Tubi is the mom and pop video store of streaming — even if it’s owned by Fox, a fact I don’t like to dwell on all that much — and the movies that it promotes as its originals really prove that. A starring vehicle for former WWE Diva Natalie Eva Marie Nelson — she was already in the movies Inconceivable, Action #1 and Hard Kill, as well as appearing on Celebrity Big Brother — this is the kind of action vehicle that often was created for star athletes in the 80s and 90s like Brian Bosworth (Stone Cold), Howie Long (Firestorm) and, yes, Hulk Hogan (Suburban Commando, No Holds Barred).

Nelson plays Fiona “Phoenix” Grant, an army hand-to-hand combat instructor who leaves the military behind after the death of her mercenary father, Everett (Randy Couture, the former U.S. Army sergeant who became a six-time UFC Champion and the first to hold titles in two different weight divisions). The cops say that he killed himself, but thanks to intel from her former commanding officer General Shackleton (Neal McDonough), she learns that his suicide was set up by a Russian crime family led by Maxim Vasiliiv (Oleg Prudius, who would be better known to WWE fans as Vladimir Kozlov). Maxim and Everett had been battling for years and their final face-off was to be hand-to-hand until a henchman shot the hero in the back of the head.

Now, Phoenix is working her way through the Vasiliiv’s family’s goons, one-by-one. She even goes to lunch with Maxim in a restaurant surrounded by his thugs. There’s also a flashback to when Phoenix lost her mother due to the lifestyle her father lived and a shopping trip with her Aunt Grace (Jessie Camacho, a former police officer and Survivor contestant who played Chupi Chupi on Reno 911!).

Phoenix is packed with tough guys, including Joseph Aviel (who once was Arnold Schwarzenegger’s stunt double), Jonathan Camp, Arnold Chon (a stuntman and MMA fighter), Frank Mir (former two-time UFC Heavyweight Champion, he also has the record for the most finishes and submission victories in UFC Heavyweight history), Rashad Evans (heavyweight winner of The Ultimate Fighter 2, former UFC Light Heavyweight Champion and a 2019 inductee of the UFC Hall of Fame), Phillip Tan (stuntman and trainer for stars like Christopher Lambert) and former Scores bouncer and former New York Hell’s Angels president Chuck Zito, who was also a bodyguard for Lorna Luft, Liza Minelli, Muhammad Ali, Charles Bronson, Michael Jackson, Sean Penn, Chita Rivera, Eric Roberts, Mickey Rourke, Charlie Sheen, Sylvester Stallone and Elizabeth Taylor. He also famously knocked out Jean-Claude Van Damme, standing over him and yelling, “This ain’t the movies! This is the street, and I own the street!” He’s been acting since the 80s, showing up all the way back in 1990: The Bronx Warriors as one of the real bikers that Enzo G. Castellari hired for his post-apocalyptic masterwork.

And hey — Bai Ling is in this as a character named Scavenger, complete with neon makeup that makes her lips look enormous. Man, I love Bai Ling. Keep being in weird parts and showing up unexpectantly!

Director and writer Daniel Zirilli is best known for his action films like Renegades and Invincible, as well as directing videos for Montell Jordan and Scarface, as well as the clip for the song “Short Dick Man” by 20 Fingers featuring Gillette.

Eva Marie has some weird line deliveries in this, but I assume that a lot of the takes were one and done. In truth, this movie isn’t about her talking — or screaming in a shrill blast of a voice as she decimates a room in anger — as it is about her kicking ass. I can report that she does absolutely fine with that.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Directed by Ari Novak (Cowboys vs. Dinosaurs, PawParazzi, Assassin’s Vow), who co-wrote the script with Rib Hillis (Extreme Makeover: Home Edition; he also appears in this movie as Jackson Hardison), Kill Shot starts with a suitcase full of cash being stolen by Dina Diablo (Mara Ohara) and Maximus (Bobby Maximus) before the plane carrying it crashes in the Canadian wilderness. Oh yeah — Novak is also in this movie as Alpha ONE.

Kate (Rachel Cook) is just trying to scatter her dad’s ashes and shoot an elk with her hunting guide Jackson, a former Navy SEAL. They find the briefcase — and the $100 million inside — and become the target of Diablo, Maximus and their henchmen.

This was filmed as Hunted back in 2020. Shot in Montana, it has plenty of great locations. What’s really wild about it is for a movie shot today how much it objectifies its lead actress. Beyond scenes where she appears runway-ready despite being deluged in a river, she starts the credits topless with a gun and later runs through the woods in a torn-up flannel and black panties, which doesn’t really seem like the tactical gear one needs to battle a crew of deadly mercenaries. I was stunned a few times, thinking that this had to be a parody and no, not at all, they really filmed this.

Other than that, Kill Shot offers guns ablaze in Big Sky country. I always worry that the action movie industry has gone away — and by that, I mean the direct-to-video one of my teenage years. As long as movies like Kill Shot keep getting made, I know that the guns and fist stories of my youth live on.

You can get KIll Shot from Well Go USA.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Nothing gives me greater joy than when our site gets mentioned on my favorite podcast, The Cannon Canon. There are a few movies they’ve covered that I haven’t, so it’s time to fix that.

Prince wanted to cast Vanity, leader of the girl group Vanity 6, in Purple Rain, but she left the group before filming began. Instead, she was signed by Barry Gordy to a four-movie contract.

She would be joined by Taimak, a martial artist who had never acted before. He’d studied under “The Black Dragon” Ron Van Clief, who choreographed the scenes where Taimak’s character Larry Green battles Sho’nuff The Shogun of Harlem during a showing of Enter the Dragon. Julius Carry, who had never done martial arts before, learned them as Taimak learned how to be in a movie.

The theater that they fight in was The Victory Theater on 42nd Street, owned by Martin Levine and Richard Brandt. It was the first theater on 42nd Street to show hardcore pornography. It’s a real theater now and lost to the clean-up of Times Square.

Leroy Green becomes Bruce Leeroy and must work on the ability to make his entire body glow with martial arts majesty. If he can find the other master who has the second part of a Bruce Lee medal, maybe he can find that power. He’s challenged by Sho’nuff and his men Crunch, Beast and Cyclone as well as arcade owner Eddie Arkadian (Christopher Murney) and his soldier Rock. They’ve kidnapped Laura Charles (Vanity) and won’t release her until she plays his girlfriend Angela Viracco (Faith Prince) on her video show.

Sho’nuff already has the glow and Leroy has to find his. He also has to learn how to catch bullets, but that seems a little bit easier.

Thanks to the DeBarge video for “Rhythm of the Night” that movie had a lot of people talking about it back in 1985. Gordy used all of his Motown artists to get people talking about it. The Last Dragon was directed by Michael Schultz, who also was behind Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band, Car Wash, Scavenger Hunt, Krush Groove and the Fat Boys video for “All You Can Eat.” Oh man! Also the TV movies Timestalkers, The Spirit comic book adaption and Disorderlies. It was written by Louis Venostra, who also wrote Bird On a Wire.

It’s also an early Ernie Reyes Jr. movie.

You can listen to The Cannon Canon episode of The Last Dragon here.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Nothing gives me greater joy than when our site gets mentioned on my favorite podcast, The Cannon Canon. There are a few movies they’ve covered that I haven’t, so it’s time to fix that.

Enemy Territory isn’t available on DVD even and to find it, you have to look on YouTube. And you know, I think it’s worth tracking down. It’s such a strange film, directed by Peter Manoogian. He also made parts of The Dungeonmaster, Demonic Toys, The Eliminators and Arena, which I would say is a pretty great run of films. It was written by Stuart Kaminsky and Bobby Lindell, who don’t have all that many credits.

It’s the kind of movie that John Carpenter really likes to make, you know, a siege of a building or a film about escaping one of those places whole being surrounded by superior forces. Or even Roberta Findlay, who made Tenement or Maura O’Connell and Paul Donovan’s Canadian urban invasion movie Siege. Or Walter Hill’s Trespass or the Stephen Hopkins movie Judgement Night.

Barry Rapchick (Gary Frank, who mainly has worked in TV) was once a successful insurance execution, but now he’s more interested in drinking. To save what’s left of his career, he has to go to Lincoln Towers, perhaps the most frightening place in New York City, to complete the life insurance policy of Elva (Frances Foster). At the same time, Will Jackson (Ray Parker Jr.) comes to repair the phone lines and see his girlfriend.

Barry doesn’t understand the many rules that comes with living in Lincoln Towers, like how the Vampires see it as their castle. They’re a cult, more than a gang, led by the Count (an absolutely deranged Tony Todd who as always is the best thing in this movie), who mark Barry for death just for touching one of their young members, Decon (Theo Caesar).

As they try and stop him from leaving, the building’s security guard and Decon are both killed. He’s soon trapped in Elva’s apartment along with Will as his reluctant partner, as he wants to get out just as bad. Elva sends them to find her granddaughter Toni (Stacey Dash) and they all go to find Mr. Parker (Jan-Michael Vincent), who is pretty much the only person the Vampires fear. He’s a disabled Vietnam vet who hates just about every race and who has armed himself with an arsenal including a weapon-launching wheelchair.

