Wha'ja do when you're a former sixties tee-vee star who's just not hittin' like you were a good ten years earlier? Why, you appear in this early-seventies low-budget crime film produced and directed by the monster king himself Bert I. Gordon, that's what!
Chuck Conners'll become the hero of all you uptight and frustrated suburban slobs out there (me included!) as the bomber, an intimidating man who, after a series of hardships culminating with the OD death of his daughter, starts bombing the heck outta various buildings somehow associated with the guy's down and out luck. This includes the school his daughter attended, the hospital where she died, a hotel where a Women's Lip meeting is in progress (with Tina Louise as guest speaker!) and a home for physical misfits where former LAREDO star Neville Brand (y'know, the guy everybody seems to mistake for Frank Sutton) as a rapist who broke into the place to clock his rocks with an unwilling deaf/mute, happens to catch a glance of Conners leaving through the storage room door.
BEN CASEY himself Vince Edwards plays it cool yet slow burn explosive as Geronimo Minelli (I wonder if the character's first name is some sorta tribute to a previous Conners feature?) in the obvious Clint Eastwood role as the cop willing to get to the bottom of this case even if he has to bend the rules more'n Gumby on Amyl Nitrate. If you liked those CASEY episodes where it seemed as if he was gonna push his fist so far down someone's throat it was gonna come out the guy's anus you'll like him here, especially in the scene where he threatens to blow Brand's head off right there inna police station because hey, what's it gonna mean to anyone that some serial rapist got knocked off anyway?
Sure you gotta suspend a lotta your logic and reason with a film like this what with Conners pulling off his bombings in broad daylight and NOBODY happens to be around to witness it all, but so what because THE MAD BOMBER's got it all from wild and tension packed scenes to some really good incidental music played on a harpsichord that'll get the hair on your backside standing on end. The Siskel and Ebert crowd wouldn't care for it one bit true, but for a good cheap fun enjoyable film what's logic and reason got to do with anything!
You might wanna get the un-cut version that certainly did not turn up on television (I didn't, though not through any fault of my own) which features a whole lotta good violence and such that was ripped outta this relatively tamer print. You might be in for some surprises like seeing Brand's mu-mu'd and prudish-looking wife (played by Ilona Wilson) revealing all for the moom pitcher camera while Brand whacks off not to mention some good ol' Amerigan violence that was deemed too much for people who probably got enough violence watching the late news. Hmmmmm, I think I'll stick this "TV Matters" Dee-Vee-Dee on Brad Kohler as a Christmas present and search out the film in its grotesque entirety.
1 comment:
Neville Brand was also in Killdozer. The movie, not the band.
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