Gold Raiders

Nothing too exiting here but a pretty entertaining thai action/adventure romp with an international cast (well... Burt Reynolds seemed to have had other obligations but they did get the lovably lame Robert Ginty, looking as wimpy as ever, and a cute caucasian girl who's acting abilities are limited to looking angry and/or horny whatever takes place in the movie... hey, good enough for me). As often when there's more than one county involved in the production we get an clichéd espionage story with a gold treasure that many parts are after - my guess is they were reaching for sort of a mixture between James Bond and Rambo with some local thai spice to make it exotic for foreign sales. We get some dumb dubbing, a high body count with lots of juicy squibs, a glide-flying motorcycle with a built-in rocket launcher (sadly the only gadget, but a good one indeed!), great evil communists, a character named Porn - who gets sick and is replaced by Penporn (did the writers see Café Flesh? ) and best of all - an underground Mario Bava-esquire lit cave filled with fat, super-duper-mega evil vampire bats with gleaming red eyes! Best vampire bats ever. But maybe I oversell it now, the film do have some obvious problems that makes land at "enjoyable B movie" rather than "trash action classic". Especially the pacing and cutting feels very... thai (judging from the few other 70s and 80s thai films i've seen). Even though there's action and excitement in almost every scene the movie still drags a lot in parts, and it's a bit overlong too. Still worth checking out for fans of trashy 80s action Asian B films though, it gets a mild recommendation from me.

The Swedish video release I saw had a perfect widescreen print and has the line "The Exterminator man is back" all over the front, back and side of the cover. They even renamed the film GOLDRAIDERS (The Exterminator Man is back!) on the tape label. You've gotta miss the early days of video when even bloody Robert Ginty was a selling name!

This is the worst movie I have ever seen and that makes it also one of my favorites. Every single scene is so ridiculous that it becomes very, very funny in every way. This is also one of the first movies I bought because my friends and I could spend hours and hours watching it over and over again, analyzing it and laughing. I recommend it to everyone that would like to see a movie made by and with mistakes.

Goldraiders is the epitome of a mixed bag and is entirely prototypical for the era - to point of being textbook. It's quality (or lack of it) is simply all over the place, in some scenes it's intensely entertaining, whereas in others it completely falls flat. Starring the dependable B-lister Robert Ginty and a supporting cast of even lesser known actors (for some this is their sole acting credit) join his ranks and form an "elite crack commando unit" and seek to recover lost gold in jungles of Thailand. Though I find this movie to be quite inconsistent as a whole, but don't worry because there's plenty of fun to be had.

Some of the movies strong suits are as follows:

1: Thee awesomely villainous and over-the-top general with the mustache (something all proper movie villains should have) and his remarkably evil gravelly voice, which is used to great effect as he delivers most of the movies best lines. 2: The shoot-em-up scenes are well done, but not award winning, replete with airborne knives and even some hatchets and are complemented by some good old blood-packs - and not that crap, that computer-generated-red-paint-stuff that's added in post, typically used in modern movies. 3: The dialog, oh the dialog... The dialog for this film is so badly written AND delivered, well...it will have you chuckling away, I know I did. 4: Sarah Langenfeld (never heard of her either) was quite a nice piece, she has a wet t-shirt/semi-nude scene which comes roaring into view in the middle of the movie and is one of the most abrupt scene transitions you'll ever see, with jarring suddeness and zero subtlety - TERRIBLE EDITING! 5: Solid underwater SCUBA action scene, not entirely dissimilar to what's seen in 007's Thunderball - just not as good. 6: The goofy motorcycle/gyrocopter that's powered, curiously enough, by a "special kind of crystal" that NASA uses to power a "space ship". Whether it's driving or flying that crap-tas-tic contraption will have you in stitches - good stuff. 7: The jungle scenery is refreshing and pleasing to the eye, not a fast food joint or titty bar seen anywhere in this flick, just war machines and bloodshed really.

On the downside there are several boring scenes throughout the film that you'll have to sit through to get to the end, great for bathroom breaks. But for a Robert Ginty movie Goldraiders is a top-of-the-line production and it has, very much, a Cannon Films feel to it and on that note if you're a fan of 80's action films I'd also recommend his "Exterminator" movies. Again, Goldraiders is simply B-List Gold. Period.

This movie has got to be one of the worst films ever made. It's extremely poorly acted, the script just couldn't be worse - all scenes are ridiculously stupid - let alone all the dialogues, the special effects are as if they were executed by small children and so on. In fact I could go on pointing out its flaws for ages.

But this film also is one of the funniest movies I have ever seen. It is one of the best - if not THE best - "so bad it's good" films I have ever laid my eyes on. I regularly watch it with my friends and we never tire of talking about it. No matter how often you watch it you can always find a new example of extremely bad film-making.

Those who hate poor movies should stay far away from this one, but those who can laugh at all the catastrophe should definitely check it out. They won't be disappointed.

I can't give this film more than 2/10 although it is as funny as I have described. I would have given it 1/10 but the fun factor raised the grade. In my opinion it would not be fair to give it any higher a grade - no matter how funny it is - it is just so bad.