Retro Review: P.O.W.: THE ESCAPE (1986)

P.O.W.: THE ESCAPE
(US - 1986)

Directed by Gideon Amir. Written by Jeremy Lipp, James Bruner, Malcolm Barbour and John Langley. Cast: David Carradine, Mako, Charles R. Floyd, Steve James, Phil Brock, Daniel Demorest, Tony Pierce, Steve Freedman, James Acheson, Rudy Daniels, Ken Metcalfe, Kenneth Weaver, Jim Gaines, Eric Hahn, Henry Strzlkowski.  (R, 89 mins)

"He's got one rule that's never been broken: everybody goes home!" 

Released by Cannon in the spring of 1986, the Namsploitation outing P.O.W.: THE ESCAPE isn't a MISSING IN ACTION sequel but it might as well be. It shares one MISSING IN ACTION co-writer and its plot has quite a few surface similarities with MISSING IN ACTION 2: THE BEGINNING, but instead of Chuck Norris as Col. James Braddock, we get David Carradine as Col. Jim Cooper, a military legend and Pentagon strategist who volunteers for One Last Mission. It's 1973 Vietnam, five days before the cease fire, and the US is launching a last hurrah raid on a known POW camp out of concern that the men will be forgotten after the cease fire and declared MIA. Cooper's rule is "Everybody goes home!" but that's not the case when the small unit accompanying him is wiped out in a chopper explosion waiting for Cooper, who went back to save the injured young Teague (Kenneth Weaver), whose fate was sealed the moment he kissed a cross on his necklace and declared "I got my own insurance right here." Instead of freeing the men, Cooper ends up captured with them in a camp run by the ruthless Capt. Vinh (THE SAND PEBBLES Oscar-nominee Mako). Vinh is informed that Cooper is now the highest-ranking American in captivity and his commanders want him taken to Hanoi for a sham trial before being executed, but Vinh has another idea: he wants Cooper to take him to Saigon, where Vinh will renounce his allegiance to North Vietnam and defect to the US to join relatives in Miami.

Of course, Vinh has ulterior motives, mostly involving an ever-growing stash of gold and jewelry he's confiscated from American POWs over the years that he intends to cash in once he's in America, but for the time being Cooper agrees to the plan, with one caveat: the POWs go with them, because everybody goes home. Complicating matters is loose cannon POW Sparks (Charles R. Floyd), who attempts one failed escape before constantly putting everyone in jeopardy looking out for #1, basically functioning as this film's "Waingro from HEAT" before the filmmakers grant him an unlikely redemption in the end. Just out on Blu-ray from Scorpion (because physical media is dead), P.O.W.: THE ESCAPE was the directing debut of Gideon Amir, who logged some time in the trenches for Cannon, doing first AD and second unit work on films like THE AMBASSADOR and MISSING IN ACTION, and co-writing AMERICAN NINJA before Menahem Golan gave him a shot at making his own movie. Amir does a serviceable job and keeps the film moving, but there's a couple of hiccups, namely a bizarre moment when a nighttime Jeep chase just abruptly ends and cuts to the next morning. Amir has only directed one other movie to date--1989's ACCIDENTS--but remains active in cable and streaming TV shows, most recently as a producer on Amazon Prime's CARNIVAL ROW and DC Universe's DOOM PATROL.

Shot mostly in the Philippines (as evidenced by the presence of Cirio H. Santiago regulars like Ken Metcalfe, Jim Gaines, Eric Hahn, and Henry Strzalkowski in bit parts), with some obvious reshoots in L.A. (the scenery's different and Carradine's hair is longer in some shots), P.O.W. utilized much of AMERICAN NINJA's crew and, most notably, co-star Steve James, again relegated to sidekick duty as Jonston, a POW who becomes Cooper's closest confidant en route to Saigon. It's always great to see James, a terrific actor with top-notch action skills who succumbed to pancreatic cancer in 1994 at just 41, and one who was always cited as a genuinely great guy by everyone who worked with him. Cannon gave James a lot of work, but they never used him to his full potential. Even when he finally secured top billing in 1989's Michael Dudikoff-less AMERICAN NINJA 3: BLOOD HUNT, he was still saddled playing second fiddle to new American Ninja David Bradley, when simply handing the franchise over to James would've been a much smarter decision. P.O.W. seems more interested in making a star of "Charles R. Floyd," who had appeared on the last few years of the long-running daytime soap THE EDGE OF NIGHT under the name "Charles Grant," and who, according to Amir in a newly-shot interview on the Blu-ray, was seen by Golan as "a new James Dean." Not quite. Not helping Floyd/Grant--either an aspiring actor or the least cooperative person in witness protection--was the fact that he acted in three different Cannon films under three different names. He's "Charles R. Floyd" here, he was "Charles Floye" in THE DELTA FORCE, and he was credited in RAPPIN' as "Charles Flohe." Following P.O.W., he found consistent work on more daytime soaps like ANOTHER WORLD, SANTA BARBARA, and THE BOLD AND THE BEAUTIFUL, reverting back to his "Charles Grant" name.

P.O.W.: THE ESCAPE would be one of the last times Carradine headlined a relatively wide theatrical release, even though he never stopped working until his death in 2009, and he was so prolific that he still turned up in over a dozen movies you've never heard of that were trickling out as late as 2013. He was still getting high-profile TV gigs like the miniseries NORTH AND SOUTH and NORTH AND SOUTH BOOK II around the time of P.O.W., but he would soon embark on a long stretch of mostly crummy B-movies and D-list straight-to-video titles. A supporting role as the villain in the 1990 Mel Gibson/Goldie Hawn comedy BIRD ON A WIRE was his only dalliance with the A-list until Quentin Tarantino gave him a brief respite with the KILL BILL films in 2003 and 2004. That got him some better TV guest spots in the short term, but the resurgence that everyone was expecting never happened, and he was soon back to garbage movies, and that includes his supporting turn as "Poon Dong" in 2009's unwatchable CRANK: HIGH VOLTAGE. He's a solid hero in P.O.W.: THE ESCAPE, and definitely brings more of a loose screen presence to the proceedings than the more stoical Norris did to the MISSING IN ACTION films. He even goes one step further with the blatant "America! Fuck yeah!" jingoism by spending most of the climactic battle literally draped in the American flag as he blows away VC commies before one of the guys leads them all in a "Proud Mary" sing-along. Suck on that, Chuck!

P.O.W.: THE ESCAPE opening in Toledo, OH on 4/4/1986

Retro Review: THE ANNIHILATORS (1985)

THE ANNIHILATORS
(US - 1985)

Directed by Charles E. Sellier Jr. Written by Brian Russell. Cast: Gerrit Graham, Lawrence Hilton- Jacobs, Paul Koslo, Christopher Stone, Andy Wood, Jim Antonio, Sid Conrad, Dennis Redfield, Bruce Evers, Millie Fisher, Becky Harris,Mimi Honce, Bruce Taylor. (R, 85 mins)

