Dark Rider (1991)

Dark Rider (1991)- * * *

Directed by: Bob Ivy

Starring: Joe Estevez, Doug Shanklin, David 'Shark' Fralick, Holly Floria, Alica Anne, Terry Brown, Larry Goodhue, and Cloyde Howard

Jim Wilson (Shanklin) is the Sheriff of the small town of Desert Springs, Nevada. The sleepy ol' burg gets a wake up call when Mayor Bradford (Howard) excitedly runs into Wilson's office, proclaiming that a new highway is going to begin construction that passes through Desert Springs. Because of this, Bradford sees hotels and casinos in his future. He wants it to be the new Las Vegas.


Unfortunately, this brings in a criminal element in the form of Anthony Sandini (Estevez) and his goons such as Joey (Fralick). Sandini is a ruthless baddie who is forcing all the locals to sell their businesses to him. If they refuse, he uses force. Meanwhile, Sheriff Wilson's wife Lisa (Anne) informs him that her sister Dani (Floria) is coming to stay with them for a while. When Sandini and his underlings don't get their way, they kidnap Dani.


That was the last straw for Wilson who quickly changes into his black leather Revenge Outfit, becomes a crusading superhero known as The Dark Rider, and proceeds to dispense justice. But will even Wilson run into the brick wall of bureaucracy when he meets a fed named Borgman (Goodhue) who informs him of the conspiracy that goes all the way to the top involving the town's water supply? Now with his hands full with many different problems and issues, will THE DARK RIDER be victorious?


Dark Rider begins with a bunch of yahoos in a car, having a discussion about how the sheriff of Desert Springs - who they have yet to meet - is rumored to be a "badass". They soon run into Shanklin (in his final credited film appearance) as Wilson, who has quite interesting helmet hair that's blonde on top but brown on the sides. He has the star and six-shooter of the sheriffs of yore and looks vaguely like Martin Kove. He makes short work of the yahoos.


When the sinister Sandini comes to town, we see he is ruining smalltown America by running down mulleted shop clerks with his car. Wilson has met his match with Sandini. He's not dealing with garden variety yahoos anymore. We also get a cinematic first with "Sandini Vision". Among the good guys standing up to Sandini is the likable Tommy Johnson (Brown). Brown really gives it his all and he wins the audience over.


The first half of Dark Rider is markedly more entertaining than the second half, as you may have been able to gather from the above description. Even after the appearance of the Dark Rider character - who, hilariously, no one realizes is Wilson despite the fact that he's the only lawman in town and the personal nature of his revenge, not to mention they're never seen together at the same time - we still missed the down-home, small town feel of the first half. Much like the Dark Rider's motorbike, the film starts to spin its wheels towards the end. If this had been 80 minutes, it could've been a new classic. At a seemingly-reasonable 94 minutes, it does tend to drag a bit.


As the main baddie, Joe Estevez gets a nice, meaty role. He's not in the background or in a room staring at computer screens. It's solid Estevez. Mayor Bradford, who resembles Richard Mulligan, also puts in a Terry Brown-like performance. He's very animated. A movie highlight occurs when he writes a note to Sheriff Wilson and spells "Sheriff" wrong.


So with Shanklin, Estevez, Fralick, Terry Brown, the two ladies - including the Christina Applegate-esque Dani, who we would have liked to seen more of - all in an AIP production, you can't really lose, and you basically don't. This was the sole writing and directing credit for Bob Ivy, who primarily was a stuntman. This would explain the presence of the great John Stewart, an amazing stuntman and director of Action U.S.A. (1989) and Cartel (1990).


In the end, Dark Rider is a lot like Fast Gun (1988). If you enjoyed that, check this out too. If it had maintained the momentum it opened with, it may have surpassed Fast Gun. As it stands, Fast Gun may be better overall but Dark Rider has a lot to recommend it as well and is very much worth checking out.

Comeuppance Review by: Brett and Ty

Also check out a write-up from our buddy, The Video Vacuum! 

Critical Mass (2001)

Critical Mass (2001)- *1\2

Directed by: Fred Olen Ray

Starring: Treat Williams, Lori Loughlin, Andrew Prine, David "Shark" Fralick and Udo Kier

Mike Jeffers (Treat) is a humble security guard at the San Miguel nuclear power plant. When the self-serving, vain Senator Cook (Prine) and his press secretary, Janine (Loughlin) arrive at the plant with a camera crew in tow for a tour of the plant, Jeffers is put in charge of said tour. There’s only one problem with the Senator’s jaunt – the arrival of a gang of international terrorists led by Samson (Kier) and his second in command, Rand (Fralick). They threaten to blow up the plant if their demands aren’t met. Naturally, that means Jeffers and Janine have to try, against all odds, to save the day. With no help from Washington, our heroes are alone in the face of overwhelming odds. Will they triumph, or will all of the sheer stupidity on show reach CRITICAL MASS?

