Tom Jolliffe looks at the career of British action star Gary Daniels…
If you’re into action (and particularly anything to do with Martial arts) and you enjoy seeing some of Britain’s finest flying the flag, then you’ll probably know about Jason Statham and Scott Adkins. There’s another Martial Arts icon that genre fans might well be familiar with too, especially those with a predilection for 90’s straight to video films. The original. The trailblazer for British kickers, who forged a fine career in a very American dominant market who outlasted many U.S. stars. Throughout the 90’s in particular, Gary Daniels was a standout in the world below the Jean-Claude Van Damme tier, where companies like PM Entertainment were blasting out action films for the home video (or HBO) market.
The A-Z of Action Movies: A-D
Beginning an A-Z series on action cinema, Tom Jolliffe offers up a selection of movies from A-D…
Action cinema. Explosions, fist fights, one liners and occasionally mullets. From the early westerns to the modern Marvels of blockbuster cinema, action cinema has entertained and excited audiences for decades. Sure, everyone knows Die Hard is one of the pinnacles of the genre, so perhaps there’s no need to recommend that one. However, through a continuing series I will offer up a varied selection of films. Prepare as I unleash my encyclopedic knowledge of action cinema upon you. Here’s an A to D selection to roundhouse kick things off…
The 411 Interview: Jeff Kirschner and Christopher Lombardo
Jeff Kirschner is a genre movie journalist and fan and English college professor. Christopher Lombardo is a writer, author, and film critic. They’re both from Canada and they’re the masterminds behind the excellent Really Awful Movies Podcast and the terrific book
Death by Umbrella: The 100 Weirdest Horror Movie Weapons, which came out in 2016. The duo’s latest book is the awesome
Mine’s Bigger Than Yours: The 100 Wackiest Action Movies, which was released via Schiffer Publishing in November 2020. In this interview, Kirschner and Lombardo talk with this writer about writing
Mine’s Bigger Than Yours, the action movie genre, their favorite movies in the genre, and more.
Cage,
Cage on the list. The same goes for their takedown of
Death Wish 3. It’s always refreshing to read a different view on a movie that you deeply love.
Mine’s Bigger Than Yours also exposes people to movies that they maybe have never heard of and had no idea existed (that’s what happened to me, anyway).
Geteven/
Road to Revenge, the vanity project of John DeHart? Until I read the review in the book I was totally unaware of the movie. Now that I have read about it (and subsequently checked out the movie’s trailer on YouTube), I