How can you tell The Green Hornet feature film is cobbled together from four episodes of the ’60s TV series? Because for about 20 minutes, our masked superhero (Van Williams) and his sidekick, Kato (Bruce Lee), are being targeted by the big city’s criminal bigwigs for assassination, and then — kablooey! — aliens from outer space (in the forms of humans donning costumes one level above Reynolds Wrap aluminum foil) burst through the wall. Cohesion and consistency, you are marked for death!

By day, The Green Hornet is wealthy newspaper publisher Britt Reid, and Kato is his chauffeur. The far-out space nuts comprise the largest piece of the story pie as they vie for control of a warhead, then suddenly — and finally — the action shifts to the Golden Lotus Cafe, the playground of the deadly Tongs and their kidnapping and extortion racket.

Hornet was birthed as another Batman, but eschews that series’ playfulness for a more straightforward approach. I wouldn’t exactly call it gritty, but the emphasis is on crime rather than clowning around, with the added pleasure of kung fu. Williams is generic is both line delivery and pretty-boy looks, but likable enough. Lee is, of course, Lee, Supreme Ass-Kicker of the World, and to the surprise of nobody, the biggest asset of this superheroic feature.

Your best bet for grabbing this film and its 1976 sequel, Fury of the Dragon, plus all the episodes, the two crossover eps from Batman, the 1940s serial and a slew of extras, look no further than the four-disc Ultimate Collection import. Since the series — not to mention Batman as well — isn’t yet licensed for stateside release, it’s a steal. —Rod Lott

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A man in a beat-up El Dorado hunts shapely women to rundown and kill, and only Jim Caviezel can save them. Yes, it’s Duel meets The Hitcher meets The Passion of the Christ! Ladies and gentlemen, it’s Highwaymen!

Five years earlier, Caviezel lost his wife to the careless driver, so he chased him down and plowed right into him, forcing the guy into an 18-month hospital stay, during which he had his limbs rebuilt — not bionically, but with a brown bag of spare parts apparently purchased at a local TruValue hardware store.

Ever since then, the six-dollar man has been traveling the country, knocking off someone every thousand miles or so, with Caviezel hot on his rusted bumper. Next on the disabled driver’s hit list? Doomsday’s Rhona Mitra, who has the advantage of built-in airbags. And I don’t mean in her car.

The reason for watching a movie like this is for the carmageddon, and on that level, Highwaymen delivers some efficient and mildly gory B-movie thrills. But it is repetitive and padded (even at a mere 80 minutes), so it’s not quite the high-octane ride one would hope. —Rod Lott

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A year before Vietnam vet John Rambo took a group of rural lawmen to violent task for failing to leave him alone in First Blood, Kyle Hanson (Dirk “Starbuck” and/or “Faceman” Benedict) did the exact same thing in stuntman-turned-director Max Klevan’s lighthearted actioner Ruckus.

The difference here is that Hanson starts out a lot more fucked up than his more famous peer and he has the good fortune to find his redemption in the embrace of ’80s B-movie icon Linda Blair — which is all the difference in the world.

His sanity eroded by his time spent caged like an animal in a P.O.W. camp, Hanson is a disheveled, mumbling mess of a human being, which causes problems when the local small-town bigwig (Ben Johnson) sends a deputy to ask him some questions about his MIA son. Hanson has no interest in talking to anyone, but the deputy and his gang of redneck yokels refuse to take no for an answer. Unfortunately for them, what the disturbed vet may lack in social graces he more than makes up for in kicking ass!

A much kinder, gentler film than First Blood, Ruckus pleases, thanks to the efforts of its talented cast members who are able to invest dimensions and authenticity into characters that walk along the wrong side of cliché. Richard Farnsworth is typically great as the reasonable sheriff who can’t believe the situation his moronic underling has gotten him into, and Blair is a lovely delight as the lonely wife of Johnson’s missing son. —Allan Mott

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PTU stands for “Police Tactical Unit,” and I’m booking this Hong Kong copper crime drama in the C+ column. It exudes potential from the outset, but tosses much of it out for a clichéd, slo-mo final shootout.

Chronicling one crazy night for the PTU, Election director Johnnie To’s film starts off just fine — even a little funny — as the rotund, chain-smoking Sgt. Lo (Suet Lam) crosses paths at a late-night diner with the wrong guys: neighborhood thugs who think they’re hot shit and all that and a bag of shrimp crisps.

Soon, the gang’s leader, the aptly named Ponytail (Chi-Shing Chiu) is dead from a knife through the back, but not before he runs down the street and tries to drive himself to the hospital, while Lo slips into unconsciousness after an alleyway fall in pursuit, and the other gang guys steal his gun.

From there, Lo’s colleagues — headed by the stoic Sgt. Ho (Simon Yam) — try to retrieve his weapon, which leads into an ever-the-more-muddled, loosey-goosey narrative that grows too messy in its second half. At least To makes the proceedings look slick. I liked the slight seriocomic, near-episodic approach, and the decision to make the cops corrupt assholes; its score, however, is atrocious. —Rod Lott

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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

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