The Delta Force (1986)

The Delta Force, released in 1986, is believe it or not my first Chuck Norris movie. 

And it’s from the Cannon Group which is always reassuring!

It begins with the failed hostage rescue attempt in Iran in 1980. Major Scott McCoy (Chuck Norris) quits in disgust afterward. His commanding officer, Colonel Nick Alexander (Lee Marvin), is disappointed but understands.

Five years later an American airliner is hijacked. A rescue mission is on, and McCoy is back in Delta Force.

At least the rescue mission is on once the President gives the go-ahead but that means Delta Force cooling their heels while the danger to the hostages increases.

The initial stages of the movie are a bit slow and the emotional manipulation is laid on thick but it is necessary. The audience has to understand just how ruthless Abdul Rafai’s terrorists are. We have to understand that no matter how risky the rescue mission might be there is no choice.

Once the movie hits its stride the suspense builds relentlessly and the action is non-stop and the explosions are too numerous to count. Chuck’s tricked-out motorcycle is a treat.

The rescue is much more complicated than had been anticipated. These hijackers are well-organised and they’re suspicious and cautious. They have predicted the likely American moves. Delta Force will just have to come up with some moves they haven’t foreseen.

The airliner is flown to Beirut, then to Algiers, then back to Beirut. The fact that the hijackers are making these unexpected moves is a real problem.

There are lots of stars in this film although most of them (Shelley Winters, Martin Balsam, George Kennedy) are somewhat faded stars. But they are enthusiastic and it’s always great to see Robert Vaughn in any movie. He plays General Woodbridge, US Army Chief of Staff.

At 62 Lee Marvin was too old for this sort of thing but he’s Lee Marvin and he’s a legend so it doesn’t matter. This was, sadly, his final film appearance.

Chuck Norris is an action powerhouse. He doesn’t get to do much kung fu but he gets to inflict all manner of mayhem on the bad guys. As far as acting is concerned he doesn’t bother too much with that but he’s a totally convincing action hero.

The action scenes are complex and done on an epic scale and they really are very nicely mounted. There are plenty of them.

Critics mostly hated this film, which is always a good sign. It upset all the right people who were horrified by the idea of Americans being portrayed as heroes.

It is a movie about old-fashioned virtues - courage, sacrifice, overcoming fear, loyalty, determination.

If a movie has a political subtext I ignore it. If it’s so intrusive that I can’t ignore it I don’t watch the movie. I don’t watch movies in order to be subjected to political lectures. I had no problems in that regard with this movie.

The Delta Force was a huge hit and spawned a couple of sequels.

The Delta Force offers action, excitement and all-round entertainment. It might not be art but I had a lot of fun with it. Chuck Norris lives up to his reputation admirably. Highly recommended.

It’s available on Blu-Ray (and looks great in that format) individually and as part of a double-header release with the first of the sequels.

Hard Target (1993)

Hard Target is a 1993 action movie directed by John Woo and starring Jean-Claude Van Damme. This is obviously yet another adaptation of the classic 1924 Richard Connell short story The Most Dangerous Game (also published as The Hounds of Zaroff).

Natasha Binder (Yancy Butler) is looking for her daddy. She hasn’t seen him for twenty years, since he walked out on her mother. Natasha discovers that he’s been living on the streets. We know from the opening sequence that something really bad has happened to him.

Natasha is an accident waiting to happen in the big city. It’s not that she’s dumb but she’s not a city girl and in this movie New Orleans is like a post-apocalyptic wasteland in the making. She’s way out of her depth and almost immediately she gets herself into big trouble with a gang of hoods who don’t just intend to rob her. She doesn’t know why this big tough guy rescues her but he does. We will soon find out that the big tough guy is Chance Boudreaux (Jean-Claude Van Damme).

Natasha hires him to help her find her dad because she’s smart enough to realise she needs someone who knows the city and she needs a minder. Her woman’s instincts tell her she can trust this man. And she’s right.

