The Cinema of the Four

DOA: Dead or Alive

The fair sex has always been the department of the good Watson IV, but even I found that I could not resist the temptation to take a hansom to the cinema for “DOA: Dead or Alive.” For those of you who have no idea to what that title refers, I shall read from my good old index:

“DOA: Dead or Alive, a video game featuring three-dimensional fighters in the genre made popular by such games as Mortal Kombat. Characters participate in a “Dead or Alive” tournament of single combat. A controversial spin-off game, Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball, featured the female game characters playing volleyball in abbreviated swimming apparel of the game-players choice.”

Ah, the video game film! My good friend movie inspector Lestrade is a great connoisseur of the genre and was very excited when I mentioned that it was in theaters. What can the rest of us expect? Well, consider what the Charlie’s Angels movies would have been like if you weren’t as familiar with the lead actresses. The best known star of DOA is Jaime Pressley from the TV show My Name is Earl. Would that have hurt the Charlie’s Angels films? At all?

Multiple attractive women in abbreviated apparel doing super-human martial arts is something that any red-blooded American male should find some enjoyment in, and DOA: Dead or Alive does nothing to ruin that enjoyment. In fact, I believe it contains the first “fighting while putting on a bra” scene in movie history. That scene is even more remarkable in that various objects somehow barely manage to keep it from gaining the movie an “R” rating.

Don’t expect this one to stay in theaters long, as its promotional campaign has been almost non-existent, but while it’s there, it should provided ample entertainment for any boy that’s half a man, or any man that’s half a boy.

What Great-grandfather Sherlock would say:
“Women have seldom been an attraction to me, for my brain has always governed my heart, but I could not look upon [DOA:Dead of Alive] without realizing that no young man would cross her path unscathed.”