LET’S GET PHYSICAL: HELLCATS IN HIGH HEELS (1997) ** ½

FORMAT:  VHS

This odd shot-on-video softcore tape feels like if Michael Ninn tried to remake Rock Video Girls with a camcorder.  It’s nothing more than a series of pointlessly arty sequences of porn stars and nude models engaging in softcore activity set to a rock soundtrack and edited like a music video.  I can’t say it works, but it’s got a lot of naked women in it. 

The only names I recognized were Nikki Sinn and Melissa Monet and the only band I’ve heard of was David Allen and The Arrows.  I don’t know if that is exactly a “criticism”.  I just wish the music was better.

The tape begins a with a quote from Judy Garland (!), then the softcore sequences begin.  In the most interesting scene, a model is covered in black latex and when it hardens, she does a striptease by peeling the latex from her body.  All this might’ve been erotic if it wasn’t for all the Hollywood Squares camera effects.  Next up is a scene where a woman in an equestrian outfit and a topless chick in a bridle engage in some “pony play”.  Like the first segment, it has a good idea at its core, but the camera effects get in the way of the fun.  (In this case, too much “Negative Vision”.)  Then Nikki walks by a bunch of erotic art while smoking.  This scene is kind of pointless as it features no nudity aside from what’s featured in the artwork.  Next, we have a series of biker babes performing stripteases.  This is followed by a lesbian softcore scene that features some bootlicking, which is kind of hot… if you’re into that sort of thing.  Then, a quartet of babes in ‘50s attire shake their goods in front of classic cars while Allen plays guitar.  A disagreement breaks out between two of the gals, and things erupt into a hair-pulling catfight.  Even though there’s no nudity in this segment, it’s probably the most fun.  This is followed by a nude body painting scene that might’ve worked if the body art didn’t make it look like Venom puked tribal tattoos on the models.  Next, the girls get naked and shake and shimmy for the camera before engaging in a five-way lesbian fuck fest.  If you make it past the credits, you’ll be treated to a trailer for Part 2, which looks like more of the same.  

Hellcats in High Heels was directed by porn star-turned-photographer Justice Howard, who appeared in a handful of hardcore movies (including… uh… More Than a Handful).  Her only directing credits were the films in the Hellcats in High Heels trilogy.  I will say this for her:  She knows how to showcase silicone boob jobs, blonde dye jobs, and body piercings.  All this kind of made me nostalgic for edited-for-cable adult content of the ‘90s, like the Playboy Channel and Spice Channel, but it wasn’t exactly titillating. 

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: ACT OF WAR (1998) **

FORMAT:  DVD

The opening of Act of War is kind of amusing.  Jack Scalia arrives at a swanky embassy party in Russia.  When his credentials are denied, he tips the cabbie to ram the gate.  The taxi winds up going beyond the gate and crashes through the front door and right into the main ballroom.  Talk about crashing the party!

After that fun sequence, I was up for a good time.  Unfortunately, that’s about where the fun stopped as the film became increasingly generic after the smashing opening.  About a third of the way in, Act of War turns into yet another Die Hard clone where soldiers, led by a crazed military dude attempting a coup, storm the party and take everyone hostage.  Naturally, it’s up Jack to save the day. 

Look, I enjoy a good Die Hard in a… movie as much as the next action fan, and I’ll admit, some amusement can be had seeing how the filmmakers crassly steal from the Die Hard formula (right down to the slimy Ellis character, the revelation that the coup is merely a glorified robbery, and Scalia’s sweaty undershirt).  However, it ultimately feels more of a filmed checklist of Die Hard cliches than an actual film.  It’s a shame too especially when you consider the most novel part (the opening) was the most fun.  

Part of the problem is the setting.  It’s just a mansion out in the middle of nowhere.  Die Hard in a… movies should have at least a memorable setting (think the plane in Passenger 57 or the train in Under Siege 2) that enhances the story.  Then again, the original Die Hard took place at a party, but at least the skyscraper brought an element of peril to the proceedings.

Scalia’s handsome charm certainly carries the film further than you’d expect.  Just imagine what he could’ve done if the script gave him some memorable dialogue and or funny one-liners.  While Act of War is certainly watchable, it’s just that at the end of the day it’s nothing more than a mediocre action flick with little to offer to anyone other than die-hard fans of Die Hard rip-offs. 

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: CRAZY SIX (1998) * ½

FORMAT:  DVD

After the fall of Communism, Eastern Europe became a haven for criminals and is now known as “Crimeland”.  A crackhead thief named Crazy Six (Rob Lowe) and his crew rip off a gangster played by Ice-T. Naturally, that makes them wanted men. 

