Enter the Video Store: Video Vengeance
Directed by Peter Maris/Mario DiLeo/Cullen Blaine/Vic Armstrong.
Starring Dolph Lundgren, George Segal, John Schneider, Kristian Alfonso, Geoffrey Lewis, Beau Starr, Nick Chinlund, Ken Foree, Jan-Michael Vincent, James Tolkan, Michelle Phillips, Kim Delaney, George Kennedy, Yaphet Kotto, Michael Paul Chan, Lou Ferrigno, Margaret Trigg, John Saxon, Lee De Broux, Carroll Brandon Baker, Lyle Alzado, Robert Miano, Brad Davis, David Hasselhoff, Bo Hopkins, Jeanie Moore, Richard Gesswein.
SYNOPSIS:
Blu-ray box set of five more unsung cult classics from the VHS era.
It has been three years since Arrow Video released Enter the Video Store: Empire of Screams, a Blu-ray box set that brought together five VHS rental titles from the Empire Pictures stable that may not have been the greatest technical examples of low budget genre filmmaking, but they represented the spirit of the era and made for a fairly consistent collection.
And so now we have a second set, but this time the theme is not studio-based. Instead, we have five movies from the golden age of VHS rentals that all feature some sort of man-on-a-mission revenge/vengeance plot, so be prepared for explosions, testosterone and mullets as Arrow invites you into their Video Vengeance store.
First up is Ministry of Vengeance from 1989 and directed by Peter Maris. In it, John Schneider stars as David Miller, a Vietnam vet who became a priest after the war. After his wife and daughter are murdered in a Rome airport by Arab terrorist Ali Aboud (Robert Miano) and his gang, Miller turns to his old war commander Colonel Freeman (James Tolkan) to help him get back in training for a trip to Lebanon to track down Aboud. Under the guise of a visiting priest, Miller is let into the country and when he finds Aboud his old instincts kick in, but will his faith get in the way of his morals and what he believes to be right?
Featuring a solid supporting cast that includes George Kennedy as Miller’s superior in the church, Yaphet Kotto as a CIA agent and Ned Beatty as a priest living in Lebanon, Ministry of Vengeance has the look and feel of a prime Cannon Films release but it isn’t one. If it were it might have had a bit more oomph behind it because despite the stellar cast, it never quite takes off to where you expect it to, balancing the drama of Miller’s crisis of faith with some The A-Team-esque action a bit too unevenly to really hit as either a sombre character piece or a balls-out action movie.
If you wanted to be really picky, John Schneider is not a great lead for this, seeing as he was 29 when it was made so he wouldn’t have been old enough to serve in Vietnam, and not even a neatly trimmed moustache can disguise the fact that he looks too young. His performance is fine, but you never really believe David Miller has served in ‘Nam, found religion, had a family and is now searching for terrorists, questioning his existence and everything in the world, and generally doing all the stuff that Rambo did when he was about 60, so an older actor would have been a better idea. Then again, Robert Miano isn’t Arabic and is of Italian descent, so authentic casting wasn’t high on the list of priorities.
Nevertheless, Ministry of Vengeance will likely find favour with fans of Cannon Films thanks to the supporting cast of familiar faces, although anyone under the age of 35 probably won’t get much from it as this is a particular style of filmmaking that doesn’t seem to carry much favour with younger modern audiences, coming across like an extended episode of The A-Team or Magnum P.I. as the violence is toned down and there is a moral quandary to overcome. It is a decent watch if you are prepared to overlook many things, and there is a fantastic look at Vietnam war movies with Douglas E. Winter in the extra features for some homework, but on the whole it isn’t quite the explosive start to this set that the title implies.
And carrying on in a similar vein is The Final Alliance from 1990, a movie that when broken down into its individual parts could look like a parody on paper, but anyone with an affinity for this era of direct-to-video will no doubt get loads of joy out of it.
David Hasselhoff stars as Will Colton, a drifter with a pet cougar called Felix and who is returning to his former home where his wife and child were killed by the biker gang that rule the small town, led by albino Ghost (John Saxon). Trying to fix up the place, he throws out the gang members squatting in the run-down house which brings him to the attention of Ghost, and with Will standing up to the gang this empowers the locals – including shopkeeper Carrie (Jeanie Moore), whose father was murdered by Ghost and with whom Will becomes romantically involved – to arm themselves, but there is a bigger plan at play here as Ghost is running rackets for the corrupt Sheriff Whistler (Bo Hopkins).
Part Death Wish, part High Plains Drifter with a smattering of Road House thrown in, The Final Alliance should work as a no-nonsense DTV revenge movie, if nothing else because you have a charismatic lead with David Hasselhoff channelling his inner Clint Eastwood, a maniacal John Saxon looking incredibly creepy in his albino makeup and who seems to be in another movie entirely (and probably a better one) and Bo Hopkins trying to outdo him but without any albino makeup, so he has to go bigger, but the production is woefully inept – because if you want your bartender to mimic pouring a beer, don’t set up the camera so it faces him side-on to reveal the already-poured pint sat under the tap – and the acting from the supporting cast is dismal.
But like with Ministry of Vengeance, if you are well versed in these types of movies and can overlook its flaws then The Final Alliance is quite fun. Let’s be honest, David Hasselhoff has always been a bit cheesy, especially when it comes to his movie appearances as he is quite hard to take seriously, but the performance he delivers is pretty good, being both tough and charming. Granted, he looks ridiculous with his mullet, perfectly trimmed stubble and cowboy hat, and had that been, say, Jean-Claude Van Damme (who would sport a similar look in Hard Target three years later) or Michael Dudikoff then it might not appear quite so comical, but Hasselhoff is doing his best to make it work, which it does (sort of).
However, the star of this show is John Saxon, who only six short years before was a concerned father in A Nightmare on Elm Street and clearly took some of Robert Englund’s manic energy on board as he is chewing the scenery and spitting it back out as Ghost, and he looks incredible with his white wig and matching contact lenses that give him the air of Bill Bixby’s David Banner mid-transformation. Unfortunately, except for when he is onscreen with The Hoff or Bo Hopkins there is no one else who matches his screen presence, and with the TV movie-level camerawork not really adding much dynamism to the action it does feel like a bit of a slog at times, which is a shame when the lead actors are bringing so much to the production.
Nevertheless, The Final Alliance is entertaining enough to warrant having a Blu-ray release, and there are some special features to add some context, including The Rise of DTV, where The Schlock Pit writer and Snips Movies owner Dave Wain discusses the DTV boom of the 1980s/’90s, an interview with co-writer/co-producer Harel Goldstein and a new audio commentary by Mike Hewitt, Russell Lee and Jim Smith from EatMyBrains. It all helps to enhance the experience, and as an example of a DTV action/revenge thriller The Final Alliance is textbook, but given how pedestrian and inept some of its components are its appeal will be limited.
Speaking of limited appeal, 1987s R.O.T.O.R. is a movie that should have been a no-brain-required slab of enjoyment given how much of a knock-off of every other 1980s sci-fi/action title it is, even down to the Mad Max ‘homage’ on the cover art. Basically taking The Terminator and RoboCop – even though this was actually filmed in 1985, two years before Paul Verhoeven’s movie, but there is no way Verhoeven knew about this, let alone used it for inspiration – and a bit of Judge Dredd, R.O.T.O.R. stands for ‘Robotic Officer Tactical Operations Research/Reserve’ – or basically a cyborg cop – and although it fits the remit for inclusion in this box set you have to wonder what else was passed over for it to get a place here. In this one, scientist and police captain Dr. Barrett C. Coldyron (Richard Gesswein) has invented a cyborg cop he calls R.O.T.O.R. (played by Carroll Brandon Baker) to cut down the high crime levels in Dallas. However, the corrupt overlords – OCP if you’ve seen RoboCop – insist on releasing the future of law enforcement before it has been tested properly, forcing Coldyron to angrily quit and hand the project over to his inept subordinates, who unleash R.O.T.O.R. onto an unsuspecting public. Naturally, Coldyron was right to protest as the robot doesn’t yet have the nuance to turn a blind eye to the most minute of incidents, such as shooting a motorist for going slightly over the speed limit out in the middle of nowhere at night, but this is just the beginning as it goes on the rampage looking for civilians it deems to be criminals.
