The Marine 4: Moving Target

Congratulations to Mike “The Miz” Mizanin, the first WWE wrestler to star in two consecutive MARINE movies. John Cena starred in the entertaining throwback THE MARINE, which garnered a short theatrical release through 20th Century Fox. Ted DiBiase Jr. took over the title role in the direct-to-video sequel THE MARINE II with Mizanin starring in THE MARINE 3: HOMEFRONT. To beef up the star power, WWE films gave The Miz a popular co-star, Danielle Moinet, better known to wrestling fans as diva Summer Rae.

Alan McElroy, a veteran of the HALLOWEEN and WRONG TURN franchises, took inspiration from the original MARINE and delivered another story about well-armed bad guys and a Marine chasing each other through the woods (though, finally, a MARINE movie neglects to take the hero’s loved one hostage). Jake Carter (The Miz) is one of several bodyguards assigned to protect Olivia Tanis (LEPRECHAUN: ORIGINS’ Melissa Roxburgh), a whistleblower reluctantly willing to testify against a defense contractor that built faulty body armor for American troops. Their convoy is ambushed by the defense contractor’s hired mercenaries, including leader Simon Vogel (Josh Blacker) and badass sniper Rachel Dawes (Rae), leaving only Carter and Olivia alive.

The attack happens thirteen minutes in, and everything after is pretty much one long chase and gun battle. While that may be enough to keep undiscerning action fans happy, THE MARINE 4 has little else to distinguish it. Mizanin is a poor actor, and he’s playing someone who’s kinda dumb. Roxburgh’s character is also kinda dumb and kinda mean too. While that could make for an interesting relationship — the hero who has to protect somebody he doesn’t like — McElroy and director William Kaufman (ONE IN THE CHAMBER) aren’t interested in having anybody think too much.

As for Rae, her role is minor and not proportional with her billing on the Blu-ray packaging. She has almost no dialogue and no screen presence. Kaufman’s direction is sloppy. When Vogel’s men loudly shoot up a police station with automatic weapons, cops in the next room are taken by surprise. Maybe their hearing aids were turned off. CGI explosions and muzzle fire and bullet hits are distracting, as is unconvincing day-for-night photography. Shooting a zillion bullets at a speeding pickup truck results in only a few bullet hits. The devil is in the details, William.

Martial Law II: Undercover

Jeff Wincott (LAST MAN STANDING) is the new Martial Law in the sequel to MARTIAL LAW, which brings back Cynthia Rothrock (GUARDIAN ANGEL) as his former partner, Billie Blake. Directed by Kurt Anderson, making his debut after producing pictures like PARTY LINE, THE BANKER, and MARTIAL LAW (Steve Cohen, the latter film’s director, serves as producer on the sequel), MARTIAL LAW II: UNDERCOVER finds Sean “Martial Law” Thompson (Wincott) promoted to detective and transferred to a new division.

Almost immediately, Thompson is embroiled in controversy and corruption. He believes a colleague’s drunk-driving death was no accident and that Spencer Hamilton (Paul Johansson, the director and star of ATLAS SHRUGGED, PART I), a wealthy nightclub owner, is involved. Recruiting Billie to poke around Hamilton’s club in the guise of a bartender, Thompson finds a steady stream of karate-happy ambushers between him and the truth. To no one’s surprise, none are left standing by the time the finale rolls around at the good old tried-and-true power station. Because he’s Martial Law.

Both Rothrock and Wincott were among the DTV action genre’s most dependable stars in the 1990s, and MARTIAL LAW II is a terrific example of why. Both are able to perform complex and exciting martial arts moves without quick cutting or substituting fight doubles. The martial arts scenes are fairly fast and violent for an American direct-to-video movie, boasting some nifty choreography by Jeff Pruitt, who did an even better job staging the action in Wincott’s next film, the excellent MISSION OF JUSTICE.

Casting the perennially strange Billy Drago (DELTA FORCE 2) in a straight role as Wincott’s boss seems like an odd call on the surface. The karate studio of Jun Chong, star of the memorably bad L.A. STREETFIGHTERS, is a location. Anderson and Wincott also made, in addition to MISSION OF JUSTICE, MARTIAL OUTLAW, which sounds as if it should have been another sequel, but isn’t.

Martial Law

You’ve probably forgotten, but Chad McQueen — son of actor Steve McQueen — was a star in direct-to-video movies in the 1990s. Don’t be too hard on yourself. Even his producers knew he couldn’t carry even a minor film like MARTIAL LAW, which is why he was usually teamed up with another top-of-the-bill action star. Here it’s Cynthia Rothrock (CHINA O’BRIEN) as his partner and David Carradine (DEATH RACE 2000) as the heavy to relieve McQueen’s load.

McQueen plays Sean Thompson, a badass Los Angeles cop with the badass nickname of “Martial Law.” Even though he’s a uniformed cop in a squad car, Thompson is the guy the bosses call when they need a badass job performed like busting a punk in a crowded nightclub. It wouldn’t do for Martial Law to have a lady friend who wasn’t badass, so he partners on and off the job with Billie Blake (Rothrock), a badass cop who works double shifts to pay rent.

Thompson is investigating a hot car ring led by sinister suit-wearing Dalton Rhodes (Carradine), whose badass credentials are firmly established when he kills Professor Toru Tanaka with a five point palm exploding heart technique. It isn’t just a case for Martial Law, no sir. It’s personal, because his younger brother Michael (Andy McCutcheon) is a member of Dalton’s gang.

Steve Cohen was a second assistant director on several films and television series before producer Kurt Anderson (PARTY LINE) promoted him to director. With help from stunt coordinator Philip Tan, Cohen does a steady job helming a procession of good chases and fights, including one between Rothrock and Benny “The Jet” Urquidez. Carradine had a habit of occasionally walking through pictures like this, but he was such an interesting actor, he could usually get away with it. Here he has a visibly good time being David Carradine, and it was probably good for McQueen that the two don’t share much dialogue. I shouldn’t be so hard on Chad. He’s kinda short and dumpy, but he’s handsome enough and he can throw a convincing punch. He and Rothrock are convincing as a caring couple too.

