THOU SHALT NOT KILL...EXCEPT
Thou shalt not miss...unless you never listen to me anyway
This movie's so-bad-it's-brilliant title oughtta clue you in as to the kind of cinematic experience you're in for. This movie is really dumb, badly acted, ridiculously tacky, and it's the most fun I've had with a rented movie in quite a while.
When this movie opened up, I thought I was in for a truly lame and pathetic experience. We're shown some stock footage of jungle, all green and black, and then we're told in eye-straining BLACK titles that this is "South Vietnam, 1969". How often do you see black titles like this? Not often. But on a largely black background? Come on - the last time a movie had announced this much incompetence this early on was Sleepwalkers, which had a boom mike in the middle of the picture in the very first shot.
Fortunately, things pick up a little.
Brian Schulz plays Stryker, a Vietnam vet who returns home in 1969 with limited use of one leg. He picks up his mangy mutt and finds that some Manson-like cult is terrorizing the countryside. Given that this movie came out of the mid-80's, it's a given that Stryker will assemble other Vietnam vets to amass a huge cache of weapons with which to annihilate the badguys - which is all Vietnam vets did in the mid-80's.
Sam Raimi plays Manson - well, not REALLY Charles Manson, but the caricature is so thinly disguised that he may as well be. (note to Entombed fans - this movie features the lines sampled and slipped in at the beginning of "Out Of Hand" on Wolverine Blues) (there's no feeling quite like stumbling across the source of a familiar sample like that)
This one's directed with a lot of energy and enthusiasm (if not a lot of polish) by Josh Becker, featuring a lot of hilariously overdone violence (like when one chick falls on her knife in a most undesirable way, or how one guy is killed with a tree). Bruce Campbell doesn't appear (to my knowledge) in the film, but he gets a number of credits in it (Story, sound editing, and much of it was apparently filmed around his house!).
The box insists that the rating for this movie is "Contains strong materials, discretion advised". The same box insists that our heroes are "a three-man annihilation squad", although they're four men. Also known as Stryker's War. Rent, bring beer, sit back, and invite your friends. They'll thank you. Even if it's just for the beer.
Watch for an almost unrecognizable Ted Raimi as a chain-swinging maniac.