At the risk of earning a Motor City-style ass-kicking from the assorted toughs who make up the cast and crew of the independent film Strong Arm, I have to publicly admit that, to me, the movie is not very good.

While the plot regarding a woman found raped and murdered — only to have her brother track down the three random gang members and their porn ring — should be enough to fill a 70-minute movie, I was surprised how much of the running time is actually filled with scenes of the street whizzing by outside a car window as a D-level group plays on the soundtrack.

What story there is revolves around war vet Jake Ramsey, a guy with apparent PTSD and constant heavy breathing when moving around, often grunting “shit” under his breath. From what I could gather, his sister is found raped and possibly murdered on the mean streets. His Detroit PD buddy fills him in on the possible perps: three gang members who stand around talking in badly recorded conversations.

There’s a bloody final battle that is a real downer, but I feel that was kind of the point of the flick. From grindhouse upstart Independent American Pictures, the film is given a faux-’70s look, with computer-generated film scratches and a plot full of violence, but with a very first-day-of-film-school need for a decent script or, at the very least, one where something actually happens.

That being said, I do applaud these guys for getting the movie done and look forward to seeing what B-movie madness they come up with next, hopefully improving on their formula. So please don’t beat me up. —Louis Fowler

Get it at StrongArm.com.

To my knowledge, The Prey is Cambodia’s first update of The Most Dangerous Game, arguably the most recycled of all cinematic premises. Either way, it assuredly is the only one in which the bad guy with a bullet-ridden torso pulls a final hit off his vape pen, only for smoke to waft from numerous bloody holes.

So that’s new.

While working undercover in Phnom Penh to bust a mafia scam, mild-mannered police inspector Xin (a debuting Gu Shangwei) is among the most unfortunate men swept from the streets and thrown into a most unforgiving prison. Its warden (Vithaya Pansringarm, Only God Forgives) is — as prison movies dictate — even more corrupt than he is corpulent, but the good news is he occasionally takes his captives for a field trip. The bad news is, it’s to the jungle, where they’re given a hair of a head start before being hunted like animals by rich guys looking for cheap thrills at an expensive price.

Putting Xin through his paces from behind the camera is director and co-writer Jimmy Henderson (Jailbreak), whose hands prove more skilled than those pulling the strings of most American action films these days. That said, The Prey is not different enough where it really matters — the story — to make it worth watching; after all, you’ve seen this before, just not with these performers.

Fleet of foot, Gu certainly has the moves to merit the lead role right out of the gate, but he lacks the personality and charm of martial-arts stars Jackie Chan, Jet Li and the lesser-wattage Tony Jaa, whom he most resembles. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Not that you needed it, but for further proof Italy never saw a movie trend it couldn’t rip off, I give you Karzan, Maitre de la Jungle, aka the Tarzan wannabe Karzan, Master of the Jungle, starring “Johnny Kissmuller Jr.” (actually Loaded Guns’ Armando Bottin) as the illiterate lord of the loincloth.

The setup Xeroxes the premise of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ legendary literary hero to a T (or should that be “to a K”?), as the male child of a well-to-do family is orphaned by tragedy and subsequently raised by apes in the African wild, acquiring formidable vine-swinging prowess as the years progress. In Karzan, the pith-helmeted, J&B-fueled members of an expedition go looking for this “fabulous creature.” Among them are the beautiful Jane Monica (Melù Valente, Blindman) and, serving as guide, a towering mute named Crazy (Attilio Severini, Viva! Django).

Much of the film by Coffin Full of Dollars’ Demofilo Fidani is taken up by the expedition traversing the harsh mistress known as nature. With every step, they teeter on the precipice of doom, with expository dialogue constantly reminding the viewer: “We haven’t got a chance,” “One bite means instant death,” et al. Most memorable among the close calls are Crazy’s use of a blow dart to kill the (obvious toy tarantula they call a) black widow atop Monica’s chest, followed by Crazy making good on his nickname by wrestling — and then biting — a poisonous snake. Of presumably less threat is the native tribe whose leader’s foreign-tongued babbling is dubbed to sound like Looney Tunes’ Tasmanian Devil.

When they finally meet Karzan (who looks not unlike the Samurai Cop himself, Mathew Karedas), they find him shacking up with the subservient Sheena-esque Shiran (Simone Blondell, Frankenstein’s Castle of Freaks), who’s literally so stupid she can’t even drink from a coconut without its milk judiciously spilling down her bare midriff.