Her father was tricked into playing a deadly game where he was the prey being stalked by bored psychos who like the idea of hunting men. And as a former Special Forces soldier they figured he’d make challenging prey.

Chance starts to work out what happened and soon he and Natasha are being stalked. Chance has been chosen as the latest prey.

The hunters, and there are lots of them, have motorcycles and helicopters and grenades and automatic weapons and Chance is just one guy. But he is Jean-Claude Van Damme so that makes the odds pretty even! And he is not likely to just sit back and allow himself to be hunted.

That’s basically all the plot there is but it’s enough.

Much mayhem ensues.

John Woo is obviously a guy who believes that nothing succeeds like excess and the more excess you have the better you’ll succeed. He gives us lots of excess in this movie. There are explosions. Millions of rounds of small arms ammunition are expended. There are more explosions. There’s martial arts action. Action on horseback. Action with motorcycles and helicopters. And bows and arrows, and venomous snakes. And more explosions.

All handled with incredible style and energy. The finale in the warehouse full of Mardi Gras floats is wild.

Once you accept the premise the movie makes sense. Chance isn’t just a regular Joe, he’s ex-Special Forces so it’s believable that he’s an awesome fighting machine. And it makes sense that he would take on a whole army of bad guys even though he doesn’t owe the girl anything and it wasn’t his fight to start with. Her father was a military veteran, and Chance is a vet as well. And we find out right at the start that he doesn’t like seeing powerful people picking on powerless people and he really doesn’t like seeing women being picked on. If a woman needs help that’s something a man can’t just walk away from. Not a man like Chance anyway.

The psychos hunting men as big game are trying to prove their manhood but Chance understands what real manhood entails.

Van Damme has the necessary charisma. He’s in fine form. And the bad guys are led by two totally evil totally crazy larger-than-life super-villains - Fouchon (Lance Henriksen) and van Cleaf (Arnold Vosloo). Yancy Butler as Natasha is likeable enough and not at all irritating. She doesn’t have GirlPower fantasies - she’s happy to accept Chance’s help and protection.

This is like a fever dream post-apocalyptic western with dashes of Mad Max but set in a totally dysfunctional New Orleans. The action never lets up, which is as it should be. Hard Target is a very superior action movie and it’s very highly recommended.

The earliest adaptation of the Richard Connell famous story is The Most Dangerous Game (1932) which is excellent. Another notable version is Turkey Shoot (1982) and there have been some weird and crazy versions that are well worth seeing, such as Confessions of a Psycho Cat (1968) and Slave Girls from Beyond Infinity (1987).

Timebomb (1991)

Timebomb is a 1991 action movie with some major science fiction elements. It might be more accurate to describe it as a techno thriller. 

It was written and directed by Avi Nesher.

Eddy Kay (Michael Biehn) is a quiet inoffensive watchmaker who happens to rescue a woman trapped in a burning building. The story makes the TV news and seeing Eddy Kay is quite a shock to Colonel Taylor (Richard Jordan). Eddy Kay is dead.

Taylor works for one of those rather sinister covert agencies. If Eddy Kay is alive that could cause problems. It is important to make this problem go away. One of the agency’s top assassins is sent to carry out the assignment.

The odd thing is that Eddy survives. That’s odd because the assassin is a pro. No ordinary guy has the survival skills to get out of such a situation alive. But Eddy does survive.

Eddy has met a nice young woman, Dr Anna Nolmar (Patsy Kensit). He’s repairing an antique watch for her. She’s a psychotherapist. 

Eddy has been having odd and very disturbing flashbacks but they’re not really flashbacks because these are memories of things that never happened to him. At least he’s pretty sure they never happened.

Anna is interested, especially when she runs some tests. The brain scans come back normal, or at least mostly normal. There does appear to be very slight damage to the hippocampus.

And then all hell breaks loose. Eddy knows that people are definitely trying to kill him but he doesn’t know why, and he doesn’t know how he keeps surviving.

