Reviews

This time the remaining mean spirited kids are moved to a new location where they bring their usual kill-crazy antics and it's up to a tabloid journalist (Terence Knox) and his rebellious son (Paul Scherrer) to save the town from "He who walks behind the rows!" and save their love interests from sacrifice in this surprisingly watchable sequel, which is against genre odds better than it's lame predecessor. While the King story has nothing to do with the sequel, there are some entertainingly nasty scenes such as a voodoo nosebleed as well as a wheelchair smacked with a semi truck. Also as Scherrer's love interest, Christie Clark comes off very well. While Terence Knox looks like a cross between Treat Williams and Michael Pare. It's no masterpiece but for a campy horror sequel, Children Of The Corn II works as mindless entertainment.

2/5 Matt Bronson

A traveling couple (Horton and Hamilton)stumble onto the town of Gatlin, where kids have slaughtered the adults and are always eager to slaughter more, along the way they're separated and Peter Horton of course must save his wife from these tiresome, er terrible tykes in this very bad adaption of one of King's best short stories. In the original story King managed to create tension and draw personality of his characters, however all of that has been zapped from the production and all that is left is a repetitive bore which is far too predictable to be all that suspenseful. Also the effective ending used in the story is in favor dumped for a happy ending which makes the overall impact mute. There is some atmosphere and stylish directing but no plot to back any of it up. The kids are woefully unconvincing also.

1/5 Matt Bronson

This time the gang of nerds get together to help throw a wedding for Booger in what ranks as the best sequel although that isn't saying very much as this has all been watered down by television standards. Indeed I went in with such low expectations after the disastrous third entry that this one comes as a vast improvement. It feels very much like a television movie and on the basis of rating this against other television sequels such as Problem Child 3 and The Birds II, this is vastly superior to a short lived genre made in the mid-90's. Still the movie doesn't contain a lot of inspired humor, it's more surprising that we find ourselves actually getting involved with the characters because there are actually a few tender moments, which actually work. Of course the main problem lies in the fact that basically everybody in this movie are too old and it's basically lost all the zip that the original contained, but if you loved the first entry (As I did) this one will have it's appeal. Although my 2 star rating is out of sheer nostalgia.

This time a new generation of nerds face off against the Dean (Ted McGinley) and go to get help from Poindexter (Robert Carradine) who has turned into a cool yuppie dude in this painful sequel which leaves the viewer thinking the obvious question: What were they thinking? Ted McGinley is probably the best thing about the movie as he delivers a performance that at least has some comic energy, Robert Carradine acts through this movie as if he was his brother David Carradine on Kung Fu, which is to say this is quite painful to watch. It doesn't help that this is made for TV so the antics are all watered down and why Anthony Edwards is nowhere to be found. Even most of the nerds from #1 and # 2 are nowhere to be found until the very end. This is the worst sequel of the bunch. After this, the series almost had to get better.

Two friends Gilbert(Edwards) and Poindexter(Carradine) go to college expecting that things will have changed since High School, however what they find is different when the jocks (led by Married...With Children's Ted McGinley and Bloodsport's Donald Gibb) decide to pull mean pranks on our lovable nerds, of course this is college and the nerds band together to start a fraternity and in the process wage war on the jocks, in which many pranks ensue in this ultimately hilarious comedy which has aged fairly well. The main reason why Revenge Of The Nerds works and why it's sequels don't is that, we want to see these nerds prevail and see the jocks get their comeuppance. In that regard this makes it essential to anybody who was picked on in high school for being dorky. (You all know who you are.) 4/5 Matt Bronson

This time the nerds led by Robert Carradine and Anthonny Edwards go to Florida where there they meet a new breed of jocks who they face off against and basically destroy in the end, the problem with this entry is that the nerds this time are too cool to really be considered nerds and they even get a girlfriend sympathetic to their cause, this undermines all the humor, not to mention that away from the college dorm setting, there really isn't much the nerds can do that they didn't in the original. As a sequel this is all disappointing stuff, but aside from James Hong who gives an inspired performance as well as maybe a few vaguely amusing moments, Revenge Of The Nerds II is a big disappointment.

