Cocaine Wars

Hilariously awful Rambo knock-off has John Schneider, The Dukes of Hazzard's Bo Luke himself, as Miami DEA agent Cliff Adams, out to take down a South American drug kingpin. The story is completely ridiculous and involves Schneider's reporter girlfriend getting kidnapped in an attempt to blackmail Cliff into killing the president, but no one is really going to watch this movie because you actually thought it would be good, right? "Cocaine Wars" is an absolute 80s cheese fest in the best sort of way. Cheesy music, a cheesy star, and a cheesy ripped-from-the-headlines story about scary drugs. Produced by Roger Corman's New Horizons, that should be a major tip-off for that this would be a silly action flick (that or the fact that Rotten Tomatoes has no critic or audience score this movie because it's so low budget and/or so forgotten). Venerable Hollywood character actor Royal Dano does appear in the film, but the only reason to watch this film is for so-bad-it's-good 80s nostalgia purposes.

"A Lone American Hero Challenges The Might Of A Vicious Drug Empire!" Cliff Adams (Schneider) is an American in South America. He works for drug super-kingpin Reyes (Luppi) and his partner General Lujan (Rodolfo Ranni) as their personal pilot and assistant. However, Cliff is a DEA agent working hard, undercover, to bust Reyes' organization. When Marcelo Villalba (John Vitali), a revolutionary, "power to the people"-type politician starts gaining some political momentum, Reyes gets worried, because Villalba is anti-drug. Reyes asks Cliff to kill Villalba. This unleashes a chain of events that sweeps up Cliff and his love interest/reporter Janet (Witt) in the violence. Will Cliff be able to protect Janet, Villalba, and their friend Bailey (Dano) from the thugs of Reyes? Will Reyes succeed in his nefarious drug-running plans? And who are those strange German characters? "Cocaine Wars" somehow manages to be pretty silly, yet unmemorable. Odds are, you will forget this movie very shortly after watching it. Maybe it's the unclear, disjointed way the plot rolls out, or some of the stilted dialogue and wacky dubbing (things that normally make these types of movies worth watching), but there it is. The unshaven John Schneider, who, here at least, is best described as "flatly charismatic", does a competent job as Cliff. His hirsute status gives him a doglike appearance, perhaps a golden retriever. I mean this in the best possible way, of course. Luckily, his mustache saves the movie.

There are the standard car chases and shooting-based action scenes, and the movie would definitely have been remiss in denying Schneider the all-important torture scene. There are some parallels to the Peter Fonda movie Fatal Mission (1990), as well as The Dogs of War (1980) and The Expendables (2010). The main music cue is very similar to the opening notes of Beverly Hills 90210. You think Schneider, after running people off cliffs and such, will at any moment walk into the Peach Pit.

Cocaine Wars is a very 80's subject, and this Roger Corman production, released on the great Media label, perhaps could have been executed better. But at 82 minutes, you can't really go wrong.

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This film begins with a pilot named "Cliff Adams" (John Schneider) landing his small airplane onto a makeshift runway near a plantation in South America which is owned by a drug lord by the name of "Gonzolo Reyes" (Ferderico Luppi). It's during this time that his colleague flying with him is killed in cold blood because he was suspected of skimming off some of the proceeds. Needless to say, this displeases Cliff quite a bit because he knew that his friend had been set up. From that point on, however, Cliff becomes a target by others within this criminal organization due in large part because of his attitude and the fact that he knows too much about those within the business. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that films like "First Blood" and "Missing in Action" were quite popular during this time period and this fact inevitably resulted in a plethora of copycats-with this particular picture being one of them. Unfortunately, it wasn't one of the better ones as it suffered from poor acting, a bad script and more than a few unrealistic action scenes. In short, I didn't find it that appealing and have rated it accordingly. Below average.

It's very rare, someone returns a video the same day they hired it. Such was the case with this cheapie Italian effort I hired back in 1987. The guy at the video store, cautioned me about it, saying "It was sick". Really, he should of told me straight out, "It's pretty crap". Dea undercover cop, Schneider (one of he Hazzard boys, if you can remember) stars in this junk, which I'm sure spent it's weeks, unwanted on the video shelf. At it's start, he witnesses he's friend, double crossed, also undercover, being slain at the hands of the merciless drug lord, Regis. An old flame, a female journalist, pops up in Schneider's life, after an attempt is made on his, where the other guy goes flying through the window of this seedy bar. The owner, Cliff's friend, who's been handed the assailant's weapon, tells buddy Schneider, later, "Cliff, you keep giving me these guns", which he does. He suggests turning the first gun into a lamp, the second into a family air loom. Schneider doesn't really seems phased about people trying to kill him. He acts pretty cool in fact. He ups the stakes too. Regis, before was screwing him over with money and a plane, after Schneider refused to kill a zealous anti/drug government official, trying to hit hard his message of abolishing the drug empire. Now Schneider starts screwing with Regis, where in turn, more attempts are made on his life. The same official-a friend of Schneider's girl team up together to bring down this bastard. Schneider is funny and so cool in some of his remarks, he sends out to his executors. A bit of sick violence, that being the torture/interrogation scene where electrodes are clipped to his nipples, where the amps are pumped up, each time his torturers don't get a proper answer. The highpoint of the Italian sleaze effort movie is the bad's guys face being shoved into a excess of cocaine. He snorts so much of it, as when he tries to stagger around, he eventually collapses, just proving, if you mess with cocaine, the results can be fatal. This movie is a half baked product. It's made as if it was done in a needed rush. Typical exploitation film, I was in a hurry for it to finish. Some viewers may take to throwing their head into a mountain of cocaine, after watching this crap. Given that said, though, Schneider does make it watchable.

The title and accompanying art work don't hold out much promise but this is a competent piece of film-making with several touches which lift it ever so slightly above the mediocre. However, the material is too routine and predictable to have much impact and its lack of distinction may have helped put an end to John Schneider's movie career. This is unfortunate since Schneider had both youth and size at this point and could possibly have competed with Schwarzenegger, Van Damme, and Chuck Norris for leads in action movies. (Assuming he got a better haircut.)

Schneider plays a man at odds with a South American drug lord and in one scene Schneider is captured and tortured for information by the drug lord's henchmen. He's stripped of his shirt, thus allowing him to show off an impressive but not over-muscled physique, and bound spreadeagled-style. Here, as is common throughout the movie, there's a small but imaginative touch that elevates the otherwise unexceptional proceedings.

As expected, Schneider is forced to endure electroshocks since electricity is almost always the torture of choice in these movies. And, as expected, his pants are left on, thus putting off-limits, in a gentlemanly sort of way, the very parts of his body most vulnerable to electric shocks! This means the sadistic henchman with the cattle-prod restricts himself just to shocks above his victim's waist. (Yes, there's the usual close-up of the tip of the prod being held to one of Schneider's sweaty nipples.)

But the sequence ends with a distinctive flair. Black-gloved hands pry apart Schneider's lips and we see the prod being roughly inserted into his mouth. Now, sticking something into the mouth of a man you're trying to make "talk" may not be very logical, but it gives the scene a sexual connotation that is often missing in these sequences, and it imparts to even a jaded audience the sort of chill that makes them pause and think: "Now, that must REALLY hurt."

Kathryn Witt, the indispensable "girlfriend," makes the most of trite material.