No Surrender Cinema: Skyscraper (1996)
Jeff Wincott. Michael Worth. Don “The Dragon” Wilson. These men are synonymous with 90’s action movies, and a great deal of credit goes to PM Entertainment, the low-budget production juggernaut that brought us some of their most beloved entries in direct to video action history. PM has enjoyed a lot of coverage here on Bulletproof Action (hell, we even gave them their own Ultimate Countdown), and this month’s No Surrender Cinema is no exception. Joining the ranks of Wincott, Worth, and Wilson in 1996 was someone with a more mainstream name, but not for the reasons you’d expect from an action star. PM’s choice for their next big star was Playboy Playmate Anna Nicole Smith, who played a helicopter pilot that had her hands full with a group of terrorists in Skyscraper!
For the few of you who figured that this edition of No Surrender Cinema was going to discuss 2018’s Skyscraper that featured The Rock, let me make one thing perfectly clear; there is no confusing the two. The more recent version of Skyscraper is a blockbuster that captivated audiences en route to making over $300 million in theaters. This one here, the OG version, was marketed to a predominantly male audience who loved naked women (or should I say woman, since the female nudity is exclusive to Smith) and seeing shit blow up. PM Entertainment was always pretty cut and dry about what you were going to get, and we get all that we were promised from Skyscraper in the first 10 minutes of the film!
The plot follows PM’s standard simplistic formula of quickly establishing our main characters and conflict; Carrie Wink (Smith) is an escort, or rather a Heliscort, a pilot who flies wealthy clients around the city of Los Angeles. Seems a bit excessive, but you know what they say about a fool and his money. Carrie just so happens to be married to an LAPD detective named Gordon, who gets introduced to us by interrupting Carrie’s shower time to give her some good lovin’. We get one of those prolonged scenes that serves to show off Anna Nicole in all her undressed glory, but the sexfest ends abruptly when Gordon gets a page and has to run. Carrie is disappointed, the couple argue about the practicalities of having a child at this point in their lives, and then they’re both off to work.
While Carrie is busy being the Marilu Henner of Helicopters (there’s a reference for you), a man named Fairfax and his underlings have been making deals and shooting up equally shady types in an effort to take over the world. Lots of stuff gets blown up, lots of people get shot, and all Fairfax needs is one more piece to a device that will allow him to achieve his goal. Little does Carrie know that she’s been shuttling some of the involved parties around all day, and winds up flying Fairfax himself to the Zitex building, a skyscraper where the fourth and final piece he requires is supposed to be. Things go awry real fast, and before you can say “obviously”, it’s Carrie who winds up in possession of the coveted device and finds herself the target of Fairfax. A variety of his cronies are dispatched throughout the building, a cast of characters that includes familiar faces such as Deron McBee (Malibu from American Gladiators, looking a lot like wrestler Chuck Palumbo’s doppleganger) and Deirdre Imershein, who played the object of Matthias Hues’ unwanted affection in Blackbelt.
This is the point in Skyscraper where Carrie shifts from sexually frustrated pilot to super soldier. Watch as she swings from a cable and dodges bullets! Marvel at the way she manipulates the security system and fire alarms! Stare longingly at the flashback placed in mid-film for the sole purpose of getting another nude scene out of her! The character of Carrie does one of the biggest A-Z jumps I’ve ever seen, seguing from helicopter pilot housewife to highly skilled, hostage saving badass. Even when her husband shows up on scene (because the death of his partner is linked to Fairfax’s quest for power), Carrie continues to be a one woman army, dispatching of a terrorist who tries to rape her (another reason to show off her “talents”) and Imershein’s character rather ruthlessly before a rooftop rendezvous that puts her against Fairfax with the fate of the world at stake.
Putting a Playboy Playmate like Smith in the leading role wasn’t a novel concept for PM; they had done the same thing by making Traci Lords one of their regulars a few years prior. The difference between the two is glaring, because while Lords was looking to distance herself from her controversial porn career, Smith was clearly hired because of her Playboy popularity and because people liked to look at her naked. Her actual acting in Skyscraper finds her looking and sounding more annoyed than anything, but fortunately PM covered it up with enough pyro and ballyhoo to keep things fun. That’s the key word here; Skyscraper IS a fun movie. Its paint by numbers plot is easy to follow, the action sequences are quite good and give us everything from a kickboxing brawl to helicopter explosions.
The simplicity of the plot, PM’s trademark overabundance of action, and a star that was easy on the eyes was enough to turn Skyscraper into a direct to video/late night cable classic. This is a movie that knows what it is and embraces it. Anna Nicole was never going to be an action movie legend, but let’s be real, that’s not what she was here for. In fact, all of the acting in Skyscraper is quite clunky, but those noticeable flaws are buried under the mountain of sex and violence that Skyscraper provides. This is the type of testosterone pumping flick that Al Bundy and his NO MA’AM buddies would have rushed to the TV for. If you’re in the mood for a DTV throwback that doesn’t try to be anything more than 90 minutes of boobs, bullets, and things blowing up, then turn on your YouTube or Tubi app so that Skyscraper can take you back to simpler times.
