THE SHEIK (2014) ****

The Iron Sheik is one of the greatest wrestling heels of all time.  This surprising, heartfelt, and engrossing documentary reveals him to be a likeable teddy bear of a man.  Throughout the film, we see his highs (in both senses of the word) and his lows, but the determination of the man shows through every step of the way.  

As a young man, Khosrow Vaziri was one of the top wrestlers in Iran.  When the Iranian champion dies under mysterious circumstances, it stinks of government assassination.  Fearing for his life, Vaziri skips to America where he becomes an Olympic wrestling coach before hooking up with wrestling legend Verne Gagne.  Using his Iranian heritage to play upon anti-Iranian sentiment in the ‘70s, Vaziri christens himself The Iron Sheik and becomes a legend of the ring.  

It is a testament to The Sheik’s legacy that so many wrestlers come up to him and pay homage during interview segments.  (The Rock reveals The Sheik used to babysit him.)  It’s quite amazing to see just how many careers he helped shape whether training them behind the scenes or giving them a boost by playing the heel.  It’s particularly nice seeing the usually hubristic Hulk Hogan acknowledging the fact that without The Sheik, there would be no Hulkamania. I’ll admit, seeing them hugging like brothers got me a bit misty-eyed. 

I’ve always felt a kinship with the heels, and that feeling is even more pronounced now I’m an adult.  It takes a lot of character to roll over and take a fall to promote the baby face (AKA:  “Good Guy”), especially when you’re as great of a heel as The Sheik and everyone in the arena wants you dead for real.  It’s even more of a badge of honor when you learn that Gagne offered The Sheik $100,000 to break Hogan’s leg in an effort to sabotage Vince McMahon’s fledgling WWF.  Even though his gimmick was pure heel, he was always a baby face at heart.

His career took a drastic nose dive when he was busted for drugs with “Hacksaw” Jim Duggan.  What’s amazing about this is that the fans did not get upset that The Sheik was in possession of drugs, but that the heel and the baby face were riding in the same car together.  This incident is critiqued by many at the moment that shattered the illusion of “real” and “fake” wrestling.  As if they had to be mortal enemies in and out of the ring. 

From then on, his addictions to drugs and alcohol not only derail his career, but also threaten to push his family away.  Like most wrestling storylines, this is a tale of redemption.  After years of heading down a dark path, The Sheik reinvents himself into a social media phenomenon, making hilarious YouTube videos and becoming one of the most recognizable Twitter celebrities.  Today, he’s just as well known for his Twitter tirades as he is for his Camel Clutch.  I think there’s a lesson there for all of us.  

If you’ll indulge me, I must tell you my Iron Sheik story.  Back in the late ‘90s, I used to work on the boardwalk, and one night, while on my break, I went out to get a soda.  As I leaned down to get the Coke out of the machine, I heard a crowd of people chanting behind me and much to my surprise, there was The Iron Sheik strutting around waving the Iranian flag.  It was a surreal moment.  I soon found out he was just doing publicity for an indie wrestling show the next night.  As any wrestling fan would, I showed up, but I was perplexed that The Sheik was not on the card.  I just figured he got hurt or something and couldn’t attend.  The next evening, I went down to get another soda, and lo and behold, The Sheik was sitting on a bench.  No headdress, no flag, no crowd of people.  I approached him and he shook my hand.  I told him I missed him at the show the night before and he said, “Oh, I wasn’t wrestling, I was just promoting the show for my friends.”  I always thought that said a lot about the Sheik that he would use his name to help promote other, lesser-known acts.  If that isn’t was legends are made of, I don’t know what is.

CHEAP THRILLS (2014) *** ½

The Innkeepers’ Pat Healy and Sara Paxton are reunited for this surprising, wild, and highly entertaining flick.  Healy is an out of work mechanic with a mountain of debt who runs into an old friend (Ethan Embry) at a strip club who ekes out a living as a skeevy loan shark.  While hanging out, they get propositioned by a rich couple (David Koechner and Paxton) to do stupid dares for money.  As the monetary value goes up, the dares naturally get riskier.  They head back to the couple’s home where they notice a safe loaded with cash.  Embry decides to rip him off, which is about when all hell breaks loose.  

Co-written by Troma alum Trent Haaga, Cheap Thrills offers a good mix of hardboiled drama, crime comedy, and balls-out horror.  The way the social awkwardness escalates into flat-out savagery is often surprising and funny.  It’s a great social commentary on how far a cash-strapped working-class person will go to provide for their family, as well as how the rich delight in fucking around with poor people.  

The performances are uniformly great.  Healy has a nice Everyman quality about him, and you feel bad when he winds up way in over his head.  Embry (who’s quickly becoming the go-to guy for indie horror movies after Late Phases and The Devil’s Candy) is equally absorbing as the unscrupulous friend who eventually shows signs of a conscience.  Koechner is perfectly cast as the loudmouth asshole.  He has a knack of saying something disturbing, but playing it off like he’s joking (although you have the sinking suspicion he’s dead serious).  Paxton fares well as the blonde vixen who suggests there’s more to her seemingly vapid exterior.

