Rage to Kill

RAGE TO KILL (1988)

Written & Directed by: David Winters
Starring: James Ryan, Oliver Reed & Cameron Mitchell

Good lord Rage to Kill is bad. And I mean bad. Sure it’s also freaking hilarious and provides a good amount of bad cinema entertainment: but only just. This Action International Pictures (AIP) “epic” is so barmy, inept and features a complete douche bag as the main character that even this connoisseur of bad action cinema had trouble tolerating the insaneness and never ending explosions (two things I usually love) that is Rage to Kill. Not even a drunk (and I mean, DRUNK) Oliver Reed could save this (ok, so he was kinda humorous and inappropriate: check out the extremely random and uncomfortable hot tub scene to see evidence of this). But you know you are in trouble in a cheap B-Movie when constant shit blowing up and a drunk Oliver Reed can’t save your flick.

The “film” sees uber-ripped and annoyingly awesome Blaine Striker (Ryan) heading off to kick some ass to rescue his brother (who actually utters the immortal words, “Gee, I wish Blaine was here”) who along with some other students and what seems like a good portion of South Africa are being held under an iron grip by a mental general (Reed) and his ever loyal army. I’m not sure how everyone has come under Reed’s rule, as he seems completely inept at doing anything other than drinking, lying on sofas and partaking in some “hilarious” acting. So Blaine gets smuggled into the country, gets caught almost immediately (what a dickwad!), gets tortured, manages to bed an annoying journalist and then somehow (in what is one of the many completely absurd moments to be found in Rage to Kill) manages to train the journalist and the students to become machine gun toting soldiers who then somehow manage to overthrow Reed and his army. But not before Blaine (awesome hero name, especially when coupled with Striker) has time to show off his drag racing skills in a silly scene (supposedly) showing him racing a jet powered car just so we know how awesome he is (maybe he should have spent more time training and planning a proper rescue mission so he wouldn’t be captured straight away instead of poncing about like he’s in Days of Thunder).

Despite mucho explosive destruction of various properties and vehicles and gunfire aplenty the action is pretty dire with everybody just firing randomly and hoping to hit someone, guns never needing reloading and quite possibly cinema’s worst boat chase. Ugh. Now AIP never made great films but they made some entertaining ones (sort of) but Rage to Kill is scraping the bottom of the action barrel.

Your eyes will bleed, your brain will melt and you’ll laugh your ass off.