Cast: Steven Seagal and a bunch of other people over 50 pretending to be under 30 and to have a variety of scary foreign accents.
Trivia about The Movie:
It’s a remake of a likely even more terrible 1998 movie “Black Thunder.” (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0004738/) Steven Seagal co-ripped off the script and it has caused quite a stir amongst the “People Who Love Movies about the Military No Matter How Crappy They Are” community. Apparently the special effects in Flight of Fury are better.
The Plot in Review: Air force pilot John Sands (Seagal) narrowly escapes a “memory wipe” while in military prison for something undefined. It’s too bad for us that the erasure is unsuccessful, because there was a chance that by eliminating his character’s memories, Seagal could also diminish his awareness that he is an actor, a singer or is ever seen in public. According to IMDB, the brain fry attempt is because his superiors feel threatened by his intelligence and the totally amazing information he was able to get about sensitive subjects while on his special operations missions.
Within the first ten minutes of the movie, John escapes the detention center. If you’re Steven Seagal, no one can see you riding on top of a truck the size and height of a short bus, even when you’re wearing bright orange Timberlands. He gets away, and immediately showcases his brilliant gun-fighting techniques when he prevents the robbery of a diner/convenience store by sliding across the floor whilst shooting repeatedly at nothing in particular. What is causing his velocity is unknown, but is likely simply magic or perhaps the magnetic pull of the earth’s core on Seagal’s titanium hip replacement. This incident seems unrelated to the plot, until we realize it is the vehicle by which he is reunited with his former military colleagues when his arrest for the shooting deaths of the robbers is brought to the attention of his former commander. Upon reuniting, he sends him to find a top secret Air Force Stealth Bomber known as the X-77, which is the first ever to be totally invisible and has been stolen by John’s former partner, a now corrupt Air Force pilot named Ratcher. Within the first ten minutes of the movie, John escapes the detention center. If you’re Steven Seagal, no one can see you riding on top of a truck the size and height of a short bus, even when you’re wearing bright orange Timberlands. He gets away, and immediately showcases his brilliant gun-fighting techniques when he prevents the robbery of a diner/convenience store by sliding across the floor whilst shooting repeatedly at nothing in particular. What is causing his velocity is unknown, but is likely simply magic or perhaps the magnetic pull of the earth’s core on Seagal’s titanium hip replacement. This incident seems unrelated to the plot, until we realize it is the vehicle by which he is reunited with his former military colleagues when his arrest for the shooting deaths of the robbers is brought to the attention of his former commander. Upon reuniting, he sends him to find a top secret Air Force Stealth Bomber known as the X-77, which is the first ever to be totally invisible and has been stolen by John’s former partner, a now corrupt Air Force pilot named Ratcher.
At this point in the movie, I fell asleep briefly after having been lulled to sleep by an inordinate number of Top Gun-esque flight montages that displayed the boring power of the plane. After my nap, I woke up to the rebel forces of Banansistan (yes, Banansistan), who have British and also some sort of Middle Eastern or Spanish (I still am not sure) accents and are somehow affiliated with Ratcher and his evil plot.
As a completely necessary aside (or perhaps a merciful disclaimer), Steven Seagal clearly thinks he still looks like this:
In reality, he mostly looks like this:
And if we learn one thing from the wardrobe of this movie it’s that black is just not as slimming as Seagal thinks it is.
Here is a snippet of thrilling dialogue exchange from the film, proving that Seagal is like a brain damaged, nonsensical, one-lining Bruce Willis that has missed his midday geriatric nap:
Policeman: “Who are you?” Seagal: “I’m just a country boy.” Policeman: “Who’s your employer?” Seagal: “I’m self employed right now.” Policeman: “What do you do?” Seagal: “I travel a lot.” Policeman: “That’s no ordinary fighting.” Seagal: “I grew up in a bad neighborhood.”
The following is a list of requirements for a script written by Steven Seagal, for Steven Seagal:
1. All planes he flies must look impressive and bigger than the Death Star inside, even if they are small.
2. Names of normal places have to be called their most convoluted, vaguely racist and antiquated names. For example, the Persian Gulf becomes the “Gulf of Arabia.” Perhaps he’d like to meet some “Orientals” while he’s out East …
3. Any character Seagal plays at any age must have a girlfriend that is no older than 20. She also must wear teddies even when in military barracks and has to be a closet lesbian that uses her lesbian powers to trick the only villainess in the movie. This of course results in a lesbian scene that has no bearing whatsoever on the plot.
Seagal’s very tenuous grasp on the English language is obvious in the following three lines, the stand-out moments of this movie:
“We cut off their testicles, or we teach them how to sing soprano.” (Is this really an either/or situation? It sounds a lot more like cause and effect.)
