Hit List (1989)

If you’re a child of the 80’s and had an obsession with movies, you know what a wondrous place the video store was at the peak of the video rental boom.  Walking through aisles of VHS covers and having those lurid covers tantalizing your preadolescent mind was quite an experience.  It almost gave you a feeling that you were somewhere you shouldn’t be.  The VHS sleeves for movies like Zombie, I Spit on Your Grave, and Driller Killer will forever be imprinted on my brain.  Then there were the odd or curious looking box art.  The ones that had you guessing what they were about and what type of movies they were.  Films like Happy Birthday to Me or The Exterminator had interesting but somewhat ambiguous covers.  If it weren’t for them being shelved in a specific section of the store, you weren’t sure what you were in for.  One such film, for me anyway, was Hit List.  The image of the car running over a man always piqued my curiosity.  Was this a horror film?  An action film?  What was it?  Once I discovered it was directed by William Lustig and involved a psychotic hitman played by Lance Henriksen, I had to track it down.  And the fact that this movie remains available only on VHS makes it that much more curious.

Essentially, Hit List is a crime-thriller with flourishes of action and horror.  After a gangster is arrested for drug trafficking, he’s forced to turn state’s evidence and testify against his criminal boss.  The mob boss, worried that his lieutenant will rat him out, decides to put a hit out and ensure that no testimony is made; except that the hitman makes a vital error and goes to the wrong house during his assassination attempt.  After disposing of a man and woman he assumes are federal agents providing witness protection, he kidnaps a boy he believes to be the son of his target, whom he can’t find anywhere in the house.  This sequence of events sets in motion the revenge / rescue angle of the film and will make up the majority of the runtime going forward.

Jan-Michael Vincent plays Jack Collins, the family man whose son has been kidnapped, wife attacked, and friend murdered during the home invasion.  Collins is hell-bent on rescuing his son and finding the person responsible for turning his life upside down.  In order to make this happen, he’ll have to recruit the help of the gangster turned informant and intended target, Frank DeSalvo, played by Leo Rossi.  DeSalvo has his own vendetta to settle, now that he knows his boss (Rip Torn) tried to have him whacked.  Together, Collins and DeSalvo will have to fight off mafia thugs, elude the police, and battle a highly trained killer in order to save the kid and win the day.

Just like his prior films, Lustig’s cast for Hit List is made up of recognizable character actors.  Lance Henriksen, Leo Rossi, Rip Torn, and Charles Napier, who plays the lead FBI agent, are all familiar faces to movie fans and they all do a solid job in their respective roles.  Henriksen and Torn, in particular, are a lot of fun in their over-the-top performances as villainous characters.  The only issue with the cast is the leading man role, played by Jan-Michael Vincent.  Most will probably know Vincent from the TV show, Airwolf.  According to a 2008 interview, Lustig states that Vincent was drunk during the shooting of the film and it’s pretty apparent from the moment he steps onscreen.  He seems to struggle delivering his lines and I think you can even see him have trouble staying upright in some scenes.  In addition to this, he just simply can’t emote the grief that is necessary for his character.  When it’s explained to him that his wife is in a coma and that she has lost their unborn child, Vincent’s reaction to this soul-crushing news seems more appropriate for someone who has just been told that their favorite flavor of ice cream has been discontinued.   Lustig does his best to limit Vincent’s dialogue and shoot around his embarrassing performance, but there’s only so much you can do when your leading man is a disaster.  Jan-Michael Vincent almost sinks this entire film.  Fortunately, the rest of the cast brings it and a strong third act saves this movie from being a dud.

In that same interview, Lustig admits that he needed work and that this project was a director for hire job.  It definitely has that feel when compared to his earlier efforts, such as Maniac and Vigilante.  Hit List doesn’t have the same grit or nihilism that those films had.  Also, this film was shot in sunny Los Angeles instead of the rough streets of a pre-Giuliani New York City, where Lustig filmed his previous movies. This gives Hit List a more polished aesthetic, overall.  Still, Lustig delivers on the violence and action set-pieces, especially in the finale of the film.  There are a few memorable sequences that occur within the film.  There is a scene where Henriksen slips into a prison like a ninja and assassinates a potential witness after he takes out the prison guards.  There’s a fun shootout that takes place in a laser tag arena.  And there’s the standout car chase that eventually leads to a crazy sequence where Henriksen’s character is hanging from a truck as he tries to kill the driver.  I don’t want to spoil the end of this wild scene, but let’s just say that there is truth in advertising in regards to the VHS box art for this movie.