This time the remaining recruits (Gaynes,Winslow,Bailey,Easterbrook and Graf) are back this time to help Russia fight off a computer programmer/mobster who plans on ruling the world with a strange video game in what is unquestionably one of cinema's worst movies ever. Yes it's that awful. I don't give many movie Zero stars, because I like giving at least a full star rating, but this sequel is just so awful one cannot even believe their eyes when watching this worthless tripe. Is there one laugh to be found in the entire movie? Well, yes there was one scene that had me laughing, it's how the news reporter is supposed to be hooked on "The Game" but there is actually no video game inside the unit. Aside from that this is so awful that it doesn't even deserved to be mentioned in the same sentence as comedy, indeed it doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence of Police Academy 5! The only positive spin I can perhaps put on Mission To Moscow is that it most likely killed the series, and even if it didn't, there's no possible way a sequel could be worse than this.

0/5 Matt Bronson

This time the pretext is a rip off of Police Academy 2, with a group of thieves starting a crime wave, while facing police corruption in the city in this atrocious sequel which leaves the viewer begging for death. This sequel is without a doubt one of the lamest comedies ever, the humor is dated, the actors bored and no laugh is contained in this horse manure. One could call this a really bad action movie, with the humor it contains. This is seriously the pits, as bad as movies get and just think Mission To Moscow was even worse. Of course that's why this I voted it a 2 rather than a 1.City Under Siege, indeed!

1/5 Matt Bronson

This time the remaining recruits (Smith,Winslow, Ramsey and Graf, Guttenberg and Goldthwait obviously abandoned a sinking ship) go to Florida (You know things are lame when we are ripping off Revenge Of The Nerds II) to assist Lassard (Gaynes) in accepting a career lifetime reward, while jewel thieves pop up in this painful sequel. As people notice Steve Guttenberg was barely in Police Academy 4, here he's not even in this muck. Instead we have Matt McCoy (An actual decent actor) who is supposed to be Guttenberg's replacement. Naturally this is unfunny garbage and the only real laugh comes from watching comedy that fails so bad that it actually becomes funny again. It's not much but even # 6 didn't have this.

1/5 Matt Bronson

This time the cadets (Guttenberg,Smith,Winslow,Ramsey and Graf) help Lassard (Gaynes) conduct a citizens on patrol unit, however Harris (Bailey) is there to muck everything up by being extra hard on the cadets which of leads to some pranks by the citizens and instructors in this definitely below-par sequel. As far as comedies go this is usually about as effective as the genre goes. (Yes there are ones like Airplane, Stripes and effective black comedies) but the majority of them are about as effective as Police Academy 4, in that they provide maybe one or two chuckles (No belly laughs mind you) and that's all for the next 90 minutes. Police Academy 4 has a couple of laughs which rise it above the rest of the subsequent entries, although as far as i'm concerned they should've stopped at the very least at # 3.

1.5/5 Matt Bronson

This time the cadets (Guttenberg,Smith,Winslow,Ramsey, Maher and Graf etc) go back to school to mold new recruits in their own image and help Lassard (Gaynes) keep his academy which Mauser (Metrano) is aiming to steal in this good natured but ultimately mediocre sequel. Police Academy 3 certainly has it's moments, mainly from Winslow and Goldthwait but this is running very low on inspiration and while I'll defend this one as well as Police Academy 2 for being underrated, it's obvious that this is a series that went to the well way too many times. Also the action sequence at the end is very well done, i've seen worse in action movie. This is where the producers should've pulled the plug on the franchise.

