THE MINION (1998)

“You’re a long way from home, stranger.”

Not to be confused with this summer’s blockbuster starring the little yellow dudes from the DESPICABLE ME flicks, this MINION is actually a slice of pre-aughts Millenniumsploitation starring Dolph Lundgren as a member of the Knights Templar.

Charged with the sacred task of keeping the Anti-Christ locked up in a bottomless prison at their stronghold, the Templars must spring into action when some NYC sewer workers unearth the key to said prison on the eve of the new millennium. So Lukas (Dolph) heads to the city that never sleeps and begins punching people in the head with a big spiked glove that is supposed to kill the titular minion.

Unfortunately, the minion won’t rest until its master is free and when Lukas kills a demon-possessed cop it sends him and a sexy archaeologist (Francoise Robertson) on the run.

Jean Marc Piche – making his first feature film outing – delivers a sorta lazy actioner that’s never as much fun as something with Dolph Lundgren as a priest punching people in the head with a spiked glove should be.

Bonus points, though, for a TERMINATOR-inspired police station assault. – Dan Taylor

THE MINION is available from Amazon.

What Happened to the Summer of ACTION?! and Other Notes

Okay, so the Summer of ACTION! didn't turn out quite the way I'd hoped.

Though the umbrella project featuring everything from comics and action flicks to vintage TV and men's adventure novels started strong (and with the best of intentions), by August the real world had intervened and while I kept reading and watching I never quite found the time to write. Add in a week without internet (due to the hurricane) and several extended beach trips and well, you know how it goes.

So, what happens now? Does the SoA! come to an end? Get "retired" like an assassin whose conscience is getting to him? Do we put it on ice – like Dolph Lundgren in the snappy action flick UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: REGENERATION – only to thaw it out next June in the hopes that the intervening months haven't made it crazier than it already was?

Hell no.

Though it might be getting dark earlier and fall temperatures aren't far off, the Summer of ACTION! will continue. Like five o'clock, it's always summer somewhere.

So, what else is happening in the world of Exploitation Retrospect?

Work on our Revenge of Print edition is currently under way and thanks to a hard drive bulging with awesome contributions it's likely to be the biggest issue of ER ever produced. I still have some design decisions to shake out – particularly whether to go with a digest or full-size layout – but we're still on track to have the issue wrapped up before the end of 2011.

I've also decided to make some changes in how reviews appear both on this blog and at our site. Recent discussions with a friend who is just tackling the whole blog thing made me realize that I've been keeping one foot in "traditional" publishing for far too long.

The original ER website was put together in the mid-to-late 1990s and my approach to it shows. With the current "system" I gather reviews as they come in from contributors and update the site (when time allows) with a couple dozen reviews. In other words, the site has become a bit like the zine that led to its creation – no real deadline for publication and it only gets worked on when I have a huge block of time to handle the formatting, linking and updating of the home page.

It finally dawned on me that nobody ever said I had to wait till I had two dozen reviews to update the site, that all the new reviews had to go up at once, or that I couldn't roll reviews out here on the blog first.

Hopefully, this change in approach will lead to a couple things. First, reviews of new releases will appear here and on the site in a more timely fashion. Second, the site will get updated more frequently. And, third, I won't have to make the foolhardy attempt to carve three or four hours out of a weekend in order to do a sweeping site update.

That's about all for now. Thanks for your continued support of this blog and the site!

SUMMER OF ACTION! -- Why Am I Alive?

Don't be sad, don't be blue, Happy Burger has treats for you!

SERIES: The Dead Man
VOLUME/TITLE: #1/Face of Evil
AUTHOR: Lee Goldberg & William Rabkin
PUBLISHER: CreateSpace
YEAR: 2011
OPENING LINES:February 19, 2011. In the few minutes before Barney Slezak recorded the gruesome YouTube video that would draw more than a million hits, winning him and his family an all-expense-paid trip to Los Angeles to be on Jimmy Kimmel's show, he was thinking about how much he hated snow.
CLOSING LINES: And with that, Matthew Cahill walked out the door and down the road, chasing the receding echo of Mr. Dark's twisted laughter wherever it might lead him.

One of the biggest problems with getting hooked on men's adventure novels a good twenty or thirty years after they peaked in popularity is that it can be difficult – and sometimes pricey – to pick up a series from the beginning. Oh sure, you can grab fistfuls of adventure for 25 cents a pop at your local flea market or thrift shop, but you're often dropped into the midst of a series, wondering just how this guy you're reading about became a Death Merchant, a Protector or a one-eyed mercenary.

Though some series, like The Destroyer, have made it easy for fans and newbies to get started thanks to things like selected "best of" volumes or dirt-cheap ebooks, be prepared to shell out more than flea market prices if you want to read the first few adventures of Mack Bolan.

The ability to get in on the ground floor, so to speak, was but one of the things that attracted me about The Dead Man books, a new series created by Lee Goldberg & William Rabkin (action fiction vets and writers of the popular MONK and PSYCH novels, respectively). Not only could I start at the beginning and keep pace, but good pal and kindred spirit David Zuzelo assured me that the tales of Matt Cahill would dovetail nicely with both the Summer of ACTION! and my horror-loving side.

FACE OF EVIL introduces us to Matt Cahill, one of the luckiest – or unluckiest – men alive. I supposed it depends on your point of view. After a skiing accident leaves him buried under a mountain of snow and presumed dead, Cahill rejoins the human race when his body is discovered by a family that I'm sure will spend the rest of their vacations in a warm, sunny climate.

Not surprisingly, the time spent locked in his icy tomb has left Matt with an unwelcome skill – he can literally see the bad in people. And when he sees it he really sees it – soulless eyes, rotting flesh and boiling skin are just a few of the ways the evil manifests itself as Cahill attempts to return to the life he led before the accident.

Complicating matters are the presence of Mr. Dark – a shadowy figure who haunts Cahill at every turn – and the fact that Cahill's best friend appears to be falling prey to the evil that's tearing away at him from the inside.

