The B Movie Column 3.5.11

It was only a matter of time…

The B Action Movie Thread has been a gargantuan mainstay of this site for several years. So, in our continued efforts to dominate the internet in every conceivable way, here is a weekly column. A digest, if you will. Dig in and we’ll see you in the thread!

THIS WEEK ON THE B ACTION MOVIE THREAD (Last Week’s Installment)

 

 

Rene here with The B-Action Thread Round Up for this week.

The action begins on page 1416 and ends on page 1419

On page 1416 one of the biggest revelations in the history of the boards happens, when Perfect Weapon posts a Youtube video where duke fleed appears giving his take on Drive Angry: Shot In 3D! Ever since his appearance back in 2006, people have wondered if duke fleed was a real person. He called into the 2 B-Movie Podcasts that we did last fall, and he informed us that he would be showing up in a Youtube video. Here’s his post.

Rene (Mr.Eko), By the way, I got interviewed for a youtube.com/beyond the trailer reporter, after exiting the screening room in the…AMC Empire.  She asks my opinion of the film.  I was not the only one interviewed, but I gave my name…John Perrella, and I am wearing a buttoned jacket.  I also wear glasses, and refer to Nic Cage as…CAGEy Nic!  I gave Drive Angry a…10 out of 10, and told the reporter, Grace, the film was, A Hell of a ride!  Allegedly said review will air tomorrow.

 

Moltisanti talks about his experience when walking out of Drive Angry: Shot In 3D.

“Nobody interviewed me after the film ended but when I put my 3-D glasses in the 3-D glasses recycle bin one of the theater employees said thanks. That was nice. The employee could have just as easily said nothing.”

 

The next page is spent talking about duke fleed, as well as Drive Angry: Shot In 3D and how we all loved it, as well as our rage in that it only made 9^th PLACE for the weekend.

felix posts that Albert Pyun is working on restoring a Director’s Cut of his film Cyborg.

I finally saw the Clint Eastwood/Burt Reynolds starring film, City Heat, and wasn’t crazy about it, but I still found things to like in it.

We all talked about the Academy Awards, and how despite it being short, was pretty damn lame, and a certain movie about a certain website that  LOTS of people use, should have won Best Director and Best Picture.

Jox chimes in to reveal that he has written liner notes that will be included with the Blu-ray release of the Director’s Cut to Dolph Lundgren’s Red Scorpion.

felix reveals that THE DAY THE CLOWN CRIED OF ACTION MOVIES, aka THE EAGLE PATH has a June 20^th release date in the U.K., so a release in Region 1 can’t be too far off.

Monday was a really slow day for us, not because we had nothing to talk about (that’s fucking impossible) but that there was an issue with the reply box and this glitch was fixed by tuesday. We lost a day, but made up for it as we always do. By talking about the stuff we love! Like talking about Bill Cosby’s Leonard Part 6.

Here’s Perfect Weapon with a run down on it.

Oh boy… I’m surprised to hear you haven’t heard of Leonard Part 6. It’s not something you want to watch unless you want to experience one of the worst comedies of all time! It’s so bad that Bill Cosby-the film’s star, after all-told the public right before the film came out that it sucked. In fact, rumor had it that Cosby bought the film rights so that it’d never come out on DVD; that was proven untrue when it came out on DVD back a few years ago. It was originally only offered via mail order but eventually it make it to places like Big Lots, where I got it. I first got it on VHS back at a used movie store in Illinois when I was up on vacation there back in like ’05.

To state what I’m sure Hunter has formulating in his brain as soon as he read this… “Rene, PLEASE don’t say that you like this movie.”

Oh, and to clear any confusion, it has the title Leonard Part 6 not because there were 5 previous Leonard movies before it. Rather, it’s because “the first five installments were locked up due to reasons of world security”, or some such nonsense. You know, it’s sort of like Plan 9 From Outer Space… which I would rather watch than that God-awful Leonard film!

kain424 posts a message that Don “The Dragon” Wilson left on his website.

One of the members of my site did a video killcount for Don “The Dragon” Wilson’s fun little action movie Blackbelt.  Surprisingly, Don dropped a message there:

“I am the Dragon and this movie was loved and hated like all of my films…thanks for watching and regardless of the lack of “critical acclaim” I had a lot of fun making them. Try to remember the redeeming social value for all action films is, “The good guys win and the bad guys lose”. Thanks for all your support over the years and I’ll go back to acting class before my next feature….your friend, Don”

The news that the Robocop remake is going to be directed by the same guy who made the movie Elite Squad sparks a discussion on Elite Squad, and I moved it up on my Netflix dvd list.