Another day, another “DieHardInA” movie. These Die Hard (1988) knockoffs are so common in the DTV world, even ones set at nuclear power plants are a cottage industry unto themselves. For a more complete list of them, please see our Sudden Death (1995) review. This particular run-through of the classic Die Hard scenario is probably most similar to Deadly Outbreak (1995) and the Jerry Trimble outing Stranglehold (1994). It even borrows (?) the plot device of having a politician visit the facility before it’s taken hold of by the baddies. While we’re not entirely sure if director Fred Olen Ray saw Stranglehold, he’s certainly not afraid of borrowing ideas. Or footage.

It seemed to be common practice, starting in the early 2000’s as DTV movies started to go downhill, for filmmakers to borrow footage from other movies, particularly the bigger setpieces the lower budget versions couldn’t afford. It happened in Rangers (2000), it happened in Gale Force (2002), it happened in Extreme Limits (2000), and now it’s happening here. Anyone who has seen Terminator 2 (1991) or Universal Soldier (1992) will know when those scenes are intermixed with the more recently-shot stuff. Samson and his fellow baddies even steal their nuclear material from Cyberdyne Systems. Did they have to get permission to use that name? Isn’t that copyrighted material? Nevertheless, old footage of people shooting guns and blowing up stuff is interpolated with new footage of people shooting guns and blowing up stuff. Think of Fred Olen Ray as a bartender and here he’s making a cinematic Shandy. 

We love Udo Kier (or Udo Dirkschneider, or anyone named Udo), and he does his best, but of course he plays the typical Eurotrash baddie with an accent that means he’s evil. Just as Christopher Plummer did in Crackerjack (1994) or as pretty much any baddie has in any Die Hard knockoff. So that cliché remains unchanged. As has the “he’s just the security guard!” cliché, modified from Under Siege (1992) and its “he’s just the chef!” line of thinking.

Besides Critical Mass’s stubborn and out-and-out refusal to come up with any remotely original ideas, the main problem, really, is that it is repetitive and very, very dumb. Halfway through the movie you feel like you’ve been watching it for four hours because you’ve seen this type of movie so many times before in your life. It just starts to pile on at about that point. Even the great and mighty Treat Williams can’t salvage things. No one’s bigger Treat fans than us. He’s charming, likable, and a very capable hero. He’s even from the great state of Connecticut. But despite all that, Critical Mass’s monolithic wall of stupidity is just too all-encompassing for even Treat to surmount. 

We were happy to see Lori Loughlin on board, and this is certainly a departure from Full House, and the other character actors are quite good, but come on…ANOTHER “DieHardInA”? We would say to the filmmakers churning out this crud: Give us, as viewers, a little more credit. Don’t you think we’re tired of the same-old same-old? Don’t you think we can handle something a little more challenging; something with a tad bit of originality? Are we really supposed to be going back to the same old slop again and again? On the bright side, though, the key to Samson’s world domination and nuclear supremacy looks like the inanimate carbon rod from that episode of The Simpsons.

Sadly, despite the actors that are on board who put forth their best, Critical Mass is a dud. It’s a prime example that DTV was out of its glory days of the 80’s and 90’s and had entered its period of doldrums.

Comeuppance Review by: Ty and Brett 

Soultaker (1990)

Soultaker (1990)- * *1\2

Directed by: Michael Rissi

Starring: Joe Estevez, Vivian Schilling, Gregg Thomsen, David "Shark" Fralick, and Robert Z'Dar

Natalie McMillan (Schilling) is the “rich girl” in her small town, and Zach Taylor (Thomsen) is the poor local mechanic. Before this West Side Story/Romeo & Juliet-like romance can get off the ground, their buddy Brad Deville (Fralick), who appears to be a cross between a lunkhead and a meathead, drives drunk and they all die (?) - but before “The Man” (Estevez) can collect their souls, they realize what’s going on and they all run away from The Man and his partner (again a ?), Angel of Death (Z’Dar). 

This race between life and death intensifies because Natalie reminds The Man of a woman he used to love in a past life. Who will win - those who collect the souls of the recently deceased, or mulleted, 37 year old teens on the run?

Okay, we all know Soultaker was famously tackled by the MST3K guys. Let’s try and put that aside for a moment, if possible, and realize that it is indeed AIP April once again, so we have to put in our two cents as well. Rather than mercilessly bash the poor movie, we choose to dwell on the positive: the first half. Any scenes with Brad Deville - and David “Shark” Fralick does indeed look like a dude named Brad Deville - are gold. 

The “Summerfest” sequences provide solid entertainment/laughs/80’s nostalgia, and the presences of Robert Z’Dar and Joe Estevez are comforting and familiar. To see them working and walking together as an “afterlife team” was pretty cool. And we applaud the effort all around, even if the final result is (pleasantly?) amateurish. But that’s what we look for. Not everything has to be absolutely perfect and we cherish the quirks. But it’s not all a Summerfest bash…

The second half of the movie is boring, dull, and repetitive. Even the powerhouse team of Z’Dar with his unintelligible electronically-lowered voice and Joe Estevez with his black guyliner can’t remedy that. Their characters are supposed to be menacing because of these things, not to mention their black coats. They also disappear and reappear quickly thanks to what can only be described as “Blip-cuts”. There’s also a green special effect that will remind you not of Slimer from Ghostbusters, but of his Hi-C Ecto-Cooler. Zach Thomsen gives Billy Warlock a run for his money, and Vivian Schilling, interestingly enough, is credited with screenplay/story on the film.

So as a glimpse of the end of the acid-washed 80’s, with plenty of 80’s coolguys and coolgirls and their various fashions, Soultaker has some value for that reason alone. Pounding, generic 80’s rock/metal seems central to their lives, though the end credits song, “Somewhere in Paradise” by Karen Lawrence, would seem to contradict that. Yet again we have a movie of two halves - the first being better, of course - but it’s largely sunk by the dull second half.

Comeuppance Review by: Brett and Ty

Also check out write-ups from our buddies, The Video Vacuum and DTVC!

Desert Heat (1999)

Desert Heat (1999)- *

Directed by: John G. Avildsen

Starring: Jean-Claude Van Damme, Pat Morita, Danny Trejo, Bill Erwin, David 'Shark' Fralick, Larry Drake, Paul Koslo, Gregory Scott Cummins, Vincent Schiavelli, Jeff Kober, Jaime Pressly, Gabrielle Fitzpatrick, and Ford Rainey









Eddie Lomax (Van Damme) is a mysterious stranger who comes to a dusty ol’ California town. When some local good old boys called the Hogan family, not to be confused with the delightful 80’s sitcom, assault him and leave him for dead, Eddie’s buddy, Johnny Six Toes (Trejo) nurses him back to health.

 Lomax then makes it his mission to get revenge on the Hogans, and one of his main methods of doing that is to pit a faction of other local no-good-niks against them. Lomax must be a big movie buff, because we’ve all seen that plan so many times before. He then enlists the help of Jubal Early (Morita), a nice man who annoyingly repeats all his sentences, the crotchety old man Eli Hamilton (Erwin) and the inexplicably Indian road house owner Singh (Schiavelli) to help him out. The owners of the local diner, the Reynolds family - Dottie, Rhonda, and the prerequisite Pop (Pressly, Fitzpatrick and Rainey, respectively) all love Eddie and get behind his mission quickly, and of course there’s some predictable romance between Rhonda and Eddie. Will Lomax ever turn up the DESERT HEAT?

At this point in his career, Van Damme was in a rut. After a long string of either good or successful movies, he went on to make the awful Universal Soldier: The Return (1999) and then Desert Heat, his first DTV effort after he was exiled from movie theaters. 

Despite a virtual all-star/all character actor cast, Desert Heat is a dud that’s pretty hard to sit through. The plot is yet another tired run-through of Yojimbo (1961), or, if you prefer, A Fistful of Dollars (1964), or perhaps Django (1966), Savage Dawn (1985) or the more recently-released at the time Last Man Standing (1996), or any other possible options. This movie adds nothing whatsoever to the tale, it’s just a tired rehash. At least similar DTV films like Steel Frontier (1995), Digital Man (1995), or Missionary Man (2007) tried to inject something different into the formula. Desert Heat - which based on its forebears should have been called “Desert Man” - does no such thing.

The whole outing starts on an irritating note and it’s hard to recover. It’s Van Damme spewing a bunch of nonsense as a “tilty-cam” swirls around him. It was the late 90’s after all, so there had to be things like this, and the fact that the movie is annoyingly self-aware (a character asks Dottie if she wants to go see Yojimbo in the theater...groan) hurts the final product. Desert Heat is populated with underdeveloped characters you just don’t care about, and, coupled with the movie’s lack of any originality whatsoever, makes it lose any kind of force or interest for the viewer.

 After the intro, which will unfortunately remind viewers of Bloodmatch (1991) of all things, it never seems to gain much momentum and it’s easy to see why director Avildsen took his name off the movie (even though it’s still in the end credits anyway - just another facet of the shoddy nature of the film). From Rocky (1976) to Desert Heat? Interesting career trajectory...

