Episode 13 - To Be The Best - The PM Entertainment Podcast

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
You'll have entered the PM Entertainment Podcast.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
Hello and welcome to an all new episode of the
PM Entertainment Podcast. The Show that dangles you out of
a helicopter shows you multiple montages, including a bowling montage,
and then escapes on a dirt bike to Las Vegas,
where you are roped into fighting a team of martial
artists from Thailand and thwarting a gambling fix. I'm your host,
John Cross and don't forget. If you like the show,
please remember to rate and review us on any of

(00:51):
the podcasting platforms you use, share our Facebook posts and
our Instagram stories like comment, and you can contact us
via our email pm entpod at gmail dot com. That's
pm e ntpod at gmail dot com. This week, we're
learning just what it takes to be the best Well
back in nineteen ninety three. That took Michael Worth, Stephen

(01:13):
Vincent Lee and the guy from Karate Kid that really
wasn't working very much at the time, Martin Cove and
the whole PM Entertainment squad. We've got Joseph Mayhe directing,
Rick Pepin shooting, fight choreographer Artcamacho, composer John Gonzalez Assistant
director Jerry P. Jacobs, Broadway, Joe Murphy and Red Horton
Stunting and Paul g Volk as supervising editor for These

(01:36):
are some top line PM Entertainment gents who came together
to make this film. It is written by Michael January,
who has also written Firepower, CIA, Two Target, Alexa and
Deadly Target for PM Entertainment. It was only a one
and done for Martin Cove, but Michael Worth worked on
Final Impact and Street Crimes for PM before learning what

(01:57):
it takes to be the Best and antagonist Stephen Vincent
Lee appeared in Ring of Fire and Deadly Bett before
showing up in today's movie. If you haven't guessed it
already to be the best. Our guest this Week has
been operating Bulletproofaction dot com for almost eleven years now
and the Bulletproof podcast will hit six years in November.

(02:18):
Congratulations on that. If that wasn't credentials enough to have
this Titan of Action appreciation on the show. He was
also back in the independent wrestling days, did play by
play announcing and writing and producing, which is interesting because
if you know the film we're talking about, play by
play announcing plays a huge part of it. Welcome to
the show, the one, the only, the legendary Chris Kovinsky.

(02:41):
How are you, sir?

Speaker 3 (02:42):
I am great, John, And what an introduction. I gotta say.
I absolutely love this show and I've been listening to
just about every episode. So it's the only other time
that's happened where I've been like an avid fan of
a show and then got invited on. Interestingly enough, the
Clones Cast, which is co hosted by Michael Worth, who

(03:06):
we obviously will be talking about here on this episode.

Speaker 2 (03:10):
Oh my goodness, I did not know that you had
been on mister Worth's podcast.

Speaker 3 (03:15):
Oh yeah, I talked about Bruce Lee in New Guinea,
which splendid was a wonderful film. But yeah, so very excited.

Speaker 2 (03:24):
Well look at that, even even more credentials piled onto
your already impressive list of credentials. And thank you very
much for your compliment about the show. Means a lot.
It means a lot, definitely. I'm glad there's someone out
there listening at the end of the tunnel, so I'm
going to assume you were. But as always I like
to ask new guests on the show series of very

(03:47):
probing questions. But I assume that you were always into
action films from a very early age.

Speaker 3 (03:53):
Am I right, Yeah, I you know, my earliest movie
memories would be and I was spoiled. I feel like
I was spoiled because it was Star Wars and Superman. Yeah,
and then we rolled into Raiders of a Lost Ark
and it's like, okay, I am like, these are some
of the greatest films of all time and I'm growing
up with them. But really it was probably my friend,

(04:15):
I don't know if I was staying over his place
or what he had, the Big Boss or a Fist
of Fury as it was known back then, Bruce Lee,
and that was that pretty much did it. Then it
was getting into the Ninja movies that were coming out,
and then into the Bruce Lee introduced me to Chuck Norris,
so that I'm watching Chuck Norris movies and yeah, it

(04:36):
just snowballed from there. And yeah, obviously still to this day,
I'm watching action movies every week, every day, very basically. Yeah,
I don't see an end to that anytime soon.

Speaker 2 (04:50):
No, I don't. And then it's interesting because obviously during
this podcast, I've just been watching, you know, every week,
I watch at least one if not multiple PM entertainment films.
But recently, this last week, I took a dip out
of old action films and I watched a few new ones. Obviously,
we had Cynthia Rothrock on the show and she was

(05:11):
talking about her new film, Black Creek, which finally came
out on June seventeenth. So I watched Black Creek, which
I really enjoyed, and you can find a review for
at aftermovie diner dot com. I also, though, watched Scott
Atkins's new one, Diabolo, and I wanted to get your take,
Chris on both those movies if you've seen either of them.

(05:32):
Diabolo was one, I mean it fast shot into my
certainly top five, if not top three, Scott Atkins films
of all time. I loved it, but I was wondering
if if you had heard or watched or seen either
of those two films.

Speaker 3 (05:45):
Have not watched Black Creek yet, I do want to.
But yeah, Diablo, Yeah, probably one of Scott Atkins's best performances. Yes,
I mean it just I mean I think it really
helped that you had a quality villain across from and
I think that's so often the weakness of some of these.
You know, you got star power on one side or

(06:06):
the other and you'd but here was nice and equal.
And I mean Zoror was just freaking creepy with that hair, and.

Speaker 2 (06:14):
He was tremendous. He was just having a ball. I
love it when martial arts actors lean heavily into playing
the heel or the antagonist or whatever, because yeah, you know,
and I actually heard Scott being interviewed about this where
he was saying, you know, your fans don't want to
watch you lose. You know, it's fun to play the villain,

(06:37):
but very often your fans complain because they're like, well,
I don't want you to be killed or blown up
or whatever at the end of the movie, right, But
Zoroor just leaned heavily into it and had the best
time with it, I thought, And I didn't even mind.
I'm not going to spoil it for people, but I
didn't even mind the ending. In fact, what I really

(06:58):
liked about the ending was that the music over the
end credits reminded me very much of when John Carpenter
around kind of the Escape from La Era, went a
little heavy with his soundtracks, and he sort of did
that kind of heavy rock heavy metal kind of crossover

(07:18):
and sort of ramped everything up, like all his soundtracks
suddenly became like much heavier and much louder and more
kind of grinding and stuff. And Diablo ends with a
just an incredible, like kick ass John Carpenter from nineteen
ninety five kind of era synth song. So I really
enjoyed that as well, because I felt like that was

(07:40):
a little bit of a nod. That's all. I'm gonna say,
a big nod to Carpenter just based on the movie.

Speaker 3 (07:46):
Yeah, I mean, as of right now, I would say
Diablo is like the best pure action movie of the year.

Speaker 2 (07:52):
Yes, I mean it's it's in terms of movies that
I've enjoyed that much. There may have been technically better
action movies or action movies with bigger budgets, and obviously
the John Wick franchise is just sort of you know,
jaw dropping and its scope and what they've achieved with that.
But to my way of thinking though, in terms of

(08:15):
old school style action films, it's it's my favorite since
John Wick two. To mean for me, you know, I'm
a big, big Stathan fan. In the other movie that
I watched recently was working Man, I, unlike everyone else
on the planet, seemingly was not a big fan of

(08:35):
The Beekeeper because I thought it was just it was ridiculous,
And I don't mind ridiculous, but it was ridiculous to
the point of idiocy. And I didn't feel like that
the the action sequences really elevated it the way I
would have liked. Not a big David Air guy, but
I Working Man came out in the first thirty minutes.

(08:56):
I'm like, Oh, it's more of the Beekeeper, It's more
of the same, It's just oh. And then something happened
while I was watching it, and apparently mutual friend Matt
Perier also watched it the night after I watched. It
did not feel this way, but I felt that the
middle of the movie took a turn, and I loved

(09:17):
Act two and Act three of Working Man. I thought
it was back to Statham's older movies and I had
a lot more fun with it, especially when you suddenly
get characters that have like Game of Thrones chairs made
out of biker bike exhausts like that, I thought, Okay,
I can get with that. So I thought it took
a turn in the middle and really enjoyed it. Matt

(09:38):
did not feel that way. So I did like working Man.
But out of the three that I watched, the Aablows
number one, Black Creek is number two, and working Man
is number three.

Speaker 3 (09:47):
Yeah, I mean, I think we've been a bit. We've
had a good twenty twenty five as far as action
movies are concerned.

Speaker 2 (09:53):
So yeah, And I think just in terms of movies
in general, the few times I've decided to take time
out from my eighties and nineties action watching and sort
of tiptoe back into modern movies, which is not very often.
This year especially, I've really really enjoyed what I've been watching,
So I'm glad about that.

Speaker 3 (10:13):
Yep.

Speaker 2 (10:13):
So can you remember then, in your journey through obviously
the Bruce Lee movies, the Canon movies with Chuck Norris
and so on, and Charles Bronson, I'm sure that you
watched and obviously show Kasugi and you was mentioning the
Ninja movies Michael Doudakov and things like that. Can you
remember when you first came across a PM Entertainment.

Speaker 3 (10:33):
Film It could have been Firepower, to be quite honest,
because the Ultimate Warrior was in that one. Yeah, and
you know it was like in the wrestling magazines that
Ultimate Warrior was going to be in this movie, So
that's definitely a PM I remember. But I remember watching
like all these the Michael Worth ones. I don't know
how I became a Michael Worth fan, but I must

(10:55):
have seen one, and then I just kept going. And
then when he popped up on El Capoco Heat, I
was like, what, I know that guys in these movies
I watch and it's like, yeah, it was just because he.

Speaker 2 (11:04):
Had done Final Impact in Street Crimes before this.

Speaker 3 (11:08):
Right, I believe, so I think, yeah, this was the
third one. Yeah, so Final Impact was definitely his first movie.

Speaker 2 (11:17):
Yes, it was, Yes, and that is coming out soon.
I don't know if you've seen. I don't know if
you've been following up on the whole Focus Media releasing
blu rays of PM Entertainment in Switzerland and Germany and stuff.
But just to let you know, they've recently made their
website American friendly, so you can now order directly from
them if you if you've heard the news and you're

(11:38):
up on that. But Final Impact is coming out and
they have some exclusive Kathleen Kinmont signed editions. So I
don't know if you're into like collecting the special editions
and all the physical media and all that good stuff.

Speaker 3 (11:50):
But oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I think I think Michael
Worth has some I think he's either doing commentary on
there or did something as well. I saw him, yeah,
talking about it as well, So he must have some
special bonus feature featuring mister Worth.

Speaker 2 (12:06):
Yes, I know that. I know that Claudio from Focus
has spoken to Lorenzo Lamas because he's on a couple
of the new Deaths that are coming out. So once
you sort of saw your first PM Entertainment film, did
you put it together that? Were you enough of a
fan at that point that you were able to put
it together that kind of PM? Was this company putting

(12:28):
out lots of different films or did you kind of
figure that out later? It was?

Speaker 3 (12:32):
It was later. There was so much content at the
video store that you know it. And I didn't become
like a rewatcher until like probably later in the nineties.
It was just like, let's go get a movie, and
let's get you know, you just kept getting more and more.
Like as far as I would know, Fist of Iron,
which is another that's probably my favorite Michael Worth movie,
I'm like that could have been PM I don't know,

(12:53):
you know it's not but you know a.

Speaker 2 (12:56):
Crab in Yeah, it's funny. Both him and even go
on to work with Matthias Hughes a lot. They're both
in Mathia and Martin Cove as well. I think they
all went on and did Matthias Hughes movies after they
did their PM film.

Speaker 3 (13:12):
Yeah, but yeah, I don't think it was really until
I started the site and he was like, man, this
that was Pete and then it all started coming together.
I'm like, Wow, these guys were as good as Canon
having all this.

Speaker 2 (13:26):
Yeah, and they didn't overextend themselves for good nine years
until until the very end. But you know, obviously that
was Canon's failing. So do you have then? And I'm
guessing because when I asked you what PM entertainment film
did you want to do? This was the first. You

(13:46):
just went to be the best. You're just like, boom,
that's what I want to do. And I guessing, then,
is this your favorite PM Entertainment film? I don't know.

Speaker 3 (13:55):
If it's my it's definitely in my top five. I
would say, yeah, proboutly my favorit of the Michael Worth
although it's tough sometimes because I really like Final Impact,
and then you think, well, Street Crimes, and the Street
Crimes got Dennis Farina, and it's so it's like, oh,
that kind of elevates that one. So it's like it's
you know, it's probably one of those where if you
asked me today, I would say yes, and if you
ask me next week it could be a completely different one.

(14:18):
But yeah, I would actually say top five for to
be the Best. Yeah, I love all the Michael Worth
ones he did for him, But of course, you it's
hard to knock out things like the uh like Rage,
I mean Rage come on the PM Entertainment Video Store
almost makes it like that has to be the number one, right.

Speaker 2 (14:37):
Right, Although I would say what was and we'll get
into this when we get into the movie. What I
really enjoyed about To Be the Best as well, outside
of the martial arts and the kickboxing contests and everything
that we'll get into, was that it's I think, I think,
and of course a lot of them blend into one,
but I think it's the only PMT TAM film I've

(15:00):
watched that has a car chase through the La River.
And you would have thought, as people who filmed downtown
l A all the time. You would have thought they
would have used the dry riverbed of the La River
all the time, but they don't.

Speaker 3 (15:19):
Did because the footage from there was in Ring of
Fire to some of that car chase from the from
the river isn't it's a recycled from Ring of Fire too, right, robbery? Yeah,
because like I had, like my friend came over. I'm like, oh,
you got to see this movie to be the best.

(15:40):
So we watched it and that like that was my
fifteenth time watching it probably, but yeah, let's then the
very next day, I'm like, let's see what other PM
like I think it popped up on YouTube was a
Ring of Fire too, And I'm like, I just saw
these freaking carcass last night.

Speaker 2 (15:54):
And yeah, but it's that's odd though, because obviously the
car chase is to be the Best also has the
dirt bike which is not in Ring of Fire Too.

Speaker 3 (16:04):
Is it right?

Speaker 2 (16:05):
No?

Speaker 3 (16:05):
I don't think that is just like the that white
car right and and the cop cars that it was
like the whole thing, but that little bit was that.

Speaker 2 (16:14):
Little right, We're right, So they recycled that. Yeah, Okay,
that makes sense. That's why in oh now, I'm remembering.
That's why in the scene and to be the best,
you suddenly cut to three cops you've never seen before
stood next to an unmarked albeit apart from the red
siren on the roof, but an unmarked white police car,

(16:36):
and then they go charging off. You're like, wait, who
are these guys? That's because they used the footage from
Ring of Fire too. Okay, that now I remember, and I.

Speaker 3 (16:44):
Have to imagine that this footage was also repurpose for
La Heat.

Speaker 2 (16:51):
Oh, I think everything was repurposed.

Speaker 3 (16:53):
If the big helicopter thing from a riot, yes, with
a sugar ray that they do that like Wolf, Here's
the exact Gary Daniels wardrobe and it's beautiful. I'm like,
oh this is and you like I knew it was coming.
I'm like, oh, oh, Mike, they're just going to use

(17:14):
the riot footage. I cannot. I love this company.

Speaker 2 (17:18):
Yes, No, they're they're They're fantastic because they have to
contrive two in La Heat to do action sequences that
can legitimately use sequences from other movies so that they
can make La Heat look much bigger and you know,
more expensive than it actually was. But it's that thing

(17:38):
on set. They must have been watching like the footage
from the other thing and being like, all right, we
need this guy in a brown jacket, we need this
guy driving a black car. We need you know, they
must have had to like put stuff together in order
for it to all match. But yeah, I mean just bafflick.
But yeah, and again, I don't know if when we
get to the end of all the Pimonte films and

(18:00):
all the City Light Entertainment films and even some of
the ones that they distributed but did not make, do
we then keep going with this podcast and do every episode.

Speaker 3 (18:12):
Of la absolutely that you know the answer that is
basically a rhetorical question. They didn't know the answer. Yes,
damn it, Yes.

Speaker 2 (18:21):
Damn it.

Speaker 3 (18:22):
Yes, Yeah see, I don't. I haven't. Like I think
it was maybe a year or two ago. It popped
up on one of the probably Prime Video or something
like that.

Speaker 2 (18:34):
It's on Prime Moost seasons of streaming on Price.

Speaker 3 (18:36):
I started going, I don't think I've made it all
the way through because I part of me is also
like once I'm done, then I'm done. Oh you know,
it's bittersweet.

Speaker 2 (18:45):
That And so once you're done with la Het, you've
seen every PLO.

Speaker 3 (18:49):
I would every No, I'm just like, you know, I'm
enjoying this, but it's like I don't kind of want
to burn through all these episodes right away. But I'm
sure there's still some movies I have not seen.

Speaker 2 (18:59):
Well, it's annoying because Echo Bridge, who basically bought PM,
eventually bought the PM catalog before Film Rise. They put
out the first season, so I have the first season
on DVD. There is no second season on DVD, so
the only way you can currently watch the second season
is on Prime or Free V or one of those channels,

(19:22):
which is frustrating because I would like a nice set
of season two to match my disc set of season one.

Speaker 3 (19:31):
You know what they're going to do. They're going to
just put season one and two together in one set
and then you'll just have an extra season one.

Speaker 2 (19:39):
Right. Well, that's fine, I don't mind. I don't mind extras.
I just don't like it when I can't get everything.

Speaker 3 (19:44):
Else when there's an empty Yeah.

Speaker 2 (19:47):
And now the moment you've all been waiting for, we

(20:15):
have chainsaw ice sculptures. Wait, do people ever do ice
sculptures with anything other than a chainsaw? Can chainsaws be
used to do any other sculptures. Would Leonardo da Vinci
have love to chainsaw anyhe kick boxing and martial arts
fights atop a casino, one bount of which I think
legitimately ends in a fighter snapping another guy's neck, dangling
Michael Worth under a helicopter piloted by a mad bastard.

