Mad Foxes

Mad Foxes (1981)

*** (out of 4)

Hal (Robert O'Neal) is out with his girlfriend when they are violently attacked by a motorcycle gang. The girl is raped but Hal seeks revenge the next night when him and his kickboxing friends attack the gang. He thinks all is over but soon the gang comes back for revenge, which results in Hal seeking revenge yet again but guess what? The motorcycle gang comes back for revenge and then Hal has to go out for revenge again.

That's a lot of revenge for one movie, isn't it? Well, that's pretty much the entire plot to MAD FOXES, which has to be considered one of the most entertaining bad movies ever made. The film has some really awful acting, an awful plot, awful direction, really bad camerawork and pretty much everything else is awful. I mean, if you wanted to play film critic then there's no way this thing would get anything other than a BOMB rating.

With that being said, the movie is so downright bad on so many levels that you really can't help but just kick back and have some fun with it. I mean, take a look at the violence in the movie. There's no question that anything was able to happen including one man getting his penis cut off and forced into his own mouth! There's non-stop violence throughout the film and most of it is downright hilarious including a shooting rampage early on. Just look at some of the actor's attempt at pulling off a death scene. Oh yeah, there's a lot of sex and nudity thrown in as well.

As you can tell, there's really nothing going on in MAD FOXES except for sleaze. The movie has nothing in it that would make you respect the filmmakers but at the same time I think they accomplished what they set out to do. This is basically a wannabe DEATH WISH but of course it's pure trash and on that level it's entertaining.

This film has earned its cult reputation due to the fact that it's ridiculous - and as you might expect, this reputation isn't exactly unfounded. Mad Foxes is just as ridiculous as it's meant to be and then some...however, while I enjoy a good silly flick, the inconstancies and illogical nature of the film don't help it as the plot doesn't move well at all, and the film gets confusing too often, which isn't good when the plot is as simple as the one here. The plot is pretty much routine for a rape/revenge flick, and focuses on a guy and his girl who end up getting on the wrong side of a neo-Nazi biker gang. The gang beat him up and rape his girl, so he vows revenge on them...blah blah. The way that the plot moves isn't very fluent, and usually just jumps from one scene to the next; which can be irritating. There are a few good sequences in the film, and these include things such as a man being blown up on the toilet and a Nazi-style bondage session towards the end. In fitting with the rest of the film, the acting and the dialogue are both terrible; but the film is very funny on numerous occasions, and while I can't say I overly enjoyed Mad Foxes; it might appeal to those who enjoy seeing movies at their worst.

In Denmark this gory and sick mutant was called "The Bikers And The Disco Kid"!?! It should give you a clue of what kind of trash we're dealing with here. After showing off his flashy fast car the "hero" gets beaten up and his girl is brutally raped by a moronic biker gang. He then contacts his kung fu buddies for help and they beat up the bikers and cut off the leader's penis (!) for revenge. The bikers then come back and gun down the kung fu guys...and so on. The dubbing is properly the worst ever and the film is drenched in blood, swastikas, disco, heavy metal, small bikes, sex and bad acting. The spirit of Herschell Gordon Lewis lives on, so get a copy of this obscure anti-masterpiece! Swiss producer Erwin C. Dietrich also worked with Jess Franco, so you know you're in for a treat!

Warning: Don't watch this freakshow unless you're intoxicated, it can seriously damaged your health!!

Phewy, some of the people writing these reviews have no clue what's up. Mad Foxes isn't just your regular flick you watch and judge. It's an exploitation classic with ridiculous ideas and situations. You should at least know that much going into it. But then I read that people had issues with how awful the dubbing was. Get the f@ck outta here! I can agree that it's not well-done in the sense it really overlaps well, or even sounds good. But these issues are moot when watching a flick like this. A flick with a double revenge story, karate guys fighting biker Nazis, lots of violence, sex and sleaze. I can understand that some people may have been expecting better dubbing, but the dubbing in this movie is although amateurish, it's incredibly funny and entertaining. It's similar to classic Popeye. Popeye (or any character) will ramble on about stuff when it seems unnecessary to do so. It's also the case here. There's silly dialogue thrown all over the place in here, and it's undeniably humorous. It's bad in the big scheme of professional dubbing, but if you've seen Premutos or any other poorly dubbed film that benefits from such crazy dubbing, this will only heighten your viewing experience.

Besides the dubbing stuff, I gotta say I really enjoyed the flick and it immediately became one of my favorite exploit flicks. It was funny, stupid, over-the-top, had many memorable scenes and was a very fun and fast watch at under 80 minutes long. My only gripe is a slight slow down in the pace during the last act or so. But it's all made up for when the finale occurs. Now that had me laughing. Check out Mad Foxes if you can actually spot the funny and enjoy crazy exploitation goodness.

While en route to a nightclub, playboy Hal (José Gras) has a violent run-in with a neo-Nazi biker gang which ignites a series of vicious revenge attacks that culminate in murder.

Exploitation film-makers generally take one of two tried and tested routes—gritty realism or exaggerated excess; rarely are the two styles combined. Director Paul Grau, on the other hand, is clearly a true maverick of the genre, a man who likes to truck convention, break all the rules, do his own thing however unpredictable the result might be: for Mad Foxes, Grau recklessly combines genuinely mean-spirited nastiness with seemingly incongruent, over-the-top elements, and abandons technical perfection and logic in favour of a less rigid, more experimental approach to his volatile material. It's a radical stratagem which results in an undeniably unique piece of work—or to put it another way, the film is an inept one-of-a-kind mess, often unintentionally hilarious (or so I presume), occasionally shocking, sometimes completely random, but always totally insane.

To expound on Grau's bizarre combination of the ridiculous with the realistic, I'll describe the villains of the piece in more detail: sporting a range of clichéd motorcycle gang outfits accessorized with matching swastika armbands, the gang's appearance brings to mind the imbecilic Black Widows from Clint Eastwood movie 'Every Which Way but Loose', whose nefarious plans were constantly thwarted by Clint and his orangutan with suitably comical results. Despite their cartoonish countenance, however, Mad Foxes' bikers prove to be far from a laughing matter, raping and killing without mercy (but strangely enough, not putting so much as a scratch on Hal's swanky sports-car).

Another example of how director Grau casually mixes silliness with the surprisingly savage comes when Hal and his martial arts pals seek revenge for the rape of an 18-year-old virgin (whom Hal had hoped to break in himself): the fracas begins with some of the most pathetic karate ever captured on film, but ends with the bikers' leader having his severed penis unceremoniously jammed into his mouth. It's sudden changes in tone like that which have earned this film its reputation as one hell of a strange cult oddity.

Of course, with terrible direction, choppy editing, lousy acting, dire dubbing and poorly choreographed action, Mad Foxes is about as far removed from decent film-making as you can find, but it's hard to ignore any movie in which vicious rape rubs shoulders with rock 'n' roll jive dancing, evisceration and emasculation go hand in hand with full-frontal nudity and steamy sex, a visit to the crapper can result in sudden death (I've heard of suffering from explosive bowel movements, but this is something far worse), and absolutely no-one lives happily ever after.