MOON IN SCORPIO (US - 1987) Directed by Gary Graver. Written by Robert S. Aiken. Cast: Britt Ekland, John Phillip Law, William Smith, Lewis Van Bergen, April Wayne, Robert Quarry, Jillian Kesner, James Booth, Donna Kei Benz, Don Scribner, Bruno Marcotulli (R, 87 mins) "Moon in Scorpio...what does it mean?" That's the question asked by strait-jacketed heroine Linda (Britt Ekland) at the beginning of MOON IN SCORPIO, and like her, you still won't have an answer when it's over. One of the worst slasher films of the 1980s, MOON IN SCORPIO, just out on Blu-ray from Scorpion (because physical media is dead), squanders a more-than-capable B-movie cast in an amateurishly-shot and excruciatingly dull mishmash from director Gary Graver. A veteran cinematographer on drive-in and grindhouse fare going back to the 1960s--in his early days, he was part of the Al Adamson stock company, shooting SATAN'S SADISTS and DRACULA VS. FRANKENSTEIN before moving on to some New World-era Roger Corman productions--Graver (1938-2006) would occasionally helm mainstream exploitation like the 1981 Cameron Mitchell trucker actioner TEXAS LIGHTNING and the HALLOWEEN-inspired 1982 slasher film TRICK OR TREATS, in addition to having a long career directing hardcore porn under the name "Robert McCallum." But to present-day film nerds, he's best-known for his association with Orson Welles in the 1970s, which has earned him a certain degree of cred in cineaste circles. Graver struck up a friendship with Welles after contacting him out of the blue and expressing a desire to work for him. This occurred in early 1970 when the auteur was beginning work on THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND, which wouldn't be completed and released until 2018, long after Welles, Graver, and a good chunk of the creative and acting personnel passed on. Graver was a loyal Welles inner-circler in this latter phase of Welles' life and career, serving as an assistant and uncredited co-director on 1973's F FOR FAKE and other assorted projects left in various states of completion. Happy to be an apprentice to a master and correctly assuming he wouldn't be getting paid, Graver made ends meet by taking cinematography and directing gigs where he could get them, eventually relying on the hardcore porn industry to pay the bills. At one point during THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND's on-again/off-again production that lasted until 1976, Welles gifted Graver the Oscar he won for co-writing 1941's CITIZEN KANE, which Graver held on to until he reached a financially-strapped period of his life in the 1990s and sold it for $50,000, a move that eventually led to him being sued by Welles' daughter Beatrice.
Graver with his mentor Orson Welles
Until his death, Graver was one of many people involved in the long completion process of the infamously unfinished THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND. Welles died in 1985, and Graver probably could've used his help on MOON IN SCORPIO, a dismal slasher outing co-produced by '80s B action stalwart Fred Olen Ray (ARMED RESPONSE, CYCLONE). It was released straight-to-video in late 1987 with some admittedly great artwork on the VHS box that could be found in any video store well into the '90s. As was the case with his mercurial mentor on so many of his own projects, Graver clashed with the money men--in this case Trans-World Entertainment head Moshe Diamant--during the film's production and eventually had the film taken away from him in post, which was probably a Welles-ian badge of honor. Diamant didn't like the supernatural angle of the script by Robert S. Aiken (an unsuccessful flash-in-the-pan actor briefly known as "Ford Dunhill" in the late '50s when he was being groomed as a Rock Hudson clone for about an hour and a half before appearing under his real name in a couple of Russ Meyer films a decade later), and instructed Graver to make it a straight-up slasher movie. When Graver disregarded his marching orders, Diamant recut the film in his absence, resulting in complete incoherence, though it's really hard to imagine MOON IN SCORPIO being good even under the most ideal circumstances.
The plot has Ekland's Linda in a psych ward, babbling about a ghost ship after being found alone on an abandoned yacht. She tells attending shrink Dr. Khorda (Robert Quarry) that she was on the yacht for her honeymoon with her husband Allen (John Phillip Law), who surprised her on their wedding day with...a trip on a yacht with his Vietnam buddies Burt (William Smith) and Mark (Lewis Van Bergen, looking like SNL-era Dennis Miller) and their annoying girlfriends? Linda is understandably puzzled, especially as Allen has had a fear of water since the war, and still struggles with PTSD from an incident involving Burt murdering a Vietnamese woman in cold blood. Mark's much-younger squeeze Isabel (April Wayne) constantly reminds everyone that "The moon is in Scorpio, you know," while Burt and his booze-swilling girlfriend Claire (Graver's wife Jillian Kesner, star of FIRECRACKER and RAW FORCE) seem to be lost in their own community theater version of WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? If MOON IN SCORPIO accomplishes nothing else (and trust me, it doesn't), you at least get to hear the wonderfully gravelly Smith, who constantly sounds like he's gargling glass shards, grunt to a frequently-topless Kesner, "Hey, lay off the hooch, will ya?" thus saving it from complete ruin.
It takes about 45 of the film's 87 minutes before they're even on the yacht, and eventually, they find themselves being offed one-by-one by a possible stowaway, a knife-and-harpoon-wielding maniac. Apparently, Graver's initial cut, from Aiken's script, dealt with the trip being haunted by the vengeful spirit of the dead Vietnamese woman. That's vaguely hinted at here and in the scenes with Ekland and Quarry, where she's talking about the yacht being possessed. But none of that means anything since Diamant turned it into a Namsploitation-tinged slasher movie that offers some over-the-top gore but little in the way of suspense, since it's pretty easy to figure out the killer by simple process of elimination. Ekland was never mistaken for a great actress in her prime, though she could always get by (she was in THE WICKER MAN, after all), but still, she's terrible here, and she gets no help from the laughable dialogue ("My honeymoon turned out to be a nightmare...on a death ship!"). Much of the time, MOON IN SCORPIO resembles an L.A.-shot Jess Franco film, complete with glaring gaffes (watch Kesner fill her gin glass she just filled in the previous shot and say the same line of dialogue over again, and Van Bergen's name is misspelled "Louis" in the credits), bizarre supporting characters (why are James Booth and Donna Kei Benz even in this?) and a flashback Vietnam skirmish--augmented by grainy, mismatched, decades-old documentary combat stock footage (in 19-fucking-87!)--looks like it was hastily staged in a park down the street from Graver's house. There's one big laugh that's probably intentional (a weirdo private eye played by Don Scribner is made out to be a total badass and gets harpooned about ten seconds after he's introduced), and Smith and Kesner are trying to make something out of nothing, and while MOON IN SCORPIO looks better than it has any business looking on this strong candidate for the Buyer's Remorse Blu-ray of 2019, this is decidedly not a long-buried classic that's been patiently waiting to be discovered, no matter how tight Gary Graver was with Orson Welles.
Despite the title, this isn't a sixth installment of the long-running Tom Berenger action franchise. Instead, it's another "Steven Seagal" movie where the 64-year-old star and co-executive producer does as little as possible, is always shot solo and never directly interacting with his co-stars, and is obviously doubled in any shot where his face isn't visible. Indeed, there's several instances here of Seagal's double using props--and in one instance, actually holding up his hand--to obscure his face as he exits a room or walks away. Filmed on some still-standing sets from AMERICAN SNIPER at the Blue Cloud Movie Ranch facility in California, SNIPER: SPECIAL OPS is written and directed by exploitation vet Fred Olen Ray who, like his contemporary Jim Wynorski, almost could've had a big(ish) career in the 1980s but has instead dabbled in any number of DTV genres under a plethora of pseudonyms. On the commentary--yes, this actually has a commentary--Ray talks of this being a return to the style of his '80s action movies like ARMED RESPONSE and that it was a special project for him, but it's really just a blatant ripoff of ACT OF VALOR (Ray says his original draft of the script was titled HOUR OF VALOR). Seagal and pro wrestler Rob Van Dam have their last names above the title (I guess hoping to confuse Redbox rubes who don't follow wrestling and don't know how to spell "Van Damme"), but the real star is third-billed Tim Abell, a Ray regular who's been carving out a living on the fringes of D-list DTV since the early '90s when he headlined a number of erotic thrillers and the syndicated series SOLDIER OF FORTUNE INC. A gravelly-voiced and DUCK DYNASTY-bearded Abell is Sgt. Vic Mosby, the head of an Army special ops unit that rescues a US senator taken hostage by Taliban insurgents. Two of their unit--sniper Jake Taylor (Seagal) and his spotter Rich Cannon (Daniel Booko)--are left behind in the skirmish, with young Rich shot and unable to feel his legs. Back at the base, the commander (ex-Marine and go-to movie military advisor Dale Dye, who's had better assignments) assigns Mosby and his men, among them second-in-command Vasquez (Van Dam), to head into dangerous territory to retrieve a stranded military truck filled with explosives and fuel.
Of course, there's extensive firefights with terrorists, who aren't after the truck as much as they are the person in the truck, Jada (Rita Khori), the daughter-in-law of a major Taliban leader. Jada has renounced her terrorist ties and is trying to find safe passage with the Americans for herself and her infant son, which makes Mosby a bit more grumbly than usual, as does the presence of stowaway photojournalist Janet (Charlene Amoia). Mosby hatches a plan to use Jada as leverage to ensure the safe release of Taylor and Cannon, who are still holed up and under siege where Mosby was forced to leave them behind. In other words, what you have with SNIPER: SPECIAL OPS, is really a Tim Abell movie where he tries to rescue Steven Seagal. Seagal's laziness is rivaled only by Bruce Willis, and he's in SNIPER: SPECIAL OPS even less than he is his more recent "efforts." Seagal's amusing performance in 2014's GUTSHOT STRAIGHT was a good indication that he could have a credible career as a character actor if he gave a shit, but all the hallmarks of modern-day Seagal are on display in SNIPER: SPECIAL OPS: the barely-concealed double, the mumbling, fake N'awlins accent, the mid-film sabbatical where he's gone for somewhere around 20-25 minutes of screen time. I guess SNIPER: SPECIAL OPS isn't bad as much as it is by-the-numbers. Ray's handling of the action scenes is perfunctory at best, with a 15-minute opening sequence that should have you on the edge of your seat but never builds any momentum and just meanders on its way to nowhere. Abell does what's expected of him but none of these characters are interesting and we don't really get invested in anything they're doing. It's a standard, undemanding, streaming-ready, jingoistic military actioner with a lot of "Roger, sir!" and "Copy that!" and "Let's go!" and "You got it, Sergeant!" Seagal is practically a non-factor in what's being sold as a Seagal movie, and nothing sums that up more succinctly than Ray saying almost nothing about him on the commentary, probably because he has yet to actually meet him. (R, 86 mins) REMEMBER
(Canada/Germany - 2015)
The wildly inconsistent Atom Egoyan is so far removed from his 1990s EXOTICA and THE SWEET HEREAFTER heyday that it's best to approach his new films with diminished expectations. He's been working at a fairly steady pace the last few years, with 2014's pointless West Memphis Three misfire DEVIL'S KNOT and the same year's missing child thriller THE CAPTIVE, which started good but got increasingly goofy as it went along. With REMEMBER, it's goofy pretty much from the start, its story so distant from any plausible reality that, given its subject matter, it's almost admirably tacky in its execution, In a nursing home in New York, 90-year-old Zev Guttman (Christopher Plummer) is a recent widower suffering from early-onset dementia. Zev is an Auschwitz survivor, like fellow facility resident Max Rosenbaum (Martin Landau). Max has to remind Zev of a plan they intended to carry out once Zev's cancer-stricken wife passed: to find and kill the Nazi blockfuhrer who ran their section of the concentration camp. The blockfuhrer goes by the name "Rudy Kurlander," and though Max, who has dedicated his life to tracking down former Nazis, has located four elderly men with that name living in the US, he's now confined to a wheelchair, hindered by emphysema, and too ill to do it himself. He gives Zev a detailed letter and a pile of cash and sends him to Cleveland, where that Rudy Kurlander (Bruno Ganz) turns out to be the wrong guy. Zev will venture through Michigan into Ontario, Canada and back into the US to Reno on his quest for the other three Rudy Kurlanders, the second being surprisingly poignant and heartfelt before Egoyan and first-time screenwriter Benjamin August (a former casting director on the reality show FEAR FACTOR) hop on the crazy train, turning REMEMBER into a bizarre and strangely compelling exercise in discomfort and disbelief, sort of what you'd get if you dropped Simon Wiesenthal into a DEATH WISH or HARRY BROWN scenario. There's a twist ending you'll probably see coming, a sweating Zev getting trapped in a place he shouldn't be and pissing himself while blowing an anti-Semite's brains out, and the great Jurgen Prochnow (as a Rudy Kurlander) sporting what might be the least convincing old-age makeup ever seen in a movie.
From the moment a visibly scattered Zev walks into a Cleveland gun shop and effortlessly walks out with a Glock, REMEMBER is pretty much full of shit but scores a few points for chutzpah. On top of that, the specific reminders in Max's letter and Zev writing "Read letter" on his arm seem too indebted to MEMENTO and it doesn't seem likely that a frail Alzheimer's patient can Leonard Shelby his way across the country on a mission of vengeance. Committed performances give this a lot more class than the story can possibly offer, with an excellent Plummer apparently under the impression that he's in an old-school Egoyan film, carrying this on his shoulders and reminding us what a great actor he's been all these years. Landau is fine in his few scenes, and Ganz and Prochnow have little more than cameos, much like the second Rudy Kurlander (Heinz Lieven), who's memorable even with very little dialogue. Henry Czerny plays Zev's concerned son who spends the entire movie trying to find him, and Dean Norris has a small role in the film's darkest and most over-the-top segment, at least until the surprise reveal in the finale. Egoyan bungles things by adding one more scene after where it should've ended, almost like he didn't trust the audience to figure out the machinations of a key character and had to explicitly spell it out for them. I'm not sure whether that's a sign of Egoyan's slipping as a filmmaker or him recognizing that he needed to dumb it down for audiences that might not be as sharp as they were circa EXOTICA. REMEMBER is better than Egoyan's most recent films, but that's a pretty low bar. He hasn't made a recognizably "Egoyan" film since 2008's ADORATION, and REMEMBER finds him in what's best described as his "trashy pulp paperback" mode, along with the sleazy, NC-17-rated WHERE THE TRUTH LIES or the laughably dated CHLOE, a decade-and-a-half-too-late contribution to the 1990s erotic thriller cycle. REMEMBER is better than those films, for what that's worth, and that's largely because of Plummer, who probably shook his head at some of the scenes as he read the script for the first time, but still gives it everything he's got. (R, 94 mins) EMELIE
(US - 2016)
Directed by veteran live concert DVD director Michael Thelin and written by J.J. Abrams protege Richard Raymond Harry Herbeck (is all that necessary?), EMELIE works best in its ballsy early stages, where it seems like it's willing to go into some pretty dark places (there's also a cringe-inducing scene of young Christopher playing with Joe's gun that Emelie found in a closet and left out). But it starts collapsing midway through, with Emelie's motivation being traumatic but handled in a much stronger fashion in the very disturbing PROXY from a couple of years ago. Once the pieces are in place, it's ultimately nothing more than HOME ALONE re-imagined as an R-rated psychological/home invasion thriller, with the smart Emelie suddenly required to do stupid things in order to keep the story moving. But all that's just a warm-up for the climax, which kicks off with her accomplice doing something so impulsive and recklessly idiotic that it undermines all of the careful planning they've done, all leading up to a dumb non-ending that lands with a resounding thud. Bolger is terrific as the psychotic Emelie, and young Rush does a solid job as a pre-teen just starting to rebel (and explore other things, as Joe expresses concern to Joyce about the boy's web browsing history) and stepping up to protect his younger siblings. Thelin and Richard Harris Raymond Burr Tom Dick Harry Dean Stanton Herbeck offer an intriguing set-up (even though we're not sure how Emelie knows Anna or that she'd be filling in for her friend at the Thompsons, but it's not really a necessary detail) that becomes increasingly ordinary and dumb as it fizzles to its conclusion. (Unrated, 82 mins)
A year after playing memorable bad guy Mr. Joshua in the smash hit LETHAL WEAPON and about six months before the motorcycle accident that would be the first step in turning him into a walking punchline, Gary Busey got to headline the ridiculous LETHAL WEAPON ripoff BULLETPROOF. Trying and failing to introduce the pejorative "butthorn" into the lexicon ("Your worst nightmare, butthorn!"), Busey--an Academy Award-nominee a decade earlier for THE BUDDY HOLLY STORY--is Frank "Bulletproof" McBain, a sax-playing, renegade L.A. cop who plays by his own rules, prompting his straight-arrow partner Roger Murtaugh, er, I mean, Billy Dunbar (Thalmus Rasulala) to go through his entire allowance of "Dammit, McBain!"'s in the first five minutes of the movie. Bulletproof is such a badass that he has a collection of self-removed bullets he keeps in a jar in his medicine cabinet (you see, because he's "Bulletproof"). Bulletproof turns out to be ex-CIA, and he's called back into action when a military convoy in Mexico is taken over by a generic consortium of Arab and Latin American terrorists led by Col. Kartiff (Henry Silva). Kartiff wants what the convoy is transporting--a high-tech, experimental supertank called the MBT Thunderblast. Of course, among the military officers taken hostage is Devon (Darlanne Fluegel), who happens to Bulletproof's one-that-got-away. She was also the ex of his old CIA partner, who was killed by a Russian goon (William Smith, essentially playing the same role he did in RED DAWN), now a Soviet general in cahoots with Kartiff.
BULLETPROOF shifts into RAMBO III territory midway through, with Bulletproof making his way to Mexico to rescue the hostages and commandeer the MBT Thunderblast, stopping just short of draping himself in the American flag to take on the commies and the "Ay-rabs," as R.G. Armstrong's CIA honcho calls them. Armstrong, L.Q. Jones, and Luke Askew turn up in supporting roles, adding further evidence to support my hypothesis that the three grizzled character actors shared a house with a Three Stooges-style triple-stacked bunk bed and got gigs in B-movies as a package deal. It can't be a coincidence that BULLETPROOF is as absurd as any of Rainier Wolfcastle's MCBAIN vehicles on THE SIMPSONS, but it also helps that McBain is just a great name for a pissed-off police captain to shout, as Lincoln Kilpatrick (in the blustering Frank McRae role) gets to do with an early "Cut the shit, McBain!" BULLETPROOF has to be one of the most sublimely stupid action films of the 1980s, and even though it bombed in theaters in the summer of 1988, it's a great crowd movie, filled with idiotic one-liners ("Bird season's over, butthorn!" Bulletproof declares before blowing three dudes away), over-the-top action scenes (a getaway ice-cream truck explodes, Bulletproof screeches to a halt in the chase car, cue the '80s sax lick), and stereotypical, one-dimensional evildoers (Islamic extremists! Commies! Mexicans!) straight out of the deepest recesses of a Donald Trump voter's spank bank. Fred Olen Ray was originally set to direct--he retains a story and associate producer credit--but was replaced by veteran action guy Steve Carver (BIG BAD MAMA, AN EYE FOR AN EYE, LONE WOLF MCQUADE) just prior to filming. Also with Rene Enriquez, Mills Watson, Lydie Denier, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Danny Trejo, and Juan Fernandez, aka "that shitbag Duke" from Charles Bronson's KINJITE. The awesome BULLETPROOF is a must-see and is right up there with 1986's EYE OF THE TIGER as essential B-movie Busey, butthorn! (R, 94 mins)
Shout! Factory is back with another impressive collection of back-in-the-day video store fixtures from their MGM licensing deal, now available in anamorphic widescreen transfers at the incredible list price of $9.99 for four movies over two discs. With only one total clunker in the set, this is one of the must-have genre DVDs of the year. Disc 1 is a double shot of exploitation icon Fred Olen Ray with CYCLONE (1987) and ALIENATOR (1990), while disc 2 is the Gary Busey actioner EYE OF THE TIGER (1986) and the vigilante sequel EXTERMINATOR 2 (1984), which also features a commentary track with director Mark Buntzman and co-star Mario Van Peebles.
CYCLONE (US - 1987)
Heather Thomas had just finished a five-season run on the Lee Majors TV series THE FALL GUY when she got to headline her own big-screen action film with this enjoyably dumb Fred Olen Ray joint. The extremely prolific Ray has cranked out about 130 movies over the last 30 years but the mid-to-late '80s found him at a weird crossroads where he almost could've had a major Hollywood breakthrough. These days, he's responsible--under a variety of pseudonyms, much like fellow almost-famous '80s genre vet Jim Wynorski--for a lot of those not-quite-pornos you see on Cinemax and the specialty HBO channels around 2:30 am. Minus the gift of writing, he was doing the Quentin Tarantino thing with casting your has-been heroes about a decade before it was cool. In addition to providing work for the usual suspects like David Carradine and Bo Svenson, Ray's earliest efforts featured the likes of Buster Crabbe and John Carradine. Thomas capably carries CYCLONE, but gets a ton of support from one of the strangest casts of any low-budget B-grade '80s action flick. Teri (Thomas) finds herself pursued by government agents and hired assassins when her tech-head boyfriend Rick (RE-ANIMATOR's Jeffrey Combs) is killed over the Cyclone, a top-secret super-cycle he's developing that runs on converted hydrogen and could feasibly put an end to reliance on traditional fuel. Teri takes off with the Cyclone, with ruthless killer Rolf (legendary stuntman Dar Robinson) and his psycho sidekick Henna (Ray's then-wife Dawn Wildsmith), plus two government agents (Martine Beswicke and COUNT YORGA's Robert Quarry) close behind. Pulling the strings from behind the scenes is mysterious big shot Bosarian (Martin Landau, just before his TUCKER/CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS comeback), who's promised the Cyclone to a Japanese crime organization. Also with Troy Donahue, Russ Tamblyn, Huntz Hall as a pervy old motorcycle parts dealer, Ashley Ferrare, Tim Conway, Jr., the punk/metal band Haunted Garage, and Michael Reagan, making CYCLONE the only low-budget action cheapie of the 1980s to co-star a son of the sitting US President.
CYCLONE is dedicated to Robinson, who was killed shortly after the film wrapped in the fall of 1986, performing a routine stunt for the 1987 bomb MILLION DOLLAR MYSTERY. He was filming a driving stunt, missed a turn, and drove off a cliff. The famed stuntman was just 39 years old. With films like CYCLONE and, earlier, Burt Reynolds' STICK (1985), where he played a psychotic albino henchman, Robinson was trying to break into character parts and with his imposing presence, likely would've succeeded. With Robinson onboard, it's no surprise that Ray shows off some spectacular stunts, car chases, and explosions in CYCLONE, and though it's nothing close to a great movie, let it be said that even on a cost-cutting project like this, Ray's action sequences still look better than a good chunk of the CGI silliness that moviegoers inexplicably accept in $100 million movies today. (R, 86 mins)
ALIENATOR (US - 1990)
Another Ray film, this one a D-grade sci-fi outing that's already several notches below CYCLONE quality-wise. Shot in 1988 but unreleased until 1990, ALIENATOR feels like three films edited into one, and none are particularly interesting. On a distant planet, death row prisoner Kol (Ross Hagen) escapes into a pod and crashes on Earth. The prison commander (Jan- Michael Vincent) sends a cyborg soldier called the Alienator (female bodybuilder Teagan Clive) to retrieve him. Meanwhile, on Earth, Kol is clipped by an RV filled with four obnoxious vacationers who take him to the nearest ranger station, run by Ward (John Phillip Law), as the Alienator chases them in circles through Topanga State Park. ALIENATOR has a great cast of veteran B-movie and TV actors--there's also P.J. Soles, Hoke Howell, Fox Harris (in his last role; he died in 1988 and the film is dedicated to him), Robert Clarke, Robert Quarry, DAY OF THE DEAD's Joe Pilato, Ray regulars Dawn Wildsmith and Jay Richardson, and a spirited turn