“I would be ashamed of you. But I don’t think you deserve my shame.” (Personally, I believe everyone in this cinematastrophe deserves all the shame in the world.)
“Unfortunately, you ain’t going to get no big hit. I wish I had time to whoop your ass and shoot you, but I got to go.”
Do you mean it this time, Steven? Or are we going to see you back here in ten years picking up chicks in the high school parking lot?
While nothing’s more American than Steven Seagal half-assedly fighting terrorism in the Gulf of Persia, at least he has his career as a Mojo Priest to fall back on:
Theme Song: A collection of generic opera music in requiem style that sounds like it’s being played on set through a transistor radio.
Starring: Some of the ugliest men you’ve ever seen, plus an aging Leslie Caron in denial and Catherine Bach (Daisy Duke of the original Dukes of Hazard TV series), accompanied by her strange collection of toy ponies.
Plot Summary: Nicole (Leslie Caron, shedding her ballet shoes for the finest in polyester 70s fashion) is a beautiful (supposedly), single woman that has earned her fortune by being married to someone we never meet that either left her, died under mysterious circumstances (potentially he was the guy in that one semi-flashback scene that was drowned in the pool) or never existed. She lives in a big house with her creepy chauffer, Malcolm, who in the opening scene we learn may have killed his wife and her lover, using nothing but his rage and a rotary phone. She spends her days and nights playing opera music, watching a tiny television with really bad reception, taking pictures of herself (and of her television), obsessing over her hands and making her friends feel bad about themselves. Supposedly, this is a cautionary tale for rich bitches. As for what it is cautioning against, I’m not sure. Perhaps it’s a lesson to you that if you are bat-crap crazy and also wealthy, you should invest your money in prescription drugs like lithium instead of self-medicating with booze and sex. It is also perhaps a cautionary tale for movie makers that drink and film.
From an artistic perspective, if awkward shots and blurry fadeouts into montage after montage were dollars, Crazed, aka, Nicole, aka, Where Did the Last 1:28 of My Life Go? would be a blockbuster. This film’s DVD release (or at least its Netflix Insta-Watch release) can be blamed on the Troma Team, the proud distributors of the Toxic Avenger series.
From the beginning, we know a steady hand was not a priority for the camera operator, who likely drank in order to overcome his feelings of dread about having to go to work every day on this. The opening scene provides a little back story development about Malcolm (who will later in the film become Nicole’s live-in butler, yet despite being a murderer, not change his name), who walks in on a man that is, if possible, more acne scarred than he is but apparently is having an affair with his wife Patrice. Patrice and the unnamed adulterer are quickly eliminated by an enraged Malcolm, and opening credits run over what feels like a 30-minute, thrilling aerial shot of a cul-de-sac.
The movie really picks up speed (goes from a tortoise’s to a turtle’s pace) when we see Nicole stripping down into a saggy white bra and panties while cranking up dark opera music, presumably a requiem to help her mourn the passing of the time when she was young enough to be able to get away with prancing around on screen without appropriate levels of clothing. She proceeds to wander around her house attempting to get dressed while engaging in a variety of “bad naked” activities, such as mixing drinks, pulling random objects out of closets and the refrigerator, stooping, crouching and yelling out to butler Malcolm.
I would attempt to outline the plot of Crazed, but after Nicole starts taking photographs of herself and the television – convinced, as we learn through flashbacks, that a car salesman with a chest hair vest of simian proportions on a commercial, named “Fletcher the Dollar Stretcher” is someone that abandoned her while she was hitchhiking cross country years before – my brain started to decline into madness and to protect myself, I had to stop trying to make sense of the movie. I also started to ask questions such as “Why can’t she afford a better television?” and “Why doesn’t she just take some Xanax?”
To make a long story short (which unfortunately, writer/director Ventilla did not), she stalks Fletcher at his car dealership, starts sleeping with him, then seduces a young chickie, Sue (Daisy Duke) at her ballet class that she then spends the rest of the movie playing with like a Barbie doll, and also trying to coerce into a threesome with her and Fletcher.
