Hit List (1989)

If you’re a child of the 80’s and had an obsession with movies, you know what a wondrous place the video store was at the peak of the video rental boom.  Walking through aisles of VHS covers and having those lurid covers tantalizing your preadolescent mind was quite an experience.  It almost gave you a feeling that you were somewhere you shouldn’t be.  The VHS sleeves for movies like Zombie, I Spit on Your Grave, and Driller Killer will forever be imprinted on my brain.  Then there were the odd or curious looking box art.  The ones that had you guessing what they were about and what type of movies they were.  Films like Happy Birthday to Me or The Exterminator had interesting but somewhat ambiguous covers.  If it weren’t for them being shelved in a specific section of the store, you weren’t sure what you were in for.  One such film, for me anyway, was Hit List.  The image of the car running over a man always piqued my curiosity.  Was this a horror film?  An action film?  What was it?  Once I discovered it was directed by William Lustig and involved a psychotic hitman played by Lance Henriksen, I had to track it down.  And the fact that this movie remains available only on VHS makes it that much more curious.

Essentially, Hit List is a crime-thriller with flourishes of action and horror.  After a gangster is arrested for drug trafficking, he’s forced to turn state’s evidence and testify against his criminal boss.  The mob boss, worried that his lieutenant will rat him out, decides to put a hit out and ensure that no testimony is made; except that the hitman makes a vital error and goes to the wrong house during his assassination attempt.  After disposing of a man and woman he assumes are federal agents providing witness protection, he kidnaps a boy he believes to be the son of his target, whom he can’t find anywhere in the house.  This sequence of events sets in motion the revenge / rescue angle of the film and will make up the majority of the runtime going forward.

Jan-Michael Vincent plays Jack Collins, the family man whose son has been kidnapped, wife attacked, and friend murdered during the home invasion.  Collins is hell-bent on rescuing his son and finding the person responsible for turning his life upside down.  In order to make this happen, he’ll have to recruit the help of the gangster turned informant and intended target, Frank DeSalvo, played by Leo Rossi.  DeSalvo has his own vendetta to settle, now that he knows his boss (Rip Torn) tried to have him whacked.  Together, Collins and DeSalvo will have to fight off mafia thugs, elude the police, and battle a highly trained killer in order to save the kid and win the day.

Just like his prior films, Lustig’s cast for Hit List is made up of recognizable character actors.  Lance Henriksen, Leo Rossi, Rip Torn, and Charles Napier, who plays the lead FBI agent, are all familiar faces to movie fans and they all do a solid job in their respective roles.  Henriksen and Torn, in particular, are a lot of fun in their over-the-top performances as villainous characters.  The only issue with the cast is the leading man role, played by Jan-Michael Vincent.  Most will probably know Vincent from the TV show, Airwolf.  According to a 2008 interview, Lustig states that Vincent was drunk during the shooting of the film and it’s pretty apparent from the moment he steps onscreen.  He seems to struggle delivering his lines and I think you can even see him have trouble staying upright in some scenes.  In addition to this, he just simply can’t emote the grief that is necessary for his character.  When it’s explained to him that his wife is in a coma and that she has lost their unborn child, Vincent’s reaction to this soul-crushing news seems more appropriate for someone who has just been told that their favorite flavor of ice cream has been discontinued.   Lustig does his best to limit Vincent’s dialogue and shoot around his embarrassing performance, but there’s only so much you can do when your leading man is a disaster.  Jan-Michael Vincent almost sinks this entire film.  Fortunately, the rest of the cast brings it and a strong third act saves this movie from being a dud.

