Dr. Jones I Presume: INDIANA JUNKIE AND THE RAIDERS OF THE BOX OFFICE GOLD Theme Month

Our (almost) complete guide to Indiana Jones rip-offs and the original inspiration for the character!

Raiders of the Box Office Gold

JAKE SPEED (1986)

FIREWALKER (1986)

CLEVELAND SMITH: BOUNTY HUNTER (1982)

TREASURE OF THE FOUR CROWNS (1983)

RAIDERS OF THE MAGIC IVORY (1988)

BLOODSTONE (1988)

The "Never Got Made" File #31: TERRY & THE PIRATES

HUNTERS OF THE GOLDEN COBRA (1982)

THE ARK OF THE SUN GOD (1983)

MAGNUM P.I. AND THE LEGEND OF THE LOST ART (1988)

Parody, thy name is Indiana

RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (1951)

THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF TENNESSEE BUCK (1988)

JEWEL OF THE GODS (1988)

Brainstorming an Icon

Indiana Jones and the Lost Expedition

Mr. Lucas and Mr. Spielberg, meet Mr. Mattei: STRIKE COMMANDO 1 & 2 (1987-1988), THE TOMB (2004)

Godfrey Ho's HANDS OF DEATH (1987)

The Asian Invasion: ARMOUR OF GOD (1987), MAGIC CRYSTAL (1986), SEVENTH CURSE (1986)

THE SECRET OF THE INCA'S EMPIRE (1987)

ROBBERS OF THE SACRED MOUNTAIN (1982)

YELLOW HAIR AND THE FORTRESS OF GOLD (1984)

TREASURE OF THE MOON GODDESS (1987)

JACK HUNTER AND THE LOST TREASURE OF UGARIT (2008)

JACK HUNTER AND THE QUEST FOR AKHENATEN'S TOMB (2008)

JACK HUNTER AND THE STAR OF HEAVEN (2009)

GWENDOLINE (1984)

CAROLINA JONES AND THE BROKEN COVENANT (2008)

INDIANA JOAN IN THE BLACK HOLE OF MAMOO (1984)

THE RETURN OF INDIANA JOAN (1989)











King Solomon's Epics:

KING SOLOMON'S MINES (1985)

THE MINES OF KILIMANJARO (1986)

ALLAN QUATERMAIN AND THE LOST CITY OF GOLD (1988)

ALLAN QUATERMAIN AND THE TEMPLE OF SKULLS (2008)

KING SOLOMON'S TREASURE (1977)

The Golden Age of KING SOLOMON'S MINES (1919-1950)

The Gold Lamé Age of KING SOLOMON'S MINES (1959-1977)

The Aluminum Age of KING SOLOMON'S MINES (1986-2004)

QUATERMAIN: TREASURE OF THE KINGS (2001)

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Cinemasochism: REVOLT (1986)

I’ve said it on here before, but it is worth repeating. Nothing is better than being a Video Junkie and having friends with the same habits.  Just when you think you have seen it all, someone will throw a film at you that you’ve never heard of.  Case in point: REVOLT! Just over a week ago my buddy Richard sent me a message asking if I had seen this ‘80s action film streaming exclusively on Netflix.  Seen it?  I’d never even heard of it.  He said it was crazy (always a good sign) and later said, “I might need to revisit it, just to remind myself of what I saw.”  If you can’t trust your friends, who can you trust? I look it up and see it was directed by one J. Shaybany and written by someone named Shield.  Yes, this person is credited solely as Shield.  Sold!

The film opens with a nearly 7 minute segment about the dangers of drugs with some narration that sounds like it was culled from a 1950s educational short.  Shocking revelations include that drug dealers like to sell where young people converge (Bryan Singer’s pad?) and that “they couldn’t care less about you.”  All of this is a preamble for our story proper that takes place in an unnamed small town.  Local dope kingpin Mr. Macintosh is having trouble with his drug car driver Curtis, who is refusing to drive over a shipment from Mexico and getting a beating for his insubordination.  Macintosh’s right hand man Lee suggests they use George, whose “brother and sister run that Persian restaurant.” I’m not sure why that fact is mentioned (unless they specifically want relatives of restaurant owners), but George happily accepts and really, really wants to prove he can do a good job.

