What the Chuck?! Walker, Texas Ranger VS The Black Dragons

Speaking of TV reunions, a random episode of Walker, Texas Ranger was Chuck full of them this week. I'm always surprised when people don't know Chuck Norris was a movie star before becoming a TV staple and internet hero.  As a Karate Man I was always aware of Norris' show Walker, Texas Ranger but never really watched it regularly while it was on.  I knew it was popular, had 2 spin offs and ran for a solid 8 years.  Today, reruns are on a couple different channels and I'm catching up.  While people claim this is the golden age of television, all I see are a bunch of sad sack looking mother f*ckers, talking heads and story lines that should only take up 1 episode stretched out to 10 and still not resolving jack sh*t.  In 5 minutes of one episode of Walker there were Hummers, shootouts, trucks chasing a plane, a fight inside the plane, a guy thrown out of the plane with no parachute, Walker rescuing the guy in midair and then landing with a smile and bro-hug.  No wonder I find much of today's television boooooring.

Black Dragons, episode 18 of 2000's final season (weird, I was just talking about episode 18 from The Flash...), is the tale of P.K. Song (Street Fighter & American Dragons' Byron Mann), a vicious heroin dealer who threatens any that would oppose him and assaults Ranger Francis Gage (Judson Mills) when he tries to intervene in a heated argument.  Mann is a solid actor with quiet charisma and a scary villainous side honed from playing a ruthless and violent assassin in Dragons and as a violent and ruthless gangster in the Chow Yun-Fat/Mark Wahlberg flick The Corrupter.  Turns out P.K.'s father Edward is a diplomat (mutha fudging Mako! View In Peace) so the bad guy has immunity.  Mako actually played a completely different role 3 years earlier on the show and co-starred opposite Norris in 1981's An Eye For An Eye and 1992's SIDEKICKS!  We learn that P.K. is working for The Black Dragons, a hardcore sect of the Chinese Triad who set up drug smuggling during The Vietnam War and are still bringing product in through Dallas.  Does this sound like an awesome TV mash up of Lethal Weapon 1&2 to anyone else?!  Then we get a Mortal Kombat connection as Shang TSung himself, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa shows up as P.K.'s drug smuggling boss Master Ko and yoked out Deron McBee (Motaro from MK: Annihilation & Malibu from American Gladiators) as pre-Dog the Bounty Hunter looking local dealer Luke.  If that weren't enough, Magnum P.I.'s Larry Manetti shows up as a low level street crook and informant while Enter the Dragon villain and Karate Hall of Famer Bob Wall gets his neck twisted as a security guard.  Phew!  Oh and the dude who breaks his own neck from Showdown In Little Tokyo plays P.K.'s homeboy driver.  Damme!

Walker and partner Jimmy Trivette (Die Hard's Clarence Gilyard, Jr.) along with Gage and female ranger Sydney Cooke (Nia Peeples) figure out P.K.'s racket and dad Edward relents, removing his son's immunity and letting the law do it's thing.  Of course much karate fighting is involved and we get not one, not two, not even three, but FOUR final showdowns of hand to hand combat.  Norris and Tagawa mix it up in a living room with lots of wrist locks and sweeps while Gage and P.K. duke it out in the grassy back yard with punches and kicks, Trivette and Luke smash up the kitchen while Cooke wrecks some random ass dude who isn't in a bunch of action movies outside in the driveway.  We all know that Norris is a badass and a true martial artist but there's a lot of stunt man work in the fight scenes here.  Angles from behind are always a dead giveaway as are the super fast high kicks.  Byron Mann's double looks shorter and a lot wider taking the falls of the grassy bout.  We get lots of kicks of the front, hook and jump spinning back variety and ya know, nobody gets shot too boot.

