Retro Review: COCAINE WARS (1985)

COCAINE WARS
(US/Argentina - 1985)

Directed by Hector Olivera. Written by Steven M. Krauzer. Cast: John Schneider, Kathryn Witt, Royal Dano, Federico Luppi, Rodolfo Ranni, John Vitaly (Juan Vitali), Heidi Paddle (Haydee Padilla), Ivan Grey, Edgard Moore (Edgardo Moreira), Richard Hamlin (Ricardo Hamlin), Armand Capo, Mark Woinski (Marcos Woinsky). (R, 83 mins)

John Schneider was only 19 when THE DUKES OF HAZZARD became a breakout hit for CBS in 1979, and when its seven-season run came to an end in early 1985, he probably thought he'd have bigger big-screen opportunities waiting for him than the Roger Corman-produced COCAINE WARS. Schneider already had a minor hit during a DUKES break with 1983's EDDIE MACON'S RUN, which paired him with screen legend Kirk Douglas, but it failed to jump-start his movie career. And a salary-dispute holdout with DUKES co-star Tom Wopat to protest the lack of money they were seeing from DUKES-licensed products bearing their Bo & Luke Duke likenesses--an acrimonious battle that saw the two stars being replaced for most of the show's fifth season by Byron Cherry and Christopher Mayer as Duke cousins Coy & Vance--didn't go over well with fans. Schneider's big-screen career never took off with supporting roles in the 1987 Italian horror film THE CURSE and the 1989 CANNONBALL RUN semi-sequel SPEED ZONE, in addition to starring as a vigilante priest in the 1989's MINISTRY OF VENGEANCE. Nevertheless, in the 30-plus years since DUKES OF HAZZARD came to an end, the now-56-year-old Schneider has never stopped working, with regular gigs on TV shows like DR. QUINN: MEDICINE WOMAN, SMALLVILLE (as Pa Kent), and THE SECRET LIFE OF THE AMERICAN TEENAGER, plus guest spots on tons of others. He's also done Syfy movies like LAKE PLACID 2 and SHARK SWARM and faithsploitation outings like OCTOBER BABY. In recent years, he's also directed some low-budget films like 2016's C-lister horror summit SMOTHERED and other no-budgeters that usually debut in the new release section at Walmart. He also enjoyed some success as a country music artist, releasing several albums in the 1980s, with 1985's A Memory Like You topping the Billboard Country Charts in April of that year with the hit single "What's a Memory Like You (Doing in a Love Like This)."

Schneider released more music over the years, including a 2014 Christmas album with Tom Wopat, but his 1985 just went downhill after his hit album. One of the films in Corman's partnership with Argentina's Aries Films (others included THE WARRIOR AND THE SORCERESS and BARBARIAN QUEEN), COCAINE WARS sent Schneider to Buenos Aires to play Cliff Adams, an undercover DEA agent posing as a pilot to run drugs for South American coke lord Gonzalo Reyes (Federico Luppi, the future Guillermo Del Toro favorite who would later star in CRONOS). Cliff can only think of vengeance when his partner Rikki (Edgardo Moreira) is killed by Reyes' German henchman Wilhelm (Ricardo Hamlin), a dweeb in Coke-bottle specs obviously modeled on Ronald Lacey's Toht in RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK. Cliff is further enraged when Reyes offers him $200,000 to kill crusading politician Marcello Villalba (Juan Vitali). Instead, Cliff teams up with Villalba and American reporter Janet Meade (Kathryn Witt) to expose Reyes' drug trafficking operation to the world. Everything goes to shit when Janet's editor leaks the plan, outing the long off-the-grid Cliff as a DEA agent and sending both him and Janet on the run with Reyes and his goons in pursuit.

Recently released on Blu-ray (!) by Code Red, COCAINE WARS may sound like a timely action movie for its period but it's not exactly a ripped-from-the-headlines expose of drug cartels. Schneider is a little more gritty than you might expect for a 25-year-old playing a veteran DEA hardass, and there's some seething intensity in his scenes with Luppi, who looks a lot like David Strathairn here. He has little chemistry with the bland Witt, not helped by one of the most hilariously unerotic sex scenes you're likely to see. A decade older than Schneider, Witt had been around for a while, starring with Connie Sellecca and Pat Klous in CBS' short-lived, 1978-79 CHARLIE'S ANGELS ripoff FLYING HIGH and she had supporting roles in films like 1981's LOOKER and 1983's STAR 80. Her career never really caught fire, and she was just about to throw in the towel by the time COCAINE WARS came around. After that sojourn to Argentina, Corman sent her to the Philippines to star in Cirio H. Santiago's DEMON OF PARADISE, but since then, her only film credit is a small role in 1993's PHILADELPHIA, followed by appearances in a pair of Stephen King miniseries, THE DIARY OF ELLEN RIMBAUER and KINGDOM HOSPITAL. COCAINE WARS is low-rent and cheap-looking even by Roger Corman standards, with Argentine director Hector Olivera not really demonstrating much skill in the handling of some frequently choppy and clumsily-assembled action scenes, many of which aren't even up to the standards of a guy like Santiago on an off-day. Perhaps getting it right wasn't as much of a priority as getting it done, as COCAINE WARS was one of three Corman/Argentina co-productions Olivera directed in 1985, along with BARBARIAN QUEEN and WIZARDS OF THE LOST KINGDOM. COCAINE WARS opened in November 1985, just a month after the Arnold Schwarzenegger hit COMMANDO, which was still plenty of time to allow Schneider to straight-up swipe the classic "I lied" quip after he promises to not kill one of Reyes' men but does so anyway. Old-timer character actor Royal Dano has a minor supporting role as Bailey, a crusty old expat coot who more or less serves as an Uncle Jesse surrogate if you want to imagine Cliff as a more grizzled, embittered Bo Duke. COCAINE WARS isn't very good (it probably would've been a lot better in the Philippines with Santiago directing), but Schneider handles himself pretty well and does a couple of his own hair-raising stunts, plus it's tough to dismiss any movie that offers the sight of Royal Dano snorting blow.