If only he knew what those flashbacks meant.

Anna is along for the ride whether she likes it or not and she can’t decide if she’s terrified of Eddy or wants to mother him.

An enormous amount of mayhem follows and the violence gets quite brutal. Lots of innocent bystanders get caught in the crossfire. There are some very bad people involved and they have no moral scruples. This movie doesn’t pull its punches in that respect.

The pacing is frenetic and the action scenes are well-mounted and exciting and pleasingly excessive.

This seems like it’s going to be a standard paranoia action movie but there’s a major science fiction element that gradually comes to the fore. And the movie starts to get wilder and as it gets wilder it gets better.

Apparently the producers wanted either Jean-Claude Van Damme or Chuck Norris as Eddy but while Van Damme might have worked Michael Biehn is a much better choice because he’s a less obvious action hero and he’s more convincing as a regular fairly nice guy who is not only confused but a bit frightened. He still does cool action hero stuff (in fact lots of it) but we believe that he’s only doing it in order to survive, and to save the girl.

Patsy Kensit is likeable and believable even if she’s a bit young to be a top-flight psychotherapist.

There’s some frontal nudity and a surprisingly explicit sex scene.

There’s a thematic link to a much better known earlier movie but to tell you the name of that movie would reveal a spoiler.

The visuals are quite impressive with some cool sets and this is the pre-CGI era so the special effects guys had to rely on imagination instead.

Timebomb had a limited theatrical release so it’s not quite a direct-to-video production. It attracted little attention at the time but has since deservedly gained a strong cult following.

Timebomb is a crazy ride and it’s highly recommended. And it looks great on Blu-Ray.

Nemesis (1992)

Nemesis, released in 1992, was apparently the first film in an entire franchise the existence of which I had never suspected. The first four films were all directed by Albert Pyun so you know that while they might not be art they will action-packed and exciting. This review concerns the first movie in the series.

This is a dystopian cyberpunk science fiction film with definite post-apocalyptic overtones. Civilisation has not collapsed but it has descended into violent semi-barbarism.

It begins in L.A. in 2027. The city is not quite a hellscape, but close.

We are introduced to LAPD counter-terrorist cop Alex Rain (Olivier Gruner). He’s in the middle of a running battle with a terrorist cell led by a chick named Jared (Marjorie Monaghan). 

Several thousand rounds of small arms ammunition get expended and lots of stuff gets blown up before Alex is overcome. He’s been shot countless times and he’s lost a few limbs but he’s a cyborg and once they find him the LAPD will have him put back together again.

Jared had apparently been his girlfriend and he feels that she betrayed him.

He’s totally disillusioned but the police commissioner tells him he’s needed for another mission. He doesn’t have much choice - they put a bomb in his heart so if he doesn’t co-operate he’ll be blown to pieces in three days.

And the mission involves Jared. She’s stolen a computer disk that has to be retrieved before she passes it on to another terrorist faction.

After an interlude in Brazil he finds himself in Java. And meets up with Jared’s pal Julian (Deborah Shelton).

The storyline is a bewildering series of double-crosses but there’s so much insane action you won’t fret too much about the plot.

There’s clearly a kind of war between those who embrace cyborgisation and information technology and those who oppose it. In this society it seems that the battle is all but lost - cyborgs are everywhere and it’s impossible to visually identify them as cyborgs. There are also personality uploads (an idea that was hugely popular in 80s/90s cyberpunk).

And since virtually all the characters are cyborgs or androids it’s no use shooting them once, or three or four times. To make sure it’s best to shoot them a couple of hundred times. That at least slows them down a bit.

I like Olivier Gruner’s performance as a man who is just tired of everything and no longer really believes in anything. He’s not an obviously charismatic hero and he no longer wants to be a hero but he keeps bouncing back.

The locations are terrific and Pyun uses them to their best advantage.

Pyun knew how to do action scenes. He goes insanely over-the-top but it works. You can try counting the explosions but you won’t be able to - they just keep coming.