The most important thing I learned from this movie (because it is clearly meant to be a very useful didactic tool for us all) is how rich people spend their days. This is how Nicole rolls (and presumably how all rich people eat up all their financially-fulfilled time). She …
1. Stalks anyone and anything that wrongs or doesn’t wrong her. 2. Listens to the many answering machine messages she receives but doesn’t return the calls or do anything about them. 3. Has thrilling conversations with strangers during which she asks 100-200 personal yet also uninteresting questions, but then doesn't listen to the answers. 4. Judges other people that do not share her stellar design sensibility, which rests entirely on making every home look like the Playboy Mansion as it appeared in 1978, but with a lot more wood paneling. 5. Takes staged photographs of herself checking out her pores, then gets them developed and talks about how great they look. 6. Orders around her butler Malcolm and tries to steal his breath while he sleeps by leaning over him and staring at him until he wakes up. 7. Fondles strange, vapid women’s breasts … or at least has fantasies that she is fondling their breasts, which are communicated through montages featuring blurred shots of disembodied boobs and equally disembodied female hands cupping them. 8. Dates awkwardly, jumping right into questions about religion, family background and money. 9. Studies ballet with women half her age. 10. Judges other people that are poorer than she is, like Sue. She asks her this series of questions about ten minutes after arriving at her house for the first time and looking through her things, which include an odd toy horse collection: “Are you a moon freak?” “Are you not over your horse phase yet, or what?” “Your father doesn’t give you any allowance?” “What’s this obsession with animals?” 11. Pays for plastic surgery for their uglier friends to fix their “nasal defects” so they can be prettier. 12. Redecorates apartments that are not up to her standards, without the permission of the owners. 13. Runs around crying and screaming frantically and aimlessly in her driveway after breaking up with her boyfriend.
The only thing Nicole doesn’t do that I always have assumed rich people do is play tennis well. In my face, Nicole. Thanks for turning a stereotype on its ear.
I would insert clips or a trailer for Crazed, but everyone associated with this film seems to want to bury it, just as Nicole buried all her former lovers … or as a dog buries its own poop in the yard.
A Bonus Tally of "Montages to Watch":
1. The “Pre-Threesome” Montage (accompanied by rollicking pop music). 2. Nicole’s “Depressing Story about my Mother” Montage. 3. Sue’s “Explaining to Fletcher why Nicole is Judgmental and Pissing Me Off” Montage. 4. The “Nicole Fondling Sue’s Breasts” montage. 5. The “Sue Getting Mauled by a Great Dane” Montage. 6. The “I Killed Someone” Montage. Reviewed By: Julia Rogers
In the spirit of the birthday of the U.S.A., Movie Deuce is pleased to bring you a very special theme week. Join us to celebrate "Double Threat to America" week, during which we enjoy the renderings of renowned actor/singers that can't really do either very well at all.
Stay tuned, beginning on July 1st (tomorrow!) for the best of the worst double threats. You likely already know who they are.
... and justice for all (but unfortunately, not really, because we all suffer).
In this Easter season, why not celebrate the potential second coming of Jesus with a bad sequel or two? Join MovieDeuce for the next two weeks as we sprinkle in some reviews of deucey deuces -- movies that should've never been reborn, but unfortunately were.
Suggested Title: “A Funny Thing Happened to Our Porno Script”
Tatonka Rating: 4.0
Director: Max Kalmanowicz
Writers: Carlton J. Albright, Edward Terry
Theme Song: The product of what must have been the most annoying string recording session ever, with extra violins.
Starring: A general “Who’s Who” of Hollywood nobodies. Only one of the actors has a head shot in IMDB, and his only acting jobs post The Children were in Law and Order episodes almost 30 years later, proving that anyone’s dad could’ve scored a part in this film.
Suggested Tagline(s): “Gettin’ Huggy with It;” “Don’t Get All Handsy with Me”
Actual Tagline(s): “... thank God they're somebody else's!” “Something terrifying has happened to the children... pray you never meet them!” “It only takes five to hold a town in TERROR.”
Plot Summary: A group of vacant-eyed kids are on a school bus in Ravensback, a small New England town, riding home from school on a typical day, and they go missing. A Sheriff named Billy Hart, who looks like Dennis Hopper meets Jim Nabors somehow misses a thousand obvious clues while hunting down the cause of their disappearance. Plot spoiler? The kids have turned into delightfully murderous zombies, thanks to exposure to a gas leak at the local nuclear power plant.
Trailer:
The Other Trailer:
(Spoiler Alert) The Children is a horror romp with a slowly-unraveling plot. It takes its humble first steps with stock footage and innocuous conversation – sprinkled with light blue collar humor – that largely fails to hint at an impending Chernobyl-style disaster, between two nuclear power plant workers, shot from afar, identified in the credits as “Slim” and “Jim.”
Slim: “I checked the intake and the outflow.”
Jim: “Maybe there really was a pressure drop.”
Slim: “And maybe they really will pay us overtime.”
As we watch noxious gas begin to creep from a pipe, we fade to a bus scene. Never have “99 Bottles of Beer” and “Here’s to the Bus Driver” been so ominous as here, when they are sung by children that have oddly hybrid Boston/Long Island accents. The bus rambles through the woods, and we see pregnant mother Cathy Freemont wave to it before it disappears into the toxic gas cloud.
We skip to a deserted road, where short-shorts, high-heel-wearing farmer’s daughter Suzie and Deputy "Rapey O’Toole," whose real name is Harry, played by the infamous Tracy Griswold talk about traffic suggestively while determining if they have enough chromosomes to one day responsibly mate.
