June 25: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is Wings Hauser Tribute!

This movie is a dream.

Worth Keeter, moving up from the Earl Owensby studios, is directing.

Sybil Danning as vigilante ex-cop Ruger in a movie made to get away from her sex symbol status but just look at the cover of this with her holding a rifle and man, it’s just what 17-year-old me was afraid of, that there were girls out there that looked like Sybil Danning and someday I might have to talk to them. She also wrote and produced this effort, which happened when International Video Entertainment realized how well the Sybil Danning Adventure Video releases they made — she just hosted — did so well.

Gary Graver is shooting it.

Wings Hauser as Cavanaugh, a drug dealer who is, as all Wings Hauser bad guys must be, absolutely beyond evil and out of his mind. He’s also a painter in this. An insane painter.

A candidate for mayor of Los Angeles has been kidnapped and his wife nearly killed, saved only by Ruger shooting first at the criminals. The politician’s wealthy wife, Kelly Rhodes (Lenore Kasdorf, Rico’s mom!), doesn’t dig that Ruger lives in a filthy trailer like she’s Martin Riggs or something, but they quickly bond over, you know, hating drug-dealing scuzzbuckets and being hunted by that very same drug-selling villain.

The sad part is that Steve James was supposed to be in this, and then they even shot photos of Danning with him for Ruger: L.A. Bounty 2, but yeah, I still don’t want to admit that Steve James is dead. Danning kept pushing for this character, as Ruger was in the comic book Concrete Storm with James as Major Washington Lyons and another comic in 2015, too.

And this from Rock Paper Shotgun: “This could well be the single weirdest E3 announcement. 1980s action-movie “star” Sybil Danning is making a “cloud-based” action shooter. It’s called Ruger, and will be loosely based on the 1989 movie L.A. Bounty. The baffling press release states: “While it is still early in the development cycle, Ruger will be a highly stylized, almost comic book styled shooter. The story, written by Sybil, is being held close to the vest, but watching L.A. Bounty is sure to shed at least some light on what it’s all about. There is definitely room in the faux-retro market for more names than Tarantino and Rodriguez, and Sybil Danning certainly has the pedigree to be credible. Incredibly, the game and a Ruger film are being developed simultaneously.””

If I ever meet Jim Rossignol, who wrote that, we may discuss why he put star in quotes about Sybil Danning.

Ruger speaks 31 words in this entire movie, which also has Anthony Kiedis’ dad Blackie Dammit, Frank Doubleday — Romero from Escape from New York — and Robery Quarry in the cast.

Every fact about this movie is that Sybil didn’t dress sexy and was wearing high-waisted jeans. Have you seen Sybil Danning in 1989? She could dress like an aging U.S. Senator and be volcanic.

But yeah. Wings Hauser. He talks to God, he paints naked women, he builds death traps and kills everyone around him, friend, foe and bystander. They should put heat this movie in a spoon and shoot in my eye.

You can watch this on Tubi.