Nobody would claim that Hit List is one of Bill Lustig’s best films; including the director himself.  It doesn’t have that grindhouse feel of his earlier films and it doesn’t have a screenwriter like a Larry Cohen to inject some social commentary into the film, as he did for Maniac Cop.  And it certainly doesn’t help that your leading man is blotto through the film’s entirety.  Lustig and the supporting cast manage to somehow save this movie from being a complete disaster.  It’s a testament to Lustig’s skills as a director that he was able to salvage this film from what must have been a difficult shoot and turn in a decent action-thriller.  It may not be a cult classic, but Hit List deserves better than to linger in VHS obscurity.

MVT: The supporting cast of Lance Henriksen, Leo Rossi, Rip Torn, & Charles Napier

Make or Break Scene: The action packed finale!

Score: 6/10

Phantom Soldiers (1989)

The My Lai Massacre is, arguably, the most infamous occurrence of the Vietnam War, a conflict that was unpopular in America to start off (and, certainly, I would imagine in Vietnam, as well).  On March 16, 1968, between three-hundred-and-forty-seven and five-hundred-and-four civilians were killed in two hamlets of the Quang Ngai Province, including infants, children, and women.  The massacre was set off, at least in part, by a bloodlust the soldiers of Charlie Company felt due to recent, heavy casualties of their brothers in arms.  These losses were perpetrated largely by booby-traps set by the Viet Cong, engendering a hatred for the enemy and their guerilla tactics.  Using specious reasoning and sketchy intelligence, the soldiers performed some of the most inhuman acts possible, partly in the name of vengeance/payback.  Despite protests from certain of the men and reporting of the extent of the carnage to superior officers, the My Lai Massacre was covered up for roughly a year before it was exposed to the world.  Of all the soldiers charged with criminal offenses, only one was convicted, and he wound up serving about three-and-a-half years under house arrest (that doesn’t feel balanced, now does it?).  At any rate, the massacre is the jumping off point for Teddy Chiu’s (under the alias Irvin Johnson) Phantom Soldiers (aka Commando Phantom).  In fact, a character is even named Barker after Lieutenant Colonel Frank Barker, the officer in command of the My Lai operation.  Once this set up is done, however, the film essentially becomes a Missing in Action film, for better or worse.

A platoon of silent, black-clad, gasmask-wearing soldiers march into a small Vietnamese village, leveling the place and murdering everyone in sight with everything from bullets to nerve gas.  Investigating the titular troopers, Lieutenant Mike Custer (Corwin Sperry) and his men are captured behind enemy lines.  Meanwhile, back in the States, Mike’s brother Dan (Max Thayer) is a Texas Ranger, busting up drug cartels on the border.  He receives news of his brother’s disappearance and decides to go to Nam incognito and get his brother back.

It’s a little startling, though just a little, that American war films from the Seventies through the Eighties that were set in Vietnam very often focused on going back and winning the war.  Barring the righting of a perceived wrong in the minds of the more jingoistic, many of these films also centered on rescuing those soldiers who were MIA and forgotten about by all but their family members.  The two are not entirely mutually exclusive, both being seen as slights against the young men and women who gave their lives (literally and figuratively) in an “unwinnable” war.  Those who came back were not universally hailed like those who served in World War Two, and this only compounded the sour resentment of the veterans.  Likewise, this sort of film plays to the viewers who didn’t serve but still had strong feelings about America’s defeat.  Dan, then, is both a veteran and a patriot.  When not wearing his Stetson, he wears baseball caps, one that’s camouflaged and a blazing white number with the NFL logo on it.  He’s an all-American in every way.  He dislikes injustice, and he asserts at least twice that, “Nobody’s above the law” (I cannot imagine from whence this bit of dialogue came).  Dan has no real feelings about the rightness or wrongness of the Vietnam War, except in that his brother is involved in it.  Once he gets in-country, Dan winds up machine-gunning a slew of Viet Cong from a helicopter.  They are, after all, the enemy.  Yet, Dan’s first priority is his brother, so this bit of violence can be looked upon as survival rather than as any sort of soldierly duty.

Importantly, the American soldiers in the film are clearly distinguished from the Phantom Soldiers.  They do not fire on unarmed noncombatants.  They play by the rules.  They get irritated that the villains are making them look bad (and, y’know, that they’re blatant murderers).  Conversely, the Phantom Soldiers are ruthless, sadistic, and quasi-superhuman.  In their first scene, the Phantoms are shot and beaten with gun butts, but these things have no effect on them, shrugging them off like gnats a-buzzing.  Their uniforms are meant to inspire fear and call back to several reference points.  First, the gas masks are reminiscent of those creepy ones we’ve all seen in photos of the soldiers in the trenches and the civilians at home during both World Wars.  Two, the masks evoke images of death in their implacable brutality and lifeless visages.  Three, they recall memories of Star Wars in the audience with their similarity to Darth Vader and his stormtroopers, not only in the skull-like faces but also in the Nazi-esque helmets.  Their actions in the film, and the explanation behind it all is a way for Americans to say, “See?  We were the good guys here!”  It’s the sort of exculpation of America and some its soldiers that, I would suggest, they needed to have in order to deal with their involvement in Vietnam and to vindicate themselves to those who hated them for it.  Naturally, it’s also a power fantasy to reinforce that America is the best ever.

