Editor’s Note: Welcome to our final review for our first “Philippine War Week,” in which we reviewed 24 flicks. Yes, we said “first” because we’ll be back during the first week of December with 24 more. To populate a complete list of all of our reviews, click here.
Here, he takes the Dirty Dozen to Vietnam by way of the Philippines and hey look, there’s Vic Diaz!
Well, it all starts with Captain Rosello (Anthony Finetti) taking a platoon into combat but nearly everyone dying. In fact, no one wants to be in his command as nearly everyone dies under his watch. So they assign him the scumbags and misfits stuck in Nam as his next group of sacrificial lambs and, of course, none of them get along.
This team is hard-wired to not get along, what with a racist named Richter being forced to work alongside a black demolition expert, all while one is a pothead, one is the requisite mysterious Native American and the other one is obsessed with God and says stuff like, “Thy will be done. In Vietnam as it is in Heaven.”
They capture Vic Diaz, lose a member and then bond at a brothel, which lands them in the brig, during which they get their big mission: they have to free their commanding officer and some nurses from NAV forces.
Trust me, not everyone is coming back alive.
Also released as Full BattleGear, this movie blows up more huts than any other film you’ll see made in any other country. Plus, Don “The Dragon” Wilson shows up!
We’re breaking from tradition this week when we join special guest Mike Justice this Saturday on the Groovy Doom Facebook page starting at 11 PM East Coast Time.
This is not Nam’s Angels. It’s Nam Angels. That one was made in 1970 and was also known as The Losers. This one in the late 80s in the Philippines.
Lt. Vance Calhoun (Brad Johnson, who was a rodeo cowboy and former Marlboro Man who later was in Always, Flight of the Intruder and played Rayford Steele in the Left Behind movies) is a West Texas soldier with a lasso and a sawed-off shotgun who has taken on a dangerous rescue mission to get some POWs back from Vietnam. Luckily, he has five Hell’s Angels — Larger (Rick Dean, Tales from the Hood), Bonelli (Mark Venturini, Suicide from Return of the Living Dead!), Carmody (Jeff Griffith, The Sisterhood) and Turko (Romy Diaz) — who are ready to fight anyone, anywhere, even if Calhoun tells them they’re on a very different mission.
Vernon Wells plays — well, he’s Vernon Wells so you know he’s completely insane throughout — Chard, a guy who has gone all Heart of Darkness in Vietnam and encourages the villagers to kill everyone on every side of the battle. After all, they have gold to keep safe. That gold is what Calhoun tells the bikers they’re after, not a mission of mercy.
The theme song from this movie does not fit at all and that’s probably why I love it so much.
A Concorde Roger Corman release directed by Cirio H. Santiago, this movie will definitely do the job if you can’t find an Arnold, Chuck, JCVD or Stallone movie.
Our beloved Cirio H. Santiago is back in the Vietnam-doubling Philippine jungles — along with the ubiquitous stock footage — in another Roger Corman-backed Rambo romp. And Cirio’s — always welcomed — stock company is back: Jim Moss, James Gregory Paolleli, and Vic Trevino. And yes . . . that is T.C Carson from Fox-TV’s Living Single starting out his acting career.
And if we have to explain the greatness of Martin Kove to you, well, then you’re no longer allowed to surf the pages of B&S About Movies, for Sam and I can no longer be your retro-VHS senseis. But we’ll mention that Kove’s co-star, Matt Salinger, made his film debut in Revenge of the Nerds and had high hopes in his first marquee role as Steve Rogers in Cannon Pictures’ Captain America. That film — and Matt’s performance — we so poorly reviewed, it was three years before he reappeared in Firehawk. And he’s actually very good here, owning his role as a racist who loves his copter-mounted machine gun to mow down the Viet Cong — and you’ll notice how he creatively repurposes a Confederate Flag bandana into a “star” that homages his best-known role.
Courtesy of jwidner-2011/eBay/TRAILERcourtesy of You Tube.
Kove is the cigar chompin’ Stewart, a helicopter rescue pilot. During a Ramboesque rescue mission in Vietnam, Stewart and his five-man crew are shot down and they must fight their way back to the Cambodian border. They soon come to discover that their ‘copter was sabotaged — and one of them is a traitor assigned to assure the mission failed.