(20:37):
Helicopter crashes into the top floor of the Sands Hotel.
Michael Worth crashes into a lower floor, still attached by
a rope. Helicopter starts to slide out of the building,
dragging Michael Worth, but he thankfully cuts the rope in
time with a bit of broken window. Helicopter slides out
of window, crashes the ground below and explodes. Yay, illegal
street fights, no ice sculpture, this time a missed opportunity.
Please show up. Police get beaten up, they give chase,

(21:00):
and Chase Troy Linger down the La River on his
dirt bike. There are suddenly eight police cars, and of
course they all crash. Police shoot out the tire of
another street fighter's car and that causes it to explode
and flip over, because well that's physics. Dirt bike jumps
over fence into Little League field, followed by stock footage
of white car from previous Tracy Lord's film Crashing into

(21:20):
the Park, Sparring in the gym, bowling alley, brawl, wedding chapel, fight,
efficient with a gun, Many many contest spouts and fights,
none of which seem particularly illegal, but all of which
are incredibly fun. Martin Cove gets stabbed. Wait is it
easy to stamp people through nylon and polyester? You'd think
synthetics wouldn't give as easy as cotton. All the hench

(21:40):
person extras look like extras from the movie Singles. Stairwell fights,
fight on the roof with leatherjacket, evil Henchperson. The penultimate Boss,
Big Boss shoots his worthless Dowe mafioso sidekick with one kick.
Michael Worth kicks the Big Boss off the top of
the casino. He falls down the building through the overhang
and hits a parked car out front smash. After the
final wedding, bride kneesman in nuts and punches him in

(22:03):
the face, and then Vince Mdoco says that's my girl
when it's clear she's worth girl as they just got married.
Unless Medocco has been stripping his friend's girl the whole time.
And this is a twist ending sparring in the gym
and working out Montage Tai team fighting and trying out
Montage bowling Montage falling in love and makeout Montage with
Troy Linger and his tie crush. That's literally what she's

(22:25):
credited as. Gratuitous Raiders jacket mug, gratuitous monkey painting, gratuitous
art camacho, gratuitous eve eating an apple metaphor. And it
turns out that Martin Cove brought his Raiders mug to Vegas,
not the jacket, but the mug. Okay then, So to
be the best and what I always like to do
at this juncture, Chris, if you don't mind, and you'll

(22:47):
probably better verse at it than I am, as it
is one of your favorite films, why don't you give
us a rundown of the plotza?

Speaker 3 (22:54):
Okay? Well, To be the Best tells the tale of
the brothers Colhane, Eric and Sam, and we get the
most PM introduction to both of them. We get Eric
fighting on the roof of It's not the actual roof of,
it's like the roof of the overhang to the entrance

(23:16):
of the Sands Casino. Yes, and so, but it must
be maybe the Sands rent that out for special events
because they have like an ice sculpture there and everything. So, yeah,
you meet Eric who's a hotthead fighter. There's a big
guy dough boy aka Mario, who's trying to make him
take a dive. Pay him off. No, it's not going

(23:37):
to do it. So then what do you do to
the guy who wouldn't take a dive? Well, you dangle
him from a helicopter and the helicopter the helicopter pilot's
really into it, yeah, and he's just having a ball
forgets where he's at though, loses his geographical awareness for
a moment and flies into the hotel. He's up on

(24:01):
the one floor. Our boy Eric played by Michael Worth,
is like maybe two floors down. Helicopters going. There's Michael
Worth having it. Saw the rope with the shards of glass.
What an introduction again, classic PM. Cut to La where
we meet Sam who's in an alley fight that gets

(24:24):
broken up by the cops, which then goes into the
aforementioned car chase with cops that we never saw before
but they just show up. Yeah, so there's that. So
now we find out that these two brothers are kickboxing brothers.
We'll be going to Las Vegas to compete for the
world championship, so we get that bit of a story,

(24:45):
but we also get their romantic roller coasters that each
go on with Eric and his girlfriend, his rich girlfriend,
Cheryl played by Brittany Powell. Dad doesn't like him though,
but they're going to Vegas. He's a hothead. She's not
too much of a fan of that, and that comes
into play because then the evil Jack Rogers comes into play,

(25:10):
played by Alex Cord, and he intervenes and we find
out he's been screwing with the col Hayne family for
quite some time. This is like his hobby and yeah,
so he wants Eric to throw the big martial arts
or kickboxing tournament. He wants the Thailand team to win.

(25:34):
Eric obviously says, all sure, I'll do that, but he's
not gonna do it. But then Jack takes Cheryl and
uses her as a bargaining chip. So we get a
tournament and then we get this big finale with Eric
versus Jack. It's really all over the place in some ways,

(25:54):
but at the same time it's not. It has that
whole tournament to kind of be the backbone of it,
and then all this other stuff is happening in between.
That's probably an awful synopsis.

Speaker 2 (26:04):
But no, it's a fantastic synopsis. You covered. You covered
everything we needed to cover so that everyone understands it. Uh.
The thing that the thing that always makes me laugh
about it is is Cheryl because, Uh, she's dating a
guy who is like clearly a martial arts fighter. His

(26:24):
brother is a martial arts fighter, his dad is a
martial arts fighter. They own a gym in which they
do a lot of fighting, and the one thing she
wishes he wouldn't do fight. I'm like, well, you've picked
the wrong man, like a thousand percent, Cheryl, Listen. I

(26:48):
don't want to question you too much. You do, you, sweetheart,
whatever you need to do. But if your problem is
your boyfriend fights too much, you may have picked entirely
the wrong family. That col Haynes are all about kicking
ass killer. Yeah, and at least he's not a drunk
like his dad.

Speaker 3 (27:07):
Right by Martin Cove prior to him biting his co
stars in the arm.

Speaker 2 (27:11):
Yes, we should probably bring that up just because it's
it's it's in the news. It's typical that we would
pick this movie the week that we find out that
Martin Cove's gone a bit insane at a convention somewhere.

Speaker 3 (27:24):
Yeah, I was like, okay, well, good pick. Maybe they
bring the hits, more clicks, more downloads.

Speaker 2 (27:31):
And just to just to say this to the older
actors out there, because apparently none of them are immune
to this. If you think to yourself, well, I'm going
to have some fun with my co star who's female
and much younger than I am, maybe just go Nah,
I'm not I'm not gonna do that. I think Bill
Murray could learn that lesson. Mark Go could learn that lesson.

(27:55):
Because whatever you think is fun, I'm guaranteeing that a
woman forty years younger than you does not think it's
very fun.

Speaker 3 (28:03):
No, you're not. Yeah, it's not the old boys clubs.

Speaker 2 (28:06):
So come on, come on, sort it out. Slap yourself
into into shape, and sort yourself out. I do like
at the end of the movie with Martin Martin being like,
did you did you? Did you see my kick to
his sons. He's just a fighter to the end, just
wants to be the big big man and has never

(28:28):
been the big man. So yeah, what I love about
this movie is it's funny. We were talking about Guardian
Angel on one of the last episodes, and what I
what I feel is similar about the two films is
that the first act of this movie, the sort of
establishing act, is completely different to the second and the
third act of this movie. It has the same characters

(28:49):
in it, it has the same you know, is he
going to take a diver? Is he not? But in
terms of look, feel, action, story, tell all the rest
of it. I feel like the first act is one
kind of movie, and then once you get to Vegas
and the tournament is underway, it's it's a different type
of film.

Speaker 3 (29:11):
Oh yeah, I mean yeah, they had to like get
the PM stuff. They probably couldn't figure out, like, how
are we going to get a car chase in the
middle of this tournament? How are we going to dangle
somebody from now?

Speaker 2 (29:21):
We can't.

Speaker 3 (29:21):
We're gonna have to put that up in the front
or at the back. Let's just put it right in
the front. Let's grab them right from the beginning, and
they're going nowhere after you see that, So that will
be with us for the rest of this for the tournament.

Speaker 2 (29:33):
And and yeah, and both guys, both sons at this
time are scoff laws, as they used to say.

Speaker 3 (29:46):
But they don't say that enough.

Speaker 2 (29:51):
No, they don't. People should use that term more more.
I only use that term because it kind of explains
exactly who these guys are. They're not criminals, no, but
they couldn't call us about the law. You know. One
of them is having like an illegal fight on the
top of the Sands casino U and another one has

(30:12):
no problem having a back alley fight and then escaping
on a dirt bike and trashing lots of police cars.

Speaker 3 (30:19):
I question how illegal that Sands one is though. I mean,
it's right there out in the orb and everyone could
see it, and somebody brought an ice sculpture. For God's sake,
you can't come. That has to again. I think the
Sands rents out that overhang roof. You can have a
wedding reception up there. I don't know what's going on,
or maybe you can't. That probably doesn't exist anymore. I

(30:40):
would assume that got torn down like everything, well it did.

Speaker 2 (30:44):
It did so interestingly enough. The reason why they were
able to use the Sands as much as they used
the Sands is that the Sands was due to being
due to be torn down, and in fact, when they
heard that, the reason why this movie kind of is
a little scrappier and doesn't quite have necessarily the pre

(31:08):
production planning of other films that they would do, not
that there was much of that either, but is that
they've heard the Sounds was going to be pulled down.
They wanted to make the destruction of the Sands part
of the film in some way that got then postponed,
so they were still able to use it and still

(31:28):
able to film there, but they weren't able to use
the destruction of the casino in the movie. There's a
and again I'm going by a review on IMDb which
is written by someone who claims to have worked on
the film, someone who goes by into our dash en

(31:50):
Dash film. They claim that they were the production designer
on the film and that the first few minutes of
helicopter footage the best moments in the entire film. They
are not complimentary about this film at all. The production
designer did not like it. But apparently Reckon Joe heard
that the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas was going to
be torn down, so they rushed over to shoot there

(32:11):
in order to incorporate the demolition of it into the film,
but it ended up being delayed. Other problems they had
were somehow they ended up with less than half the
extras that they needed to fill the audience in the
fight sequences, I don't notice that. I think it looks
pretty decent in that. And apparently the sequence where the
villain is thrown off the top of the sand's top

(32:33):
floor penthouse had to be shot several times because there
was bad weather and a mess up with one of
the explosions and special effects artists and various other things.
He goes into a long litany of complaints about the movie.
I don't want to go there because I think he's wrong.
I think I'm just going to say it up front.
I think this is a fantastic film. But he has

(32:55):
a lot to say, so if you want to check
it out. Apparently the production design has been going around
slagging this movie off online. I don't understand why.

Speaker 3 (33:03):
But he's trying to get Mark Hartley's attention.

Speaker 2 (33:06):
Maybe, oh, is that what it is he wants to
do the negative PM Entertainment podcast. I will not have
any negativity around PM Entertainment. We will occasionally get a
little riffy and do some jokes and be a little
funny about them, but we will never be negative about
them because I absolutely adore the ethos with which these

(33:26):
movies were made. Everyone I've spoken to behind the scenes
has been lovely. I will only have a champion these films.
But yes, so we start off with several beautiful different things.
We get to look at chainsaws going through ice, great
way to start a movie. Fights and flames and things
on top of the sands. Fantastic. The helicopter to put

(33:50):
that in the opening sequence of a PM film, it's
just it's glorious because you would think, oh, he's going
to the helicopter's going to crash into the hotel and
blow up, But no, the helicopter crashes in and then
it's a race to see if Michael Work is going
to get pulled off the building or up. And then
it seems to crash down onto that platform at the

(34:12):
top of the sand. Did it kill a bunch of fighters?
Then I don't know, an explosion seems to go off
on the top of that platform from the sand, so
maybe they'd all run out of the way at that point.
But because dough Boy comes back. So we know dough
Boys survived because he comes back later on in the movie.

Speaker 3 (34:28):
Yeah, he's like, oh, I just wanted him to scare
the guy.

Speaker 2 (34:32):
Halfway through. I love a gangster who says to his
like manic helicopter driver, because this isn't like if if
this goes a gangster and he has this helicopter driver,
this isn't the first time this helicopter driver's gone whacker do.
Like you know, it's not like, oh, we've suddenly dragging

(34:52):
a guy underneath the helicopter. This clearly has happened before.
Otherwise this gangster is just the most reckless person on
earth and just went, yes, we're gonna get of this,
uh whacker do helicopter drive. We're going to put Michael
Worth's life in his hands. But actually what ends up
having what what what's hilarious is well, if you're a
gangster and you're hanging someone from underneath the helicopter, if

(35:12):
you don't mean to kill them, I think of another
way to scare them. Because hanging someone over a major
metropolitan city from a helicopter with no way to communicate
to the insane person you put behind the gueststick of
the helicopter. I think at that point your protestations on

(35:32):
the ground going no, no, no, I just meant to
scare him. I think that's a bit late, buddy, having
no warrior that ship is saying.

Speaker 3 (35:40):
Do they do the classic? You just take him up
to a balcony and hang him and hang him by
his feet, just like we're going to drop you. We're
gonna oh no, okay, we weren't really going to drop you.
But next time we tell you to take a fall,
you take a fall, or you're going to take the
big fall, right not the sea Thomas her movie, But
and yeah, that's Mike Tony played Mario and his first

(36:03):
movie was also Final Impact. And I'm thinking, this guy
is just somebody who lived in Vegas. And he was
almost like the Jim Gaines or the Mike Monty of
the Philippine movies, where it's like, if you're making a
movie in the Philippines, there's a certain list of people,
like you have to pick at least one of these
guys to be in the movie. I feel like Mike

(36:24):
Tony was just like, hey, I'm in Vegas. Was he
a teamster? I don't know what he was, But how
did he get in these movies his whole thing other
than the last movie I think was the only non
PM movie in his life.

Speaker 2 (36:35):
But yes, you're right, listen. He may have been someone
Mike Tony. He may have been someone who Joseph knew
because Joseph lived in Vegas. If you haven't checked it out,
there was a really good interview with Joseph that takes
you from his early days in Syria all the way

(36:56):
through to the first PM films. And it's on the
Richard Munchkin podcast, which I think is called Life is
a Risk or it's a gambling podcast. But I put
the link in in one of our earlier episodes and
it basically fills it in. But Joseph owned pizza parlors

(37:16):
in Vegas for many years, and in fact, his brother
then took over once Joseph went to La.

Speaker 3 (37:25):
Doughboy. Right, Maybe maybe he was a manager of one
of the pizza parlots.

Speaker 2 (37:30):
Yeah, maybe Mike Mike Pawney just came out and made
pizzas in Vegas and then I'm in movies. Now. Maybe
that's how it worked. I don't know, but let's hope.
Let's hope it like him and Marry old Pals. Maybe
I don't know. You know, he's one of those character
actors who shows up in multiple PM films, like Kenneth
Tiger and Robert Miano, who's in A ton who we

(37:51):
just did a post about on Facebook. Robert Miano is
sort of a He's like the you know, the character
actor version of of a PM mal star, you know,
m hm.

Speaker 4 (38:02):
He was in multiple movies as well, So maybe yeah,
maybe Tony just him and Mary knew each other from
the pizza parlors and the two joints of Las Vegas
or whatever that was.

Speaker 2 (38:12):
So yeah, we get that. And then as I say,
the race through the La River, I'd forgotten about the
Ring of Fire two connection there. But it's been a
while since I sat down and watched that one. That
is a fantastic that is so iconic, that La riverbed.
It's been in so many films, but I never get
enough of it. I I whenever anyone decides to shoot

(38:33):
a car chase or an action sequence or you know,
two gangs meeting each other or whatever whatever kind of sequence,
the La River suits itself. I love it. It's in
It's in Larry Cohen's it's alive at the end. It's
in Greece, isn't it? Isn't it in Greece? Maybears macaroons.

(38:54):
I of course, what a fantastic the whole ending of
bakaro right, but then walking around with the music playing,
I love that sequence. It's just incredible. So having PM
in the La River it's always a good because PM
and Los Angeles and PM and Las Vegas, you know
they go hand in hand.

Speaker 3 (39:13):
Right, those are the pure PM entertainment movies. Yes, later
on when they started branching off to other things, then
it lasts some of that PM magic.

Speaker 2 (39:23):
Yeah. I mean that's the only thing you could say
about Steel Frontier is it doesn't have the the La
and the Las Vegas of it all. Right, there are
enough out there that, you know, if you want CD
Los Angeles, you've got the wings Houser movies. If you
want action packed blowing up Los Angeles, you've got stuff
like Executive Target. And similarly with Vegas, Vegas is a

(39:45):
great place to set a tournament film. Obviously Deadly Bat
is set in Vegas, and this one is set in Vegas,
and there's a few others, and that's what happened in
this movie. Basically, what's interesting is you are introduced to
this and then you're introduced to the dad in the gym,
and no one's talking about the fact that they're about

(40:07):
to have apparently the most important tournament in kickboxing. Yes,
no one's talking about that at all. If anything, Martin
Cove is just challenging his son to get back in
the ring and beat up some of his guys at
the gym there. And he does that for him because

(40:28):
I think the oldest son sort of didn't he have
a chance at the title and then didn't get it
or something.

Speaker 3 (40:34):
That's something he did. I think he took a dive. Okay,
he got a payoff of one hundred thousand dollars. He
got that, and he obviously went into some sort of
depression and became an alcoholic much like his father. But
now he's like cleaned himself up his Redemption tour. Basically,
he's coming back one more time. This time he's gonna

(40:55):
win that world championship.

Speaker 2 (40:56):
Yeah. And but we don't I mean, in typical PM fashion,
and this is absolutely fine. I don't. I don't need
my pms to be long winded to the point where
they have to explain every tiny, every tiny plot point.
But you know, the next thing, we know, they're showing
up in Las Vegas for this tournament and it is

(41:19):
considered that America and Thailand are the two to watch.
Everyone else it doesn't matter. And I think it's absolutely
hilarious that they have an English team there.

Speaker 3 (41:30):
I love this whole scene because one of I think
the first time I watch it, I'm like, wow, what
if this is like the only film that survives in apocalypse.
Someone's gonna get this and they're gonna think that kickboxing
was the most important sport on the planet, Like America
just couldn't get enough kick Because there's a crowd of people.

(41:53):
This news coverage, it's like this is Vegas. There's a
million things going on in Vegas at any given time,
but here this woman is covering and she knows all
about it. And yet we get the American team come in,
they got their cool American jackets, and then yeah, we've
got our tity. But before we we get the tie

(42:14):
team arriving in Vegas, we do get that brief little
montage of them preparing as we see them. We see
them in Bangkok, California. Yes, and yeah, so we get
to see like get a little because yeah, we got
the big montage at the Colhyne Gym where basically.

Speaker 2 (42:34):
They film up at the Chinese pavilion, right, which is
the same that's used in Usual Suspects and a couple
of other.

Speaker 3 (42:41):
Right, but no it says it's Bangkok, oh Okay, Bangkok, California.
I guess I didn't know there was one, but yeah,
so yeah, we get the Colhne Jim footage where basically,
I guess we're whittling down who's the who's going to
represent America and to the guys, and then we just
see Hong Do and and the Thai team in Bangkok,

(43:02):
California very briefly, and then they all arrive on the
bus and the people love the Thai team. So it's
like a lot of front runners there over there in Vegas.

Speaker 2 (43:13):
You know.

Speaker 3 (43:13):
Of course, maybe they they won big on the gambling.
I don't know. I don't know how often this World
Championship happens. I guess they've been the champions for like
five years running or something, so it must be an
annual event. But maybe this is Eric Colhanes's first chance
to be.

Speaker 2 (43:32):
He's a Hong Do is the big news. Hong Do
has his own chant, and everyone seems to love Hong Do.
That's the Stephen Lee character.

Speaker 3 (43:43):
Yeah, who I like a little less than he was
in Deadly Bet, but he is like freaking martial arts
Wayne Newton. Yes, just he's again. It's worse in Deadly
Bet because he's got the fancier clothes and stuff on.
But he's just yeah, he's martial arts Wayne Newton as
far as I'm concerned.

Speaker 2 (44:04):
And I wonder if Don was either consult Don Wilson
was either consulted about the kickboxing tournament or whether he
was disappointed that he was not able to be you know,
I mean, don't forget.

Speaker 3 (44:19):
Like, oh, he was legit the greatest kickboxer of all
time based and.

Speaker 2 (44:24):
Benny the jet Akidas as well is undefeated. Don was defeated.
But yes, Don Wilson holds more world records than anyone else.
And I wonder if I wonder if Don was consulted
on this or whether he was disappointed because he was
I don't know. They did Ring a Fire, what was
he What was Don's next movie that he was probably

(44:44):
working on at the same time as this one.

Speaker 3 (44:46):
Probably on Bloodfist twenty one somewhere else.

Speaker 2 (44:51):
No, I'm finally with with with PM so to be
the best, Well, he had just been in he was
in Magic Kid that year as.

Speaker 3 (44:58):
Well for PM, and he I think The Player too
had come out earlier in the year.

Speaker 2 (45:02):
Ring of Fire two. Yeah, so yeah, he was busy CyberTracker.
He could have been filming CyberTracker at the same time
as this was coming out. I don't know, but either
way they decided to do a kickboxing tournament without him.

Speaker 3 (45:17):
Well, he'd also had to be in the villain, and
maybe he didn't want to be the villain right.

Speaker 2 (45:22):
He also Don Wilson always had a rule as well,
because he was proud to be Asian American rather than
just always being an Asian actor and never wanted to
as he in his term, in his words, do the voice.
So very often Asian actors who spoke with an American
accent were asked to do you know, a generic Asian accent,

(45:47):
And in fact Stephen Lee sort of does in this.
He kind of half does it, half not in this.
But Don always said he would do that so he
wouldn't fake being from you know, another country, So maybe
that maybe that stopped them. I have no idea. I
don't know. I don't have any information about this movie
at all other than what I can find online. But yeah,

(46:08):
So we then start the tournament section of the movie,
which is basically the whole second act and most of
the third act interspersed with this, and I quite liked
the way they did it because you've got you got
two or three fights which you could actually get invested in,
and I thought it was nice because and you'll have
to talk to this because obviously you were a play

(46:29):
by play commentator, but you get the play by play commentators,
which I really liked. And I love the way they
kind of filmed them from a low angle and they
looked funny and stuff. But I really like these two.
They did a good job. And unless they're real commentator,
I have no idea they might be. I don't remember.

Speaker 3 (46:48):
I think I may have looked that up at one point,
but I don't remember that they were like, yeah, was
there a kickboxing show?

Speaker 2 (46:56):
Again?

Speaker 3 (46:56):
If you just saw this movie and had no knowledge
of sports all, you would think this is a big
time thing. But yeah, I do also like that the
color commentator, though, does disappear at some point you just
have the play by play guy. For the early matches,
they're both there. Somewhere in the middle, the color commentator's
gone and camera is just on the play by play guy,

(47:18):
and then by the end he's the two man booth
is back.

Speaker 2 (47:22):
But so TJ. Wells, who is one of them, I mean,
he's announced as that he was only ever in this movie.
I don't know who the other commentator was. I mean,
there's a TJ. Wells who was a voice actor, But
if I look up TJ. Wells, they don't say, you know,
famous martial arts commentator or whatever, or yeah, like.

Speaker 3 (47:44):
Some kind of sportscaster in Las Vegas.

Speaker 2 (47:46):
Or some sportscaster. Yeah I know. So I don't know.
But also, the thing we interspersed with these bouts, and
what I liked about it was that I actually got
into the bouts. I mean, I kind of knew how
they were going to play out, because obviously you know
that at a certain point it's going to come down
to Stephen and Michael fighting, so you know that you

(48:08):
know to some extent what the outcome is going to
be of some of the fights. But I enjoyed how
many times they tried to get Art Camacho into the movie.
He plays at least three characters in this film. He's
even one of the characters in silhouette during a fight,
which was fantastic. You can't you can't miss Art's mid
nineties mullet that he's got going on there. Even in silhouette,

(48:31):
it pops red out at you. And he gets the
freeze frame at the end of the movie, which I
absolutely thought was wonderful. He's right there, his little smiling
face is right there freeze frame with the end of
the film. Thought Wow, ah, it's just all over this thing.
It's fantastic. Good for him. I mean, I think he
said in an interview on the disc that I watched,
because he's interviewed on the to be the best disc

(48:53):
that was put out by Focus Media, that there were
thirty seven fights in this movie that he had a career. Yeah,
not just not just the bouts, but including every every
confrontation in the movie.

Speaker 3 (49:08):
Right the rooftop one and the you know, the thing
I enjoyed about these early matches is, you know, it
was quite the revelation when we found out that Jamaica
had a bob sled team. Right now, we also know
they have a kickboxing team.

Speaker 2 (49:22):
They do? They do?

Speaker 3 (49:25):
I was, I mean, who knew Jamaica had all these things?

Speaker 2 (49:29):
Listen, it's it's a fantastic country. It's I've already been
the other ones, but it was. It was beautiful. The
people were lovely and yeah with me, like.

Speaker 3 (49:38):
They would just be enjoying, enjoying the island. Why why
are they playing sports? Why are they bob sledding? Where
are they bob sledding in Jamaica?

Speaker 2 (49:46):
Well you might, right, but you might ask like, why
would anyone in Vegas play ice hockey? Or why would
anyone in Florida play ice hockey? But they do and
they win all the time, right, which is which annoys
I'm a fan of a Canadian team, the Toronto Maple Leafs,
and it annoys the hell out of US Northeasterns that

(50:07):
Florida keeps winning. We're like, Florida shouldn't even have an
ice hockey team? What's going on here? But much in
the same way that Jamaica shouldn't have a bob sled team.
But I will tell you this about Jamaica. I've only
been other ones, but I will tell you this. Everyone
I spoke to everyone I spoke to, and these were
all people involved in tourism. So bartenders, you know, luggage handlers,

(50:28):
people who row you down the Martha Bray River, which
is this beautiful river in Jamaica. You can get like
a guid that tore down the river or whatever. The
guy who took us up nine Mile, where Bob Marley
was born and eventually buried all of them to a man,
said that they were just earning enough money that they
could get go to London, England and become either get

(50:50):
a business degree. They either wanted to go to London
to get a business degree or they wanted to go
to London to be a cab driver. And I would
look around at this beautiful and I understand, look politically
or whatever, and financially Jamaica's in a messed up place.
But I would look around at this island paradise and
think to myself, No, I understand for someone who's like

(51:13):
you know, has no prospects and wants to just get
off the island because they're you know, they're being oppressed
or whatever. But these guys were working in tourism and
making money hand over fist. The guy who took us
up nine mile. He must have been handed almost one
thousand dollars by various American tourists just doing that one tour,
and he was doing ten tours a day. The idea
of him going off to London and driving a rainy

(51:36):
cab around the city.

Speaker 3 (51:37):
Say a beautiful tropical London.

Speaker 2 (51:40):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the same with the guy who's
a bartender at at the hotel. I'm like, all you
have to do is make English and American tourists my
ties every five minutes. Why would you want to leave this?
Why would you want to go? And he's like, well,
you know, I want better prospects, and good for them, like, yes,
go to London and get better prospects. But everyone from

(52:01):
London is trying to figure out how to live in Jamaica.

Speaker 3 (52:05):
Maybe an exchange program should be right.

Speaker 2 (52:08):
Maybe all the cab drivers in London who have had
enough of London traffic to go live in Jamaica and
road tourists down the river, and then all the riverboat
guys could come out to London and drive camps for
a couple of years, and then every few years they
just swap it out. It could be like an.

Speaker 3 (52:24):
Six months six months off I don't know.

Speaker 2 (52:27):
But no, Jamaica does have a kickboxing team according to
this movie, and why not. They give quite a lot.
What I liked was quite a lot of the other
teams did give the two, the Thai team and the
American team a little run for their money. I mean, ultimately,
you know, we care about the Tai team and the
American team because that's who we're hoping face off eventually.

(52:48):
But what I liked about Ark Camacho's fight choreography here
was that even the other teams, because even the English
kickboxer in one of the very early fights, I don't
think he ever was back, but in one of the
early fights, gives one of the Americans. I think Dutch
a run for his money a little bit. And I

(53:08):
like that. I like there being at least a little tension.

Speaker 3 (53:10):
You know, you want to know why because he was
originally from Jamaica and he moved to England.

Speaker 2 (53:18):
He was a cab driver who moved to Jamaica and
then moved back to England and then thought I'm going
to fight in the last vega.

Speaker 3 (53:26):
K I like that the American team had their American
flag zubas on, so you knew that they were the
American team at all times.

Speaker 2 (53:37):
Yes, if you couldn't spot it by the variety of
mullets that they were all wearing. Although I have to
say this film features the most heroic mullet that I
think has ever put on screen. And what's really sad
is we don't get a mullet payoff because he seems

(53:58):
to disappear. But at the end of the movie, Jack
Rogers Alex Cord has a henchman who has I mean,
this is talking about it's not even business. At the front.
It's like, I don't know what that is. At the front,
it's like a mountain. It's almost like a you know,
like a quiff at the front, like a like a

(54:20):
buffon at the front, and party at the back. It's
like it's a mountain of hair with a beautiful cascading
waterfall of hair going down the back. And I was
very sad that we didn't get a mullet Michael Worth's
face off because he seems to disappear, that mullet guy and.

Speaker 3 (54:39):
That other guy like did we at the end, like
the guy with the leather jacket, Like was he in
there earlier? Like I'm like, did I miss him earlier?

Speaker 2 (54:47):
That he just suddenly oh right, the guy, yeah, yeah,
the guy who looks like he just walked right out
of like street fight through the arcade game away?

Speaker 3 (54:54):
Was this guy in here earlier and I just missed him?
Or did he not have the jacket on what's happening here?

Speaker 2 (55:00):
But yeah, it's fine. We just assume anyone who cackles
a lot, has bad hair, and wears leather clothing is
the villain. That's just what we assume in PM entertainment films,
and why not indeed, but no so interspersed with the bouts,
which again I think has staged pretty well. I think

(55:22):
what Art had to do, what he said in the
interview was that he couldn't prep so all the fights
that they did in like the stairwells and in the
bowling alley and in the casino, all of those were
done apparently on the hoof. He would go walk around
the casino with the cast and Joe and Rick and

(55:44):
Joe would be like, I want to film an action
scene here, and you've got ten minutes while we set
up the car to come up with to come up
with a bit of business. But because he knew that
the tournament was sort of a big section of the movie.
About a week or ten days before the movie. Art
was able to get his guys together because most of

(56:06):
the people who do the tournament fighting at his guys
outside of Mike Worth and Philip Linger and others, and
he was able to get his guys together. And what
they figured out was all the ones that are like
pairings we don't care about, or pairings that are only
going to be seen once, they were all figured out beforehand.
When they got on set, they simply set the cameras

(56:28):
up where they wanted them, and Art had all right YouTube.
First two come in fight, fight, fight, fight, fight right
out the ring. Next next guys come in fight, fight, fight, fight,
fight right out there. So all the pre prepared stuff
was filmed in kind of one day, and then they
came in the next day and did all the close

(56:50):
ups and cutaways that were needed. But he was able
to get the way they were able to film a
movie like this in such a short time with so
many fights. Was Art at least had the chance to
pre plan the tournament fights, even if he wasn't able
to pre plan the.

Speaker 3 (57:08):
Other stuff right, And plus he had the crowd to
think about too, so Yeah, you get the crowd shots
to see the kind of the wide shots of the fight,
and they weren't really necessary when you did the close
ups or not as many of them were necessary.

Speaker 2 (57:24):
Right. But again, I don't know your opinion, but I
think that I think this is certainly for an early one,
certainly for a pre ninety four, ninety five ninety six,
which is sort of the three big year or ninety
five ninety six ninety seven. But I go back and
forth as to which are the three that really pop.

(57:45):
But as a pre one of those, this I think
is some of Rick Peppens's best cinematography. I think it
especially when they're up on the balcony in Vegas with
the debt the field, you know, because they're obviously in
the foreground out on their balcony, he's able to put

(58:05):
the rest of Vegas in this sort of lush sunset
hue with you know, a lot of blur. When he's
filming on the casino floor, there's a lot of like
bouquet light blur behind everyone. He's really using the neon
and the flashing lights and everything to his advantage to
really give like strong depth of field and some nice

(58:28):
and natural color in this, I think he I think
Rick's cinematography in this is fantastic, and I think some
of their early nineties filming in CD parts of LA
really helped him figure out how to light and shoot
stuff quickly, so that once he gets on a film
like this where he's got all the vegas to play with.
I think they just do a terrific job. But as

(58:50):
someone who used to all wrestling for a living, talk
us through these bounce in these fights, what did you
think about them?

Speaker 5 (58:57):
So?

Speaker 3 (58:57):
I mean, yeah, they the commentators do a great show
up and that makes you feel like you are watching
an actual professional fight. You know, they they set the tone. Again,
if the guy was not a actual commentator, he did
a hell of a job. And yeah, they kind of
explain who who's in there, what's going on, and you
know that's basically what you need as a viewer. You're like, Okay,

(59:19):
why should I care about this person? Why should I
care about this? But what country is this person? You know,
they're not all wearing their flags on their pants, so
it's like, who is this person? Who's that person? You know?
And then we get the big.

Speaker 2 (59:30):
Country merchandise quite as well as American right.

Speaker 3 (59:34):
It's merchandise. Uh so, yeah, you got. And then what
about the shocking reveal that it's a female has replaced
one of the members on the Tie team, And that
was that.

Speaker 2 (59:46):
Was so controversial in the audience. Segue, I don't think
I can hit a female.

Speaker 3 (59:52):
Vince Mndacco, he didn't have an issue with that. He's like, yeah,
it's legal, you got to go for it.

Speaker 2 (59:58):
Old Duke, Oh yeah, I called him Dutch earlier. I
meant duke. It's the same kind of name.

Speaker 3 (01:00:05):
Yeah, I knew, Yeah, Duke. And an interesting thing with
I don't know if you know this, but Vince Murdaca
was actually the one who was auditioning for al Capoco
Heat and his buddy Michael Worth was just helping him
run through lines. And guess what happened?

Speaker 2 (01:00:23):
Oh no, oh yeah, the old Texas switcheroo. I did.
Did Vince Vadoco and Michael Worth go out into the
parking lot afterwards and have an illegal kickboxing match?

Speaker 3 (01:00:38):
That's what I want to I don't think so. But
maybe they're not allowed to talk about it. If it
happened in Vegas, stay there, they.

Speaker 2 (01:00:46):
Could stay in Vegas. Indeed, indeed, uh no, I agree
with you one hundred. Like I'm not a big you know,
I watch ice hockey, I watch baseball. That's pretty the
two sports I watch. And I prefer to watch them
in person that I do watch them on the TV.
But I watched them on the TV as well. I
don't watch fights on the TV unless they're in movies

(01:01:08):
like this. But I think probably the biggest praise I
could give this movie is that the way it's filmed,
the way it's commentated on, and the way it's the
fights are choreographed. Was I was in each of those matches,
like I was concentrating, I was following the tension, the

(01:01:31):
play by play, I was following, you know, who we
needed to win, who we didn't need to win, the
you know, any controversial moves, things like that. Like I
was invested in it. The only thing that took me
out of the movie was I was like, I can't
believe that all of these moves are legal kickboxing because

(01:01:52):
it seemed to be anything goes. I mean, it seemed
to be as much mma as it was kickup.

Speaker 3 (01:02:00):
They Yeah, they were blazing a trail there. Yeah, And
the commentators also gave it some gravitas they it made
it feel important, like this is you know, this is
the big one this and it should be. It's the
World Championship of kickboxing, right Pandem I think he said it.
Pandemonium is in the air. It's like that is freaking
right out of the pro wrestling play right.

Speaker 2 (01:02:22):
Oh yeah, cell Sell sells that you can't sell anymore.
Sell the fact that there's an excited audience.

Speaker 3 (01:02:28):
And yeah, the more the crowd was pumped up, and
like you said, the guy at the that negative Nancy
on IMDb was like there wasn't enough. That crowd looked full.
To me, Yeah, they were great. Anything I'd be like
this many people like kickboxing. I'm surprised, No, I listen.

