Les huit diaboliques

Aptly described by the other reviews here as "Thunder Road" meets "The Dirty Dozen", "The Devil's 8" is just pure fun. The filmmakers have a good time with the premise and deliver an acceptable amount of thrills, spills, and titillation in 99 straightforward minutes. Capably produced and directed by Burt Topper ("The Strangler", "The Hard Ride"), it features some enjoyable location work - it was filmed partly in the Big Bear Lake area - and a peppy music score by Mike Curb and Michael Lloyd. (Trust me, you'll be humming that theme song long after the movie is finished.) The cast is stocked with familiar faces and the story leads to a pretty good action-packed finish.

Christopher George delivers a very engaging performance as Ray Faulkner, a federal agent who busts several prisoners - part of the "Devil's 8" of the title - out of a work camp so that they can be made to work for the government. Their mission will be to make life miserable for various moonshiners led by Burl (Ralph Meeker), and ultimately, to take Burl alive so he can be pumped for information. Along the way the scrappy young bunch take time out to pursue members of the fairer sex and indulge in what is a good old fashioned barroom brawl.

Other members of the cast include singer Fabian as Sonny, Tom Nardini ("Cat Ballou") as Billy Joe, Cliff Osmond ("Invasion of the Bee Girls") as Bubba, biker flick veteran Larry Bishop ("The Savage Seven") as Chandler, Robert DoQui (Sgt. Reed in the "RoboCop" series) as Henry, Kubrick regular Joe Turkel ("The Shining") as Sam, and Ron Rifkin ("L.A. Confidential") as timid federal agent Stewart Martin. Ross Hagen ("The Hellcats") is particularly good as Frank, whose involvement in the mission is personal, and sexy Leslie Parrish ("The Giant Spider Invasion") is delightful eye candy as Franks' lady friend Cissy. Look for Georges' wife Lynda Day George in an uncredited bit as Faulkners' girlfriend.

Overall, this is routine but it still delivers the goods for lovers of this sort of thing.

Screenplay by James Gordon White and future directors John Milius ("Red Dawn") and Willard Huyck ("Messiah of Evil"), based on a story by Larry Gordon.

Seven out of 10.

The Devil's 8 (1969)

** (out of 4)

THUNDER ROAD crashes into THE DIRTY DOZEN in this drive-in flick from AIP. A federal agent (Christopher George) is sent to break up a moonshine business so he recruits six convicts to help with each of them being pardoned if the mission is a success. THE DEVIL'S 8 isn't nearly as fun as one would hope but the cast is good enough to make it worth sitting through at least once. The biggest problem here is that the direction is so weak that there's never really any excitement built up in the story. There's no adventure to the mission that the guys are going on and there's really no suspense anything going wrong. I'm sorry but you can't have people going into a battle and you never once fear that there's something that could go wrong and put them into harm. Another problem is that there's simply no energy to be found so at times it's a real chore just staying interested in what's going on. At 98-minutes the film runs a bit too long and I think there were several scenes that could have been trimmed to help the flow of the picture and make it drag less. The one thing that does work here are the performances with George being a lot of fun as the leader of the group. I've always enjoyed George as a character actor and I thought he gave a good performance here and as usual he's just got a certain charm when it comes to playing a tough guy. The supporting cast includes Fabian and Tom Nardini, both who are good but so are the rest of the players. THE DEVIL'S 8 is mainly going to appeal to those who enjoy watching low-budget rip-offs of bigger and better movies. This thing is far from perfect but it's decent entertainment if you've got nothing better to do.

Not even Christopher George could keep me interested in this lame, boring Dirty Dozen (not enough budget for 12, so they had 8) movie. Slow moving with very little action, it's hard to believe John Milius wrote this terrible movie.

This is a film that is destined to have a cult following. That it is a ripoff of The Dirty Dozen will be obvious to one and all.

Christopher George is a Treasury agent who breaks six convicts off a chain gang in the south as these are guys who know the territory and would blend right in. The object is to take down moonshine kingpin Ralph Meeker who has a wired in operation and has killed a few Feds. One of those he frees is Ross Hagen who knows Meeker well and has his own reason for wanting to nail him. Hagen's ex, Leslie Parrish has moved in with Meeker.

The others are about as willing as Lee Marvin's crew was, but soon enough the idea of freedom appeals to them more than the chain gang.

The Devil's 8 is certainly cheaply made with a cast of B list players. But it doesn't take itself seriously at all.

And it does have one catchy musical score. This one will be rumbling around my head for days.

A moonshine movie is a moonshine movie. Everybody did one. Robert Mitchum. James Stewart. Richard Widmark. This one is a non-stop action piece of fluff. Really good light entertainment. Ralph Meeker is so relaxed in his role as the pin-up poster boy for moonshiners everywhere you can almost believe it. And Cliff Osmend, great actor and screen writer, plays his usual light comedy big dumb oaf. All the rest of the cast, except for Fabien, were unknown at the time.

Agent George answers his car phone (mark of a really important man back then) and his hot date is interrupted by an urgent call. He has to move now to break up a big moonshine syndicate. He recruits 8 guys doing hard time. Their reward, lots of time off. They set up a military style training camp, become commandos, infiltrate Meeker's gang and locate the down home whiskey world. Instead of a chase scene they invade with firebombs, hand grenades, sub-machine guns and much macho heroism. Many die. Truth, justice and the American way are made safe for the bonded whiskey warehouses. Fun to watch. A six-pack helps. Fun to watch a second time. Like an old western with many saloon me-lees.