If you’ve hung out with us all this week during our “Philippines War Week,” you know how it all goes: Lots of huts obliterated. Lots of explosions. Lots of stock footage recycling. Lots of bodies fall to the ground in hails of bullets. But you also get pretty solid acting from everyone — Kove’s really good — and all of the expected, solid action we expect from Cirio’s Corman-backed war coffers.
Roger Corman producing a Cirio H. Santiago Philippines-ripoff of Rambo starring David Carradine? No, back up that half-track, soldier! In addition to Rambo, we’re getting an inversion of Brian De Palma’s Causalities of War. See? Roger Corman is never one to allow a major studio theatrical hit go to waste.
The “Tony Dorsett” starring alongside David Carradine is, in fact, the Rochester, Pennsylvania-born Tony Dorsett, who served as a running back for the Dallas Cowboys from 1977 to 1987. And there’s Vic Trevino, who played Ricardo in HBO’s Pee Wee’s Playhouse (and also starred in Cirio’s Firehawk), and Ken Metcalf, who goes all the way back to the 1974 exploitation classic TNT Jackson (and also starred in Cirio’s apoc-slopper Stryker). Fans of the short-lived CBS-TV sci-fi series Space Precinct and Fox TV’s Melrose Place will also notice Rob Youngblood in the cast. If you’ve seen Black Mamba (1974), then you recognize Vivian Velez. And if you’ve seen any Philippines action flicks from the late ’80s — post-apoc or war — you know Jim Moss and Nick Nicholson.
Of course, while all of the actors look familiar . . . you also notice, as with most of Cirio’s flicks: stock recycling of war footage from Cirio’s other films is afoot.
Courtesy of darksidelouisville/eBay/TRAILER on You Tube.
Our man Carradine is, of course, the hellbent and perpetually cigar chompin’ Col. Horace Wiggins inflicting the war casualties as the commander of his own, unauthorized fighting force in Cambodia. And despite the orders of his superiors to not cross the border, he’ll burn the Viet Cong to the ground — no matter the cost. And Tony Dorsett is the just soldier who takes it upon himself to stop Wiggins.
And that’s pretty much it. Lots of huts blow up. Lots of bodies are mowed down by a never-ending stream of bullets. But there’s also a lot of philosophical war babbling. But when those last ten minutes of film roll . . . pure Cirio . . . stock footage be damned. The man knows how to put on a Corman-ploitation styled war drama.
Another scene-clip bites the dust: Why is every time we post a clip or trailer for a review, it’s pulled down?
You can watch a very clean upload of Kill Zone — along with a dozen other Cirio H. Santiago films — on Tubi TV. What’s great about this upload — unlike the numerous, washed-out VHS rips we usually get of Cirio’s work on You Tube — is that we can see how well his films were shot.
About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook.He also writes for B&S About Movies.
While on vacation in Goa, India, Canadian filmmaker Chris McDonell turns his camera on Shilpa Poojar, a 9-year-old girl hustling tourists to buy clothes and jewelry from her seaside shop.
The girl is a migrant worker from the unique Banjara tribe and the primary breadwinner for her family. Somehow, Chris feels a connection to her and comes back three times over the next seven years to tell her story. He feels like if he can help her get to school, he can change her life. But can it happen that way? Will her family allow her to discover her dreams? Once you become addicted to the hustle, can you give it up?
I’m not sure how I feel about this movie, to be perfectly honest. I want to believe that the director was truly altruistic, but then I wonder why he decided to turn this story into a movie instead of it just being a private analog moment.
That said, your mileage may vary and you may have less cynicism in your heart than I do. From the looks of the official Facebook page, Shilpa is leading a happy life and directly attributes that to McDonell, so perhaps things can be positive in this world.
You have to give it to the filmmakers for that title. I mean, that took balls.
Writer/director Ramin Niami is behind this story, working with his daughter Tara Violet as camera operator. It’s about Henry, an agoraphobic resident of Los Angeles who has learned how to hack into the webcams of women all over town. He sees himself as their white knight as he watches them live their lives. His roommate Eric, an actor and influencer, wants him to head out into the real world and yet has no compunctions over getting to uses his male gaze on these women.
