Hell Squad (Kenneth Hartford, 1986)

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“Is this a joke?” Dig this. The son of an American Ambassador in the Middle East has been kidnapped and the government wants nothing to do with it. He has a problem, and there's no-one else who can help, so he hires The A-Team … no wait, he doesn't. Indeed, his assistant figures it'd be a waste of time employing mercenaries so, using his connections in Las Vegas, he hires a gaggle of showgirls to stage the daring rescue. Yup!

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The Zero Boys (Nico Mastorakis, 1986)

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“Eat your heart out, Sly.” You know how it is with so many slasher movies – pretty people making dumb decisions and splitting away from the group only to end up with a butcher knife through their face. But what if those genetically gifted college kids weren't so dumb? What if they did their utmost to stick together? What if they were armed with semi-automatics and TNT?...

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Chopping Mall (Jim Wynorski, 1986) Review

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“I guess I'm not used to being chased around a mall in the middle of the night by killer robots.” The 1980s was the decade when the shopping mall ruled all from the consumerist dream driving the economy to the food court driving teenagers' social engagement. It was a time and a place that was important in people's lives, something worth protecting, but how best to do that? Perhaps big steel time-locked doors and a trio of roaming robots armed with laser eyes? Gee, I sure hope a random lightning storm doesn't scramble their circuits and result in a slew of corpses … oh, hang on, too late!

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Double Bill Mini Musings: Iron Men & Iron Bars...

Iron Man 3
What's it about?
If you don't know about Iron Man by now, then where have you been? Tony Stark/Iron Man comes unstuck when international terrorist The Mandarin starts causing global chaos while the 'extremis' biological development only makes things worse.
Who would I recognise in it?
Robert Downey Jr, Gweneth Paltrow, Don Cheadle, Guy Pearce, Ben Kingsley, Rebecca Hall, Jon Favreau, James Badge Dale, William Sadler, Paul Bettany, Miguel Ferrer.
Great/Good/Alright/Shite?
Better than the second, not as good as the first. In spite of few plot holes and story jumps, the script is breezy and sassy enough to make this a hell of a fun ride. Director and Co-Writer Shane Black works his sardonic magic - a summer blockbuster that's set at Christmas, a precocious kid side-kick, innumerable withering put-downs, and an audience-splitting 180 degree blindsiding reveal, all make this a thoroughly enjoyable time. Some might gripe that 'there's not enough Iron Man in it', but there's plenty of iron-fisted mayhem come the finale. Focusing more on Tony Stark this time around makes things more personal and ties up some loose character ends - Iron Man 3 is, after all, the beginning of 'Marvel Phase II' after the billion-dollar juggernaut that was The Avengers. Much better that they play with the formula somewhat rather than just stick rigidly to the same old tricks we've seen before. Good.

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