After making a fortune with his Utah-based indie Sunn Classic Pictures and creating the hit TV show THE LIFE AND TIMES OF GRIZZLY ADAMS, Charles E. Sellier Jr. had other ambitions and gradually began to wean the company off speculative re-enactments like 1977's THE LINCOLN CONSPIRACY, Brad Crandall-narrated UFO and Noah's Ark "documentaries," and more faith-based fare like 1980's IN SEARCH OF HISTORIC JESUS. There was money to be made with titles like the 1980 sci-fi conspiracy thriller HANGAR 18, the 1981 horror film THE BOOGENS, and the 1983 Stephen King adaptation CUJO, the latter finding distribution with Warner Bros. Sunn Classic would be sold to Taft Enterprises in 1980, and Sellier would move into the profitable realm of drive-in exploitation with the 1984 teen comedy SNOWBALLING and the same year's SILENT NIGHT DEADLY NIGHT. The latter would prove to be a step too far--not just for Sellier's Sunn Classic faithful but for pretty much everyone--with the killer Santa slasher movie igniting a firestorm of controversy and widespread condemnation, with Siskel and Ebert calling him out by name and calling the profits from the film "blood money." Sellier continued to follow B-movie trends outside the auspices of Sunn Classic with the 1985 New World Pictures release THE ANNIHILATORS, an instantly-forgotten Namsploitation/vigilante mash-up shot in Atlanta and just out on Blu-ray from Kino Lorber, because physical media is dead. The concept was nothing new--TAXI DRIVER, ROLLING THUNDER, THE EXTERMINATOR, and FIRST BLOOD all dealt with Vietnam vets unable to function in civilian life when they came home before the subgenre went into full "the war's not over till the last man comes home!" mode--but THE ANNIHILATORS takes a more SEVEN SAMURAI-esque approach, albeit with a budget that forced them to whittle it down to four.

Paralyzed from the waist down after being shot saving his buddies in 'Nam, Joe Nace (Dennis Redfield) now owns a small grocery store in the fictional South Point neighborhood in Atlanta (the film was shot in the city's Cabbagetown district, and the market is played by Little's Food Store). The area is overrun with gang activity, with the chief menace being Roy Boy Jagger (Paul Koslo) and his "Rollers." Where most movie gangs are fearsome youths terrifying their elders, Roy Boy and his Rollers all look to be grown-ass men in their 30s and 40s, terrorizing a bunch of people in roughly the same age bracket by shaking them down for protection money and loan sharking. Joe mouths off to Roy Boy one too many times and gets his head bashed in with a meat tenderizer (Joe has one for sale in his store, just randomly hanging on a rack with numerous other unrelated items) while his lone customer--a well-dressed woman who can't possibly live in the area--is stripped naked, fondled, and gutted with a switchblade. Joe's dad Louie (Sid Conrad) decides he's had enough of Roy Boy's reign of middle-aged terror and summons Joe's old Nam buddy Bill "Sarge" Ecker (Christopher Stone) to teach the area residents to fight and help them stand up to the Rollers. Ecker tracks down the rest of their Nam crew--accountant and comic relief Ray (Gerrit Graham), family man Garrett (Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs, aka WELCOME BACK, KOTTER's Freddie "Boom Boom" Washington), and hopeless drunk Woody (Lou Reed lookalike Andy Wood)--to come to South Point and take out the trash.

Christopher Stone (1942-1995)

With a bigger budget and a better director, THE ANNIHILATORS could've been an acceptably entertaining garbage action movie. But it's so inept and cheaply-made that it's really surprising New World actually rolled it out across the country (regionally; it opened in the summer of 1985 but didn't hit my hometown of Toledo, OH until January 1986). The cops--led by Lt. Hawkins (Jim Antonio)--are no help and rank among cinema's most pathetically useless. The training montage lasts all of two minutes before all of the residents are taking charge and kung-fu fighting. And in his own way, Koslo's mulleted Roy Boy is as cartoonish as Gavan O'Herlihy's Fraker in the somewhat similar DEATH WISH 3, which would be out later in the year. But despite the occasional amusement, THE ANNIHILATORS is never as entertaining--even in a bad way--as you want it to be. The title crew is likable enough (except for annoying sad sack Woody), and while he was never a star, Graham (USED CARS) seemed to be doing OK enough with comedic supporting roles in higher-profile projects (THE RATINGS GAME, THE MAN WITH ONE RED SHOE) that a gig like this seems a bit beneath him. If THE ANNIHILATORS deserves credit for anything, it's giving a tough-guy lead to Stone, a TV vet best known for co-starring with his wife Dee Wallace in THE HOWLING and CUJO (they were married from 1980 until his death from a heart attack at just 53 in 1995). Though he stayed busy until the end, Stone never really broke out and became the second-string Tom Selleck that he could've been, so even though it's pretty terrible, THE ANNIHILATORS does get somewhat of a boost from his presence. It would be the last film Sellier directed before his death in 2011 at 67. Following THE ANNIHILATORS, he switched to producing TV-movies and later replicated the Sunn Classic ethos for the post-2000 DTV era with various DA VINCI CODE and SECRET-inspired "documentaries," as well as pandering, faithsploitation drivel like END TIMES: HOW CLOSE ARE WE? and GEORGE W. BUSH: FAITH IN THE WHITE HOUSE.

THE ANNIHILATORS opening in Toledo, OH on 1/10/1986

Retro Review: THE LAST HUNTER (1980)

THE LAST HUNTER
(Italy - 1980; US release 1984)

Directed by Anthony M. Dawson (Antonio Margheriti). Written by Dardano Sacchetti. Cast: David Warbeck, Tisa Farrow, John Steiner, Tony King, Bobby Rhodes, Margi Eveline Newton (Margie Newton), Massimo Vanni, Alan Collins (Luciano Pigozzi), Dino Conti, Gianfranco Moroni, Edoardo Margheriti. (Unrated, 96 mins)

Veteran Italian journeyman Antonio Margheriti became synonymous with jungle explosion movies in the 1980s with RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK ripoffs like THE HUNTERS OF THE GOLDEN COBRA, THE ARK OF THE SUN GOD and JUNGLE RAIDERS, and a WILD GEESE-inspired commando trilogy with British TV star Lewis Collins (CODENAME: WILDGEESE, COMMANDO LEOPARD, THE COMMANDER), but it was his partnership with New Zealand-born David Warbeck that initially got the ball rolling. Shot in the Philippines on some of the same locations and abandoned sets from APOCALYPSE NOW, 1980's THE LAST HUNTER (belatedly released in the US in 1984 by World Northal) was the first teaming of the director and star and the first of countless Namspoitation actioners to come from Italy throughout the decade. Filmed under the title IL CACCIATORE 2 in response to the Oscar-winning THE DEER HUNTER being known there as IL CACCIATORE (from Lucio Fulci's ZOMBI 2 to Ciro Ippolito's ALIEN 2: ON EARTH, unofficial bogus sequels were a trend in Italian exploitation at the time), THE LAST HUNTER is more of gritty, down-to-the-basics riff on APOCALYPSE NOW. In January 1973, burned-out Capt. Henry Morris (Warbeck) is given a top secret assignment. Dropped in an area swarming with VietCong, he meets up with a small group of soldiers--Sgt. George Washington (Tony King), Carlos (Bobby Rhodes), and Stinker Smith (Edoardo Margheriti, the director's son and assistant)--who are accompanied by war correspondent Jane Foster (Tisa Farrow) as they make their way toward a destination known only by Morris, who's haunted by the recent suicide of his best friend. They're ambushed by VC along the way, and Stinker is ripped apart by a spiked booby trap, but they eventually find refuge at a rowdy outpost run by the very Kilgore-like Major Cash (John Steiner), who sends daredevil Phillips (Massimo Vanni) on dangerous coconut runs outside the camp's perimeter that are in no way meant to remind you of Lance's surfing during a bombing raid in APOCALYPSE NOW.

