NAKED VENGEANCE (US/Philippines - 1985) Directed by Cirio H. Santiago. Written by Reilly Askew. Cast: Deborah Tranelli, Kaz Garas, Bill McLaughlin, Ed Crick, Terence O'Hara, Carmen Argenziano, Steve Roderick, David Light, Don Gordon Bell, Nick Nicholson, Phil Morrell, Joseph Zucchero, Helen McNeely, Doc McCoy, Henry Strzalkowski, Bill Kipp. (Unrated, 97 mins) Filipino exploitation auteur Cirio H. Santiago took a break the '80s cycle of Namsploitation and post-nuke ripoffs to helm 1985's NAKED VENGEANCE, an I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE-inspired contribution to the rape/revenge subgenre. An early release of Roger Corman's Concorde Pictures, NAKED VENGEANCE's Lightning Video VHS was in every video store in America back in the '80s, but it was available in two vastly different editions: a 77-minute R-rated version, and a 97-minute (!) unrated version, the latter represented on Scream Factory's new Blu-ray double feature set with the women-in-prison thriller VENDETTA, because physical media is dead. Much of those 20 additional minutes are related to character development, but in its uncut form, NAKED VENGEANCE is maybe the most ridiculously violent movie Santiago ever made. Flash-in-the-pan actress and SoCal trophy wife Carla Harris (Deborah Tranelli, then in the middle of a decade-long run as Phyllis Wapner, Bobby Ewing's secretary, on DALLAS) finds her world shattered when her husband Mark (Terence O'Hara) is shot and killed while heroically intervening in a sexual assault in the parking lot of a swanky restaurant where they were celebrating their fifth wedding anniversary. When the detective (Carmen Argenziano, whose two brief appearances are likely Hollywood-shot inserts by someone at Corman's lumberyard headquarters) tells her there's no leads and the rape victim isn't cooperating, Carla decides to get away and visit her parents in her childhood town of Silver Lake. Once there, she's ogled, leered at, harassed, and hit on by every guy in town, some of whom knew her in high school and resent that she ran off to Hollywood. When she resists the forceful advances of seemingly affable supermarket--or the closest approximation of a California supermarket that Santiago can throw together in a what looks like a vacant Manila gas station--butcher Fletch (Kaz Garas), tensions explode and when Carla's parents take an overnight trip to visit relatives, Fletch and his sub-literate buddies barge into the house and gang-rape Carla. Of course, her parents decide to return early, and they're shotgunned to death as Fletch also kills Timmy (Steve Roderick), the town's "slow" kid who tagged along, framing him for the massacre.
A catatonic Carla is hospitalized, but escapes nightly to exact revenge on the men in a variety of horrific ways, from setting one ablaze to crushing another under a car to the old rape/revenge standby of castration. As the body count rises, useless sheriff (Bill McLaughlin)--who shruggingly told Carla to "just keep your curtains closed" and "relax a little" when she reported Timmy peeping through her window--takes an inordinate amount of time to realize that all of the victims are Fletch's asshole bros, and he has to keep Fletch from forming a posse to go after Carla. Similar to what he'd do with FUTURE HUNTERS, Santiago rips off multiple films over the course of NAKED VENGEANCE: it goes from I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE to a DEATH WISH-style vigilante thriller, then it turns into FIRST BLOOD when they pursue Carla through town and into the surrounding woods, and finally STRAW DOGS when she barricades herself in her parents' house as Fletch and what's left of his crew lay siege. As evidenced by the grocery store and an equally unconvincing gym, NAKED VENGEANCE is laughably cheap. Even the sheriff's office has a laminated "Sheriff's Office" sign taped to a door in what's obviously not a police station.
While a few early scenes were actually shot in California, the bulk of the film has Manila passing itself off as suburban L.A. with occasional bits that almost look convincing (there's also the presence of Santiago's usual Philippines-based stock company members like Nick Nicholson, Henry Strzalkowski, and Ed Crick). An epilogue with Carla back in L.A. cluelessly makes use of stock footage of NYC before Tranelli is back in L.A., made apparent by a cameo appearance from Walter Hill's favorite bar, Torchy's. Tranelli isn't a great actress, and her TV career went nowhere after DALLAS (she left the business after a 1995 guest spot on LAW & ORDER). While she's good enough for NAKED VENGEANCE, it says a lot about the opportunities she was getting outside of DALLAS that she'd resort to something this grimy and nasty to land a lead role in a feature film (she's also a singer, and Santiago letting her belt out the overplayed but undeniably catchy Laura Branigan-esque power ballad theme song "Still Got a Love" might've sweetened the deal). It's repugnant and graphically violent, but make no mistake: for those genre fans so inclined, the absolutely insane NAKED VENGEANCE is a buried treasure of VHS glory days trashsploitation just waiting to be rediscovered.
VENDETTA (US - 1986) Directed by Bruce Logan. Written by L.J. Cavastani, Emil Farkas, Simon Maskell and John Adams. Cast: Karen Chase, Sandy Martin, Kin Shriner, Roberta Collins, Michelle Newkirk, Marshall Teague, Greg Bradford, Mark Von Zech, Hoke Howell, Eugene Robert Glazer, Marta Kober, Lisa Hullana, Durga McBroom, Will Hare, Jack Kosslyn, Bruce Logan. (R, 90 mins) Paired with NAKED VENGEANCE on the new Scream Factory Blu-ray double feature set is VENDETTA, a Concorde pickup that made the regional rounds in the fall of 1986. Originally titled ANGELS BEHIND BARS, it joined Cannon's THE NAKED CAGE and New World's spoofy REFORM SCHOOL GIRLS as belated stragglers in the '80s women-in-prison revival that was highlighted by the likes of 1982's THE CONCRETE JUNGLE and 1983's CHAINED HEAT. VENDETTA was designed as a starring vehicle for stuntwoman Karen Chase, cast radically against type as Laurie Collins, a tough-as-nails Hollywood stuntwoman whose little sister Bonnie (Michelle Newkirk) is raped and gets tossed in prison on a manslaughter charge after shooting her attacker with his own gun. In the joint, Bonnie runs afoul of bitchy, ruthless cell block queen Kay (Sandy Martin), who has her crew beat the shit out of her, shoot her up with junk, and throw her over a railing in what corrupt prison officials and a shady coroner write off as a suicide. Laurie isn't convinced and devises a plan to get sent to the same prison--by stealing the judge's car and going on a drunken, reckless driving spree, and being sentenced by the same judge, which is in no way a conflict of interest--where she tries to figure out who killed her beloved baby sister.
VENDETTA is moderately entertaining trash that's pretty much par for the course as far as these kinds of movies go, except for a climax involving a Prince impersonator, which is admittedly not something you see every day. Chase's Laurie demonstrates some more fighting skills than the usual naive innocent protagonist you'd normally find, and it's of interest in retrospect to see Martin--later to find notoriety as Grandma in NAPOLEON DYNAMITE, as Mac's mom on IT'S ALWAYS SUNNY IN PHILADELPHIA, and as disgraced deputy Sam Rockwell's mom in THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI--letting it all hang out and acting like an unhinged psychopath as Kay. Fans of the post-Roger Waters era of Pink Floyd will be surprised to see the band's soon-to-be fan-favorite backing vocalist Durga McBroom as an ass-kicking inmate named "Willow." There's also '70s drive-in starlet Roberta Collins (DEATH RACE 2000's Matilda the Hun) in her final film appearance as the one sympathetic prison official (she retired from acting and died in 2008); longtime daytime soap vet Kin Shriner, who's spent most of the last 41 years as Scott Baldwin on GENERAL HOSPITAL, as a horndog guard ("C'mon, I've already serviced three girls today and my wife's waitin' for me...it's our anniversary!"); Marshall Teague (best known as ROAD HOUSE dipshit Jimmy Reno) as Laurie's boyfriend; and a brawl outside Pacino's, then a well-known Covina, CA restaurant owned by Sal Pacino, who unsurprisingly couldn't talk his son Al into stopping by to say hello. VENDETTA was the directing debut of Bruce Logan, a cinematographer on '70s Roger Corman productions like BIG BAD MAMA, CRAZY MAMA, and JACKSON COUNTY JAIL who also worked on the special effects crew of STAR WARS, STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE, and FIREFOX among others. He served as the cinematographer for the groundbreaking TRON before going into the world of music videos, where his biggest credit was producing the Mary Lambert-directed video for Madonna's hit "Borderline," from her self-titled 1983 debut.
VENDETTA opening in Toledo, OH on 12/12/1986 as a
"First Run Exclusive" at a nearly abandoned mall's
second-run two-screen that would be closed seven months later.
Note SONG OF THE SOUTH hitting another second-run
at the end of what would be its final--to date-- theatrical re-release.
NAM ANGELS (US/Philippines - 1989) Directed by Cirio H. Santiago. Written by Dan Gagliasso. Cast: Brad Johnson, Vernon Wells, Kevin Duffis, Rick Dean, Mark Venturini, Jeff Griffith, Romy Diaz, Ken Metcalfe, Archie Adamos, Eric Hahn, Tonichi Fructuoso, Frederick Bailey, Leah Navarro. (R, 93 mins) Filipino exploitation auteur Cirio H. Santiago (1936-2008) dabbled in nearly every genre over the course of his long career, specializing in blaxploitation knockoffs in the mid '70s and post-nukes in the early '80s, but as B-movie trends went, so went Santiago. By the late '80s, after the success of macho MIA rescue fantasies like UNCOMMON VALOR, MISSING IN ACTION and RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II, and more serious films like the Oscar-winning PLATOON and Stanley Kubrick's FULL METAL JACKET, Namsploitation became one of the most profitable genres for the burgeoning home video market. Ripoffs flooded New Release shelves at video stores nationwide, whether it was Santiago's Philippines-shot actioners or Italian knockoffs like Fabrizio De Angelis' THUNDER WARRIOR series and OPERATION NAM, and Bruno Mattei's legendarily craptacular STRIKE COMMANDO. Even Australia got into the act with Brian Trenchard-Smith's cult classic THE SIEGE OF FIREBASE GLORIA. Usually working in conjunction with Roger Corman, Santiago cranked out a ton of Namsploitationers from 1984 to 1993, including FINAL MISSION (1984), THE DEVASTATOR (1986), EYE OF THE EAGLE (1987), BEHIND ENEMY LINES (1988), THE EXPENDABLES (1988), EYE OF THE EAGLE III (1989), FIELD OF FIRE (1991), BEYOND THE CALL OF DUTY (1992), FIREHAWK (1993), and KILL ZONE (1993) before demand died down and he moved on to a string of kickboxing movies.
EYE OF THE EAGLE III is probably Santiago's best Namsploitation outing (he sat out 1988's EYE OF THE EAGLE II), but a close second is 1989's NAM ANGELS, a loose remake of the 1970 Jack Starrett drive-in hit THE LOSERS mixed with a little KELLY'S HEROES. Just out on Blu-ray from Code Red in further defiance of the "Physical media is dead" myth (and introduced by Code Red head Bill Olsen in his inane "Banana Man" get-up, referring to Cirio Santiago as "Sollio Sariago"), NAM ANGELS opens at the height of the Vietnam War as Army Lt. Vance Calhoun (a debuting Brad Johnson) loses most of his men in a skirmish while the rest are taken prisoner by Chard (Vernon Wells, best known as Wez in THE ROAD WARRIOR), a "round eye" mercenary with ties to both the CIA and the North Vietnamese, who has set up shop as a despotic ruler, out there operating without any decent restraint, beyond the...oh wait, that's Col. Kurtz. Back at the base, Calhoun can't convince Gen. Donipha (Ken Metcalfe) to send in a rescue team, so he organizes his own--an off-the-books op where he recruits a quartet of incarcerated Hell's Angels who were nabbed trying to smuggle drugs out of Cambodia back to the States. Calhoun gets them out and convinces them they're on a mission to recover $10 million in VC gold that his men found in a cave on the outskirts of Chard's camp. Calhoun and Army mechanic Hickman (Kevin Duffis) butt heads with the biker gang leader Larger (Rick Dean) and the rest of the Angels--Bonelli (Mark Venturini), Carmody (Jeff Griffith), and Turko (Romy Diaz), especially when Larger finds out the primary reason for the journey--but before long, they set aside their differences and find common ground, realizing they have to work together to make it out alive...if they don't kill each other first!
