Hell on the Battleground

My review was written in March 1989 after watching the movie on AIP video cassette.

Formerly titled "Battleground", this utterly routine war actioner is another Action International picture lensed in Riverside by prolific but styleless David Prior; it's a direct-to-video stores release.

Producer Fritz Matthews doubles as pic's lead, Rambo-esque Casey, a gung-ho soldier faced with green troops in endless infantry and tank battles with the Russkies. (Pic is abstracted to the extent that time, place and occasion of a U. S./USSR faceoff are left blank.)

Perfunctory staging of the battles and cornball sentimentality (a lucky crucifix is handed off, soldier to soldier) make this one a chore to watch. Little sense of reality is engendered as Matthews and fellow hero Ted Prior head back to base camp from time to time for r&r with their pretty blonde nurses/girlfriends.

When i rate an action film, i rate it on two levels, two extremely difficult tests. It needs to pass one of these to succeed. The tests are:1. Was it entertaining as a normal movie, and 2. Was it entertaining as a b grade film.

This failed miserably on both levels.

Basically the story goes: Seasoned veterans break army command and wins on the battlefield, but they need to be punished, so are assigned with hot shot new recruits. This turns bad when they are trapped in the bush by enemy soldiers and all they can do is wait.

Apparently.......

So basically the entire movie is us watching them sit in the trenches saying 'we can't go out because they outnumber us so badly'. About an hour of that. Now THAT is entertainment. And then, the stupidest part..... This one soldier just decides to wipe out THE ENTIRE ENEMY ARMY by himself, with his trusty machine gun. AAAAAAAAARRRRRRGHH.

WHY DIDN'T HE JUST DO THAT AT THE START???? WHY SUBMIT US TO HOURS OF 'we can't leave the trench because we'll just get killed'. AAAAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGHHH. You get the idea of how angry it has made me..don't make the same mistake of watching it.

I rate movies of this genre on the number and quality of the muzzle flashes displayed. This one is almost 6 stars for number (732, 800 being 6 stars) and the quality is phenomenal! Some of the flashes are so large that one wonders how they were achieved (more than 5 feet long!). The crew certainly did not stint on the blank ammo budget.

Generally speaking, the AIP war films in the 1980s all scored very well in the muzzle flash department, but (as other raters have indicated) the movies pretty much sucked in plot, acting, tactics, etc. Because my focus is on other things, I just ignore all that and enjoy the action. It's mindless, but it's fun.