WHITE FIRE (Turkey/UK/France - 1984; US release 1985) Directed by Jean-Marie Pallardy. Written by Edward John Francis. Cast: Robert Ginty, Fred Williamson, Belinda Mayne, Jess Hahn, Mirella Banti, Diana Goodman, Gordon Mitchell, Benito Stefanelli, Jean-Marie Pallardy. (Unrated, 102 mins) You know you're in for something special when you're watching a Turkish co-production and an establishing shot caption can't even spell "Istanbul" correctly. I must've looked at the box for the 1984 actioner WHITE FIRE a thousand times at the video store back in the day and never pulled the trigger on renting it. It's just been released on Blu-ray by Arrow (because physical media is dead) and in these unprecedented times of great uncertainty, it actually warms my heart to discover a small miracle like WHITE FIRE exists and to realize that there are still some movies out there that have the ability to leave me awestruck with wonder, mouth agape, asking questions like "What the fuck is this?" "Am I imagining this movie, because it can't possibly be happening, can it?" and "Was this made by human beings from planet Earth?" Also, for reasons that will become clear, any mention of "White Fire" in any capacity will henceforth be immediately followed with a italicized "White Fi-yaaa!" You can make a drinking game out of how many times someone in WHITE FIRE (WHITE FI-YAAA!) declares "White Fire," and instantly follows it with an exclamatory "White Fire!" ("Look! It's White Fire. White Fire!"). And the same thing happens in the chorus of the insanely catchy earworm of a theme song by NWOBHM-turned-AOR band Limelight that plays approximately 650 times over the course of WHITE FIRE (WHITE FI-YAAA!).
Directed by French soft-and-hardcore porn vet Jean-Marie Pallardy, WHITE FIRE (WHITE FI-YAAA!) has a plot that defies all logic, plausibility, and reality, but here goes: Boris, aka "Bo" (THE EXTERMINATOR's Robert Ginty) and Ingrid (KRULL's Belinda Mayne, daughter of cult actor Ferdy Mayne) are siblings who were orphaned as children and taken in by Sam (a profusely sweating Jess Hahn as George Kennedy). Cut to 20 years later in "Istambul" where Ingrid is employed by a high-tech diamond mine that looks like the repurposed set of a Turkish STAR WARS ripoff, complete with security personnel in full SPACEBALLS/Dark Helmet head gear and attire. Her boss (Gordon Mitchell) and the staff all wear weird red jumpsuits like staffers in a Bond villain's secret underground lair. Bo and Ingrid have remained inseparable into adulthood, and still live with Sam and his wife, but they also have a side gig: Ingrid has been secretly stealing diamonds from the mine and fencing them with Bo and Sam. The siblings are abducted by Italian criminals Sophia (TENEBRE's Mirella Banti) and Barbossa (Benito Stefanelli, looking like Terry Gilliam's stunt double), who know what they're up to and want a piece of the action. Around the same time, a mine employee informs the boss that they've excavated the legendary "White Fire" (White Fi-yaaa!), a massive, radioactive, million-year-old diamond with magical powers long thought to be a myth. Word of White Fire (White Fi-yaaa!) gets out and Sophia and Barbossa want Ingrid to obtain it for them. The siblings refuse to play along, and Ingrid is killed during an attempted kidnapping. A devastated Bo goes to a bar to drown his sorrows and he meets Olga (Diana Goodman), a near dead-ringer for Ingrid. Sam is the man with a plan: pay Olga $50,000 to undergo plastic surgery to turn her into Ingrid, convince her boss that reports of her death have been greatly exaggerated, and get her back in the mine to steal White Fire (White Fi-yaaa!). Another benefit: Bo is falling for Olga and it would be super-cool for him if she looked exactly like Ingrid, because he really, really wanted to bang his sister.
Oh yeah, Bo's got it bad for Ingrid. It's not every day that you see a vaguely futuristic diamond heist movie filled with catchy AOR jams, bad guys in crazy future-onesies with security dressed like Darth Vader, Robert Ginty picking up a random chainsaw on a loading dock and slicing through a bunch of goons PIECES-style, the villains graphically bisecting some unlucky putz with a band saw, the mine having an easily accessible torture chamber (!) for staffers caught making off with merchandise, and a female plastic surgeon who operates out of an exotic fortress filled with stunningly beautiful women like some Sapphic Playboy Mansion, with all of it blanketed in an overt incest fetish with VERTIGO undertones. Look no further than the bizarre and downright creepy scene where Bo watches a skinny-dipping Ingrid and they can't take their eyes off one another as Bo flirtatiously plays keep-away with a completely nude Ingrid's towel ("You know, it's a pity you're my sister," purrs a bedroom-eyed, feathered-haired Ginty). Then Fred Williamson (who had just co-starred with Ginty in the Italian ROAD WARRIOR knockoff WARRIOR OF THE LOST WORLD) shows up about an hour in as Noah, a hired gun pimp/mercenary leading a team of Borat cosplayers searching for the missing Olga, who's apparently the AWOL mistress of his powerful boss. All get involved in the search and all parties eventually converge as the plot to steal White Fire (White Fi-yaaa!) intensifies. That is, when Bo and Olga/New Ingrid (played post-surgery by Mayne) aren't too busy fucking.
WHITE FIRE (WHITE FI-YAAA!) really has to be seen to believed. It wastes no time establishing itself as a jaw-dropper of the highest order less than five minutes in, with one of the most reckless and shockingly irresponsible stunts ever captured on film. During the prologue, we see Bo and Ingrid's parents murdered, and her father is hit with a flamethrower, which completely engulfs the unprotected stuntman in flames from head to toe--his hair briefly ablaze--as he does a stop, drop & roll to put out the fire. The sight of this is incredible enough to make even an '80s Indonesian action director have an anxiety attack, but what takes it to next level insanity is that it wasn't a stuntman--it was Pallardy himself, playing their father and doing the stunt on his own, making WHITE FIRE (WHITE FI-YAAA!) very likely the only film where a director lets himself be set on fire on camera to capture the perfect shot.
The behind-the-scenes personnel involved is just as bugfuck insane. In addition to Pallardy venturing outside his erotica comfort zone (except for the whole sister-screwing subplot), WHITE FIRE (WHITE FI-YAAA!) had a weird combination of financial backing from some unexpected places. A Turkish-British-French co-production, it was executive produced by Sedat Akdemir and Ugor Terzioglu, the Turkish team who briefly dabbled in the Italian exploitation industry with a pair of Antonio Margheriti projects (1983's YOR: THE HUNTER FROM THE FUTURE and 1984's THE ARK OF THE SUN GOD). Also involved were John L. Coletta and Alan G. Rainer, who had ties to Deep Purple's inner circle when they produced 1977's THE BUTTERFLY BALL, a concert film of Purple bassist Roger Glover's 1974 rock opera The Grasshopper's Feast and the Butterfly Ball. Furthering that association was WHITE FIRE (WHITE FI-YAAA!)'s soundtrack being overseen by legendary Deep Purple keyboardist Jon Lord, who composed the score and produced the songs by Limelight (in addition to the "White Fire" (White Fi-yaaa!) title track, there's the love ballad "One Day at a Time," the unintended anthem for incestuous siblings everywhere). To no one's surprise, WHITE FIRE (WHITE FI-YAAA!) skipped US theaters, getting a straight-to-video release courtesy of Trans-World Entertainment in 1985, its artwork and tag line ("EXTERMINATION is the reward for the world's richest prize") making an unmistakable reference to Ginty's EXTERMINATOR fame, though the jury's still out on whether his character's idea of the world's richest prize is White Fire (White Fi-yaaa!) or finally finding a way to bone his sister without everyone thinking he's a creep.
