If you dig deep enough into the trenches of exploitation movies, you eventually find yourself watching Filipino action cinema. Directed by the prolific Teddy Page (working under his own name alongside his Teddy Chiu moniker), Fireback is a relentless blast of custom weaponry, wild pacing and pure cinematic adrenaline.
The narrative kicks off in the thick of Southeast Asia, where US Army weapons expert Jack Kaplan (Richard Harrison, Godfrey Ho’s favorite) is demonstrating a brand-new invention. Captured during a sudden Viet Cong raid, Kaplan finds himself locked away in a brutal POW camp somewhere in the hazy borders of Vietnam, Cambodia or Laos. The film isn’t all that sure.
After a swift rescue operation, Kaplan returns home to America expecting peace, only to discover his nightmare is just beginning. Local gangster Duffy Collins (Bruce Barron) has set his sights on Kaplan’s wife, Diane (Ann Milhench, Nine Deaths of the Ninja, Zuma, Sloane). When she fiercely rejects the criminal’s advances, he kidnaps her, and when she escapes, he kills her.
Kaplan is instantly framed for crimes he didn’t commit, drawing the eyes of a police chief (Mike Monty) and his trusty deputy (Ronnie Patterson). As Kaplan tracks down the underworld figures responsible—including the treacherous nightclub dancer Eve (Gwendolyn Hung, also in Atlantis Interceptors and War Bus) and a small-time crook named Digger (Jim Gaines, who is in every action movie made in the Philippines) —the plot spins completely off the rails. Collins unleashes a bizarre rogues’ gallery of assassins, including a tracksuit-wearing hitman known as the Man with the Golden Hand (Ruel Vernal), a cat burglar (Ron David) and a stealthy ninja named Shadow (Tony Aaron).
Wait? Didn’t I say that this was about a special gun? The Omega (One Man Army Gun), which is a machine gun, grenade launcher, rifle, missile launcher and radio all in one? Did someone tell Blastfighter about this? Kaplan lost that gun back in Vietnam (or some other country), but now he’s on a mission.
After evading the cops in a customized car, using the Omega, Kaplan flees straight into a miraculously transplanted jungle cave. In the final showdown, Kaplan dispatches the ninja Shadow, puts on his gear (it’s not neon and doesn’t say ninja on it, but Harrison did exactly that in Ho’s movies; he also wore eyeliner to ninja fights), infiltrates Collins’ stronghold and finishes the job with a katana. Only a ninja can stop a ninja? Not here. Not now.
Harrison anchors the madness with the stoic intensity of a man who can apparently turn an ordinary soft drink straw into a lethal instrument. It’s true. They say it out loud. Known widely for his prolific work in Italian sword-and-sandal epics, spaghetti westerns and later starring in a string of notorious ninja films, Harrison brings absolute authenticity to the role of the ultimate one-man army, as much as anyone can.
This also has a complete disregard for geographical consistency, seamlessly—well, not really—blending urban American crime elements, local police manhunts and dense tropical jungles into one hallucinatory fever dream of action cinema. The budget is small but who cares? This is why I watch movies.
You can watch this on YouTube.
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