Kenneth Easterday was born with sacral agenesis, a congenital disorder in which the fetal development of the lower spine is abnormal. The first amputation surgery used his shin bones to replace his missing spinal column. They held off on the second surgery as he wasn’t expected to live, but then his second surgery improved his mobility by amputating the rest of his remaining legs at the hips.
This didn’t stop Kenny, as you can see in the movie, as he got around on a skateboard.
Directed and written by Claude Gagnon, this film is about a documentary crew trying to see what Kenny’s life is, living in the mill town of Aliquippa with a large family. Funded by Bandai Entertainment Inc. and Toho and staffed by a Japanese crew — Gagnon often worked between Canada and Japan — this film has a great cast as well, including Pittsburgh native Caitlin Clarke (Dragonslayer), Liane Curtis (whose father was the voice of Pops Racer and directed The Flesh Eaters; she’s in Sixteen Candlesand Critters 2: The Main Course), Zach Grenier (he was Ed Norton’s boss in Fight Club), the man considered Pittsburgh’s finest actor Bingo O’Malley and Kenny’s real-life brother and sister Jess and Karen.
What’s amazing in this film is that it never gets overly dramatic. Kenny is actually pretty much fine with the hand that life is dealt him, laughing that the documentary crew wants to ramp up his pain and refusing the fake legs that everyone thinks will make him feel normal. It’s also a wonderful opportunity to see the old Market Square that I miss so much, giving you a view of George Aiken’s so perfect that you can smell the fried chicken.
This is now available on blu ray from Canadian International Pictures, a Vinegar Syndrome partner label.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This originally was on the site on January 5, 2020 and the article first appeared in Drive-In Asylum Special Issue #4, which you can buy here. It’s running again because the Another Hole In the Head Film Festival will be playing it during the Warped Dimension VHS Show! at the Roxie Theater on December 3rd at 9 pm.
This performance art hybrid of Live interactive theater and movie screening experience will be hosted by MC Benji, AHITH programmer and host of the underground virtual show Warped Dimension TV. Special guests include award-winning actor Michael Kane and his personal VHS copy of Jaws: The Revenge, which will be screened after a brief Q&A session.
So many people use Jaws: The Revenge as an instantly recognizable reference point for bad movies. If you watch any of those top ten worst film lists on YouTube, inevitably it’s right there on the top of every one of them. But can it really be that bad of a movie?
It’s certainly made by people with talent. Producer/director Joseph Sargent won four Emmys throughout his storied career, as well as helming such well-thought-of movies like The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, The Night That Panicked America, Nightmares, MacArthur and Colossus: The Forbin Project. He even won the Directors Guild of America Award for The Marcus-Nelson Murders, the TV movie pilot for Kojak. In fact, he still leads all DGA members for most nominations for the TV movie category.
Sir Michael Caine is certainly a talented actor. He’s been nominated for an Academy Award in every decade from the 1960s to 2000s, winning two for Hannah and Her Sisters and The Cider House Rules, with his performance in Educating Rita earning him the BAFTA and Golden Globe Award for Best Actor.
So what happened? How can a movie — that one assumes was made with good intentions — turn out to be the touchstone for what constitutes a bomb?
In interviews before the film was even released, Sargent referred to it as “a ticking bomb waiting to go off” and noting that MCA Inc. president — and husband of star Lorraine Gary — Sid Sheinberg “expects a miracle.” There was no script when Sargent was asked to direct. Years later, he’d say that the movie was made out of desperation and that he tried a mystical take in an attempt to give audiences “something interesting enough to sit through.”
Even though this film was to center on Gray’s Ellen Brody character, Roy Scheider was offered a cameo where his Martin Brody character, rather than Sean Brody, would have been killed by the shark in the beginning. This was a wise choice to avoid this opening — murdering the center of the first two films would have put such a bad taste in audiences’ mouths that they may have hated this movie even more than they already did. To his credit, Scheider said, “Satan himself could not get me to do Jaws Part 4.”