Morris' mission is to terminate (with extreme prejudice) a traitorous voice broadcasting anti-American, "Charlie" propaganda over the airwaves in Saigon. The voice is that of an American woman who turns out to be someone close to Morris (making this mission...wait for it...personal) and the embodiment of every enraged, right-wing "Hanoi Jane" caricature you've heard for the last 50 years. Cash complains that the voice is turning his officers against him with statements like "Don't obey your commander...he's only sending you out to die. Go home to your girl, American boy..." while the deeper into the jungle they go, the more Morris and the others start to question why they're even there. It all leads to one of the more downbeat finales in Italian Namsploitation, which was a common theme as these went on. More often than not (Margheriti's TORNADO, Fabrizio De Angelis' COBRA MISSION aka OPERATION NAM), the Italians avoided the revisionist, flag-waving "This time we're gonna win!" mythology of the American Namsploitation movies and went for full-on bleak hopelessness. Of course, in 1980, Sylvester Stallone and Chuck Norris had yet to embark on one-man missions to bring the POWs back home and as such, THE LAST HUNTER is certainly more in line with the grim elements of APOCALYPSE NOW and THE DEER HUNTER, particularly Washington's memorable death scene and Morris' final decision at the end. It's also quite brutal and often incredibly gory, so much so that it earned a spot on the UK's infamous "Video Nasties" list. Margheriti wasn't one to indulge in the graphic gore of his contemporaries like Lucio Fulci and Umberto Lenzi, but 1980 saw him going all in on the splatter. The same year, he directed CANNIBAL APOCALYPSE, his lone entry into the Italian cannibal cycle. Also known as CANNIBALS IN THE STREETS and INVASION OF THE FLESH HUNTERS, the film fuses the cannibal subgenre with Namsploitation, as Vietnam vets John Saxon, Giovanni Lombardo Radice ("John Morghen") and THE LAST HUNTER's Tony King return home infected by a cannibal virus, their PTSD manifesting itself as an insatiable craving for human flesh that sends them on a rampage through Atlanta.

Typically, Margheriti would use gore sparingly to focus more on action, of which THE LAST HUNTER--written by frequent Fulci collaborator Dardano Sacchetti--has plenty. Displaying more explosions and firefights than perhaps the rest of Margheriti's filmography combined, THE LAST HUNTER is old-school and has a cut-the-bullshit attitude, especially in the way it shows off the kind of dangerous stunt work that would never fly today (there's one shot of an explosion going off near Warbeck and Farrow that's pretty ballsy on the part of both actors). You can feel the sweltering heat and humidity in the obviously unpleasant shooting conditions. Of course, this being an Antonio Margheriti film, there's also the usual display of Margheriti miniatures as well as some explosions in the opening sequence that's mostly recycled footage from 1978's THE SQUEEZE and 1979's KILLER FISH. But overall, THE LAST HUNTER is one of the great Namsploitation offerings and a masterpiece from the glory days of the Italian Ripoff. It helped set the course for Margheriti's output for the rest of the decade and established Warbeck as an action star in Italy. Known for some UK TV roles and small parts in British horror films like TROG, TWINS OF EVIL, and CRAZE, as James Coburn's doomed friend in Sergio Leone's DUCK, YOU SUCKER, and as the male lead in Russ Meyer's BLACK SNAKE, Warbeck's status as a Eurocult legend would be cemented thanks to his work with Margheriti and Lucio Fulci in the 1980s. Warbeck's star would dim as the Italian exploitation cycle declined in the late '80s, but he did land one major A-list gig with a supporting role in the 1984 Tom Selleck vehicle LASSITER. Code Red/Kino Lorber's new LAST HUNTER Blu-ray (boasting the obligatory Code Red packaging typos as producer Gianfranco Couyoumdjian becomes "Grand Franco Couyoumdjian"--honesty, isn't "Gianfranco" the easy part of that name?) also features an interview with the well-traveled Tony King, who retired from the NFL after one season with the Buffalo Bills in 1967 before drifting into modeling and acting in the early '70s. His standout performance in 1975's underrated REPORT TO THE COMMISSIONER should've made him a star, but nothing happened, and by 1980, he was working in Italy, reteaming with Margheriti and Warbeck for 1982's TIGER JOE. He moved into social activism and upon changing his name to Malik Farrakhan in the late '80s, became well-known as the head of security for Public Enemy. King's life and career have gone down some unexpected paths, and he has some good stories about working in Italy, and fond memories of the cast and other films he's worked on, though the interview's most memorable moment is when someone starts banging on his door and shouting "Tony, open the motherfuckin' door!"

Retro Review: PLATOON LEADER (1988)

PLATOON LEADER
(US - 1988)

Directed by Aaron Norris. Written by Rick Marx, Andrew Deutsch, David Walker and Peter Welbeck (Harry Alan Towers). Cast: Michael Dudikoff, Robert F. Lyons, Rick Fitts, Michael DeLorenzo, Jesse Dabson, William Smith, Brian Libby, Tony Pierce, Michael Rider, Daniel Demorest, Al Karaki, Evan J. Klisser, Dean Ferrandini. (R, 96 mins)

A gritty Namsploitation outing from the beginning of the waning days of Cannon, PLATOON LEADER is still big on explosions and firefights but surprisingly light on the flag-waving jingoism so common in the Reagan era with Sylvester Stallone's Rambo and Chuck Norris' Braddock. Based on the 1985 memoir of Lt. James McDonough, PLATOON LEADER--originally titled NAM until Cannon went back to the book's title to take advantage of the success of Oliver Stone's PLATOON--gave Cannon's AMERICAN NINJA star Michael Dudikoff his biggest opportunity to act and build a three-dimensional character. Dudikoff is Lt. Jeff Knight, a book-smart West Point grad sent to Vietnam with an assignment to run the 103rd Airborne--aka "The Herd"--a platoon of battle-hardened, seen-it-all troops tasked with guarding a village from attack by the VC. Knight is inexperienced in battle, talks down to the guys, and commits one mistake after another, quickly earning the derision and scorn of his far more experienced charges. He's severely injured by an exploding landmine and shipped off to recover. It's assumed he'll never be back, but once he's well, he requests to be assigned to the same post, this time learning the error of his ways and becoming a genuine leader, unafraid to get down in it and do the grunt work and earn the respect of his men as they protect the village from invasion by VC forces.

It's a formulaic story that gets a big boost from some solid action sequences and a believable performance by Dudikoff. The film takes a big risk in making Knight kind of a prick in the early going, but Dudikoff wisely doesn't oversell it. Dudikoff always had an engaging presence in his action movies without ever being a particularly gifted thespian, but he steps up his game in the presence of veteran character actor Robert F. Lyons as the cynical Sgt. McNamara, his second in command and the diplomatic peacemaker, keeping the soldiers in line and getting it through to Knight that he needs to quit being such a dick. Usually cast as cops or lawyers in a long career on the big and small screens, Lyons rarely got a chance to shine, but he's very good here, giving a lot more to a low-budget action movie than most jobbing journeyman actors would. And speaking of journeyman actors, PLATOON LEADER gets a little added gravitas from gravelly-voiced B-movie legend and '70s biker movie fixture William Smith, on hand for a few scenes as Knight's commanding officer back at the base.

Shot in South Africa, PLATOON LEADER was a Cannon production farmed out to legendary producer Harry Alan Towers, who also co-wrote the script under his usual pen name "Peter Welbeck." Best known for his many collaborations with Jess Franco in the 1960s and into the early 1970s, Towers was one of the movie industry's all-time great exploitation hucksters. In the late '80s, he was producing a ton of films in South Africa, including several for Cannon and Menahem Golan's post-Cannon outfit 21st Century, at a time when apartheid was still a thing and working there was a dubious career choice. Despite the terrible optics, working actors went where the work was, and Tower$ always had a way of getting known names attached to his projects. Accordingly, many established but past-their-prime actors who weren't fielding offers from Hollywood studios opted to take the paycheck and headed to South Africa for Towers, including Oliver Reed (DRAGONARD), Ernest Borgnine (SKELETON COAST), Jack Palance (GOR), Donald Pleasence (TEN LITTLE INDIANS), Herbert Lom (RIVER OF DEATH), Brenda Vaccaro (THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH), and Robert Vaughn (BURIED ALIVE), among others.

