Savage Harbor aka Death Feud (1987)

One would think that if you put Chris Mitchum and Frank Stallone (yes, he's got two older brothers: Rocky and Rambo) one would get good action movies. Unfortunately that not the case with Save Harbor. Mitchum and Stallone plays sailors. Stallone's characters rescues woman who is running away from her pimp. They fall in love, but Stallone has to go out to sea for a work. Pimp forces the girl back to her old tricks and gets her hooked up on smack again. Stallone comes back from the sea 6 month later and the girl is nowhere to be found. Rest of the movie pretty much concentrates on Stallone trying to find his girl.

There are couple of good action scenes, especially the one where guy gets drag behind a pick-up truck. That shit look dangerous! Mitchum gives good performance as usual. Basic '80s action crap, just too little action and too much talk. Directed by Carl Monson.

Commondo Mengele aka Angel Of Death (1987)

Infamous nazi doctor Josef Mengele (played by Howard Vernon) is hiding in some South American country. In which country ? Eather i was making snack when this was explained or it never was explained. Anyways. He is back to his old tricks, conducting human experiments. Group of nazi hunters get a hint about his whereabouts and they start planning a mission to bring Mengele to justice.

Directed by Andrea Bianchi, best knows for his etruscan Zombie mayhem "Burial ground". I have say that movie blew me away. This is some amazing package: special effects (hair clued on mans face and arms to make him look like a half ape/half man), acting (one of the nazi hunters is a karate experts and he demonstrates his skills every time he gets some screen time) and directing... I think that Bianchi dozed off while "directing" in half of the scenes and just kept the camera rolling. Dialog is also priceless. One of the guys, who are out to catch Mengele, is an acrobat and he gets his legs shot to pieces. "It's okay, it's okay, i can still do card tricks for a living". Talk about positive attitude!

Chris Mitchum is billed as the leading star, but once again his screen time is very limited. He plays an evil sidekick to Mengele, so something different this time. Jesus Franco provited the script and off they went. Be prepared for some mind bobbling '80s Euro-madness!

Executioner, Part II, The (1984)

Oh dear...I am a big fan of Chris Mitchum, but this one is really weak entry in his filmography. He's got cool mustache in this one though. What about Executioner Part 1? As fas as i can tell there is no part 1, they went straight to sequel...

Movie starts with a flashback from Vietnam, squad of American soldiers are under attack and suddenly we cut to the present day. Mitchum plays cop who is working on a case to catch a vigilante killer, The Executioner, who is killing the thugs and criminals. Prime suspect is his Vietnam buddy who saved his life. Real dilemma there, should he arrest him or not. His daughter is also hooked on drugs and she gets into a bad crowd to support her habit.

Low budget straight to video stuff. Plot is full of holes, sometimes the movie jumps from one scene to another kind of leaving you hanging just what happened. Action scenes are really weak. Althought Mitchum is the leading man his screentime is somewhat limited. Couple of years after Executioner Part II Mitchum went to Indonesia and filmed some of the best action movies, Final Score and Lethal Hunter, ever made with the mighty Arizal.

Directed by James Bryan, best known for "Don't go in the woods"

American Commandos (1985)

Strange movie, basically two movies in one. First one is a revenge story and in second one group of American Vietnam-vets take out the Golden Triangle heroin ring.

ACT I: The Revenge
Vietnam-vet Dean Mitchell(Chris Mitchum) works at a gas station. One night group of thugs rob the place. Dean manages to kill one of the robbers. Remaining thugs invate Deans home while he is at work. When he gets back home he finds his son killed and his wife bound to bed and raped. When he unties his wife, she takes her own life with a razor in the bathroom. This send Dean over the edge and he hunts down the thugs one by one.

At this point i was pretty confused. Film had lasted only 30 minutes and Dean had already taken out all the thugs. Now what? And why in the hell is the movie called "American Commandos". Well, lets move on to the second act...

ACT II: The Golden Triangle
Dean is offered a job to take out the heroin smuggling ring, Golden Triangle. He acceps the job, of course 'cos he is a man who has nothing to lose. He gathers his old army buddies and off they go in  this cool bulletproof armour car to take out the heroin ring. And as a special suprise for the bad guys chasing them they got motorcycle with rocket lauchers. Action wise the second act is top notch, lots of gun fights, explosions, car chases. Full of really cool stuff. Law and Mitchum are really good in this movie, both of them are just fitted for these kind of roles. Hats off to them.

