Red Scorpion (1988)

"I AM SPETZNAS!... but I'm no longer one of you..."
Soviet's very own, one-man killing machine, Lt. Nikolai Rachenko is trained to obey any orders that comes his way, without ever questioning why or talking back, and he have never failed a test before in his life. But when ordered to infiltrate and overthrow a small group of anti-communists in Africa, Nikolai are about to be taught a cruel lesson in life, one that just might save him and change his views forever.

I remember back in autumn 2001 when the DVD began to increase sales by a lot, making it sadly obivous that the VHS was on the way down. 
The good news was that in many music and movie stores, they had these huge tables full with brand newly sealed VHS tapes going for ridiculously cheap prices, and I bought a whole pack of them, almost weekly. 
Sure, a lot of it was trash, real TRASH. But every now and then titles like The Exterminator (1980) or The Running Man (1987) would appear and then we had Red Scorpion (1988) which I truly just had to have because of the epic artwork on the cassette.
A few weeks later in early october, some of the shops stopped selling VHS releases or at least the dirt cheap ones, but I got a hold on some gems and I still am very fond of these. I have always kind of been a "slow" learner when it comes to new stuff, not much of a trend follower and so on, I still played my music on Walkman and Discman when the Mini-Disc system (which I guess was not new elsewhere) but in norway it seemed like a big deal in the late 90s and early 2000-01, and also with the failure of the Laserdisc system fresh in mind, I was probably a bit naive to think that maybe this DVD system would not be such a big deal and people would go back to the VHS system.

Well, it lasted up till around end of 2003/winter 2004, as the last new VHS copy I bought was of The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (2003) and since all of Arnold Schwarzenegger's films that I always wanted but never found on VHS had arrived on DVD, I realized I had to update, it sucked but well, I guess now I cannot say I regretted on that descion.
Anyway, I still miss VHS, but I was too young to really capture the VHS in its glory days as movie fan, and it was just when it was on its way out I began to collect movies and so on, but I still try and hunt down some if I come over them, and the titles are any cool.

Back to the film, Red Scorpion is one of Dolph Lundgren's earliest releases, this time it is very obivous that they are trying to sell him as the latest heroic one-man army, not that far away of Sly Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger, but the problem is that Dolph is not exactly as good an actor as the ones mentioned and Red Scorpion is pretty much Ivan Drago having a wake-up call down in Africa, but still an enjoyable action film with lots of funny scenes, much thanks to an hilarious M. Emmet Walsh as a "typical" loud mouthing american sidekick who loves to wind up his more wooden soviet compadre, whenever the chance is there.
It is directed by Joseph Zito who had already done two other 80s action films with Chuck Norris in Missing in Action (1984) and Invasion U.S.A. (1985).
The film even got a "sequel" many years later on, but that one I have not any plans on seeing anytime soon.

Classic bad ass 80s action scene and where Dolph shows off his fantastic singing talent, and then some: