Mean Guns (1997)

“The original Mambo king… makes you want to dance…”

On video store shelves, I confused the cover of Mean Guns (1997) with another direct-to-video Christopher Lambert action movie, Gun Men, though the former would have been released during the transition to DVD. Becoming more and more part of the auteurist following to director Albert Pyun, I had always heard good things about Mean Guns. To be a fan of Albert Pyun is knowing that none of his movies are perfect, either taken out of his hands and re-edited, or suffering low budgets and production issues, yet still pulling off something that is visually striking and entertaining in spite of and even because of its limitations.

For example, Mean Guns is set in a new LA prison complex set to be open but taken over for one day by powerful gangster Moon (Ice-T). As a way of cleaning house for “The Syndicate” that Moon works for, he invites fifty or so criminals and gangsters who have all either cheated, betrayed or dishonoured the organisation. Unknowingly, as they enter the empty prison, everyone is signing up for a death game – the three who remain standing will take a suitcase of $10 million dollars to split between them, and will be able to walk out with their lives. As hundreds of guns and thousands of bullets rain down upon the collected players – including blonde wild card Lou (Lambert), quiet hitman Marcus (Michael Halsey), glamorous assassin D (Kimberly Warren), and a lawyer turning state’s evidence, Cam (Deborah Van Valkenburgh) – everyone grabs a weapon and begins to shoot each other. Pyun and his collaborators were able to film in a newly opened prison, and yet couldn’t damage or mark the property, hence why the multiple bullets fired don’t result in blood pack squibs or bullet holes in the wall. Despite this limitation, the movie is still entertaining for a post-Tarantino crime flick with ponderous, “poetic” dialogue, Hong Kong influenced action sequences and Spaghetti western inspired showdowns.

Long-time Pyun collaborator musician Anthony Riparetti infuses the action with a John Carpenter bass synth throb at times, but the main musical signifer is… Mambo, which is heard throughout the movie as much as gunfire, often both, adding to the movie’s strange, alternate universe feel (a precursor to the type of John Wick world-building). I had fun with Mean Guns as it keeps moving with shoot-outs, team-ups and double-crosses, particularly driven by Lambert doing his thing with an intense stare breaking into a raspy laugh, Ice-T chewing the scenery with his silver teeth-grill, and nice moments for actors like Van Valkenburgh (from The Warriors and Streets Of Fire) and Halsey’s British Lee Van Cleef energy. I watched the Director’s Cut on YouTube. Recommended.

Hologram Man (1995)

Slash Gallagher. That’s the name of the bad guy in Hologram Man (1995), a sci-fi action techno-thriller from PM Entertainment Group. No doubt direct-to-video upon its release, watching it on a YouTube rip now, the film looks like television, yet has enough budget for multiple explosions and equipment to launch stunt people into the air against a wall of flames in the background. Now Slash Gallagher (played by Evan Lurie who also cowrote the movie) is a dreadlocked megalomaniac (resembling a buff Jonathan Davis from Korn) who in the opening of the movie takes his army of goons to assassinate a US senator as part of his “revolution.” In Slash’s way are by-the-book cop named Decoda (Joe Lara) and his partner (John Amos). After one action sequence that smashes up and detonates multiple cars on an inner-city main road, there’s now a vendetta relationship between Decoda and Slash, particularly when Slash is captured and sent to hologram prison. Flash forward five years, and now LA is even more futuristic with space-ship cars and eco-domes. Decoda is no longer by-the-book but a long-haired, rule-breaking maverick and Slash has broken out of the matrix and turned into a powerful electron based force… a Hologram Man if you will.

Demolition Man is a clear influence here (and the film’s title is even name-dropped by a character) along with action sequences that recall moments from Robocop and Terminator 2 (the cocaine factory shoot-out and the truck freeway chase respectively). This is fun cyberpunk video trash that has it all: a VR training sequence that feels like a demo for a PC simulator, a corrupt corporation called CalCorp (short for “California Corporation”), character actors like William Sanderson and Tiny Lister as Slash’s henchmen, Michael Nouri from The Hidden as the power hungry governor, and Tron level effects that turn our muscular stars into video-effect body-suit wearing pixelated “holograms.” Lara resembles Nic Cage in Con Air but if he traded the white singlet for a yuppie suit, and Lurie has a haughty, over-the-top energy that is memorable. Directed by the king of PM cyber-action flicks, Richard Pepin (Cyber Tracker and T-Force) Recommended.

Female Prisoner Scorpion: Beast Stable (1973)

