Bullies

A mother, son and new stepdad move from the big city to a rural area in the shadow of the Rockies in the Great Northwest (Janet-Laine Green, Jonathan Crombie and Stephen Hunter). The teen meets an intriguing lass (Olivia d'Abo), but she's a member of a hostile moonshining family that grossly bullies the citizenry of the area. Dehl Berti is on hand as an American Indian who befriends the kid.

"Bullies" (1986) is curiously listed as a horror flick in some sources, but it's not; it's a hillbilly romance mixed with crime drama/thriller. The confusion is likely due to it being directed by Paul Lynch, known for "Prom Night" (1980) and "Humongous" (1982), plus the fact that there is some shocking gore for back then in the last half-hour. The movie is actually a meshing of the basic plot of "The Karate Kid" (1984) with the setting of "I Walk the Line" (1970) and "First Blood" (1982), along with the one-man-army element of the latter.

The first two acts are a really good set-up despite the overdone villainy of the antagonists (I mean these guys are just frothing at the mouth with ee-vil). It smacks of a real-life situation and you care about the protagonists while loathing the arrogant intimidators. At around the hour-mark, however, there's some awkward editing and the story switches to an over-the-top action flick while inexplicably forsaking a key character. It's as if the writers never heard the proverb "Less is more."

Still, if you can roll with these issues there's enough good here to make "Bullies" worthwhile for those interested. For instance, the relationship of the boy and Will Crow, some quality life-lessons, the teen romance and Olivia d'Abo's fun swimming scene.

The film runs about 1 hour, 30 minutes, and was shot in Marysville & Kimberly, British Columbia, which are located an eight-hour drive east of Vancouver in the Canadian Rockies of southeast BC, as well as Thunder Hill Provincial Park 40 miles north of there.

GRADE: B-

Around the same time as Sean Cunningham's similar in vein "The New Kids", came director Paul Lynch (the original "Prom Night", ''Humongous'' and ''Cross Country'' to his name) with his Canadian produced mean-spirited, brutal and intense small rural town revenge / vigilante thriller. Quite grippingly bold, dangerously impulsive and competently made, making it just as good if not better than Cunningham's feature. It won't win any awards for its simple, routine plot, but it's pulled off with such exploding ticker and vigorous verve in really exploiting its primitive thirst for violence and control. There's no holding back, but what really makes this one work are the villains of the piece. The Cullen family (well the father and three sons) are a really hateful bunch of intimidating psychos that will always get their own way, until the city folks the Morris family arrive on the scene. While passive at first to the Cullen's strangle hold over the town, the Morris' soon begin to question the Cullen's on-going harassment until one unpleasantly scarring incident occurs that really tips the once mild-mannered father over the edge and the fear is turned around for a bloody confrontation. This is when it opens up to a thrilling last half, which is excitingly electrifying and dark. Bill Croft crafts a dominating presence as the father Ben Cullen. Bernie Coulson, Adrien Dorval and William Nunn are solid as sadistically nutty sons. Then you have the drop dead gorgeous Olivia d'Abo as the unlucky sister, who numerously finds herself at the wrong side of her father and brother's aggression. The Morris' are likeably played by Stephen Hunter (who mightily grows in the role), Janet-Laine Green and Jonathan Crombie as the tough, determined lad Matt. Dehl Berti is appealingly good as somewhat a mentor figure for Crombie's character. Especially those talks of the spiritual side of his people and you can't go pass the spearing skills he taught him that did come in rather handy outside of just fishing. The relationship and lessons formed between the characters (mainly between Crombie and Berti and Crombie and Hunter) might be old-hat, but remain thoughtful in its character drawings to make the gruelling situations even more stirring. It's emotionally driven by its characters, which are helped by the convincing performances when everything erupts. Lynch's grounded style keeps it edgy and well-paced in a technically sound production, blending the dynamics of its atmospheric score and picturesque mountainous backdrop. The latter having many stunning background shots.

A family (A teenage boy, his mother and a stepdad), sick of city life, decides to move to the mountains to get away from it all and have a fresh start. However, their idyll is shattered by three brothers and their domineering father, who don't take kindly to newcomers on their patch. While having objects thrown through their window and being threatened in the street is just the start, the youth decides to make things even worse by having a relationship with the terrible trio's sister. With the law unwilling to do anything about it and the violence escalating rapidly, the lad decides to take matters into his own hands..

Veering wildly between hilarity and nastiness, this is one of the oddest exploitation movies ever made. At first, you can have a chuckle at some of the hammy acting and ludicrous dialogue given to the characters, especially the overwrought bad guys. But then, you get completely unnecessary scenes like a mother being raped while her son is forced to watch, or the thug's sister getting herself beaten up by her siblings for daring to sleep with our young hero. In fact, the whole view of women in the movie, which seems to be that they're pathetic creatures who scream a lot and can't defend themselves, is pretty despicable. But of course, there's the obligatory nude scene, which this time involves a young lady diving into a pool bra-less under a very thin T-shirt. Who cares about plot consistency when you have some willing young starlets ready to shed her togs. Right?!

The climax centres on the teenager, who up until now hasn't been able to sneeze without jumping, suddenly morphing into a Rambo clone and blowing off his assailants left, right and centre to save his stepfather who is being held hostage by the gang. It's completely implausible but hey, so is everything else in this film.. so at least you can't accuse it of not being consistent. So, rather than attempting to find logic in a place where the word doesn't exist, check out the IMDb pages for Janet Laine Green, Dehl Berti, Stephen Hunter, Jonathan Crombie.. etc. Notice a pattern emerging here? Their careers all hit dead ends. Why? Sit through this, and all will become clear. Remember kids, if you want to get ahead in this business, hire a decent agent and ALWAYS read the scripts they offer you. Please.. 3/10

Olivia D'Abo in a wet T-shirt is the only thing this movie has going for it. Other than that, this Canadian production about a man taking out a vicious band of hillbillies is not worth anybody's time. The writing is bad, the acting is poor and the direction is sub-standard.

Criminally unsung British horror movie maverick Paul 'Prom Night' Lynch's super intense backwoods nightmare is not only blessed with another righteous Paul Zaza soundtrack and the deliciously luminous presence of Olivia D'Abo but is an usually bleak and mean-spirited redneck head-wrecker about the suburbanite Morris family moving to a rather isolated ski-resort town and instead of enjoying a little respite from the stresses of the big bad city only to discover the country can present a uniquely unpleasant threat all of its own. Very soon all the members of the Morris family have a series of increasingly violent confrontations with wealthy, profoundly inhospitable land owners The Cullens, a despotic clan of thugs who run the town like it was their own personal fiefdom. The director does a bravura job of raising the volatility of his bellicose 'Bullies' to a feverish pitch of intensity, delivering a truly exhilarating and breathlessly satisfying, if not to mention highly combustible conclusion!

While the film is far from unpredictable there is an undeniable primal viscerality to Lynch's pulse-pounding filmmaking which maintains rigorous interest throughout, cannily replacing originality with unleavened emotional force. It must be added that youngsters Jonathan Crombie and Olivia D'Abo truly make a delightful pair of greatly embattled lovers. Great stuff! Blu-ray Please!!!!