Sunday, July 19

Sudden Death (1977)

"You wanna know how to beat this guy? Spit in the face and kick him in the balls..."
"Wow, look at these Salvation Army faggots."
"Hit 'em hard enough and they say nothing, they just fall."
"If you decide not to I might have to talk about your mother"

Directed by Eddie Romero
84 Minutes / Media Entertainment / Cropped from 1.85:1 to full screen

After the carbombing of a man who survived the shotgun murder of his entire family months earlier, brothers-in-badass Duke Smith (Robert Conrad) and Wyatt Spain (Felton Perry) take on the task of tracking down those responsible since the cops can't do fuck all. The audience learns the ownership board of a powerful Filipino shipping corporation (with Balboa shotgiver Thayer David as their head) are behind it all and our buddy protagonists also come to know through beating the piss out of a host of little brown people on the tropical island. As the ass kickers get closer to the rich assholes, Dominic Digaldo (Don Stroud) is brought in to make it a "family matter", but Smith and Spain are always one step ahead.

No, this isn't JCVD running atop The Igloo, but an excuse for Conrad to improve upon his tan/5th-degree burn and chew the Philippine scenery while spitting out gritty one-liners. The story doesn't mean anything since as noted above our heroes seem to be pushed towards those who deserve bullets and shattered teeth simply by the ticking runtime. The fight sequences are straight forward with Perry breaking out the kung-fu and Conrad defaulting to the killing hardware. The snappiest and funniest quips come right before big brawls erupt with bloody Peckinpah slo-mo thrown in for taste. Yep, it's a speedy slice of hard action throughly drenched in '70s fashion and funk...in the Philippines no less.





VHS Picture: 3/10
VHS Sound: 4/10

No comments:

...do you dare tread upon the staircase?

Basement of Ghoulish Decadence, Basement of Ghoulish Archive, and all original material Copyright © 2009-present by Jayson Kennedy. All rights reserved.