I may have never seen The Wedding Pact or, let’s face it, any Hillary Duff movies before, as she was born in the time when teen entertainment was too young for me. But what you may not know is that I have a hidden love for romcoms and when the sequel to a movie I never saw before crossed my way, I totally watched it.

Back in 2014 — or a few months in the timeline of this movie — Elizabeth (Duff) and Mitch finally got married after a wedding pact that started back in college. This movie decides to take that cute story and inject utter despair, as Elizabeth is pregnant and her husband is now dead. She’s moved away to live with her sister and is trying to get her life started again when her mother-in-law Donna (Leslie Easterbrook from Police Academy!) serves her with papers, asking for custody of a baby that hasn’t even been born yet.

Luckily, Kevin Pyle (Connor Trinneer) is a lawyer who overhears her problems at a coffee shop — this movie has more coffee being ordered than a Starbucks on the first day of pumpkin spice latte season — and realizes that his sister Robin (Gail O’Grady, Criminal Minds) is the one behind the lawsuit. He always tries to help people, so he decides that he’ll handle Elizabeth’s case for $2 an hour.

Richard Riehle shows up and man, that dude is always great. I kind of liked the turn by Elizabeth’s ex Jake (Scott Michael Campbell) too. The movie moves pretty quickly and hey, any film that has a judge that has a puppet dog and no one complains, well, I kind of like strange quirks that just randomly appear.

This film was directed and written by Matt Berman, who also made the first movie, as well as Big Wind On Campus (Kevin P. Fairley, who plays the judge in this, was in that movie), Hollywood and Wine (which was co-directed and written by Fairley), Model Citizen (which also had Fairley, Campbell and Bob Bancroft, who show up in this), Killer Defense and Manipulated (which has a dream cast: Traci Lords, Michael Paré, Greg Evigan, John de Lancie and Judy Landers).

I’ll get back to the weird stuff the site is known for soon enough. But if you also like romantic films and a good cry, well, here it is.

The Wedding Pact 2: The Baby Pact is now available on major streaming and cable platforms from Freestyle Digital Media, including iTunes, Amazon Prime Video, DirecTV, Dish, iNDEMAND, Vudu and FandangoNOW. You can learn more on the official website.

Jack Dameron (Richard Norton, Rage and Honor) was raised by Mr. Fung (Joe Mari Avellana) after his family was gunned down. Seeing as how Fung was business partners with his father, he feels bound by honor to raise Jack along with his son Chiang.

Fast forward and Jack is getting promoted to chairman of his adopted father’s company — Chiang (Franco Guerrero) is into some dark stuff — and his wife Sarah (Karen Moncrieff) is going to be a trial attorney in Thailand despite being a gaijin.

To get back at Jack, Chiang sets him up for the murder of Noi (Tetchie Agbayani), a woman who Jack maybe got drunk and slept with at a trade show. He has his Jamaican henchman I-Ron (Chuck Jeffreys) force her to call Jack, who rushes over just in time to find her stabbed, and then the police arrive just in time for them to find her blood all over Jack.

Chiang is now in charge and Jack has to rely on his wife as his lawyer, but he also has to tell her that he cheated on her. And now she’s pregnant, too? Oh man.

If direct to video martial arts movies have taught me anything, complex legal matters and relationship issues are best solved with kicking someone really hard.

Director Anthony Maharaj also made Return of the Kickfighter, Innocent Adultery, The Fighter and Secrets of the Shell which promises to be about “Seduction, Betrayal, Obsession – Erupt to the Rhythms of an Exotic Caribbean Island.”

Writer Tom Huckabee produced and wrote Taking Tiger Mountain as well as being involved with writing four episodes of the Ghostbreakers series.

Paul (Paul Johansson) is in trouble. He accidentally filmed Officer Garland (Maxwell Caulfield) beating a suspect to death, so now that evil policeman wants to get the tape and take out the cameraman. Paul screws up by bringing his girlfriend Katy (Karen Moncrieff) into all this danger but things go from bad to worse when redneck maniac Lance (Jan-Michael Vincent) and his equally messed up girlfriend Devon (Kelli Maroney) kidnap them Kalifornia-style.

Director and writer Peter Foldy does fine with this except for when Lance and Devon completely disappear and you miss them, because they’re the best part of this movie.

Unless you love direct to video action movies — well, this is not really all that filled with action, but that’s the closest it gets — or want to see Maxwell Caulfield in a cop uniform and I know who you are, you can skip this.

Or you can watch it on Tubi.

