2.5 Razors

Big Doll House

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  • Title: Big Doll House
  • IMDb: link

Big Doll House movie reviewThrowback Tuesday takes us back to 1971’s Big Doll House. Produced by B-movie legend Roger Corman, the film kicked-off a jungle subset of the women-in-prison genre starring Judith Brown, Roberta Collins, Pam Grier, Brooke Mills, Pat Woodell, and Gina Stuart as inmates in a prison of an unnamed tropical country run by an evil warden (Christiane Schmidtmer) and overseen by the Nazi-like torturer Lucien (Kathryn Loder). Collins, Grier, and Brown would all return for the similarly themed Women in Cages released the same year.

Pushing the boundaries of what was allowed in the loosened ratings of the time, the independent film follows the basic format of the exploitation genre putting the women in various compromising positions guaranteed to get their clothes off such as strip searches, group shower scenes, catfights (one even in mud), lesbian and bondage scenes, and torture. We also get a revolution and escape plot, which would become part of the sub-genre, culminating in the group’s attempt to escape the prison during the movie’s climax. Although not the main character, the film is notable for launching Grier’s career in this genre and blaxploitation films.

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The Tomorrow War

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  • Title: The Tomorrow War
  • IMDb: link

The Tomorrow War movie reviewThe Tomorrow War, about soldiers from the future who arrive to draft earlier generations to fight a war against aliens who are wiping out humankind in the future, is a passable horror movie. The problem is it’s also a below average sci-fi film with aspects of a TV-movie thrown in for good measure. Director Chris McKay and writer Zach Dean struggle to make the various pieces fit into a coherent whole.

Any movie with Chris Pratt, who stars as a high school science teacher with delusions of grandeur, and Yvonne Strahovski, who stars as the future commander, starts out on pretty good footing. The film makes less use of the rest of the cast, which are mostly monster food or stuck in family drama subplots which, will of course, need to be resolved for our hero to learn his lesson.

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Ninja

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  • Title: Ninja (2009)
  • IMDb: link

Ninja movie reviewThrowback Tuesday takes us back to 2009’s Ninja starring Scott Adkins as an American raised in a Japanese temple tasked by his sensei (Togo Igawa) to protect the temple’s most sacred artifacts from a rival former student (Tsuyoshi Ihara) using the skills taught to him to become one of the world’s deadliest assassins.

Ninja is the kind of movie where the police get involved, but only manage to get in the way or arrest the wrong person until they step back to let the ninja fight. Very much the B-action movie it appears to be, Ninja also teases a love story between Casey (Adkins) and the sensei’s daughter (Mika Hijii) as well as Casey’s search for family. Neither amount to much as the film works best when director Isaac Florentine queues up the rivals’ series of action scenes.

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Willy’s Wonderland

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  • Title: Willy’s Wonderland
  • IMDb: link

Willy's Wonderland DVD reviewWhat if the animatronic characters at ShowBiz Pizza Place or Chuck E. Cheese came to life and started murdering their customers? That’s the basic premise behind Willy’s Wonderland. Nicolas Cage stars as an unnamed mute drifter who accepts a job cleaning up a rundown attraction in exchange for repairs to his car not realizing he’s actually the latest sacrifice to the evil robot mascots Willy Weasel, Arty Alligator, Knighty Knight, and the rest of their merry band.

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Tango & Cash

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  • Title: Tango & Cash
  • IMDb: link

Tango & Cash home video reviewThrowback Thursday takes us back to the last film of the 1980s. Tango & Cash is the ridiculous, balls-to-wall, over-the-top pairing of Sylvester Stallone and Kurt Russell as rival super cops forced to work together after they are framed for murder. Stallone stars as the upscale Ray Tango while Russell’s Gabe Cash is more working man. Without realizing it, both men have been cutting into the business of Los Angeles’ hidden kingpin Yves Perret (Jack Palance in full scene-chewing mode) who frames the super-cops for murder, gets them relocated to a different prison than they were sentenced, and attempts to have them killed behind bars.

The film was plagued by production issues including multiple script revisions and the firing of director Andrey Konchalovskiy. The last film to be released in 1989, Tango & Cash is a glorious homage to the action movies of the decade. Dumb as rocks, with a script full of plot holes, it nevertheless entertains. Teri Hatcher, who makes use of her dance background as Tango’s younger sister, Brion James, James Hong, Marc Alaimo, and Michael J. Pollard, as Cash’s goofy weaponsmith, round out the cast.

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