In that same interview, Lustig admits that he needed work and that this project was a director for hire job.  It definitely has that feel when compared to his earlier efforts, such as Maniac and Vigilante.  Hit List doesn’t have the same grit or nihilism that those films had.  Also, this film was shot in sunny Los Angeles instead of the rough streets of a pre-Giuliani New York City, where Lustig filmed his previous movies. This gives Hit List a more polished aesthetic, overall.  Still, Lustig delivers on the violence and action set-pieces, especially in the finale of the film.  There are a few memorable sequences that occur within the film.  There is a scene where Henriksen slips into a prison like a ninja and assassinates a potential witness after he takes out the prison guards.  There’s a fun shootout that takes place in a laser tag arena.  And there’s the standout car chase that eventually leads to a crazy sequence where Henriksen’s character is hanging from a truck as he tries to kill the driver.  I don’t want to spoil the end of this wild scene, but let’s just say that there is truth in advertising in regards to the VHS box art for this movie.

Nobody would claim that Hit List is one of Bill Lustig’s best films; including the director himself.  It doesn’t have that grindhouse feel of his earlier films and it doesn’t have a screenwriter like a Larry Cohen to inject some social commentary into the film, as he did for Maniac Cop.  And it certainly doesn’t help that your leading man is blotto through the film’s entirety.  Lustig and the supporting cast manage to somehow save this movie from being a complete disaster.  It’s a testament to Lustig’s skills as a director that he was able to salvage this film from what must have been a difficult shoot and turn in a decent action-thriller.  It may not be a cult classic, but Hit List deserves better than to linger in VHS obscurity.

MVT: The supporting cast of Lance Henriksen, Leo Rossi, Rip Torn, & Charles Napier

Make or Break Scene: The action packed finale!

Score: 6/10

Damnation Alley (1977)

Up until recently, I have never owned a four-wheel drive vehicle. Funny thing that, since I live in a mountainous area with notoriously crappy winters (it's often said we only get two seasons, Winter and August). No, my first vehicles were of the big sedan style (one nicknamed the Deerslayer after nailing said animal on the way back to college the day after my twenty-first birthday and one nicknamed the Fenceslayer for equally calamitous [but far less hungover] reasons). But I have always wanted one of the many fantastic vehicles that cinema has given us over the years (a desire no doubt shared by many of you out there, gentle readers). Who wouldn't want to fly around town in the Batmobile (1966 version, please)? Your daily commute would be ten times more enjoyable, I'd wager, if you owned a Land Speeder (never mind the hovercraft you could build yourself using old vacuum cleaner parts). If I ever learned to ride a motorcycle, I'd give my eyeteeth (okay, maybe your eyeteeth) for Kaneda's gorgeous bike from Akira. But if it's power and versatility you desire, look no further than the Landmaster, as designed by Major Eugene Denton (George Peppard) in Jack Smight's Damnation Alley (aka Survival Run). Me? I had to content myself with a Jeep. 

Major Denton and fellow soldier, Tanner (Jan-Michael Vincent) work at a missile base, where they are the guys in charge of firing The Big One. When incoming missiles are detected over American air space, the men do their duty, but sixty percent of the enemy rockets still hit their mark. The Earth's axis is thrown off, and the planet's environment turns to shit (as evidenced by the perpetual light show in the sky). Denton and Lieutenant Perry (Kip Niven) build two Landmasters in an effort to go cross-country to Albany, where radio signals have been detected. But after their missile base meets with an ignominious end (damn bed-smokers), Denton recruits Tanner and Keegan (Paul Winfield), who have both decided to eschew the military lifestyle now that the planet is seemingly doomed, to join in the quest. To reach their goal however, the quartet must first negotiate what Denton has dubbed "Damnation Alley."

