No Contest (1995)

Rating: C+

Dir: Paul Lynch
Star: Shannon Tweed, Robert Davi, Andrew Dice Clay, Roddy Piper

[22] No Imagination either, but (Scottish accent, please) No Too Bad. This is a surprisingly good ‘Die Hard’ clone, with Shannon Tweed as the action movie star (‘Tae Kwon Doll’) trapped in a building when the bad guys take over a beauty pageant. Tweed is pleasantly fallible, her film roles not really preparing her character for real violence, while the supporting cast is solid B-movie stars like Roberto Davi (who was in the original ‘Die Hard’), Roddy Piper and Andrew ‘Dice’ Clay, largely playing against type: Piper is a villain, while Davi is the closest thing the film has to a romantic lead. The villains are all given more personality than you’d expect; indeed, in this department, they come off rather better than the beauty queen hostages, who are almost interchangeable, doing little more than flounce in high-heels and squeal in terror. Director Peter Lynch usually has something interesting going on, though the second half does contain rather too much creeping along corridors. Still, better than expected: what it lacks in originality is more than made up for in memorable characters.