No Retreat, No Surrender 3 (1990)

No Retreat, No Surrender is your average martial-arts vehicle, save for it being the first big role for Jean-Claude Van Damme. It had two 'sequels', NRNS 2: Raging Thunder (with Loren Avedon and Cynthia Rothrock) and NRNS 3: Blood Brothers. Naturally these two sequels have absolutely nothing to do with each other or the first movie.

Blood Brothers stars Loren Avedon and Mark Ruffalo-look/sound-alike Keith Vitali. The film is about two brothers, Will (Loren Avedon) and Casey Alexander (Keith Vitali) who both share a bitter emnity towards each other, something which their father John (Joseph Campanella) tries his best to fix.

While Will-a martial-arts instructor-is very hostile of anything political, Casey and John both work for 'The Company'-the CIA.

John has recently retired, yet is still looking for intel on terrorist Franco (Rion Hunter), something that proves fatal...

The movie opens with a group of terrorists holding a bunch of hostages in a bank. Luckily for the hostages, uber-cool CIA-man Casey Alexander is also in the bank. Needless to say, he takes care of the trash in under a minute! Having solved the crisis (with a bullet wound in his arm to show for it), Casey spends the night with a foxy gal from the bank.

It's John's birthday, and he wants to use this opportunity to mend the rift between his sons. His bithday party goes smoothly enough until Will and Casey get angry with each other and Will leaves. When the party is over, Casey offers to drop one of the attendants to their home, leaving John home alone. It doesn't take John long to realize that there are intruders in his house...

John fights as best he can against the intruders, and puts up one hell of a fight for an old man-he footy tackles a muscled thug straight off a stairwell balcony! He also has about fifty weapons hidden throughout his house that he constantly tries to use-but to no avail when Franco arrives. Franco taunts John, then throws his special blade-things at John, impaling him through the neck. Then a thug jump-kicks John, who's sent flying about thirty feet backwards, off a balcony and into a swimming pool!

In the heat of his anger, Will forgot to give his father his birthday present. He goes back and discovers the carnage, as does Casey moments later. This leads to a 'tender' moment, where both Avedon and Vitali try to overact their best as they recite hilariously bad dialogue.

After John's funeral (which is scored to what sounds like a rock anthem in dirge form), Casey wants to be put on assignment to hunt down Franco. His boss refuses, because Casey is too connected, so Casey sneaks into the CIA's classified files section and steals the file on his father, which has parts missing. Since all files are kept on th CIA computer system in their whole, Casey approaches his friend, a flamboyant CIA tech-guy who likes to talk rough with his computer, which 'she loves.' After 'getting nasty with' the 'whore', the techie gets the files on Franco, and leaves his post, letting Casey read them. Casey is a spy, so he knows that one has to be covert with things like this, so naturally he talks to himself out loud at what he finds!

Casey, having found out that Franco is in Florida, goes to the parking lot to leave when he's ambushed by friends of the bank terrorists from the film's opening (one of whom is wearing a wig and make-up-hey, gotta make the ambush seem authentic!). He does his thing, attacking them when Will shows up out of nowhere and deals his own moves against them. Casey is trapped in his car by the thugs, but torpedoes his way out through the back window! With no momentum! Yeah, this film is TOTALLY abiding by reality!

After killing all of the thugs, Casey gives Will the printouts of the Franco file and tells him to take them to his apartment while he fills out paperwork for the carpark battle royale. Casey finishes the paperwork and goes back to his apartment, finding a note from Will saying that he's gone back home. Not believing the note and knowing that Will has gone to Florida to find Franco, Casey goes to Florida himself as fast as he can to make sure that Will doesn't get himself killed.

