This week in the Deep Hurting Project is the first movie in the Project's residency in Amazon Prime: Attack Force. It's likely the last Action movie in the Project (what with being the sole So Bad It's Horrible Action movie left after exhausting the Netflix, Hulu, and Skokie Public libraries for candidates and being left with only Amazon Prime) and today is a special case. So, let's talk about Steven Segal, probably the only big action star who I've heard constantly getting into fights and consistently losing.
While Segal showed promise in the late Eighties and a good-sized portion of the Nineties, his career ended up nosediving, and, except when some major director takes pity on him, he's spent most of the last 20 years in Direct-to-DVD Hell, where he's become notorious for being, for lack of a better phrase, extremely lazy. I remember recently watching a video by Brad Jones, and apparently he mentioned that one of his friends wound up working on one of his films, and had a herculean effort trying to edit about 20 minutes or so of raw footage of Segal into a movie where he's not only the star, but an invincible killing machine. You know how most actors, when their characters are supposed to do dangerous shit, have stunt doubles? He's long ago defaulted going beyond that, having as much of his performance as possible done by doubles, whether it's stunt doubles for the dangerous stuff (and, indeed, a lot of the other physical stuff), body doubles (to hide how much of a paunch he's developed), and sometimes even having other people dub his own lines (made all the worse in this case because, for much of the production, the bad guys of Attack Force were supposed to be aliens (and, at one point, the movie was meant to be called The Harvester), but, by the time they released it, the villains were made to be European Gangsters who decided to spike the water supply of Paris with some sort of drug that turns people into homicidal maniacs. Cowriter Joe Halpin that they somehow managed to film two versions simultaneously, one where the villains were Aliens and the final version, but given how low budget it was, and that Segal managed to have someone else overdub almost ALL of his lines (and not merely a good-sized portion), I find this questionable). Halfway through the movie, we get the first proper fight scene with Segal, and it's obvious that he's not even doing anything.
This isn't helped by the fact that the movie's plot is really hard to follow, with the opening sequence being of a shooting that's never given any context. And the decision to have gangsters be the bad guys makes it worse; for an Alien race to try to spike Earth's water supply to turn them into homicidal maniacs, frankly, it makes sense. The decision to make it a purely human invention just makes everything stupider, as explained in one scene a third of a way through the film, how it was invented by the Army to try and turn soldiers into mindless killing machines, even though, the more I look into it, the sort of soldiers they'd create would be huge liabilities in combat, and even setting aside the whole "committing war crimes" thing, they'd probably just end up killing each other as easily; I can remember that being a huge plot point in Jacob's Ladder. Then, it becomes a club drug, for whatever reason, and then, the inventor gets involved with the mob, who decide to spike Paris' water supply with it so that, in his words "everybody within a hundred miles will either be addicted or dead."
There is zero benefit for such a plan for a gangster. Why do gangs deal in drugs? Besides the fact that nobody else legally can? Because it makes them a shitton of money. What's the point in getting people addicted when the drug can be accessed by simply turning a fucking tap? Even if they figure out what's happening and the gang is smart enough to not keep spiking the supply, how likely is it that they'll figure out how to get their fix? Do they even have the supply to keep the massive population of people who'd become addicted happy? Because the metropolitan area of Paris, which isn't anywhere near "within 100 miles," contained a population a bit shy of 12 million. Even if 90% ended up dying, that's still only a bit less than the total number of Americans who used meth (according to the 2017 National Survey on Drug Use and Health) and far above the number that used it in the past month. You think you can handle that, unnamed European mob cartel?
Oh, and several times, seemingly human berserkers get Alien eyes, so they don't even get that right.