Lee Fierro also returned as Mrs. Kintner, the mother of Alex in Jaws, along with Amity Town Council member Mrs. Taft, who is again played by Fritzi Jane Courtney. Amity Selectman Mr. Posner (Cyprian R. Dube) is now the mayor, probably because the actor who played Larry Vaughan (Murray Hamilton) is dead.
Otherwise, forget all you knew about Jaws and the previous sequels. Mike no longer works for SeaWorld and he’s no longer played by Dennis Quaid. Instead, Halloween 2 hunk Lance Guest fills in. Following the heart attack death of her husband and great white murder of her son Sean — to the strains of holiday carols no less — Ellen Brody forgets all that she knew as well and leaves for the Bahamas.
There, she falls for Hoagie (Caine), who is a degenerate gambler by night and a pilot by day, but we all know that he runs cocaine. It’s just never said, but we can read between the lines that he’s done some shady things. In fact, scenes involving him being a smuggler were shot, then deleted during post-production, because it took away from the shark scenes.
Right now, Hoagie is having a September September romance with Ellen, trying to get her to forget the past — keep in my her husband died a few months ago and her son a few days hence — with some airplane riding, slow dancing and carnival attending.
Some moments of the film definitely make me understand why people dislike it so — the sepia toned callbacks to the first film, Mario Van Peebles’ forced accent, a shark that is somehow able to swim from an island in New York to the Bahamas in three days, which means he’d had to swim at nearly its full speed of 25 mph non-stop to make it. I mean, sharks never sleep, but that’s ridiculous.
Also, when you watch the ending, you may notice that the shark roars. Underwater, no less. The sound effects guy thought that this was so stupid that he used a sound effect from a Tom and Jerry cartoon.
Speaking of the ending, the one that gets aired on TV and home video isn’t the original. When the film was first released, it ended with JJakebeing devoured, Ellen ramming the shark with Mike’s boat and the shark’s death throes nearly killing everyone. Audiences hated that, so the ending with her stabbing the shark with the bow of the ship was added. Because they didn’t have much budget left, the film ends with the footage of the dying shark from the original.
These reshoots kept Caine from accepting his Oscar. Imagine that.
It could have been much worse. Or better, if you’re someone like me that loves movies packed with inanity and insanity in equal measure.
That’s because in the novelization of the film by Hank Searls, Hoagie is a government agent transporting laundered money. Jake is killed by the shark. And the reason for all this mayhem is because a voodoo witch doctor has a score to settle with the Brody family — which also explains, I guess, why Ellen and the shark have a psychic connection.
While the movie ignores the third film, the book combines all the movies with the Peter Benchley novel, making a reference to Ellen’s affair with Matt Hooper that is eliminated from the Spielberg-directed original film.
In truth, I like this movie. It’s an interesting take on how years of dealing with shark-related mayhem takes its toll on the various characters’ lives. And I really enjoyed how Michael and Carla’s marriage is depicted; she initiates lovemaking as much as him and it just seems honest and real.
Let’s face it. I’ve seen plenty of worse movies than this one. If there’s any tragedy to this movie, it’s that the actress who played Thea — Judith Barsi — died not long after it was released, as she and her mother were the victims of a murder/suicide at the hands of her father. Lance Guest served as a pallbearer at her funeral.
Perhaps the best review of the film comes from Sir Michael Caine himself, who said, “I have never seen it, but by all accounts it is terrible. However, I have seen the house that it built, and it is terrific. Won an Oscar, built a house and had a great holiday. Not bad for a flop movie.”
This movie was part of the Another Hole in the Head film festival, which provides a unique vehicle for independent cinema. This year’s festival takes place from December 1st – December 18th, 2022. Screenings and performances will take place at the historic Roxie Cinema, 4 Star Theatre and Stage Werks in San Francisco, CA. It will also take place On Demand on Eventive and live on Zoom for those who can not attend the live screenings. You can learn more about how to attend or watch the festival live on their Eventlive site. You can also keep up with all of my AHITH film watches with this Letterboxd list.
