If you were wandering the aisles of the video stores in the 80s like I was, you were always looking for something fun and exciting to watch and a good percentage of the time one of the films that found its way home with me, or passed to me by a friend at school would feature one of the titans of the action era, when body counts were high, scripts were (with the notable exceptions) simplistic and a pithy one-liner could be quoted ad nauseam.

Nick de Semlyen takes us back to those days and pulls the curtain of the silver screen back a little bit to let us have a glimpse at some of the things that happened behind the scenes with some of the decade’s biggest names.

We check in with Stallone, Schwarzenegger, Chan, Willis, Seagal, Van Damme, Lundgren, and Norris. We learn a little about their competition, their flops, their grudges, the things that drove them and held them back, and the dreams they pursued through some of the most recognizable action titles ever.

Wonderfully nostalgic the book takes readers through films loved and panned, de Semlyen knows how to dole out his narrative and the book is a (too) fast read that reinvigorates your love for some possibly forgotten films and makes you want to fire up the VHS/DVD/Blu-Ray to dig into these titles and watch them anew.

There aren’t a lot of surprises in the book, and most action film fans will know most of them, but the way de Semlyen tells his story is so engaging you keep turning pages and imagining what it would have been like to be in the room with some of these action legends.

Partway through this book, I started hunting down his other book, Wild and Crazy Guys, about the comedy legends and films of the 80s and I cannot wait to dig into that. I had a number of laugh-out-loud moments with this book, so I imagine the comedy one will have more, but things like upping body counts or changing the length of a knife so one star could claim to be bigger and better than the other, it’s brilliant! Ridiculous! and oh so 80s Hollywood.

The book certainly didn’t change my opinion on Seagal, the only one amongst this group that I’ve thought is a complete tool. Sure, the rest of them have had their problems (and some still do) but Seagal, outside of Under Siege, has never been too likeable. And that one worked because you had Tommy Lee Jones, Erika Eleniak, Gary Busey and Andrew Davis.

But man, do I want to watch Commado, and Tango & Cash again real soon, maybe Bloodsport too…