SEAL battling modern pirates in the midst of a large scale hurricane. It went through numerous re-writes over several years of development. In fact, they even brought Joe Eszterhas in for a rewrite and spent $500,000 on him turning the movie into an erotic thriller, which isn’t what anyone wanted. The budget spiraled out of control and the film was canceled two weeks before production was to begin, but Harlin kept his pay or play deal worth $3 million.

Somehow, Carolco then decided to spend double of Gale Force‘s budget on Cliffhanger and brought Harlin back to direct it.

Due to Carolco’s debt issues. half of the film’s budget was paid for by TriStar Pictures in exchange for complete distribution rights in North America, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, and France. Rizzoli-Corriere della Sera, Le Studio Canal+, and Pioneer Electric Corporation also helped finance the film, which meant that even when it was successful, Carolco saw nearly none of the money. Trivia note: This is the last movie to show the Tri-Star Pictures logo.

Honestly, between Gale Force, Cliffhanger and Cutthtroat Island, Renny Harlin pretty much decimated Carolco. I’m shocked people didn’t try to have him killed.

Mountain rangers Gabriel “Gabe” Walker (Stallone) and Jessie Deighan (Janine Turner, Northern Exposure) race to save their fellow ranger Hal Tucker (Michael Rooker) when his knee gives out and he’s trapped in the Colorado Rockies with his girlfriend Sarah (Michelle Joyner, Outbreak). Despite their best efforts, her harness breaks and her hand slips from her glove as Gabe tries to rescue her. Hal blames him for her death and he leaves for nearly a year.

Gabe returns to gather his remaining possessions and try to talk Jessie into leaving with him. A distress call from a group of stranded climbers comes in, so Hal and Jessie go to help, persuading Gabe to come with them. Hal remains angry and even threatens Gabe’s life at one point, but they soon learn that the distress call was a fake.

It turns out that U.S. Treasury agent Richard Travers (Rex Linn, CSI Miami) stole three suitcases full of uncirculated bills valuing over $100 million. However, their plane has crashed and now he and a gang of criminals — led by John Lithgow as an ex-military intelligence operative — plan on using the rangers to locate the missing money. Lithgow took over for Christopher Walken, who left the production a few days before shooting started. Harlin’s first choice for the role? Davdi Bowie.

Stallone would later say of the film, “The director’s cut was met with a lot of disapproval at the screening and received some alarmingly low scores. Mainly because the stunts were absurdly overblown. For example, the average man can jump maybe twelve feet across a gorge, and the stunts had me leaping maybe three hundred feet or more, so situations like that had to be pared down and still then were fairly extreme… so you’re probably better off with this cut. By the way, the 2nd unit crew that filmed the majority of the action was extraordinary.”

One of the recuts involved the scene where the rabbit gets shot at. Audiences hated seeing the rabbit die so much that Stallone spent $100,000 of his own money for a reshoot.

There’s also the issue of the Piton gun, which fires pitons directly into rock. Usually, in reality, climbing requires rock-drilling and piton-hammering. If the Piton gun were real, there would be shattered rock and shrapnel with each shot. But hey — when you’re hanging off a mountain and making a movie, why worry about those kinds of things?

That said — this is a surprisingly violent movie, as one scene where a henchman attacks Hal is incredibly bloody. Not a lot of people discuss this movie, but it holds up pretty well more than a quarter century after its initial release.

The film is still in the Guinness Book of World Records for the costliest aerial stunt ever performed, a stunt in which Simon Crane jumps between two planes at 15,000 feet with no trick photography. Obviously, in the pre-CGI days, you did stunts like that. The insurance company refused to insure this stunt, so Stallone — man, he was just giving away what I make in five years to get this made — reduced his fee for the movie by the final cost of this stunt.

TriStar Pictures planned to make a sequel called Cliffhanger 2: The Dam, which would have had Gabe defend the Hoover Dam against terrorists. This project almost made it to the screen in 1994 and 2008 before StudioCanal would make a remake of the film. That project was in development for nearly a decade before a female-centric reboot was announced in 2019 that will be written by Sascha Penn (Creed 2) and directed by Ana Lily Amirpour (A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night).