Cigars, Loud Jackets and Poontang

This an instance where you can judge
a movie by its don’t-give-a-shit cover art.

There were many ways I could’ve spent the U.S. Election Night: Obsessively checking my phone for updates, watching TV news to see how many different ways anchors could say, “No, not yet,” or just getting drunk. I chose to watch a shitty 1993 direct-to-video thriller, SOUTH BEACH.

Fred Williamson stars as Mack Derringer, a retired pro football player who now runs a private investigation agency with another ex pro football player, Lenny (Gary Busey). When we meet them, they’re playing a round of golf, smoking cigars and talking shit. The two pals are seemingly without a care in the world, even though they have plenty of reasons to worry. As Lenny points out, they haven’t had a case in five weeks, a payment is due on Mack’s houseboat and their bar tab at their favorite watering hole, The Sports Page, “is as long as a tapeworm.” Mack isn’t worried, though, telling Lenny that “big things can happen at any time.”

Then Lenny leaves for a Jamaican vacation, and though his timing is questionable his departure helps ensure the amount of Gary Busey in the movie is kept to a tolerable level. Mack then takes his wheelchair-bound mom (Isabel Sanford) to the mall. He leaves her parked outside a store while he goes shopping in what looks like a Hallmark card shop, but Mama Derringer just can’t stay put, rolling to the jewelry store next door, where she witnesses a robbery in progress. 

Fred Williamson chews more cigars in South Beach, but
Gary Busey chews more scenery.

An alarm goes off and Mack rushes out of the Hallmark store, his gun drawn, though he has no idea the reason for the alarm. I mean, for all he knows, it’s a fire alarm. Anyway, Mack blows away the mullet-headed robbers, police Det. Coleman (Robert Forster, who worked with Williamson in the far superior Vigilante) lets Mack know he’s sick of his shit, and Mama Derringer hams it up for the local TV news.

Meanwhile, Mack’s ex-wife Jennifer (Vanity), who manages a phone sex business, is being stalked by one of her callers, a guy identifying himself as Billy. Jennifer dismisses the stalker as an annoyance, until she shows up at work one day, wearing a slinky black dress with matching opera gloves, as one does, and discovers the naked corpse of her dim-bulb co-worker Suzi on the office floor. 

It was Nightclub Wednesday at the office.

You might think, as I did, that hunting for Suzi’s killer/Jennifer’s stalker would become the main driver of South Beach’s story, but that’s merely a B-plot. At the Sports Page, while cutting up with his buddy Jake (a barely recognizable Peter Fonda), yet another former pro ball player, Mack is approached by Francesca (Sheree Deveraux, who, despite what her name and acting style suggests, did not do porn). She wants to hire Mack to protect her from a jealous ex-boyfriend. He reluctantly agrees, because pussy, and accompanies her to a party aboard a yacht.

It’s a set-up, of course, and before the party is over Francesca has disappeared and Mack is framed for a murder. With Jake’s help, Mack goes hunting for the person who framed him, getting occasional too-convenient-to-be-true assists from Lenny. He might also try to find out who’s after Jennifer, and, what the hell, go after the people behind that jewelry store robbery since the helmet-haired daughter of the store’s owner (Shay King) so obviously wants to get into Mack’s Dockers. 

Shay King’s movie career consists solely of
supplying South Beach’s nudity.

These three storylines—Mack being framed, Jennifer’s stalker and the jewelry store robbery—are loosely wrapped up by the end, but don’t ask me to explain how because the movie sure doesn’t, not coherently, at least. But South Beach isn’t about the destination; it’s the meandering journey, during which our leading man models loud jackets, chews through about thirty cigars and considers all the sweet poontang he’s offered, including the well-seasoned meat pocket of Stella Stevens (watching the 54-year-old throw herself at Williamson is only slightly less cringey than the scene featuring Marquis Ross’s beachside rap performance).

Stella Stevens is actually a more age-appropriate partner for
Fred Williamson, but the movie pretends she still looks
like her 1960s self (right).

A Black Burt Reynolds

South Beach seems to be going for a vibe similar to one of Burt Reynolds’ ’80s crime movies, a mix of gritty action and smartass humor. It certainly sold me on the idea of Williamson as a Black Burt Reynolds. His ’stache isn’t as iconic and he lacks a signature laugh, but Williamson projects the same blend of no-bullshit machismo and easy-going humor as Burt. I could easily see him playing the lead in Stick or Heat.

Peter Fonda and Fred Williamson are just
a couple of zany bros.

Unfortunately, I could just as easily see Reynolds in South Beach, which more closely resembles the DTV shit he was making by the late 1990s. Michael Thomas Montgomery’s script, with its muddled plotting and underwritten characters, is partly to blame for the movie’s poor quality. I say partly because I suspect there were more than a few sequences that were improvised, e.g., the opening golf scene. And, honestly, can any scene involving Gary Busey really stay on script? Casting Busey in a movie after his 1988 motorcycle accident is like giving your best man a microphone at your wedding reception after he’s downed his sixth glass of Prosecco with a cocaine chaser. Semi-coherence is the best you can hope for.

But most of the blame goes to the director… Fred Williamson (IMDb lists Alain Zaloum as a co-director, though his name doesn’t appear on the movie’s opening credits). As cool as he is in front of the camera, Williamson isn’t so capable behind it. South Beach is sloppily made, with flubbed lines and visible safety rigging. There’s also an over-reliance on close-ups and waaaaay too many shots of Williamson grinning into the camera and handling a fucking cigar (seriously, I think he’s a fetishist about those things). 

One of the few scenes in South Beach that’s not
shot in close-up, and it captures the stunt man’s safety
rigging and filming equipment in the background.

 

 

South Beach has an interesting cast, at least. The movie can now boast that it stars three Oscar® nominees (Busey for The Buddy Holly Story, Fonda for Ulee’s Gold, and Forster for Jackie Brown), plus an Emmy winner (Sanford for The Jeffersons) and a Golden Globe winner (Stevens, but the category was Most Promising Newcomer, the Hollywood equivalent of being crowned homecoming queen). Vanity never won any awards but she boned Prince, so that’s got to count for something. I always found her a welcome screen presence, and wish she was more of one in South Beach, her next to last movie before she quit cocaine and show business to become an evangelist (no one ever turns to God when things are going great). Rounding out the cast are cameos from Henry Silva and Flash Gordon star Sam J. Jones. The movie also has the distinction of having a high body count amongst its cast: Sanford, Forster, Fonda, and Vanity are now all deceased, and yet Busey is still with us.

Unless you’re a fan of the lead actors you could probably skip this one and re-watch one of their better movies. That said, there were worse things I could’ve watched on Election Night.

Fun fact: South Beach features four actors who have posed
nude for Playboy/Playgirl: Stella Stevens, Fred Williamson,
Vanity, and Sam J. Jones.

Oh, You'll Welcome Sudden Death, All Right

The poster fairly represents
the movie’s quality.

The 1994 version of The Fantastic Four, produced by Roger Corman, is notorious for two things: being terrible (though worse was yet to come) and being made not as a theatrical release but to ensure the rights to the property didn’t revert to Marvel. I have read nothing that suggests WELCOME TO SUDDEN DEATH was made for similar reasons, yet I couldn’t help but think the sole reason this unasked-for sequel exists is as a fuck you to whatever studio was hoping to buy the rights, cheap.

Universal Studios couldn’t even be bothered to supply an actual synopsis for Welcome to Sudden Death’s IMDb page:

Sequel to the 1995 Jean-Claude Van Damme action flick.

Both the original and its sequel can essentially be summed up as Die Hard in a sports arena, but I guess supplying that much detail was more time than Universal wanted to waste on this thing. They couldn’t even be bothered to put a “the” in front of “sequel,” they had so few fucks to give. And why should they give them, when clearly the makers of the movie didn’t give any.

Sudden Death, the aforementioned “1995 Jean-Claude Van Damme action flick,” didn’t exactly set box office records. In fact, a planned 1997 sequel was scrapped because the movie under-performed. Were our memories not being jogged occasionally when Sudden Death popped up on streaming services (and on cable before that), the movie would likely have been forgotten. But then, 25 goddamn years later, Universal decided that what the world—or at least Netflix subscribers—needed was a Sudden Death sequel.

This time around, instead an ex-fireman with PTSD we get an ex-soldier with PTSD, and instead of JCVD, who turned 60 on October 18, we get the youthful Michael Jai White, who turns 53 on November 10. Sudden Death took place during a hockey game, making it the original Die Hard on Ice. Welcome to Sudden Death takes place during a basketball game. The biggest difference between the two movies, however, is Sudden Death, while no action classic, is a perfectly enjoyable way to kill a Sunday afternoon. Welcome to Sudden Death is a total piece of shit.

The movie is deceptive in its opening, a flashback to Jesse’s (White) soldiering days. He and his platoon have been taken captive in an unnamed Middle Eastern country, being tortured with electric cables. “Tell me American, where are they?” snarls the interrogator, zapping White’s rippling abs with electric cables.

“Gokis,” gasps Jesse to the perplexed torturer. “Go…kiss…my ass.”

Michael Jai White flashes back to
a better action sequence.

Ass-kicking and explosions ensue. Then Jesse wakes up. The gritty generic action movie we started watching was all a dream, and now Jesse (and the audience) must face a far more troubling reality: he now lives in a syndicated sit-com. His wife (Sagine Sémajuste) gently nags him about not spending enough time with the kids, but after meeting their children—Mara (Nakai Takawira), a sassy 10-year-old and Ryan (Lyric Justice), her surly older brother—it’s clear what Jesse’s wife means is he better get these little fuckers out of her hair soon or she’s going to pack them into the minivan and drive into the nearest river. Instead of running out the door, Jesse instead presents his obnoxious children with VIP passes to the big game between the Phoenix Falcons and I don’t care. It’s Take Your Plot Contrivances to Work Day!

Lyric Justice and Nakai Takawira’s performances will make
you reconsider your opinions about Will Smith’s kids

The kids may have VIP passes, but they’re eclipsed by the game’s real guests of honor: the city’s hand-wringing mayor, the state’s smarmy governor, and, most exciting of all, apparently, is billionaire businesswoman Diana Smart (Sabryn Rock). Diana is escorted by her her rapper boyfriend Milli, short for Millions (sorry if you just vomited in your own mouth), a pairing that’s about as believable as Oprah hooking up with Coolio. Just as perplexing is why a billionaire would choose to dress like an Ikea bedding display.

A stylish red pillowcase pairs
nicely with a cream bed skirt.

Also attending the game is a team of crooks, led by Jobe (Michael Eklund, whose scenery chewing never quite pays off). Arriving under the guise of tech support, Jobe and his team quickly change into security staff uniforms and dispatch all the real security guards —all except you-know-who. 

Jobe (Michael Eklund) doesn’t care who you are.

Jobe takes Diana, Milli, the governor and the mayor hostage in their luxury skybox. When the governor huffs, “Don’t you know who I am?” Jobe kills him, just to show he means business. While I understand the impulse—who among us hasn’t wanted to shoot someone who utters the sentence, Don’t you know who I am?—killing the gov was a tactical error. I mean, cops don’t just let such a thing go, even if the governor was a doofus.

Jobe’s primary motives are revenge and greed. Diana was responsible for getting him fired when they worked together at the CIA, and now he wants Diana to transfer $1 billion to him and do so within one hour. When Diana protests the time frame, one of Jobe’s tech-savvy accomplices, a prissy woman named Psi (Stephanie Sy—not the PBS news anchor, I’m sad to say), helpfully hands Diana a smart phone and tells her to enter her bank account number, routing number and PIN. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, Diana doesn’t have an appropriately sarcastic response to this request, so let’s borrow one from a much better movie:

Meanwhile, Mara witnesses some of Jobe’s gang killing a guy in a restroom and is captured, which can happen when you just fucking stand there. Lucky for her, one of the bad guys draws the line at killing kids (darn the luck) so instead she’s taken up to the skybox for Jobe to deal with. Jesse discovers her missing and goes looking for her. He almost finds her, too, until one of Jobe’s goons gets in the way. Michael Jai White beats said goon to death, a scene that might have been more satisfying had there not been some bargain-bin rap music blaring on the soundtrack.

Gary Owen’s portrayal of Gus calls into question
his success in stand-up comedy.

Jesse teams up with the janitor, Gus (Gary Owen), for what I think is supposed to be the buddy comedy portion of the movie, minus the comedy. “This is like some John McClane shit!” Gus exclaims, because nothing helps a shitty movie more than referencing a much better one. Gus and Jesse happen upon another member of Jobe’s obnoxious gang, Gamma (Gillian White), planting a bomb, because Jobe’s plan involves bombing all the exits. When she’s unable to talk her way out of her predicament, Gamma pulls a gun, resulting more fisticuffs and bland rap music. She gets shot in the stomach in the process, but gets the gun thanks to Gus’s clumsiness. Rather than shoot the two guys, however, she shoots herself in the head for the sole reason of providing Gus with the opportunity to shout: “Yo, that is one crazy bitch!” To the movie’s credit, practical effects are used for the gore, not CGI blood spatter. 

Who would’ve guessed this guy would
turn out to be a criminal?

Moving right along, Jesse and Gus disarm most of the bombs (Gus is on his own for the last one, because hilarity), Jesse discovers his boss was in on Jobe’s scheme (time for more ass-kicking!), and then learns Jobe now has Mara. My opinion of this movie would improve substantially if Jesse said to Jobe, “Hold on, I’ll bring you my son, too,” but this isn’t the type of movie to subvert expectations. Anyway, more ass kicking, a final confrontation with Jobe, Mara in peril, blah blah blah… Jesse saves the day.

Michael Jai White in one of Welcome to Sudden
Death’s better fight scenes.

What Michael Jai White probably imagines doing to his agent.

Welcome to Sudden Death answers the question: What if the Disney Channel produced R-rated action schlock? Director Dallas Jackson, also credited with the screenplay along with Sudden Death’s original writer Gene Quintaro, delivers a movie that is almost aggressively devoid of any wit, personality or style. Instead, we get cliched dialogue (including the chestnuts “You had one job!” and “That’s above my pay grade”), cheap-at-half-price production values, and performances barely worthy of an episode of The Suite Life of Zack & Cody (though Owen’s community theater-level acting added a humorous flare to his f-bombs). There’s only so much Michael Jai White can do, and he does the bare minimum here. And yet the movie has the audacity to tease a sequel. I hope for White’s sake he leaves that project to sentient Naugahyde bean bag Steven Segal should it ever materialize.

Corman’s version of The Fantastic Four wasn’t made for public consumption, but it still managed some so-bad-it’s-good charm. Feel free to check it out for yourself. It’ll be a better use of your time than watching the stillborn Welcome to Sudden Death.

Michael Eklund welcomes sudden death.