For City on Fire, Canada took The Towering Inferno, knocked it on its side, reduced its running time by an hour, then plucked a few supporting players from The Poseidon Adventure, Earthquake and The Swarm. Ta-dah! Instant disaster movie! (Half a decade too late to capitalize on the craze, but still: “A” for effort.)

Directed by Death Ship cap’n Alvin Rakoff, the fiery film quickly introduces the characters we theoretically are supposed to care about — a tall order when one of them is Shelley Winters. We have a fire chief two months from retirement (Henry Fonda, Meteor), a vodka-pickled newswoman (Ava Gardner, 1977’s The Sentinel), a wealthy widow who donated $3 million for the new downtown hospital (Susan Clark, Porky’s), that hospital’s numero uno surgeon (Barry Newman, Vanishing Point) and the city’s corrupt mayor (Leslie Nielsen, in his creepy Creepshow mode) with eyes on being governor and being atop Clark’s character.

Meanwhile, over at the world’s ninth-largest oil refinery — which the mayor allowed to be built right next to waterways, all the better to Irwin Allen this here shit up — a beady-eyed, longtime maintenance worker named, of course, Herman (Jonathan Welsh, Starship Invasions) is shown the door and retaliates by punching timecards that aren’t his and causing a big explosion. And that big explosion results in more big explosions. And those big explosions travel down that flammable river like one long wick and set off even bigger explosions, all over town! Why, one might go so far as to say the city is on fire.

Indeed it is, all to show that the film’s appetizer sequence of an apartment building going up in flames — thanks to some pesky kids trying to smoke cigs — was like an hour of TV’s Emergency! by comparison. Please note there is nothing wrong with Emergency!, but is there an episode where a VW Bug flips in the air from the sheer force of a kablooey? Where quake-style rumbling causes some old dude to fall into a swimming pool? Where walls collapse around some poor young guy just trying to get in some reading while taking a dump? Where a Hollywood legend like Gardner says “fuck”? Hell, did Julie London ever go the extra mile like Clark, and give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to a stranger whose face is caked with yellow vomit?

Look, Rakoff may have had to resort to the ol’ shake-the-camera trick and leaned too hard on one terrible matte painting, but cut him some serious slack: He shows a crazy woman from the hospital purposely walk toward the raging fires, seemingly oblivious that the skin on her face is peeling like an onion. Hell, Rakoff’s concluding set piece puts Nielsen in control of a fire hose, and he turns the throng of exiting patients into his own personal wet T-shirt contest! Something tells me Emergency! creator/producer/goody-two-shoes Jack Webb wouldn’t go for those shenanigans.

But I sure as hell did. City on Fire earns its R rating, because it wanted to. It’s surprisingly gory and, therefore, surprisingly good. Not even Fonda’s ending sermon could temper my enthusiasm. —Rod Lott

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Moments after attempting to seduce his sexy wife (Cherilyn Basile) with hot talk of their booming electronics company’s quarterly earnings, Joseph Lawrence (Jeff Risk, an apt surname for this tyro) is shocked to find himself cock-blocked. Thugs led by Dutch (Cameron Mitchell, Gorilla at Large) break into the Lawrences’ living room, rape and murder the missus, yet leave Joseph merely confined to a wheelchair for life (and his voice dubbed by Russell Johnson, the Professor of Gilligan’s Island!), all because the couple wouldn’t sell!

Upon release from the hospital, Joseph calls upon his Vietnam vet pal, Larry (The Enforcer’s Jean Glaudé), he of the Fisher-Price Afro, for assistance. From his beloved rose garden, Joseph lets his vengeance-dripping wishes be known: “Fragrance opens a man’s mind,” he says. “I want you to assemble a squad.”

A Kill Squad, dammit!

With writer/director Patrick G. Donahue (Troma’s They Call Me Macho Woman!) sparing viewers no detail, Larry goes about recruiting a Village People-esque Rainbow Coalition of revenge: a Gold’s Gym ‘roided honky, a black cowboy, an Asian gardener, a Hispanic construction worker, a Jewish businessman in the insect trade — ‘Nam buddies one and all. We meet each prospective squad member as he happens to kung-fu several dudes at once for some flimsy disagreement or another; as the fight concludes, Larry and the others (increasing in number at each stop, like The Little Rascals used to do) just walk up and say, “Joseph needs you,” and boom — the Kill Squad is complete, no questions asked. Instead of group health insurance, they get matching camo uniforms. To up the intimidation factor, they know simple math; as the movie’s tagline has it, “12 Hands … 12 Feet … 24 Reasons to Die!”

From there, Kill Squad enters its second cycle of agonizing repetition — one that carries the actioner through the back half. Donahue’s chockablock formula goes like this: The members approach a(n) [insert one item from Column A] and say, “We’re looking for a man named [insert one item from Column B],” and then a fight breaks out, as does a jazz-funk theme heavy on that plunky Seinfeld bass, ending with a squad member getting [insert one item from Column C] by a mysterious man in Diabolik black. Repeat until only one man survives!

Imagine if The Expendables were truly expendable and not at all famous (most of these guys never acted before or after), and that’s Kill Squad. It’s like Agatha Christie’s First Blood, but also M. Night Shyamalan’s Fists of Fury, because a Big Twist awaits … that you can see coming from the clichéd mile away. However, that’s exactly the kind of thing you want from a no-name VHS action flick with delusional intentions. You’ll love it! —Rod Lott

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Bold admission: I’ll watch almost anything that dares to put an exclamation point in its title, including Hijack! (Exclamation theirs.) But since nothing in this Spelling-Goldberg telefilm gets hijacked, I propose that it should be called Hijack? (Question mark mine.)

