In short: Phantom Raiders (1988)

OMG! Some ex-marine Colonel (Mike Monty) is training evil commie terrorists in the jungles of the PhilippinesVietnam! The end of the Western World is nigh! What to do? Get badass commando ninja Python Lang (Miles O'Keeffe) on the job! And give him the Colonel's son - also a badass commando ninja - as a helper! Python (hiss) grabs three random beardy Vietnam veterans selling heroin from the street and puts them through half an hour of commando ninja training (throwing shuriken! rappelling away from the explosion! jumping around!) until they deserve the honour to wear silly camo hats, while Miles puts his favourite sock on his face.

Then it's off into the jungle to shoot Filipino extrasevil commie terrorists! Shuriken are thrown! Assault rifles are shot! Guys run through the jungle! Huts explode!

Who knew that a film so full of shooting, jumping and explosions could be so dull? Turns out even the most basic of action films needs at least a little bit of dialogue, probably even scenes without action, to work. Alas, directors Don Harvey and Sonny Sanders (whoever they might be) didn't believe in that boring talking stuff, and decided to make a film containing much less dialogue than your typical silent movie. On a certain level, I can even understand their reluctance regarding letting Miles O'Keeffe talk, for the square-jawed one uses his superpower of…putting pauses…at the most…inappropriate parts of every…sentence…he…says whenever he opens…his…mouth, sounding for all the world as if he were reciting really bad poetry - the sort of poetry that has sentences like "don't be a dumbshit" in it.

The internet rumour mill says Phantom Raiders' script only had thirty pages (as we all know, as a rule of thumb, one script page makes one minute of movie), and for once, I absolutely believe what it says. Two thirds of those pages were probably filled with the words "shooty shooty shoot!" and "run run run run", too.

It's not that I expect much of a plot from my shot-in-the-Philippines jingoistic action crap, but there's a point where the same handful of guys running and shooting through the same few square feet of jungle stops to provide even the scant entertainment values I expect from a movie of this particularly sad genre. Italian jungle action crap usually makes up for this kind of deficit by providing oodles of ridiculous dialogue and creative cursing and letting some grizzled veteran actor drunkenly stumble around the screen for five minutes or so, but all this one has is a hatred of the human voice and Mike Monty.

Well, at least the huts explode instead of just burning down.

 

Technorati-Markierungen: filipino movies,american movies,in short,action,miles o'keeffe,mike monty

In short: The Lone Runner (1986)

Somewhere, at some inexplicable point in time, a bunch of rather dull people live in a desert.

Various tribes - let's call them the Poor People, the Bedouins and the Sand People - roam the desert around something that could be meant to be a town (or not). A man called the Summer King (Donal Hudson) rules over the place (or not) peacefully enough, while Garrett the Lone Runner (Miles O'Keeffe and his magical hair, mostly riding and not running) rides through the desert looking heroic, righting wrongs (or not) etc.

One day the Summer King's daughter Analisa (Savina Gersak) is kidnapped by the Bedouins.

The whole kidnapping business is just a ploy thought up by the Summer King's confidante Emerick (Michael Aronin) to get at the thousand diamonds (and the film is pretty adamant about that number) his boss has stashed away. I'm pretty sure those diamonds will be of use in the desert.

Of course, rescuing kidnapped women falls under Garrett's job description, and he'll have quite a bit of rescuing and re-rescuing to do, because he might be great at pulling a damsel out of distress, but he's just crap at keeping said damsel un-kidnapped.

The desert dwellers don't make his job any easier. The Sand People, lead by a certain Skorm (John Steiner), also want a piece of the diamonds and are willing to do the most fiendish evil cackling to get what they want.

Well, that was slightly underwhelming, yet puzzling. The Lone Runner is usually called a post-apocalypse film with horses standing in for cars, but I'm not completely convinced that it is supposed to take place after a global catastrophe. Knowing how Italian genre films use history, this might as well be meant to take place in 19th century Tunisia, or the time and place when Maciste met Zorro.

Unfortunately, thinking about this is the most fun I had with the film. It's just not all that interesting to watch people ride through a indifferently shot desert while one of the more boring synthesizer soundtracks in Italian film history noodles away in the background.

Points of interest between all the riding are few and far between. O'Keeffe moves his facial muscles at least once, John Steiner plays his baddie as Adam Ant on crack and some of the fight scenes are somewhat competently done. You could also add O'Keeffe's use of a crossbow with exploding bolts and the homemade laser the Sand People use to the mildly awesome.Alas, director Ruggero Deodato never heard of the word "awesome" and does everything in his power to make even these flourishes rather slow and boring.

I'm not asking for much in Italian post-apocalypse (or not) action films from the 80s, but a film needs to show a little effort, either by being insane or enthusiastic or both.

What Deodato delivers instead is a desert of wasted opportunities.

 

Technorati-Tags: italian movies,post-apocalypse,action,ruggero deodato,miles o'keeffe,john steiner,in short

In short: Colombian Connection aka The Hard Way (1987)

A Central American drug kingpin rules his part of the rain forest with the help of an impressive mercenary army, lead by Henry Silva.

A small American commando unit sneaks into the country to assassinate him, but the tables soon turn and the three men (including Miles O'Keeffe who for once does an adequate acting job due to the fact he hasn't got to do any acting) have to flee through the jungle.

Being tough-minded professionals, they soon decide to attack the enemy camp and accomplish their initial mission at any cost.

The Hard Way (directed by Michele Massimo Tarantini) is the non-silly Italian Eighties action film condensed to its essence. After the initial exposition there is barely anything else than lots and lots and lots of explosions, shoot-outs and brawls, spiced up with people running through the jungle, cheap synthie music and Henry Silva.

Personally, I prefer the less tight and lean and more idiotic type of Italian action films, but if you have your mind set on seeing a lot of explosions, you'll certainly have a fine time with this.

 

Technorati-Tags: italian movies,action,michele massimo tarantini,miles o'keeffe,henry silva,in short