Phantom Soldiers excels in the action department.  The scenes of carnage are exciting, well-shot and edited, and impactful.  They are also overlong (and, I’m sure, fans of action films will argue that this is impossible) to the point of stopping the story dead in its tracks.  Some would say that’s just fine and dandy in this sort of movie (and to some degree, it is), but for my money, it also winds up becoming a vague blur and, ultimately, pretty boring.  It’s simply too much of a good thing, which I hate to say, because of the insane amount of talent involved in these sequences.  The actual plot, then, just meanders along, bopping from action beat to action beat, barely holding together just to fill the spaces between explosions and gunfire.  Thayer does a solid job as the good ol’ boy maverick, but even what charisma he musters isn’t quite enough to compel an audience along through the whole of the film.  He does blow things up real good, though.

MVT:  The action.

Make or Break:  The opening sequence is rock solid across the board, despite the remainder of the film not quite paying off on this potential.

Score:  6/10    

Angels of the City (1989)

I’m in a pretty crass mood today, so I’m just gonna run with it, and this week’s selection most assuredly abets this.  A learned man (it may have been Friedrich Nietzsche) once sad that pimping ain’t easy.  I would imagine not.  While I don’t know scoot about this career choice, I know that it would have to involve, on some level, accounting, something with which I have only a passing acquaintance.  What’s the tax allowance for birth control and transportation?  Could the whole thing be written off as entertainment expenses?  I would guess that the logistics alone would be murder, too (assuming one offered a delivery-type service).  Who needs how many “friends,” and where, and when?  What if the pimp overbooks?  And I’m sure collections are a whole other pain in the ass.  I had a paper route for about five years when I was a kid, and I can tell you with confidence that many people don’t ever want to pay for services rendered (and that was only about $1.50 per week back then), even when they’re satisfied with them.  That’s if the tricks pay the pimp directly.  Getting the money owed from your “workers” is probably a lot like how the IRS feels when reviewing a person’s tips reported for the fiscal year.  I mean, pimping is almost like work.  Of course, it ain’t easy!

Cinematic pimping, on the other hand, is really easy.  You get to wear great clothes (everything from tailored suits to plumed, fuzzy hats), ride around in nice cars, drink champagne constantly, and be surrounded by hot women who act like you’re the bee’s knees (totally not because of the money or because they’re in fear for their lives, I’m sure).  All you have to do is relax and alternate your moods between threatening and saccharine (the really great thing here is that you can still call absolutely everyone “bitch,” whether they work for you or not).  Pimps in film are arguably more pimp-ian than real pimps.  Just look at Fly Guy from I’m Gonna Git You Sucka versus Iceberg Slim, if you doubt me (alternately, see Roy Scheider’s turn in Klute for something a bit more verisimilitudinous).  You’re basically a gangster, just without the family ties that prove so vulnerable to folks like the Corleones.  So, when dueling pimps Gold (Michael Ferrare) and Lee (Renny Stroud) go toe-to-toe over whose territory is whose in Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs’ (you know him better as Freddie “Boom Boom” Washington on Welcome Back, Kotter) Angels of the City, you know that one of them is getting paid, and the other is getting laid out.

While Gold and Lee hash out their differences, college asswipes Mike (Brian Ochse) and Richie (Rusty Gray) hire a prostitute while wasted.  Meanwhile, their girlfriends Cathy (Kelly Galindo) and Wendy (Cynthia Cheston) are forced to dress up like hookers and collect one hundred dollars off a john (but, hey, it’s still, like, their choice if they want to actually sleep with some guy for it, and stuff) as part of their initiation into the Delta Delta Delta (Can I help ya, help ya, help ya?) sorority.  Never thinking that they could have just gone out for the night and then handed their sorority sisters the money and said that they did what they were supposed to do (because no one is monitoring them), these two idiots get embroiled in the middle of the heated pimp turf war.  After about ninety minutes, the credits roll.

