Death Promise

                                                A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, (New York City 1977), a place of rent control, urban renewal and greedy scumbags willing to do anything to drive tenants out of said rent controlled buildings so they can invoke “urban renewal” to make a killing. Even if it involves a literal killing or three. This is where our tale unfolds.

  Just as
a historical footnote, this is based in reality. Back in the day the only way to get out of rent control on a property was to get all the tenants to leave. Scumbag landlords, (yeah that's most of them), weren’t above using local street gangs to help persuade tenants to move, (see Roberta Findlay's “Tenement” for this taken to the extreme).

  And this is just what is going on as our story starts, a voice over tells us so as we see a couple of pretty inept thugs letting boxes full of rats, (which change color between shots), loose in the building. They get caught and get an ass kicking by our heroes, Charley Roman and Speedy Leacock, (who is played by Speedy Leacock no less.), Charley's father Louis, (played by Rocky Crevice) is the leader of the folks trying to keep a roof over their heads. Needless to say he soon ends up dead despite not only being a boxer, but packing heat as well. In the tradition of cheap martial arts films everywhere his son swears to avenge him.

  Death Promise is a fairly basic American take on the Hong Kong martial arts films of the time. Evil men kill the hero's father. He wants revenge but his kung fu not good enough so he must be further trained. His teacher, Master Shibata sends him to Japan, (which looks a lot New York) to study under his teacher. The standout here is a scene where Charley catches a fly with his chopsticks, years before the Karate Kid made it cool.

  While he's doing this Speedy is running around the Big Apple kicking ass and taking names, trying to find out who's behind the mysterious “Iguana Realty Corporation”. When Charley returns the ass kicking ramps up, allowing him to show off his new skills. And when one of Master Ying's students Sup decides to visit NYC, they're ready to storm the enemy's fortress, or office building as the case may be.

  As you can tell, this is hardly a groundbreaking film. The plot never strays to far from the genre's template and it makes sure to hit a few other cliche's along the way such as the integrated group of heroes, (Charley is white, Speedy is his soul brother from another mother and Sup is of course, Oriental). And in one of the better scenes Speedy gets revenge on the dealer who sold his 12 year old brother the heroin he od'd on by tying a bag full of rats over his head. Pity the effects weren't all that good.

  The fights are well enough done if not overly violent for this kind of film and the final battle works well. It's also the one point where the film somewhat steps away from the cliches with a twist as to the ultimate villain’s identity and a resolution to the final fight that pretty much inverts one of the genre's biggest cliches.

  So in short, a lot of action, a little violence and a very little nudity, (though to be fair the  actress is so well endowed it should count as 3 scenes). The dvd is very reasonably priced on Amazon and it's also on YouTube. Check out the trailer, you'll be glad you did!

Storm Troopers U.S.A.

                                                               Filmed in 1969 and apparently never released, (for reasons that are obvious by about 10 minutes into the film), this shot on 16mm cheapie  sat on the shelf gathering dust until the magic of home video let it find an audience. Sometimes magic isn't a good thing...

  Shot in Florida, this tells the tale of a bunch of American Nazis who are about to unleash “Operation 11”, (two steps further in boredom than Plan 9), on an unsuspecting country. This involves blowing up electrical plants, using a remote control boat to blow up a destroyer and taking over a hotel. Given the budget of course all we get is the taking over of a damn near deserted hotel. Having run over an FBI agent sent to infiltrate them earlier they think they're in the clear, but what they don't know is the hotel's manager has been replaced by another agent...

  Even with it's budget this could still have been a tense little exploitation number, a distant ancestor of “Die Hard” even. But the clowns making this were so inept in every possible way it's a total failure. The film is padded out to feature length with a long intro consisting of World War 2 combat footage and many scenes are shot without dialogue, just the horrible music score to save the cost of recording it. And given how awful that dialogue is that may actually be a blessing. Long expository monologues delivered straight into the camera and threats that are so over the top, delivered by “actors” even further over  it they're funny rather than intimidating.

The movie's over, let's party!

  And when they stop talking and actually do something it only gets worse. The fights are choreographed worse than a backyard wrestling match and when they decide to spice things up and toss in a rape the actress still has her panties on and her attacker still has has damn pants on as he's trying to pound her through the mattress. These idiots even fail Exploitation 101.

In short this is only for masochists and those with an insatiable thirst for obscure regional films. Oh wait, I'm being redundant...

Blue Monkey

                                               

 Ok, so there's no monkeys in this film let alone a blue one, (though one character does mention one) but we do have a big insect, a really big insect that looks like a giant praying mantis on steroids. Well maybe not steroids, but it does accidentally get dosed with growth hormone.

    What we have here is an unjustly overlooked Canucksploitation gem, directed by veteran helmer William Fruet, (Death Weekend, Spasms) and with a cast toplined by Steve Railsback and  Susan Anspach, plus an early appearance from Sarah Polley.  The plot is kinda sorta Alien in a hospital, only with the afore mentioned bug gestating in a handyman instead of a critter from space and an astronaut. Much of the film takes place in access tunnels under the hospital giving it the same feel as the corridors of the Nostromo in the original. It even keeps it's prey alive for it's hatchlings to devour alive. Unlike Alien however it has a couple drunken old ladies, a woman in labor and a bunch of annoying kids, one of whom holds the key to stopping the big bug.