In what was one of the worst-kept secrets in Hollywood at the time, Golan and Cannon partner Yoram Globus also had a production facility in Johannesburg that they repeatedly denied existed, and with a bad taste in his mouth after shooting AMERICAN NINJA 2: THE CONFRONTATION, PLATOON LEADER, and RIVER OF DEATH in quick succession in South Africa, Dudikoff decided he would no longer work there. As a result, he sat out AMERICAN NINJA 3: BLOOD HUNT and would only return for AMERICAN NINJA 4: THE ANNIHILATION when Cannon agreed to move the production to Lesotho, a sovereign nation inside South Africa. Easily the best film directed by Aaron Norris (BRADDOCK: MISSING IN ACTION III) and the only one that didn't star his big brother Chuck, PLATOON LEADER is an unusual entry in the Cannon Namsploitation canon, lacking the "America! Fuck yeah!" fist-pumping of MISSING IN ACTION and P.O.W.: THE ESCAPE--the latter ending with star David Carradine literally draped in the American flag--and the blunt, right-wing polemicism of THE HANOI HILTON. Call it Cannon's version of THE SIEGE OF FIREBASE GLORIA.

A still from the NAM press materials before
the title was changed to PLATOON LEADER.

Retro Review: OPERATION NAM (1987)

OPERATION NAM
aka COBRA MISSION
(Italy/West Germany - 1986; US release 1987)

Directed by Larry Ludman (Fabrizio De Angelis). Written by Gianfranco Clerici, Vincenzo Mannino, Larry Ludman (Fabrizio De Angelis) and Erwin C. Dietrich. Cast: Oliver Tobias, Christopher Connelly, Manfred Lehman, John Steiner, Donald Pleasence, Ethan Wayne, Gordon Mitchell, Enzo G. Castellari, Enio Girolami, Alan Collins (Luciano Pigozzi), Aldo Massasso, David Light. (Unrated, 87 mins)

"Forget about it, man. It's Vietnam." 

This Italian-German Namsploitation actioner was shot in 1985 as COBRA MISSION but unreleased in the US until 1987, when it went straight to video courtesy of Imperial Entertainment, who retitled it OPERATION NAM, as Vietnam movies were in vogue in months after PLATOON. In West Germany, COBRA MISSION was known as THE RETURN OF THE WILD GEESE in an effort to tie it in with Antonio Margheriti's WILD GEESE ripoff CODENAME: WILDGEESE (1984), as both films shared German co-producer Erwin C. Dietrich. An unusually downbeat and cynical example of the '80s P.O.W. rescue movie, COBRA MISSION/OPERATION NAM avoids the flag-waving, "Born in the USA," "America! Fuck yeah!" jingoism of the Reagan era, when blockbusters like RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II went back to Vietnam to refight the war with a guaranteed American victory. OPERATION NAM shares the distrust of the powers that be exemplified by Charles Napier's duplicitous Murdock in RAMBO, but it goes further by letting the corrupt US government and military win and having the good guys lose the war a second time. The heroes of OPERATION NAM aren't killing machines like Sylvester Stallone's John Rambo or Chuck Norris' James Braddock in the MISSING IN ACTION movies. They're normal, everyday guys like the Vietnam vets in Ted Kotcheff's UNCOMMON VALOR. OPERATION NAM has some valid points to make and its finale is an unexpectedly subversive gut-punch, but it's still a Namsploitation B-movie directed by Fabrizio De Angelis, under his usual pseudonym "Larry Ludman." Much better known as a producer (ZOMBIE, THE BEYOND, 1990: THE BRONX WARRIORS) than a director--something he didn't start doing until 1983's FIRST BLOOD ripoff THUNDER WARRIOR-- De Angelis blows things up impressively, but the film is ragged and filled with amateurish continuity gaffes (like one character going back and forth from light stubble to a two-week beard, often in the same scene) and sloppy corner-cutting, often glossing over important details just to get to the next explosion.

Unable to adjust to civilian life in the decade-plus since they returned home from Vietnam, three Arizona men impulsively decide to mount a hastily-planned P.O.W. rescue mission: henpecked Roger (Christopher Connelly) plays video games all day and hates his wife, his daughter, and his life in general; drifter Mark (Manfred Lehman) just walked out on a shitty job at a desert bar; and unemployed James (John Steiner) has just pawned his service medals so he can afford a suit to wear to Roger's daughter's wedding. The vets share crass, vulgar war stories and offend the other guests--all rich friends of Roger's nagging wife--who drop unsubtle lines that scream "MESSAGE!" like one pompous asshole declaring "Those Marines are trained for combat, but they're only happy when they're fighting in war." The three men ditch the wedding and pay a visit to their old commander, Major Morris (cult director Enzo G. Castellari), who was railroaded out of the Marines for his persistence in pushing the issue of rescuing P.O.W.s still left behind in Vietnam, a topic that those high up the military chain of command, like stern Col. Mortimer (Gordon Mitchell), refuse to discuss or even acknowledge. The guys visit another vet buddy, Richard (top-billed Oliver Tobias of THE STUD), who's crashing in a mental institution for free meals and easy sex with the nurses, improbably break him out of the facility and head to Bangkok. "There's only one problem...how do I get outta here?" Richard asks, as De Angelis immediately cuts to the four men driving around Bangkok, never bothering to show how they managed to get Richard out of the hospital.

Taking $30,000 from a corrupt, Bangkok-based contractor (Enio Girolami) who cons grieving families of their hard-earned money by promising to find their MIA sons, the quartet head to Vietnam meet up with Father Lenoir (Donald Pleasence), a French priest who's been in the region since the 1950s and supplies them with weapons, ammo, and maps to still-operational P.O.W. camps. Typical Namsploitation antics ensue, with the guys mowing down numerous Viet Cong soldiers and eventually finding a camp with several Americans still being held captive. In a plot development that echoes RAMBO and the untrustworthy Murdock, Roger and the others find out that the US government and military are fully aware of the remaining P.O.W.s, and that they were left behind and labeled "war criminals" as part of the agreement to end the war. US inspectors visit the camps every year or so to check up on everyone, always promising that "We're gonna bring you home soon," and they never do, and Roger and the others who went on this unauthorized rescue mission find themselves in over their heads with a government that needs them to keep their mouths shut.

Perhaps because European producers didn't have an American flag to fly behind tough guy stars like Sylvester Stallone, Chuck Norris, and David Carradine (who's literally draped in an American flag at the end of the 1986 Cannon production P.O.W.: THE ESCAPE), bleak endings were nothing new with Italian Namsploitation movies. Two films by Antonio Margheriti--1980's THE LAST HUNTER and 1983's TORNADO--have bum-out final shots that send the audience out sulking. Even taking those into consideration, OPERATION NAM is a little more subversive than you might expect, going full PARALLAX VIEW in the home stretch and boasting one of the more ballsy downer endings you'll see in the Namsploitation genre, one that not only paints the government as not giving a shit about those who risk their lives fighting for their country, but actively silencing those who pose a risk of shattering the illusion of America. Until then, it's fairly typical of mid '80s Italian action, complete with some of the same Arizona locations seen in films like THUNDER WARRIOR and HANDS OF STEEL, location work in the Philippines filling in for Vietnam, questionable dubbing choices (Tobias, Lehman, and Steiner are all dubbed, with British Steiner given a ridiculously overripe Southern good ol' boy accent), a slumming guest star cameo (in this case, Pleasence, who's in the movie for five minutes, tops), and Connelly ad-libbing the same bizarre insults he used in almost all of his many Italian trash movies of the period (yes, his old standbys "flyface" and the ubiquitous "suckfish" make appearances here).

