Nightforce

Making a film that's even stupider than Schwarzenegger's "Commando" seems like an unimaginable feat, but here it is. Starts off with some gratuitous nudity, then degenerates into a ludicrous action film. Some of the dumbness was probably intentional, but that doesn't make it excusable. Linda Blair is curiously absent during most of the big action scenes, Cameron Mitchell, in his last film appearance, has a brief cameo, and the main villain is a Fidel Castro lookalike! The film is thankfully short, though (not counting the closing song, it runs about 73 minutes). (*1/2)

If Leonard Pinth-Garnell, the Bad Cinema maven from SNL, ever compiled a list of ten examples of "Truly Bad Cinema," this epic would have to be on it. Now, I usually don't consider films like this one to be worthy of mention on a bad-movie list. Normally, I prefer the grand turkeys like "Conqueror" and "Exorcist II." Still, Linda Blair is Linda Blair, and it was her starring in it that got it made. So I guess we can blame her for this turkey. The fact that these college-age dudes and babes can suddenly shoot like Green Berets is a variation of Roger Ebert's "thirty-second genius" motif. That is where the lead hears the whole plot from somebody in 30 seconds, and immediately knows what to do. In this case, the kids practice shooting for a couple hours, then are ready to do battle with an entire army. My favorite bad moment is when the kidnapped girl is ravaged by one of the enemy soldiers. The Commandante comes along, shoots the soldier, then has HIS way with her. She must have had more Latinos land on her than the Bay of Pigs. My favorite character is the American soldier-of-fortune, played by Richard Lynch. They should have called him Pizza-Face Jones, since a) Lynch's face has more holes in it than the Van Wyck Expressway, not far from where Lynch grew up in Brooklyn and, b) he acts like Harrison Ford on 'Ludes. There's not much more to say, but if you must see it, try to catch it, unedited, on one of the premium movie channels. If you rent it, do so on two-for-one night, along with something that you know is good. A couple beers will help you bear it.

A definitive example of 80s action trash: probably the only people who would shell out cash for a ticket were wasted teens looking for some skin and lots of explosions. Watch the opening sequence and marvel out how shoddy the editing is: when one of the baddies fires at an officer, there is actually what looks like a break in the film (as if to chop a few frames out) followed by a painfully out-of-sync death scene of the fat officer- ooph!- getting plugged by a bullet, which apparently stopped in mid-air for five seconds while the camera crew switched reels.

By today's standards (and 80s standards, probably) the action is sub-par, not gory enough to be interesting but violent enough to be morally inexcusable. Thankfully, every once in awhile Night Force falls into softcore porn territory- this is the only movie I've seen that interrupts a cheap shower scene with flashbacks to a cheap sex scene- but not nearly enough to make the rest of the movie bearable. Night Force exploits pointless violence and gratuitous sex, and poorly. Virtually everyone involved in making this film- actors, actresses, FX technicians, editors- have officially lost any artistic integrity they once had.

Linda Blair must be the only actress in the world whom I love more with every new and utterly lousy movie of hers that I watch! Never mind the immortal horror classic ("The Exorcist") or the socially relevant TV-drama's ("Born Innocent", "Portrait of a Teenage Alcoholic") she starred in during the 70s; the sleazy and trashy B-movies she made throughout the 80s are what define her as the ultimate cult cinema siren! Now, admittedly, for "Night Force" you need to have a lot of Linda Blair fondness, because the film itself is terrible.

The one thing that is really great about "Night Force" is, ... the plot description! It sounds like a cool rip-off/variation of "Red Dawn", with a bunch of friends spontaneously deciding to go and rescue their friend who got kidnapped by a Mexican crime cartel and taken to a primitive jungle prison. The girl's fiancée is too cowardly to do something, and her father - a senator - cannot act because he swears by not negotiating with terrorists.

The rest of the film is a sore letdown, to be honest. The 'mission' is quite dull, the action sequences are poorly staged, Linda Blair disappears without a trace half of the time, the locations and scenery are uninspired, and the climax is unremarkable. Highlights, next to Blair, are the flamboyant performance of Richard Lynch, and the gratuitous nudity provided by Claudia Udy.

Extremely slight actioner features clean-cut, country club kids who become suburban Rambos after one of their friends--a busty blonde, no less!--is kidnapped by nefarious Mexican terrorists (naturally, these brutal nasties keep their caged hostage half-nude, but it isn't sexy because she's crying all the time). Straight-to-tape low-budget trash served as veteran actor Cameron Mitchell's swan song. Linda Blair, cashing a paycheck, seems placed amongst the cast only to get her name on the video-box (she has absolutely nothing to do). Why not make Blair the focal point and do a distaff variation on "First Blood"? Apparently nobody involved with this rinky-dink thing was really thinking--not director Lawrence D. Foldes nor his three-count 'em-three-screenwriters, Russel W. Colgin, Michael Engel, and Don O'Melveny. These guys are not hidden talents, they are hacks. NO STARS from ****