DOCTOR MORDRID (1992) ** ½

Jeffrey Combs stars as Doctor Mordrid, an immortal sorcerer who lives in an apartment in New York City and has a pet raven named Edgar Allan.  It’s up to him to stop the evil Kabal (Brian Thompson) from bringing about the apocalypse.  When Mordrid is arrested for one of Kabal’s murders, his mystical amulet is confiscated by the police, leaving him in a mortal state.  Mordrid then relies on a pretty detective (Yvette Nipar) to help him escape prison and save the world.

Directed by the father and son team of Albert and Charles Band, Doctor Mordrid plays like a half-assed low budget version of Doctor Strange.  His inner sanctum lair has a cool retro-art deco look and the production design probably cost more than anything else in the entire movie.  The chintzy effects have a certain charm about them too, it’s just that the budget was too small to realize its fantastic vision.    

Doctor Mordrid has ambition, I’ll give it that.  Unfortunately, the pacing is erratic at best.  The opening is rather sluggish, and overall, it feels much longer than the seventy-four-minute running time suggests.  (The second act feels like a Law and Order episode.)  Luckily, the film really comes alive during the rousing finale.  The stop-motion dinosaur skeleton fight is simply awesome, and it’s a shame there wasn’t more scenes of this caliber throughout the picture.  

It also benefits from a great performance by Combs, who lends considerable gravitas to the cheapjack surroundings.  He can earnestly spout mystical gobbledygook like few can and he really sells the character’s sense of impending doom.  Thompson is a blast too as the badass villain who looks like a lost Mortal Kombat character.  Whenever they are squaring off against one another, Doctor Mordrid is just what the doctor ordered.

AKA:  Rexosaurus.  

PARANORMAL EXTREMES: TEXT MESSAGES FROM THE DEAD (2015) *

Writer/director Ted V. (The Corpse Grinders) Mikels made Paranormal Extremes:  Text Messages from the Dead when he was eighty-six years old.  I can’t imagine being alive and kicking at eighty-six, let alone making a movie at that age.  With that in mind, I tried to take it easy on the film.  However, this just might be Mikels’ worst.

Addison (Colie Knoke) is a ditzy blonde who meets an old man (Mikels) in the park.  He asks her to pass a message along to his wife.  When Addison does so, she’s befuddled to learn from the wife that the man has been dead for three years.  Later, her boyfriend goes on a business trip and keeps texting her about needing her help to “cross over”.  Since their last conversation revolved around a GPS, she thinks he needs help with directions.  Little does she know, he’s actually dead as a doornail and trying to communicate with her from beyond the grave.

Like most of Mikels’ latter-day shot-on-video affairs, Paranormal Extremes:  Text Messages from the Dead is a rather slipshod affair.  The dialogue and the acting are mostly terrible across the board (except for Mikels) and some of the extras and bit players are… shall we say… eclectic.  Knoke’s performance almost singlehandedly sinks it.  Her blank line readings and unresponsive reaction shots are often good for a laugh though.  There’s obviously SOMETHING supernatural going on around her, but she’s such a dim bulb that you have to wonder if she can even conceptualize what’s happening.  

If it was just a bimbo version of The Sixth Sense, I might’ve been okay.  However, once Knoke joins a Ghost Hunters-style reality show in the third act, I had to tap out.  It just tacks on another useless twenty minutes of unnecessary plot at the end and makes the one-hundred-and-two-minute running time feel a hell of a lot longer.

BORIS AND NATASHA (1992) ** ½

Before the Rocky and Bullwinkle movie, we got this live action spin-off featuring the two nitwit Pottsylvanian spies.  Since it never got a theatrical release and pretty much fell off the face of the earth after premiering on Showtime, my expectations were lower than slug shit.  As it turns out it’s fairly clever and contains a few genuine laughs. 

Boris (Dave Thomas) and Natasha (Sally Kellerman) defect to America.  Really, they’re unwitting decoys for the real agents who are out to steal a microchip that can turn back time.  Along the way, Natasha becomes a fashion model and Boris has to come to grips with his feelings for her.