Joe Highhawk has the most 1992 name ever as well as the most direct to video career path: he’s a cop who is also a kickboxer. He’s played by John Newton, who was Superboy on the syndicated series. But then his rage takes things past the limit and he kills a man in the ring. He quits his big city job, he leaves behind kicking people to death and heads out into the desert of his youth, where he lives in his grandfather’s trailer on a reservation and serves as a deputy to Sheriff Larry (Biff Manard).

Meanwhile, an accountant named Claudia Valenti (Judie Aronson, American Ninja) notices that the books of her horse breeder client Carl Schultz (Paul Smith!) are off. One of the trainers helps her and her little brother Anthony (Sam DeFrancisco) get away. Also, she now has $20 million into a secret account, which enrages her boss, who is really a drug dealer named Santos.

Of course Joe helps them. Of course they hook up. Of course Santos and his men break that up, take Claudia and leave Joe for dead. But then we get what makes this movie so unique, as not only do Santos and his gang kill the little brother, but Joe has a phoenix — or hawk? — rise from near-death set to a montage as shirtless Joe comes back alive in the desert. Joe returns to decimate henchman Bruno (Michael M. Foley) and Santos pays. And by pays, I mean he gets kicked directly in the dick.

Director and writer Isaac Florentine would go on to make Undisputed 2, Ninja and work on the WMAC Masters show, just like nearly everyone that was involved in 90s non-Asian martial arts direct to video movies.

The tagline is “Navajo… Warrior… Kickboxer. Cross the line of his law and you’ll live… to regret it.” It’s also a movie where a white guy plays a Native American and the Navajo are said to do the Ghost Dance and yet they never did it.

Jake (Ed Gonzalez Moreno) is a videographer who has found all of his dreams coming true on the other side of a portal to another dimension. The perfect job, the wife of his dreams, a daughter that he never had in our world. Yet as they say, the grass is greener on the other side and Jake soon learns that perfection isn’t all it’s claimed to be.

Directed and written by Alrik Bursell, The Alternate answers a question I’ve always asked: is it cheating if you sleep with your wife from an alternate reality?

As the film progresses, we meet multiple versions of Jake and his wife Kris (Natalia Dominguez), who is overworked and wishes Jake would stop being so immature in our reality yet loving and supportive in her mirror universe version.

The truth of the movie lies in the question of whether you’re truly happy with what you have and the steps you need to make to find it. Even in another world, you remain yourself and so often, our problems are caused by our own emotions and behavior.

While the budget is low and the effects not the best you’ve seen, this movie realizes that it can be different by having an intriguing story and pushes itself to be quite unique.

The Alternate is available on digital and DVD.

A sequel to the 2017 film The Wicked One, this movie has Adam and Alex Lawson returning to Carpenter Falls for one more night battling Colin Miller, also known as The Wicked One, a serial killer who has haunted them for a decade.

Adam and Alex are driving their son Daniel to his band’s gig in Carpenter Falls — I don’t know what’s worse, going back to a place where you were almost killed or having parents drive you around to band gigs — along with daughters Kendall and Jenna. Meanwhile, Miller has gotten into the heads of two other teenagers — Myles and Madeline — whose parents survived the murders only to be killed by their kids. If you start getting The Strangers vibes that may not be unintentional.

As far as direct-to-streaming slashers go, The Wicked Ones isn’t bad. It doesn’t break any new ground, but then I often think that we watch slashers because they provide us with familiar comfort. It does have a scene where a guy plays with himself in a cemetery before getting killed, so there’s that.

Wicked Ones is now available on VOD and will be released on blu ray in November from Wild Eye Releasing. You can also watch The Wicked One on Tubi.

Amazingly, this movie is not a drug reference, but instead is all about Arthur Flegenheimer (Bruce Nozick) who is recruited by “Legs” Diamond (Will Kempe) and becomes his right hand man under the name Dutch Schultz.

We’ve seen it before, but have we seen it from Menahem Golan in the director’s seat and have we seen it shot in Russia instead of New York City?

No, we have not.

Golan instead this as a trilogy covering the most important gangsters of the era and only one other movie was made, 1993’s Killer Instincts AKA Mad Dog Coll.

Menahem also steps in front of the camera to play a role named Hymie Weinstock. Other than Sally Kellerman, he may be the most recognizable person in this. I really wanted to love it, but it’s pretty unfocused and even though the fight between Thomas Dooley and Schultz is covered, this doesn’t get as intense as the other gangster movies of the early 90s that it was certainly cashing in on like Goodfellas and Bugsy.