Directed by Albert (Mean Guns) Pyun, Crazy Six has a surprisingly sturdy cast.  You’ve got to hand it to Ice-T.  Whether he’s in superior action pictures like Surviving the Game, a Leprechaun sequel, or a dreary Albert Pyun movie, he always brings his A-Game.  Likewise, Burt Reynolds lends the only real spark to the film as an American lawman in a cowboy hat.  He classes things up a bit and gets the best line when he says:  “I wouldn’t trust him if his balls were on fire and I had a bucket of water!”  The supporting cast is populated with Pyun regulars like Thom Mathews as Lowe’s best friend and Norbert Weisser as Reynolds’ partner.   

It’s just a shame that Lowe is such a washout as the eponymous character.  He mumbles, sports long, scraggily hair, and a big handlebar mustache.  That suggests to me he’s either hiding under his character or hiding from the audience in embarrassment.  Mario Van Peebles is also around as a rival gangster, but he doesn’t have much to do other than speak in a thick Jamaican accent and sit around and pet his chihuahua.

Pyun stacks the film with long, insufferable nightclub acts that are cut together like a bad music video.  That’s the big issue:  The editing.  The film is so overedited that even the simplest scenes feel confusing, or at the very least, clumsy.  (Speaking of editing, notice how Burt never appears in the same shot as anyone else in the finale.)  The dialogue is almost as bad.  In one scene, there’s an awkward discussion about Kool-Aid that sounds like a third grader trying to sound like Tarantino.  

Plus, Pyun bathes every scene in neon.  I think he was going for a comic book effect, but the whole thing comes off looking garish and ugly.  So… you know.  It looks like your typical Pyun joint. 

THE BEEKEEPER (2024) ****

The Beekeeper is Jason Statham at his best.  He’s an unassuming beekeeper.  A man of few words, and when he does speak, it’s mostly about bees.  When some annoying online scammers fleece his elderly friend (Phylicia Rashad), she becomes so distraught that she commits suicide.  Then, the beekeeper goes out for revenge, working his way up to the top of the Crypto Bros. ladder, and disposing of the scum of the universe. 

That is to say, it’s glorious.

The Beekeeper is in the tradition of the best revenge thrillers.  The main tweak here is that he’s avenging the elderly.  Oh, and beekeeping isn’t just his profession.  He used to be a “Beekeeper”; a top-secret soldier who restored order to the “ecosystem” when it got out of balance by working outside the law.  (“I protect the hive!”)  Yes, the more ridiculous it gets (you won’t believe where the conspiracy leads), the straighter Statham’s face becomes, which makes it even more enjoyable. 

I love it when revenge movie heroes find new scum to exterminate.  In the ‘80s, Charles Bronson took out muggers.  In the early ‘00s, Liam Neeson executed white slavers.  Now, Statham is sticking it to cyber criminals.  It’s a subtle, yet clever twist on an established trope.  Most of these kinds of films have a scene where one of the bad guys begs for his life.  In The Beekeeper, a dude offers our hero crypto and NFTs if he will spare him.  Naturally, it leads to a crowd-pleasing death. 

Director David Ayer’s filmography has been spotty.  However, this is far and away his best.  He dials down his knack for obnoxious excess and peppers the film with just enough ludicrousness (like the assassin who looks like one of the Misfits from Jem) without upsetting the balance of the film.  Just like the Beekeeper. 

It was also written by Kurt Wimmer, who likewise is hit and miss, but this is one of his best scripts.  He too deserves praise for not going overboard with the beekeeping metaphors and one-liners.  (Although I did crack up when the villain’s henchman said, “To bee… or not to bee…”)  Hopefully he’s saving up more bee puns for the sequel. 

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: SPOILER (1998) * ½

FORMAT:  DVD

Gary Daniels stars as the titular “Spoiler”, a convict that’s been dethawed from his cryo-prison.  Wrongly accused, convicted and incarcerated, he has a propensity for escaping, with the ultimate goal of seeing his daughter.  Naturally, every time he escapes, it adds more years to his sentence, and eventually his little girl ain’t so little anymore.  

Spoiler boasts a good supporting cast.  We have Bryan (Cold Harvest) Genesse as a bounty hunter, Meg (They Live) Foster as the warden, Arye (House 2) Gross as the “attendant” who thaws out the prisoners, Bruce (Diamonds are Forever) Glover as a priest, Duane (Pulp Fiction) Whitaker as a prison guard, Tony (Bad Santa) Cox as Daniels’ buddy, John (Jaws 3-D) Putch as a doctor, and Jeffrey (Re-Animator) Combs chewing the scenery as a cop.  It also has a plot that borrows freely from Demolition Man, Fortress, and Blade Runner, and even features scenes similar to Die Hard (like Daniels crawling around in a ventilation shaft). 