NAM ANGELS is one of Santiago's fastest-paced programmers. The director drops the ball when it comes to period detail, best represented by Santiago capturing the exact and very brief window in time in 1989 when Chard's rather ahead-of-its-time and decidedly un-1969 combination mullet/tiny ponytail would be even remotely socially acceptable, and he has the chutzpah to close the film with a John Milton quote ("Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven"), but NAM ANGELS is a lot of fun. The action, explosions, and motorcycle stunts are almost non-stop, and there's some attempt at making a serious statement ("Even your own people don't care about you!" Chard yells when Calhoun realizes no one's coming to rescue them), and while none of these guys are any great shakes as actors, there's enough of a developing camaraderie over the course of the film that it turns into a better-than-expected men-on-a-mission outing.
The film marked the big-screen debut of Johnson, a professional rodeo cowboy who served a three-year stint as the Marlboro Man before turning to modeling and eventually acting. Like many before him, Johnson got his start in the world of Roger Corman (and Santiago put Johnson's lassoing skills to use throughout NAM ANGELS) but it wasn't long before he was declared a Next Big Thing. Later in 1989, still a virtual unknown and given an "Introducing" credit despite already starring in NAM ANGELS, he was picked by Steven Spielberg to co-star with Richard Dreyfuss, Holly Hunter, John Goodman, and the legendary Audrey Hepburn in the director's ALWAYS. He next starred with Danny Glover and Willem Dafoe in John Milius' 1991 military actioner FLIGHT OF THE INTRUDER, and...that was it. With the big studios deciding they already had one actor to fill their Tom Berenger needs, Johnson's time on the A-list was short-lived, rivaled in its brevity only by Patrick Bergin, another Next Big Thing from that same period who flamed out in record time. Like Bergin, Johnson became a fixture in the world of straight-to-video and/or cable, with films like 1993's THE PHILADELPHIA EXPERIMENT 2, 1994's THE BIRDS II, and 1995's LONE JUSTICE 2, along with several TV gigs and the syndicated series SOLDIER OF FORTUNE, INC, with fellow straight-to-video mainstay Tim Abell. Johnson's career got a second wind with the faithsploitation crowd when he co-starred as pilot Rayford Steele in the Kirk Cameron-headlined LEFT BEHIND trilogy, but with the exception of a one-off comeback in the barely-seen church-funded indie NAIL 32 in 2015, the devoutly religious Johnson's been retired from acting since 2008. Now 56 and the father of ten with his wife of 30 years, Johnson appears to have left Hollywood behind and now owns a real estate and property development company.
FUTURE HUNTERS (US/Philippines - 1986; US release 1989) Directed by Cirio H. Santiago. Written by J.L. Thompson. Cast: Robert Patrick, Linda Carol, Richard Norton, Ed Crick, Bob Schott, David Light, Paul Holmes, Peter Silton, Ursula Marquez, Elizabeth Oropesa, Bruce Le, Wang Chang Lee. (Unrated, 100 mins) While Filipino exploitation auteur Cirio H. Santiago is best known for his association with Roger Corman from the 1970s until his death in 2008, he frequently branched out and worked on his own. Some of the better-known non-Corman Santiago films include THE MUTHERS (1976), VAMPIRE HOOKERS (1978), DEATH FORCE, aka FIGHTING MAD (1978), and FINAL MISSION (1984). Perhaps the craziest Santiago joint away from Corman is 1986's FUTURE HUNTERS, where the filmmaker basically goes for broke, throwing every big Hollywood action/adventure genre from the period into one ambitious mash-up before anyone knew what a genre mash-up was. Perhaps more than anything, FUTURE HUNTERS is Santiago trying to make his own version of a Cannon/Golan-Globus production. Its dumb plot and nearly nonstop action could've worked for any Chuck Norris or Michael Dudikoff adventure outing; its rousing score by Ron Jones (who went on to write music for FAMILY GUY), divides its time between mimicking cues from Jerry Goldsmith's KING SOLOMON'S MINES score and something more synth and drum machine-based that does its best to invoke Gary Chang or Jay Chattaway; and its 100-minute running time matches the typical Cannon genre production to the minute. Alas, without a bottom-line guy like Corman to oversee things, Santiago indulges himself a bit too much. Even with a jam-packed plot and a shitload of action, FUTURE HUNTERS somehow manages to drag a bit. A lot of this is due to Santiago letting shots run longer than necessary and not trimming the fat elsewhere. In his quest to showcase every action subgenre he could in a single movie, Santiago somehow lets the pace slack. Had this been done under the Concorde banner instead of Vestron offshoot Lightning Pictures, Corman would've had this thing down to 80 minutes and it would've been perfect. As it is, it's stupidly entertaining in all the right ways, but it really could stand to lose 15 or 20 minutes.
Opening in the year 2025, 40 years after "The Holocaust" turned the world into a post-nuke wasteland, marauding, Mad Max-like hero Matthew (Richard Norton) is the last survivor of a group of renegade warriors who have ventured into the Forbidden Zone to find the head of the Spear of Longinus. The Holy Lance, which pierced the body of Christ on the cross, holds within it the power of creation, and with that the ability to turn back time. Matthew hopes to retrieve it and go back 40 years to prevent the Holocaust, with Wez-esque despotic madman Zaar (David Light) in pursuit. Matthew is transported back to 1986 but is badly wounded right beforehand. Before he dies, he hands off the spearhead to vacationing couple Michelle (Linda Carol) and Slade (a debuting Robert Patrick). So begins an adventure through every genre that pops into the heads of Santiago and screenwriter J.L. Thompson (probably a pseudonym for someone, and erroneously listed as veteran director J. Lee Thompson on IMDb). FUTURE HUNTERS is primarily a RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK ripoff with the globe-trotting search for an ancient artifact, as Michelle and an incredulous Slade attempt to find the actual Spear of Longinus in order to reattach the spearhead and thus, prevent the approaching nuclear holocaust. But it dabbles in Santiago's familiar post-nuke wheelhouse before Norton's Matthew is killed off shortly after the prologue. Then the RAIDERS plot kicks in, then they're off to Asia where Slade meets an old buddy Liu (kung-fu second-stringer Bruce Le) and it becomes a Shaolin martial arts movie for ten minutes as Liu has an extended fight scene with powerful Silverfox (Wang Chang Lee, aka Jang Lee Hwang). Then it's back to RAIDERS as Slade and Michelle are confronted by Bauer (Bob Schott of GYMKATA), the chief henchman of modern-day Nazi Fielding (Ed Crick) who wants the spear in his quest to bring about a new Nazi uprising. Before long, they're a lost in the jungle for a brief segue into ROMANCING THE STONE before they encounter a dwarf tribe played by the same group of little people who play similar roles in all of Santiago's post-nukes, only this time it's a blatant riff on the RETURN OF THE JEDI Ewoks, That detour sends them to a group of Amazon warrior women, one of whom Michelle must battle over a crocodile pit in order to obtain the spear, attach the head, and save the world.
For such a wild plot, FUTURE HUNTERS could have some more spring in its step. Santiago pads a lot of the running time with overlong establishing shots and hanging on to some shots much longer than needed. Still, watching him rip off every '80s blockbuster in sight (you can even say there's some BACK TO THE FUTURE in Matthew's story) is ambitious and pretty ballsy on such a fairly low budget. Though the film was released in the Philippines in 1986, it didn't turn up in the US until its straight-to-video debut in 1989. Though he appeared in several films after, FUTURE HUNTERS marked Patrick's debut and he's a pretty engaging smartass hero, and he's clearly doing a lot of his own strenuous stunt work. Prior to making his impact in pop culture history with his role as the T-1000 in 1991's TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY, Patrick got his start in Santiago's Filipino B-movies after he auditioned in L.A. for the Roger Corman production WARLORDS FROM HELL and, according to WARLORDS director Clark Henderson on the Blu-ray special features for Santiago's WHEELS OF FIRE, "it was obvious to all of us that he was a better actor than everyone else in the room." Corman farmed Patrick out to Santiago, who took an instant liking to the young actor and gave him the lead role in FUTURE HUNTERS, as well as his Vietnam actioner BEHIND ENEMY LINES (1988), along with supporting roles in other Philippines-shot, Santiago-directed Corman productions like EQUALIZER 2000 and EYE OF THE EAGLE (both 1987). Though he realizes the movies were junk, Patrick, who has never stopped working since FUTURE HUNTERS, has always looked back on his time with Corman and Santiago with appreciation, grateful for his first big break and for the experience, as well as for meeting his BEHIND ENEMY LINES co-star Barbara Hooper, another Corman ingenue loaned out to Santiago in the late '80s. They hit it off during during production of BEHIND ENEMY LINES and have been married since 1990.
This late 1980s video store fixture from Filipino exploitation icon Cirio H. Santiago is pretty crummy overall, but it's got plenty to entertain fans of bad movies. The plot--involving drug smuggling and stolen identities of dead Hawaiians--is hopelessly convoluted and not in a cool, BIG SLEEP kind of way. American actress Cec Verrell is Jenny "Silk" Sleighton, a badass Honolulu cop who plays by her own rules. Silk and her partners Yashi (Joe Mari Avellana) and Brown (Fred Bailey, who also wrote the screenplay) are taking on the drug ring of crime lord Austin (Peter Shilton) while dodging two assassins (including an overacting Nick Nicholson) in the employ of someone not what he's pretending to be. Silk also makes time for dalliances with her captain (Bill McLaughlin), though there's no nudity (bizarre for a B-movie released by Roger Corman) and Santiago seems to show little if any interest in the T&A potential. There's a lot of violence, gunplay, explosions, and chases, including one through a shopping mall with a theater that's showing Antonio Margheriti's THE ARK OF THE SUN GOD. Manila does a thoroughly unconvincing job of playing Honolulu, but even it gives a better performance that the lifeless, zombie-like Verrell. She's a terrible actress but can handle action sequences, even if she seems hindered by the cumbersome wardrobe with which she's been provided. There's one instant classic dummy death, ridiculous fake Hawaii license plates on all the cars (but hey, at least they made an effort!), and a rockin' would-be Pat Benatar theme song ("Don't push your luck too far/Silk's gonna getcha no matter where you are/You'll never get away/From Siiiiiiillllk!") and the supporting cast is a veritable Who's Who of Filipino exploitation all-stars: Avellana, Bailey, Nicholson, Henry Strzalkowski, Mike Monty, Joseph Zucchero, David Light, Don Gordon Bell, Berto Spoor, Eric Hahn, and the ubiquitous Vic Diaz.
Verrell next appeared in Santiago's EYE OF THE EAGLE and the Roddy Piper cult favorite HELL COMES TO FROGTOWN. Not surprisingly, she never became a star but did a ton of TV guest spots throughout the '80s and '90s (L.A. LAW, HUNTER, CHEERS, MATLOCK, THE X-FILES, WINGS, NYPD BLUE, MURDER SHE WROTE, ER) before retiring from acting in 2001. SILK was apparently successful enough somewhere to justify SILK 2 in 1989, also directed by Santiago but with Monique Gabrielle taking over the role of Silk. SILK is total garbage, cheaply made and horribly acted, not exactly essential Santiago but enjoyable viewing if you're familiar with his movies and know what to expect going in. (Unrated, 83 mins)
WHEELS OF FIRE (US/Philippines - 1985) Directed by Cirio H. Santiago. Written by Frederick Bailey. Cast: Gary Watkins, Laura Banks, Lynda Wiesmeier, Linda Grovenor, Joseph Anderson (Joe Mari Avellana), Joseph Zucchero, Jack S. Daniels, Steve Parvin, Dennis Cole, Henry Strzalkowski, Gary Taylor. (R, 81 mins)
Following 1983's STRYKER, Filipino exploitation legend Cirio H. Santiago went back for a few more laps around the same rock quarry for some more post-nuke ROAD WARRIOR ripoffs, starting with 1985's WHEELS OF FIRE, which is about as no-bullshit as drive-in actioners get. Santiago and screenwriter Frederick Bailey obviously know what you're here for and keep the plot as simple as it can be. In a post-apocalyptic wasteland, nomadic Trace (Gary Watkins) ends up rescuing his sister Arlie's (July 1982 Playmate of the Month Lynda Wiesmeier) dirtbag boyfriend Bo (Steve Parvin) from a death match against a post-nuke Robert Goulet lookalike. From then on, it's pretty much one long chase sequence, with the army of evil despot Scourge (second-unit director Joe Mari Avellana, credited as "Joseph Anderson," a last-minute replacement for Fear leader Lee Ving, who abruptly checked out of his Manila hotel room several hours after arriving and went to Tokyo without telling anyone) relentlessly pursuing Trace in one car and Arlie and the incredibly ungrateful Bo in the other. Arlie is eventually abducted by Scourge's creeps and repeatedly raped, while Trace hooks up with bounty hunter Stinger (Laura Banks) and psychic Spike (Linda Grovenor, Robby Benson's love interest in 1980's DIE LAUGHING) as he attempts to rescue his sister and wipe out Scourge's gang.
Except for one Trace-Stinger sex scene that's shot like the cover of a shitty romance novel, WHEELS OF FIRE is virtually non-stop action from start to finish. It's got more explosions than an Antonio Margheriti flick, constant car chases, countless shots of guys from Scourge's gang engulfed in flames, an out-of-nowhere appearance by a bunch of albino cavemen, and other instances of some truly hair-raising and clearly dangerous stunt work. With no plot to get in the way of the mayhem, WHEELS OF FIRE stands as one of the very best of the low-budget ROAD WARRIOR clones, and Code Red's new Blu-ray (available exclusively through Screen Archives as part of the "Roger Corman Post-Nuke Collection") is as good as it's ever looked. There's short interview segments with Corman, Bailey, and second-unit director Clark Henderson. Among the interesting tidbits is that one Filipino stuntman spent more than a week in the hospital after a stunt gone awry, and Henderson recounting when the crew discovered that Wiesmeier was such a natural behind the wheel that she was allowed to do her own driving, upstaging all of the professional Filipino stunt drivers in the process. WHEELS OF FIRE was the only big-screen lead for Watkins, who was known around Hollywood less for his acting chops and more for being John Belushi's coke dealer. He also had a supporting role in the previous year's JOHNNY DANGEROUSLY and a very small handful of TV and movie gigs after, with IMDb showing nothing after 1998.
EQUALIZER 2000 (US/Philippines - 1987)
Directed by Cirio H. Santiago. Written by Frederick Bailey. Cast: Richard Norton, Corinne Wahl, William Steis, Robert Patrick, Frederick Bailey, Rex Cutter, Warren McLean, Peter Shilton, Vic Diaz, Ramon D'Salva, Henry Strzalkowski, Bobbie Greenwood, Nick Nicholson, Eric Hahn. (R, 88 mins)
Despite some attempts at interjecting some story elements that only serve to slow it down, EQUALIZER 2000 follows the same template as WHEELS OF FIRE, right down to a mid-film appearance by an out-of-nowhere group of post-nuke freaks, in this case, a crew of ululating buffoons who look like Manila's most hopeless faction of the KISS Army. Set in northern Alaska 100 years after the nuclear holocaust has rendered it a scorched-earth wasteland, EQUALIZER 2000 centers on nomadic warrior Slade (Richard Norton) taking on The Ownership, a fanatical militia group that's hoarding water and supplies (just like in STRYKER) and generally making life even more miserable for everyone. When Slade makes off with The Equalizer, a high-tech (at least by Santiago's standards) automatic weapon that also functions as a high-powered bazooka (it's sort-of like a gun nut's version of a Cheap Trick five-necked guitar), psychotic Ownership commander Lawton (William Steis) leads the inevitable pursuit on the way to a solid 30 minutes of gunfire and explosions to cap off the film.
EQUALIZER 2000 is fun, but it's not quite as good as WHEELS OF FIRE. Norton could be a little more engaging, while Steis does a pretty good job as the chief villain. Female lead Corinne Wahl, married to actor Ken Wahl at the time, is better known as Corinne Alphen, 1982 Penthouse Pet of the Year. She plays a character similar to WHEELS' Stinger, and she and Slade get their obligatory tame sex scene. While the usual Santiago and Filipino exploitation regulars appear--Vic Diaz, Henry Strzalkowski, Nick Nicholson, Eric Hahn--the film's most interesting bit of casting is then-rookie Robert Patrick as a secondary bad guy. Patrick was just starting out and knew someone who worked at Roger Corman's office. According to Clark Henderson on the WHEELS Blu-ray, Patrick came in to read for another Corman production (WARLORDS FROM HELL) and it was instantly clear to them that he was a better actor than everyone else in the room. Patrick gained his earliest experience being farmed out by Corman to Santiago, who took an instant liking to the young actor and cast him in both Corman productions (EQUALIZER 2000 and 1987's EYE OF THE EAGLE) and his own solo joints (1986's FUTURE HUNTERS, 1988's BEHIND ENEMY LINES). Patrick also met his wife Barbara, then going by Barbara Hooper, another American on loan to Santiago (they worked together on Santiago's BEHIND ENEMY LINES), and they eventually headed back to Hollywood when he landed a small role in DIE HARD 2 (1990) before his breakthrough as the T-1000 in TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY (1991).