Angels of the City was shot on video, and this is something that can blow up in even the best filmmaker’s face.  Audiences tend to think of one of three things when watching something in a video format: home movies, institutionals, and porn.  One of these things is actually likely to excite a viewer.  Now, I understand that there were and are a great many features shot on video, and some of them are very good, and the format even has a healthy cult following.  I have nothing against it, personally.  My philosophy is that any way a filmmaker can get their vision put together and shown to people, do it.  Nonetheless, I also think that there are standards and a certain level of quality that even the cheapest production needs to have (even if that quality is trash level; there’s still something to be said for it when it’s done right).  Hilton-Jacobs shows glimmers of hope throughout the film.  The basic premise is solid and holds some promise (the idea of buying and selling flesh objects from the male and female sides of the coin, the harsh realities of the streets contrasted against the sequestered safety of college life, the pimp war with the unwitting kids in over their heads/fish out of water element, etcetera).  Some of the set ups and compositions are solid, evocative, and downright professional.  The action is choreographed and edited well enough (though not quite up to the highest standards of PM Entertainment, the erstwhile kings of low budget action cinema).  The big problem is everything else that is not either technical or philosophical.  Read: ninety-five percent of the movie.

With that in mind, then, let’s dig into the film’s faults.  First and foremost, the film is confused about who its protagonists are.  During an overextended college classroom scene (we will come back to this, trust me), the film sets up the two main couples and even possibly a few other students who may take part in the plot.  The scene immediately following this focuses on Mick and Richie slavering and all but high-fiving about fucking (you’ve likely heard guys actually talk like this and just wanted to immolate them).  These two dicks then go to a sleazy motel with Carmen, the hooker they picked up at a bar.  We are then treated to an extended scene of Mick and Carmen doing it in POV, with Mick gurning and mugging the entire time (in my opinion, the only way to save this acting choice would be if Carmen did the same thing; she doesn’t).  Meanwhile, the girls are attending their candlelit sorority meeting, get dressed up like strumpets, and hit Hollywood’s underbelly.  The amount of time spent with the two guys is disproportionate to their importance in the film.  We already got the message that they’re complete douchebags (in fact, the movie goes to great lengths to show us that every male in it is one).  We don’t need to follow their idiotic escapades, since everything following from them is tangential, at best.  

Second, Angels of the City follows a pattern of setting Wendy and Cathy running into “colorful” locals and then running away from them.  They are accosted by a crackhead/alcoholic that would make Dave Chappelle wince and are “saved” by Maria, who bums a smoke and then exits (we will come back to this, trust me).  They meet a homeless man who tells them about the hardships of his life and then exits.  They meet some young punk who takes them to meet his gang of juvies.  The girls are robbed before being chased, first by the kids, and then by a large dog (yes, really).  They go to a private club (go ahead and guess what the password is), where Wendy makes out with the owner before he’s shot.  This is in between their various run-ins with Gold and Lee.  What it all boils down to is a very serious lack of coherence and focus on the part of the screenwriters, one of whom just so happens to also be Hilton-Jacobs and none of whom ever got the point of the old saw “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.”

Which brings us to problem number three, and the one which contains the most SPOILERS.  This movie juggles tones in nonsensical fashion.  It wants to be a fun exploitation/action picture.  It wants to be a broad comedy.  But worst of all, it wants to be a deep, meaningful treatise on how the dregs of society are overlooked and abandoned.  After the events of their fateful night, Wendy is now a vegetable, and Cathy visits her and tries to talk to her at the hospital.  You know, deep, meaningful shit.  Gold is still after Cathy, and she has a live-in cop guarding her, who, to no one’s surprise, is also a douchebag, and takes great joy in hearing her fight with Richie.  Capitalizing on her vulnerability in the creepiest way possible, the cop has sex with Cathy, and the impression we’re given is that it is the best fuck of her sweet, young life.  Bear in mind, the audience just met this guy.  It is conceivably the emptiest sex scene ever committed before a camera (I am including porn loops in this category) made all the more ridiculous by the emotional weight it’s supposed to have (yes, really; we’re meant to get something out of this aside from various shots of Galindo’s admittedly nice breasts).  Finally, Cathy does her project for the aforementioned Sociology class, where she talks about Maria, the runaway kid who has the entire “shitty life moments” checklist befall her (junkie, hooker, abusive boyfriend, ad nauseum).  This is delivered aurally and visually with all the conviction and meaningfulness the rest of the film has served up ice cold (i.e. none).  Once again, Hilton-Jacobs and company find a way to completely misplace the big dramatic resonance they thought would give this shit show some value outside of its exploitable elements.  Trying to think of something witty to sum up Angels of the City is just fruitless, since I’ve already devoted more time and effort into discussing this turd than it will ever deserve.  Have a nice day.

MVT:  The few moments of professionalism on display.

Make or Break:  Mick and Richie spend some time with Carmen.

Score:  1/10