While searching hotels for Will, Casey meets up with an old friend, Maria (Wanda Acuna), who was once one of Franco's team until she defected with the CIA's help. In the meanwhile, Will gets a few of his friends to help him with a plan. Will goes to a sleazy bar, doing a tough guy impression when his friends come in, playing the part of angry thugs looking for 'Angel' (an associate of Franco's). They start to trash the bar and are 'beaten up' by Will. Angel (David Michael Sterling ) is impressed by Will's fighting skills and offers him a job. Will goes by the name 'Jesse Brody', and the moment he creates his tough guy 'Jesse Brody' persona, his own theme music starts to follow him. In the meanwhile, Casey is trying to get Maria to go back in to Franco's organization as a double agent.

Will meets Franco, who doesn't recognize him as the son of John Alexander. Will is subjected to a few tests before Franco is convinced of his worth. For his first assignment, Will is instructed to kill Casey...

Will meets up with Casey again and 'kills him' in view of two of Franco's thugs keeping watch on him. The brothers plan to meet later, but when Will returns, he's recognized by an associate of Franco's-John's CIA replacement! Casey is captured soon after by a group of machete-henchman, and both he and Will are strapped up in restraints. Franco still needs Will to carry out part of his master-plan, so he tortures Casey until Will agrees. This scene would be a mite bit easier to take seriously if there weren't cartoon electricity lines!

Franco want Will to go to the nearby airport and kidnap the visiting Mozambique ambassador, claiming that if he does this, he will win his and Casey's freedom. What neither Will nor Casey know is what Franco's true plan is-create a diversion attracting security away from his real target (or something like that), stock footage of President George H. W. Bush!...

No Retreat, No Surrender 3 is a LOT of fun! Sure it's not particularly realistic (from people leaping and jumping down improbable distances to deflecting knives with a plaster cast to shrugging off serious bullet wounds as if they were bee stings) but when has that ever not been a cause for enjoyment in action movies. The acting is solid overall, though Loren Avedon's acting is a bit weak here and there during about the film's first twenty minutes. Rion Hunter makes for a great villain as Franco. Wanda Acuna as Maria though is not good at all (but this doesn't matter, since it's clear in every scene that she's not wearing a bra!)

The action is great throughout, and convincing, for the most part. The story is good, especially with the brother relationship between Will and Casey-it's believable and well-acted between the two.

And to top everything else, the soundtrack is gloriously 80's-tastic! Sure this film was released in 1990, but it definitely shows what decade it was made in!

There are a few weird things about the movie though. For one, what the hell is up with the sky in these shots?!

And in the ending credits, it lists all of the extras as Terrorist 1 and so on...except the person doing the numbering must have been dyslexic!

Terrorist 1, 2, 4, 13, 15, 69, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 14, 16, 17!

So in closing, No Retreat,  No Surrender 3: Blood Brothers is an extremely entertaining action/martial arts film that should be watched by all fans of the genre.

The Dirty Dozen: The Fatal Mission (1988)

While the last mission was deadly, you know Telly Savalas and his men are going to be in for a tough time when they're in for a fatal mission!
The Deadly Mission was set in 1944, while The Fatal Mission is set in 1943. At first you'd think that means this is a prequel to Deadly and you'll wonder why this wasn't released first. But watching Fatal, you'd soon realize that this isn't a prequel! The character of Joe Stern returns from the previous film (albeit played by a different (similar-looking though) actor) and the nazis watch a film reel of Telly's rampage from Deadly's prologue. Some might say that this is a continuity error, I call it the aftereffect of an unexplored mission where Wright and Stern combated and flushed the secret SS time-travel unit! The Dirty Dozen: The Hostile Mission!


The film opens in nazi-occupied Denmark, where Major Wright (yeah, two movies and we never know Wright's first name) and a group of soldiers are trying to save a German informant. The nazis attack, but are defeated. The informant however has been shot. Before dying, he says 'vierundzwanzig zwanzig'.

