Relentless (1989) CineTel Films/Thriller RT: 92 minutes Rated R (strong violence and language, nudity, suggestive material, drugs) Director: William Lustig Screenplay: Phil Alden Robinson Music: Jay Chattaway Cinematography: James Lemmo Release date: August 30, 1989 (US) Cast: Judd Nelson, Robert Loggia, Leo Rossi, Meg Foster, Patrick O’Bryan, Ken Lerner, Mindy Seeger, Angel Tompkins, Robert Madrid, Beau Starr, Harriet Hall, Frank Pesce, Ron Taylor, Roy Brocksmith, G. Smokey Campbell, Edward Bunker, Brendan Ryan. Box Office: $6.9M (US)
Rating: ***
The thriller Relentless opened on the final weekend (Labor Day) of summer ’89. Traditionally, that’s a weekend reserved for “dump movies” that have no chance against the big titles of early to mid-summer. I can understand why Relentless fell into that category. It’s from a small independent studio that specialized in low-budget B-movies like Cold Steel, Bulletproof (NOT the Adam Sandler one!) and 976-EVIL. It doesn’t have any bankable names in the cast. Former Brat Packer Judd Nelson’s star had all but faded by the time he agreed to star. In short, it didn’t have mass appeal.
Then you have filmgoers like me who live for movies like Relentless. While it has a decent enough cast, it wasn’t any of them that got me interested. It was director William Lustig, the man behind exploitation classics like Maniac and Vigilante, two of my faves. For the record, he also did the Maniac Cop trilogy, but the two sequels came later. Anyway, I knew with Lustig’s name on it, it had to be pretty good. I needed something to make me forget the abomination I saw the week before, the contemptible John Belushi biopic Wired.
Nelson stars as Arthur “Buck” Taylor, the disturbed son of a cop killed on the job years before who goes on a killing spree after being rejected by the LAPD. He seemingly picks names at random out of the phone book and calls first before going to their house to kill them by their own hand. He leaves a message for his first victim, a movie extra named Todd Arthur (O’Bryan, 976-EVIL), on his answering machine. Todd goes to the cops with the tape, but there’s not much they can do. When he gets home, Buck is waiting for him. After a brief struggle, Buck puts a knife in Todd’s hand and stabs him. Then he leaves the page from the phone book with a message written on it taunting the cops.
The detectives on the case are young hot shot Sam Dietz (Rossi, The Accused) and veteran cop Bill Malloy (Loggia, Jagged Edge). It’s Dietz’s first day as a detective and he’s eager to solve the case while Malloy wants to bide his time waiting for a witness or some concrete clue. As the bodies pile up, it leads to some tension between the new partners. Dietz, a transfer from the NYPD, tells Malloy of his involvement in the Son of Sam case. He thinks they need to be more aggressive in their approach to nabbing the “Sunset Killer” as the press dubs him. They soon figure out the connection between Buck’s victims. As they close in on Buck, Buck zeroes in on them. He plans to kill them before they get him. Things reach a head when Buck threatens Dietz’s wife Carol (Foster, They Live) and son Corey (Ryan, Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey).
Relentless is a solid thriller brimming with gritty B-movie intensity. At the same time, it could have used more of the sleaziness of Vigilante. Instead of shaking down scuzzy street criminals for information, it shows Dietz and his happy home life with a New Age-y wife and a precocious kid who always picks the wrong time to practice his sax. However, when it focuses on the main plot, it’s good. It’s smart too even if the psychology behind Buck is strictly Psych 101. He was routinely abused by his dad while being molded into a future cop. By not being accepted into the academy (for obvious reasons), he feels as though he let his father down. That’s why he snaps. Geez, even a novice could tell you that.
Nelson delivers a creepy-as-hell performance as the low-key, dead-eyed killer who barely utters a word as he dispatches his victims with piano wire and a corkscrew. It may not reach the level of Tom Noonan in Manhunter, but it’s solid work from an actor I don’t ordinarily like. Rossi is somewhat hammy as Dietz. It’s hard to separate him from the skin-crawl creep he played in The Accused, but he manages to pull it off in the end. Loggia turns his usual great old grouch performance. I always liked that guy. Foster’s neo-hippy character just feels out of place. 70s exploitation starlet Angel Tomkins (The Teacher) makes a brief appearance as a reporter who helps Dietz lure Buck out into the open with fatal consequences. I wish she had been in it more.
What’s personally interesting about Relentless is that I went home afterwards and watched Lustig’s action-thriller Hit List released earlier in the year. It also starred Rossi. I missed it at the movies so I had a really good night watching two winners from Mr. Lustig. Okay, that’s just a side note of interest to almost no one. I’ll close by saying that Relentless is one of the best unsung movies of the 80s. It came out at the end of an era of great exploitation movies. It’s a sad reminder of the type of movie they just don’t make anymore.