There’s one brief nude scene but this is an action movie and that is its entire focus.

I’m starting to like Albert Pyun’s movies. Alien from L.A. (1988) is goofy but Cyborg (1989) is truly excellent post-apocalyptic cyberpunk.

I’m quite fond of 80s/90s post-apocalyptic sci-fi in general, with Hardware (1990) being a bit of a favourite.

Nemesis is a wild ride and a thoroughly enjoyable one. Highly recommended.

Nemesis looks great on Blu-Ray (my copy is the Spanish all-region disc).

Deathcheaters (1976)

Deathcheaters is a 1976 ozploitation action movie directed by Brian Trenchard-Smith, a man who certainly knew how to do action movies.

The premise sounds promising enough. Two ex-military commandos, Rod Cann (Grant Page) and Steve Hall (John Hargreaves) are recruited by Culpepper (Noel Ferrier) of the Australian Secret Service for a clandestine mission in the Phillipines. They will have to burgle a safe which is located in a factory complex which is protected by elasborate security including about a hundred armed guards.

The movie doesn’t quite come off. To appreciate it one thing you do have to understand is that Trenchard-Smith wanted to make a very lighthearted movie aimed at a family audience, with some non-violent thrills and some comedy. He was aiming for a G rating, which he got.

The problem is that it therefore ends up being very innocuous and non-violent. It’s explained early on that after their experiences in Vietnam Rod and Steve will accept the mission as long as no killing is involved. As a result it’s very much wholesome entertainment.

The problem is that there’s really nothing very much at stake. Had the heroes been breaking into the factory complex to rescue hostages or a kidnapped scientist the movie would have had more bite but the censors might have considered it to be too scary for kids and it might have missed out on that G rating. The objective is just documents implicating a crooked businessman so there’s no sense of urgency, no sense of lives at stake. If the mission fails it will be mildly annoying for the Australian Government but no big deal.

There are no plot twists, no betrayals, no double-crosses.

It does start with a genuinely excellent chase sequence involving a customised dune buggy and a couple of bank robbers and this is the highlight of the movie.

We then see Rod and Steve do a few movie stunts but they’re movie stunts so we know that nobody is going to get hurt.

And we get a lot of unnecessary dialogue scenes. It seems to take forever for the actual plot to kick in.

The G rating also means that there is no nudity. Not even girls in bikinis. We see Steve with his wife but their interactions are so chaste they might as well be brother and sister. Rod romances Culpepper’s secretary but again it’s all very chaste.

While Rod and Steve are off on the mission Culpepper invites himself to Steve’s house where Steve’s wife is home alone. He claims he wants to play chess with her. We expect something to happen. Maybe a clumsy attempt at seduction, maybe a revelation about the real nature of the mission. What actually happens is that they play chess. Sadly that anticlimax sums up the movie. There just aren’t any plot twists at all.

And although there are some very good action sequences we never really get a sense of danger.

And we never get to see the movie’s villain, which might have livened things up.

The acting is competent but with such a bland script there are no opportunities for anyone to shine. Even Noel Ferrier (who could overact outrageously and delightfully when given the chance) is very restrained.

This was a very low budget movie so the factory complex in the Phillipines just looks like a factory. There wasn’t the money to make it look like the lair of a super-villain.

Deathcheaters has some good stunts but it falls flat and it’s easy to understand why it flopped at the box office.

Umbrella’s Blu-Ray release looks great and there are plenty of extras.

Barb Wire (1996)

Barb Wire (1996) has a reputation as a trashy Pamela Anderson action thriller. That’s OK. I like trashy thrillers. And it’s a post-apocalyptic dystopian cyberpunk action thriller. That’s OK by me as well. It’s based on a comic book.

It’s the aftermath of the Second American Civil War. Now Steel Harbor is the only free city. It’s city of crime, chaos, corruption, sleaze and depravity. You can have a lot of fun in Steel Harbor and you can get into a lot of trouble.