Speaker 2 (01:02:46):
I thought it was very well staged, very well filmed,
very well forought. I thought that, I mean talk about
showcases for our camacha being able to work on a
with no build up, no whatever, like being able to
turn this around on a dime kind of thing. As
I said he had, he had a time to prepare
the bouts. But you think of all the other little

(01:03:06):
fights here and there. It's just in terms of fight movies,
I think it has some of the best fight sequences
in it. I mean, I you know, the other one
that obviously springs to mind to everyone is like the
Rocky franchise, because but they tend to have maybe one
or two fights a movie, and even then you only
know who you want to win. Because it's rocky to

(01:03:28):
have a movie like this where you have, you know,
multiple people for multiple countries, supposedly for multiple countries, all
fighting for something that, yeah, we're invested in because we
want Michael Worth to be happy, but we're not that invested,
you know what I mean. It's not like we give
two shits about Martin Cove and his dreams of whatever,
you know what I mean, Like, it's it's there, but
it's not. It's not that we're super invested in it.

(01:03:52):
I have to say that a lot of this movie
owes a big debt to Art Camacho. I mean, this
is a real calling card for him.

Speaker 3 (01:03:59):
I think, well, and I think that's a reason why
the man's still working today in the industry. I mean, right,
he proved himself here and continues to get opportunities to
do what he does best. And I think that's great.

Speaker 2 (01:04:14):
Yeah, I mean yeah, because you think of this and Firepower,
which he worked on I believe.

Speaker 3 (01:04:18):
In Firepower is probably like his most mediast role as
an actual character, not just like where he's playing fifteen
different people in the shedow right, And a lot of
the movies like that was like his That was his
big movie right there.

Speaker 2 (01:04:32):
Yeah yeah, and a ton of fights in that movie
as well.

Speaker 3 (01:04:35):
Yep, oh yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:04:51):
And I couldn't be happy to be saying the next words.
On this episode, we have an interview with none other
than star of Final Impact Street Crimes and this film
to be the best, it's none other than Michael Worth. Yes, indeed,
martial artist, actor, filmmaker, writer, incredible storyteller, Michael Worth. It

(01:05:16):
is such a pleasure to have him on the show.
He talks all about this film, he talks about getting
his start in the business, he talks about working with PM,
and he talks a little bit about a film that
he's been making for a long while now called Bring
Me the Head of Lance Hendrickson, which I must have
heard about years ago, and he gives us a little
update on that. So this is a fantastic interview and

(01:05:39):
I cannot wait to share it with you. So I
will go ahead right now. As always, we do have
to have some commercials. I do apologize for this. It
just helps pay for the hosting and all the other
work that we do on the show, and it certainly
doesn't pay very much. So if you want to fast
forward these following commercials, please do because I don't care anyway.

(01:06:02):
After that, we will have our conversation with Michael Worth,
which you will want to stick around for. Obviously, let's
just start with a little bit of sort of how
you got into the industry and a little bit of
your martial arts. So obviously I'm reading your bio, and
obviously you were very interested from an early age, especially

(01:06:22):
in film, filmmaking, acting things like that. You made short
films and things like that. But where did the martial
arts then enter that? So you were very interested in film,
you obviously wanted to make that your career, but then
you also studied, you know, martial arts under Chuck Norris's
trainer I believe, and some other So yeah, so how

(01:06:46):
did that end to your life? And when did that
end to your life? And how did you see that
mixing with the filmmaking interest you already had.

Speaker 6 (01:06:54):
They you know, they both came pretty early into my
life around the same time. I mean the idea of
I was falling in love with film, as I was
falling in love with both you know, science fiction and
monster films at the time, but also martial arts films.
I saw Ended the Dragon when I was ten years old,
thinking it was a monster movie because I had dragon
in the title, and then I was, you know, halfway

(01:07:15):
through it, I realized it wasn't, and I was like,
when's it going to enter this dragon? But I came
out of the movie so enthralled by what the human
body could do and the impact had had on the
audience that I went right away. At ten years old,
I started studying Aikto, and that you know, lasted for
maybe about six months. As a ten year old, you're
sort of like trying to wrap your head around, you know,

(01:07:36):
what's going on. But then I picked it back up
again about two years later when I was eleven twelve,
and I started studying Northern Shaolin, and from that point
I was just all in. And at that time, as
you said, I was buying super eight cameras with my allowance.
I ended up buying a sixteen millimeter camera when I
was fifteen years old, and I would go out and
I would write scripts and I would hire my friends

(01:07:58):
and my family and I'd go shoot movies and I
edited them on a little movieolo, which is just a
little device with a screen and you put you know,
you'd have to you'd have to. I mean, for those
who don't quite get this, you know, you'd go out
and you'd buy a roll of film. You'd put it
in your camera, you would shoot. It would last three minutes,
you'd pack it up, send it off to a place
to get developed. It would come back hopefully you did
a good job with the lighting, and and then you

(01:08:19):
take the actual film and cut it and snip it.

Speaker 7 (01:08:22):
And I started making these short films.

Speaker 6 (01:08:24):
That were all, you know, paradise parodies of Bruce Lee movies.

Speaker 7 (01:08:29):
I did Enter the Toad.

Speaker 6 (01:08:31):
We did Fists of the Toad, We did you know,
we did the Toad Warriors, which is a combination of
the Road Warrior and Toad. And we were working on
The Good, the Bad and the Toad when I finally
got a little too old and was moving off the Hollywood,
so I never got to finish it. But you know,
so yeah, I mean, my my interest in movies and
martial arts came pretty much at the same time.

Speaker 7 (01:08:52):
And when I went to LA.

Speaker 6 (01:08:56):
When I moved to Los Angeles and I moved there
right when I turned eighteen, I wasn't ever trying to
be an action but you know, an action like star,
an action actor I really liked, you know, I liked
just acting. I liked performing on stage and film whatever,
but martial arts I was still obsessed with, you know,
I was in LA. So immediately went to look for
Dan and Asanto to train with him, and started working

(01:09:19):
with Gene LaBelle and just Bill Wallace and all these
people that I had grew up, you know, idolizing as
a kid, and then that's kind it was kind of
the kicker that got me down there.

Speaker 2 (01:09:31):
And obviously you had done sort of a couple of
small parts Legend of Billy Jeene and Team Wolf two
and some other kind of you know, extra work or
featured work, but Final Impact, or certainly when it comes
to your IMDb credits, Final Impact was kind of your
first feature and your first time working with PM. How

(01:09:52):
did that come about and were you aware of I
know it was ninety two, so it was sort of
early days for PM Entertainment still, but are you aware
of them at that point or was this just a
costing call that you were excited about because I had
it had martial lots on acting and everything else.

Speaker 6 (01:10:09):
Well yeah, so at that It's funny because at that point,
right before I got that part, I'd always said that
one of the things at this point I'd been working
now for a few years, I said, I, if whatever
happens in this business, if I can just get a
part in a movie or a TV show, that if
you were to cut my part out, you would notice
something was missing from the story. That was my goal,

(01:10:32):
you know, that was my That was all I wanted
to do, is just have a part like I was
doing all these things on Alien Nation or you know,
police Academy stunts or whatever it was. Or I'd walk in,
you'd have a fight scene maybe or something else, and
if you cut those scenes out, you'd be like, no, you.

Speaker 7 (01:10:45):
Wouldn't really notice it. But that was my goal.

Speaker 6 (01:10:48):
So when and I've read for a number of leading
role films, I just had never booked anything. So when
when this movie, when Final Impact came along at that point,
it was called The Flying Dutchman, that was the screenplay
was written by Steven Smoke, and so I read it
and I didn't you know PM, when they wrote Final Impact,

(01:11:08):
or they wrote The Flying Dutchman, they knew they wanted Lorenzo,
but their original idea was to do Lorenzo and Don
the Dragon Wilson. So Don would have played my part
and with the Lorenzo. And then as they were going
through it, I think the idea of Don was so
he was a little older, and he was also stuck
in that sort of like professional kickboxing idea that they

(01:11:29):
thought having Lorenzo trained Don the Dragon didn't quite you know,
it just wasn't ringing for him, so they decided to
open it up.

Speaker 2 (01:11:36):
I mean, no offense to Lorenzo, but but Don had
several world titles, right.

Speaker 6 (01:11:41):
No, no exactly, and I'll pay I will talk about Lorenzo,
but he was actually Lorenzo proved to be a really
talented fighter. I know, I just I just but you're right,
I mean, Don the Dragon, you know, it's like this
guy's you know, it was the guy.

Speaker 7 (01:11:55):
So I so, so I went out there.

Speaker 6 (01:11:58):
This time PM was located out in the valley, out
near the Anheuser Busch factory that was out there, so
it was pretty I lived in this point.

Speaker 7 (01:12:06):
I lived in Marina del Rey.

Speaker 6 (01:12:07):
So it was a good little jaunt for me, and
I'd drive out there, went into the offices there, and
they had they were in a little cul de sac.

Speaker 7 (01:12:13):
It was a small building.

Speaker 6 (01:12:14):
I had like about maybe five or six offices in it.
You know, you walk in the they own the whole
building or they were renting the whole building. And when
I went in there, there was you know, Vince Murdaco
was in there. I think Gary Daniels was in there,
Ian Jacqueline, they were these guys were all coming in
to read for Danny's part. I didn't know, I knew,
I didn't know who Gary was. I didn't know. I

(01:12:36):
Actually the only people I knew at that time I
was aware it was Eric Lee and Lorenzo.

Speaker 2 (01:12:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:12:41):
So when I went into PM, you know, they did
a little reading when Lorenzo was in there, Joseph Murphy
was in there, Kathleen Kinmont, Katherine Laudner, Eric Lee. I
did a couple of one scene with Lorenzo and Kathleen
got up. It is a scene with her, and then
then they just said to me that you throw some
kicks and punches, And at.

Speaker 7 (01:12:57):
This point that's all I was doing.

Speaker 6 (01:12:59):
Was like, if I was out trying to get a
job as an actor, I was, you know, practicing training, sparring, whatever.
So I was really confident in that area, and I
just started doing jump spins and tornado kicks and just
you know, went through the whole roster and then and left.
And what's funny about it is is that normally in
the process of a of a of an audition, for

(01:13:19):
those who don't do it, you know, usually go in
once and you'll get called back something usually once twice
to retime. Like when I was doing Batman Forever, I
think I went back seven times.

Speaker 7 (01:13:28):
And for this though, I went in once and then
and then what.

Speaker 6 (01:13:32):
Happens is your manager or the producers call you and say, hey,
you book the role.

Speaker 7 (01:13:36):
Well what happened to me was two days later, it might.

Speaker 6 (01:13:37):
Have been on the weekend that this happened, I get
a phone call from Eric Lee and Eric's like, hey.

Speaker 7 (01:13:41):
Michael, He is like, we should start talking about fight scenes.

Speaker 6 (01:13:44):
And I'm thinking, oh, maybe I got a call back,
and I'm I'm getting brought back in and you know,
he wants to talk about something they want to do.

Speaker 7 (01:13:50):
I was that was in my head all of a sudden,
here's somebody yelling at Eric off the in the phone.
I think it was Charlotte or somebody going Eric, what
are you doing?

Speaker 6 (01:13:58):
Charlotte Driver who was one of the producers on the film,
and and he goes, oh, I got to call it
back and he hangs up. But what happened was he
had gotten they just decided to use me. He got
so excited he called me up and want to start
putting together the choreography. And he, you know, preceded my
manager finding out or anything.

Speaker 7 (01:14:15):
So that's how I found out. I got the part.

Speaker 2 (01:14:18):
Oh that's funny, that's fun People in the background they're like, no,
not yet, yep, tell him yet. Yeah, talk about to
be to be the best, coming about and and sort
of taking your I know, obviously Martin Cove is the
name in there and other things, but like you're the lead,
and to be the best, so talk about making that
step from you know, second on the cool sheet to

(01:14:40):
first on the cool sheet.

Speaker 6 (01:14:41):
I guess to be the best was was kind of funny.
I remember I had this one of these images. I
remember that I showed up to meet with Joseph. I
guess I was just going to go over there to
talk with him as their first day of shooting on
To Be the Best, And I had really long hair
at the time, and they were shooting the first day
of shooting. They were shooting the sequence where Philip Troy,

(01:15:03):
who plays my brother in it, he's doing a he
has a fight scene in the in the street and
they they end up going on this big motorcycle chase.

Speaker 7 (01:15:11):
And this is when they were beginnings.

Speaker 6 (01:15:13):
I remember they said, this whole chase leads up to
this car stunt that we're taking from another movie we
shot with Tracy Lord's, and so I was like.

Speaker 7 (01:15:20):
Oh, that's how it works.

Speaker 6 (01:15:21):
And again I was already learning how the whole thing
worked well. A part from the Tracy Lords movie I
think that they I'm pretty sure they took was the
I think the car flipping at the end when it
flies over the Yeah, I think that was the part
that they actually swiped more from her movie than anything.

Speaker 2 (01:15:39):
Yeah, it's the white car because halfway through the car
chase and To Be the Best, you suddenly see a
couple of cups you haven't seen yet get into a
white car and join the chase. I think that's just
so they can flip a white car at the end
of the movie that they'd filmed from another place.

Speaker 6 (01:15:54):
But so I showed up on the set and Joseph
saw me and he goes, he says, oh hey. He goes, hey, listen,
we're gonna need you to cut your hair, and I said,
you want me to cut my hair? I was kind
of going, well, I was thinking, you know, maybe this
this character I'm playing, Eric, he's a little more rebellious
like Danny was sort of the good boy from Ohio,
and this Eric's a little more like careless, and maybe
it's here.

Speaker 7 (01:16:15):
He goes, No, he goes, we gotta. He goes, we're gonna.

Speaker 6 (01:16:18):
Cut We're gonna use some of your unused fight scenes
from Final Impact and cut him into this. And I
was like, oh, and I was kind of he goes
and then Joseph and he does this kind of stuff. Man,
He'll go but you know you don't want to cut
your hair, That's fine, I can get somebody else. And
I was like, Okay, I'll cut my hair. Then I
think it was a day later or two days later. Joseph,

(01:16:40):
I guess, realized because one of the things was we
were gonna stick with this uniform and to be the
best where we each have our you know, our kind
of our team uniform. And he couldn't really cut in
other scenes because I was wearing the muy Thai shorts
and final Impacts. He calls me, he goes, all right,
you can leave your hair along. We're not gonna use
any of the scenes. It's like a few okay, thank god.

Speaker 2 (01:16:59):
So uh yea, because you all have those uh you know,
USA Atomics.

Speaker 6 (01:17:05):
I think, oh my god, those those pants. They were
everywhere Body Alive and Atomics I think were the two
brands that was this sporting brand that were like they
were catering to bodybuilders. Like I was in Venice Beach
at the time, and you know, I trained that everybody
had these things on. But the martial arts films at
that period, like in all these films with.

Speaker 7 (01:17:26):
Don was always wearing these clothes.

Speaker 6 (01:17:29):
And so yeah, we all had their their red, white
and blue outfits for the for the movies.

Speaker 2 (01:17:34):
So yeah, to be the best. Obviously, it's it's an
incredibly fight heavy film. I think when we spoke to Camacho,
I think there's like thirty seven fights in the movie.

Speaker 6 (01:17:45):
Yeah, it was, I can tell you. I remember very distinctly.
I'd get up in the morning. Usually Vince Murdaca would
come over the.

Speaker 7 (01:17:52):
Mikey, Mike, let's go. We're going to the steamer room.
We're gonna get all the school. He's always I don't know,
he just never slept.

Speaker 2 (01:17:58):
He come.

Speaker 6 (01:17:59):
He'd come over and we go to the steam room,
and then we'd come out. And then in the back
of the parking lot the Sands, because Joseph and Rick
had some deal with Mike Tony who did all. You know,
he was in a bunch of these movies, but he
he was connected with the Sands.

Speaker 7 (01:18:12):
You know, there was that whole underworld thing. I don't
know what was going on there.

Speaker 6 (01:18:14):
Is before they blew it up. Obviously in con Air
or whatever movie they blew it up. And but they
had the entire parking lot. I had a big canopy
set up, and you would go out there and we
would all be out there. All of these guys that
you see fighting in the movie would be under this
canopy just trying out fight stuff. I'd go out there

(01:18:35):
and I'd be you know, Stephen Lee and I would
start tracticing some stuff, and then Art would come by
and go, what do you guys got and I go, well,
how about this boom boom boom boom, and go oh
what about trying this and this and this and then
and then do this? And I go, okay, we'll get
that try and then we'll like work it in and
and then you know, and then I'd work with Stephen
for an hour and I go, okay, I gotta go
over to the other guy and I go work with
him for a little while, and I gotta go work
with this guy. And it was like and then Art

(01:18:56):
would come in and nitpick at it a little bit,
but it was like crazy. I mean, it was just
like that's all we were doing, was rehearsing fight scenes
and then shooting fight scenes, and you know, like the
Bowling Alley scene.

Speaker 7 (01:19:08):
I think, you know, I've got a lot of the
stuff I have.

Speaker 6 (01:19:10):
Behind the scenes footage on VHS from I got years
later that that was shot, which is kind of fun
to have because it kind of brings it back. But
the Bowling Alley I think was a quick little thing
that we rehearsed the day of.

Speaker 7 (01:19:21):
You know, it wasn't like anything we really practiced.

Speaker 2 (01:19:25):
I did have a question because you brought up sort
of the exploding the Sands Hotel. I heard that. Obviously
they were filming this as the Sands was looking to
shut down anywhere. Yeah, and that originally the movie was
meant to end with the explosion of the stands, but
they postponed it, and it meant that they couldn't include
it in the film. But is that just an urban legend?

(01:19:47):
It was the movie meant to end with like some
ridiculous explosion.

Speaker 6 (01:19:51):
Was there was a big there was something at the end.
I remember that was a little but that the whole
thing with the helicopter in the beginning of the movie
was gonna sort of lay into that, you know. Oh
but yeah, I mean, but of course they were still
it was still functioning as a hotel at that time.

