If you see only one David Heavener film in your life … well, it’s clearly one too many. Heavener’s one of those guys who does practically everything in his low-budget action movies; in addition to starring and producing, he provides the witless writing, the lifeless direction and the atrocious music. (It’s a wonder he wasn’t credited with doing his own mullet-sculpting.) Despite all his involvement to the contrary, he can’t be an action hero, because he looks like the guy who last serviced my car.
In Twisted Justice, he plays Tucker, a quirky, renegade Los Angeles cop in the year 2020. How quirky and renegade, you ask? How’s sleeping in the bathtub in dirty longjohns with his jelly-donut-eating hamster for you? Tucker’s on the trail of a serial killer who murders hot, rich women connected to a chemical company.
Or, as his boss (Erik Estrada, TV’s CHiPs) puts it, “We’ve got a turbo-charged fruit loop here.” Congress has outlawed guns, however, so the cops have to make do with stun darts. Good thing our boy Tucker — who drives a beat-up car with the license plate “TUCK U” — still carries his illegal weapon, with bullets hidden inside a donut kept in a box next to his toilet.
Estrada is just one part of an all-star washed-up supporting cast that includes Jim Brown, Karen Black, James Van Patten, Shannon Tweed and a “special appearance by Gerald Milton.” (Wait, who? The executive producer.) It’s with Tweed that Heavener proves his true ineptness as a filmmaker: Who in the fuck casts Tweed and doesn’t write himself a five-minute sex scene with her? Heavener, that’s who. In fact, he doesn’t even have her take off her clothes. That’s just Twisted, dude. Now will you please rotate my tires while you’re at it?
Fun fact: This was the last movie I watched before nervously hopping on a plane for the first time after 9/11, mere weeks. If it had turned out to be the last movie of my life, I would’ve been pissed. —Rod Lott