A word of warning to those interested in the book ’80s Action Movies on the Cheap: 284 Low Budget, High Impact Pictures: “Cheap” is an adjective not used carelessly, so expect neither Stallone nor Schwarzenegger. Know that there is nary a Batman or Bond, and that Van Damme is more or less persona non grata. … Continue reading ’80s Action Movies on the Cheap: 284 Low Budget, High Impact Pictures
More creatively satisfying than World Gone Wild, his 2014 survey of postapocalyptic films, David J. Moore’s The Good, the Tough & the Deadly: Action Movies & Stars 1960s-Present is in reach of claiming definitive status, but falls short in its deliberate choice (too convoluted to discuss here) to exclude the genre’s seminal titles from coverage. … Continue reading Reading Material: Short Ends 7/4/2016
Narration in the 1965-set River of Death suggests that director Steve Carver (Big Bad Mama) may have viewed this adaptation of the 1981 Alistair MacLean novel as his own Apocalypse Now. Of course, Michael Dudikoff is no Martin Sheen; the American Ninja star has trouble delivering the VO convincingly, stumbling and rolling over the words … Continue reading River of Death (1989)
Israeli cousins Menahem Golan and Yoran Globus absolutely loved movies. It’s just too bad that, during their 1980s reign as owners of The Cannon Group, they had “cash registers where their hearts should be,” as disgruntled actress Laurene Landon puts it, just before she burns a VHS tape of America 3000, the forgotten flick she … Continue reading Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films (2014)
It’s hard to remember a time when Steven Seagal was actually cool. It was 1988, when nobody knew who he was, yet here he was, headlining a pretty good B-actioner called Above the Law. It heralded the dawn of a new (stoic) action star, whose career would be packed with hit after hit … until … Continue reading Seagalogy: A Study of the Ass-Kicking Films of Steven Seagal