If you're anything like me – a card-carrying HorrorDad^TM who fits in his reading time between pre-school drop-off/pick-up, meals, swim lessons, exercising, grocery store trips and the like – FACE OF EVIL (and the other Dead Man books I'll be reviewing soon) gets my highest recommendation. The book is short and fast-paced, but never feels rushed, and you'll find yourself looking for any excuse to bang out the next chapter.

And, like an adaptation of the greatest tv show that's not on the air, the end will leave you wanting more. NOW!

The Dirty Dozen – Premiere Edition

Entertainment Weekly has their Must List.

Golf Magazine has the Front 9.

But what if you don't care about golf or what the cast of Glee is up to? What if you what you really want to know is what Eurotrash DVDs are coming out or what blogs you should be reading or bands you should be listening to in order to get your recommended daily dose of trash?

Well, fear not. ER is here with The Dirty Dozen, a new feature that will provide you with a look at the junk culture and fringe media stuff we love, Love, LOVE ... at the moment. Stop back every weekend for a new installment and be sure to drop me a line if you have something you feel is worthy of being in The Dirty Dozen. Got a mag, comic, zine, disc, movie or, well, anything you want us to check out? See the sidebar for our PO Box address.

Enough yakking. On to this week's list!

1. The Planet of the Apes Saga: Original Recipe – I don't know if RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES is any good or not, though I was pleasantly surprised to see its rating on Rotten Tomatoes well past 80% when I got up this morning. But I do know that the new flick seems to have sparked renewed interest in the original five films which I love so much. Best of all, I got to watch all five flicks on the big screen last weekend thanks to the guys at Exhumed Films and believe it or not, I think I actually like the series more than I did about a week ago. Rather than simply make the same flick over and over again each film has its own unique take on the storyline, and, more importantly, the saga works as a great, epic tale. Sure, some of the effects are dated and the messages simplistic, but I'll go on the record as saying the STAR WARS flicks can't hold a candle to the APES saga.
2. TENEBRAE (DVD) – Though I've been spending a lot of time these last few months immersed in The Summer of ACTION! (with more posts to come soon, I promise), an ongoing side project has been a reassessment of the work of Dario Argento. I've always thought The Italian Hitchcock was a little overrated but felt like I should go back and give fresh watches to some of his classic – and not so classic – work to see if I was being fair. I was surprised by how much I loved the nightmarish INFERNO and how much the trashy, nutzoid PHENOMENA didn't click with me. But a recent viewing of the seemingly personal TENEBRAE reminded me that when he was firing on all cylinders there weren't many who could touch Argento's deft touch when it came to giallo. It's an entertaining, funny and well-acted mystery packed with iconic death scenes and a superb cast.
3. THE BASEMENT VHS Screener – As the DVD/Blu-Ray era closes in on the end of its second decade, one can be left wondering what's left to release? Thanks to the horror market's insatiable need to see anything and everything, no matter how poorly acted or cheaply made, it looks like shot-on-video and shot-on-super-8mm (!) features will ensure that horror fans have plenty to watch in the years to come. THE BASEMENT takes a page out of the SLEDGEHAMMER book by providing screeners on both DVD and VHS. THE VHS screener is a site to behold, an old school big box with colorful artwork of a buxom blonde being attached by nasty beasts from the titular basement. I don't know if the flick will even be watchable (though I was pleasantly surprised by SLEDGEHAMMER) but the screener brought a tear to my eye and reminded me of the good old days of turning those worn out cardboard boxes over and over in my hands.
4. Klaus Kinski's Directorial Debut (And Swan Song) Comes to US DVD – Regular readers know of my love for the irascible and outrageous European film star Klaus Kinski. I've long contended that no matter how brief his role, "The German Olivier" usually makes anything he's in worth watching. (A theory that was severaly put to the test by PSYCHOPATH.) Towards the end of his long and storied career, Kinski conspired to write and direct a biography of Niccolo Paganini, an Italian violinist and composer whose wild lifestyle and violent playing style led some to suggest that he'd made a deal with the devil (take THAT Robert Johnson!). The resulting film – KINSKI PAGANINI – has only been available on German VHS and DVD but good pal and Cinema Arcana honcho Bruce Holecheck recently informed me that Mya (who released the Turkish Kinski oddity EVIL FACE) will be putting the film out on US DVD in November. I'll provide more details about the disc as they become available and be sure to check out the Cinema Arcana Upcoming Release List!
5. NEVER SLEEP AGAIN: THE ELM STREET LEGACY (DVD) – I've always thought the NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET franchise should have ended after the third installment – DREAM WARRIORS directed by Chuck Russell. It made up for some of the glaring sins of ELM STREET 2, gave the series a nice sense of closure thanks to the presence of Heather Langenkamp and John Saxon, and would have been a good way to end things on a high note. Thanks to boffo box office we all know that's not how things played out and the more of an outrageous wise-cracker Freddy became the more my interest in the series waned. But I'm glad it went on as long as it did, because it gave filmmakers Daniel Farrands and Andrew Kasch the opportunity to create NEVER SLEEP AGAIN, an exhaustive, funny and informative look at the franchise, the people behind it, and how New Line really was "The House That Freddy Built". Who knew a four-hour ELM STREET doc would be my front-runner for my favorite film I've seen all year?!
6. The Stalkers: Yesterday is No Tomorrow (CD) – I caught this New York garage band a few weeks ago when they opened for The Dwarves here in Baltimore. The moment I saw them setting up on stage I had a feeling they'd be the kind of band I'd dig... the members looked like guys I hung out with in college and you could almost smell the Ramones/Thunders/Dictators vibe. Oddly enough, the dude I had pegged for their roadie – a burly biker type who looked like he might have kidnapped the rest of the band – was actually their lead singer, giving the garage-pop an interesting visual dynamic and gleefully sinister playfulness. The disc I picked up from their merch table after the show is four years old and doesn't really do them justice, but with great music in short supply these days I was happy to discover a band I'm anxious to hear more from.
7. Louis Fowler's Damaged Viewing (Podcast) – Longtime ER readers are certainly already familiar with Louis Fowler, a pop culture watchdog who has written some of my favorite reviews at the site. And when he's not telling everybody within earshot how great BATMAN & ROBIN is he's also a damn fine blogger, food writer (check out his work in our sister publication The Hungover Gourmet) and host of Damaged Hearing (available via iTunes). But I'm partial to Louis's latest venture – with frequent guest and card-carrying Man of ACTION! John Grace – a hysterical and interesting look at cinema called (what else?) Damaged Viewing. Louis and Co. jump in the studio after seeing such films as TRANSFORMERS 3, GREEN LANTERN and CAPTAIN AMERICA, only to find the conversation veering wildly off-topic before coming back around.
8. Black Dynamite: The Animated Series Premiere (TV) – I finally caught up with BLACK DYNAMITE at this year's ActionFest and busted a gut over Michael Jai White's dead-on paean to 70s blaxploitation cinema. With DYNAMITE already a full-fledged cult film hit, the character has his own comic book and is now set for his big TV debut. But first, this Monday, August 8th will see the premiere of BLACK DYNAMITE: THE ANIMATED SERIES on AdultSwim.com. The 11-minute pilot, featuring the voices of White, Tommy Davidson and others from the film, is just the start as Dynamite will be joining the Adult Swim lineup later this year.
9. First Photo of Henry Cavill as The Man of Steel – I was shocked when the first photo of Henry Cavill in the Superman costume from the upcoming THE MAN OF STEEL hit the internet and nerds began complaining. Oh no, wait, I wasn't shocked at all. In fact, I resisted the urge to look at the pic when the link first hit my mailbox because I wanted time for the ferocious idiocy to come to a rolling boil. Sure enough, comments sections on blogs, websites and social media sites were packed with complaints ranging from nitpicky (Why is the S so big? The cape looks like drapes.) to nitwitty (Bring back Brandon Routh! Where's the curled lock of hair?). Frankly, I'm not a huge Superman fan but even I was dismayed at Kal-El's last cinematic outing and had little interest in this new "reboot", even if I like some of Zack Snyder's work. But not only does the first look at Supes remind me of the George Reeves show that I grew up on but for the first time in a long time the Boy Scout looks like he's finally ready to kick some bad guy ass. (I was not similarly enthused about the first glimpse of Anne Hathaway as Catwoman in THE DARK KNIGHT RISES.)
   
