American Rampage (1989)

American Rampage (1989)- * * *1\2

Directed by: David DeCoteau

Starring: Kary Jane, Thomas Elliott, B.J. Gates, Otis T. Longhorn, John T. Bone, Troy Donahue, Jasae and Linnea Quigley

Samantha Rork (Jane) is an L.A. vice cop who shoots first and asks questions later. She's teamed up with many different partners, among whom are Ryan Hayes (Elliott) and a certain man named Bart (Gates), but the important thing to know is that she really wants to bring down the drug pushers, pornographers, and other criminal lowlife scum of the city. Because this takes a toll on her mental state, she has therapy sessions with Police Psychiatrist (Donahue). He's so integral to her life, he doesn't have a name. Eventually she finds her way to the mansion of the main drug kingpin and yet another shootout ensues. Is Sam Rork going on a classic AMERICAN RAMPAGE?



We really loved American Rampage. It's completely fun from start to finish, in a Samurai Cop (1991), Death Flash (1986), or Savage Harbor (1987) kind of way. It's silly, it's utterly ridiculous, and it's totally 80's. In other words...awesome. The soundtrack is washed in synthesizers, and there's a scene at a mall (apparently the South Bay Mall somewhere in Southern California) where the synths blast, and director DeCoteau has a brief cameo. Hayes, one of Sam's many partners on the police force, is perhaps the only cop in recent memory to wear a stonewashed jacket with the collar up. Most of the male characters in the film have some form of mullet, making the Mullet Per Minute (or MPM) quotient higher here than in any other movie in memory.

Porn purveyor John T. Bone plays - you guessed it - a pornographer. His name in the film is Mike Raisin. Many other characters have silly names like that. All of the characters and their motivations are spelled out during a lengthy slide show sequence towards the beginning of the film. It's a cheat sheet of sorts for the goings-on of American Rampage. Fan favorite Linnea Quigley plays a drug courier who takes a shower and then dies. There is a ton of hilariously gratuitous nudity, including from fellow fan favorite Michelle Bauer, and a woman named Jasae, who appeared in Road House (1989). 

It all starts out with the time-honored convenience store shootout, where many bottles of New York Seltzer meet their demise. And not just New York Seltzer, but also Zeltzer Seltzer. Lots of carbonated water goes flat in this sequence. This sets the tone for all the fun to be had throughout the rest of the film. Of course, there is a classic WYC (White Yelling Chief) that Sam and her partners have to contend with. It's a shame that Kary Jane (credited as only Kary J. on the film, and many of the other actors only did initials or pseudonyms as well) did only this movie. She could have been a rival to Brigitte Nielsen at the time.



While American Rampage received a U.S. DVD release back in 1998 on the low-budget Simitar label, thankfully, Massacre Video has now rescued the film and released it on Blu-ray. Not only did they pair it with the Dan Haggerty film Danger USA (1989), but there is a commentary track by DeCoteau and producer Raj Mehrotra. Also included is a deleted scene that features Linnea Quigley that previously was only available on the French VHS release.



While you can't hear Mehrotra too well on the commentary track, DeCoteau does most of the talking anyway, and he repeatedly mentions PM and AIP productions as his contemporaries at the time. He also namechecks Amir Shervan and Hollywood Cop (1987). He even mentions that a stuntman who worked on American Rampage later died doing a stunt on a PM film, but he doesn't mention their name. There are numerous instances where DeCoteau and Mehrotra crack up laughing during the track. They do mention that the genesis for the film was that foreign markets want "American guns, American cars, American cops, and American girls". Hence, the name American Rampage.



That formula does makes sense, if you look at how many movies were released at the time with the word "American" in them, which we talked about on one of our podcasts. This even goes to low-budget foreign productions like American Hunter (1989). As long as people in other countries view America as the zany universe that American Rampage takes place in, I'm okay with that. I wish we lived in a world where Sam Rork always was there for us and always had our back.

For a thoroughly enjoyable and mirth-filled night of entertainment, it's hard to beat American Rampage. It has a rough-hewn homemade charm that’s easy to love. The Blu-ray is a standout, and keeping in mind that we have nothing to do with Massacre Video and they probably don't even know we exist, we absolutely recommend purchasing their American Rampage/Danger USA release. You won't regret it.

Comeuppance Review by: Brett and Ty 

Savage Streets (1984)

Savage Streets (1984)- * * * *

Directed by: Danny Steinmann

Starring: Linda Blair, Robert Dryer, Linnea Quigley, Sal Landi, Rebecca Perle, Brian Frishman, and John Vernon













Brenda (Blair) is a tough, streetwise chick who loves nothing more than hanging out on the streets of Hollywood with her group of friends named The Satins (remember when friends used to do that?) - but her one soft spot is for her deaf/mute sister, Heather (Quigley). 

Trouble arises when a group of no-good street toughs called The Scars, who do nothing but annoy and harass everyone, cross paths with The Satins. Led by the sinister Jake (Dryer), he and his boys continually up the ante, until they go WAY too far, and Brenda, who was already on the edge and getting into catfights at school with the cheerleader Cindy (Perle), snaps and begins wearing black fingerless gloves. Suspended from school by Principal Underwood (Vernon), she is free to use her time to get her revenge against The Scars. Will she complete her mission? Find out today!