Henry also believes that one of the girls is a serial killer. So there’s that.
Naimi was inspired by this high tech film by a story he heard on the radio, stating “I heard about a female college student who found nude photos of herself on the Internet. The FBI discovered that her webcam was hacked and that a fellow college student had taken these images when she was changing in her college dorm room in revenge because she had rejected him for a date. This story inspired me to create a modern Rear Window.”
That’s a high bar to shoot for and this film may not reach it. But hey — it’s a great goal.
This was a hard watch considering how much the way men behave has been publicized. It’s difficult to feel any sympathy for an incel like Henry or a lothario like Eric.
Eye Without a Face is available on demand from Gravitas Ventures. You can learn more at the official website.
Editor’s Note: Part-time contributor Robert Freese loves his Philippines War flicks as much as we do, so he contributed this review to our Mill Creek box set month of reviews back in February 2021. We’re reposting his review as part of our “Philippines War Week” tribute. And there’s an Easter Egg with this review!
An unnamed terrorist leads a team of mercenaries onto a United States military base in Puerto Rico to steal a nuclear weapon. Commando Lt. Tony Turner witnesses the gang’s getaway. His pregnant wife is killed in the crossfire.
Vowing vengeance for his murdered wife and unborn child, Turner immediately commandeers Delta Force pilot Capt. Samuel Beck’s Mercedes and directs him at gun point to follow the goons. From this moment forward, Turner and Beck follow the rebels to Nicaragua and senselessly blow up so much property there is little left for Col. Keitel and the Delta Force calvary to sift through when they finally catch up with the rogue commandos.
For me, Delta Force Commando is perfect Saturday afternoon entertainment. It is an excellent example of the kind of movies I would rent with my brothers on VHS and devour over the weekend. All the thrills we craved to burn through a lazy afternoon are delivered here by the truckload: non-stop action, the obligatory scene where the hero packs his duffle bag with weapons, torture with some wires and a Diehard car battery, multiple shootouts, hand to hand smack-downs, a scar-faced villain, throwing knife mayhem, sling-shot mayhem, crossbow mayhem, macho one-liners, bodies destroyed in meaty bullet hits and copious, glorious explosions. They blow up everything in this movie: cars, buses, jet fighters, helicopters, trucks, bodies, bridges, buildings… I lost count after forty-three explosions, and every last one of them was old school gunpowder and gasoline pyrotechnics, no doubt pulled off by a pyro-effects wizard, probably missing a finger or two.
Fred “The Hammer” Williamson (Black Caesar) as Beck and Bo Svenson (Walking Tall Part 2) as Keitel have their names above the title, but Brett Clark as Turner, is the real star of the film. Like Michael Sopkiw before him, and Richard Anthony Crenna after him, Clark was given the chance of headlining an Italian production made for the international film market in the hopes of becoming a superstar like Clint Eastwood. Clark will be instantly recognizable to you, but you might not know him by name. We’ve been watching him since he first played one of the Camp Mohawk basketball players in Meatballs. He made all kinds of daytime soap and movie appearances. He’s maybe best known for his role of Nick “The Dick” in the Tom Hanks comedy Bachelor Party. (And if you aren’t familiar with “Mr. Dick,” you just need to watch Bachelor Party.)
Mark Gregory essays the role of the unnamed bad guy. Gregory is probably best known for his portrayal of post-apocalyptic hero Trash in 1990: The Bronx Warriors and the sequel, Escape from the Bronx. Here he sports some scabby facial make-up, short hair and a never wavering maniacal smile. Of all his performances I’ve seen, this is the first time Gregory appears to really be having fun with his character.
Director Frank Valenti (a nod to former president of the MPAA Jack Valenti, perhaps?) is really Pierluigi Ciriaci. Long time Italian movie scholars don’t need me to tell them writer David Parker Jr. is really Dardano Sacchetti.
To understand my appreciation for this flick, you really have to understand the era in which it was made. The 80’s were an amazing time of every kind of movie getting made, many receiving a theatrical release and almost all of them eventually showing up on home video or cable. One hit would begat dozens of similar follow-ups, from all over the world. Delta Force Commando was one of the many films that came into creation thanks to the always in demand action movie market and the success of films like Rambo: First Blood Part II, Commando and Missing in Action.
