Cross Mission

(It's been a while, screenshots and videos to follow shortly once I get on a computer that can do those two things)

Cross Mission is a sorry excuse for an action film that plods along as if it doesn't even want to; lambast various other B-grade directors such as Lamberto Bava, Mattei and Fragasso all you want, at least they weren't Al Bresica, who cut so many corners his films were just a few milimetres away from being totally one-dimensional. Taking place in an ambiguous Latin American country (in this film's favour, it makes a change to the painfully similar setting of Filipino jungles), Cross Mission focuses on General Romero's corrupt business as a politician; to the UN he is removing his country's marijuana crops, in secret he is still growing them and shipping them off. His right hand man William is turned to the good side by an investigative reporter called Helen who he finds himself overwhelmingly attracted to after knowing each other for such a short amount of time, and soon the two are waging war alongside rebel forces against Romero's oppressive and sly rule. The relatively confused and standstill plot is spiced up just a bit by the classically exploitative inclusion of Ratman star Nelson de la Rosa (famed for his extremely small height) as a supernatually-powered dwarf called Astaroth, but his presence is simply to make stand out what is unfortunately a very non-daring expedition into familiar territory.

While indeed slick-looking in some instances, with semi-decent acting and a catchy synth score, Cross Mission's flair is limited and its action sequences are neither exciting or explosive, consisting mostly of very still scenes of simple machinegun spraying and some small explosions. The nadir of which is a final beach battle that is shot in day-for-night and consists of not a lot going on (the film slips up and shows the beach at day time when shown one of Romero's monitors, even though it's meant to be at night). Of course, much of the entertainment is going to come from picking this one apart, but don't expect anything to throw itself at you like many other titles will, this one is very reserved and even goes so far to culling footage from Umberto Lenzi stinker Bridge to Hell. The romance subplot in this one deserves a footnote in how appalling it is, only here could the hero declare his love for the woman he wants to save and then promptly dive at another woman he's been talking to. That, and the many little snippets of sexism make for unusual laughs, otherwise, the majority of the dialogue is unnoticeable.

What could have been an exciting and slightly original little title of heated battles in untouched land for Italian filmmakers and a fight against a voodoo dictator and his magical midget (Nelson de la Rosa is woefully underused) is really something for completionists of this sort of thing only. Mildly interesting, but General Romero and his sparkling telekinetic lie detector is not going to win fans easily for this title.

• Midgetsploitation: 2/5
• Music: 3/5
• Being a wasted opportunity: 5/5

-James

Review source: Japanese VHS

Title information

• Production company: AM Trading International SRL
• Year of release: 1988

Alternative titles:

• Missão Mortífera <Lethal Mission> (Brazil)
• Mafia Power (France)
• Combat Attack (West Germany)
• 追跡大陸グレート・ミッション "Tsuiseki tairiku gureeto misshon" <Continent track: Great Mission> (Japan)

Rolf: The Last Mercenary

Rolf is shit, muddy, dirty and nonsensical shit, in which its own shortcomings come together to make a product that makes you want to wash once it's over. Coming out in 1983 as fast as possibly can in the wake of First Blood, this revenge tale (of course) borrows heavily from the Stallone vehicle, while the speed of its production really shows in the overall product. Being a slice of cash-in trash, rather than present a sympathetic look at a direly-treated war veteran, it plays out like a cruel observation of a character effectively having the world defecate on him every step of the way. It's not the filmic equivalent of watching someone kick a puppy, but it borders on that. Written and directed by Mario Siciliano, a man better known for his prior pornos, this surely says a lot about what we're in for.

The film follows Rolf, a mercenary-turned-commercial pilot living in an unnamed Middle Eastern town, who seems to shower rarely as proven by a dialogue between him and his girlfriend Joanna. The police don't get on with Rolf, it seems they don't like his past as a mercenary; is the film presenting a nationalistic friction between a caucasian ex-soldier and the people of a race he may have previously killed as some sort of social critique? Or is it just ripping off First Blood? They let him off, but not after they've stuck his hand into an unflushed toilet! Rolf is the standout among his former mercenary friends, who are led by John, one of the slimiest looking guys since before Clarence Boddicker, and his men in tow are a colourful bunch of vile bastards.

John offers Rolf the chance to make $50,000 exporting hard drugs. Rolf declines, but when John makes a crack about his dead mother he has none of it and bashes John's head against a wall before kicking him out! When Joanna hears about him passing up such a sum, he tells her a painful memory of how his prostitute mother was given a drug overdose in front of him by her pimp, along with a bit of expository dialogue on how he was the most athletic in college, but yeah, Rolf's a good clean guy. Rolf is later caught by his the entire group of his former friends; after the beating they give him, he resets his own knee in a real squirmer of a scene and he faints in a bush full of leeches! Police bias prevents them from putting a search out for Rolf, leaving Joanna to look for him on her own, the police do end up being nice enough to stop two rapists following her though! After she finds him, Rolf learns he has been fired from his job, so he gets together with a friend and hijacks a plane loaded with John's drugs, only to piss all over them and hurl them out! For this, John and his boys break into Joanna's home, and in a very uncomfortable sequence, take turns raping her; the frequent POV shots and the incredibly inappropriate porn-like theme in the background make it actually quite disturbing. The film at this point obviously does what you've been waiting for and kicks Rolf into Revenge mode, you can tell where this goes. 

Nothing nice ever happens to Rolf, in virtually every scene the poor man is shown to be suffering one way or another, from being picked on by every cop in town to having his girlfriend raped and murdered, to having his hands riddled with bullets and spending the rest of the film disabled. He is effectively played up to be Jesus, with the build laughably culminating in him raising his bloodied hands to the sky and begging "God, help me!", along with the final scene depicting him against the setting sun. Despite every scene being one ineptly-shot sequence chained together in the name of exploitation, there is a delightful dirtiness to it that could have perhaps been much more and could have elevated it to a bang rather than a sigh. The appalling production values work in its favour in a way if the intention was to upright create a grimey feature. No one is likable and some OTT touches nicely crank up the scum factor; one of the mercenaries is so abject he even steals his fallen comrade's watch and wallet, and then uses his blood as make-up to play dead! Their canteens are even loaded up with cocaine instead of water! The antics of the particularly venomous-looking John are interesting to say the least, he randomly beats up a woman in the street, then randomly forces a bottle down the mouth of another without anyone batting an eye, and then shoves away a woman trying to kiss him! She and her friend bizarrely don't stop though, and seem to pamper him in fondles. Hell, he's just a lonely, tortured soul, just listen to the pain in his voice when the police ask him about friends and he responds with "what friends? I don't know what you're talking about".

The ropey narrative as you would expect serves only to continually dish out brutalities; the film opens with a flashback of the mercenaries blurredly tearing up an entire village, but you would only guess this as soon as other flashbacks begin to pepper the story, depicting John and his goons using free-falling children as target practice and Rolf being the saviour behind their backs. A lack of polish leaves the many scenes of violence hollow, giving us only a poke not a punch. This is further held down by the general absence of background foley, on top of that the dubbing is lifeless and at times incoherent, mainly because the actors barely open their mouths more than a little. At times, it seems they don't even twitch their lips, and in one instance, Rolf opens his mouth fully to yell and the dubber's dialogue amusingly doesn't match up.

That said, the music by the great Fabio Frizzi also isn't very up to scratch, the most notable piece of music is however, Rolf's theme song! Yes, Rolf gets this soothing synth-rock melody play at some of the wrong times in the film, but the lyrics are irresistable, and it's the only thing credited in the end titles! As a bit of trivia, some poster art for the film shows Rolf holding a gun he never uses in the film, along with a blonde-haired Joanna clinging to his leg, this drawing of her however has been cribbed from the poster for Clint Eastwood's The Gauntlet! Erase the music entirely, do away with the sillier elements and you would have something seedy enough to be on par with Day of the Woman/I Spit On Your Grave, this is for completionists of Italian exploitation only. In the immortal words of Rolf's theme song... Rolf, your vengeance can't die! The fire in your eyes, says it all!     

• Action: 3/5
• Brutality: The outline of it all is there
• Natural lighting: 5/5 

-James, 14 November 2010 (original date)

Review source: Japanese VHS
Screenshot source: Japanese VHS

Title information

• Production company: Metheus Film
• Year of release: 1983

Alternate titles:

• Viimeinen taistelija <The Last Fighter> (Finland)
• Der Tag des Söldners <The Day of the Mercenary> (West Germany)
• Rolf: ワイルド・アウトサイダー "Rolf: wairudo autosaidaa" <Rolf: Wild Outsider> (Japan)

Quest for the Mighty Sword

Ever since I sampled the wondrous and campy delight that was Terry Marcel's Hawk The Slayer, you offer me a film featuring toy weapons, barren sets and moronic magical tales of chivalry against evil, you are guaranteed to hold my attention. Unsurprisingly like every brief movie craze during the 80's in this case the 'Conan-style' swords and sorcery genre, Italy wanted to ride high on the bandwagon and up the ante in terms of Z-budget antics. Already, Lucio Fulci had made his own stab with 1983's Conquest along with Albert Pyun's Sword and the Sorcerer and of course, the king of this underworld of fantasy tales: the Deathstalker franchise. Now surprisingly Bruno Mattei was not involved for this particular charade from as late as 1990, but the one you could consider his master: Joe D'Amato.

D'Amato who sadly died in 1999 was an especially seedy, sleazy director who has made no less than 200 movies. Like many of his fellow Italian exploitation buddies, D'Amato stuck to many genres in his lifetime including spaghetti westerns and war films; although he mostly stuck with soft and hardcore pornography which is what he is most notorious for. His resume includes such 'erotic classics' as Porno Holocaust, Caligula: The Untold Story and Hercules: A Sex Adventure. Needless to say, I had some trepidation about wading into his murky and potentially mentally scarring filmography. Now this movie Quest For The Mighty Sword is oddly enough both the technical fourth entry into D'Amato's Conan knock off series starring Miles O'Keefe known as Ator, as well as in Germany being the unofficial sequel to Troll 2 by Bruno Mattei collaborator Claudio Fragasso. Basically, the only relation this movie has with Troll 2 is the fact that several of Laura Gemser's troll/goblin costumes are reused. In terms of being an Ator sequel though this one was apparently meant to be a reboot for D'Amato after the third entry in the series Iron Warrior was disowned by him due to a different director being at the helm. 

To start with, we have a lone female warrior garbed in gold and a few bedsheets dashing across the scenery as the title cards roll. Intercut with this is a scene of silver-clad soldiers dragging civilians to be executed by Prince Ator, ruler of this very small bog pit with a gondola in the middle. These particluar felons have been charged with rape as reported by a dude with a goofy helmet that covers his eyes, funnily enough this is the first line of the film. As long as there is no rape involving cannibals and a character named Emanuelle within the first five minutes I might just make it. As a way of proving what little possible strength they may have over their leader, the criminals are offered to fight Ator in exchange for their freedom. Our hero steps into the pit with the Mighty Sword in hand, a plastic toy so heavy that our main actor can't seem to do more than one move with it. Just to show he's a hardcore family man he is also demonstrating his raw manliness in front of his wife and young kid.  Ator promises to his son who also happens to be called Ator imaginitively enough, that when he dies the Mighty Sword will become his to rule over the land; eyes subsequently roll at obvious foreshadowing. Ator in epic fashion begins his battle against the rapists in glorious slow motion. No, I'm not talking about the footage slowing down but Ator's movements are so lathargic that I can't believe that he actually hits anything. 

