Backwoods hicks murder the parents and kidnap the teenage
sister of an undercover urban cop (Lorenzo Lamas), with a handy knack for
setting punishment traps (wooden spikes that can pop out when a foot presses a
hidden switch, a rope trick that tightens ankles and jerks victims upside down
once they walk within the loop, among others), and he enters their domain to
get revenge. The villains are the customary white trash goofs in filthy rags,
with missing teeth, foul and crude. Individually they aren’t that difficult for
Lamas to undermine but when the bunch, led by a particularly nasty Junior
(Robert Scott, the kind of antagonist Walker, Texas Ranger, would
pummel a few times and spinning back kick
into oblivion), gang up together, the film’s hero is at a disadvantage. The
film opens as if Lamas’ story will take place while on the crummy streets as a
narc cop, but not long after an outside bar fight with couple of biker heavies
(and dispatching a drug kingpin and his lead thug with floor wood spikes,
impaling their feet, while their alluring female street seductress is caught in
a net, set off by a rope trap), he learns of his parents’ death on a boat
(Junior and a couple of his goons board their boat, terrorizing them before
finding Lamas’ sister in her room) and goes to investigate, with a mission of
finding his missing sister. Junior and his uglies don’t exactly avoid
suspicion, mocking Lamas when asking about whether or not they have seen his
sister. The film doesn’t exactly hide its inspiration (“First Blood” (1982)
when Rambo is in the wilderness as deputies pursue him, failing miserably, is
obvious), with Lamas a poor man’s Stallone. Lamas, his hairy chest, and snake
belt buckle, was a staple in my teenage years when my stepdad would rent bad
made-for-video action movies on VHS and I would watch them when he was gone.
Lamas was often on HBO or Cinemax as well. I watched a bunch of his crap,
including the Snake Eater series. But it has been decades, although it wasn’t
too long ago that I came across “Bounty Tracker” (my favorite of his), since I
watched the shitty Snake Eater films. Probably the last time I watched any of
them was maybe 1995. At any rate, El Rey Network was showing them (I am also
revisiting the Kickboxer sequels, spawned from a Van Damme flick in the 80s),
so I thought I would rewatch them after 24 years. “Snake Eater”, Lamas first
from 1989, was shoddily shot, produced, cast, and acted…which means it would
have been right up my alley in the early 90s. How I was able to digest them enthusiastically
I even wonder sometimes myself. At least with “The Bounty Tracker” (from 1993),
there was some good martial arts action. But when your main villain is Junior,
not exactly an adversary one would consider in the same league as Bolo Yeung or
Matthias Hues, then taking threats to Lamas’ well-being serious is ridiculous.
The finale has Lamas held up in a shack with his sis while Junior and his
hillbilly posse unload their shotguns and arsenal into the barely held-together
structure, practically falling apart already. This was Lamas’ sister’s prison
during the film before Lamas showed up to try and spring her. Josie Bell, whose
father operates a boat lodging associated with Lamas’ parents death (they were
on one of his boats when Junior and his scum intruded on them), comes to his
rescue when he was overpowered by Junior’s thugs. The film loves to camera pan
up the legs of its women, as Bell tends to lotioning hers, naked in a robe,
(Lamas awakening from a concussion in her bed) while the kingpin’s lover orders
Lamas to disrobe in order to verify he’s not wearing a wire. doing so herself
when they negotiate a duel stripdown. The graphic violence is relegated to
blood squibs when Junior’s creeps are shot and one of them gets a knife to the
chest (some of the explosions are shabbily disappointing). This film is very
much a casualty of limited funds. Lamas goes for the smooth voice approach,
full of confidence and bravado, but having to eke out survival against Junior
and his less-than-intimidating backwoods crew is embarrassing. Norris would
have wiped them out in about a minute. That’s a problem when you are wanting to
mark your own territory in the very crowded action star real estate of the late
80s / early 90s.
Ron Palillo, of "Welcome Back, Kotter" fame, has a small part at the very tail end of the film as an arsonist Lamas torments with a condom filled with his lighter fluid (he claims is just bug spray as he is disguised as an exterminator), but the part if very brief and not all that significant. Two cops hang out in a car while Lamas is inside, one of them urinating in a cup and giving it off to a homeless vagabond begging for some hot coffee! Lamas talks to himself, humming Kumbaya, and flicking cards while waiting for criminals to show up. For me, this film is one of Lamas' less appealing efforts...and he's made some particularly unappealing actioners.
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