These films would get made, usually on low budgets, have a few recognizable stars, lots of action and sell tens of thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands, of videotapes to the vid stores across the country. When Vista released this film on VHS, it was in every neighborhood video shoppe, in the new release section, right there next to 1988’s Rambo III.
For me, Delta Force Commando is way more entertaining than Rambo III. Of the two, Rambo III has some stunning action sequences, yes, but the characters talk too much, there’s too much plot and story and worst yet, the movie has a “message.” On the other hand, Delta Force Commando doesn’t have a “message” to bog down the action, and we can just munch popcorn and cheer on Lt. Turner as he turns the men responsible for his pregnant wife’s death inside out.
I had the opportunity to ask Dardano Sacchetti about his involvement with this film, as it is a film in which not a lot seems to be known about it. He had this to say, “The Ciriaci brothers had a supermarket and an oven that made bread in a small town near Rome. The oldest was very rich and the youngest wanted to be a director. My agent told me they would pay well for my script. I talked to them and they ended up making films from three of my scripts, but they did not come up roses. I only did it for the money, which turned out not to be very much, in a cloud of cigarette smoke and lots of Vodka.”
As far as the similarity of this title with a Cannon release around the same time, Sacchetti offers, “I believe my Delta Force was written a few months before the American one with Chuck Norris.”
When you’re in the mood for just watching a couple old-school guys blow up a lot of stuff in the name of vengeance, Delta Force Commando is a perfect pick.
What the . . . Sam “The Bossman” Pacino also reviewed Delta Force Commando for our “Mark Gregory Week” back in September 2018? Let’s roll his take!
Latin American revolutionaries — led by Mark Gregory, who still hasn’t learned how to walk properly but has cut his hair — invade a military base on Puerto Rico, steal a nuclear bomb and kill Lt. Tony Turner’s (sure, Brett Baxter Clark was in Teen Witch, but he’s also the gardener who sexes up Harlee McBride in the Cinemax After Dark classic Young Lady Chatterley II) pregnant wife.
Lt. Tony decides to steal a jet and its pilot: Captain Beck, played by Fred “the Hammer” Williamson! They follow the terrorists back home, take them out and almost die when the weapons are due to go off. Funny story — it was just a training weapon and a story to get the U.S. media excited about the Delta Force again.
Your enjoyment of this film is based around how much you enjoy seeing Mark Gregory loopily walk around with a nuclear weapon on his back and Fred Williamson wiping out an entire army while dropping one liners like, “Hey, this beautiful brown body’s got a lot of living left to do, pal!” This is a movie that has a puke grenade. This is a movie that has Fred driving a bus while a helicopter shoots at it point blank. Me? All in.
Good news. Not is this movie amazingly and ridiculously awesome, there’s a sequel. And you can watch both of them for free at Amazon Prime or buy them at Revok.
Yep. That’s how much we love Mark Gregory and Philippine War flicks. Two reviews in one.
Editor’s Note: We unpacked this war flick as part of Mill Creek’s Excellent Eighties 50-Film box set back in February 2021. We’re bringing it back as part of our “Philippines War Week” of films. Yeah, the Italians made this — and not down in the South Seas — but wow, this plays as good as any Philippine Namsploitation rip. Maybe even a little bit better than a Cirio H. Santiago flick. Maybe.
Okay, ye purveyor of B-Trash, let’s unpack the caveats:
While that looks like a rendering of Michael Sopkiw on the one-sheet, this isn’t a repack of Blastfightermade to look like a First Blood/Rambo sequel — although that film was inspired by the adventures of Rambo.
While it looks like it’s a Mark Gregory War movie — of which he made four, plus three Thunder movies — themselves each inspired by Rambo — this isn’t a repack of any of those movies. (We break those flicks down as part of our “Mark Gregory Week” tribute.
Do not do what I did and confuse this Jim Goldman, aka John Gale, aka Filipina Jun Gallardo’s Mad Max apoc-poo Desert Warrior starring Lou Ferrigno.
No, this isn’t a Stallone Rambo foreign repack with bad art work.