FIST OF FEAR, TOUCH OF DEATH (US - 1980) Directed by Matthew Mallinson. Written by Ron Harvey. Cast: Bruce Lee, Fred Williamson, Ron Van Clief, Adolph Caesar, Aaron Banks, Bill Louie, Teruyuki Higa, Richard Barathy, Gail Turner, Hollywood Browde, Louis Neglia, Cydra Karlyn, Annette Bronson, John "Cyclone" Flood, Ron Harvey. (R, 86 mins) When he died suddenly in 1973 at just 32, Bruce Lee was already a renowned figure in martial arts and his legacy would be cemented when ENTER THE DRAGON hit theaters a month later. The official cause was deemed cerebral edema but Lee's death was instantly shrouded in mystery and intrigue with conspiracy theories continuing to this day, with a bonus "family curse" added to the mix when his 28-year-old son Brandon was killed in a tragic on-set accident with a prop gun while filming THE CROW in 1993. In the years following Lee's death, the cash-ins and ripoffs--the "Bruceploitation" craze--never stopped, the best-known being GAME OF DEATH, the film Lee was working on at the time of his passing. He had the climactic fight scenes (including one with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) done in 1973 but ENTER THE DRAGON director Robert Clouse ended up creating a new plot around the existing Lee footage, using outtakes from past Lee movies and two unconvincing doubles (and, in one incredible shot that somehow didn't end the careers of everyone who thought it would work: a cardboard cutout of Lee's head attached to a mirror so it looks like it's his reflection). GAME OF DEATH hit theaters in 1979 and despite its dubious nature (and perhaps because the fight scenes Lee completed were among the best he'd ever done), it satisfied a public that still wanted all the Bruce Lee it could get, even if wasn't him. That demand was further satiated by tons of kung-fu movies featuring rechristened actors with names like Bruce Li, Bruce Le, Bruce Lea, Dragon Lee, Bronson Lee, and the unlikely Myron Bruce Lee, among several others. These guys starred in films like ENTER THE GAME OF DEATH, NEW FIST OF FURY, FIST OF FURY II, GAME OF DEATH II, THE CLONES OF BRUCE LEE, and EXIT THE DRAGON, ENTER THE TIGER just to name a few.
Legendary 42nd Street grindhouse god Terry Levene and his Aquarius Releasing were no strangers to scrounging in the exploitation gutter to make a quick buck, like driving a "Butchermobile" around NYC in 1982 to promote DOCTOR BUTCHER M.D., or releasing the same movie multiple times under different titles, so it was inevitable that they got a piece of the Bruceploitation action. Aquarius had titles like GOODBYE, BRUCE LEE: HIS LAST GAME OF DEATH and BRUCE LEE FIGHTS BACK FROM THE GRAVE in regular rotation in Times Square and on America's drive-in circuit, but 1980 saw their most shameless Bruceploitation con job yet with FIST OF FEAR, TOUCH OF DEATH, which has just been released by The Film Detective in a surprisingly nice 40th anniversary Blu-ray edition (!) with a top-notch transfer (!!), bonus features (!!!) and liner notes (!!!!), because physical media is dead (?).
It's hard to believe FIST OF FEAR, TOUCH OF DEATH actually played in theaters across America, but gullible Lee fans were so hungry for more of their hero that they'd plunk down their hard-earned cash to see any new stuff they could, no matter how many times they'd get hosed and leave pissed-off. Driven by sheer chutzpah, Levene decided to assemble a "new" Bruce Lee movie out of some footage from a black-and-white 1957 Hong Kong drama he acquired called THUNDERSTORM, which featured a 17-year-old Lee among the supporting cast. Aquarius staffer Ron Harvey found the two-decade-old film by accident while doing an inventory of titles in Levene's library. Harvey was then charged with constructing a story around the THUNDERSTORM footage, and what he and director Matthew Mallinson came up with can only be termed a "movie" in the loosest sense. It's set up as a TV documentary hosted by then-busy grindhouse trailer narrator Adolph Caesar, who would get a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination four years later for A SOLDIER'S STORY and co-star as Old Mister in Steven Spielberg's THE COLOR PURPLE a year after that. Caesar is covering the 1979 World Karate Championship at the Felt Forum in Madison Square Garden and interviewing various talking heads about the legend of Bruce Lee. That includes event organizer Aaron Banks, taking on the role of conspiracy theorist and insisting that Lee's death was caused by "The Touch of Death" as punishment for revealing too many of the secrets of Chinese martial arts. Banks then proceeds to reveal more secrets of Chinese martial arts by detailing a move called "The Vibrating Palm," which can be laid upon someone in a certain way and lead to death in three to four weeks.
Caesar jabbers endlessly about this tournament being the deciding factor as to who will be the successor to Lee's legacy. Among those interviewed are actor and ex-football star Fred Williamson, who's introduced in a comedy sketch where he gets a late wake-up call and is exhausted and spent from satisfying his woman (Hollywood Browde) all night long (she begs for more, and Fred replies "Five times ain't enough?"). A running gag has everyone mistaking Fred for Harry Belafonte, including a would-be tough guy named Jasper Milktoast (played by Harvey) who tries to start shit with Fred by stealing his cab. Fred ends up catching a ride to the Garden with Caesar, who talks incessantly about Lee's TBD successor while Mallinson provides us with some vintage shots of 1979 Times Square, with movies like 10, HALLOWEEN, STARTING OVER, ANIMAL HOUSE, and APOCALYPSE NOW on theater marquees. Caesar also talks to full contact karate champ Ron Van Clief, who's shown doing his workout routine before agreeing with Banks and emphatically declaring that there's no way Lee could've died from natural causes. Dr. Van Clief is then shown beating the shit out of some creeps hassling an attractive women in the park. "How can I ever repay you?" the woman coos to a beaming Van Clief, as a presumably leering Caesar coyly quips via voiceover, "I'm sure Ron has some ideas of his own." Canceled.
Then comes what Caesar calls "The Halftime Show," where he delves into Lee's past and what made him the martial arts legend he became. Cut to over 30 minutes of footage from THUNDERSTORM, which has been dubbed over with ridiculous American voices to become a story of a teenage Bruce Lee being pressured by his family to pay attention to his studies when all he wants to do is keep practicing karate and get tickets to "the karate show." The black-and-white THUNDERSTORM footage is periodically interrupted by another detour into completely different stock footage, as Lee's mother tells him about the legend of his kung-fu warrior great-grandfather, which plays out in scenes taken from 1971's in-color and Bruce Lee-less INVINCIBLE SUPER CHAN, another import that Levene forgot he owned and would eventually release on its own in 1983 as FORCED TO FIGHT. Of course, it didn't matter to anyone that INVINCIBLE SUPER CHAN was about a samurai warrior and not a kung-fu fighter, but hey, whatever helps pad the running time by 30-plus minutes. And the THUNDERSTORM footage is the sketchiest way possible at Levene's disposal to justify giving Bruce Lee top billing in a movie being hastily assembled to take advantage of his name seven years after his death.
There's another haphazardly-stitched together scene of Lee having a conversation with Banks (of course, never in the shot together at the same time, and the scene is tinted to make it all match), and the Lee side of it is just badly-dubbed stock footage from either an old interview or a TV show (possibly taken from his recurring role on the short-lived 1971 ABC series LONGSTREET, which starred James Franciscus as a blind insurance investigator), followed by Mallinson cutting to World Karate Championship contender Bill Louie (seen earlier in a hilarious staged shot yanking out an opponent's eyes and tossing them into the crowd) going after some muggers in Central Park while dressed as Lee's Kato from THE GREEN HORNET. Caesar continues to ask anyone within earshot about who will carry on the legacy of Bruce Lee, including a ringside sitdown with a seemingly irritable Williamson, followed by a desperate crawl to the feature-length threshold by showing the final two rounds of the World Welterweight Full Contact championship bout between Louie Neglia and John "Cyclone" Flood. Neglia wins but Caesar, who's spent the entire movie pestering everyone with the same inane questions about who will inherit Bruce Lee's crown, decides it doesn't matter. On the subject of handing off Lee's legacy, he asks "Why should we?" and concludes that Lee is irreplaceable, which is interesting since no one was even talking about it in the first place except Adolph Caesar.