Back in England, General Worden (Ernest Borgnine) shows Wright an uncovered top secret nazi plot. In the event that Germany loses the war Hitler has appointed General Kurt Richter (Matthew Burton) (who is of course best buddies with der fuhrer) to create a fourth reich, headed by twelve men, experts in leading fields, and all under 35 to be the governers of this new reich, to be set up in the Middle East-Turkey to be exact. 'Vierundzwanzig zwanzig' is German for twenty-four twenty, which is the number of the train carriage that will transport the leaders of the fourth reich to neutral Turkey.

Wright is again instructed to form up a dirty dozen. This time however, the nazis know about the dozen...

The new dozen is formed up of big man-small man duo Fred Collins (Jonh Matuszak) and Tom 'Shorty' Ricketts (Ray Mancini), the returning Joe Stern (Gary Graham) who's back in prison for assualting an officer in a bar, mafia hitman Carmine D'Agastino (Erik Estrada), American hotshot Thomas Hoffman (Derek Hoxby), train expert Dravko Demchuk (Alex Cord), and Joseph Hamilton (Ernie Hudson), among others.

The dozen train at parachuting for when they enter Yugoslavia, where the train will be heading through. Hoffman however is killed-his parachute string cut! Wright realizes that there is a traitor in the dozen. Replacing Hoffman's place in the dozen is Lieutenant Carol Campbell (Heather Thomas). Yeah, that's right, two firsts for the Dirty Dozen franchise-there's a traitor in the dozen and there's a dame in the dozen!

After Collins and Ricketts foil an escape attempt, the men are treated to a brothel party and just like the last film, the party is set to 'In The Mood'. I would complain about this being unoriginal and repetitive, but when Glen Miller's playin', who's complainin'?

The dozen fly to Yugoslavia and are about to parachute when Wright decides to change the drop coordinates on the spot. The dozen land elsewhere and the nazi ambush at the original coordinates set up by the traitor fails, though a group of partisans there are all killed.

Wright and his men meet up with Yelena (Natalia Nogulich) the partisan leader. Soon after, dressed as priests and hiding in coffins, they attack...no, DEMOLISH a radio camp. While Wright tries to work out who the traitor in the dozen is, Stern and Campbell have a romantic moment, which leads to Stern having a great piece of dialogue.

The dozen are soon ready to take out the train and put a stop to the fourth reich!...

I'm going to spoil the movie's ending, but trust me, you won't care one bit. The dozen have taken over the train and are holding the 12 nazi leaders hostage and Wright has found out who the traitor is and dealt with them (you can't trust CHiPs can you). Wright attaches a large fuel carriage onto the front of the train and drives it towards the clustered nazi prescence ahead. While the train speeds into the nazi base, the dozen jump off the train, leaving General Richter to futilely fire a machine gun at the train as the carriage holding the 12 leaders of the fourth reich rams straight into Richter and explodes, taking out the whole nazi base with it!

Say goodbye to the fourth fucking reich!!

So how does The Dirty Dozen: The Fatal Mission rank up next to The Deadly Mission? It's just as great! It has great action scenes, well-written characters, more fun dialogue (and a baffling line-during parachute practice, one of the dozen is nervous about jumping, and one guy says 'move it or milk it'. I have no idea what that means!). Telly Savalas is just as badass as he was in Deadly-while training the dozen, one of the men has stolen Wright's knife and tries to kill him with it, and Wright calmy disarms him, laughing, like this is something that happens to him ten times a day. Also, Ernest Borgnine gets more screentime in Fatal than he does in Deadly!

The plot is refreshingly different from previous Dirty Dozen entries with inclusions of a traitor in the dozen, a woman in the dozen, a change of location from nazi-occupied France for once, there's more than one survivor and instead of an over-the-top action extravaganza climax like Deadly, Fatal handles its ending differently.

The only negative that I can place on this movie's neck is the romance subplot that starts, then is never mentioned again, but even that led to the best line of the movie. These movies are just too hard to dislike! Fatal also improves on Deadly's mistake and it's actually clear here who has survived and who hasn't.

So that was The Dirty Dozen: The Deadly Mission and The Dirty Dozen: The Fatal Mission. Come on studio execs, hurry up and make The Dirty Dozen: The Hostile Mission, the Dangerous Mission, The Savage Mission, The Ruthless Mission, The Bloodthirsty Mission, The Unrelenting Mission, The Destructive Mission, The Baleful Mission, The Cruel Mission, The Homicidal Mission, The Lethal Mission, The Grim Mission, the synonyms are endless, so move it or milk it!

The Dirty Dozen: The Deadly Mission (1987)

American Tigers had no reason to have 87 minutes of training-padding just because it was a Dirty Dozen knock-off, because making a 90 minute Dirty Dozen style movie is VERY possible to succeed at.

The famous original Dirty Dozen had a so-called spiritual sequel, Too Late the Hero and one direct sequel, imaginatively titled, The Dirty Dozen: The Next Mission. But it also had two other, lesser known, straight-to-tv sequels, both with subtitles brimming with fantasy and imagination-The Deadly Mission and The Fatal Mission!

These both star Telly Savalas, with Ernest Borgine popping up throughout both films.

The film opens in 1944, and starts off with Major Wright (Savalas) pretty much destroying the nazi prescence in a small Italian town on his own as he hunts for Benito Mussolini. Though Mussolini has sucessfully fled, the town is retaken by the partisans.

Later, in England, Wright is called on by General Worden (Ernest Borgnine) to form up another dirty dozen. Yep, Major Wright's done this before! He goes to a military prison and rounds up the group, which includes Joe Stern (Gary Graham), a refugee from a German family with a grudge for the nazis, Maurice Fontenac (Bo Svenson), a psychopathic rapist, Ernesto Ferucci (Paul Picerni), a con-man and forger, huge guy Eric 'Swede' Wallen (Randall 'Tex' Cobb) and two brothers, Ronnie (Vincent Van Patten) and David Webber (James Van Patten), both vicious car thieves, among others.

Wright makes his deal with the handpicked baker's dozen-cooperate and follow all orders or everyone will be sent back for 'immediate execution of sentence'-and prepares them all for their mission: knock out a monastery in St. Michel, France, which the nazis have turned into a laboratory, having kidnapped scientists make a deadly nerve gas (a gas which we see the effects of in a creepy film reel that Worden shows Wright) and rescue the scientists.

Wright subjects his men to a training course simulating their reactions under fire, having guard, Sergeant Holt fire a sentry machine gun above their heads as they are made to crawl a stretch of dark, nighttime land. Things go wrong for an odd member out and the dozen is now actually a dozen.

Wright then tests his men how fast they can put gas masks on, letting off a canister of 'the same nerve gas that the nazis have made'. Everyone get their masks on in time except for Ferucci, who 'dies'. Of course, it wasn't really nerve gas that Wright was using, but a knockout gas. In the meantime, the Webber brothers try to escape, but are stopped by Swede, who beats them down and forces them back to bed, so the rest of the team don't suffer.

In France, a British agent paratchutes in and meets up with the local resistance leader, but they are both surrounded by nazis and shot to death. This radically changes how the dozen will enter France, and they decide to go via boat, rather than plane. Before they leave however, they're treated to a brothel party, scored to the kickass tune 'In The Mood'.

When the dozen arrive in St. Michel, they meet up with the murdered resistance leader's daughter Marie (Emmanuelle Meyssignac). They soon attack a nazi patrol boat on the nearby river, losing one of their own in the process.

Because the former priests of the monastery are still allowed in their old church for prayer, Wright and Fontenac gain entrance into the monastery by disguising themselves as Monks. They meet up with George Flamands (Bernard Woringer), the project director of the nerve gas laboratory, who informs Wright that the scientist's wives have also been taken as hostages. This worries Wright as he was not told this and not given a chance to prepare-there might not be enough room for the wives in the escape plane...

