Best of the Best (1989)

PLOT: The five members of the U.S. karate team must work together in order to compete against their highly skilled counterparts from Korea. Will the stress of intense training combined with their personal demons threaten their chances, especially if they’re not allowed to drink, have sex, or smoke the devil’s lettuce during training?

Director: Robert Radler
Writer: Paul Levine
Cast: Phillip Rhee, Eric Roberts, James Earl Jones, Sally Kirkland, Chris Penn, David Agresta, Simon Rhee, James Lew, Ken Nagayama, John Ryan, John Dye, Tom Everett, Hee Il Cho, John P. Ryan

PLOT THICKENER

The Rhee brothers, Simon and Phillip, are established quantities in the world of action cinema. The elder sibling, Simon, has done stunt work on everything from The Dark Knight Rises and Anchorman 2 to the 2011 Muppets reboot. While fight and stunt choreography is clearly his bread and butter, his acting appearances are frequent but mostly minor, with credits such as “Asian villain #1” and “Bruno’s henchman” in his filmography. Younger brother, Phillip, has had a much less prolific career in front of the camera, but four of his gigs were starring roles in the film franchise he co-produced starting in 1989, Best of the Best. He has since become more heavily involved with the business side of media production. The moral of the story: for the best of the best possible outcomes in the entertainment business, enroll yourself or your children in taekwondo classes around the age of four.

When it comes to competitive martial arts team competitions, no one is better than the Korean team. Practicing for 12 months out of the year -- even under the harshest conditions (snow jogging!) -- has resulted in countless international championships and Olympic medals. The team is also led by the reigning world's champion, the fierce Dae Han (Simon Rhee). With only three months to train the American team before a major competition, Frank Couzo (Jones) is facing an uphill battle. The team’s financial benefactor, Jennings (Ryan) has mandated that Couzo make room for an assistant coach specializing in meditation and mental skills, named Catherine Wade (Kirkland). With the merry band of fighters Couzo has chosen for the squad, he’ll need all the help he can get to make them laser focused.

The team is five men strong. Alex Grady (Roberts) is a widowed single parent and auto factory worker from Portland, Oregon with a bum shoulder. Travis Brickley (Penn) is a hotheaded and overtly racist Floridian cowboy from Miami. The team’s resident oddball is Virgil Keller (Dye), an aspiring Buddhist from Rhode Island. Hailing from the mean streets of Detroit is proud and totally generic Italian guy, Sonny Grasso (Agresta). Rounding out the team is the talented, Tommy Lee (Rhee), a taekwondo instructor who teaches kids in California and harbors a past trauma that could harm his ability to fight at a high level. To keep the team on task, Couzo’s two rules are simple: don’t be late, and function as a team. Other than racist infighting, car accidents, and a macho inability to deal with one’s emotions, what could possibly go wrong?

The action in the film is sparse but well executed. There’s a bar fight in the early going after the team has been assembled that serves to not only bond the new teammates, but also demonstrate how big of a prick Travis can be (his gyrating and groping of a woman starts shit with her jealous boyfriend and his crew of drunks). This melee (quite fun!) features broken tables, wrecked doors, a smashed pinball machine, and a shattered glass pane before all is said and done. Up until the actual competition, though, there’s a dearth of choreographed fight scenes, as the story focuses instead on preparation and training montages. Thankfully, the final showdown between the teams doesn’t disappoint, as each fight balances good choreography with relevant character drama. The filmmakers were wise to save the best martial artists in its cast for the most meaningful fight, when Tommy Lee takes on Dae Han in the final match with the highest stakes. The brothers Rhee tear the house down, showing off the skills that made them household names in the 1980s and 90s, assuming those households were comprised of action movie fanatics.

Maybe this is the sting of untimely 2016 celebrity deaths talking, but it’s rather odd to watch the team of young American fighters in a 1989 movie with the knowledge that two of the five actors are no longer with us. Stranger yet, both John Dye and Chris Penn passed away from non-specific heart ailments in their 40s. While both actors enjoyed roles in other action films, this movie afforded them an opportunity to demonstrate their martial arts skills for the camera for the first time (unless you count Penn’s fight scene in Footloose). Penn, as some readers might know, was also a student and close friend of Don “The Dragon” Wilson, but also trained in the early 1980s under Benny “The Jet” Urquidez. At least for a time, martial arts was a very legitimate facet of his life.

The way the film handles the cultural representation of the Korean team is rather strange, yet almost typically 80s in its fumbling approach. The most glaring trait is that the non-English lines of dialogue among its team -- primarily delivered by the team’s coach, played by TKD legend, Hee Il Cho -- aren’t given the benefit of subtitles. The subtext that results is that these people aren’t meant to be understood, but rather only identified as foreign through their use of a non-English language. The team is shown practicing outdoors and/or in temple courtyards, bereft of the sleek and high-tech settings one might typically associate with South Korea today (a country often cited as the most innovative in the world). The team is said to practice 12 months out of the year and according to competition commentator Ahmad Rashad, taekwondo is basically the national pastime, akin to American baseball. (Assuming you ignore the data showing that football and baseball are the most popular sports there.)

Unlike a lot of films from this era, the main villain is not some cartoonish brute with a bad haircut or some wealthy, nefarious puppetmaster attempting to destroy everything around him. Sure, the Korean opposition is appropriately fearsome but far from evil. Instead, the tension for the heroes is almost entirely internal. Can Travis regulate his hot-headed bullying long enough to focus on the objective at hand? Will the distractions of Alex’s family obligations undermine his goals and get him booted from the team? Can Tommy overcome the torment of his past and find the killer instinct within himself that he’ll need to win? As someone who is deeply neurotic with a lot of unresolved emotions and a trail of failed relationships, this really appealed to me.

VERDICT

Critics were not kind to the film upon its release -- and neither were audiences -- but Best of the Best found a loyal fan base through home video and cable TV. It’s that rare breed of chopsocky film that complements its martial artists with seasoned performers and loads of dramatic heft to help carry the story. Admittedly, it can be formulaic at times and it may rely on training montages too often. Some action fans may be disappointed with the low amount of creative fight scenes. To those people I say: quit whining...and thanks for reading. At its core, it’s a well-acted and satisfying underdog story that should appeal to pure martial arts fans.

AVAILABILITY

On DVD through Amazon, Netflix, and eBay. Streaming on Crackle.

5 / 7

Furious (1984)

PLOT: A grieving martial artist does battle with a group of wizards and new-wave music enthusiasts for control of the universe. All participants are paid in delicious fried chicken for their efforts.

Directors: Tim Everitt, Tom Sartori

Writers: Tim Everitt, Tom Sartori

Cast: Simon Rhee, Philip Rhee, Arlene Montano, Howard Jackson, Mika Elkan, Loren Avedon, Peter Malota

PLOT THICKENER

Jodorowsky. Buñuel. Lynch. “All psychomagical hypnotist meditators and coffee drinkers?” you ask. Close, but no! They’re filmmakers responsible for some of the most transgressive surrealist works in cinema history. Based on his work in 1984’s Furious, Tim Everitt may have had an eye on adding his name to this list. His debut feature film lacks the epistemological heft of Holy Mountain or the fever-dream duality of Mulholland Drive, but make no mistake: Everitt was not afraid to feed your head with the weirdly random thunder. He’ll give you five straight minutes of old women eating chicken while a man in a kabuki mask performs magic tricks for a baby and a shirtless man twirls swords around in the back of a dimly-lit restaurant. And you’ll like it.

After a warrior named Kim (Montano) is chased into the mountains by white dudes in Mongol warrior garb making melodic nature calls lifted from Doug McKenzie, a brief skirmish leads to tragedy. The hooligans seek a powerful navigational tusk (think of a saber-tooth with GPS) that may or may not point the way to the so-called Astral Plane, and Kim was simply caught holding it at the wrong time. To her credit, Kim doesn’t make the theft easy for them, fighting off one fighter with a staff and hitting another in the lower-lumbar / upper-ass area with his own throwing star. Pretty demoralizing, though not as bad as actually dying.

Kim’s martial artist brother, Simon (Simon Rhee), lives in an isolated woodland cabin, teaches martial arts to an eager group of adolescents, and even has a dog. All in all, life is good. When he learns of his sister’s demise, everything goes to hell. He immediately beats the shit out of an outdoor heavy bag in front of his confused students and then storms off to seek guidance from his master, Chan (Phillip Rhee). The older, wiser Chan lives and works in an office building and oversees a dojo, but spends most of his time meditating while floating three feet off the ground or learning new sleight-of-hand magic tricks from his right-hand dude, Mika (Elkan). Noting his protege’s grief, he gifts him with a mysterious pendant and some philosophical claptrap before sending him off on a wild goose chase for spiritual enlightenment. This is odd, because the office building is filled with chickens. You following so far?