This movie is so, so great. Imagine if Foxes (1980) was an exploitative revenge movie. The awesomeness of the 80’s is cranked to 11, and the film seemingly makes no apologies for its unabashed, for lack of a better word, raunch. To the delight of viewers, political correctness is light years away, and everything from the dialogue on down has a wickedly entertaining power that is impossible to resist.  

Linda Blair has absolutely never been better - her level of sassiness is off the charts, and her exchanges with just about everybody give her some great lines - but her best on-screen partner is John Vernon, and their scenes together are priceless.

The fashions not just the Satins, but everyone wears are mind-boggling, and the music is perfect, especially the songs by John Farnham. You thought the songs he did for Rad (1986) were great, just check these out. Someone needs to do a CD reissue stat.  Whoever created the signs in the movie truly outdid themselves - “Doctors Hospital” and at the club MX there is a sign on the wall that simply reads “Rock and Roll”. You truly cannot beat that. 

Outside of a record store there are posters for Kiss, Def Leppard and Motley Crue, and it wouldn’t be a high school-set movie without a 42-year old student, this time it’s Cindy’s boyfriend Wes (Frishman). Or at least that’s how it seems.

We really have nothing negative to say about Savage Streets. If you love awesome things and fun times, you will love it. Not to mention 80’s nostalgia. The movie truly shows why revenge movies are among our favorites. It delivers exactly what you want, and then some. If there are any haters out there, don’t listen to them. Savage Streets is an out-and-out winner!

Comeuppance Review by: Brett and Ty

Also check out a write-up from our buddy, The Video Vacuum! 

Young Warriors (1983)

Young Warriors (1983)-* *

Directed by: Lawrence D. Foldes

Starring: James Van Patten, Ernest Borgnine, Linnea Quigley, Richard Roundtree, Mike Norris, Dick Shawn, Lynda Day George, and Casper The Wonder Dog













Kevin Carrigan (Van Patten) is a recent graduate of Malibu High and now is studying animation at Pacific Coast College. All he really wants to do is party down, drink beer, invite babes over to his Phi Delta Tai frat house, engage in quasi-homosexual frat initiations, and did we mention he also just wants to party down? His buddies Fred (Norris), Scott (Tom Reilly), and Jorge (John Alden) are all in on the carefree fun. But when a mysterious gang of bikers rapes and kills Kevin's sister Tiffany (April Dawn), Kevin changes. He realizes there's more to life than keggers and pranks, and he becomes sullen, distant and just plain weird.

Tired of what he sees as too much police incompetence, signified by his own cop father, Lt. Bob Carrigan (Borgnine) and his partner Sgt. John Austin (Roundtree), these former frat-house knuckleheads go out on their own in a jeep with their beloved dog Butch (Casper the Wonder Dog) and try to solve the mystery of his sister's assault. But Kevin and his cronies get deeper and deeper into the seedy underbelly of the city - and its culture of extreme violence - and people like Kevin's mother Beverly (Day George), his girlfriend Lucy (Anne Lockhart) and his professor Hoover (Shawn) - worry Kevin has lost the plot, as well as his mind. Will Kevin's newfound obsession with violence consume him and everything he loves?

In this pickup from Cannon, which infamously combines the 80's teen sex romp and violent revenge genres, we see a major flaw: the movie, despite all the action and shooting and such that we see, actually has an unpleasant, anti-revenge motif. Obviously director/co-writer Foldes didn't realize what audience he was making this film for. You can't make a relatively entertaining, if misguided and overlong, exploitation film catering to drive-ins and hounds of that genre, and then turn around and say "violence and revenge is wrong; don't do it". That's really lame and hypocritical. Just blow up the bad guys with a missile launcher and save your whiny treatises for your shrink (i.e., make a different, less confused, movie).

Another flaw is that our "heroes" are unlikable and you don't care about their plight. The whole first half of the movie is carefully setting up our protagonists as frat-boy jerks. Would it have been so very hard to NOT have done that? So when Kevin flips out and becomes addicted to going out and "fighting crime", the transition isn't as dramatic as it could have been. You know he's really out of it when he wears his bandanna around in daily life. Also we don't know anything about the bad guys or even who they are. They are not established at all. So we don't really even know who Kevin and his buddies are fighting, which detracts from the conflict.

So we have a rockin' title song by Lennie Gale, and the film is dedicated to legendary director King Vidor. I'm sure he's thrilled about that. For some reason, Kevin's father is elderly, and Dick Shawn plays the college professor Kevin talks to, where we get the annoying comment on violence the film puts out there. The theme "violence destroys us all" is just irritating for this type of film. But in the plus column we have Casper the Wonder Dog as Butch. He wears sunglasses and a hat, and, like we've seen so many times before (Killpoint, 1984, and Fist Fighter, 1989) come immediately to mind), he steals the movie. 

Here's what Young Warriors SHOULD have been: 1. Kevin and his friends are set up as nice, normal kids 2. The bad guys are established 3. They rape/kill Kevin's sister 4. Kevin and his friends become vigilantes 5. The bad guys kill/injure Kevin and his friends 5. Borgnine and Roundtree go rogue and get revenge for the deaths/injuries to their friends and family, and (OPTIONAL) 6. Ernest Borgnine shoots a missile launcher.
THAT'S IT! If that was the movie, Young Warriors would be a classic for the ages. As it stands, we have a deeply flawed, but still worthwhile watch.

Released in a big-box VHS in the U.S., for all its foibles, there's still some meat on the bone for 80's obsessives to enjoy with Young Warriors.

Comeuppance Review by: Brett and Ty