10. Bruce Springsteen Auditions for PERFECT? (Viral) – There came a point in the 1980s where you had to make a music video. It didn't matter how big a star you were, music videos were a big promotional tool... even if they made you look like a tool. Bruce Springsteen's "Dancing in the Dark" was, I believe, The Boss's first music video and the one that aired ad nauseum on MTV is largely remembered for the scene at the end with a post-MISFITS OF SCIENCE/pre-FRIENDS Courtney Cox being pulled from the audience to "dance" with Bruce. (The moment was even referenced on Cox's underrated COUGAR TOWN last season.) As stiff and uncomfortable as that video is, it's like a Kubrick film in comparison to this early, original version that I stumbled across thanks to the great Butch Walker (whose new album hits later this month). For twelve painful minutes The Boss arthritically lurches through "dance moves", does some kinda weird lasso thing over his head and snaps his fingers to a non-existent beat that only he can hear. That'd be bad enough, but the black pants, wife-beater tee, suspenders and black headband make it look like he's trying out for a role in PERFECT. Hard to believe this is the guy who did "Candy's Room".
    
11. Kindle Bargains (eBooks) – After getting an iPad this summer I found myself blowing past the eBook apps because I couldn't imagine I'd ever curl up with the device to read a good book. I've always been a textural guy who likes the feel and smell of a used paperback or the ability to roll up a mag or zine and stuff it in my pocket. But I was won over by the Kindle app and the fact that Created, The Destroyer was available for the low, low price of 99 cents along with a ton of other Destroyer novels! (Hey, if you're going to take the plunge into a Summer of ACTION! you might as well read the first book in the most famous men's action series.) Then, while cruising around West Philly this past weekend, ER co-founder Lou Goncey informed me that the 25th anniversary edition of John Skipp & Craig Spector's groundbreaking splatterpunk horror novel Light at the End was available for less than the price of a cup of coffee. The eBook will never replace the fun of finding great, used trash at a flea market and I won't take my iPad into the can with me, but good bargains on great books will certainly keep me coming back for more.
    
12. JAWS Meets... Peanuts? – As a kid I loved anything and everything related to PLANET OF THE APES, KISS, and James Bond, just to name a few. Having older siblings meant that I also got my hands on passed-down volumes of classic Peanuts strips re-printed in paperbacks and had escorts who would take me to see JAWS, even when I wasn't supposed to. Given how much time I spent in the ocean you'd have thought the flick would have freaked me out, but I went the opposite direction and, for a brief period, embraced all things shark. My 9th birthday even had a bit of a JAWS theme, with me getting a huge towel featuring the iconic JAWS poster (wish I still had that) and a plastic Great White Shark bank. Never expected to see beloved childhood icons like Snoopy and JAWS mashed up, but, well, you just never know. (Link via Super Punch)
    

July 2011 Viewings

18 flicks this month, helped along largely by the girls' weekend away and yesterday's month-ending APE-Fest (which will be covered in a separate post).