Ethan Wayne hanging with his dad on the
set of 1973's THE TRAIN ROBBERS

When Imperial Entertainment's VHS release of OPERATION NAM arrived in video stores, the pre-release promo and the cover art hyped the presence of Ethan Wayne. The sixth of John Wayne's seven children and named after his father's character in THE SEARCHERS, Ethan Wayne (who's also gone by "John Ethan Wayne") has a supporting role as one of the P.O.W.s and figures prominently in the depressing finale, but Imperial's tag line screamed "In the John Wayne action-packed tradition comes his son Ethan Wayne," plastered over a pic of Oliver Tobias blowing someone away. Born in 1962 to John Wayne and his third wife Pilar, Ethan Wayne started out with bit parts in some of his dad's late-period westerns like 1970's RIO LOBO and 1971's BIG JAKE, and eventually moved into stunt work. He made a brief detour to Italy in an attempt to start a career as an action star, but all he got were roles in two Fabrizio De Angelis films, starring in 1984's Arizona-shot THE MANHUNT, plus his supporting role in OPERATION NAM. Wayne got a few TV guest spots over the years and had a lengthy run on the daytime soap THE BOLD AND THE BEAUTIFUL, but things never took off for him and he never even got as big as Patrick Wayne, let alone their old man. These days, Ethan is in charge of overseeing his father's estate and all of its business concerns, and he runs the John Wayne Cancer Foundation charity. Tobias, meanwhile, would reunite with De Angelis for 1990's insane THE LAST MATCH, without question the greatest football commando movie ever made, with Tobias as a superstar QB whose daughter is abducted in a South American country, prompting him to take his team--played by off-season members of the Miami Dolphins and the Buffalo Bills, including then-Bills QB Jim Kelly--on a rescue mission as they attack the villain's compound in full game-day attire, complete with their coach (Ernest Borgnine) calling coordinated plays ("Hut! Hut!") and their kicker punting footballs stuffed with grenades.

Under its original COBRA MISSION title, the film was enough of a success in Europe and Asia that De Angelis produced the 1988 sequel COBRA MISSION 2, directed by Camilo Teti (a production manager for Sergio Leone on ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST and DUCK, YOU SUCKER and for Dario Argento on THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE) under the pseudonym "Mark Davis," with the younger and more Stallone-esque Brett Clark (BACHELOR PARTY, EYE OF THE EAGLE, DELTA FORCE COMMANDO) as someone named Roger--though it doesn't seem as if he's playing the same Roger as Connelly, who died of cancer in 1988--who's off the grid and working black ops for the US government, sent to help freedom fighters depose a Latin American dictator. COBRA MISSION 2 can be found on the bootleg circuit, but was never released in the US and has fallen into total obscurity.





SPOILER ALERT

Note: the version of OPERATION NAM that's streaming on Amazon Prime, under the original title COBRA MISSION, has a bizarre edit in the final scene that eliminates crucial information and inadvertently gives the film an anticlimactic and confusing wrap-up that significantly cushions the blow. After the men leave Vietnam and head home, forced by the military to leave the P.O.W.s behind, Mortimer is shown arriving at a hospital and saluting an apparently shell-shocked, motionless, wheelchair-bound Richard. The Amazon version eliminates a POV shot of Moritmer walking down the hallway to Richard's room as captions reveal that Roger and James both died mysterious deaths immediately after their attempted rescue mission, the implications being that they were murdered and Richard has been given a ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST lobotomy and dumped back in the V.A. hospital to keep quiet about what he knows. This scene is actually shown in full in the COBRA MISSION trailer above, so it's odd that it's incomplete in the Amazon Prime version, which actually runs two minutes longer and has more violence and gore than Imperial Entertainment's 85-minute VHS release of OPERATION NAM. 

Retro Review: NAM ANGELS (1989)

NAM ANGELS
(US/Philippines - 1989)

Directed by Cirio H. Santiago. Written by Dan Gagliasso. Cast: Brad Johnson, Vernon Wells, Kevin Duffis, Rick Dean, Mark Venturini, Jeff Griffith, Romy Diaz, Ken Metcalfe, Archie Adamos, Eric Hahn, Tonichi Fructuoso, Frederick Bailey, Leah Navarro. (R, 93 mins)

Filipino exploitation auteur Cirio H. Santiago (1936-2008) dabbled in nearly every genre over the course of his long career, specializing in blaxploitation knockoffs in the mid '70s and post-nukes in the early '80s, but as B-movie trends went, so went Santiago. By the late '80s, after the success of macho MIA rescue fantasies like UNCOMMON VALOR, MISSING IN ACTION and RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II, and more serious films like the Oscar-winning PLATOON and Stanley Kubrick's FULL METAL JACKET, Namsploitation became one of the most profitable genres for the burgeoning home video market. Ripoffs flooded New Release shelves at video stores nationwide, whether it was Santiago's Philippines-shot actioners or Italian knockoffs like Fabrizio De Angelis' THUNDER WARRIOR series and OPERATION NAM, and Bruno Mattei's legendarily craptacular STRIKE COMMANDO. Even Australia got into the act with Brian Trenchard-Smith's cult classic THE SIEGE OF FIREBASE GLORIA. Usually working in conjunction with Roger Corman, Santiago cranked out a ton of Namsploitationers from 1984 to 1993, including FINAL MISSION (1984), THE DEVASTATOR (1986), EYE OF THE EAGLE (1987), BEHIND ENEMY LINES (1988), THE EXPENDABLES (1988), EYE OF THE EAGLE III (1989), FIELD OF FIRE (1991), BEYOND THE CALL OF DUTY (1992), FIREHAWK (1993), and KILL ZONE (1993) before demand died down and he moved on to a string of kickboxing movies.

EYE OF THE EAGLE III is probably Santiago's best Namsploitation outing (he sat out 1988's EYE OF THE EAGLE II), but a close second is 1989's NAM ANGELS, a loose remake of the 1970 Jack Starrett drive-in hit THE LOSERS mixed with a little KELLY'S HEROES. Just out on Blu-ray from Code Red in further defiance of the "Physical media is dead" myth (and introduced by Code Red head Bill Olsen in his inane "Banana Man" get-up, referring to Cirio Santiago as "Sollio Sariago"), NAM ANGELS opens at the height of the Vietnam War as Army Lt. Vance Calhoun (a debuting Brad Johnson) loses most of his men in a skirmish while the rest are taken prisoner by Chard (Vernon Wells, best known as Wez in THE ROAD WARRIOR), a "round eye" mercenary with ties to both the CIA and the North Vietnamese, who has set up shop as a despotic ruler, out there operating without any decent restraint, beyond the...oh wait, that's Col. Kurtz. Back at the base, Calhoun can't convince Gen. Donipha (Ken Metcalfe) to send in a rescue team, so he organizes his own--an off-the-books op where he recruits a quartet of incarcerated Hell's Angels who were nabbed trying to smuggle drugs out of Cambodia back to the States. Calhoun gets them out and convinces them they're on a mission to recover $10 million in VC gold that his men found in a cave on the outskirts of Chard's camp. Calhoun and Army mechanic Hickman (Kevin Duffis) butt heads with the biker gang leader Larger (Rick Dean) and the rest of the Angels--Bonelli (Mark Venturini), Carmody (Jeff Griffith), and Turko (Romy Diaz), especially when Larger finds out the primary reason for the journey--but before long, they set aside their differences and find common ground, realizing they have to work together to make it out alive...if they don't kill each other first!