Herbert Buckingham Khaury was better known as Tiny Tim. To most of the general public, he’s been forgotten. But at one point, he was the hottest celebrity in the country.
He started his stage career under a series of names like Texarkana Tex, Judas K. Foxglove, Vernon Castle and Emmett Swink, growing out his hair and wearing pale face paint. His mother thought he was insane and nearly committed him Bellevue Hospital.
He persevered, becoming Larry Love, the Singing Canary at the also now forgotten Hubert’s Museum and Live Flea Circus in New York City’s Times Square. He was soon playing six nights a week throughout Greenwich Village as Darry Dover and finally settled on the stage name Sir Timothy Timms.
After an appearance in Jack Smith’s Normal Love and on the ultra hip show Laugh-In (by his third appearance he would arrive and depart surrounded by a procession of hangers-on), Tim began making appearances on The Tonight Show. On December 17, 1969, he married his first wife Miss Vicki on a set decorated with 10,000 tulips from Holland, with 40 million people as guests watching on television. This event was second to only the moon landing when it comes to TV ratings in the 1960’s.
So what was it that made the public fall in love with a strange man who sang old standards with a high falsetto while playing a ukelele? Maybe he just hit the pop conscious at the right time, seemingly aware and unaware of the joke.
The only movie that Tiny Tim ever starred in was 1987’s Blood Harvest. To say that this is an incredibly odd film should surprise no one.
Jill Robinson, returns to her peaceful hometown to discover her childhood home defaced, her parents missing and every single person hating her father, whose bank has foreclosed on all of their farms. Only one man — Marvelous Mervo the Clown (yes, Tiny Tim) — is happy to see her. Almost too happy.
Why is Mervo a clown all the time? Why does his clown suit have a plaid dress shirt as part of it? Why do people allow this to happen?
Mervo’s brother tries to win back Jennifer as everyone around her is killed in the barn, turned upside down and allowed to bleed out like animals. Who is the man with the stocking on his head, killing everyone? I mean, this movie starts out with a silly clown and ends up as brutal and demented as any giallo, including a scene where someone who we believe could be the hero gets fully naked and just stares at the final girl while she sleeps. There’s also way more nudity than you’d expect. And this is a slasher. So you expect plenty.
Unlike most slashers, this movie feels like real maniacs made it. It feels you’re a voyeur even watching it. And having Tiny Tim comment on the action by having scenes where he tearfully sings songs that seem to comment on the action only push this further into true art. Why is this movie not more celebrated? Where is the high end blu ray re-release?
Keep in mind that this isn’t post-modern goofiness or Troma look how silly this all is strangeness. This movie is the kind of strange that makes you wonder if people were really murdered as it was created. That’s high praise.
How did Tiny Tim get into this? Well, at a personal appearance at a beer carnival in Lincoln County, Wisconsin, he met local filmmaker Bill Rebane. Rebane had an idea for a film, wanted to know if Tim wanted to be in it and that’s how this got made.
Rebane was also responsible for films like Monster a Go-Go, The Giant Spider Invasion, The Alpha Incident and Demons of Ludlow. All of those films are strange and worth exploring, but they can’t hold a candle to the pure bonkers nature of this one.
Sadly, Tiny Tim would have a heart attack on stage while performing his most famous song, “Tiptoe Through the Tulips.” Today, people know it as the scary song from Insidious. But once, it meant so much more.
Directed by Jeffrey Obrow (The Dorm That Dripped Blood, The Power) and Stephen Carpenter, who wrote the script along with John Penney (who wrote and directed Zyzzyx Road), Joseph Stefano (Psycho) and Earl Ghaffari, this movie starts with Amanda (Kim Hunter) giving her son John (David Allen Brooks) a dying request to destroy all of the notes from her lab. And oh yeah — he had a brother. And also, PS PS, that brother has tentacles.
