The Death Squad

8 stars are for good to great. 7 good to great but with a noticeable flaw - rushed ending, plot hole.

THE DEATH SQUAD is a made-for-TV movie concerning the group of the title, who abduct and eliminate those whom they deem to have escaped justice. The squad is actually a cabal of rogue ex-cops / vigilantes.

Enter Robert Forster, as a cop sent undercover to infiltrate this group. Forster is very good in his conflicted role.

This theme had been explored a year prior in Clint Eastwood's MAGNUM FORCE, it would surface again in THE STAR CHAMBER with Michael Douglas, some nine years later. DEATH SQUAD's main strength lies in casting Forster, who brings this movie up several notches...

The low ratings for this made for TV film which cameos Melvyn Douglas are accurate. This film should be viewed by movie students to see how movies can either be improved or how the original outshines the copy.

You do not have to be a sophisticated movie lover to see the difference between DEATH SQUAD and MAGNUM FORCE. You should compare films like TO BE OR NOT TO BE with Jack Benny and Carole Lombard (1942) with the more slapstick production of Mel Brooks. Ernst Lubitsch in his direction supplied subtle nuances to make a sophisticated comedy, Mel Brooks i "Pie in the Face". This makes for a complex but comprehensive understanding of what is the difference between a good film and a film classic.

DEATH SQUAD was interesting for me, so that I could relate the comparison as stated above.

render a snarky judgment of 1974's The Death Squad by writing "The Cliché Squad" in the summary box. I was going to ridicule this cheapo TV movie as an inevitable rip-off of Magnum Force. I was going to point out the pablum-level plotting, the cardboard characterizations, the neon sign pointing at Melvyn Douglas as the Hal Holbrook character in Magnum Force.

In other words, I was going to dismiss The Death Squad as the typical junk put out by ABC for its "Movie of the Week" series way back when.

Then it dawned on me that I didn't know who all was involved in supporting the vigilante cops. I started thinking how this may have made a passable series (c'mon, every other episode of The Movie of the Week was a pilot or some sort of pitch to the network suits). I found myself feeling comfortable with Claude Akins, Ken Tobey, and Mark Goddard. I wanted to see more of a very young, very charming Michelle Phillips.

The Death Squad was junk, but the sort of junk you want to browse through at a garage sale.

And then there was Robert Forster, an actor with a reputation of doing journeyman work portraying the lead with an earnestness that I found admirable.

So, my prejudice against this sort of Spelling-Goldberg trash may have had legitimate roots (right, Starsky and Hutch?), but after The Death Squad was over, I found myself a smidgen sad. This was the stuff I grew up on in the 70s. The movie was just about as good as NBC's Police Story.

Not a complete waste of 70 minutes.

The 1973 film "Magnum Force" was a Dirty Harry film where a small group of cops began dispensing justice to criminals who somehow beat the system. In other words, these cops became judge, jury and executioners of folks who just needed killing, in their opinions. Despite Harry sympathizing, he was a good cop and eventually brings down this group of rogue cops. Now, in 1974, pretty much the same sort of plot has been recapitulated in "The Death Squad"....an enjoyable but completely unoriginal installment from "The ABC Movie of the Week".

The film begins with some cops killing a scum-bag who was able to avoid prison due to some technicality. Soon, Eric (Robert Forster) is recruited by the Police Commissioner to investigate this and a string of other recent murders that MIGHT be the work of rogue cops. However, Eric isn't thrilled with the idea since he had been thrown off the force some time earlier. But they want him because at least in his case they can be sure he's not involved in the killings. Soon (WAY TOO SOON), Eric is invited to become part of this murder squad...and not surprisingly, when they ultimately figure out he's working for the Commissioner, he's dead meat unless some sort of miracle occurs.

The best thing about this film is Robert Forster and his excellent performance. But this alone cannot make up for the script that was essentially a copy of "Magnum Force"...so much so that I am sure it irritated many audience members as well as the folks who made up this previous film. Watchable and enjoyable but hardly original.