No Surrender Cinema: A Dangerous Place

Released in 1995, A Dangerous Place had to be, by far, PM Entertainment’s most accomplished effort as far as casting.  We’ve got a ton of familiar faces here, and I don’t just mean your usual cast of kickboxers that have turned up in their other releases.  We’ve got some accomplished actors here, people!  Eight Is Enough dad Dick Van Patten is an affable principal.  Erin Gray of Buck Rogers and Silver Spoons fame plays the mother of our lead character.  Mako plays a sympathetic sensei (seriously, did Hollywood have this guy on Sensei speed dial? He’s played the role in everything from episodes of The Incredible Hulk to voicing Splinter in 2007’s TMNT movie).  William James Jones might not be as big of a name as the others, but back in the mid 90’s he was riding a wave of popularity as one of the stars of Saved By The Bell counterpart California Dreams on NBC.  Road House villain Marshall Teague lends his evil ways to A Dangerous Place as an evil teacher/sensei/all around bad dude.  Last, but certainly not least, is the inclusion of Corey Feldman…Corey F’N FELDMAN…as our main antagonist!  Factoring in the relatively small budget for PM releases, having a cast like that makes A Dangerous Place look like their version of Ocean’s Eleven.

All that name value aside, the true star of the film, and our hero, is Ted Jan Roberts, or TJ as he was also known.  An accomplished martial artist, TJ first broke into acting with a small role in an episode of Married…With Children, and was then brought into the PM Entertainment family.  His first starring role came in Magic Kid, a movie that gained popularity on cable thanks to its family friendly nature.  After churning out a sequel to Magic Kid, PM started developing slightly more mature fare for TJ, films that could appeal to both action fans and the younger set.  The first release following that format just so happens to be the movie I’ll be talking about today.

We kick things off with a little grand theft auto so that we know just how bad our bad guys can be.  The Scorpions are a karate team who act less like a karate team and more like a gang of delinquents.  Influenced by their leader, Taylor (Feldman), the Scorpions sneak into an auto dealership after hours and make off with several dirtbikers and a Chevy Blazer, crashing through the windows of the establishment and getting caught up in a high speed police chase.  The cops can’t catch up to Taylor and co., and PM even throws in an exploding car just to make things a little more bombastic.  

Cut to the morning, and we meet Ethan and Greg Keats, two bickering teenage brothers, and their single mother, Audrey.  Seems like Greg, the older brother, has been ditching karate class at The Lions dojo and hanging out with the Scorpions, and Ethan isn’t above ratting him out to mom.  The family dynamic is established well pretty quickly, as we see that Audrey is working hard to provide for her boys so she’d rather not have Greg wasting her money, while Ethan and Greg seem to take joy in busting each other’s balls.  Greg, in typical teenage fashion, protests that he’s spending time with the Scorpions because they get the hottest girls, and he needs to meet them later so that they can go “scavenging”, though he’s not quite sure of what that means.

After meeting the Scorpions at the beach and realizing that they partake in illegal fights in their spare time, Greg dispatches of an unnamed foe (Nick Hill, who popped up in numerous 90’s action flicks including personal favorites Fists of Iron and Showdown) and earns the respect of The Scorpions.  Or so he thinks.  See, we know that The Scorpions are into much more than just illegal fighting, but Greg doesn’t.  Since he wants to be a Scorpion so bad, Taylor decides he needs a little initiation, and coerces him into helping them break into a house.  Greg is led to believe that the owners are away and no one would be hurt, but sure enough an older couple wakes up to find a masked Greg prowling in the house.  The rest of The Scorpions barge in, and as they accost the couple Greg decides he’s not going to sink to their levels and starts fighting them off.   His heroic comeback gets cut short courtesy of some mace to the eyes, and Taylor beats him down, striking him with an Eagle Claw that sends Greg falling down the stairs to his death.  As The Scorpions stand shocked, Taylor instantly tries to pass the blame onto all of them, claiming “he had a little help”, and gets them to help haul off Greg’s body.  The next morning at school, some girls in the gym find Greg hanging from the basketball hoop, made to look as if he committed suicide.  