So, while this week was a shoo-in, next week will be Comedy and it has a lot of contenders:
While Segal showed promise in the late Eighties and a good-sized portion of the Nineties, his career ended up nosediving, and, except when some major director takes pity on him, he's spent most of the last 20 years in Direct-to-DVD Hell, where he's become notorious for being, for lack of a better phrase, extremely lazy. I remember recently watching a video by Brad Jones, and apparently he mentioned that one of his friends wound up working on one of his films, and had a herculean effort trying to edit about 20 minutes or so of raw footage of Segal into a movie where he's not only the star, but an invincible killing machine. You know how most actors, when their characters are supposed to do dangerous shit, have stunt doubles? He's long ago defaulted going beyond that, having as much of his performance as possible done by doubles, whether it's stunt doubles for the dangerous stuff (and, indeed, a lot of the other physical stuff), body doubles (to hide how much of a paunch he's developed), and sometimes even having other people dub his own lines (made all the worse in this case because, for much of the production, the bad guys of Attack Force were supposed to be aliens (and, at one point, the movie was meant to be called The Harvester), but, by the time they released it, the villains were made to be European Gangsters who decided to spike the water supply of Paris with some sort of drug that turns people into homicidal maniacs. Cowriter Joe Halpin that they somehow managed to film two versions simultaneously, one where the villains were Aliens and the final version, but given how low budget it was, and that Segal managed to have someone else overdub almost ALL of his lines (and not merely a good-sized portion), I find this questionable). Halfway through the movie, we get the first proper fight scene with Segal, and it's obvious that he's not even doing anything.
This isn't helped by the fact that the movie's plot is really hard to follow, with the opening sequence being of a shooting that's never given any context. And the decision to have gangsters be the bad guys makes it worse; for an Alien race to try to spike Earth's water supply to turn them into homicidal maniacs, frankly, it makes sense. The decision to make it a purely human invention just makes everything stupider, as explained in one scene a third of a way through the film, how it was invented by the Army to try and turn soldiers into mindless killing machines, even though, the more I look into it, the sort of soldiers they'd create would be huge liabilities in combat, and even setting aside the whole "committing war crimes" thing, they'd probably just end up killing each other as easily; I can remember that being a huge plot point in Jacob's Ladder. Then, it becomes a club drug, for whatever reason, and then, the inventor gets involved with the mob, who decide to spike Paris' water supply with it so that, in his words "everybody within a hundred miles will either be addicted or dead."
There is zero benefit for such a plan for a gangster. Why do gangs deal in drugs? Besides the fact that nobody else legally can? Because it makes them a shitton of money. What's the point in getting people addicted when the drug can be accessed by simply turning a fucking tap? Even if they figure out what's happening and the gang is smart enough to not keep spiking the supply, how likely is it that they'll figure out how to get their fix? Do they even have the supply to keep the massive population of people who'd become addicted happy? Because the metropolitan area of Paris, which isn't anywhere near "within 100 miles," contained a population a bit shy of 12 million. Even if 90% ended up dying, that's still only a bit less than the total number of Americans who used meth (according to the 2017 National Survey on Drug Use and Health) and far above the number that used it in the past month. You think you can handle that, unnamed European mob cartel?
Oh, and several times, seemingly human berserkers get Alien eyes, so they don't even get that right.
So, while this week was a shoo-in, next week will be Comedy and it has a lot of contenders:
- 30 Days of Paranormal Activity with the Devil Inside the Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (Wherein Craig Moss decides to take the formula pioneered by Seltzer and Friedberg and do it even worse.)
- Chairman of the Board (Wherein someone decided that Carrot Top would be a compelling star for a film and almost immediately regretted it.)
- Breaking Wind (Wherein Craig Moss decides to make fun of Twilight and somehow fucks it up.)
- Dirty Love (Wherein Jenny McCarthy decides to do a topless dance with vomit covering her tits.)
- F The Prom (Wherein two YouTubers decide to make a relatable teen movie and fail spectacularly.)
- Hottie and the Nottie (Wherein Paris Hilton builds an entire movie around insulting people who are less attractive than her... even though her most attractive qualities were her fame, her money, and her refusal to wear panties.)
- InAPPropriate Comedy (Wherein the Sham-Wow guy decides to make a movie that's half a ripoff of Movie 43, half a ripoff of his previous movie, The Underground Comedy Movie).
- Loqueesha (Wherein a white guy decides that the key to success is pretending to be a black woman.)
- Lower Learning (Wherein Rob Cordrry has to turn the worst school in America around in a single day.)
Comparing the Universal Oneness of All Life to Yo Mama since 2010.
![[Image: harmlesskitchen.png]](https://i.postimg.cc/yxR97P23/harmlesskitchen.png)
I was born with the gift of laughter and a sense the world is mad.
I was born with the gift of laughter and a sense the world is mad.