Cheap Thrills is alternately darkly humorous and hair-raising.  Director E.L. Katz gets the most out of his talented cast and the minimal locations.  Situations have a way of unexpectedly blowing up or taking odd left turns, and Katz plays them up to the hilt.  The finale is especially powerful.  

In short, there’s nothing cheap about these thrills.

SILENCE (2016) ***

Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver star as priests sent by Ciaran Hinds to find their mentor Liam Neeson, who apotheosized under torture in Japan and disappeared.  They can’t believe the man who taught them everything they know would turn his back on the church, so they go to Japan to investigate.  Knowing they will be captured, tortured, and killed if found out, they hook up with the Christian underground to find Neeson.  Along the way, they try to save Christians from rampant Japanese persecution.  

Director Martin Scorsese uses a lot of Akira Kurosawa influences throughout Silence.  From the fog shrouded mountains to the cramped huts to the torch-lit caves, the film oozes atmosphere.  You can almost feel dampness of the inhospitable landscape.    

Silence also gives Scorsese another chance to exorcise his heavy Catholicism themes of guilt, suffering, and redemption.  It’s also a little bit of a Men on a Mission movie as our heroes march into a foreign land to rescue a fallen comrade.  Once Garfield is captured, it kind of turns into a POW drama, complete with scenes of grueling torture, both mental and physical.  (It would also make a good double feature with Apocalypse Now as the mystery of Neeson’s disappearance is similar in some ways to Colonel Kurtz.)

Silence is engrossing and heartbreaking in the early going, but it sort of loses its way and gets draggy once Garfield is captured.  The focus on religious persecution and suffering means it’s not a lot of fun.  It’s a heavy movie; well shot, well-acted.  It’s just at 161 minutes, it plods in places.  Still, there’s no denying that a few scenes pack a real wallop.  

Despite a few quibbles, the central themes of the film keep you watching.  Garfield’s devotion to his faith leads to not only his suffering, but to the suffering of others.  In a battle of faith, how far would you go?  Would you renounce God to save yourself?  What about your friends?  Entire villages?    Where do you draw the line?  Garfield does a fine job in these heavy scenes, though I must admit the movie loses a lot of weird energy once Driver departs from the narrative.  

No matter how dark the film gets, there are rays of hope that shine through.  I’m speaking of the scenes where Garfield offers confession to the Japanese Christians, even if they can’t understand one another.  It’s a great way to show that religion crosses borders, races, and languages.  

DANGEROUS GAME (1991) **

Dangerous Game is the movie that got Aussie director Stephen Hopkins noticed.  By the time this was released on video in the states, Hopkins had already directed A Nightmare on Elm Street 5 and Predator 2.  He has a slick style that sets the film apart from many of its Ozploitation contemporaries, but that isn’t quite enough to distinguish it from the pack.  

A group of kids hack into a department store’s security system on a bet and break into the place.  A possibly psychotic cop named Murphy (Stephen Grives), who’s been hassling them mercilessly, follows them into the store, puts on a mask, and tries to scare them.  One of the kids winds up dead, and the cop sets out to kill the other teens in order to cover his tracks.  

I remember seeing the VHS of this back in the day on video store shelves and laughing at the way they blatantly tried to make it look like a Die Hard knockoff.  They even made up Grives to look like Bruce Willis with his closely cropped hair and dirty white tank top.  It’s safe to say anyone who rented this expecting a Die Hard rip-off was severely disappointed.  Sure, it takes place in a contained area, but it’s a lot closer to Psycho Cop than Die Hard.  

The problem is Hopkins takes an inordinate time getting the show on the road.  A lot of time is spent on both the teens and the cop before they finally get to the mall.  I realize some of these scenes are essential to establishing the characters, but they honestly could’ve been paced tighter.  Even the scenes inside the mall have a tendency to dawdle.  The ending is a bit of a disappointment too.  

Hopkins has a nice style.  The camera moves around a lot (especially inside the mall) and some of the camera angles are quirky and/or interesting.  The scene where a ball bearing rolls down a stationary escalator is sort of mesmerizing.  Most of these cinematic gymnastics are only there to disguise the thin plot.  

Grives is pretty good as the crazed cop.  There’s a fun scene where he tries to smash up the security system while screaming like a lunatic.  As he does so, he keeps seeing the murder being replayed again and again on the screen.  It’s a memorable sequence, but these highlights are unfortunately few and far between.  

THE MAN WHO KILLED DON QUIXOTE (2019) ** ½

Terry Gilliam’s obsession has finally paid off.  It took over twenty years, several false starts, cataclysms, natural disasters, and multiple deaths, but The Man Who Killed Don Quixote is at long last here.  It’s telling that Gilliam and Orson Welles both tried to make Don Quixote movies that were allegedly cursed.  It just goes to show you have to be some sort of mad genius to even attempt it.  