Soon the dozen are ready to strike the monastery, rescue the scientists and their families, and blow the nerve gas to hell...

The Dirty Dozen: The Deadly Mission is a very fun film! The acting is solid, the action scenes are great, especially in the finale, the dialogue is a lot of fun ("Do they give gold cups for that kind of dumb?") and above all, Telly Savalas is a badass! He's extremely watchable in the role and has a few great lines ("You move an eyelash and I'll blow your head off!").

The plot is good and while a couple of scenes are similar, it doesn't copy the plot for the original Dirty Dozen like, say American Tigers did. Though it's mainly The Fatal Mission that has a vastly-different-from-the-original-plot. Also, I like how there wasn't a leak in the resistance, or in the group of scientists, it was refreshing to not have the rug pulled from under you, as everyone in this film is who they say they are, nothing more, nothing less. At frst, I did think that Flamands was a traitor, and when he spoke of his French-nazi secretary, I thought that he was framing his secretary, who'd really be a good guy, but this idea was dispelled the moment the secretary came onscreen. Pierre (David Horovitch) the secretary is such a slimy character (ala Ramon Cota from Delra Force II) that he's obviously a villain and the movie makes no attempt to hide this.

As for the movie's villains, there's Pierre, the secretary, who's a good villain, though he shows a case of villainous stupidity when he taunts Wright and Flamands, who can't shoot him because they're in a crowded opera, and Pierre goes right up close to Flamands, apparently forgetting that Flamands, like every other human being in existence, has hands, and Pierre finds this out the hard way. The main villain is Colonel Krieger (Wolf Kahler), and he turns in a fun performance, though his character never dies, or gets any kind of comeuppance, which is a shame.

Onto the bad, there's not much to complain about. The only real complaint that I have about the movie is that other than Major Wright and Joe Stern, it's not very clear which of the dozen are the survivors. Other than that, this movie entertained on all levels!

So that's The Dirty Dozen: The Deadly Mission, an extremely entertaining commando action movie. And tomorrow I'll upload my review for The Dirty Dozen: The Fatal Mission...

New Fist of Fury (1976)

 Bruce Lee is by far the most renowned god...er, I mean kung-fu practioner in the universe, so famous that even after his tragic death in 1973, filmmakers all around wanted to make more Bruce Lee movies. This led to movies like Game of Death, which Lee had partially made before his death, which had it's plot morphed into Bruce Lee's character faking his death, so the stand-in for Lee could be in disquise for the whole movie-this wouldn't be too bad a way to go for anyone insistent on still making the movie...if they hadn't used actual footage of Lee's funeral!-and there's the infamous shot where a Lee stand-in was sitting in front of a mirror, an obvious cardboard cut-out of Lee's face pasted onto the mirror over his reflection's face!; and there was The Dragon Lives Again, where, after dying, Bruce Lee goes to the Chinese underwold and fights James Bond, The Man With No Name, The Godfather, Dracula, The Exorcist, Zatoichi and Emmanuelle, and is helped by Kwai Chang Caine (David Carradine's character from Kung Fu) and Popeye!-enough said!; and there was Bruce Lee Fights Back From the Grave, which had a 20-second prologue showing Lee's grave being struck by lightning and Lee jumping out from the ground...and then nothing to do with Lee is ever mentioned during the rest if the film, which is about triads or something; and there were titles like The Clones of Bruce Lee, Bruce Lee vs. Gay Power and the unfortunately never made Bruce Lee vs. Ilsa in the Devil's Triangle! The stars in these films always had soundalike psudonyms, like Bruce Le, Bruce Li, Bruce Ly, Bruce Lai, Bruce Leung, Bruce Thai, Dragon Lee, Bronson Lee, Brute Lee, Myron Bruce Lee, Lee Bruce and many others. Probably the most mainstream of these movies would be 1976's New Fist of Fury, starring Jackie Chan!

