The Devastator

1980s B movie stud Rick Hill ("Deathstalker") plays Deacon Porter, a Vietnam veteran suffering from nightmares. He goes to the small town of Kings' Ransom to investigate the death of his former C.O., and finds that he will be up against an army of evil marijuana growers. To combat them, he will assemble the members of his old squad: Spencer (Terrence O'Hara, "Naked Vengeance"), Bartlett (Bill McLaughlin, "Silk"), and Ox (Jack S. Daniels, "Wheels of Fire"). The main bad guy is a cocky creep named Carey, played by Crofton Hardester ("Android"), and the leading lady, Audrey (Katt Shea, "Psycho III"), works at the local service station.

"The Devastator" is the kind of undemanding cheesy B you watch if you just want to relax and give your brain a rest. Awash in cliches, it has a very silly script (by Joseph Zucchero) complete with the kind of lines the viewer will doubtless have heard before. (For one thing, the morally compromised Sheriff (Kaz Garas, "Ben") has little patience for anybody he deems to be an outsider.) Director Cirio Santiago here takes a bit of a break from the slew of post-nuke flicks he also made during the 1980s, crafting some very fast-moving nonsense. Its frequent action scenes are not exactly that slick, but they're certain to amuse the audience regardless. In any event, it's hard to completely knock a movie that often exists mainly for the purpose of blowing stuff up. The music is so awful it's downright hilarious; it doesn't sound composed so much as improvised on the spot. The acting is suitable for this genre: Hill is a decent enough hero, and Hardester is a hoot as the kind of unflappable bad guy who sticks a flower in a gun barrel when Shea tries to intimidate him. She's very sexy and enticing, and went on to a solid filmmaking career of her own, directing things like "Dance of the Damned", "Streets", "Poison Ivy", and "The Rage: Carrie 2". Tough guy Daniels' goofy performance is so utterly cheese-ball that it's priceless.

Good fun, provided one is partial to this sort of thing in the first place.

Five out of 10.

My review was written in December after watching the film on MGM/UA video cassette.

"The Devastator" once again brings the Vietnam war back to the homefront as a vet uses military tactics to clean up bad guys in California. Originally titled "Kings Ransom" (after the town where it is set) and alternately "The Destroyer=s", pic is similar to "Final Mission", a 1984 Cirio Santiago opus as well. "Devastator" opened regionally in September 1985.

Wracked by nightmares about his stint in Vietnam, Richard Hill visits the small town of Kings Ransom after Debbie Brooks, the widow of his pal Marty, calls from there telling him her husband has been killed in a car wreck. Befriended by gas jockey Katt Shea, Hill is terrorized by locals for being an outsider. It seems the local growers have taken over the valley for their marijuana business and corrupted the local sheriff (Kaz Garas).

Hill barely escapes when the thugs burn down Brooks' house (where he is staying), but comes back in force with other war vets armed to the teeth. With the sheriff won over to theris side they burn up the pot fields, rescue Shea from the villains and set things straight.

Action scenes are acceptable and both Ill and Shea make for sympathetic protagonists. Crude editing job has the picture ending very abruptly, perhaps acceptable to antsy home video consumers but a definite irritation for a theatrical film. Several credits seem to have been anglicized, e.g. Richrd Reemington for Santiago's regular cinematographer Ricardo Remias.

A vietnam vet searches for what happened to his old buddy and investigates a town controlled by pot growers. He's attacked and fakes his own death so he can recruit a team of commandoes to take down the bad guys with lots of firepower.

The wooden and lame lead has no charisma but it wouldn't matter who you had in this bland movie with perfunctory everything. Endless streams of bad guys rush the heroes and get shot. Grenades thrown, tiny explosions, rinse repeat. Just about the only bright spot is Ox, who's insane and his introduction is hilariously terrible. Street fighting an old man in his underwear, he gets caught cheating, runs away while his pants fall down and he says "you really saved my a$$ there" with a bare butt sticking out a window. If that's the best part of the movie, you know you're not getting anything great.

The recently deceased Cirio H. Santiago was a prolific director who usually worked with low budgets and made some enjoyable B-movies. "The Destroyers" AKA "The Devastator", however, is one of his dullest films. Not that it lacks action - in fact quite the opposite: it is almost non-stop action, with the "talking parts" largely shortened or eliminated (example: a girl, who thought the hero was dead, suddenly sees him in the front door of her house; before they exchange a single word, the next scene shows them in bed together!). The action, though, is totally mindless - not just because four men, even with military experience, go up against about a hundred, but because it is never explained how a drug dealer operating in a small town is able to assemble a hundred men and so much hardware. Rich Hill, of "Deathstalker" fame, doesn't show much personality an a lead; the sweet Katt Shea does, but her part is largely thankless. * out of 4.

Ok, if you're going to pick a Cirio H. Santiago movie to watch, this should be it. Granted, the acting is weak and the plot needs some work, but you'll guaranteed to laugh at the amazing one liners occasionally spouted off. The movie is quite entertaining and it definately teaches everyone to beware of those hard-core, ruthless, killing marijuana growers. In Devastator, they are a force to be reckoned with.