Good, I’m glad that’s out of the way. Now, take everything I just told you about the plot of this film and throw it in the garbage along with the leftover macaroni-and-cheese you forgot to refrigerate overnight. Some of this stuff definitely happened, but it’s a patchwork story interspersed with fight scenes and in-camera effects. Watch, rinse, and repeat, because you’ll (arguably) benefit from a few viewings and come up with all sorts of theories. That said, anyone approaching this film and hoping for modern-day, inventive TKD action will come away disappointed. The fight scenes, while good for a 1984 American movie, seem a little loose and under-rehearsed, no doubt a consequence of a micro-budget and rushed shooting schedule. Where the fights succeed is in their energy, frequency, and pure silliness. Enemies throw cardboard boxes from rooftops, restaurant combatants throw bowls of rice at each other, and fireballs turn into chickens mid-flight. Who cares if you don’t get crisp choreography with intricate combinations and epic build-up? This has Simon Rhee fighting a goddamn papier-mâché dragon with a skeleton clenched in its teeth.

Last summer, I was a guest on the GGTMC podcast where we reviewed this film, and while we had a ball discussing the zany elements of Furious, we found it was a slippery movie to discuss given its disjointed story and lack of dialogue. For fans of the genre who are tired of needlessly talky movies filled with exposition, you’re in for a treat. The first line of dialogue -- “All right...” -- comes around the 12-minute mark. Now, the dialogue may not be as sparse as say, Castaway or All is Lost, but even for a 73-minute film, there’s not a whole lot of conversation here to move the plot forward. Everitt instead uses a lot of surreal visuals with uncomfortably long stretches of silence to build the story’s framework, and leaves the audience to fill in the rest. Somehow, for this type of film, it works more often than not.

Furious is significant for a lot of reasons -- chickens, talking pigs, a flaming skeleton -- but it also marked the film debut of Loren Avedon. As a student of Jun Chong and Phillip Rhee, he was one among many advanced students who made an appearance as a henchman -- Double Impact’s spur-heeled villain, Peter Malota, also appears -- but you’d be hard pressed to pick him out given the generic costumes and grainy look of the film. In my correspondence with Loren, he himself couldn’t recall the specific scene in which he appeared. (He would go on to have a similarly fleeting appearance in L.A. Streetfighters, but was at least identifiable). Here, I had no clue though. Devo henchman? Restaurant patron? Chicken handler? Who knows?

VERDICT
This was not a film where much footage was left on the cutting room floor and you get the feeling that the filmmakers needed to use or re-purpose everything they captured on camera. Filmed in less than a week’s time, Furious bears a very “kitchen-sink” feel informed by visual non-sequiturs, a limited inventory of ridiculous props, and a wonderfully absurd plot. There are some highly unconventional ideas at play here and this is likely to be the most original (if not the most technically adept) martial arts b-movie you’ll see this year. Highly recommended.

AVAILABILITY
Near-impossible to find in its distributed physical form (VHS). A previously available VHS rip was yanked from YouTube based on a copyright claim from the director himself. In isolation, this guarantees almost nothing, but I’m hopeful that this means Everitt was reasserting control over his intellectual property for a proper home video release.

AVAILABILITY UPDATE!
The fine folks at Leomark Studios released a Collector's Edition DVD on July 21, 2015. The release is now available for pre-order, so make sure you support this film!

6 / 7

Silent Assassins (1988)

PLOT: A scientist who holds the secret to a biochemical weapon is kidnapped by an ex-CIA agent and rogue criminal. Humanity's only hope to avoid germ warfare is a clumsy cop who eats raw hot dogs with peanut butter, a dude in red sweatpants, and the guy from L.A. Streetfighters who was clearly too old for high school.

