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!

I thought that I had watched every Mark Gregory movie there was. I’d made it through 1990: The Bronx Warriors, Escape from the Bronx, Adam and Eve vs. the Cannibals and even Thunder. But now you’re telling me that he’s playing a terrorist who goes up against Bo Svenson and Fred Williamson in a movie written by Dardano Sacchetti (Zombi, The House by the Cemetery, The Beyond, Blastfighter, Demons, Demons 2, Hands of Steel)? Holy shit, it’s like getting a Christmas gift months after the holiday is over!

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: This review ran on September 13, 2018. We’ve brought it back for our “Philippines War Week” tribute.

Before Dr. Strange was in big time movies, he was in TV movies. There, he was played by Peter Hooten. Why am I telling you this? Because Pete is here to star with our man Mark Gregory today in Just a Damn Soldier.

The story here is that Hooten’s character gets together his mercenary pals to steal some gold from a bad guy and sell it to the Afghan rebels that would one day become the Taliban because his girlfriend was killed by the Russians. That Taliban part is me editorializing. It’s also totally true.

Ferdinando Baldi is back in the chair for this one, as he must have had a deal to create every Mark Gregory commando style movie. Also: Mark gets shot in the knee, limps and is fine by the very next scene.

You should do what I do. Shoot roman candles at the TV while drunk, screaming Mark Gregory’s name over and over while savoring every second of this film. You can watch it for free at Amazon Video!

Editor’s Note: This review first ran as part of our “Mark Gregory Tribute” on September 12, 2018. We’ve brought it back for our “Philippines War Week.”

Terrorists are making genetic experiments on kidnapped girls. And Professor Larson has a dream. That dream is probably your nightmare, as he wants to create a master race to rule the world. Luckily, some scientific organizations in Asia and Europe have hired a group of mercenaries to kill everyone. Yay!

But wait! This movie is a North Korean/Italian co-promotion! Kim Il-Sung actually allowed this movie to be made in his country and, well, it’s a total piece of shit.

That said — Mark Gregory is the bad guy, the leader of the terrorists. And who is being paid $65,000 by FSR (Final Solution Research) to stop him? Frank Zagarino — Stryker himself! Plus, Sabrina Siani (Conquest, The Throne of Fire) came along too. Did you know her mother used to come to nearly every set she was on and get in the way? Well, she also encouraged Jess Franco to film her daughter naked, so there’s that.

There is also a veritable army of North Korean extras ready to do whatever it takes to make this entertaining. They failed!

There is one goofball scene where Lou, a commando, talks about how he spent the last year with the Bolshoi Ballet and how he had to kill a ballet dancer who was ready to stop disarmament talks between Russia and the U.S. Not only does this sound like the kind of script conversation that Quentin Tarantino used to get paid to write (like that discussion about the Silver Surfer that comes out of nowhere in Crimson Tide) and a way better movie than what I suffered through.

But Mark Gregory is in it! That has to count for something.

An interesting trivia note: the evil Professor Larson was played by Charles Robert Jenkins, a United States Army soldier who lived in North Korea from 1965 to 2004 after deserting his unit and crossing the Korean Demilitarized Zone. He immediately regretted this decision and was treated poorly for years. In 1982, Jenkins appeared as Dr. Kelton, painted to be the mastermind behind the Korean War, in the film Unsung Heroes. This was the first evidence to the Western world that he was alive, but the U.S. government did not acknowledge this fact until 1996. He was given a Japanese wife, who was allowed to go back to Japan and he eventually was able to go there, where he spent the rest of his life.

The country of Japan asked for the U.S. to pardon him for treason, but they refused. Jenkins put his conscience to rest by reporting to Camp Zama on Patriot Day, September 11, 2004. He showed up in full uniform with all of his medals and saluted the military police.

On November 3, he pleaded guilty to charges of desertion and aiding the enemy, but denied making disloyal or seditious statements. Those charges were dropped and he was sentenced to 30 days in the brig. He was released early for good behavior and received a dishonorable discharge.

He published a biography in Japan called To Tell the Truth, which was re-published nearly a decade later in the U.S. as The Reluctant Communist: My Desertion, Court-Martial, and Forty-Year Imprisonment in North Korea. He died in Japan on December 11, 2017.