Barb Wire (Pamela Anderson) runs a bar there, called the Hammerhead. Curly (Udo Kier) manages it for her. 

Barb makes her living in various ways, some legal and some illegal, including bounty hunting and stripping.

She has an uneasy relationship with the local chief of police Willis (Xander Berkeley). Willis is moderately corrupt but Barb doesn’t mind that since she’s moderately crooked as well. There’s some erotic heat between them. An attraction of two morally compromised people.

There’s a totalitarian government and of course there’s a Resistance. There’s a genius scientist named Cora D with the antidote to the government’s most potent bioweapon. She’s on the run. And she needs some high-tech retinal contact lenses to escape detection.

Barb has the contact lenses and they’re worth big bucks and that could be her ticket out of Steel Harbor. But the bad guys (from the totalitarian Congressional government) are determined to get the lenses and to get Axel and Cora D (who are irritating starry-eyed idealists and not that bright).

Axel is helping her to escape. They want Barb’s help. Barb had loved Axel but he betrayed her. Barb has now had enough of causes.

Barb’s brother Charlie is with the Resistance and he’s idealistic and you just know he’s going to get himself into trouble.


Now at this stage you might be thinking that you’ve seen this film before. And if you’ve seen the 1989 Jean-Claude Van Damme movie Cyborg you have seen it before. The plot is pretty much identical. Barb Wire also owes a lot to Casablanca.

The bad guys are cardboard cutout villains.

The main thing wrong with Barb Wire is that the basic concept is not very original and the plot is very unoriginal.

On the plus side the action scenes are extremely good. I can’t really fault the job done by director David Hogan. He keeps things moving and as interesting visually as he can.

And there’s Udo Kier who is always a joy to watch.

In my view the movie’s biggest asset is Pamela Anderson. Barb is a larger-than-life outrageous comic-book kickass action heroine and that’s how Anderson plays her. And with impossibly voluptuous figure, her blonde hair, her leather gear and her corsets she doesn’t look real. She looks like a comic-book heroine. That’s how it should be.

It’s easy to point out this movie’s many faults (and they are many) but if you don’t worry about the plot you can just enjoy the mayhem. There’s very little gore and very little blood. It’s about excitement rather than gore. It’s also very tame where nudity and sex are concerned. Perhaps too tame.

Barb Wire is a comic-book B-movie with a comic-book B-movie heroine and that’s fine by me. Mindless entertainment but it’s not trying for anything more than that. I enjoyed it. Recommended.

And it looks nice on Blu-Ray.

Ninja III: The Domination (1985)

Whenever I see the Cannon Group logo at the beginning of a movie I get a feeling of confidence. Whether it turns out to be a great movie or a not-so-great movie it will be fun. Ninja III: The Domination belongs to the not-so-great category but in its own perverse way it achieves a kind of quasi-greatness.

This is a psycho ninja chick movie. And any psycho ninja chick movie has got to be worth watching.

It begins with a bunch of people playing golf. Then a ninja shows up and kills everybody. Then the cops show up. Lots and lots of cops. Dozens of cops. The ninja kills most of them. Finally, having been shot about 98 times the ninja has had enough and he’s about to expire. But his story is not yet finished. Christie (Lucinda Dickey), a perfectly ordinary young woman, finds him lying in the bushes about to die and something weird happens.

One thing that’s cool is that we never find out why the ninja ran amok on the golf course. We presume someone hired him. We have no idea who that someone could be. Writer James R. Silke knows that we don’t need to know. This is not a mystery or a police procedural, it’s a ninja action picture.

The cop who interviews Christie, Officer Secord (Jordan Bennett) takes a shine to her. Christie doesn’t date cops. But Secord isn’t a quitter and his desperation to get into her pants is finally rewarded with success. And soon there’s a thing between them.

Christie has a sword, a katana. We soon have reason to suspect it’s a magic sword.

The cops who shot that ninja start to die in rather grisly ways. Maybe there’s another ninja about.