Now is a good time to open the floor so I can answer your burning questions:
• “Does Karzan do the Tarzan yell?” If you consider every third note changed to avoid intellectual-property litigation and delivered with less confidence than Carol Burnett, then yes, you may.
• “What about the animals? I like the animals. Mommy takes me to the zoo for going potty. Can I see lots and lots and lots of animals?” Oh, heavens, yes! Prepare to see such exotic stock-footage sights as the giraffe, zebra, water buffalo, elephant, lion, rhinoceros and crocodile. Or is that an alligator? I get those two confused. You also will meet a chimp named Cika, credited as playing itself.
• “Pray tell, does the climax involve Karzan wrestling a man in a shoddy ape suit?” As a matter of f– wait, how did you know? —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Say the words “flamethrower” and “Robert Ginty,” and I’m excited to watch The Exterminator and/or Exterminator 2. But those words also apply to White Fire, a European action film that ultimately will extinguish your desire. For starters, Ginty isn’t the one who throws those flames, but he does get to rip into the flesh of his attackers with a Stihl chainsaw — a great element that, unfortunately, comes front-loaded with all the good stuff.

Ginty’s Bo is in the diamond-smuggling business, thanks to his loving sister, Ingrid (Belinda Mayne, Alien 2: On Earth), being employed by a mining company and using her assets to manipulate the CEO (Gordon Mitchell, Frankenstein’s Castle of Freaks). The siblings’ scheme is discovered by sleazy people who want in on it, just as a random miner lucks upon the fabled million-year-old White Fire diamond, a 2,000-carat rock so named because it’s radioactive, burning the hands of all who touch it.

What will burn your eyes, however, are the incestuous overtones between Bo and Ingrid, such as him freeing her towel from her nude body after she emerges from a swim, and voicing what a shame it is he’s her bro when she has a rockin’ bod like that. If you think that’s icky, just wait until he starts living with the prostitute Olga, who’s Ingrid’s spitting image — so much so that she’s also played by Mayne. Then again, White Fire comes written and directed by skin-flick filmmaker Jean-Marie Pallardy (Erotic Diary of a Lumberjack), for whom this kind of thing is NBD.

Shot in Istanbul (not Constantinople), White Fire introduces Fred Williamson (The New Gladiators) in the second half as a foil for Bo — a case to file under “Too Little, Too Late.” Ginty’s mealy-mouthed appeal is a peculiar one, with him forever in motion like a coke fiend. That he’s sold as some kind of sex symbol is hard to swallow; that’s he also sold as a guy who can karate-kick his way through a circle of heavily armed men is even harder. Nearly every backup goon looks like a Turkish Tom Savini, but only one gets bisected by a table jigsaw, testes first. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

We all owe Timothy Dalton an apology. Turns out he’s quite good in the role of James Bond, even if his first of two shots at bat, The Living Daylights, is not an all-star entry in the 007 franchise.

Befitting of its time — near the end of the Cold War — Daylights pits Bond against the ever-fearsome KGB, but also the ever-formidable Joe Don Baker (Walking Tall) as a gluttonous arms dealer. Honestly, the plot is overwritten with the usual geopolitical brouhaha that could drive you crazy on first viewing, so just worry about following the fun as 007 traipses ’round the world with Kara (Maryam d’Abo, Xtro), a Russian cellist he meets cute when she tries to assassinate the KGB agent Bond helps to defect (Jeroen Krabbé, The Fugitive).

If you’ve ever wanted to see Bond on a roller coaster as part of a carnival date, you’re in luck! This is the one for you. However, coming in at the back end of the ’80s, Daylights feels curiously past its sell-by date, starting with one of the series’ worst theme songs, by a-ha, the Norwegian pop act that already had peaked. Meanwhile, Desmond Llewelyn’s Q demos a literal ghetto blaster in a missile-launching boombox, and a bad guy infiltrates supposedly secure grounds by tossing milk-bottle bombs.

Still, with old pro John Glen (Octopussy) directing the penultimate in his record-setting run of five 007 films, count on action sequences executed with clockwork precision. As good as the scenes are that kick off the plot and then bring it to closure — the latter while hanging out the open cargo bay of an airborne plane — two others are more deserving of mention. The first is the prologue, in which a military paintball exercise suddenly gains life-or-death consequences; the second finds Bond and the bland Kara fleeing pursuers by riding an open cello case down a ski slope. Snow has been exceedingly kind to this franchise, no matter who dons the tux. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.