Shotgun

To anybody who has not seen SHOTGUN I urge you to find a copy ASAP! The standard of acting and scriptwriting is so appalling that this film is easily the worst ever made BUT that is exactly why it is also the best! Anybody with a sense of humour will be unable to contain themselves after just one minute of this flick. It is outrageously funny. The pumping 80s rock soundtrack oozes cheese and adds to the film immensely. The characters all reflect one cliché or another, especially Stuart Chapin as Ian Jones, the star of the film. Watch out for his legendary cowboy hat and excessively long coat, real gems. The wordplay is so laboured and stereotypical that no sane person could ever take the film seriously. The way it is filmed also reminds me of 80s style American daytime soaps, very cheap indeed! It will only be available to buy in the cheapest of shops, no more than 50p at most, even on DVD! Go and buy this film NOW! It will provide you with a lifetime of comedy!

Two cops…two different cops…one white, one black…one officious and one who doesn't play by the rules. Playing by the rules can get you killed.

You may have encountered the above scenario a few times before. Shotgun is without doubt a cliché-fest and I love it for it. It's central character is called Ian 'Shotgun' Jones and he is on the hunt for a sadistic misogynistic maniac in a gimp suit. Stuart Chapin plays the title character perfectly with zero irony and humour; this makes him all the funnier of course. This is the joy of Shotgun in general, in that everything is played deadly seriously while at the same time being quite magnificently ridiculous. Take the scenes near the end where Jones and his buddy more or less build a tank out of scrap metal – pure hokum but oh so much fun. This extends to the music too. The soundtrack consists of many guitar solos and a theme song about the title hero. It's pure 80's cheese. Add to this a shot of a man being thrown into a pile of cardboard boxes from three separate angles, a badge handing-in scene, an angry chief, an arrogant lawyer villain, lots of prostitutes, people dancing in suits, a man being set on fire and then run over by a car, etc etc…you get the general idea.

As you might have guessed already, Shotgun is essentially a Lethal Weapon rip-off. It follows the basic template quite closely but obviously with hugely lower production values. Oddly enough, this doesn't effect the enjoyment level of the film very much at all, as it's not especially expensive to make an action thriller if you do it without any star names. And I might actually prefer Stuart Chapin and Rif Hutton to Mel Gibson and Danny Glover. I mean did Gibson and Glover ever appear in a drunk scene quite like the one here? In this one, Chapin and Hutton meet for a few beers at the latter's house and all I can say is it looks like they have had their drinks spiked as their acting suggests that they are tripping on acid as opposed to being ripped on alcohol. This is one of the funniest attempts at drunk acting I have ever seen. Another classic moment to look out for is in the corridor of the police station where the film-makers have decided to try and make the small number of extras they hired seem like a much larger group of people – watch characters walk off screen only to return a few seconds later in the opposite direction wearing shades etc. Great stuff.

Shotgun is a terrifically entertaining bad movie. It has an agreeable smattering of action, sleaze and unintended hilarity. Definitely a hidden gem of a movie for bad movie buffs. A very entertaining flick overall.

Cowboy charlatan Ian Jones (Stuart Chapin) and his stern cop partner Max Billings (Rif Hutton) must track down a fiendish sex maniac with a lovely penchant for vulnerable whores. Believe it or not...he beats up his victims, who comprise mostly of prostitutes and hookers...to death!

This "Basher" is out for a taste of blood. He revels every second in the pleasure of inflicting pain on others. Among the Basher's victims include...Ian's sister. Yes, one of the hookers happens to be Ian's sister. What a big mistake for the masked murderer! Now, Ian has a dead sister to avenge...

Unfortunately for those two detectives, they must overcome their problems with alcoholism before they can take their jobs seriously. To make matters worse, when Ian's methods have gone too far, he gets suspended from the force for six months. Ian than takes a second job as a "Skip Tracer." This hot tempered ex-cop turned bounty hunter is enjoying every minute of his new occupation.

Now, without having to play by the rules, Ian must continue his pursuit of the Basher. What Ian uncovers though is more egregious... He learns of an underground drug ring operating in Mexico. The drug ring is lead by a wealthy lawyer. He is this twisted lawyer by day...and an evil villain who commands a well-armed fortress South of the Border.

Ian's mission is to terminate this drug emperor and destroy his empire and associates...but could this one antagonistic man be working in conjunction with the Basher?

Admittedly, when I first saw SHOTGUN, I was anticipating a high adrenaline thriller. Of course, I was crestfallen once again. The most distinct problem with SHOTGUN is that it never holds the viewer's interest. Though the film tries to be sleazy, it teases the viewer more than draws them into the story. The film quality stinks too! Expect lots of laughs in this movie though. There is occasional, unintentional hilarity in this film to keep connoisseurs mildly satisfied. One of the most amusing scenes was the depiction of police brutality. I mean, come on, the actors were not even touching let alone hitting each other. The dancing and party club scenes also evoked a reminder of how the decade of the 80s seemed so...Eighties. Who could forget the irritating rock music, especially the gratuitous heavy metal guitar, which began to get on my nerves?! Also notice how the same damn helicopter keeps appearing in virtually every other PM Entertainment motion picture!

Chapin (who kind of resembles Italian exploitation actor Al Cliver) looks and acts like the typically bland, hackneyed ex-policeman with a passion for vengeance. I also saw that actor who played Ian's sidekick somewhere else on TV...I just cannot remember where...

Well, I guess that this movie was not all too deplorable. The ending was half-decent even though it seemed to be too derivative of TANGO & CASH (1989). There was also one fast paced car chase. Otherwise, the action scenes were sloppily directed.

SHOTGUN does not have the capabilities to be either a thrilling or entertaining movie. It also lacks the drive to keep the momentum going. This is just another forgetful B-movie. I will say no more except to warn action fans to RUN AWAY as soon as they catch sight of this movie.

RATING: NO STARS out of ****.

This one has every tired cop flick cliche imagined -- the partner loved like a brother, the hooker sister who ends up killed by a mask-wearing trick, other street walkers who all look like expensive call-girls and do their stuff to "Gee, is this a porno?" background music, the police command that's always making life difficult for the put-upon, hard-drinking partners (one Black, one White; one married, one single; blah blah blah).

For me, the highpoints of these films are those scenes in the Police Chief's office. You know the drill: "I'm watching you, G_dammit! One more dead suspect and you'll be walking a beat in the worst part of town I can find. You're OFF this case, capisce?!" In this regard, "Shotgun" did not disappoint. It kept me happy, too, with the camera work, acting, transitions, plot tricks and, especially, that God-awful heavy metal guitar soundtrack. The only thing missing was one of those moments where the hero cop splashes his face with cold water and stares intensely at himself in the mirror before the cutaway to the next head-bashing scene. But for that, it would be a perfect 10 in that parallel movie universe one enters through the bottom of a bottle of booze.

Summary: -10 stars in this Universe. Watch it late at night with an equally drunk friend and enjoy.

A drug deal is "going down", and within seconds, thugs are flying through the air in slow-motion, like stuntmen in a movie.

BOOM!

SHOTGUN has begun.

Someone is beating prostitutes to death. Someone wrapped in leather, prefiguring "The Gimp" from PULP FICTION. Officers Ian Jones and Max Billings (Stuart Chapman and Rif Hutton) are on the case, willing to hit every porn shop, adult theater, and back alley dive in town, to catch the fiend.

Jones is a towering, ponytailed sasquatch of a man, certainly the world's tallest cop. It's fun to watch him "blend" into a crowd, when he's three feet taller than anyone else! He's also driven by a "personal score to settle" with the killer. When it comes to bad guys, Jones is ever ready to "take out the trash". He's truly "a man on a mission".

Ian's got a bit of a temper that leads to trouble with his job. No problem. He just becomes a bounty hunter. When Billings is injured, an even more vengeful Jones teams up with a survivalist. Together, they construct a canon / machine gun / flamethrower-endowed death-mobile! Yep, it's finale time! This could be called: Death-truck vs. The fortress of insanity!

The schlock gods are raining down gold upon us! You'll laugh so hard, you'll need rib bandages! You'll never look at giant cops in the same way again, ever!...