Warrior Queen (1987, directed by Chuck Vincent)

Posted on October 3, 2025 by Jedadiah Leland

The place is Pompeii in the year 79 A.D.

One of the jewels of the Roman Empire, Pompeii is overseen by the decadent Clodius Flaucus (Donald Pleasence). Despite the warning that the statues of the Temple of Jupiter have been crying salt and that a goat was recently born with the head of a human, Clodius refuses to believe that anything bad could happen to Pompeii. (“I’d like to see the cow!” Clodius exclaims with a laugh.)

In the arena, the gladiator Goliath (Marco Tullio Cau) throws deadly frisbees and demands slave girls as his reward for victory. In the streets, all the women adore Marcus (Rick Hill) but he has eyes only for one of the new slaves, the comely virgin Vespa (Tally Chanel). Vespa has been purchased by Berenice (Sybil Danning), a former mistress of Caesar who is secretly working to free the slaves.

Warrior Queen was directed by Chuck Vincent. Vincent was a veteran of the adult film industry and was considered to be one of the best hardcore directors around. His X-rated films were even positively written up in the New York Times. In the 80s, he tried to go mainstream and ended up making movies like this one. Produced by British B-movie impresario Harry Alan Towers and filmed largely in Italy, Warrior Queen was an attempt to capitalize on the minor sword-and-sorcery revival that followed the success of Conan the Barbarian. There’s plenty of nudity and violence but there’s not much plot and the film feels much longer than its 70-minute run time. When the volcano does erupt, it’s represented by stock footage and someone shaking the camera while filming the extras. Pompeii has never looked so cheap.

The main attraction here is Sybil Danning and Donald Pleasence. Pleasence gives it his all and earns however much he made for this movie. Danning is only in a handful of scenes and can be seen yawning at several points in the movie. I think she’s supposed to be the title character but she’s actually neither a warrior nor a queen. Rick Hill (of Deathstalker fame) and Tally Chanel are at least appealing as the leads, even if Chanel looks more like a lost cheerleader than a Roman slave girl.

The main thing that I learned from watching this film is that the lava that hit Pompeii wasn’t actually that thick, wide, or deep and everyone should have been able to just hop over it and escape. Anyone who died at Pompeii has no one but themselves to blame.

The Three Musketeers (1973, directed by Richard Lester) and The Four Musketeers (1974, directed by Richard Lester)

Posted on September 8, 2025 by Jedadiah Leland

In 1973, director Richard Lester and producer Ilya Salkind decided to try to get two for the price of one.

Working with a script written by novelist George McDonald Fraser, Lester and Salkind had assembled a once-in-a-lifetime cast to star in an epic film adaptation of Alexandre Dumas’s The Three Musketeers. Michael York was cast as d’Artagnan, the youthful swordman who goes from being a country bumpkin to becoming a King’s Musketeer. His fellow musketeers were played by Oliver Reed, Richard Chamberlain, and Frank Finlay. Faye Dunaway and Christopher Lee were cast as the villains, Milady and Rochefort. Charlton Heston played the oily Cardinal Richelieu. Geraldine Chaplin played Queen Anne while Simon Ward played the Duke of Buckingham. Comedic relief was supplied by Roy Kinnear as d’Artagnan’s manservant and Raquel Welch as Constance, d’Artagnan’s klutzy love interest. The film was a expensive, lushly designed epic that mixed Lester’s love of physical comedy with the international intrigue and the adventure of Dumas’s source material.

The only problem is that the completed film was too long. At least, that’s what Salkind and Lester claimed when they announced that they would be splitting their epic into two films. The cast and the crew, who had only been paid for one film, were outraged and the subsequent lawsuits led to the SAG ruling that all future actors’ contracts would include what was known as the Salkind clause, which stipulates that a a single production cannot be split into two or more films without prior contractual agreement.

But what about the films themselves? Both The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers are currently available on Tubi. I watched them over the weekend and, of the many films that have been made out of Dumas’s Musketeer stories, Richard Lester’s films are the best. Lester captures the swashbuckling spirit of the books while also turning them into two films that are easily identifiable as Lester’s work. There’s a lot physical humor to be found in Lester’s adaptation, especially during the first installment. d’Artagnan runs through the streets of Paris, convinced that he has been insulted by the haughty Rochefort. d’Artagnan manages to get challenged to three separate duels, all to take place on the same day. After his first swordfight as a member of the Musketeers, d’Artagnan tries to tell the men that he wounded about an ointment that will help them with their pain. Raquel Welch also shows a genuine flair for comedy as Constance, which makes her fate in the second film all the more tragic.

