Bloodfist 2050 (2005)

Tagline:

To avenge his brother's death, Alex Danko must enter the erotic and deadly criminal underground of the near future where he finds the fight of his life!

Back of DVD:

In a brutal future Los Angeles, where the streets run red with the blood of fallen fighters, street fighter Alex Danko (five times world martial arts champion Matt Mullins) searches desperately to find his brother's killer. To find the truth, Alex must enter the vicious world of "THE PIT", an arena where extreme, and often lethal, martial arts are a way of life. Will Alex prove himself and learn the truth? Or will the pit claim yet another casualty?

Movie Review:

The Direct to Video Connoisseur recently reviewed the first Bloodfist movie, a genre classic starring Don "The Dragon" Wilson. I picked up the whole series of eight movies for a total of $16 which was a bit of a bargain but I am yet to watch a single one of them. Recently I discovered when pilfering through bargain bins that there was a ninth movie made, Bloodfist 2050, that did not star Don but starred five-times world martial arts champion Matt Mullins and was somewhat of a remake of the first one.

The movie literally starts with a bang as we are thrown into the deep end of a battle between Mad Max type thugs and 2019: After the Fall of New York type thugs with tonnes of gunfire and explosions and a car chase of Matt Mullins trying to escape it all in his Interceptor rip off. I have no real idea why this sequence was tacked onto the front of a pit fighting movie but I think the producers are trying to remind us it's the post-apocalyptic future of 2050. Mullins hits his afterburner and the footage goes into double speed.

Before the fights had even started I knew I was onto gold. I was also double checking the production year. 2005, really? This made-for-TV movie looks like it came out in 1987. I would usually go on about the video quality in a separate section, but I couldn't leave this till the end. Perhaps it was the old Filipino cameras that were used or some ancient film stock, but Bloodfist 2050 could easily be disguised as a prequel to the original movie from 1989. If it wasn't for a handful of bad CG renders of the cityscape and the techno playing in the nightclubs you wouldn't be able to tell. There is also quite a lot of stock footage used here but I won't ruin it for you; it's fun trying to pick the scenes out. I will say that not all of the titty-bar scenes were filmed for Bloodfist 2050. And I'm pretty sure the opening war is lifted from The New Gladiators or something else from the Concorde vaults.

Speaking of titty-bars (like that segway?) that's where we end up next. After a minor war outside a fighting ring between various gangs, we are introduced briefly to a fight underway between two combatants, one wearing running mascara and the other kickboxing his head in. After the fight the winner goes out to celebrate by watching one of the biggest pair of breasts I've seen on camera. It's all too much for the tired and inebriated fighter who goes outside for a slash. Out of the darkness a ninja attacks him and the guy dies, then a bum steals his jacket. Victory is fleeting.

Matt Mullins arrives at the city gates and pays a blind man to watch his car (?), then goes to his brothers apartment. His brother is not there but his friends Randy and Nadia are and they tell Mullins that his brother Johnny is dead. If you hadn't worked it out, Mullins' brother is the guy who was killed by the ninja. Immediately he wants revenge and ends up in a five-way fight with one of the gangs in a factory. This is pretty sweet; kicking out windows, throwing barrels, spin kicks, cartwheels... Mullins' is very good at his martial art, like a modern Van Damme. Then Joe Sabatino turns up and shoots into the air, scaring the gang away. He tells Mullins that he looks like he needs a drink and takes him to, you guessed it, the titty bar.

Now this bit is fantastic. We are treated to a full strip show by the very hot Beverly Lynne (star of such classy movies as Bikini Royale II and Bikini Chain Gang) who incidentally is married to Glen Meadows, the guy that plays Randy, her brother in this movie. The strip is fine but what is fantastic about it is it's filmed with every single transition effect you can possibly imagine. I'm talking page rolls, star wipes, venetian blinds - all the good stuff you used to find on home video editing hardware from Tandy and Jaycar (or Radio Shack for our US readers). It's hilarious.

Anyway, the fights! Mullins befriends Sabatino who turns out to be a cop and has connections that can get him into the ring. They go to watch the reigning champion fight, the Great Ahmed Khan (featuring the Great Drawn-on Tattoos), Filipino Monsour Del Rosario, also in Bloodfist II but as a different character. Speaking of same actor/different character, the ring announcer here is Joe Mari Avellana - Kwong in Bloodfist and Su in Bloodfist II! When announcing the rules of the match he notices two guys making an illegal side-bet. Obviously the house gets no money from this so Joe yells to them "No side bets!". He is ignored, so Joe shoots them with a flare gun. Baha!

