The Deadly Chemical Medley part II

After reading this and watching this, how could I read the tease for Crank: High Voltage ("After surviving the brush with death that ended the first Crank film, top assassin Chev Chelios returns in this action-packed sequel to track down a ruthless Chinese mobster who has stolen his most prized possession: his heart.... he must continually jolt the mechanical ticker that beats within his chest") and not just plow ahead with the double feature? Per the blurb, its not exactly a chemical situation in this case, but the jist is the same.

It seems most appropriate to present my review in the same format as Dallas did. Plus that saves me having to come up with yet another way to vary my incessant posts. ONWARD!


1. Ridiculous Premise. After falling out of the sky (literally) some chinamen abscond with Chev to a mysterious back room where his heart, amongst other organs, are removed for transplant. Keeping Chev alive: a mechanical heart designed only to support minimal human activity for a couple days until the subject gets a transplant. Perhaps not as outlandish as the original, in this one Chev is constantly in search of some batteries or other clever way to get a shock. Naturally getting his electrical fix won't be enough for Chev; he's  going to get revenge on the motherfuckers responsible for stealing his heart while he's at it. Given the limits already set out, not a bad storyline. At the same time, given the limits already set out it probably wasn't too hard to say "lets take his heart".
Other plot notes of interest: Amongst the side characters: a guy with "full body tourrettes" (apparently the brother of the gay guy in Crank) (like they needed a reason for more jerky camera work and ridiculous spasticity) and some skinny asian bitch who just won't die, even when she's run over by a car going 50 mph. For some reason in the midst of a bunch of transformers, Chev and his Chinese nemesis grow to 50 feet tall and battle like King Kong, replete with bizarre facial prosthetics and building smashing. It's a hysterical scene. The buxom chocolate-skinned lady riding Doc's lap at the start of the movie helps Chev find the guy with his heart by playing a prostitute. A true hooker with a heart of gold story. At one point Chev comes face to face with the disembodied but still living head of one of his prior victims. This happens just before the gay guys come kill the ferret and save Chev from a super homoerotic cat-o-nine-tails lashing.
2 Stallones and a Statham for the storyline.
2. Earnest over-acting. One of the ways Doc tells Chev to get revved up is to use friction ("the rubbing of two like objects causes the transfer of electrons"). For some reason it takes him the better part of seven minutes to figure out that this can be accomplished not just by dry-humping an old lady, but also by sex. As he's about to lose it before the redemptive sex scene, he throws us a gloriously over-acted "Friiiictioooon" as his body wilts from his failing heart. Generally though, Statham's breed of grimace-and-run is just a different kind of action from the Stallone "It's like a switch" school of acting. 1 Stallone, 2 Stathams.
3. Ka-blooey! We open with Chev falling from the sky onto a Cadillac. It doesn't explode, but the peeling-his-body-off-the-cement sound effect was pretty swell. The rest of the movie, sadly, follows a very similar path. Lots of fighting, lots of jolting, lots of running around, but the ka-blooeys are few and far between. What it lacks in splosions it tries to make up for in blood, like when they cut off the tip of a guy's elbow, or when a failed cronie is forced to cut off his own nipples. However, this does not make up for the lack of explosions. Its just terribly disturbing. Yech. 2 Stathams.
4. Ka-boobie For some reason or another, Chev pops into a strip club. So, boobies abound, especially when the Mexicans come in and startle the strippers into bouncing their jubblies all over the place. Importantly, he also hooks up with Amy Smart there, and this time there's no doubt at all about the fact that she spends the next fifteen minutes with nothing but electrical taped X's covering her nips. So, incidental tits + leading character breasts (minus nipples) + occasional frontal nudity during the final poolside shootout gives us an upgrade over the original: three Stallones. However, minus one Statham for the scene later where Chev and Amy do it on the horse track in the middle of a race and expose nothing but Statham's buttcheeks. Net: 2 Stallones, 2 Stathams. It is a pretty awesome protracted ridiculous sex scene though.
5. Cheesy one liners. They're not one liners, but the film's repeated use of little graphical ploys is at least thematically entertaining and accomplishes what it sets out to do in making the film feel like a comic book. Chev tries a one-liner once with "Chicken and broccoli" after he kills a bunch of Chinese, causing their limo to crash, but that really doesn't make any damn sense. One Stallone.


It's certainly no Over the Top; its pretty much just a shadow of Crank. What do you expect though? It was a hell of a lot more entertaining than War or Death Race; they're all foregone conclusions but at least this one gets from A to B by way of breasts, flaming dream hugs, Journey, and SoA-approved awesomeness.