His story would make a much better movie than Tan Zan: Ultimate Mission. But you can still watch this movie for free on Amazon Prime.

Editor’s Note: Thanks to Paul Andolina, whose website is Wrestling with Film, for sending this to us to express his love of Philippine war flicks. This review first ran on October 15, 2018, and we’ve brought it back . . . as our first review for our week-long “Philippines War Week” tribute that ends on Friday, August 6, at 6M. To populate a complete list of all of our reviews, click here.

Every October since about 2014, I’ve participated in a friendly movie watching competition called the Halloween Horror Movie Marathon Madness. The first couple years I joined in I tried to stick to horror movies as much as possible. However since certain actors and directors are considered Wild Cards during the Madness I can get away with non horror fare. Such is the case with today’s film, Saigon Commandos. I came across this film while searching for movies starring P.J. Soles, who most will recognize from Carpenter’s film Halloween.

Saigon Commandos centers around a Military Police officer named, Stryker, during a drug war, a series of murders and an election happening in Saigon, Vietnam during the Vietnam War. It is based on a book in a series of novels written by Nicholas Cain, who served as an MP in Vietnam. He couldn’t get his memoirs published but was told they would publish his works if he fictionalized them with more violence and sex. The series ran for twelve novels, Saigon Commandos being an adaption of the ninth one.

Released in 1988 and starring Richard Young as Stryker, and P.J. Soles as a journalist, Saigon Commandos is not too easy to find. This is a shame as I found it to be a decent film concerning the Vietnam War that didn’t solely focus on what was going on in the jungles but more on what was happening in Saigon. Corruption is running rampant, heroin flows freely in the city streets, and someone is going around killing people with hollow point rounds. I knew I was in for a treat when it opened with a Vietnamese band singing House of the Rising Sun in a bar/stripclub. At times it felt like it was unintentionally funny especially when an AWOL soldier is shot in the ass by drug dealers. As he is on the examination table in the medic’s office in Camp Pershing, he screams in a manner that has to be heard, I found myself cracking up. 

There are quite a few plot points happening at once in this film, with Stryker dealing with an AWOL Specialist who has made it his mission to get vengeance when some of the corrupt politician Trui’s men kill his fiancee when trying to get to Stryker. There is also an investigation into who exactly the hollow point killer is, as well as Trui and his men trying to win the election by fear mongering.

This film has a bit of action and even a small skirmish in the jungles of Vietnam when Stryker is forced to head into the shit to get two of his friends to sign a disposition backing up his alibi when his commanding officer of the military police turns up shot in the head in his bed after a night of Stryker’s heavy drinking.

I had very low expectations for this film and it turned out to be quite fun. If you can manage to track down a copy, I highly recommend it. I bought a German DVD that has both German, and English audio tracks. The picture quality isn’t the greatest but I think it adds to the enjoyment of it. 

Based on the 1981 novel Who Censored Roger Rabbit? by Gary K. Wolf, this movie is from a time before crossovers and meta-based films like the latest Space Jam and Ready: Player One. It was incredibly mindblowing as a teen to watch this movie on the big screen and see Bugs Bunny and Mickey Mouse actually having a conversation.

What’s even better is that it has a film noir mystery at its center with Bob Hoskins as Eddie Valiant*, a down on his luck private investigator dealing with his hate of animated characters known as Toons which actually exist in this alternate universe.

At the time, this was the most expensive animated film ever made, but Walt Disney Studios chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg believed that live-action and animation together would save the cartoon department at Disney.

Plus, the studio brought in executive producer Steven Spielberg and his production company, Amblin Entertainment, who would get creative control and most of the box office, leaving Disney to keep merchandising rights.

Spielberg went to work getting other studios to lend their characters to the film, getting most of the Warner Brothers characters to appear but sadly failing to get Popeye, Tom and Jerry, Casper the Friendly Ghost or any of the Terrytoons.

With live action directed by Robert Zemeckis and animation by Richard Williams — along with the skills of Dean Cundy as cinematographer, Arthur Schmidt as editor and hundreds of artists making all the animation** — this film stands out as nearly the final chapter on traditional animation***.

Eisner and Roy E. Disney, vice chairman of The Walt Disney Company, felt the film was too sexual, but Zemeckis had final cut privileges (and Williams disliked Disney so much that he based his animation studio in England so they could not interfere). That’s why this was a Touchstone Pictures release instead of Disney.