CABIN FEVER 2
Surprisingly entertaining, high-school-centric contagiony sequel to the Eli Roth original. Best prom-based horror flick since DANCE OF THE DEAD. (Buy at Amazon)

KICK-ASS
Heard good things about this but felt it paled in comparison the grittier, more subversive SUPER. Nic Cage makes up for a lot of past sins with his Adam West-y delivery but the whole affair feels too slick and polished. (Buy at Amazon)

MORTUARY
Christopher George is in grizzled overdrive as the mortuary owner who may or may not be having black masses with suburban housewives, including the MILF-y Mrs. Christopher George. Bill Paxton, in one of his earliest roles, acts his ass off as C-George's creepy, classical music-loving embalmer son. (Buy at Amazon)

UNDISPUTED III
Never expected that there'd be a third installment of this prison boxing/MMA series but here it is. Michael Jai White is gone but Scott Adkins returns as the crippled Boyka who works his way into a "winner gets his freedom" tourney featuring prison fighters from all over the globe. High octance check-your-brain-at-the-door fun. (Buy at Amazon)

RACE WITH THE DEVIL
A childhood fave now out on DVD. Warren Oates, Peter Fonda and their wives take what they hope will be a peaceful RV trip through the South, only to witness a Satanic human sacrifice that lands them smack dab in what appears to be a cult that involves all of Texas. (Buy at Amazon)

PHENOMENA
My Summer of Argento Reassessment continues with this oddly trashy offering from the Italian Hitchcock. This one has razor-wielding monkeys, maggot pits, monster kids, decapitations and ear-splitting metal, yet it failed to click with me. Though the last 20 minutes sure try to make it up to me! (Buy at Amazon)

UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: REGENERATION
When a rebel leader threatens to blow up Chernobyl *and* kidnaps two of the Russian leader's kids, it's time to call in the Universal Soldiers. Unfortunately, the original recipe versions are no match for US 2.0 and it's up to JCVD to save the day. A fast-paced and violent romp. (Buy at Amazon)

BLOODY BIRTHDAY
Had not seen this since it made its way to the local dumping ground during the late 80s. A fun and sinister "killer kids" flick packed with nudity and nutjob plotting plus Michael Dudikoff as Julie Brown's bleach blonde boy toy. Eases up a little too much at the end but good dopey fun. (Buy at Amazon)

STAGEFRIGHT
One of those "Where Have You Been All My Life?" 80s trashterpieces from Michele Soavi. A deranged killer torments a group of MTV video rejects rehearsing a musical about a dancing owl-headed rapist. Bonkers. (Buy at Amazon)

ANGRY RANGER
Guy comes home after his prison term, only to discover his neighborhood is overrun by various gangs. After getting drunk and eating some night snacks he beats everybody up.

UP FROM THE DEPTHS
80s Corman aquahorror that falls into that trap of being a little *too* jokey. Hoping the disc's second feature – DEMON OF PARADISE – salvages the purchase somewhat. (Buy at Amazon)

NEVER SLEEP AGAIN
Not-to-be-missed epic (4 hours!) documentary on the ELM STREET franchise. Even if, like me, your interest in the series waned a bit after the third installment this is an exhaustive, entertaining and informative look at Freddy, Wes Craven, New Line and much more. (Buy at Amazon)

TIME OF APES
Totally insane Japanese PLANET OF THE APES rip-off tv show edited down from 20-some episodes to a somewhat incoherent 90 minute movie. Two kids and a researcher get frozen in a lab accident and wake up on a planet of apes who drive 70s muscle cars. LARGE portions of the show's middle are completely excised and only referred to in passing. Makes the horrendous 70s RETURN TO THE PLANET OF THE APES cartoon appear Shakesperian by comparison. (Buy at Amazon)

Look for complete report on yesterday's APE-Fest to come!

SUMMER OF ACTION! -- If I Press Any Harder It's Gonna Break

Earlier in this SUMMER OF ACTION! I reviewed Walter Hill's underrated 2002 prison boxing thriller UNDISPUTED (Buy at Amazon) starring Wesley Snipes as an inmate pugilist and Ving Rhames as a thinly-veiled version of Mike Tyson.

Found guilty of rape, "Iceman" Chambers (Rhames) lands behind bars and must fight against the highly-touted longtime prison champ Monroe Hutchen (Snipes). As much as I liked the flick – which sports a great supporting cast including the late Peter Falk and Michael Rooker – my biggest complaint was that while Snipes is in marvelous shape and looks like he could punch through a prison wall, Rhames comes off a bit too big and lumbering, not like a world class athlete who dominated his sport on the outside. Say what you want about Tyson, but in his prime letting him loose in the ring was like unleashing a caged tiger.

The Iceman's casting is corrected in the highly entertaining – and quite unexpected – UNDISPUTED II: LAST MAN STANDING thanks to a slightly ironic twist. Michael Jai White who played "Iceman" inspiration Mike Tyson in the made-for-tv movie TYSON steps into Rhames' shoes as the down-on-his-luck former champ struggling without a title after serving his time. A trip to Russia to film a vodka commercial lands Chambers in the middle of a frame job and faster than you can say "da svidaniya" the champ is in a craptacularly grey Russian hellhole complete with – you guessed it – a savage champ named Boyka (Scott Adkins).

But while Hutchen was a pure boxer willing to strap on the gloves and duke it out in the squared circle, Boyka is a lethal mixed martial artist, a blur of feet, knees, elbows and hands who dishes out spectacular punishment against the cons that the warden (and mobster who really runs the prison) keeps feeding him.

If you've seen any prison flicks the story progresses about how you'd expect – Chambers runs afoul of Boyka, a fight between the two becomes inevitable, prison shenanigans put the result of the fight in doubt, the aging con who emerges from hiding to train the champ, etc.

But heralded action director Isaac Florentine earns his stripes by grafting the typical "new prisoner meets prison kingpin" storyline onto a gritty, fun low-budget actioner complete with double-crosses, septic tank fights and an underground gambling storyline that reminded me a little of the excellent Thai fight-fest BANGKOK KNOCKOUT.

But the flick really belongs to the charismatic White and the spectacular Adkins. White brings a sneering "how'd I get involved in this shit?!" presence to Chambers not to mention the size AND speed to believably step in the ring with Adkins, whose turn as Boyka in this flick and the third installment has made him an action fanboy fave.

And for good reason.

UNDISPUTED II: LAST MAN STANDING (Buy at Amazon) is that rare instance – sorta like the TURBULENCE flicks I love so much – where the direct-to-video sequel is more entertaining than the bigger-budgeted, theatrically-released original. And, if the buzz is to be believed, UNDISPUTED III: REDEMPTION (Buy at Amazon) is even more entertaining than the second installment! We'll see in the days of summer ahead...