Sounds good on paper, but R.O.T.O.R. is a movie that suffered many production setbacks, including having to ADR many of the cast as shooting was taking too long. This is the most obvious flaw as nearly everyone sounds odd, like the voice you hear couldn’t possibly be coming out of the mouth you can see moving, but none more so than Richard Gesswein, who seems to have been dubbed by Michael Moriarty doing his Mo Rutherford voice from The Stuff (if Mo Rutherford was in his late 60s); alright, it isn’t him (Gesswein was dubbed by actor/cameraman/effects artist Loren Bivens) but the southern drawl coming through your speakers is as distracting as the porn movie levels of flat and uninspiring filmmaking on display during the less exciting bits (and there are plenty of those).
There isn’t that much else to say about this movie as it is a simple plot made all the more difficult to watch by the dismal attempts at being a futuristic sci-fi romp, but made by someone not really getting the zeitgeist of the time. To help you get more out of it, Dave Wain and his The Schlock Pit cohort Matty Budrewicz are on hand with an audio commentary and a video essay entitled Machine Head: A Potted History of Robo Schlock and both of these features are more interesting and easier to digest than the main event, which is just dull and frustratingly silly. Also included on the disc as a bonus feature is Interzone, a post-apocalyptic oddity from 1987 that stars Re-Animator’s Bruce Abbott, and whilst this isn’t much of an improvement over R.O.T.O.R. it does at least embrace its absurdity, but when you break R.O.T.O.R. down into its individual parts it does tick the boxes for inclusion in this set – it is just a shame that one of those boxes wasn’t titled ‘Being Fun to Watch’.
Slightly more fun to watch – but not that much – is Hangfire from 1991, which served as Peter Maris’s follow-up to Ministry of Vengeance. In this one, Kuttner (Lee De Broux) is a psychopathic prisoner who has just been refused bail, but conveniently a poison gas cloud sends the area around the prison into a panic and Kuttner takes his chance to escape with his friend Patch (James Tolkan), any ragtag inmate who wants to come along and also Maria Slayton (Kim Delaney), an innocent bystander who he kidnaps to hold hostage.
Switch now to Sheriff Ike Slayton (Brad Davis) and his buddy Billy (Ken Foree), two former Vietnam vets whose survival instincts come into play when Ike gets word that his wife has been taken hostage and that Kuttner has taken the small town over. The National Guard are called in but are ineffective, so the two former soldiers take matters into their own hands to rescue Maria and relive the old days a little.
The premise of Hangfire is fun, if a little clichéd, and you simply cannot argue with a cast that includes Ken Foree, James Tolkan, Lee De Boux, Kim Delaney, George Kennedy, Jan-Michael Vincent, Yaphet Kotto, Lou Ferrigno and Lyle Alzado. The trouble is that the movie is quite dull for the most part, and the writing is so shallow that you end up pretty much at the same place you started but with fewer – i.e. not so charismatic – characters in it.
The wonderful cast are underserved by a script that does nothing with any of them. Oscar-winning actor George Kennedy shows up for a few minutes as the prison warden and then promptly disappears, Jan-Michael Vincent – who may or may not have had a drink before shooting his scenes – may as well have just been credited as ‘Generic Hard-Nosed Military Colonel’ given how shallow his character is and you’ve got Lou Ferrigno – The Incredible Hulk himself – as a visual spectacle if nothing else, and he’s basically given the job of being comic relief as an escaped prisoner in a double-act with former American Football player Lyle Alzado. And don’t even mention the brilliant Yaphet Kotto, who is wasted here as a cop who doesn’t like The National Guard and that’s about all you get from him.
Hangfire is an attempt at making a prison break/western-style action movie with balls, and were it not for the individual cast members adding their own particular kind of spice to a script that was either a first draft or an episode of The A-Team that nobody got round to making, then it would probably be the bottom of the pile in this set – hell, even R.O.T.O.R. had robots, which was a bit exciting (for about five minutest) – but it just about escapes that honour. There is a fun interview with Ken Foree on the disc, which shows that at least he enjoyed himself making it, and if it appeared on TV late at night when you couldn’t be bothered to concentrate then you could do worse than slump on your sofa and watch Lee De Boux take his best shot at becoming a leading action star but, overall, Hangfire is too drawn out and tedious to deliver on the promise of its core plot and stellar cast.
Which brings us to Joshua Tree (a.k.a. Army of One, and if you watch the movies in this set in disc number order then you can safely say they saved the best for last. Here, Dolph Lundgren stars as Wellman Santee, a former racing car driver who now transports stolen cars in a truck with his buddy Eddie (Ken Foree), but when their truck gets pulled over and a motorcycle cop is murdered Santee gets put away for the killing.
Nine months later, Santee is being transported from the prison hospital to San Gorgonio Penitentiary and takes his chance to escape, running into the desert as dodgy cops Frank Severance (George Segal) and Jack Rudisill (Beau Starr) gather their troops to follow him. However, Santee knows the terrain and manages to evade them, kidnapping Rita (Kristian Alfonso) from a local garage and making his way to his old haunts to plot his revenge against those who put him away, as he claims he was innocent of the murder. The thing is, Rita is a police deputy and no one likes a cop killer, so can he convince her as well as the authorities of his innocence?
Well, this being a Dolph Lundgren movie you can guarantee that lots of faceless goons will die as he tries to prove it. At this point in his career Dolph Lundgren had made a few movies but with the exception of Universal Soldier, his co-headliner with Jean-Claude Van Damme, he was still best known as the Russian boxer from Rocky IV rather than for his own starring roles. However, Joshua Tree was directed by Vic Armstrong, a veteran stunt coordinator who had worked on several Bond movies, Arnie’s The Last Action Hero and Total Recall, Rambo III, Superman II & III, Universal Soldier, Raiders of the Lost Ark and dozens of other big budget spectacles, and here he was given free rein to helm a low budget DTV action movie with his brother Andy, who served as producer and second unit director. Having worked with Dolph on Universal Soldier they knew what they could get out of him, and so off to the races they went.
Being made by filmmakers who were primarily stuntmen, Joshua Tree is obviously heavy on the action and it is all very well coordinated, with Dolph Lundgren doing a lot of his own driving. The downside of having a movie made by stuntmen is that the other elements – such as story, plotting, pacing and dialogue – are often secondary considerations and that is the biggest flaw with the movie, but who goes to a Dolph Lundgren headlining movie and expects anything other than exciting car chases, punch ups, shoot-outs and blood squibs galore? Yes, Dolph’s emerging screen charisma was still in its early stages, but he was in magnificent shape and magnetic to look at, and with a supporting cast featuring Ken Foree, Geoffrey Lewis, George Segal, Beau Starr, Michael Paul Chan, Nick Chinlund and Michelle Phillips you really can’t go wrong for sheer DTV joy, and with a lack of Bond, Indiana Jones or Rambo at the box office during this period then renting action videos of this nature was the only way to get a hit of good ol’ fashioned blood, sweat and tears.
So, there you have it – five more video rental store era movies for you to either discover or revisit, and if you are revisiting them then no doubt seeing them in HD on a wider screen will be a joy compared to the old pan-and-scan VHS tapes. Each movie comes with its own selection of extras, including audio commentaries, new interviews and archive featurettes, and in the case of the lesser titles the audio commentaries do enhance the experience, so even the worst movies in the set have something to offer. In comparison to Enter the Video Store: Empire of Screams the quality of the movies is probably a little less consistent but the spirit of the video shop is in all of them, and let’s face it, part of the fun of picking a title from the shelf back in the day was not knowing what the movie was going to be like so in terms of recreating the video shop experience this set more than does its job. Roll on Enter the Video Store box set number three…
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Ministry of Vengeance – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
The Final Alliance – Film: ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
R.O.T.O.R. – Film: ★ / Movie: ★
Hangfire – Film: ★ / Movie: ★ ★
Joshua Tree – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Chris Ward