A sequel to Lee's Fist of Fury, New Fist is set during World War II, in Japanese-occupied Taiwan. It's about thief Ah Loong (Jackie Chan), who resents the Japanese, and a local kung-fu school dealing with Japanese adversity.

Ah Loong is at the island's docks, looking for expensive luggage to steal. He takes a case containing what he thinks is valuable treasure, and opens it when he goes home with his Uncle, finding that inside it is a set of nunchucks, which he takes with him as he goes to gambling ring DaYang Gate, who are offering him a job. Loong declines and is set on by the gang, who he fights back with the nunchucks, succesfully until he knocks himself out with them...yeah, the film uses THAT gag! He is rescued by the Seven Peaks Kung Fu school, who are led by Miao Li-Er (Nora Miao), who wants to train Loong so he can defend himself.

The school is opposed by the villainous Okimura (Chan Sing), who's a dead ringer for Lee Van Cleef. Things come to a head when assassins try to kill Okimura (and fail spectacularly, though you can't really blame them when the guy they're trying to kill can stop a knife thrust by catching the blade in his mouth!). Okimura is the head of DaHe Gate, another local school which he wants to ecompass all the other local schools.

Things get worse when Elder Xu, the master of Seven Peaks dies of a heart attack (presumably) during a play, brought on by Okimura's taunting (though it's kinda Xu's fault that he has a coronary, he did leap about thirty feet all the way onto the stage and bellow at Okimura's gods! (intimidating the hell out of the Japanese). With Xu gone, DaHe Gate goes to Seven Peaks, it's name now changed to Jing Wu, and Okimura's daughter breaks the Jing Wu sign.

If you're wondering why I haven't mentioned Jackie for two whole paragraphs, it's because after the bashing, he vanishes from the film for abut 20 minutes. He reappears, standing out in the streets after Okimura has just warned them from opposing him or breaking his rules, and he rallies all of the twownspeople back to Jing Wu school, and holding the now repaired sign as they go.

In the meanwhile, Okimura has informed the Japanese chief-of-police that Jing Wu is hiding rebels. The police inspect the school, but Loong's uncle has managed to lead the rebels out in time. The police take Miao and another teacher in for questioning and plan on killing them, but they are bailed out by the local governer. These scenes would be easier to take these scenes seriously if the chief-of-police didn't have an extremely historically subtle moustache.

Then Okimura sets up a contest between all of the local schools. If  the schools can't beat his best fighters, then they will have to concede and name their schools DaHe Gate-now it's up to Jing Wu to win freedom for all of the schools...

New Fist of Fury is a decent kung-fu flick all throughout. It probably copies Fist of Fury's plot, but I haven't seen Fist of Fury, so I was fine watching New Fist without the plot bugging me. The film's score is good (and unlike Snake and Crane Arts of Shaolin and Fearless Hyena, it doesn't lift music from Monty Python and the Holy Grail or The Pink Panther, although those are much better movies). The kung-fu looks well choreographed and is plentiful enough througout the film. And as for the direction 'by Lo Wei', it's pretty much point and shoot (presumably done by someone who isn't Lo Wei, who was a lazy bastard who was always too busy sleeping or listening to horse races on radio to pay attention to his own movies).

Onto the bad, the film's editing is good in some places but terrible in others. There's a hilarious scene where several people are slaughted with katanas and there are literally no blood effects, the killers just surround the other guys and swish their swords while their victims flail around, try to run, and die, hilariously unconvincingly!-and what's even worse is that the victims are wearing all white suits so the problem is even bigger!

And of course there's the ending!



SPOILER ALERT!!!!!!



The main villains are all dead and there's 30 seconds left of the movie. Jackie rallies up everyone to stand up against the Japanese, who "have gone too far". Everyone leaves the building, standing up for their country and rights!...And are all shot to death! Including Jackie! The End!

That is one hell of a downer ending!

At least Okimura Van Cleef was a fun villain...