    One place it does go off on it's own and actually delivers it's most shocking scene, (especially for it's time), is the infection the creature causes which spreads through the hospital and gets it quarantined so hardcore the National Guard is surrounding it. When one of the patients tries to escape out a window he's shot dead by the troops. Instead of playing it for cheap shocks, Fruet plays the man's desperation to escape, the officer's unwillingness to give the order to shoot and his men's reluctance to follow it off against the need to contain the unknown and fast spreading infection. It's a remarkably tense scene, even if it is at odds with the rest of the film's monster oriented action.

  On the downside the film is hurt by the usual plot contrivances, the horny guy who's supposed to be watching the larva but goes to get some from a cute nurse, and the fact there happens to be an incredible, beyond state of the art laser research facility in the hospital for example. But hey, it's an 80's movie about a giant bug, stuff like that comes with the territory.

  Sadly, while it was released on VHS back in the day as far as I can tell this film is yet to see a legit DVD release although there are bootlegs available on Ebay and a VHS rip is floating around the torrent sites. It's probably on YouTube for that matter. But I would love to see a cleaned up print of this, with some commentary tracks get a release from the likes of Code Red. 

Final Reprisal

FINAL REPRISAL

Back in the day if you were making an action film and couldn't afford Stallone or Arnie you got Van Damme or Segal. And if you couldn't afford them you got Gary Daniels. For a while you couldn't walk into a video store without seeing a new action film staring the British born martial artist, or have him turn up in a supporting role in some big budget film. And while he isn't cranking them out like he used to, he is still playing both ends of the budget spectrum. His most recent starring role is the very low budget “Dark Secrets”, (aka “Cold Earth”) but he also has roles in Sylvester Stallone's upcoming extravaganza “The Expendables” as well as the video game adaptation “Tekken”.

But this being my first real post it's only fitting that we look at his first film, 1988's “Final Reprisal”, (aka “Assault System”, “Platoon Without Return”, “Warriors Without Return” ). It was this Philippines lensed cheapie that gave him his start, as inauspicious as it might have been.

Like many such of these films the story begins in Vietnam as David Callahan (Daniels), and his crack team get wind of a meeting of the top Vietcong leadership and plan an attack. Infiltrating the compound they run into a slight problem, the conference has been rescheduled and they're now trapped. They find themselves pinned down in a room with the General's daughter, who looks to be all of 10 years old. Seeing an opportunity they take her hostage and use her as their ticket out. Yes, you read that right, the heroes take a little girl hostage.

Their escape goes smoothly until the jeep hits a land mine. The survivors separate and here we get to the plot's second major twist. As the little girl runs off screaming we see the boots and legs of somebody following her. Somebody who shoots the screaming girl in the head. And it isn't a cutaway, we see the bullet hole in her forehead and her open eyes staring up. Needless to say when her father finds the body he is not happy, he vows revenge on the attackers blaming them for her death, (and we know one of them is guilty). The sequence ends with him torturing David's friend Charlie, (James Gaines, who also co-wrote the script), to find out who the killer is.

And then we flash forward to the present, or at least 1988. David is married and working at the embassy when who should miraculously appear but Charlie. And as anyone who's seen any movies in this genre knows, that's a sure sign things are about to get ugly. Sure enough, not five minutes later an outing to the beach becomes a bloodbath leaving David's wife and son dead and David and Charlie injured.

From here the plot goes down the familiar road of crosses, double crosses and revenge with no shortage of fights, shootings and explosions. Director Teddy Page made a career of cranking out cheap and efficient action films like this under a long list of aliases. This is from the middle of his career and he shows he knows what he's doing, staging all manner of mayhem from martial arts battles to military strikes and keeping the film moving along at a good pace.

The script gives him plenty to work with to keep the macho action coming. Indeed the cast is almost all male with the General's daughter and David's wife the only female characters of note and both of them are dead within minutes of their appearance. It's very much a man's movie, both in cast as well as plot with not even a female soldier or somebody's girlfriend around for eye candy.

The other place where the script deviates from the norm is the main villain. It's pretty obvious from the start just who is responsible for all the mayhem, but it's hard to work up the usual hatred for him. After all he is going after the man he believes killed his child in cold blood. You may not approve of what he does, and there's no doubt he's an evil bastard, but you can't really bring yourself to hate him the way you normally would the villain in this kind of film. Whether that weakens the film or gives it more emotional depth than usual is a matter of opinion.

The acting in these kinds of films is usually not anything worth discussing, but as it is Gary Daniels debut we'll take a minute to look at it. Daniels certainly looks the part, big, muscular and cut. And his fight scenes show off his considerable martial arts skills. But he really doesn't do much in the way of acting. In part hat's because the script gives him little to do apart from react to the death of his family. The rest of the film he just has him looking badass and beating the crap out of people. To be honest he really doesn't show many signs of the actor he would become.

Of the rest of the cast several will be familiar to fans of low budget film, especially the previously mentioned Jim Gaines, who's appeared in an number of Italian low budeters including “Robowar”, “Zombie 4: After Death” and Bruno Mattie's last two films Island of the Living Dead” and “Zombies: The Beginning”

So in the end what we have is a film that's slightly better than average for it's kind and with the added bonus of a star in his first role. It's a bit hard to find, but if you can track down a copy it's a fun watch.