Tics

The tv-series Nightmare Cafe was one of my favourite shows when I saw it by mistake one saturday night. Great characters and one of my at the time favourite actors, Robert Englund as a mentor figure helping the dead man and woman to help other lost souls. Funny, imaginative and with this nice everyday halloween scare to it. But not totally satisfying, mostly because the possibilities are not explored enough. Except for that Nightmare Cafe is one fine treat.

Here is the second movie together with Marked for death that I hate to love with the actor that I hate to love (not love to hate, hate to love, I love the b*****d I really do but he is such a bad actor). Seagal as Gino, a hard-ass cop trying to find the killer who just shot down his partner, the killer being his childhood friend Ricky Madano (played by William Forsyth in one of his typical badguy roles but with the special over the top that only Seagal movies give).

But this is not all of it, Ricky Madano has pissed off the local mafia hoods and is driving round killing whoever he can while being hunted by both the mob and Seagal.

In the end we have a usual Seagal showdown with him breaking bones and riping limbs with the old stoneface routine.

As with Marked for death this is only entertaining because it is not. It is also trying to be the most brutal Seagal movie together with Marked for death (which is probably one of the most violent and unpleasant action movies around).

After this Seagal went on to make the well-made Under Siege with Tommy Lee Jones and Gary Busey.

Steven Seagal and fellow actioneér Jean Claude Van Damme has seriuos problems, the film makers try so hard to make them look tough that in the end thay both look stupid. Now they are not anyway near good acting but while Van Damme makes fun of himself Seagal never can. He keeps up his old stoneface look and hisses at the badguys while trying to look mean and cool. Both Van Damme and Seagal have about two movies worth watching, in Van Dammes case it's Bloodsport and Double Team and with Seagal it's Above the law and Under Siege. Marked for Death was made after Above the law and Hard to kill and you can tie together these three and Out for justice because they all have much in common. Seagal plays cops in all of them but in two he is something else also. They all show Seagal coming into places where he meets some badguys and he kicks their ass one by one, they don't have any real humour and no real plot, stupid dialogue and old stoneface showing a disturbing talent for violence. In this movie DEA agent Hatcher (Seagal) has returned from a drugbust gone bad in South America and he tries to seek up his family and friends to live a quite life but he soon has to show his mean side once more when Jamaican drugdealers are interefered in a massacre by the stoneface and craves revenge against Hatchers family and he himself becomes marked for death (but you would expect it that it's the drugdealers that are marked for death in this case). Hatcher hunts them down and kills them in various violent acts and then turns his path towards Jamaica for a showdown with the badguys leader Screwface (with an overacted performance by Basil Wallace). But this isn´t really the end but who cares because in the end everyone has to pay the piper in the worst kind of way as in all Seagal movies. Now this may sound like I didn´t enjoy this movie but acctually I did. It may be only for dumb people but I didn´t say I was ever very smart so when I see Seagal trying to act tough while breaking arms and shooting and decapitating people it just makes me laugh because it is so extreme and when Seagal with his over the top stiffness makes the violence so awful and none-entertaining this is when the fun acctually starts.