Can you imagine paying to see this in 1980? What is this movie? Is it even a movie? It's part documentary, part mockumentary, part sketch comedy, part sporting event coverage, part proto-JACKASS, and it was all sold as a new martial arts epic teaming Bruce Lee, Fred Williamson, and Ron Van Clief ("The 3 Greatest Masters!"). The Blu-ray features interviews with all the major surviving players, including Levene (who's in his 90s), Mallinson, and Harvey, plus Williamson and Van Clief are interviewed together (Caesar died in 1986). They all have a sense of humor about it, with stories of creating forged credentials and equipment adorned with a "WAQU-TV" (for "Aquarius") logo so Garden security would let Caesar and a cameraman into the event, thinking they were with an actual TV station. Harvey also shares a hilarious memory of Caesar (described by Mallinson as "not drunk, but he had a couple drinks and was feeling good") nailing some lines of dialogue before Harvey realized he missed a couple of sentences, and started shouting to get Caesar's attention "like I was Arthur Miller trying to preserve the sacred texts." It's hard to recommend FIST OF FEAR, TOUCH OF DEATH to anyone but the most die-hard Bruce Lee completists or Bruceploitation masochists, but one almost has to admire the audacity of its very existence, along with the nostalgic reminder that there was once a time when some straight-up bullshit like this could make money in theaters. I feel sorry for any '80s kid who decided to do a book report on Bruce Lee and thought watching this would be a good way to get around the reading ("...but all he really wanted to do was get tickets to the karate show").
FIST OF FEAR, TOUCH OF DEATH
opening in Toledo, OH on 11/14/1980
BLIND RAGE (Philippines - 1978) Directed by Efren C. Pinon. Written by Jerry O. Tirazona and Leo Fong. Cast: Tony Ferrer, Leila Hermosa, Leo Fong, Fred Williamson, Charlie Davao, Carlos Padilla Jr, D'Urville Martin, Dick Adair, Darnell Garcia, Golay, B.T. Anderson, Subas Herrero, Bing Velasco, Chuck Doherty, Max Alvarado, The SOS Daredevils. (R, 81 mins) "Let's begin by synchronizing your Braille watches." Cheaply-made and amateurishly-shot, BLIND RAGE is a thoroughly ridiculous high-concept Filipino mash-up of heist flick, blaxploitation, and kung-fu involving a group of blind men hired to steal a secret $15 million CIA slush fund from the vault of a Manila bank. The mastermind is Johnny Duran (Charlie Davao), a bank representative working with the US Treasury to secure the $15 million as part of the covert "Project Southeast Asia," designed as an emergency fund for US allies in the region to launch a counterattack should Vietnam be plotting any more shenanigans. Duran and teacher-for-the-blind Sally (Leila Hermosa) work on putting together a crack team of blind guys from all over the world--mostly criminals--since no one will think them capable of pulling what's tantamount to a SEEING-EYE DOG DAY AFTERNOON. There's American gangster Willie Black (DOLEMITE director/co-star D'Urville Martin), who lost his sight during a botched attempt on his life; Hong Kong's Lin Wang (co-writer Leo Fong), a Tong "liquidator" who tried to skim off an opium deal and was promptly rewarded with acid being thrown in his eyes; matador Hector Lopez (Darnell Garcia), who went blind when he was gored by a bull; and the only non-criminal, Tokyo-based, blind-from-birth expat American magician Anderson (Dick Adair). Sally thinks they need a fifth person to handle the more technological elements and act as a decoy by pretending to have sight, so she hires past student and low-level hood Ben Guevera (Tony Ferrer, a huge star in the Philippines who was best known for headlining a long-running series of Filipino 007 knockoffs), so "he can get even with the world for what happened to him years ago," specifically, trying to pull a fast one on a rival crime outfit and getting a power drill to the eyes.
Directed by Efren C. Pinon with all the skill and production value of BLACK DYNAMITE if helmed by Al Adamson, BLIND RAGE boasts of globetrotting location work all over the world, which mostly consists of fleeting shots of Davao walking around in Vegas, Tokyo, and Hong Kong as he recruits all of the blind participants. Davao disappears for much of the middle, but he's essentially the lead in the first and third acts (top-billed Ferrer doesn't even appear until nearly 30 minutes in), with the entire opening devoted to long shots of him driving around various recognizable L.A. locations on his way to meet the Treasury guy. Pinon brings The Hammer down for the finale, however, with Fred Williamson turning up in the final ten minutes, reprising his role as CIA agent Jesse Crowder from a pair of his own 1976 drive-in actioners, DEATH JOURNEY and NO WAY BACK (he would play Crowder again in 1983's THE LAST FIGHT). In an interview in the Blu-ray bonus features, Fong says a chance encounter with Williamson led to his brief appearance, shot in Los Angeles, where he gets a fight scene with Davao on top of a building next to an IHOP that, according to Fong, served as the production's unofficial office during the L.A. portion of the shoot (was the "chance encounter" just Fong and Pinon showing up at that IHOP one morning and interrupting Fred's breakfast?). Williamson probably knocked out his role in a day and a half, tops--not a bad gig to show up 70 minutes into an 80-minute movie and instantly be the hero. It's this final section where BLIND RAGE finally starts to look like an almost-professional action film. While not exactly good in the standard sense, there's enough of a marked change in style and execution in those climactic ten minutes that it's likely Williamson took charge and directed his scenes himself.
VFW (US/UK - 2020) Directed by Joe Begos. Written by Max Brallier and Matthew McArdle. Cast: Stephen Lang, William Sadler, Fred Williamson, Martin Kove, George Wendt, David Patrick Kelly, Sierra McCormick, Tom Williamson, Travis Hammer, Dora Madison, Josh Ethier, Graham Skipper, Linnea Wilson. (Unrated, 91 mins) Since his micro-budgeted 2014 debut ALMOST HUMAN, indie horror filmmaker Joe Begos hasn't exactly been subtle in his worship of the VHS glory days. Even his production company is named "Channel 83," a loud shout-out to David Cronenberg's VIDEODROME. Like a lot of today's young genre figures, Begos has a particular affinity for the work of John Carpenter, and if VFW was any more fanatical in its obsessive devotion, Carpenter would have to get a restraining order. In an era where the Carpenter influence is all over modern horror and cult fare, VFW is arguably the most slobbering tribute yet, with a hard-on for the legendary director that's as relentlessly throbbing as the incessant synth score by Zombi's Steve Moore. It's done out of unabashed love, and since Carpenter appears to have moved on from filmmaking, spot-on replicas like VFW are likely as close as we're gonna get to experiencing new ones. That's fine if they're done right, which VFW is for the most part (the mood is set with PRINCE OF DARKNESS-inspired opening credits that play out over the first 12 minutes). Begos followed ALMOST HUMAN with THE MIND'S EYE and the recent BLISS, but VFW is his first time working from a script he didn't write, which may help explain why it's his most accomplished directing effort to date.
It also helps that he's been gifted with a great cast of Character Actor Hall of Famers, recruiting a supergroup of grizzled old B-movie vets and some familiar TV faces for what's basically ASSAULT ON VFW POST 13 with the ferocity of GREEN ROOM. It's set in a near-future urban dystopia that could be two weeks from now, where the opioid epidemic has completely spiraled out of control and major cities have become war zones where cops don't even bother to go, and the new drug on the streets is Hype. Addicts known as "Hypers" wander the ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK-like terrain in a strung-out daze, all looking for the next dose provided by ruthless dealer and crime lord Boz (Travis Hammer), who operates out of an abandoned six-screen multiplex. When Boz throws a vial of Hype off a balcony and convinces sore-covered junkie Lucy (Linnea Wilson) to go after it--jumping to her splattery death below--her enraged sister Lizard (Sierra McCormick) makes off with the remainder of his Hype inventory and hides out at the dilapidated VFW post across the road. It's there where gruff bartender Fred (Stephen Lang, also one of a truckload of producers), his Vietnam buddies Walter Reed (William Sadler), Doug (David Patrick Kelly), Zabriski (George Wendt), and slick used car salesman Lou (Martin Kove), along with elderly Korean War vet Abe (Fred Williamson) and young Shawn (Tom Williamson, no relation), who's just back from Afghanistan, are celebrating Fred's birthday and planning on closing early to take him to a nearby strip joint. Boz knows Lizard is in the bar and sends a couple of goons after her, led by his younger brother Roadie (Graham Skipper), who instantly takes a shotgun blast from Fred in one of the more exuberant exploding head kills that cinema has offered of late. But Doug also takes a machete in his shoulder, and his arm is barely hanging on. And now with two of Boz's guys dead, the stage is set for a "survive the night" gorefest with the mostly geriatric VFW regulars using their long-dormant but innate military skills ("We set a perimeter...we make our stand!") to fashion makeshift weapons out of nail-spiked barstool legs and pool cues, barricading themselves in the bar as Boz's gang tries to get in, kill everyone, and recover the Hype.
It's too bad this is getting banished to VOD, because it's a terrific rowdy crowd movie. The siege scenario is the major trope in the Carpenter playbook, one he borrowed time and again from his favorite movie, the classic 1959 western RIO BRAVO. VFW gets far gorier than anything Carpenter ever did--heads are blown apart, skulls are stomped into raw hamburger, throats are slit, people are disemboweled, offed by axe, machete, circular saw, pool cue through the mouth and out the back of the head. It's the kind of movie where gunshot wounds and opened arteries are hastily bandaged with duct tape. It's also aware that it's not exactly original (has there ever been an instance in a siege or hostage scenario in a movie where someone doesn't go Full Ellis, fancying themselves a skilled negotiator and saying something like "Relax, trust me, I can handle these guys" and actually makes it to the next scene alive?), but it also has fun with it (of course George Wendt is seated at the corner of the bar). The one big detriment of VFW is that once the power gets cut, many of the scenes take place in almost total darkness, and coupled with an occasional indulgence of quick-cut shaky-cam, some of the mayhem gets a little hard to discern on a handful of occasions.
But holy shit, what a cast of great character actors! Lang! Sadler! Luther from THE WARRIORS! Asshole Cobra Kai sensei Kreese! NORM! And 81-year-old Fred Williamson can still kick your ass (don't miss a wild-eyed Hammer breaking open a brick of Hype and snorting it by the fistful to make himself impervious to pain before the final showdown). Most pre-fab cult films of this sort--even some directed by Joe Begos--are too self-consciously hip and fall victim to becoming an endless series of snarky references and knowing winks--not quite the SHARKNADO element but certainly in the ballpark. The closest VFW gets to that is Wendt's corner seat at the bar, but Begos doesn't even draw attention to it. He doesn't have Kove say something like "Fear does not exist in this VFW post." He doesn't have Kelly screech "Hyyyyperrrrs...come out to plaaaaaay!" Dumber filmmakers couldn't have stopped themselves, but Begos plays it a little smarter with VFW. Yes, the gore is absurdly over-the-top, but it's otherwise played completely straight and the cast of veteran pros gives it much in the way of credibility and gravitas. Props to Begos for realizing that making them a joke would negatively impact the film.
THE MESSENGER (Italy - 1987) Directed by Fred Williamson. Written by Brian Johnson, Conchita Lee and Anthony Wisdom. Cast: Fred Williamson, Christopher Connelly, Cameron Mitchell, Joe Spinell, Val Avery, Jasmine Maimone, Micheal Dante, Sandy Cummings, Peter Brown, Stack Pierce, Suzanne von Schaack, Umberto Raho, Riccardo Parisio, Maurizio Bonuglia, James Spinks, Cyrus Elias, Stelio Candelli, Frank Pesce, Chris Conte, Vince Townsend. (R, 97 mins) During his eight-season career in pro football with the Pittsburgh Steelers, the Oakland Raiders, and the Kansas City Chiefs, DB Fred Williamson earned the nickname "The Hammer," and upon his retirement in 1968, he parlayed his tough gridiron persona into a TV and movie career. He landed a recurring role as Diahann Carroll's love interest on the NBC series JULIA and made his big-screen debut as Spearchucker Jones in Robert Altman's 1970 classic MASH. Williamson followed that with a supporting role in Otto Preminger's 1970 Liza Minnelli vehicle TELL ME THAT YOU LOVE ME, JUNIE MOON before finding his niche as one of the top blaxploitation stars of the 1970s. Williamson enjoyed one drive-in and grindhouse success after another, with HAMMER and THE LEGEND OF NIGGER CHARLEY in 1972, and no less than four films in 1973, with the sequel THE SOUL OF NIGGER CHARLEY, BLACK CAESAR and its sequel HELL UP IN HARLEM, and the 007-inspired THAT MAN BOLT. Williamson worked relentlessly throughout the decade, often teaming with fellow football legend Jim Brown in films like 1974's THREE THE HARD WAY and 1975's TAKE A HARD RIDE, but by the mid '70s, Williamson grew restless and wanted to start making his own independent movies through his own Po' Boy Productions. He made his directing debut with 1976's MEAN JOHNNY BARROWS and managed to talk some celebrity friends into co-starring, including MASH buddy Elliott Gould in a cameo as a bum, and Roddy McDowall ludicrously cast as a Mafioso. Williamson directed and starred in three more films in 1976: the western ADIOS AMIGO with Richard Pryor, followed by NO WAY BACK and its immediate sequel DEATH JOURNEY, the first two of four films where he'd play private eye Jesse Crowder. With Enzo G. Castellari's 1978 cult classic THE INGLORIOUS BASTARDS, Williamson began a second career in Italy, even directing the Italian-made MR. MEAN during his BASTARDS downtime. Though he made some American films in the '80s, most notably 1983's THE BIG SCORE and the same year's VIGILANTE, Williamson spent most of that decade in Italy, starring in Castellari's 1990: THE BRONX WARRIORS (1983) as well as the director's post-nuke WARRIORS OF THE WASTELAND (1983) and Lucio Fulci's post-nuke THE NEW GLADIATORS (1984). 1985 also saw him as a pitchman in a series of King Cobra malt liquor commercials, and the same year, he took a break from Italian genre fare to co-star in the short-lived Joe Pesci NBC series HALF NELSON.
But by the mid '80s, Williamson was getting lazy. He made a pair of almost interchangeable back-to-back thrillers with 1986's FOXTRAP and 1987's THE MESSENGER, both vanity projects (well, every Williamson movie is a vanity project to some extent) that co-starred Williamson BFF Christopher Connelly and were little more than an excuse to get Italian production company Realta Cinematografica to send him on paid vacations throughout Europe and the US. THE MESSENGER is especially bad, with Williamson demonstrating a level of carelessness that borders on audience contempt, whether it's staging inept action sequences, putting himself in an overlong love scene where he has the camera pan down so we see his co-star Sandy Cummings' hands caressing his gyrating ass, or padding the running time with absurdly long establishing shots like following two actors on a golf course for over a minute or planting the camera inside a cab and giving us an impromptu, MANOS: THE HANDS OF FATE-style travelogue every time his character arrives in a different city. We get a two-minute look at Vegas, up and down the strip, past the casinos and hotels, and even going blocks away, taking the audience on a captivating drive past the local Woolworth. There's also a scene where Michael Dante, as a Hollywood mobster, is shown pulling into his driveway, turning his car around in the driveway, then backing into the garage, pulling back out and then maneuvering the car back into the garage again so he can straighten it out. Then Williamson keeps the camera right where it's at while Dante gets out of the car and leisurely walks into what I presume is the actor's own home. It's at least a solid minute and a half of static screen time devoted to watching Dante dick around in his driveway.