THE SISTERHOOD (US/Philippines - 1988) Directed by Cirio H. Santiago. Written by Thomas McKelvey Cleaver. Cast: Rebecca Holden, Chuck Wagner, Lynn-Holly Johnson, Barbara Hooper, Robert Dryer, Henry Strzalkowski, David Light, Jim Moss, Anthony East, Tom McNeeley, Warren MacLean, Peter Shilton. (R, 92 mins)
WHEELS OF FIRE and EQUALIZER 2000 were not big-budget productions but they were professionally-constructed and made with flair and style, putting forth the effort to make it look good in spite of what little money they had. THE SISTERHOOD, on the other hand, shows some concrete evidence of Corman and Santiago beginning to cut corners. Oddly, of the three initial entries in Code Red's Corman Post-Nuke collection, THE SISTERHOOD has the most plot, but the film is so unbelievably cheap, badly-written, poorly-acted, and straight-up dull that it's easily the least of the trio. Still, it's not without its bad movie charms, set in 2021, several years after "The Final War," as the world is once again a desolate wasteland represented by the same stretch of Filipino desert seen in STRYKER, WHEELS, and EQUALIZER. It's a world dominated by men, where women have been relegated to a commodity, but a group of female warriors called The Sisterhood roams "The Outlands," fulfilling their mission to protect the disenfranchised and the marginalized, and rebel against the brutal patriarchal society. There's some potentially interesting ideas in Thomas McKelvey Cleaver's script, but Santiago is just content to break the same old post-nuke junkers out of storage and drive them around the desert while Jun Latonio's terrible synth score squonks endlessly, sounding like random notes farting out of a defective Casio. Branded as witches by the despotic male rulers, The Sisterhood is led by Alee (KNIGHT RIDER's Rebecca Holden), who teams up with Marya (champion figure skater Lynn-Holly Johnson, a long way from ICE CASTLES and FOR YOUR EYES ONLY), who has a strange psychic connection to a falcon, to rescue captured Sister Vera (Barbara Hooper), who's been abducted by Mikal (AMERICA 3000's Chuck Wagner) for leverage with the post-nuke overlords. Or something to that effect.
Santiago's post-nuke formula is here, right down to the mid-film appearance of a crew of freaks, in this case a bunch of robed mutants chasing Alee and Marya through a "radiation zone." A gust of wind causes the hoods to blow off a couple of the mutants, revealing them to be some normal-looking extras just making idiotic grunting noises. Performances are terrible across the board, though Wagner at least seems to realize he's in a shitty movie and tries to enjoy himself with some vaguely Shatnerian over-emoting (one interesting thing about Wagner that probably helps in his current career in touring Broadway productions is that his actual speaking voice sounds like a dubbed bellowing voice in a 1960s HERCULES movie). SAVAGE STREETS villain Robert Dryer overacts shamelessly as the fey, sneering Lord Barak, a sort-of post-nuke Billy Idol. A strange mix of sword & sorcery, post-nuke, and the supernatural (Alee has telepathic abilities and can shoot lasers from her eyes, but Santiago seems to forget about it until the end of the movie), THE SISTERHOOD is one of the most obscure titles from Corman's Concorde era and isn't nearly as fun as it should be. It's strongly indicative of the difference between '70s Corman and '80s Corman: a '70s Corman production (think of his women-in-prison titles like THE BIG DOLL HOUSE and CAGED HEAT) would've done something with the potential social commentary inherent in the concept. It's also a real slog at an interminable 92 minutes, which is epic by 1988 Corman standards. The Blu-ray contains the overseas version, where the US theatrical and VHS cut ran 75 minutes--the absolute last thing THE SISTERHOOD needs is 17 minutes of additional footage. It may be good for some laughs (watch the sloppy closing credits, where the cast listing changes format midway through), but is really only for die-hard Santiago completists and the most fanatical Henry Strzalkowski stalkers.
STRYKER (Philippines - 1983) Directed by Cirio H. Santiago. Written by Howard Cohen. Cast: Steve Sandor, Andria Savio, William Ostrander, Mike Lane, Ken Metcalfe, Julie Gray, Monique St. Pierre, Joe Zucchero, Jon Harris III. (R, 82 mins) Though Italy was largely ground zero for the 1980s post-nuke ROAD WARRIOR ripoff, it should come as no surprise that Cirio H. Santiago, the undisputed king of Filipino exploitation, wasted no time in getting his own post-apocalyptic saga in theaters when he saw the craze gaining momentum. Santiago (1936-2008) schlepped his way around the Filipino movie industry from the mid-1950s on before finding his niche in drive-in trash after forming a partnership with Roger Corman in the early 1970s. Corman would co-produce and distribute Santiago's Manila-shot T&A actioners like FLY ME (1973) and COVER GIRL MODELS (1975) as well as 1974's immortal T.N.T. JACKSON ("She'll put you in traction!"). Santiago and Corman would part ways by the late '70s as Santiago had some other successes with EBONY, IVORY & JADE (1976), THE MUTHERS (1976), VAMPIRE HOOKERS (1978) and DEATH FORCE (1978). Santiago and Corman reunited for 1981's FIRECRACKER, a remake of T.N.T. JACKSON. By the mid-to-late 1980s, the prolific Santiago was on a roll, with Corman's Concorde Pictures releasing a slew of his post-nukes (1987's EQUALIZER 2000, 1988's THE SISTERHOOD, 1992's DUNE WARRIORS), horror (1987's DEMON OF PARADISE), vigilante exploitation (1985's NAKED VENGEANCE), cop movies (1986's SILK), RAMBO ripoffs (1986's THE DEVASTATOR), post-PLATOON Vietnam sagas (1987's EYE OF THE EAGLE, 1988's NAM ANGELS, 1989's better-than-expected EYE OF THE EAGLE III), and one that was a fusion of everything (1986's insane FUTURE HUNTERS). Santiago slowed down a little in the 1990s, but still had time to crank out several BLOODSPORT knockoffs like the 1993 duo of ANGELFIST (with Vidal Sassoon's karate champ daughter Cat) and LIVE BY THE FIST, and a few more 'Nam offerings that provided jobs for fading American tough guys, such as 1992's BEYOND THE CALL OF DUTY with Jan Michael Vincent, and 1993's KILL ZONE with David Carradine and Dallas Cowboys great Tony Dorsett. By the early 2000s, he was making jingoistic military actioners like 2003's WHEN EAGLES STRIKE, and producing a pair of 2006 films with Mark Dacascos: THE HUNT FOR EAGLE ONE (2006) and its sequel THE HUNT FOR EAGLE ONE: CRASH POINT (2006), which transplanted his Vietnam formula to the post-9/11 era.