Surprisingly, Ator dispatches the crooks fairly quickly with each of the opponents receiving two different battle themes including a funky medieval disco tune and an oddly well done orchestral piece that sounds like James Horner on an off-day. But before Ator can lay down his arms, a mysterious metal-clad warrior named Tharn appears to challenge Ator for the sword; Ator naturally decides to literally stand his ground, holding the sword horizontally like a barrier loudly declaring his loyalty to his people. Tharn prepares to throw his spear when our female from eariler now named as Dejenira pleads while out of breath for Tharn to relinquish his anger; Tharn refuses and chucks his spear into Ator's gut breaking the mighty sword in two. Notice how the prop is so heavy it appears Ator is deliberately holding the spear into his gut. Tharn then decides to reveal himself as one of the snarling goblins from Troll 2 before disappearing in a gust of smoke. Now I know what you are thinking, with our main character Ator now dead after less than ten minutes this means the movie is over right? Nope, in his dying words Ator requests that his wife and child be taken to a supposedly wise goblin named Grendel so that his son can be brought up to be as strong as his father.

Meanwhile Dejenira flees from the scene and falls from exhaustion because I guess being a woman in a fantasy realm means jogging endlessly through recycled scenery isn't one of her strong points; some hasty editing later and she is captured by her kind and forced into some kind of hibernation for having feelings for Ator which can only be broken by another mortal. Gee, I wonder who is up for that task? Need I also mention this entrapment involves having a spear thrown into a wall causing a barrier of fire; I guess a light knock to the noggin was out of the question. Cut to eightenn years later as the now grown up Ator Jr (naturally played by the same actor as his father, go figure) is speaking to a sorceress about Dejeneria's curse and his fate to reclaim the mighty sword from Grendel, but first we need to take some backward steps courtesy of a flashback. 

Ator Jr and his mother venture to the home of Grendel, where their presence is not met with the most flattering of welcomes. I suppose the sudden jump to goofy music only makes the situation all the more awkward. The mother requests that the broken mighty sword be repaired to be inherited by little Ator for his eighteenth birthday; Grendel being a bitter old geezer requests for her love in return which she refuses choosing to rather drink a suicide potion. Instead she is given a love potion and proceeds to make love to Grendel, I've certainly heard of beastiality before but gnomeality is news to me. Learning about his mother's sudden love for plastic masks naturally angers Ator and in a fit of rage searches desperately for the shards of the mighty sword; unfortunately Grendel has none of it and tricks him several times with fake swords that smash over his head. Chortling to himself, Grendel never expects Ator to wield the deadly heirloom again as he blinds him with a potion...which wears off about two seconds later.

Take three now as Ator finally grabs the real mighty sword (after two tries no less) and finally slices Grendel in half, his crow laughing maniacally in the background. Ator with the sword in hand and a new set of unbelievably furry threads heads to a nearby cave where the sorcress from eariler claims that are Amazonian damsel in distress is hidden. Ator heads off when suddenly a silver (again) armor clad bandit sprints straight towards him obviously having no regard towards his massive sword of death.  If you look closely at the side of the villain you can spot a severed head dangling from it's side. Bit hardcore for a PG rated exploitation movie methinks. After performing the ancient technique known as 'swinging the giant plastic toy horizontally very slowly' Ator slays the bandit (complete with cheesy laser sound effect)  revealing itself to be the sorceress apparently testing Ator's strength. She warns him that even with the mighty sword it is impossible to defeat 'the king of the Gods',  whoever that is I guess. Even Ator seems unenthused by her warning with our actor brushing the line off as which to say 'you're kidding me right?' The sorceress as one last word of advice tells Ator to be wary of two guards that shield Dejeneira.

So what do these two guards consist of? A highly impractical two-headed robot that is defeated by getting stuck in a doorway (worst anticlimax ever) and a fire-breathing 'dragon' which heavily resembles a paper-mache Godzilla to me which is dispatched by Ator and his deadly laborious swipes. He discovers a few treasures and proceeds to proclaim VERY LOUDLY to the gods that he now owns some very special bling; with that superfluous plot point to never be mentioned again over he finally stumbles on Dejeneira's tomb, managing to wake her in the process. So how do our two heroes react to this whole charade? They instantly and I mean within about five seconds of meeting fall madly in love with one another. So the title of this movie has now changed from 'Quest for the Mighty Sword' to 'Quest for the Amazon Princess' and now it is currently 'Quest for the halfway pont between the Second Act'. Yep, we're still only halfway through. Naturally with the two meeting they must hastily escape the tomb because a sudden mass of stock footage lava is catching up to them. 

Dejeneira reveals that while she lacks her prerequisite immortality, she has 'secrets of the gods' as a bonus. Five minutes later though she reveals that while she knows them she can't reveal them making the whole plot point completly redundant. Either way Ator suggests that they must travel to the 'Middle-world' in order to escape Tharn who naturally is brought up again to make this film's threadbare plot all the more convoluted.

