STONE COLD DEAD (1980) ***

Richard Crenna stars as a determined cop out to stop a killer who’s going around murdering hookers with a sniper rifle.  Paul Williams is the evil pimp who...  

Okay, do you need any more convincing to see Stone Cold Dead?  Didn’t think so.  I mean how are you not going to watch it now that you know one of the most beloved icons of the ‘70s plays a pimp who forces the girls in his stable to give him head in the back of his limo?  

Apparently, there’s another version of the film that adds a scene of Linnea Quigley being killed.  Unfortunately, that’s not the one I saw.  I may have to track it down at some point.  It can only make the movie even better, right? 

I mean, this flick has everything.  Paul Williams getting roughed up by Richard Crenna at a hooker’s funeral, Chickie from Death Wish V as a crooked cop, strippers, hookers being taken out by Sniper Rifle POV shots, Bob Seger songs, you name it, it’s got it.

In addition, it’s got this weird energy that makes the predictable plot feel fresh.  It’s probably too long with maybe one extraneous subplot that bogs things down, but it’s constantly absorbing thanks to the performances.  Crenna is given such an eccentric character to play that it more than makes up for the film’s lapses in other areas.  He has a great gimmick where he calls his answering machine that’s set up to a Rube Goldberg contraption that feeds his fish whenever the ringer goes off.  That way he doesn’t have to race home to take care of them when he’s on a case.  It’s offbeat touches like this that help to make Stone Cold Dead stone cold awesome.  This also leads to a wonderful character moment for Crenna when a woman asks him why he has goldfish for a pet and he replies, “Fish don’t bark!”

AKA:  Point Two-Two.  AKA:  Sin Sniper.  

WATER’S EDGE (2004) * ½

Nathan Fillion and Chandra West star as a married couple grieving the loss of their daughter.  Looking for a fresh start, they go to live in his father’s old cabin out in the middle of nowhere.  While walking in the woods, Nathan stumbles upon a crooked cop (Daryl Shutterworth) about to murder a battered woman (Emmanuelle Vaugier).   He kills the cop in self-defense and brings her back to the cabin to convalesce.  Eventually, the couple learns the woman isn’t exactly who she claims to be.    

Written by Craig Brewer a few years before he made a name for himself directing Black Snake Moan, Water’s Edge starts slowly, allowing time for the characters to breathe and become fully developed.  Despite the well-intentioned opening, the film pretty much jumps off the rails once Vaugier’s character is introduced.  Though the set-up holds promise, there are just too many long stretches where nothing happens.  Just when it seems like the tension should be ratcheting up, the flick becomes even more slow moving and obvious.  The small-town conspiracy plot is laborious and the eventual twists involving stolen money, blackmail, and murder are surprisingly anti-captivating.  It also feels like a TV movie at several junctures, which doesn’t help.  

Fillion is normally charismatic and fun to watch, but he’s stuck playing a sad sack character without a whole lot of personality.  Likewise, West isn’t given much to do.  I wouldn’t mind seeing them paired again if the script was better.  Vaugier probably fares the worst, although she spends too much of the movie sleeping.  She’s also more convincing playing the frightened waif than she is portraying the conniving femme fatale side of her character.  

It’s sad when Daniel Baldwin steals the movie.  He shows up about halfway through playing the town’s crooked mayor.  Of course, even that twist is telegraphed from a mile away.  (How do we know he’s crooked?  By his evil looking goatee, that’s how!)

PRIMAL INSTINCT (2002) *

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LION STRIKE (1995) ** ½

Don “The Dragon” Wilson returns as everyone’s favorite Kung Fu doctor Johnny Wu in the third installment of the Ring of Fire franchise.  This time out, an international crime organization joins forces to sell nukes to terrorists.  Naturally, through a set of dumb coincidences, Johnny winds up in possession of a vital computer disc the gangsters need to get their plans rolling.  They then set out to kill Wu and get the disc back.  Can a global conglomerate of mobsters stand a chance against a Kung Fu doctor?

The best scene in the whole movie has nothing to do with the main plot.  A surly biker gang barges into a busy ER room and demands medical treatment.  (One guy even runs through the hallway on a motorcycle!)  Don tells them to take a number and a brawl ensues. 

