Skinheads

Chuck at his best. This is one of "The Rifleman's" last films. He plays a good guy who helps some kids being chased by skinheads. Chuck is by far the most believable character in this less than good film. It would be terrible if it didn't have Mr. Connors acting.

A must see for any Chuck Connors fan.

If the so-called Master Race are this stupid, we would be all better off as cavemen.

Take all the Nazi stereotypes you can think of, and you'll find them here... including some you didn't. What they tell didn't tell in history class though, is that these guys were as thick as pig s**t, and as ugly as sin. Rather than being menacing though, these idiots are most likely to cause the Jews and Blacks they rail against to die of laughter than cause them any physical harm. Particularly the big guy, ironically called Brains... who wipes his bum on poison ivy instead of leaves. Hardy ha ha. Seriously, if Hitler wanted to clean the Whites of all impurities, he would have started with executing these jokers.

This makes it easy to cheer for the college kid and his spunky girlfriend, as they're pursued through the woods by this band of miscreants. They garner support from a grizzled old hunter (there always seems to be one about) when they find his hut, and what follows is a series of shootouts, threats and general idiocy. What's strange though, is how the bad guys never run out of bullets. They find a hand gun right at the start (with no extra ammunition) and yet they seemingly discharge it on more than 100 occasions throughout. We never see them reload it, or check for empties. It must be MAGIC.

Apart from having the worse editing ever, and the dreadful acting from all concerned, what is most noteworthy here is just what a bad mouthpiece it is for the far right. None of the arguments preached by the leader of these fanatics are coherent at all, which makes you wonder... how did he convince 6 other people to join his worthless cause? You'd think the writers would have him some kind of gravitas, but nope... the bloke is a walking parody, and impossible to take seriously. This may work as a sop to minority groups who hate the Nazis, but it renders the enemy so pathetic it's impossible to feel any tension as they stalk their prey.

So, I'm sure you've gathered by now it ain't no award winner. It won't you jump off a pier, though. Especially if you find a certain charm in low budget movie-making. Damn it... they try their best... can't we give them at least SOME credit?

Perhaps a little.

We're talking microscopic proportions here.

Do you see it?

Thought not. 4/10

While it may be a stretch to call Skinheads: The Second Coming of Hate the greatest American film of all time, it's much of one. This film tackles the troubling questions that Neonazism posed to our culture in the late 1980s in an unblinking fashion that throws fear completely aside. Unlike later films that dealt had skinhead-related subject matters such as American History X, Skinheads: The Second Coming of Hate does not try to preach to its audience. It simply portrays Skinheads as the ruthless Hitler-loving killers they are. Skinheads: The Second Coming of Hate also features what is probably Chuck Connors' finest performance. Connors was an American treasure and without a doubt the greatest film actor this nation has ever produced. To say that this film contains his finest performance is to say that this film contains what may very well be the greatest acting tour de force ever caught upon film. It is a modern tragedy that Skinheads: The Second Coming of Hate is rarely, if ever, mentioned as one of the great films of the 1980s let alone one of the great American films of all times.

Greydon Clark will never learn. The man has written and directed a slew of thoroughly awful films, gaining some slight notoriety in the late seventies for Satan's Cheerleaders and The Return. Rest assured this particular piece of horse hockey is no better than the films he made at the "pinnacle" of his career.

Skinheads (I'm sure you can guess the plot, theme, and overbearing moralization from the title alone) is notable solely as a turning point-- well, okay, maybe an S-curve-- in two careers. It's one of the last films of Rifleman star Chuck Connors, as the grizzled hermit who takes a stand against the Evil Skinheads(TM), and it was the first big-screen role for Brian Brophy, who's since gone on to be a solid character actor in "serious" films (The Shawshank Redemption, White Man's Burden, et al.). Comparisons with American History X are inevitable, and will be uniformly unfavorable; where Tony Kaye gave us a band of halfway intelligent skinheads with a truly dangerous and thoughtful leader, Clark's bunch of halfwits are incapable of anything but the kind of moral posturing one might expect from a band of chimps exposed to nothing but reruns of That Girl for years on end.

The one bright spot in this film, ironically, is the late Dennis Ott as Brains, the slow-on-the-uptake skinhead who provides the group's muscle and the overwhelming majority of the film's levity. Sadly, Ott, who passed away from AIDS-related complications in 1994, never got another role this big. It's worth a free rental to watch him here. **

In this lame thriller, a group of half-wit skinheads kill four people at a diner then chase a deeply uncharismatic couple into a forest. It's all really quite amateurish. The skinheads could be OK villains if only they weren't so moronic and the plight of the heroes would be a lot better if only they were in the least bit interesting. But alas, no. What we end up with is an extended and somewhat tedious pursuit through a forest. There are a couple of cameos courtesy of an old grizzled woodsman and an extremely tame grizzly bear. It's not really all that entertaining but sadly I have seen much worse.

The soundtrack is provided by someone called Elvis Hitler and given the neo-nazi subject matter here, I sincerely hope that this is an ironic name. But in a film where the supposed most stupid member of the skinhead gang, 'Brains', is clearly only the second most stupid, anything is possible.