The threadbare vigilante/revenge plot requires location work in Rome, Chicago, Hollywood, and Las Vegas simply because Williamson was given enough money to do so. The Hammer is Jake Sebastian Turner, a Green Berets legend released from a Rome prison and reunited with his wife Sabrina (Cummings, in her first and thus far only film), who's turned into a junkie while he was locked up. She's killed in a drive-by shooting and Jake is informed by the improbably-named Italian mob boss Gielgud (Riccardo Parisio) that Sabrina got involved with Rome drug traffickers who were supplying Chicago gangster Paolo (Maurizio Bonuglia). The same people who killed Sabrina also murdered Gielgud's stepson, and he offers Jake $500,000 to go to Chicago and track down and kill those responsible. Arriving in Chicago, Jake kills Paolo with a ninja star only to find out that he was just a part of the machine and he'll need to head out west to find the real bosses behind the operation. His path of vengeance takes him to Hollywood (Schwarzenegger's RAW DEAL on a theater marquee!), where he finds Emerson (Dante), whose tool company is used as a money-laundering and narcotics distribution front for Vegas mob kingpin Rico (Joe Spinell) and his top flunkies Clark (John Cassavetes inner circler Val Avery) and Harris (Peter Brown). Meanwhile, loose-cannon, plays-by-his-own-rules FBI agent Parker (Connelly) develops a begrudging admiration for the so-called "Messenger of Death" who's wiping out syndicate goons, and butts heads with Chicago police captain Carter (Cameron Mitchell, hamming it up but still outacted by his garish eyeglasses that must be seen to be believed) and irate detective Leroy (Stack Pierce), who want this mystery vigilante off the streets.
THE MESSENGER is grossly incompetent but calling it "so bad it's good" is a stretch. Williamson's direction is unbelievably sloppy, from the half-assed action scenes to his direction of the actors, none of whom appear to be aware of what kind of movie they're in. As a director, his chief concern seems to be getting women to throw themselves at him and staging as many King Cobra product placements as possible (they even get a shout-out in the closing credits). Williamson and Connelly play it straight, Connelly especially enjoying himself as Parker, pointlessly doing a T.J. HOOKER shoulder-roll into Rico's mansion and throwing around the usual made-up insults that he used in a lot of his Italian films (RAIDERS OF ATLANTIS, OPERATION NAM, STRIKE COMMANDO). His favorite standby "suckfish" makes a required appearance (calling someone "suckfish" is Connelly's "John Cusack vaping"), along with "shitstick" and calling Spinell "butt-wipe." Mitchell just seems to be goofing off (did he borrow his mother-in-law's glasses for this role?), Dante does what he's required to do--be the guy you get when John Saxon, Henry Silva and Tony Lo Bianco turn you down--and Spinell plays it broad, turning Rico into a whiny, sniveling Joe Besser of a mob boss. The Rome scenes with Italian actors are shot with live sound, and it's pretty clear when you listen to Eurocult stalwarts like Stelio Candelli (DEMONS) and Umberto Raho (THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE) that their grasp of English is tenuous at best (bonus points if you can understand a single word Raho says as the warden who releases Jake from prison). Even the dialogue in the American scenes is often difficult to decipher, as the actors are constantly cut off or drowned out by William Stuckey's repetitious, flatulent synth score.
And whether it's a fault of the script--somehow the work of three people, two of whom did nothing else after while the other (Anthony Wisdom) went on to write 1990's THE RETURN OF SUPERFLY--or Williamson's slapdash direction, THE MESSENGER offers one of the all-time great continuity gaffes, one that involves Mitchell's pissed-off Capt. Carter. When introduced, he's bitching at Parker and refusing to cooperate with him after the Chicago hit on Paolo. When others turn up dead in Hollywood, Parker informs Carter that the Messenger must've left Chicago and made his way out west, with Parker announcing "I'm going to L.A." as Carter chomps on his cigar and seethes, adjusting his ill-fitting Estelle Getty glasses. Much later, in Hollywood, after Emerson is killed and his naive wife (Suzanne von Schaack) finds out he's a drug dealer and that's how he was providing for her and their children, she inexplicably turns up as a cokehead hooker in Vegas for no reason at all. She recognizes Jake at a casino, dials the operator and asks for the Los Angeles police department, specifically "Chief Carter," as we see Cameron Mitchell pick up the phone. Wait..,LAPD Chief Carter? Wasn't he just a precinct captain in Chicago a few scenes back, with a map of Illinois on the wall of his office? Sure enough, Carter rounds up the cops and Parker and they go straight to...Rico's mansion in Las Vegas?! Is Williamson even paying attention to his own movie?
Williamson campaigning for
Donald Trump in 2016.
Williamson continued dividing his time between Italy and America, and by the 1990s was a C-lister relegated to straight-to-video status with films like 1991's THREE DAYS TO A KILL and 1992's SOUTH BEACH. He enjoyed a brief resurgence in 1996 with the all-star blaxploitation throwback ORIGINAL GANGSTAS and with longtime fans Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez giving him a showy supporting role in FROM DUSK TILL DAWN, two years after turning down an offer from Tarantino to play crime boss Marcellus Wallace in PULP FICTION. Williamson passed on the part because of the scene where Wallace is raped by Zed in the Gimp dungeon in the pawn shop basement.. He got to demonstrate some slow-burn comedy skills, playing off Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson as the perpetually flustered Capt. Doby in 2004's STARSKY & HUTCH, but other than that, Williamson has done some sporadic TV guest spots and some Z-grade DTV swill you find in the New Release section at Walmart. He's also become a regular presence in low-budget faithsploitation dramas like 2015's LAST OUNCE OF FREEDOM, where he played a villain trying to stop a small rural town from celebrating Christmas. Now 79 and probably still able to kick your ass, Williamson most recently made the news in 2016 when he was spotted on the presidential campaign trail competing with Ben Carson for the coveted "Donald Trump's black friend" role.
Made during the post-GODFATHER days when theaters were flooded with mob movies, the obscure Italian-U.S. co-production CRAZY JOE is a sufficiently entertaining but simplistic and superficial look at famed NYC gangster "Crazy Joe" Gallo, who was gunned down outside an Italian restaurant in 1972. The film opens in 1960, as Joe (Peter Boyle) and his older brother Richie (Rip Torn) are fed up with their status as low-level errand boys after years of busting their asses for powerful New York mobster Falco (Luther Adler). Branching out on their own incurs the wrath of Falco and the other bosses, not to mention the Boss of Bosses, Don Vittorio (Eli Wallach), a character based on Carlo Gambino. When Vittorio tells Falco to reach a compromise with the Gallo brothers, Falco instead orders a botched hit on them, which sets Joe off on a revenge spree that gets him ten years in prison. During this time, former Gallo associate Vince Coletti (Charles Cioffi) gets vocal in his political ambitions, which worries Vittorio, who unsuccessfully tries to talk Coletti into backing off and not bringing so much attention to the families.
Joe is eventually paroled in 1970 and is pulled back into "This Thing of Ours" as Don Vittorio talks him into a hit on Coletti, but Joe is already partnered up with a Harlem crime outfit led by Willy (Fred Williamson), a gangster he befriended in the joint, with the intention of removing Don Vittorio from his throne. Producer Dino De Laurentiis hired Italian journeyman Carlo Lizzani (THE LAST DAYS OF MUSSOLINI) to direct a mostly American cast (Italian actors like Fausto Tozzi, Guido Leontini, and others are dubbed by the usual crew of Eurocult voice actors) in a film shot entirely in NYC, and it's a weird mix of actors and genres that makes the film consistently interesting if not altogether successful. The script by Lewis John Carlino (THE MECHANIC) changes many of the key figures' names and glosses over the details in almost bullet-pointed, Cliffs Notes fashion. Second-billed Paula Prentiss plays Joe's moll and in her few scenes, she has nothing to do but cry and sob and scrrech some variation on "You're in danger, Joe!" and "They'll come after you, Joe!" and "Are you crazy, Joe?" Her big scene near the end with Boyle is just a soapy, florid embarrassment for both actors and the film an uneven fusion of old-school gangster movie and then-in-vogue blaxploitation.
