From the time I heard about the book Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter until the second before I saw the trailer for the movie version, I had no interest in the concept. Yeah, I get it – history and horror cliches moosh-up. Wocka wocka wocka. But one second later I saw that trailer and I realized that I hadn’t gotten it at all. As far as you could tell from the trailer, this movie was gonna be treated dead serious. A historical drama that for some reason is also a horror action movie. It looked amazing.
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Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
Windy City Heat
WINDY CITY HEAT is the story of Stone Fury, the Chicago sports private eye who all the legendary athletes come to when they’re the victim of a crime. For example one of the cases he investigates in this one is when William “The Refrigerator” Perry comes to him and says his refrigerator has been stolen. “How am I gonna chill my food?” he asks Fury. “How?”
Well, that’s not the WINDY CITY HEAT you’ll sit down to watch, though. That’s the movie-within-the-movie. The movie that we can get on DVD is an elaborate practical joke played on “Scary” Perry Caravello, the weirdo Sam Kinison wannabe and accomplished film extra who plays Fury. Comedians Don Barris and Mole (who always pretends to be stoned and wears an obviously fake wig) have known him for years and like to fuck with him. With the help of producers Jimmy Kimmel and Adam Carolla they convince him he’s auditioning for, then filming, the role of Stone Fury. He’s convinced he’s a great actor (you will disagree) and of course agrees to interviews and cameras following him around for the behind-the-scenes documentary.
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Shakes the Clown
After his unorthodox standup comedy led to his screechy POLICE ACADEMY 2-4 character leading to other movies that aren’t remembered too well other than SCROOGED, Bobcat Goldthwait took the Clint Eastwood or Bruce Lee path: he went rogue to write and direct a vehicle that was more in tune with his voice and talents than what he was being offered. At the time it didn’t get him much more respect than the talking horse one, but this movie holds up and earns him a pass for those other ones in my opinion.
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Police Academy 1-4: The Carey Mahoney Cycle
Sometimes, in a man’s ongoing journey toward a fuller understanding of his world, he must watch the POLICE ACADEMY series of films. That’s all I really have to say as far as an explanation.
If you are not familiar with the POLICE ACADEMY saga, I know it must sound like a very scholarly law enforcement procedural, but don’t expect THE FRENCH CONNECTION. Or even POLICE STORY. In my opinion this is more of a “comedy” type of series than a serious analysis of law and order. I guess it’s trying to be a version of ANIMAL HOUSE but with cops instead of non-cops, and more of a “not good at all” type of approach than what John Landis chose to do.
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Ca$h (the Sean Bean one)
An Avenger and a Throne-Gamer butt heads over a suitcase of money in this mediocre DTV thriller
Wasn’t that awesome? I wrote a headline.
Chris Thor Hemsworth plays Sam, a Chicago knucklehead who thinks the Lord is smiling on him when a suitcase full of money is thrown over an overpass and lands on the hood of his station wagon. He’s not a streetwise tough guy of any kind, not a guy that knows how to handle the situation. He’s just a dipshit who thinks since nobody saw him take it as far as he knows he can just live off the money and there will be no consequences. At first his wife Leslie (Victoria Profeta) is nervous about it, but she decides to go along with it anyway. They pay off their debts in cash, buy a new Range Rover, a new house, new furniture, new TV. (read the rest of this shit…)
Eastern Condors
There’s alot of big movie anniversaries this summer. Everybody’s celebrating 30 years since the Summer of ’82 shit like E.T., THE THING, BLADE RUNNER, CONAN THE BARBARIAN. And I’ve been trying to commemorate the important summer of ’87 ones like PREDATOR and ROBOCOP. Little did I know that there was another movie, originally released July 9th, 1987, worthy of that kind of respect, but that I never saw before.
Geez, man. What have I been doing these last 25 years that was so god damn important I couldn’t be bothered to watch EASTERN CONDORS? Nothin, that’s what. Why did nobody convince me to watch this one before? This is my new favorite movie until further notice. The only legitimate reason to not watch it is if you’re worried that it will be hard to find another action movie to watch after that, because not many hold up to the EASTERN CONDORS standard of fun. (read the rest of this shit…)
Wrong Turn at Tahoe
Back when I saw the insane Lee Daniels mother-fucking assassin movie SHADOWBOXER I admitted that Cuba Gooding Jr. was good in it, but made fun of the generic covers of some of his other straight to video movies. Back then one or more people stood up for WRONG TURN AT TAHOE. I don’t think I believed them.
Since then I liked Gooding in HIT LIST, and started to realize that I was unfair to dismiss him as a DTV star. Just ’cause he did all that mugging on all those trailers for comedies I never saw doesn’t mean he can’t do other shit. I even kind of liked him in RED TAILS – not a popular stance, but an honest one. And I can’t continue to hold that ugly purple shirt from BOYZ N THE HOOD against him. It was the ’90s, it was a different time. At least he wasn’t wearing Zubaz.
Chronicle
Yeah, CHRONICLE. I just shouldn’t watch these found footage movies, I guess. It doesn’t matter how good they are for their genre, I always think they pale in comparison to actual movies. But technically this isn’t a found footage movie, because they never claim that anybody found the footage, and they sometimes switch POVs from the one character’s camera to another character’s, or to security cameras. So it’s a footage movie.
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Miami Connection
Y.K. Kim is a motivational speaker, author of books with titles like Winning Is a Choice and The New American Dream. He sells a 5-CD set called U.S. National Exercise that boasts “It’s amazing! You can even exercise while driving without any extra time!” On his websight he’s quoted as saying, “Success: 1% is the idea, 99% is action. Put your goals into action, never and ever give up until you achieve your goals.”
In 1987 his goal was to make an action movie.
Perfect Target
Daniel Bernhardt is a Swiss martial artist and model who appeared in a Versace commercial with Jean-Claude Van Damme, then was hired to play the lead in the BLOODSPORT sequels. So it’s only natural that in 1997 he inherited Van Damme’s frequent collaborator Sheldon Lettich, who had already directed LIONHEART and DOUBLE IMPACT (plus the great Mark Dacascos capoeria-‘n-teaching movie ONLY THE STRONG). But I’m sorry to say the substitute is not as good as the real thing. (read the rest of this shit…)
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