Ethan is obviously distraught, and while his mother is simply trying to come to grips with Greg’s death, Ethan knows that Greg would never kill himself.  He pleads his case to the detective investigating the incident, mentioning The Scorpions and the “scavenging”.  Since that’s really all Ethan has to go on, he decides to go another route; get in the good graces of The Scorpions so that he can unearth the real reason his brother is dead.  Of course, Ethan opts not to tell anyone about his real reasons for joining The Scorpions, so his friends in The Lions feel like he’s betrayed them.  His sensei, since he’s wise and all, feels like there is more to the story and reminds Ethan that “revenge is the dark side of honor”.  Taylor tells The Scorpions that he doesn’t trust Ethan at all, but what better way to cover up Greg’s murder than to befriend his little brother and accept him.  The only one who protests this is Eddie (Jones), who knows he’s in over his head with The Scorpions and wants out, but is too afraid to come clean about their criminal ways.  Clearly, because they’re a much tougher crowd than he’s used to being around over on TNBC.  A cafeteria brawl with Scorpions member Pat doesn’t exactly endear Ethan to them, but it does catch the attention of Gavin Smith (Teague), the Scorpions sensei who just so happens to be a teacher at their school.  Smith is shown to be sinister and violent, as he uses Pat as a punching bag after his inability to defeat Ethan in the school brawl.  He’s also shown to be the kingpin of their crimewave, reaping the benefits of his students thievery. 

Despite having the whole world against him, Ethan is persistent in his quest to find out the real reason for his brother’s death.  He bonds with Eddie, the one Scorpion who appears to have a heart, and the two even team up to take out some local thugs.  Taylor and Smith are always quick to test Ethan’s loyalty, forcing him into some illegal situations and culminating in Smith demanding that Ethan challenge The Lions to take on The Scorpions in a karate tournament.  Ethan is finally proven right in his feelings that The Scorpions killed Greg, but Eddie is too scared to help because not only would it implicate him in The Scorpions crimes, but they would go after him next.  Everything comes to a head, and the climax of the movie gives us not one, but two fights with Ethan and Taylor, as the former seeks justice for his brother.

Although several of the stars in A Dangerous Place were past their prime and/or being used for whatever residual star power they had left, the effort here showed.  Feldman, who in the 90’s seemed to take any role that came his way to feed his bad habits, was a pleasant surprise as Taylor.  He played the smug douchebag well (it might be fair to say that at that point, it wasn’t much of a stretch from reality), but he didn’t look out of place at all in his martial arts scenes.  According to several sources, Feldman was fairly athletic already due to some prior dance training, and he did train in martial arts to prepare for his role.  Not bad for a guy who was notorious for coasting through crappy comedies and direct to video horror for most of the decade.  Gray and Van Patten are pretty much glorified cameos, but Gray brings emotion into her role, while Van Patten is a bit of comic relief amidst the darker storyline at hand.  Teague leaves the movie with throat intact (if you’re reading this site, then you should easily get that reference), but amps up the evilness just as he did in his roles before or since.  Mako plays his role with relative ease (and with a black toupee).  Aside from Feldman, none of the well-known names are really focused on, allowing Roberts to really shine as Ethan.  This wasn’t your typical PM effort featuring stars who were often better at fighting than they were at acting, because Roberts actually has some range and carried the movie well. 

Though the movie can feel like an afterschool special at times (and the DVD cover would make you think the same thing, as the tagline reads “High school can be A Dangerous Place… and a deadly experience), the high school setting is more of a backdrop, as there is little “school time” in the story.  The action that ensues on Ethan’s quest for justice is kept pretty simple due to the movies PG-13 rating.  TJ Roberts showed that he was more than capable of being a major star for PM, and I do wonder how he would have fared if he continued as a martial arts hero into adulthood.   He did well as a sympathetic figure coping with the loss of his brother, and as a determined fighter out to end The Scorpions.  A Dangerous Place is a movie with heart, something that allowed PM Entertainment to gain the interest of a younger than normal audience who may have outgrown 90’s mainstream fare like 3 Ninjas and Surf Ninjas.  Though the DVD is long out of print, the full movie is readily available for your viewing pleasure on YouTube.  It’s definitely worth the watch for fans of 90’s karate cinema, and others may get a kick out of the oddity of Corey Feldman as an evil karate champion.