There is, in a way. That evil dead ninja has possessed Christie. She now intermittently turns into an evil lady ninja.

And there’s another ninja, Yamada (Shô Kosugi). He has an eye patch. We don’t know if he’s a good ninja or an evil ninja.

More cops get sliced up. Poor Secord doesn’t know what’s going on. Christie doesn’t know either.

Truly immense quantities of mayhem follow.

This is not just a psycho ninja chick movie. It’s also an incredibly bad rip-off of The Exorcist. And it’s a bit of an 80s dance movie as well. Lots of aerobics. And a video game movie. If something was fashionable in the 80s it will show up somewhere in this movie.

The acting is terrible. If you’re wondering why Lucinda Dickey did not become a major star then watch this movie and you’ll have your answer. The gal just can’t act.

But then this is not exactly a character-driven movie so that doesn’t really matter. It’s all about the martial arts action and there’s plenty of that and it’s pretty entertaining with a very high body count. And Miss Dickey can dance and trained dancers always handle fight scenes pretty well.

There are some really bad special effects as well, which adds further layers of fun. I have no idea why some of these effects were even there except that I think they wanted a video game vibe.

What do you want in a psycho ninja chick movie? You want a cool lady ninja and you want her to be totally nuts and you want her to leave a path of death and destruction behind her. That’s what this movie offers. It doesn’t offer anything else. It doesn’t need to.

Ninja III: The Domination is in truth a very bad movie but that’s what makes it fun.

I have the Spanish Blu-Ray release which sadly doesn’t provide a very good transfer. On the other hand this is the sort of movie that is more enjoyable if it looks like you’re watching it on a VHS rental from Blockbuster back in the day.

Cyborg (1989)

Cyborg is a 1989 science fiction action movie starring Jean-Claude Van Damme and directed by Albert Pyun. While there is a cyborg in the film the character played by Van Damme is totally human.

The setting is your basic post-apocalyptic wasteland world. There’s been social, political and economic collapse and then a devastating plague.

The last remaining scientists are holed up in Atlanta and they’re working on a cure for the plague. They need some crucial data. That data is contained in a female cyborg, Pearl Prophet (Dayle Haddon). She has to make it to Atlanta.

The chief bad guy is an incredibly vicious pirate named Fender (Vincent Klyn). He wants that data. Not to save lives, but because he would give him unlimited wealth and power.

Gibson Rickenbacker (Jean-Claude Van Damme) is a Slinger - a kind of mercenary/hired gun/adventurer/freebooter. Slingers might not be solid law-abiding citizens but they’re not pirates and they’re not murderers. He doesn’t care about the data or the cyborg but he has a really big grudge against Fender (explained in a series of brief flashbacks). He’ll try to save the cyborg but what he wants is revenge.

He hooks up with Nady Simmons (Deborah Richter). She’s some kind of thief and she tries to kill our hero but he feels sorry for her and he doesn’t like hurting women and when she insists on tagging along he puts up with her. She has come over all idealistic and wants to save the cyborg.

She makes a likeable cute side-kick and gives Rickenbacker the chance to show that he has a gentle side. He’s not interested in getting her into bed but he does end up caring about her.

The plot is very sketchy but that doesn’t matter because it’s just an excuse for a series of extremely violent incredibly brutal action scenes but that’s OK because those action scenes are superbly staged.

This movie is a non-stop adrenalin rush.

Jean-Claude Van Damme was cast for his very considerable martial arts skills. As an actor he’s competent.

Fender is an evil villain with the emphasis on the evilness and he’s effectively scary and very very nasty.

This is a Cannon Group production and while the budget was limited and the concept of the post-apocalyptic world is routine it looks very impressive. Imagination and energy are more important than a big budget.

The presence of a cyborg suggests a cyberpunk influence but really she’s just there to add an extra coolness factor. Both the plague and the cyborg are just plot devices to make Rickenbacker’s quest about something more noble and important than mere revenge. There is however one major emotional twist towards the end.

