lasthunter

This is without a doubt the most entertaining and downright grimy feeling Vietnam war movie I've seen in a while. It begins in a Saigon whorehouse early in 1973. David Warbeck (best remembered from The Beyond) and a couple of his buddies are enjoying a little R&R at the house of ill repute when one of them totally wigs out after too much combat/drugs and pulls a Colt .45 on Warbeck and the other guy. He blows the other guys brains out , and points the gun at Warbeck before reconsidering and turning it on himself.

This is one of the most impressive looking suicides ever committed on celluloid. The guy jams the gun in his mouth , fires, and we see red flame and smoke spew from his open mouth. I have no idea how they did it, but you can bet the actor had to be treated for burns afterward. After all this , Warbeck is sent on a mission to destroy a propaganda spouting V.C. radio tower deep in enemy territory. Instead of being dropped in a nice safe clearing , the chopper drops him in the centre of a very deep river. Old Dave loses most of his gear and nearly drowns.

He then manages to rendevous with the rest of the team , which consists of Washington (Tony King , who ironically was also called Washington in Raiders of Atlantis) , a hagged looking Tisa Farrow , the black guy out of Demons, and a few faceless cannon fodder commandos. Tisa is a journalist who's covering this covert mission for some reason or another. The team moves on , finding a rotting airman with his guts spilled out all over the ground. After marching on for a while , they find a U.S. bunker under siege from Charlie.

When they enter the bunker , they find that the inmates are running the asylum. The Major in charge is sane , but everyone else is stark raving mad (this is established via large doses of overacting). Led by none other than Massimo Vanni (The New Barbarians) , some of the shellshocked troops try to rape Tisa Farrow. The Major catches them just in time.... but instead of a court martial , or on the spot execution , he tells Massimo to go get him a coconut.

Here's where things get really ridiculous. Massimo throws on Bart Simpson's lucky red hat , silly Benny Hill style music begins , and he runs a bizarre steeple chase into no mans land to the nearest coconut tree. Bombs and mortars are going off all around , and every V.C. sniper in the area is taking potshots at him. He loses his lucky red hat , but shows us why he's the consumate stuntman/actor of Italian filmmaking , returning with the coconut in record time.

The hijinx and comic relief dont last too long though... the Viet Cong infiltrate the bunker , and the commandos are forced to push on to their objective. The action gets a lot more frequent , as does the gore. We're treated to head shots , disembowellings , guys being eaten alive by rats , and amputations before Warbeck reaches his goal. Margrit Evelyn Newton of Night of the Zombies fame even shows up , making this almost an 'Italian Zombie flick' reunion movie.

I was surprised at the amount of gore to be found in what I thought would be a basic potboiler action film. It almost had the feel of a cannibal movie minus the animal cruelty. It's always good to see a solid ensemble of entertaining actors in a low budget Italian movie, especially when someone like Massimo Vanni or the guy from Demons (though unfortunately without his hilariously overdubbed voice from that movie) pops up from nowhere. This was a yin and yang style movie. Although a lot of ridiculous things happened, it did have an extremely gritty and realistic feel which a lot of big budget directors have failed to deliver in films about the conflict. This movie's pretty hard to track down. But if you do see a copy in your local video store you should definitely check it out. It's one of those great easy to get into exploitation films , and they won't make a war movie as gory as this one ever again.