Yes, as incredible as it may seem, the Mark Harmon in the credits — in lieu of Michael Sopkiw or Mark Gregory (!) that should be starring — is the same Mark Harmon you’re now watching in reruns from CBS-TV’s NCIS.
This is, in fact, a Enzo G. Castellari’s production, aka The Desert Warrior, aka Tuareg: The Desert Warrior, aka Rambo of the Desert Warrior, which makes no sense. Why not Rambo, the Desert Warrior or Rambo: Desert Blood?
In a desolate section of the Libyan-Algerian Sahara once ruled by the French, Gacel Sayah (Mark Harmon), a Tuareg tribal leader (in tanning make-up and blue contacts), offers refuge to two government fugitives. When soldiers from the newly-installed Arab regime demand the “war criminals” be turned over to them, our desert Rambo refuses, based on the region’s ancient, scared laws. When the soldiers murder one and kidnap the other war criminal, Sayah mounts a bloody campaign to rescue his charge, for so says “the law.”
If you’ve watched any of Enzo’s westerns — A Few Dollars for Django and One Dollar Too Many — then you’ll know that Enzo was into desert-based mayhem long before Stallone came on the scene, so what you get with this much HBO-aired ditty is a war-modernized Spaghetti Western. And be it western, poliziotteschi, or post-apocalypse, Castellari never disappoints, non-A-List Hollywood budgets be damned.
By the time Harmon went all spaghetti-Rambo in the joint, he got his start with guest shots as cops on Adam-12 and its ’70s sister show, Emergency (which I’ve seen these past months as Antenna TV reruns). Harmon also starred in two, failed one-season series with the cop procedural-dramas Sam (1977) and (the one I remember watching first-run) 240-Robert (1979). He was one season deep into his breakthrough role as Dr. Robert Caldwell in the NBC-TV medical drama St. Elsewhere when Tuareg: The Desert Warrior was released. But I have a feeling Harmon probably film this Italian romp long before production on the series began — with Enzo holding back the film (due to creative or cash flow issues), then released he had a “star” on in his film. As for Harmon: when it came to crossing over to a theatrical career, he went for comedy instead of action, with the flops Summer School and Worth Winning.
When you think that Harmon is the guy from TV’s NCIS . . . made-up to look Middle Eastern . . . makes this spaghetti Rambo an even more fascinating watch.
And you can watch this Mill Creek box set public domain ditty on You Tube.
And you thought, after two Teddy “Chiu” Page flicks with Romano Kristoff and Jim Gaines back to back in one day — Black Fire and Jungle Rats — we were doing another one? Gotcha!
As with Kristoff and Gaines, Jim Mitchum — the eldest son of Robert Mitchum (Thunder Road) and older brother to Chris Mitchum (who did his own share of Philippine-schlock with Aftershock, SFX Retaliator, and The Serpent Warriors) — jumped into the Sulu Sea as his career cooled off into a series of Phillipine-based actioners to close out his career. Jim was best known to U.S. audiences for starring in the theatrical inspiration to TV’s The Dukes of Hazzard, Moonrunners (1975). But you’re part of the B&S crowd, right? So you know Jim Mitchum best for his work alongside Richard “Captain Apollo” Hatch and Daniel “Paco Querak” Greene (know your ’80s apoc anti-heroes) in Sergio Martino’s Beyond Kilimanjaro: Across the River of Blood (1990). (Check out our “Ten Sergio Martino Films” featurette.)
Jim Mitchum’s co-star, Christopher Ahrens, is our (well, moi) “Michael Sopkiw,” if you will. Sopkiw made it through four movies before hangin’ up the clap board (2012: After the Fall of New York will get you started): Ahrens also stuck around for four leading-man roles: Raiders of the Magic Ivory being his debut, along with (Do we love this movie or what?) his role as Samuel Fuller in Bruno Mattei’s Shocking Dark (1989), third-stringing with Dirk “Starbuck” Benedict and Ted McGinley (from friggin’ Happy Days?) in the Top Gun-cum-Blue Thunder smash-up Blue Tornado (1991), and Beyond Justice (1991) with Rutger Hauer. As with Mr. Sopkiw and Mark “Trash” Gregory: we wished Aherns stuck around for more flicks. (If I had the money of a producer, I’d pull all three out of retirement and make an action movie . . . but I digress in my fanboy-dom.)
