Savage Dawn

Title: Savage Dawn
Director:  Simon Nuchtern
Released: 1985
Starring: Lance Henriksen, George Kennedy, Karen Black, William Forsythe, Richard Lynch, Claudia Udy

Plot: Vietnam veteran turned drifter Stryker (Henriksen) finds himself defending a town from bikers gang The Savages when they decide to take over.

Review: Because there is nothing like a leaving soon message to help you clear out the watchlist as was the case here with director Simon Nuchtern whose work I’d previously encounter with the 3D slasher Silent Madness while here he delivers a by the numbers action flick. 

Lance Henriksen here heads up the cast largely made up of genre cinema favourites as he plays the war veteran and drifter Stryker a man of few words and a reluctance to involve himself in fighting even when a band of bikers take over the town while he’s visiting is war buddy Tick (Kennedy). This is one of the big issues for the film as it means that while we want to see Stryker tooling up to wage war on the biker gang “The Savages” especially when they break into the national guard armoury and get their hands on a tank amongst some choice military firepower. Instead the gang are largely left to cause havok in the town outside of the occasional punch up. Add to the fact that Stryker hardly talks and the problems only continue to be added to the film. 

William Forsythe plays the big bad of the film as the leader of the Savages and cares little for anything other than causing chaos in the town and terrorising the locals of the this small California desert town. His fellow bikers meanwhile are a rag tag band of biker thugs, hair metal band rejects and seemingly a bunch of dancers the production found to be in the film. None of them it seems are overly confident on the bikes especially when you look at the speed they ride around at it would be quicker to walk than get a ride off any of these guys. This gets especially comedic when it comes to the action scenes with bikers being knocked of their barely rolling rides. 

The town residents are nonetheless an eclectic group with the town having hit hard times when the gold dried up the main draw of the town seems to come from the deputy sheriff holding bare knuckle fighting competitions while being followed by his own dwarf sidekick, while Richard Lynch plays the town priest who easily forgets his commitment to the church whenever there’s a pretty young girl nearby and at one point even hooks up one of the biker girls known as Mouth Service. Karen Black meanwhile is quick to turn her back on the town to run off with the bikers believing it has to be a better life than the one she has in the town.

Suffering from a plodding script were nothing really happens until the final 40 mins and even then the action is so pedestrian and mishandled it’s hard to really get excited about anything that is happening even with the bikers having access to a tank you would think that the film could find an exciting set piece to craft but it never happens and even when the town take the fight in their own hands it never really manages to grab you no doubt because you wondering if this is the moment that Styker actually does something!

While I can accept a film being bad, especially with the cast assembled here there is the hope that it might scrape by as passible entertainment but when you film becomes a bore to sit the problems really begin. Yes there are certainly elements which should have been played better here but the script is so plodding it makes it hard to care about any of it.

Nam Angels

Title: Nam Angels
Director: Cirio H. Santiago
Released: 1989
Starring: Vernon Wells, Rick Dean, Mark Venturini, Kevin A. Duffis, Jeff Griffith, Romy Diaz, Ken Metcalfe, Brad Johnson

Plot: Lt. Calhoun (Johnson) leads a group of Hells Angels on a rescue mission to free members of his platoon captured by Chard (Wells) and his tribe of followers who are also protecting the gold hidden in the valley.

Review: A real beer and pizza romp this Vietnam set actioner I stumbled into this fim thinking it was Jack Starrett’s 1970 Bikers in Vietnam movie The Losers which Tarantino used as the motorcycle movie Butch’s girlfriend is watching in Pulp Fiction. A film was also released under the title Nam Angels….real helpful right. Still while it might not have been the right movie the concept was certainly enough to keep me intreged to see how it turned out. Surprisingly while this plot might sound far fetched during the Vietnam war the leader of the Hell’s Angels Sonny Barger offer the use of the Hell’s Angels as a guerilla commando unit to President Lyndon B. Johnson who no doubt knowing full well what a bad idea this was declined the offer.

Playing similar in many ways to Kelly’s Heroes as a ragbag team set out with the prospect of gold which seemingly is all these bikers need to inspire them to join Lt. Calhoun on this potential suicide mission in the final days of the Vietnam war. Still bailed out by Calhoun after a bar brawl with a bunch of special forces guys sees them all locked up, this apparently being all it takes to convince him they are the right guys for the job.

Trading in their Harley’s for Yamaha’s and bringing onto the team the no-nonsense jive talking mechanic Hickman whose first interaction with Calhoun has him calling him both a cracker and redneck and these two are friends! Still it’s really Hickman whose the lynchpin of the team providing the neutral ground between Calhoun and his biker recruits as even though Calhoun is permanently laid back the fact he’s in uniform is all it takes for the bikers to constantly push back against his orders.

Despite the interesting setup the film soon falls into heavy repetition of the group riding to a location, engaging in a uninspired action scene before moving onto the next location and sure while the first few shoot outs are fun, the fact that nothing especially memorable is happening during them adds to the tedium fast.

As the villain of the piece Vernon Wells as Chard is actually pretty decent if impossible to view as anything but a Col. Kurtz knock off (with a questionable haircut) what with his tribe viewing him like a god more than happy to despatch anyone who stumbles into their valley be they part of the American or Viet Cong forces, its clear no one is going to get hold of their gold. How he came to be there is never revealed while his weird blend of French and Australian accents is certainly a unique if we can assume unintended touch. However compared to his numerous other villainous roles we’ve seen him memorably playing over the years this is kind of a let down and you kind of wish that he’d been left to bring Brando levels of madness to the film than just being another generic villain.

A fun fact though is that when the film was released Roger Corman who was handling the distribution for the states was forced to pay for copyright infringement to the Hell’s Angels for the unauthorised use of thier trademarked insignia which according to Beverly Gray’s book “Roger Corman: An Unauthorised Life” had tarnised thier reputation.

Honestly though while this movie did nothing for myself I can see it having it’s fans though I would say it’s the kind of movie best watched with friends who you can rift on it with which no doubt will help with the monotomy of the action scenes but as disposable fun there are worst things you could be watching.