I'm a huge fan of Fabrizio De Angelis. If all he did was produce movies like Violent Naples, Emanuelle Around the World, Zombi, The Beyond, The House by the Cemetery, The New York Ripper, Manhattan Baby, The New Barbarians, Formula for a Murder and 1990: The Bronx Warriors, he'd be worthy of my respect. Then he went and started making his own movies, starting with this Thunder, a series of three movies that outright remakes, remixes and rips off Rambo while adding in a Native American wrinkle. Using the name Larry Ludman, he also directed Deadly Impact, The Manhunt, six Karate Warrior movies, the incredible Karate Rock, Killer Crocodile, the transcendent The Last Match and many more.
Seriously. Track down Thunder, Thunder 2 and Thunder 3. They haven't been released by anyone in the U. S. on blu ray, but they better be soon. De Angelis knows how to shoot the kind of action movie that answers what people are looking for. The hero has to go through some horrific odds before blowing things up real good on the way to being one of your five for five dollars for five nights mom and pop video rentals.
When everyone was making Stallone Xerox cinema, Italy answered the call. In Germany, this was also considered a sequel to The Wild Geese, as it was released as Die Rückkehr der Wildgänse (The Return of the Wild Geese). What helps make Operation Nam (AKA Cobra Mission) stand out is that just like how Italian cinema reinvented the American Western, they do the same with the Vietnam revengeomatic.
De Angelis wrote this with Gianfranco Clerici (Delirium, Tex and the Lords of the Deep, House On the Edge of the Park) and Vincenzo Mannino (Devil Fish, Atlantis Interceptors, Strange Shadows In an Empty Room). Instead of simply being a man coming back to get to win this time, they forget the jingoistic nature of the Reagan 80s - or filter it through an Italian hivemind that survived the Years of Lead - and recall that America also made movies that showed just how rough Vietnam was on its men like Coming Home, The Deer Hunter and Rolling Thunder.
Ten years after they left Vietnam, James Walcott (John Steiner, Shock, Tenebre), who just quit his job at a roadside bar that he used to work at with his now ex-lover and unemployed Mark Adams (Manfred Lehmann, who was actually in Code Name: Wild Geese, the Antonio Margheriti-directed ripoff of Wild Geese and was the German voice of Bruce Willis) are attending the wedding of the daughter of Roger Carson (Christopher Connelly, Strike Commando, The Norseman, Peyton Place). Roger isn't interested at all, playing Pole Position instead of getting ready and inviting those buddies when his rich wife - she used to work in a bra factory before she decided to buy it. Now she has a deal with Sears and he's a kept man - asked him not to. In fact, he's ruined his daughter's day so much that they all go to a bar instead of sticking around.
That's when they commiserate over some beer and whiskey, discussing how they can't even sell the medals from the war for money. A story about prisoners of war comes on the news and two guys at the bar start making fun of the stoner vets who barely fought a war. All four of our heroes remember how much violence made them feel alive and kick the stuffing out of these men. If that felt good, just imagine how great it would feel like to go back to Vietnam and find the rest of these vets!
If it worked for Sylvester Stallone and Chuck Norris and David Carradine and Chris Mitchum and Brent Huff - you get the idea - it will work for these guys. For some time, it does. They start by looking up their old commanding officer, who has been replaced by Colonel Mortimer (Gordon Mitchell, who has graduated from playing the action hero to the kind of heavy who doesn't get his hands dirty). Mortimer tells them where to find Major Morris, who turns out to be played by Enzo G. Castellari, who knows a thing or two about war. After all, he directed The Inglorious B*******.
Well, Morris seems insane to the boys. He has maps packed with information about where the POWs are and keeps claiming that the government forced him out because they don't want anyone to know that our boys are still over there. Hey - we shouldn't have been there, as someone always says in these movies.
They leave this crazy old man and look up an even more mentally ill younger man, their old war pal Richard Wagner (Oliver Tobias, The Stud, Mata Hari) who tells them that he has a good life: no rent, free food and plenty of nurses who want to sleep with him. All they have to do is ask him if he wants to kill some Viet Cong and he leaves behind what he has claimed to be paradise.
The now foursome meet up with a group of vets who try and help families to get closure, including those of soldier Phil Lawson (look for Luciano Pigozzi as his grieving dad). These soldiers explain that just giving these families bones and a flag is all they can do. Well, that and taking their money. Roger goes s***house and the gang beats the p*** out of these quislings.
