TheExecutionerPartII

The Executioner, Part II (1984)

Some stories are timeless and this isn’t one of them. The movie opens up in one of the worst recreations of Vietnam that I’ve ever seen on film. Then the action moves to “modern” day and back to the states. Someone has been executing criminals by beating the hell out of them and shoving grenades in their clothes to blow them up. A police detective named O’Malley is trying to figure out who the vigilante is. Eventually he discovers that it is his old army buddy (it is supposedly them in the earlier clip) and he goes off to arrest him. Toss in a subplot about O’Malley’s daughter getting caught up in drugs and prostitution and you have a movie.

You know since I’ve started reviewing movies I’ve seen my share of really poorly put together movies. But this one rivals any movie that I’ve ever seen in the complete ineptness with which it was made. The story has potential with the whole Vietnam vet looses his marbles and mistakes the local criminal element as “Charlie”. There are a lot of movie from the 80s just like this one. But any chance of getting a decent action or revenge flick pretty much ends there. The story is poorly executed with giant wholes in the plot that are impossible to ignore. For example why would the detective, after matching fingerprints and knowing for sure that his friend is the killer, then give him four hours until he is arrested? Then after the Executioner saves the detective’s daughter, why would no one else question the detective when he suddenly says he was wrong. This is after he already had the evidence from the police lab, and discussed it with another detective! Hell you have a masked man running around jamming grenades in the clothing of criminals and no one even notices. I’ll give a movie like this a lot of rope, but at some point it becomes so stupid that it isn’t fun to watch.

The performances are equally as bad as the rest of the story. I had hoped for something that was at least passable, but the actors clearly haven’t got a clue what they are supposed to be doing. This may come from what appears to be a complete lack of skill from the director James Bryan. Bryan is also responsible for one of the most overrated “backwoods slasher” movies ever, Don’t go in the Woods Alone, so I should have been prepared. Though this is even a worse effort than that movie, if you can believe that. What was especially disappointing was the performance of Christopher Mitchum (Ricco the Mean Machine) in the lead role of the O’Malley. He was just as bad as the rest of the cast of unknowns.

One of the positives that I can say about this movie is how well the action scenes were shot. The cast may not of had any clue how to act, but they were quite good in most of the action sequences. Of course this is ruined by the ineptness which all of the gunplay and explosions are handled. First you have actors fifteen feet away from each other that continually miss with their pistols! Then what is even worse is the terrible insert shot of a random explosion that is used whenever one of the criminals is blown up by a grenade! It is the same shot and it never matches any of the death scenes. The other most glaring technical deficiency is that they either didn’t record sound when shooting the film or just did away with it. All of the dialogue is dubbed and there is at best a halfhearted attempt to add ambient sound. This makes the movie seem way too “quiet” and is really distracting when what is on screen doesn’t match up with the soundtrack, which happens thru most of the movie.

All in all I can’t recommend this movie. The only people that are going to get any enjoyment out of this will be the diehard fans of terrible grindhouse movies and even that isn’t a sure thing. I myself am a fan of movies like that and I had a hard time finding anything worthwhile about this movie. This movie can be found on the Grindhouse Experience box set. This is only the second movie I’ve watched from the set and I hope that they get better.

1 out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer