Tag: Kelly Hu

Devil’s Den A Movie A Day Journal Entry

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Devil’s Den (2006) – A Movie A Day 2021 #6

Devil’s Den DVD cover

Have you ever wanted to watch From Dusk till Dawn, but didn’t really want to watch From Dusk till Dawn? Then Devil’s Den might be just the movie for you!

Devil’s Den is a fun little horror comedy heavily inspired by From Dusk till Dawn. It’s so inspired by Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino’ masterful mashup of crime and vampires, that Devil’s Den has to go out of its way to explain how the not-vampire strippers in its movie are different from the totally-vampire strippers that inhabit the Titty Twister. But let me back up a bit. 

Devil’s Den stars Kelly Hu, Ken Foree, and Devon Sawa. We first meet Sawa’s character, Quinn, as he’s driving back from Mexico with a suitcase full of Spanish Fly in the back set and his best friend, Nick, in the passenger seat. After a semi-lengthy yet entertaining conversation where Nick doubts the effectiveness of their cache of drugs, Quinn decides the best course of action is to prove the Spanish Fly’s effectiveness by drugging some strippers with the pills and reaping the rewards. This, my friends, is our hero of the story. Well, sort of. Quinn’s role as main character is taken over by two much more likable characters we meet in shortly after this opening scene. 

Quinn and Nick pull into a strip club named Devil’s Den, and as they scope out the place for two victims, two other people are scoping out the place for reasons that remain a mystery until later in the movie. One of those people is Leonard, played by Ken Foree, and the other is Caitlin, played by Kelly Hu. Both Leonard and Caitlin are sitting alone at separate tables, and they’re not there for the beers or the breasts. They’re both looking for something or someone, but they don’t begin to reveal their true intentions until Quinn’s plan goes awry. 

Quinn slips a pill into one of the dancer’s drinks, and at first the Spanish Fly seems to be working. The drugged dancer, Jezebel, played by Dawn Olivieri, becomes aggressive in her requests to take Quinn to a secluded area for a “private dance.” Quinn, of course, is thrilled, and he’s led down a hallway and out the back door of the building. Quinn starts to get nervous, and rightfully so, because Jezebel has gotten so worked up by the Spanish Fly that she can’t control herself anymore. Jezebel reveals her true monstrous face as she claws at Quinn and bites at his neck. Luckily for Quinn, Caitlin was following him and Jezebel, and even luckier for Quinn, Caitlin has two pistols that she unloads into Jezebel.

When Caitlin and Quinn make it back into the Devil’s Den, all hell has broken loose. The strippers have all turned into what I assumed were vampires, and they are tearing the customers apart. The only person besides Caitlin who knows how to fight is Leonard, and he’s swinging a katana around, chopping off heads left and right.

So that’s the setup, two criminals stop at a strip club that’s infested with stripper-monsters, and everyone who survives the initial massacre has to band together in order to survive. Sounds a lot like From Dusk till Dawn, right? Well it’s totally different, because Leonard explains that the strippers aren’t vampires, they’re ghouls. They’re not trying to drink blood, they’re trying to eat flesh. So yeah, totally different. 

I’m just having a bit of fun with the plot though. I actually did enjoy Devil’s Den, and beyond the basic setup, the movie is pretty different as it goes on. We learn about who Caitlin and Leonard are and why they’re there, and the star power of Kelly Hu and Ken Foree absolutely helped sell me on the goofiness of the story. I immediately liked then, but I never got to where I liked Quinn. He is a whiney, selfish douche who got into the whole mess by trying to drug a woman and take advantage of her. He has a bit of a redemption arc, but by that point in the movie I was hoping for a random ghoul attack to take him out. But two out of three isn’t bad, and Caitlin and Leonard (and there ridiculous backgrounds) more than made up for Quinn. 

Plus, you know, stripper monsters are pretty much always fun. Sure, it’s a bit of a rip-off of From Dusk till Dawn, but I don’t care. A fun movie is a fun movie even if I’ve kind of seen it before. Also, as I understand it, Zoe Bell doubles for one of the ghouls who has an extended fight scene with Kelly Hu, and that is super fun to watch. So yeah, I’d recommend Devil’s Den for people who enjoy silly horror movies with a fair amount of blood and boobs. 

Devil’s Den – Trailer from Ken Ohara on Vimeo.

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The Tournament (2009) A Movie A Day Journal Entry

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The Tournament (2009) – A Movie A Day 2021 #3

DVD Cover

When I saw the DVD case for The Tournament, I didn’t have very high hopes for the movie contained within. The title is generic, and the cover is reminiscent of many other low-budget action movies packing the department stores of the world. But, as much as I’m not a fan of the floating-head-style of marketing that seems to dominate the home video market, in this instance it worked on me. Seeing Kelly Hu’s floating head next to a gun was all the convincing I needed to spend part of my evening watching The Tournament, and I’m glad I did.

The Tournament is an independent British action movie starring the aforementioned Kelly Hu alongside Ving Rhames and Robert Carlyle. The setup for the plot is rather generic, so my reading of the DVD case was fairly accurate in that regard. The tournament within The Tournament is battle-royale-inspired scenario where thirty of the world’s top assassins are brought together into a small town and set loose to kill each other in any way possible. There’s a group of anonymous rich people from all around the world watching from a secret location (by hacking into security cameras, satellites, etc.), and bets are made on which assassin will be the last one standing. The lone survivor wins the tournament and gets a giant cash prize along with bragging rights. Each assassin is implanted with a tracking device that also reads their vital stats (so the team in the control room can track who is dead), and if there isn’t a winner after 24 hours, all the tracking devices will explode. So, you know, a lot like Battle Royale.

So that’s the setup, but the actual story focuses on just a few of the assassins and one random civilian. Ving Rhames is Joshua, an assassin who has won a previous tournament. We learn early in the movie that he’s not back because of the promise of money and fame; he’s here for revenge. Someone close to Joshua has been killed, and he’s been led to believe one of the assassins participating in the current tournament is the person who did it. Elsewhere in the city, Lai Lai Zhen (played by Kelly Hu) is a somewhat stoic assassin who ends up feeling obligated to protect Father MacAvoy (played by Robert Carlyle), a drunken priest who gets caught up in the tournament after he accidently ingests one of the tracking devices. Lai Lai Zhen’s motivations for participating in the tournament are a mystery at first, and much of the story involves peeling back the layers of her story as she and Father MacAvoy converse more and more. A few of the other assassins are also featured throughout the movie such as Ian Somerhalder’s eccentric American psychopath Miles Slade and Sébastien Foucan’s quiet and smart free-running French assassin Anton Bogart, but the remainder of the thirty assassins are essentially props to get punched, kicked, shot, and blown up by the stars of the movie. And boy do they get punched, kicked, shot, and blown up.

I didn’t expect the action in this movie to be as fun as it is, so even though I enjoyed the story going on between our three main stars, the excessively violent and bloody action was the biggest treat for me. The movie begins by showing the final moments of the tournament that Joshua previously won, and the screen is filled with blood, bodies, fire, and bullets. It’s a great way to set the tone of the movie, and the action sequences throughout the remainder of the film always lived up to the promises made by that opening scene. There are some great martial arts sequences with Lai Lai Zhen battling various assassins in hand-to-hand combat, and there are huge set pieces with car chases, explosions, and many, many bullets fired. The action is abundant and varied, and it always kept me entertained. Plus, the movie doesn’t shy away from copious amounts of blood and gore (there is no shortage of exploding heads and bodies), and that will always get bonus points from me.

As you might expect, there are a few twists and turns in the movie’s story. The twists aren’t super twisty though, and even though I pretty much immediately figured out what was going to happen well in advance of it actually happening, I was still thoroughly entertained. The stars did a great job of getting me care about their characters, and the over-the-top action sequences had me smiling the entire time. Definitely check out The Tournament if you ever get a chance.

 

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