Meanwhile, Curtis, who is being led to his “retirement” in the woods, escapes his captors but gets shot in the process. When he goes to the hospital, the doctor is none other than the Iranian father-in-law of Steve Brown (Rand Martin), husband to the doc’s daughter Mina and George’s brother. Are you still with me?  Curtis tells the doctor that George is in trouble and the doc calls Steve, who in turn calls the Sheriff Dukes.  Are you really still with me?  Anyway, Dukes somehow knows the exact road George and Lee are barreling down (not to mention the time they will arrive) and gives chase.  Steve also shows up just in time for a pursuit through the woods.  In the chaos, Lee shows his true colors and shoots new hire George dead.  Naturally, Steve sees this go down.  At the funeral (where the doctor tells a priest “the children these days just don’t seem to know what this drug scene is doing to their lives”), Steve is upfront with the sheriff and tells him he will seek his revenge against Mr. Macintosh.  The Sheriff is like, “Eh.”

Somehow our lead crook gets wind of this plan for vengeance and decides to send some of his goons to harass Steve and his family at the post-funeral gathering at their restaurant. Jeez, news travels fast in this town.  Lead thug Tom (if there is a more evil bad guy name, I can’t think of one) assails them with threats like, “What the hell is going on here? This is America, not Iran. Can I get a menu?” before punching out the comic sidekick cook.

After Steve subdues him in a dry river bed behind the restaurant (?), Tom admits that Macintosh sent him.  Steve speeds on over to his ranch (oddly, Tom beat him back there and changed shirts), beats up a few bodyguards and then says, “I may not be able to get all you sons a bitches, but I’m going to bring you down…hard.” Yeah, that’ll show him. Steve somehow gets it into his head that the only way to bring Macintosh down is to have Curtis testify against him. Curtis is in hiding with his pregnant girlfriend Nancy but apparently a bartender named Tiny knows his location.  Both baddie Tom and hero Steve make it to Tiny’s within minutes of each other, resulting a big ol’ brawl in the alley behind the bar.  The Sheriff shows up to arrest Macintosh’s men, but warns Steve, “I’ll arrest you as I would anyone else for breaking the law, disturbing the peace and breaking the law.”  As if the feuding stakes couldn’t get any higher, Macintosh is suddenly incensed by the Iranian hostage crisis and this leads to – I kid you not – Steve’s son Jeremy being picked on at school and run over and killed by a car!  With only ten minutes left on the running time, I guess it is time to REVOLT as Steve and new BFF Curtis, whose girlfriend was also killed, head to the ranch with guns a blazing.

Running a scant 72 minutes, REVOLT is the kind of brain dead action cinema we love to see here at Video Junkie.  It has the perfect blend of cheapness, bad dialogue, overwrought drama and explosions.  Here is a perfect sampling with some dialogue when Uncle George drops Jeremy off at school.

Another great example is the final showdown when Macintosh sees the good guys coming.  He shouts at his two henchmen, “Lee, get your gun. You, get your gun.”  Because having him say, “Get your guns” is just too complex.  Of course, this is from a director who has the drug kingpin give the town a church (!) and still has his wife working at the local grade school.  What?  Director Shaybany is just as cheap when it comes to his onscreen action as his script.  For the finale, he has Macintosh grab a random car rather than the Mercedes he drove up in.  Why?  We ain’t throwing no Mercedes off a cliff, son.  Also, for some odd reason, Macintosh gets into the car by himself, but when he is shown being chased on the highway he magically has his wife and son with him.  Drama! Even better, when the car goes off the cliff in a spectacular explosion, the young boy is thrown from the car and is safe.  Well, except for now being an orphan.  Sheibany doesn't have time for the after, just the right now.  Oh wait, Steve lost his son so he can now just adopt this kid.  Problem solved.

