Back in the ’90s, the direct-to-video market existed because many producers had discovered they could make a lot of money before a single frame of film was shot by pre-selling a generic action plot starring a handful of semi-famous actors to a bunch of unwary foreign distributors.
With their profit ledgers already in the black, there was no incentive then to spend further money on quality filmmaking, publicity or a theatrical release for these films and, as a result, they would just suddenly appear on the “New Releases” shelf of your local video store and stay there until some sucker decided he was tired enough of life to give them 90 minutes of his time.
Starring that pockmarked guy who was in Die Hard and The Goonies, that one guy who was in Scarface, that fucked-up Airwolf dude, plus Red Sonja and The Streetfighter, Body Count is an archetypal example of one of these pre-fab films.
In it, The Streetfighter plays a Japanese hitman who teams up with Red Sonja to get revenge on the cops who sent him to prison for a hit he performed on two acquitted child-pornographer gangsters. Pockmarked guy is aided in his investigation of these murders by a leggy FBI agent whose nonregulation miniskirts are highly inappropriate for the workplace. Naturally, they’re the only two who make it to the end of the movie alive.
Body Count is one of those movies you forget about while you’re still watching it, so it isn’t exactly worth seeking out, but it does feature enough violence, explosions and gratuitous nudity to sit through if it were to suddenly appear on your television screen. That is, if you’re a sucker who’s really tired of life. —Allan Mott