Even today, Zemeckis claims that Disney will never make any of the proposed sequels, telling Den of Geek, “The current corporate Disney culture has no interest in Roger, and they certainly don’t like Jessica at all.” He also claimed that a sequel**** wouldn’t be on Disney+ as there are no princesses in it. There were, however, some animated shorts that came out after the film: Tummy Trouble proceeded Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, Roller Coaster Rabbit played before Dick Tracy and Trail Mix-Up was in front of A Far Off Place.

Instead of a detailed summary of the plot of this film, I suggest you view it for yourself. However, I will share that I absolutely love Joanna Cassidy as Eddie’s strong and capable love Dolores and Christopher Lloyd is beyond outstanding as Judge Doom. And I think it’s amazing that early versions of the script had The Toon Patrol weasels as Stupid, Smart Ass, Greasy, Wheezy and Psycho, created to be inversions of Snow White’s Seven Dwarves Doc, Grumpy, Happy, Sleepy, Bashful, Sneezy, and Dopey).

Charles Fleischer was so dedicated to his role as Roger that he dressed up on set and did his lines. And man, has any voice ever been better for a cartoon noir girl than Kathleen Turner (and Amy Irving for the singing voice)? And any movie where a cartoon baby gruffly says, “I got a thirty-year-old lust and a three-year-old dinky…”

One last fact: When Eddie takes Roger Rabbit into the back room at the bar and Dolores is sawing their handcuffs, the lamp on the ceiling bumps and swings. That’s all animation that was added to give the scene something extra. All of those shadows were drawn. That’s why the phrase “bump the lamp” is used at Disney even today when people say they need to go the extra mile to make something special, even if no one notices it.

*Test footage has Peter Renaday as Eddie Valiant, Paul Reubens as Roger Rabbit and Russi Taylor as Jessica Rabbit. Other actors who were almost Eddie include Harrison Ford, Chevy Chase, Bill Murray, Eddie Murphy, Robin Williams, Ed Harris, Charles Grodin, Robert Redford, Jack Nicholson, Sylvester Stallone, Wallace Shawn and Don Lane.

**Post-production lasted 14 months and all of the animation was made with cel art and optical tricks instead of CGI.

***It’s also the last time Mel Blanc would voice Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Tweety Bird, and Sylvester the Cat.

****You have no idea how badly I want to see Roger Rabbit: The Toon Platoon, a movie where Roger would have entered World War II and met his real father, Bugs Bunny.

The title of this movie may translate as The Spider’s Nest, but it was released here as The Spider Labyrinth, which is a really awesome name for a movie. Good thing that this blast of late 80s Italian horror lives up to it.

Professor Alan Whitmore (Roland Wybenga, Sinbad of the Seven Seas) is a professor of languages whose life’s goal is to translate the sacred texts of a pre-Christian religion. This brings him to Budapest, where Professor Roth gives him a black book and plenty of paranoid ramblings, telling him about a cult called The Weavers that worship living beings from before humanity was even an idea.

This film has its roots in not just giallo — Whitmore is the stranger in a strange land who is confronted by a dead body and plenty of mystery about exactly why — but also the works of Lovecraft, informing us that there are religions that exist before the ones that we know and accept. Also, a shade of yellow forms over this story as our hero has a phobia about spiders, as he was locked in the closet with one as a small child and has carried that fear with him into his adult life.

Oh yeah — there’s also a fanged woman who can climb the walls like a spider out there killing anyone who helps our hero, even transforming the murder of one of the maids into an Argento-style art murder. It helps that Sergio Stivaletti, who did the effects for so many of the giallo maestro’s films, is on hand here. And this movie works admirably without CGI, as the ending gets absolutely into the stratosphere of wildness with an infant that becomes a spider.

This isn’t just a giallo cover movie. It has a genuine story to tell and some beautiful scenes along the way, as a real air of death just under the surface of reality. Sadly, its director Gianfranco Giagni has mostly worked in television, such as the show Valentina (a remake of Baba Yaga), or made documentaries such as Rosabella: la storia italiana di Orson Welles and La scandalose.

I really wish an American label would release this, because I was quite frankly so overjoyed to discover that someone was making the kind of Italian horror that I love so much as late as 1988.