Nam Angels

I can't make up my mind - this is either the best biker film I've ever seen or the best Vietnam War movie I've ever seen. It is certainly the most extreme of both genres ever committed to celluloid. Nam Angels is about a soldier who visits a brothel in Vietnam (during the war) and recruits members of the Hell's Angels biker gang into his army. Their mission: to steal ten million dollars of Vietnamese gold, and free two American P.O.W.'s. Why is hell is the Hell Angels in Vietnam? – who cares?! Vernon Wells (star of The Road Warrior and Commando) plays a Colonel Walter E. Kurtz kind of character who has captured the American P.O.W.'s. This is a fast paced and fun war movie that comes highly recommended.

My review was written in June 1989 after watching the movie on Media Home Entertainment video cassette.

This oddball picture introduces Hell's Angels on their bikes into the Vietnam War with entertaining (though unconvincing) cross-genre results. Released in Miami in January, it's now simultaneously available on pay-cable and video cassette.

Filipino helmer Cirio H. Santiago has made several conventional films about the Vietnam conflict (including two "Eye of the Eagle" features), but here goes wild with a crazy gimmick. A group of Hell's Angels happens to be hanging out in a Saigon bar. They're recruited by young Lt. Calhoun (Brad Johnson) to help him rescue two comrades captured behind enemy lines.

Gimmick is that he needs specialists to take dirt bikes into the rugged terrain before a massive offensive is launched. He offers the rowdy quartet a chance to earn $10,000,000 in gold hoarded by local warlord Vernon Wells.

Though that key plot twist is hard to swallow, Santiago stages action scenes well and it's fun to see the free-spirit bikers in gung-ho war action. Predictably , they don't take kindly to following orders.

Cast is serviceable and tech credits fine.

Same movie as The Losers 1970. Released under a bunch of names. I collect old biker movies and this one rates by the bottom of the list mainly due to silly context and plot. Created after Hells Angels Prez Sonny Barger sent a letter to the US President volunteering his club to fight as a unit in Viet Nam. The hook was they had to sray together as a group. President declined the offer.

I must admit the idea in itself is HIGHLY original - buncho bikers on the loose for the gilt... the script's tragically eyewatering as well as the shoot - in a shell : militarily untrained, sociopath hooligans kill trained VC/NVA troops by the dozen, at the very rate of ONE cartridge wiping out THREE enemies, ehhhhh, LOL I say, have seen the pattern in auld soviet patriot WWII movies where an entire SS panzer division is annihilated by a single weary gunman ... good for a Saturday- night flick, but have a straight bottle of anything handy to pass it on high spirits. Maybe the 80's Angels' pop-culture heaves this movie to a pedestal but man, go see some platoonlike movie if you want the real McCoy's angle on Vietnam. So, as good as a one-night-stand but easily forgettable... Casting was really good (maybe lured some real Angels to share the part?) but way too theatrical.

There are bad films I hate, and there are bad films to be savored. Nam Angels would fit the latter type. This is a cheap, preposterous, and insulting to the intelligence "Vietnam" film made in the Phillipines. Despite its faults, there is enough action and energy packed into its 91 minutes that it will most certainly liven the mood in any room.

Get a load of this plot: An army Lieutenant (Brad Johnson) and his small recon unit are ambushed during the Vietnam war. He escapes, but two of his men are taken prisoner. Not by the NVA, but by a tribal army led by a mysterious white mercenary who is seen as a deity by them. Hello, Apocalypse Now! The area where the men are being kept prisoner is about to be "bombed into no-man's land". The men are considered expendable. Lieutenant Calhoun, desperate to get his men out, decides to recruit four California Hell's Angels to ride into the area with him on motorcycles and take down the tribal army and their leader!!! Yes, but it gets better! See, there's also a hidden cache of gold dust within the enemy fort. $10 million worth, one soldier calculates after merely picking up one vile of the stuff and dumping a little out. The Hell's Angels will get the gold, and Calhoun will get his men if all goes according to plan.

How could a plan like that go wrong? The guys have even thought to have a supply of fuel waiting for them at the midway point of the trip so they can make it back. Now how many low-budget films would have considered that detail, huh? Well, as soon as the Angels find out the whole thing is really a rescue mission, they do what you'd expect. They turn on Calhoun. It's up to him to pull the group together, defeat the tribal army, and get his men out. Wow! This film is extremely violent. That's a good thing, since whenever anyone is just standing around talking, you get treated to poor dialog and acting by all. I'd estimate this film has a higher on-screen body count than even Commando. Speaking of that film, the number one baddie from it (Vernon Wells) is the bad guy in this one, too. Gone is his Freddie Mercury mustache, and now he has a bleached blonde mullet tied behind his head in a pony tail. He gives by far the most lively and nuanced performance, but he is by all means a destitute-man's Marlon Brando. I wouldn't dream of revealing who all lives or dies, but in the final scene, a quote from Milton about heaven or hell flashes on the screen. It appears to have no logical connection at all to the story.

Brad Johnson is not bad as Calhoun. His character is supposedly from West Texas, and he fights mostly with a lasso and a sawed-off shotgun. Johnson actually went on from this film and had somewhat of a decent career. The rest of the cast is pretty awful.

By the way, what were California Hell's Angels doing in Vietnam?? Were they laying low after all the chaos they caused during the Rolling Stones' set at Altamont??? 5 of 10 stars from the Hound.