The movie shifts again to pill pusher and lesbian co-mom Dr.-of-What(?) Joyce Gould (played by Michelle La Mothe), who spends her days in the company of her Doberman and her cellulite, sunbathing in weather-worn white bikinis. While her relationship to Ms. Button (one of the children, Tommy Button’s bat-shit-eating-crazy mothers) is unclear, she shields her from life’s truths with copious amounts of prescription drugs and soothing piano music. Here we are introduced to the investigative prowess of Sheriff Billy Hart, who brings an overly-pissy Dr. Gould with him to check out the empty bus, filled only with leftover school books and the bus driver’s fishing hat. From these clues, he is able to deduce that the bus driver and children are missing.
We cut back awkwardly to Deputy Harry, still with Suzie, who answers his police radio while approaching first base and says, “Nothing’s gone by us here” when asked if he’d seen the school bus or any other traffic. We have to trust his report, considering the foreplay to his failed barn kiss with Suzie was to talk about the lack of traffic in the town.
We cut without warning for the third time back to Dr. Gould searching for Tommy frantically near the bus after Sheriff Hart leaves her to go cock block his deputy. The vehicle is abandoned eerily in front of a cemetery, which makes our first sight of black-fingernailed, Goth Club ready Tommy even more impactful. Dr. Gould sees Tommy and chases after him, tripping over the burnt-out shell of the bus driver. She also gives us our first visible death scene via the “Hug of Death,” delivered by a male tween in a striped polo, and thwarts our expectations that she will be a main character. As he hugs his ornery second mom right into her grisly, burning death, his eyes are believably lifeless, potentially because he was already dead inside, or simply was given LSD during filming so he wouldn’t be weirded out by having to hug a bunch of girls from whom he might contract serious cooties.
And now, some quick FAQs about the gas-induced hugging disease:
How is it contracted?
It is airborne, but only for a limited time and in limited areas. It comes from unidentified gas produced by nuclear power plants.
Is it contagious?
It’s deadly, but not contagious.
Will it live on?
Apparently it will, but only in children that contract it in-utero when their mothers drive through a cloud. It probably was supposed to produce a sequel film, but that didn’t work out so well.
After the first visible death, we get a delicious taste of the Plaid Ginger Twins, Hank and Frank, who are both balding fans of plaid and denim shirts. They introduce us to the small-town charm of the corner store that buys roadkill, especially dead birds from townspeople and sells things like ether and other confusing auto repair supplies. The store is staffed by the saucy, NRA-card-carrying grandma, Molly. The “that’s what she said” conversation between Molly and the brothers further shows us that the writers of the script were really aiming to make an adult film, but somehow the kids got in the way.
Hank/Frank (about the birds they’re selling): “If you want ‘em any bigger, you’re going to have to wait a couple months. This is as big as they are right now.”
Molly also has access to a CB radio, presumably so she can boff truckers on their way through town and also keep tabs on the admittedly senile school bus driver.
Next on the agenda is for Sheriff Billy to visit one of the other children, Janet’s mother. Dee Dee Shore, played by an actress whose only other role was a hooker in a different movie also filmed in 1980, has hobbies that include sunbathing topless on overcast, chemically-polluted days and watching her heavily-mustachioed boyfriend Jack lift weights by the pool in a grey Speedo that perfectly matches his ashy skin. He gets visibly winded holding up his giant, oiled torso, and angrily turns down a cigarette from Dee Dee while calling into question the not-so-thinly-veiled message Sheriff Hart is delivering: “Exactly what are you trying to tell us Sheriff?” The prospect of a kidnapping inappropriately excites Dee Dee, who exclaims, “A kidnapping in Ravensback! Oh Jack, how exciting!” In an attempt to deflect the twisted nature of the situation, Hart strikes up a conversation about an art “piece” he finds and many awkward silences ensue.
We are introduced to one of the main characters, John Freemont, a father of two of the “Children” and owner of a regularly-broken car. As he waits for Sheriff Hart to help fix his car, girl zombie in a fuscia jumper, Ellen looks on from the trees, but is forced to delay her attack.
Ellen takes real pleasure in her work:
One of the skills of this movie is to switch between sex and death awkwardly with zero transition. After Ellen kills both her parents, we cut to the Ginger Twins spying on Harry and Suzie. They talk about how pretty her hair is, likely eying it as potential stuffing for future pillows. While the purpose of this scene seems to be to give the writers an excuse to wax philosophical about hand jobs with homoerotic overtones, it is really to introduce a character that serves no future purpose in the film. Enter a man in a Pimpmobile, who may or may not be Terry Kiser, but is definitely styling with his giant car phone. He is there to see Dee Dee Shore and her boyfriend.
When Dee Dee’s name is mentioned, Hank and Frank, now the official Greek Chorus of this movie say,
Hank: “I’d like to hump that bitch.” Frank: “Well, you’d have to take her on your own then.” Hank: “I’d take her on my own.”
At this point, Suzie dies at the hands of her brother, Paul. Initially, we think she might get away, since in her only perceptive moment she finds his incessant attempts to hug her inappropriately out of character and starts to slap him repeatedly. Unfortunately, the spinning bike tire and gurgling scream tell us Suzie is dead. Paul then kills his before-now-not-introduced father.
The magic really happens when Harry finds three children in the darkness and tells Molly over the CB radio, “Hey, hey, hey. Harry the Hawk does it again” right before he alliteratively gets hugged to death. Billy comes across his lifeless body and morphs into full-on Gomer Pyle in order to more appropriately display his grief over the situation.
Now there are officially feral children on the loose, but Sheriff Hart’s fear of dogs is what almost prevents him from going in to check on Dr. Gould at the Button house. The only thing more horrifying than finding burnt, dead bodies on the scene is that the phones are dead.
The next stop is back to Molly’s store. She provides us a new twist on an old expression when Hart bangs on her door, presumably because she is used to warding off the gentleman callers she phone sexes via short wave: “Alright, keep your pants zipped!” She makes a loose and fast promise to protect herself by adding, “Anyone tries to get in here, I’ll blast their ass to kingdom come!”
Having still not put together the very conspicuous pieces of the mysterious “The Children” puzzle, Sheriff Hart and John Freemont join forces and find a missing child, Janet on the highway, who thankfully for them is not feeling very affectionate. They repeat her name 100 times, thus turning her into the most well-developed character in the movie.
Then, the death toll really mounts … again.
The film picks up additional steam when bodybuilding, eye-candied Jack dies. Thankfully, his death is more dignified than his life, as he is found lounging by the pool wearing a nice dress shirt and slacks. The death of Jack’s amazing mustache – the only thing left on his burnt carcass that is recognizable – finally helps John and Billy discover that Janet and her friends are part of the problem rather than the solution.
And now, a still from the moments before Molly’s very anticlimactic death:
After the sad demise of the town’s only badass grandma, we cut to a scene in which an adult is slowly killing a child, as we see pregnant Cathy Freemont smoking, with apologies to her baby. Since – spoiler alert – the baby ends up being infected in the end, perhaps the whole movie is a PSA against exposure of children to toxins of any kind.
When Billy and John arrive at the Freemont home, going through major caffeine withdrawal, they demand that Cathy make them coffee. At this point, Goth-nail-infected Freemont daughter Jenny attempts to break into her own house. Cathy almost gets the hugging of a lifetime, but the hug is brutally rebuked. John and the Sheriff start to wrangle the children into the barn/tool shed, and John learns the hard lesson that you should never hug a child that’s gone full Goth when his hand is singed by touching Jenny. A barrage of threatening hug attempts ensue as all the zombie children rally.
Billy sets up a firing-squad-style shooting post inside the Freemont house, but the children are immune to the blasts. They are also apparently excellent climbers, and start to try to invade the Freemont house to hug the crap out of their families. A game of hide and seek goes horribly wrong as yet another Freemont child, Clarkie, starts to kill …
but gets ass-blasted in dramatic fashion over the railing of the stairs. At this point, we discover the Achilles Heel of the infected: cutting off their hands cuts off the disease and also kills them.
Likely this movie was an excuse to satisfy the urge to kill child actors without the authorities being alerted. The fact that these young actors and actresses completely disappeared from show biz after this could be more than just a career side effect of starring in this.
“God … if they get those hands on you!”
Giving up any hope of salvaging the movie, the writers decide to make their characters adopt a passive aggressive stance on solving the problem of the zombie kids by having them propose waiting it out and seeing what happens, echoing our sentiments about what we might be able to do after watching this film to erase it from our memories: “Maybe it will just go away.” However, like the characters and also the actors, we know we will never get that hour and thirty minutes of our lives back.
While debating, they manage to cut off the hands of Ellen, the girl that had the most unquenchable bloodlust. The end of the movie is a series of flashlight scenes, interspersed with John’s conflicted feelings about filicide. He almost succumbs to the power of his daughter’s high-waisted khakis (Jenny is truly ahead of her time in the fashion department, as such pants were not seen in their full glory until the early 1990’s). As she advances on him in her zombie hug stance, he is saved by the Sheriff, who systematically kills the children in the shed one-by-one.
Unfortunately, losing one “Huggy Hand” does not fully kill Ellen, and she delivers the final death blow of the movie to Sheriff Hart from the backseat of his police cruiser, bringing about the untimely end of one of the most majestic movie bromances of all time.