Director: Doo-yong Lee, Scott Thomas
Writers: Lin Ada, Will Gates
Cast: Sam Jones, Jun Chong, Phillip Rhee, Mako, Bill Erwin, Linda Blair, Gustav Vintas, Rebecca Ferratti, Bill Wallace, Ken Nagayama
  
PLOT THICKENER
Sometime after the release of the iPhone, David Lynch sat down to record some bonus content for the special edition release of his film, Inland Empire. During that session, Lynch made a remark that people who watch films on mobile devices like their “fucking telephone” are cheating themselves out of the cinematic experience and need to “get real.” Some clever soul set this clip to music and uploaded it to YouTube as an iPhone commercial parody, and the rest is viral video history. I’m proud to say that I’ve never tried watching a full-length movie on my fucking telephone, and didn’t even purchase a smartphone until 2011. I have, however, watched a grainy VHS rip of 1988’s Silent Assassins on the 2.2-inch screen of a 5th-generation iPod Nano while enduring a five-hour bus ride somewhere on I-95. Sorry, David -- I was desperate.

DTV action films of the 1980s that dared to combine scientific elements with espionage often involved stolen microfilm, black market nuclear material, or secret formulas for dangerous but ambiguous weaponry. This film falls into the latter camp, where an elderly biochemist, Dr. London (Erwin), is kidnapped for his knowledge of a secret chemical formula that could be exploited for germ warfare. The abductors include a sultry killing machine, Miss Amy (Ferratti) and an ex-CIA agent named Kendrick (Vintas) along with an army of masked foot soldiers who may or may not be Iga ninja clan members. This lethal group gives no fucks, as evidenced by their snatching of not only London, but the small, Asian, and completely unrelated girl who he happens to be holding at the time of the abduction in a parking garage elevator. Let this be a lesson to all of you in the scientific community: if you’re working on anything remotely interesting to our nation’s enemies, they will not be deterred by your use of children as human shields. And don’t ask to hold people’s kids if they’re old enough to walk, it’s friggin creepy.

In hot pursuit of Kendrick is Sam Kettle (Jones), a wisecracking everyman cop who very nearly busted him just days before, during a sting operation. How did Kendrick get away? He ran to a warehouse pier and threw a baby in the water before boarding a speedboat. Why was a baby hanging out on a dock in the middle of the night, you ask? Who knows, but like any other good cop, Kettle dove in after it for the save. Upon discovering the baby was a doll, our hero actually yelled, “IT’S A DOLL!” Kendrick responded by cackling and firing his gun into the air as his boat sped away, because he’s the villain in a 1988 DTV action movie. Predictable.

The flipside to Kettle’s cocky can-do attitude is occasional meatheaded incompetence, so he obviously can’t be trusted to do things alone. He’s joined by Jun Kim (Chong) the distressed uncle of the kidnapped little girl, and he wants nothing more than to rescue her. This leads to some strange moments between the two men: Kim hides out in Kettle’s jeep, shows up randomly at police HQ for progress reports, and at one point finds himself sitting between Kettle and his wife, Sara (Blair) as Kettle eats a dinner of raw hot dogs and peanut butter while arguing about his increasing involvement in the case. When Sam and Sara get up from the couch to giggle and play grab-ass (they’re childless, so still having fun!) Kim discovers the majesty of heavily processed meat product combined with peanut butter. The heroes are eventually joined by Bernard (Rhee), the wise-ass son of a reformed Yakuza gangster and art collector (Mako). Bernard is also a Kendo instructor who is consistently flanked by at least one pretty, bleach-blonde California girl at any time.

In terms of production value, technical competence, and overall narrative coherence, this was a major step up for co-stars Philip Rhee and Jun Chong from their previous collaboration, L.A. Streetfighters. Multiple directors is usually an indicator of a glorious mess (see: Breathing Fire) but directors Scott Thomas and Doo-Yong Lee do a solid job. I’ll dock them a few points for some bad lighting choices in the climax, but they otherwise keep the action moving at a good clip and utilize varied settings. I was surprised to see legitimate character development in Bernard, turning from an obnoxious and flippant California ladies man to a vengeful whirlwind through metered motivating incidents.  It should also be mentioned that while the onscreen chemistry between Chong and Jones isn’t great, the character dynamic was well-formed -- Kettle’s cocky, rapid-fire chatter plays well with Kim’s more downbeat demeanor. You could just as easily see a guy like Roddy Piper sliding into the Kettle role, but perhaps the world was not ready for a Piper-Chong collaboration. Humanity is so backwards, at times.

