Deadly Games (1982)

Sometimes your instincts steer you right and sometimes they steer you wrong. And sometimes you aren’t quite sure about the end result. That happened to me with Deadly Games, a film released onto shiny disc format that, much like my says of browsing in the video stores, drew me in with an intriguing cover design.

The plot is very simple. A masked killer is picking off women in a small town. He also seems to spend a lot of his time playing a home-made board game that can help direct his urges (I guess). Can Roger (a police officer, played by Sam Groom) and Keegan (Jo Ann Harris) catch the killer before it is too late, and before Keegan suffers the same fate as her sister? And is it anything to do with the strange Billy Owens (Steve Railsback)?

With some gratuitous nudity early on, and a couple of impressive and deadly set-pieces interspersed throughout the runtime, Deadly Games is certainly a film that most slasher movie fans will want to check out at least once. Whether it is worth a repeat viewing, however, is a different matter entirely. There’s something worthwhile here, an attempt to play by the rules while also toying with viewers, but there are also numerous scenes that have characters chatting to one another in a way that feels like it is just being done to pad out the runtime.

Writer-director Scott Mansfield doesn’t have much in his filmography at all, and this was his first film, but he shows a certain degree of competence when it comes to a few of the more memorable moments. There’s a swimming pool scene here that ranks up there alongside the best in the genre, for my money, and it is clear that Mansfield tries to make the most out of what he has available to him. If only Mansfield the writer was as good as Mansfield the director, this could have been a minor classic of the sub-genre.

Harris is a fine leading lady, although she’s weighed down by the weaker performance from Groom. Railsback does just fine, despite the limitations of his role, and certainly adds value to genre fans. Elsewhere, the cast is eclectic enough to include Colleen Camp, Dick Butkus, Denise Galik, Saul Sindell, and many others. Very few people are doing their best work, but most of them are just fine for what the movie is.

A mixed bag of good and bad, with most of the bad coming from the script, what you have here is a lesser slasher movie that has enough curiosity value, and strangeness, to make it worth your time.

6/10

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Eye Of The Tiger (1986)

Gary Busey plays Buck Matthews, a man so tough that his entire character is defined by those two things. Okay, he's also just out of prison (where he didn't deserve to be, goddammit) and he was quite the champ in his years of military service. When he returns home, he finds a town that is being terrorised by a bunch of violent bikers. The local law enforcement don't seem to be doing much about it, so it's up to Buck to teach them a lesson that they won't forget in a hurry. Unfortunately, the bikers take their opportunity to exact some revenge and before you can say "did they name this movie JUST to use that Survivor song?" it's time for a bit of a one-man war.

Directed by Richard C. Sarafian, and written by Michael Thomas Montgomery, Eye Of The Tiger is a very pure film experience. It's a lean, mean tale of revenge that benefits from a great leading man (during the years when he was just the right side of sanity, apparently) and a solid supporting cast, including Yaphet Kotto in a particularly enjoyable turn, Seymour Cassel and big, bad William Smith. Denise Galik and Kimberlin Brown may have less to do, but they are actresses in a testosterone-filled '80s action flick, so whatyagonnado? Young Judith Barsi, as the daughter of our hero, doesn't have a lot to do either, but I had to mention her here after I was saddened to find out that she died (cause of death - homicide) not long after her tenth birthday, just a couple of years after this movie was released.

Busey has, quite simply, rarely been better onscreen (and let's just take a moment to remember how many great performances he's actually given, all too easy to forget as he weaves a cloak of self-parody around himself in the 21st century). He's a man who wants to stand his ground, and he's often in the right, despite what odds may be stacked against him. As things wind towards an inevitable, and satisfying, finale the whole movie delivers a well-executed dose of righteous machismo.

I'm not going to pretend that this is high art, but I will emphasise that it's all put together almost perfectly for what it aims to be. The script sketches out characters, but fleshes out enough little details to make viewers invest in every confrontation, while Sarafian's direction delivers some great moments, with the perfect pacing of the film leaving plenty of room for impressive stuntwork and set-pieces in between the more predictable beats.

And then, of course, there's THAT great song being put to good use. Enjoy.

8/10

http://www.amazon.com/Action-Marathon-Cyclone-Alienator-Exterminator/dp/B00AJXO5X6/ref=sr_1_1?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1388415609&sr=1-1&keywords=eye+of+the+tiger