The film, adapted from a novel by late science fiction and fantasy author Roger Zelazny, is first and foremost a Road Movie. That it is set in a Post-Apocalyptic milieu is almost tangential. The point of the film is the journey and the encounters that happen along the way. Like Stagecoach and so many before, the emphasis is on forward movement and what happens next. Unlike Ford's deservedly legendary Western, though, Damnation Alley never develops its characters for the most part, and a major portion of the objective of a Road Movie is the arc of its characters. The road (or dirt path or space flight or whatever) is only a metaphor which provides the characters seemingly transitory venues and obstacles by which they evolve. Keegan is only ever a non-conforming artist from the start of his journey to the end. Denton is a military man with a mind toward order and rules. By contrast, Tanner is a wild card who openly defies Denton at every opportunity, even though his disobedience is never proven to be the correct choice. By the film's end, they are essentially the same people. The trek has not changed them at their cores, and it takes away some of the resonance the film could have had.

This extends to the film's treatment of the military. We would expect Denton to be an overbearing, even brutal man whose tactics are not only misguided but outright perilous. Tanner, his opposite number, we expect to be the one whose unconventionality to be the key to successfully completing the mission. This is not so. The soldiers are good, competent, and even get the moral high ground at several points ("it doesn't mean you're right, and I'm wrong. It means [he's] dead."). In fact, it's the capricious actions of Tanner that land him in trouble more than anything Denton orders him to do. This is an intriguing aspect of the film, considering when it was made. Only a few years after the Watergate scandal and the end of the Vietnam War, the public's view of authority and the military was not exactly soaring. Yet, the filmmakers never overtly state that one side is superior to the other or the correct path to follow. Whether this was a conscious choice or simply the producers wanting to appeal to as broad an audience as possible without alienating either, I cannot say, though I personally would suspect the latter. The end product is too light in approach to suggest the creators wanted to inspire deep discussions (and yet, here I am).

The film also centers on the reformation of the family unit, and the attempts by the characters to reconnect to humanity in various ways. So, Denton becomes the "grandfather," Tanner the "son," Janice (Dominique Sanda) becomes the "wife" to Tanner, and Billy (Jackie Earle Haley) becomes the "son" of Tanner and Janice. While there are, of course, other characters, these are the four who constitute the film's focus, and though not formally a family, their interdependence emphasizes the theme of reconnection. In the worst of times, people will cling to the most tenuous of things to make themselves feel like they still exist, they still live and matter. Keegan paints his dwelling with a mural. In Las Vegas, the group happily plunk coins in the remaining one-armed bandits, and even though the thrill of gambling is hollow (money meaning nothing here), it still reconnects them to who they were (emphasized by the use of crowd sounds over this scene). Both Denton and Tanner want to teach Billy different things, not only so that he can help, but so that they can pass down knowledge to the next generation, to perpetuate the species. At a gas station, one of the Mountain Men (Robert Donner) wants to hear Janice play the piano. He needs to feel human again, even if he intends to commit some heinous acts in the immediate future.

The film is also biblical in several ways. There are floods that come up out of nowhere, mirroring the story of Noah's Ark. Billy gets the chance to act out the climactic showdown of the tale of David and Goliath. Las Vegas stands in for Sodom and Gomorrah, though Janice never turns into a pillar of salt (for good or ill). Regrettably, the film then culminates with a Deus Ex Machina that takes much of the steam out of the pilgrimage that has come before, and feels far too neat and easy to be plausible. And that's the thing about Damnation Alley; it poses some interesting questions and sets up some interesting relationships and then leaves them completely uncomplicated. Despite this striving for a surface-only experience, the movie still manages to be thoroughly entertaining, almost daring us to not ask any questions of it. I still did, but that's just me.

MVT: Peppard? Landmaster? Peppard? Landmaster? Since I already went on about vehicles enough in my introduction, I'm going to give my MVT to the late, great Mr. Peppard. I have been a huge fan of his, whether he was snarky insurance investigator Thomas Banacek, snarky Colonel-on-the-run Hannibal Smith, or any character in between. And as always, he puts his all into his performance and pulls out a likable character that could have easily been just another straitlaced, cantankerous career soldier.

Make Or Break: The instant that the Landmasters roll out, your first thought has nothing to do with whether or not these things would actually be practical. Your first thought is, "I want one." I still do.

Score: 7/10
 

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