The movie is totally focused on the action and Pyun wisely allows nothing to distract us from that. He’s not going to waste time on exposition. We don’t care where the plague came from. We don’t need a detailed history of the process of social collapse. We don’t even need to know exactly what a Slinger is. We just need to know that they’re basically good guys while the pirates are seriously evil. This is totally a good vs evil story. The villain has no redeeming features whatsoever.

Cyborg is pure action entertainment and it delivers the goods very impressively. There’s not a wasted minute in the movie. The plot probably has lots of holes in it but there’s no time to notice such details. Jean-Claude Van Damme is a badass action hero and his martial arts skills are pretty awesome. He doesn’t say much, but he doesn’t need to.

Cyborg is highly recommended.

I have the French Blu-Ray release and it looks terrific.

I’ve also reviewed another much less successful Albert Pyun-directed Cannon Group release, Alien from L.A., released a year earlier.

Guns (1990)

Guns is a 1990 Andy Sidaris movie so you know what to expect. And it delivers the goods. By this time he had the formula humming along very nicely indeed. 

As usual his wife Arlene was the producer.

The cast of this one includes no less than six Playboy Playmates.

Donna (Dona Speir) and Nicole (Roberta Vasquez) are undercover federal agents in Hawaii. They stumble onto something big when an innocent girl is the vicim of what was clearly a professional hit. The girl just happened to be wearing the exact same dress as Nicole. The girls figure that Nicole was the intended target.

The hit was ordered by a Juan Degas (Erik Estrada), who has a special grudge against Donna. He didn’t want Donna hit. He wants her to suffer first, before he takes care of her himself.

Degas is involved in gun-running, using Molokai as a staging point. But the girls are cleverly decoyed to Las Vegas.

Degas is obsessed by his quest for revenge, just as much as protecting his gun-running racket.

Donna doesn’t know who is out to get her since she thinks Degas is dead. She also hasn’t realised that her mother, who happens to be the Attorney-General of Nevada, is going to get mixed up in all this.

The Feds organise a team to take down Degas. Naturally it includes a member of the Abilene clan, in this case Shane Abilene (Michael J. Shane). Like all male members of the family Shane is a staggeringly bad shot, a running gag in the series which will be used very cleverly and wittily towards the end.

The team also includes professional magician (and Federal agent) Abe. He gets a delightful scene involving some very unusual interrogation methods.

There has to be a bad girl and this time around it’s Cash (Devin DeVasquez) and she’s a formidable and coldblooded hitwoman.

Typically for a Sidaris movie the bad guys all look like bad guys and the sexy bad girl looks like a sexy bad girl. The good guys look like good guys. It’s cartoonish but it’s part of the Sidaris style and it adds to the fun. You don’t watch Andy Sidaris movies for moral ambiguity.

Like all of Sidaris’s movies this one is technically very polished which helps to make it look more expensive than it is. Guns is beautifully shot.

Andy and Arlene Sidaris had a positive genius not just for finding good locations but for using them efficiently and economically, and for getting added production values from those locations. If you shoot scenes in a luxury hotel your movie will have the right aura of money and glamour even though you’ve spent hardly any money.

Since this is an Andy Sidaris movie there are action scenes involving motorcycles, aircraft, ultra-light aircraft, helicopters and boats. And there will be explosions. There’s a cool scene where Donna is under aerial attack. If only she had a shoulder-launched multiple rocket launcher with her. Then she remembers - she does have a shoulder-launched multiple rocket launcher in the back of the van. Sensible girls don’t go anywhere without a multiple rocket launcher.

Sidaris knew how to do impressive action set-pieces that are clever and imaginative as well as exciting. This movie has some fine examples.

Guns is just non-stop action and mayhem with lots of extraordinarily gorgeous women who manage to be frequently topless. This is such a fun movie and it’s highly recommended.

Andy and Arlene provide another of their delightful audio commentaries.

Guns is included in the Mill Creek Girls, Guns and G-Strings DVD boxed set. The 16:9 enhanced transfer are lovely are there’s an audio commentary for every movie. Most of thee movies are now on Blu-Ray as well.

Black Tight Killers (1966)

Yasuharu Hasebe’s Black Tight Killers was released in 1966 and it’s one of those movies that is perfectly in tune with the zeitgeist. The Swinging 60s were underway. London wasn’t the only place that was swinging. Tokyo was definitely swinging as well. Black Tight Killers is a wild crazy Pop Art-infused thriller that includes everything you could possibly desire in a 60s movie.

Daisuke Hondo (Akira Kobayashi) is a globe-trotting photojournalist who always manages to be in the thick of the action and the danger. On his return flight to Tokyo he meets a very pretty stewardess, Yoriko Sawanouchi (Chieko Matsubara). They’re hitting it off really well until Yoriko is kidnapped. There’s a gang led by a hoodlum named Lopez after her but the beautiful girl ninjas are after her as well. Of course you can never be sure if girl ninjas will turn out to be evil girl ninjas or good girl ninjas.

It all seems to have something to do with Yoriko’s father and the disappearance of a huge stash of gold during the war.

From this point on there’s non-stop mayhem. Fortunately Hondo can handle himself pretty well and he’s spent time at the Momoko Ninja Research Station so he knows a few ninja tricks himself. Although the ninja chewing gum bullet trick does come as a surprise to him.

Yoriko keeps falling into the hands of assorted bad guys. Hondo is still trying to figure out which side the girl ninjas are on. They do seem inclined to offer him at least a temporary alliance.

Yasuharu Hasebe has been an assistant to Seijun Suzuki and that’s significant. This was the very year in which Suzuki made his crazed masterpiece Tokyo Drifter. It’s clear that Suzuki and Hasebe were working along very similar lines, with plot coherence taking a back seat to energy, very cool visuals, Pop Art style, wild use of colour and major flirtations with surrealism. Black Tight Killers, like Tokyo Drifter, takes place in its own universe. Realism pretty much goes out the window. And both films display an obsessive interest in the use of colour to undermine realism. There’s an obvious comic-book influence. And there are hints of the psychedelic freak-out elements which were becoming increasing a feature of late 60s movie.

There’s also go-go dancing.

I love the fact that some of the supposedly exterior shots were deliberately done in the studio and that in the frequent driving scenes the rear projection is obviously intended to look as artificial as possible.

The sets are cool but they’re made to look a lot cooler with very nifty lighting effects.

There are some odd tonal shifts. Mostly the emphasis is on super-charged hyper-kinetic action fun but then there are periodic dark tragic gut-punch moments.

There are also some cynical moments.

Akira Kobayashi is a serviceable action hero. Chieko Matsubara is cute and likeable.

The action scenes have plenty of energy.

The movie is as sexy as you could get away with in 1966, with some very brief glimpses of nudity.

Black Tight Killers was clearly much in tune with international trends in pop cinema. The Bond movies obviously, but it’s closer in feel to eurospy movies like the wonderful French Fantomas (1964) and the amazing Italian heist movie Seven Golden Men (1965), the thoroughly enjoyable Lightning Bolt (1966) and one of the best of all the eurospy films, Special Mission Lady Chaplin (1966). And the German Kommissar X series kicked off in 1966 as well, with Kiss Kiss, Kill Kill.

And let’s face it - you can’t make a bad movie with beautiful girl ninjas.

Black Tight Killers has so much energy, so much fun and so much style. This is pure pop cinema. Highly recommended.

The Radiance Blu-Ray looks lovely. There are some decent extras.

Yasuharu Hasebe went on to direct several of the wonderful Stray Cat Rock movies - Stray Cat Rock: Delinquent Girl Boss (1970), Stray Cat Rock: Sex Hunter (1970) and Stray Cat Rock: Machine Animal (1970). These three movies are all quite different in tone but they’re all very enjoyable.