That is to say, it’s basically a mess.  Ultimately, Spoiler boils down to a long series of scenes of Gary escaping, being captured, escaping again, getting recaptured, and so on, and so on, and so on.  It doesn’t take long before all this becomes monotonous.  The scenes of Daniels kickboxing on sets of what look like remnants of old Roger Corman movies offer fleeting amusement, but the majority of the fights are indifferently staged and listlessly edited.  It’s also ugly looking to boot.  

The funny thing is that despite the turgid first hour and a half, the last five minutes come very close to working.  That’s mostly because Daniels commits to the potentially silly scene.  I won’t spoil… uh… Spoiler, but it’s a shame the last five minutes doesn’t come at the end of a better movie. 

Apparently, director Jeff (Leatherface:  The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3) Burr took his name off the film when the producers started meddling in the editing room.  (The clunky editing is one of the film’s biggest shortcomings.)  I can’t say I blame him. 

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: AIR MARSHAL (2003) ** ½

FORMAT:  DVD

Air Marshal is a straight-to-DVD action flick from the Nu Image “American Heroes” line.  It’s basically a slight variation on Passenger 57 for the Post-9/11 world.  Dean Cochran stars as a former Special Forces soldier-turned-air marshal who’s on a flight home to see his pregnant wife.  Of course, the plane is taken over by Arab terrorists.  There’s a shootout on the plane, and the marshal is presumed dead.  The dumb terrorists don’t realize he pulled the oldest trick in the book (wearing a bulletproof vest) and soon, he sets out to stop the terrorists, land the plane, and save the passengers. 

Dean Cochran is a perfectly acceptable C-list square jaw, action hero type.  He looks like the love child of Dean Cain and Paul Logan, which means he looks right at home in a second-rate Nu Image production.  Considering the low budget surroundings, his performance is about on par with everything else in the movie, which is to say, slightly better than you’d expect.  The only “star” in the movie is Jack Deth himself, Tim Thomerson, who plays a senator who is embarrassed by his daughter’s constant flirting with other passengers. 

Nu Image was working with a formula here and they follow it to the letter.  You can chart the history of airline action flicks like this one back to the disaster movies of the ‘70s (like Airport) all the way up to the actioners of the ‘90s (like Executive Decision).  Air Marshal doesn’t stray from the formula.  It checks off all the boxes and crosses off all the cliches in the book. 

It also delivers some unintentional laughs along the way.  The constant shots of the poorly CGI-ed plane are good for a chuckle and the emergency landing scene is pretty funny, which helps.  Overall, it makes for an OK night of braindead DTV cinema. 

AKA:  Air Marshals.

TEEN STEAM (1988) ****

When I was a kid, Alyssa Milano was one of my first big celebrity crushes.  With Teen Steam, I get to relive those golden years when she was one of the hottest teen stars in Hollywood.  

In the ‘80s it seemed like EVERY celebrity had their own workout video.  Teen Steam is Alyssa’s.  It begins with a music video of her singing the title tune in the studio while dancers strut in a fog-drenched alley.  Then we see her in her room talking to her friends on the phone.  They all want to release a little steam, so she invites them over for a workout.  (They magically appear moments later out of thin air.) 

Teen Steam has a good message:  Kids are under a lot of pressure, and they need to release energy in a positive way, like working out.  (“Teen steam… Gotta let it out!”)  It was also something of a family affair for the Milano clan.  Dad Tom wrote the music and mom Lin produced and was the hairstylist.  

The workout portions are good cheesy fun, and the banter between Alyssa and her friends is casual and spontaneous.  At one point, she cheerfully shouts, “Eat your heart out, Jane”, a clear, but playful jab at Jane Fonda and her workout video.  Alyssa also tries to be “hip” by performing a rap about toe raises.  (According to the credits, the rap was co-written by The Wonder Years’ Jason Hervey!)  I also thought it was funny that Alyssa doesn’t do some of the exercises but sits idly by and watches her friends do them.  Things take a turn for the kooky about halfway into the video when Alyssa walks through her bedroom mirror and winds up back in the music video where her and a bunch of teens dance.  She naturally returns back to her room for the finale where the video ends with stretching “cool down” exercises. 

This review is coming from a forty-five-year-old dude.  Not only am I a genuine fan of Milano, but also of the celebrity workout genre/phenomenon.  As a form of ‘80s video archeology, Teen Steam is quite a find.  If I saw this when it was released as a young man entering puberty, I would award this the highest rating imaginable.  Watching it now, it still remains a fun relic of a bygone era with just enough WTF moments to make it a must-see for fans of ‘80s cheese. 

AKA:  Alyssa Milano’s Teen Steam.  AKA:  Alyssa Milano:  Teen Steam.