Night Wars

Trent (Brian O'Connor) and Jimmy (Cameron Smith) are two Nam vet buddies who escaped a POW prison camp only to face worse horrors at home when the past literally comes back to haunt them. They're harassed by a soldier they left behind and a sadistic traitor who helped torture them, and when they're attacked in their dreams, they emerge with real scars (a la A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET). The two deck out in cameo and carry high-powered machine guns into their dreams to fight back after one's wife is raped and killed by a ghost. Dan (GRIZZLY ADAMS) Haggerty is the top-billed guest star. He plays a psychiatrist who tries to "help" by holding them at gunpoint, drugging them and tying them up in his office!

The premise is somewhat new, but the unconvincing Nam flashbacks look like the stars are playing War Games in the woods behind their house, the dialogue ("Let's do it!," "I'm scared, man!") is annoying and the action and horror scenes just aren't very exciting.

Prolific director David A. Prior also combined the war and horror genres in THE LOST PLATOON (1989) and also directed KILLER WORKOUT (1987), MARDI GRAS FOR THE DEVIL (1992) and MUTANT SPECIES (1995) in between all his cheapo action movies. He scripted from a story he wrote with his brother Ted Prior and William Zipp (both of whom acted in his previous films).

Nine years ago, Trent and Jim managed to escape from a POW camp in Vietnam. They had been captured and were being tortured by a soldier named McGregor, who had been part of their platoon but turned over to the communists. During the escape, they were unable to save their friend Johnny, and were forced to abandon him. This has left a lasting shadow of guilt over the men now that they have returned to civvie street. Trent is married and has a stable job, while Jim is an alcoholic and lives alone. Now, Trent and Jim find that they are both having recurring nightmares about the event and when they wake up, they are cut and bruised, and sometimes bring things back with them from their nightmares. And they are beginning to see Johnny on the streets, and driving around. It seems that McGregor, and their pal Johnny, have unfinished business with them...

This made me think of Chuck Norris vs. Freddy Krueger, in that the "Missing in Action" series meets "A Nightmare on Elm Street". Vietnam Vets return to the war to bring a man home through the dream-world. Certainly not as bad as the low-budget and obscurity suggests. The performances are decent and the dream sequences are quite good. I really enjoyed it, but the ending did leave a lot to be desired. I think Prior just lost control of the film by then as there appeared to be some confusion over where the dream-world ended and reality began. Wes Craven did it better, but "Night Wars" still has an appeal to it.

Viewers will find it easy to criticize this low-budget, no-name effort found only on the dusty backshelves of a few video stores. It suffers from the flat dialog, so-so acting, haphazard scripting, and awkward pacing so often found in these Grade-Z productions.

And yet there's something about the merger of nightmare and reality in "Night Wars" which gives it an odd, almost haunting quality which softens the edges of all its many faults. Or, putting it another way, considering the vast resources spent on "Pearl Harbor" versus the scant resources spent on this movie, which one is really the more satisfying achievement?

Aside from that blurring between waking and dreaming, the most distinctive feature here comes in the form of two torture scenes occurring in Vietnamese POW camps. In the first scene, Cameron Smith has a red-hot metal rod pressed against his bare chest while he's tied between two posts, and in the second, Brian O'Connor -- tied between two trees -- has strips of barb-wire tightened around his naked torso. Unlike many Hollywood movies in which the hero suffers stoically, these two men scream with open-mouthed agony. (You can even count the fillings in Cameron Smith's teeth.) And unlike many Hollywood heroes, these two men don't have perfectly-chiseled physiques. (O'Connor especially shows signs of middle-aged flab.) The result is unnerving because the torture seems to be inflicted on real men rather than movie actors.

Top-billed Dan Haggerty has little to do in his part and Steve Horton overdoes the wild-eyed look as the sadistic villain, but Jill Foor invokes suitable sympathy as Brian O'Connor's bewildered wife. As for the two tormented ex-POWs, O'Connor is earnest and almost even appealing and Cameron Smith has the born-to-be-tortured look which is just right for this part.

