Undefeatable (1993 90 minutes)

Crazy death match fighter Stingray is having some marital problems that all stems from his crappy attitude towards women so his wife leaves him and that makes him even more crazy. In the meantime, Cynthia Rothrock is involved in some other kind of underground street fighting for money that involves dressing like a cross between Janet Jackson and Debbie Gibson while not letting your hands touch the ground in a fight. Stingray puts a purple streak in his hair and goes out looking for women who look like his wife (and wear flowered  dresses) so he can tie them up at his secret warehouse lair. He also pokes people's eyeballs out. One day, Cynthia Rothrock's sister goes out wearing a flowered dress and you can probably guess where this is headed. Seriously, this is so great I can't even pick out a favorite bit - is it the eyeballs in the fishtank or the fighter named Bear who wears football shoulderpads and baggy weightlifter pants? Is it the reaction shots of the fight watchers and their crazy outfits - from those black baseball hats with the metallic "Nasty" logos to a 3 sizes too large 'Fuck Censorship' t-shirt and trenchcoat? Or is it the drawn out end fight in all of it's knife licking glory? Sadly, this was Don Niam's (the guy who plays Stingray) only fictional martial arts movie. Most of the rest of the cast and the director made another movie the same year called Honor and Glory that just doesn't have it so I'm convinced that it's Don's magic that makes this such a treasure. He gives  private martial arts lessons in Las Vegas. Maybe you can get him to show you that knife-licking technique

Warbus (1986 92 minutes) / War Bus Commando (1989 90 minutes)

I had to re-watch these after the viewing the  recent  atrocity  The Expendables. War is brutal, stupid and has consequences + explosions look so much nicer with real flames. In Warbus, some fleeing missionaries barely escape a part of the 'Nam that's being overrun by the enemy and meet up with a few straggling marines so off they go to find a base or border or some safe point. Along the way they come across a bunch of dead soldiers, some are crucified, others are booby trapped to explode. There are some things that need to be blown up like the occasional bridge or fuel depot but everyone on the bus has problems that can't be solved with a few well placed grenade tosses. You keep waiting for the eventual double cross to take place and by the end I couldn't tell for sure if it had happened or not.

In War Bus Commando, also known as Warbus 2, Mark Gregory (the guy who played Trash in the Bronx Warriors) is a special forces lone wolf named Johnny Hondo who single-handedly attacks a Russian base in occupied Afghanistan to free some guy. I was wondering to myself 'when is he going to break out the rocket launcher' about 10 seconds before he did it to blast some guys on the other side of the river. He's  back home in the States enjoying some hunting when he's approached by the guy who played the dean in Animal House with a new mission. It seems Hondo's dad is a disgraced General who left a secret package of documents or something back in Afghanistan so Johnny needs to go back and get it to restore dad's honor. Of course it's hidden inside a bus so he has to fight both the Russian army and Afghan rebels to get to it, meeting an orphan boy and a couple soldier prisoners along the way. At least they're smart enough to fortify the bus with makeshift armor before heading for the border. After much fighting, slow motion gun shooting, and explosions (even a helicopter or 2) we get to the eventual double cross and of course it's all about stupid money.
Sadly, neither bus survives to ride off into the sunset

A Night To Dismember (1982 69 minutes)

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I'm usually pretty against voice over narration but when someone at the film lab destroys most of the footage for your movie and you still have to finish it i guess you do what you gotta do.  The Kent family has the bad luck of everyone winding  up suddenly dead. Poor Vicki gets out of the institution and some family members don't want her back so they start trying to spook her into craziness.  Then there's the  killing....lots of it - with some of the most passive axe chopping ever committed to film.  Then a detective shows up but he seems more interested in peeping in Vicki's window than working on the case. I think he's the one doing the narration. Everything is overdubbed - all of the character's voices, all of the sound effects, various random stock library film music, everything. All at once I'm reminded of the opening monologue in Oliver Stone's JFK, Brian De Palma's Sisters, HG Lewis, Godard, Truffuat and more. If David Lynch had made this it probably would've won some kind of award at Cannes. Dogma 95 be damned, If Lars Von Trier or Harmony Korine would  put a couple decapitations or someone getting their chest punched through and heart ripped out in their stuff, maybe I would still remember the names of any of their movies. Doris Wishman, you are my hero. I am awestruck.

LIght Blast (1985 89 minutes)

Any movie that opens with some people getting their faces melted off and then Erik Estrada shows up in his underwear to pull a gun out of a stuffed turkey to blast a bad guy that looks like a mix of David Crosby and Gallagher should be rated pretty high. Estrada's so cool he gets 2 bits of theme music  , one a jaunty bass line for when he's walking and another jazzy number with horns for all of the car chases. It seems some disgruntled scientist created a laser that melts stuff but he needs to point it at an LCD display in order for it to work, so he offs the train yard with the giant digital clock and then the announcer's booth at the stock car races.  The city won't give in to his demand for millions of dollars so Estrada puts on his sleuthing cap to save everyone from horrible face melting death.  Along the way we get a kung fu funeral home worker, multiple acts of violence against volkswagon beetles, a lot of slow motion gunfights, explosions and people on fire and a super car chase with a dune buggy + you can't have a car chase in San Francisco without a bunch of slow motion jumps over those big hills. Most movies are a chore to get through in one sitting, this one's smooth like lemonade.