|Reviews & Columns|
TV on DVD
Reviews by Studio
Collector Series DVDs
Easter Egg Database
DVD Talk Radio
The M.O.D. Squad
DVD Talk Forum
DVD Price Search|
Customer Service #'s
Day of the Warrior
Directed by Christian Drew Sidaris in 1994 and produced by his father, Andy Sidaris, for Malibu Bay Films, The Dallas Connection offers up pretty much everything that you'd want from a Sidaris picture: sun, skin, action and sin. Oh, and a few Playmates as well, we can't forget them.
The story, this time around, a curvaceous female assassin dubbed The Black Widow (Julie Strain) who has a fling with a Parisian scientist who is part of a team in charge of developing a satellite tracking system that ties into a government weapons program. After they make love, she kills him, just like her namesake. Meanwhile, in Africa, another curvaceous female assassin, this one dubbed Cobra (Julie K. Smith), mates with and kills a second scientist attached to the same project. A short time later, way over in Tokyo, a third scientist is killed by yet another curvaceous female assassin dubbed Scorpion (Wendy Hamilton). Notice a trend? In Argentina, the fourth and final scientist connected to the project, Antonio Morales (Rodrigo Obregón), soon learns what's happened.
To keep Morales from meeting a fate similar to that which befell his associates, two brave American special agents, Chris (Bruce Penhall) and Mark (Mark Austin), are assigned to his protection detail, but those three aforementioned curvaceous female assassins are hot on Morales' tale and hoping to take him out for good. They'll use every trick in the book, and all of their feminine charm, to trick Chris and Mark into making the wrong move at the right time in order to get their pray, which leads to a battle of wits and wills as well as a lot of softcore sex, some jet ski action and a few shoot outs as well. Also, the assassins are strippers.
All of the Sidaris trademarks are here: big breasts, big explosions, tiny remote control weapons, exotic locations (or at least some American locations doubling for them, some of which will look very familiar to those familiar with Sidaris movies), strip tease scenes and a predictable final twist that most will see coming a mile away. On top of that we also get a cameo from Andy Sidaris himself, a gratuitous Gerald Okamura appearance, cast here as a guy named ‘Fu.' The movie is very much ‘by the Sidaris book,' recycling a lot of plot points from earlier Malibu Bay Films productions and using some of the same sets and many of the same cast members. There isn't an original bone in this film's body, but you know what? If you're a fan of Sidaris pictures, you'll get a kick out of this one. Like most of the other Malibu Bay productions, there's a very obvious sense of humor on display here, and while some of the jokes are corny as Hell, they'll still bring a smile to your face if you go into this one in the right frame of mind.
Team Sidaris made movies for people who wanted entertainment, no more, no less. As such, the focus was on cheap thrills, and for that reason we get a lot more emphasis on sex, nudity and action than on anything else. Never meant to be looked at as high art, The Dallas Connection moves at a good pace, never goes more than a few minutes without offering the audience something salacious to appreciate, and it doesn't take itself too seriously at all. The end result? An hour and a half of big dumb fun.
The Dallas Connection arrives on a 50GB Blu-ray disc framed at 1.85.1 widescreen in an AVC encoded 1080p high definition transfer taken from a new 4k restoration provided by AGFA and it looks really nice. The feature takes up just under 27.4GBs of space on the disc. Colors are nice and black levels are also strong. The greens of the forest scenes look particularly lush. The film's many, many skin tones look nice and natural. There are no noticeable issues with any edge enhancement or noise reduction and the disc is free of obvious compression artifacts. There isn't much in the way of print damage at all either, a few white specks now and then but unless you're looking for them for the purpose of writing an anal retentive review, you're not going to even notice them. All in all, a very solid picture.
The 24-bit DTS-HD 2.0 audio track does what it can with the limitations of the source material. Dialogue is clean and clear and properly balanced and both the score and the effects work all sound just fine. There are no problems with any hiss or distortion and optional subtitles are provided in English.
Aside from a quick minute-long introduction with Sidaris and, once again, a bikini-clad Julie Strain (who appears in most of the intros on Sidaris' releases whether she had anything to do with the movie in question or not), the main extra on the disc is an audio commentary courtesy of Andy and Arlene Sidaris. Like all of their other tracks, this one is a pretty scene specific walk through of what went into the making of the movie, covering the music used in the film, how they made certain locations in one state work as locations that were supposed to be in another state, working with the cast and crew, staging the action set pieces and plenty more. These two are always enjoyable and a lot of fun to listen to, this track is no exception.
Additionally, the disc includes a making of featurette with Andy that runs thirty-nine-minutes. With Sidaris joined once again by Julie Strain and her twins, this piece also features a surprise appearance from another lovely starlet. They check out some photographs and then Andy gives us a bit of a play by play on some time coded behind the scenes footage from Savage Beach II (lots of ninjas), some outtakes, some test footage, more time coded outtakes, snippets from the Joe Bob Briggs interview that Sidaris did way back when, Andy showing an actress how to hold a gun in his backyard and more!
Rounding out the extras are trailers for a host of Malibu Bay productions like Malibu Express, Hard Ticket To Hawaii, Do Or Die, Savage Beach, Guns, Do Or Die, Hard Hunted, Fit To Kill, Enemy Gold, The Dallas Connection, Day Of The Warrior and, of course, Return To Savage Beach. Menus and chapter selection options are also provided. All of the extras included on the disc are carried over from the older DVD releases.
A coupon inserted into the keepcase accompanying the disc allows for access to a digital HD download version of the movie.
Drew Sidaris' The Dallas Connection is another movie that proudly follows in the footsteps of his father's delightfully trashy action extravaganzas, and it's a whole lot of goofy, exploitative fun. It doesn't reinvent the wheel at all but if you appreciate the work that the senior Sidaris made his name with, you'll definitely enjoy his son's work as well. Mill Creek has carried over all of the extras from the past DVD editions and offered the film up with a really nice high definition presentation. Recommended.
Ian lives in NYC with his wife where he writes for DVD Talk, runs Rock! Shock! Pop!. He likes NYC a lot, even if it is expensive and loud.