When I saw the terrible WWE Films theatrically released post-action movie THE CONDEMNED I said that I liked “Stone Cold” Steve Austin’s screen persona, “his gravelly voice and his Plissken-esque don’t-give-a-fuck attitude,” and predicted that “If he was given an actual character to play in a movie by people who knew how to make a real movie, he could be at least as good as Roddy Piper.” I was probly thinking a lowbrow studio movie like a DEATH RACE or something, but this’ll do: a surprisingly compelling DTV underground fighting movie from Jeff King, the director of Seagal’s KILL SWITCH and DRIVEN TO KILL (which it just occurred to me oughta be the name of a movie where Seagal plays an ex-CIA NASCAR driver or Tokyo drifter. Coulda woulda shoulda). (more…)
Posts Tagged ‘wrestler-turned-actor’
Damage
Monday, August 9th, 2010
Wrong Side of Town
Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010
I don’t know if you guys remember this, but one time I reviewed a horror movie called CHAOS, and the director of the movie challenged me to a wrestling match in the Ain’t It Cool talkbacks. The director was David DeFalco, a some-time independent circuit wrestler, director of the movie THE BACKLOT MURDERS, and guy who played Marquis De Sade in THE EXOTIC HOUSE OF WAX under the name “Bobby Young.” He was known for wearing spiked collars and Marilyn Manson style contacts and yelling things like “I’m a demon! I’m the king of violence!” during Q&As for his movie. The official CHAOS websight boasted that he had been banned from the 24 Hour Fitness gym chain. I guess after that he had to start working out at the L.A. County Morgue – that’s where the DVD extras show him flexing his muscles and yelling wrestling promo style taunts to Roger Ebert. So I was pretty excited to see his new one. (more…)
Back In Action
Saturday, April 18th, 2009
Yesterday was Roddy Piper’s birthday. I’m celebrating late with the Piper/Billy Blanks picture from 1993, BACK IN ACTION.
Script-wise, I gotta say, this is a half-assed affair. They got the maverick cop (Roddy Piper), the ex-soldier who is back in action on a one man mission of justice (Billy Blanks), standard issue evil druglords, damsel-in-distress sister and also the female reporter love interest always looking for a good story but who ends up trying to help (see also DARKMAN 2, UNIVERSAL SOLDIER). Also some obvious one-liners that I guess I got a laugh from, like when the bad guy thinks (let’s face it, naively) that Piper won’t kill him because of his Miranda rights. Piper stabs him and says “You have the right to remain silent. Forever.”
Other than that there is no effort to put any spice on the usual cliches or put them together in a way that makes sense. And it’s kind of stupid that Billy only thinks he’s on a one man mission of justice. He’s going after these drug dealers who he thinks kidnapped his sister, but actually she’s hiding from them in an apartment with her boyfriend. The filmatism is low rent like an American International Pictures jungle commando movie or something. There are lots of scenes at bars, warehouses and docks.
Piper seems to be trying, doing what he can with a nothing character. I realized during the scene when he looks at his dead partner that movie acting really has nothing to do with wrestling acting. He lets you read his facial expressions but doesn’t project them to the back row. I wonder if he ever fucks up and does wrestling acting on a movie shoot and gets yelled at by the director? And then he breaks a chair over the director’s head? That could explain why there are two directors credited. One had to tag in when the other one got knocked out. (more…)
The Scorpion King
Saturday, August 16th, 2008Well, I gave up on Stephen Sommers after the rhythmless THE MUMMY so I never watched THE MUMMY RETURNS. But I have since learned to enjoy The Rock so today I finally got around to watching the prequel/spin-off THE SCORPION KING. It’s directed by Charles NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 3 Russell, so I didn’t have to break my Sommers boycott. And I’m glad I finally watched it. This is probaly the best riff on the CONAN THE BARBARIAN type of movie I’ve seen. Not as stylish or violent as 300 but a little more fun. And a hell of alot better than KULL THE CONQUEROR.
The movie got me from the opening scene where Tyler Mane and a horde of barbarians have some hapless dude who they call “an Akkadian” tied up. They are very proud of all the races and nationalities they’ve murdered but they never bagged them an Akkadian before, so this is a big day. But the Akadian says, “May the gods have mercy on you, because my brother won’t.”