The action, for the most part, is well-executed and everyone gets an opportunity to shine. There are shoot-outs, foot chases, vehicle chases, smashed windows, rooftop jumps, 'splosions, and plenty of hand to hand combat. Chong and Rhee, as fight choreographers, make great use of the production’s willing stuntmen and unlimited inventory of breakaway furniture. No book case or end table was safe! Rhee, in particular, has a memorable scene in a public bathroom against two goons that leaves no stall divider untouched. Thankfully, no one was taking a shit at the time, so this saved everyone from that unique brand of action movie embarrassment.

Oddly, this is the last cinematic appearance from Chong we’ll cover, and he goes out on a high note with his best (dramatic) performance. (Amazing titles aside, 2006’s Maximum Cage Fighting and 1976’s Bruce Lee Fights Back from the Grave are decidedly non-canon in our theme of Western martial arts b-movies of the 1980s and 1990s). Despite less than a half-dozen acting roles, Master Chong’s contributions to cinema as a martial artist can’t be overstated: his pupils have included action genre mainstays such as Phillip and Simon Rhee, Loren Avedon, Thomas Ian Griffith, Lorenzo Lamas, and even Sam Jones himself. Regardless of how you feel about them as dramatic actors, that’s an impressive crop of on-screen fighters to have helped to elevate to lead star status. His crowning cinematic achievement is probably the amazing gangland shit-show L.A. Streetfighters, truly one of our pantheon films. So we bid adieu to Jun Chong, a man who was so much more than jump kicks and an awesome moustache, but also a teacher, learner, and master of the fighting arts.

VERDICT
On a second watch at a more reasonable resolution, I really enjoyed Silent Assassins. The plot and reliance upon exposition is a little hamfisted at times, but it’s a breezy 90 minutes of enjoyable action and it features one of those b-movie casts that was only possible during the golden age of direct-to-video. While it’s not quite a hidden gem, Rhee, Jones, and Chong completists will definitely want to bump this up in their respective queues.

AVAILABILITY
Used VHS and non-R1 DVD copies are available on Amazon, but it’s also on YouTube in full. Not to be confused with Godfrey Ho’s Ninja: Silent Assassin.

4 / 7 

L.A. Streetfighters (1985)

PLOT: Rival teenage gangs of martial arts street toughs rumble over territory and bragging rights. When one gang tries to go legitimate as a private security team, and one gang member starts dating the sister of a rival gang member, and someone steals drug money, and another guy comes from a broken home, things get really convoluted. And awesome.

Director: Woo-sang Park
Writer: Ji-Woon Hong, Jaime Mendoza-Nava
Cast: Jun Chong, Phillip Rhee, James Lew, Bill Wallace, Loren Avedon
 
PLOT THICKENER:
Bear Republic Brewery’s Racer 5 might be my favorite IPA of all time. You sudsy connoisseurs are probably chuckling at my naivety on the subject, but I had it for the first time recently and gave it immediate and favorable judgement. Taste is like that, so is smell: in analyzing the respective properties, you usually know immediately whether you like something or not. Movies are more slippery. The 1985 Woo-sang Park film L.A. Streetfighters is one that often popped up when researching the filmographies of Loren Avedon, James Lew, and Phillip Rhee. Digging deeper into some random reviews, I found a lot of “so bad it’s good!” reactions and added it to my Netflix queue. I watched it. I probably shrugged. I moved on.

It was added as a “midnight movie” selection to last year’s edition of the New York Asian Film Festival and due to time restrictions, I failed to attend. With fresh eyes, I just revisited the film last week and have concluded this: in terms of cinematic gut reactions, 2009 Karl Brezdin’s guts don’t know shit. This movie is incredible.

Phillip Rhee stars as Tony, a charismatic and likeable high school student. The only problem? He’s the new guy in town and doesn’t look quite tough enough to not be fucked with. Part of it is his affable demeanor but most of it is that he wears the same gray argyle sweater to school every day. (Unless it’s a Members Only jacket, wearing the same clothes on consecutive days is not a cool thing to do.) As a result, the school’s bully, Chan (Lew) and his gang of thugs target Tony for a beatdown, unless he can pay the fee: five dollars. Luckily, the rebellious Young (Chong) sticks up for Tony and challenges Chan to a duel under the cover of night. While his ample mustache might suggest he stayed back a few years, Young is a tough customer and has the leather jacket, black fingerless gloves, and occasional flowy scarf to prove it.