For all the controversy that it caused, splitting the story into two films was actually the right decision. If The Three Musketeers is an enjoyable adventure film, The Four Musketeers is far more serious. In The Four Musketeers, Oliver Reed’s melancholic Athos steps into the spotlight and his story of his previous marriage to the villainous Milady casts his character in an entirely new light. In The Four Musketeers, the combat is much more brutal and the humor considerably darker. Likable characters die. The Musketeers themselves commit an act of extrajudicial brutality that, while true to Dumas’s novel, would probably be altered if the film were made today. From being a naive bumpkin in The Three Musketeers, The Four Musketeers finds d’Artgnan transformed into a battle weary soldier.

The cast is fabulous. This is a case of the all-star label living up to the hype. Oliver Reed, Frank Finlay, and Richard Chamberlain all seems as if they’ve been riding and fighting together for decades. Christopher Lee plays Rochefort as being an almost honorable villain while Faye Dunaway is a cunning and sexy Milady. What truly makes the film work, though, is the direction of Richard Lester. Lester stay true to the spirit of Dumas while also using the material to comment on the modern world, with the constant threat of war and civil uprising mirroring the era in which the films were made. Interestingly enough, Richard Lester first became interested in the material when Ilya Salkind reached out to the Beatles to try to convince them to play the Musketeers. While the Beatles were ultimately more interested in a never-produced adaptation of The Lord of the Rings, Richard Lester was happy to bring Dumas’s characters to life.

Both The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers are currently on Tubi, for anyone looking for a truly great adventure epic.

Guilty Pleasure No. 83: Meteor (dir by Ronald Neame)

Posted on May 16, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

1979’s Meteor is about a big rock that is tumbling through space. Earth is directly in its path and, if it hits the planet, it could be an extinction-level event. Unfortunately, little bits of the rock keep breaking off and crashing into Earth, destroying cities and fleeing extras. Goodbye, Hong Kong. Goodbye, Switzerland, which is destroyed via stock footage lifted from Avalanche. Goodbye, New York, which blows up in such spectacular fashion that the scene was later re-used in The Day After.

It might seem like the planet is doomed. The meteor is unstoppable. Bruce Willis hasn’t become a star yet. But fear not! Some of the brightest faces of the 70s have been recruited to stop the meteor. Natalie Wood, in one of her final films, plays a translator and gets covered in muddy river water. Sean Connery wears a turtleneck and curses in that Scottish way of his. Karl Malden wears a hat and tells people to calm down while he calls the President. Brian Keith plays a Russian with all the grace and skill of a cat trying to rip open a bag of treats. Martin Landau is the military official who doesn’t think that the scientist know what they’re talking about. Henry Fonda is the president. That’s a lot of balding men for one movie and it’s hard not to notice that both Malden and Keith often seem to be wearing a hat whenever they share a scene with Connery. My personal theory is that the production, having spent all of their money on blowing up New York, couldn’t afford more than two toupees so everyone had to take turns wearing them. (The few scenes where Malden is hatless while in Connery’s presence are often oddly filmed, with either Connery on Malden standing with their back to the camera, almost as if the scenes were actually done with a stand-in.)

We’re supposed to breathe a sigh of relief when we see that Henry Fonda is playing the President but I’ve seen Fail Safe and I remember him allowing the Russian to nuke New York City. Interestingly enough, New York gets destroyed in this film too. Why didn’t President Fonda care about New York City? Of course, the scientists and the military folks are all located in a control center that’s located under the city. Malden mentions that they’re right next to the Hudson River. It doesn’t seem to occur to anyone that this is a bad idea but, then again, they also elected Henry Fonda president again.

My late friend and colleague Gary Loggins described Meteor as being a “crashing bore.” I have to admit that this is one of the few times that I have ever disagreed with Gary. Meteor is a tremendous amount of fun, as long as you’re watching it with a group of people and nobody takes it seriously. (The first time I saw it was at one in the morning while I was in college. Jeff and I watched it in the lounge of one of the dorms. We may be the only two people to have romantic memories of Meteor.) Meteor features a cast of champion scenery chewers. Karl Malden, Sean Connery, Martin Landau, Brian Keith, none of them were exactly subtle actors and giving them an excuse to argue about how to deal with a meteor allows for a lot of very enjoyable overacting. As well, the special effects are so cheap and obviously fake that it’s hard not to laugh out loud whenever the film cuts to that shot of the meteor rolling through space or the incredibly shiny American and Russian missiles slowly heading towards it.