As far as the baddies, there are some familiar names - Larry Drake, Jeff Kober, Paul Koslo and Gregory Scott Cummins, among others. That’s one of the real shames of Desert Heat. It took a killer cast and reduced it to this crud. There are even a handful of potentially cool scenes - but if you don’t care about the characters or their plight, they don’t amount to much. 

Apparently, Van Damme’s behind the scenes meddling caused the mess we see today. Just what he wanted to change, why he thought the version after the changes was better, or how he was allowed to have that much power over the final film remain unanswered questions. But the end result is that Desert Heat is a slog and one of the weakest Van Dammes.

Comeuppance Review by: Brett and Ty

Also check out write-ups by our buddies, DTVC, and The Video Vacuum!

Project Eliminator (1991)

Project Eliminator (1991)-* * * *

Directed by: H. Kaye Dyal

Starring: Frank Zagarino, David Carradine, Brett Baxter Clark, David "Shark" Fralick, Joshua Bryant, Hilary English, and Calista Carradine











Much like KFC’s popcorn chicken, John “Striker” Slade (Zags) is back! Did you ever know it/he went away? This time around, the Strikester teams up with a buddy of his, Ron Morrell (Carradine), a Vietnam vet, and tries to rescue a kidnapped scientist, Dr. Markson (Bryant). It seems Markson has invented a flying laser contraption, and in what can only be explained as a fit of doubt, blows up his nifty invention. After doing this, he was kidnapped by a team of baddies led by the sinister Elias (Clark). The only people on earth that can rescue the scientist are naturally Striker and Morrell, and Jackie Markson (English) is helping them out. Will Markson be rescued? Will the world be safe from flying attack lasers once again? Find out today!

Project Eliminator is definitive proof that long blonde hair and Ray-Bans conquer all. Naturally we’re referring to Frank Zagarino, and, judging by the VHS box cover, he’s clearly the ultimate cool dude/meathead, or meatdude, if you will. One of the many lessons you can learn watching this movie is that a shirtless, mulleted hulk with tight ripped jeans, in and of itself, solves problems in life. 

Never mind the fact that Striker (whose nickname is Striker, don’t’cha know) is ex-Army, ex-Marines, ex-Delta Force and ex-Special Forces (we kid you not), always hits his target, and is, according to Morrell, “Bulletproof”. He’s definitely a man you’d want on your side, and Zagarino and Carradine make a winning team. This movie definitely ranks among Zagarino’s finest work, and from the moment you see him on a motorcycle with his long flowing locks in the wind - and especially when he’s wearing a motorcycle helmet, so it looks like just a morass of blonde hair spilling out of a blank head - you know that if you don’t shut off your brain, this movie will shut it for you.

It seems haters of this movie out there do not have the word “Fun” in their vocabulary. That’s just what this is - fun - and it was never meant to compare to the works of Ingmar Bergman. Though Zagarino is certainly blonde enough to be Swedish - wouldn’t it have been something to see him in a Bergman movie? One can only lament the fact that it never happened.

Carradine certainly gives Zags a run for his money the whole way through: we’ve never seen him so animated. He has energy, he actually smiles numerous times, and he even sings and plays the piano at one point! This is the Carradine we want to see, as opposed to his uncaring, listless performances in Future Force (1989) and Future Zone (1990). It’s pretty clear he was having fun here, as his bolo tie and cowboy hat may indicate, and he’s listed, along with Gail Carradine, as an associate producer, so he gave himself some freedom and it’s infectious. Calista Carradine is on board as well as Vanna.

As for the baddies, Brett Baxter Clark of Delta Force Commando (1988) fame stars as Elias, looking like a cross between James Brolin, Bob Vila and the guy on the Just For Men box. What with his well-kept, classy beard and all. Interestingly enough, Clark played Shark in Shootfighter II (1996), and his sidekick in Project Eliminator is none other than David “Shark” Fralick, who is credited as just David Shark, playing...wait for it...SHARK! Seeing as how Fralick is also a muscular, long-haired, blonde meathead, when he and Zagarino fight it’s like a Mortal Kombat "Mirror Match". It’s very hard to tell who’s who. 

Early in the movie, some baddies attempt to rob a store using rubber President masks. Obviously 1991 was a huge year for said masks, as Point Break also was released.

Director Dyal directed Trained To Kill (1990) the year before this and was obviously preparing for the brain cell-depleting fights and shootouts, pew pew laser shots, inane dialogue and unbridled Zagarinoness on full display here. Containing some rewindable moments, Project Eliminator is brainless fun at its best.

Also check out a review from our buddy The Goodkind!

Comeuppance Review by: Ty and Brett