Yet another installment of the SpeakEasy's CHEAP-ASS REPORT brings us back to the land of milk and honey for tightwad film buffs....the "Dollar DVD" movement that seems to be sweeping through large retail chains across America these days.  And, again we focus on one of the better manufacturers that lead the pack on this front:  Digiview Productions, whose output seems to primarily be found at Wal-Mart chain stores....

Now....I'm a huge Sonny Chiba fan, but this flick takes the cake.  What I mean by this is The Bodyguard possesses an.....um...."unique"...editting style when it comes to it's action/fight sequences.  Basically, every time that Chiba (portraying a character called...well..."Chiba") dukes it out with a heavy, the camera begins with jerky, hand-held moves and the film itself seems to be shot at a slightly sped-up rate...maybe about 16 frames per second as opposed to the norm, which is 24 fpc.  Imagine an "anti-Bullet Time" effect, which adds a somewhat hyper- kinetic energy and pace to the sequences...but is incredibly disorienting after seeing it the first three times.  If it's possible for a film to induce motion sickness, this would be the one.  All in all, a decent effort by Chiba, who's basically portraying a version of the character he made popular in the Streetfighter series.  Only this time, the character possesses a slight amount of scruples......

Leslie Nielsen:  Kung Fu Master! Yeah...that's what I thought, too.  "What a load of...." 1976's Project: KIll was director William Girdler's (Grizzly, The Manitou, Day of the Animals) entry into the spy genre, and it's quite a hoot.  Seeing Nielsen in his pre-Police Squad comedy makeover playing it straight as a poor man's Jason Bourne trying to escape from the government agency that spawned him is enough unintentional humor to last for days.  Add 2001: A Space Oddessey's Gary Lockwood as a former subordinate ordered to bring him in, clunky cliched dialouge and the aforementioned "kay-rah-tay" antics, and I was pleasantly surprised to find another gem of bad filmmaking.....

As far as cheapo "documentaries" created to cash in on the rise to fame and untimely death of Bruce Lee, 1977's The Real Bruce Lee really isn't all that bad.  Of some interest is the footage of Lee's childhood acting career in Hong Kong.  Not nearly as comphrehensive as such "official" docs as Bruce Lee: Curse of the Dragon or Blood and Steel: Making of Enter the Dragon, but entertaining in that sleazy, cheap sorta way....ya know, the feeling that the majority of pop culture in the 1970s gives us...