 

 

THE MIND OF RENE F. RANGEL

 

Last night, I went to Texas Roadhouse to treat my girlfriend and my parents to dinner there. While we were there, I was privy to a “unique” sight. No it wasn’t girls in tight shirts. That’s all the time there. I’m talking about a bunch of OLD FRENCH PEOPLE, 3 couples to be exact, and 2 of the old men STARTED ARM WRESTLING. They were having quite the fun time there. They sat right across from us, and come on. I live WAY at the bottom of Texas. Seeing French people (They looked really Canadian, so they were probably French Canadian) down here is quite the odd sight. Turned the place into some type of bizarre dive. I ate a delicious steak that came with some ribs, so there was that.

 

Too bad Sly also never made a RHINESTONE pudding which would be little bits of cookie and candy inside of it, and when you first tore off the lid, it sparkled!

 

So we saw Little Fockers yesterday. Unlike Drive Angry: Shot In 3D which we loved, this one was only ok. Keitel only has 2 scenes, but one of them was with De Niro, and I kept expecting him to say “What you wanna fuck me? You wanna fuck her, you give her the money!” when they have a face off. Sadly that didn’t happen and all he did was call De Niro “Gramps”.

 

THIS WEEK’S MOVIE

 

 

 

MIKE BRINGS THE CHAINSAW, PARTIES HARD AND GETS ALL FUBAR WITH TANGO & CASH

Where do I begin?

Tango & Cash is built on arguably the most infallible pairing of star talent in the entire history of the action genre. Seriously, if the idea of watching John Rambo and Snake Plissken taking names and fucking shit up in a buddy cop yarn does not excite you in the same way that a kid finds a brand new video game console under the Christmas tree, I suggest you stop reading this right now and consider the error of your ways.

There’s absolutely no other way of putting it, either in my learned college boy academic fashion or typing in all caps like a fanboy making a profound statement of their disgust about the latest Dark Knight Rises rumors—I fucking love this movie. The buddy cop genre was absolutely nothing new, as we had already seen two great Lethal Weapon films, 48 Hrs., and even the undervalued gems like Running Scared and Freebie and the Bean do wonders for this subgenre by the time Tango & Cash unleashed itself onto America over Christmas weekend in 1989. Luckily for us, the film is an absolute blast—instead of being just a rehash of other, better ideas, the entire film’s ideology plays like a cross between the McBain segments from The Simpsons and an absurdly violent late 80’s or early 90’s video game like NARC or Smash TV.

 

Much like last week’s feature fine work of art, Superman III, Tango & Cash is a thoroughly baroque and kitschy, live-action cartoon that dials every parameter past the limit it should be at. Unlike Superman III, there’s no bones about it that the people involved care deeply about the film they’re in. Both Stallone and Russell are at the top of their game here, and in spite of being axed late in the production, Andrei Konchalovsky very well proves Runaway Train was not a fluke and that he can direct the fuck out of an action movie. The endless charisma the two leads have and Konchalovsky’s directorial flare are so commanding that you don’t have to give a fuck, and what’s on hand is one of the fastest moving and, quite frankly, best 80’s action movies.

This hit theaters on December 22, 1989. The 90’s were days away, and Tango & Cash just throws the kitchen sink into a bigger kitchen sink filled with all the beer and hot wings and single women with a heart of gold that you’d ever want out of the best bar outing of your life. The 80’s were coming to an end, and Tango & Cash is the cataclysm of greatness and badassery that has the power to unleash a three-day storm of Big Trouble in Little China lightning in the sky, and while this didn’t happen, IT SURE COULD HAVE.

In a way, you’re really trying to wrack your brain trying to figure out why the prisoners choose to use an elaborate water tank/electro-shock torture device (if there was ever a Sega Genesis game of this movie, the challenge level involving this scene would be the one everyone who owned the game bitched about) instead of just an easy shank or soap-bar beatdown, or why there’s a big rig filled with more cocaine than was ever sold in the Miami area in the early 80’s. But guess what? This is basically the movie world from Last Action Hero, and in this land, fuck realism, sit back and relax, and ENJOY THE FUCKIN’ SHOW EVERYBODY!!!!!

 

 

Let’s talk about the opening scene of this movie. Rare for 1989, we get nothing past the title and the “Warner Bros. Presents” card. Stallone coolly says, “Let’s do it,” a la Tone Loc on “Wild Thing,” and Harold Faltermeyer’s extremely badass score kicks in. We open on an 18-wheeler gliding down a desolate California highway, which is being driven by Robert Z’Dar and this other dude who looks frighteningly like Slash right down to his face and the hat he’s wearing. This is no ordinary convoy though, as highway patrol and Ray Tango (Jackie Stallone’s little boy), renegade L.A. detective and Wall Street Journal subscriber, are on their tail.

Instead of just trying to go on with the chase, Tango gets out of the car, loads up his .38 revolver, and fires it directly at the windshield of the truck. Normally, this would be a really, really bad idea, but Tango is convinced that there’s nothing but fresh blow from the finest coca plants in Colombia, so the distracted Matt Cordell and Not Axl Rose’s Mortal Enemy brake so hard that like three seconds pass before they get flung through the windshield and crash onto the ground. A shit-storm immediately breaks out when Tango’s stupid captain (an uncredited and toupeed Geoffrey Lewis) yells at him for pulling the trigger too quick. A highway patrol officer smells gas, not yet vindicating Tango (possible name for a Tango solo vehicle: Wall $treet $mart), and then he mocks him further and says that he thinks he’s Rambo.

Thinking that he’s more like Gordon Gekko than one of his more iconic characters, Stallone goes really classy and says without any lick of irony, “Rambo…” [dramatic pause] “…is a pussy.” That this postmodernist touch managed to sneak into the film is mind-boggling, but to have a guy like Sly deliver the line with the most nuanced self-awareness of all time (Writer’s note: that delivery was some real Freddy Heflin shit there) is a stunning and joyous miracle, and it basically sets up the movie you are about to watch AND LOVE.

Then we meet Gabriel Cash (Kurt Russell), whose service firearm has a laser sight and who has just been arbitrarily greeted by a Chinese hood in his shit apartment. Cash’s instinct is to chase the fucker down (but not before he gleefully fucks up some Russian guy’s car…when tries to reason by saying he believes in perestroika, Russell goes full Jack Burton and cackles, “Welcome to America!”), arrest him, book him, and then try to strangle him on a chair for information. Also, before he goes in for the interrogation, Cash is arriving at the precinct shirtless (he puts one on quickly) and in classic Kurt Russell asshole fashion, he steals a slice of pizza from a box being flailed around at the precinct. I’d say that Tango probably gets more character development, but we’re talking about two legendary motherfuckers over here so the rest of the movie allows these dudes to run wild with the rest of it.

 

I remember Erix described the prison scenes with Lithgow in Ricochet as “The Shawshank Redemption on crack.” Watching the film again, I was reminded that this film basically does just that, only on crystal meth and Four Loko and kind of like that magic moment Brad Davis and John Hurt had in prison in Turkey. Oh yeah, and this whole section is so gay that you’d think that Bette Midler would kick in on the soundtrack and the entire jail was decked out in a rainbow palate. First, there’s a bathho…I mean shower scene where the boys talk about their dicks and Cash literally drops the soap and Tango thinks he’s gonna start blowing him. But no, we get the typical Kurt Russell bundle of mind-blowing greatness (pun intended) as he rips on the size of the Stud (as in Party at Kitty’s & fame):

RELAX! SOAP! And don’t flatter yourself…pee-wee.

The 20-25 minutes, give or take, that Tango & Cash spends in the prison make everything in Lock Up and An Innocent Man look like Down by Law in comparison. And unlike Lock Up, a purported (and fucking horrible) prison action film that cockblocks every chance Sylvester Stallone gets to kick somebody’s ass, within about six seconds of arriving, Tango smashes Robert Z’Dar’s face into the bars (looking silly after not shaving for a while) and a big, strong black man threatens to “stick some brown sugar” up Cash’s ass. Then we get the wet n’wild electroshock torture, Robert Z’Dar getting the fuck electrocuted out of him (coroner is still out on how much damage was caused to his face and whether it was electrocutin’ chin action that did him in), and then the DARING AND AMAZING prison escape.

With all due respect, the guys who made the game Dead to Rights a few years ago should be ashamed of themselves for completely stealing this entire section of the film and using it in the game.

 

That’s where Jack Palance comes in. Palance had been absent from films for a number of years prior to this, due to his hosting stint on Ripley’s Believe It or Not! on ABC in the mid-80’s. The previous year he came back in full, scenery-inhaling swing as the chief bad guy in Young Guns (that bastard gave Terence Stamp and Terry O’Quinn a raw deal, man) and had his criminal empire taken over by the Joker in Batman earlier in 1989. But it’s here that Palance shines brightest as a bad guy, and it completes a hat trick that, no doubt, led him on the road to winning the Oscar for City Slickers.

One of the biggest components of Tango & Cash is the prevalence of the World War II expression “FUBAR.” Derived from furchtbar, a German word meaning “horrible” or “terrible,” American troops adopted it into their vernacular as meaning “Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition.” The film’s screenplay does not take time to offer this interesting piece of history and linguistics, but Gabriel Cash is more than happy to explain to his partner that he “has an aversion to getting all FUBAR”—you know, which refers to everything that happens in this entire movie! If Warner Bros. was smart, this whole movie would have been entitled FUBAR. I don’t know if Middle America would get it, but I sure as hell would and I’d be there for every show opening day.

 

“FUBAR,” quite simply stated, is the reason why I earmarked Tango & Cash is the closest an 80’s action movie ever got to being like a video game. Perret’s entire criminal empire is outfitted to be set up like the nigh-impossible but extremely fun and insane last level (where the climax occurs). Imagine if Xanadu from Citizen Kane ended up in one of the Mad Max movies—that’s what Perret’s fortress of evil is, and when the heroes’ “RV from Hell” shows up in the climax, it basically turns into a more extravagant and explosive version of Jackal for the NES before they get into his super sweet mansion/compound (via construction vehicles!). And it doesn’t stop there—he’s got enough henchmen on his payroll that he could buy out the Legion of Doom in their plight against the Super Friends and then kill them because he was already booked to capacity. And when you have Brion James as the most threatening gay Australian villain since Bennett in Commando as your #1 guy and Lo Pan himself, James Hong as Generic Asian Crime Boss Who Just Happens to Be Pretty High Up in the Perret Empire, all you need is some Redshirts and explosions and you got yourself something kind of on the level of the last level of NARC.

SORT OF SPOILER ALERT: This is the only movie I can think of where one of the bad guys is killed after having a grenade tossed down his pants. Critics have widely noted such an incident as the film’s contribution to birth control.

 

And you want one-liners? This movie just lays ‘em all on without any warning and Stallone and Russell just shoot them out like they’re bullets:

“When this is over, remind me to rip Jumbo there’s tongue out.”

WITH A TOW TRUCK.

“When this is over, we have to pay Jabba the Hutt here a visit.”

“I’ll bring the chainsaw.”

“I’ll bring the beer.”

“Lucky for me this place is soundproof. That way nobody gets to hear me beating the truth out of you.”

“Oh, God, Ray Tango. How he loves to dance. He waltzes in and takes all my drugs, then tangos back out again.”

I think the best line in the whole film, however—well, delivery wise—is when Tango pays a visit to another scumbag who took money to fuck our boys over. He drops his leftover spaghetti in terror as Tango confronts him:

From the look of your diet, you’re not counting calories. Too busy counting the money you got for setting us up?!

What kills me is that Stallone could have easily gone way over the top on the last line, but he just says it so calmly that it fucking sets me off laughing. And did I mention that he then cracks another side-splitter when he pinpoints the guy as an anemic, and says this:

YOU NEED A LITTLE IRON IN YOUR DIET.

There you have it. Only one of the best movies ever made.

 

There are countless things I haven’t discussed here, like how hot Teri Hatcher is. I could go all day on this movie. I could write a strong closing. That being said, I think that we should motion Congress and Obama’s administration to change July 4 from Independence Day to Tango & Cash Day. There’s nothing more FUBAR than a crazy fireworks display. And there’s nothing more American than Tango & Cash.

 

Erix sez

I hadn’t seen this movie in years. I had forgotten that it really is, above all else, a comedy. And I don’t mean a comedy in the sense that Lethal Weapon is a comedy. I don’t mean an action movie with comedic elements. Andrei Konchalovski is the director of Maria’s Lovers and Runaway Train. This is not genre stuff we’re talking about. There may be some genre elements in Runaway Train, but these are both serious, artistic films from a thoughtful filmmaker. So, it’s very possible that he set out to make a parody of the American action film.

Stallone and Russell have a kind of Abbott & Costello thing going on here and it is often very funny. Stallone in particular is very amusing. So often he’s been criticized as being someone with no comedic sensibilities. The comedy was one of the biggest complaints thrown towards The Expendables; and Oscar is often cited as a career low point for the actor. But he’s very good and very funny in Oscar. And he’s quite funny here. He is able to take his larger than life persona and infuse it with a shot of irony that works.

It’s rather exhilarating how the movie is basically crammed to the hilt with all the action clichés in one set piece after another. And it never really stops moving. Right down to that weird shot of Tango & Cash high-fiving and interlocking their fingers like lovers.

Perhaps the final statement on homoerotica for 80s Action – and a fitting capper for that decade of very singular, specific action films.

Given the film’s popularity, I’m surprised we never got a sequel. But perhaps there’s hope…

 

 

Rene’s Take: One of the greatest movies of all time – TANGO & Cash.