Cirio H. Santiago (1936-2008)
Released in September 1983, STRYKER was Santiago's first post-nuke, and one of the last films distributed by the original incarnation of New World Pictures after Corman sold the company that same year. Santiago's style typically didn't concern much beyond getting the film in the can and shipped off to Corman, but with STRYKER, he seems to have taken some care as it demonstrates some of his most accomplished filmmaking. It's not just in the stunt work or the action sequences (Filipino writer/actor Joe Mari Avellana is credited as "associate director"), but Santiago also seems to have gotten access to a Steadicam for a few shots that really show off the barren, desolate look of the mines on the Filipino island of Marinduque (the site of terrible mining tragedy in 1996), which does a very effective job of standing in for a vast, post-nuke wasteland. As much of a shameless and aimless ROAD WARRIOR ripoff as it is, STRYKER stands as one of Santiago's best films, even though it could really use some Vic Diaz.
Even by the standards of the post-nuke ripoff, STRYKER's story is threadbare: years after the nuclear (or, as the opening narrator puts it, "nucular") holocaust, water is the scarcest commodity, and marauding bands of relatively good guys team up to take on the sadistic overlord Kardis (1950s pro wrestler turned B-movie actor/producer Mike Lane), who's bent on hoarding it for himself. A band of scantily-clad female badasses led by Delha (Andria Savio) are part of The Colony, where a natural spring has supplied them with water for years. They reach out to a compound run by Trun (Ken Metcalfe as Tom Atkins), figuring that an alliance between The Colony and Trun will force Kardis to realize he's outnumbered and negotiate a deal that finds them all sharing the spring. Of course, since Kardis is the villain in a post-nuke ripoff, there's no way he'll go along with this pie-in-the-sky bullshit, especially after he's revealed to be a thoroughly tone-deaf post-apocalyptic one-percenter who announces his plan to strictly ration the precious water "for those who contribute" while splashing his face after a refreshing, hot shave. Wandering in and out of the convoluted but somehow still empty story is Stryker (Steve Sandor), the requisite nomadic warrior in a souped-up muscle car. Stryker is Trun's younger brother but branched out on his own because that's just how he rolls. Stryker has a sidekick in Bandit (William Ostrander), who gets a love interest with one of the Colony ladies, but considering the movie is called STRYKER, Stryker doesn't figure much in the action until the climax, when he gets to face Kardis one-on-one and avenge his late wife, who was tortured and beheaded by Kardis years earlier.
Steve Sandor IS Stryker!
Santiago comes storming out of the gate with an opening scene that includes a disemboweling and several shotgun blasts to faces and heads. There's quite a bit of action, constant explosions, and dangerous stunts throughout (there's one impressive chase sequence where Ostrander clearly does his own stunt, falling from the top of a moving rig onto the truck passing by it, and it looks dangerous as hell), but the script by Howard Cohen (SATURDAY THE 14TH, DEATHSTALKER) has too many characters (there's also a group of robed, jabbering dwarves who get a lot of screen time) and almost treats its title hero as an afterthought. That's a shame, because Sandor is well-cast and plays the part with just the right tongue-in-cheek attitude. STRYKER was, for that time anyway, a rare big-screen lead for Sandor, who headlined a couple of late '60s biker movies but was mainly a jobbing journeyman making his living on TV guest spots. Santiago's film came in the midst of a brief renaissance for Sandor, who provided the voice for Darkwolf in Ralph Bakshi's FIRE AND ICE, which opened a week before STRYKER, and a month later, he had a co-starring role on the short-lived Cybill Shepherd/David Soul NBC series THE YELLOW ROSE. Sandor is perhaps best known to cult movie audiences of more refined taste than STRYKER for his role as the leader of a gang of sadistic bikers whose beating and humiliation of a fragile ex-astronaut (Scott Wilson) and his even more unstable shrink (Stacy Keach) kick off what's probably cinema's most harrowing bar fight in William Peter Blatty's THE NINTH CONFIGURATION (1980).
William Ostrander in his best-known role as bullying
Buddy Repperton in John Carpenter's CHRISTINE
A native of Euclid, OH outside of Cleveland, Ostrander also had a voice role in Bakshi's FIRE AND ICE and is best known to genre fans as Buddy Repperton in John Carpenter's CHRISTINE, released three months after STRYKER. As played by Ostrander, Repperton is one of the most memorable movie bullies of the 1980s, but even though the film was a hit and his performance is remembered by fans to this day, Ostrander never capitalized on it and it wasn't long before all of those roles started going to William Zabka (THE KARATE KID, BACK TO SCHOOL) instead. Ostrander plugged away for the rest of the '80s, but fame never materialized. He co-starred in the grim 1985 German-made women-in-prison drama RED HEAT, with Linda Blair and Sylvia Kristel and had a recurring role on KNOTS LANDING in 1986, but he only worked sporadically in the '90s and onward. He had a small role in David Lynch's MULHOLLAND DR. (2001), but he hasn't acted since an episode of ANGEL that same year.
