Well our second year on the web begins with a bang as we debut a brand new film, Lethal Force, coming soon, I have no doubt, to video store near you. After getting sufficiently revved up and put in the proper frame of mind by the film’s preview trailer, the movie proper begins.

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There is a brief standoff as Savitch, the assassin (Cash Flagg Jr.) (no relation to Cash Flagg Sr. a/k/a Ray Dennis Steckler. I think.) introduces himself as someone mad, bad, and dangerous to know. He ignores her pleas of silence, so she shoots at him; but misses. He returns the favor by emptying his entire clip into her. (Nothing personal I’m sure.)

We jump ahead, about nine months, and watch Jack Carter (Frank Prather) return home only to find it ransacked and his wife and son gone. Instead, he finds two men with a simple ransom demand: Turn Savitch over to their employer and they won’t kill his family. (Carter and Savitch used to be partners and Carter is the only person Savitch trusts.) There isn’t much room for negotiating because the graves for his wife and son have already been dug. Jack calls their bluff and blows one of them away.

He then turns the gun on (whom the press kit calls) Psycho Bowtie (Eric Thornett) (who’s also the films action director, fight choreographer and cinematographer). Bowtie slowly gets up, adjusts his tie, and manages to knock Carter out without spilling his drink. (Dang he’s good.)

Carter is hauled off to the palatial estate of Mal Lock (Andrew Hewitt), our source of pure evil for the film. We also meet a few of his associates; including Big Bertha (Allison Jacobson) (who’s kind of a cross between Sidney Greenstreet and Pearl Forrestor); his aide de camp, Rita (Pat Williams) (think Cleopatra Jones with long blond hair); and about a dozen masked goons. Carter is briefly reunited with his family but still refuses to cooperate. Mal, who is confined to a wheelchair, orders Carter's wife executed. While Carter watches, his wife is shot in the head.

The next day, Savitch meets up with Carter and three goons, who claim to be from Wisconsin (They don't look like cheeseheads. Go Packers!), and they escort him to a construction site where his alleged target is waiting. The three goons speak in a strange foreign tongue (okay maybe they are from Wisconsin) and when they arrive at the site, Savitch shoots them all dead. (He thinks they were going to kill Carter, too, and hasn’t discovered his treachery yet.)

Okay, they weren’t from Wisconsin. Savitch understood their lingo and says they’re obviously from Minnesota - not Wisconsin - because all bloodthirsty killers are from Minnesota. Carter didn’t know that because he’s never been to Minnesota. (aw-jeez-ba-dump-bump-ching!)

Savitch hears some noises coming from inside the unfinished house and goes to investigate. Psycho Bowtie (His name refers to his constantly adjusting his bow tie during a fight.) drops down from the rafters. Savitch manages to kick the Uzi out of his hand and escapes outside. Bowtie recovers the gun and heads after him.

He catches up but Savitch manages to disarm him again. They go mono-o-mono and kick the crap out of each other until Bowtie manages to get his gun back. Savitch dives for cover and finds a can of paint thinner. He throws it at his attacker - just as he fires - and the bullets rupture the can, setting its contents on fire that spill all over him. He drops the gun and manages to put the flames out. He recovers but sees Savitch now has his Uzi - right before he takes a full clip in the chest. (So long Psycho Bowtie, you will be missed.) 

Back at Mal’s, one of the guards turns out to be a pedophile and goes after Patrick. Rita comes to his rescue and marches the guard into the basement and proceeds to shoot him in a, well, a very sensitive area. (Okay, she blew his block and tackle off.) She promises Patrick that she’ll watch after him.

Savitch and Carter head to Bertha’s strip club (a nice place to visit if you want to catch a disease) for a little payback. They jump the manager and he takes them to Bertha’s office; but she won’t let them in because she’s in the process of disciplining one of her strippers -- with a hot curling iron.

Savitch makes a break for it, escapes Bertha’s office and heads downstairs. He then has to fight through all the strippers before he can get outside. (Man, I love this movie.) But everywhere he turns, he always runs into some of Mal’s goons. He fights his way through several of them while Carter watches. (Including kicking one in the head so hard, it causes a massive amount of blood to squirt from his eye. It is a little known fact that there is over 5000psi of pressure behind the eyeball.)

Savitch puts the gun to Carter's head and asks why did he betray him? Carter says Mal is behind it all and will kill Patrick if he didn't betray him. Savitch says all he had to do was ask for help -- but it’s too late now. As he prepares to pull the trigger, he flashes back to all the good times he and Carter used to have. (This is friggin hilarious, especially the scenes where they mow down hundreds of extras via stock footage.) Savitch can’t do it, so he just knocks him out and walks away.

Carter returns the favor by jumping in a convenient car and runs Savitch over. Several times. Before he can hit him again, though, Savitch manages to go over the side and falls, about five stories, to the concrete below. (Who is this guy? Evel Knieval?) Carter gets out of the car, looks over the side and spots Savitch slowly limping away. (That Savitch is one bad mutha - shut your mouth or get your ass sued - I’m just talking about Savitch.)

Inside the mansion, Rita easily dispatches the first batch of guards -- Pam Grier style. She makes her way to the room where the kid is held but she missed one guard. He overpowers her and plans to, uhm, well, deflower her. He wants to get a little French kiss in first, so Rita chomps off his tongue. (You go girl.)

Outside, the Savitch tormenting continues. Mal asks if he knows what trephine means. (Let’s see, according to The American Heritage Dictionary, trephine: ~noun~ to bore (a shaft) with surgical instrument through bone, usually the skull.) Uh-oh, is that a drill Bertha is fondling?

Bertha gleefully revs up the drill and bores not one but TWO holes into Savitch’s head. (There is a certain section of society that believe if you aerate the skull, you’ll become smarter and more in tune with your brain. Uh-huh.) Savitch takes it like a man. Bertha licks the drill bit clean.

The tongueless guard exposes Rita as traitor. Mal tells her to watch Savitch, to see what’s in store for her, then signals Bertha who rams the power tool in again. (That’s three holes.) Again, Savitch doesn’t flinch. Mal asks him how it feels. Savitch answers he’ll gladly show him. He kicks his legs loose and then kicks the drill in Bertha's hands. She pulls the trigger, as it’s redirected into her own throat, and scrambles her own windpipe.

Savitch breaks free from the chair and uses the knives, stuck through his hands, to dispatch all of Mal’s guards. (Including the deflection of several gun shots.) Carter dumps Mal out of his wheelchair and Rita gives him the key to Patrick’s room. He leaves to go and get his son, while Rita goes after Savitch with a machete. She holds her own against Savitch - for a while. He dodges her blade and swings wildly at her with his knifed hands and decapitates her.

He then turns his attention on Mal. He takes the knives and uses them to pin Mal to the ground. He then takes the drill and tries a little trephine number on his brain -- by way of the eyeball.

I do not want to spoil the slam bang conclusion of the film, it’s totally fubar - and borderline brilliant - so I’m going to stop right here. (You won’t believe who’s the last one standing.)

Sometimes e-mail filters are a good thing; and sometimes they’re a bad thing. Luckily I found Ecarma’s offer to send me a preview screener of his magnum opus (and first film), Lethal Force, before I bulk trashed it into oblivion. I replied and said I’d be happy to take a look at it. About a week later, I received the tape and press kit.

Now I’ll admit I was a little leery about the quality of the film because, in his e-mail, he described it as a bottom of the barrel action film spoof. Well that kind of description is usually reserved for film projects that turn out so bad that they brand it a spoof to make up for the films short comings. (Has anyone else noticed a lot of big-budget action and horror films make that claim these days?)

Personally I’ve been burnt out on the action genre and have avoided it as much as I can. I don’t know. HK flicks can be very repetitive and sometimes the fight scenes become too protracted and way too long (and dare I say tedious and boring?). On this side of the Pacific, it’s been bogged down in sequelitis with moronic (and very telegraphed) plots.

After the movie finished, I e-mailed Ecarma back and was totally honest with him. Lethal Force was the most welcome hyper-violent kick in the nuts I’d seen in a long time. (Believe me, that’s a compliment.) It’s restored my faith in the genre.

The film is a volatile mix of several genres (including HK, Blaxploitation, spaghetti westerns and a little James Bond) that refuses to blow up in the creator’s face. I haven’t seen anything this messed up in a long time and I enjoyed every stinking low-budget minute of it. It reminded me a lot of Seijun Suzuki’s equally messed up and off the wall assassin flicks like Tokyo Drifter and, especially, Branded to Kill. (I can’t recommend both of those films enough, either, so track them down.)

I don’t want to call the film silly because that’s juvenile -- and that’s selling it way too short, so I’ll settle on goofy. (That really isn’t any better is it? Aw dagnabbit! Let me try again.) It isn’t terrible, as its creator would have you believe, and it’s more of a farce than a spoof but it had me laughing from beginning to end. Why? Because this movie is hilariously INSANE!!! It feels and smells like a Troma production without the gratuitous nudity and gore and again, I’m happy to report, the film needs neither to help out.

Thornett’s fight scenes borrow heavily from other kung-fu films but each has an original tweak to it. (And not one freeze frame kick. That was so refreshing.) No one embarrasses themselves. Jim Williamson’s soundtrack is a mish mash off Isaac Hayes and Ennio Morricone, who's sampled in the film more than once to great effect.

Ecarma was smart enough to keep the plot simple and straightforward (no matter how f***ed up the plot gets.) There are no stupid plot twists. The film is humorous and isn’t afraid to make fun of itself. It’s clever without hitting the viewer over the head with the obvious "see how clever we are" moments. He was also able to maintain the film’s momentum because it refuses to slow down, thus avoiding another pitfall of the action genre (an evil thing known as padding.) And the best thing about the plot, at no point did I have a clue where this movie was going or how it was going to end. My hat’s off to you Mr. Ecarma.

I have to be careful, here, because I don’t want to oversell the film. It does have a few rough edges; there was that whole teeth bit and it completely unspools all over itself (but quickly recovers) during the scene when Carter first asks Savitch for help. (Okay that part was bad but it was damned hilarious.) If you’re not a big fan of the genre, you probably won’t get the joke and might want to skip this one.

Ecarma is currently barnstorming the country and showing it at several film festivals, so keep you’re eyes on the local papers and hopefully Lethal Force will be hitting the rental aisle PDQ. (I’m already looking forward to Lethal Force II: Certain Death.) All you webmasters out there might be able to get a copy from Alvin through his official Lethal Force website. It won’t hurt to ask. I guarantee you won’t regret it.

Lethal Force proves that you can take an old idea and with a little originality, and a very bent perspective, a very entertaining film can be the result. It’s a study of substance over style with a style all its own. It's a fine first effort that won me over, completely, and I think it will win you over, too, if you give it a chance.