The Kindred has a great cast — Amanda Pays, Rod Steiger, Talia Balsam — and even better effects. It might not have the best story, but look, in 1987, this was a very solid five for five rental. And today, in 2022, it’s a great reissue blu ray that looks way better than it ever has before. I mean, it has Steiger get dumped with KY jelly and he did that stunt himself. A true pro as always.
Practical effects forever. Seriously, if I saw this when I was 15, I would probably be even more into it than I was and that’s the mark of a worthwhile film.
The Synapse blu ray release of The Kindred has an all-new 4K high-definition remaster of the unrated version of the film, along with audio commentary with directors Jeffrey Obrow and Stephen Carpenter, moderated by horror journalist Steve Barton, an all-new documentary on the film, never-before-seen behind the scenes effects experiments, a still gallery, storyboards, theater and video trailer, and TV ads. You can get it from MVD.
I remember renting this and had that feeling afterward that I wanted the characters to be real people. I wanted to get to know them better and spend more time with them, which is a little odd as one of the leads is an alien.
Detective Thomas Beck (Michael Nouri) is an LAPD cop. He’s definitely from our world or more likely, the universe of action filmmaking. FBI Special Agent Lloyd Gallagher (Kyle MacLachlan) is potentially something else. Together, they’re hunting a being that goes from body to body, starting with Jack DeVries (Chris Mulkey), once an ordinary person who has gone on a crime spree and who also takes hundreds of bullets and a car crash to slow down. The slug-like alien inside that man leaps into a nearly dead man, then into an exotic dancer (Claudia Christian), a dog and then even tries to get inside a politician.
Along the way, you get alien weapons, sports car mayhem, flamethrowers and even an emotional ending to this story. It kind of transcends simple science fiction ridiculousness while also having tons of it; it’s just a special movie to me.
Jim Kouf — using the name Bob Hunt — also wrote The Boogensbefore this. He’d later write Stakeout, Rush Hour and National Treasure.
This was called L’Alieno (The Alien) in Italy because they don’t care about spoilers.
27. A Horror Film by a Director who made more than three movies but only made one horror film. (Not THE SHINING. You can be more creative than that!)
EDITOR’S NOTE: I honestly couldn’t think of any that I haven’t written about before, so I had to post this, which was first on the site on September 8, 2020.
Two vampire movies came out in 1987.* One became a celebrated big-budget film that launched the careers of the Coreys and Kiefer Sutherland, with songs that people still sing, shirtless saxophonists and quotable dialogue about why there’s no need for a TV when you have TV Guide. The other movie was in and out of theaters in the time it took to read the last sentence and has stuck in my mind forever since.
Kathryn Bigelow had never directed a movie before. She was given five days to succeed or be replaced. She wanted to make a Western, but they weren’t popular. So she combined the vampire genre — the word is never mentioned — and hired three of the actors from her future husband James Cameron’s recently completed Aliens, Lance Henriksen, Bill Paxton and Jenette Goldstein.
Caleb Colton (Adrian Pasdar) falls for the mysterious Mae (Jenny Wright, who is another beyond cult horror film that few discuss, I, Madman) but then learns her family — Severen (Paxton), Jesse Hooker (Henriksen), Diamondback (Goldstein) and Homer (Joshua John Miller) — are a roving band of RV driving maniacs given to acts of merciless terror.
The only problem that I’ve ever had with this film is that I have always seen the normal people in the world as the real monsters, despite the hints that Jesse and Severen set the Great Chicago Fire. The blood transfusions that save the beautiful people seem way too easy of a way out of the hell that the gang promises.
Biglow would go on to make the equally well-made Blue Steel. Most of the cast went on to fame, at least in the circles of people who read our site. And if you look close enough, there’s a picture of a torn-apart Severen on my fridge.
If you’d like to learn more about the films scored by the band who gave this movie its unique soundtrack, check out our article Exploring: 10 Tangerine Dream Soundtracks.
*We know that A Return to Salem’s Lot and My Best Friend Is a Vampire also came out in 1987. For the sake of poetic license, we hope you understand why we juxtaposed these two films. Ironically, both movies have a son of The Exorcist star Jason Miller in their casts, with Joshua John Miller is in Near Dark and his half-brother Jason Patric in The Lost Boys.