SUMMER OF ACTION! -- Flea Market Score!

Just back from the local 4H Hoedown and Flea Market where my gut told me I'd find some good men's adventure fare to chow down on this summer.

By the end of our loop my bag of goodies was as bizarre as my Netflix queue, with a half-dozen Disney and Barbie VHS tapes rubbing up against a crew of one-eyed mercs, half-man half-robot cops and various other men of action.

Here's what I scored along the way...

• Destroyer#84: Ground Zero -- Can Remo and Chiun stop the Crash of the 90s from ending with a big bang?
• They Call Me The Mercenary #15: The Afghanistan Penetration -- A simple rescue is turning into much more than one-eyed merc captain Hank Frost bargained for – and maybe more than he can handle! (Written by Axel Kilgore... I'm thinking that's a pen name.)
• Steele #5: Renegade Steele -- He's the perfect combination of man and machine. Armed with the firepower of a high-tech army.
• The Guardians #13: Devil's Deal -- World War III is over... and the ultimate battle for control has begun
• The Guardians #14: Death from Above -- America's last line of defense against world domination by the Federated States of Europe.
• Stony Man #16: Deep Alert -- Nuclear terror strikes from the sea.
• Able Team #19: Ironman -- Carl Lyons explodes into action in a Central American showdown. (Includes a chance for me to Gear-Up for Adventure and win a 1986 Jeep CJ)
• Nick Carter #185: The Algarve Affair -- Agent N3 takes on a dope ring... a Soviet dope ring!
  

SUMMER OF ACTION! -- A Savage Beauty Holds the Key to World Survival

Sometimes the Trap Catches the Trapper

SERIES: Nick Carter, Killmaster
VOLUME/TITLE: #31/Macao
AUTHOR: Manning Lee Stokes
PUBLISHER: Award Books
YEAR: 1968
OPENING LINES: London sweltered. It was the last week of July and for days now the thermometer had been bushing near to eighty. In Britain that is hot and it was only natural that the consumption of beer, mild and bitter, and nut brown ale should increase in direct ration to the degree Fahrenheit.
CLOSING LINES: He went back to the booth where Miss Benita Dawson, of Fort Wayne, Indiana, was waiting for him.

Nick Carter, Killmaster, was not the first American attempt to emulate the trademark spy adventures of Ian Fleming's creation James Bond 007, but if NICK CARTER, KILLMASTER #31: Macao is any indication, it may be one of the best. At least in terms of hitting all the right notes.

Carter – Agent N3 of AXE, a super secret and lethal spy agency of the United States – is a suave ladies man who is vacationing in London when he comes to the "rescue" of the out-of-control Princess de Gama, a Portugese beauty with a dark secret in her past that she medicates with drugs, booze and the attention of the opposite sex. Or, as AXE chief David Hawk puts it, "she is an international tramp with an appetite for booze and drugs and not much else". Meow!

Pretty soon Carter's act of chivalry finds him mixed up in a pornographic blackmail plot turned into a grisly murder scene, complete with a mutilated corpse whose mouth is stuffed with its own genitals. Seizing the opportunity to put the pretty princess to work for Uncle Sam, Hawk sends Carter and her to Macao on a mission to trap Colonel Chun Li, head of Chinese Counter-Intelligence.

Did I mention that Chun Li has set out a trap to capture Carter in order to put his own nefarious scheme into motion?

By the time Macao came out in 1968 the series most definitely out-Bonded James Bond to paraphrase a popular Killmaster series cover blurb of the day. Fleming was dead and any original Bond books from his pen were kaput. The film series had slowly but surely detoured away from the more espionage-oriented books into the somewhat cartoonish villainy of films like THUNDERBALL and YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE. Fans of Fleming's original novels could take solace in the world of the Killmaster complete with its super secret government agency and a gruff but fatherly boss who looked upon his deadliest agent as more than just a government assassin. (Other books in the series would further complete the bizarro Bond comparison thanks to a flirty secretary for Hawk and a Q-ish tech expert named Poindexter of all things.)

If you've read even one of Fleming's 007 novels you'll probably find yourself enjoying Macao much like I did – as a cut-rate Bond effort, right down to the hilarious description of a disguised Carter (whose cover image looks like a young Robert Wagner as pointed out by card-carrying Man of Action John Grace) pretending to be a nose-picking, cross-eyed coolie who shouts "No sabby. Want Hong Kong dolla now!" at a clerk he's just about to karate chop into submission. (I couldn't help but recall a giant, paunchy Sean Connery trying to pass for a Japanese fisherman in the unintentionally hilarious YOLT.)

The storyline globe hops in typical Bond fashion, our hero and heroine find themselves chained naked in a basement dungeon awaiting a fate worse than death, the villain gladly shares his evil scheme with a chained Carter, and there's a shifty ally who were never quite sure we can trust.

Unlike SWAG and THE CHAMELEON, the KILLMASTER series would prove to be one of the most durable and long-running of the men's action series. Dragon Slay, the 261st (!) Nick Carter adventure was published in 1990. We'll be back with more Nick Carter coverage as the Summer of ACTION! continues.

SUMMER OF ACTION! -- I Am A Tourist

Where Survival is the Game, Swag Makes the Rules.

SERIES: Swag
VOLUME/TITLE: #1/Swag Town
AUTHOR: L.S. Riker
PUBLISHER: St. Martin's Paperbacks
YEAR: 1992
OPENING LINES: This is the way it happened. Eight hundred banks failed that year. The Japanese traded in their T-bills for francs and headed for Europe's Common Market. A loaf of white bread cost three dollars, and unemployment was over eighteen percent. A Republican was in the White House. Then came the war...
CLOSING LINES: "Huh," came the reply. "I thought you was a tourist. Must have been the shirt."