I also liked his Kung Fu forest ranger love interest, played by Bobbie Phillips.  Lion Strike maybe a dumb title because there are no lions in it, but Phillips does rescue a cougar.  There’s a hilarious moment when Wilson’s kid sees it and says, “Nice cougar!”

Don then looks at the camera and says, “I’ll Say!” I’m not an expert on colloquialisms, but I think this might be the first use of the word “cougar” to mean a hot older woman.  If not, it’s certainly one of the funniest.

Some laughs can also be had from seeing various explosions and shootouts from other PM movies acting as placeholders during the action sequences.  These moments help give the illusion the movie’s much more expensive than it really is.  However, after the silly and entertaining first act, things quickly become more generic as it goes along.  It pretty much loses a lot of its nutty charm in the third act when it just becomes a series of interchangeable scenes of Don Kung Fuing bad guys in the mountains.  It somehow was more fun when he was getting into unrelated action scenes and dodging stock footage from other movies.

Action fans will enjoy seeing a pre-Spawn Michael Jai White popping up in a small role.

AKA:  Ring of Fire 3:  Lion Strike.  

STIFF COMPETITION (1984) ***

You know all those movies about the underground kickboxing circuit?  The ones where people gather in a dingy garage or basement and bet on who will be left standing in a mano y mano Kung Fu battle?  The kind where a young fighter gets plucked out of obscurity and works their way to a fight inside the ring for a big money prize?

Well, Stiff Competition is the first underground cocksucking tournament movie.  Instead of two guys fighting, it’s a guy standing there while a women races against the clock to see how fast she can make the dude cum.  In fact, it predates many of those kickboxing films I was talking about, which in a way makes it a trailblazer for not only one genre, but two.

When a cocksucker quits in the middle of an underground “suck-off”, a young newcomer named Tammy the Tongue (Gina Carrera) takes her place.  Jeff (Kevin James) sees she has real talent and coaches her to be the best dick-licker on the circuit.  She quickly works her way up the ranks of the cocksucker elite, which spells doom for the former pro Cynthia Silkthroat (Cyndee Summers) and her attempted bid at a comeback.  Eventually, they settle their differences in the ring at the “Super Bowl of Suck-Offs” for a $50,000 cash prize.  

Stiff Competition has fun playing up the usual sports movie clichés, which is where a majority of the amusement comes from.  It takes a lot of its cues from the Rocky series (there’s a dick-sucking montage instead of a training montage) and the final match is rife with drama.  It’s also kind of like The Hustler in that the hero’s mentor takes them out on the road in preparation for the big match.  

If you’re mostly concerned with the XXX action, you may be dismayed by the heavy concentration of oral scenes.  (Unless that’s your thing.)  Director Paul (Bodacious Ta-Ta’s) Vatelli, perhaps sensing his overreliance on oral, mixes things up by sticking a great anal scene with Bridgette Monet smack dab in the middle of the flick.  

Carrera is kind of forgettable in the lead, but the supporting cast is amusing.  We have Ron Jeremy who plays “Don Head”, the promoter of the big Suck-Off, delivering another sleazy performance.  John Leslie brings his typical intensity to the role of Summers’ slimy manager, Jake the Snake.  It’s also fun seeing Kitten Natividad turning up for a nice little lesbian scene with Carrera.   

A sequel followed ten years later.

NIGHT OF THE SHARKS (1990) **

Night of the Sharks was a late era entry in the first wave of the Killer Shark films that were released in the wake of Jaws’ success.  (It was made in Italy a year after Jaws the Revenge and released in America two years later.)  It was made at a time when the country’s exploitation output was in a gradual state of decline.  It’s not up to snuff with something like Great White, but if you’re an undemanding fan of Italian shark movies, it’ll be an OK way to kill 90 minutes.

Treat Williams stars as a beach bum who is out to kill a one-eyed shark named “Cyclops”.  His brother gets mixed up with some unsavory characters and comes to the beach to lay low.  Naturally, the bad guys follow him and kill him.  It seems he was blackmailing some pretty powerful people and was in possession of an incriminating disc.  Treat winds up with the disc and soon, they come after him too.  

Let me be honest.  I’ll pretty much watch any Blood in the Water movie.  That of course is any film that features a shark attacking someone as the waters slowly turn red with blood.  As far as these things go, it’s tolerable, although it comes up way short in the exploitation department.