2/5 Matt Bronson

This time the cadets (Guttenberg, Smith,Winslow, Graf,Ramsey and Maher etc) get their first assignments and just in time since a crime wave (Led by the always welcome Bobcat Goldthwait) is terrorizing the city, also the cadets help their new chief Lassard (Howard Hesseman) remain the chief since Mauser (Metrano) is looking to take over in this adequate comedy which for the most part remains true to the formula. What people often times don't notice is how this one tries to parody cop thrillers, although this is an angle that should've been explored more carefully and in the end it becomes nothing but slapstick humor. Of course with our new wave of comedy coming out in the 21st century, this has actually gotten better with age because this comedy is generally good natured and funnier than most of the utterly awful stuff called comedy in the 21st century. (Date Movie and Freddy Got Fingered for one) Still this is all stupid but there are good amount of chuckles here.

2.5/5 Matt Bronson

When the lady mayor make possible for anyone to be a police officer, a bunch of misfits run to nearest recruitment poster and take the training to be police officers in this pleasant hit and miss comedy that doesn't always hit the bullseye but when it does, it really hits the mark. It's easy to blame what became the Friday The 13th of comedy on this particular entry but like the first Friday, this is actually a good movie which does what it mainly promises to do. The gross out humor is generally inspired and the movie does have good comic performances. It's not nearly as funny as say Airplane or Stripes but there is a reason why this became a classic. Of course the highlight of it all is hands down Michael Winslow, who's sound effects are always funny. I'll even go as far as saying that PA 2 and (maybe)PA 3 are also adequate comedies as well.

3/5 Matt Bronson

Peter Frampton, The Bee Gees and George Burns (!)stars as Sgt Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club band, a group who bands together to gather the instruments of the god-like Sgt Pepper(Preston) and save their town of Heartland from Mean Mr. Mustard, while saving Frampton's true love Strawberry Fields(Sandy Farina) in this jaw droppingly ludicrous and unbelievable musical that's so bad it could only star the Bee Gees. What is most shocking is that that female characters are named after The Beatles's drug songs (Strawberry Fields Forever, Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds) Seriously was Penny Layne taken? Or Elenor Rigby? In any case this is the prime example of LSD induced imagery filtered to the theater, and in a way it's genius. Still Peter Frampton and Bee Gees were always guilty pleasure artists and having them perform Beatles tunes (The best songs from the fab four) is like casting Sylvester Stallone and Jean-Claude Van Damme in the Brando and Pacino role in The Godfather. Things however get even more bizarre when Alice Cooper(Who I like but never for Beatles stuff) and Steve Martin show up singing the Beatles songs (!) No more Mr. Niceguy indeed! This is one awful movie, yes but I for one couldn't take my eyes off it and indeed i'm still wondering if what I had just saw was a hallucination.

Keith Carradine, Powers Boothe,Fred Ward star as National guardsmen who find themselves hunted in the backwoods bayous, where Cajuns are hunting them, since one of the guardsmen stole their canoes and shot blanks at them, of course this leads to a suspenseful and viscous finale where the guardsmen armed with only a few bullets don't put up much of a fight against the Cajuns who know the land and have a seemingly never ending supply of bullets in this intense thriller. If there's only one minor flaw it's that we learn nothing about the Cajun villains who wipe out the guardsmen one by one, aside from that this becomes a strong outing and perfect symbolism for the Vietnam war. The ending is especially well done and the sense of paranoia and mean spirited violence punctuated by long stretches of talk only add to the overall effect of the downbeat story. This is the type of movie that emotionally drains you.

4.5/5 Matt Bronson

Michael Beck and James Remar star as leaders of a gang called "The Warriors" who must get back to their turf, after being set up for murder by a rival gang, along the way The Warriors encounter other gangs, police and double-crossing hookers in this masterpiece of a film. What people don't understand about The Warriors is that it's not just a great action movie, or a super cool movie (It's both of those things) but what really makes this such a haunting movie is it's dream-like approach in which a seemingly easy task is made absolutely difficult by hurtles which keep coming up. The fight scenes are sharp, the cinematography is intense and the whole movie comes off as ahead of it's time. In closing, this one's a classic.

