Operation Warzone

My review was written in July 1990 after watching the movie on AIP video cassette.

This made-for-video feature re-fights the Vietnam War with the novelty of trying to win this time. It's not much but a diversion for action fans.

The late Joe Spinell phones in his role as a general at the Pentagon who's spearheading an illegal arms shipment. "General" is also the codename for a guy who has key information about the arms.

The heroes consist of army intelligence officers and a gung-ho sergeant who quite improbably get the info and use the arms in a major offensive in an attempt to win the war. What this has to do with historical reality is mainly wishful thinking.

AIP regulars Fritz Matthews (who also produced) and William Zipp are okay in the heroics department. California-lensed film lacks any credible atmosphere. Most confusing element is the opening battle (prior to any exposition) between heroes and Hispanic actors portraying Viet Cong.

My father is notorious for picking out terrible movies from the bargain bin at the rental store. My friends and I like to go through the stuff he's hand-chosen and give it a watch just for laughs.

This movie was one of those.

But we didn't get normal laughs out of it, oh no. They were roaring laughs of incredulity and surprise. One thing we kept thinking was "how does this movie exist?" One friend made an excellent point: it's only considered a film because it's BEEN filmed. It carries no natural facets of film-making...there's completely unnecessary twists (and I mean UNNECESSARY) and scenes that go on for far too long (think 5 minute fist fights where both opponents are tired, but just don't stop until they both fall over), and you can't tell it's supposed to be in Vietnam until they tell you it's Vietnam. The Vietnamese looked like a couple Philippino guys.

The story is that this war exists solely for financial gain. They maintain that this is a complex storyline on the back of the case, but I see no signs of this. It's just vaguely explained in some scene that I was too busy laughing about. And while we're on the subject of accurate warfare, let's talk about the fact that there's hand-to-hand combat way too often, there's INTRIGUE (or attempts at it, anyways), and weird chase scenes that smack of a 30's silent film. The tagline is "they told 'em war was hell...they were right!" This leads me to believe they actually thought this to be an accurate representation of war. It's almost an appalling concept.

There was a point at which I was actually trying to figure out if this was an elaborate joke that one man made on his spare time, or that the movie was supposed to be a comedy but it was too subtle. It was at this point that there was a dramatic scene with explosives and running, but the music sounded exactly like - I swear to god - an aerobics video from 1986. The music literally never matched the scene it was trying to help along. And it was directly before this that some unexplained Australian character came along and said "cut through the dingo s***!"

Maybe his character had been explained earlier, and I was too busy laughing to notice.

I'm positive this movie is one of two things: an ingenious comedy, or probably the worst movie I've ever seen.

(1989) Operation War Zone WAR

Super duper low budget co-written and directed by David A. Prior meant to be a serious war film, about corruption happening among people working for the pentagon, for the intentions of continuing the war efforts happening in Vietnam, so that money can be made for certain high official people.

All this is, is adults playing soldiers on a national park or on someone's back yard- you can decide, using toy guns with sparks coming out and fireworks that are supposed to be grenades with sound effects too. Theirs also a lot of guys wearing rented green outfits who're supposed to be chased running through trails, beautiful enough than some of the dangerous ones I've been through in terms of the woods. One might get a big chuckle out of watching this, that was supposed to be serious....and I almost said comedy, but I don't find any of this funny except a waste of time!. The only thing I got out of this was that it was reminiscent of my old days when I was a child and played with toy guns against other kids around the neighborhood, It sure brought back some memories. This one gets a big fat ZERO!!

This AIP war movie is a genre for which I have a very simplistic method of rating: I count the number of muzzle flashes displayed in it, and note something about their beauty. I do not expect realism, good acting, proper tactics, or even much plot. I sit back, watch the action, and enjoy myself. I do a lot of laughing, but that's what I expect and I get a good time out of it.

As for details, this film had 884 muzzle flashes, which makes it a solid 6-star movie on my scale (8 stars is max, and no actual film has ever achieved that--it takes 3200 flashes to do that). There are about 20 films that have achieved the 6-star rating or higher, but what sets this one apart is that about half of the flashes (almost 400) happen in the very first 5 minutes of the movie (and the action is at night). The flames are quite spectacular.

The plot (such as it is) has several interesting twists that I found unexpected and, therefore, interesting.

Oh my gosh, if you want side splitting laughter you HAVE to rent this movie!

Of course, finding a copy of this one might be an incredible challenge, but if you have the time, look for it. Look everywhere, search every video store, look at every garage sale, scour every pawn shop, leave no stone unturned. At first glance I thought this was a spoof, but when I soon realized that these "actors" were trying to seriously portray Vietnam-era Army soldiers (with mullet haircuts!) it instantly got my attention. What I next witnessed was 60 minutes of the most incredibly cheesy, laugh-out-loud low budget portrayal of combat, that I can't help but think of the look on someones face after watching this movie and thinking they were paying for a movie they expected to take seriously!

This movie is, absolutely, undoubtedly, without any reservation the worst movie I have ever watched. This you can't miss!