I’m also a big Treat Williams fan.  He’s fun to watch and gives a charming performance.  His charisma shines through, even if it’s obvious he only took the job so he could hang out on the beach all day.  

There are some amusing moments to be sure.  I liked the scene where the shark steals Treat’s boat, and the big bar fight scene is kind of funny.  I also enjoyed seeing Antonio Fargas popping up as Treat’s right-hand man.  I even got a chuckle out of the electronic suspense music, which sounds less like a rip-off of John Williams’ Jaws theme and more like music from the boss level of a video game.  Italian exploitation vets John Steiner and Chris Connelly also turn up, which fans of this sort of dreck will appreciate.  

Sounds like a walk on the beach doesn’t it?  Well, despite a fair amount of good points, Night of the Sharks (there’s only one shark, by the way) just never works itself up into a frenzy.  At one point, the movie forgets all about the shark as it turns into your typical jungle actioner.  After that, it just never recovers.  It goes without saying that the scenes of blackmail, political intrigue, and Treat tangling with assassins is far less entertaining than the scenes of the shark eating people. 

Treat fared much better ten years later with another aquatic horror flick, Deep Rising.

AKA:  Jaws Attack.

JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 3: PARABELLUM (2019) ***

John Wick:  Chapter 2 ended on such a perfect note that John Wick:  Chapter 3 quickly became one of my most anticipated movies.  Who could forget when John Wick (Keanu Reeves) broke the sacred rules of committing murder in the hitman hotel, thus declaring open season on himself, allowing every hitman on the planet free reign to take him out?  It was an awesome set-up that suggested all hell would break loose in Chapter 3.  Other than a sterling opening twenty minutes or so, this uneven, sometimes frustrating sequel never quite lives up to the promise of its predecessor.  However, there are still enough moments of badassery here to keep fans of the series happy. 

Things kick off with an excellent fight in a library as well as a tense scene set in a doctor’s office.  Then along comes a sequence that will go down in history as one of the all-time greats.  John Wick is chased by a gang of killers into an antique weapons warehouse where they match wits in a hallway full of knives.  It is a jaw-dropping display of martial arts choreography, action cinematography, and sheer kinetic filmmaking.  I haven’t even brought up the horse fight.  

Then, as the film enters its second act, it does the unthinkable.  It gets boring.  It’s almost as if the first flurry of non-stop action winded the movie and it had to sit down and catch its breath.  It eventually rights itself as the action in the third act is frenzied and fun (though lacking the kick of the early sequences), but that whole middle section of the flick is downright turgid.

I always hate it when a movie feels like it’s making up its rules as it goes along.  I mean the second film ended with everyone in the world gunning for John Wick.  Then, all of a sudden, the flick is like, “Oh, wait we lied.  He’s got a Get Out of Jail Free card he pulled out of a box of Crackerjacks.”  Then when it feels like the action is about to ramp up again, there’s a longwinded scene where Wick finagles his way out of ANOTHER scenario by invoking inane obscure hitman bylaws at the last minute.  The original film’s world-building was one of its most intriguing aspects.  Here, it just seems like the screenwriters are just pulling new “rules” out of their ass to keep the stuntmen on the sidelines.  

It doesn’t help that the second act is chockful of scenes of brand-new characters that bring absolutely nothing new to the table.  The scenes of Anjelica Huston, Halle Berry, and the terrible new villain “The Adjudicator” (Asia Kate Dillon) are dull and stop the movie on a dime.  In fact, it seems like Halle is only there to set up her very own a spin-off as Reeves takes a backseat to her for a chunk of the movie.  Remember when they tried to pull that shit with James Bond on Die Another Day?  It didn’t work out so good, did it?  I won’t even tell you about the shitty Lawrence of Arabia part. 

Luckily, the stagnant second act is redeemed once Mark Dacascos and his Ninja buddies try to kill John Wick.  There’s even an extended cameo by one of my favorite badass Kung Fu stars that I wouldn’t dream of spoiling.  These fight scenes help to solidify the film’s shakiness somewhat, even if they lack the breathlessness of the opening moments. 

The ending sets things up for yet another sequel.  I can honestly say its not nearly as inspired as the previous cliffhanger.  Hopefully, the next Chapter will be a bit of a course correction for the series, but if it has at least one sequence as exhilarating as this one’s “Hall of Knives” fight, it’ll still be worth watching.

AKA:  John Wick 3:  Parabellum.