CRAZY JOE is obviously no GODFATHER (hell, it's not even THE VALACHI PAPERS), but it's a decent time killer, with enough action and an unusual enough cast that it shouldn't have fallen off the face of the planet like it has. It aired in prime-time on ABC just a year later in 1975, it never got a US release on home video in any format, not even on VHS, and even syndicated, late-night TV appearances were rare (it most recently surfaced for one airing a few months ago on ThisTV, a network that constantly looks like it's streaming using dial-up). You also get Michael V. Gazzo (the same year as his Oscar-nominated turn as Frankie Five Angels in THE GODFATHER PART II), Carmine Caridi (THE GODFATHER PART II, PRINCE OF THE CITY), future FANTASY ISLAND star Herve Villechaize as an unlikely member of the Gallo crew, RAGING BULL producer Peter Savage, Cornelia Sharpe (SERPICO), Louis Guss (THE GODFATHER, MOONSTRUCK), Sam J. Coppola (SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER), Dan Resin (CADDYSHACK's Dr. Beeper) as an FBI agent, and, just on the verge of blowing up as The Fonz on HAPPY DAYS, which premiered on ABC a month before CRAZY JOE's release, Henry Winkler in a prominent supporting role as a loyal Gallo capo who becomes Joe's right-hand man once he's out of prison. (R, 100 mins)
THE NEW BARBARIANS aka WARRIORS OF THE WASTELAND (Italy - 1983; US release 1984) Directed by Enzo G. Castellari. Written by Tito Carpi and Enzo Girolami (Enzo G. Castellari). Cast: Timothy Brent (Giancarlo Prete), Fred Williamson, George Eastman (Luigi Montefiori), Anna Kanakis, Thomas Moore (Enio Girolami), Venantino Venantini, Massimo Vanni, Giovanni Frezza, Iris Peynado, Andrea Coppola, Zora Kerova, Fulvio Mingozzi, Stefania Girolami, Paul Costello. (R, 91 mins)
Affectionately but often mistakenly considered by fans and historians to be part of the non-existent "BRONX WARRIORS trilogy," Enzo G. Castellari's THE NEW BARBARIANS is also the only actual ROAD WARRIOR-inspired post-nuke of the three films in question and has no relation to the other films aside from being directed by Castellari. It was shot between 1990: THE BRONX WARRIORS (1982) and ESCAPE FROM THE BRONX (1983), but rather than post-apocalyptic, the two BRONX films were closer in setting and tone to Walter Hill's THE WARRIORS (1979) and John Carpenter's ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK (1981), with their then-futuristic setting (the sequel ESCAPE FROM THE BRONX takes place ten years after the events of 1990: THE BRONX WARRIORS) perhaps misleading people into lumping it in with all the post-nukes being made at the time. THE NEW BARBARIANS was Castellari's only entry in the Italian post-nuke cycle, and while it features all the expected crazy cars and futuristic, rocket-launching dune buggies, post-nuke despots, nomadic heroes, and that same desert portraying the same scorched-earth wasteland, it also stands alone in its subgenre. Taking what others might use as a subtle subtext and bringing it to the forefront as a major plot point, THE NEW BARBARIANS is the CRUISING of Italian post-nuke ripoffs.
Set in 2019, several years after the nuclear holocaust, the world is a desert with scattered bands of survivors trying to rebuild and restart the human race. That doesn't work for One (Luigi Montefiori/George Eastman), the tyrannical leader of the Templars, the "high priests of death" and the "warriors of vengeance," a brutal, militarized squad of hilariously-coiffed psychos bent on making the living pay for the crime of being alive. It is One's goal that "the seed of man will be canceled forever from the face of the earth." It's telling that there's only men in the Templars, and that One's goal is zero population growth. Enter Scorpion (Giancarlo Prete, billed as "Timothy Brent" and looking like a post-apocalyptic Bert Convy), a nomadic warrior with a giant plastic bubble on top of his car. Scorpion tries to help a wandering group of survivors that includes Alma (Anna Kanakis of 2019: AFTER THE FALL OF NEW YORK), and gets help from two other post-nuke loner mercenaries, the tough-as-nails Nadir (Fred Williamson) and a fix-it-all kid mechanic (THE HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY's Giovanni Frezza) who also helps build a bullet-and-laser-proof body torso shield for Scorpion in his final battle against the Templars.
Action-wise, THE NEW BARBARIANS is pretty much business as usual: there's a ton of wrecked vehicles, car chases, explosions, smashed faces, heads are sliced and blown off, and there's no shortage of amusing dummy deaths and silly contraptions, like Scorpion's clear, illuminated, portable fuck-pad that comes in handy when he meets Alma. It looks like a portable, see-through bounce house, but Castellari intercutting the sex scene with Scorpion and Alma's prior discussion of their lives over a campfire is a less explicit homage to DON'T LOOK NOW and an interesting precursor to the similar and very praised George Clooney-Jennifer Lopez love scene in Steven Soderbergh's OUT OF SIGHT (1998). You get the feeling that there's some strong sexual undercurrent to THE NEW BARBARIANS with Castellari's abundance of weaponry protruding and extending from speeding vehicles like some kind of post-nuke Cialis commercial, but that's just a warm-up for what happens later. Where the film differentiates itself from overcrowded Italian post-nuke scene is its open depiction of the homosexual villains. One, clearly crushing on Scorpion, keeps trying to get him to join the Templars, but is only met with rejection. Their sexual preference--or at least the preference of One, who seems to rule his men by force and coercion--is not from innate desire for other men but to avoid the possibility of procreation and to have the world end. Late in the film, One gets so fed up with Scorpion that he has him strung up, and forcibly "initiates" him into the Templars via anal rape, a ceremony the rest of the Templars seem to know all too well. It's only after this humiliation and emasculation (along with some vaguely homophobic ballbusting from Nadir) that Scorpion rises like an avenging angel and decides to take out the Templars once and for all. It's here that THE NEW BARBARIANS vacillates between a post-apocalyptic spaghetti western with Scorpion, Nadir, and the kid mechanic forming the requisite unholy alliance, and a post-nuke DELIVERANCE as Nadir and the kid step aside and let Scorpion handle One on his own. Scorpion's final revenge on One is about as twistedly funny as this subgenre would ever get: a car chase with Scorpion barreling up on One, and an erect drill-like mechanism penetrating the back of One's ride and right through the lower part of the driver's seat, literally plowing through One's ass and ripping it apart.