Of the half-dozen or more men's adventure novels, comics and eBooks I've read so far, SWAG #1: Swag Town definitely has the most intriguing concept. The United States has fallen victim to economic terrorism through a small-scale war conducted with assassins' bullets and a flood of foreign currency. By the time the "war" is over, the haves had fled to Europe and the shelter of their foreign bank accounts. The have nots have been left behind, old scores are being settled and payback – as you may have heard – is a bitch.

While the rest of America struggles under the belief that things will somehow be as they once were, New York City has become a playground for loads of skeevy Eurotrash and foreign jet-setters, a bustling center of commerce where anything – and everyone, it seems – is for sale.

Into the midst of this post-financial-apocalypse comes Swag, a former NYC detective who was shoved off the force in the aftermath of a bungled high-profile case. Swag – whose nickname is a mean-spirited joke and whose real name we never discover – is now forced to play bodyguard for the rich jet-setters who come in to the city and use their foreign cash to go on extended shopping sprees. But when one of Swag's clients gets blown away in a brazen, broad daylight hit the ex-cop wants answers... like who would want the pretty blonde dead so bad and what kind of hired trigger has Kevlar implanted under his skin?

Author LS Riker keeps the story moving as Swag drifts through the NYC underground – and briefly into Jersey – encountering low-lifes, mobsters, gun experts, hustlers, government men, ambitious bodyguards and a bevy of almost-indestructable killers who insist they are simply tourists. Even when they're trying to blow our hero's head off.

Swag Town seems more ambitious that your typical action novel of the era. Riker's NYC is familiar enough that you recognize it but just scary enough that you'd never, ever want to go there. Jam-packed with colorful characters and inter-weaving, overlapping plotlines, it requires a bit more attention on the reader's part than, say, the blast 'em all heroics of Mack Bolan – more than once I found myself doubling back to make sure I was making the right connections. Better than that, it never quite went where my expectations were leading me, which kept the novel full of surprises from the financial war start to the action-packed finale.

Swag also stands out as a character, because unlike Bolan, Remo Williams, Nick Carter or other heroes of these pulp adventures he has no special training aside from his time as a cop and he is most decidedly human and vulnerable. On more than one occasion our hero finds himself in an impossible scrape, only to have his ass pulled from the fire by a character who may be a friend, a foe or even a little bit of both.

Unfortunately, the Swag series only lasted for two more books: a Most Dangerous Game riff called Full Clip (1992) and the "more powerful than crack"-fueled revenge tale Kill Crazy (1993). Frankly, I think Danny McBride should get himself in shape and option the Swag novels for his own action franchise. For some reason I kept picturing a blend of Kenny Powers and a MARKED FOR DEATH-era Steven Seagal as the Hawaiian-shirt sporting, pistol packing bodyguard hero of the novel.

SUMMER OF ACTION! -- For Those Who Came In Late

When I was growing up, one of my favorite daily activities was the time I spent reading the newspaper comic strip adventures of Lee Falk's iconic action hero The Phantom. Though this activity took all of about 30 seconds I can still recall the thrill that came with flipping to the comic section and drinking in the panels that made up his latest exploits.

Also known as "The Ghost Who Walks", The Phantom was a masked, seemingly-immortal jungle protector who lived in a skull-shaped cave in the country of Bengalla, had a trained wolf named Devil and even found time to romance the beautiful Diana Palmer while he was fighting poachers, criminals and modern-day pirates. How cool is that?

As it turned out, The Phantom wasn't immortal at all but the latest in a long line of masked heroes descended from Christopher Walker, a young boy whose father had been killed in 1536 by pirates during an attack on the high seas. The stories I read as a kid focused on Kit Walker, the 21st Phantom, and were still written by Falk, who worked on the strip up until his death in 1999.

Though my local daily doesn't carry the strip – nor do I get the paper on a daily basis – I was happy to see that the strip still runs in some papers. Unfortunately, I doubt there's a ten-year-old out there who is chowing down on bowls of King Vitaman while he reads and re-reads The Phantom as I was doing at that age. (I can't remember 99% of what I "learned" in college but can still recall the 1978 wedding of Diana and The Phantom – attended by Falk creation Mandrake the Magician! – and the birth of twins Kit and Heloise about a year later.)

Along with the Adam West version of Batman, Falk's creation was my first real exposure to the world of "superheroes". And while neither character has any super powers, the two masked crimefighters kicked as much ass as any son of Krypton.

So you can imagine my excitement when the 1990s brought news that Hollywood was bringing the purple-clad hero's exploits to the big screen. It didn't take long for me to discover that the project was likely doomed before it began – attempts to talk the project up with co-workers were largely met with with blank stares, a disinterested "who?" or the mistaken (and somewhat embarrassing) notion that I was super excited about a Phantom of the Opera movie.

Sigh.

In the rush to plunder the vaults for ready-made heroes, Hollywood had set their sites on the 1930s and 40s. And why not? There was plenty of material to draw inspiration from – including art deco sets, eye-catching cars, snappy clothes and villains simply dripping with WWII-era evil.

Warren Beatty's ill-advised DICK TRACY (1990) had started the ball rolling and though the square-jawed cop was another of my boyhood faves, even I was embarrassed by the end result. As well as the t-shirt I had to wear as my ticket to the midnight premiere.

A year later THE ROCKETEER gave it a shot. In the process, the filmmakers reinvented Hollywood, scrubbed Dave Stevens' comic clean, and turned Timothy Dalton into the lamest villain since Snidely Whiplash. Hey, at least we got to look at Jennifer Connolly. Oh, I mean Jennifer Connolly's boobs.

1994's THE SHADOW was another depressing strike for pulp/comic genre cinema, offering up a miscast Alec Baldwin, the shrieking Penelope Anne Miller and a hopelessly hammy Tim Curry (these days far better cast as voice talent in direct-to-video Scooby-Doo animated movies).

By 1996 THE PHANTOM was ready for his closeup – and while it fares slightly better than the aforementioned efforts I might just feel that way because I genuinely love the character.