The plot is somewhat similar to Spies Like Us (which is fitting since Thomas wrote that flick).  Thomas, it must be said, is a bit miscast.  He doesn’t go all in with the accent and seems much more dapper than the cartoon Boris ever was.  Kellerman is a lot of fun though.  She is clearly having a blast and really gets to cut loose. 

The funniest part is the narration, which is done in the same style of the old show.  Not only does the narrator steal the movie, he helps keep the spirit of the Rocky and Bullwinkle show intact.  Too bad the budget was too low to prevent the real moose and squirrel from making proper cameos.  Most of this is silly, and it’s occasionally downright dumb, but there are some insane cameos here (especially Kellerman’s “date”) that add to the fun.

It all kind of falls apart by the end, but I guess that was to be expected.  Director Charles Martin (Trick or Treat) Smith’s style is a bit too flat.  I guess that is due in part with the low budget.  However, there’s enough bright spots here to make it recommended as a curiosity piece.

FUTURE KICK (1991) *

Here’s a ripe slice of What the Hell Did I Just Watch?  It’s one part Terminator rip-off, one part Virtual Reality flick, and one part stripper movie.  Imagine if Albert Pyun directed Total Recall but had to have a random striptease tossed in every ten minutes or so.  That still doesn’t do it justice. Holy cats is this one big clusterfuck.

Don “The Dragon” Wilson stars as a Cyberon, or cyborg.  He’s the last of his kind and makes his living as a bounty hunter.  Meg Foster (who deserves like… SOOOOOO much better) wants to avenge her husband’s death and hires Don to help her.

This is incredibly, seventy-one minutes long, but it is one of the longest seventy-one minutes I have ever endured.  Some scenes don’t make a lick of sense.  Others are too dark to see.  Others are filled with so much nothing you wonder how it even got before a camera.  We also get inexplicable overuse of footage stolen from other Roger Corman productions to pad out the running time.  There’s an occasional WTF moment to keep it from being a total waste of time (like the decapitation scene) and there’s plenty of boobs, but for the most part, this is one frustrating experience.  

Speaking of frustrating, the ending is something else.  It’s one of those “It was all a dream” deals.  More like a nightmare if you ask me.

Wilson skates by, just barely, by deftly acting like a robot the whole time.  Or maybe he wasn’t.  It’s hard to tell.  Just thinking about the supremely talented Foster in this movie is too depressing for words.  The great Chris Penn is completely wasted as the villain’s lackey who only gets like one line of dialogue.  Maria Ford also shows up briefly as a stripper, but that’s not nearly enough to pull this one out of the gutter.

Writer/director Damian Klaus didn’t write or direct another movie.  That alone proves there is a God and he is merciful.  

AKA:  Futurekick.  AKA:  Kickboxer 2025.

THE CHRISTMAS CHRONICLES (2018) ** ½

Two kids (Judah Lewis and Darby Camp) left alone on Christmas Eve stay up late and try to film Santa Claus (Kurt Russell) with their old camcorder.  They stow away aboard his sleigh and cause Santa to wreck in the mean streets of Chicago.  To save Christmas, the kids have to help Santa find his reindeer, the sack full of toys, and magic hat.

The Christmas Chronicles is perfectly harmless family yuletide entertainment.  If it wasn’t for Kurt Russell playing Santa, I doubt I would’ve even seen it.  He brings his usual swagger and bravado to the role and does a fine job erasing the traditional Santa stereotypes.  He’s physically fit, has a penchant for mischief, and sings a mean rendition of “Santa Claus is Back in Town”.  It’s fun seeing Kurt channeling Elvis once again as he leads a jailhouse combo (including Stevie Van Zandt) in what is far and away the best scene in the movie.  

If only the rest of The Christmas Chronicles had that same spirit.  Much of the drama with the bickering siblings is your usual Hallmark Channel-style fluff.  (At least the child actors don’t grate on your nerves too bad.)  Some of the subplots (like the kids’ run-in with some thieves) are superfluous.  I could’ve also done without the CGI elves, who look like garden gnomes and act like those annoying Minions.  The identity of Mrs. Claus (which I wouldn’t dream of revealing) is pretty great though.

Kids are sure to enjoy The Christmas Chronicles.  Grandparents too.  People that fall somewhere in the middle (like me) may feel a tad underwhelmed.  Still, there’s enough good-naturedness here to make it an OK Christmas flick.  

CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON: SWORD OF DESTINY (2016) **

Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was a landmark film for the Kung Fu genre.  It combined arthouse drama and elegant cinematography with badass fight scenes that were among the best ever filmed.  Sixteen years later, Michelle Yeoh returned for this direct-to-Netflix sequel without Lee or Chow Yun-Fat.  I thought the addition of Donnie Yen to the cast and the fact that the legendary Yuen (Drunken Master) Woo-Ping was at the helm would be enough to make this a surefire winner.  Sadly, Sword of Destiny is a clunky, curiously uninvolving affair.

A ruthless warlord (Jason Scott Lee) wants the titular sword to fulfill a prophecy.  It’s up to Yeoh and a band of intrepid fighters to make sure that doesn’t happen.  Yen is a mysterious stranger who joins Yeoh on her quest.  

This misguided sequel features none of the elegance and style of the original.  The pacing is sluggish, and the plot is one-dimensional.  Even the usually adept Woo-Ping’s choreography seems to be on autopilot.  Aside from an OK fight on an icy lake (which is a bit too dark) and Yeoh’s duel with a witch (which is a bit too short), the film feels fairly ordinary in just about every way.

Yeoh once again is great.  It’s just that the film lets her down.  It’s fun seeing Lee getting to chew the scenery a bit as the villain, even though he feels like he came out of an entirely different movie.  Yen is sadly wasted and isn’t given a whole lot to do until the very end.

Overall, this is a disappointment in many regards.  If it was just called Sword of Destiny, it might’ve been a forgettable programmer.  As a sequel to Crouching Tiger, it comes with a certain set of expectations.  Unfortunately, it just can’t live up to them.

FEARLESS FIGHTERS (1974) ****

Two clan brothers are at odds.  One feels the government owes him, so he steals a shipment of gold.  His brother, hoping to restore his honor, steals it back with the intention of handing it over to the authorities.  Of course, HE gets blamed for the theft.  Four strangers are drawn into the plot, each with their own suspicions and motivations for getting involved with the gold.  Eventually, they learn to trust one another and work as a team to fight the evildoer who wants the gold for himself.

Fearless Fighters is densely plotted but never confusing.  It reminded me a little of Shogun Assassin as it sometimes feels like there were multiple movies edited into one.  It moves at a breathless pace and amazingly enough, it crams in a ton of plot and even more action into a short amount of time.  Our heroes can’t take two steps without a group of bandits or killers or somebody jumping into the frame to do battle with them. 

It’s also chockful of colorful characters, many of whom have cool gimmicks.  My favorite was a badass named “One Man Army” whose sword splits in two.  He also lulls his enemies by hypnotizing them by waving his arms.  While they’re busy standing around watching him flail around, he runs in and cuts them to shreds. 

Fearless Fighters features lots of scenes where the bad guys shoot arrows at our heroes, who almost always catch them and throw them back.  Incredibly, the arrows always land into the chests of the archers who shot them.  This begs the question:  Why would you need a bow in the first place if you can just throw arrows so fast that they kill their intended targets?  No matter.  It’s just another reason to love this nutty movie.

If you’re looking for non-stop carnage and first-rate chopsocky goodness, Fearless Fighters is hard to beat.  It’s a film about loyalty, friendship, honor, and kicking lots of ass.  Kung Fu fans will undoubtedly eat this one up. 

James Hong helped prepare the American version and did some of the dubbing. 

AKA:  A Real Man.  AKA:  A Hero of Heroes.