Disc Reviews

"On the day America remembers its dead, a special salute today for the war dead in Vietnam. An American serviceman who died there took his place today in a place of honor, The Tomb Of The Unknown Soldier. Almost 10 years after the last American left Saigon, the men who fought in Vietnam got their parade. Muffled drums and dirges. A coffin and a flag wrapped in plastic to protect it from the rain. Families of the men still missing in Vietnam waited for the coffin and remembered. They wonder if their sons are still alive and why the world sits back and allows the Vietnamese government to flagrantly violate the Geneva Convention. Rumors of physical and mental torture have made the wait more agonizing."

If the story sounds somewhat familiar, there are two reasons for that. The first Missing In Action film was released in 1984, so you've had about 40 years of imitations and knock-offs along the way. The other is that the film shares more than a little history with the Sylvester Stallone film Rambo: First Blood Part II. When Sly was shopping around his original ideas, Cannon Film Group was one of the places that listened to the pitch. So it's not a complete coincidence that the films went into production at the same time, with Missing In Action beating the Stallone vehicle to the box office by a few months. Both films did well, and they started a genre of war films that involved rescuing Americans still missing in Vietnam. It was in the early 1990's that the plight of missing servicemen in Vietnam was brought to the public's attention. Ronald Reagan gave it a bigger voice than had been given earlier, and he made it a point to address the issue. It shouldn't come as much of a surprise that Hollywood was on it as fast as they were. The franchise would become one of Chuck Norris's more iconic franchises, and the rest is, shall we say, history. Now Kino Studio Classics have brought the original three films together in a much deserved Blu-ray collection.

I get it. At first glance Ghost Warrior seems like a movie that is easy to disregard, but if you are looking to step outside the mainstream and dip your toe into the murky waters that is B cinema, Ghost Warrior is a heck of a fun place to start. The film is produced by Charles Band. He’s pretty much royalty when it comes to B cinema. His biggest claim to fame is the creation of Full Moon Features, and if you were around in the mom and pop video store days, you more than likely passed plenty of his work on the video store shelves. Movies like Puppet Master and little gems like Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama were Band’s bread and butter, and he’s been successful enough to produce well over 350 films. When it comes to Ghost Warrior, this is before Full Moon became notorious for low-budget horror, but this film does show that he could produce a quality film on a thin budget and have a running time of only 81 minutes.

The film opens up in Japan with Yoshi (Hiroshi Fujioka) as a samurai attempting to protect the woman he loves, but in the process he falls from a cliff and into a frozen lake where he remains frozen for 400 years until he is discovered by a pair of hikers. This opening sequence is a good looking sequence, and that is thanks to the cinematography from horror great Mac Ahlberg. Let me take a moment to just say that it is criminal that Mac Ahlberg isn’t a household name with horror fans, Just to name a few of the great horror films he shot: Hell Night, Re-Animator (personally my all time favorite horror film), House, From Beyond, and countless others. The look of this film elevates it to the point where it can hold its own with bigger 80s films released at the same time, and seeing the image cleaned up for this release, it looks really good.

A possibly innocent military man facing treason and war crime charges, a devoted wife who finds herself drawn to a man who is not her husband, and a prosecutor who is beginning to doubt the conviction of a lifetime. I can honestly say that Sergeant Ryker piqued my interest with this dynamic. And for me what was the key component to my successful viewing of the film, Lee Marvin of The Dirty Dozen fame embodies Sergeant Paul Ryker, an American solder charged with treason for allegedly aiding the enemy following a failed raid during the Korean War. Bradford Dillman plays Captain Young, the JAG officer who prosecutes Ryker for treason, who comes to doubt the conviction that could launch his career. Then there is Vera Miles of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho fame as Sgt. Ryker’s neglected wife, who begins to have eyes for the young captain. What can I say, I dig the drama.

Traitor or hero? That is the main question and theme that is explored in the film. Was Sergeant Ryker really aiding the enemy? On the surface he appears guilty as sin, and it seems like a no-brainer that he will hang for his crimes. However, there are discrepancies when it comes to his defense. Enough so that Captain Young begins to question if the Sergeant received an adequate defense. Or is it Mrs. Ryker who brings him around to the way of thinking? It’s hard to say. There is clearly chemistry between the two, and it is evident from their first exchange that while they care for one another, Mr. and Mrs. Ryker are far from a picturesque married couple. When she comes to see him, he is cold and distant, but in the next minute he expresses tender need. It was a fine line to walk, but Lee Marvin did a fairly decent job walking it. In the case of Capt. Young and Mrs. Ryker, the two find themselves bonded when they risk life and limb to get to the truth of what happened during that failed raid.