Meteor’s a lot of fun, even if it is one of those movies where no one points out that our heroes inevitably seem to make every situation worse with their own stupidity. It’s very much at the tail-end of the 70s disaster boom. Watch it for the stars. Watch it for the rock. And watch it for the hairpieces.

Previous Guilty Pleasures

Live Tweet Alert: Join #FridayNightFlix For Hercules!

Posted on November 10, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in a few weekly live tweets on Twitter and Mastodon. I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday, I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday, and I am one of the five hosts of #MondayActionMovie! Every week, we get together. We watch a movie. We tweet our way through it.

Tonight, at 10 pm et, #FridayNightFlix has got 1983’s Hercules, starring Lou Ferrigno and Sybil Danning!

If you want to join us this Friday, just hop onto twitter, start the movie at 10 pm et, and use the #FridayNightFlix hashtag! It’s a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.

Hercules is available on Prime and Tubi! See you there!

Operation Thunderbolt (1977, directed by Menahem Golan)

Posted on May 31, 2020 by Jedadiah Leland

On June 27th, 1976, four terrorists hijacked an Air France flight and diverted it to Entebbe Airport in Uganda. With the blessing of dictator Idi Amin and with the help of a deployment of Ugandan soldiers, the terrorists held all of the Israeli passengers hostage while allowing the non-Jewish passengers to leave. The terrorists issued the usual set of demands. The Israelis responded with Operation Thunderbolt, a daring July 4th raid on the airport that led to death of all the terrorists and the rescue of the hostages. Three hostages were killed in the firefight and a fourth — Dora Bloch — was subsequently murdered in a Ugandan hospital by Idi Amin’s secret police. Only one commando — Yonatan Netanyahu — was lost during the raid. His younger brother, Benjamin, would later become Prime Minister of Israel.

A year after the the raid on Entebbe, Menahem Golan would direct a film the recreated that heroic moment. Originally, Operation Thunderbolt was intended to be a Hollywood production, with none other than Steve McQueen playing the role Yonatan Netanyahu. When McQueen withdraw for the project (as he did from a lot of productions in the 70s), Golan and the project returned to Israel, where it was produced with the help of the Israeli military and the Israeli government. (Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres are among the notable Israeli leaders who appear as themselves.) Singer and comedian Yehoram Gaon was cast as Netanyahu while veteran exploitation stars Klaus Kinski and Sybil Danning were cast as the German terrorists.

The end result is a rousing action film that takes a semi-documentary approach to telling its story. Imagine a less flamboyant version of Golan’s The Delta Force, one that tells a similar story but without the oversized personas of Chuck Norris, Robert Forster, and Lee Marvin. Though the film celebrates the bravery of Yonni Netanyahu, the emphasis is more on the IDF working as a team than on individual heroics. (The film open with the IDF running a drill that mirrors the eventual raid on Entebbe, a reminder that Israel and the IDF were determined not to be caught off guard.) The film is not only a celebration of the strength of the Israeli people but, with the Germanic Kinski and Danning cast the villains, it’s only a very loud cry of “NEVER AGAIN!” It may be an exciting action film but it’s an action film with a message: Don’t mess with us.

(At the same time, the hijacker portrayed by Klaus Kinski is not presented as being cardboard villain, which may seem surprising given Kinski’s reputation as an actor and Golan’s reputation as a director. Kinski’s terrorist does get a chance to explain his ideological motivations, with the film presenting him as being more misguided than evil.)

Though I will always consider The Delta Force to be the greatest film ever made (if just for it’s cry of “Beer! America!” at the end), Operation Thunderbolt features Golan’s best work as a director. Menahem Golan was a frequently crass director but, with Operation Thunderbolt, it’s obvious that he was motivated by more than just making a hit movie. Golan’s aim with Operation Thunderbolt was to make a film that would celebrate both Israel and the strength of the Jewish people. With Operation Thunderbolt, Menahem Golan succeeded.