5/5 Matt Bronson

This time Connor McCleod(Christopher Lambert) and Duncan McCleod(Adrian Paul) must decide who must kill the other, in order to gain the necessary edge to kill an evil immortal who has gotten far too strong to take on alone in this confusing sequel which gets by only due to some fresh ideas and some good action. A Highlander sequel never really gets one excited, The third chapter was utterly abysmal. However Endgame is so confusing because one wonders how exactly this now works as continuity with the series, once you establish a certain individual as the winner of the prize, it's hard to take seriously a film which constantly contradicts it's own predecessors. Still ambitions are always something I hold in high regard and in the end this one probably had the best possibility to be the best sequel (It does so anyway but to actually be a good sequel) however this isn't treated as a prequel and with the ending it basically implies that the other three didn't exist. In other words this would've been best as a stand alone film, as a Highlander sequel it makes little sense. I give it two stars only for Donnie Yen and the action scenes, but in my opinion I can do without all the Highlander sequels.

2/5 Matt Bronson

Christopher Lambert stars as Lou seemingly invincible serial killer (He has just killed his daughter's step-father for molesting her) who along with a group play a battle royale, in which the prisoners are all forced to fight out to the death, until 3 are last standing which then get a million dollar prize. Among the prisoners include genre faces such as Return Of The Living Dead's Thom Mathews, Karate Kid II's Yuji Okumoto, Streets Of Fire's Deborah Van Valkenburgh and Pyun regular Tina Cote. Ice-T is the prison warden who is also probably going to die as well, what transpires is a downbeat yet at times very enjoyable Battle Royale scenario that is consistently watchable enough to be considered one of Pyun's better efforts. Also it helps that the cast has somewhat of a coolness factor. However let it be said that the bleached hair look is not to Lambert's advantage.

2.5/5 Matt Bronson

David Bradley stars as Jack Ryan (Once again I assume no relation to Harrison Ford or Alec Baldwin in Hunt For Red October or Patriot Games)an ex-cop who becomes a one man army when he finds that an evil mad scientist Kessel(John Rhys Davies) has turned his brother into a robot, along the way Ryan is aided by Kathy (Double Impact's Alonna Shaw) who helps him find out what happens in this testosterone driven thriller. David Bradley gets about as good as he ever gets in this science fiction thriller which features enough flair in the action to make this a rather pleasing effort to the action fan. Anyone however looking for something more won't find it here. Of course nobody would go in expecting much from a David Bradley movie anyway.

2.5/5 Matt Bronson

Dudikoff stars as Michael Atherton a gunfighter and ex-union soldier, after stumbling across a woman being beaten by some no-good scum, Atherton naturally steps in and saves the girl(Valarie Wildman) and in the process finds himself targeted for vengeance by the family of one of the guys he killed and it's not long before Atherton is caught, beaten and almost killed, only to be saved by Wendy the girl he saved before, Atherton takes aim at taking down the family and does, however the sheriff has a vendetta, one that goes all the way back to the war in this far-better-than-you-would-expect direct to video western which features a decent story and Dudikoff in good form. This, The Silencer, Soldier Boyz and Virtual Assassin are the only watcahble movies from Dudikoff in the 90's. However where as Dudikoff is well suited to the role of a western, it's Randy Travis who ends up making the most impression and in turn steals the movie.

3/5 Matt Bronson

Michael Dudikoff stars as Sonny McLaren a bounty hunter who finds himself hunted by mobsters when one of his prisoners is killed, when Dudikoff is transporting his prisoner to the jail (We strangely never learn where this is supposed to take place) of course the mobsters have marked him for death and now his only help comes from Detective Don Racine (Billy Dee Williams) in this terminally dull actioner which is photgraphed very poorly and just doesn't have enough action to justify the means. Michael Dudikoff actually tries to act and although he's not terrible, he fares much better in The Silencer. In all seriousness this is for only, I repeat only for die hard Michael Dudikoff fans.

