That's Action

My review was written in December 1990 after watching the program on AIP video cassette.

"That's Action" purports to do for actioners what MGM's "That's Entertainment" did for musicals, but it's just a cheap plug for the recent B- and C- level made-for-video output of Action International Pictures.

Host Robert culp loks mighty uncomfortable fronting this time-killer, especially given his past association with Walter Hill and championing of the late Sam Peckin;ah, both masters of the genre.

What we have here is the films of AIP exec David A. Prior and others, excerpted tediously under headings liek "high speed chases & crashes", "fight scenes" and "body burns". Cumulative effect is like wandering in and out of screening rooms at Mife or the American Film Market.

There are some bright moments here, notably in the fight scene department reprising an effective Kimberley Casey-helmed Ted V+Prior versus FritZ Matthews punch-up. The alluded chase & crash scenes are mediocre and unintentionally reveal the low budgets AIP works with. Unrated tape includes brief nudity in "Aerobicide" excerpts.

At the end of the tape Culp proclaims: "What a way to make a living", and warns of a sequel "That's Action 2".

In the beginning AIP stood for American International Pictures; then after the firm was defunct, Samuel Z. Arkoff (himself now defunct also) started Arkoff International Pictures - "Nobody else seemed to want 'em," he said of the initials. Then the torch was passed to the bargain-basement purveyor of straight-to-video tosh, Action International Pictures.

This video compilation of clips from many of their movies may be named in the manner of "That's Entertainment," but this AIP sampler just spares luckless viewers the chore of actually having to sit through the movies they come from, because nearly all the clips are useless (the law of averages demands a couple be watchable, such as the one with a gym that kills customers in which a woman is roasted inside a tanning machine; and the one with soldiers battling enemies in their dreams... but the fact that more than ten years after seeing this tape I still have no real desire to track down the movies should tell you something).

"That's Action" is made even worse by the by-the-numbers presenting style of Robert Culp, who being a proper actor has no business being here; and by the poor writing and "directing" of David A. Prior. The producers of Asian action movies have nothing to worry about.