Leather and Iron

Lawyer John Telliman rides his bike along with a mate Bobby over the weekends. They stop off at a bikers' strip club and Bobby leaves with one of the strippers. The next morning, John learns that Bobby was killed and suddenly now there are bikers who believe he knows the whereabouts of a package that was stolen from them. But there are also other figures who want that package, and John's daughter could be targeted if he doesn't come up with the goods.

Nice poster art, but what's this one doing in a fright night pack?! 'Screaming Metal' is a competently made independent flick, which I found to be extremely bland and superficial when it came to the crunch. There was a lot of timer checking during my viewing. The action is pretty cut and dry. These generic moments lacked the rush and felt terribly banal. One staged car chase scene is quite laughable as you notice crowds along side the streets watching on. And a lack of traffic during these scenes loses a bit of creditability. More often there was plenty of posing and bling, especially towards the earlier half of the film. Involving motorbikes. If you love that sort of thing, you might get something out of it. But it did grow tiresome and the restless script didn't help the tepid nature it seem to fall into. The plot is rather conventional (and incoherent) even with all its overblown drama, few surprises and web of deceit. The constant where's the package line, really did start to rub me up the wrong way and actions of certain characters became extremely annoying. It comes across as dumb, senseless and meandering, but it seems to hold your attention nonetheless. Acting is wooden all round, but I can't fault it because it didn't do any damage. Mike Valletta was decent enough in the heroine role and Blythe Metz smokes up the screen. Booming out of the speakers is a blaring heavy rock soundtrack that goes down with that biker spirit. The blunt soundtrack seems to change depending on what gang / people it wants to focus on. Director James Archer did an admirably workable job, but it needed more oomph for its buck and slipshod editing didn't do anything for its lagged pace. What's going on with the open-ended conclusion though? After all of that you get the feeling "is that it?" to the story's dying outcomes. Is a sequel on its way… or maybe this was a pilot for a series? Oh well, you just feel short-changed.

While I didn't care too much about it, this exercise is far from a complete mess and throws up some minor goods… if you look hard. Or who am i kidding? Just simply enjoy the scenery in the strip club, fellas.

Thanks for the kudos on some of the music used (stolen) for the film. My band mates and I were actually filmed for the bar scene. It was done at the Jackson Hole in Phoenix AZ. Apparently we didn't fit his artistic vision of what a rock band should look like so he put in a different group of guys. Yeah, my drummer bought one of the DVD's and I watched it... It's an hour and a half or so of my life that I'll never get back! We wound up on the cutting room floor but Archer stole... that word's a bit harsh... used without our consent two of our copy written songs. Perhaps it was unintentional, but we never received compensation for the tunes, and to add insult to injury he misspelled the band name on the credits. The band was ITHICA you twit! TTFN ya Boob!

This film begins with two buddies by the names of "John Telliman" (Mike Valletta) and "Bobby Douglas" (Scott Dillon) enjoying some time riding around Phoenix on their motorcycles. Eventually, they decide to go to a biker bar to round out their experience. When they get there the two of them meet a young woman named "Misty" (Blythe Metz) who begins flirting with the two of them with Bobby eventually taking her a hotel that night. What he doesn't know is that Misty has become involved in a dispute between a Chinese organization led by a man named "Feng" (Jack Dong) and a bio-tech company. As it so happens, the Chinese were in the process of conducting a transaction with the bio-tech company when it was interrupted by a biker gang led by a man named "Walker" (J. David Watson) who stole the money and the merchandise. Naturally, both groups desperately want what they are after and Misty seems to be at the center of it all. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this could have been pretty good film as it had an interesting plot and a good foundation to proceed from. For example, the scenes involving the motorcycle gang were all pretty good for the most part. Unfortunately, the script needed serious improvement and the acting of both Feng and Walker was simply dreadful. That being said, this turned out to be a rather poor film overall and I have rated it accordingly. Below average.