John is distracted from his corpse-holding grief by the cries of Cathy from inside the house. The baby is being born, bringing about the swelling of the violin-heavy string theme again. He finds her in the bathroom, and she starts to list the usual laundry list of items – boiling water, sheets, scissors – you’d think you’d need to carry out a successful home birth, even though she does not use any of them in the end. As the sun rises, the true horror of the film unfolds as the creepy sounds of Cathy giving birth that are likely indistinguishable from what conceiving it sounded like fill the house.
John exclaims, “The head’s clear! You did it, Cathy!” And the baby is born – a girl … with Gothy fingernails.
The moral of the story? If your kids die, you can always have some more; but they might turn to the Goth lifestyle to fill the emptiness you created when you told them they failed to meet any of your expectations.
Tatonka Rating: 4.0 Director: Sheldon Lettich Writer: Sheldon Lettich, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Steve Meerson, Peter Krikes
Theme Song: “Feel the Impact,” Performed by Gen
Actual Tagline(s) … (Because a Twin Movie Should Have TWO): “One Packs a Punch. One Packs a Piece. Together, They Deliver.”
“Two Brothers Separated by the Violence. Now Together in a Mission of Revenge.”
What I Remember the Tagline Being: “Twice the Van Dammage.” Suggested Tagline: “… Like Jean-Claude Van Damme Having Sex with Himself.”
CAST:
Jean-Claude Van Damme (Muscles from Brussels), as Chad Wagner, aka, “Mr. California, Mr. Silk Underwear.”
Unshaven Jean-Claude Van Damme, as Alex Wagner
Geoffrey Lewis as Frank Avery, the guy that can insert “fuck” into just about every sentence (in real life, he is also Juliette Lewis’ father)
Cory Everson as Danielle, the person who most acutely feels the Van Damme double-team action in this movie.
THE PLOT:
Double Impact is a double-the-pleasure movie from that 90’s that took four whole people to write and proves Jean-Claude Van Damme (JCVD) is the King of getting inappropriately over-enraged and over-excited about nothing in particular. This action-packed movie was also clearly sponsored by the belt industry and the makers of high-waisted pants.
Throughout Double Impact, JCVD proves that when you have two chances to suck, you can really do it up right. The movie is essentially comprised of a collection of uncomfortable extreme close-up shots of him checking out mentally interspersed with a lot of bewildering high kicks.
To be honest, for the first ten minutes, I wasn’t sure I was watching the right movie. We find ourselves in Hong Kong (potentially really the hills of Southern California) witnessing a vague political event involving the creation of the Hong Kong Island Tunnel in the 60’s, orchestrated by twins Alex and Chad Wagner’s father in a ceremony attended by a small collection of movie extras. As the family leaves, they give their body guard, Frank (Lewis) the night off, thus causing them to be killed after thousands of failed shots from 100 or so Chinese wielding what appear to be red paint guns amidst an assault of tom-tom-intensive, violin-riddled elevator music. One of the twins is kidnapped, though Frank is able to save Chad, who he takes back to California by boat after being shot by the main villain who has been confusingly shot in the face (possibly by his own henchmen). From this bloody scene, we learn that the second you take a night off from being a body guard in an action movie, unless you are JCVD, your charges are immediately brutally slain, and you can do nothing at all about it.
(DISCLAIMER: Because the director/producer didn’t bother to provide any English subtitles for the Chinese spoken in this movie – either out of respect for the culture, or more likely, because they are not actually speaking Chinese – my plot interpretation is loose, at best.)
In any good twin movie, one half of the twin set has to be raised by nuns, causing that twin to develop a massive chip on his shoulder. However, 25 years after the horrific slaying of the twins’ parents, the first one we meet as an adult is supposedly well-adjusted, over-sexed Chad in California.
As we learn more about Chad and wish someone had told the movie's music supervisor to take it easy on the synthesizer, we are left wondering which is more unbelievable – Jean Claude being 25 in 1991, or the character Chad building a fortune by teaching aerobics and karate. Regardless, his wardrobe was clearly selected based on what would make his ass look most like two ham hocks wrestling.
(The above picture has been minimized for your protection.)
After almost getting beaten up by an entire karate class (the members of which object to his choice of blue spandex as much as we do), he is told by a now older Frank (who finds out Chad’s twin is still alive while he is inappropriately massaging some of his students) that he needs to go to Hong Kong for undisclosed reasons. This prompts JCVD to change into an outfit that makes him look like he mugged Don Ameche in Cocoon.
Once Chad reunites with his twin Alex, we realize that the only thing they have in common is their high kick and their need to call attention to the extreme size of their penises. We also discover that you need more than a little luck to successfully explain a conspiracy theory to one JCVD, let alone two.
