This DVD is billed as a double feature: A Carol Alt film and a Rutger Hauer film. Closer inspection, that is watching the films, shows that this is actually a Carol Alt double feature since she is the female costar of Beyond Justice as well. Both are Italian pictures.
Bye Bye Baby is billed as a comedy. At least, that’s what I get because the DVD box says it has more than one uproarious scene. I didn’t see any of that. It’s the story of an Italian businessman with an attractive woman doctor wife (Alt) who throws him out. After the divorce, which she doesn’t really want, he goes onto a relationship with a professional pool player (Brigitte Nielsen), and she gets involved with a doctor at the hospital where she works. Eventually, she and he rediscover their passion for each other and they (uproariously!) try to get their current mates to fall for each other as the former spouses get back together (while still seeing their new relations). Then, he gets hit by a car. But doesn’t die. So there’s hope they’ll get back together. The end. Not a lot of laughs, but a lot of Carol Alt ca. 1988. Which might be worth a watching just for that.
Beyond Justice is an eighties action film a couple years past the 1980s. The son of an American businesswoman is kidnapped by Arabs, and her ex-husband knows more about it than he lets on. Seems he’s the son of a northern African emir, and when the boy turns 13, he’s supposed to be returned to his tribe to begin his real education with the tribe. Rutger Hauer is Rutger Hauer, and he agrees to help find the boy. Along the way, guns are shot, respect is gained for former adversaries as they band together in the face of new threats, and Omar Sharif. The film has more depth than one would expect given its lineage, but not bad at all.
The offshoot is that I’ve achieved a certain balance in my life that not many people have: I have watched as many Carol Alt films as Kathy Ireland films (those being Necessary Roughness and National Lampoon’s Loaded Weapon I).
And as an off-shoot, I also have the urge to look into the spaghetti Rambo films that I might have missed until now. And, maybe, the Carol Alt films. It looks as though she’s done a lot of work in Italy.
Books mentioned in this review:
