Cocaine Wars

Cocaine Wars

United States/Argentina – 1985

Director – Hector Olivera

Media Home Entertainment, 1986, VHS

Run Time – 1 hour, 22 minutes

Readers familiar with the Corman library of skullduggery will no doubt recall the heady days of Conan, when the master of low-budget was cranking out the knockoff fantasy barbarian franchises like they were going out of style. Which they were, very quickly. Although the Deathstalker series would continue into a fourth film and the stylin’ 90’s, it was the longest running franchise at a mere seven years. Shorter and possibly lower budget (it’s a tight race) films like Barbarian Queen and Wizards of the Lost Kingdom were churned out too and are notable primarily for their even more addled plots. These were the days when Corman was farming out production overseas to the Philippines, Mexico and even Argentina where the first of the Barbarian Queen and Wizards films were made. One man was responsible for directing both of those bungling and silly indulgences, Hector Olivera. Some might not wish to ever tread the Olivera path again (especially after Wizards) but I’m stubborn, and I find it all quite fascinating. The plot thickened perceptibly when I discovered Cocaine Wars.

1985 would appear to have been a good year for our intrepid Argentinian who helmed not one, not two, but all three of his Corman productions. It was still a few years until the Latin American Drug Cartel action films would have to make way for Inner-City Drug Gang films in the 90’s and Corman was going to try his hand before they moved back home. Hiring one of the Duke Bro.’s (John Schneider to be exact) as his “Name,” he passed the reins to Olivera who crafted a bungling and silly yarn about an undercover DEA agent (Schneider) and his investigative reporter wife (Kathryn Witt) who are after the same Kingpin. Kidnappings and intrigue follow in typical though clumsy and meandering fashion, and all resolves itself somehow. To be honest, by the time I got to the end of Cocaine Wars I was no longer paying much attention, there was little to elicit it.

Still, there was something memorable about the film. What lingers with me is the VHS box art. It’s a vision of saccharine machismo that calls forth memories of some of the finest in men’s pulp magazines and makes me ache for Reagan-era cinema. Like the cover of Equalizer 2000 (also Corman produced) over which I waxed poetic last month, Cocaine War’s rippling bare-chested hero and vulnerably draped female token are quite literally iconic. Those were the terminal days of Communism and drug’s synonymity, when USAmerica still needed cowboys to protect the womenfolk and defend the frontier. Corman and his directors didn’t always hit the target, but a look at the poster/box art for any of the films I’ve mentioned here and there can be no question that they knew what they were aiming at.

Our friends over at Comeuppance Reviews have a thing or two to say about Cocaine Wars.

Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold

Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold

United States - 1987

Director - Gary Nelson

Media Home Entertainment,  1987, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour, 40 minutes

Sortof an Indy knockoff, at least the movie was. The books predate all of it by a few years.

 British VHS sleeve from some torrent forum.

 Italian poster from Wrongsideoftheart

Messenger of Death

Messenger of Death

United States - 1988

Director J. Lee Thompson

Media Home Entertainment, 1990, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour, 32 minutes

The Wild Pair

The Wild Pair

United States - 1987

Director - Beau Bridges

Media Home Entertainment, 1988, VHS

Run Time -1 hour, 29 minutes

As a late entry into the 80’s buddy-cop cycle that was turned up to 11 by one Eddie Murphy, The Wild Pair is yet another white-cop/black-cop combo, but it is also another local-cop/federal-cop pairing. Yet neither of these “ironies” is mined for its humor. Baby-faced Beau Bridges plays FBI agent Joe Jennings with enough suave confidence and pig-headdedness, and Bubba Smith plays short-fused Narc Benny Avalon with sufficient pathos to be convincing, but given that by this late date the context has been standardized, it’s not surprising that their performances are also comfortably standard. Together they foil a criminal endeavor perpetrated by a fairly run-of-the-mill array of semi-inept punks and nominally-sinister kingpins and all ends more-or-less happily. As a result, The Wild Pair is both predictable and unsensationally flat, an otherwise forgettable flare-up of Action’s most chronic case of sub-generic herpes.

And yet, beneath this placid, run of the mill surface is a not so subtle current of transgression just waiting to drag you under. The Wild Pair could have gone the way Hellbound  and Cop and ½ eventually did (following precedent), making Benny into a Jim Crow stereotype to compensate for the film’s flaccid storyline. But Benny is not the comic relief to Joe's more serious (and hence we are led to surmise more important and worthy of our identification) quest/project. His physicality, in it's unusualness (to the film) is certainly hard to ignore, and (as with obesity, shortness, boobs etc.) simply must be exploited by the conventions of low comedy (Police Academy) reliant on physical idiosyncrasy for narrative engagement. What humor there is in The Wild Pair (and there aint much) is dependent on Smith's being huge, not on his “acting black" and fulfilling those standards that make white viewers feel safe liking him.

This works because while Jennings is technically on the other side of the tracks, the film is not about his discomfort and the sort of coming to terms for which white audiences need irony and stereotype to feel vindicated. It makes sense then that Benny is the character with depth, history and personality while Jennings is a two dimensional milquetoast (despite Benny’s pointed questioning: “Do you drink your own bath water?” “Sometimes.”) It is after all his neighborhood, his friends and ‘his’ kids who are being subjected to the terrorism of drugs and political violence perpetrated by a racist white conspiracy that goes right to the top levels of government.

Thanks to Ronald Reagan’s little war, drugs and junkies were as necessary to 80’s cinema realism as punk-rockers, but it was his predecessor Richard Nixon who initiated the War on Drugs, clarifying that it was really about black folks, you just couldn’t say it was. At the same time, the CIA really was deliberately introducing narcotics into black neighborhoods to undermine the Black Power movement. (Not surprisingly this was also the same time that the NRA was for gun control; to prevent armed Blacks.) To be sure, there’s a black guy in there peddling drugs in The Wild Pair. It’s easier to dismiss all of this conspiracy stuff if they do it too, but I choose to see his name “Ivory” as somewhat more than accidental. As my friends over at Comeuppance Reviews said in their write-up of The Wild Pair, “it’s all there,” to which I would add; IF you choose to see it. It may appear too convenient to find all this baggage in a forgotten crime dramedy, but after realizing that The Wild Pair has already subverted the staid norms of its genre, its allusions to history appear much more deliberate. The Wild Pair may not be the most original buddy-cop flick out there, but for rocking the narrative boat, it does have the most to say.

Lunch Wagon

Lunch Wagon

United States - 1981

Director - Ernest Pintoff

Media Home Entertainment, 1982, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour, 28 minutes
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In the metropolitan areas of the United States, the food truck has now become ubiquitous. The taco truck was probably the first contemporary incarnation, but you can find just about anything these days. A few blocks from my apartment in Seattle, in the parking lot of a gas station/convenience store you can get fresh sushi, while a little further down the same street, Haitian Creole is available. Although they’ve been around practically forever, this level of cultural variety is a relatively recent development. I cannot of course speak for anywhere else, but virtually all of these rolling establishments seem to have appeared in the last 10 years, most in the last five. Talk all the nonsensical ignorant trash you want about immigration, but even bigots love a curry.

Presumably intended to be just as exotic as the smorgasbord of international options now available from food trucks, Lunch Wagon unfortunately comes from an era when, as its name implies, the typical vehicular dining establishment offered a much more banal culinary experience, like hot dogs and burgers. It is also, again one can only assume, supposed to be more titillating than the average food truck of today* since its owners are two scantily clad and buxom young women (prominently advertised on the box as former playmates Pamela Bryant and Roseanne Katon.) Unfortunately both the exotic and titillating spins on the food truck premise, which might under other circumstances actually work really well together, are afterthoughts. The truck itself, painted pink and named the “Love Bites,” plays only a peripheral role in the film, serving predominantly as a vehicle (literal and figurative) for a septic stew of lounge-act comedy.

A thrilling surprise cameo by Evel Kneivel pinball!

Move it Proles!

After inheriting their lunch wagon from Dick van Patten, our two leads recruit a sexy cook and begin selling food to construction workers. By parking over a particular manhole cover however, they run afoul of a swanky white-collar criminal type who is using said manhole to gain access to a bank. With the help of freshly landed (color coordinated) boyfriends, the female trio manage to foil not only that dastardly plan but another, less dastardly but no less annoying plan by another set of cloying “comedians.”Snagged on the undercarriage of this heretofore thrilling ordeal and dragged along like week-old road kill is yet another tangentical story, this one a talent show which goes on for days and days and is notable only for an early appearance of Missing Persons whom repeatedly perform their song Mental Hopscotch.

It’s an apt metaphor for a film that jumps all over the place yet somehow still lands on a conclusion. Using a food truck as the crux of your film is clearly not a lucrative source of material. As Wheels on Meals, the only other film with a foundational food-truck demonstrates, some other element is critical (in that case incomparable kung fu.) Instead, Lunch Wagon takes its cue Loose Shoes style, from the trashy and titillating exploitation trailers that are entertaining when compressed into 3 minutes, but stretched to feature-length become a chore.

Yes, it's that good.

*Here in Washington State there are a number of drive-up coffee joints that “offer” young women in lingerie or bikinis making the coffee. I suspect these exist elsewhere in the country as well. However, the interior of food trucks in my experience are not typically attractive, sexually or otherwise. 

The Deadly and The Beautiful

The Deadly and the Beautiful 

Philippines – 1973

Director – Robert Vincent O’Neill

Media Home Entertainment, 1984, VHS

Run Time – 1 hour, 32 minutes

When a famous Jai Alai player disappears without a trace, Mike Harber is off to track him down. Leading with his libido, he soon discovers that a syndicate of beautiful but deadly Wonder Women (the film’s original title) is behind the kidnapping. When Mike decided to pursue a career in insurance he never quite pictured himself fighting criminal masterminds or mad scientists in the seedy underbelly of Manila. The job description “insurance investigator” doesn’t exactly ooze sex appeal after all, but nothing is quite like it seems in The Deadly and The Beautiful. In fact, cockfights and cycle-cab chases aren’t exactly the “underbelly,” and Dr. Tsu’s Go-Go squad aren’t quite a syndicate.

Combining the well worn action spy/secret agent plot (the pre-credit sequence does a worthy Bond imitation, only topless) coupled with the mad scientist performing unorthodox experiments on humans, The Deadly and The Beautiful is essentially a film version of a men’s adventure magazine come a few years after its time. As such it’s not exactly unique or terribly inspiring in it’s content, at least nothing we haven’t seen from Eddie Romero or Cirio Santiago a few dozen times by now. Where it might suffer from a lack of budget or originality however, The Deadly and The Beautiful is extremely generous with sincerity. With all the dire intensity of a 40’s science-fiction serial, and the gritty peril of a location shot action flick, this film literally revels in it’s milieu like a pig in shit. Sincerity goes a damned sight farther than “propriety”, and no matter how many bad rubber monsters and shitty drunken lead actors you have, what an old friend of mine used to call “heart,” will make your movie.

Using a decrepit warehouse to transplant the organs of young athletes into the aging bodies of her wealthy clients, Dr. Tsu somehow manages to turn a profit despite her rickety handmade equipment. When Mike Harber shows up, Tsu cuts short her vinyl clad hit-squad’s latest session of frozen donor boner and sends them to make-out/take-out the erstwhile insurance investigator. Careening through a veritable buffet of Manila scenery and culture with the help of the ubiquitous Vic Diaz and crushed-velvet and ascoted Sid Haig, Mike at last lands on the couch for an up-close-and-personal round of ‘brain sex’ with the good Dr. Tsu. Just before they can reach whatever climax happens at the end of brain-sex, the doctor vanishes in a puff of smoke promising to return a-la Mad Doctor of Blood Island for a second round and possibly even a franchise. I suppose that would explain the carboard laboratory. If you had to abandon all that equipment every time some clunky gumshoe with an ethical hang-up came snooping around (and this seems to happen a hell of a lot,) you’d probably build your lab on the cheap too.

The Deadly and The Beautiful isn’t purely Pinoy. The writer/director and the big ‘stars’, Sid Haig, Ross Hagen (Mike,) Nancy Kwan (Tsu) and Roberta Collins are all American, but as soon as the principals are done forwarding the plot or whatever it is they do, all sorts of Filipinos suddenly appear with vintage WWII weapons and start blasting the shit out of each other on behalf of one or the other side. It reminds me more than a bit of Western colonialism in that the Westerners (Europeans and Americans, in that order here) moved in and made the locals do the rough stuff. Only, underneath it all, nothing would have run without the locals, it was an economy of deception.

The more contemporary Westerners in question were just as dependent on this “cheap” exoticism (and labor) to make their movie(s.) There is an exemplary scene in The Deadly and The Beautiful when, after seducing and attempting to assassinate Mike, one of the Wonder Women flees and initiates a long chase scene through the streets of Manila. The local color makes for some exciting realism, but at the same time can’t help but reveal true local flavor. At one point can be seen a Mule carrying a man with a bullhorn followed by a string of pedicabs bearing banners campaigning for “Remy – Councilor.” This is, I am pretty sure, a frozen historical reference to the late martial artist Remy Presas who worked for the Philippine government for a minute in the early 70’s and which only Pinoy audiences would have appreciated.

To tell the truth of course, the movie industry in the Philippines was initially a product of colonialism as well. Dependent on the whims of the Western dollar to a great extent, but as with any local industry, the Filipinos built their own cinematic house with the master’s tools. The underlying myth to this whole narrative is revealed in the fact that without the local, without Pinoy, the whole ruse would be both narratively and economically impossible. Filipino, and I dare say Southeast Asian films in general (I'm thinking here specifically of Indonesian and Thai, but assuming it applies elsewhere) are some of the best in the world. I hate to say it’s purely a factor of scarcity because despite a relative dearth of these films in USAmerica, I don’t think it is. One gets the impression however that, at least during this period, Filipinos must have really cared about making movies because they put their heart into every one. The Deadly and The Beautiful is a prime example and a rare treat which, thanks to Jack at En lejemorder ser tilbage (among other fine sites,) I’m glad that I revisited.

Sorry about the image quality, its an old tape of a bad print!

Firewalker

Firewalker

United States – 1986

Director – J. Lee Thompson

Video Treasures/Media Home Entertainment, 1987, VHS
Run Time - 1 hour, 46 minutes

If ever there was a cheap - and I do mean cheap - knockoff of the Indiana Jones franchise – and I assure you, there weren't ANY, not one - this would probably be, if not the best cheap knockoff, then maybe the worst good one. If there were such a thing as a Heroic Pantheon of Legendary Norris Films - and there isn't - Firewalker might just be one of the best. In fact, even as I shook my head at the simple, crude script, I was laughing right along with it, an intoxicated dopey grin spread over my face. The thing is, this movie really took me by surprise. That devious right-wing ginger ideologue pulled out a good performance on me. It's almost as if this is actually the role that he should have played all along, his perfect match.

I might also say the same of his buddy Louis Gossett Jr., who compliments Norris' reckless charming white-guy lead with a stellar performance as a skeptical, fast-talking black-dude accomplice. Once again, a Norris film that isn’t challenging any stereotypes, but it ‘works better’ (or is less offensive) than many iterations and is far less grating.

Together our color-coded-combo consistently screw up and botch their various treasure seeking adventures: Max (Norris) dutifully getting them deep in the shit, then barely pulling them out in the nick of time, making it seem completely accidental, while Leo (Gossett) curses and berates him with practiced consistency. As if on cue, (as if) the beautiful blonde Patricia shows up with vague clues promising a plethora of potential wealth at great risk of life. Consulting Tall Eagle, a cynical but campy Native American stereotype, they learn the legend of the Firewalker, for whatever it's worth and are off to Central America followed by an evil Apache shaman (Sonny Landham.)