God’s Gun (1976, directed by Gianfranco Parolini)

Posted on April 22, 2020 by Jedadiah Leland

During the dying days of the old west, outlaw Sam Clayton (Jack Palance) ride into the town of Juno City and try to take things over. Because the sheriff (Richard Boone, who reportedly walked off the film before shooting was complete) is old and ineffectual, it falls to the town priest, Father John (Lee Van Cleef), to chase them off. Father John is hardly your typical priest. He’s a former gunfighter who, even though he no longer carries a weapon, still knows how to throw a punch. Though he manages to put Sam and the gang behind bars, they are all eventually released. The first thing they do is gun down Father John in front of his own church.

A mute child, Johnny O’Hara (Leif Garrett), flees town to track down Father John’s twin brother, Lewis (also played by Lee Van Cleef). What Johnny doesn’t know is that Sam, who years ago raped Johnny’s mother (played by Sybil Danning), might actually be his father. When Johnny finds Lewis, he finally manages to communicate what’s happened. Lewis and Johnny head back to town so Lewis can get his vengeance The only catch is that Lewis promised his brother that he would no longer carry a gun so he’s going to have to use his wits to get his revenge.

God’s Gun is a strange film. It was one of the last of Spaghetti westerns but, though the director was Italian, it was filmed in Israel and it was produced by none other than Menahem Golan. Golan brings the same producing aesthetic to God’s Gun that he later brought to many Cannon films — a few recognizable veteran actors (Jack Palance, Lee Van Cleef), an up-and-coming star (Leif Garrett), an international sex symbol (Sybil Danning), and a spin on a popular genre. Like many of Golan’s films, the plot is occasionally incoherent and the entire production feels cheap and rushed but, at the same time, it’s hard to resist the mix of Van Cleef, Palance, and Danning.

Adding to the film’s strange feel is that every actor is dubbed, even the ones with trademark voices like Jack Palance and Lee Van Cleef. Palance sneers throughout the entire film and could be giving a good performance but every time he starts to speak, you hear a voice that is clearly not Jack Palance’s and it makes it hard to get into the story. There’s also an annoying squawking sound effect that explodes on the film’s soundtrack whenever someone is shot or whenever Lewis makes an appearance.

It’s not all a loss, though. The Israeli desert is an effective Western backdrop and there are a few good camera shots. When Lee Van Cleef and Jack Palance have their final confrontation, the picture starts to spin around and it’s pretty cool. Finally, if you’re a Van Cleef fan, this is a rare chance to see him playing a traditional hero. Because he’s dubbed, it’s hard to judge Van Cleef’s dual performances but this film does show that he could do more than just be a smirking killer. He’s actually a pretty convincing priest. Who would have guessed?

Film Review: Malibu Express (dir by Andy Sidaris)

Posted on March 5, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Other than being the protagonist of the 1985 film Malibu Express, just who is Cody Abilene (played, in the film, by Darby Hilton)?

He’s a private investigator. Judging from his accent, he’s from Texas. He drives a red sports car and he lives on a houseboat that he’s named the Malibu Express. He’s even got a painting of a caboose that stands on the docks next to his boat. (It all goes back to an old friend of his and how he wanted to “remember her caboose.”) He’s got nice hair and mustache and he looks like he could have had a career in 70s porn. Literally everyone that he meets wants to have sex with him. His best friend is a cop named Beverly (Lori Sutton). His girlfriend is a race car driver named Judy Khnockers (Lynda Wiesmier). “Khnockers … with an H.” Cody says that about a thousand times over the course of the film.

Cody loves his cars. Of course, it seems like he can’t go anywhere without running into three obsese rednecks who always demand that he race their son. (Their son is apparently a mechanical genius.) Cody always gives into their racing demands and he loses almost every time.

Cody also spends a lot of time talking to himself. Nothing he says is that interesting. I spent the entire movie waiting for him to say, “I hate pigs but yet I love bacon, what’s all that about?” He never did. I think the film would have been better if he had.

I should also mention that Cody is remarkably incompetent at his job. The movie opens with him at the shooting range, firing his gun and continually missing the target. Later on in the film, Cody’s accuracy will get better but he still always seem to be shocked whenever he actually hits his target. From what we hear in the film, it appears that Cody has the respect of his peers but I’m really not sure why. While he does solve the case, it’s mostly through dumb luck. Cody doesn’t find clues through detective work. Instead, he just kind of stumbles across them.

As for the case that Cody is investigating in Malibu Express … well, honestly, your guess is as good as mine. I watched the film and I could hardly follow the plot. Some of that is because this is one of those films that appears to have been edited with a chainsaw. But a lot of it is because the film’s plot has a make-it-up-as-you-go-along feel to it.

It starts with Cody being hired by the mysterious Contessa Luciana (Sybil Danning) to investigate who has been selling computer secrets to the Russians. Luciana has figured out that it has to be someone in the household of her friend, Lady Lillian Chamberlain (Niki Dantine). (Apparently, every aristocrat in Europe has relocated to Bel Air.) It doesn’t take long for Cody to discover that everyone in the house has a secret. For instance, one daughter is having an affair with a butler. A son-in-law is actually a drag queen. Another daughter has gotten involved with a sinister computer mogul.

The computer mogul sounds like a good lead to pursue but, before it occurs to Cody to do that, there’s a murder and Cody shifts his attention to trying to figure out who did the killing. But then suddenly, Cody’s being chased by three armed men so Cody shifts his attention yet again to trying to escape from them. Fortunately, the actual murderer doesn’t really seem to care that much about remaining undetected, which certainly works out well for Cody…

Malibu Express is an Andy Sidaris film. If you’ve ever seen a Sidaris film, you know better than to expect a nuanced or even narratively coherent film. Sidaris specialized in over-the-top B-movies with nonsensical plots, frequent nudity, and dialogue that was heavy on groan-worthy double entendres. Malibu Express was the first of his so-called triple “B” films (that stood for either Bullets, Bombs, and Babes or Bullets, Bombs, and Boobs, depending on who you ask). It’s definitely a flawed film. The plot makes no sense. The dialogue is often cringe worthy. The acting ranges from competent to awful. The editing … oh my God, don’t even get me started on how messy this film is.

And yet, it’s also an oddly likable film. If nothing else, the film seems to be aware of its flaws. It knows that it makes no sense and that Cody is incompetent and no one in real life would ever say 75% of the lines that are uttered in Malibu Express. It knows all of this but the film is determined to have fun and it’s hard to admire the film’s determination to full embrace the exploitation aesthetic. Watching Malibu Express, you can tell that Sidaris probably enjoyed himself will directing it. How much fun you have will depend on how much patience you have for Sidaris’s style of filmmaking.

Myself, I love over-the-top B-movies so I enjoyed it even if I couldn’t follow the plot.

A Movie A Day #286: The Tomb (1986, directed by Fred Olen Ray)

Posted on October 21, 2017 by Jedadiah Leland

Sybil Danning is top-billed in The Tomb but she only appears at the very start of the film. She lands an airplane on a landing strip in the middle of the Egyptian desert and then gets into a gunfight with two archeologists who have robbed a tomb and are now trying to sell off the artifacts. When one of the archeologists aims his handgun at the plane and pulls the trigger, the plane explodes. Though Sybil survives the gun fight, that’s it for her in this movie. Since whatever modern-day audience The Tomb may have is largely going to be made up of nostalgic Sybil Danning fanboys, most people will probably stop watching once it becomes obvious that she is never coming back.

The rest of the movie is about the archeologists selling off the artifacts to greedy collectors like Cameron Mitchell (who spend the entire movie sitting in his office). This ticks off the ancient Egyptian princess, Nefratis (Michelle Bauer), and she sets off to kill all of the collectors, one-by-one.

Like The Awakening and Blood From The Mummy’s Tomb, The Tomb claims to be based on Bram Stoker’s The Jewel of Seven Stars. Actually, The Tomb is just an early Fred Olen Ray film, complete with Ray regulars like John Carradine, who gets even less screen time that Danning and Mitchell. Like most early Ray films, it suffers due to a low budget but Ray’s enthusiastic, never-say-die spirit keeps things moving right along. With most of the top-billed actors only appearing in a scene or two, the movie belongs to Bauer and she does the most that she can with her role, tearing apart hearts and swearing vengeance with real gusto.

One final note: during the opening credits, The Pharohs, a band that performed while wearing headresses and wrapped in banadages, performs Tutti Frutti. That almost makes up for Sybil Danning only appearing in 3 minutes of the movie.

A Movie A Day #201: L.A. Bounty (1989, directed by Worth Keeter)

Posted on July 28, 2017 by Jedadiah Leland

Sybil Danning vs. Wings Hauser? What could go wrong with that?

