Cyclone (1987)

The Cyclone the title is referring to is a motorcycle created by Rick Davenport (Jeffrey Combs) that doubles as a military weapon. It’s equipped with lasers, guns and six rockets. It can reach unimaginable speeds and perform practically any stunt. Even the helmet is decked out. It comes with a radar system that speaks and it also shoots lasers. It’s like a ten year old’s wet dream come true!

Making that wet dream even better is Teri Marshall (Heather Thomas), Jeffrey’s girlfriend. She doesn’t know of his government job. She soon discovers when two punks, Rolf (Dar Robinson) and Hanna (Dawn Wildsmith), stab him in the back of the neck with an ice pick while they were out at the club. They’re hired goons of Bosarian (Martin Landau, having fun chewing up the scenery), who wants the transformer to the Cyclone to sell. Why he wouldn’t want the whole bike is beyond me.

While this sounds like a ton of fun, and certainly is at times, it’s not quite the enjoyable experience I was hoping for. The Cyclone doesn’t get used to it’s full potential until the finale. It races around town for a bit (in quite a few montages that drag a bit) and gets in a wicked car chase at one point. But, the lasers and rockets and whatnot don’t get busted out until near the end. I understand why Fred Olen Ray did this. He was building up the suspense and hitting the money shot at the end. While I respect this decision, I feel he stumbled a bit on the way there.

The main issue with “Cyclone” is that it can be boring. A lot of the dialogue can be atrocious and I found some talk heavy scenes to drag. For a film that’s only eighty-three minutes long, it sure has a lot of padding. I’ll give credit to the actors; they do their best with the material. Heather Thomas can be a bit flaky at times, but she handles herself well and is the camera’s best friend. Jeffrey Combs is quite charming in his brief role as her boyfriend and the two surprisingly have chemistry together. Dar Robinson is a hoot as Rolf, while Landau is fun to watch as his boss.

Olen Ray adds some comic relief in the form of two bumbling cops played by Tim Conway, Jr. and Michael Reagan. While they do score some laughs (them falling asleep while on a stakeout made me chuckle), they felt woefully out of place. They add nothing to the story and only waste time. I’m not so sure if Fred was filling dead air or if he just wanted the two of them in his film. It’s quite possible the latter is the case and he penned them in at the last minute.

I need to quit bitching and moaning! While I had my fair share of issues with “Cyclone”, I also had my fair share of fun with it. Though the action sequences only appear sporadically, they deliver on the goods. Olen Ray doesn’t hold back in the finale and goes balls to the wall (replete with a gargantuan amount of explosions). I just wish the road there wasn’t so bumpy.

MVT: Heather Thomas. She may have been flaky in spots, but she was good overall and held her own. She played the eye candy up to the camera, but handled herself well when it came to the action. She was a good choice for the role.

Make or Break: The finale. It saved the film for me. Honorable mention goes to the car chase in the middle, where the goons’ car gets ripped in half.

Final Score: 6/10

Hollywood Cop (1987)

Director/Writer: Amir Shervan

Cast: David Goss, Julie Schoenhofer, Lincoln Kilpatrick, James Mitchum, Troy Donahue, Cameron Mitchell, Aldo Ray

When you think of memorable action film henchmen, Goldfinger’s Oddjob, Lethal Weapon’s Mr. Joshua, and Al Leong from roughly 90% of 1980s action cinema spring to mind. Unfortunately, not every worthy henchman gets the notoriety he deserves. Animal, the bearded and oft-cackling henchman in 1987’s Hollywood Cop, falls into this category not simply because of the film’s relatively low profile, but because director Amir Shervan failed to include the actor’s name in the credits. This was but one in a flurry of egregious errors in Shervan’s American directorial debut, where the hair is feathered, the aviators are polished, and the jeans and jackets are a little on the snug side.

The audience gets its introduction to Animal in the film’s opening scene, where members of a gang are gathered poolside at the Feliciano mansion before an important operation. Feliciano (Mitchum) has carefully planned the kidnapping of the son of Joe Fresno, a former associate who screwed him out of a large sum of money. He demands that no one be left alive with the exception of the mother. Animal assures him that he’ll “kill them all” and then cackles maniacally. In response, Feliciano asks that the rest of the gang keep an eye on Animal because “he’s strange.”