BONUS: You can hear Becca and Sam discuss this movie on our podcast.
Frank Stallone as Tony Mareda Jr., a former Olympic athelete and now a detective who fights with the mob the whole way to a drive-in located in Beamsville that soon has a meteor crash down and transform all of the women in sex-obsessed maniacs. Soon, Tony and news anchor Bruce Pirrie are trying to save the men of the town from Mary Anne Kowalski (Elizabeth Edwards) and her literal army of women. And their pink tank, too.
The meteor has the voice of Earth Kitt. Along with Stallone, she performs the Paul Zaza-written songs.
Why do I keep doing this to myself? Don’t I need sleep?
This is the only full-length movie that Tony Currie directed and wrote, but he also worked on sound for Prom Night, Naked Lunch and Eastern Promises.
But seriously, this movie doesn’t have much to say. I was hoping that this would be some kind of secret classic — I mean, look at the poster art — but I struggled throughout. In a world where Invasion of the Bee Girls and Voyage of the Rock Aliens are already made, why did this even happen? What new could it say?
The filmmakers did, however, get all they could out of Art of Noise’s “Peter Gunn theme.”
According to Taiwan Black Movies in Variety, this genre of films was “Known at the time by the polite description “social-realist crime films,” the genre was a broad church, combining over-the-top sexual and physical violence with stories involving either political or economic gangsterism.”
I’m telling you this because IFD Films usually involved filmmakers like Godfrey Ho taking multiple ninja movies and surgically fusing them together into one never all that conhesive narrative. This one claims to be directed by Joseph La with Ho as story developer, yet nearly the entire movie come from the Taiwan black movie Ma! Don’t Die On My Back!
The Ninja Master (Louis Roth) of the Silver Ninja Empire tells his students that Rodney and Janet — the characters from Ma! Don’t Die On My Back! — have broken the first law of being a ninja: no premarital sex. They have been exiled and oh yeah, Gordon (Richard Harrison), needs to go get the Sword of Valour.
Rodney (Chun Hsiung Ko) and Janet (Elsa Yeung) aren’t having a good time of things after being ninjas. He’s gambling all over their money, she works scrubbing floors despite being pregnant. When he wins a big game of dice, a gang sets him up and he goes to prison, leaving Janet as a single mother and to make things worse, an accident burns her face.
As their son Danny grows up, she’s too ashamed to tell him that she’s his mother and says that she’s just his maid. It takes him growing up and searching for his birth parents to realize that he’s always known his mother. She’s now dying and he puts her on his back to run to find his father, who has hung himself under a bridge. Yeah, this movie gets dark and you thought you were getting brightly colored ninjas.
Well, they’re still here. As the master sent away Gordon, he has denied Stuart (Dave Wheeler) from being his successor. Stuart responds by killing him but somehow, he keeps breaking into the movie to tell us the ninja commandments, living up to this film’s title. And then Gordon uses a ninja umbrella and defeats every other ninja and we’re just supposed to forget that we watched all these ruined lives.
Seriously, this is one of the strangest and most oddly perfect mixes of two movies that don’t belong together.
Basically, if you’re a ninja, get married before you make love.
Sho Tanaka (Sho Kosugi), Ray Jones (Richard Wiley) and Dick Coleman (Gerry Gibson) are trying to catch drug dealers when someone betrays them. Ray is killed and Tanaka follows the leader Havlock (Lewis Van Bergen, who played the lead on the TV adaption of the comic book Jon Sable, Freelance) to Argentina.
Director Gordon Hessler made this with Kosugi after Pray for Death, which I feel is a much better and more consistent movie. This one was written by Wallace C. Bennett (The Silent Scream, The Philadelphia Experiment) and Robert Short (Scared to Death).
If this had any other actor than Sho — and his self-made weapons — it wouldn’t be as much fun. By this point in Sho’s films, he plays a cop who is just a ninja on the side versus a ninja, which feels like a step back from where he’s been. That said, he also has a throwing star that blows up on impact.