Franco Guerrero plays the bad guy of the movie. He is a sadistic drug lord who takes no shit from anybody. If he's workers try to escape from the drug plantation, they are executed, plain and simple.

Directed by late great Bobby A. Suarez and comes highly recommended for all the action movie junkies. Just don't let the first part fool you, act II is where the action is.

Release year in IMDB is 1986, but lots of other sources in the Internet claim its released in 1985.

SFX Retaliator (1987)

Doris (Linda Blair) steals one million dollars from the mobster (Gordon Mitchell) . When mobster notices that the money is missing he sends his men after Doris. Just when they are about catch her, special effects guy Steve Baker (Chris Mitchum) just happens to come to rescue and Doris and Baker get away. Mobsters kidnap Bakers wife and tell him that they will exchance her for the money.

Most of the action happens on car chases and there is a lot of them. All most every time Baker gets behind the wheel some one is after him. But hey, he drives a cool special effects car: it got rockets, machine guns, smoke screen maker etc. And in the final scene he disquises it as a tank! Well how about that! All three main character gives ok performance, although sometimes Blair seems bit stiff.

Ok little actioner. Action sequences are pretty standard, nothing so over the top as for example in Arizal's movies. Directed by Jun Gallardo.

Lethal Hunter aka American Hunter (1988)

Another lethal dose of Indonesian action!

Movie starts with a bang. Jeep is driven into office building from the roof top of the opposite building. Man in the Jeep executes everyone in the office in search for microfilm. But microfilm is gone. Villains chase  the man who escaped with the microfilm. Villains finally catch the man and get the microfilm.

Secret agent Jack Carver (Chris Mitchum) is send to get the microfilm back. He meets the man, Selick (Peter O'Brian), who is selling the film to highest bidder. All the hell breaks loose when the bad guys come into office to get the film. Carver manages to save Selick' secretary Janet (Ida Iasha). After series of gun fights and whole lotta crazy ass action bad guys capture Carver. They torture him to get the info of microfilms whereabouts. Of course they fail miserably and set the house on fire leaving Carver there to burn.

Surprisingly enough, Carver manages to escape. After this we get series of car and helicopter chases (best car stunt was the one where villains drove their car into a crowded  grocery store), fist fights, gun fights, bad guys kidnapping Janet and lots of explosions when the bad guys try get the microfilm and in the process eliminate Carver. In the end we see the final fight between Carver and the main villain Adam (Bill "Superfoot" Wallace). Finally the microfilm is returned to the good guys. The End (just how many times did i wrote the word microfilm...).


Directed by Arizal and he knows how to make a good actioner. This was not as mind blowing as Arizal's "Double Crosser" or "Final Score", but still a very very fine Indo-actioner.

Lots of memorable scenes in this one. Highlights include Peter O'Brian's character's demise. He is chased by car into a dead end alley and rammed through a prick wall. One of most bizarre interrogation methods is also used when the villains want to get info out of Janet. They put shaving cream on her face and start shaving her invisible beard... 

Final Score (1986)

"Who are you?" "Death!"

Villain named Mr. Hawk (Mike Abbott) sends his men to take care of  director of  computer institute Richard Brown (Chris Mitchum) before he can sign a contract that's not in a favour of Mr. Hawks criminal activities. Thugs enter Brown's home (he's away buying birthday present for his son) and kills his son and gang-rape and kill his wife. Brown finds his family slaughtered and swears revenge. Bad guys come back later and try to kill Brown, but that ain't gonna happen. He kills 'em all and manages to get the names of the men behind all of this. So now he's kicking ass and taking names.

Brown enters the thugs hideout. We get these flashbacks from Vietnam so we know Brown is about to blow some shit up and kill these goons. And so he does. Brown got five names in his list, one down, four to go. Rest of the film concentrates on how Brown takes down these men behind his family's murder one by one. Before the final match between Mr. Hawk and Brown, we get all the normal stuff that happens to you when go on a revenge: Brown gets captured and tortured by the bad guys and he get romantically involved with a woman who saves him.

Directed by Arizal (Lethal Hunter, Double Crosser), so you know that the action is top-notch and we get lot of that too. Gun fights, exploding all kind of shit up and lots of car and motorcycle stunts in this one. One of the car stunts involve guy hanging outside the car's window and they crash the car. That shit just looked dangerous. Hopefully that dude was OK after that.

Once again, highly recommended grim vengeance story with lots of action. Let's hope that some day some company releases these Arizal movies on good quality DVDs. Gimme triple Arizal feature, Lethal hunter, Final score and Double Crosser and i will be the first in line to buy that one!