The Deadly Chemical Medley part I

At the beginning of the Summer of Action, I had no idea who the hell Gary Daniels was or why he was being included in The Expendables. I'm still not sure who the hell he is or why etc. etc. I did find out, however, that in 1995 he was in a movie called Rage, in which the netflix blurb describes him as a school teacher who is "forced to consume a deadly chemical that causes extreme violence in those who ingest it." Since this sounded a lot like the premise of Crank I decided it would be fun to pull a "dangerous chemical which causes unruly, SoA-approved behavior" marathon. However, I already watched the original Crank because of this technically convincing piece on a site I dabbled with doing some writing for. Also, Dally-Wally and I, like all of my co-conspirators here, had a very detailed plan of who was going to watch which movies. Right. That's it.

So, here in part I of The Deadly Chemical Medley I will discuss Rage. Wasn't Dally-Wally's flambeing of Crank part I? you ask. Well, he didn't call it The Deadly Chemical Medley part I now, did he? DID HE? If you're that worried about continuity, just think of it as the prelude.

It's clear from the outset of RAGE (starring Gary Daniels) that his character, Alex, is a little too happy with life for things to go well for him. He appears to be happy with his job as a 2nd grade teacher wherein he gets to hold forth with bizarre, winding discourses all day. At the start of the lesson it appears as though he's teaching the children to read by writing the word "Monkey" on the board.

Tiger Hi-Line Entertainment Review: Tango & Cash

Now this is it! When Mrs. Timmons gave us the information on this summer internship, watching movies like Tango and Cash is exactly what I wanted to do! I don't know why they had me watching some namby-pamby thing for my first review, or why they wouldn't give me a contributor account of my own. But now I'm here, and I'm here to talk about STUFF BLOWING UP!

Sylvester Stallone plays Ray Tango. Randy Feldman, the writer of the movie Tango & Cash, did a really clever thing there- turns out that TANGO is in his own way obsessed with CASH- he dresses like a businessman with geeky glasses and trades stocks! Cash marches to his own drumline a little more; he's played by Kurt Russell. I've heard some crazy stories about how much Kurt Russell used to drink!

Well, these two make like Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan in the recent smash Cop Out. Actually its not much like that because unlike Monroe and Hodges, they don't like each other too much. Well, they're the best cops in LA, which really bugs the bad guys who set them up and put them in general population of a prison. You can't keep a good man down though, so Tango and Cash one-line their way right out of jail. Then the figure out who put them behind bars in the first place, and go kill him. Revenge is a cold dish!

I'm really glad Mr. Feldman wrote this movie. It was probably a good training point for people who wanted to write buddy movies in the future so they could learn from his script about having the characters speak only with awesome cliches that I can't wait to use if I hopefully get into a fraternity when I get to move out of my parents and go to school far, far away from Mr. Deines. I'm just kidding, I love my school! But being in college is going to be awesome. Like Ray Tango says, Rambo is a pussy!

The guys wanted me to tell you this: this fall I'll be a junior at Cedar Falls High School in Iowa. I'm going to watch some movies during summer break and tell you all about them.

BEST OF THE 5Qs 2

As promised at the tail end of BEST OF THE 5Qs, the touching conclusion of Best of the Best inspired me to immediately queuuequequeqeeueueueueueueue up its imaginatively titled sequel, Best of the Best 2. It came in on the very same day that the good viceroy of West LA leant me the footage of the goings on at The Party at Kitty & Stud's. Having already expended quite a bit of energy getting all erotic'd up with Italian Stallion, I was having second thoughts about rocking another SoA double feature. However, when the netflix envelope told me this:

My fate was obviously sealed. And so I partook of the fantastical revenge of Alex and Tommy...

So who's the baked potato?

There are two Death Race films, which conveniently both feature an Expendables star. I was going to compare and contrast, in a very concise and not overly verbose manner, producer Roger Corman's original 1975 film starring David Carradine and Sylvester Stallone and the 2008 adaptation starting Jason Statham. But about ten minutes into DR2K I realized you needed to come on the (preposterously verbose) journey with me. Enjoy it now because I'm not sure how many more of these I'll do.

So, without further ado, real time thoughts, analysis, and description of three-plus hours of tantalizing action, starting from the start.
*edit I'm trying the fancy jump break because Jay had the brilliance to reveal the button to me. This way this post will take up less front-page real estate. I assure you you should still read it though. It's brilliant.