Speaker 7 (01:20:07):
Okay, Yeah, the Sands was on its way out.

Speaker 6 (01:20:10):
It was already being scheduled for you know, demolition and
that whole thing.

Speaker 3 (01:20:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:20:17):
No, there's some Yeah, there's some weird review on IMDb
that claims to be from the production designer, and it's
it's a very weird review, but it told the story
that there was meant to be an explosion at the
end of it, and I was like, I don't know
whether to believe this guy. So it's just I was
just interested whether you had heard about that.

Speaker 6 (01:20:34):
Yeah, I mean, and it was funny because that whole
helicopter thing we shot the last I mean, that came
back about two weeks after we wrapped to shoot the
helicopter stuff on green screen. I mean, you know, we
shot we shot some of it there obviously, but you know, yeah, but.

Speaker 7 (01:20:49):
There was you know, there was definitely a there was
a lot.

Speaker 6 (01:20:52):
There was a bigger I mean, in fact, there's there's
even footage of this. There's a whole sequence when Brittany
gets kidnapped and she's taken up to the roof and
I had that big fight with the guy on the roof.
There was a whole sequence with Vince and I going
up the hotel like die Hard, almost fighting guys.

Speaker 7 (01:21:10):
All along the route on the way up.

Speaker 6 (01:21:11):
These guys are coming as we're fighting them in the hallway,
and they shot this whole sequence of us like just
going at guys and they ended up taking it out.

Speaker 2 (01:21:20):
There's still some in the in the stairwell, and there
is a sequence where you're fighting some guy in a
leather jacket that just shows up. He's not been in
the movie before and then in the last sequences, you're
running up to the roof to get to uh yeah,
the guy with the guy with the long hair you
mean no, Uh well, yeah, he sort of has long hair.

(01:21:41):
He sort of had similar length hair as you do
in the movie. But yeah, no, he doesn't have like
super long hair. Yeah, he's in like a black studded
leather jacket and he just shows up out of nowhere,
and you guys spa a little bit. He's sort of
like a henchman. I guess you've got to get past
in order to get up to Alex Court and Brittany
on the roof.

Speaker 7 (01:21:59):
Yeah, well, he he's actually in the very beginning.

Speaker 6 (01:22:01):
If you watch the scene where I'm fighting the guy
on the roof and then Tony's there and the helicopter
gets me, he's there. He's actually the guy, which he
knocks me out, So he does. They set him up
in the beginning, and then they bring him back again
at the end, so he does pop up.

Speaker 2 (01:22:14):
But well, there's one weird henchman with a ridiculously long mullet,
like one of the greatest mullets I've ever seen. On strike.

Speaker 7 (01:22:22):
I remember the guy you're talking about yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:22:24):
And he's running along with Alex Cord when Alex Cord
leaves to go upstairs. But by the time you get upstairs,
he's gone. So maybe he's in the cup footage. I
don't know, but guy, man.

Speaker 6 (01:22:35):
And that's that now, you know we're talking about I
mean Marty, I love Marty. Marty and I became great
friends and I love him to death. But getting a
chance to also work with Alex Cord was like, oh
my god, man, right, yeah, he was another one, just
a you know, classic class.

Speaker 2 (01:22:51):
He plays such a great villain and to be the
best as well.

Speaker 6 (01:22:54):
Well, yeah, he was the way he would eat up
the whole scene where he's just talking to me about
just fouling down.

Speaker 7 (01:23:00):
You know, I'm like, I was.

Speaker 6 (01:23:01):
I remember doing that scene with him, going, oh, this
guy's kind of knows how to eat the space up.

Speaker 3 (01:23:05):
I love it.

Speaker 2 (01:23:06):
Oh yeah, no, I mean, you know, from air Wolf.
You know, it's probably for my generation kind of the
thing we most know him from. But yeah, I mean
he's been he's been working since the sixties.

Speaker 6 (01:23:18):
So oh yeah, the Westerns and he'd done and so yeah,
but anyways, that was that was great.

Speaker 7 (01:23:23):
It was great to have Marty on there. You know,
it's like I had.

Speaker 6 (01:23:26):
It was the first time I got to work with
Martin and then, you know, I've done a couple of
movies since then, but you know, we had a we
had a lot of fun on that shoot.

Speaker 2 (01:23:33):
That all all the.

Speaker 6 (01:23:35):
Playing you know, father and son and and just the
relationship with him.

Speaker 2 (01:23:39):
And yeah, he's great in the movie because he plays
the I mean, not only does he play the alcoholic
very well, and it's difficult to get that right on
screen because people either do it or underdo it, and
he kind of I think he got it like perfectly.
Even looks great, like he looks a little sweaty, you
know what I mean, like like you meant to like
he looks a little shoveled, a little sweaty like he looks.

(01:24:02):
He looks great. He plays the part really well, and
he has that really good thing of being the you know,
the former wonder kind who is now you know, past
his days and never got to achieve what he wanted
to achieve and sort of all those like sins of
the father stuff right that he plays in the film,

(01:24:23):
and he does it. He does it really really well.
And it's one of those things where especially on his
his you know, the scene where he's been stabbed or
whatever and he's he's lying in the hallway there, you know,
to say a line like did you see me? Did
you see my kick? Could sound really corny coming from
anyone else, because it sounds like such a childish thing

(01:24:45):
for a grown Matt to say, because he just wants
to kind of be recognized for something. But the way
he does it is actually kind of emotionally acceptable, and
you kind of really buy into it. It's it's sort
of it's yeah, it's fantastic. He's really he is really
great in the movie. So I'm glad he was fun
to work with. And yeah, Philip Troy Linger who played

(01:25:08):
your brother in the movie, and I think a good
brother like you. You guys looked like brothers.

Speaker 6 (01:25:15):
Like it worked Yeah, yeah, Troy Troy and I Yeah,
we did. We it did work well together. In fact,
I've known I've still to this day talk with Troy.
I mean, we've known each other the whole time, and
he's I actually had I mean, I actually wrote. There
was a point a few years back where they were
trying to pull a sequel together and and the guy
because at this point. I. You know, of course, I've

(01:25:35):
been writing and directing a lot myself. So I came
in and I said, look, you know, I got an
idea if you want to do this, And the producers
came in and we sat.

Speaker 7 (01:25:42):
I got paid to write the script.

Speaker 6 (01:25:44):
It's just a movie never got the ground, but I
had written everybody back into it. I brought my brother
back in. I brought Vince Murdaco back in. They had
Stasha Mitchell was going to come on and play the
sort of kind of the heavy to me. But he's
not really a bad guy. He's just the guy I'm
competitive with. And but it was cool. It was a
great It was a great follow up idea for a

(01:26:04):
movie where which is sort of like the Rocky Balboa story,
where you have these ex kickboxers that everybody wants to
see how they would compete against MMA guys, And so
we all kind of come back like to prove a point,
and I get sucked suckered into it.

Speaker 7 (01:26:17):
And Sasha Mitchell is now the coach.

Speaker 6 (01:26:19):
Of this MMA team, and he's now married to Britney,
and and so we've kind of got a little bit
of a rivalry, and so it was it was a
cool story, you know, I just I wish we'd gotten
to do it. It was we were going to bring
in a bunch of the new MMA guys, and but yeah, yeah, yeah,
it was. I think the movie, you know, To Be
the Best had definitely spawned a lot of int you know,
there was a lot create I think of the ones

(01:26:41):
I've done there, from Final Impact to Be Street Crimes,
and that that's the one that everybody seems to want
to talk about, is to Be the Best.

Speaker 2 (01:26:48):
Yeah. Well, I think it comes out at the time
where there are a lot of tournament films. Yeah, and
it's interesting because you know, they did a blood Sport
many years later with Alan Mussey recently, right, I want
to say recently. I think in the last ten years
they did that. And there was even talk of Eric
Roberts coming back for a sequel to the Best of
the Best. His Best is the Best, yeah, is Martial

(01:27:10):
Arts franchise, So there was Yeah, there was some rumblings
about redoing that. They just did the Dark Kumite, which
I know is not a it's not an exact sequel,
but obviously it's it's referencing the Van Dam film and
so on. So yeah, I think there's definitely a market
for it. I see these I see the you know,
martial arts and straight to video action stuff is still

(01:27:31):
a thing, and it's still you know, Dolph Lungern's still
making movies. Scott Atkins is out there making incredible movies. Yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:27:38):
Yeah, when I was because I wrote a script Dolphin.
I did a script together, and out of that, and
then out of this documentary work I was doing on
some of these old kung fu stars, I actually put
a script together and pulled together a number of these
guys from the seventies and eighties from Hong Kong that
want to do a film. So we're trying to get
it off the ground right at this point, we're like

(01:27:59):
in development it so but it's with that same intention
of like pulling in these these nostalgia things that people
still have a connection to with the more modern feel
of it. But it's you know, there's always I think,
you know, we're just basically we're never we're never reinventing
the wheel. We're just taking that old wheel and just
sort of polishing it up every once in a while,
you know.

Speaker 2 (01:28:20):
Yeah, And this leads to a conversation that we had
all about the nature of low budget films back when
PM Entertainment we're making them, and low budget films today
and just the look and feel of them and how
it was different and so on. And it sort of
covers a lot of what I was saying in the
show about Rick Peppin's cinematography and some other stuff, and

(01:28:41):
just sort of the stunts and things they were able
to pull off. I didn't feel the need to include it,
but I just want to let you know that. That
then leads to the rest of this interview, just to
fill in the blacks. When you watch something like to
Be the Best Now and you watch it, you know
it it looks like a movie, do you know what

(01:29:03):
I mean? It looks like a movie. It looks like
a I mean kind of thing, And I think, yeah,
I mean, that's got a lot to do with Rick cinematography,
which I think certainly helps that. Like he's he's a
very It's interesting what he could have gone on and
done if he was interested in working on movies that
he didn't produce, you know, if he'd gone on as
just a cinematographer because he had a real talent for it.

(01:29:24):
And I think that helps. But I also just think
that money went a little further back then. I think, yeah,
I did.

Speaker 6 (01:29:30):
But I think there's also another point too, which is
the idea of the effort you have to go through
to make a film like a PM movie back then,
where you were actually burning film, you were actually shooting
the way you were shooting. There's a I mean, even
though you still have you know, restrictions and barriers and timelines,
et cetera. Today there is a little bit more of

(01:29:52):
an ease or just sort of a comfort level that
I think takes the edge off.

Speaker 7 (01:29:57):
And and you know, you back then you're like, I.

Speaker 6 (01:30:01):
Can only shoot this so many times because we can
only burn so much film, you know, so you got
you know, you take a little more thought into what
you're doing and and with you know, when you're shooting,
and in digital it's it's a little easier just to
and in some ways that's great, especially if you're quick
to sort of know what you want and know what
you're putting together, then it can be fine because you

(01:30:22):
get it and you get it quick. But there's also
I think a little bit of a certain it's not
laziness maybe, but it's there's a certain amount of God,
keep going to go back to lazy. But it's just
the idea of when you're shooting film, of shooting the
digital stuff that you're you just have so many avenues
of thinking of how you can fix it later that
rather than being so specific when you were doing it.

(01:30:44):
And I can tell you that even though Rick wasn't
what I would necessarily sit here and call an aw
tour like, he was not like a you know with
this like, I learned a lot about cinematography through him.
It's my my interest in in the visual became again
from watching how he he was the first time I
have to look through a thirty five millimeter camera was
when he said, hey, take a leally this Mike, you know,
and so you know, but but but even though he

(01:31:07):
might not be that kind of you know, he's not
a Roger Deakins or something, his his approach of aesthetics
was very strong, Like he just kind of knew this
is gonna look like you said, big, it's gonna look
it's gonna look powerful, and he would get it. And
I think that that is what brings that out. And
plus the other thing about the stories back then, they

(01:31:28):
were still you know as hokey as they can be sometimes,
as as we can look at the fight choreography from
those movies and see it being very specific to that era,
as we can see certain elements from this vantage point
we have of the future, there was still an element
of hardcore, not just like how cool are people going
to think this is going to be? And writing from

(01:31:49):
that perspective, but rather going, what's this story that I
think is interesting? You know, and and and they were
trying to do those stories like final impact, you know,
with Steve when Steven smoke, when Joseph called me when
they took the film to can and I was in
Marina del Rey. I don't know what time he called
me at the time it was there, but he goes
Mike was just threeing the film here. Everybody came out

(01:32:11):
of the theater crying.

Speaker 2 (01:32:13):
You know.

Speaker 6 (01:32:13):
It was like because of the emotional impact of Lorenzo
dying and getting passed, you know, the being passed on
to me that this this sort of new generation or
whatever it was, you know, just whatever, those feelings. But
it was a very you know, authentic, organic feeling to
that movie making process. So I know what you're talking
about around a lot of these newer films where there
is a bit of a bit of you know, like

(01:32:36):
you reliant on things that I think take away from
some of the effort that used to win into those films.
I don't know if any of that made sense, but
it's something I do think about a lot when I'm
making films.

Speaker 2 (01:32:46):
So no, it does. It does make sense. It's something
that we've been trying to hone down on the podcast
is kind of one. Are the elements that make a
PM entertainment film. And the reason why we talk about
it that way is because while Rick might not be
an alto, Joseph's not an auto and so on and
so forth, a PM film is a PM film. It's
not the same as a Roger Corman movie. It's not

(01:33:07):
the same as a full Moon film. And Roger Corman
has his own look, and full Moon have their own look,
and so on and so forth, and Canon have their
own look. But when you watch a PM film, it's
a it's a PM film. It doesn't necessarily matter who's
writing it or directing it or whatever. That there was
a crew there that the way Joseph and Rick worked

(01:33:28):
with their crews somehow created a consistency it created a
you know, an authorship for what you know, for one
of a better word, that that meant that when you
put a PM film in, you knew what you were getting.
And I think that you're right to talk about story
as well. I think that as as basic as some
people might look at some of these stories in terms

(01:33:52):
of oh, it's you know, it's a guy who revenges
himself against this other guy, or it's a cop who
has to take down a drug load or what you know.
The elevator pitches are often very simple, but I think
that the way they wrote them, or the the crew
of writers wrote them, and then how they shot them,
I think that they did care about the characters. They

(01:34:14):
did care about the outcome. They did care about the
three act structure. And maybe it's not in a traditional
way or a Hollywood way, but you know, because sometimes
the PM can find it can write their way out
of a structural problem in an interesting way, you know
what I mean. They kind of pull around out of

(01:34:34):
a hat sometimes from a writing perspective. But even when
they do that, that then becomes part of what a
PM entertainment film is. You have to have that thing
where that comes out of left field a little bit
where you kind of go, huh, I've not seen that
in another movie, but all right, here we go. We're
going with it. And I think that that's that's why
they still hold up, and that's why they're still loved today.

(01:34:57):
And I think that trying to look at the most
low budget action film that I've seen very recently versus
a low budget action movie from PM, and you you
can tell the difference even when they've spent a lot
of time, and it's clear that well.

Speaker 7 (01:35:11):
But that's my point too, though.

Speaker 6 (01:35:13):
What you're saying is that cinematography today is almost a
dime a dozen, and in just in the sense of
an aesthetic, like there are people you can go on
YouTube that go out and buy you know, like I
own a series of anamorphic lenses. I've got numbers of
different cameras, and people go out and have these equipment.
They spend tens of thousands and they're just like hobby
shooters and they can go out and capture some amazing stuff.

Speaker 7 (01:35:35):
But the point is, how do you fuse that look,
that feel.

Speaker 6 (01:35:40):
That tone, and that story and those that act those
performances all together and make them make them work? Because
you start, you can have a visually stunning, you know, movie,
but it's it could be flat just because all the
other pieces are not supporting it. So the idea of
I think what the difference is between the sort of
modern low budget and the low budget of that time.

(01:36:03):
And as you said, they were definitely made for less money,
I mean final impact. I mean, I don't think that
movie was could have been much. They didn't spend much
more than one hundred and fifty two hundred thousand on that.

Speaker 2 (01:36:15):
That's all they were. That's all their budgets were until yeah,
the mid nineties, late late nineties they got up to
about a million one million, two, but in general their
early budgets, according to Joseph, were between three hundred and
fifty thousand, depending on what the requirements were. Well, listen, Michael,
this has been fantastic. I have two more questions. One

(01:36:36):
from my guest of this week's show, Chris Kovinski. He
asked if why, if any reason, did you not do
more films with PM after the first season of Archipolco.
He wrapped basically around your like fists of iron time.

Speaker 6 (01:36:51):
Yeah, well that's interesting because I think I think I
do want to speak too much. I think Fits of
Iron may have had something to do with it, you know,
because Richard Munchkin had split off at that point and
done his own thing and went off to work with
Aaron Schiffman and did Twenty first Century, and they had
a couple of movies they were putting together. And I
think because after Acapolcle the first season of Pokele, when

(01:37:12):
I came back, you know, i'd never worked with Richard,
and even though there was still a couple of movies
that PM was doing that they had been talking about
and were coming up, and I thought, we're going to
be potential films for me to do with them. Richard
came to me and even though I was a little
hesitant to do Fist Environ at first because it was
another fighting in a ring thing, I was like, God,
am I going to do another one like this? I mean,
it's like but it was like there was something about

(01:37:33):
the story that I liked and the character, and I
was kind of getting sort of suckered into that, suckered
into it because I really had a great time doing
that movie. But I think once I did that for them,
there may have been a little bit of this thing
I wasn't recognizing in the competition going on that may
have had something to do with it, which was you know,
it was fine. I had all these other whether it
was working with Isaac Florentine or going back to do

(01:37:55):
Acapocle Heat or whatever films I was doing later. I
would have loved to have gone back and done it
another movie or two at PM, but I was.

Speaker 7 (01:38:01):
I was there, you know, when they I kept going.

Speaker 6 (01:38:05):
By the office all the time, go see Gary, they
throw parties, they go hang out, and so I was
kind of there all the way to the end. When
they were doing the Van Dam film, the one with
al Avilson John Yeah, which heat right, Yeah, Yeah, it
was called yeah right Desert Infront with Marita and Van Dam.

Speaker 2 (01:38:23):
And you know, I love that movie. I think that's
one of Van Dam's best. Everyone loves at it, but
I think it's one of Vandam's best. I really enjoy it.
I mean, I know it takes it I remember Jimbo,
but still.

Speaker 6 (01:38:36):
Yeah, absolutely, But yeah, so I think I think it's
to answer his question, I can't. I mean, you know,
sometimes we just all I wasn't like pursuing it per se,
and I you know, they had plenty of people, whether
it was Gary or whoever that they were, and I
to be honest with you also, at that time, I
was trying to do more drama and do more you know,
I wanted to keep doing action. But it was like
I was just you know, I did have a couple

(01:38:58):
other kickboxing films that were thrown not from PM but
from other people that were very much along the lines
of Fist of Iron, and I turned away Isaac Florentine
when he came in with us Cels. It was a
very different thing, and I really wanted to work with
Andy Chang and so you know, it's you know that
that wasn't easy, but I'm glad I did because it.

Speaker 7 (01:39:15):
Was such an interesting experience.

Speaker 2 (01:39:16):
Well, so Florentine is such a I mean, his work
with Scott is amazing, but Florentine's just a fantastic director
and a martial artist himself.

Speaker 6 (01:39:24):
Right, Oh yeah, yeah, oh god, he's That was what's
great about Isaac is that he's he is a martial artist,
you know, I mean like his So when we'd come
in and do the technique like I was because in
this he wanted me to be a karate guy.

Speaker 7 (01:39:36):
So he was like he wanted the makawari board in there,
and it was he was very much like you have
to throw up the distion you would have thrown this way.
He was very interesting, you know.

Speaker 6 (01:39:43):
He was like he would come in. Andy's a you know,
kung fu guy. But so Isaac when he came to
the karate would come in and really want to show
me exactly how to you know, do it a specific
way that he wanted to see on films. So, yeah,
I mean working with Isaac, he's that's why he's such
a great action director too. In fact, when he and
him and the right after he finished US Seals two,
the next movie he went to do with Special Forces

(01:40:05):
with Marshall TG and that was the one that Scott
did his first part in, was right the one right afterwards.

Speaker 2 (01:40:11):
Yeah, but no, his the two Ninja films that he
does with Isaac. Yeah, just I mean Ninja two is
just incredible, such a fantastic movie. No, I'm looking at it,
and I don't think I'd ever looked at this, but
I'm looking at the cost and crew of Fists of
Iron and it may as well have been a PM film.
I mean, I know it wasn't made for PM. But
my goodness, you've got half the actors have been in

(01:40:33):
PM film. Yeah.

Speaker 7 (01:40:34):
No, no, it was definitely a whole I mean, Richard.

Speaker 2 (01:40:38):
Was just like, I'm taking everyone from PM from.

Speaker 7 (01:40:41):
Yeah, I mean it, you know it was. We shot
the whole thing in Malibu. We were in you know,
when we.

Speaker 6 (01:40:45):
Were shooting at Aaron Schiffman's house in In fact, we were
while I was shooting the scene. There's a scene there
where I remember shooting with the girl that plays my
ex wife and I'm with my daughter and while we're
shooting at Nick Nolty just walks across the street in
his bathrobe and he's like watching us, He's talking to Aaron.
It was like, oh man, this is pretty cool having
Nick Nolty watched his seat. But yeah, yeah, no, it

(01:41:07):
was definitely the format of it, to the schedule.

Speaker 7 (01:41:09):
Everything was very much PM Entertainment one hundred percent.

Speaker 2 (01:41:13):
And then the last question I have for you, man,
was about a movie that I have I don't know,
I've heard about for years. Well, I mean it was
made in twenty ten and I didn't know until I
sat down to talk to you today that you had
actually directed it. But I'm a big fan of everyone
who's in it, and I didn't know if it had
ever come out, and that was bring me the head

(01:41:34):
of Lonce Henrickson. I have heard about this movie for
years and they didn't even know if it came out.

Speaker 6 (01:41:39):
Don't know it is no, it has It's actually the
Boyhood of comedy, that movie Boyhood. We have been we've
actually continued to shoot it. It's done. It's done now
with you because it's really about a story. It's it
plays into the aging of a character. And that's why
I thought it was so. I call it that because
I thought it was so interesting that Link later did
a film that took a production of ten years.

Speaker 2 (01:42:01):
You know.

Speaker 7 (01:42:02):
But it's done.

Speaker 6 (01:42:04):
We're just working on trying to decide how we want
to do it because at one point I was gonna
do it as an episodic thing, and we still may
because it could play almost as like a four or
five part thing.

Speaker 7 (01:42:15):
It was.

Speaker 6 (01:42:17):
It's great. I mean, it's a fun movie. It went,
it's gone through a real process. There's a real evolution
to it. But it's all with a lot of you
know name actors that came in and none of them
knew what was being done until it was already done.
Like I kept everybody in the dark, very curb your
enthusiasm without the rehearsal.

Speaker 7 (01:42:33):
You know, it was you know, Adrian Barbo and you know,
you know got Jam.

Speaker 6 (01:42:38):
I mean, the thing is about when you shoot a
movie that long, too, that's kind of sad, is that
people start passing away. I mean we've lost about six
or seven of the main characters are at Lafleura passed away,
John Saxon passed away, Karen Kim passed away, you know,
a Tim Witherspoon passed away. So it's like we've had
a number of people. But you know, Tim Thomerson's in it,
Martin Cove's and at Lances in it. Of course, you

(01:43:01):
know the list of Adrian Barbo. I mean it goes
on and on and on, but it's.

Speaker 2 (01:43:05):
Just a huge Tom Tim Thomas. I mean a huge
Lon Henrickson fan, but I'm a huge Tim Thomason fan.
And I think that's where I first came across it.
Well enough was through Tim rather than Lunce, but I'm
a huge fan of both them. And then yeah, like
you say, and then I started going down the cost
list and it's yeah, Adrian Bobo and it's just incredible.

Speaker 6 (01:43:25):
You'll you'll hear it. It'll be out within the next
six to eight months. I mean, we're just we're gonna
probably do festival circuits with it.

Speaker 7 (01:43:31):
But it's it's a lot of fun. It's been.

Speaker 6 (01:43:34):
It's crazy to go back and work on something for
so long and go back go looking at something you
shot seven years ago.

Speaker 7 (01:43:39):
Oh my god, what the hell?

Speaker 6 (01:43:40):
You know, It's like, it's been kind of an interesting
It sort of makes me think about some directors that
shoot movies and then they get a chance ten years
later to come back and re edit them, because I'll
sometimes go back to the seeing and go, why do
I do it this way?

Speaker 7 (01:43:51):
Let me change this up? But yeah, it's fun.

Speaker 6 (01:43:54):
I've actually got three movies that we've done over the
last number of years that are all coming out over
the next year or so, you know, the that I've
directed and all again, these are all these very pm
entertainment as far as things that I've learned and how
to get them shot. I've got a film coming out
called The Butterfly Guard that was a martial arts film
we shot in Thailand.

Speaker 7 (01:44:14):
We shot here in l A and and it's a.

Speaker 6 (01:44:17):
Kind of a you know, a very I want to say,
it's almost surrealistic martial arts film. It was very experimental.
We've got another one called The Sugar Moon Tribe, which
is a very comedic, fun you know, all ensemble's story.
All of them are really interesting and good and different,
but they were all they were all from that standpoint

(01:44:39):
of things that I learned from working with PM and
how they got things done, how to get things done quick,
how to set them up, do them properly, And so
I'm excited to get them all out. It's it's been tough,
you know, we're you know, we've worked. I mean, believe me,
all of them were done for much less. Even PM
was doing it for right, So it's it's but now
with the way modern technology is caught, post production is

(01:45:00):
so much easier than it used to be. So it's
a it's not a place where things are finally flowing.
But yep, keep your eyes field, well you'll see it.

Speaker 2 (01:45:09):
Well that's exciting stuff, man, And thank you so much
for giving me so much time tonight. This has been
terrific and tremendous and I can't thank you enough.

Speaker 7 (01:45:18):
You got it all right, take it easy, Thanks, don
take care bud.

Speaker 2 (01:45:37):
So, yeah, we've got the love story and the fix
it in kind of storyline that I think again, they
do a very good job in this of you know,
you get two or three fights that you kind of
get past the next round, and then it goes back
into the casino and you get a little bit more
of this Sheryl and Jack Rogers story. And I really

(01:46:00):
liked that because I thought it gave it gave a
very kind of realistic feel to the proceedings, which is, yeah,
you would have a few bouts and then everyone would
go grab dinner and drink and gamble and whatever, and
then you come back the next day and there'd be
a few more bouts. It kind of felt very authentic
that way. But the first time we sort of meet Cheryl,
it's not really a love scene. They have kind of

(01:46:21):
a post love scene, I guess, where she seems to
be very fixated on the fact that he is melancholy
post coitus, that Michael Worth is all sad after after
making love with Shell, another indication that these two should
just not be together. But although the French do have

(01:46:42):
they have the French have a word for the sadness
one feels after after sex, which is the petty more,
which means the small death. That's that's just that's just
another weird little thing that I picked up through my life.
But he is experiencing when petty moore, as the French

(01:47:04):
would say, and she is walking around with an apple
because apparently Joseph was married. The director wanted a little
biblical symbolism. What what did you think about the Cheryl?
I love it's such a Monty Pizon thing as well,
to have like an eve subset, an Adam and Eve

(01:47:24):
substitute and call her Cheryl. Did you notice the biblical reference?

Speaker 3 (01:47:30):
You know, I did not? You just point You just
blew my mind with that. He even asked, didn't notice that?
But yeah, she like lives in the pool house like
she's Carlton and Will and she just hangs out in
the poolhouse and that's where where Eric goes and Caesar
and you know, but he's like, Hey, I'm going to
be the world champ. You're gonna come to Vegas with me?

(01:47:52):
And yeah, then they're off. That's how she just kind
of tags along because she wants to be there for
her man.

Speaker 2 (01:48:00):
She hates fighting, but she's going to go to Las
Vegas to watch her future husband get beats eventually. Yeah,
she has no idea, So we get that. Then obviously
we get the Jack Rogers character. Boy.

Speaker 3 (01:48:17):
Oh yeah, we got We can't not talk about the
bowling alley.

Speaker 2 (01:48:21):
Oh no, I was going to bring that up as well,
but I was gonna let's talk bowling Allie first then
and then we'll go on to this.

Speaker 3 (01:48:26):
Yeah, they get to they get to Vegas and she's like, oh,
you didn't get us the presidential suite, and you know
it's a little she's so neat. I thought you didn't
need all that rich stuff. Oh well, then what are
we going to do? How about we go bowling? Yeah,
so I think we'll go up bowling. But guess who
else goes bowling? That damn tie team shows up as well,

(01:48:50):
including Hong Do's unnamed sister, who becomes the object of
affection for one Sam Colhayne.

Speaker 2 (01:49:02):
She's literally referenced as Sam's tye crush.

Speaker 8 (01:49:07):
Yes, oh I know I picked that up first viewing
on when I checked the iteme what who was like,
I'm like, what's her name, Sam's ty crush?

Speaker 3 (01:49:19):
Yeah? That makes you couldn't just make up a name
for her. I mean, she's obviously Doe something long Dough
and his sister cher No, we got a Sheryl Mary Dough.
I don't know, but yeah, so we get a little
bit of that. But we also get the probably the
greatest bowling alley brawl in the history of cinema. And

(01:49:44):
I say that knowing that I can't name any other
bowling alley brawls off the top of my head. But
that's all right. If you're the only one, you're the
best one.

Speaker 2 (01:49:53):
Well to me, there were three great bowling alley sequences
in the world of cinema. One is, of course, Grease Too,
hands down, has to be Grease to Number one with
the bullet is Grease too. Number two is any sequence
in The Big Lebowski where they're in the bowling at
which I understand is like two thirds of the film.

(01:50:16):
And then the third one would be this this hot
headed go down between the Carl Haynes and the tie
fighters and.

Speaker 3 (01:50:28):
Not Star Wars, tie fighters people.

Speaker 2 (01:50:31):
No Thailand fighters from Thailand, and not fighters wearing ties either.
They are they are they are sounds neck adornments. But
what a wonderful fight we get no know that. But
the fight comes after we've had a bowling montage, because

(01:50:52):
this movie has a series of montages in it, and
the bowling montage was probably my favorite.

Speaker 3 (01:50:57):
It's a real nice one, you know, just just unwinding,
just doing their thing. And you know, because they got
this tournament ahead, you know, let's kick back because after
this we got we gotta be locked in. We can't
be playing around bowling. We got to be in the zone.
So they get this one night out of fun. And

(01:51:18):
but of course, in typical col Hayne fashion, it goes awry.

Speaker 2 (01:51:23):
Yes, and which causes his wedding to be disrupted right by.
And I don't really understand it because they sort of say, well,
if it becomes public that this fight happened, you'll both
be disqualified. But then the Tie team bring a news

(01:51:44):
reporter to his wedding right and in front of the
news reporter, he starts another fight because this guy just
cannot Michael Worth. Just the col Haynes have to kick
ass in every single situation that they possibly give. They
go to the supermarket and they're out of the oat
milk that they drink whatever it is they drink. If

(01:52:08):
they're out of the almond butter, whatever they buy. I
don't know why I'm picking on nuts all of a sudden,
but anyway, if they're out of whatever food they normally buy,
they will they will fist fight. You know, a supermarket
employee without a problem. These guys will fight everybody.

Speaker 3 (01:52:25):
Yeah, yeah, so yeah, and we should point it that
it seemed like Eric dislocated Hong Do's shoulder. Oh fully,
yes in that bowling alley brawl. So that's why he's like, oh,
this guy wants to ruin my time here in Vegas.
And of course Eric, I think also just it's like, hey,

(01:52:46):
let's get married, because he knows Cheryl's going to chew
his ass out for getting in this. I mean she does,
but he's like, oh, let me distract her. Let's get married.
Oh okay, we can.

Speaker 2 (01:52:57):
Get married as long as you never fight again. And
then he lets a fight break out at the wedding.

Speaker 3 (01:53:03):
And you know, I do like that. Eric was so
concerned that Cheryl's father hates him, so I'm sure finding
out that his daughter just eloped with him, that would
really that would be the move to now Dad's just
going to love you. That he didn't even get to
see give his daughter away or be there for her
big day.

Speaker 2 (01:53:23):
What about the fact that the officient at the wedding
chapel is packing heat.

Speaker 3 (01:53:31):
And pulls out his little sick shooter to fire and
got a wild West roots over there in Las Vegas.

Speaker 2 (01:53:39):
Yeah, I lived in Vegas for eighteen months when I
first moved to the country.

Speaker 3 (01:53:44):
That's my uh, that's your introduction to America.

Speaker 2 (01:53:48):
My introduction to America was Vegas. I went from I
went from London, England to Las Vegas, and wow, that
was that was a baptism by water, by fire, by heat,
by everything. It was. It was fantastic. I instantly fell
in love with the play.

Speaker 3 (01:54:08):
Yeah, I mean yeah, that's I mean Vegas. Yeah, it's
not your typical American town. So you you really you went,
you went right in head first.

Speaker 2 (01:54:19):
I was I was from the belly of the beast,
is what happened. But yeah, so it's we we get
this weird run of luck, bad luck, I don't know
what you call it, bawling at a wonderful fight wedding,
wedding just you know, disrupted by tie people with newsperson
and camera and everything. And then she goes, oh the

(01:54:42):
wedding's off, goes running off into the casino in her
white dress, only to be picked up by her daddy's
friend Jack Rogers Alex Cord giving the sleaziest of all performances.

Speaker 3 (01:54:57):
Yeah, I was wondering where his eye patch was. I
guess that was just a another thing. But yeah, he is.
He is a real slime ball. But that's another thing
where it's like, why would Cheryl like, Okay, I understand
at that moment she'd be like, oh, thank you, you
know I'm upset, But it's like, why are you Like
you can't see that this guy is. Oh, he's the

(01:55:19):
sweetest man, like, but why is he doing all this
for you? Like, there's got like why doesn't that go
through her head? Maybe it's just because she's been pampered
and spoiled her whole life, I suppose, but I would question,
I mean, being so nice to me for like, unless
you know, the obvious thing you would think is like, Okay,
this guy wants to sleep with me. He's a dirty

(01:55:40):
old man.

Speaker 2 (01:55:41):
And even when we've seen other like rich female Los
Angeles set TV and or movies. So I don't know.
Beverly Hill's nine or to one over on a comas. Uh,
these kind of things that are set in you know,
Beverly Hills or Hollywood or that area with wealthy young

(01:56:02):
women who have their dads wrap around their finger kind
of thing. They all I've like, I can't even I
can think of a movie clip and I can't think
what movie it is, but where the girl in question
literally says something along the lines of, Oh, I have
all my dad's friends wrapped around my finger because I
know that they all want to sleep with me. Basically

(01:56:23):
because most of the time these women are fully in
most pop culture where these kind of characters sort of
wealthy la girls of a certain age kind of show
up in order to counteract the fact that their characters
might come across as bimbos, writers often put in there

(01:56:44):
that they are self aware, that they are aware of
what's going on, and that they're actually playing the sequence
to their advantage, not being taken advantage off right. It's
a way to counteract the fact that their daddy's girls
and you know, slutty or whatever whatever negative terminology that
one might use about these stereotypical kind of characters in

(01:57:06):
a TV or film, and instead, in this one, PM
has decided let's just make her really dumb, because not
only does she want a long, unfight ladened relationship where
a guy who seemingly only wants to fight, he's miserable
after they have sex. He doesn't like that, she doesn't

(01:57:28):
like the fact that he doesn't get the presidential suite
at the hotel with all the trimmings in it, and
then you know, can't understand why he still wants to fight,
et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. They seem very disconnected.
Neither of them seem to like each other particularly well,
which allows alex Cord to swoop in. But alex Cord

(01:57:48):
has had this plan all along because apparently he is
there specifically to bet against his own country. And again,
after watching two or three of the bouts, like why
did he make the decision? Then why did he just
show up in Vegas? Go oh no, I'm betting against
the Americans. The Americans have to take a dive because
I don't know if any if any nation in a

(01:58:11):
fight competition are going to be the ones that are
going to be too proud to take a dive. I
feel like it's the Americans, and I mean that is
a compliment as well as a that's a caustic extqussion.