REVOLT is initially a very had film to pin down in terms of when it was actually shot. Shaybany doesn’t have time for credits or that nonsense.  It just ends with “THE END” and that’s it.  No names, no dates, no nothing!  Honestly, the fashions and minutia are all over the place.  One minute it reads early ‘80s, the next a dude is wearing a ‘70s outfit that would make Porter Wagoner stop in his tracks and gawk. There is a lengthy scene that shows news footage of the Iranian hostage crisis so it has to have been after November 1979.  Eagle-eyed Tom (our VJ leader, not the main henchman) spotted a Q-105 bumper sticker, which is apparently standard ‘70s SoCal.  However, several people sport Members Only jackets, which were introduced in the US in 1980 but became big in 1983.  Variety’s lone listing for the film is a mention in March 1985. The establishing of it being shot in the early ‘80s was finally revealed when I spotted a kid with a little league 1983-84 jacket on and with this simple nameless henchman’s t-shirt (prepare yourself for a level of geekiness previously unseen on this blog).

In the same mold as Amir Shervan (HOLLYWOOD COP, SAMURAI COP), director Jamshid Sheibani (billed here as J. Shaybany) was born in Iran and came to the United States to make movies. Believe it or not, Sheibani’s earliest listing in the US copyright database is a song from the Cary Grant film DREAM WIFE (1953) that he co-wrote.  According to his obituary, he returned to his native Iran and began making a name for himself as a singer and in their cinema in the 1960s/70s as a producer and director. Variety listed Sheibani as being a recipient of a grant from the Ministry of Culture in May 1976 and 1978.  His Iranian work (as far as the IMDb is concerned) ceased in 1976, so we can only assume something happened (the Iranian Revolution, maybe?) that sent him back to the United States.  We’re thankful for it, whatever it was. REVOLT is a trash classic that should be honored.

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Cinemasochism: BEYOND FEAR (1993)

Quite possibly one of the worst movies I have ever seen. No, really.

Yeah, sure there are all these people running around talking about how they are "bad movie experts" and cite examples such as THE DEVIL'S RAIN (1975) and BRAIN DAMAGE (1988), at which point I send them e-mailed threats of kicking their asses in an organized boxing match at the location of their choosing. They lump great movies in with stuff like AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN PARIS (1997) and HOUSE OF THE DEAD (2003). Yes, those last two are terrible movies, but they at least sport a level of editing and cinematography that is professionally competent and when it comes down to it, the script is really the only thing that irredeemably wretched. These schmucks truly don't know what a "bad" movie is.

Mimi Lesseos started her career in martial arts (kickboxing and judo) at the age of 16. Starting in 1980 she trained under Fabulous Moolah as a professional wrestler and spent the next 14 years in the AWA and the LPWA under the name "Magnificent Mimi". Lesseos then became an International Full Contact Martial Arts champion. In addition, she is easy enough on the eyes to be featured in the December 1989 issue of Playboy. If that isn't colossal potential for a badass film-career, I don't know what is.

Unfortunately Lesseos decided to take her talents and instead of putting them in someone else's hands, she would start her own production company. I commend her for the initiative, but clearly she would have been better off working for Godfrey Ho.

Lesseos plays Tipper Taylor, a mountain-climbing tour guide (a guide for tourists) who works with an older black man named... uhhh... Sammy (Verrel Reed). They don't go so far as to have him eat watermelon, but they do bust out the old negro wisdom shtick that I was pretty sure died in the '60s. Piling into the tour bus we have a wimpy guy (Robert Axelrod) with a video camera in bickering relationship with his obese wife who stuffs her face with twinkies when she gets mad; the newlyweds who have a falling out after the wife finds out that her cracker husband slept with two hookers during his bachelor party (says the husband about why the wife is mad: "it's a Korean thing"); and a few other losers that are just there as killer fodder. Ha! Fools! None of them get killed, they presumably live out their annoyingly mundane lives for perpetuity.

After arriving at their cabins (which looks like a cheap motel in Los Angeles), Vince decides to go out at night and peep in everybody's windows with his video camera. One of the rooms he peeps into is two ex-cons, Boar (Wayne Bower) and Jack (Brogan Young) trying to get it on with a hooker who is very annoyed that two guys want to do it with her at once. I'm no expert on the subject, but it's surprising to me that this would be an issue, but it is. She keeps pushing Jack away saying "one at a time!" until Jack finally snaps and beats her to death. This may sound shocking, but it is completely laughable. There is no nudity and the "beating" is basically the girl getting thrown against a wall where she pulls the old wrasllin' move where she slaps the wall with her hands and pretends to hit her head. Unfortunately the camera angles are so poorly chosen in this film, it is blatantly obvious that her head didn't even come six inches near the wall.