Thai DVD art for WATER WARS
At the time of his death in 2008, Santiago was working on a sequel of sorts to STRYKER, which would be his first time behind the camera since 2005's futuristic kickboxing opus BLOODFIST 2050, an unusually long break for the director. An ill Santiago was battling lung cancer when he died five days into production on ROAD RAIDERS, which would eventually become WATER WARS. The film, starring Michael Madsen because of course it did, was shelved until 2011 when producer Corman brought in his veteran utility man Jim Wynorski to finish Santiago's final project. Wynorski shot new scenes and assembled what he could out of what Santiago managed to get done, and relied on copious amounts of stock footage from STRYKER and other Santiago post-nukes to fill in the gaps. All told, about 20-25 minutes of WATER WARS' 78-minute running time is stock footage from movies that were nearly 30 years old, featuring characters who have nothing to do with WATER WARS. The resulting patchwork, which has been charitably described as ranging from "amateurish" to "unwatchable," seems to have been shelved permanently by Corman as far as actual release is concerned, and has only been seen by a small number of masochists relying on the bootleg and torrent circuit. Its only official release thus far has been as a straight-to-DVD title in Thailand in 2014, the kind of under-the-radar rollout usually reserved for snuff films on the sex traveler and human trafficking circuit.
LETHAL LADIES COLLECTION 2 is the latest in Shout Factory's impressive "Roger Corman's Cult Classics" line, focusing on Corman's work as a producer/distributor with his New World Pictures in the 1970s and Concorde in the 1980s. While Vol. 2 doesn't reach the delirious heights of LETHAL LADIES 1's TNT JACKSON ("She'll put you in traction!") and FIRECRACKER, there's still plenty of drive-in action and skin to keep any exploitation fan satisfied.
THE ARENA (Italy/US - 1974)
The first film in the set is easily the best. THE ARENA (aka NAKED WARRIORS) is a sort of ancient Rome/feminist take on SPARTACUS with a bit of THE DEFIANT ONES as a band of sexy slave girls, led by Margaret Markov and Pam Grier, become female gladiators and lead a revolt against the asshole men in charge. Corman co-financed THE ARENA with Rome-based American actor/producer Mark Damon, and supplied the stars (Markov and Grier both had a recent hit with 1973's BLACK MAMA, WHITE MAMA), the script, and director Steve Carver, and Damon supplied the Italian crew and Italian supporting cast. So there's an interesting mix of talent in front of and behind the camera: co-stars Paul Muller, Rosalba Neri, Lucretia Love, Salvatore Baccaro, and Vassili Karis, composer Francesco De Masi and cinematographer Aristide Massaccesi (aka Joe D'Amato) are no strangers to fans of Eurotrash cult movies, nor are the familiar voices dubbing the cast (Italian films of the time were shot without direct sound, requiring post-production dubbing, and the perpetually miserly Corman didn't want to pay to have Markov and Grier fly back to Rome to record their dialogue, so Grier and Markov are both dubbed). Carver, a veteran second-unit director for Corman, was given his first shot at directing here, and when THE ARENA proved successful at grindhouses and drive-ins, Corman rewarded him by giving him the same year's BIG BAD MAMA, which was one of New World's biggest hits. THE ARENA is presented in a nice 2.35:1 transfer and is filled with special features: Carver supplies a director's commentary, and is seen in a retrospective doc that also features Corman, and Damon & Markov, who met on the set on THE ARENA and have been married since. (R, 82 mins)
FLY ME (US/Philippines - 1973)
Cirio H. Santiago's FLY ME is filled with the Filipino exploitation auteur's usual touches: gratuitous T&A, terrible acting, inept action sequences, a near-total disregard for continuity, and US-shot inserts that are far more entertaining than the stuff he himself filmed. In this case, Corman had a young Jonathan Demme shoot additional action sequences in L.A. Nowhere is this more apparent than in a scene taking place in Tokyo...with the Hollywood sign visible in the distance. The threadbare plot involves the escapades of three stewardesses (Pat Anderson, Lenore Kasdorf, Lyllah Torena) in the Far East. A badly-jumbled mix of action, kung-fu, sexploitation, grim sex-trade drama, and broad comedy, FLY ME runs just 72 minutes but feels twice as long. The worst element is Anderson's overprotective Italian-American mother (Naomi Stevens), who tags along on her daughter's flight and keeps cockblocking a doctor's (Richard Young) attempts to get in Anderson's pants, and shouting "Mamma mia!" at the slightest provocation. Features Santiago fixtures Vic Diaz and Ken Metcalfe, as well as the venerable Dick Miller as a cabbie in one of the L.A.-shot scenes. The print is 1.78:1 and pretty beat up, but why would you want it any other way? FLY ME is bad, but it's a fun bad, and no doubt served its purpose at drive-ins with the window speakers cranked in 1973: something to drown out the noise of couples screwing in their cars. (R, 72 mins)
COVER GIRL MODELS (US/Philippines - 1975)
Santiago again, and this is a bit more entertaining than FLY ME. Three women again, this time models (Pat Anderson again, plus Lindsay Bloom and Tara Strohmeier) getting involved in espionage after a microfilm is sewn into one of their dresses while on a photo shoot in Hong Kong. It's all an excuse for inept kung-fu and nudity, so on those terms, it's a success. The plot is confusing as hell and I doubt Santiago or screenwriter Howard R. Cohen know (or care) what's going on. The leads are lot more likable in this one (though Anderson was also appealing and maybe the best thing about FLY ME) and a lot of the humor is legitimately amusing. Plus, this only feels about one and a half times longer than its 73-minute run time. Features the ubiquitous Vic Diaz and Ken Metcalfe yet again. The transfer is 1.78:1 and not as battered as FLY ME, but pretty close. (R, 73 mins)