Finally, our boys get to Vietnam, a place where they plan on freeing as many Americans as they can. They're given the weapons and intelligence they need from Father Lenoir (Donald Pleasence). Did Pleasence own a Catholic priest costume and offer to bring it? Is it the same collar from Prince of Darkness and The Devil's Men?* Did Pleasence ever say no to a movie?
The weird thing is, when they finally get to save the men kept there, they don't want to leave. Well, when four maniacs show up and one of them - Richard - remembers the face of a soldier who whipped his nude body before literally p****** in his face, well...you can't blame them. Richard goes wild, not waiting for the signal from Roger the leader and starts moving down the VC before anyone knows what's going on.
Despite having no real plan, military hijinks like throwing a ton of grenades into a room and yelling. "You've got mail" three years before America OnLine changed its name from Quantum Computer Services and also leaving some grenades in a truck and sending it directly into the enemy while flipping them off seem to get the job done. But things are weird for the guys. They start to realize that their old enemy now has the upper hand when it comes to tech. And the ladies they once easily slept with are now scarred victims ready to shoot you when they remember how you napalmed their homeland. Yeah, maybe Mmark shouldn't have tried to relive past memories.
That's the whole point of this movie. Nothing the Americans have done goes right. Even when they think they've saved a few of the POWs - they've gotten nearly all of them killed - they're surrounded by the enemy and only saved when their real enemy, Mortimer, flies in and tells them to leave behind one of the POWs, Mike. And Mike is played by Ethan Wayne, the son of the Duke, so in essence the military-industrial complex is selling out the son of John Wayne. Only an Italian scum director could pull off something so audacious. And nihilistic. And bleak.
We end with everyone selling out America just to survive, Mortimer getting a promotion and Richard back in the mental hospital. Everyone decides to go back to their old lives, but you get the idea from Mortimer that they now know too much.
So do we, as we learn from the end credits - I had to translate them from Italia - the fate of the rest of the unit. Roger Carson died two weeks later when he was hit by a car as he was leaving his home. James Walcott died 25 days later, his helicopter carrying tourists crashed in Thailand. Richard Wagner is the only survivor. Doctors say he is in excellent health.
I love that the poster for this has Gabriele Tinti and David Warbeck in it. They're not in the movie. They totally could have been, however.
If you enjoy this tale of Americans in over their head when trying to be action heroes, I recommend The Last Match, which has Ernest Borgnine, Charles Napier, Oliver Tobias, former Buffalo Bills QB Jim Kelly and most of the late 1991 Miami Dolphins battling the army of an entire evil nation to get back their coach's daughter.
Seriously. Track down Thunder, Thunder 2 and Thunder 3. They haven't been released by anyone in the U. S. on blu ray, but they better be soon. De Angelis knows how to shoot the kind of action movie that answers what people are looking for. The hero has to go through some horrific odds before blowing things up real good on the way to being one of your five for five dollars for five nights mom and pop video rentals.
When everyone was making Stallone Xerox cinema, Italy answered the call. In Germany, this was also considered a sequel to The Wild Geese, as it was released as Die Rückkehr der Wildgänse (The Return of the Wild Geese). What helps make Operation Nam (AKA Cobra Mission) stand out is that just like how Italian cinema reinvented the American Western, they do the same with the Vietnam revengeomatic.
De Angelis wrote this with Gianfranco Clerici (Delirium, Tex and the Lords of the Deep, House On the Edge of the Park) and Vincenzo Mannino (Devil Fish, Atlantis Interceptors, Strange Shadows In an Empty Room). Instead of simply being a man coming back to get to win this time, they forget the jingoistic nature of the Reagan 80s - or filter it through an Italian hivemind that survived the Years of Lead - and recall that America also made movies that showed just how rough Vietnam was on its men like Coming Home, The Deer Hunter and Rolling Thunder.
Ten years after they left Vietnam, James Walcott (John Steiner, Shock, Tenebre), who just quit his job at a roadside bar that he used to work at with his now ex-lover and unemployed Mark Adams (Manfred Lehmann, who was actually in Code Name: Wild Geese, the Antonio Margheriti-directed ripoff of Wild Geese and was the German voice of Bruce Willis) are attending the wedding of the daughter of Roger Carson (Christopher Connelly, Strike Commando, The Norseman, Peyton Place). Roger isn't interested at all, playing Pole Position instead of getting ready and inviting those buddies when his rich wife - she used to work in a bra factory before she decided to buy it. Now she has a deal with Sears and he's a kept man - asked him not to. In fact, he's ruined his daughter's day so much that they all go to a bar instead of sticking around.