One the worst things that can happen to a cop is to be forced to do a shooting in the line of duty. All the training in the word does not make living with action any easier, especially if it results in a fatality. It is among the most traumatic events that can occur for a police officer. No matter what, that officer is likely to second guess every decision that led to that point. Could they have found another way to resolve? Did they have to shoot? Could they have talked the person down? Did the person have to die? Those are just a few of the question that are likely to arise. What makes that situation even worse is if person is found to have been at fault. And herein lies the premise for Warning Shot. David Janssen of TV’s The Fugitive fame plays LAPD Sergeant Tom Valens in this crime drama where he finds himself in that exact situation. During a routine stakeout, Valens fatally shoots what he perceives to be an armed suspect. However, upon a comprehensive investigation, the purported weapon is nowhere to be found. This premise alone was enough to intrigue me, but while watching the film, I became more engrossed in the crime drama with every passing detail. Rounding out the cast are Ed Begley and Joan Collins, as well as the “First Lady of American Cinema,” herself, Lillian Gish.

As mentioned earlier, Valens is living every cop's nightmare as additional details come out about his allege armed suspect. For one, his status as a prominent doctor and humanitarian. Adament about his account, but with no evidence to back up his claim, Valens finds himself charged with manslaughter, suspended from the police force, and demonized by the public, who call for the book to be thrown at him. With very few allies, the disgraced officer sets out to prove his account and regain his reputation. But a lingering question remains, “did the doctor really have a gun, or did he imagine the whole thing?

Coming off the success of James Cameron’s The Terminator, just about every studio was looking to piggyback off that gold mine, and what followed was a parade of knockoff films that for the most part failed to match The Terminator in quality and in box office draw. One of those bottom-of-the-barrel knockoffs is the 1987 film Programmed To Kill, also known as The Retaliator. While in the 80’s this was a film that could be appreciated  in drive-ins and later on late-night cable, nowadays the unexpected draw for this film is that it has the late Paul Walker in one of his earliest roles playing Jason, the son of the film’s lead character, Eric Mathews (Robert Ginty). Former CIA agent Eric Matthews is hired to lead a group of mercenaries to rescue a pair of kidnapped kids from a group of terrorists. In the process of performing the extraction, Samira (Sandahl Bergman), one of the terrorists, is critically wounded. For some reason, the mercenaries bring Samira with them. Samira is then brought to a group of government scientists who do experimental brain surgery and in the process turn her into a cyborg with one goal in mind, to use her to eliminate the head of the terrorist cell that she was a part of. This aspect of the film for obvious reasons has me thinking about Robocop. Even when we get to see things through her perspective, it is like a cheap imitation.

For the record, the first 40 minutes are a bit dull, but thankfully there is enough action in the sequence where the mercenaries rescue the kids to make the first half bearable. Where things do pick up is when the government first dispatches their cyborg assassin to kill the terrorist leader and her former lover. Things obviously don’t go as planned, and of course their robot assassin becomes a killing machine with one goal in mind, to eliminate all those responsible for making her what she is. The second half of this film is fun.  It’s a shame the filmmakers decided to play this so seriously, because let’s face it, the film is nowhere near the quality of The Terminator or Robocop, and the result is just unintentionally silly.

The 1980's saw a resurgence of the themes and styles of the earlier film noir genre but with more modern themes and situations. Films like Alan Parker's DeNiro/ Rourke Angel Heart and Paul Schrader's Richard Gere/Laura Hutton American Gigolo are two of the finest examples of what has become known as neo noir. The genre has existed since the 1960's, but there was a certain style to these 1980's films that brought us the peak of this style of filmmaking. It crossed other genres as well. Ridley Scott's Bladerunner is absolutely the best science fiction representative of the style, and that film's impact on sci-fi going forward still has a huge impact today. It's all about style: lighting, cinematography, and themes that often blur the line between good and bad. No Mercy returned Richard Gere to the genre, and while No Mercy was a box office flop, it has endured more than some from the era, and now Kino Lorber gives us a chance to revisit one of the better examples of neo noir on Blu-ray. It's worth a look, and I'm going to tell you why.

Richard Gere plays Chicago detective Eddie Jillette. He and his partner Joey Collins (Basaraba) have been undercover at a car wash for several days. They are getting inpatient for a good bust and end up rushing into an arrest that nets them a simple pot dealer. They cause a lot of damage making the pop, and the result is more than a little disappointing to the brass. Things appear to turn around when the perp claims to have been contacted about doing a hit. He has a meeting that night, and so Eddie decides to leave the brass out of the picture and stand in for the hitman, who hasn't met the contact yet. He shows up at the meet where he's confronted by Allan Deveneux, played by William Atherton, and his "girl" Michel Duval, played by Kim Basinger. Eddie decides to act like a tough guy, and it all ends up with more mayhem and his partner getting killed. Now he wants to go to New Orleans where the hit was supposed to take place and track down the people who killed his partner.