In the course of a demonically possessed reviewer’s life, some things are just too unpleasant for words. Thankfully, this movie isn’t one of them. It comes pretty goddamn close, but it’s not one of them. So, instead of listening to some Guitar Wolf or doing something cool, let’s trudge our way through a stinky little Ross Hagen production, shall we? Doesn’t that sound like fun? No? Well, that’s okay, it didn’t to us either. Here goes.
The movie begins with a vaguely large black man putting on some wicked riot gear. Meanwhile, some people that may or may not be important drive through a gate somewhere and away, but they’re followed by a station wagon. Wait, the masked vigilante drives a station wagon?! Oh, this should be good. Anyway, they park in a junkyard, and the man with the titular skull-busting device attacks them, smashing the shit out of their car. Glove guy beats the hell out of the guy from the other car, and drops a badge on his chest as he walks away.
We go now to a quiet little river, down which is floating Sam and his idealistic daughter. In the beginning of what is to be a continuous Joe Friday-style narration, he reveals that he is a bounty hunter, and things aren’t going well. Saxon drops his daughter off at school and tells her to give her mom a note.
Once he’s left her in the safety of her worthless closed-minded teachers and sociopath gun-toting classmates, he goes off to see a man about a fruity hot tub. Okay, a fruity man IN a hot tub, I was trying not to think about it. Well, Sam tries to arrest the man, but he resists. A fight between Sam, the fruity guy, and his fruity guy lover ensues, but Sam gets his man (no, not like that, that’s yucky). The arrest made, Sam goes to talk to the old bail bondsman who pays him. When Sam asks for another job, the bondsman tells him to just take some money and get out of it, so Sam goes to the police station to look for an assignment. He asks one of his cop friends for a lead on a new case. The cop tells him about a vigilante who’s been beating up prison guards, and the Prison Guard Association is offering a $20,000 reward for him. Then the cop tells Sam about the Riot Glove, a device created for prison guards in the sixties to use on especially violent prisoners. Victor Hale, the vigilante guy, stole the glove from a prison guard.
Sam goes to visit Hale’s grandma, and it’s revealed that Vic’s sister was beaten up, slashed, and used by an evil cop. Vic took revenge and went to jail for it. Meanwhile, Vic is on a payphone calling George, another prison guard. He tells George’s wife that he’s coming to visit.
Then Sam goes and finds a certain Mrs. Fitzgerald, who stole some money from one of Sam’s clients. He takes part of it to pay off his alimony, which has sunk him deep into debt, and then stops by the client’s house to drop the rest off. The man invites Sam to a poker game, and being a gambling kinda guy, Sam can’t pass it up. Sam takes off to visit a man at a meat packing plant, said to be a vicious killer who could have some useful information. Sam ends up having to chase the guy through the plant, they fight with beef joints (which is just kinda strange), and then Sam shoots him. The police arrive, and Sam’s cop friend tells him the same thing the bondsman did, to make a bundle of money and then get out of bounty hunting. Sam then goes for a walk on the beach and gets some wanted posters made up with Vic’s picture on them.
Speaking of Vic, he comes home to his slum apartment with some groceries, and on a whim teaches one of the neighbor kids to play guitar. Meanwhile, Sam stops by his office to talk to his secretary, who gives him some messages. There’s a little sexual tension, and Sam leaves. Vic gives Sam a call at home and tells Sam to leave him alone. Sam says he has a job to do, no hard feelings, he just needs the money. Then Sheila comes to pick him up to take him to the poker game.
The poker game is attended by several high rollers, including... no, could it be? Well, this steaming log is a Ross Hagen movie. Ugh. It’s the rock-stupid hillbilly boy from Sidehackers, which is easily the worst movie ever to be watched by the “MST3K” crew. At any rate, Sam loses a lot of much-needed money and leaves the game. He’s then spurned by Sheila and takes a cab home.
Waiting for him at home is Harry Iverson, his competition. Before I go on, I’d like to point out that Harry is played by possibly the most despicable, loathsome, slimy, ass-ramming, pig-fucking, sleazy, grease-ball motherfucker ever to ooze his way across a movie screen, Michael Pataki. YUCK! ICK! BLECH! WE HATE MICHAEL PATAKI! Okay, I’ve taken three boxes of Valium and calmed down, so I’ll continue.
Harry finagles Sam into cutting him a chunk of the twenty grand if he helps Sam catch Vic. Just as Harry leaves, Sam gets a call from his secretary, who tells him that if he can’t come up with a shitload of child support money pronto, his visitation rights go away forever.
While all this drama is going on elsewhere, Vic pays his promised visit to George the evil prison guard. During the fight, Vic demolishes the guy’s house. Previously, he crushed a car. But when he hits a person, which is quite a bit more fragile than support beams and Detroit steel, he barely cracks a tooth. Shouldn’t that thing shatter skulls like eggshell? Oh well, it’s Ross Hagen. I didn’t expect anything that makes sense. Or even anything that displays talent, for that matter. Vic then makes a call to another cop, promising the same visit. Sam goes to visit Sheila, trying to convince her to stay with him, and she agrees, for the moment. Sam and Sheila find a beat-up black guy with a picture of Vic taped to his face, while Vic plays his guitar and gets laid off screen like the smooth-talking motherfucker that he is.
Sam listens to a tape of the conversation he had with Vic earlier and deduces that it came from a payphone in a bar. He gets up and heads off to a club where he knows Vic plays at. Sam drops Sheila off on the way, and their relationship ends. Sam gets made at the club, and Vic bails. Sam gives chase, but to no avail. Vic calls Sam again and tells him to come find him, giving him the address of his slum apartment.
Once Sam shows up, Vic taunts him with a song. He tells Sam the story of being in prison, of being beaten by the guards. He gives Sam the glove, and they duke it out, eventually beating each other into a draw. They collapse laughing, talking, and realizing that they’re not all that different. Just as everything seems happy again, that slimy fucking grease-ball jerk-off motherfucker Harry shows up and shoots Vic. Vic, however, was a very popular guy around the tenement. Every other tenant shows up and they beat Harry to death. So, Sam ends up with his money and gets to see his daughter again, but he’s not happy with the way things turned out.
What the fuck is wrong with Ross Hagen and everyone he works with!? I have nothing against dismal bad guy winning movies, like Jeepers Creepers, but this is just too fuckin’ much! Some movies leave you feeling dirty after watching them. Hagen’s movies leave you feeling like you’ve lost every loved one in your life, you have nothing to live for, and everyone and thing is against you. They make you want to commit suicide in fifty-four different horrifying ways all at the same time. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go stick my head in a tank of piranhas while ramming a railroad spike tied to a high-voltage wire through my heart and shoving a roaring chainsaw soaked in hydrochloric acid and lemon juice up my ass.
Holy crap. Fedeler needs to be smacked. My retinas were throbbing after having to look at John Saxon fight Fu Manchu with beef joints for ten minutes. And the guys in the hot tub at the beginning, not even gonna touch that. Ross Hagen and Michael Pataki both need to die slowly and horribly. I would only give it a 1/2, but it's getting a 1. The extra 1/2 is for Pataki getting his ass handed to him at the end. Fuck off, Sidehackers crew.
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