“There ain’t gonna be no rematch.”
— Apollo Creed, telling you there won’t be a “Philippine War Week III”

Thank god. The last and final, ever, Philippine war flick reviewed on this site (well, sans the idiotic Commando Invasion snafu that led us to review it, twice, this week). We started this nonsense four months back, with our first week of reviews during the first week of August. Our reviews of 40-plus film — with plenty of links and mentions of so many others — will get you were you need to be, that is if you must watch every single Sylvester Stallone-to-Arnold Schwarzenegger-to-Chuck Norris ’80s war rip ever made in the lands northwest of Down Under.

In one of Jun Gallardo earliest rips, he shanghais Richard Harrison (we explore his career by way of his Neapolitan-cum-North African passion project, Three Men on Fire) in a tale about ragtag group of not A-Team lads led by Richard Harrison into the Cambodian jungle.

The roles of the good guys and bad guys are divided up among the familiar names and faces of, well, everyone that’s on that VHS sleeve. Yes! Romano Kristoff (Raiders of the Magic Ivory) is here as well? Hey, Mike Monty, you’re back . . . oh, not for long? What flick did your scene get cut-in from, I wonder? If you’re keeping track: Anthony Alonzo was in W Is War and Mad Warrior. Vic Vargas? IMDb him: he’s got over 300 credits to pick at (Daughters of Satan is one of them). Remember the Robert Clouse (Golden Needles) mess that is Gymkata starring Kurt Thomas? Well, Tetchie Agbayani — who’s done a few of these Asian war romps and is a much more serious, accomplished actress, one with over 100 credits, as well as Asian television series — not only stars in Gymkata: she “invented” the martial art-gymnastics hybrid used in the film; something to that effect.

As you can see, I am going to rant and make this Namsploitation’er sound way better than it is.

Harrison — with a ‘stache that’ll scare the shite out of Tom Selleck (who got his start in Daughters of Satan) — is an ex-Special Forces ops who makes his scratch as a mercenary for hire who leads a ragtag group of U.S and Southeast Asian guerrilla freedom fighters into Cambodia. Harrison’s claim to fame: he’s the only one that comes back alive from his missions. Lovely. In steps Tetchie, our hot guide — the only one who knows the terrain — because you need a sex-love interest between the showers of blank n’ squibs. All the racist cliches are then thou unleashed: the Italians are oversexed nut bags (Romano Kristoff), the Asians are all yellow-troped to the extreme, and the African Americans (actor Jim Gaines, in this case) make Sgt. Lincoln Osiris positively subdued.

This is a movie that, before we get to the no-plot-and-just-explosions part of the picture, our newly formed force of no-Rambos hangs out at a disco-strip joint (lifted from another Harrison war opus, Fireback by fellow Sliver Star alum, Teddy Page; we did that on Friday; we are writing ahead, here) and bowling alleys to pad the running time until they find that “secret” document that started this mess.

Wow. Poor Richard Harrison. He made ONE ninja movie for Godfrey Ho, then, by way of splicing, ended up “starring” in a dozen more films — and had his career ruined because everyone thought he was down-and-out and on the drunken skids to a grave in Manila. He was anything but, as he was putting together his grand opus, Three Men on Fire.

Just damn you to Charlton Heston ape hell, K.Y Kim, you cheap bastard. Curse your Silver Star Studios for torturing me and Sam the Bossman these past five months in dealing with faux-Nam joints. But oh, my crazy celluloid uncles of Cirio Santiago, Teddy Page, and Jun Gallardo: your Z-grade rips of Clint Eastwood’s The Dirty Dozen to Sly Stallone’s Rambo: First Blood II made my VHS home video days of youth all the much sweeter.

And as we add another oxtail to the Kare-Kare: Anthony Alonzo previously appeared in another Pearl of the Orient warsploitationer, Wild Cats Attack. But you’ll notice Tony’s name isn’t on the video sleeve (seen below). So what’s the stewed mechado all about, my kaibigan? Well, in the grand tradition of all things Manila-doubling-as-Vietnam-and-Central America and actors starring-by-proxy: Wild Cats Attack clips all of its war footage from Task Force Alamid (1982), which aka’d as The Red Barrets — which should only have one “r” in the title, but it’s Philippines cinema, don’t cha know? But Wild Cats Attack, to keep that wheel of title confusion, spinning, also aka’d as Special Forces U.S.A. “Ahiiiiyaaaah! Make it stop!”

Now you, our fellow Philiploitation fetishist may disagree on that Wild Cats Attack titling snafu, but let’s not forget that Tony starred in Diegong Bayong (1984), which was recut into a post-Oliver Stone world as Platoon the Warriors (1987). Hey, if starring-by-proxy is okay for an expatriated Richard Harrison and Gordon Mitchell, then it’s good enough for our native son, Anthony Alonzo. Oh, did you know Alonzo won an award for “Best Actor” in the Filipino Academy of Movie Arts & Sciences for Willie Milan’s Bambang (1982)? True story. No, sorry, that’s a Death Wish–Lethal Weapon-styled story about Manila street gang wars and not a ‘Nam flick, so you’re on your own with that one.

Okay, let’s get back to Invasion Cambodia . . . er, uh . . . there’s nothing else to tell . . . except that there’s no trailer to share. But you can pick through the full film on You Tube and see if you want make a 90-minute go of it.