I have commented before on how I generally find David A. Prior's ideas to be really cool, but his direction to be very poor. The big exception to this was `Lock ‘N Load,' which I found to be great. Other good Prior movies are the higher-budgeted `Raw Nerve' and the silly but fun `Invasion Force.' I watched `Night Wars' not really knowing what to expect. The plot sounded neat, but it was still a low-budget AIP movie with only one name star, Dan Haggerty. But as it unfolded, I was really surprised.

Two Vietnam buddies, Trent and Jim, trying to live normal lives, start to have bad dreams nine years after their time in the war. Their nightmares are always about the war and a third friend, Johnny, who they left behind in the hands of an American turncoat, McGregor. Eventually, the nightmares begin infesting themselves in the daylight hours when Trent and Jim start to fall asleep at any given moment, and that's when events in the dream start to cross over into reality, like when one of them gets cut in a dream, they get cut in reality. That is when the two friends realize they must somehow enter the nightmares willingly and either get Johnny out this time or die trying. At the same time, Trent's wife has contacted a psychologist (Haggerty), also a Vietnam vet, about her husband's odd activity. Concerned, he tries to intervene at the worst possible time.

This movie has a lot going for it and for once an AIP movie is not at all hindered by its budget. Prior's early dream sequences are quite good. He makes good use of lighting to make them scary. He keeps early dreams dark and adds neat touches like red tints which makes soldiers wearing dime store rubber skull masks look convincing and freaky where in any other way they would have looked silly. There are also some rather impressive effects. The scene where Trent sees McGregor in the mirror and McGregor sticks a gun into the mirror is a radical and inexpensive special effect. The soldiers rising out of the dirt had a good effect, too. And the scene where Haggerty, having given Trent and Jim sedatives, is racing to Trent's home to try and save Trent's wife is exceptionally done. And of course it is all made better by a fine musical score by Tim James and Steve McClintock. I was all set to give this movie an 8 or 9, surpassing `Lock ‘N Load' as the best of Prior's movies, when the ending happened. I won't reveal what it consisted of, but I will say that it was a cop-out. Gone was the adrenalin in my blood for what would happen next. Gone was the hope that an explanation of how the events were happening would arrive. Gone was the atmosphere that had been looming so well over the whole movie. This is the only black mark on an otherwise great low budget film (well, other than spotting a crew member's hand tossing a gun onto the screen after a soldier was shot), but it is a serious one. The result for me is that it ties `Lock N' Load' as Priors best movie (out of the twelve I have seen). Zantara's score: 7 out of 10.

Ha! I notice that practically all my fellow reviewers also make tongue-in-cheek references towards "Nightmare on Elm Street" in their user-comment titles. Logically, because this "Night Wars" is a shameless and blatant imitation of the NoES formula - albeit, admittedly, with a Vietnam war-movie twist!

Vietnam movies, or at least horror/action movies with links to 'Nam, were somewhat the hobbyhorse of writer-director David A. Prior. For more than three decades straight, Mr. Prior was one of the most over-active and prolific trash directors in the business. Nearly forty terrible films in thirty years, that's what I call perseverance and dedication! He was enthusiast and creative, to say the least, but he still couldn't direct very well at the end of his life. After two lousy horror movies ("Sledgehammer" and "Killer Workout"), he quickly turned to jungle adventures and Vietnam action vehicles, with the phenomenal 1987 "Deadly Prey" as their absolute and inarguable highlight. Now there's a movie that everybody in the whole wide world needs to watch, if you ask me!

Trent and Jim are two war buddies with recurring nightmares about their Tour in Vietnam, and then particularly how they were forced to leave behind their pal Johnny as a POW and how another platoon member McGregor turned out to be a psychotic mercenary traitor. The nightmares grow increasingly realistic, however, and the boys are even getting injured in them. They soon realize they'll have to enter their dreams armed to the teeth in order to rescue Johnny and eliminate McGregor who's terrorizing them from beyond the grave. Now, the plot of "Night Wars" isn't entirely bad, but it's totally lacking logic and structure and - with all due respect - David A. Prior doesn't have the intellect for it. He constantly falls into the traps of paradoxes that automatically ensue from a plot like this. On the bright side, there's plenty of gunfire, preposterous warfare (you know, the Asian soldiers shoot a thousand times but never hit anything, whereas the white soldiers never miss) and horrendously over-the-top acting performances (especially Steve Horton).