Alex, the evil twin, does dastardly things like provide the nice people of China with pretty cars and American cigarettes. He is also so badass that when on a boat, he can just look at people sideways, and they decide to immediately jump overboard while screaming.
A Tribute to JCVD’s Sarcastic, Ineffectual Punchlines in Double Impact:
“Nice going?! Nice going, my ass! I almost got killed!”
“Hey – can this piece of shit move any faster?”
“Welcome to Hong Kong.” (Delivered by Alex after throwing a Mercedes emblem from a blown-up car at his brother, Chad.)
(Chad, referring to the soup he is eating) – “What’s it supposed to do … make my dick bigger?”
(Chad, Right before getting kicked in the nuts) – “You go fuck yourself.”
(Alex, talking about Chad) – “Big kiss? I’ll give him a big kick in the ass, that’s what I’ll give him!”
And, the most offensive Jean-Claude Van Damme line ever delivered (by Alex), and potentially why we really don't see him in movies anymore:
“Maybe I’m drunk, tomorrow I’ll be sober, but he’ll always be a faggot.”
In general, the ass kicking in Double Impact takes a while to get started. With double the potential Van Dammage, you’d think they’d want to get it started right away, but they really make us wait for it. However, once it's on, it's ON, and we get a taste of what JCVD clearly believes about himself – that he is a better martial artist than all of China. Eventually we also discover that if you’re going to get high-kicked by JCVD in slow motion, put water in your mouth first to increase the drama.
The slightly bumbling Chad provides a nice reward for those of us that have been frustrated by JCVD’s inability to get very hurt in any of his movies. Watching him get repeatedly nailed in the nuts while wearing pleated Dockers will be one of the most satisfying experiences of your life, especially after watching him carefully drag his garment bag everywhere to protect his rockin’ 90’s wardrobe.
One of the most unique characteristics about Jean-Claude is his signature scream, which is offered up in great supply throughout Double Impact. It’s basically like an Arnold Schwarzenegger scream, if Arnold ate more bran and spoke slightly better English.
At one point, there is an interchange between the brothers that was probably repeated after production wrapped whenever JCVD thought about this movie while he was looking in the mirror:
CHAD: “Hey bro! We did it!” ALEX: “Did what? You fucked up!”
In terms of sexual tension in Double Impact, it is most strongly felt in interactions between Jean-Claude Van Damme and himself. Of course, whenever any woman is around JCVD, her clothes fall off inexplicably and her hair dries seconds after swimming (undoubtedly, food also loses its taste and birds sing). However, the only sex scene – between Chad and Danielle, Alex’s girlfriend – looks like it was ripped uncomfortably from a naked production of the “Blue Man Group.” Thankfully, we get a great interplay between Chad and Danielle having sex on a boat and Alex somehow knowing through twin intuition they are having sex, knowledge that causes him to randomly punch everything in sight and shoot bourbon angrily out his nose.
A good twin action movie would be nothing without the main actor epically kicking his own ass at some point, and we get that in spades in this movie. They eventually reconcile after Chad proves his total confusion over geography and threatens to swim from Hong Kong to California (and truly believes he can do it) and join forces to totally kick everything in sight for the last 10 minutes.
Biggest Lesson Learned: If you see an Asian falling from a great height, JCVD was probably responsible.
Fun Trick: If you listen to Double Impact without watching it, you get a pretty close approximation of what it would sound like if JCVD could really have sex with himself.
Tatonka Rating: 4.0 Director: Neal Israel Writer: Neal Israel (teleplay), Arnold Margolin (screenplay, story) Actual Tagline: “Will Solve Any Case by Dinnertime.” Suggested Tagline: “Will Do Anything for a Buck.”
Ashley Olsen, as the Stuck-Up, Old-Lady-Hat-Wearing, Is-Afraid-of-Everything One
Tracy Nelson, as the fake mom (you might remember her as daughter of Ricky Nelson and the one that played a nun on the deuce-worthy television series Father Dowling Mysteries with Tom Bosley) William R. Moses, as the dreamy fake dad (who has over 90 TV movies under his belt, usually playing the fake dad in those too)
Despite being a quasi musical, no one was willing to take credit for having written the songs. The theme song, which apparently provides an opening for all parts of this episodic movie series is best listened to after imbibing a vat of malt liquor purchased from your local registered sex offender-staffed convenience store … or after smoking a pound of crack:
The story of this particular movie begins when the Olsen Twins’ fake parents – who are marine biologists at Sea World in Orlando, Florida (who we’d like to especially thank for endorsing this particular cinematic bowel movement) – invent a way to talk to dolphins. Their discovery is in great part thanks to their love of neglecting their children, who after a hard day of aggressively interrogating birds and Sea World mascots with their basset hound “Clue” still cannot find a plot for this movie.