The Female Prisoner Scorpion series are a quartet of Japanese exploitation action thrillers centred around the explosive character of Nami Matsushima aka “Scorpion”, unforgettably portrayed by Meiko Kaji in an indomitable performance. Arrow Video remastered and released the movies in a box-set, and they are available to stream on Tubi – though bizarrely the second film (Jailhouse 41) is missing. Definitely falls in the category of “movies Quentin Tarantino paid homage to aka ripped off” with strong shades of Kill Bill Vol. 1 + 2. And warning, the series is sicko 1970s exploitation genre fare, with lots of ugly moments, so not for the faint of heart. What shines through is Kaji’s star presence, who is given little dialogue but speaks volumes with her eyes, and creates a mythical angel of vengeance. In Female Prisoner Scorpion: Beast Stable (1973), Scorpion has broken out of prison (again) and rather than a women-in-prison movie, this entry follows her hiding out in the slums and experiencing the ways in which the criminal underworld and lower class areas have their own “prisons”. There is a brilliant pre-title opening sequence that shows Scorpion slipping the net from a detective (Mikio Narita) on her trail, and incidentally taking one of his arms as a parting gift. The other strength to the series is director Shunya Ito (who directed three out of the four movies) who provides a snappy sense of style, with certain sequences on the border of pop art and surrealism in their colour, composition and conception. The murder of a sloppy, mob-backed doctor, for example, is not witnessed, but the aftermath is rendered as blood splatters on white hospital curtains and Scorpion’s face obscured behind speckled glass of a door. Between different sub-plots and characters, Ito’s Scorpion works her way through a world of abused sex workers, rotten gangsters and brutal police. The main connection Scorpion has is with the kind sex worker Yuki (Yayoi Watanbe) who lives in a shack with her mentally ill brother who she is in an incestous relationship with (again, grubby exploitation genre stuff). Meanwhile, a villain from Scorpion’s past is Katsu (Reisen Ri) has a cage of ravens and is part of a criminal gang, and will inevitably cross paths with Scorpion. While not as strong as the first film, with its stop-start structure, Beast Stable is still very good; highlights being Scorpion’s revenge montage and the haunting imagery of lit matches dropped into a darkened sewer as Yuki calls out for “Scorpion” as our hero hides out in there from the cops. Recommended (if you have the stomach).

Future Kick (1991)

H Y P E R D R E A M

Objectively, Future Kick (1991) is one star direct-to-video trash. Yet this is right in the pocket of a low-rent cyberpunk vibe that I’m very much into. I love The Terminator, Robocop and Total Recall so much, that to see a cheap knock-off from the 1990s is a joy, for how they replicate moments on a lower budget. Usually there are practical sets and special effects, and if there’s any CGI, it’s going to be on the level of a CD-ROM video game.

In the “future” of Future Kick, wealthy people live on the moon while the Earth has become a Blade Runner type ruined metropolis, all overcrowded police stations, streets with fire drums, and illicit night clubs always cutting away to a stripper performing a dance. Meg Foster (They Live, Masters Of The Universe) is searching for her missing VRS programmer husband (VRS is “Virtual Reality Systems” as he helpfully explains to her) in the sprawl. Eventually she teams up with a sunglasses-at-night bounty-hunter cyborg played by Don “The Dragon” Wilson (his championship titles as a martial artist are given underneath his name in the opening credits). I loved how his opening narration explains that a new line of cyborgs were created to crack down on corporate crime, but they found out the corporations were responsible for too much crime, and a special task force of corporate police were created to hunt down and terminate the cyborgs (info given in the space of two minutes). There’s also a serial killer (who has a pouty Chris Sarandon Fright Night aura) with a three blade knife who rips out people’s hearts and sells them to a New Body rejuvenation corporate business on the body organ black market. And there’s also Chris Penn as a robot who does kickboxing, no doubt waiting for Reservoir Dogs to shift him out of the Best Of The Best era.

The great thing about Future Kick is that its 76 minutes long and moves at a clip, with ADR exposition papered over edits between scenes, and producer Roger Corman recycling sets and stars from other films, even footage (the space scenes I believe are from Battle Beyond The Stars) to make it to the finish line as a releasable movie. It still has enough William Gibson rip-off shit (there’s even an underground death game called Laser Blade) to make me love it, alongside other VHS cyberpunk knock-offs like Mutant Hunt, Cyber Tracker and Virtual Assassin.

Available to stream on Tubi (of course). Recommended (if you like your direct-to-video detritus).

Deadbeat By Dawn (1988)

Deadbeat By Dawn (1988) is a splatter-punk symphony on a beer can budget. Directed, written, and starring Jim Van Bebber, a film school drop-out who put everything into this low-budget action flick, even choreographing the fights and stunts. With gang members in ripped denim and head-bands, sporting switch-blades and nunchaka, this movie has been compared to Streets Of Rage, but rather than an 1980s neon arcade game, there’s something more grimy and grungy here; the synth score is crunchy, the blood is like red paint, and it’s clear that Bebber is putting his body on the line with each hectic stunt. That, and you can just feel that when they drive a car into a river for one scene, they don’t have any back-ups to spare; everything piece of action or violence has a consequence in this shoe-string production. Shot on the streets of Dayton, Ohio, there’s a primal reality to everything, even with it following a familiar exploitation plot. Bebber plays Goose, leader of the Ravens, who are in a gang war with the Spiders, led by the sadistic Danny (Paul Harper). When Goose’s girlfriend Christie (Megan Murphy), who dabbles in mysticism, and physic readings, asks him to leave the gang life behind for the straight-and-narrow, Goose obliges. After tragedy strikes due to Danny’s violent machinations, the scene will be eventually set for a showdown of revenge. Clearly feeding off the scuzzy punk vibes of The Warriors and Death Wish, there’s also a sense that Bebber is carrying off his own Taxi Driver intensity in certain scenes, like when he stays with his heroin-addicted father in a rundown apartment, or when he walks the streets with bloody soaked fists (clearly shooting on the fly to the gawking background passerbys). The violence hits hard and fast, even when the guns look like toys; Bebber gets enough visceral energy from his handling of nunchucks or the gory body blows. A triumph of cheap, passionate genre filmmaking, with energy coursing in the moving camera and editing in of the cityscape, all eventually escalating into a satisfyingly bloody fight across a train station platform. Marc Pitman is also a scene-stealer as the spaced-out nihilist gang member named Bonecrusher (it’s that type of flick!). Available to stream on Tubi. Recommended.