ESCAPE FROM THE BRONX (Italy - 1983/US release 1985) Directed by Enzo G. Castellari. Written by Tito Carpi and Enzo G. Castellari. Cast: Mark Gregory, Henry Silva, Valeria D'Obici, Antonio Sabato, Paolo Malco, Timothy Brent (Giancarlo Prete), Thomas Moore (Enio Girolami), Massimo Vanni, Alessandro Prete, Romano Puppo, Eva Czenerys, Andrea Coppola, Moana Pozzi, Carla Brait, Thomas Felleghy, Martin Sorrentino, James Sampson, Paul Costello. (R, 90 mins)
THE NEW BARBARIANS opened in Italy in July 1983 and it would be picked up by a pre-NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET New Line Cinema, who rechristened it with the much snappier WARRIORS OF THE WASTELAND for its January 1984 release in US theaters. ESCAPE FROM THE BRONX was released in Italy in August 1983, just a month after THE NEW BARBARIANS, and like that film, New Line would also acquire it for the US, rolling it out in January 1985, minus some of the more excessive gore to secure an R rating. ESCAPE is an an enjoyable follow-up to BRONX WARRIORS, though it's not quite as good. Set in the year 2000, it involves a plot by an evil corporation overseen by Clark (Castellari's brother Enio Girolami, billed as "Thomas Moore") to gentrify the Bronx and relocate its denizens to lovely, scenic New Mexico. In truth, he's ordered armed "disinfesters" led by renegade cop Floyd Wangler (Henry Silva, in a slightly reworked version of Vic Morrow's Hammer the Exterminator from BRONX WARRIORS), to corral and exterminate the remaining residents. After his parents are killed, Trash (a returning Mark Gregory), who's now a nomadic warrior thanks to his entire gang being wiped out in the previous film, teams up with mercenary Strike (Giancarlo Prete), his dutiful son Strike Jr (Prete's son Alessandro), affable gang leader Dablone (Antonio Sabato), and crusading reporter Moon (Valeria D'Obici) to take on Clark, his ambitious second-in-command Hoffman (Paolo Malco), and mad dog Wangler, who spits coffee, berates everyone, and acts insane, because he's played by Henry Silva. Like its predecessor, ESCAPE isn't really a post-nuke outing, but everyone seems OK with letting them into the club. With less location shooting in the Bronx and more set work done at Cinecitta, ESCAPE is able to have a more dystopian feel than the urban war-zone immediacy of BRONX WARRIORS. Gregory was only 17 when BRONX WARRIORS was shot, and though it's just a year later, he looks a bit older and seems much more composed and comfortable compared to his awkward presence in the first film. ESCAPE FROM THE BRONX was featured on MST3K under the title ESCAPE 2000 (not to be confused with the Brian Trenchard-Smith film) and indeed has no shortage of amusing elements, from unconvincing miniatures to constant explosions to Silva's overacting to Trash's parents having a huge Mark Gregory-as-Trash poster adorning their living room wall.
The so-called "BRONX WARRIORS trilogy" has just been released in Blu-ray/DVD combo sets by Blue Underground (to their credit, they don't use the "trilogy" moniker) in impressive new transfers and bonus features. Castellari previously recorded commentaries for the Media Blasters/Shriek Show DVD editions of 1990: THE BRONX WARRIORS and THE NEW BARBARIANS from a decade ago, but has recorded new tracks for these editions. There's a lot of repeat info, but Castellari, even with his heavily-accented English (his son and former production assistant Andrea Girolami, completely fluent and with barely an accent, is on hand to occasionally help him find the right words), is such a likable presence and entertaining raconteur and has enough new material that they're worth hearing. This marks ESCAPE FROM THE BRONX's first appearance on DVD or Blu-ray in the US, and it's the uncensored version with all of the New Line-trimmed violence intact. All three titles feature an "In Conversation" featurette with Castellari and producer Fabrizio De Angelis in 2015, discussing the films and reminiscing about the productions, with plenty of interesting anecdotes for fans.
1990: THE BRONX WARRIORS (Italy - 1982; US release 1983)
Directed by Enzo G. Castellari. Written by Dardano Sacchetti, Elisa Livia Briganti, Enzo G. Castellari. Cast: Vic Morrow, Christopher Connelly, Fred Williamson, Mark Gregory, Stefania Girolami, Enio Girolami, George Eastman (Luigi Montefiori), John Sinclair, Betty Dessy, Rocco Lerro, Massimo Vanni, Angelo Ragusa, Enzo Girolami, Carla Brait. (R, 86 mins/92 mins)
Frequently and mistakenly lumped in with the onslaught of early 1980s Italian post-nuke ROAD WARRIOR ripoffs, Enzo G. Castellari's 1990: THE BRONX WARRIORS is more indebted to Walter Hill's THE WARRIORS, with a bit of John Carpenter's ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK. In it, we have warring gangs making their way across gang-controlled territories of NYC, but with a "near-future" element of the Bronx being a desolate No Man's Land, a look that wasn't hard to achieve given its state in 1982. Castellari, best known for his 1970s crime thrillers and 1978's THE INGLORIOUS BASTARDS, captured the look of the decayed Bronx so effectively that the film, along with examples like WOLFEN and FORT APACHE THE BRONX from 1981, stands as a powerful visual document of its era. Of course, any semblance of seriousness offered by 1990: THE BRONX WARRIORS ends there, especially considering that Castellari and the Italian crew couldn't get any of the streets in the Bronx shut down for their shoot, so in this uninhabitable "No Man's Land," you clearly see cars travelling in an orderly fashion (a crew member can be seen directing traffic in one shot) and area residents standing around, obviously watching some crazy Italians shoot a movie in their neighborhood. The Bronx was so dangerous that a local Hells Angels chapter hired by producer Fabrizio De Angelis to play additional members of the main biker gang pulled double duty as security for the cast and crew during the Bronx portion of the shoot (the interiors were shot in the much safer confines of the De Paolis Studios in Rome).
I absolutely love 1990: THE BRONX WARRIORS. It's one of the essential trashy Italian exploitation films of its era. It's everything one looks for in such fare: blatant ripoff of one or more American box office hits, gratuitous violence, nonsensical and illogical story, often hilarious dubbing, slumming American actors, a killer score (by Walter Rizzati), and an eye for the grime of 1980s NYC that Hollywood films rarely captured, likely because the Italians were always shooting without permits and the city didn't step in first to clean it up and make it presentable for the cameras (a good example of this is seeing just how different the same stretch of Times Square porn palaces and sex shops look in Lucio Fulci's THE NEW YORK RIPPER and Ron Howard's NIGHT SHIFT; both films shot the same year, but NIGHT SHIFT manages to make it look safe and clean while you actually fear for the well-being of RIPPER's cameraman, especially with passersby looking right at him). Low-budget American films like James Glickenhaus' THE EXTERMINATOR (1980), Romano Scavolini's NIGHTMARE (1981), and Abel Ferrara's FEAR CITY (1984) among others, were successful at this and there's an occasional TAXI DRIVER (1976) that didn't sugarcoat things, but if you want a really accurate look at 1970s and 1980s Times Square, Manhattan and the rundown areas of the surrounding boroughs in all their sleazy, decayed, and morally decrepit glory, no one captured this energy and imagery better than permitless Italian film crews.
In 1990, the Bronx is declared a no-man's-land (a crawl explains that all "attemps" at law and order have been abandoned) and is ruled by warring biker gangs who know to keep to their own turf. The main gang is The Riders, led by Trash (Mark Gregory). Complications ensue when rich teenager Anne (Stefania Girolami, Castellari's daughter), who can't stomach being the heiress to the powerful Manhattan Corporation, which handles 60% of the world's arms manufacturing, flees Manhattan and heads to the Bronx. She's immediately attacked by a gang of hockey stick-wielding idiots known as The Zombies, but is rescued by Trash and welcomed into The Riders. Meanwhile, Manhattan Corporation honcho Fisher (Enio Girolami, Castellari's brother) sends in renegade cop Hammer (Vic Morrow) to find Anne and bring her back home. Hammer has other plans: born in the Bronx and sporting a huge chip on his shoulder about it, the self-loathing Hammer detests his origins and wants the Bronx to burn, and instead of doing his job and rescuing Anne, decides to plant evidence that he hopes will start a war between The Riders and The Tigers, the other major gang led by The Ogre (Fred Williamson). Hammer assumes that Trash and his old-school bikers and Ogre and his pimped-out henchmen will destroy each other and the Bronx in the process. He even gets help from Ice (John Sinclair), Trash's duplicitous second-in-command who has his eyes set on leading The Riders and needs Trash out of the way, resenting the influence Anne has on him ("Since he's hooked up with that Manhattan pussy, all the blood's rushed to his cock"). Hammer, fueled by rage and hubris and assisted by untrustworthy trucker Hot Dog (Christopher Connelly), gets sloppy and it doesn't take long for the not-very-brightTrash to figure out that they're being played. He's forced to journey across dangerous territory and face other rival gangs (including one called The Scavengers, who inexplicably grunt and dress like prehistoric cavemen) to get to The Ogre and convince him to band together to take on the insane Hammer, who's bringing along an army of cops for the subtly-named "Operation Burnt Earth."
