1987 Directed by Albert Pyun
A naive, good-hearted Los Angeles waitress does not think twice about helping her troubled roommate. Unfortunately, her help lands her in Central America fleeing for her life with a grungy mercenary
Treasure of San Lucas
There's a mystifying and almost inexplicable appeal to Albert Pyun's low budget cannon. For films that can easily be called unrefined, incomplete, half-baked, and schlocky, Pyun confidently emits a distinct tone with appropriate needle drops. One step further than that, Old Al implements inspired guerrilla filmmaking, with here the aid of cinematographer Walt Lloyd (Sex, Lies and Videotape), unleashing sweaty set piece after sweaty set piece. Unfortunately not all of Al's films are great (or even good for that matter), but it just so happens I can now call one of his movies exactly that.
Clearly inspired by Mann's Thief and the decade's Miami Vice in atmosphere, Pyun also struck inspiration from Walter Hill's Streets of Fire in plot and character,…
starts off with neon lights and drug smuggling and nighttime speedboat rides in a way that suggests albert pyun's attempt at Miami Vice but because this is pyun it doesn't take long for this to morph into this strange globe-trotting, conspiracy adventure movie with menacing businessmen in cartoon evil corporate spaces and some sort of hunt for an ancient central american jungle artifact in all these sweaty, colorful locations. this of course delivered on with all the charming low-budget suspense setpieces, romantic mood and sometimes goofy acting i've come to expect from him. fun!
this movie really speaks to me because it feels like a nonsense dream a person who only cares about michael mann & romcoms would have
Odd addition to the Pyuniverse, sort of his version of INTO THE NIGHT meets ROMANCING THE STONE. Occasionally manages a bit of perverse edge, but don't get too excited, it stars Charles Rocket.
One of Albert Pyun's signatures is to inject heavy social or philosophical themes that you would never expect to find in the low-budget genre exercises he specializes in, but this is pure escapism, a globe-spanning adventure with a bunch of thieves (one of whom has a garrote wire wristwatch like John Lithgow in Blow Out!) chasing and bumping each other off in pursuit of a shiny religious relic, basically Pyun's version of a 1940s studio thriller, all about the universal daydream of traveling to an exotic locale, having an adventure, falling in love, and looking cool. This needs to be restored and made available in its proper aspect ratio yesterday. Five, or maybe 50, stars for the closing montage of the movie's greatest hits set to the Fine Young Cannibals, pure cinema, could eventually become a religious artifact of its own!
If you enjoy this review, check out my book RADIOACTIVE DREAMS: THE CINEMA OF ALBERT PYUN. I reviewed every one of Albert Pyun's films and interviewed some of his closest collaborators.
Sometimes it’ll take me a moment to get in synch with an Albert Pyun film. They may all seem similar on the surface (Lotsa cyborgs!), and he does dive into the same bag of stylistic tricks (Wide angle lens! Blue light! Inserts!), but every project still comes with its flavour. For example, KNIGHTS (1993) may look like another try at the post-apocalyptic Spaghetti Western genre he tackled with CYBORG (1989), but it has more in common with the new-wave flying swordsman genre of Tsui Hark’s THE BLADE (1995), then…
Albert Pyun’s Howard Hawks movie. It turns out making a globe throttling adventure one a Cannon budget might not be the greatest idea and as sometimes happen in a Pyun movie barely anything is credible, but its stylization and energy makes up for any blunder. I like when a movie is set in Pyunland, but the apocalypse is private. The cast is having a great time.
Albert Pyun’s New Wave CHARADE, strained through the cavernous, pastel laden criminal’s paradise of MIAMI VICE. Everybody’s got their own deal to make, and nobody is who they seem, except Carey Lowell’s obvious Audrey Hepburn stand-in, who just wants to get back for an exploitative job interview at some dead tech yuppie asylum. Possibly the most colorfully competent and entertaining of Pyun’s Cannon output.
I think it has been mentioned before but Eric has us doing an Albert Pyun project. He is forcing me, er, I mean, he is having us watch all of Pyun's films, in order. Thankfully for me, he is spreading them out so we aren't just watching them all in a row. Last night he decided it was time to watch the next Pyun on the list, 1987's Down Twisted.
Charles Rocket and Carrie Lowell star in this Romancing the Stone wanna-be film about a heist to steal some ugly-ass gold statue thing from a tiny South American country. Of course, there is a mix-up, a kidnapping, and some badly dressed bleach-blond bad guy with a menacing stare. I think…
Got strong-armed by Zig into giving this another look, and while I liked it the first time, he's right that it's a lot funnier and cleverer than I remembered. Not to mention there's the classic "civilian randomly ensnared in a high-stakes international power struggle" a la Fair Game along with gratuitous sunglasses-wearing/smirking in exotic locales. And a Bond girl running around a tropical carnival in a bird costume. And Charles Rocket, need I say more. Pyun strikes again.
In some prior write-ups of mine, my fingers have tapped away at the fact that some actors or directors (the latter more so) and their films remain as blind spots in my viewing experience. However, as of this moment, the specific examples of such blind spots have gone astray from the contours of my own brain as Albert Pyun has become the top tier director to take the mantle of the certain and unequivocal filmic “blind spot”. Never would my mind have traversed into this realm of the cheap, low budget, and yet… fascinating B-movie schlock. However, as of writing that last word, a few memories have manifested — schlock, as it turns out, has burned through to mold itself…
-THE ODD GREATNESS OF ALBERT PYUN-
Despite a seemingly small-scale conflict, it tries to bite off more than it can chew. Too many characters, who in turn have too many goals and betrayals, which makes it either hard to track or hard to get fully invested.
Carey Lowell keeps things engaging with her inherent likeability and believable changes in attitude as she is thrust into this plot and having to deal with assassins, foreign soldiers, double-crosses, and everyone always trying to question her.
The main problem is her suspicious and clownish companion; I get what Pyun was going for with him, but every character beat of his never gets a chance to flourish so it makes the developing relationship between…