Before that though it's time to rip off the Star Wars cantina scene as the two wander into a nearby bar complete with guitar playing goblins and a craps table made outof a glowing blue bedsheet. Here they spot three people, Laura Gemser (why not?),  a pretty skilful gambler and oddly Ator's mother who appears to have aged really well but is now also the brunt of good old drunken abuse. Ator rescues her with that nagging suspicion that he had seen her once before; confusingly enough Ator's helpful sorceress from eariler just so happens to be running the bar (guess thats her day job) and informs Gemser of his presence. Within seconds Gemser makes it her job to make him hers to control. We then immediately cut to Ator's mother visting him again for one last time, revealing to us that because of her lust for Grendel the gods transformed her into a whore to wander the earth for eternity. Ator to comfort her gives her a big old bear hug but that instantly turns her into an old, decrepit corpse; cue a cremation scene ripped straight from Return of the Jedi. Never thought I'd see a film which channels both Star Wars and Conan into such a plagiaristic whole. If only Jack Palance could appear right about now I could market this as Hawk The Slayer 2. 

Skiold, the name of the gambler from earlier decides to tag along after rescuing the couple from a pack of what appear to be tusken raiders draped in white blankets and cloth. What is with the set designs and the use of either bog pits or bedroom furniture? Well soon after introducing himself as a character with a 'debt to pay' motive Dejeinera is captured by a group of armoured soldiers with little to no effort. In fact all they do is quite literally run and bump into Ator and Skiold, knocking them out cold like they just grab a random girl as part of their daily run. Well we have to have some kind of rescue operation for the third act, right? It turns out that her captor is an old dude with a serious case of OAP acne named Gunther who just wants a bit of love from our now seemingly useless Amazonian damsel. Naturally to help him and his pervy ways is a troll for company, complete with a dubbed voice that sounds like an extra from Dilbert. He summons Gemser to disguise herself as a false Dejeinera for Ator which naturally is discovered by him very quickly upon his arrival to the castle, oddly enough he decides to be merciful to her as she loses her disguise and prances off to be never seen again. With this in mind it's time for the castle takeover in what is a showcase for the most incompetent castle guards in film history.

These feats include such wonders as:

• Two armoured guards with silver helmets being killed by Skiold's wooden boomerang.
• Another pair of guards charging at Ator failing to even attempt to stab him. Instead they flail their rubber rapiers like guests to a rave party as Ator lathargically swipes at them naturally decimating both in a single blow.
• Yet another guard squadron that decides to split into smaller pairs despite the fact that logically it's obvious that Ator and Skiold only went in one direction.
• Lastly a pair of 'expert' swordsmen deciding to do the 'Indy' routine of showing off all two moves they can do wih their blades. Ator using the power of jump cuts procures a wrist mounted arrow launcher and promptly shoots both of them in the neck. One manages to survive briefly and stabs Skiold killing him instantly.

Gunther despite losing a fair chunk of his men continues with his plan for Dejeinera, by very slowly lowering her into a vat of magic white liquid preserving her as a statue. Wonderful, I never thought the statue shagging scenes from Libidomania would be making a possible comeback. Well Ator shows up in the nick of time to deck some guards with his hunk of plastic and face Gunther in a final duel; however he decides to buck the trend in a noticeably anticlimactic fashion by killing himself and his troll partner in the vat of statue goop. 

Without questioning as to why his nemesis decided to off himself, Ator rescues his Amazonian bride and the two wander out of the castle into the unknown. But not before Gemser shows up out of nowhere to watch them leave, only then she reveals herself to really be Tharn all along for no particular reason. With this completely abrupt climax, the credits roll. Quest For The Mighty Sword  for me is easily the Italian equivalent to Hawk The Slayer on so many levels, the most obvious comparison being that it relies on fantasy cliches by the truckload. So much so that the plot has countless unresolved or downright poorly thought out sections of narrative that can be easily converted into a deadly drinking game. For a film that only runs for around 90 minutes, the pacing of the film ranges from being lightening fast to turgidly slow.

Much like Hawk The Slayer, the acting range is schizophrenic at best. The main examples of this being Margaret Lenzey's unbelievably wooden (and mostly out of breath) performance as Dejeinera to Eric Allen Kramer's role as Ator which comes off as almost as self-aware of the movies quality given his oddly sarcastic mannerisms throughout the film. The script itself, along with being as badly laid out as the overall plot, also contains a few painfully obvious plagiarisms from other fantasy films including the hilarious mention of a 'middle-world', Tolkien is rolling in his grave.

As expected there is also the mixture of both terrible and occasionally inspired costume and prop design particularly with some of the armoured soldiers as well as the mighty sword itself easily taking the award for most impractical fantasy weapon ever in my book, although the sets themselves are barren and very nondescript. The score by Carla Maria Cordio however is really not bad with Ator's theme having a funky disco beat and some of the battle music featuring some well made orchestral overtures fitting of the Conan-esque setting.

Quest For The Mighty Sword can be a very entertaining piece of trash if you look into it the right way. With it's nearly nonsensical fantasy narrative, comical action sequences and acting that would making even the most hardened critics holler, it will most likely be a blast with bad fantasy afficionados. Besides, it's not the worst thing D'Amato had unleashed on the world. Radioactive zombies with penises of death; 'nuff said.

• Nonsensical plot point count: Enough to make Frank Miller's later work seem coherent.
• Recycling from other films: 4/5
• Incompetent villains: Always a bonus

                                         -Oli, 2 June 2010 (original date)

Review source: US VHS

Screenshot source: US VHS

Cop Game

With the action craze in the 80s, it's as if Bruno Mattei and his contemporaries all holidayed in the Philippines to see what they could all film in the same jungle while borrowing footage off each other. It must have been one big happy film-making, idea-chucking festival at the cost of the Philippines' jungles. Sticking to the tradition of ripping off what was hot at the time, Mattei (under his "Bob Hunter" alias here) went for something he could do while in his Filipino hot spot, and that was make a cop film set in the final days of the Vietnam war. The film going through the Italian filter was Off Limits, starring William DaFoe, a film I have admittedly not seen.

Manning the star roles are Brent Huff (Strike Commando 2) and Max Laurel (Quang from Robowar), with appearances by Romano Puppo (Cory from Robowar too) who appears to have an Italian accent here, as Captain Kirk (oh you read that right, writer Rossella Drudi must have been having a funny day), Werner Pochath, who had something of an acting career, as Col. Kasler, Candice Daly as Annie, and as always, Massimo Vani making a cameo as background filler. Most surprising of all though, is Brett Halsey as General Morris. Huff plays Morgan, a typically tough-as-nails American cop with a dangly earring while Laurel plays Hawk, a Vietnamese cop with the thin underlining of being a family man, they're an unlikely pairing but they've got each other's backs.

They've been called in by Captain Kirk, reluctantly known as "Skipper" by Morgan, to investigate a recent murder carried out on an American officer called Col. Watts by the Cobra Force, an American army unit. All signs point to the murder being orchestrated by one Major Shooman, the leader of the Cobra Force. The area where the shooting took place is in the control of Col. Kasler; Kasler tells Morgan and Hawk that Shooman definitely wants him and another officer dead, but isn't really saying why for reasons of national security (to quote Kasler directly, "it's not a pretty picture"). Kasler resides with his boy-ish bodyguard called Lodge, who does a great job at body-guarding when a drug-abusing Vietnamese street urchin knocks him out and then tries to assassinate Kasler (a bullet wound to the shoulder, something Kasler considers to be just a scratch, while his acting certainly makes it to be that way). After a good five minutes or so of the cop duo chasing the amateur assassin (and Huff spewing out unintelligible swearing while out of breath), the Cobra Force appear again to kill the assassin.

After that unsuccessful tirade, Morgan makes a call to Skipper about the current situation (Hawk has seemingly disappeared for now, "one of his kids is sick", either Drudi and Mattei REALLY wanted to emphasise the fact this guy is a family man, or Max Laurel wasn't on the set). While on the phone, a blond woman called Annie writes something I really can't read on the mirror opposite of Morgan in lipstick (if I could read the Japanese subtitles, it'd help), but he follows her and she tells him the room number of one of the Cobra Force murderers; Morgan ends up killing him before he can interrogate him (the killer gets hold of a giant machinegun but completely fails to just walk up to Morgan and spray him and instead destroys the fucking bar in his room!). Morgan and Hawk then corner Kasler to get some info out of him, who tells them that he, Col. Watts and the other one in danger witnessed Major Shooman order his men to slaughter a village of innocent Vietnamese citizens, but the American military want to keep it quiet to save face. The other officer in danger is a guy called Pierce, who is spending his night in a strip club, but uh-oh! Morgan and Hawk get there too late, the other two Cobra Force killers have done away with their next victim, so Morgan and Hawk kill the Cobra Force guys out of self-defence (Hawk punches one to death because he nearly knocked out his tooth, in Hawk's defence "I thought I was hitting him lightly!"), all this after an extremely hokey car chase!
Skipper gets pissed at how the two have kinda fucked up their mission (who in the middle of all this serious business and shouting, still reaffirms that he hates being called Skipper), General Morris orders Morgan and Hawk to go to the front to meet up with Shooman and get some answers. Shooman being Shooman, more or less kidnaps them after a brief encounter with some Vietcong troops (movie stock footage of Vietcong troops), and lives up to his reputation; he snorts coke while telling his helicopters to start bombing Vietnamese villages, all the while barking "FUCKING BEAUTIFUL", this scene enables Mattei the one-two punch of ripping off the same scene from Off-Limits, as well as the re-use of footage from his own films! Shooman tells them that Col. Watts and Col. Pierce were working for him while the Cobra Force guys doing the murders must have been traitors, Morgan takes a bullet to the arm whilst gunning and Shooman tells him to get patched up while he and Hawk will go to Saigon to meet up with General Morris. However, Shooman and Hawk are killed the next day by guys who have presumably been impersonating the Cobra Force, who have also killed General Morris. It's now up to Hawk to get to the bottom of things.

The plot is confusing, and it essentially boils down to "THE COMMIES DID IT!", which is as satisfying as any conclusion can get for trash cinema like this, in which brains come last. As per usual with Mattei, stock footage is a norm, but the abundance of the material is unprecedented here. This time, not only do we get footage snatched from the public domain of the Vietnam War, we even get a helping of clips from Strike Commando 1 & 2 and Double Target! There's probably some others in there, as this is one Mattei flick that feels really under-budgeted, as if they had a total of four locations (a hotel, a marketplace outside the hotel, a nearby jungle and a fake chopper interior). Mike Monty even makes an appearance through the magic of re-using film (note how the type of helicopter constantly changes in the Shooman scenes).

