To prepare myself for this review, I went outside and smashed my head against a concrete wall until my I.Q. dropped to six (that’s three points lower than normal for me). Then I drank a lot of beer. Then some more. Then I ate lots of salted dried meat products. Then more beer. I watched some football. I read a porno mag. I changed the oil in my car, swore at the kids next door, kicked the cat and unblocked the toilet. Then blocked it again. All good manly stuff.

Now, to keep it simple for all the meatheads like me out there reading this, I will use simple words. And short sentences. Okay? Good.

DVD movies too long. Flixmix take out story bit. Leave in fight bit. Flixmix create Ultimate Fights DVD. Simple. Brilliant even.

Concept goes like this: Plot bad, fights good. Crying bad, bleeding good. Relationships bad, double roundhouse kick to the head good. Happy ending bad, everyone dead or hurt in end good. Metaphors bad, violent revenge good.

It has scenes from:
Legend of Drunken Master
Blade
Fist of Legend
Snatch
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Scarface
Crossing the Line
The Players Club
Gladiator
TimeCop
Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story
They Live
Black Mask
First Blood
The Killer

Lots of guns, lots of blood. Jet Li slaps the crap out of a guy using his belt. That’s cool. Russell Crowe stabs a lion. That’s cool. Wesley Snipes cuts a vampire in half, cool, Rowdy Roddy Piper has a fist fight, cool, Jean Claude Van Damme does the splits, not cool, Stallone goes psycho on some cops, cool, Jim Carrey’s fight from Dumb and Dumber where he pulls a guy’s heart out isn’t included, not cool. Pacino telling killers to say hello to his little friend the M16 with grenade launcher, very very cool.

Some of the films are on DVD, some on video only at the moment. Someone better release They Live and First Blood here in Australia real soon or I’m gonna punch the person next to me and blame it on movie violence.

Just try me.

Audio-wise, this isn’t a showcase DVD, merely functional at best. Generally the quality is fairly ho hum with one or two nice moments, whether in 5.1 or 2.0. Some of the 5.1 track is a bit limp and overly frontal, often lacking punch (no, it wasn’t a pun, I’m just stupid and couldn’t think of a better word, okay?).

All the clips are shown as pan and scan except for Crouching Felafel, Hidden Lasagne which is letterboxed. Nothing here is going to impress your friends who are sick of you boasting about your CRT projector, with the quality of the clips on this DVD not quite up to scratch compared to the few already released on DVD. But heck, for what the product is, it’s fine and there’s not too much that non-anal types with a sense of perspective will worry about. The only real let down is the pan and scanning which lessens the impact of some of the fight scenes significantly.

Moving on, the brief 50 minutes run time of the show is more than amply made up for by the extensive extras. Let’s take a look at them shall we?

Behind the Punches is a featurette looking at the techniques of staging a film fight. Camera angles, fake punches etc etc. Good stuff, interesting. Have a watch and then grab some mates and try it all out down the pub after 50 beers and see what happens. Should be good for a laugh. Remember to sue the pub for negligence afterwards.

Fight Cards/Fight Master: Fight Cards is a list of stats for the type of fighting and weapons used in the clips, punches thrown, those kind of stupid useless facts which you can impress your friends with next time you’re bored or in jail, and Fight Master is a commentary track by James Lew for the scene discussing aspects of the fighting and filming technique etc.

Fighter Profiles for ten of the stars in the clips highlights their fighting credentials and selected filmographies. Read them then go to Coles and punch a checkout chick.

Tsui Hark, an action film director from China, gets an Audio Commentary Track to ramble through. It’s sometimes good, sometimes a bit obvious. But what do you expect? He didn’t make all these movies, and it’s hard to be interesting all the time when you don’t know what you’re talking about. Just ask any DVD reviewer.

Rock Track is another audio track which is just music. Loud. Annoying. Repetitive. Just like me. Rip it to a CD and play it in your car when you drive too fast, using it to fuel your road rage.

Name that Frame is a game where you have to pick which movie the random film frame is from. Get them all correct and win a car. Okay, that’s not true. You can’t win a car. But that doesn’t mean you can’t get them all right and ask the creators of the DVD to give you a car anyway. If they refuse, just threaten to burn their office down. If this DVD teaches us anything, it’s that violence works.

My Top 5 lets you program any five fights on the DVD to play back in the order you want. That’s democracy in action for you. Now go find a Communist and punch his lights out.

Trailers is a picture gallery of pigs dressed in various outfits. What do you think a section called Trailers is about? It. Has. Trailers. For only ten of the films featured here. Try channelling the anger that this causes into something productive, like setting fire to your workmate’s desk. Better out than in, I always say.

Flixmix Recommends has other titles by Flixmix (just Boogeymen so far) and a music video called Control by some wankers called Puddle of Mud. Puddle of S**t, more like it.

Flixfacts Trivia is an option to have a trivia track accompany each scene with various little tidbits about the film. Actually, tidbits isn’t a manly word. Make that ‘think crap’ instead. More manly and violent. Now get stuffed.

Last, there’s some DVD ROM stuff for the nerds.

All up, a good package to waste away the hours between meals.