The audio in this is pretty terrible, but simultaneously awesome. The dialog is muffled and when filmed indoors it has a bad echo to it. The fight sounds are great though with those fantastic chop-sockey fight sounds from 1970's kung-fu movies making up the majority of the fight sounds. When there's no fights we get dark synth soundtrack that is reminiscent of early 80's Doctor Who. Sometimes it's played so loud it makes it even harder to hear the dialogue. Top stuff.

Mullins suspects Khan killed his brother and confronts him, to which he replies "Watch your ass.. it's gonna be mine!" Then Mullins and Sabatino go... that's right! To the strip club! This time the Beverly Lynne is covering herself in moisturising cream. Mullins' enjoys the show. That's it. Eventually Mullins' is called for his first fight against some huge guy called The Monster and positively smashes him with his kickboxing skills and even does some backflips. Then to the titty-bar. It's a great cycle, and eventually we get a softcore scene with Mullins and Beverly Lynne. I know some people might just be shouting "get on with the fights!" at their screens but I thought the excessive displays of the female form in Bloodfist 2050 were a great if highly amusing addition. And don't get me wrong, there are plenty of fights to be had.

Randy gets up for his fight against Khan but gets his arse handed to him and his neck broken. Medics perform CPR but I don't know what they hoped to achieve. You can't glue his neck back together with shock paddles. Ultimately the movie ends with a great fight in another factory setting between Mullins and his brother's killer.

Roger Corman produced all nine Bloodfist movies according to IMDB. He had even more staying power in this franchise than Don "The Dragon" Wilson. He is also reunited by the director of the first two Bloodfist's, Cirio H. Santiago. I think they did a fantastic job overall. This is such a fun fight movie that doesn't overstay it's welcome, clocking in at only 78 minutes. There is little pointless plot exposition; just the basic revenge theme, the fights and of course the tits. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what we are all here for.

The Video:

Like I mentioned in the review, the video is pretty poor a lot of the time but that comes down to how it was filmed. The DVD is adequate though there is a lot of noise in some darker scenes. The sound is a mixed bag; the fights sound fine but the dialog was clearly recorded with a microphone attached to someones lapel. Runtime 78 minutes.

Sourced From:

Somewhere random for $2, which is the RRP! Best two bucks I ever spent.

Trailer:

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Repo Jake (1990)

Tagline:

Jake was ready to lead a quiet life... but things just keep hotting up.

Back of DVD:

Jake Baxter takes a job as a repo-man with hopes of living the quiet life. Plans go sour when he's whipped into supersonic action involving a vicious crime lord, a mob of angry car owners, a sadistic porno ring and lastly a brutal, illegal and very lethal car race known throughout L.A.'s underworld as the "Slam Track".

Movie Review:

Dan Haggerty (famous for being Grizzly Adams) stars in this earlier production from PM Entertainment and it's a seriously mixed bag. It starts off brilliantly. Jake is this loveable, huggable lumberjack type who is moving to LA to earn the big bucks as a repo man. Swinging harmonica blues plays in the background as Jake shuffles off his coach and walks down the street carrying a portable TV. He's such a nice guy he pays the first busker he sees. Right in front of him a woman is mugged by some thug and Jake is immediately to the rescue, catching the guy and throwing him through the window of a pizza shop multiple times. This heroic display pleases the woman, Jenny (Dana Bentley), who suggests Jake rents a room in the same building she is in. His landlord looks like Elvira in a wedding dress.

So Jake starts his job repossessing cars and we meet the most cliched team you could possibly find in 1990. You get the tall guy with long blonde hair - called Blondie I might add - that looks like Dave Mustaine from Megadeth, the wiry old man that's been in the job since ought six, the accountant-type of guy that's never managed to successfully repossess a single car, the "ethnic" guy with a heavy New York Italian accent they refer to as a spick and the morbidly obese black guy that writes impromptu rap songs. They all work for an irritable guy called Bulldog. I'm not making this shit up.

Jake goes on many repo jobs and they all end in various "hilarious" ways. The first one he gets chased by the owner and pinned to the windscreen while the car does donuts. Hysterical! The next one he uses his past military training (I forgot to mention, he's an ex marine! This guy that could push a tree down, an ex marine!) to repossess a helicopter which he can't fly properly and the owner hangs onto the side of when in mid air. Amazing! He goes after a car at night owned by a huge ex-con type who he calls Tiny and get's thrashed around the parking lot, until Jake grabs him by the balls and won't let go. Side-splitting comedy! All the while the worst, absolute worst, Casio keyboard demo music is playing.

There are some serious random scenes in this, but none more so than the scene where Jake goes back to his apartment, switches on his black and white TV and watches some cowboy movie while drinking soup and eating half a loaf of bread. This goes on for a minute. THAT'S IT. It went absolutely nowhere! Jake and his new neighbour Jenny also try developing a romantic relationship which is so funny to watch, especially when during a reading for a play she is auditioning for - again, I'm not making this up - she leans in and kisses his walrus face. I burst out laughing. I'm sure bearded guys need love too but man did it make me laugh.

Ultimately Jake gets involved in a derby race by one of his colleagues who has a muscle car that "can't lose". They even managed to make the race scenes tiresome unfortunately, and it gets worse when the local pimp puts a 50K bet on Jake to win and uses his new girlfriend Jenny as collateral. The pimp has a sidekick that has the best flattop hair I've ever seen though.

There are also boobs. Not only do we get to watch Jake try to repossess cars, but we see some of his colleagues too. One of them falls for the old "maybe we can work something out" routine and has ridiculous sex with a bimbo girl in an RV. There's more boobs when we see the bad guy pimp filming a porno movie. The scene was purely there so they could say they had boobs in the movie.

You would think this all sounds awesome, a veritable goldmine of craptacular entertainment. And you'd be right for the first twenty minutes. I thought this was going to be the best movie ever based on the start. Then it just gets tiring. The jokes aren't funny, the bad guy is rubbish and there are far too many secondary characters you don't give a shit about. There's a whole scene where some of the guys put lipstick on the cheeks of another guy and send him on a repo job. This is the kind of comedy you expect in an after-school special, not something that has a picture of a lumberjack with a shotgun on the cover. Incidentally, that photo must have been taken especially for the cover as I don't remember Jake ever holding a gun once in this movie.

I'm disappointed that the premise of a repo man with a shotgun kicking arse was not explored. Instead they went for the PG action comedy with bad 'dads jokes' and added softcore sex scenes to get the R rating, with only ONE explosion. Worth a watch with friends who are already drunk and on a high from a Billy Blanks movie and need some light entertainment, but warn them first. You might want to fast forward through the tedium and laugh at the highlights - smashing through the window, breaking Tiny's nuts, kissing the girl, guy with the flat top, etc. The movie ends with the fat guy rapping over the credits, which you can see in the trailer below. It sums the movie up nicely I think.

The Video:

Soft but representative of the source material and generally quite clear. The audio was fine but the low budget is evident when interior shots are filmed with a bad microphone causing echoes. Still, for this film the presentation is fine. Runtime 86 minutes. NOTE the following screenshots were located elsewhere, my DVD wouldn't read in the Mac for some reason.

Sourced From:

eBay on a double disc with Forced to Kill for a couple of bucks.

Trailer:

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Fortress 2: Re-entry (1999)

Tagline:

No Pardon. No Parole. No Escape.

Back of DVD:

Years ago, John Brennick did the impossible - he escaped from the maximum security prison known as The Fortress. But the Men-Tel Corporation have finally tracked down and re-captured their most wanted fugitive, and Brennick's fight for freedom is about to begin again - on a state-of-the-art prison orbiting 26,000 miles above the Earth.

Movie Review:

I actually owned this when it came out and as I didn't have much appreciation for bad sequels I sold it on. Ten years later I picked it up again at a closing down sale and gave it another chance. I am a massive fan of the first Fortress. To me it is the epitome of B-grade sci-fi action, with hilarious over-acting and plenty of cyborg-gore to boot. Plus Kurtwood Smith (Boddicker from Robocop) is brilliant as Prison Director Poe. And it also helps that it was filmed in Queensland.