The bo staff is the weapon of choice for the rumble between Chan and Young, and it’s a legitimately well-choreographed fight scene that puts over Young’s skills very effectively. He dominates the contest and Chan’s gang goes scurrying. A casual observer to the proceedings notices that Young is a formidable physical specimen capable of quickly disarming his opponent and immediately offers him a wad of cash to work as private security. We then get the first of several WTF moments, as Young grips the cash in hand, turns his head toward the camera, and begins laughing maniacally before it abruptly cuts to the next scene. Incredible.

Like Chan, Young has a gang of super-tough friends, and also like Chan, he comes from a single-parent household. During a rotating cascade of poorly-lit, ineptly performed, and terribly dubbed scenes of melodrama, Young laments his place in America and his mother’s rampant alcoholism. Will she ever accept him or be a real mother to him? The dilemma frustrates him to no end and he constantly vents to Tony, but his friend seems to think that he should simply concentrate on school, the one thing he can control. Like Bill Gates before him, Young is all “fuck school, I gots to get PAID” and continues to bust heads during the gang’s adventures in private security and random parking garage rumbles.

As Young and friends rush fist-first into the alluring world of working the door at Mexican restaurants and dance clubs, Tony catches the eye of the adoring Lily (King) and they begin to date. Despite their innocent puppy love, this is a highly combustible situation because Lily is Chan’s sister. She attempts to explain away her brother’s dickheaded behavior as the result of their mother abandoning the family. The honesty between them and their mutual love for ice cream only fortifies their romantic bonds, and it seems as if Young is growing resentful. As the gang’s caretaker who took Tony in as a friend, it troubles him to see his friend happy with the sister of his arch-rival. This manifests itself in an awkward scene where Young drives around looking for sex workers for Tony, and mistakes non-sex workers for actual sex workers as Tony shifts nervously in his seat all the while.

There are so many more scenes just like this, none of which can be adequately described in the written word as a means of capturing the same random and off-beat spirit that an actual viewing could. By the time Young steals a drug dealer’s money and the gang is stalked by Bill “Superfoot” Wallace and a samurai-hitman fights a gang member in what looks like an expressionistic art gallery, your head will be spinning with the pure fun of it all. Though, for all the goofiness and technical gaffes, the ending to this movie is bleak as all-fuck which made me love it all that much more.

The action overall is quite good when you can actually see what’s transpiring. While the terrible attention to lighting hurts at times, the choreography is mostly crisp, the movement is framed well, and the editing isn’t overdone. More than the technical components though, the roster of fighters helps these scenes succeed. Rhee, Chong, and Lew are all legitimate taekwondo masters and the inclusion of karate and kickboxing champion Bill Wallace was a cool way to bridge the 1970s and early 80s output of the Chuck Norris era, and the burgeoning talent and work of the 1980s Los Angeles taekwondo scene. I didn’t spot him fighting, but Loren Avedon -- a TKD practitioner -- makes a brief appearance as one of Lew’s buddies. Mark Hicks, who cries over a birthday cake here, has a long history of Hollywood stunt work, just appeared in the action blockbuster Fast Five, and achieved unfortunate Internet fame as Afro Ninja. Also deserving special mention is Danny Gibson, who appears as the leader of the Spikes gang and has one of the most unique looks in a film loaded with questionable fashion sense. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen a mustachioed man in a belly shirt yelling “YOU'RE DEAD MEAT MOTHERFUCKER! DON'T FUCK WITH... THE SPIKES!”

VERDICT:
The terrible lighting. The dubbed dialogue. The fingerless black leather gloves. The VHS artwork that looks like it belongs on the cover of some obscure side-scrolling Data East beat-em-up for the NES. You get all of this and more in the highly enjoyable gang violence romp that is L.A. Streetfighters. While it will never win points on polish or artistic achievement, the film is legitimately historic for other reasons. It’s a cinematic flashpoint for some of the biggest figures in the American martial arts b-movie scene. Phillip Rhee went on to head up the infamous Best of the Best franchise. James Lew would become one of the most prolific stunt performers in Hollywood. Loren Avedon played prominent heroes and villains for the next 20 years. While Chong never achieved the same longevity cinematically, this is his most consistently entertaining piece of work and a legit midnight movie gem. Highly recommended.

AVAILABILITY:
Amazon, EBay, YouTube. Currently in Save Hell on Netflix.

6.5 / 7