A Couple Reviews

I hadn't watched any of my VHS tapes in a little while (and truth be told, I have neglected movies entirely outside of criticizing horror movies), so I resolved to watch a couple recently with the intention of getting caught up on my backlog of tapes. There are some twenty or thirty of them waiting on me, and of course during the same time I was watching the two I'm about to describe, I also bought five more.

The first was "Speed Zone". Made in the late 80's it was meant originally to be a third Cannon Ball Run film, and indeed the race in the film retains that name, but only Jamie Farr's very sensitive Arab character returns (and briefly at that). Really I have no complaints on this one. It was lots of fun to watch, and they even did a passable job of granting enough oxygen for every character's game to breath. It's a bit dated in some respects, but it was a blast to watch some of the best comic actors do their thing.

The second film receives few such accolades from me. It's called "Indio 2", and it stars Marvin Hagler, who was the middleweight boxing champion for most of the 80's. He is, regrettably, no champion of the acting game. His character, Sergeant Iron, goes to the Amazon under puzzling circumstances in order to avenge the other lead from the first film. That man is killed in this film's opening scene, which is too bad. He might have been a more compelling presence.

Poor Marvin, as I said, is not much of an actor. He has every scene he's in stolen by anyone else who has the inclination to do so. Additionally, while unquestionably very fit, Marvin gives us an allegedly elite soldier who is never really active or proactive in any sense. Mostly the native character he befriends takes the lead. Also, for a veteran soldier Sergeant Iron seems very uncomfortable with the outdoors and generally ill-suited to fighting.

A few memorable characters keep the film from circling all the way down the drain, including the aforementioned native, the villainous South African who serves as the film's main villain, Charles Napier, who is that man's boss and a heavyset woman who runs a brothel that inexplicably exists and thrives deep in the Amazon. Ultimately, of course, the natives triumph over the evil developers seeking to build a highway through the Amazon.

I wrote more about "Indio 2", I notice, maybe because the squeaky wheel gets the grease, and that was definitely the squeakier wheel of the two. Still, both films were enjoyable, having as I did no foreknowledge or expectations with either film. That is the key, I believe, to enjoying movies. When you know little, when you have heard little, when you expect nothing, anything you do get is great. These movies were great.