Now . . . before we get to the plot, we must discuss the all-too-brief directing career of Tonino Ricci and his bastard pup of Jaws-ness that is Night of the Sharks. Yes, even Treat Williams, who’s a really fine actor in his own right, when needing a paycheck, can be suckered into the ripoffness of the Spanish and Italian film industries. (See, now I’m the guy who, if I had the chance to interview Treat, I’d could give two shites about Hair; I’d go straight to Night of the Sharks with my first question.) Across his 22 credits, Tony R. gave us a couple of underwater adventures with Cave of the Sharks, aka Bermuda: Cave of the Sharks (1978) and yep, more Atlantis-shenanigans with Encounters of (in) the Deep (1979). And since we’re in Namsploitation territory: the one, two, three precursor Rambo-punch of Bruno Minniti as Rush in Rush, (1983), its sequels, A Man Called Rage and Days of Hell (1986). (Yeah, I know Big M’s character name-changes from Rush to Rage to Williamson . . . and the first two are technically post-apocs, while the third is in set modern-day Afghanistan, but if you watch the movies . . . hey, don’t argue the point with me: they’re “Rambo” “sequels,” so let it go.)
Does the fact that I’m the only person you know that’s seen seven Tonino Ricci films in my ’80s VHS travels concern you? That I’m the only person you know — maybe besides Sam the Boss at B&S (I doubt it, though) — that’s seen more than one Bruno Minniti film? And that I’d add Bruno to my own “Expendables” knockoff with Sopkiw, Gregory, and Aherns?
It should. Be very afraid.
Yeah, yeah. I know. The plot.
Oh, yeah. We know that this is an Italian production shot in the Dominican Republic — but the jungle Rambo-ness is oh, so Filipino. And besides, for all of our favorite B&S actors: when the Italians stop calling, you head to the South Seas.
Anyway, a Chinese businessman contracts Mitchum and Aherns’s mercenaries — for a cool and easy $250 K — to find that ubiquitous magic trinket that everyone seems to be after in these films, in this case: a rare ivory tablet lost in the deep jungles of North Vietnam. So, yes . . . we’ve just smushed our Raiders of the Lost Ark peanut butter into a bar of Namsploitation chocolate. Now, before you say “piranha” or “sharks” are swimmin’ around the treasure: this time we’ve got still-fighting-the-war Vietnamese soldiers, cannibalistic monks, and witch doctors. For the life of me, I don’t know, nor care, if this is set during or after ‘Nam. I just want action. So what’s with all the contemplating and yakity-yak? Friggin’ kill somebody already.
So what’s the dealo with the tablet?
The “evil” Lee Chang — like Lo Pan in John Carpenter’s Big Trouble in Little China — will be cursed for the next 2,000 years, or something, without it. (Of course: he’s a lying bastard with something up his sleeve.) And we need a damsel, and, just like with the cute Chantal Mansfield in Black Fire (reviewed this week) sticking around for only one movie, we have a kidnapped Clarissa Mendez in need of rescue from a black magic jungle cult. (POOF! Clarissa’s gone.) And, for that Rambo pinch: there’s LOTS of explosions and guns with a ridiculous, never-ending-supply of bullets. (There’s so many one-film-and-they’re-gone actresses in these Filipino films . . . did they give away film roles as prizes in Philippine modeling contests or beauty pageants? Crazy!)
So, yeah. It’s just a whole lot of bad-of-everything encased in better-than-the-movie-cover art that screams: RENT ME. And, back in the 5-5-5 days of home video stores and .49 cents Phar-Mor rentals, I gobbled up as much of it as I could. Seriously, how can you pass up a movie that gives the term “everything and the kitchen sink” new meaning?
And you can gobble it up for yourself on You Tube. Or — after reading my near 1,000 word dissertation (about 800 more words than it deserves) — watch the minute-long version.
The hilarious, ingenious minute-long edit of the film would be embedded here . . . if You Tube didn’t delete the user’s account before we went to press. Sorry you missed it.
B&S About Movies 
You must be logged in to post a comment.