The Flash: 90's Reunion

What is it about the good ol' 90's and special Christmas episodes of TV shows that just make you feel good?  On this week's The Flash, fans of the original 1990 show were treated to a bit of nostalgia as stars of the former CBS series John Wesley Shipp and Amanda Pays both made appearances.  This is hot on the heels of news that Mark Hamill, who played the memorable Trickster on the former show will be appearing as an older version on the 2014 series.  If that weren't enough nostalgia, this week's installment was directed by Ralph Hemecker, a veteran of TV shows like Renegade and Silk Stalkings and helmer of one of Michael Biehn's greatest Direct to Video flicks, American Dragons (aka Double Edge depending on country of release).  The Biehn himself was in Phoenix, Arizona this week for a convention that yours truly was supposed to attend as press but instead played tour guide to a visiting friend from out of town.  You can still check out Biehn talking about Tombstone, Terminator and loads of other cool things with this video.

So far, 2014 The Flash has been a hit with viewers and critics alike while I've been tuning in each week as well.  It's a fun show dripping with comic book references, thanks in no small part I'm sure to writer and DC dude extraordinaire Geoff Johns.  Johns wrote some of the best Flash tales in recent years and along with Jim Lee is helping to spearhead DC's vast library of comic book character's penetration into pop culture via animation, TV, video games, etc.  Up to this point, young Barry Allen has struggled with the knowledge that some strange "yellow blur" killed his mother but his father was sent to prison for the crime.  After a freak accident involving lightening and a particle accelerator at STAR labs, Barry becomes the crimson streak aka The Flash, taking out crooks and other "meta-humans"; individuals given power from the science charged explosion.  I'm surprisingly ok with this "freak of the week" approach more so than I was with Smallville as at least The Flash comes right out and says it's a superhero show and everyone draws their powers from a similar source as our protagonist.  Unlike Smalls where the mandate was "no flight, no tights" because they were ashamed of the source material or didn't want to compete with any big screen versions.  To be fair, the superhero genre on film and television has come a long way since 2000, for better and for worse.

I had just gotten finished re-watching a handful of 1990 episodes where Barry Allen (John Wesley Shipp) and STAR labs scientist Tina McGee (Amanday Pays) fight the likes of Captain Cold, The Deadly Nightshade and Mirror Master.  With a nice mix of action, drama, humor and super heroics set in an art-deco pulp world with a big, moody, orchestral soundtrack, it's easy to see that The Flash was truly ahead of it's time.  Episode 18 features former The Partridge Family crooner David Cassidy as Mirror Master, a crook who has gotten his hands on a set of batteries that project lifelike holograms to confuse and terrify people with images of snakes, cowboys and hostile police officers.  During a botched sting/meeting, Barry poses as the eccentric criminal mastermind Professor Zoom, alleged creator of The Flash in a random nod to the comics villain.

Cut to this week's episode of the new series and Amanda Pays shows up as Tina McGee only now working for MERCURY labs, a competitor of STAR's with $500 billion in funding and some nifty new tech.  It's nice to see Pays looking so regal 24 years later and her distinctive voice still lends her performance a memorable quality.  Meanwhile, Shipp has been playing Henry Allen, father to new Barry (Gustin Grant) and all we know about him is that he seemingly loves his son and is sent to prison for the murder of his wife after mumbling about a man in a crazy whirlwind of lightening actually doing it.  There's been no indication that Shipp would be revealed as a former Flash himself and it was kind of meta-confusing to know that Pays was playing her former character yet Shipp was not. Or is he? A visit to dad in prison along with an ambiguous performance from Shipp had me wondering if he was going to turn up as Professor Zoom somehow even though it's alluded to and then confirmed that Barry's mentor Dr. Harrison Wells (Tom Cavanuagh) is actually the villain.  At the end of the episode it's revealed that young Barry actually saw two super high speed beings doing battle over his mother.  Which, along with Mark Hamill's Trickster being brought back, can only lead me to believe that Shipp will actually be the former Flash which will then lead to me throwing my arms up into the air, cheering and knowing that I've always had good taste.  It just took the world 24 years to catch up.

Keep runnin':

Ask Me a Question: The Victim

Tuesday, May 11th, 2012 was a good day.  I won a copy of Jean-Claude Van Damme's latest, 6 Bullets as well as tickets to Michael Biehn's new movie, The Victim, playing at The New Beverly.