 

Unsurprisingly, Central America is full of overeager loudmouthed revolutionaries with big bottles of tequila and a love for blonde gringo women. John Rhys-Davies pops in for a quick (Norris-requisite) 'Nam reminisce, and an almost uncomfortable philosophical discussion. Don’t get too carried away now, Firewalker gingerly walks the triple line between campy, dramatic, and crappy, without totally botching any of them, but narrative depth is not on the menu. The essential Norris staples are still there, but the big fella actually manages to squeeze out a little human emotion and warmth this time out.  But that might just be the secret of the firewater, er…Firewalker.

Still image credits from top to bottom are:
listal.com
theworstmovie.files.wordpress.com
masternorris.com

I borrowed this UK VHS sleeve from Cannon Rank

Rage of Honor

Rage of Honor

United States - 1987

Director - Gordon Hessler

Media Home Entertainment, 1987, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour, 32 minutes

Lone Runner

Lone Runner

Italy - 1986

Director - Ruggero Deodato

Media Home Entertainment, 1989, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour 23 minutes

Predating 1987's Swayze soaked sleeper Steel Dawn by a full year, Lone Runner confirms (because I saw it second of the two films) that after the apocalypse there will be a big demand for metrosexual hair styles. Of course that's entirely because the 80's were so damned awesome that the future, even if it's a post-apocalyptic one, will be just like the 80's. When society falls to its knees only heroes will have designer sculpted stubble.

Last time I found myself at the short end of the Deodato stick was back in 1968's Phenomenal, but Lone Runner offers a strong challenge for supremacy of the bummer pile. Fortunately, Deodato had the good sense to kindof remake it a year later, or at least re-imagine it in a far more entertaining way with 1987's Barabarians. I've seen my share of post-apocalypses, even Italian post-apocalypses (the best kind), and to be honest, most of them are pretty lame. Lone Runner's robed nuke-mutants and endless wandering can't be any worse than She Wolves of the Wasteland right?

I feel like I should give Lone Runner another chance just to be fair, but the memory is such a disappointment that I'm not sure I can muster it. Perhaps it's one of those films that is a drag the first time because you have such high hopes that the crash is all the more profound. Next time I'll be ready for you Lone Runner, next time your stupidity will be fun.

Dangerously Close

Dangerously Close

United States - 1986

Director - Albert Pyun

Media Home Entertainment, 1988, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour, 36 minutes

Either you love it or you don't really care enough to have a strong opinion. Dangerously Close is an early film from auteur Albert Pyun. Sandwiched between other 80's Pyun classics The Sword and the Sorcerer and Vicious Lips, Dangerously Close is surprisingly unembelished. In fact it's downright vanilla, following a lower class kid who goes to an elite school only to discover that the rich students are not particularly friendly towards the lower classes.

Numerous other films have covered similar territory, at LVA we've met Zombie High and Brotherhood of Justice, but its a story that comes directly from the pages of history. Ever since the inception of private property, the Haves have tried to keep out the Have-Nots. United Statesian cinema loves to tell the story of the poor kid who fought back and kept his dignity. If he won the girl that's because love is more valuable than riches. If he won the riches, it's because, darnit, this country is GREAT, and anybody can achieve anything if they set their minds to it. I would argue that it is the power of such myths that makes this country great. That films in which we sympathize with the po' folks keep getting made and out in the real world we continue to idolize the vampire elite.

Tintorera: Tiger Shark

Tintorera: Tiger Shark

UK/Mexico – 1977

Director – Rene Cardona Jr.

Media Home Entertainment, 1983, VHS

Run Time – 1 hour,31 minutes

Tintorera came to my attention because of the Hugo Stiglitz name and the raggedy old Media box in which I spotted it. It quickly became evident that despite more obvious on-screen distractions, there was a lot of subtext in the sex and violence that pervade the film, and I wanted to figure it out. Monsters pretty much always represent more complex issues than their own physical or spiritual presence. Animals as monsters, despite common connections to fears of science, can also embody some socially or personally repressed aberration (or both).