That's when they commiserate over some beer and whiskey, discussing how they can't even sell the medals from the war for money. A story about prisoners of war comes on the news and two guys at the bar start making fun of the stoner vets who barely fought a war. All four of our heroes remember how much violence made them feel alive and kick the stuffing out of these men. If that felt good, just imagine how great it would feel like to go back to Vietnam and find the rest of these vets!
If it worked for Sylvester Stallone and Chuck Norris and David Carradine and Chris Mitchum and Brent Huff - you get the idea - it will work for these guys. For some time, it does. They start by looking up their old commanding officer, who has been replaced by Colonel Mortimer (Gordon Mitchell, who has graduated from playing the action hero to the kind of heavy who doesn't get his hands dirty). Mortimer tells them where to find Major Morris, who turns out to be played by Enzo G. Castellari, who knows a thing or two about war. After all, he directed The Inglorious B*******.
Well, Morris seems insane to the boys. He has maps packed with information about where the POWs are and keeps claiming that the government forced him out because they don't want anyone to know that our boys are still over there. Hey - we shouldn't have been there, as someone always says in these movies.
They leave this crazy old man and look up an even more mentally ill younger man, their old war pal Richard Wagner (Oliver Tobias, The Stud, Mata Hari) who tells them that he has a good life: no rent, free food and plenty of nurses who want to sleep with him. All they have to do is ask him if he wants to kill some Viet Cong and he leaves behind what he has claimed to be paradise.
The now foursome meet up with a group of vets who try and help families to get closure, including those of soldier Phil Lawson (look for Luciano Pigozzi as his grieving dad). These soldiers explain that just giving these families bones and a flag is all they can do. Well, that and taking their money. Roger goes s***house and the gang beats the p*** out of these quislings.
Finally, our boys get to Vietnam, a place where they plan on freeing as many Americans as they can. They're given the weapons and intelligence they need from Father Lenoir (Donald Pleasence). Did Pleasence own a Catholic priest costume and offer to bring it? Is it the same collar from Prince of Darkness and The Devil's Men?* Did Pleasence ever say no to a movie?
The weird thing is, when they finally get to save the men kept there, they don't want to leave. Well, when four maniacs show up and one of them - Richard - remembers the face of a soldier who whipped his nude body before literally p****** in his face, well...you can't blame them. Richard goes wild, not waiting for the signal from Roger the leader and starts moving down the VC before anyone knows what's going on.
Despite having no real plan, military hijinks like throwing a ton of grenades into a room and yelling. "You've got mail" three years before America OnLine changed its name from Quantum Computer Services and also leaving some grenades in a truck and sending it directly into the enemy while flipping them off seem to get the job done. But things are weird for the guys. They start to realize that their old enemy now has the upper hand when it comes to tech. And the ladies they once easily slept with are now scarred victims ready to shoot you when they remember how you napalmed their homeland. Yeah, maybe Mmark shouldn't have tried to relive past memories.
That's the whole point of this movie. Nothing the Americans have done goes right. Even when they think they've saved a few of the POWs - they've gotten nearly all of them killed - they're surrounded by the enemy and only saved when their real enemy, Mortimer, flies in and tells them to leave behind one of the POWs, Mike. And Mike is played by Ethan Wayne, the son of the Duke, so in essence the military-industrial complex is selling out the son of John Wayne. Only an Italian scum director could pull off something so audacious. And nihilistic. And bleak.
We end with everyone selling out America just to survive, Mortimer getting a promotion and Richard back in the mental hospital. Everyone decides to go back to their old lives, but you get the idea from Mortimer that they now know too much.
So do we, as we learn from the end credits - I had to translate them from Italia - the fate of the rest of the unit. Roger Carson died two weeks later when he was hit by a car as he was leaving his home. James Walcott died 25 days later, his helicopter carrying tourists crashed in Thailand. Richard Wagner is the only survivor. Doctors say he is in excellent health.
I love that the poster for this has Gabriele Tinti and David Warbeck in it. They're not in the movie. They totally could have been, however.
If you enjoy this tale of Americans in over their head when trying to be action heroes, I recommend The Last Match, which has Ernest Borgnine, Charles Napier, Oliver Tobias, former Buffalo Bills QB Jim Kelly and most of the late 1991 Miami Dolphins battling the army of an entire evil nation to get back their coach's daughter.