NAM ANGELS is one of Santiago's fastest-paced programmers. The director drops the ball when it comes to period detail, best represented by Santiago capturing the exact and very brief window in time in 1989 when Chard's rather ahead-of-its-time and decidedly un-1969 combination mullet/tiny ponytail would be even remotely socially acceptable, and he has the chutzpah to close the film with a John Milton quote ("Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven"), but NAM ANGELS is a lot of fun. The action, explosions, and motorcycle stunts are almost non-stop, and there's some attempt at making a serious statement ("Even your own people don't care about you!" Chard yells when Calhoun realizes no one's coming to rescue them), and while none of these guys are any great shakes as actors, there's enough of a developing camaraderie over the course of the film that it turns into a better-than-expected men-on-a-mission outing.

The film marked the big-screen debut of Johnson, a professional rodeo cowboy who served a three-year stint as the Marlboro Man before turning to modeling and eventually acting. Like many before him, Johnson got his start in the world of Roger Corman (and Santiago put Johnson's lassoing skills to use throughout NAM ANGELS) but it wasn't long before he was declared a Next Big Thing. Later in 1989, still a virtual unknown and given an "Introducing" credit despite already starring in NAM ANGELS, he was picked by Steven Spielberg to co-star with Richard Dreyfuss, Holly Hunter, John Goodman, and the legendary Audrey Hepburn in the director's ALWAYS. He next starred with Danny Glover and Willem Dafoe in John Milius' 1991 military actioner FLIGHT OF THE INTRUDER, and...that was it. With the big studios deciding they already had one actor to fill their Tom Berenger needs, Johnson's time on the A-list was short-lived, rivaled in its brevity only by Patrick Bergin, another Next Big Thing from that same period who flamed out in record time. Like Bergin, Johnson became a fixture in the world of straight-to-video and/or cable, with films like 1993's THE PHILADELPHIA EXPERIMENT 2, 1994's THE BIRDS II, and 1995's LONE JUSTICE 2, along with several TV gigs and the syndicated series SOLDIER OF FORTUNE, INC, with fellow straight-to-video mainstay Tim Abell. Johnson's career got a second wind with the faithsploitation crowd when he co-starred as pilot Rayford Steele in the Kirk Cameron-headlined LEFT BEHIND trilogy, but with the exception of a one-off comeback in the barely-seen church-funded indie NAIL 32 in 2015, the devoutly religious Johnson's been retired from acting since 2008. Now 56 and the father of ten with his wife of 30 years, Johnson appears to have left Hollywood behind and now owns a real estate and property development company.

Cult Classics Revisited: THE SIEGE OF FIREBASE GLORIA (1989)

THE SIEGE OF FIREBASE GLORIA
(Philippines/Australia - 1989)

Directed by Brian Trenchard-Smith. Written by William Nagle, Tony Johnston, Brian Trenchard-Smith and R. Lee Ermey. Cast: Wings Hauser, R. Lee Ermey, Albert Popwell, Robert Arevalo, Mark Neely, Gary Hershberger, Clyde R. Jones, Margi Gerard, Richard Kuhlman, John Calvin, Nick Nicholson, Michael Cruz, Henry Strzalkowski. (R, 99 mins)

Before it came back into circulation on MGM's HD cable channel, streaming services, and as an "MGM Limited Edition Collection" manufactured-on-demand DVD in recent years, Brian Trenchard-Smith's THE SIEGE OF FIREBASE GLORIA was a hard-to-find VHS obscurity going for exorbitant rates on eBay. It was a sought-after title not just for B-movie aficionados and cine-hipsters who embraced it after learning Quentin Tarantino was a huge fan, but also for Vietnam War veterans.  Released in January 1989 by the short-lived Fries Entertainment, THE SIEGE OF FIREBASE GLORIA was one of many post-PLATOON Vietnam War dramas that saw a marked reduction in the "The war's not over till the last man comes home" side of Namsploitation, where the heroes of UNCOMMON VALOR (1983), MISSING IN ACTION (1984), and RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II (1985) went back to 'Nam to settle scores and take care of unfinished business. Instead, there was a shift to grittier fare like HAMBURGER HILL (1987), PLATOON LEADER (1988), and EYE OF THE EAGLE 3 (1989), throwbacks to the types of straightforward, formulaic, B-grade WWII and Korean War battle pictures that Sam Fuller made in the 1950s.  FIREBASE GLORIA's trump card was the presence of R. Lee Ermey, a Vietnam vet and former Marine drill sergeant who found work as a Vietnam genre Hollywood technical advisor on films like THE BOYS IN COMPANY C (1978) and APOCALYPSE NOW (1979), where he can be seen as a helicopter pilot during the famous "Ride of the Valkyries" sequence.  Ermey was hired by Stanley Kubrick to mentor actor Tim Colceri, who was cast as the brutal drill instructor Gunny Sgt. Hartman in FULL METAL JACKET (1987). Kubrick's instructions to Ermey were simple: "Lee, I want it real."  What Kubrick realized in witnessing Ermey's training of Colceri was that he cast the wrong guy in the part and that Ermey should be playing Hartman.  Kubrick, never known as the most sympathetic director to actors, felt bad enough about replacing Colceri that he gave the young actor the consolation prize of a small but memorable one-scene role as a trigger-happy doorgunner ("Get some!"). Ermey, meanwhile, was given wide latitude by Kubrick to improvise and actually wrote much of his own dialogue, creating one of the most memorable characters and some of the most quotable lines in cinema history in the film's harrowing opening 45-minute basic training segment (it's worth noting that Hartman's insults about "steers & queers" and "I will gouge out your eyes and skullfuck you!" were bellowed five years earlier by an Oscar-winning Louis Gossett, Jr. in AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN).

Ermey's FULL METAL JACKET success led to him being given the lead in THE SIEGE OF FIREBASE GLORIA, even though '80s B-movie icon Wings Hauser (VICE SQUAD) gets top billing. Like Kubrick, Trenchard-Smith gave Ermey a lot of wiggle room, allowing him to rewrite much of the script, which is credited to William Nagle and Tony Johnston (Trenchard-Smith and Ermey are credited with "additional dialogue").  Nagle wrote the novel The Odd Angry Shot, about Australian soldiers in Vietnam, and it was turned into the acclaimed 1979 film that may very well have the worst trailer ever.  He also scripted the WWII courtroom drama DEATH OF A SOLDIER (1986) before working as an assistant director on 1990s straight-to-video fare like INDECENT BEHAVIOR II.  It's hard telling how much of Nagle and Johnston's work made it into the finished film, but the result resonated with many Vietnam veterans who feel that THE SIEGE OF FIREBASE GLORIA is the most accurate cinematic depiction of the war.  You can find that sentiment on message boards and IMDb user reviews, and I can even attest from my days at Blockbuster Video that this film was regularly cited as the most brutally realistic look at Vietnam that many of these vets had ever seen.