Hammer's curious hatred of his home turf is about as close to psychological drama as the script by Castellari, Dardano Sacchetti, and Elisa Livia Briganti gets. The primary focus is on action and, thanks to the work of the dubbing crew, hilarious dialogue. Whether it's the background chatter of The Riders ("Yeah! Ya gotta fight to live!") or the colorful metaphors (thinking they're being set up by Hammer, Trash doesn't simply say something like "This is a bunch of crap!" but instead goes with "It could be a pile of shit outta somebody's asshole!"), something bizarre is uttered in seemingly every scene. Even Connelly, dubbing himself, gets into the act, calling Ice "fagface" and Trash "pisshead" in odd insults that were improvised by the actor himself. In his later Italian B-movie excursions, Connelly used similar strange terms, including "suckfish" in at least three different movies. The silliness continues with a random riverside drum solo, and a complete disregard for NYC geography, with scenes in "the Bronx" obviously shot in Brooklyn (including one looking at the Brooklyn Bridge and the Twin Towers), and the exterior of The Ogre's "Bronx" headquarters actually being the abandoned insane asylum on Roosevelt Island between Manhattan and Queens. But perhaps the film's biggest laugh comes from Sinclair badly wiping out on his bike in one shot and breaking several ribs...and Castellari leaving it in the movie.
Connelly and Williamson were no strangers to B-movies during this time and both would continue to work in the Italian exploitation scene, reuniting a few years later on 1987's Williamson-directed THE MESSENGER. Always employed but with his BLACKBOARD JUNGLE and COMBAT days long behind him, Morrow failed to get much of a career bump from co-starring as the rival coach in the 1976 blockbuster THE BAD NEWS BEARS, and was mainly doing TV guest spots and drive-in flicks like 1979's THE EVICTORS and 1980's HUMANOIDS FROM THE DEEP. He starred in the 1978 Japanese STAR WARS ripoff MESSAGE FROM SPACE and had already worked with Castellari on the Italian JAWS ripoff GREAT WHITE, released in the US in the spring of 1982 and quickly withdrawn from circulation. He co-starred with a then-unknown Michelle Pfeiffer on the short-lived 1980 ABC cop show B.A.D. CATS, but it was cancelled after six episodes. Estranged from his two daughters (including actress Jennifer Jason Leigh) from his first wife and in the midst of a divorce from his second, Morrow's professional and personal lives weren't at their pinnacle by the time he agreed to star in 1990: THE BRONX WARRIORS, and on the BRONX WARRIORS DVD commentary, Castellari tells a story of Morrow breaking down on the flight to Rome after seeing the warm father-daughter affection between the director and daughter Stefania, saying he wished he had that kind of relationship with his daughters. According to Castellari, it was while Morrow was working on 1990: THE BRONX WARRIORS that he learned he got a major role in the John Landis segment of the big-budget, Steven Spielberg-produced TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE, and that he was due to begin work on it when he was finished working on the Castellari film. Morrow's spirits picked up tremendously, and he told Castellari that he believed things were finally looking brighter for him and that he was going to try to repair the fractured relationship with his daughters.
Of course, everyone knows that Morrow never finished shooting TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE. He and two children were killed in the early morning hours of July 23, 1982 when, amidst explosions and pyrotechnics, a hovering helicopter crashed on top of them, crushing one of the children, with the blade decapitating the other child and 53-year-old Morrow. The actor had expressed concern over such a dangerous stunt while carrying two young children, but this was his most high-profile role in years and he wanted the scene to be perfect and didn't want to be seen as "difficult." Morrow was dead just three months after GREAT WHITE appeared in US theaters, and with the Italian practice of not shooting with live sound and instead dubbing the dialogue later on, Morrow didn't live long enough to voice his performance in 1990: THE BRONX WARRIORS, so he was dubbed by veteran voice actor Ed Mannix, whose gruff tones can be heard in countless Italian exploitation films from that era. Cut by six minutes (eliminating a couple bits of gore, the Hells Angels onscreen credit, and the appearance of a campy gang of tap-dancers, all restored on the 2004 Media Blasters DVD), 1990: THE BRONX WARRIORS was released in the US in April 1983 by United Film Distribution, nine months after Morrow's death, with TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE hitting theaters two months later, with Landis' segment with Morrow as a loudmouthed bigot who gets the tables turned on him included but slightly restructured and understandably feeling incomplete. The film was a modest box office hit and had its moments (most notably, John Lithgow's performance in George Miller's segment), but the resulting lawsuits and settlements dragged on for years as the tragic and completely avoidable deaths of Morrow and the children has, to this day, left a dark cloud hovering over the entire project.
1990: THE BRONX WARRIORS also introduced the world to the enigmatic and elusive Mark Gregory. Just 17 years old at the time of filming, young Marco di Gregorio was discovered working out at a Rome gym that Castellari frequented. Rechristened "Mark Gregory," the novice actor's screen presence is, in a word, awkward. His strange, halting posture and his pulled-too-high jeans are a sight to behold, and, well, there's no really delicate way to put this: he's got a chick's ass. This, and his apparent orientation (Williamson said in the DVD's accompanying interview, "Let's just say he didn't leave any footprints in the snow") weren't lost on the Hells Angels playing his fellow Riders, who, according to Castellari, openly razzed and insulted the actor, who didn't speak or understand much English. Gregory seems to be phonetically mouthing English, and was dubbed by the very Noo Yawk-sounding Steven Luotto. Gregory would eventually bulk up a bit more and gain some more confidence in his screen presence, never again looking quite as silly as he does here. Following 1990: THE BRONX WARRIORS, Gregory reprised his role as Trash in Castellari's inferior sequel ESCAPE FROM THE BRONX. Shot in 1983 and released in the US by New Line Cinema in 1985, ESCAPE is unremarkable except for Henry Silva's over-the-top, coffee-spitting performance as a psycho sent in by the Manhattan Corporation to once again exterminate Trash and the denizens of the Bronx. ESCAPE FROM THE BRONX was skewered on MST3K under its alternate title ESCAPE 2000, which is not be confused with Brian Trenchard-Smith's ESCAPE 2000, aka TURKEY SHOOT.
Gregory also starred in the FIRST BLOOD knockoff THUNDER WARRIOR and its two sequels, and he appeared in several other Italian exploitation outings, such as 1983's ADAM AND EVE VS. CANNIBALS, aka BLUE PARADISE and 1987's DELTA FORCE COMMANDO (playing the villain opposite Williamson), and left the movie industry after 1989's AFGANISTAN: THE LAST WAR BUS, aka WAR BUS COMMANDO. For years, rumors circulated that he was serving time in prison on a murder charge or that he was working in a Rome pizza joint, and even Castellari and his son appeared in a video on YouTube asking for information from anyone that knew Gregory's whereabouts. A BRONX WARRIORS "Hunt for Trash" fan site found someone who claimed he knew a guy claiming to be Gregory, but the photos were unconvincing, to say the least, and the guy seemed entirely too young to be Gregory. I even briefly--well, for a day or so--teamed with none other than Stefania Girolami herself to investigate a "Marco di Gregorio" on Facebook who looked very similar to Gregory. She contacted him and he said he wasn't the guy, but even Girolami said the resemblance was pretty strong. It's interesting to think that in this day and age, with fan conventions and all the technology and the social media and all the ways to internet-stalk someone, the obviously off-the-grid Mark Gregory has successfully transformed himself into the J.D. Salinger of Eurotrash cinema.
Where are you, Mark Gregory? You have a huge fan base. Tell us your story!
YouTube montage created by a Mark Gregory superfan