The cons realize that Vince was peeping on them with a camcorder, but he gives them the slip, meaning that they will have to follow the tour van in the morning to get the tape and silence Vince. You'd think this would lead to a game of cat and mouse on dangerous grounds in the mountains, but instead we get a massive amount of padding. Instead of action we get lots of rock climbing (of heights of up to 14 inches!), lots of couples discussing their relationship problems, a long scene of everyone slowly crossing a stream, people walking and walking, some of the most boring dialogue ever committed to film, and worst of all no real choreography or rehearsals. There are a couple of quick fights and if you think you hate the bad editing of hand-held shots in Hollywood movies, you ain't seen nothing! There is a scene where Lesseos runs up from behind a bad guy and does a flying dropkick right into the middle of his back. It looks pretty good, but the camera is placed so that the action crops Lesseo off the screen a bit. Even worse (or better, depending on your point of view), that shot is cut in right after we see the fat girl running through the woods dressed in a similar plaid shirt. This creates the impression the it was the fat girl doing the flying drop kick. No offense to plus sized ladies, but this is utterly hilarious. I should point out that this is during the only big fight scene which is at the 76 minute mark of the 83 minute film!

So careless and budget strapped is the production that they shoot scenes after completely losing the light making the screen a mess of dark smudges. They also shoot scenes covered in dense fog that limits visibility so much that the only way we know they didn't shoot it on a soundstage in front of a grey panel is that everyone is having a really bad hair day. It looks like it was shot on 16mm, but the sides of the image are so badly cropped that in many scenes the only reason you know the person isn't talking to himself is because there is a brim of a hat or the tip of a nose on the edge of the screen. Then again everything about it is so poorly done that it may have actually been framed that way!

Better send the kids
out of the room for this one!

In another example of pointless filmmaking, they decide they need some nudity (presumably to help sell the title). So they have Lessos take off her shirt in a tent, except it looks like a body double, her side is to the camera, it's shot through mosquito netting and it's at night! Seriously why even bother? Perhaps it's just one of the many attempts to pad the film out to feature length. In addition to all the walking and "climbing" we have long scenes of mundane things such as Taylor slowly calling out names and handing out keys to every member of the tour, one at a time. Don't miss the exciting scene in which there is some discussion about who will load the luggage on the van and then we have to watch everyone load their fucking luggage on the van! Not convinced? How about a riveting scene in which Sammy mumbles incoherently to himself while assembling a pile of leaves that he will use as a bed. Of course once settled in his futon of frond, he realizes that he forgot to put on his knit hat and we have to watch him dig it out, put it on his head, move it around till it's just right then lay back down. I don't know how I'm going to explain the claw marks on my living room walls to my landlord.

This is Lesseo's fourth film and it's shocking just how amateur it is. Of course, it's not really her fault as veteran actor Robert F. Lyons uses this as his second directorial effort and this is Michael Matzdorff's first time out as an editor. Though Lyons only got one more directing gig after this, Matzdorff went on to have a career as an editor and honestly I can't imagine why. It is said that good editing is unnoticeable to the audience. Here the editing is so noticeable that I feel wracked with guilt over comments I have made in the past about Nick Millard's ham-fisted "style". Every camera angle is wrong, cuts are jarring, continuity is an afterthought. Granted entire scenes are made in the editing room and that can only be blamed on the director. For instance, there is a scene where they are going to have the bad guy throw a girl off of a cliff and she's supposed to catch hold of a ledge on the way down. So they show the guy swinging her to the edge of the cliff, cut to a close up of him letting go of her jacket and then cutting to a close up of her face next to some rocks with her arms over her head. Then cut to the cast standing near the cliff screaming "hang on"! In this very same scene we are supposed to have Lesseos fighting the bad guy, then suddenly she stops fighting him and is inserted into the scene standing in front of a rock wall shouting lines. Obviously the director fucked up and they had to reshoot some footage of Lesseos shouting after the production had wrapped. I mean, they couldn't have done this intentionally... they couldn't have.

In spite of this being one of the worst films ever made, I'll have to give Lesseos another shot. She did work with Joseph Merhi at the helm on several occasions and even if they are not good films, I know that at the very least, Merhi will not be screwing up when it comes to camera angles and editing.

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