It’s me, hi, I’m back it’s me.

So, last night we decided to finally watch the new Road House movie on Amazon Prime starring Jake Gyllenhaal and a bare butted guy who looks like a monkey. But I’m not here to tell you much about that movie even though I would recommend it for people who like to watch movies with ridiculous fighting. I would even go as far as to say the fighting was better than in the first movie as much as it pains me to say it loving Patrick Swayze as much as I do and having as much respect for Benny the Jet’s fight choreography and all in Wheels on Meals as I do. And even though I cried when Taylor Swift sang All Too Well in the Eras Tour movie, Jake G was in two of my favorite movies of all time (Donnie Darko and Zodiac) even though I counted while looking at his filmography and I’ve only seen five of his movies. He plays the same character in all those movies, but he does it so well.

No, I’m here to talk about the latest results of my terrible habit of reading everyone’s filmography on IMDb while watching any movie, and in the case of the sheriff in the town where this Road House took place (I don’t think they even had a police department in the original movie because Ben Gazarra had cooked and eaten all their asses) the actor was in a James Glickenhaus movie from 1982 starring the beautiful Ken Wahl and the terrifying Klaus Kinski, though Klaus’s part was actually a cameo. The Soldier is an 80s movie I had never even heard of before last night, and seeing as how I watch almost nothing but 80s movies, I couldn’t believe it.

What a treat this was! I almost want to tell you nothing about it because you can go to Prime or Tubi and see for yourself, but I’m feeling enthusiastic so I’m going to tell you a little. Ken Wahl is in an opening scene that makes so little sense I thought it was a nightmare, helped by the unsettling feel that every movie scored by the ubiquitous Tangerine Dream has. But fortunately, everything in this movie is eventually explained.

Wahl is a spy out to stop some people who might be Russians and might be CIA from blowing up half the world’s oil supply. That’s pretty much it, but there’s also this amazing scene where a bunch of world leaders are at a round table and the camera just turns on a lazy Susan and points at each person as they speak, and in the background is a classic Commodore computer. There’s also a guy with a shotgun up his sleeve, and a special effect that I thought was the most inept “shot in the head” scene ever depicted until I realized it was all part of the plot. A favorite action movie trick of mine is someone jumping through a closed window, and I counted at least three times that happened in this movie. And there are tons of character actors such as the lady who played the cafe owner on Wings, and the guy from Moving Violations who really liked horror movies. Fittingly he was in the bad head shot effect scene here, and as a witness.

Also, Ken Wahl’s character goes on this amazing ski chase after Klaus Kinski has the ski lift he’s on shot out of the air with a bazooka, and then Wahl or his stuntman does a bunch of pirouettes in the air on skis while firing a machine gun. And best of all, the action ends up in Texas at some point because there’s an oily plot, and in the Texas depicted in this film none other than a young George Strait plays the entirety of his classic song Fool Hearted Memory while some women wrestle in a mud pit and some of Wahl’s team of spies start a big bar brawl. And all the bar patrons just keep dancing the entire time. Then the spies go out to some kind of red sports car and one of them takes a hit of what looks like laughing gas. Silly spy, that’s for the engine!

Speaking of sports cars the movie all ends with Ken Wahl in a Porsche that needs to be driven up to 85 MPH to do a certain thing, and it isn’t time travel, but I’m disappointed it’s not because the movie begins with a plutonium heist which of course we had already made Back To The Future jokes about.

Did I mention Fool Hearted Memory is one of my favorite George Strait songs, and he has had a lot of bangers. It’s actually an even better song than All Too Well.

Ken Wahl should have had more of a career, but various injuries ended it. He’s done a lot of charity work though, and he’s still out there L-I-V-I-N and he left us some gems. He’s no Lorenzo Lamas, but he had a better TV show. Klaus Kinski probably had too much of a career, but we all fear him anyway.

Here’s a movie rule more characters should learn: if you are having a secret meeting with someone to tell them you have learned a fact which can ruin someone else’s plans, and they ask you “who else have you told about this,” it means they are going to try to kill you, every damn time. So if someone asks you that, you say I TOLD EVERYBODY. I put it on Facebook. I called CNN and the BBC and the FBI, B.B. King AND Doris Day! Your life depends on it!

Finally, as I have a special interest in movie marquees showing up in other films, at one point you see in this movie a marquee for The Exterminator which is another Glickehaus movie. I wish I had a screenshot, but you’re just going to have to believe me.