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Karate Cop is the most unlikely of sequels. One of the most blatantly bland excuses for an action move I’d ever seen somehow produces a semi-hilarious B action flick that I am extremely glad to have in my library? I would never have guessed.

The last cop on Earth, John Travis, is back for another go-round as an unlucky hero who clings to his former career, even though the rest of the planet has fallen to pieces and has become a world where only the strong survive. The young and the weak are prayed upon by thugs and gangsters, bent on controlling what’s left of the planet, and having as much sadistic fun as they can in the process. After an hilariously heroic introduction, Travis is tasked with protecting several dozen children, the last in a cityscape filled with dangerous gang lords who would quickly snap the neck of even the smallest child to satisfy their thirst for mayhem.

Their only hope of escaping this apocalyptic hell? A transporter, probably invented way back in the year 1999, that can instantaneously send them hundreds of miles away to safety. It’s up to our hero to collect the main element in the mechanism, a crystal shard used to focus a powerful beam of light into the transporter chamber. Travis must face off against religious fanatics, bombs, booby traps, uzis, AND David Carradine, who, of course, delivers an amazing performance as a disreputable Omega Bar Tender.

I’d like to take this opportunity to discuss the “you go ahead, I’ll catch up/martyr” scenario. The idea, as noble as it may be, is nearly always debunked by the following action: the fleeing hero who inevitably turns around 10-15 feet down the path and yells “don’t do this! we need you!”, or something of the like. Add this to the amount of time it takes the martyr to convince that person to go ahead without them, and you’ve easily eaten up a minute and a half that you could have both spent running for your lives.

John Travis may also be an Omega Poet and he didn’t even Omega Knowit, as he spouts out glorious one-liners such as “I knew things were going too well to be easy!” And, after dispatching a particularly nasty boss, Travis proclaims: “Assholes to ashes, dictators to dust.” Seeing that alone is worth the price of shipping and handling.

Karate Cop starts off the story with a bang, and for all it’s budgetary shortcomings, kept me glued to the screen. I was waiting for the next pure 90s one-liner, the next horribly out of focus camera shot, the next pathetically delivered line uttered by the lead actress, Carrie Chambers, who’s stunning film career is quite simply the stuff of legends. Her performance resembles a high school play actor, putting on a lively portrayal of a middle school play actor.

The film is enhanced with a glorious B synth score, the likes of which I haven’t heard since the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon series. Boss battles, futuristic technology, trucker hats, magical crystals, slave girls, dirt bikes (back when they were the shit), executions, explosions, muscles, mohawks, faithful canine companions, and boatloads of heroic deeds make Karate Cop one of my favorite films that I’ve reviewed.

Is it a good movie? hell naw. Is it worth a measily 2 bucks? You’ll feel like you’ve gotten away with murder.

THE CHAMPION: A giant Mad Max-style gladiator.
DVD MENU: As 90s as they come.
JACK RABBIT STEW: Travis knows better.

Buy it now on amazon.com!

Genius Products, the guys who helped bring us Quentin Tarantino’s Deathproof, had a hand in producing this very finished, but incredibly bland, direct-to dvd supernatural horror/thriller. I pulled HG off of the shelf based solely upon the tagline on the box, “You can’t bury terror.” I don’t know if they have a Pulitzer offshoot category for ‘most amazingly nonsensical quote that somehow does it’s job in getting people to rent a movie’, but whoever managed to force that nugget from the right side of their brain should take it home for 2007.

Hallowed Ground takes place in a tiny rural town that is somehow fully functional and yet consists of less than 30 people. Our heroin, Liz, played by Jaimie Alexander, stumbles upon the town of Hope when her car suddenly grinds and whirs, slowing her to a snail’s pace and forcing her off of the highway. She progresses slowly down main street, coming face to face with the blank stares of the the townsfolk who obviously do not care for outsiders.

After tending to her car, she runs into a tabloid reporter (ala The Enquirer) who is doing a story on the history of the area. It seems there is a local legend about a preacher who resorted to crucifying unfaithful townspeople and visitors in order to more effectively keep the crows from destroying Hope’s livelihood of crops. (a scarecrow that screams bloody murder works better than the silent, hay-stuffed variety) The preacher was eventually caught and was murdered himself, leading people to believe that the area remains haunted by his spirit to this day. The reporter grabs Liz by the wrist, and totes her off to the haunted farmhouse where the story originated. Begin scary stuff here:

(I’m reluctant to reveal any more of the plot, as it definitely sounds interesting, and may inadvertently fool some of you into thinking that it is a tale worth your time.)

Okay, Hallowed Ground has a few serious problems. But the main err was in thinking that the story/setting was sufficiently scary and original enough to create a serious horror flick. Well, it’s not. Again, the movie was executed well, the lighting is fantastic, the cinematography was no better than an average television show, and there are actors from multiple backgrounds that bring the bland townspeople to life, but what is happening on the screen isn’t original, thought provoking, or meaningful enough for anyone to care.