Now, as someone who's never served in the military, I can only approach THE SIEGE OF FIREBASE GLORIA from the perspective of a fan or a film critic. You can see it trying to be a little more than the typical Namsploitation offering.  Its depictions of the savagery of war are unflinchingly grim and bloody, and the battle scenes have a relentless intensity to them. I suspect these are the bits of realism that the vets are talking about, along with paying briefly futile lip service to the idea that "The VC are soldiers, too," in the way it spends time with Viet Cong commander Cao Van (Robert Arevalo), who believes in respecting the courage of one's enemies.  Other than that, the story and the characterizations roll straight off of the war movie assembly line. At the start of the Tet Offensive in 1968, Sgt. Maj. Hafner (Ermey) and his right-hand man DiNardo (Hauser) and their squad commandeer and fortify a ramshackle firebase populated by stoned, disillusioned burnouts and led by a C.O. (John Calvin), who sits at his desk nude while jerking off to nudie mags and getting high. Of course, the no-nonsense Hafner is outraged over such things as weed and long hair, as Ermey himself probably is, and proceeds to whip the men into shape using the same kind of speeches he gave in FULL METAL JACKET.  Sure, it's entertaining hearing Ermey fire off quips like "We're gonna fortify this shithole and protect it like it's your daughter's cherry," or "It's time to sprinkle some shit in Charlie's rice," and another about how "there is no such thing as an atheist in a combat situation!" but when Ermey's not doing his Ermey schtick, FIREBASE GLORIA becomes so awash in cliches that it defeats itself.  There's a little Vietnamese boy named "Pee Wee" (Michael Cruz), who becomes a surrogate son to battle-hardened DiNardo, who's still mourning the death of his own young son; there's Hafner having no time for emotional silliness like a female captain (Margi Gerard) who's in charge of the infirmary; there's wide-eyed, naive innocent Murphy (Mark Neely), who immediately goes off the deep end and starts thousand-yard-staring like he invented it as soon as the shit hits the fan when Cao Van's forces attack; there's the crazed, stoned photojournalist (Nick Nicholson as Dennis Hopper); and with several reminders that he only has 17 days left in his tour, is there any chance radio communications guy Shortwave (Clyde R. Jones) is making it out alive?

One of the few instances of Namsploitation doubling as Ozploitation, THE SIEGE OF FIREBASE GLORIA was a Filipino/Australian co-production that displayed the kind of grandiose action sequences that Trenchard-Smith was known for in his prior Australian exploitation films, which often showcased the death-defying stuntwork of perpetual Trenchard-Smith man-crush Grant Page (STUNT ROCK).  Once it gets going, FIREBASE GLORIA is almost non-stop battle sequences, with some explosions that would make Antonio Margheriti envious. And that's really what this film is all about.  It may have some scattered moments of lofty ambition, but it's really just a higher-end, Philippines-shot Namsploitation entry that's just made with more precision and care than, say, the Cirio H. Santiago joints of the same period, like BEHIND ENEMY LINES or EYE OF THE EAGLE (both 1987). Ermey is onboard to be R. Lee Ermey, but perhaps FIREBASE GLORIA's dramatic element would work better if Hauser's performance wasn't so terrible.  Hauser is a legend in B-movie histrionics, but that approach doesn't adapt well to serious drama.  His big emotional scene near the end, where he talks to Hafner about his dead son and how a drunken, post-funeral, three-week AWOL bender got him busted down to corporal should be DiNardo's big moment, but Hauser's bug-eyed over-emoting is just embarrassing and cartoonish, as is every line of dialogue spoken by Gary Hershberger, who turns up late in the film as Moran, an Army chopper pilot who lends the men some assistance. When Hafner gives Moran a list of necessary supplies, Moran quips "You want french fries with that?"  Hershberger seems to have been told to act as much like Bill Paxton's Chet-from-WEIRD SCIENCE as possible, and he's so grating that you almost expect him to smirk "Cleanup, aisle 3!" after mowing down some VC.  Speaking of ridiculous, don't miss the scene where an enraged Hafner yells at his men while carrying the severed heads of two slaughtered Marines.  It's possibly the most batshit moment of R. Lee Ermey's career.

If one approaches THE SIEGE OF FIREBASE GLORIA as a B-grade actioner in the Namsploitation subgenre, it doesn't disappoint. It may occasionally try to go the extra klick quality-wise, but when it's all said and done, it's still the kind of movie that expects you to cheer and chant "U-S-A!" when DiNardo tortures an enemy soldier. That, coupled with Hafner/Ermey's almost John Wayne concepts of social conservatism (Hafner has bigger fish to fry than Moran getting a haircut and a shave), probably puts FIREBASE GLORIA more on the right-wing HANOI HILTON end of the political spectrum as far as these films are concerned. But it's all in the eye of the beholder: THE SIEGE OF FIREBASE GLORIA wasn't seen by many people in theaters, but became a word-of-mouth hit with both military vets and exploitation fans on video, and it's a film many of them have held near and dear in the 25 years since.  In other words, it's the very definition of a cult classic.

The Cannon Files/New on Blu-ray: MISSING IN ACTION (1984); MISSING IN ACTION 2: THE BEGINNING (1985); THE DELTA FORCE (1986)

This week, Fox/MGM released three Chuck Norris/Cannon classics on Blu-ray, presumably to take advantage of his co-starring role in the upcoming THE EXPENDABLES 2, which will be the action star's first widely-released theatrical film since 1995's TOP DOG.  The Blu-ray editions of MISSING IN ACTION (1984), MISSING IN ACTION 2: THE BEGINNING (1985), and THE DELTA FORCE (1986), with new artwork draping Chuck in the American flag, are exclusively available at Wal-Mart for now, but will be available through other retailers at some point in the next several months.  Fox/MGM are also releasing a pair of other non-Cannon Norris films on Blu-ray on July 17 (not retailer exclusives):  LONE WOLF MCQUADE (1983) and what many consider his best film, CODE OF SILENCE (1985).




MISSING IN ACTION
(US, 1984)

The Vietnam War was still a raw, open wound for America in the 1980s, and before Oliver Stone's PLATOON (1986) paved the way for serious examination and reflection, there was a brief explosion of action-oriented "the war's not over till the last man comes home!" films, or for lack of a better term, "Namsploitation." After several years of films depicting Vietnam vets as madmen, psychos, and killers (TAXI DRIVER, THE EXTERMINATOR, and even FIRST BLOOD to some extent), Namsploitation films were, in essense, a chance for misunderstood, outcast American heroes to go back to 'Nam, kick ass, free the remaining POWs that many believed were still being held captive, and add another chapter to the story:  one where America wins. 1985's RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II (in which Sylvester Stallone's John Rambo morphs from withdrawn, shell-shocked loner to Commie-killing cartoon) is probably the most famous example, though 1983's UNCOMMON VALOR really got the ball rolling.  Cannon had MISSING IN ACTION in theaters several months before RAMBO, and it was a surprise hit for the studio and for star Chuck Norris, until then generally known as a martial arts star, though he'd been attempting to move out of that genre for a couple of years.  Here, Norris is Col. James Braddock, a pissed-off vet forced into a diplomatic mission to present-day Vietnam.  He's there to prove MIA American soldiers are still being held captive, and neither spineless, useless American Sen. Porter (David Tress) nor the Vietnamese government, represented by Gen. Trau (James Hong!) will listen to him (Trau accuses of Braddock of war crimes against the Vietnamese people).  When Trau's right-hand man Vinh (Ernie Ortega), who held Braddock captive during the war, has him kicked out of the county, Braddock makes his way to Bangkok, meets up with wily old Army buddy Tuck (M. Emmet Walsh), who's still living it up in the city's red light district, and cajoles him into helping him sneak back into Vietnam by boat. 

