Hey everyone… Jonathan Moody back again. You will see one more time coming up as well since things have changed a bit this season! Anyway starting off this was our first Zoom episode back for season 6 and boy did it start off a lot better than expected. I had to ask my buddy James L. Edwards to join myself and Paul for this NEW episode especially since we were doing another cheesy action flick. This time it was the 1990 indie action flick, “Twisted Justice”! But bot did it not disappoint. Let’s get in to it.
To start off with this was a film by David Heavener. David Heavener was a low budget action star. He usually produced and directed the films himself. With a few big named actors which we will get in to in a bit. Now David is the self proclaimed last evangelist whatever that really means! Last season (Season 5) we had James on for Miami Connection which wasn’t his cup of tea. So I picked this one hoping it would be stinky but fun and surprisingly its less on the stink and very much fun.
The logline is as follows (Source from Frankfob 2 from IMDB):
In the Los Angeles of the future, police are forbidden to carry weapons and must use stun guns (Called “Stingers”) instead. A Maverick detective ignores those restrictions and in his pursuit of “The Bullseye Murderer”, a psychotic rapist who takes a new drug called, “Umbra” that gives him superhuman strength and intelligence.
That’s a pretty good synopsis of the movie. More than I picked up watching it. Haha. David Heaven’s character James Tucker who is a bit of a nutball. Not so much but he can be very nutty when he wants to be. Kind of like a little character named Martin Griggs in a little movie you might have heard of… Lethal Weapon. I’m sure David was thinking this would be a hit and then he could make it a franchise. It doesn’t hold up nearly as well as Lethal Weapon, of course. James Tucker is in search of the Bullseye killer and ends up tracking him down. Violence and mayhem ensues.
Anyway James Tucker has hidden his gun in his house so the commander send two police detectives who just interrupt Tucker’s morning on more than one occasion to search for the missing gun. The two detectives are played by Jim Brown and James Van Patten who are just throw away characters. C’mon you got one of the greatest action heroes and pretty much all his scenes are looking for a gun. What’s going on here?
There’s other acting favorites like Erik Estrada as the commander, Karen Black in a very small role, and Shannon Tweed who is mainly a voice in it up until the end of the movie. It was supposed to be a joke I guess but really wasn’t that funny. Paul had remembered seeing this flick when it first came out and being very unimpressed by it. I saw this one but didn’t get a chance to finish it before but man am I glad we did it. James hadn’t seen it but was well aware of who David was. This was more of what James wants out of these silly little indie flicks. And kind of exactly what Paul and I are always looking for in regards to IFC.
I mean there’s not much else more to say in regards to this flick. It’s your standard Lethal Weapon rip off but it was a lot more fun than any of us even expected and quite frankly more fun than he def. deserved to be. I mean if it can keep the attention of the moo cow these day, my ADHD brain on crack, and James’ higher than a lot of people’s standards than I would say it’s a pretty above average flick and we at the IFC studio implore you to check it out. But until then…
The Scores are in… Now as I was saying we all expected this going in to be pretty bad but since there wasn’t a lot of technical issues and the story was interesting and entertaining enough to keep us watching it had a lower score level than expected. On the Stinkometer scale remember 1-4 are pretty good; 5 is meh; and 6-10 are degrees of stinkiness. James and I both gave it a 4 and Paul gave it a 4.5 giving it a total score of 12.5. Which interestingly enough ties it with Polymorph (Starring and Written James L. Edwards) and Now You Know (The Jeff Anderson directed flick produced by Kevin Smith). Not a bad place to be especially for a cheesy action flick from the early early 90s (kind of like left over 80s)
I mean all in all this movie was a lot more fun than expected and we hope that if you get a chance to see it somewhere (we had to buy the movie online) than we implore you to check it out. The next movie tho…. ooof that was a harsh one to sit through. But before we get in to all that and everything I gotta leave you all in the hands of the MooCow who is going to tell you all where you can pick this movie up!
So take it away, Paul….
Moo everyone – here is the trailer! You can actually watch the full moovie for free on the Tube of You! And you can stream it on PRIME. You can also stream it from Uncle Lloyd at Troma Direct! Buy the DVD at Troma, Oldies.com, or Walmart. Find it re-sale on Ebay or Mercari. For twice the fun buy the double flick dvd on Amazon with Twisted Justice and Laser Mission (or the VHS too if yer into that)! Grab the 24″ x 36″ original poster on EBAY while you can! Or check out the 2 different digital posters you can download at TheMovieDB.org. There are a couple of decent write-ups/reviews at Flick Attack and Temple of Schlock, and you can check out the original LA Times review of the flick from 1990 HERE.
The Indie Film Cafe Movie Reviews! 