Death Force (1978) Caprican 3/Action RT: 110 minutes Rated R (violence, language) Director: Cirio H. Santiago Screenplay: Howard R. Cohen Music: Jaime Mendoza-Nava and Eddie Villanueva Cinematography: Ricardo Remies Release date: November 15, 1978 (US) Cast: James Iglehart, Carmen Argenziano, Leon Isaac (Kennedy), Jayne Kennedy, Jose Mari Avellana, Joonie Gamboa, Leo Martinez, Armando Federico, Irene Waters, James Monroe Iglehart, Allen Arkus, Tony Carrion, Roberto Gonzales. Box Office: N/A
Rating: ***
For accuracy’s sake, I should have put “aka Fighting Mad, Vengeance Is Mine and Black Samourai” after the title Death Force, a Filipino-US exploitation movie from the guys that gave the world Vampire Hookers, Cirio H. Santiago (director) and Howard R. Cohen (writer). I recall watching it years ago under the title Fighting Mad. It had a running time of 96 minutes. That’s the version that was theatrically re-released in ’82 by 21st Century Film Corporation and subsequently on video by Continental Video. I’m reviewing the original 110-minute version of Death Force, basically a cheap knock-off of Point Blank with plenty of martial arts sword action thrown in.
Returning Vietnam vets and partners-in-crime Doug (Iglehart, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls), Morelli (Argenziano, When a Stranger Calls) and McGee (Isaac, Penitentiary) make a stopover in Manila to sell a shipment of stolen gold to a Chinese gangster for big money. Morelli and McGee have big plans while Doug just wants to quietly settle down with his wife Maria (Kennedy, Body and Soul) and young son (Iglehart’s real-life son James). Before he realizes what’s going down, Doug has his throat slit by his two partners before being dumped into the Pacific and left for dead. Instead of dying, he washes ashore of a remote island occupied by two Japanese soldiers (Avellana and Gamboa) since WWII. After nursing him back to health, they train him in the ways of the samurai. If he should ever make it back to the States, Doug intends to take bloody revenge on his betrayers.
Doug’s time on the island is intercut with Morelli and McGee’s rise to power in L.A. Now that they have money, they want it all. They set about taking over the city’s criminal underworld employing the usual hostile takeover methods- e.g. murder, arson, intimidation, etc. Several bodies later, they’re the new crime bosses. Little do they know their day of reckoning is upon them.
Long story short, Doug gets off the island and returns to L.A. with swords in hand. His plan is to reunite with his family before hunting down his sworn enemies. Things have changed a lot since he left to fight in ‘Nam. He needs help navigating the city’s underbelly. Enter the helpful cab driver played by Filipino exploitation mainstay Leo Martinez more or less playing the same role he did in Vampire Hookers. He has a knack for gathering information and finding out where people are. It’s he who finds Maria who relocated with their boy after McGee’s advances became violently aggressive. He’s in for a serious cutting down and doesn’t even know it.
At its most fundamental level, Death Force is a solid revenge actioner with a basically good man seeking justice against two greedy bad guys. Most filmmakers would be content with leaving it at that with the villains. Santiago and Cohen get surprisingly ambitious by providing them with additional motivations for their criminal actions- i.e. Morelli’s inferiority complex, McGee’s desire for Maria. Morelli needs to prove again and again he’s not small-time. McGee, who lost Maria to Doug, derails her career as a nightclub singer and blocks her from getting ANY job in order to compel her to be with him. When that fails, he gets really nasty. Sure, these reasons are fairly perfunctory but the very fact that the makers made even a small effort in this area shows they actually care about what they’re doing with Death Force. They largely succeed in their endeavor to make more than a routine revenge picture.
Please don’t mistake my praise for Death Force as a declaration of perfection. It is definitely NOT perfect. It has serious pacing issues. It lags a bit in the island scenes. It’s choppily edited and some of the fight choreography is sloppy. It has a few jarring sound cuts mainly pertaining to score. It’s cheap-looking, but not amateurish. The acting is about what you’d expect. That is to say, it’s not great. Like many an action hero before and after, Iglehart is mainly brawn and bad assery. He does try though in scenes with his family. Argenziano is quite good as the new crime boss, a personable sort who schmoozes with customers at his Italian restaurant as easily as he dispatches anybody who dares stand against him. Leon takes it to the limit as the increasingly crazed McGee who goes completely bye-bye by the climax at a Mexican villa. This is the first time I’ve seen Leon as a bad guy; he’s a real scenery consumer. I always liked him as an actor. His then-wife Jayne is FREAKING HOT! She’s a good singer with her sultry voice.
There is action and violence aplenty in Death Force including a few bloody dismemberments and decapitations. The real fun begins when the hero comes home and starts slicing his way through L.A.’s dirtbag population. Who doesn’t like that, right? At the same time, Death Force strives to be a crime drama in the vein of The Godfather and Scarface with all the side characters and side stories like the bad romance between Morelli’s right-hand man Rico (Federico) amd Maria’s waitress friend Marina (Waters). Santiago also throws clumsy but sincere melodrama into the mix the Doug-Maria-son plot thread. He even gives us a hazy montage of Doug romping and playing with his family before getting back to business. It’s not completely successful, but it’s fine.
Under any title, I like Death Force. It’s a solid action flick that delivers a sweet balance of Filipino action and blaxploitation. It’s better written than most exploitation flicks. It’s flawed in some areas but Santiago mostly delivers. It’s definitely grindhouse material. More sophisticated viewers will turn their noses up at it but this Movie Guy digs it!