MARTIAL LAW is a standard DTV action movie, but an entertaining one. The climax pits McQueen against Carradine and Rothrock against Tan, and it’s exciting. Cohen sets an earlier suspense scene at the Griffith Park observatory at night, and McQueen shows up at a crime scene with a paper airplane. Watching the diminutive Rothrock do her stuff against guys twice her size is always a good time. After headlining two CHINA O’BRIEN films, she was too good an action star to be backing up Chad McQueen, and it’s curious why Cohen and Anderson didn’t see the potential in the two stars switching roles. Rothrock returned for the superior MARTIAL LAW II: UNDERCOVER, but with Jeff Wincott (MISSION OF JUSTICE) starring as Martial Law and Anderson making his directorial debut.

Blood And Lace

It’s been called the “sickest PG (sic) movie ever made,” and while this low-low-budget AIP shocker does contain elements of pedophilia, necrophilia, incest, torture, rape, blackmail, arson, murder, and child abuse, it’s not entirely inconsistent with other PG rulings of the era (think BILLY JACK or JAWS). “Not yet 21” Ellie (Melody Patterson, just four years after F TROOP and dubbed in some scenes by June Foray) is sent to an orphanage run by Mrs. Deere (Oscar winner Gloria Grahame) after her prostie mother is murdered in bed by a hammer-wielding maniac.

Independent and a little messed up by her mother’s killing, during which the assailant also burned down the house, Ellie immediately locks horns with the ultra-strict Mrs. Deere, who talks to her husband’s corpse and orders her drunken handyman Tom (Len Lesser, later SEINFELD’s Uncle Leo) to hunt down and murder kids who attempt to run away. They freeze the corpses in the cellar and bring them up to the “infirmary” whenever social worker Mullins (Milton Selzer) drops by to count heads.

Also in the mix is middle-aged bachelor Calvin Carruthers (Vic “Mel Sharples” Tayback), the town’s only police detective who’s working Ellie’s mom’s murder case and may have more than a professional feeling toward Ellie. A mystery man in flannel and an old-man mask wanders the grounds, and the hilariously overwrought canned music sounds ripped from a Republic serial.

Director Gilbert apparently never made another movie, but he had talent. He handles the sleazy and weird (why are 20-year-olds living in an orphanage?) screenplay by Gil Lasky (MAMA’S DIRTY GIRLS, also starring Grahame) with style, despite little money. The striking opening scene, filmed from the killer’s point of view and surprisingly graphic for a GP, prefigures HALLOWEEN. Character actors extraordinare Lesser and Tayback played comic heavies on THE MONKEES, among zillions of anonymous episodic TV guest star parts, and probably enjoyed receiving their own title cards on a feature. Making his film debut is Dennis Christopher, who earned a Golden Globe nomination for starring in BREAKING AWAY.

Scalpel aka False Face

Robert Lansing’s outstanding performance as a mad plastic surgeon anchors this sick chiller filmed in Georgia. Lansing, who starred in the television series 87TH PRECINCT, 12 O’CLOCK HIGH, and THE MAN WHO NEVER WAS, as well as dozens of episodic guest turns, plays Dr. Phillip Reynolds, whose daughter Heather (Judith Chapman, another busy TV actor who found long-running success on THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS) ran away a year earlier after she saw him drowning her boyfriend in the family pool (out of jealousy?).

Reynolds drowned Heather’s mother too. That death was chalked off as an accident by the authorities, but not by Heather’s grandfather. He dies and leaves his entire $5 million fortune to Heather, who isn’t around to collect. Reynolds wants that money. What is an unscrupulous, greedy plastic surgeon to do?

How about inviting a topless stripper, whom he finds laying in the street near death with her face beaten to a bloody pulp, back to his place with a scheme to reconstruct her features to resemble Heather. That way “Jane Doe” can collect the $5 million, sharing half with him, of course. What could go wrong? How about the real Heather returning to the Reynolds mansion and discovering her father in a sexual relationship with a woman who looks just like her!

Considering its broad portrayals of greed, murder, and incest, SCALPEL (which also saw release as FALSE FACE) is not quite as sleazy as it could have been. Or maybe should have been. Not a lot happens in terms of story turns, but what does happen is pretty entertaining, thanks mostly to the leads. Lansing played few film or television roles with as much range as the murderous Svengali Phillip Reynolds, and you can almost taste the glee he brings to the part. Chapman is also effective, even though director John Grissmer (BLOOD RAGE) and co-writer/producer/editor Joseph Weintraub don’t allow her to cut loose the way Lansing does.

One of SCALPEL’s failings as that it doesn’t provide much difference between Heather and her double — Chapman, as good as she is, plays them almost identically. However, any demerits earlier in the film are more than balanced out by Grissmer’s final reel, which throws in as many bizarre twists as the director and the writer can think of, including an insane ending perhaps more appropriate to a caper film, but entirely satisfying and laughable.

Arlen Dean Snyder (HEARTBREAK RIDGE) plays Lansing’s suspicious brother-in-law. DARK SHADOWS composer Robert Cobert provides the effective string-laden score. Originally released by tiny United International Pictures, which specialized in dubbed kung fu and sex films, SCALPEL also saw theatrical release by Avco Embassy and a VHS release by Charter Entertainment.

Tattoo

TATTOO is a forgotten film, partially because of its general inaccessibility in the United States, partially because it isn’t very good. And although it wasn’t a hit, TATTOO received enormous press coverage at the time of its release because of star Bruce Dern’s claim that he and co-star Maud Adams (OCTOPUSSY) actually had intercourse on the set in front of director Bob Brooks’ camera — a claim he later repeated in his autobiography. Adams has always consistently denied it. A lot of Dern’s memoirs is bullshit, so I’m inclined to take Maud’s side.

As an American serviceman photographing a Japanese ritual, Karl Kinsky (Dern) became fascinated with the participants’ tattoos and became a tattoo artist in Hoboken. Brooks effectively delivers this backstory in about a minute; you just know a contemporary remake would spend forty minutes uselessly setting up Kinsky’s “origin.” Karl, whose childhood artistic pretensions were stifled by his family, who still disapprove of his occupation, is rather unbelievably hired by a high-fashion magazine to paint temporary tattoos on models for a big summer issue shoot.

One of the models is Maddy Summers (Adams, who must have been hired for her willingness to do nudity and not for her acting), with whom the sexually repressed Kinsky becomes unhealthily fixated. So he drugs her, kidnaps her, and tattoos her. He forces her to masturbate, but is unable to sleep with her until his masterpiece — a full body tattoo — is complete. In one of TATTOO’s many dumb moments, it’s revealed that Karl has also given himself one without answering how the hell he could tattoo an elaborate design on his own back and ass.

There’s very little stretch from Dern’s unhinged psycho mad scientist in THE INCREDIBLE 2-HEADED TRANSPLANT to his performance in TATTOO. Because he was typecast at the time — according to Dern, he took the TATTOO role only after the studio rejected him for Len Cariou’s part in FOUR SEASONS — Dern could play Karl Kinsky in his sleep. Even though he played the role with some thought — I like the way Karl, a former public telephone disinfector, holds a handkerchief over the phone receiver when he speaks into it — the leaden direction by the one-and-done Brooks (whose experience was basically British TV commercials and two SPACE: 1999 episodes) and the uncompromising yet heavy-handed screenplay by Joyce Buñuel (who was married to Luis Buñuel’s son) let Dern down.

The Marine

THE MARINE marks the screen debut of WWE wrestler John Cena. Considering how flamboyant professional wrestling is, Cena seems like an unlikely selection for film stardom, as he comes across as dull and expressionless, no more than a slab with ridiculously huge muscles. He got better as an actor later, and was funny in 2015’s TRAINWRECK. In THE MARINE, Cena plays John Triton, a U.S. Marine who is drummed out of the Corps for killing nine terrorists and rescuing three fellow Marines singlehandedly. For disobeying a direct order by not sitting on his ass until backup could arrive, he accepts a premature discharge and returns home to his wife Kate (Kelly Carlson from NIP/TUCK and STARSHIP TROOPERS 2).

John and Kate decide to take a trip, but are waylaid at the gas station by psycho diamond thief Rome (a hammy Robert Patrick, the recipient of a TERMINATOR gag) and his gang, who kill some cops, blow the place up, and jet outta there with Kate as a hostage. Triton, who takes a ridiculous amount of physical punishment without showing more than slight scratches, jumps into the souped-up police cruiser, which looks like something out of BLADE RUNNER, and chases them. The laughs grow to a fever pitch when Triton loses control, flips the car into the air and upside down, and leaps out of it as it plunges over a cliff and into the water below. The punchline is that the bad guys continue shooting at the car, even though it's flying over their head, over a cliff, and on fire. How many times did they think they could kill that fucking car?

Triton, completely unscathed except for a half-inch red mark under his eye (you gotta see this crash to believe it), pursues the baddies into the "swamp." The rest of THE MARINE pretty much plays out exactly as you guess it will. The lame twist reveals that Rome's secret partner is the only other character in the film and the only person it could be. The whole story boils down to a fistfight between bodybuilder Cena and 50-year-old Patrick, so you can imagine how that plays out.

THE MARINE is simple and fast-paced. It’s kinda the poster child for Dumb B-Movie. It has some fun action sequences, terrible CGI, a couple of gorgeous women, and welcome humor (the often intense Patrick is pretty hilarious). The characters try to convey their treacherous conditions while traipsing through the “jungle,” but the landscape looks like a dead forest, and the "critters" like a snake and alligators are never seen in the same shot as the actors, kinda like a Jungle Jim programmer. The credits reveal that Australia substituted for "South Carolina," probably to save money, but the fakery doesn't work.

One benefit to filming in Australia was that debuting director John Bonito (his next movie was CARJACKED five years later) got David Eggby, MAD MAX's cinematographer, to shoot it, so it doesn't look too bad. Making Cena seem more human would have been an enormous improvement. He takes the brunt of several massive explosions, blows to the head, crashes...he even hangs onto the side of a semi-truck as it smashes through buildings. We're used to superheroics in our action movies, but even Indiana Jones felt pain. John Triton really is, as one character says, The Terminator.

Love And Bullets

Definitely not one of Charles Bronson’s best star vehicles, though LOVE AND BULLETS has a few points in his favor. Location shooting in Switzerland is definitely one of those points, as are the great supporting cast of character actors and several well-crafted action scenes directed by COOL HAND LUKE’s Stuart Rosenberg (John Huston is rumored to have directed some of LOVE AND BULLETS, but he bowed out during pre-production for health reasons).

Definitely not in the film’s favor are the performances by its leading lady and its chief villain. You would think I would be inured to embarrassing hambone acting by Jill Ireland and Rod Steiger by now, but not yet. Ireland was never a good actress — there’s a reason her husband Bronson was the only one who hired her — but her decision to play her role as gangster’s moll Jackie Pruitt with a combination Southern accent/ditzy blonde voice was not among her best. At the same time, Steiger, one of the worst actors ever to win an Academy Award, plays mob boss Joe Bomposa with a subtlety that matches his toupee, shouting every line and throwing in a stutter to boot.

Plot by writers Wendell Mayes (DEATH WISH) and John Melson (BATTLE OF THE BULGE) sends Arizona cop Charlie Conger (Bronson) to Switzerland to snatch Jackie and bring her back to America to testify against boyfriend Bomposa. Bomposa’s men, who include attorney Strother Martin (BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID) and Val Avery (BLACK CAESAR), are a step ahead and convince their reluctant boss to recruit Italian hitman Vittorio Farroni (Henry Silva, playing the 64th Italian hitman of his career) to bump off Jackie.

From there, it’s pretty much a chase across snowbanks with Charlie and Jackie on foot, in a car, on a ferry, on a train, on a tram, on a hay wagon, in a boat with Silva and his assistants (why does he have assistants...to beef up the body count!) mowing down plenty of innocent bystanders, but clumsily missing the target. Strangely, Bronson and Ireland basically remade LOVE AND BULLETS as ASSASSINATION, which is also not a very good film. Bronson was not the most emotive of stars, but he doesn’t seem to be enjoying himself much here, despite a free Swiss vacation with his wife. Interestingly, he doesn’t shoot anyone, but he does turn a lamp into a blowgun.

The Midnight Man

Burt Lancaster’s second and last turn behind the camera as a director was an adaptation of William Dale Smith’s excellent novel THE MIDNIGHT LADY AND THE MOURNING MAN. THE MIDNIGHT MAN doesn’t quite capture the small-town feel of the book, but it’s otherwise an absorbing, low-key Universal mystery. Lancaster shared writing, producing, and directing duties with Roland Kibbee, an Emmy winner for COLUMBO. And THE MIDNIGHT MAN plays very much like a COLUMBO with Lancaster and his heavy wool security-guard uniform taking the place of the raincoat-garbed Peter Falk.

Lancaster and Kibbee made many changes to Smith’s book — most of them unnecessary — though the skeleton is the same. Jim Slade (Lancaster) is a former Chicago police detective on parole who lands a job working third shift at a sleepy Georgia university, courtesy of his ex-partner Quartz Terwilliger (Cameron Mitchell). Although advised by his parole officer (Susan Clark) and the sheriff (Harris Yulin) to keep a low profile, Slade can’t help poking around when a trouble coed (Catherine Bach, later on THE DUKES OF HAZZARD) is murdered in her dorm room.

If you’ve watched enough mysteries, the killer’s identity is fairly obvious, but the way Lancaster and Kibbee fit the pieces together isn’t. In fact, the plot is surprisingly complex, and by the time Lancaster traipses around town arresting the myriad of co-conspirators involved in the murder, you almost expect him to reach behind the camera and slap handcuffs on the gaffer and the focus puller too.

Lancaster and Kibbee shot the film at Clemson University in South Carolina, but doesn’t take advantage of the location as well as they should. Many of its buildings look more or less like the Universal lot. Who knows — maybe they are. But with a mystery as intriguing as THE MIDNIGHT MAN’s and a supporting cast that includes Morgan Woodward, Robert Quarry, Mills Watson, Quinn Redeker, Charles Tyner, Linda Kelsey, and even THE CRIMSON PIRATE’s Nick Cravat, Lancaster and Kibbee’s film is well worth a watch. I’d love to see a more faithful film made from the book though.

The Candy Snatchers

One of the great one-and-done directorial efforts, THE CANDY SNATCHERS was helmed by Guerdon Trueblood, a busy television writer (THE STREETS OF SAN FRANCISCO, ADAM-12) who jammed his only feature with all the rape, adultery, deceit, incest, dismemberment, and general all-around grime he couldn’t get past network censors. Strangely, Trueblood didn’t also write THE CANDY SNATCHERS, leaving that task to producer Bryan Gindoff, better known for Walter Hill’s outstanding action film HARD TIMES.

Good performances, quirky dialogue, and dollops of black humor distinguish THE CANDY SNATCHERS from other exploitation films containing the same ratios of nudity and violence. Three youths—blonde Jessie (TIffany Bolling), her brother Alan (Brad David, who says, “Do I get to ball her?”), and sensitive hulk Eddy (Trueblood’s college friend Vince Martorano, who receives an “Introducing” credit)—“snatch” teen Candy (Susan Sennett, later in BIG BAD MAMA) as she’s walking home from school and hold her for ransom. They instruct her jewelry store manager father Avery (Ben Piazza) to steal some of his store’s diamonds and meet them in a half hour, when they’ll return Candy to him safe and sound.

The perfect crime, they think, except for a monkey wrench they didn’t count on — Avery doesn’t want Candy back. She’s his stepdaughter, and with her dead, he stands to inherit $1 million from her trust fund. Candy’s only hope to survive her ordeal is a mute autistic child (Christopher Trueblood, the director’s son), who knows about the abduction, but can’t get his abusive parents to pay attention.

One of the darkest, most nihilistic crime dramas of a decade dotted with them, THE CANDY SNATCHERS is strictly drive-in fare (exploitation outfit General Film Corporation of THE CENTERFOLD GIRLS and LINDA LOVELACE FOR PRESIDENT fame released it), but well above routine. Bolling (BONNIE’S KIDS), who specialized in icy bad girls, scores high as the leader of the kidnappers, staying tough under pressure while struggling to keep demons from her past under the surface. David (EAT MY DUST) and Martorano (THE SEVERED ARM) also skillfully flesh out their characters with intriguing backstories furnished by Gindoff. Poor Sennett (OZZIE’S GIRLS) is a real sport, spending nearly all her screen time tied up and assaulted.

One wonders why Trueblood didn’t get around to directing again. In addition to his sure hand with the actors, he shows real storytelling talent and some visual flair. In fact, the crane shot that buttons the film is a real doozy sure to leave the audience something to think about. Robert Drasnin composed the TV-ish wacka-wacka score, but the musical highlight is the witty theme song, “Money Is the Root of All Happiness,” sung by Kerry Chater of Gary Puckett and the Union Gap.

Street Crimes

Though one suspects ninety minutes of Character Actor Hall of Famers Dennis Farina (CRIME STORY) and Max Gail (BARNEY MILLER) sitting around shooting the breeze would be equally entertaining, STREET CRIMES is an entertaining crime drama with a heart.

Written and directed by Stephen Smoke, who had previously penned LIVING TO DIE for PM Entertainment, this is one of those action movies where every low-level street punk in L.A. is proficient in kickboxing. Luckily, so is ridiculously young-looking rookie cop Michael Worth (U.S. SEALS II), who gets razzed by fellow detectives Joe Banks and Gail for using his fists and feet instead of his gun.

Teamed with veteran Farina, who eats in almost every scene, Worth cleans up the streets by inviting the gangbangers to the gym for organized, refereed kickboxing matches with policemen. And it works. Everyone is having a good time beating everyone up, except druglord Gerardo (James T. Morris), whose business is suffering. Worth is as green as an actor as his character is as a cop, and Patricia Zehentmayr as his blind girlfriend is even worse, but the charismatic Farina (in ubiquitous Chicago Bears cap) is wonderful enough for all three (Dennis staring down a pedophile is worth a rental on its own). Smoke tries to build repartee among the cops, but it’s really Farina and Gail who make it work instead of Smoke’s clumsy dialogue.

Although STREET CRIMES has its share of action scenes, it’s as much social drama as crime drama. Smoke seems to care about people and using his little direct-to-video movie to make points and teach his audience something without getting preachy (Gail wears a D.A.R.E. T-shirt, for instance). Of course, Smoke leans on more than a few action-movie cliches — it would be hard not to at this budget level — but they play with energy and without cynicism. Worth’s first three features were kickboxing flicks for PM, but I’m unsure whether STREET CRIMES was made before FINAL IMPACT (also with Smoke) and TO BE THE BEST.

The Death Squad

Well, there’s no wondering where writers Ronald Austin and James Buchanan (CHARLIE’S ANGELS) came up with the idea for THE DEATH SQUAD, a quite good made-for-TV crime drama for ABC. It’s just amazing that producers Aaron Spelling and Leonard Goldberg were able to get it on the air a mere two weeks after MAGNUM FORCE hit theaters nationwide at Christmas 1973.

The plot is the same in both films: an honest police detective learns about a secret cadre of vigilante cops who are murdering criminals who evaded proper justice on a legal technicality. Here, it’s Robert Forster, in between BANYON and NAKIA, as a disgraced cop recruited back to the force by chief Bert Remsen (CODE OF SILENCE) and commissioner Dennis Patrick (HOUSE OF DARK SHADOWS) to investigate the killings of a dozen bad guys over the past six months in which the weapons were never found. He’s quickly recruited for the death squad by his new partner (pre-Lobo Claude Akins) and is stunned to learn that it was created by his kindly old mentor (Melvyn Douglas), now terminal with cancer.

The teleplay could have used at least another polish — not surprising assuming ABC commissioned it quickly when it heard Warner Brothers had MAGNUM FORCE in production. Some of the story points aren’t believable, but it also holds a few surprises. Forster is a strong, believable leading man, and Harry Falk (MEN OF THE DRAGON) skillfully delivers the suspense. Former Mama Michelle Phillips plays Forster’s love interest, the widow of Douglas’ dead cop son. Mark Goddard (LOST IN SPACE) and Kenneth Tobey (THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD) play other Death Squadders. THE DEATH SQUAD isn't quite as good as MAGNUM FORCE, but Forster and the brutal action make it better than routine.

The Private Eyes

Remember when Tim Conway was a movie star? Hot off his success as Carol Burnett’s impish second on her self-titled variety show, Conway moved into films, mostly with Disney (GUS, THE APPLE DUMPLING GANG) or Lang Elliott’s Atlanta-based International Picture Show Company (THE BILLION DOLLAR HOBO, THEY WENT THAT-A-WAY & THAT-A-WAY). Conway and fellow television sidekick Don Knotts (THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW) played well off one another as bumbling gunfighters in the APPLE DUMPLING GANG movies, so producer Elliott cast the comedy team in THE PRIZE FIGHTER as a bumbling (what else?) boxer and his trainer.

Unexpectedly, when released at Thanksgiving 1979, THE PRIZE FIGHTER became the top grossing film in the history of New World Pictures, spurring Roger Corman and Elliott to commission a pseudo-sequel, this time with Elliott also directing. THE PRIVATE EYES, which stars Conway and Knotts as bumbling (what else?) detectives, was somehow an even bigger hit than its predecessor — in fact, the biggest hit Corman’s New World ever released!

Conway and his PRIZE FIGHTER collaborator John Myhers wrote the screenplay, which casts Don and Tim as Inspector Winship and Doctor Tart, who work for Scotland Yard, even though they’re Americans and referred to as private eyes. The script shamelessly cribs YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN’s “Walk this way” joke and introduces a literal Chekhov’s (time) gun in the detectives’ first scene, so it’s perfectly suited to Conway’s and Knotts’, shall we say, less than subtle comic stylings.

Spoofing both Sherlock Holmes mysteries and Old Dark House thrillers, THE PRIVATE EYES is packed with sight gags, puns, pratfalls, and other cartoon slapstick aimed at kiddies and unassuming television watchers. The Yard sends Winship and Tart to the massive Morley Manor, where the lady and lord of the house were recently murdered by a hooded stalker who’s still skulking about the mansion’s secret rooms and passages.

Elliott serves up the requisite red herrings, which include stacked adopted daughter Trisha Noble (STRIKE FORCE), caretaker Stan Ross (WHOLLY MOSES!), maid Suzy Mandel (CONFESSIONS OF A DRIVING INSPECTOR), nanny Grace Zabriskie (TWIN PEAKS), chef John Fujioka (THEY CALL ME BRUCE?), groom Irwin Keyes (THE WARRIORS), and butler Bernard Fox (BEWITCHED). More bodies turn up, each accompanied by a note from the killer (one of Conway and Myhers’ funnier running gags), with the hapless Winship and Tart helpless to stop the killings.

Knotts and Conway, both of whom hosted eponymous variety shows in the 1970s, are experts at milking laughs from mediocre material, and what fun THE PRIVATE EYES offers comes from their mugging. Elliott shot on location at the remarkable Biltmore Estate in North Carolina, which is perfectly cast as an English manor. Carol Burnett’s bandleader, Peter Matz, composed the catchy score and theme for this PG-rated comedy. Though it was a major hit, Knotts and Conway didn’t do another sequel, though they and the rest of Burt Reynolds’ Rolodex made cameos in CANNONBALL RUN II.

The Hunter (1980)

Three months after Paramount released THE HUNTER in theaters, Steve McQueen was dead. He was diagnosed with the cancer that would kill him at age 50 not long after completing production on THE HUNTER, and in some scenes he seems a little shaken.

It was something of a novelty then to see McQueen on the big screen. After 1974’s THE TOWERING INFERNO, he didn’t act in a nationally released film until TOM HORN in the spring of 1980 (Warners buried his adaptation of Ibsen’s AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE). THE HUNTER, McQueen’s final turn in front of the camera, came out a few months later.

THE HUNTER’s small scale and episodic structure seem more appropriate for a television pilot than a motion picture with one of the world’s most popular action stars. The director was Buzz Kulik, who had been working mostly on television movies and pilots at the time (Peter Hyams’ name on the screenplay indicates the CAPRICORN ONE director must have been set to direct at some point). He keeps the action chugging along at an entertaining pace, but nothing feels special about THE HUNTER. If only we could have known it would be all the McQueen we would ever get.

McQueen plays Ralph “Papa” Thorson, a real-life bounty hunter and a colorful personality. Most of us have one or two unusual quirks, but McQueen’s Thorson, as penned by Hyams and Ted Leighton (ELLERY QUEEN: DON’T LOOK BEHIND YOU), is entirely made of quirks. He drives an old car (poorly, in a cute nod to the star’s real racing career), collects old toys, has a pregnant young girlfriend, likes opera, and hosts all-night poker parties in which he never plays. As if chasing criminals for monetary reward wasn’t weird enough.

It would be easy to presume the script was left unfinished when Hyams left the picture, as McQueen basically bounces from one setpiece to the next, occasionally interacting with a character actor you recognize from TV (David Spielberg, Kevin Hagen, Wynn Irwin, Nicolas Coster, Richard Venture). Tracey Walter (MALONE) has more screen time as a psycho named Mason, who stalks and kidnaps Thorson’s girlfriend Dotty (Kathryn Harrold, always a welcome presence) — the only subplot that runs the course of the picture.

Fred Koenekamp’s photography is flat and unappealing, McQueen overplays the humor, and Michel Legrand’s score is one of the strangest ever composed for a major studio action picture. But the chase scenes are pretty great, including one between a Trans Am and a combine in a Nebraska cornfield (actually shot in downstate Illinois) and another on top of a Chicago “L” train that culminates in a car tumbling from the Marina City parking garage into the Chicago River. Adding to the excitement is McQueen, sick whether he knew it or not, doing some of his own stunts, kneeling on a train car.

On Her Majesty's Secret Service

After five turns as James Bond, Sean Connery finally said, “No more” (for now). Producers Harry Saltzman and Albert R. Broccoli turned to an unknown Australian model with no acting experience named George Lazenby to fill Connery’s shoes. His performance was universally blasted at the time, but in retrospect, it’s okay. Lazenby lacks the movie-star charisma of the other Bond actors, but he’s excellent at the physical action — probably even better than Connery. He doesn’t hold the screen the way Connery (or even Roger Moore, regarded as a lightweight) did as Bond, and James Bond really needs to be the coolest guy in the room.

One of the best directed and edited films in the 007 series, ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE suffers not just from Lazenby’s dramatic deficiencies, but also its early pacing. At 142 minutes, it’s the second longest Bond film (after CASINO ROYALE) and feels it, notably the interminable scenes with Bond and the girls at Piz Gloria. On the other hand, pretty much everything from Bond’s escape from Piz Gloria to the end is great: a cable car escape, a ski chase, an amazing car chase, an avalanche, a bobsled chase and the Bond series’ most downbeat conclusion.

Bond, having failed to secure megalomaniac Ernst Stavro Blofeld while destroying his operation at the end of YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE, has spent the last two years tracking him. His boss M (Bernard Lee) takes Bond off the case at the same time 007 begins a romance with the reckless Contessa Tracy di Vicenzo (Diana Rigg), perhaps at the instigation of her gangster father Draco (Gabriele Ferzetti).

Bond and Tracy fall in love, and he considers marriage. Through Draco’s connections, Bond gets a line on Blofeld (Telly Savalas), who has opened an allergy-research clinic atop Piz Gloria in the Swiss Alps. The clinic is, of course, a front for Blofeld’s latest world-domination plot, which involves brainwashing beautiful young women from different countries into releasing a virus that could destroy the human race.

Nitpicking a James Bond plot is besides the point, though it’s hard to ignore the fact that Blofeld doesn’t recognize Bond, posing as a genealogist named Sir Hilary Bray, as the agent who blew up his volcano two years earlier. The story’s biggest hangup is Hunt’s insistence on including a treacly BUTCH CASSIDY-style romantic montage with Bond and Tracy mooning over each other while Louis Armstrong sings John Barry and Hal David’s “We Have All the Time in the World.”

Speaking of Barry, his sixth consecutive Bond score is among his best, and OHMSS’ technical and production credits are impeccable. Except the poor process photography. Why the early Bonds had such poor process work is a mystery. Despite all the great stuff in the film, OHMSS’ box office, while high, was lower than YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE’s. Lazenby decided to stop after one Bond film (his career never recovered), and a $1 million salary lured Connery into returning for DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER.

Doomsday Machine

Of course you think you want to see unctuous deejay Casey Kasem, M*A*S*H goody-two-shoes Mike Farrell, obnoxious MAKE ME LAUGH host Bobby Van, HIGH ROLLERS babe Ruta Lee, and one-time Tarzan Denny Miller in a cheap, stupid, boring space movie. DOOMSDAY MACHINE was literally never finished. Production shut down twice, quickie specialist Lee “Roll ‘Em” Sholem shot new footage with different actors after the fact, and the film somehow got released five years after production began. Miller and co-star Mala Powers didn’t even know it was out until they (separately) came across it on television.

Blue sweatshirts double as astronaut wear — a good example of the penny-pinching in Hope’s production. The superfluous prologue and the incomprehensible climax are obviously Sholem’s footage, but don’t blame the hired hand for fumbling an impossible task. Poor Grant Williams, who starred in a genuine science fiction classic, THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN, is reduced to playing a crude, thuggish rapist, which is at least one note more than almost everyone else gets to play. Somehow, Van scored top billing for his role as the odious comic relief — same as he played in THE NAVY VS. THE NIGHT MONSTERS, which is actually better than this movie. Almost everything is better than this movie. Oral surgery is better than this movie.

Seven astronauts bound for Venus are waylaid on their way to the launch pad by Air Force officers who replace three of the crew with women (“Are you insane?” is one enlightened astronaut’s reaction to — gulp — girls on a spacecraft). Hours after launch, Earth is destroyed by the doomsday device teased in the opening scene of a Chinese lady spy tossing a cat over a wall to distract the guard protecting it.

Oh. So that’s why the women are there. To keep the human race alive. It’s three on three with poor old Henry Wilcoxon (MRS. MINIVER) left out. At least they have sweet Barcaloungers for a little novelty in their race-perpetuating. Not that they get to first base after two of the crew are sucked out the airlock and two others go floating in space in a filmmaking dodge so cynical, it makes Michael Bay look like Frank Capra.

Along Came A Spider

Morgan Freeman returns as criminal profiler and Washington, D.C. cop Alex Cross in 2001's ALONG CAME A SPIDER, a sequel to the limp 1997 thriller KISS THE GIRLS. Instead of Ashley Judd, this time he’s teamed up with Monica Potter (TV’s PARENTHOOD) as Jezzie Flannigan, an agent of the United States Secret Service.

The case that brings them together is the kidnapping of little Megan Rose (Mika Boorem), the daughter of an undistinguished U.S. Senator (Michael Moriarty). Both are fighting demons: Cross, the death of his partner eight months earlier, Flannigan, the guilt of allowing Megan to be taken from school by one of her teachers, Gary Soneji (Michael Wincott). Soneji is one of those super-villains that only inhabit mediocre thrillers—brilliant, obsessed, cool, collected, a master of disguise, and the kind of guy who intentionally leaves behind arcane clues that no real cop would ever spot.

As it turns out, Soneji is just about the most believable character in the film, which delivers not one, but two ludicrous plot twists that come as a surprise only because they’re too ludicrous to anticipate. Freeman is silk, as you would expect, and acts rings around the miscast Potter, who lacks the gravitas to inhabit a role with so many sides. Director Lee Tamahori (DIE ANOTHER DAY) delivers a slick, professional product, but an empty one.

Although ALONG CAME A SPIDER, based on James Patterson’s 1992 novel—his first about Alex Cross—grossed more than KISS THE GIRLS did, Paramount didn’t make a third Cross movie. Tyler Perry, of all people, played the character in 2012’s ALEX CROSS, a much worse film.

Invasion U.S.A. (1985)

Chuck Norris was already one of America’s biggest box office stars before this crazy, jingoistic action movie opened at number one. Courtesy of Cannon’s Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus and featuring what may jokingly be called a screenplay co-written by Norris, INVASION U.S.A. is brainless fun with zero characterization, hardly any dialogue spoken by its star, and perhaps the worst female lead (in terms of performer and character) in the history of action movies.

Retired “Company” agent Matt Hunter (Norris) spends his life wrestling alligators and trading quips with grizzled Indian trader John Eagle (Dehl Berti) outside his shack in the Everglades. Reluctantly, he returns to active duty when hundreds of godless Commie terrorists, led by his old foe Rostov (Richard Lynch), invade the U.S.A. via Florida with a massive plan to blow up school buses, shoot up shopping malls, turn Americans against authority, and ruin Christmas.

For the most part, law enforcement is nowhere to be seen, except for a couple of government spooks (one played by Eddie Jones) and Hunter, whose condition for stopping Rostov is “I work alone.” So while hundreds of baddies roam the Sunshine State mowing down citizens, Hunter cruises aimlessly in his pickup truck with an amazing sixth sense for finding the killers, blasting them with his twin-holstered Uzis, and moving on to the next target. More often than coincidence would allow, he encounters an obnoxious female journalist, played horribly by Melissa Prophet (GOODFELLAS), who shows her gratitude at being rescued by Hunter by constantly calling him “Cowboy.”

Granted, the reporter is such an ill-conceived and superfluous character that Meryl Streep couldn’t have made her anything but an annoying appendage. But that’s the kind of perplexing mess INVASION U.S.A. is — an absurd series of setpieces in which Norris stumbles onto someone in danger and blows the bad guys away. There’s no detective work involved in which he is able to deduce where Rostov’s men will pop up next. No, he just drives around until he accidentally discovers the script’s next action scene.

Rostov’s plan, as far-fetched as it seems, would stand a better chance of succeeding if he’d just give it priority, but, noooo, he has to kill Chuck Norris first. You see, years before, Chuck had interrupted one of Rostov’s terrorist plots, and—gulp—kicked the Russian square in the face. One time. It must have been one heckuva kick, because Rostov still has nightmares about it, and refuses to fully commit himself to the invasion until Chuck is dead.

A lot of bullets fly in this movie, and director Joseph Zito (FRIDAY THE 13TH—THE FINAL CHAPTER), who previously worked with Norris on MISSING IN ACTION, at least keeps things moving quickly, tossing in a few smooth dolly shots and splashing enough blood on the screen to keep nondiscriminating audience members (like me) from getting bored. Working with a reported $10 million budget, Zito manages to get it all on the screen, photographing enough exploding houses, squibbed chests, and burning men to keep Cannon’s stunt crew plenty busy. INVASION U.S.A. may be stupid, crude, and confusing, but it certainly isn’t boring and is typical of the fun but empty-headed action movies Cannon was releasing in the 1980s.

Revenge Of The Ninja

REVENGE OF THE NINJA was a big step up for Cannon, as it was among the studio’s first films to receive a theatrical release from MGM. Cannon wanted a sequel to its smash hit ENTER THE NINJA, though REVENGE has nothing to do with it except actor Sho Kosugi is in both movies as different characters. Location filming in Salt Lake City gives REVENGE an offbeat look to match its offbeat script.

Kosugi, who played an evil ninja in ENTER, gets top billing this time as good ninja Cho Osaki, who leaves his native Tokyo for Los Angeles with his mother and his baby son Kane after the rest of his family is murdered in a ninja bloodbath. Six years later, Osaki has a successful business running a gallery of handcrafted dolls imported from the Orient. What he doesn’t know is that his business partner Braden (Arthur Roberts) is smuggling heroin inside the dolls and selling it to Italian mobster Caifano (an overacting Mario Gallo).

Braden’s plan goes awry after Kane (Kosugi’s real-life son Kane) accidentally breaks a doll, exposing the powder inside, and witnesses a murder. As if it weren’t already crazy enough, the screenplay by James Silke (AMERICAN NINJA) really goes off the rails when we learn Braden is also a ninja (!) and that he has the power to hypnotize sexy karate student Cathy (Ashley Ferrare) and get her to kidnap Kane.

REVENGE was the first action movie directed by Israeli-born Sam Firstenberg, and he immediately demonstrates a knack for staging exciting, bloody fight scenes. The massacre that opens the film gets the picture off to a rousing start, and the action-packed climax featuring Kosugi laying waste to an entire office building of henchmen is one of the best sequences in any Cannon movie. Kosugi and stunt coordinator Steve Lambert put together a succession of fun chases and fight scenes, which are glued together with a score credited to Michael W. Lewis and Robert J. Walsh that’s so infectious that Cannon used it in other movies.

Even little Kane Kosugi gets to knock some guys on their asses, though the sight of a little boy getting slapped around may surprise contemporary audiences. Firstenberg’s touch with actors is not as strong as his action chops — all the actors are either over- or under-emoting — but nobody’s watching a film called REVENGE OF THE NINJA to see Lee Strasberg exercises. Firstenberg, Silke, Kosugi, and editor Michael Duthie returned a year later in another unrelated “sequel,” NINJA III: THE DOMINATION, which added a supernatural spin to the chopsocky thrills.

The Wild Wild West #1 by Richard Wormser

Surprisingly, for a television series that ran four seasons and was quite popular among young audiences, THE WILD WILD WEST spawned only one tie-in paperback. Richard Wormser's simply titled THE WILD WILD WEST was not an original work, but rather was adapted without credit from "The Night of the Double-Edged Knife," an episode from the series' black-and-white first season.

In brief, THE WILD WILD WEST was a clever combination of old-fashioned western tropes, the new spy craze born from the explosive James Bond movies, and a dash of science fiction/fantasy. HAWAIIAN EYE's Robert Conrad starred as James T. West with character actor Ross Martin (MR. LUCKY) cast as West's partner Artemus Gordon. West, a typically dashing two-fisted type, and master of disguise Gordon worked as government agents who roamed the Old West battling bad guys. During the first year, their antagonists were more or less normal killers, robbers, and bank robbers. It wasn't until the series found its bearings that it introduced kinkier villains and more way-out gimmicks, including an episode in which West was shrunk to six inches in height.

The gifted Stephen Kandel, who created con man heavy Harry Mudd for STAR TREK, penned "The Night of the Double-Edged Knife," though it's unknown why he received no credit on the Wormser book. Wormser more or less follows Kandel's basic plot, though he obviously added characters and story branches to open the story to book length. West and Gordon, whose home base is a luxury steam train, are called to investigate blackmail and murder. Namely, the killing of five men per day on a railroad being financed by Penrose (played in the episode by Harry Townes) and Adamson (Vaughn Taylor) under the direction of General Ball (Leslie Nielsen), who once was West's respected Army commander, but was washed out of the service after losing an arm.

For three days straight, the mysterious blackmailers have made good on their promise to kill five men per day until Penrose and Adamson meet their demand for $50,000 in gold smelted into railroad spikes. Under suspicion is American Knife (John Drew Barrymore), a Dartmouth-educated Cheyenne who claims to be taking the fall for the real killer, a white man. Wormser keeps the killer's identity a mystery until the final chapters, though--perhaps in the interest of time--"Double-Edged Knife" reveals it at the beginning of the third act.

Wormser mostly does a good job capturing the humor and the derring-do of the television series, especially in adapting Robert Conrad's voice for the page. His biggest misstep is his characterization of Gordon, who is not West's equal in the novel, but instead a deferential employee. To pad the page count, West and Gordon have a butler, who's addicted to gambling at cards, always with a few aces up his sleeves.

Unfortunately, this 1966 novel was Signet's only WILD WILD WEST book, though Wormser went on to write TV tie-ins of THE GREEN HORNET, THE HIGH CHAPARRAL, and THE MOST DEADLY GAME, as well as a few movie novelizations and a lot of pulp fiction, sometimes under the name Ed Friend. Gold Key did release a handful of WILD WILD WEST comic books during the late 1960s through the show's cancellation in 1969.