His brother, is, of course, The Rock (registered trademark of World Wrestling Entertainment) as Mathayis, a long-haired, giant-muscled, bow and arrow toting, sword slinging, rope swinging, cuthroat motherfucker who storms in for a Rock vs. Mane Smackdown, and fires an arrow into Mane so hard he flies out the side of the building and lands five years later in the remake of HALLOWEEN. (more…)
Southland Tales
Wednesday, March 19th, 2008Poor The Rock. With his outsized charisma, cartoonish build and air of sincerity I’m still convinced he has the potential to make great movies. The problem is he doesn’t seem to hook up with any good directors. THE RUNDOWN is still his best movie and it’s a fun time but, come on, it’s no PREDATOR, or even COMMANDO. I believe we, as a society, can offer The Rock more than THE RUNDOWN. So I was excited when I found out the Rock would be one of the stars of this weird new movie from the director of DONNIE DARKO. “Should at least be interesting,” I thought, not bothering to knock on wood.
Trouble is I had writer/director Richard Kelly pegged all wrong. I liked DONNIE DARKO well enough, thought it was pretty original and enjoyable. Saw it once on video and once as the director’s cut at the Seattle Internation Film Festival, which is when I learned that some youths worship this guy. They traveled across the country dressed in DARKO-themed costumes to nervously stammer to him that he changed their lives. That’s weird, I thought.
Then he wrote DOMINO, one of my most hated movies of the last several years. But I blamed Tony Scott. I figured there could’ve been a good script in there, Tony Scott just ax murdered it to unrecognizable bits with his Guiness Book of World Records All Time Worst Editing Ever In the History of Cinema. But after seeing SOUTHLAND TALES I’m not so sure Kelly is clean on that one. In fact I bet he specified alot of that shit in the script.
SOUTHLAND TALES takes place in Los Angeles, in the near future, after a nuclear attack on Texas. It involves intrigue between an amnesiac action star, a senator, a porn star/talk show hostess, left wing radicals, a Homeland Security type Big Brother department of the US government, twin brother racist cops, the inventor of an alternative fuel, some dwarves, and a weapons dealer in an ice cream truck played by Christopher Lambert. The plot also hits on time travel, dimensional travel, the human soul, psychedelic drugs, kidnapping, blackmail, staged murders, slam poetry, and a zepellin piloted by Kevin Smith wearing old man makeup but talking exactly like he did in LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD. The cast also includes Seann William Scott, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Mandy Moore, Justin Timberlake, Nora Dunn, John Larroquette, Bai Ling, Jon Lovitz, Cheri Oteri, Amy Poehler, Miranda Richardson, Wallace Shawn, Curtis “Booger” Armstrong, Zelda Rubinstein, Janeane Garafolo in one shot of a crowd scene, and the guy who apparently played Seagal on MAD TV. Also your mom is probaly in there somewhere. (more…)
The Condemned
Wednesday, April 25th, 2007My friends, I write to you with a heavy heart to admit that the prestigious WWE Films banner is starting to lose its luster. They have three movies under their belt now (get it, belt – that is a wrestling pun in my opinion) but the record now is 1 in 3. And the one I’m counting as good is SEE NO EVIL (click for review!) , the slasher movie about a big bald sexually repressed muscleman poking out people’s eyes in a scary hotel. So your mileage may vary. (mileage is a car metaphor, that is no longer wrestling related, sorry.)
THE CONDEMNED sort of stars Steve Austin, formerly known as Stone Cold Steve Austin, but maybe he dropped that after he got fired from wrestling for getting arrested for wife beating. I’m not sure. Austin is the most sympathetic of ten convicts that an amoral millionaire buys out of prisons in third world countries, puts on an island and forces to kill each other for one of those live streaming internet shows they have in horrible movies (see HALLOWEEN RESURRECTION). They have bombs attached to their ankles so they can’t escape, and if one is able to be the last one remaining he or she will be set free.
