Friday, April 27, 2012

Blastfighter (1984)

 Blastfighter poster

Tagline:

The Force of Vengeance

Quick Blast Review:

Blastfighter is a Lamberto Bava directed Rambo derivative. Michael Sopkiw (2019: After the Fall of New York, Massacre in Dinosaur Valley) is Jake "Tiger" Sharp, an ex-cop who served eight years behind bars for the murder of his wife's murderer. When he returns to his home town Georgia (where the film was actually shot), he is upset to see that the local hunters have taken the necessity of hunting for food into a mass slaughter for profit, selling deer and bear to Chinese herbalists for a small fortune. He tries to convince the local hunters to stop, but being rednecks they tell him to shove off with a "Yee-haw!". The violence escalates between the opposing forces until Tiger's daughter Connie (Valentina Forte, Cut and Run, Bodycount), whom he only just became re-aquainted with, is killed by the brother of his close friend, Tom (George Eastman, Anthropophagus, Stage Fright). 

This is an awesome little action film, dressed with the extra explosions that the Italian directors of the 80's enjoyed adding to their films. It was a bit of a cack to see a thinner George Eastman in the film, having been mostly familiar with his work in Italian horror film. Sopkiw is great as Tiger, giving a restrained performance until the death of his daughter, where his screams of "CONNNIIIEEE!!!!" cause Tom to say to his brother "You've gone and done it now." And boy, had he ever.

The Final Fifteen:

Thus we commence the explosive hunt through the forest, seeing Tiger go up against trucks full of rednecks, all armed to the teeth, but not as armed to the teeth as Tiger himself. The title of this film refers to the ridiculous gun that Tiger carries, the Blastfighter, which as he says "is easy handling, lightweight, basically a riot gun with an interchangeable rifled barrel that will give you a 6" bullseye at 300 yards". With this gun he lines up shots from a distance as well as taking out bozos up close. It can fire rockets and smoke grenades, and can see in infra-red. There's enough exploding cars in the final fifteen to keep any action junkie happy!

Sourced From:

Reviewed from Australian PAL VHS released by CBS FOX which gives a good fullscreen picture. There is a new widescreen DVD available from Europe by AWE.

Trailer:

7 comments:

  1. Nice write-up! Haven't seen this in ages. Will have to check it out again.

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    1. Totally do that Ty, it's a great film that varies enough from the Rambo theme to be unique!

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  2. Interesting, makes me wanna check it out!!!!

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    1. Excellent! I'm glad the smaller sized reviews still get the point across!

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  3. Great "Quick Blast" Review. You definitely enjoyed this one more than I did. I saw this recently in a nice Widescreen presentation and it just didn't work for me. Too slow with barely any action at all until the last 15 minutes. For a film called Blastfighter, I felt shortchanged. Sopkiw was definitely cool and tough for a small guy, but would have preferred a little more action to break up the monotony.

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    1. Thanks robotGEEK! Yeah I really did enjoy this, though I do understand what you mean about how long it took to get to the payoff, and that Blastfighter isn't really the name for a film that only reaches that level of carnage in the final fifteen. I did think there was suitably enough action up until that point to keep the pace up, though.

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  4. I've got to check this out, it looks like a lot of fun.

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