That's not all though, the car chase scene has been completely pulled from another exploitation flick, Ark of the Sun God! Which used miniatures quite impressively! Too bad the most inventive piece of film work in this is the first murder scene with the gas masks being put on the camera lenses to make it look like it's from the point of view of the killers. These inclusions easily make this feel like one of Mattei’s most incomplete and lowest budgeted works. The production values are simply inept; locations feel more limited than usual with Philippines-based actionsploitation schlock, camera shots are primarily static and many lines are very hard to make out clearly, as if they didn't use boom mics for many shoots. The biggest aesthetic offender would be how the film is so murky, with one too many scenes taking place in the dark with obscured action. That's not to say this isn't worth a view at least once, the Drudi-penned script feels just like any Fragasso screenplay with the outrageous dialogue (well, she is his wife!), there's simply too many golden lines to count ("If I want any shit from you, I'll squeeze your head!", "Gook COPS?! SHIT! This war sucks more and more!"). Brent Huff cruises on through with his baritone suaveness, though there's plenty of times in which he just shouts everything, making him awful pretty easily. Also, count the times Pochath changes facial expression. This review can't be completed without mention being made of the music; Cop Game has its own theme song! It's a deliriously 80s-centric Rock piece and it sounds awesome, even though no one is exactly credited for it other than Al Festa. The incidental music is repetitive but not bad in itself, even though the obnoxious synthesizer really numbs your brain, one piece would even later end up in Robowar it seems (or vice versa), acquiring it wasn't from a previous film already. There's two other obscure 80s songs that appear in the strip club scenes that drag themselves out a bit (this being exploitation and all, and perhaps Mattei was having a nostalgic moment for his mondo movie days). Cop Game may be one of Bruno Mattei’s worst movies, which in itself makes it a very recommended watch for lovers of trash, but its dismal action set pieces mean it stands only on how bad it is; the mildly competent Double Target and even Strike Commando at least had something holstering them up. That's not to say I could ever hate this, it's good riffing material all round.

• Action: 2.5/5
• Music: 4/5
• Stock footage: 7/5  

-James, 27 March 2010 (original date)

Review source: Japanese VHS

Screenshot source: Japanese VHS

Title information

• Production company: Flora Films
• Year of release: 1988

Alternative titles:

• G.I. Killer (West Germany)
• サイゴン野獣刑事, "Saigon yajou keiji" <Saigon Beast Investigator> (This title is a tricky one, but it seems to be saying that the investigator(s) featured in the film are hardasses) (Japan)

Rolf: The Last Mercenary

There's nothing like another chapter in the long history of Italian exploitation, and Rolf is one of the muddier and the grittier ones; coming out in 1983 as fast as possibly can in the wake of First Blood, this revenge tale (of course) borrows heavily from the Stallone vehicle, while the speed of its production really shows in the overall product. Written and directed by Mario Siciliano, a man better known for his prior pornos, that surely says a lot about what we're in for.

Opening to a flashback (which you'd only ever learn later), a group of soldiers violently gun down fleeing villagers as everything burns, they are the former mercenary buddies of our titular hero, Rolf. Rolf now lives a peaceful life as a commercial pilot while seeing his girlfriend Joanna (he says something to the extent of "if I knew you were coming I would have showered" when we first meet her!). When a dead body turns up in Rolf's (mostly unnamed Middle Eastern town), the police blame Rolf for it, seemingly they don't like his past as a mercenary; is the film presenting a nationalistic friction between a caucasian ex-soldier and the people of a race he may have previously killed as some sort of social critique? Or is it just playing the police up to be assholes? They let him off, but not after they've stuck his hand into an unflushed toilet!

When one of Rolf's old war buddies, John (one of the slimiest looking guys since before Clarence Boddicker... woops, just spoiled who the villain is), turns up, he offers him a chance to make $50,000 exporting hard drugs. Rolf declines, but when John makes a crack about his dead mother he has none of it and bashes John's head against a wall before kicking him out! When Joanna hears about him passing up such a sum, he tells her a painful memory of how his prostitute mother was given a drug overdose in front of him by her pimp, along with a bit of expository dialogue on how he was the most athletic in college, but yeah, Rolf's a good clean guy. After spending a good time with his girlfriend, Rolf is caught by his the entire group of his former friends, and they're a colourful bunch of horrid-looking bastards; they beat him up, dislocate his knee and leave him for dead in a bush full of leeches (even after he's reset his own knee!). Police bias prevents them from putting a search out for Rolf, leaving Joanna to look for him on her own, the police do end up being nice enough to stop two rapists following her though! After she finds him, Rolf learns he has been fired from his job, so he gets together with a friend and hijacks a plane loaded with John's drugs, only to piss all over them and hurl them out!

For this, John and his boys break into Joanna's home, and in one of the most uncomfortable sequences ever filmed for a low-budget piece of cash-in trash, take turns raping her; nothing new for this sort of crap, but the ugliness of the men and the incredibly inappropriate porn-like theme in the background blur the line between it being unintentionally hilarious and accidentally offensive. Put it this way, if you imagine someone got off to this scene back when the film came out, that's where it gets worrying, but that can really be said about a lot of things. After discovering the love of his life violated and murdered, Rolf goes to visit his friend Pedro, the survivor of a village massacre committed by the mercenaries, to retrieve some hidden weapons. Rolf invites his new enemies to a forest where the filmmakers can finally rip off First Blood as Rolf devises traps to pick off each of them. He doesn't get to have all the pickings to himself though, as the mercenaries are so horrible they even end up backstabbing each other! When only John and another mecenary are left remaining, John escapes, while the other nameless bastard gets his moment of glory and riddles Rolf's hands with bullets! Rolf, not ready to be defeated by the emotional weight of his girlfriend's death and now his hands being made useless, batters his opponent to death! Hands bloodied and holed, Rolf raises his arms to the sky and proclaims "god help me!"!

From here on out, things get very personal as the police put on an all-out search to find Rolf, Pedro distracts them with a tale that illustrates just how awful his mercenary friends were and how heroic he was in comparison and in his final conquest of revenge Rolf shows that he can still do some amazing things with useless hands! The ending is bleak though, but if it has anything to say, it's that clearly Rolf is the caucasian Jesus incarnate who pays for our sins.