The movie has two advantages over the disappointing THE MARINE. Number one, it’s rated-R so it can have actual violence in it, not just explosions. Number two, Steve Austin makes a good action anti-hero, he is not bland and laughable like John Cena. Sure, they both have unnaturally large necks, but Austin seems like a genuine tough guy, not just an out of control muscle-sculpting experiment for some crazed fitness artist. The bad guys always call him “redneck” and “hillbilly” and I guess he has a little bit of a drawl, but his main appeal is his gravelly voice and his Plissken-esque don’t-give-a-fuck attitude. This crowd seemed to love it every time he barked out a sarcastic comment or called somebody “sweetheart,” and I don’t blame them. If he was given an actual character to play in a movie by people who knew how to make a real movie, he could be at least as good as Roddy Piper. (Not that any wrestler movie will ever match THEY LIVE. That’s a pipe dream.) (more…)
They Live
Wednesday, August 23rd, 2006THEY LIVE is one of my favorite movies ever. It is probaly the very best version of a rare type of movie I love: the badass action movie that also works as a political statement. BILLY JACK may be more political, but it seems so self important and it has no sense of humor. THEY LIVE is kind of saying the same thing THE MATRIX is saying about a society brainwashed by media and advertising, but it’s saying more than that. It’s about the America of the Reagan years, when everything was geared to help the rich at the expense of the working class. Which for some reason seems awfully familiar today. Huh. Weird.
“Rowdy” Roddy Piper plays Nada, a drifter who walks into town with tools and a sleeping bag on his back. (Hey, what happens to that sleeping bag? I think it disappears.) This is a hero who not only doesn’t drive a sports car, but doesn’t have a car at all. Or a house. Or a job, at first. The plants are closing, the jobs are drying up, that’s why he’s on the move. But he happens to get a construction job, where he meets Frank (Keith motherfuckin David from THE THING) and finds out about a homeless encampment near a church where some nice people serve food for the homeless.
The first section of the movie doesn’t have alot of dialogue. It’s all about watching. Nada watches people watching TV – an old lady in an apartment, a dude standing outside an electronics shop, even homeless people who have a TV set up outside. We can see that Nada is a little creeped out by the vapid commercials and their hypnotic effect on people. And then they get pissed off when, every once in a while, some weird old man cuts into the broadcast desperately telling people to “wake up.” And then everybody gets a headache.
Nada also starts watching the church, because he notices something odd going on. He watches a helicopter watching the church. He sneaks in and sees that it’s not a real church. The choir he hears from outside is a reel-to-reel tape and there’s some kind of rebels hatching a plan in there. He even bumps into a secret panel in the wall and sees a box inside, but he gets found out by an elderly blind priest, so he leaves. (more…)
See No Evil
Friday, May 19th, 2006NOTE: This appears on The Ain’t It Cool News, but the formatting is all fucked up there and I liked this one so I am re-posting it here.
Boys–
This is kind of a weird question, but have you ever thought there should be a movie about a big bald retarded muscleman with extreme religious views running around an abandoned hotel banging people against walls and plucking their eyeballs out? If so, today’s your lucky day, and SEE NO EVIL is your movie.
The retarded muscleman is played by Kane, not the rapper Big Daddy Kane but apparently a famous wrestler of some kind, making his acting debut. According to the credits he is playing “Jacob Goodnight,” a name they unfortunately never say in the movie. Like the character, the movie is big, dumb, almost definitely using steroids, and also way more fun than you would think.
SEE NO EVIL is the first film from the prestigious WWE Films. WWE is what we used to call WWF until they got sued by the World Wildlife Foundation. I guess people must’ve been donating money to Hulk Hogan thinking he was gonna use it to save the pandas, but it all went straight into his 24″ pythons. I was hoping the WWE Films logo would be accompanied by rockin guitars and clanging metal hammers, then it would explode and spray sparks and flames everywhere, and maybe some skulls and demonic goatheads. It turns out their film division is a little more high-minded than the wrestling division though, so it’s a simple logo with the sound of an orchestra tuning. I mean I’m talking 100% class. Then the last shot in the movie is a dog peeing into a dead man’s eye socket. By the way this review contains spoilers. (more…)