Tintorera: Tiger Shark centers around Steve (Hugo Stiglitz,) an affluent and bored middle aged bachelor vacationing in Mexico and his relationship with Gabriella (Susan George) and Miguel (Andres Garcia). Initially Steve chases women in the bars and beaches, but his interest is ambivalent at best. After an insincere argument with Miguel over one particular woman, he and his rival quickly become friends and begin chasing women together. Soon they meet Gabriella with whom they establish a Menage a Trois with some important rules; no attachment to her, and no other women. Much of Steve and Miguel’s remaining time together is spent interacting with one another while Gabriella, whose character remains largely undeveloped beyond her introductory lines, remains peripheral and safely within the prescribed confines of female sexual object. Her presence serves to superficially deny what is becoming increasingly readable as a journey of sexual discovery between our two brotagonists.

 

In the opening scenes while pursuing women, Steve is horrified by a local fisherman’s wanton killing of sharks, but as his relationship with Miguel quickly becomes closer (although never explicitly physical) his friend teaches him how to hunt sharks and he actually begins to enjoy it. Up to this point the violence meted out against sharks is largely implied, but when they start hunting together it is shown quite explicitly, and becomes rather difficult to watch in its gruesomeness. For both the narrative and the film itself, this graphic penetrating violence clearly implies sex between the two men and Steve’s increasing comfort with this new identity. The first time they take Gabriella on one of their hunting forays she is shocked when she witnesses what the men are doing, and as if on cue Miguel is eaten by a Tiger Shark. According to the established rules of the three way, Gabriella takes her leave and Steve is left alone again.

Until this point, social disapproval and condemnation of his sexuality have pushed Steve into bitterness and even self repression which, with Miguel’s tutelage he has overcome. Through their commission of the transgressive act, the sex as violence, the men kill their feelings of lonely ostracism and guilt. In the final scenes after his lover’s death Steve goes completely apeshit and begins clubbing and spearing every shark he sees in a desperate attempt to find the one that ate Miguel. When he does, he kills it at the cost of his own arm.

Violence committed by men has a long and multicultural filmic tradition as a metaphor for sex, so it is not really a surprise to find it surfacing in a Mexican Jaws knockoff. What is interesting are the connotations of that violence as meted out against sharks in Tintorera, and the fact that contrary to Hollywood’s imperialist tradition, it ends on a positive note with the outsider still outside and unrepentant. Although Miguel’s death truncates the possibility of an continued or overt relationship, and the brilliant white hospital room in which Steve wakes suggests a return to safe institutional normalcy (that is, the hetero-normative), Steve is undeniably and visibly marked by the experience. The look of satisfied serenity on his face leads me to believe that his guilt-demons have been finally exorcised.

 This post is part of Queer Film Blogathon hosted by Garbo Laughs

German poster from Grindhouse Database

Japanese art from Super Trash Cinema

"Cult" Classic? I hardly think so.

Three French VHS inserts, all from Agressions Animales

Ministry of Vengeance

Ministry of Vengeance

United States - 1989

Director - Peter Maris

Media Home Entertainment/Video Treasures, 1990, VHS

Starring - George Kennedy, Yaphet Kotto and John Schneider

Run Time - 1 hour, 36 minutes

Yet another painfully boring piece of junk from Peter Maris, the man behind the profoundly disappointing Land of Doom. John Schneider in case you didn't see fit to follow the link above was Bo Duke.

Ministry of Vengeance trailer courtesy Action Packed Cinema on Youtube.