This is a dirty, dirty movie, one that would no doubt be praised higher if its appallingly low production values did not render it such a sigh instead of the bang it's trying to be, but whose to say exploitation movies exactly tried? It has to be said though, some genuine attempts are made at characterization (I say that loosely, Rolf and Joana tell themselves things longtime lovers should probably already know, oh poorly-done exposition), and the villains truly are the biggest bunch of hideous, unlikable sonsuvbitches ever, even if they're presented as having pretty much no reason to be. One of them is so scummy he even steals his fallen comrade's watch and wallet, and then uses his blood as make-up to play dead! Heck, their canteens are even loaded up with cocaine instead of water! If a bit more time was spent on them, it would have been fun seeing their social degradation during the forest in which they all hate each other. The antics of the particularly venomous-looking John are interesting to say the least, he randomly beats up a woman in the street, then randomly forces a bottle down the mouth of another without anyone batting an eye, and then shoves away a woman trying to kiss him! She and her friend bizarrely don't stop though, and seem to pamper him in fondles. Hell, he's just a lonely, tortured soul, just listen to the pain in his voice when the police ask him about friends and he responds with "what friends? I don't know what you're talking about".

Don't misunderstand though and think that these villains are the type to make the acid in your stomach boil at how atrocious they are, the presentation is so bad they just come off as being bluntly bad. In fact, brutality is delivered in spades, but the lack of polish means the effect is never fully illustrated, making many scenes come off as just badly directed with goofy sound effects, no one suffering from the injuries they're receiving and just generally looking very stiffly-done. It doesn't help that there's no subtlety either, and that the violence just keeps on coming. If you want to go by the ideas at play alone, this film is as violent as 2008's Rambo, but without any of the 'oomph'.

Worming out probably unintended symbolism in some of the scenes is very amusing, such as the aforementioned arms-raised-to-heaven scene and how after all his killings Rolf is shown cleaning himself under a waterfall, cleaning himself of all his sons of course. 95% of the scenes have no background foley, making them feel very hollow and taking away and naturalism they could have, it's a definite sign of rushed filmmaking. Admittedly, it is bad that a repeat viewing is what it took to make me like this film (in my defence I was falling asleep when I first watched it), the acting is pretty unnoticeable but it has to be said the dubbing is lifeless and at times incoherent, mainly because the actors barely open their mouths more than a little. At times, it seems they don't even twitch their lips, and in one only other instance, Rolf opens his mouth fully to yell and the dubber's dialogue hilariously doesn't match up.

That said, the music by the great Fabio Frizzi also isn't very up to scratch, with only a  few notable background themes lingering in your head after, the most notable piece of music is however, Rolf's theme song! Yes, Rolf gets this soothing synth-rock melody play at some of the wrong times in the film, but the lyrics are irresistable, and it's the only thing credited in the end titles! As a bit of trivia, some poster art for the film shows Rolf holding a gun he never uses in the film, along with a blonde-haired Joanna clinging to his leg in that objectifying way to make the men seem more manly like posters did back then, but that's not it, the drawing of the woman has been stolen from the poster for Clint Eastwood's The Gauntlet!

This is probably one of the earliest examples of Italy ripping off First Blood, and while it completely blows the likes of Fireback out of the water yet doesn't hold a candle to later Italian movies like Blastfighter, it's watchable in its own right, but only when you've had quite a bit of experience with these films. It's like a grimier prototype for The Intruder. Totally shameless and lacking any serious amount of punch in today's world, Rolf: The Last Mercenary is a rare curiosity, it's definitely in need of a remastered DVD release that bigs up its ridiculous and violent content. In the immortal words of Rolf's theme song... Rolf, your vengeance can't die! The fire in your eyes, says it all!  

• Action: 3/5
• Brutality: The outline of it all is there
• Natural lighting: 5/5 (Godfather it ain't though)

-James, 14 November 2010 (original date)

Title information

• Production company: Metheus Film
• Year of release: 1983

Alternate titles:

• Der Tag des Söldners, "The Day of the Mercenary" (West Germany)
• Viimeinen taistelija, "The Last Fighter" (Finland)
• Rolf: ワイルド・アウトサイダー (Rolf: wairudo autosaidaa) "Rolf: Wild Outsider" (Japan)

Review source: Japanese VHS
Screenshot source: Japanese VHS 

Bridge to Hell

There is no denying that every cult movie fan has seen at least one crazy Italian exploitation movie in their lifetime. These tend to usually stem from a small group of directors working with various genres depending on the current craze at the time; whether it be the notorious zombie and cannibal genres to the downright outlandish action and war movies, Italy always have a crazy low-budget spectacle up their sleeve ready to pounce on an unsuspecting audience and secure a cult following regardless of the overall quality. One of the most famous exploitation directors throughout the 60s, 70s and 80s was undoubtedly Umberto Lenzi.

Throughout his career, Lenzi has created a humongous following through specific movies depending on the genre. He is primarily responsible for the birth of the cannibal genre with 1972's Deep River Savages leading to a bloody, viscera spewing crescendo with 1981's Cannibal Ferox (with music by Flipper). Despite this, Lenzi also contributed several films to the 'Polizia' (Police drama) genre including Violent Naples (1976) and Brothers Till We Die (1978); earlier than that Lenzi dabbled with the bullet spewing war dramas culminating in Battle of the Commandos (1969) and The Biggest Battle (1978). Bridge To Hell is one of the last of his war tales made when his career started to falter, as late as 1986. This particular film is often considered to be arguably Lenzi's worst project as well as one of the downright worst war dramas ever released. Being a fan of war movies, I took it upon myself to uncover this oddity and judge it for myself; this being my first Lenzi film I certainly hope his other films are an improvement but I will let the film speak for itself.