Speaker 3 (01:58:24):
And the other thing with Cheryl is like why didn't
she just go home? Like why was she like chained down? Like, no,
I came here to have the Vegas. Just go home.
You could come back to Vegas anytime you want. It's
not like, oh, this is my one and only chance to.

Speaker 2 (01:58:39):
Be three hours away on the highway. Like it's right,
it's like.

Speaker 3 (01:58:42):
A straight shot, you know, right, Yeah, so that's but yeah,
Alex cord Or Jack Rogers, mister Rogers, he's no mister Rogers.
He is evil. But yeah, he has this whole thing.
He's gonna bet on the tie team and he we've
you find out he does have someone someone's already yes,

(01:59:04):
agreed to take a dive, but he needs to double
up on his insurance policy, which.

Speaker 2 (01:59:11):
I think is the real reason why he didn't get
the job. In why Vince Meduco was was passed over
was they were like, I don't I don't know. I
think this guy takes dives. I don't want him in
our TV.

Speaker 3 (01:59:24):
Show takes dives and he's flesh Gordon, so we don't
want him. Uh, he is flesh gordonst he I knew
he was to the Cosmic Cheerleaders. I believe, Yes, yeah
he is, and that that was kind of I remember
him telling a story. It was kind of the similar thing.

(01:59:46):
He his girlfriend was like a playmate or centerfold of
some description, and he went to the audition with her
and they looked at the guy on the posters and
they looked at him and they're like, oh, do you
want to be Fletch Gordon.

Speaker 2 (02:00:01):
So see, I.

Speaker 3 (02:00:02):
Guess it all works out. Sometimes you get the roles
where you're at the right place, right time.

Speaker 2 (02:00:08):
But boy did he did. He have a good run
of movies. He was for PM Entertainment. He was in
Ring of Fire, Ring of Fire, two, Fist of Honor,
to be the Best, Private Wars, Magic Kid Too, l
a War was and then with some of the PM
Madertainment all Stars as well as other straight to video
all stars. He was in Back in Action with Rowdy
Roddy Piper and Billy Blanks. He was in Night Hunter

(02:00:30):
with Don the Dragon Wilson, and he was in Sworn
to Justice for Cynthia Rothrow. Quite a run in the
nineties there of top draw action in martial art films.

Speaker 3 (02:00:42):
He got to be a vampire in the Night Hunter.

Speaker 2 (02:00:44):
So I actually like Night Hunter get some low marks everywhere,
But I think it's one of Don's more fun movies. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:00:52):
I mean that's the thing about a lot of these.
It's like, again, how many blood fisks can you have?
Apparently it's I think eight, but.

Speaker 2 (02:01:01):
Oh no, there is a blood Fist nine, but oh no,
there's a blood Fist two thousand, yeah or something. But
it's not got done in it, right.

Speaker 3 (02:01:10):
So it's like, you know, I don't mind when they
get a little gimmicky with It's like, okay, you have
a bazillion movies. Yeah, you're gonna have to be a
vampire killer at some point, or it's you know, change
it up. How many times could you be a kickboxer
who accidentally killed your opponent in the ring and now
you're depressed? And yeah, come on.

Speaker 2 (02:01:31):
It was Blood Fist twenty to fifty and it starred
Matt Mullins and it was a Serio h Santiago movie,
of course it was.

Speaker 3 (02:01:41):
Of course it was from two thousand and five, good
old Cirio. So yeah, we get Jenny Murdaco. He's he's
taken the die, but he actually doesn't. He seems to
have a gambling problem as well. That's a little side stories. Again,
they jam a lot into the movie. Yeah you've got
a gambling problem.

Speaker 2 (02:02:02):
Oh.

Speaker 3 (02:02:03):
Cove is before he had a biting problem, had a
drinking problem. And he also loved The Raiders, extremely loved
the And he has that other cool leather jacket that
he wears and he looks I mean, he plays a
drunk real well, good for you, Martin Cove. I don't
know if that was method acting. I don't know what
was going on, but he he looks like he's drunk.

Speaker 2 (02:02:26):
Yeah, I feel like the most realistic thing in this
movie is Martin Cove like just flat out looks drunk.

Speaker 3 (02:02:34):
Like he tries to put his elbow up on the
thing and it like slips a little. That's like per Like,
that's just a classic drunk drunk move. Good job. He
had that good kick at the end. Did you see it?
Did you guys? Did everybody see that kick at the end?
You see the kick?

Speaker 2 (02:02:48):
Hey, hey boy? Did you see the kick?

Speaker 3 (02:02:51):
Like when he gets jumping ahead but he gets stabbed
and they almost make it like he's like dying, like
it's Luke talking. It removing Darth Vader's helmet and this
is the end of the sky. It's like he just
got stabbed in the shoulder, dude, you'll be okay.

Speaker 2 (02:03:08):
Yeah, I mean I think he was. I think they
tried to play it that he got stabbed a little
more in the chest region, which it might have like him. Yes,
you can believe, right, yeah, that it might have hit
his heart or you know, a lung or something. I
don't really know anatomy very well, but you know, somewhere
around that. I assume. I assume my lungs are in

(02:03:32):
there somewhere, and my heart is in there somewhere. So
Vince Madaco actually, along with Don the Dragon, Wilson, Cintia Rothrock,
and many others, got to also do a voice in
Vinegar Syndrome's New York Ninja. Yeah, that is right, which
also had Michael Bremen in LENEA Quigley, since A, roth Rock,

(02:03:53):
ginger Linn, a ton of the B team do voices
for that movie a lot with Vince Modoco, so good
for him.

Speaker 3 (02:04:04):
Yeah, and that makes because Vinegar Syndrome put out l
A Wars as well, so yeah, they obviously had Murdoco
in their Rolodex so to speak, and part he's part
of the Vinegar Syndrome family over there.

Speaker 2 (02:04:20):
Yes, Eli was, that's the one that I always want
to be a PM Entertainment film and it isn't.

Speaker 3 (02:04:25):
Right, it isn't. But it had a lot of PM
people in it, like behind the scenes and everything. I think, right,
I think Vince I think he mentioned it because there's
like a commentary or like maybe an interview on the
on the Blu ray and he mentions like during one
of his PM shoots, He's like, hey, it was going
up to people like I got this script for l

(02:04:46):
A Wars like oh, and some I think people were
just like eah, in between PM deals will do that.

Speaker 2 (02:04:54):
Yeah, like they had And yeah, I mean, you're right.
It's it's funny because it's it's written co written by
Addison Randall, who obviously wrote and directed some PM stuff,
and the composer is Louis Fabree who did like a
bunch of PM Entertainment stuff stunts is Colas McKay who
like worked with PM exclusively for a long time. Yeah,

(02:05:15):
so it's yeah, La was and La Was is like,
I mean, it's exactly if it's not a PM entertainment film.
It's weird that it's not a PM entertainment film because
they did La Heat and La Crackdown and other things.

Speaker 3 (02:05:30):
It's like a cousin of the PM entertainment I think.

Speaker 2 (02:05:35):
But I love to know what, Like when PM were
knocking out ten movies a year.

Speaker 3 (02:05:39):
There is still time. Yeah, still they still hadn't had enough.
I want to do more like that. But you know what,
it's probably that get into that lifestyle and you don't
want to go like you go home and it's like
that's reality. Instead, you get to play in this dream
world where things go up and cars flip and there's
just martial arts flights that could break out in a

(02:06:01):
bowling alley, in a chapel wherever you want it to be.
It's like, so, yeah, I guess I could get that.
Like why it's not like, oh I gotta go back
to my customer service rep job, right, Oh I could
get two weeks off of that. No, I don't want that.
I want to just sit at the desk all day
and pick up the phone.

Speaker 2 (02:06:19):
No, although I do, like like Vince Modocco after being
in like Flesh Gordon and various martial arts movies going
back to like an insurance agent job, just being like, yes, missus,
Johnson will get you the extra coverage for your car.
You know, I can't imagine that he's like And by
the way, we've seen Flesh Gordon and the Cheerleaders movie.

(02:06:43):
That's me. But yeah, So the tournament happens, and I
think this is the only thing where it can feel
a little bit like an anti climax because he becomes
the world champion kickboxer and there's like no fan fair
for that, and I understand he has to run off
immediately and blah blah blah blah blah, but there's no

(02:07:07):
considering they make you sit through that many bouts of
this tournament.

Speaker 3 (02:07:11):
There should be a trophy or something something.

Speaker 2 (02:07:14):
You need a little catharsist, do you know what I mean?
You need to get to the end and be like
a little relief, a little uh pump and circumstance, I think,
But Peter Mantainment, there's got no time for trophies. They're
stabbing Martin Cove and strapping girlfriends to the roofs of buildings.

Speaker 3 (02:07:31):
I did want to mention one of the definite things
where you could tell the budget on this film is
the dry erase board that they used to show the
odds of the various teams. That's that's a reminder that
we're not working with a huge budget here, folks.

Speaker 2 (02:07:50):
No, this was a closed down casino that they just
about were able to keep the lights on, and they weren't,
you know, And I don't even think that like the boards,
because I mean I've been there. The sports betting boards,
even the old school ones, weren't just a whiteboard or
some guy being like, well, well change that.

Speaker 3 (02:08:13):
To whoever was wonderful penmanship, I'll give a man.

Speaker 2 (02:08:19):
Yeah. But also like when they're like multi colored pens,
it wasn't just one color of pen like, they had different.

Speaker 3 (02:08:27):
And they're going to damn well use it.

Speaker 2 (02:08:29):
Yeah, they're going to use every dry erase marker that
they can find in a closed down sense casino. But yeah,
good for them, Good for them. They didn't need to
like pay someone to show them how to use the
sports betting boards. Then they could just they could just
use a whiteboard. But yeah, then we get our It's
not quite a full third act of action, but it's

(02:08:51):
a it's half a third act. The third act is
very short. Put it that way he wins the tournament,
that getstabbed, then they're off. Then they've got to fight
people in stairwells. They've got to get up to the roof.
There's guys in leather jackets that we've not seen before.
Mulletman is running around, then he disappears. Meanwhile, mister Sleeves

(02:09:13):
is strapping a Sheryl to the roof by a Pulley system,
very complex pulley system that's going to allow him to
cut the rope in front of Michael and have her
full down the building unless Michael can stop him first.
And of course old Doughboy makes a reappearance.

Speaker 3 (02:09:35):
Yeah, and jackets all. Like he really reminded me of
like Cobra Commander at this point, because he's just starting
to yell at like competence all around me, blaming everybody
else for this horp because apparently he the money he
was going to win on this big bet. He was

(02:09:55):
going to buy a casino. He was going to so
but it's like, wouldn't you be to do that in
some other fashion if you had like half a million
dollars to bet?

Speaker 2 (02:10:06):
I don't know, Well, I love that the villain in
this movie basically becomes sort of a whiny cry baby
when pushed into a corner in much the same way
that Cheryl was walking around the hotel room and being like, Jesus,
you didn't get the one with a jacuzzi. He's standing
up on the roof being like, why God, I have

(02:10:27):
my casino. I want to buy a casino, you know,
And you think yourself, well, you were dropping thousands of
dollars to impress a little girl earlier in the thing.
Why did you just I don't know, save that money?
And he just made forty grand on the tables earlier
in the movie, Like, I don't know, put that away
for a rainy day?

Speaker 3 (02:10:48):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (02:10:48):
Or am I too sensible? Dude? Should should I be
placing crazy bets against people I don't really know whether
they win or not.

Speaker 3 (02:10:56):
Yeah, it's just it's a bad plan. It was a
bad plan. And he's blaming poor dough boy for it
and everything else, and yeah, gets his come up with
he was supposed to Yeah, you were supposed to make
sure he went in that final match with broken ribs.
But you didn't make that happen, did you who? And
he gets it. Yeah, But the thing is, he gets
so angry, he uses all his bullets on poor dough boy,

(02:11:20):
which now our hero sees it, and he does like
the old George Reeves duck when the gun is thrown
at him, and uh yeah, now he's he's got his
chance to save his woman.

Speaker 2 (02:11:34):
Well, so, if I'm a villain and the guy who
I'm going up against is a martial artist, the last
place I would stand would be on the edge of
a roof with no barrier, because one kick and I'm
falling off that.

Speaker 3 (02:11:50):
And they established that, and again thanks to the commentators,
they establish that Eric had a very powerful kick. That's
what he was known for, his powerful kicks. Sys They
could come at you from all angles, all angles. Absolutely
so again, good job commentary team. You set the table
for this finale at the end and you're not even

(02:12:11):
a part of it. But we know, and we've seen
it with our own eyes, even if they if you
were listening, we have seen this man deliver so many kicks.
And yet to your point, this man is not a
fellow martial artist. This is not a younger you know,
he's a much older man. It's come on, you're an idiot,

(02:12:31):
Jack Rogers. You should have rethought this whole plan. But
that's action movie villainy for you.

Speaker 2 (02:12:42):
Right now, he's gonna have to go back to air
Wolf with his tail between his legs, Wasn't that? Isn't
that where he's framous from. Yeah, and he had the eyepatch.

Speaker 3 (02:12:53):
In there, you.

Speaker 2 (02:12:54):
Yeah, he's also in talking about pm ntament and Jason.
He's in Street Aside with my friend and yours wings
Hauser as Captain Bill Quinton.

Speaker 3 (02:13:06):
Yeah, I could see him being a captain.

Speaker 2 (02:13:09):
So and that's the Gregory Dark movie that he's in
with wings Houser. But yeah, he was in Airwolf as
Michael Coldsmith Briggs the third mm hmmm, fifty five episodes
of that. That was his Yeah, it was the longest running. Yeah,

(02:13:29):
I think.

Speaker 3 (02:13:32):
Probably could have ran longer if not for mister Jan
Michael Vincent's demons that he was dealing with.

Speaker 2 (02:13:38):
Right exactly. But yes, a fantastic performance by all, and
it ends as of course it should, with a wonderful
wedding and the hilarious ending is of course that as
Michael Worth and Cheryl and Britain Powell, Eric Colhayn and

(02:14:01):
Cheryl are coming out of the chapel and walking down
the stairs Eric accidentally bumps into another couple, the man
of whom gets quite put out that he was bumped into.
And even though Eric Colhan Michael Worth profusely apologized and says,
I'm not going to fight you, even though this guy
is egging him on to fight him, he's not gonna

(02:14:24):
fight him. He's looking at Cheryl and what does Cheryl do?
She needs him in the nuts, she needs the bad
guy in the nuts, needs the guy. And then when
when everyone says like, what do you do that for,
she goes, well, he started it, and then there's literally
like a he man slap on the back laugh freeze frame.

Speaker 3 (02:14:46):
Oh yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:14:47):
He man would always end with him going like oh
orco and then like with a freeze frame of love.
Another movie that does a great he man laugh ending
is Men at w the Charlie Sheen I mean movie
where they're all up on the sandbank at the end
after the guy's been thwarted and they all just do

(02:15:08):
a big like slab on the back laugh freeze frame.
I'm a big fan of it, with Art Camacho's little
face right at the corner of the freeze frame. And
it is then that we get a song which I
posted a video about.

Speaker 3 (02:15:22):
Last night I saw.

Speaker 2 (02:15:25):
Ah this song get It Right also could be called
maybe Tomorrow because that's another refrain and the thing, but
it's called get It Right. It's by Ken Marino. But
I don't think that Ken Marino. I think it's because
that Ken Marino was he was in his what late
twenties at this point or mid twenties at this point.

(02:15:46):
I don't think he wrote three songs for to be
the best. Maybe he did. I have no idea. Maybe
it is that Ken Marino. I have no idea, but
fantastic songs. And Chris, I was going to ask you
because I brought it up in the video yesterday. Corey
Anna and I had talked. I don't think we left
it in the episode, but we certainly talked about it
off outside the recording because he had put together the

(02:16:11):
Hard Ticket to Hawaii vinyl that came out, and I
had said that I really wanted a PM Entertainment compilation vinyl.
You know what I mean. Uh, this track at the
end of this film deserves crime position right, Oh?

Speaker 3 (02:16:27):
Absolutely? And I yeah, I'm on board for the the
soundtrack release. I'm hoping that albums are blue like the
PM blue.

Speaker 2 (02:16:37):
They have to be like the PM logo, yeah, definitely,
but yeah maybe they do. Maybe they do put some
like clouds in there, so maybe the PM logo is
right in the middle and then the vinyl is the
clouds around the logo. How about that?

Speaker 3 (02:16:53):
I love it. We need it. I mean on my
site a couple years ago, I was like real imagining
the after like the Shaw Scope from the Shaw Brothers,
Like they started releasing those box sets. I'm like, well
again again, you think there could be a PM Entertainment
one version of this, and like I put that like
I did a what if what if there was a

(02:17:14):
PM Entertainment box set? And then I did another one,
and I was about to do a third one. And
then that's when Focus Media actually was like we actually
are putting I'm like, oh, it's going to be a
box set, but it has it. It's been individual releases
but still.

Speaker 2 (02:17:27):
And I urge everyone. I have it up. I have
it up here, but I urge everyone to go over
to Bulletproof Action. In fact, I would. I was at
a certain point posting some PM articles, so I might
I might post this as part of our Facebook or Instagram,
but you have what if PM Entertainment had a set

(02:17:47):
you have, is it fourteen PM Entertainment Movies? Oh and
you do them as double discs.

Speaker 3 (02:17:53):
Double disc Oh yeah, yeah, I was being greedy. I
want it at all.