Retro Review: THE CURSE (1987) and CURSE II: THE BITE (1989)

THE CURSE
(US/Italy - 1987)

Based on H.P. Lovecraft's 1927 short story "The Colour Out of Space," THE CURSE could ostensibly fit in with the Stuart Gordon-led Lovecraft revival that was going on at Empire Pictures (RE-ANIMATOR, FROM BEYOND), but probably belongs more with the waning, last hurrah days of Italian horror. A U.S.-Italian co-production shot near Tellico Plains, TN, THE CURSE was produced by noted Egyptian-born Italian schlock king Ovidio G. Assonitis (BEYOND THE DOOR, TENTACLES, THE VISITOR), who brought along a mostly Italian crew hiding under subtly Anglicized names (cinematographer Roberto Forges Davanzati goes by "Robert D. Forges," editor Claudio Cutry is "Claude Kutry," composer Franco Micalizzi is "Frank Micalizzi," and most notably, associate producer Lucio Fulci supervised the second unit and the gore effects team and goes by "Louis Fulci") to work for AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN and FIRESTARTER star David Keith, making his directorial debut. Keith hasn't had much to say about THE CURSE since a Fangoria interview prior to its release (when it was known as THE FARM), so little is known about whether Assonitis resorted to his usual "fire the director" routine, which he's best known for pulling with a then-unknown James Cameron on 1982's PIRANHA II: THE SPAWNING, an experience that left debuting director Cameron so upset and bitter that he decided to devote all of his energy to finishing a script he was working on called THE TERMINATOR. THE CURSE is perhaps best known as the first movie young Wil Wheaton made after his breakout starring turn the previous year in Rob Reiner's STAND BY ME. There were probably an untold number of ways Wheaton could've capitalized on his success in Reiner's critically acclaimed, sleeper hit adaptation of Stephen King's coming-of-age story "The Body," and you'd have to think that starring in a cheap-looking, low-budget Ovidio G. Assonitis production where his name is misspelled "Will Wheaton" in the opening and closing credits wouldn't have been near the top of the list. As written on Wheaton's blog, his memories of THE CURSE are not fond ones: "Your Uncle Willie was just a young'un, and some really evil producers from a scary foreign country came to him and said, 'We have this movie for you to be in, and we want to give you lots of money to be in it.' And Uncle Willie didn't have the best advisers at the time, and nobody told him that this big pile of shit would be around forever."

To a point, THE CURSE, scripted by David Chaskin, who had just written the 1985 landmark in homoerotic fever dreams A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 2: FREDDY'S REVENGE, is relatively faithful to Lovecraft's source story, in the sense that it involves a crashing meteor poisoning the land, causing grotesque mutations in humans and animals and driving them insane. Wheaton is Zach, whose widowed mother Frances (Kathleen Jordon Gregory) moved him and his little sister Alice (Wil's sister Amy Wheaton) in with her new husband, the stern and fanatically religious apple farmer Nathan (Claude Akins). Zach doesn't get along with Nathan's oafish, perpetually plumber's-cracked son Cyrus (Malcolm Danare), but that's the least of his troubles once the meteor crashes and all hell breaks loose. Soon, the vegetation is poisoned and the water causes hideous changes in everyone who drinks it and cooks with it. Zach and local doc Forbes (Cooper Huckabee) can't convince anyone outside of town that something's wrong, and greedy real-estate sleazebag Davidson (Steve Carlisle) is trying to keep the truth from Willis (John Schneider), a Tennessee Valley Authority surveyor who's there to greenlight a development project in which the scheming Davidson has invested tons of money. THE CURSE has some fleeting moments of colorful or foggy atmosphere that establishes a nice mood until the film's general sloppiness ruins it--you can clearly see the pole to which the meteor is attached when it crashes into the miniature set, just like you can see the arm of a crew member moving behind a miniature of Nathan's farm, or how actress Gregory flubs a line when she tells Zach "Eat your eggs, Wil" (or "Will," according to the credits), or that the film completely forgets about the copiously hirsute handyman (Steve Davis), who just vanishes from the movie after Nathan figures out he's sleeping with the sexually frustrated Frances. A lot of the positives of THE CURSE come from the technical experience of the Italians, and it has that distinct late '80s Filmirage look to it that reminds one of the Joe D'Amato and Claudio Fragasso films of the era. But Keith's work behind the camera is largely undistinguished and it's not surprising that he only directed one more film, the 1988 INDIANA JONES knockoff THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF TENNESSEE BUCK, where he cast himself in the lead. THE CURSE, probably the last Italian horror film from the glory days to get a wide release in the US, would become the first installment of an unexpected four-part franchise consisting of unrelated films that would be retitled with the CURSE moniker slapped on them. (R, 91 mins)