Night of the Sharks

Night of the Sharks

Italy – 1988

Director – Tonino Ricci

Media Home Entertainment, 1990, VHS

Run Time – 1 hour, 27 minutes

Whether or not he intended it, writer/director Tonino Ricci managed to revive explicitly in Night of the Sharks many of the cinematic tropes that had become taboo yet implicit in popular Euro/American film by the time this was made. It immediately evokes an era when overt racial characterization was the norm, with ethnic characters that are so cartoonish that they seem to belong more in an American film of the 40’s or 50’s than of the late 80’s. It’s as if the practiced subtlety of Hollywood prejudice was profoundly lost in translation. Perhaps Ricci (who also co-wrote) thought that if he was just more blatant audiences would like it that much more. Because of a few moments of sloppy editing I get the impression this film was longer and gorier at one point but was cropped to retain what must have been perceived as the more appealing elements in a trimmed running time. At 87 minutes, a poor mix of action and intrigue steeped in crude racism barely warrants the title “Night of the Sharks”.

Life in the affluent U.S. is difficult. One must toil and toe the line to keep even a modicum of dignity and stability, and a lifetime of struggle rarely results in anything more than terminal averageness. That is why Latin America and the Caribbean are so appealing. It is untroubled by the modern complexities of civilization, making it desirable, nigh on imperative that Northerners take advantage. Domination isn’t a matter of intent then, it’s simply the natural state of things because those Others are in need of leadership and guidance. Of course, no matter how hard they try they can never quite achieve parity. It is a well worn assumption that the Global South is an impoverished and backwards fruit ripe for the gringo picking. If you want something or want to make something for yourself, Latin America is the place to go. It is escape and opportunity all in one. All of this is simply the backdrop however for Night of the Sharks' peculiar Italian take on the transnational cultural politics of the Americas.

The anonymous* locals in this case fit the bill perfectly. Lazy, shiftless men sit around waiting to fight gamble or drink, both at the slightest provocation. The local woman Juanita in particular is the idealized exotic subject, never quite acceptable in polite white society, but desirable and always, always available to satisfy the protagonists needs no questions asked. Dave (Treat Williams) likes to spend his time in a sleepy beach village drinking beer, sleeping with Juanita and laughing at the bufoonish antics of his buddy Paco (Antonio Fargas). Paco also serves as Dave’s foil, being both black and Latin (Panamanian to be exact) and dressed awkwardly to the nines in a baggy white suit. His is the quintessential “coon” character, cowardly, lazy and constantly pulling inept attempts at “refinement,” all which serve to reify Dave’s superior cultural status over and over again.


Dave’s reverie of self-satisfaction is soon wrecked by the arrival of a series of painful reminders of his former life. His brother James shows up from the States with a load of stolen diamonds and a bunch of hired goons trying to get them back. Shortly after James is killed leaving Dave with the diamonds, Dave's ex-wife Liz also shows up to to make things even more difficult. Liz repeatedly tries to deny Dave the expression of his masculine independence, something Juanita surely never did. However, she is reassuringly white and thus poses no threat. Juanita suddenly vanishes from the script, nowhere to be seen.

The remainder of the story are Dave's confrontations with these external reminders; quibbles with Liz, trying to keep Paco in line and one prolonged shootout with the goons sent to recover the diamonds. But the plot does actually feature a shark, the one-eyed “Cyclops” with whom Dave has a longstanding rivalry. Cyclops makes his presence felt in important if peripheral ways. Dave and Cyclops’ relationship is really more symbiotic than antagonistic to tell the truth because Cyclops never goes away and is never defeated. It is Dave’s lingering sense of identity and past, a perpetual threat of return to anonymity. Dave has tried to escape, and he won this battle, but no matter how easy his exile may be or how much he tries to justify it, it is always there waiting in the reef for another chance to bite him in the ass.

* NotS was filmed in the Dominican Republic

This gnarly screencap of Janet Agren's Liz getting recycled by Cyclops only lasts about .5 seconds on this VHS version so I think it was sloppily censored. I don't know what would make someone think that cheesy gunfights and Jim Crow should be left in instead. Maybe they knew their target audience better than I give them credit for.
\

 An amazing poster by prolific Italian artist Symeyoni, from Wrong Side of the Art

Poster that became the VHS box, this comes courtesy of Movie Poster Shop

. The artist's signature is "S. Dewey", but I cannot find anything else on or by this person. Any tips would be appreciated.