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Heatseeker
The Action/Adventure Section — A regular column that will exclusively highlight and review action movies. The most likely suspects? Action cinema of the 1970s and 1980s. But no era will be spurned. As the column grows, the intent will be to re-capture the whimsy of perusing the aisles of your local video store with only ragingly kick ass cover art to aide you in your quest for sweaty action glory. Here we will celebrate the beefy. This is a safe place where we still believe that one lone hero can save humanity by sheer force of will and generous steroid usage.
Tagline: Meet the Ultimate Warrior in Cyber-Technology
Best Quote Of The Film: “His style is a mutant version of outlaw shoot-fighting” — Faceless/Nameless Tournament Commentator who narrates at least 60% of this movie.
Have you ever really wished that Enter The Dragon had significantly less charismatic stars and way more cyborgs? Then have I got the movie for you. Heatseeker (1995) is a film written and directed by B-action movie legend Albert Pyun that tells the story of a 100% human fighter in a “futuristic” 2019 in which most fighters have begun undergoing cybernetic enhancement operations funded by huge multinational corporations.
But before I get too far into the specifics of the film, I’d like to spend a little bit of time paying homage to Mr. Pyun himself. As a matter of fact, Pyun’s attachment to a movie is all I need to hear to queue up the title. I can’t lie and say it always works out for the best. I recently “blind-watched” a film by Mr. Pyun called Adrenalin: Fear The Rush (1996) which was just one of the most thin and listless features I have seen in years. Natasha Henstridge and Christopher Lambert chase a diseased mutant around underground sewers in a sustained, feature-long, flaccid as hell chase movie. So no, a Pyun film is no seal of guaranteed quality. But when you take in a film by Albert Pyun, you are taking in the work of one of the great cult and b-movie directors of the 1980s and 1990s. The man brought us The Sword And The Sorcerer in 1982, Cyborg in 1989, and even Captain America in 1990! (Note, somehow I’ve still never seen his Captain America, but I hear glorious things.) He also directed a whole mess of entries in a franchise called Nemesis which star ’90s action regular Olivier Gruner. It is my genuine hope to offer up a few Gruner entries here in the Action/Adventure section sometime soon. And if you want to talk about a man of his word? Pyun recently delivered a sequel he had been promising since the 1982 end credits of Sword And The Sorcerer with 2010’s Abelar: Tales Of An Ancient Empire.
I haven’t seen every Pyun film, and I haven’t loved every one I’ve seen. But I love the man’s oeuvre. I am (and readers of this column are) his people. His tireless work to bring crazy, cultish, genre cinema to my eyeballs and millions of others over a career that has spanned decades should be commended.
Why am I talking about the guy like he is dead? Well, precisely because he is very much still alive, but recently announced his upcoming retirement. Pyun took to social media to announce that health issues (MS) have prevented him from working any longer and that the completion of his last couple of features will be his final film output. While I am sad to hear of his health issues, I am glad to take an opportunity to thank him for the many hours of entertainment he has brought to my life and others’. Check out a great piece by Outlaw Vern for a better written and more personal homage to Mr. Pyun that also offers a way you can financially support Pyun’s retirement celebration. So let’s get down to one of Pyun’s films, and talk about why I had a blast with it.
I stumbled across Heatseeker while perusing Netflix Watch Instant. Cyborgs? Martial Arts Tournament? Albert Pyun? *Presses Play*
Heatseeker is Enter The Dragon and really any tournament fighting movie. You’ve got the clandestine tournament, you’ve got a final villain that our hero must face, and you’ve got some shady dealings and intrigue outside the ring. Oh, and don’t forget the fighter who befriends our lead and either A) gets hurt or killed to push our hero 2 the limit or B) befriends our hero but ultimately disappoints or betrays them. Heatseeker switches it up a little bit by combining the love interest/damsel in distress with the hero’s trainer! Oh, Heatseeker also switches it up by having cyborgs.
Probably the most awesome thing about the whole cybernetic implant sub-plot is how little impact it really has on the ultimate film itself. It is basically a martial arts movie where, at the end of each fight, a dude’s robo-knee gets broken and you get some shots of pretty awesome cyber-gore. Otherwise, you don’t get a bunch of Terminator-like eye-read-out shots or mechanical whirring when robo-characters walk around or fight.
Our hero is Chance O’Brien (Keith Cooke), the world’s greatest fighter and opponent of cybernetic enhancement. He’s a pure fighter with nothing to prove after defeating Xao (Gary Daniels) in the opening credits. But when an evil… Marketing Executive?… from a cybernetic systems company called Sianon invests a ton of money to outfit Xao with tons of implants and upgrades, he proposes that Sianon host their own tournament with their own rules. Multinational corporations will send their best enhanced fighters to prove their mettle. (Sorry, I had to go there, didn’t I?) Chance refuses to fight so Sianon kidnaps his girlfriend/trainer to force his hand and the quest to defeat Xao and rescue his girlfriend is on! If you haven’t seen the film you already know exactly what is going to happen. The only real question is how much fun you will have watching it all play out. And my guess is that if you pressed play because of Pyun, cyborgs, or marial arts, you’ll probably have a pretty fun time.
Star Keith Cooke is fairly wooden throughout, and it doesn’t surprise me that his career didn’t exactly go the leading man route. But with a crazy physique and gifted martial arts ability, he has gone on to work in films for decades perhaps most famously as Reptile in Mortal Kombat and Sub-Zero in Mortal Kombat: Annihilation. Then you’ve got Gary Daniels as Xao. I knew when I saw Daniels here that he was both the clear stand out performance and presence in the movie, but also that I should know him from other films. As it turns out, Daniels is a career-long action star in his own right who has literally dozens of screen credits to his name. I promptly watched his star vehicle Fist Of The North Star (1995) and fell crazy in love with that movie. I probably would have written that film up instead if Pyun hadn’t made his retirement announcement when he did. You have to go and watch that piece of insanity post haste. While Daniels isn’t exactly a method actor, he gets to have the most fun as the villain/Terminator of this movie and I’ll now be seeking out any action title featuring this man after the one-two punch of Heatseeker and Fist of the North Star.
Heatseeker is really just one more entry in the endless catalog of tournament movies when it all comes down to it. But if you like a little Roger Corman-esque evil-corporate future kitch thrown in with your cybernetic martial artists, then Albert Pyun’s Heatseeker is just a click away.
And I’m Out.