CURSE II: THE BITE
(Italy/US/Japan - 1989)

Though it didn't set the box office on fire, THE CURSE was enough of a minor hit in theaters and in video stores that in 1989, the Assonitis-produced THE BITE was turned into an unofficial and unrelated sequel when Trans World Entertainment rechristened it CURSE II: THE BITE. THE CURSE wouldn't be the first Assonitis production to be followed by bogus sequels cashing in on a recognized brand: his 1975 EXORCIST ripoff BEYOND THE DOOR led to Mario Bava's 1977 film SHOCK being renamed BEYOND THE DOOR II for its 1979 US release, and 1989's AMOK TRAIN was retitled BEYOND THE DOOR III for its 1991 debut in US video stores. Directed and co-written by Italian Federico Prosperi (under the name "Fred Goodwin"), CURSE II: THE BITE centers on Lisa (THE STEPFATHER's Jill Schoelen) and Clark (J. Eddie Peck, soon to star in Cannon's LAMBADA), a young New Jersey couple travelling across the country and out west in Nevada (the film was actually shot in Las Cruces, NM). Their vacation is derailed when Clark is bitten by a mutated snake that's poisoned with radiation from a nuclear test site. He's given an antidote by travelling salesman/amateur doctor Harry Morton (Jamie Farr in an Italian horror movie?!), but it turns out it's the wrong medication. As Harry frantically tries to locate the couple on the back roads and desert highways, Clark's left arm is slowly turning into a snake, with the radioactive virus infecting his entire body. This leads to some impressively slimy, oozy, and gnarly creature FX courtesy of Screaming Mad George (SOCIETY), and Prosperi doesn't really hold back on the gore and the splatter. Finally able to be seen in its proper 2.35:1 aspect ratio on Scream Factory's new Blu-ray (where it's paired with the correct 2.35:1-framed THE CURSE, no doubt to "Will" Wheaton's disapproval), CURSE II: THE BITE is revealed to be a well-shot film that really takes advantage of its wide-open desert locations and Roberto D'Ettorre Piazzoli's cinematography, especially in one legitimately famous scene (famous for fans of the movie, at least) where Clark and Lisa's Jeep speeds down a snake-covered stretch of highway, with snakes squashing and exploding under the tires. It's so visually striking that other than Clark slither-chasing Lisa while barfing up snakes as his body transforms into a giant one in the climax, it tends to be what people who've seen CURSE II remember the most. It owes a small debt to Cronenberg's remake of THE FLY, but it also fits in with Assonitis' trend towards rural or desert back roads horror in the late '80s, which also describes THE CURSE and 1990's immortal SONNY BOY.

CURSE II: THE BITE is an insane piece of work that should probably have a larger cult following than it does. It's spectacularly gross; Bo Svenson seems to be playing the same asshole sheriffs he played in the first two THUNDER WARRIOR movies; it's a reminder that Schoelen was an adorable scream queen in her day; there's a bizarre, out-of-nowhere appearance by a crazy, religious Swedish family with a mom played by Assonitis' girlfriend Savina Gersak and a kid played by a young, pre-ROSWELL Shiri Appleby; and Jamie Farr gets laid in the most unlikely horror movie appearance by a M*A*S*H vet until Gary Burghoff got a lap dance and went full batshit in 1992's SMALL KILL. It was only a matter of time before Christopher Lee ended up in the CURSE series whether he was aware of it or not, and a couple of years later, the 1989 Lee-headlined South African voodoo horror film PANGA was retitled CURSE III: BLOOD SACRIFICE for its straight-to-video US release in 1991. 1993 saw the release of CURSE IV: THE ULTIMATE SACRIFICE, which was actually the long-shelved and incredibly dull 1988 Empire production CATACOMBS, which has since been released to DVD under its original title. Though none of the sequels have anything to do with the 1987 original, the gloriously disgusting CURSE II: THE BITE is probably the best "dude turns into a giant snake" movie since 1973's unforgettable SSSSSSS ("Don't say it...hiss it!"), and deserves to be the face of what's perhaps horror's most disingenuous franchise. (Unrated, 98 mins)