DEADBEAT AT DAWN (1988) – Four years in the making, Deadbeat at Dawn is rightfully called America’s Street Fighter – as in the 1974 Sonny Chiba movie, NOT the later video game. Writer and director Jim Van Bebber also starred in this 81-minute film as street gang leader Goose.
That antihero wields a self-taught bone-crushing, blood-spurting, throat-ripping mongrelized form of martial arts that makes Sonny Chiba’s beatdowns in Street Fighter look almost gentle by comparison.
Audiences not only wince at the violence in Deadbeat at Dawn, they thrill to the stunts that Van Bebber and his collaborators were able to pull off without the benefit of professional stuntmen or fight choreographers.
The risks taken by our auteur and his cast embody the ballsy guerilla filmmaking spirit as surely as Jorg Buttgereit’s efforts on both sides of the Berlin Wall in the early 1980s. The makeup and special effects for the butcher’s shop of injuries and dismemberments suffered by various characters are more like horror films than action flicks. Continue reading
HAPPY FATHER’S DAY FROM BALLADEER’S BLOG! Over the years my review of the 2011 horror film Father’s Day has been the most controversial. Reader reaction has been split between requests that I run the review every single Father’s Day and requests that I never run it again. 
Balladeer's Blog 