Day of the Warrior Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		2.5

Day of the Warrior Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman July 20, 2020

Andy Sidaris had a rather interesting career in both television and film, having won a (shared) Emmy Award for his contributions to ABC’s coverage of the 1968 Summer Olympics before setting off for assumedly greener pastures in the world of film. Sidaris’ cinematic output prominently features what might be thought of as another kind of athletic activity, one which a sixties’ film title jokingly referred to as being Man's Favorite Sport?, namely sex, and a dozen of films either written, directed or produced by Sidaris offered one of Sidaris’ stocks in trade — former Playboy Playmates and/or Penthouse Pets in starring roles. Mill Creek Entertainment has been releasing Sidaris’ so called L.E.T.H.A.L. Ladies films, and is now bringing out the last two in the series.

Previous releases in the series can be read about by clicking on the following review links:

Malibu Express Blu-ray review

Hard Ticket to Hawaii Blu-ray review

Picasso Trigger Blu-ray review

Savage Beach Blu-ray review

Guns Blu-ray review

Do or Die Blu-ray review

Hard Hunted Blu-ray review

Fit to Kill Blu-ray review

Enemy Gold Blu-ray review

The Dallas Connection Blu-ray review

There are bad films, and then there are films that are so bad you end up actually enjoying them, but the Sidaris films are kind of their own peculiar subgenre within the general confines of “bad” films, in that they’re typically very self aware, and are frequently kind of hilarious as a result. It’s obvious from some of the supplements included on both this disc and Return to Savage Beach that Sidaris had a great sense of humor about life in general and his films in particular, and so any curmudgeonly “critique” of his output is probably missing the mark, at least in part.

As is mentioned in some of the above linked reviews of earlier Sidaris films, plotting is not exactly his strong suit, and in fact many of his films featuring buxom women cavorting in few (if any) clothes are simply vignette driven enterprises seemingly cobbled together to get things to a point where a female can either disrobe or engage in some soft core sex scenes. Sidaris also evidently liked to blow things up, and so along with frequent examples of titillation, there are regular interludes featuring large explosions.

Part of the humor side of things in these films comes courtesy of little things like the name of the top secret agency at the core of the story being L.E.T.H.A.L., an acronym which stands for Legion to Ensure Total Harmony And Law. L.E.T.H.A.L. is run by incredibly curvaceous women who do things like have staff meetings in bathing suits while they work out on an elliptical (which Sidaris frames as provocatively as possible). Unfortunately L.E.T.H.A.L’s “high tech” computer (which resembles a Radio Shack remainder) is hacked by a supervillain helpfully named Warrior (erstwhile wrestler Marcus Bagwell), with the result being that all of the undercover L.E.T.H.A.L. agents are in danger of not just being “outed”, but killed. That’s basically it for the plot machinations of the film, other than a subsequent denouement that Warrior may have a “mole” helping him from inside the L.E.T.H.A.L. organization.

Day of the Warrior doesn’t have any outsized ambitions, and it’s routinely fun if unrepentantly silly virtually the entire time. “Performances” are iffy at times, but the women seem to be having fun strutting their stuff, with the muscle bound men kind of hilariously serving as sidebars to the entire enterprise. For such a lo-fi effort, the film actually has decent production value, and some of the action scenes are decently staged.

Day of the Warrior Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Day of the Warrior is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Mill Creek Entertainment with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. The back cover of this release touts that the film is "available for the first time on Blu-ray from a 4K widescreen restoration". This is a generally very pleasing looking presentation that offers a secure accounting of the film's rather nicely varied palette, as well as good detail levels in close-ups if perhaps slightly less so in some midrange shots. There are occasional signs of age related wear and tear that made it through whatever restoration gauntlet was set for the restoration, with flecks, small nicks and scratches and dirt showing up from time to time. While the grain field resolves naturally most of the time, there are some kind of random spikes where things look considerably grittier (see screenshots 16 through 19 for some examples).

Day of the Warrior Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Day of the Warrior features a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 track which capably supports the film's often lunatic dialogue, as well some of its explosive sound effects and driving score. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout the presentation, and I noticed no issues at all with regard to damage, dropouts or distortion.

Day of the Warrior Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Intro (480i; 1:51) features a little comedy from Andy Sidaris and Julie Strain. This is authored to move automatically on to the feature after it plays.


• Audio Commentary features Andy Sidaris and Arlene Sidaris.


• Behind the Scenes (480i; 39:11) aggregates a bunch of snippets from various Sidaris films with some often funny commentary from Sidaris and others.


• Malibu Bay Trailers offers Day of the Warrior (1080p; 2:04) along with trailers for the other films in this series.

Kind of hilariously, the Chapter Select page has little thumbnail images next to each chapter heading which I assume are there to indicate which of the "three Bs" listed above are included in that particular chapter.

Day of the Warrior Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Day of the Warrior is just flat out silly, or perhaps, considering the curves on display, not all that flat out silly, but that's part of what makes this unabashedly goofy enterprise so much fun. I can't in good conscience give it more than 2.0 stars as a film, but for those who might get a kick out of seeing scantily clad (and more than occasionally naked) women kicking butt as kinda sorta secret agents, Day of the Warrior should suffice quite nicely. Technical merits are generally solid and the supplemental package enjoyable for those who are considering a purchase.