The Vampires have taken Elva and Toni and want to exchange them for Barry, but Mr. Parker goes wild, shooting everyone he can before taking one to the chest and dying himself. The trio of Barry, Will and Toni learn that a young kid named Chet Cole (Deon Richmond) knows of a way out that no one else does. The little guy sneaks out of bed and takes them there. You may wonder if a kid being in danger is too much. Well, that kid has a baseball bat that he uses to knock one of the Vampires, Psycho (Robert Lee Rush), down an elevator shaft.

Can they make it the rest of the way out? Is the Count unkillable? Will the cops come even after refusing to get near a place where so many of their number have been killed?

Enemy Territory has the budget of a TV movie, but has a great idea that getting rid of the money that is weighing you down is the only thing that can save your life. Ernest Dickerson replaced the other DP when he was let go and as always he knows how to get so much out of so little. He shot this the same year he did Eddie Murphy Raw and would go on to direct some great movies of his own like Juice, Surviving the Game (another movie I need to see), Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight and Bones.

It also has Ray Parker Jr. not singing the theme but in the movie. He’s also in Disorderlies and seeing as how I’ve written about that movie twice today, I should probably get to that soon.

Tony Todd is the heart of this movie. I could say that for nearly everything he’s done, but he takes this from a simple trapped in a building movie to outright audacity. He deserves all the credit he gets.

You can listen to The Cannon Canon episode of Enemy Territory here.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Nothing gives me greater joy than when our site gets mentioned on my favorite podcast, The Cannon Canon. There are a few movies they’ve covered that I haven’t, so it’s time to fix that.

“Truthfully, the way to go about doing a part 3, if you’re ever in that position, as I’m lucky enough to be, is to find a way that the first two weren’t done yet. You have to find a way to make sure that the story that’s emerging is still ongoing and, by the time you’ve finished 3, will be something resembling the culmination of a trilogy. It’s about, “How has the story not yet been completely told?,” and I think we’re getting there. I think we’ve really found ways to make this feel organic and new, based on what’s come before, and that’s what I’m happy about.”

Shane Black directing and co-writing (with Drew Pearce) a Marvel sequel.

Yes, it happened.

But it had to.

There were some big issues coming into this film.

First, issues between Paramount Pictures, which had distribution rights to certain Marvel properties and man, don’t get me started, and Disney, who just bought Marvel, made the release and distribution of the third Iron Man already a mess. So Disney agreed to pay Paramount $115 million to distribute the movie, giving it a big budget before anything was even started.

Then the director of the first two movies, Jon Favreau, decided not to direct it.

Star Robert Downey, who was in Black’s Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, called him in and remarked, “Bringing in Shane Black to write and direct Iron Man 3 to me is basically the only transition from Favreau to a “next thing” that Favreau and the audience and Marvel and I could ever actually sign off on.”

Black didn’t want two guys in metal suits fighting each other and also wanted it set in the real world. He was inspired by the Warren Ellis “Extremis” storyline in the comic books. Tony Stark would go on a journey where he might not even know who the villain really was. And because it was a Shane Black movie, it would be set at Christmas. I don’t even have to share the quote from Black. You probably know how he feels about the holiday.

1999: Tony Stark (Downey) meets scientist Maya Hansen (Rebecca Hall), the inventor of Extremis. This regenerative treatment allows people to heal from injuries that would before ruin lives. Disabled scientist Aldrich Killian (Guy Pierce) wants them to work for his organization Advanced Idea Mechanics, but Stark rejects him.

2012: Tony Stark is suffering from PTSD after surviving the alien invasion of New York City in The Avengers. He keeps building new Iron Man suits and remains distant from his girlfriend Pepper (Gwyneth Paltrow). This makes sense, because it seems like Tony has conquered so many challenges. Now, he has to fix himself.

A series of bombings — Stark’s friend Happy (Favreau) is injured in one — set him off and he challenges the man behind them, the Mandarin, to attack him, giving away his home address. Pepper and Hansen barely survive and after flying away in a new Iron Man armor, Stark is believed dead.

Crash landing in Tennessee and helped by a young boy, Stark rebuilds his armor and learns that the attacks are the work of Extensis-powered soldiers who are part of a conspiracy to take over the U.S. government and even co-opt the armor of his friends James Rhodes (Don Cheadle), now the Iron Patriot.