by Leo V. Gordon as a crusty old war vet who helps Ward battle the Alienator--and a pro like Law actually appears to be taking this seriously, but other than the fun cast, ALIENATOR just stinks. Lousy special effects, terrible acting by the younger cast members (Wildsmith and Richard Wiley, as the beer-guzzling RV driver, are especially bad), mumbling apathy from Vincent, and plodding pacing kill it, and an irritating score by Chuck Cirino gives it the distinct aura of a bottom end Roger Corman/Concorde release from that era. The one outright dud in this set, ALIENATOR isn't even an entertaining bad movie. It's just bad. (R, 93 mins)
EYE OF THE TIGER (US - 1986)
The modern-day western EYE OF THE TIGER was in and out of theaters in a week back in the fall of 1986, but don't let that fool you: it's really a shame that this low-budget, testosterone-heavy actioner isn't better known. While the title was merely an excuse for Scotti Bros. Pictures to trot out Scotti Bros. Records artist Survivor's 1982 chart-topper "Eye of the Tiger" one more time as if ROCKY III never happened, the movie itself kicks all kinds of ass. Gary Busey is recently-paroled ex-con Buck Matthews, a Vietnam vet who ended up serving time over a self-defense killing. Buck just wants to head back to his small Texas hometown and lead a quiet life with his wife Christie (Denise Galik) and young daughter Jenny (Judith Barsi, who would die tragically in 1988 when she and her mother were murdered by her father, who then killed himself), but with the corrupt sheriff (Seymour Cassel) who trumped up his murder charge acting as his parole officer, things aren't going to be easy. Buck saves a local nurse from being gang-raped by a group of vicious, drug-running bikers led by Blade (William Smith), who retaliates by killing Christie and putting a catatonic Jenny in the hospital. With the sheriff on Blade's payroll and the townfolk too cowardly to help, Buck is forced to take on Blade and his psychos alone, but gets some help from buddy J.B. (Yaphet Kotto).
How evil is Blade's gang? Not only do they kill Buck's wife, but then they dig up her casket and leave it in his driveway. Other highlights include Buck stretching wire across a road and decapitating some speeding bikers, and later, torturing another by shoving a stick of dynamite up his ass and lighting the fuse. Director Richard C. Sarafian (VANISHING POINT), who previously worked with Busey on 1973's Rod Steiger vs. Robert Ryan hillbilly feud drama LOLLY-MADONNA XXX and 1984's Bear Bryant biopic THE BEAR, stages some impressive explosions and stunt work, and Busey, two years before a head injury in a motorcycle accident began his slow and painful transformation into a reality show punchline (he's an Oscar-nominated actor, folks), is in top form. EYE OF THE TIGER isn't a Cannon film but it sure feels like one, and seeing it again after 25+ years, it's an absolute blast and a great example of what a fun and fast-moving B-grade action flick should be. (R, 92 mins)
EXTERMINATOR 2 (US - 1984)
Four years after the surprise box office success of the 1980 vigilante thriller THE EXTERMINATOR came the sequel, only this time the dynamic duo of Golan & Globus got involved. Without the original film's writer/director James Glickenhaus on board, Cannon had EXTERMINATOR producer Mark Buntzman handle the directing chores, and to say it didn't work out is an understatement: Buntzman was fired during filming and Cannon moved the production from NYC to Los Angeles as William Sachs (1977's THE INCREDIBLE MELTING MAN, 1979's VAN NUYS BLVD, 1980's GALAXINA) was brought in rewrite part of the script and to finish directing the film. As a result, EXTERMINATOR 2 exhibits all the tell-tale signs of a troubled production: choppy editing, mismatched shots, obvious stock footage, continuity errors, superfluous padding, blatant gaffes (co-star Frankie Faison looks straight into the camera twice in one scene) and most noticeably, the complete absence of star Robert Ginty for the last 20 minutes of the film. When Buntzman was fired, Ginty