Now normally I would not mention the title sequence of a film but Bridge To Hell certainly has one of the weirdest theme tunes of any film in terms of its context. This is mainly due to the fact that despite the movie taking place during the middle of WWII, the music is entirely synthesized which comes off as largely inappropriate making certain dramatic scenes cheesier than they already are. Now you maybe thinking that the music must be pretty awesome because it's 80s synth, well too bad there is only around THREE whole tracks repeated verbatim throughout the 87 minute running time. God bless z-grade budgets.

The film begins much like how it progresses with a scene of our partisan heroes evading Nazi capture after escaping from a camp in Sarajevo. After encountering a genderly challenged child named Igor, they stumble upon a group of resistance fighters offering to help. We are introduced to our main characters: Bill Rogers an American pilot, Mario Espozi an Italian infantryman and Blinz a deserter from the Whermacht. To round off this 'manly' proceeding is our lone female partisan Vanya who naturally is hit on (in the most unerotic conversation ever) by Mario which results in their relationship progressing......nowhere. The leader of the rag tag group who remains nameless (along with 95% of the other cast members) offers our heroes the chance at some payback by flying a few planes to fend off German patrols as well as an armoured train carrying supplies. Shortly after a scene of schizophrenic bullet spraying and toy bomb chucking, the leader of the partisans celebrates this epic stock footage battle with the simple cry of 'YAY!' Powerful stuff indeed.

After a brief tangent in the plot about Blinz possibly sabotaging aircraft because he is Austrian (subtle), we learn that the partisans had only those two aircraft in their arsenal. Continuity decides to off itself however, as another mission is sent out to blow a bridge allowing Nazis to cross over involving a FULL squad of fighter planes, which apparently according to the dialogue belong to the partisans. I will leave you to decide how large that plot hole is for a second. When their fighter plane crashes, Bill and Mario assault a patrol of soldiers with Bill according to the camera angle sticking a knife up the unlucky guy's ass. Trying not to be immature here, but from here it looks like sodomy.

Through the magic of jump cuts, partisan passes (?), near death by firing range and even more stock footage (cutting corners for the win) our merry band of uncharismatic dullards stumble upon a nunnery which Vanya used to belong to (Lenzi's great idea for character development right here). According to the nuns, the Germans have been attempting to raid their monastery purely to steal gold from orders of a 'General Hitler'. Naturally our heroes decide to take after their enemy and take it themselves, because hey we have to make our protagonists seem dirty right? These scenes also feature political incorrectness that would make the BBC wince in terror including how the nuns believe that 'all Americans and Russians are the same, they worship Satan'.

More godawful romantic tension between Mario and Vanya ensues as she strips off at a lake for a bath; no boobies for you mister, it's a PG movie by the way. Moving on, a few Nazi officers prepare to defend the titular bridge to HELL. This conversation involves a lot of saluting and eevviilll synth music so everybody knows these guys are bad to the bone. The partisans, disguised as German soldiers infiltrate the bridge through a truck that through the power of editing once again keeps changing from grey to green and back again. After a misplaced shootout occurs in a communications block (including epic milk bottle abuse), our heroes come under attack from a German battalion in what is quite possibly one of the most poorly edited shootouts in movie history. The camera specifically during tracking and close up shots moves at a frenetic pace meaning everything becomes an impossible whirlwind of cuts and just plain awkward continuity mistakes. For example it will show some stock footage of German soldiers firing in the direction of a character, cut to said character running towards the screen with no effects or sounds indicating he is under attack. Moreover, there is a brief shot of German soldiers lobbing grenades which immediately cuts to an explosion near a machinegun nest indicating that they were aiming for their own soldiers.

Blinz while setting explosives to destroy the bridge is shot and falls through manner of floppy mannequin to his death. Emotional resonance at this scene = nil. The bridge is successfully destroyed and the rest of our team escape. Vanya stays with the resistance leaving Mario and Bill while taking the nun's gold back to the monastery, this mildly irks them so they steal a nearby fighter plane. Because that plan worked so well before; predictably they get shot down and surprisingly (sarcasm) meet up with Vanya and the resistance fighters again after literally 5 minutes. They tag along and the movie...ends. No I am not exaggerating when I say the movie's narrative has literally gone in a circle. Well at least it had a moderate body count I guess.

I won't beat around the bush, Bridge To Hell is one hell of a terrible movie. The characterisations are bland, dull and overall carry no significance towards the story; the plot carries no tension or emotional weight whatsoever, almost like Lenzi made up the plot as he went along adding whatever he could find from the big book of war cliches. Certain stretches of scenes can be edited in any order and it would not make a little bit of difference to the film's structure; continuity, as stated before, is glaringly obvious in how poor it is not just with props, but also with the editing and in particular the dialogue. Action scenes suffer from being filmed with amateur camerawork consisting of dodgy close-ups, jittery tracking shots and liberal use of washed out stock footage. Acting is largely lifeless, with few really standout ironic phrases meaning chuckles are few and far between.


All this is made sadly obvious by the budget which is extremely low even by exploitation standards, which nearly cripples this movie of a sense of atmosphere leaving it a hollow and downright frustrating mess. Is it the worst war movie ever? Not quite, but it hangs on by the skin of its teeth narrowly avoiding garbage like The Last Drop. Unless you are a really hardcore fan of Umberto Lenzi's work and WWII films in general, this one should be given a miss. No wonder it is so obscure, this truly is Third Reich forgotten junk.

• Inappropriate synth music? Gnarly.
• Liberal use of stock footage: 4/5
• Worst ending in movie history? It's up there. 

-Oli, 13 October 2009 (original date)