The genius of the film is that the man everyone thinks is the Mandarin is really an actor named Travis Slattery, playing a role created for him. Of course, everyone who watches Marvel movies knows now that the Mandarin really exists. But it was a major reveal in this movie. The real villain is Killian (it was once going to be Hansen, but Marvel didn’t want a female villain to ruin their merchandising, I am not making that up out of thin air).

Stark must now save Pepper, protect President Matthew Ellis (William Sadler) and stop Vice President Rodriguez (Miguel Ferrer) from becoming Killian’s paid for leader, with the price being him healing his daughter.

This movie ends with every Iron Man suit being used in battle and then destroyed, but we all know that Iron Man would have to return. But if this is where the series ended, this would be the right place. People seem to get superhero fatigue, but that’s silly to me. Maybe because if you grew up reading comics, you were getting several movies a week. You didn’t have to wait years in between them. Maybe you did for bigger stories, but there was always a new Iron Man or Wolverine story. At one point, it never got old.

It feels like Marvel brings directors in now and hammers out their individuality. Instead, they should be looking to creatives like Black, who made Tony Stark a near James Bond who didn’t even need his armor to be a hero. He was going to end this by saying, “I am Tony Stark.” But man, “I am Iron Man” sounds so much cooler, right?

You can listen to The Cannon Canon episode of Iron Man 3 here.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Thanks to Matthew Hale on Letterboxd, I’ve learned that there are alternate versions of this Mill Creek box set. For the sake of completeness and my obsessive compulsive disorder, here’s this missing movie.

A monkey. A girl who can talk to bugs. Donald Pleasence. All directed by Dario Argento. If you don’t immediately say to yourself, “I’m in,” you’re reading the wrong web site.

Within the first two minutes of the movie, you realize you’re watching an Argento film. A tourist misses her bus, somewhere in the Swiss countryside, before she is attacked by an unseen person and then beheaded.

Fast forward a bit and we catch Jennifer (Jennifer Connelly, Labyrinth, The Rocketeer) arriving at the Richard Wagner Academy for Girls — did I tell you this is an Argento movie? The head of the school, Frau Brückner (Dario Nicolodi, Argento’s wife (at the time) and mother to his daughter Aria, who also co-wrote Suspiria and appeared in Deep Red, Inferno, Tenebre and Opera amongst other films) already sets up an air of menace. Even her roommate offers no relief, telling Jennifer how much she wishes she could have sex with the heroine’s famous actor father. At this point, Jennifer relates a horrifying story about how her mother left her — it’s a moment of pure pain in a film that hasn’t led you to expect it. That’s because it’s a true story. The true story of how Dario Argento’s mother left his family.

Jennifer tends to sleepwalk, which leads her through the school and up to the roof, where she watches a student get murdered. She wakes up, falls and runs from the murderer, ending up in the woods where she’s rescued by Inga the chimp — again, did I mention this is an Argento film? Inga works for forensic entomologist John McGregor (Pleasence). Argento was inspired by the fact that insects are often used in crime investigation to learn how old a body is and worked that into this film. McGregor learns that Jennifer can talk to the bugs.

After returning to the school, things go from bad to worse. Jennifer’s roommate is murdered and a firefly leads our sleepwalking protagonist to a glove covered by Great Sarcophagus flies, which eat decaying human flesh, which can only mean that the killer is keeping his bodies — again, Argento.

At this point, Phenomena pays tribute to Carrie, with the other students making fun of her in regard to her love of bugs. She calls a swarm of flies into the building and collapses, which leads to Frau Brückner recommending her to a home for the criminally insane. Luckily, Jennifer runs to McGregor, who gives her a bug in a glass case that she can use to track the murderer. Again, you know who. The bug leads Jennifer to the same house we saw at the beginning of the film.

Meanwhile, McGregor is killed after Inga is locked outside. True fact: the chimpanzee who played Inga, Tanga, sounds like she was uncontrollable. She ran away for an entire evening of the shoot and later, nearly bit off one of Jennifer Connelly’s fingers.

Let me see if I can sum up the craziness that ensues: Jennifer calls her father’s lawyer for help, who ends up bringing Frau Brückner back into this mess, who tries to poison Jennifer and then knocks her out with a piece of wood,. She then KOs a cop before Jennifer escapes, going through a dungeon and a basement until she falls into a pool that is packed with maggot-ridden corpses. This is the point in the film where you may want to stop eating because it gets rather intense from here on out. As Jennifer escapes that watery tomb, she hears someone crying. That someone is Frau’s son, who was born from rape. Jennifer asks him why she thinks he’s a monster, to which he turns to face her and scares the fucking shit out of her. Seriously, it’s jolting — the kid has Patau Syndrome, a real chromosomal abnormality (it’s makeup in the film, but looks quite true to life). He then chases Jennifer into a motorboat, but at the last second, she calls a swarm of flies to attack him. He falls into the water and the boat explodes and he dies and…whew.

I know this film is 32 years old, but I’m going to put in some spoiler space here because what happens next is crazy.

Jennifer reaches the shore just as her father’s lawyer arrives. All well, all good and then, out of nowhere, Frau cuts the dude’s head clean off. Plus, she’s already killed the cop and she goes absolutely shithouse.

“He was diseased, but he was my son! And you have… Why didn’t I kill you before? I killed that no-good inspector and your professor friend, to protect him! And now… I’m gonna KILL YOU TO AVENGE HIM! Why don’t you call your INSECTS! GO ON! CALL! CALL!”

At this point, Inga the chimpanzee comes out of nowhere and kills Frau dead with a razor. Keep in mind, this is not just one cut. This is a simian that knows how to get murder business done.

Jennifer and Inga hug. Roll the credits.

Phenomena was the last Argento movie to get major distribution in the U.S., thanks (or no thanks) to New Line Cinema, which played it here as Creepers. This version is 33 minutes shorter than the original and has so many scenes so shuffled, it makes little or no sense. Also, unlike other Argento films, Goblin only have two songs in this, as modern bands like Iron Maiden and Motörhead are featured.

I love this movie. It makes little to no sense at numerous times, but you don’t walk into an Italian horror film expecting narrative structure. You hope to see some crazy gore, some interesting death scenes and maggots — all things that this film more than delivers. I’m not the only fan of this flick — the Japanese video game Clock Tower is an homage to this film, even featuring a heroine named Jennifer.

BONUS: We did a podcast all about this movie and you can hear it here:

EDITOR’S NOTE: Cinematic Void will be playing this movie on Thursday, Jan. 16 at 9:00 PM at The Plaza Theater in Atlanta, GA (tickets here) and January 25 at midnight at The Belcourt in Nashville, TN (tickets here). For more information, visit Cinematic Void.

A monkey. A girl who can talk to bugs. Donald Pleasence. All directed by Dario Argento. If you don’t immediately say to yourself, “I’m in,” you’re reading the wrong website.

Within the movie’s first two minutes, you realize you’re watching an Argento film. A tourist misses her bus somewhere in the Swiss countryside before she is attacked by an unseen person and then beheaded.

Fast forward a bit, and we catch Jennifer (Jennifer Connelly, Labyrinth, The Rocketeer) arriving at the Richard Wagner Academy for Girls — did I tell you this is an Argento movie? The head of the school, Frau Brückner (Dario Nicolodi, Argento’s wife (at the time) and mother to his daughter Aria, who also co-wrote Suspiria and appeared in Deep Red, Inferno, Tenebre and Opera, amongst other films), already sets up an air of menace. Even her roommate offers no relief, telling Jennifer how much she wishes she could have sex with the heroine’s famous actor father. At this point, Jennifer relates a horrifying story about how her mother left her — it’s a moment of pure pain in a film that hasn’t led you to expect it. That’s because it’s a true story. The true story of how Dario Argento’s mother left his family.

Jennifer tends to sleepwalk, which leads her through the school and up to the roof, where she watches a student get murdered. She wakes up, falls and runs from the murderer, ending up in the woods where she’s rescued by Inga the chimp — again, did I mention this is an Argento film? Inga works for forensic entomologist John McGregor (Pleasence). Argento was inspired by the fact that insects are often used in crime investigations to learn how old a body is and worked that into this film. McGregor knows that Jennifer can talk to the bugs.

After returning to the school, things go from bad to worse. Jennifer’s roommate is murdered, and a firefly leads our sleepwalking protagonist to a glove covered by Great Sarcophagus flies, which eat decaying human flesh, which can only mean that the killer is keeping his body — again, Argento.

At this point, Phenomena pays tribute to Carrie, with the other students making fun of her regarding her love of bugs. She calls a swarm of flies into the building, and it collapses, which leads to Frau Brückner recommending her to a home for the criminally insane. Luckily, Jennifer runs to McGregor, who gives her a bug in a glass case that she can use to track the murderer. Again, you know who. The bug leads Jennifer to the same house we saw at the film’s beginning.