Fortress 2 came out seven years later which follows well with the timeline, as the movie starts in the woods where Christopher Lambert and his (most likely) seven year old son are working and riding horses. They are called back to the cabin by his wife Karen (different actress to the first film) and meet with members of the resistance to Men-Tel (the corporation that own everything and built the first Fortress). Lambert doesn't want a bar of them and sends them packing, just in time for Men-Tel choppers to find him and his family. Soldiers blow open his door and chase him into an escape tunnel in the floor, shooting and getting shot at in the process. Lambert's wife and kids get separated and Lambert escapes in a jeep that has a handy RPG in the boot. He takes out the chopper but another comes quickly and blows his car up, netting him as he tries to escape, and knocking him unconscious with gas.

Lambert awakes in a steel chair being dictated rules to by the resident robotic glowing red light in the roof, a situation he knows all too well. The first thing I noticed is that for some reason Zed, the security system, has a South African accent this time. This sequel was filmed in Luxembourg so it's a little surprising. Instead of Intestinators, this time Lambert is outfitted with a new neural inhibitor, injected into his leg. I would have thought his head would have been more appropriate, but I'm no doctor, nor a security system with red eyeball.

It all goes on pretty much like the first movie, except this time women are allowed to mix with men. Lambert gets a bunk bed with a mix of people - a girl who was with the resistance but got arrested, an ex-Russian military man, another ex-resistance guy who had a botched implant and is now a dribbling fool, and the jive-talking everyone's-friend black sidekick Marcus Jackson. He dead-set nearly pulls out "This is whack!" at one point, but this is the 90's so I have come to expect it in movies of the time (see: Under Siege 2).

There is of course an altercation with a beefcake in the mess hall who is complaining about the pink and yellow slop he has to eat. Lambert tries to break up the fight to save them all the pain of the neural inhibitors. This is when we get to meet the administrator of Fortress 2 (Patrick Malahide hamming it up) as he demonstrates over the internal video network what happens if you disobey the rules - you get flushed into space. That's right, Fortress 2 is an orbiting prison platform over Earth. Bet you didn't see that coming, what with the subtitle "Re-entry". Lambert is still going to try to escape though.

Yuji Okumoto, who we have previously seen playing the bad guy in Hard Justice, plays the token prison guard Sato that enjoys beating people up too much. There are a couple of instances where he asks for the inhibitors to be disabled so that he can enjoy a fight with an inmate, and other times where he just sits back and watches beefcakes try to take on Lambert. One beefcake has a go with a overly large welding torch but gets beaten into submission and catches on fire. Sato sends Lambert and a few others outside the ship in suits to do some repairs and doesn't care that Zed is warning him of an incoming asteroid shower. Lambert makes it back in side but one random redshirt cops as asteroid to the brain. Sato laughs and says "I'd give that a nine out of ten". Ooh you cold, cold man.

Look, this isn't too bad. Certainly I don't know why I sold it the first time, I definitely appreciated it more on a second viewing. But it pales in comparison to the original. There is no over-the-top gore in Fortress 2 and no triple-barreled shotguns which is a real shame, as it was one of the main reasons the first worked so well, but there are a few fights and a minor shootout.

Lambert's sidekicks are also not as likeable this time round. The first movie had a good mix of friends for Lambert with prison-currency Nino Gomez, assistant to the Administrator Abraham, beefcake Stiggs and the awesome Jeffrey Combs as tech geek D-Day. The annoying sidekick Marcus Jackson is the tech geek guy this time; he fashions a TV remote out of bits and pieces and a video recorder that the gang use to loop shower footage over the security network to confuse the guards whilst making their escape.

And what the hell was the deal with Lambert being able to do a spacewalk with no suit and just hold his breath? If you've seen the excellent Sunshine you know you turn to ice after about a second in space unprotected. It's -270 degrees for god's sake.

Worth a watch if you were a fan of the first movie's story and not just its gore. And check out the second last screenshot at the bottom of the page. Yes, that is a metronome.

The Video:

This is the long deleted R4 edition, one of the early examples of DVD in Australia coming out in 2000. The 16:9 enhanced presentation is very good and the filmic quality and surround sound are perfectly fine, no issues to report. Runtime 89 minutes.

Sourced From:

A Video Ezy rental shop that was closing down for two bucks.

Trailer:

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