Cavanaugh (Wings Hauser) is an insane drug dealer who is also an artist. When he is not coming up with elaborate ways to kill people, Cavanaugh can be found painting in his warehouse and talking to himself. Cavanaugh spends a lot of time talking. Ruger (Sybil Danning) is a former cop turned bounty hunter. In the tradition of Clint Eastwood, Ruger rarely speaks. Ruger has good reason to hate Cavanaugh. When she was a cop, Cavanaugh killed her partner. Now that Cavanaugh has kidnapped a local politician, Ruger is the obvious choice to track down Cavanaugh, get revenge for her partner, and save the next mayor of Los Angeles.

A typical low-budget late 80s action film, L.A. Bounty is distinguished by the contrast between the ferocious overacting of Wings Hauser and the underacting of Sybil Danning. This was one of Danning’s final starring roles before she retired from the movies. (She has recently returned, with cameos in two Rob Zombie productions.) It is interesting to see Danning in the type of role that would typically go to either Clint Eastwood, Charles Bronson, or maybe even Chuck Norris. According to the imdb trivia section for L.A. Bounty, Danning only has 31 lines in the entire movie, which is more than I can remember her saying. Danning, however, is such a strong physical presence that she does not have to say anything to make her point or show how tough she is. Hauser, on the other hand, never stops talking, moving, and laughing. This is one of Hauser’s craziest performances, which is saying something. From scene to scene, Hauser’s performance is so consistently bizarre that it keeps things entertaining.

L.A. Bounty may not be anything spectacular but fans of Danning and Hauser will not be disappointed.

“DAMN YOU, KENNEDY!”: Assignment — Kill Castro (1980, directed by Chuck Workman)

Posted on June 18, 2016 by Jedadiah Leland

7d9oDL3Y5kupCGgUsR6Jh5ZU1Kf One of my earliest memories of staying up late and watching cheesy movies on local television was the sight of Robert Vaughn standing on a beach and cursing, “Damn you, Kennedy!” An echo effect kicked in, making the line: “Damn you, Kennedy Kennedy Kennedy Kennedy Kennedy!”

The name of the movie was Assignment — Kill Castro and sometimes it seemed like it came on every other night. The movie started with a title crawl that was so lengthy and so set the tone for the entire film that I feel it is worth quoting in its entirety:

From 1961, the year of the Bag of Pigs to today, the Government of the United States has been embroiled in a series of events which have continually led our nation to crisis after crisis and to the brink of war.

ASSIGNMENT — KILL CASTRO, a true story is one of the most confusing and frustrating historical events that might have led to a world power showdown. It happened yesterday! It happened today! It can happen again!

Names of persons and places have been changed to protect the individuals who were called upon to aid their country and in doing so placed their lives in jeopardy.

“I WILL GIVE ALL FOR THE LOVE OF MY COUNTRY … RIGHT OR WRONG! — G.W. Bell, Chief of Carribean (sic) Operations, Central Intelligence Agency”

This motion picture is dedicated to all people who desire to live in a free democratic society.

Robert Vaughn plays Hud, a former CIA agent who was involved in the original Bay of Pigs invasion. When the mysterious Mr. Bell (Raymond St. Jacques) and a gangster named Rossellini (Michael V. Gazzo) agree to finance an operation to kill Fidel Castro, Hud recruits a Key West bar owner named Tony (Stuart Whitman) to take him to Cuba. However, Mr. Bell and Rossellini are just using Hud to secretly smuggle heroin into Florida and, much like John F. Kennedy in 1961, they are planning on abandoning him on the beaches of Cuba.

The main problem with Assignment — Kill Castro is that we already know that Hud is not going to succeed in his mission because Fidel Castro is still alive and probably still bragging about how he sent Tony Montana to Miami. The other problem is that the movie does not make any damn sense. That title crawl was not kidding when it said the story was confusing and frustrating. Everyone is so busy double-crossing everyone else that it is hard to keep track. There has to be a simpler way to get heroin into Florida. Surprisingly, this incoherent movie was written and directed by the legendary editor, Chuck Workman, the same Chuck Workman who puts together those montages for the Oscars.

Kill Castro does have a good cast, though none of them are at their best. Along with Whitman, Vaughn, St. Jacques, and Gazzo, the cast includes Woody Strode, Albert Salmi, and Sybil Danning (whose last name is misspelled Daning in the end credits). Fidel Castro plays himself and the film’s ending is provided by cannibal turtles.

Assignment — Kill Castro was just one of the many titles that this movie was released under.

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