Meanwhile, McGregor is killed after Inga is locked outside. True fact: the chimpanzee who played Inga, Tanga, sounds like she was uncontrollable. She ran away for an entire evening of the shoot and nearly bit off one of Jennifer Connelly’s fingers.

Let me see if I can sum up the craziness that ensues: Jennifer calls her father’s lawyer for help, who ends up bringing Frau Brückner back into this mess, who tries to poison Jennifer and then knocks her out with a piece of wood. She then KOs a cop before Jennifer escapes, going through a dungeon and a basement until she falls into a pool that is packed with maggot-ridden corpses. This is the point in the film where you may want to stop eating because it gets rather intense from here on out. As Jennifer escapes that watery tomb, she hears someone crying. That someone is Frau’s son, who was born from a rape. Jennifer asks him why she thinks he’s a monster, to which he turns to face her and scares the fucking shit out of her. Seriously, it’s jolting — the kid has Patau Syndrome, a real chromosomal abnormality (it’s makeup in the film, but looks quite true to life). He then chases Jennifer into a motorboat, but at the last second, she calls a swarm of flies to attack him. He falls into the water, and the boat explodes, and he dies, and…whew.

I know this film is 32 years old, but I will leave some spoiler space here because what happens next is crazy.

Jennifer reaches the shore just as her father’s lawyer arrives. All well, all good and then, out of nowhere, Frau cuts the dude’s head clean off. Plus, she’s already killed the cop, and she goes absolutely shithouse.

“He was diseased, but he was my son! And you have… Why didn’t I kill you before? I killed that no-good inspector and your professor friend to protect him! And now… I’m gonna KILL YOU TO AVENGE HIM! Why don’t you call your INSECTS! GO ON! CALL! CALL!”

At this point, Inga, the chimpanzee, comes out of nowhere and kills Frau with a razor. Keep in mind that this is not just one cut. This is a simian who knows how to get the murder business done.

Jennifer and Inga hug. Roll the credits.

Phenomena was the last Argento movie to get significant distribution in the U.S., thanks (or no thanks) to New Line Cinema, which played it here as Creepers. This version is 33 minutes shorter than the original and has so many scenes shuffled that it makes little or no sense. Also, unlike other Argento films, Goblin only has two songs in this, as modern bands like Iron Maiden and Motörhead are featured.

I love this movie. It makes little sense, but you don’t walk into an Italian horror film expecting narrative structure. You hope to see some crazy gore, some interesting death scenes and maggots — all things that this film more than delivers. I’m not the only fan of this flick — the Japanese video game Clock Tower is an homage to this film, even featuring a heroine named Jennifer.

BONUS: We did a podcast all about this movie, and you can hear it here:

BONUS BONUS: Here’s a drink recipe.

Inga and Jennifer

• 1/2 oz. 99 Bananas
• 3 oz. half and half
• 1/2 oz. coconut rum
• 1 1/2 oz. orange juice
• 1/2 tsp. grenadine

1. Pour all of the ingredients in a shaker and do your thing.
2. Pour into a glass and enjoy.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Nothing gives me greater joy than when our site gets mentioned on my favorite podcast, The Cannon Canon. There are a few movies they’ve covered that I haven’t, so it’s time to fix that.

The ancient future test is one to determine if the movie that you are watching fits into that genre, a time when books like Neuromancer were being strip-mined for ideas to make high concepts films that were five minutes into the future in the 1990s but are now hopelessly mired in the past.

Let’s give Nemesis this test.

Does it have the title of a Philip K. Dick book but not really have much to do with it?

Nope, but you would not be blamed if you believed that director Albert Pyun and writer Rebecca Charles — who is of course Pyun using a different name* — weren’t watching tears in the rain and robotic mutton sleeping.

Is there a lot of rain?

Of course there is.

Does the male hero wear dress clothes and/or a trenchcoat?

More than that, everyone in this movie wears sunglasses. In the day. At night. Sunglasses on top of sunglasses.

Do Keanu Reeves, Ben Affleck, Dolph Lundgren or Udo Keir appear in it?

Amazingly, no.

Does the internet do something it can’t do yet, yet look dated AF?

Oh man. You can download your entire soul onto the video game grid, something Jared (Marjorie Monaghan) does before — spoiler warning — sacrificing herself.

Are Stabbing Westward, KMFDM, Ministry or God Lives Underwater on the soundtrack?

The budget couldn’t afford any of those bands. It’s also a few years too early.

Is it a crappy version of Blade Runner?

Can a movie be Blade Runner, The Terminator, an anime and The Matrix seven years before that movie got made?

Are there numerous Asian-influenced scenes?

The U.S. and Japan have pretty much become one big country.

Do people use future terms that make no sense?

You know it, akachan.

Are there a lot of whirring sound effects?

All the whirring.

Do people stare at the camera as it moves through a neon-lit strip club?

I mean, they have sunglasses on, but I think the answer is yes.

Are there rock stars in it?

Shockingly, no.

Is there a feral child?

You would think so, but somehow, nope. There’s a dog that Alex saves in the beginning and loses, but that happens so fast that there is really no emotional impact.

I’ll still say that this is an ancient future cyberpunk movie.

After Dangerously Close and Down Twisted, this was to be Albert Pyun’s last film in his three-movie contract with Cannon. Golan and Globus wanted Pyun to make a more mainstream action movie and he pitched a remake of Nicolas Ray’s Johnny Guitar with John Travolta — who Cannon thought didn’t have enough power at the box office — and Alex Rain, a serial killer being chased by the cops movie. Pyun started on the Alex Rain script, which was to star Kelly Lynch as an FBI agent hunting a serial killer amongst the Neo-Nazi community 25 years in the future. Or maybe 400 years and on Mars. Before that could happen, Cannon had him finish Journey to the Center of the Earth and do Cyborg.

In 1991, Pyun made Arcade for Full Moon and went back to Alex Rain. His new idea was to have the lead be a violent street urchin working undercover for a futuristic L.A.P.D. He planned on Megan Ward, who had been in Arcade, to star. He started looking for the right studio to make it with and decided on Imperial and the Shah Brothers. They told him that if he changed Alex from a 13-year-old girl to a 30-year-old male and cast French kickboxer Olivier Gruner, he could do whatever he wanted.

After being bullied as a kid, Gruner started to study Shotokan karate, boxing, kickboxing and full contact kickboxing. After school, he joined the French Navy, volunteering for their Commandos Marine unit and fought pirates. He left the military and won his first kickboxing title — the W.A.K.O. World Championship — before plastering the 1987 Cannes Film Festival with his photo. Obviously, he’s been a success — he’s been in more than forty films — as well as having a fashion line, being a volunteer firefighter and even continuing to work as a bodyguard for clients like Celine Dion.

He starts the film as just 86% human named Alex Rain. He’s an assassin/bounty hunter for the LAPD — not a stretch, right? — who is attacked on a routine case by Rosaria (Jennifer Gatti, Double Exposure) and The Red Army Hammerheads. After months of cybernetic reconstruction — who can even guess his percentage now? — he finds Rosaria in Baja and gets his revenge. That’s when her handlers show up to get the pieces, Sam (Marjean Holden, who has been in everything from Dr. Caligari and Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot to playing Sheeva in  Mortal Kombat: Annihilation) and Alex’s ex, Jared (the previously mentioned Marjorie Monaghan).

Alex decides that he’s done with the LAPD, but he’s brought back in by Commissioner Farnsworth (Tim Thomerson!) for one last job. He has to stop Jared before she sells vital security intel about the Japan/U.S. summit to the Hammerheads. To add another influence to the film, they Snake Pliskin his heart by inserting a bomb that will blow him up in three days unless he finds Jared before she meets with Hammerhead leader Angie-Liv (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, who is literally the bad guy’s bad guy; speaking of Phillip K. Dick he was in the TV series of the book The Man In the High Castle).

You may not be shocked to learn that the cops are the bad guys and the Hammerheads have humanity’s best interests at heart. There are several sinister androids stalking the highest levels of human society, copying the minds of powerful leaders into their perfect synthetic bodies. One of them you’ve already met, as Farnsworth has been taken over and has already sent another cyborg named Julian (Deborah Shelton, Body Double) to destroy the Hammerheads. She removes the tracking device in his eyeball, injects him with a scrambler that allows her to remove the bomb in his heart and sacrifices herself to save him when the cops bust in. Somewhere in the middle of all of this, she’s also naked — as she is for most of the film — and shares some love scenes with Thomas Jane. She volunteered to be nude for these scenes and Jane decided to follow her lead.

Alex saves the life of Max Impact (Merle Kennedy), the sister of the cyborg he killed earlier, Rosaria, and wins her over to his side. Despite all of the Hammerheads getting killed — the movie jumps from city to jungle in some of the action — Alex and Max used Jared’s digital spirit to destroy most of the replicating machines and then kill Farnsworth and Germaine (Nicholas Guest), who tells him that they can’t stop all of their creations.

