DAY 28. PM Entertainment!

If you’ve spent any time digging through the bargain bins of VHS history—or if you’ve spent your weekends scouring Tubi for the kind of low-budget, high-adrenaline junk that puts modern CGI-fests to shame—then you know the name PM Entertainment. They were the kings of the direct-to-video era, a studio that understood a fundamental truth about action cinema: nobody cares about the plot as long as you blow up enough cars and someone gets kicked in the face with artistic precision.

Firepower (1993) is the quintessential PM production. It is a glorious, neon-soaked movie that feels like it was written by someone who had only ever seen RoboCop and Enter the Dragon and decided the best way to merge them was to set the whole thing in a future where crime is legal, and the fashion sense is pure early-90s dystopian chic.

Welcome to the year 2007. I know, I know—we’ve lived through that year, and it mostly involved dial-up internet and the rise of social media, but in the world of Firepower, it’s a lawless nightmare. Cities have been carved up into Hell Zones, essentially pockets of urban collapse where the police are forbidden to tread. It’s a brilliant setup for a low-budget movie because it explains why everything looks like it was filmed in a half-abandoned industrial park in Sun Valley.

Enter our dynamic duo: Darren Braniff, played by Chad McQueen, and Nick Sledge, played by tGary Daniels. Braniff is the straight man cop, the guy who plays by the rules until the rules stop working, and Sledge is the loose-cannon Brit who is basically a one-man wrecking crew. They’re tasked with infiltrating the Hell Zone to bust a racket involving a counterfeit AIDS vaccine.

It’s the kind of high-stakes, socially conscious plot point that was ripped straight from the headlines of 1993, then immediately discarded in favor of guys fighting in a death-cage. Once they step into the zone, the movie stops pretending it’s a police procedural and starts being what it actually is: a collection of excuses for Gary Daniels to display his world-class kickboxing prowess.

Daniels is the crown jewel of this production. Long before he was holding his own against Stallone in The Expendables, he was the go-to guy for legitimate martial arts talent in films that couldn’t afford a massive budget. He’s agile, he’s mean, and he has that quintessential cool that makes him the star of every scene he’s in. Even when he’s playing second fiddle to McQueen, your eyes are naturally drawn to his technique.

But why did I choose this movie?

Firepower is famous for being the only film role for the late, legendary WWE Hall of Famer, The Ultimate Warrior. Cast as the main villain, The Swordsman, Hellwig is an absolute wall of muscle. The film handles him perfectly: he doesn’t have much to say, which is smart, because his job isn’t to deliver Shakespearean monologues. It’s meant to look like a mountain of neon-colored menace, crushing people in a cage. Watching him move against the more technical martial artists is a bizarre, fascinating contrast.

The heart of Firepower is the Death Ring, an underground tournament run by the villainous Drexal (Joseph Ruskin). The plot eventually forces our heroes to enter the tournament, which turns the movie into a series of increasingly elaborate death matches. This is where the film earns its reputation. PM Entertainment was famous for its practical effects. They didn’t have the budget for big-screen explosions, so they made sure their small-screen ones were everywhere. The car chases are well-executed, featuring daring stunts that feel genuinely dangerous. They had a knack for blocking off streets and turning Los Angeles into a playground of burning rubber and flying steel.

The fighting, meanwhile, is classic 90s DTV. It’s not the polished, wire-fu spectacle of Hong Kong cinema (though Daniels brings some of that training to the table), nor is it the slow, heavy brawling you’d see in a modern UFC fight. It’s raw, it’s rhythmic, and it’s over-the-top. The scene where the characters are forced to perform in a continuous take in front of the cameras shows just how talented these guys were at adapting to tight schedules and limited resources.

To prepare for his role, Jim Hellwig reportedly trained for three weeks with martial arts instructor Richard Rabago and the film’s fight coordinator, Art Camacho (who also plays Viper). It wasn’t enough to make him a world-class kicker, but it was certainly enough to make him look like a terrifying physical threat on screen.

Daniels initially turned down the role because the pay wasn’t up to his standards, and he was sick of deathmatch movies. The executives at PM finally convinced him to read the script, and he realized the character of Sledge had enough sarcastic wit to be worth the trouble. Thank goodness he changed his mind. Without him, this would just be another forgotten relic.

Like many films of the era, Firepower relies on that specific 90s vision of the future: dark, gritty, filled with leather trench coats and neon lighting. It’s an aesthetic that has aged into a kind of nostalgic perfection, even as it becomes outdated, even though it’s supposed to be the future.

Spoilers: Poor Darren. Not only is his fighting name Alley Cat, but his wife gets killed because he’s poking around and well, maybe that’s not so sad because all she ever did was yell at him and one of the girls in the fight club, Lisa (Alisha Das, who is also in Nightwish and has gone on to be “considered a global authority on spirituality with a special focus on angels”), was already showing him interest. So in the PM Entertainment world of men writing men’s movies, I guess that’s happy. What isn’t is seeing Warrior slice his partner’s head clean off and hold it up, which I wasn’t expecting.

The P in PM, Richard Pepin, directed, and the script was by Michael January. Keep an eye open for George Murdock (the voice of God in Star Trek V), stunt coordinator and former pro wrestler Nils Allen Stewart, Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs (who played Joe Jackson in The Jacksons miniseries because he looks exactly like Joe Jackson to the point that I thought, “Why is Michael Jackson’s dad in this movie?”) and, of course, Gerald Okamura. 

This is the movie where Gerald Okamura fights Ultimate Warrior and I’m glad I watched it.

You can watch this on Tubi.