While they are being babysat/harassed by and also criticizing two mimes named Flippy and Bobo in one of the kidnapping capitals of the world, the twins almost miss their daily dose of child abuse – performing dressed as penguins for tourists in the dolphin show. (Perhaps the only thing I have in common with Mary-Kate and Ashley is their hatred of mimes and the pleasure they get from verbally abusing them.)
The movie really starts to hit its stride once Mary-Kate and Ashley rap (because they can’t sing worth a damn) in penguin suits as dolphins do their bidding. Winning lyrics from their musical extravaganza include those found in a quirky back-and-forth between the sisters, which throws you into a tailspin because you pretty much can’t tell them apart without their signature hats:
The song reaches Shakespearean levels when it collapses onto itself like a dying star with “Hey comma comma c’mon, comma comma c’mon let’s jump the moon/We’re so much in tune I want to flip.”
Their public humiliation complete, the twins go onto their next fit babysitter, a maniacal 30-something woman (who must be a recurring character in the series) who tells them a story about a girl named Cindy and some pizzas … and an old lady that shoves gingerbread into someone’s face before or after seeing some gerbils. While she is talking, they drift off and rudely interrupt her by doing what they do for most of this particular episode – talking about not having a case to solve and illegally spying on people.
A seeming non-sequeter (until the very end), the twins’ parents’ boss tells them they better take a vacation or he’s going to call child welfare on them for forcing their children to have to pretend to be detectives instead of behaving like normal children (or at least he implies he’s going to take some drastic measures to get them to stop working). Thankfully, he never really makes good on his threat, as he depends on the twins for entertainment, provided in great supply when he makes up fake cases for them to solve that almost get them killed, raped or kidnapped on his days off.
The twins finally find a case about 15 minutes into the episode when they discover what they think is a corpse in the woods (yep!) and are thrilled to report it. As they are running off to tell a local policeman, the dead body gets up and leaves a wallet behind, which they find when they come back to nothing.
As they are following the clues (which lead them on a trip up in the Sea World Sky Tower), we learn something that might have helped us take down the Olsen Empire before it became catastrophically problematic: Ashley is deathly afraid of heights.*
The Adventures of Mary Kate and Ashley: The Case of the Sea World Adventure takes a turn towards Weekend at Bernie’s until the bitter end, when the twins start seeing a woman parading the corpse in a trench coat around Sea World, taking it on rides and generally pretending it is alive and having one hell of a good time.
And now a break for “Precious Moments to Support Good Parenting inThe Adventures of Mary Kate and Ashley: The Case of the Sea World Adventure”
1. At one point, Mary-Kate declares, before doing one of many dangerous things that will lead to being kidnapped and becoming a hot commodity in human trafficking, “We’re detectives … detectives never think about safety.”
2. The twins flirt with the idea of taking a cab with a stranger, but their plan is thwarted not because of safety concerns, rather because they can’t afford it.
Their poor choices lead them to become buskers singing tribute songs to Miami (where they are trying to go). Fortunately, they meet a steel drum band that is willing to put their ramblings to music, dress up in whorish Flamenco outfits and combine forces to sing about Pastrami, Afro Cuban music and Key Lime Pie. Of course, random crowd people start helping them by doing a dance that looks to have been choreographed by Ed Grimley, but really wants to be an exact replica of the stairs dance scene during the big parade in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
Thankfully, people in Miami are more than willing to pay top dollar for high-quality, live kiddy porn and the duo makes $98.50, enough to hire a limo to drive them to Miami.
And then, this movie goes one place with a dead body that Weekend at Bernie’s never went – a Carnival Cruise ship (but I’m betting Carnival wouldn’t have had the balls to capitalize on the death of Terry Kiser).
All-in-all, this is a great series to watch when you’re deliriously sick and stuck at home with nothing but Netflix instant watch by your side. It would also be fuel for a really high-volume drinking game.
PLOT SPOILER, so you can avoid watching this entirely: The dead body is Flippy the mime, and Bobo is a transvestite.
BONUS: It’s only 28 minutes long, and there’s a blooper reel at the end.
Reviewed by Julia Rogers
*If an Olsen Twin is pushed off a cliff, and there is no one around to hear it, does she still make a sound?
1 Tatonka = Too Good to Be Bad or Not Bad Enough in the Right Way to Be Good 2 Tatonkas = Pretty Bad, but Still Pretty Disappointing 3 Tatonkas = Delicious Head Cheese on a Stale, Generic-Brand Ritz Cracker 4 Tatonkas = The Devil's Diary or Friends 'Til the End 5 Tatonkas = Buffalo Patties on a Hot Log or a Deuce Dropped from a Great Height***