There are several endings. The  Extended Version has Alex and Max walk into a still-alive Farnsworth cyborg while Sam’s voice asks, “Should we take them out now?” Farnsworth answers, “Why not?” Farnsworth is still alive in this cut as they never fight him in the previous scenes. There’s also an ending — which is the one I watched on Tubi — where this conversation happens but you never see Thomerson’s robotic bad boss.

This movie has so many people in it that I forgot its cast includes Thom Matthews (Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives), Yuji Okumoto (the best bad guy ever, Chozen Toguchi from The Karate Kid Part 2, as well as one of the Howard Cossell-loving brothers, Yee Sook Ree, in Better Off Dead) Brion James (who was in everything; he grew up in his parent’s movie theater and went on to be in films like The Horror Show (AKA House 3), Brainsmasher… A Love Story, Striking Distance and perhaps most essential to this movie, Blade Runner), former surfer Vincent Klyn (Cyborg and so many other Pyun movies), one-time Bad News Bear and someday Freddy Jackie Earle Haley and Arnold’s buddy Sven-Ole Thorsen, who played La Fours in Mallrats, Thorgrim in Conan the Barbarian, The Demon in Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story and henchmen and hired thugs in more movies than I can even think of.

Pyun made a lot of movies. He had a thing called “Rock and Roll Filmmaking” where he’d spend the first few days just getting pick ups he’d never use. This caused producers to get upset. But you know, do we even know that producer’s name today? Nope. But we can watch this Pyun film and be amazed at what he did on such a small budget and that this was the time that fate decreed that it would all work out right, that all the influences would come together and that this was his most perfect film.

You can watch this on Tubi.

*Thanks to the always amazing Bulletproof Action for confirming this.

You can listen to The Cannon Canon episode of Nemesis here.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Nothing gives me greater joy than when our site gets mentioned on my favorite podcast, The Cannon Canon. There are a few movies they’ve covered that I haven’t, so it’s time to fix that.

I had a friend that I used to go to a movie with every weekend. It didn’t matter sometimes if we even wanted to see a movie. The Last Boy Scout was one of those movies and you know, it was different from the moment it started, when an L.A. Stallions running back (Billy Blanks!) pulls out a gun in the middle of a game. But that just seems like background noise as Joe Hallenbeck (Bruce Willis), once a national hero for taking a bullet for the President of the United States, now learns that his wife Sarah (Chelsea Field) is sleeping with his business partner (Bruce McGill). And now he has another boring job, guarding an exotic dancer named Cory (Halle Berry).

But then a car bomb kills Mike. And things aren’t so boring.

Soon after, Joe is approached by Cory’s boyfriend, one-time Stallions quarterback Jimmy Dix (Damon Wayans). He wants his woman off the stage and seems every bit of the errratic man who was banned for gambling and drugs. Joe is beat up by some hitmen who kill Cory and nearly do the same to Jimmy before he saves his life.

This is all because she had a tape of Senator Calvin Baynard (Chelcie Ross) and Stallions owner Sheldon Marcone (Noble Willingham) that neither man wants the public to ever hear. She was using it to get Jimmy back on the team but they sent the killers instead. But their evidence gets blown up in another car bomb. That said, Joe is now on Jimmy’s side, because the reason he was removed from the Secret Service was because he once stopped Baynard from abusing a woman. Well, maybe they aren’t that close, because he throws Jimmy out when he catches him doing drugs. As he walks out, he signs his rookie card for Joe’s daughter Darian (Danielle Harris), “To the daughter of the last boy scout.”

This is where we enter the dark world of a Shane Black movie, much less one directed by Tony Scott. The police figure Joe killed Mike, so they come to arrest him. Milo (Taylor Negron, so missed and beyond beloved) kills the cops and Marcone explains what Joe has stepped into. The team owner has been buying Senate votes to legalize sports gambling until Baynard tried to blackmail him for $6 million. Knowing Joe’s history with Baynard, Marcone says that it’s cheaper to kill the senator with a bomb in a suitcase and frame Joe for the murder. He’s saved by Jimmy and Darian, but Milo is the only of Marcone’s men to survive. He recovers and takes her.

So yes, of course this ends with Taylor Negron getting shredded by a helicopter, the rich guy blown up and Willis and Wayans as friends. Joe even gets his wife back. But who cares if it’s predicatable? Nothing else has been in this movie.

Black wrote this while getting over a failed romance. He sold it for $1.75 million and Joel Silver agreed to produce it. He also wanted its original title for another movie he was making, Nothing Lasts Forever. Yes, before it was changed to The Last Boy Scout, this movie had the title Die Hard.

You can listen to The Cannon Canon episode of The Last Boy Scout here.