In case you never read the site, you may not know how much I love Bruno Mattei. Well, Severin seemingly feels the same as they’re releasing a bundle of three of the Italian maniac’s movies!
These blu rays will have the best-looking versions of these movies yet along with bonus features from Claudio Fragauso and Rossella Drudi. You can get each movie by itself or in a big fancy bundle.
Born to Fight (1989): The third time Brent Huff would work with Bruno Mattei — there’s also Strike Commando 2 and Cop Game— this time finds the actor playing Sam Wood, a survivor of a vicious Vietnamese prison camp who is talked into going back into hell with reporter Maryline Kane (Mary Stavin, the 1977 Miss World who is also in Mattei’s Born to Fight, as well as Open House, House, Octopussy, A View to a Kill, Caddyshack II, Top Line and Howling V: The Rebirth, proving that I have seen many of her movies), who really just wants our hero to help her free her father from the prison camp.
Things get more complicated when Wood learns that Duan Loc (Werner Pochath, Colonel Magnum from Thunder 3) is still in charge. Yet instead of being a film that explores the root causes and treatments for post-traumatic stress disorder, Mattei and writer Claudio Fragasso give everyone watching what they really want: violence, glorious violence.
The beauty of this film is that Mattei references Casablanca while featuring a hero who is so bored with life that he mixes snake venom into the beer he drinks all day long to escape the pain of his past.
Made pretty much hours after pretty much the same crew finished Strike Commando 2, Born to FIght has everything I look for in a Mattei Philippines war movie, which is totally a genre, thank you for asking. There’s nothing quite like a slow-motion Brent Huff unloading millions of rounds of ammunition into bamboo huts while screaming and repeatedly saying his catchphrase, “It can be done.” Maybe he was a Bud Spencer fan?
As for Ms. Stavin, she also dated Manchester United football hero George Best, who was voted the sixth for the FIFA Player of the Century and one of GQ’s fifty most stylish men of the last fifty years in 2007. One of the first celebrity football players, he was nicknamed El Beatle and owned restaurants, fashion boutiques and a nightclub called Slack Alice. Of his life, he said, “I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars – the rest I just squandered.”
Between 1982 and 1984, the fitness craze swept the UK. Lifestyle Records released a series of celebrity albums in which different somewhat famous folks sang cover songs and discussed what working out meant to them. The first two albums, which featured Felicity Kendal and Angela Rippon, sold well. Later releases, well…not so much. Beyond Isla St. Clair, Suzanne Danielle, Christina Brookes, Jay Aston, Suzanna Dando and Patti Boulaye, Stavin and Best released their album, which even had their cover of “It Takes Two” cut as a single. They also covered The Eurythmics’ “Love Is a Stranger!”
Cop Game (1988): An elite group of commando assassins — Cobra Squad! — are murdering high-ranking U.S. soldiers in the closing days of Vietnam. To stop them, Morgan (Brent Huff, Gwendoline, Nine Deaths of the Ninja) and Hawk (Max Laurel, who played Zuma in two films and Quang in Robowar) must have one another’s back against a massive conspiracy.
Yes, Bruno Mattei — Bob Hunter! — has united with Rossella Drudi and Claudio Fragrasso, headed to the Philippines and made a movie that makes little to no sense whatsoever. I don’t say this as an insult. Few of the man’s movies have anything approaching a coherent plot. Yet every single one of them wants to entertain you to the point that you are rolling on the floor in incredulity and laughter. They are everything you want them to be.
This is the kind of movie with dialogue like “When you go home, you will forget about me. But I will still be here, drowning in a sea of shit.” and “Ah, Jesus Christ, cocksucker motherfucking sonofabitch.” Nearly every line is screamed as loudly as possible, as if a twelve-year-old boy has just been allowed to stay home by himself while his parents go out and he takes advantage of the freedom by repeatedly saying combinations of swear words and never getting tired of using them until he’s hoarse by the time mom and dad come back.