Instead of genuinely creeping, frightening, or intriguing, Hallowed Ground simply bores. As is evident on the package, the Scarecrow is a main character in the movie. He comes to life and begins to seemingly terrorize the town and Liz. However, the production team decides not to stick with the horror film staple of letting the audience create their own fear by keeping them in the dark. Instead, they present the scarecrow every chance they get. They generally show where he is and what he is doing at all times, which is usually standing around with a pitch fork looking confused.

During the following hour, the story veers away from the stalker/slasher it starts out to be, and takes half a dozen other turns before the lights come up. (and it is just enough to keep you watching, especially if it’s your job to do so). Will the ancient prophecy be fulfilled? Will Liz be able to out-whit the crazed religious fanatics? What on earth will happen in the end? Let me go ahead and tell you now: nothing you will remember in a 3 day’s time.

I can’t recommend Hallowed Ground for any audience. It’s not scary enough for anyone over the age of 8, and it does not entertain on any B level whatsoever. Hell, even I can’t even make fun of the thing!

Let’s help this sorry, sleepy little flick just fade away.

SCRAPE: Pitch-fork on glass=not pleasant.
STUCK: Townspeople from telephone poles!
SIGH: That’s it. A measly two payoffs…

Buy it now at Amazon.com!

Sharks have always held a special place in my heart. In fact, I have a vivid memory of the very first picture I ever drew that I was happy with: A wholesome little crayon piece detailing a shark sinking its teeth into a helpless recreational swimmer. At that moment I knew I wanted to be an artist.

Now, some twenty or so years later, when I see a movie called Hammerhead I just can’t help but snag it off the shelf. Call me sick, but I had a severe craving for some grisly shark attack mania solely for the sake of a few laughs…

But were the laughs delivered? Yes, yes they were.

Hammerhead is not the typical Jaws ripoff like one would expect. The plot revolves around a mad scientist named Dr. King played appropriately by B-God Jeffrey Combs. His poor son was diagnosed with cancer, so naturally the only solution was to fuse his son’s stem cells with those of a hammerhead shark and transform him into an ugly-as-hell-but-cancer-free-half-man-half-shark-beast-thing! It’s logical, really…when you sit and think about it…

To Dr. King’s dismay, a group of scientists come to his private island on a mission to shut down his dastardly operation. Hammy The Shark-Man gets out, and his scraggly teeth begin sinking into anyone and everyone as they scramble for survival! Any more plot explanation than this is completely unnecessary. This IS a SciFi Channel original movie, after all.

Now Hammerhead doesn’t really have a great looking monster. In fact, Hammy The Shark-Man looks incredibly cheap. He goes from being a guy in an ultra stiff rubber suit to a much-too-fluid CG disaster with the flick of a switch. Hammerhead also doesn’t have a decent script, decent acting (save for our hero, played by William Forsythe!) or a decent original death scene.

SPOILER WARNING: But it does have a bloody half-human-half-shark fetus, a bad guy looking through a scope that doesn’t exist, the same bad guy walking through a maze of body parts like it ain’t no thang, a helicopter with 666 plastered on the side for no apparent reason, a “hero” that shoots bad guys in the back, a rich prick that crashes into a tree and can only say “Uuh,” and a slow-motion explosion that is about as poorly executed as possible. END SPOILERS

The best part is that all these great little moments and more are scattered comfortably throughout the movie, making it an entertaining watch from start to finish. It may not be much, but it isn’t supposed to be a remake of Citizen Kane. It’s a movie about a half-man-half-shark that eats people. Take it for what it’s worth and you won’t be disappointed!

SHARKFETUS: Isn’t he a cuuuuuuute?
JEFFREY COMBS: The man is a legend, recognize!
SILLY GOOD FUN: That’s all there is to it.

Buy it now at Amazon.com!

Sometimes I wish I could take a movie, chop out the excess fat, burn my own version, erase the entire experience from memory and watch it all over again. Such is the case with Randy Daudlin’s monster flick Bottom Feeder.

This almost-good creature feature begins with the story of a famous geneticist hired by a billionaire burn victim to develop a serum to regenerate dying cells. The geneticist ends up producing more theories than results, and gets an overdose of his own medicine forced into his jugular. He is thrown into the cellar of an old hospital and left to survive off nothing but rats. The side effects of his overdose make him acquire the genetic traits of his food and he begins mutating into a rather lame and not very scary looking Rat-Man. A city maintenance crew happens to be scheduled to work in that very cellar, and needless to say, it ends up being more than just another day on the job!

Along the way we are also introduced to a sub-plot involving a couple government agents…or what SEEM to be government agents, one of which I could swear is Gillian Anderson’s long lost twin sister!

