What Not To Watch: Beyond Fear
As a big fan of Mimi Lesseos from her days as the Magnificent Mimi in the American Wrestling Association and having enjoyed some of her acting endeavors in movies like Final Impact and Pushed to the Limit, I really wanted to like Beyond Fear. The premise of Mimi Lesseos kicking ass First Blood style in the woods was most intriguing.
But as it turns out 1993’s Beyond Fear proved to be beyond horrible…
- Beyond the Ring: Mimi Lesseos plays Tipper Taylor a former martial arts champion who left her competitive days behind her after she accidentally paralyzed her best friend during a match… a slight variation on one of the most common occurrences in direct to video action movies of the 1990’s. Now that she is not a champion, Tipper became a wilderness guide instead. Why a wilderness guide you ask? Well, Tipper inherited her father’s business, T.T. Hiking Tours & Excursions, after he passed away. Tipper and her business partner/friend Sammy (Verrel Reed), take groups of city folk out into the wilderness where they have a chance to reconnect with nature and learn some valuable survival skills along the way.
- Sad Sacks: The latest tour group to employ the services of T.T. Hiking Tours & Excursions may be the biggest group of sad sacks this side of a Judd Hirsch fan club meeting. Knowing I was now going to have to spend the rest of the movie with this cast of characters was the first red flag that this one was going to be tough to get through. The group includes a newlywed couple, a business man, a former dancer/current alcoholic and last and certainly least… Vince and Betina Paige. Vince Paige (Robert Axelrod, Death Wish IV: The Crackdown) quickly becomes an important part of the movie thanks to the video camera Betina bought for him with her recent lottery winnings.
- Sex, Lies and Videotape: After a long drive up to the mountains, the group stops at a motel for the night to get a good night’s rest before they begin their wilderness adventure bright and early the next morning. I didn’t catch the name of the motel, but for the purposes of this review I’ll refer to it as the Pike View Motel. Everyone retires to their rooms, but Vince Paige either isn’t tired or has no desire to get in bed with his fat wife, so he takes his video camera and starts wandering around the Pike View Motel parking lot. First Vince happens upon Tipper and Sammy as they are practicing Tai Chi… for whatever reason, Vince confuses Tai Chi with yoga or as he so “hilariously” refers to it as he narrates, “yogurt”. Vince would later correct himself calling it “Yogi” like the bear who lives in Jellystone Park. Bored with the Tai Chi demonstration, Vince starts looking in open windows at the Pike View Motel and one room catches his eye as a lingerie clad hooker finds herself sandwiched between two men, Boar and Jack. The hooker tells the guys she only wants to do them one at a time, this makes Jack happy since he was going to get her first, but pisses Boar off. Boar, who was either really into three ways OR really against sloppy seconds, loses his temper and gets physical with the hooker and yadda yadda yadda, she ends up dead and “Peeping Tom” Vince Paige has the whole thing on videotape! As Vince tries to slink into the darkness, he steps on a beer can.attracting the attention of Boar and Jack, who rush to their window and see Vince running away with his video camera. Our bad guys may have to pay for sex, but they are not total dumb asses and realize they need to get that tape before Vince takes it to the police. But Vince is too scared to go to the cops, so he just keeps the knowledge that he witnessed a murder to himself and endangers his wife and everybody else in the group in the process.
- The Not So Great Outdoors: The rest of the movie is then Boar and Jack trying to get the videotape by terrorizing and threatening the tour group out in the woods only to get their asses kicked by Tipper Taylor every single time. Where dastardly duos are concerned, Boar and Jack have to be about as close to the bottom of the barrel as you can get. At no point during the film did the bad guys ever seem to have a chance. There was little to no sense of danger, and there was way too much getting to know our group of novice campers in between Tipper whooping Boar and Jack’s asses. Seriously, I was under the impression that Beyond Fear was an action movie, if I wanted to hear about the minutia of everyday life from uninteresting people, I’d go to work and listen to the mindless small talk that is spewed hourly in the office.
Beyond Fear had potential, but it needed to take a page out of the Friday the 13th playbook and have the sorry collection of weekend warriors get picked off one by one only to have that one strong female character (Tipper Taylor perhaps?) survive and kill the killers! The body count would have also made our bad guys actual bad guys and not just two dumb asses who accidentally killed a hooker… and it would have meant more when Tipper kicked their asses if they were legit bad guys.
I will now take a page out of my own playbook and present to you some Bonus Bullet Points…
- Reunited: Verrel Reed, who played Sammy, previously worked with Mimi Lesseos in Pushed to the Limit.
- Get The F Out: Beyond Fear was directed by Robert Lyons, or as he is better known… Robert F. Lyons. You may remember Lyons from movies like Death Wish II, Platoon Leader and Murphy’s Law. Lyons also co-wrote the movie with Mimi Lesseos.
- Streets of Rage: The opening credits feature Tipper working out at the gym, following her workout Tipper hops in her SUV to meet up with Sammy, when she sees a man getting mugged on the side of the road. This scene served two purposes… #1 – Pad the runtime and #2 – An excuse to throw in a quickie fight scene for our action hero.
- Banter: Tipper has a reputation for not being the most punctual person in the world. When Tipper tells Sammy she will meet up with him at 8:00 PM sharp, Sammy asks “Is that a sharp 8:00 or a dull 8:20?” Personally, I found Beyond Fear to be a dull 1:24. Sorry Mimi.
