WILLIAM SMITH DOUBLE FEATURE!!

It was entirely by accident. I watched a lot of movies when I was sick recently. One that I needed to watch was the 1986 flick EYE OF THE TIGER starring Gary Busey as a good guy and William Smith takes up the role of crazed biker villain.
Seems that Busey's character, Buck, has served some hard time and is just getting out of the slammer. He goes back to the small town he grew up in where his loving wife and daughter are waiting for him. There's something else waiting for Buck. Trouble. Trouble in this guise comes in the form of a biker gang led by William Smith.

They have a drug factory and compound outside of town and they take the law into their own hands. When Buck stops a group of them from raping a nurse on her way home they retaliate by trashing his house and killing his wife. seems like overkill to me, but now Buck has no choice. Time to take those skills honed in Nam and show these bikers how ass is properly kicked. with the help of Yaphet Kotto and a tricked out truck with mortars and machine guns, Buck brings the fight to the bikers. Gary Busey versus a legion of bikers? The poor bikers never had a chance.

we get the title song three times during the course of the flick, the action really never slows down for any kind of story. The most shocking moment in the flick would have to be when the bikers tow Buck's dead wife's coffin back to his house and dump it in his front yard. That's cold blooded there boys and girls.

I like that they knew they were dealing with a revenge flick of the most basic variety so there is not a lot of slow time in the movie as I mentioned before. We get right to business from the onset and it doesn't let up until the credits roll. An action flick that knows what it is and delivers accordingly. Genius. From the director who gave us the immortal VANISHING POINT comes a classic of 80's cinema. This must have been a blast when it was first released upon the world.

Next up was COMMANDO SQUAD. I have been in a classic Fred Olen Ray mood of late and been watching a few of his flicks. None of that INVISIBLE MOM crap. Sure, it has done good business for Fred and glad to hear it, but I want Fred's crazy 80's output and that is delivered in spades in the flick from 1987.

Seems that special operative Kat wants nothing more than to go on vacation. Too bad there's a huge drug cartel that needs busting up down in Mexico. To make sure she goes she discovers that her old partner Clint (Brian Thompson) is in the clutches of the evil drug lords. Little does Kat suspect that an old member of the firm, Morgan (William Smith) has turned into the reigning drug lord of Mexico. Now she has to defeat him, save her partner and shut down the drug operations for good. Easier said than done when Morgan has the help of Sid Haig and Ross Hagen. This ruthless band of drug runners will stop at nothing to get Kat out of the way...for good.

This was mindless, good fun. Lots of guns, explosions and Sid Haig acting like, well, Sid Haig. I have to give Fred Olen Ray props for the innovative torture sequence. When they pulled Clint's tooth and then shot compressed air into the fresh socket it made my teeth ache for a while.

The only question I have is that this thing starred the Playboy Playmate of The Year. Why was there zero naked in this thing?

Even that doesn't hinder the amount of fun this flick is. You know that when the explosions start hitting fast and furious that the movie is almost over and it's time for Fred to waste his entire pyrotechnics budget in a huge blaze of glory. A good old fashioned action flick that delivers the action.


COMMANDO SQUAD TRAILER



I couldn't find an EYE OF THE TIGER trailer that I could inbed here so go HERE to see it. AMazing stuff!