MISSING IN ACTION ended up being one of Cannon's most successful films, and is arguably the point where American moviegoers finally recognized Norris as a legitimate action star and stopped boxing him in as "just" a martial arts guy.  The whole one-man-wrecking-crew motif is inherently absurd, but for the most part, MISSING IN ACTION is played totally straight, unlike many of the increasingly ridiculous films of the subgenre that came down the pike later (like many of the Italian ones, particularly 1987's STRIKE COMMANDO).  The stoical Norris is a tough, mean bastard throughout, and for a Cannon genre outing, it gets better direction that you'd expect from Joseph Zito (who had FRIDAY THE 13TH: THE FINAL CHAPTER in theaters the same year).  Zito often relies on long takes with fluid camera movements (watch the opening sequence) that do an effective job of making the action immediate and real.  Watching it again after all these years, I was surprised to see that MISSING IN ACTION is not the non-stop shoot 'em up that you'd think it is.  Rather, it plays more like a suspense thriller with periodic bursts of action.  It's a revisionist fantasy (complete with the iconic shot of Norris rising from the water, gun blazing, blowing away some cackling VC, plus a great crowd-pleasing final shot), but it's surprisingly grim, respectful of its subject (Norris had a younger brother who was killed in Vietnam), and non-exploitative, which is more than you can say for a lot of the films that followed in its and RAMBO's wake.  MGM's Blu-ray is framed at 1.85 and while not demo quality, is a definite upgrade from previous DVD editions, with a nice level of grain, texture, and detail throughout.  Also with Roger Corman vet Lenore Kasdorf (FLY ME) as a State Dept. representative, a terrible Bangkok karaoke version of Rod Stewart's "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy," and, credited among the stuntmen, one "J. Claude Van Damme."  (R, 102 mins)


MISSING IN ACTION 2: THE BEGINNING
(US, 1985)

MISSING IN ACTION was released in November 1984 and became a sleeper hit, and it was followed less then four months later by the prequel MISSING IN ACTION 2: THE BEGINNING.  Critics remarked that it was a cheap, quickly-shot cash-in of a follow-up, but in fact, both films were shot back-to-back and it was shot before MISSING IN ACTION and was intended to be released first.  What became MISSING IN ACTION was supposed to be a sequel.  Cannon honchos Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus liked Joseph Zito's MISSING IN ACTION more and decided to release it first.  When it proved popular with audiences, this film was sold as a prequel.  This explains at least one oddity about MISSING IN ACTION: why there's a "Based on Characters Created by" credit when it's ostensibly the first of two films. You wouldn't know they were shot back-to-back without being told: Norris is the only actor in both films, which have different directors (Lance Hool helms MIA 2) and different shooting locations (MIA was shot in the Philippines, MIA 2 in Mexico and on St. Kitts).  Where MISSING IN ACTION was handled relatively seriously, MISSING IN ACTION 2 (co-written by then-19-year-old millionaire investor/philanthropist and future tabloid fixture Steve "father of Elizabeth Hurley's kid" Bing), focusing on Braddock's time in a POW camp under the merciless rule of cardboard villain Col. Yin (Soon-Teck Oh), looks cheaper and feels more in line with the Namsploitation ripoffs that would come from the Philippines and Italy a year or so down the road.  There's much more of an emphasis on violence and gore, including the infamous "rat hood" scene, and Braddock and Yin have a totally out-of-place climactic karate battle. Taken for what it is, MISSING IN ACTION 2 is very entertaining, but it's interesting to see how two films intended to go together, and shot and released in such close proximity to one another, could be so vastly different in tone, style, and technique.  Zito has always been an underrated genre director (his FRIDAY THE 13TH: THE FINAL CHAPTER is easily the best of the sequels) who should've gone on to bigger things.  Lance Hool, while competent, doesn't have the same directorial flair.  It's easy to see why Golan & Globus, always out to make a quick buck but also craving respectability, opted to position the Zito film first, even though there's clearly more action in Hool's film. 

Chuck Norris 1, Huge Rat 0

Oddly, MGM's Blu-ray transfer (again framed at 1.85:1) actually looks and sounds better than MISSING IN ACTION.  Norris returned in 1988's forgettable BRADDOCK: MISSING IN ACTION III, and in the meantime, Golan & Globus returned to the Namsploitation genre with 1986's P.O.W.: THE ESCAPE (with David Carradine) and 1988's PLATOON LEADER (with Michael Dudikoff) in addition to the serious, post-PLATOON parade with Lionel Chetwynd's 1987 right-wing, Jane Fonda-bashing THE HANOI HILTON.  (R, 95 mins)


THE DELTA FORCE
(US, 1986)

Drawing heavily from the harrowing summer 1985 hijacking of TWA Flight 847, THE DELTA FORCE is one of Cannon and Chuck Norris' most ambitious action films.  Directed by the big guy himself, Menahem Golan, the film pairs Norris with the legendary Lee Marvin (in his last film) as the leaders of the elite Delta Force, called to duty when an Athens-to-Rome-to-NYC flight is hijacked by Ayatollah Khomeini-supporting Lebanese terrorists led by Abdul Rifi (Robert Forster).  The hijacking takes up the first half of the film, and the rest deals with the Delta Force's attempted rescue of the American hostages who were removed from the plane during a stop in Beirut.  To his credit, Golan does a great job of keeping the film on track and not succumbing to camp and overacting, a miraculous feat given the Golan-Globus-by-way-of-Irwin Allen supporting cast (the poster art even uses the Allen-pioneered classic '70s "faces in boxes" design for all-star disaster movies!):  Bo Svenson as the pilot, Robert Vaughn as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Fassbinder ingenue Hanna Schygulla as the German flight attendant/Uli Derickson stand-in, Kim Delaney as a nun, Steve James as one of the Delta Force, and, straight from a Dean Martin Celebrity Roast, there's Martin Balsam, Shelley Winters, George Kennedy, Susan Strasberg, Joey Bishop, and Lainie Kazan as hostages.  They aren't asked to do much after the initial hijacking, but Kennedy, Bishop, and Balsam (as a Holocaust survivor) all get poignant moments in the spotlight, and even Winters keeps the shrieking to a minimum.  Forster is quite good as the fanatical terrorist, taking what could've easily been a politically incorrect caricature and turning it into something plausible and not embarrassing. 

Lee Marvin (1924-1987)

The film does get increasingly silly as it goes on, when Golan shifts the focus to nonstop explosions, stunts, guys engulfed in flames, and endless Norris fetishizing, which reaches its apex during a "How 1986 is this?" shot of Chuck on a motorcycle, silhouetted against the sky, his mullet blowing in the breeze, accompanied by Alan Silvestri's rousing, synth-and-drum-machine-propelled score.  And it's nice to see Marvin going out with one last solid tough guy role.  He was already having health problems at this point and looks much older than 62, but in no way lacking in energy or screen presence.  It's certainly a product of its time, but it holds up as an essential 1980s action flick.  Norris returned in 1990's DELTA FORCE 2, and his son Mike Norris starred (along with other less famous relatives of bigger names like Nick Cassavetes, Eric Douglas, and Matthew Penn) in 1991's DELTA FORCE 3.  Several years later, Cannon cover band NuImage released a series of five (!) similar OPERATION DELTA FORCE films. The Blu-ray offers a solid HD presentation, framed at 1.78:1, cropped slightly from the theatrical 1.85:1.  There were apparently some subtitling issues in a previous DVD edition, but that seems to have been corrected here.  (R, 129 mins)