To make it even freakier, the actresses name is Wendy Anderson, though from my research there is absolutely no relation to Gillian. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm, oh well.

All the ingredients are there for a cheesy good time. In fact, Bottom Feeder actually provides quite a bit of bloody entertainment and so-bad-it’s-good-dialogue. The problem is, it takes nearly 45 or 50 minutes for it to realize it’s a campy B-Horror movie and not a serious big budget production. Such is the downfall of so many of the direct to DVD horror movies flooding our video stores these days. That said, Bottom Feeder is still one of the better films of this crop.

To illustrate this point, I will put the first half of Bottom Feeder to the side for a moment and focus on all the positive aspects that come later on. For example, Tom Sizemore’s character Vince Stoker has quite a few absurdly macho one liners that add some very beneficial laughs to break up the monstrous monotony. He even goes on a wonderfully typical tirade about how he spent two year’s in ‘Nam! Another particularly great laugh comes from Stoker’s niece Sam talking to one of the other maintenance workers named Otis. There is also a smidgen of decent gore in the second half, with scenes involving hedge trimmers, arms, axes, Rat-Man’s claws and one characters jawbone…yes, jawbone!!! These are really the type of moments that make this job worth while.

Besides all this, I’m not sure if I can really recommend Bottom Feeder. The first half is just mind-numbingly bland, and I’m not sure if the goodness to follow is quite good enough to justify sitting through everything else. About the only good part of the first 45 minutes is the very beginning of the credit sequence. Who really thought this would be a good idea? Who knows, but I’m glad they did…for it sure gave me a laugh!

So rent it if you wish, but don’t say I told you to!

CHEESY LAUGHS: As long as you can wait for them.
HEDGE-TRIMMER: Yummy.
JAWBONE: Even yummier.

BUY IT…THAT’S AN ORDER!

If there is one movie genre that never ceases to amaze me with sheer stupidity, it is not B-Horror…it is B-Action. Something about the muscle bound pretty boys like Jean Cleade Van Damme and the painfully persistent Steven Seagal running around killing hooligan after hooligan of multi-millionaire drug-lord after multi-millionaire drug-lord drives me bonkers. Maybe it’s just me. But one good thing came out of this relentless stream of nonsense, and that is the nearly perfect B-Action Spinoff Lethal Force.

So unlike many of my other recent reviews where I begin trash talking in the second paragraph, I am instead going to start giggling like a little school boy as I attempt to express just how bad-fucking-ass Lethal Force really is. First and foremost, The plot is perfect for an action flick: Good guy must kill bad guy, with plenty of interesting and humorous subplots along the way. The picture quality and overall color scheme is straight out of the late 80’s/early 90’s. The music fits every scene to a T, ranging from cheesy single note hits on the synthesizer, touching piano, to all out Spy-Hunter style bass driven rock. And to top it all off, it’s all wrapped nicely in hand painted cover art. Yessums.

The characters throughout Lethal Force are all unique, memorable, and get plenty of time in the spotlight. The main characters Jack and Savitch (played by Frank Prather and Cash Flagg Jr, respectively) are definitely the film’s main highlights, but there are plenty of sweet and silly bad guys decked out in cheesy 80’s Miami Vice style suits to keep things lively. The coolest bad guys would most definitely have to be the black suit and tie wearing martial arts maniacs with the ghostly white masks. Once these guys are on the screen you know you are in for a treat!

Really there isn’t anything negative to say about Lethal Force. The action is tight, the acting is cheesy, and it had us laughing from start to finish. All I hope is that Sir Alvin D. Ecarma will enlighten us with another no-holds-B-arred action extravaganza such as this!

In fact, it’s soooooooo good, if you watch Lethal Force and don’t have a BLAST you might as well never visit bisforbrains.com again…because we sure as hell ain’t gonna get along. A+++

P.O.I.N.T.L.E.S.S.: A definite rewind moment!
‘NAM: Just when you thought it reached its peak.
EVERYTHING: The model B-Action movie.

Buy it for the sake of giving me some money through the Amazon affiliates program.

Death Knows Your Name is the final flick from Maverick entertainment that I will ever be watching. That’s it. No more.

The plot has something to do with a mysterious skull and a weird disease in a hospital. It’s basically a wannabe Lovecraftian story that isn’t actually based on a Lovecraft story. I’m not even going to try to explain it. Nor am I going to rip into how boring it is. Instead, here is a list of movies you should watch that did what this movie wants to, but were a B-zillion times better:

1. Re-Animator
2. Beyond Re-Animator
3. From Beyond
4. The Haunted Palace
5. Masters of Horror - H.P. Lovecraft’s Dreams in the Witch-House

Hell, why not just read some Lovecraft.

Knowing I’ll never watch another Maverick flick again? That’s about as good as it gets.