I know, many of you want to know what I watched over the holidays. I actually didn't watch too many movies. Some were pretty mainstream: Dr. Strange(I enjoyed it, great effects), Rogue One(better than Episode 7), Deadpool(it's exactly what it needed to be). But there is another class of film that I know you guys love to see me watch...so here you go:
Rambo IIIGuess who got the Rambo collector's edition boxed set for Christmas?
Rambo III is Rambo II in Afghanistan, only now he's on the side of the Afghani Mujaheddin against evil torturous Communist Soviets! And they've captured his commanding officer to boot! If you're wondering whether this is the best of the Rambo series, I have one scene to illustrate just how amazing Rambo III is:
Rambo gets impaled by a piece of metal due to a grenade early on. Later he pushes the metal out of his body, fills the wound with gunpowder from a bullet, and lights it on fire to cauterize the wound through his body instantly, complete with fire blowing out both sides of his back while he man-roar-screams in action-packed agony.
If that does not sound like the greatest idea for a quick self-heal from any action movie ever, I'm sorry, you really need to stop reading anything I write.
Suffice to say, Rambo III is exactly the kind of movie that makes me watch movies: it's dumb and therefore awesome.
Against the DarkIn this movie, a bunch of stupid people end up trapped in a freaky hospital and can't find the front door while the military plans to blow it up for some reason. Also Steven Seagal walks around with folks in leather and fights vampires in what is pretty much a separate movie. When the two groups do eventually bump into each other...they try to walk out of the hospital together. That's it. That's the movie. Oh, and Steven Seagal's character is named Tao because fuck it, why not?
Outpost III, AKA Outpost: Rise of the SpetsnazThat title is bullshit. There are no Spetsnaz in this movie. Officially the Spetsnaz started in 1950, though the Soviets did train special commandos to fight in World War II. This movie is about a bunch of those partisans getting captured by Nazis and forced to fight against Nazi zombies.
At least I wish that is what happened. Mostly this movie is Nazis talking and Nazi zombies banging their heads or hissing from windowed cells. Then the Soviets try to fight there way out, it gets down to one Soviet man, and he kicks the ass of everyone involved. That's it. Every now and again someone has to fight a Nazi zombie, but it doesn't really happen often enough to be notable. Still the movie apparently serves as a prequel to the Outpost series of Nazi zombie movies.
Bloodsport 4: The Dark KumiteIf your first thought from reading this title is, "What, they made
four Bloodsport movies," congratulations, you asked the right question. Jean-Claude Van Damme had long since stopped appearing in them(he only did the first), so it was up to Daniel Bernhardt to suffer through these movies as the lead. The best part? Bernhardt plays a totally different character in Bloodsport 4 than he did in either Bloodsport 2 or 3! The only continuity at all is that there is a Kumite in the first place! And at the start of the film, Berhardt's character decides to quit because the fights have literally just become a bloodsport(harhar) to the death.
Unfortunately Bernhardt's partner is then killed by a psycho killer, and evil Ben Franklin
really wants Bernhardt to fight in his own special prison Kumite, so things get maneuvered so that Bernhardt must go to prison "undercover" as himself, a super cop whom the inmates all recognize. Fights break out, a squirlly fellow prisoner reveals he is also a cop working undercover, and then Bernhardt, the other cop, and a bunch of prisoners including psycho killer end up being taken into evil Ben Franklin's weird pastel '90s mansion by a bunch of evil prison guards dressed in leather bondage gear.
What follows involves a bunch of guys wearing spandex or parts of gis and bathrobes while they fight and hang out in cages under green lighting because...look, at this point, just stop asking why anything is happening. The important thing is the kumite proceeds, Bernhardt saves the day, and evil Ben Franklin, the bondage guards, and the psycho killer all get theirs in the end. And we have the death of the franchise people, which enables Daniel Bernhardt to go off and appear in significantly better movies like John Wick. You're welcome.