left as well, and Sachs had to somehow shoot major sequences in order to finish and salvage a film without access to its star, and it's dealt with in classic Fake Shemp fashion by having Ginty's John Eastland either shot from behind or above or spending entire scenes hiding behind a welding mask, even when he's just running around (two stuntmen are credited with doubling Ginty). That, coupled with the laughably cheap sets and obvious low budget (there's a nightclub set in this that's almost as chintzy as the bar with folding chairs in SAVAGE STREETS), pretty much dooms EXTERMINATOR 2 from the start, and while it really pales in comparison to the first film, it's moderately entertaining trash if you're in the right mood and approach it with the lowest possible expectations. Eastland is still taking out NYC's trash as a flamethrowing vigilante by night and runs afoul of a cartoonish street gang that seems to have wandered in from the set of an Italian post-nuke outing, and is led by the ruthless X (Mario Van Peebles, giving it his all in an early role). When X's goons attack Eastland's dancer girlfriend (Deborah Geffner) and his buddy Be Gee (Faison), Eastland fortifies Be Gee's garbage truck into a ridiculous high-tech tank and takes on X and his gang at the requisite abandoned factory.
THE EXTERMINATOR is a great example of a grindhouse film with complex characters that holds up very well, but EXTERMINATOR 2 dates pretty badly (need to add a few minutes to the running time? Then have Ginty and Geffner walk through Central Park and watch some breakdancers) and isn't helped by behind-the-scenes problems that are all too apparent in the finished product. A while back, Cannon expert and genre historian Paul Talbot wrote a terrific piece on the EXTERMINATOR films for an issue of Screem that does a far better job of detailing the behind-the-scenes discord of EXTERMINATOR 2 than the wasted opportunity of a commentary track does here. Buntzman and Van Peebles talk a lot of trivia, like Van Peebles going into how he put his character's wardrobe together and Buntzman saying he's the one who talked Golan & Globus into making the breakdancing epic BREAKIN' ("but they made it without me") or that he "rode around with garbagemen" while prepping for the movie. There's long silences and comments that are left hanging (Buntzman: "a lot of ideas from this ended up in THE TERMINATOR," and "Bob (Ginty) had a sweet side. He had a really angry side, but he had a sweet side, too") with no follow-up or explanation. Or, after a particularly long space of dead air, Buntzman says "It's interesting to watch this again...it's like I'm just watching the movie." Van Peebles: "Yeah, it is interesting." The two men barely talk about Ginty and both get Geffner's name wrong (calling her "Deborah Geffen"). The backstory of EXTERMINATOR 2 is far more interesting than the film itself, but it's a story that neither Buntzman nor Van Peebles--who have remained friends through the years as Buntzman has had small roles in several of Van Peebles' subsequent directing efforts, and Van Peebles mentions Buntzman is godfather to one of his kids--appear interested in telling. Buntzman says something about when "we moved the production out to L.A.," and how Ginty is doubled in the climax because "we didn't have him," but Buntzman was fired by that point. At one point, Van Peebles mentions Cannon, and Buntzman chuckles "I haven't even gotten into that yet," and he never does. Buntzman's firing and replacement by Sachs is never mentioned, even when the closing credits kick off with "Additional scenes directed by William Sachs." I suppose it's possible some of this was discussed in the long silences and maybe the comments were edited out, but if the rest of the track is any indication, these guys just don't have much of anything substantive to say about EXTERMINATOR 2 and the commentary is ultimately a waste of time. The film itself, despite its many issues, still has some sleazy grindhouse charm to it, though it's quite a step down from its predecessor. (R, 89 mins)