1/5 Matt Bronson

Michael Dudikoff (In a not so appealing haircut)stars as a prison warden named Tolliver who lets out six prisoners to do a dirty dozen style rescue, mainly a V.I.P's daughter who has been abducted by communist Vietnamese soldiers (Ah, isn't the cold war over, guess not.) along the way Dudikoff a former soldier trains the prisoners and leads the attack on Vinh Moc (Cary Hiroyuki Tagawa) in this lively actioner which although stupid at least offers the action with a good amount of flair. Indeed when compared to Dudikoff's duds like Crash Drive and Moving Target this comes off as a vast improvement. Still the story is undeniably silly and Dolph Lundgren's "Men Of War" did this type of story much better. Although sadly the 60's song "Soldier Boy" doesn't play once during the movie.

2.5/5 Matt Bronson

Sasha Mitchell stars as Spike Fumo a boxer who want to be a champion but not mess up his pretty looks in the process, Fumo gets along well with the mobster Baldo Cacetti (Ernest Borgnine, in a great performance) however it's when Spike starts eyeing Cacetti's daughter Angel (Maria Pitillo) he's forced out of his neighborhood and forced to live with his Puerto Rican friend Bandanna (Rick Aviles) and there he starts his own boxing circuit, however when Cacetti finds out Spike has gotten Angel pregnant, As well as Bandanna's sister India (Talisa Soto) things heat up to confrontation in this hilarious and sly satire of Rocky and mobster flicks. The best joke is of course that Sasha Mitchell doesn't want to actually earn his title as champion but rather have it fixed by mobsters so he doesn't have to work so hard. Sasha Mitchell displays real acting talent and real sharp comic skills, something that would surprise you if you saw him on that awful TV show he was on. This without a doubt Mitchell's best movie and it's thanks to the humor derived from Mitchell and Borgnine's chemistry which provides the most enjoyable moments. The only complaint is Talisa Soto who comes off like a deer in the headlights. Still it's shocking that the best Mitchell could do after this was Kickboxer 2, 3 and 4.

3.5/5 Matt Bronson

Michael Pare stars as Tom Cody a mercenary who agrees to rescue his rock star ex-squeeze Ellen Aim(Diane Lane) from Raven Shaddock (Willem Dafoe) and his gang of bikers in this enjoyable-on-a-visceral level only actioner which claims to be a rock and roll fable. The problem with Streets Of Fire is that it comes after such heavy weights as The Warriors,48 HRS and Southern Comfort, Walter Hill's best efforts, so this ends up being not as good as those but better than say everything after this made by Hill. That's not to say there isn't anything to enjoy, Michael Pare is well suited to the part, Dafoe is a fun villain , Diane Lane is cute and (of course) the action scenes are well handled and have a lot of punch to them. So this is a good effort from Hill, who adds excellent cinematography and creates a mood which convinces you that this does take place in another time and another place. It also happens to be Michael Pare's best movie, although that's kind of damning with praise.

3.5/5 Matt Bronson

Jeff Wincott stars as Harlan Quinn a hit-man who wakes up to find that he's been declared dead and that he's been recruited to work for the CIA in killing anybody who's a threat to the government, this has all been set up by the mysterious Mr.Green (Michael Ironside) and his first targets include a homosexual advocate, a muckraking journalist and a female professor with information that the AIDs virus was manufactured. Dr.Ann Kendall (Terri Hawkes) is the last one of Wincott's list but he finds himself falling for his prey and when the time comes for the kill, Quinn ends up protecting Kendall from the assassins now gunning for them both in this intense thriller. Jeff Wincott gives an impressive performance and Ironside makes for a great villain which elevates this far above the usual output of this worn out hit-man genre.

4/5 Matt Bronson