It’s also the kind of film that says that it takes place in 1975 Vietnam but also has plenty of Miami Vice and 80’s buddy cop vibes, along with stolen footage from The Ark of the Sun God, both StrikeCommando movies and Double Target. I guess since Mattei made most of those, he’s really just cutting and pasting. You can’t steal from yourself, right? This isn’t a John Fogerty getting sued because his song “The Old Man Down the Road” sounds exactly like a Creedence Clearwater Revival situation!
Cop Game also has an all-star cast and by that, I mean actors that ony I care about like Romano Puppo (Trash’s dad in Escape from the Bronx), Candice Daly (After Death), Werner Pochath (Colonel Magnum in Thunder III), Robert Marius (Mad Warrior), Massimo Vanni (Robowar), Ottaviano Dell’Acqua (who is the “We are going to eat you” undead face on the poster for Zombie), Roberto Dell’Acqua (Nightmare City), Jim Gaines (Zombies: The Beginning) and a Brett Halsey cameo.
Mattei made movies in nearly every junk film genre. I can honestly say that I have loved every single one of them and if you want to hear me ramble on about something, ask me about them.
Double Target (1987): You know, if John Rambo hadn’t gone back to Vietnam and gotten the chance to win that time, we wouldn’t be blessed with an entire video store section of films from around the world. Rambosploitation?
My mother told me that after he came home from working late in the mill, my grandfather would watch war movies at ear-shattering volumes, loudly laughing and enjoying himself while the entire family would be awakened by the cinematic combat echoing through the paper-thin walls.
Forty or so years later, I realize that I have inherited his vice.
After several American and British military personnel are killed in suicide attacks throughout southeast Asia, the U.S. government starts thinking that perhaps — just perhaps — the Vietnamese government isn’t the ally they thought they were.
There’s only one man to call when you need the truth.
Bob Ross.
No, not that Bob Ross. I’m talking Miles O’Keefe, the very same man who was Ator, now transplanted to the ninth circle of Southeast Asia, seeking the son he has never known, going up against the most sinister of all Russians and backed up by exactly no one.
Seeing as how this is a Bruno Mattei film, you just know that all manner of absolute celluloid cutting and pasting is going to happen. Well, it goes both ways, because Mr. Mattei was an early adopter of recycling, doing his part to keep his scummy cinema carbon footprint small. That shark that shows up? Yep, it’s taken directly from The Last Shark. And since he went to the trouble to lens all this jungle footage, it also shows up in Cop Game, Robowar and Shocking Dark, while the musical score ends up coming back in Interzone.
This movie unites so many of my film favorites, like Donald Pleasence as the incredibly named Senator Blaster, a man who is either coughing or screaming at everyone around him. And look! There’s Bo Svenson as the nasty Russian Colonel Galckin, a man so evil that he puts a gun into Ross’ son’s hands and explains to him exactly how to blow his dad’s brains out.
Kristine Erlandson kind of made a name for herself — well, with video store weirdos — by being in movies like this, Trident Force, Saigon Commandos, Vengeance Squad, Warriors of the Apocalypse and American Commando. She’s joined by Ottaviano Dell’Acqua*, the rotting zombie from the infamous “We are going to eat you!” Zombi poster, Massimo Vanni** from Zombi 3 and Luciano Pigozzi*** (Pag from Yor Hunter from the Future).
Man, this movie tugs at the heartstrings. Ross had a kid over in ‘Nam and never knew his wife, who was taken into a re-education camp, where she died and his kid ended up hating him. Or course, this was filmed in the Philippines, but let’s not argue.
Mattei used his Vincent Dawn name on this one and co-conspirator and potential co-director Claudio Fragasso went as Clyde Anderson in the credits. Speaking of American names for Italians, let’s answer those little footnotes:
*Richard Raymond
** Alex McBride
***Alan Collins
You know, this movie entertained me beyond belief, but I’m beyond a Mattei apologist. If he was still alive and needed a place to live, I would move him into my basement and cook every meal for him.
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