Well, that’s it! Thanks for playing along with our two “Philippine War Week” blow outs. See yahs for the next “theme week” at B&S About Movies. As for our “Philippine War Week” theme weeks: click the hyperlink to populate all 48 reviews in one easy-to-scroll list. You can learn about the genre with an in-depth interview with Godfrey Ho at Nanarland.com.

About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.

Here I go again, with my Richard Harrison squeezin’ and pleasin’. Deal with it, ye reader. . . .

Silver Star Productions. Teddy Page. Richard Harrison. Sly and Arnie ripping. So, what’s not to like? Well, each and every Southeast Asian Pacific Rim film that starred Richard Harrison also starred Jim Gaines: for by hook or by crook . . . or by stock footage . . . Harrison and Gaines will always co-star in Silver Star productions. They will. And here, Gaines is the bad-guy-who-goes-good Digger. And so . . . that ends the common sense portion of the film.

Well, not really. This one actually has a sensible story, a plot, and (minor) character development, and Harrison isn’t thespin’-expressionless driftwood as the other actors, and the proceedings lack the usual shot-through-cheese-cloth cinematography and stock footage stitching we’ve come to expect with most of the PWFs we’ve reviewed back in August and this week.

But wow. These ’80s Silver Star flicks really screwed up Richard Harrison’s career.

Harrison acted in five flicks for K.Y. Lim’s stock footage-and-everything-else-stocked celluloid factory o’ sausage: Fireback, Hunter’s Crossing, and Blood Debts, which were directed by Teddy Page, and two for Jun Gallardo: Intrusion Cambodia and Rescue Team (both of Jun’s Rambo joints are coming this week; search for ’em, ya lazy surfer). But it gave Harrison a chance to write, which he does here, as Timothy Jorge (Three Men on Fire is another of his films). But I don’t know . . . I can’t see Harrison’s years in film culminating in a screenplay like this. Perhaps he did write it. But, between the dubbing — that he had no control over, as that is not even his voice you’re hearing — and the fact Silver Star Films shot with no locked scripts and were improvising along the way, Harrison’s original intent is, mostly likely, barely on the end product.

Then Godfrey Ho came along and compounded the career problems.

Harrison contracted to make a couple of low-budget ninja films for Ho. Then Ho cut-and-pasted, as is the par for the celluloid in Southeast Asian cinema of the low-budget variety, Harrison “starring” in the films Ninja Terminator, Cobra Vs. Ninja, Golden Ninja Warrior and Diamond Nínja Force. The list goes on and on. Shame on you, Godfrey, more so than Jun and Teddy. Well, not really. We still love you guys.

Okay, so Richard Harrison is U.S. Army weapons expert Jack Kaplan — and he can MacGyver (Oy! That CBS-TV reimage sucks donkey) any liquid into a weapon. He’s captured while field-testing a new “super gun,” the Omega, that turns a man into a one-man-army. Holy Shit! Micheal Sopkiw déjà vu with Blastfighter!

Calm down, my friend. The gun ain’t around for that long.

So, Kaplan’s rescued from a Southeast Asian POW camp. But he returns to the States to find his wife Diane missing. And he comes to discover that Duffy Collins, a local gangster, kidnapped and murdered Diane after she rejected his need to rape her. And Kaplan — with a souped-up junk yard set of wheels, along with his crossbow-shotgun-bazooka armament thingy he patched together — goes after Duffy.

Oh, shit. The music that sounds like it’s clipped from Mad Max!

Calm down, kid. For this is no more Blastfigther than it is Max Max. But we do get a lot of Kaplan daydreamin’ and flashbackin’ to Diane bikini diving into a swimming pool. So there’s that. Yeah, we know: we are also wondering, if we are back in the States: why we are seeing so many citizens of the Philippines in this movie? Well, remember when Tom Selleck made Daughters of Satan (note how much Selleck and Harrison look alike; I think Harrison’s ol’ stache is bigger) in the Philippines — but that was actually set in the Philippines — and there were more white actors than Filipinos in that film? See? It all balances out in the end.

Anyway, Duffy has a hitman man on his payroll known as the “Man with the Golden Hand” gunning for Kaplan. And Digger (Jim Gaines, natch) is the crook who comes to help Kaplan take down Duffy while avoiding the Sheriff (Mike Monty, natch) who’s after Kaplan for murdering one of Duffy’s men. Then things go oh-so-very Tarantino with an assassin squad of ninja killers with the names of Panther, Shadow, and Cat Burglar on Kappy’s trailer — and that’s after Eve (Gwen Hung, who’s all over these movies), our femme fatale, fails at killing Kaplan. So Duffy kills her — just as Kaplan was goin’ in for the hook up.

Now Kaplan is really pissed: So he “Rambos” all of their asses from a makeshift mountain-jungle cave in a climatic battle in the woods of Somewhere, U.S.A. — with a side of Arnie to spare. Oh, and Kaplan goes full-regalia Ninja with a katana. So there’s that. Oh, and we assume they ran out of short ends and couldn’t finish the film . . . so we got this end credits epilogue to wrap up the tale:

Fireback is better than I had hoped — and that’s not my blinded-by-Richard Harrison fandom. That’s not saying it’s good, just not as bad as the usual ’80s PWF Sly n’ Arnie homage. If only they kept the gun in the movie and the car was a bit more Road Warrior and we had some highway mayhem on the screen instead of the usual flailing and frolicking about in the woods.

Finally! We progressed from the-schedule-to-review process and the film uploads are still there to enjoy. You can watch Fireback on You Tube HERE and HERE.

About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.