Of course, with how small the crowd was that night, I doubt they had many entries but hey, free tickets are free tickets.  The flick had been playing all weekend and director/star Michael Biehn (if you don't know how he is by now, GTFOOH!) and his actor/producer wife Jennifer Blanc were to be on hand following the film to discuss with one Mr. Beaks from Ain't It Cool.

The Victim is not a good movie.  It's awkward to watch and cheaply made yet funny in a "what the fuck" kind of way and the final minutes where you're left pondering if Biehn's character is a serial killer display glimpses of his acting prowess that made me such a fan in the first place.  Oh yeah, it's about two chicks hanging with dirty cops, an accidental death, a loner in the woods and a fight for survival.  What I wish every viewing of the film had was an appearance by The Biehn after.  The credits hadn't even finished yet and a voice screamed out "without him this woulda been a real piece of shit!", the voice of course, belonged to the star of Terminator, Aliens, Timebomb and American Dragons, Michael Biehn.

What followed was a funny, insightful and passionate look at the movie business.  Basically, Biehn had encountered a script by Reed Lackey, using that as a base, Biehn rewrote the film while wife Jennifer drummed up financing and crew.  They prepped for, not very long, then shot the flick around Los Angeles in 12 days.  They took it on the festival circuit around the world and were eventually picked up by Anchor Bay.  A handsome DVD complete with commentary and making of would be released later that summer.  Now they're producing movies left and right.  I actually ran into the Biehn's again at San Diego Comic-Con but it wasn't quite so happy an experience...

Biehn Scene: American Dragons aka Double Edge aka A Tale Of Two Michaels

A buddy alerted me that MGM has their own channel and yesterday programmed a doozy of a daytime double feature with American Dragons and American Ninja IV:  The Annihilation. AD stars Michael Biehn while AN has Michael Dudikoff.  You SHOULD know Biehn's work from The Terminator, Aliens, The Abyss, Navy Seals, Tombstone, The Rock, Grindhouse:  Planet Terror and many more but I'm here to talk about those lesser known titles, the VHS tapes I packed into my luggage when I moved out west.

American Dragons, titled Double Edge on my VHS copy, is a great direct to video action/crime thriller from the 90's.  Remember those?  Genre flicks of varied quality made on a budget in Los Angeles, Canada or Europe starring familiar (or familiar to genre fans) faces who had their moment but never quite broke through?  Sure you do.  Trimark, Live Entertainment, Imperial, Dimension, New World... No?  Starring the likes of Eric Roberts, Lorenzo Lamas, Lance Henriksen, Shannon Tweed and Joan Severance?  Still no?  Find yourself another online diary!

(Ahem, in gravelly narrator voice) A maniacal renegade enforcer and a shadowy, cold-blooded assassin have teamed up to start a gang war between the mafia and Yakuza in a bid to take control.  It's up to mismatched partners Detective Tony Luca (Biehn) and Seoul Police Department Inspector Kim (Joong-Hoon Park) to stop them!  East meets West in a furious flurry of bullets and blades, fists and fights, racism (all Asians are Bruce Lee, right?), stereotypes (greasy/douchy Italians alert!), bonding through booze and karaoke, pizza, ramen and slow-motion work out montages!  Get ready to feel the Double Edge!  Or, here comes the American Dragons!

Like I said, AD is a great piece of 90's DTV filmmaking.  TV director Ralph Hemecker acquits himself nicely in one of his few feature credits.  It's well made (in Canada) with great production values, exciting action (gun fights, fisticuffs), pulsing music and a solid cast.   Joining Biehn and Park are Don Stark (That 70's Show) as traitorous evil mob henchman Rocco, Byron Mann (Ryu in Van Damme's 1993 Street Fighter movie) as hyper efficient, knife and sword wielding assassin Shadow and Tsang Shung himself, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa as a Yakuza boss.

The Biehn showcases a bit of his sensitive action hero side as well as being kind of a dick.  In a funny, "prove me wrong" kind of way.  Definitely one of my favorite performances from him in an utterly enjoyable and re-watchable flick.

Check out the horrible-great video trailer: