Coming off the success of James Cameron’s The Terminator, just about every studio was looking to piggyback off that gold mine, and what followed was a parade of knockoff films that for the most part failed to match The Terminator in quality and in box office draw. One of those bottom-of-the-barrel knockoffs is the 1987 film Programmed To Kill, also known as The Retaliator. While in the 80’s this was a film that could be appreciated  in drive-ins and later on late-night cable, nowadays the unexpected draw for this film is that it has the late Paul Walker in one of his earliest roles playing Jason, the son of the film’s lead character, Eric Mathews (Robert Ginty). Former CIA agent Eric Matthews is hired to lead a group of mercenaries to rescue a pair of kidnapped kids from a group of terrorists. In the process of performing the extraction, Samira (Sandahl Bergman), one of the terrorists, is critically wounded. For some reason, the mercenaries bring Samira with them. Samira is then brought to a group of government scientists who do experimental brain surgery and in the process turn her into a cyborg with one goal in mind, to use her to eliminate the head of the terrorist cell that she was a part of. This aspect of the film for obvious reasons has me thinking about Robocop. Even when we get to see things through her perspective, it is like a cheap imitation.

For the record, the first 40 minutes are a bit dull, but thankfully there is enough action in the sequence where the mercenaries rescue the kids to make the first half bearable. Where things do pick up is when the government first dispatches their cyborg assassin to kill the terrorist leader and her former lover. Things obviously don’t go as planned, and of course their robot assassin becomes a killing machine with one goal in mind, to eliminate all those responsible for making her what she is. The second half of this film is fun.  It’s a shame the filmmakers decided to play this so seriously, because let’s face it, the film is nowhere near the quality of The Terminator or Robocop, and the result is just unintentionally silly.

The 1980's saw a resurgence of the themes and styles of the earlier film noir genre but with more modern themes and situations. Films like Alan Parker's DeNiro/ Rourke Angel Heart and Paul Schrader's Richard Gere/Laura Hutton American Gigolo are two of the finest examples of what has become known as neo noir. The genre has existed since the 1960's, but there was a certain style to these 1980's films that brought us the peak of this style of filmmaking. It crossed other genres as well. Ridley Scott's Bladerunner is absolutely the best science fiction representative of the style, and that film's impact on sci-fi going forward still has a huge impact today. It's all about style: lighting, cinematography, and themes that often blur the line between good and bad. No Mercy returned Richard Gere to the genre, and while No Mercy was a box office flop, it has endured more than some from the era, and now Kino Lorber gives us a chance to revisit one of the better examples of neo noir on Blu-ray. It's worth a look, and I'm going to tell you why.

Richard Gere plays Chicago detective Eddie Jillette. He and his partner Joey Collins (Basaraba) have been undercover at a car wash for several days. They are getting inpatient for a good bust and end up rushing into an arrest that nets them a simple pot dealer. They cause a lot of damage making the pop, and the result is more than a little disappointing to the brass. Things appear to turn around when the perp claims to have been contacted about doing a hit. He has a meeting that night, and so Eddie decides to leave the brass out of the picture and stand in for the hitman, who hasn't met the contact yet. He shows up at the meet where he's confronted by Allan Deveneux, played by William Atherton, and his "girl" Michel Duval, played by Kim Basinger. Eddie decides to act like a tough guy, and it all ends up with more mayhem and his partner getting killed. Now he wants to go to New Orleans where the hit was supposed to take place and track down the people who killed his partner.

"From the green hills of Vermont to the verdant canyons of Arizona, people all over the country are beginning to realize it's nearly over. We have almost beaten COVID, and the best news of all? Things are finally getting back to normal. Infection rates are at an all-time low. New stronger vaccinations have ebbed the tide. And we humans are cleaning up the mess and finally getting on with our lives But as we start to get back to our jobs and schools, one question remains: What lingering effect will the pandemic have on our children?"

This has been a tough year for everyone. Productions all around the world have been uprooted because of the pandemic. I guess I thought there might have been one place on this planet that was safe. OK, I made that last part up. We always knew that South Park was going to have a field day with COVID. Let's be honest; the amount of material for the irreverent show is simply off the scales. There's nothing like a global catastrophe to bring out the sharp wit of Trey Parker and Matt Stone. The pandemic meant we saw the long-running animated series limited just like everyone else. So instead of a 10-episode run, the 24th season of South Park was made up of two double-length "Pandemic Specials", but just for whats and giggles, let's call it South Park The Complete 24th Season, and then there were two Post COVID specials, and that's what we have next, a look at it in Blu-ray.