TV’s original Fugitive, David Janssen, is Jake Wilkenson, a gruff, tanned, middle-aged truck driver on suspension, hired to drive a top-secret government project from Las Vegas to Houston. Sounds easy, right?

Well, unfortunately, blobby, lisping Donny McDonald (Keenan Wynn, Dr. Strangelove) is his co-driver. Ha! I kid, because the real trouble comes in the form of a bald guy in loud pants who chases and attempts to kill them, over and over (per the orders of The Magic Garden of Stanley Sweetheart director Leonard Horn), until Jake gets the bright idea to ram their helicopter with his semi.

See? Not a damn thing hijacked, except 74 minutes of your free time. —Rod Lott

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Imagine if Jean-Claude Van Damme made Bloodsport and then never got to topline another action film. You’ve just envisioned a sad world, I know, and yet that is the reality for world-champion boxer Carlos Palomino and his Fists of Steel. Having essayed the roles of Truck Driver, First Cuban and Bandit #1 in, respectively, Silent Night, Deadly Night III; It’s Alive III and Dance of the Dwarfs, the welterweight champ earned his shot at action-hero glory in the Stallone/Schwarzenegger era.

Written, produced and directed by Jerry Schafer (whose only other credit is 1970’s obscure hippie drama, Like It Is), the film plays directly to its hopeful star’s strengths, in that he plays a guy named Carlos. From a logo that belongs on a locker mirror won at the state fair to a theme song rivaling “You Got the Touch” in the department of he-men ballads, everything about Fists of Steel screams the 1980s. Although the indie was released in 1991, I suspect its delay represents a case of shelf-sitting while awaiting a buyer, because a portrait of President Ronald Reagan smiles from the wood-paneled wall of the single room serving as CIA headquarters.

The CIA needs an agent “outside the government” to bring down Shogi (Henry Silva, Above the Law), “an expert in three areas of terrorism: killing, kidnapping and ambush.” In fact, Shogi — who theme-dresses like a baseball player and a dentist when torturing victims — ordered the death of Carlos’ father via truck running over his head, thus making a revenge-salivating Carlos the agency’s ideal recruit.

The only problem is that Shogi is known to be in Hawaii, says Agent George (Sam Melville, Twice Dead), which may be problematic for Carlos in source utilization. Carlos asks George if Hawaii has any Mexican restaurants, to which George responds in the affirmative.

“Then I have sources,” says Carlos, a Vietnam vet who is capital-D down for undertaking the mission, and under the code name of Conquistador at that: “He’s gonna die slow. And mean. And hard.”

But shit won’t be easy; Shogi has a secret weapon in the hourglass form of a KGB honey (Marianne Marks, Russ Meyer’s Up!) whose Russian accent is so brick-thick, you half-anticipate hearing the phrase “moose and squirrel” emerge from her ruby-red mouth. Also working their way into the plot: an itching henchman named Itchy, a butt-ugly lounge singer, a round of bikini croquet and two twists I dare not spoil, even if the first is as obvious as Carlos’ mustache is bountiful.

The way Fists of Steel ends (read: abruptly, bordering on accidentally) leaves as many questions unanswered as it does near-split ribs from prolonged laughter. Although a talented fighter, Palomino is no actor — not that lack of thespian skills ever stopped Van Damme — and there would be no further adventures of Conquistador. But I would gladly pay to see them. —Rod Lott

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John S. Rad’s Dangerous Men does not tell a story in any conventional manner — not because its Iran-born multihyphenate creator had an innovative narrative approach he was itching to impart, but because he did not know how to tell a story. At least his trash can be branded as one-of-a-kind trash. To see it is to disbelieve it, and that should count for something.

When her fiancé (one-timer Coti Cook) is murdered by her would-be rapist on a public beach in broad daylight, Mina (one-timer Melody Wiggins) dries her tears and immediately befriends the evil deed-doer. Mira’s intention is to get this fat, bald biker named Tiger (one-timer George Derby) alone in a hotel room, which she does only after they share a pre-sex steak dinner. Naked, she insists he rub her knees as he kisses her belly button, and as Tiger complies in ecstasy, she retrieves the fenced steak knife hidden between her butt cheeks and stabs him to death. Move over, Ms. 45! Vengeance, thy name is Mina!

From there, Mina vows to kill — and perhaps even castrate — any male who dare use and abuse a woman. To do this most effectively, she dons the disguise of your common street whore. It’s as if we are witnessing the origin of a feminist vigilante superhero … except that Mina just kinda disappears from Dangerous Men, so the movie morphs into something else — that being the tale of a police detective who would have become Mina’s brother-in-law (Michael Gradilone, Animal Instincts III) out to crack down on a drug-dealing biker gang whose leader is a poodle-mulleted Caucasian named Black Pepper (Bryan Jenkins, 1997’s Riot). Mr. Pepper earns an interminable, Tommy Wiseau-length sex scene with a skank after their strange idea of foreplay: hiring a belly dancer (Roohi — just Roohi, thanks) to perform her hip-shimmying routine while they watch from the living room couch.

It ends with … well, you’ll have to witness this baffler for yourself. Even among all the cinematic detritus I’ve consumed in four decades’ time, I cannot recall a single one wrapping up quite like this!

Rad’s coda should not have caught me so off-guard. It’s not like my eyes didn’t notice the cop’s badge reading “Policeman Police” earlier. It’s also not as if Rad’s own looped-synth score didn’t register with my ears throughout, its plucky mix of Bobby Brown’s “My Prerogative” and the Seinfeld theme incongruent with the tragedy unfolding onscreen. Dangerous Men is consistent only in that it is woefully incompetent for every second. The conclusion is par for the course, considering Rad’s course clocked roughly 20 years from idea to premiere. The wait was worth it, even if none of us knew we were waiting. Again, that should count for something. Shouldn’t it? —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.