Bad Movie Challenge: The Odyssey of Parole Violators

Like the mythological Greek hero Odysseus, I’ve lived a good life. I will place a shopping cart back in the rack that some lazy fart left in a parking spot. I will round up to the nearest dollar for charity whenever the cashier rings up my single packs of SPAM. I have even (on my own accord) watched Glitter with Mariah Carey and had a living pulse by the very end. Never in my sojourns did I expect the gods to shine upon me when I bought the $1 DVD of Parole Violators from a Walmart bin! It would do nobody justice for me to continue without you going online and watching this heralded classic long forgotten by the Academy of Motion Pictures Association (and for shame on them for doing so)!

Go ahead. I’m waiting.

No seriously. Stop reading and watch the darn movie, you film snob Scylla!

Caught you! I know you kept reading and didn’t watch the film yet. So seriously, go watch it!

Okay. Now that you’ve watched it, and survived the jaws of Charybdis, we can continue.

In the hero’s journey, Odysseus stabbed the eye of the behemoth cyclops and I always felt sympathy for this creature. Firstly, nobody deserved that (get it?). Secondly, I hate there will be one soul in this world who will never have the sheer delectation to view Sean P. Donahue’s roundhouse kicking (more like attempting) a parole violator while holding a 1990s Ikegami 79E. The villains in this 1994 direct-to-video pilgrimage might be committing crimes like idiots opening sacks from the gods, but I say it is a crime this poor beast will never get to watch a man get duct-taped to a pole and the words “Parole Violator” sharpied to his chest!

Directed by Sean’s Daddy-O, Patrick G. Donahue (who gave us classics like Kill Squad and Asphalt Wars), the main plot of this one-hour-and-twenty-seven-minute excursion (if you care) involves our hero Miles Long, a TV reporter/Cheaters Joey Greco wannabe, who films himself catching (you guessed it) parole violators. Guns, goons, gumption, and giggles ensue, and let’s be honest, who cares where the movie goes! You get a gunshot or a semi-executed kick every three minutes and what more could you ask for? Again, if you got the same Primera Bravo SE-3 printed DVD version (which is a copy of a VHS tape left in the pits of Circe’s basement) then you should not have been expecting a Sir John Gielgud rendition of Oddyseus arrowing through axes for his beloved. You got conned by your mind and you have to live with your choices. For the rest of us who embrace great filmmaking, holding that Walmart $1 DVD is like wielding a sword of truth, and the truth is Parole Violators rocks!

You can find Parole Violators on Tubi and YouTube to stream, but I highly beg you to get the same dollar bin dive copy I did. Not only do you get great grainy quality, but you might enjoy a tape track issue at one point!

Dog, the Bounty Hunter it is not (it’s not even dog food) but how can you hate a movie with great action and dialogue like “Yeah, the food was cold, but everything else was hot.” Now, if you were naughty and continued reading (your dirty little lotus-eater, you), go watch the movie, feed on grapes and lukewarm luncheon meat, and enjoy the feeling of laying on the shores of Ogygia when you hit those end credits.


About Ian Klink

As a filmmaker, writer, and artist, Ian Klink’s work includes the feature film Anybody’s Blues, his thesis film adaptation of Stephen King’s The Man Who Would Not Shake Hands, the novel Lucky for Newfangle Press, and he has written short stories for Weren't Another Way to Be: Outlaw Fiction Inspired by Waylon Jennings, The Creeps, Vampiress Carmilla, The Siren’s Call, and Chilling Tales For Dark Nights audio cast. Klink shares his talents as a teacher of multimedia studies in Pennsylvania.

View all posts by Ian Klink

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