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Andrew Dice Clay and his band of criminals take a couple of beauty queens hostage during the Miss Galaxy ceremony. Only one woman can escape their clutches. Now, with her Tae Kwan Do skills, she must save all the pageants from these criminals with the aid of Robert Davi, who’s on the outside of the building. Sound familiar? Yes, it’s one of those many, many movies that rips off Die Hard. The gimmick this time? The role of Bruce Willis now goes to none other than Shannon Tweed. Yes, Shannon Tweed; The woman that is mostly known for her numerous erotic thrillers released throughout the 80’s and 90’s. This time she gets to keep her clothes on and show us how good of an action star she is…
Not that good I must say. Shannon is more convincing in taking her clothes off than doing roundhouses. 1994 was just not the time when every guy or gal out there could become a convincing action star through the magic of the editing room, in those days you just had to perform them moves for real. And Shannon isn’t quite the martial artist you’d expect in a movie like this. Is it all bad? No, I was suprised how watchable this actually still was.
Of all the Die Hard rip offs I’ve seen or in some cases endured over the past couple of years this stays the closest to it’s example. Certain scenes/situations are even copied basically. The setting is in both cases a multiple story building. Remember how John McClane had Al Powell on the outside to talk to? Shannon has Robert Davi who guides her from the outside and in the end gets to be a little involved in the action. The only difference is that at the end of the movie Tweed and Davi kiss while McClane and Powell just shook hands. Remember that one guy who’s brother is killed by Bruce and keeps on coming back? Now it’s Rowdy Roddy Piper who just keeps on returning. An extensive scene in an air vent, it’s here! The list goes on and on. Hell, both movies even have Robert Davi!
What is obvious is the low budget this movie made on. The scene where a girl explodes and falls out of a window is obviously fake, there are a couple of small pyrotechnics scenes but nothing epic. For the rest it’s just shootouts and hand-to-hand combat. Badly choreographed hand-to-hand combat. So don’t expect Shannon to fall from rooftops and swing herself back into the building two stories lower or something like that.
Posing as the hero of the movie on the poster is Andrew Dice Clay, billed as just Andrew Clay. He is actually the villain of the piece. Which made no sense to me. Why put The villain and a supporting character on the cover nd leave out the hero of the story? Probably because movies starring Shannon Tweed normally don’t get rented, they get watched when they’re on TV late at night. But still it doesn’t make sense. Imagine the poster for Die Hard having just Alan Rickman and Reginald Veljohnson on it. You catch my drift. Also popping up is Roddy Piper as an unkillable henchman of Clay. I must say that for a movie like this they put some effort in giving all the henchmen a personality of their own, especially the bad-ass geek Cal (Keram Malicki-Sánchez) who is a bit too much into computers and has a nifty hairstyle.
It is Clay who brings some juice to his role. He lets his stand up comedy persona at home but does seem to have some fun with the part. The rest of the cast just does what is expected and nothing more. But hey, you don’t watch these films for Oscar worthy performances. Hell Miss Germany doesn’t even have an accent. These movies are the kind you watch when nothing else is on and you need to kill some time. Since it stars Shannon Tweed you expect some titties to be thrown in there too and that’s another point this movie does not deliver. This is as saucy as it gets:
That’s right! Even though there is a scene in which there is an opportunity for Shannon to ditch some clothes when she tries to seduce a captor at a swimming pool it just all stays on. There are tons of models running around and we even get scenes inside a dressing room but everything just stays on. A year later Showgirls would show us how dressing rooms in movies should look like. A Shannon Tweed movie without nudity is like a car without an engine.
Somehow the movie is still watchable even though Shannon never convinces a second as a woman who can kick ass. Clay’s villain is fun though never memorable and the supporting cast actually are more fleshed out than you’d expect. This movie is no contest for Die Hard but on its own it’s not a complete waste of time.