“If you need me. Me and my ass will be in the neighborhood.”

“That, is an RV from Hell.”

Tango & Cash has been one of my top favorite action movies of all time. I first saw a recorded off of HBO vhs tape that my brother made for us, and when I saw it in 1991, I immediately knew that this would be one of my favorite movies. The movie being released in 1989, makes it, in my opinion, the last official crazy 80’s action movie. There’s so much in it that you won’t believe your eyes. The entire climax features trucks with mounted machine guns, rockets, and even MONSTER TRUCKS. Add in earth movers that Tango & Cash commandeer, and you have the wet dream of an action fan. That’s just the ending. The entire movie is filled with plenty of quotes that will have you laughing. All of this, and just as with Con Air, the movie barely has any semblance of a plot.

Basically, there’s a big time boss named Yves Perret, masterfully played by the man who did one armed push ups several years later, right after winning the Best Supporting Actor Oscar, Jack Palance, and he wants to frame Tango & Cash, and send them to prison, so they can be killed there, and finally out of is hair. The movie has almost no set up. It starts with Tango arresting Robert Z’Dar, and making fun of one of his best known characters “Rambo, is a pussy.” then it switches over to Cash. Cash was obviously inspired by Mel Gibson as Riggs, and I’m not saying that Kurt Russell plays him exactly the same, but Cash is reckless, and wears cowboy boots, just like Riggs. Plus his hair is very similar to the mullet that Gibson sported in the first 3 Lethal Weapon movies too.

 

As soon as Cash enters the movie, we are introduced to the recurring theme known as “Cash’s theme”. It’s a very pornographic sounding tune, that I can only assume that Harold Faltermeyer was watching an adult film, and got the idea to have Cash’s theme sound like something straight out of a sleazy 80’s skin flick.

Cash goes up into his apartment, smiles at himself in a mirror, then BOOM, a Chinese guy breaks through it, and shoots Cash twice. Luckily Cash was wearing a bullet proof vest, and then shoots at the guy with a gun in his boot. Yes, Cash has boots that are also guns.

That leads me to my next part of the discussion. We eventually learn that somehow, the LAPD has enough money to spend on a Q-type of warehouse, where all types of experimental weapons are created. It’s like Kurt Russell has strolled into a James Bond movie. Although when you’re watching a movie like Tango & Cash, you’re not expecting realism.

James Hong shows up for a few key scenes as the leader of the East side of L.A., and Brion James is essentially the real villain of the movie. He’s the muscle for Perret, in the form of a working class Englishman with red hair and a ponytail named Requin. I’ve read that Brion James’ cockney accent in Tango & Cash was poor, but I disagree. It’s pretty cool, and later on in 2 Albert Pyun films, he does another more “refined” English accent (Hong Kong ’97, check it out, it’s good) and Nemesis, where he does a German accent. The is a real bastard in Tango & Cash, and his comeuppance is one of, if not the best in the film. Next to Robert Z’Dar’s electrocution of course.

 

When they’re in the prison, Stallone gets bunked with Clint Howard (this is probably the first movie I ever saw Clint Howard in) as a pretty squirrely guy named Slinky. One of the parts that makes me laugh so much is later on when he shows up as Tango & Cash are talking, and Cash looks at him and says “What’s this?”

This movie is pure unbridled let’s forget about all things that make sense, action. It’s just Sly Stallone and Kurt Russell vs. Jack Palance, Brion James, James Hong, Robert Z’Dar, and that other guy who plays Lopez.

Geoffery Lewis and Edward Bunker show up as Tango & Cash’s superiors, and it’s nice to see a movie where the superior doesn’t get killed, and still helps out the cops that he knows are really innocent.

I ragged a little bit on Cash’s theme song, but don’t get me wrong. The music is top shelf. Harold Faltermeyer did a great score. I’m a big fan of this score, as well as his score to The Running Man, and Fletch Lives. Especially The Running Man. The main theme to that movie is excellent. Although “Captain Freedom’s Workout” song sounds very Adult Film oriented as well.

For a long time, all we had to make do with Tango & Cash on disc was the non-anamorphic dvd of it. Ever since 2009, there has been a bare bones Blu-ray. Even though this movie is sorely lacking a Stallone/Russell commentary (seriously, these 2 gents are 2 of the best commentary providers out there. Putting them together on a track is a no brainer, and would be insightful and hilarious.) it at least has an anamorphic transfer. It’s pretty cheap right now too, so do yourself a favor and buy it. If you’ve never seen it, you will now find something that you can watch over and over and over.