Speaker 2 (02:17:57):
Right, So, yeah, you had this on Recoil Ryot, this
two Ring of Fire, Guardian Angel, this three Skyscraper Intent
to Kill, Disc four, T four CyberTracker, Disc five Final
Impact to be the Best. Oh yeah, you're going to
do the two Michael Worths together.

Speaker 3 (02:18:16):
Right, two Michael Worth Vegas Ones. Yeah?

Speaker 2 (02:18:19):
Yeah. Then you had this sixth the Sweeper in Private War?
Was this seven Jeff Wincott double bill, Deadly Betton, Last
Man Standing? That was it. That was the fourteen movies
seven discs, fourteen Movies. I would buy it tomorrow if
you were to release that. But we should definitely get
a soundtrack album. I think the three songs from Ken

(02:18:40):
Marino in this movie need to be on it. I
forget the name of it, but the song at the
end of a Dangerous Place was fantastic.

Speaker 3 (02:18:49):
Talking about that.

Speaker 2 (02:18:50):
Yeah, obviously shotgun Shotgun of Jones, what a great shotgun.
That's a great song. The whole of the Steel Frontier soundtrack,
there are many songs, but the score for Steel Frontier
is my favorite PM entertainment score.

Speaker 3 (02:19:06):
Yeah, there's a handful of songs that are on YouTube
from Yes, I've definitely come across at least three or
four of them.

Speaker 2 (02:19:15):
So this one is so get it right is and
I posted it on our Facebook. For anyone looking, I'll
play it at the end of the episode, but for
anyone looking for a copy of it, if you're making
your own PM entertainment playlist, I will share the YouTube.

Speaker 3 (02:19:31):
And everyone really should. If you're not making your own
PM entertainment playlist, what are you doing with your life?
Audio and video versions. Get it together, people, get it to, get.

Speaker 2 (02:19:41):
Get it together exactly. And there are some people who
have done wonderful work, like there was a guy who
did a lot of the stunt the PM entertainment Oh yeah,
doun videos on YouTube which I watch religiously. PM is
now my all consuming focus, much.

Speaker 3 (02:20:02):
Worse you could right right again, it deserves I mean again.
Cannon had all that love, which much deserved, a PM
deserves just as much love. I mean they didn't have
I mean they had more longevity than Canon, they didn't
have as much Probably they didn't dip into the mainstream

(02:20:24):
obviously like Cannon did. But that's also kind of what
Canon's undoing too, because they got they went too big
and try to do too much, too big, like you
didn't need to do over the top Superman and Masters
of the Universe all was like basically within a year
of it. You know, it's like, that's what did you end?

(02:20:46):
If you would have just picked one of those and said,
let's do this and then once that one's done, let's
do know, but they just they couldn't.

Speaker 2 (02:20:54):
But I mean, at their height, PM Entertainment were kicking
out ten movies a year and if you.

Speaker 3 (02:21:01):
That's just alone millions of dollars to be in the movie.

Speaker 2 (02:21:04):
No, no, they weren't. If they could get away with
not paying anyone, they would. They paid everyone with loyalty
and love is what they paid everyone with. Like again,
when people say like Ulter low budget or whatever, this
movie doesn't look low budget. This movie looks great, it
looks fantastic.

Speaker 3 (02:21:22):
It's amazing what they what they It's like, how can
they not do that in today? And obviously everything's different
in the world today, but it's like when stuff is
low budget now, it's like, oh, God, it's low budget.
Like you, from the minute thing comes on the screen,
it's like, oh, this is going to be a rough
one to watch. But back then it's like that was

(02:21:43):
considered low budget. Doesn't look low budget to me.

Speaker 2 (02:21:46):
No, And I'll say this for something like well, that's
I have to say for something like Diablo and Black Creek.
Just to bring it back to what we're talking about before,
I thought Diablo looked great. I thought the cinematography for Diablo,
especially the like wide screen. The use of wide screen
was fantastic in Diablope. And I'll say this for Black Creek,
although it does have some pacing issues and definitely has

(02:22:09):
some like editing issues in places. And look, the best
thing about Black Creek is everyone is putting that absolute
all into that movie, and no one more than Cynthia.
She like a thousandfold put in every last bit of blood, sweat, tears, energy, effort.
I mean it is a herculean task that she set herself,

(02:22:33):
you know, a woman of her age with very little money,
trying to put together a martial arts western that's mostly
shot at night, with great cinematography, and a bunch of
other martial artists who are all in their sixties and
seventies and still to make a movie that is as
entertaining as grindhouse, as weird, and as wonderful as Black

(02:22:57):
Creek is. That's all on her. She's put so much
effort and energy into it. But the one thing is,
even with its pacing and editing issues, the cinematography for
Black Creek is fantastic. Like if they put their money
into anything, it was in the lighting, the cameras, the
way they use them. It from a movie that I

(02:23:18):
know costs you know, literally a few hundred thousand dollars,
like nothing in today's day and age of making movies,
black Creek looks really really great, like really fantastic. And
as a as an action fan and a fight fan
and a you know, B movie fan, it black Creek delivers. Again,

(02:23:41):
There's lots I would change and improve, but I mean
you can say that about ninety percent of the things
these days I thought Black Creek was. For what it is,
I have to give it full high marks because she
puts so much. I mean, you can just tell she
puts so much effort into that movie and continues to
do so trying to get the word out about it,

(02:24:01):
which is why I always I'll always help promote.

Speaker 3 (02:24:04):
That because absolutely, yeah. I mean that's something you know,
we could sit here and be complain like, oh, they
don't have action movies like they Well, you got to
support what's out there and help each other keep the
action genre alive. Just yeah, don't be like, oh everything's Marvel,
calm down, and there is other stuff out there, but

(02:24:28):
you got to support it and you got to promote
it because yeah, they don't have a huge budget, right.

Speaker 2 (02:24:34):
And to end on another positive note, Chris, like, you know,
being someone who grew up on movies and has been
writing about movies for the last fifteen years or doing
podcasts and stuff like that, obviously you meet a ton
of people around the world. You have different guests on
your show things like that, and you know, everyone always
talks about the horror community and the convention community that

(02:24:54):
came out of like horror and grindhouse movies and stuff
as being like a really lovely, wonder full community, and
it is. The horror community. The B movie community is
a fantastic community. What I've loved about doing this show
because it's brought me in contact with yourself and the
guys behind give me back my action and horror movies
and Corey Danna and various other people who are new

(02:25:18):
to me, you know, in terms of having them on
the show, and every single one of them absolutely lovely,
been a pleasure to talk to. And it just shows
me that you know the action community, and I know
I know Owen Friel who runs the Action Elite pretty well,
and then Matt Career and then Tie and come Up

(02:25:41):
and reviews, but in general, just a fantastic community. I mean,
the people who comment on our Facebook page alone are
just lovely, wonderful, funny people. So thanks so much for
being part of that community, man and bringing the p
met Saymon and Bulletproof Action together. I have to admit
something to you. I was doing the show, and as

(02:26:03):
you've heard, I do like the PM Entertainment bullet points.
I had no idea that your website had bullet point.

Speaker 3 (02:26:11):
That's the gimmick we do. Yeah, but I was like,
I'm like perfect, I'm like, yeah, I'm sorry.

Speaker 2 (02:26:16):
If you thought I stole it from you, I did not.
I came to your website after I came to your
website because I was doing social media for PM Entertainment,
and I was like oh look, someone else has written
about PM Entertainment. Went to your website, saw the bullet points,
and I went, oh, no.

Speaker 3 (02:26:34):
I mean yours are Yours are more actual bullet points
at mine. Was just like, that's kind of a gimmick
to kind of break up the review. So it's just
not one big giant wall of text, like right, it's
just my stream of consciousness about this, like it kind
of makes me put it in some kind of order
and just kind of.

Speaker 2 (02:26:53):
Yeah, well, thanks for being gracious about it and not
thinking that I stole. I'm just I'm obviously I'm obviously
sort of stealing Joe Bob Briggs this stick as well.
But I just thought it was a good way to
kind of summarize and make sure that at least every
episode of the PEM Entertainment podcast hits every action beat.

Speaker 3 (02:27:16):
Because I love it. It's a good give again, it
breaks up your show. I love the way you have
formatted this show where it's not just I'm just going
to talk about you know, it's got little gimmicks in it.
I'm all for that. I'm all for that.

Speaker 2 (02:27:32):
Thank you, sir, Thank you. Yeah, well, look, and thank
you for this fantastic episode. Normally we would rank these,
So if you want to rank this before we sign off,
you have to rank it out of Michael Worth movies
and you have to rank it out of PEM Entertainment Films. Again,

(02:27:53):
it doesn't have to be an exact ranking, but if
you have a ranking, if you wish to let us
know what your ranking is, go right ahead. If you don't,
that's fine too.

Speaker 3 (02:28:05):
Again, I think I said at the top, this would
definitely be in my top five PM, and that five
could rotate, but it would be in there. And as
far as Michael Worth movies, probably two or three. Again,
I love Fist of Iron. I don't know necessarily, I
just love that movie so much. That's number one, so
this would either be two or US Seals two. I

(02:28:26):
also love that one too, so those would probably be
the Micaelworth top three action movies for me.

Speaker 2 (02:28:35):
And I think when I reviewed this, I think I
gave it a three and a half out of five
out of but for PM films, and I think I said,
which if it's three and a half, that's still high
for PM. That's still a good ranking in my letterbox reviews.

(02:28:56):
So that considered this a movie that I really enjoyed.
But I think there was I said this, this almost
could have been four stars. If it had continued the
level of insanity and fun from the first act all
the way through the movie, then it would have been
like a four possibly five star movie. As it is,
it's a very very very good three point five star movie,

(02:29:16):
is what I is what I did mainly because the
ones that get the four and the five stars, those
are the ones like Executive Target or Rage or pure Danger,
one of those ones that has like, you know, operatic
car stunts and things.

Speaker 3 (02:29:33):
Like follows the PM formula more where it's like, yeah,
vehicular mayhem, some story, vehicular mayam, some story, yeah, yes,
or I think in your case, you would have given
this a four point two five if Mulletman was appeared more.

Speaker 2 (02:29:49):
Yes, listen, if if we had got a Mulletman uh
col Hayne fight off, I would have that would have
given it an extra seventy five, zero point seventy five.
That would have pushed it, pushed it over. It always
makes me laugh when I watch PM films and everyone
has long hair. I'm like, really doesn't help in a

(02:30:10):
fight situation to have long hair, because that's something I
would just grab and either yank out, flip you, over
drive your head into a pole whatever. Like Joe Lara
is walking around with his like Tarzan locks and you're like,
I would just grab that shit, you know anyway, So

(02:30:31):
that's fantastic. Well, thank you ever so much, Chris. Let
everyone know where they can find you, how they can
find you, and if you even want to be found
him whatever you have coming up on on on bulletproofs.

Speaker 3 (02:30:43):
Yeah, Bulletproofaction dot Com, as you said earlier almost eleven years,
will be celebrating our eleventh anniversary in August. You'll find
the podcast there as well. If you're finding this podcast,
you can find the Bulletproof Podcast the same place they're
finding this fine podcast. We are on Facebook and Instagram
at Bulletproof Action, and if you're still on the old

(02:31:06):
X or Twitter, we're there as well at Bulletproof Pod.
Also on Blue Sky for those who migrated away from
the X and the Twitter, we're over there at bulletproof
Pod on those So what's going on? I know, Uh, well,
I've got the Jeff Speakman PM alumni. Jeff Speakman's made
for TV movie Escape from Atlantis is coming up. And

(02:31:29):
that was a. I did not know about that. Somebody
emailed me with that and I'm like, what the hell
is this? And like I watched it afterwards was kind
of a little bit like what the hell is this?
But that's all right, that is these are these are
the types of things we do over there, and uh yeah,
so what else is coming up?

Speaker 2 (02:31:48):
You know?

Speaker 3 (02:31:50):
Superman? I know that's I'm going to see Superman. I
got my invite to go to the press screening. I'm
very excited for that. So I've been a Superman fan again.
That was one of the the original seventy eight one
was It's probably my favorite movie. That and Death Wish
three are probably tied as my favorite movie of all time.
But yeah, so we'll have that and we try to

(02:32:13):
have a great variety of stuff up there, so always
something going on Bulletperfection dot com.

Speaker 2 (02:32:19):
Well if you like Death Wish. Three years ago, I
used to do a comedy commentary podcast called Doctor Action
and the kick Ass Kid, and we would cover an
action film every week and we would do like a
very crude mystery science theater style commentary on it. But

(02:32:42):
with it was two Brits. It was me and my
friend from Lester Paul, and it was just very sweary
and filthy, and you know, we'd go off on riffs
and things that had nothing to do with the film,
but there were just you know, filthy and weird. We
did a Death Wish three commentary where throughout the commentary

(02:33:05):
I played Michael Winner, and so we pretended we had
Michael Winner on the show because I can sort it
to a pretty good mockled weather. I can sort of
though like that. I had a boss how you doing,
And so I would just do a Michael Winner impression
occasionally and tell complete lies about the lives making Death

(02:33:26):
Wish three with Chucking Prompson. You know, we would do
I just did that for ages. So if you're bored one.

Speaker 3 (02:33:34):
Day, That's the thing I've said, one of those things
where I'm like, you know what, I've seen this movie
probably in triple digit numbers at this point, but I've
never seen it with John's commentary, so it's a whole experience.

Speaker 2 (02:33:52):
Yeah, the things I've littered my existence with. Anyway, sir,
it has been a pleasure to talk to you tonight.
Thank you so much for being on the show, and
also thank you for introducing me to this movie. I mean,
I would have got around to it eventually, but I
was when you said this one. I'm like, great. I
just got the Blu Ray from Cloudier and I was like,
I've got to review it on a video for the

(02:34:14):
Blu Ray reviews anyway, so I can kill a couple
of birds with one stone and loved it. Man. I
thought it was great. So thanks so much. Oh you're welcome.

Speaker 3 (02:34:24):
Yeah, I'd noticed you had not done any like the
martial arts ones yet really, so I'm like, oh, that's good.

Speaker 2 (02:34:29):
No, we're about to start moving more into a variety.
I wanted to kind of come out the gate and
do the ones that you know, people would expect us
to do right, you know, and and still do a
couple of my personal favorites that people don't know a
lot about, like Shotgun and still Frontier and things. So
I did those. I had just done all the wings

(02:34:51):
Houser ones on the aftermovie Dina, so I'm going to
leave those for a while because if anyone wants to,
you know, I did. I did a bunch of wings
Houses stuff on the after movie Dyed, and then obviously
we did Out of Dying in that huge four hour
episode where everyone talked about wings Houser. Yeah, so it's
time that I get into the the Tournament movies. It's

(02:35:12):
time that I get into the Bigfoot movies. You see, Like,
I haven't seen the Bigfoot movies. Oh yeah, I just
picked those all up on VHS. I'm very excited, especially
Little Bigfoot, which is just such a wonderful anachronism. And
then I suppose at some point we have to do
the Bikini Summer trilogy.

Speaker 3 (02:35:31):
That's right.

Speaker 2 (02:35:33):
But I'll probably get my buddy Moe to do that
because he's the eighties sex rump expert. He's the one
who loves all the sex RUMs from the eighties, So
he'll probably do Bikini Summer with me, happily, Happily, happily, Yes,
he'll happily. Yeah. He's the one who introduced me to
such wonderful movies as Hot Dog and Hamburg in the

(02:35:55):
motion picture Splits.

Speaker 3 (02:35:56):
And Hamburg in the motion picture my buddy brought over
a couple of years ago. I'm like this, how have
I never seen this movie before? It's amazing.

Speaker 2 (02:36:06):
It's so good. I mean, it's like it's horribly on PC,
but whatever, I know.

Speaker 3 (02:36:11):
I was just like, this is like one of the
top five movies that I've discovered on one of our
movie nights here because I'm like usually it's like we'll
watch stuff that's like one like I've seen like again,
it's like, oh, I got this in on this new
movie and that's what I finally got this. Let's watch this.

Speaker 2 (02:36:29):
But all right, man, we'll look lovely talking with you. Yes, sir,
have a great night, and we will do this again
at some point.

Speaker 3 (02:36:37):
All right, sounds good anytime you.

Speaker 1 (02:36:39):
Need me entertainment podcast, food.

Speaker 5 (02:37:11):
So Joseph's suck on stage, fight beside the side. Got
to take that one less change to keep on the
low line.

Speaker 9 (02:37:26):
And though we know there's no one there.

Speaker 10 (02:37:30):
Every night we.

Speaker 11 (02:37:31):
Say on round, maybe too much.

Speaker 10 (02:37:36):
We can catch the dream a time, maybe toom we
will fight a right.

Speaker 3 (02:37:47):
To get it right.

Speaker 5 (02:37:54):
They're on the garantees. We live in Damada.

Speaker 11 (02:38:01):
Now nothing good comes.

Speaker 9 (02:38:04):
Ease, see must be a fit over.

Speaker 11 (02:38:10):
Still we gotta do what we gotta do and have
the customer say a f maybe too m we didn't
catch the dream a time, maybe too much.

Speaker 5 (02:38:28):
We will finally have stand to get away.

Speaker 9 (02:38:38):
So much fleasha, so much baking.

Speaker 5 (02:38:42):
Now we know it's not in pay yesterday.

Speaker 11 (02:38:47):
It's fast you.

Speaker 9 (02:38:50):
Said it's two times on tour. I'm so don.

Speaker 11 (02:39:23):
Really were song and.

Speaker 9 (02:39:28):
Do work with you? It's just a friend.

Speaker 11 (02:39:35):
Come where were you all.

Speaker 2 (02:39:39):
So near?

Speaker 11 (02:39:39):
Ready that song?

Speaker 10 (02:39:42):
Maybe too my we get cattle time, maybe toom.

Speaker 12 (02:39:52):
We will finally find, start to get it. Maybebe too much,
no not mercy.

Speaker 11 (02:40:09):
Up some cash right,

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Episode 13 - To Be The Best

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Episode 13 - To Be The Best