Though it seems to be aimed at kids and families (yet is laced with more swear words than I'd be comfortable with my 4-year-old daughter hearing), THE PHANTOM is like an inbred retread of the Indiana Jones saga. In other words, there are lots of jungle chases, jungle natives, evil pillagers, power-hungry madmen and escapes from "certain death" that are supposed to remind us of cliffhanger serials. Unfortunately, I'm probably the last generation that has any concept of the serial adventure.

Watching the film again last night – and desperately hoping that I had somehow misjudged it all those years ago – sorta made me mad at what a blown opportunity the film is. Billy Zane is perfectly cast as the titular hero and to his credit had bulked up to play a jungle avenger in a skintight purple costume. While we have yet to see a Dark Knight who could truly wear the Batman costume, Zane is ripped and his dedication to playing the character shows. (Stories at the time of production had Bruce Campbell in consideration for the role but Zane, a fan of the comic, not only won the producers over but largely nails the character. Frankly, I think he would have made a great Batman.)

Unfortunately, the creators of the cinematic version of THE PHANTOM forgot a couple of key ingredients from both the character's comic roots and the Indiana Jones recipe. (Ironically, the flick was the last written by INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE scribe Jeffrey Boam.) Namely, a hero (and villains) that we have some interest in... and would it kill you to have a good storyline while you're at it?

Zane may be charming and heroic but Kristy Swanson is a bland, forgettable Diana Palmer and James Remar should be thankful that Treat Williams is aboard to wrestle the Shameless Overactor of 1996 crown away from him thanks to his mustache-twisting turn as evil industrialist Xander Drax (yaaaawwwwnnnn). Attempts to shove in too many storylines from the Falk archives make the whole thing feel crowded and the likes of a pre-stardom Catherine Zeta-Jones as the Pussy Galore-esque bi-sexual (?) leader of an all-girl squadron of pilots feel grafted on despite its roots in the source material.

I would love to love THE PHANTOM. Hell, I'd love to like THE PHANTOM. But the whole thing feels like little more than some film version of a live action stunt show or a ride at a Florida amusement park. I want to see The Ghost Who Walks get the proper treatment as much as any genre character and if SyFy's recent attempt to relaunch the character with some emo kid in a hoodie who wears a suit that makes him faster and stronger is any indication, I may be waiting a long, long time.

SUMMER OF ACTION! -- The Iceman Cometh

"In the end, everybody gets beaten. The most you can hope for is that you stay on top a while. Be the best."

Ving Rhames (PULP FICTION, Vanessa Williams' Radio Shack commercial hubbie) stars in UNDISPUTED (Buy at Amazon) as James "The Iceman" Chambers, an undefeated heavyweight boxing champ serving time for rape. Sound familiar?

Wesley Snipes (BLADE, ART OF WAR) is Monroe Hutchens, serving a life sentence for a murder committed in the heat of passion (naturally). A highly-regarded fighter while on the outside, Hutchens has taken advantage of the prison's boxing program and hasn't lost a fight in the decade that he's been in the joint.

Sent to the same prison where Hutchens reigns supreme, The Iceman quickly tries to establish his dominance through violence and intimidation. When the wheels of the system get set in motion, a battle between Hutchens and The Iceman is inevitable. And to Hill's credit, the inevitable winner isn't a forgone conclusion.

It's too bad that they couldn't have cast The Iceman role with somebody more athletic or believable than Rhames. While he's certainly an imposing presence, he comes off as big and lumbering, not an athlete who dominates his sport on the outside. (This was corrected in the highly entertaining sequel UNDISPUTED II: LAST MAN STANDING in which Michael Jai White replaces Rhames.) Snipes, on the other hand, is in marvelous shape (big surprise) and gives his character more humanity, poise and depth than was probably needed.

Unfortunately, writer/director Walter Hill's prison/boxing hybrid was in and out of theaters in a flash and got lost in the 2002 event flick shuffle. Not that it's anything great like Hill's EXTREME PREJUDICE, but it certainly wasn't deserving of this fate.

I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the low-budget franchise continued with 2006's UNDISPUTED II: LAST MAN STANDING and the highly regarded UNDISPUTED III: REDEMPTION (2010), both directed by Isaac Florentine. Look for coverage of both sequels coming up during ER's Summer of ACTION!

Summer of ACTION! -- The Chameleon is Mad as Hell!

Like You, He's Mad As Hell And Not Gonna Take It Anymore!

SERIES: The Chameleon
VOLUME/TITLE: #1/The Wrath of Garde
AUTHOR: Jerry LaPlante
PUBLISHER: Zebra
YEAR: 1979
OPENING LINES: The rock passage was closing in. Off to the left, it tapered into a thin vanishing crack. My fingertips reached no more than a foot from my prone body before they wedged into solid mountain.
CLOSING LINES: "Balls." I bent over, holding mine in agony.

When I was a kid I'd usually accompany my Mom when she would go grocery shopping or make a trip to the Moorestown Mall (at that time the bastard stepchild of area malls). Since it was the late 1970s/early 1980s and nobody seemed really aware of things like child abduction and milk carton "missing" pics she'd usually drop me off in the book and magazine section while she went off to double- and triple-coupon the store into the red.

When we went to K-Mart or Pathmark I frequently found myself thumbing through the tie-ins for horror flicks like THE OMEN or AUDREY ROSE – stuff I wasn't allowed to see but could piece together in my mind thanks to "16 pages of black and white photos!". For any of you kids reading out there, trust me, the movie you make in your mind is probably gonna be waaaayyy better than whatever the filmmakers dish out.

But my favorite place was the little independent bookstore that sat at the end of a sad little branch of the Moorestown Mall. It might have been called Moorestown Books, though I can't be sure. What I do remember was that they had row upon row upon row of the men's adventure novels of the day... from hair-raising spy sagas featuring Nick Carter, Mack Bolan and Remo Williams to "sexy" adult westerns featuring Longarm. (I also seem to remember that there was a Roy Rogers across from it.)

These books were like forbidden fruit. For some reason my folks would never let me buy them, even though I'd burned through pretty much every James Bond book two or three times. I suppose the frequently lurid covers didn't help (not to mention double entendre-packed names like "Longarm"!) and, unlike the 007 novels, didn't come with my brother-in-law's stamp of approval.

And so, I'd stand there flipping through the latest from Killmaster, Executioner or Destroyer, always on the alert for my Mom. She'd already installed household bans on KISS and PLANET OF THE APES and I didn't want to queer the deal on my bookstore dalliances.

These days, venturing out to a used book sale is like being that 12-year-old kid again – except this time I get to buy whatever the hell I want! Like CHAMELEON #1: The Wrath of Garde (Buy at Amazon), which I grabbed immediately upon spotting it on a table littered with more popular examples of mass market literature.

Were James Bond to head up Q division the resulting hero might be something like Vance Garde, a "mild-mannered, scientific engineering genius" who uses his brains and the resources of his firm to, well, not so much fight crime as exact revenge against those who he feels have wronged him and/or his family.

Garde leaps into action when his young stepsister Sharon dies of a drug overdose thanks to a low-rent dealer nicknamed "The Oregano Kid". Spurred on to "don't get mad... get even", Garde creates a division known as VIBES (Vindication against Injustice, Bureaucracy and Ensconced Stupidity) and enlists the help of the beautiful Ballou Annis to ferret out the upper rungs of the drug pushing ladder that killed Sharon. Along the way he uncovers clues to the identity of his father's murderer, experiences multiple bouts of blue balls with Ms. Annis, and dispenses with more than one villain in colorful fashion that would make James Bond blush.

Little more than "Bond Lite" with more graphic sex and rougher violence, The Wrath of Garde is a breezy read thanks to Zebra's typically easy on the eyes font size and the check-your-brain-at-the-door plotline. You'll figure out most of the twists and turns long before the "brilliant" Garde but you won't hate yourself for going along for the ride.

The cover copy and art might actually be more entertaining than the book itself. The artist's rendition of Garde (resplendent in white jacket and burgundy turtleneck!) appears to clearly be based on a young Tony Curtis, though my wife suggested that there might be a little MANNIX-era Mike "Touch" Connors in there as well. As for the sheet-covered Ms. Annis? Sure looks like Elizabeth Taylor to me.

More challenging than figuring out the reference art is deciphering the cornucopia of pop culture references used to sell the reader on the book, not to mention the most perplexing of all questions: Why the hell is this series called The Chameleon?!

Both The Incredible Hulk (?!) and James Bond get name checked on the back cover copy while there's even a reference to NETWORK's Howard Beale ("Like You, He's Mad As Hell And Not Gonna Take It Anymore!") that appears atop all three books in the series. The colorful "Chameleon" logo is prominently displayed all over the covers despite the fact that – as Marty McKee keenly points out at his blog Johnny LaRue's Crane Shot – "[he] isn't a master of disguise or a cat burglar or anything like that".

Alas, the adventures of Vance Garde and Annis Ballou never really caught on and the series ended after two more books – In Garde We Trust (Buy at Amazon) and Garde Save The World (Buy at Amazon).

Welcome to ER's Summer of ACTION!

It's official! Summer 2011 is finally here and with it comes The Exploitation Retrospect Summer of ACTION!

"Why action?", you may be asking yourself. (I know my wife was.)

The simple answer is that I like focus. I like tasks. I like themes. I like direction. Every morning I make a "To Do" list. It gives me a sense of purpose for my day and a feeling of accomplishment when I look back and see that I was able to scratch out things like "Safeway?" and "Thank You Notes". It only gets a little sad when I write down things after I've done them just so I can scratch them out.

Okay, that's a lot sad. But you get the idea.

So as the winter turned to spring and I found myself emerging from my annual work cocoon, I looked around and started thinking about what kind of project I could embrace for the long, hot summer months ahead.

Friends like the staff at RIGOR MORTIS had their zombies while WP Tandy was knee deep in Hon-troversy and all things Baltimore. David Zuzelo could be found juggling everything from life in the Pyuniverse and B-Side Barbarians to Casual (Un)Dress Fridays and Joe D'Amato's excursions into porn. Even Bruce Holecheck – who I've been trying to pry a review of AMERICAN PUNKS from for about five years – has been a veritable blogging machine of late, detailing the VHS offerings from labels like Mogul and IVC.

And while I usually devote the month of October to all things horror (under our 31 Days of Fright banner), I wanted something less challenging and more check-your-brain-at-the-door for days when I'm sitting on the beach, the hot sun pounding on my melon as I pass the hours till I can crack a cold brew and slake the mighty thirst that's been building.

Frankly, it didn't take long for the Summer of ACTION! to take shape. In early spring I found myself browsing the tables at a local used book sale. After becoming indignant at the insane prices being charged for the graphic novels and ephemera the sale staff now deemed "collectible" I wandered to the mass market paperbacks relegated to the rows of tables pushed against the back wall. Where last year's table featured what must have been someone's mighty mystery collection, this year saw pockets of men's adventure peeking out between the ubiquitous volumes of King, Ellroy and Clancy.

Without even trying I found my bag overflowing with characters both familiar (The Executioner, The Destroyer) and unknown (Chameleon, Swag) as well as one-shots featuring everything from vigilantes to a 3-year-old girl wired to explode if the right team doesn't win Game 7 of The World Series. (I suppose that's one way to make baseball interesting!)

Not long after that I took an April trip to North Carolina for an awesome weekend of ass-kickery, bounty hunters, samurai and fire walks at ActionFest and it became apparent that the junk culture gods were trying to tell me something – action was my future.

Which is how we got here. From now till Friday, September 23rd ER will be celebrating all things ACTION! – from television shows and comics to books and movies. From exploding huts and Eurospys to loner cops, costumed heroes and the men (and women) they pushed... too far.

We're always happy to hear from readers and fellow bloggers... we welcome your feedback and comments. And if you've got an idea for a guest post don't hesitate to e-mail me!