Shortly before the kidnapping, single mother Rebecca (Shoenhofer) is grappling with the latest of her son’s mischievous outbursts. Little Stevie is washing a goat for the third time that day. Perhaps this is forgivable since they live on a ranch, but chronic goat-washing is the type of behavioral problem endemic to single-parent households. On the bright side, the kidnapping itself is a rousing success. The gang guns down several fleeing ranch hands before wrestling the terrified boy from his screaming mother’s arms. Raises for everyone!

Rebecca is left with a ransom letter demanding $6 million and forbidding police involvement. To whom can she turn for help? The police, of course. She crosses paths with L.A. cop John “Turkey” Turquoise (Goss), fresh off a recent rape and robbery bust that leaves three perpetrators dead and one officer violently ill after witnessing a beheading. Turkey is that ultra-rare breed of cop who works by his own rules and is regularly chastised as a loose cannon by superiors Capt. Bonano (Mitchell) and Lt. Maxwell (Donahue). From what I can tell, he doesn’t live on a houseboat however. Turkey and his partner, Jaguar (Kilpatrick), take Rebecca’s case and vow to bring her son back safely.

Having seen Shervan’s Samurai Cop a few years ago, I expected Hollywood Cop to be its sloppier and even more inept grandfather since it was filmed two years beforehand. Instead, I was surprised to find that this was the (slightly) more polished of the two. While so many of Samurai Cop’s weird moments could be attributed to an inexperienced cast, Hollywood Cop is chock full of grizzled veterans. Mitchum looks bloated but is suitably irritable as crime boss Feliciano, while Mitchell and Donahue do a bit more than cash checks in their limited screen time. The real standout here is Lincoln Kilpatrick, who looks like he’s having a blast as the oversexed and appropriately named Jaguar. Had blues legend Billie Holiday not encouraged him to pursue a career in acting, it's unlikely that he ever would have found himself performing alongside Sidney Poitier in the original Broadway production of "A Raisin in the Sun," or oil-wrestling two busty chicks in a completely unnecessary nightclub scene here. Thanks again for everything Lady Day.

The film’s action scenes are lively, for the most part. The foot pursuit near the beginning of the film which introduces the audience to Turkey leads to a severed hand and subsequent decapitation, both by machete. The shootout sequences contain some of the most wildly inconsistent behavior in the midst of gunfire I’ve ever seen. In one instance, a baddie writhes and twitches after taking several shots before sliding down a staircase to a (dead) stop. That’s reasonable. Just a few minutes later though, his cohort takes a shot to the arm and winces as if pressing on a fresh sunburn. During a climactic gun battle, Turkey shields Rebecca from gunfire by lying on top of her on the ground. This kind of selflessness would be admirable were it not for him sticking his ass in the air in a seductive manner. To quote a Beastie Boys lyric: “in the animal kingdom, they call it presenting.”

This was Shervan’s first American production, and it shows. Actors routinely talk over one another, a boom mic is visible during a scene without any dialogue, and he frequently films scenes with obstructive objects -- such as counter-tops and asses -- in the foreground. Shervan also spends much more time than is necessary on Stevie’s captivity and as far as child actors go, he’s pretty awful. Most of his lines occur in an attempted conversation with a Doberman guard dog. Yup.

Make or Break: The lone car chase near the back-end of the film. Sure, the vehicles Shervan chose are the types of shitboxes you'd inherit from a deceased grandparent. There's little flow, no real sense of danger, and the camera angles are pretty dull. However, even a scene as plodding as this still results in a ramped car, a man on fire, and a carsplosion within a 40-second time-frame. As an intersection of Shervan’s desire for visual bombast and his inability to properly execute it, this sequence was a clear make.

MVT: Director Amir Shervan. Even when the execution is clunky, his approach to filmmaking is sincere and the results are entertaining. When his dialogue is unrealistic and his characters' actions are inconsistent with acceptable human behavior, we dig him all the more for it.

Score: 6.25/10

Hollywood Cop isn’t a good film by most standards but like so many other action films of the 1980s, its charm lies in its flaws. This is “beers and buds” fodder and a pretty enjoyable watch for what it is. Even if you don’t dig the action, the bearded thespian behind the Animal character is a revelation.