Adam Driver stars as Toby, a director who walks off the set of his latest commercial and goes sightseeing.  He returns to the town where he shot his first student film in which he cast a little old shoemaker (Jonathan Pryce) as Don Quixote.  Much to his surprise, the man still lives in town, and fully convinced he is actually Don Quixote (complete with armor).  Thinking Toby is his trusty sidekick Sancho, they ride off together looking for adventure.

If you’re familiar with Gilliam’s quest to make this movie, and have seen the documentary Lost in La Mancha, you will get a kick out of seeing scenes from that film finally being realized.  Not only that, it’s fun hearing little bits from Lost in La Mancha creeping into the narrative.  It’s as if the lines between Gilliam’s pursuit of completing the picture and the picture itself have blurred over time.  

Is the movie good?  It’s kind of a moot point by now.  It exists.  For that, we should be grateful.  

It’s a Gilliam movie.  It carries his distinct style.  It’s similar in many regards to The Fisher King.  There are even some nods to his Monty Python days.  The script is kind of sloppy, and the film goes on far too long.  It particularly threatens to spin out of control in the third act, although the finale is quite appropriate.  Even through its clunkiest passages, you get the sense that because Gilliam went through such hell to complete it, every bit of footage is going to be up on screen, by god.  It’s a testament to true grit and determination that we’re even able to lay eyes on it.

It all mostly works because of Driver’s performance.  He’s constantly making quips and muttering one-liners to himself.  He’s often quite funny playing the straight man to Pryce’s bombastic theatrics; stealing whole scenes with a single line or even a look.

While not the classic we might’ve been hoping for, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote lives.  

24 HOURS TO LIVE (2017) **

Ethan Hawke stars as a grieving husband and father.  He also happens to be an unemployed hitman struggling with addiction issues.  He gets killed while trying to pull one last job and is brought back to life temporarily by his employer to finish the hit.  One catch:  He’s only given 24 hours to live, but at least they fit him with a handy countdown clock embedded in his wrist so he can keep track of how much time he has left.  Instead of going after his target, Hawke joins forces with them to bring down the corpse rejuvenation program.

I’m a sucker for a good Hawkesploitation movie.  (Violent, sci-fi, and/or pulpy flicks Ethan Hawke makes when he isn’t busy doing indie films.)  Most of them are a cut above the rest.  They look like B pictures, but they have more depth or heart to them than what lies on the surface.  Take a look at Predestination, Assault on Precinct 13, or In a Valley of Violence.  This is one of the rare missteps for the genre.  

24 Hours to Live wastes a good idea, which is kind of what makes it frustrating.  It sort of plays like a more dramatic, less imaginative version of Dead Heat.  After a decent set-up, it shits the bed in short order and the Spray n’ Wash is nowhere to be found.  

I liked the nonchalant way Hawke dispatched a couple of goons in a strip club.  That little touch is more memorable and compelling than the generic car chases, shoot outs, and various action bits that populate the rest of the film.  (Some of which contain far too much slow motion.)  The final raid on the villain’s lair has some coldblooded moments, but it’s ultimately too little too late.

Hawke is fun to watch as usual.  Even when the funky plot is stumbling over itself, he keeps you marginally involved.  There’s also a nice turn by Rutger Hauer as Hawke’s beach bum dad.  He isn’t in it very much, and you’ll wish he had more to do, but he does get one great moment dispatching some mofos with a shotgun.

AKA:  24H Limit.

THE STRAP-ON ADVENTURE (1997) ***

Julie K. Smith and Lorissa McComas are two of my favorite Scream Queens of the ‘90s.  If you feel the same way, you’ll definitely want to check out this half-hour porno the two ladies filmed for a private collector.  As far as porn goes, you’ve seen much better.  The camerawork is shitty, the lighting is bad, and the editing is shoddy.  However, since it features Julie humping Lorissa with multiple vibrators, it’s something of a must-see.  

Lorissa lays on the bed talking to the cameraman, Ben, saying she just ordered a dominatrix.  Julie then strolls into the bedroom wearing a leather harness and a black latex mask.  The two fool around for a bit before the cameraman tells them that a guy named “Vinnie” wants to see Lorissa fucked good.  Julie then uses a vibrator on Lorissa before shoving an enormous strap-on inside her.  Later, she makes Lorissa cum by using a contraption that can only be described as nunchuck dildos.

The big debit here is the constant intrusions by the cameraman, Ben.  His running commentary doesn’t help anyone who isn’t named “Vinnie”.  (“Vinnie wants to see you get fucked.”)  Still, there’s no denying the chemistry between the two performers.  While the film takes a little while to get going, the final few minutes are really something to see.

I’m sure neither lady is especially proud of her work here.  (Lorissa looks uncomfortable most of the time and Julie never takes her mask off.)  I don’t know the level of regret involved in making this video.  All I know is, I don’t regret watching it.  If you’re a fan of either lady, you’ll want to check it out, if only for the curiosity factor.  

McComas (who died in 2009 at the age of 38) also starred in private hardcore videos alongside another Scream Queen, Nikki Fritz.