Boogie Boy's box boasts that the film is from "the Academy Award-winning creator of Pulp Fiction," a claim that will have video-store patrons wondering why Quentin Tarantino is now directing low-budget direct-to-video films starring Kickboxer 5 star Mark Dacascos. And while there is an element of truth to the claim—Boogie Boy is executive-produced by Roger Avary, who co-wrote the story to Pulp Fiction—it's also misleading. The real auteur here is writer/director Craig Hamann, a filmmaker whose previous work as a screenwriter (Stalked, Dollman vs. Demonic Toys) has been overlooked at Oscar time. Boogie Boy stars the aforementioned Dacascos—whose status as the poor man's Brandon Lee was confirmed when he took the lead role in the syndicated Crow TV series—as an ex-con who, upon his release from prison, meets up with his junkie ex-cellmate (Jaimz Woolvett) and gets mixed up in an ambitious drug deal gone predictably awry. Dacascos is then torn between his desire to save his friend and his desire to start a new life as the drummer for a tough female rock 'n' roller (Joan Jett). As can probably be gleaned from that brief plot description, Boogie Boy is pretty silly. But unlike most Tarantino knock-offs, it's also relatively entertaining, a film that, like Avary's own Killing Zoe, steals a lot from Tarantino while creating a scummy little universe all its own. Dacascos is usually cast as an unsmiling, muscle-bound he-man, but cast against type here as an unsmiling, muscle-bound he-man with a couple of tattoos and a shadowy past, he's actually not that bad. Hamann helps him by casting him alongside a slew of considerably more emotive character actors, including Frederic Forrest, Traci Lords, and Emily Lloyd as a dim-witted sexpot who takes a shine to Dacascos.