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.

Universal Soldiering is an Imperfect Science

Soldier on soldier!

Inspired by Sean's near nude picture of Jean Claude, and inspired by Dolph Lundgren's gripping performance in Rocky IV, and inspired by my love for ear necklaces, and inspired by everything awesome that ever existed, I decided to Netflix (is that officially a verb now?) Universal Soldier.  I used to love this movie.  According to wikipedia, it is a trilogy now.  This excites me a great deal. They are also making a FOURTH Universal Soldier starring the original leads and set in a "more modern setting" than, um, the early 90's?  The first Universal Soldier was not a period action piece.  It was awesome though.

Here's pretty much what happened:

The movie starts with Jean Claude standing in a rain-soaked Vietnam. That war had so much rain. Then, Jean Claude tells everyone to leave.  Except they can't leave because they are all dead.  Dolph Lundgren killed them.  He then cut off their ears and made a necklace out of them.  His ear fetish was not explained.  Nor was his hysteria.  We just needed to know he thought everyone was a traitor, and that he was CRAZY.  His craziness was accentuated when he shot two innocent Vietnamese people.  Similarly, Jean Claude was not crazy because he wanted the Vietnamese people to live.  Unfortunately both Jean Claude and Dolph killed each other three minutes into the movie.

WHAT!?!?!  The leads can't die.